<p>19:21 <i>For I feared you- </i>Fear of the judgment of others is a source of false guilt. It is this which militates against the true and free life of which the Lord speaks so enthusiastically. We fear showing ourselves for who we really are, because we fear others&rsquo; judgments. This fear makes us uncreative, not bearing the unique spiritual fruits which the Lord so eagerly seeks from us and in us. The Lord said this plainly, when He characterized the man who did nothing with his talents as lamely but truthfully saying: &ldquo;I feared you&quot;. Think about this: What or whom was he afraid of? His fear was not so much of his Lord&rsquo;s judgment, but rather perhaps of the judgments of others, that he might do something wrong, wrongly invest, look stupid, mess it all up... And thus John writes that it is fear that leads to torment of soul now and final condemnation. The Lord&rsquo;s words in the parable are almost exactly those of Adam. The rejected one mina man says &lsquo;I was afraid, and so I hid&nbsp;<i>my mina</i>&rsquo;. Adam said: &lsquo;I was afraid, and I hid&nbsp;<i>myself</i>&rsquo;. The talent God gave that man was therefore himself, his real self. To not use our talent, to not blossom from the experience of God&rsquo;s love and grace, is to not use ourselves, is to not be ourselves, the&nbsp;<i>real</i>&nbsp;self as God intended.</p><p><i>Because you are a hard man- </i>The problem was the man&rsquo;s wrong attitude and laziness to do anything. The prodigal son was given much of his Father&rsquo;s wealth, and he wasted it rather than trading it. But he recognized the Father&rsquo;s grace and was prepared to work just as a servant. And this attitude was his salvation. So this man&rsquo;s rejection wasn&rsquo;t simply because he had failed to do any trading.</p><p>Another take on this is that there is a sense in which the Lord is indeed a &ldquo;hard man&rdquo;, a demanding Lord, His expectations were (and are) high. And yet His parables reveal an immense sympathy and empathy with our weakness. In a normal human situation, it would be difficult to build a relationship with someone who had such apparently contradictory trends in His character. Perhaps we have the same problem in our struggle to know the Lord. He never denied that He came over in some ways as &quot;a hard man&quot; with high expectations; all He said was that seeing this was the case, we ought to act accordingly (Mt. 25:24). And yet He is also a man of grace and understanding far beyond anything reached by anyone else. He is truly the Jesus who understands human weakness. And note that He is described even now as &ldquo;the man Christ Jesus&rdquo;, able to feel the pulse of our humanity. This, in passing, opens a window into what Divine nature will be like: we will be able to completely feel the human experience, to the extent of still bearing the title &lsquo;men&rsquo; even in immortality.</p><p><i>You demand what you did not deposit, and reap that which you did not sow</i>- He clearly didn't know nor love his master; or else he would not have had this inappropriate fear. He is accusing him of being a typical absentee landlord. But his master was not away enjoying himself. He had gone to receive a kingdom and to return and share it with his workers. The man who didn't develop as he should have done accuses the Lord of reaping what He didn't sow. But the Lord does sow the seed of the basic Gospel, as the parable of the sower makes clear. The point is that the unworthy fail to let that seed bring forth fruit, they fail to see that the Lord expects fruit from those&nbsp;doctrines they have been given. But they fail to see the link between the basic Gospel and practical spirituality; they feel he's reaping where He didn't sow. They are in denial of &quot;the power thereof&quot;, whilst theoretically possessing it. The Lord will require his own, i.e. that which he has sown, the basic Truths of the Gospel, the gift of the riches of His grace, His Spirit, with usury (Lk. 19:23). The parable of the tiny seed moving the great mountain was surely making the same point; the basic Gospel, if properly believed, will result in the most far reaching things (Mt. 17:20 cp. 13:31).</p><p>The moment of conversion is the beginning of the gathering to judgment (Lk. 11:23; Jn. 4:36). The one talent man didn't appreciate this; he objected to the Lord reaping and gathering him (Mt. 25:24). But whatever human objections, the responsible from all nations&nbsp;<i>will be gathered&nbsp;</i>to judgment (Mt. 25:32). The servants are called to receive their talents, and then called again to account (Lk. 19;13,15); there is something in common between the calling to know the Gospel, and the calling to judgment. If reaping refers to judgment which it clearly does in the Lord&rsquo;s teaching, then the man could hardly claim to have known the Lord on the basis of how He reaps. Because the man hadn&rsquo;t experienced the Lord&rsquo;s reaping. The man says he &lsquo;knows&rsquo; <i>ginosko</i> the Lord is like this; the Lord answers that if indeed the man has &lsquo;known&rsquo; <i>eido</i>- which more means to see / experience that He is like this, then he should have acted accordingly. The suggestion may be that even if a person&rsquo;s understanding of the Lord Jesus is slightly wrong, the important thing is to live within and according to that understanding, even if it involves breaking some Divine principles lending for interest. If the desire to respond to the Lord&rsquo;s gift was there, the desire to progress His work, then although such response was not ideal and not as good as that achieved by the other two servants, then the Lord would accept it. The language of sowing, reaping and gathering is all described using the same Greek words in the Lord&rsquo;s comment that the birds don&rsquo;t do these three things, and yet God still feeds them (Mt. 6:26). Perhaps the man was making a garbled, incoherent attempt to say that he had understood those words of the Lord to mean that He was somehow going to be an unreasonable judge with unreal expectations, therefore he had done nothing, although he had not spent the talent unlike the prodigal son- who desperately wanted to be with the Father. We may be intended to understand his reasoning as being &lsquo;You created birds who don&rsquo;t sow, reap nor gather into barns, they just expect food. And God thinks that&rsquo;s good. So, He is like what He creates&rsquo;. And perhaps the man also had in view Jn. 4:38: &ldquo;I sent you to reap that whereon you bestowed no labour. Other men laboured&hellip;&rdquo;. The harvest of people was reaped by those who hadn&rsquo;t fully worked for it, and the man desperately tries to turn that around to justify his own lack of action. Such desperate twisting of Bible verses can be seen at every hand today, as people wriggle by all means to justify their inaction and selfishness.</p><p><i>And gathering where you did not scatter seed</i>- The Lord is clearly the sower of seed, the seed of the word of the Kingdom (Mt. 13:3). But the man is complaining that the Lord &lsquo;reaps&rsquo; or calls to judgment those who had not received that seed. That is not the case- for knowledge of the Gospel is what makes responsible to judgment. The Lord could have corrected him by reminding him of the sower parable. But He doesn&rsquo;t. He reasons with the man according to the belief system which he claims to have, assuming for a moment that it is in fact true. His whole style ought to be programmatic for us in our frequent encounters with those who misuse Scripture and the Lord&rsquo;s words. The Lord does&nbsp;<i>not&nbsp;</i>expect a harvest from ground He has not sown; and in any case, the man had heard the word, received the talent. He was ground which had been sown, and the Lord could therefore expect a harvest from him. Like many people today, he started to raise philosophical questions about the fate of those who have not heard, and justified his own inaction as one who definitely&nbsp;<i>had</i>&nbsp;heard and been called on the basis of his doubts as to the Lord&rsquo;s justice in dealing with those who had&nbsp;<i>not</i>&nbsp;been called. Truly these ancient teachings speak to the heart of postmodern man today.</p><p>&quot;Gathering&quot; was highly relevant to the man, for the language of &lsquo;gathering&rsquo; is often used about the gathering of God&rsquo;s servants to judgment (Mt. 3:12; 13:30; 25:32). The man was implying that his &lsquo;gathering&rsquo; to judgment was unreasonable because the Lord had not sown in his land, had not strawed where he has. He felt he was being gathered to give an account when the Lord had given him nothing to account for. And yet the obvious fact was, the elephant in the room, that the Lord had given him minas, 20 years&rsquo; wages, 1 million. And yet the man reasoned as if he had not been given anything to account for. He totally refused to perceive the immense value of what he had been given. And this is so true for us- we for whom Christ died, the blood of God&rsquo;s Son shed, we who have been called to eternity, who by status are &ldquo;saved&rdquo; and showered with all spiritual blessings&hellip; can complain that we have not been given anything. Because in our minds we have buried it away, and reason as if we never received it. Here again, the Lord&rsquo;s ancient words pierce to the core of modern Christian self-perception.</p><p>The Greek&nbsp;<i>diaskorpizo</i>&nbsp;can mean &lsquo;to scatter&rsquo; and can therefore be used about sowing; but it also has the specific meaning &lsquo;to winnow&rsquo;. In this case, the picture would be of a man who has not winnowed and yet expects to come and gather up wheat. Again, the man may be attempting to twist the Lord&rsquo;s words about &lsquo;gathering wheat into His barn&rsquo; (Mt. 13:30, repeating John&rsquo;s words of 3:12). His idea would be &lsquo;You expect the wheat to be waiting for You without even winnowing it&rsquo;. But of course the point was that winnowing represented judgment, and this was exactly what the Lord had come to do. But in His grace, the Lord doesn&rsquo;t make that obvious point, but runs with the man&rsquo;s words and reasoning and shows him that however wrong his imaginations were about the Lord, he should have acted according to them if he truly loved his Lord. But he hadn&rsquo;t done so; because he was selfish and lazy.</p>