Matthew 25:21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
If you grew up when I did, and even if you didn’t, you can probably recognize a song sang by Journey as soon as it starts to play. Faithfully is one of those songs. A song released in 1983 is still recognizable 35 years later, not only to people that grew up in the eighties, but even to kids that are in junior high and high school now. It is a very catchy song that sticks with you quite easily. Mathew 25:21 has a phrase in it that is catchy and sticks with you, well done good and faithful servant.
This comes from Jesus’ parable of the bags of Gold. The parable is about a master that is leaving and gives three of his servants bags of gold. The first one he gives five bags to, the second one two bags, and the last one a single bag.
When the master returns he sees that the servants given five and two bags had made 5 more and two more respectively. The one who received one bag buried and hid the money so he was only able to return the single bag of gold. The master called the first two servants faithful. The servant given one bag he called “wicked and lazy.”
After reading through the parable I went back to Verse 16. We are told the man with five bags “went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more.” The man with two bags did they same thing. Two things were interesting to me, first that he “went at once.” A servant that Jesus would refer to as faithful was someone who didn’t procrastinate. The second thing is that he put the money to work. They knew the importance of getting to work while they had time and working hard to accomplish what they could do with what he was given.
The biblical definition for faithful is loyal, constant and steadfast. The two faithful servants showed these attributes by doing what was best for their servant. The third servant did what he thought was best for himself. There was no loyalty. He had worked for the master when the master was there but when the master left he didn’t remain constant. Fear kept the unfaithful servant from doing what he should do.
The past couple weeks we have been studying evangelism on Sunday mornings. I read this story and I think about how we as Christians need to be faithful just as the two servants were. The master has given us the gift of salvation, more precious than any number of bags of gold. The questions is what are we doing with it? Are we hiding it or are we going out at once, knowing our master and savior could come back at any time, and sharing it with others. Are we multiplying the blessing God has given us by pointing others to Him.
Lets go back to the Journey song Faithfully for just a minute. The chorus has a line it, “you stand by me, I’m forever yours…faithfully.” It reminds me that Jesus stands by us. He is always there for us. Can we in turn echo the words of the song that we are forever His? That we will always be loyal to Him and constant in the person that He has called us to be? Are you faithfully His? Are you helping others know Him?