"For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey.
Matthew 25:14-15 (Please read through to v.30 for the whole story.)

As a follow up to yesterday’s post (I encourage you to read it if you haven’t yet), what does the Bible say about wealth and responsibility? In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), note the following:

The Lord (pictured by the master) entrusts resources to His servants. All the resources in our possession are His, not ours. We are stewards of what is His.

The Lord does not give the same amount to everyone. So much for the unbiblical idea that wealth must be distributed equally (as though God doesn’t know what He is doing!).

Each of us is responsible to “invest” what the Lord has entrusted to our care—and we will all answer to Him for how we managed His resources.

We will answer to Him, not for how much we have, but for how wisely we managed what He entrusted to our care. Though those who were wise didn’t all end up with the same amount, they all received the same commendation: “Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

The one who did not truly know the Lord, and therefore did not understand what was required of servants, was condemned. We are not saved by wise stewardship, but those who are saved must be wise stewards.

And while the parable does not address covetousness, the sin of covetousness is simply wanting what others have. In our culture’s current situation, this is blatantly seen in those who hate the rich and demand that what the wealthy have be taken from them and given to the covetous crowd. They want the government to administrate this redistribution. But when the government doesn’t (according to the mob’s liking), the covetous take it for themselves (looting), insisting that looting is justified as a form of “reparations.” (I am not making this up!)

What is the answer? Besides the fact that the government will answer to God for allowing this lawlessness, we need a spiritual revival because all of the mess our nation is in is due to not knowing God and therefore not understanding His ways.