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this kind of carving. But this kind of carving would not be standing here if that kind of spade work had not been done. One rests upon the other. So you see, we need not and dare not call any gift which God has given us, even if it's only the gift of using a spade effectively, calling it unimportant. It all is important, so important that the Master

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says if you don't use it, you will be thrown into the outer darkness. The other mistake that this one talented man makes is this. He refuses to run the risk of trying. He demonstrates no courage. Christ liked triers. Remember how he talks about the unfortunate widow who keeps beating on the judge's door, or about the friend who comes to his neighbor's house and

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keeps calling till he gets out of bed to help him out, or about the guy who was so enthusiastic that he went and bought a whole field in order that he might know where the treasure was, or about the disobedient servant. He was at least zealous in what he did, and Christ complimented him for that. You hear a lot of people giving excuses for why they don't try. Well, I did

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things when I was younger, but I'm older now, and let the young people do it. Well, I'm too young. You see, if I had more experience in the life of the Church, if I knew more people, then I would invest my talents and my skills for the kingdom. Well, the problem is I don't have as much money as someone else does, and so there is little that I can do

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functionally, so I might as well not do anything at all. Or I give a great deal of money to the Church, let somebody else take that money, and hire the people that are needed to do the things, and then that will lead me to carry on the particular aspect of work which is mine. Failure to use what God gives you to use, failure even to try, is an act of

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cowardice. And God takes it very seriously, because it says in the parable, the Master says, "Take what he has away from him, and give it to the one who already has the most." Now, that's a simple law of life, isn't it? If you don't use a talent, you lose it. You take your right arm and tie it to your chest, leave it there for a month. When you release

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it, it's not going to be nearly as strong and useful as it was before. What you do not use, you lose. That's a plain fact. And then the Master goes on to say, "And throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Now, you've got to be careful here. Whenever you start talking about judgment in this sermon you're

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writing, you've got to be careful. There are a lot of people who don't like to hear about judgment. As soon as you start talking about it, they'll say to you, "Sixteenth-century theology." Or they'll say to you, "And remember now, these folks to whom you're talking, a lot of them have a foot that fits this shoe." In other words, they're one talent or two

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talent or five talent people, and they know in their heart of hearts that they are not using their talents to the extension of God's kingdom. They know that full well. You've made that very clear in the course of the sermon. And now you come along and you start talking about being thrown into the outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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And the first thing they're going to think is, "What about you, Buster? I mean, are you using out of your talents? Do you want to raise that question?" The psychologists tell us, you know, that you catch a lot more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. What should you do at this point? Well, I leave it up to you because it's your sermon and

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not mine. But in any case, the passage does say that they would be thrown into the outer darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now we need a conclusion. We need something to wrap it up, something that will bring home the question, "Are you using your talents, no matter what they are, great or small, to

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God's glory?" A few weeks ago, I was speaking in a home for senior citizens, 730 in the morning. And as I walked in the door, a man walked over to greet me. I could tell as he came toward me, he was an older man. I suppose he'd seen 80 summers. And he came over very well-dressed. And he took my hand and he said, "I feel great. I feel just wonderful this

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morning. How are you?" Well, I said, "After a welcome like that, I guess I feel pretty good myself." He said, "Well, there's very little I can do anymore, but at least I can make people feel better. So I go about doing that." And he shook my hand and walked off. And I watched him as he went. He was alone. I suppose his wife had preceded him in death.

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He'd made that trip to the cemetery. I wondered if he had any kids and if they ever came by to see him. He was on a cane. I imagine it was quite a blow to his manhood when he had to start using that. His hair was almost gone. The trips to the barber's didn't take very long anymore. He was wearing a hearing aid. I thought about that. Did he find himself

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saying to his friends, "Would you speak a little louder, please?" Or did his wife say to him, "Charles, you're talking too loud." Or did he find he had to stand a certain place in order to be able to hear? And how did he feel when people noticed the hearing aid and then looked away? Or how difficult was it to get it on and tuned in when the telephone

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rang late at night? I suppose he'd been retired many years. He'd gone the gold watch route, probably had it in his pocket. There wasn't a great deal that he could do anymore. But the one talent of making people feel better, "Well, I'm wonderful today. How are you?" He was still using it to the full. Now, see, you could use an illustration like that. There

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are a lot of older people in the congregation. They will identify with that immediately. You may have a parent in a place for senior citizens or someone you know wears a hearing aid. There's all kinds of little personal connections in that, you see, which make people feel warm and personal. And that may be the way you want to end a sermon. Or you may want

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to end it a little harder than that. So you come on with something like this. I knew a retired carpenter who used to work in his church and do carpentry work there. They said that he did between $10,000 and $12,000 worth of carpentry work gratis every year in that church. And I know it was true because I was the pastor of the church. And one time we

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had a lot of stuff stored in the garage of one of the members, and it came time to move it out. And Pete was going to move it out. He had a truck and he came. Do you know he couldn't find anyone to help him? He called and called, and that church was more than twice the size of this one. He called and called to get someone to help him, and he

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couldn't find anyone to help him. We finally had one of the seminarians whom we paid help him haul the stuff out of the garage. And two weeks later, I got up in the pulpit and I mentioned this to the congregation. As I stood at the door at the end, so many people came out and said, "Well, I would have helped if you'd have called me. I mean, I would have

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been glad to have helped. Why didn't you call?" Well, we didn't call because we didn't know they would have been glad to have helped. We didn't know that they were ready to give a Thursday afternoon. We didn't know that they had a vehicle that they could put at the church's disposal. They had never called and advised us of what talents or gifts they

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had that could be put to the disposal of the advance of the kingdom in that place. They didn't tell us. That's the reason we didn't call. Now that, you see, ties the knot a bit tighter. Now all you need for your sermon is a title. Now if you put a title on the board like "The Parable of the Talents," everybody will say

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I heard that one before. So you have to come up with an angle. For example, what you might do is this. You might say, "I'm going to teach you how to write a sermon." And then we will weave the parable into the lesson on sermon writing so that while the people think they're being preached to about how to write a sermon, instead of that they're being challenged to

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the use of their own talents and gifts. You're trying to slip it in on them, you see. It's an angle. It's a dimension of approach that will hook them when the parable of the talents wouldn't. And then the last thing is you have to have a good opening sentence. You've got to have

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something that will catch people's attention. For example, you might say, "I'm sufficiently sacerdotal in my ecclesiastical orientation to believe that this piece of stone is more than a piece of stone. This is a holy place. This is a sacred desk from which the word of God is preached. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the word of God will endure forever."

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Let us pray. Above all other things, our Father, make us sensitive. Make the one who preaches sensitive so that he doesn't put his heavy feet on the few blossoms some people have in their lives. And make those preached to sensitive so that they will tolerate the blunders and the inexactitudes of the one who seeks to bring the word.

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And above all other things, Father, make us sensitive to your word. Make all of us obedient to it. Call us so clearly that we cannot deny the hearing to the use of every gift you've given us. To the honor and glory of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in whose name we pray. Amen. 1

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(car horn honking)