Matthew 25:26–28: But his master answered, “You evil and lazy slave! So you knew that I harvest where I didn’t sow and gather where I didn’t scatter? Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten”

The complaint of the master against the slave was that he was evil and lazy. But that is not the slave’s estimation of himself. I don’t know how the slave is thinking about himself, but the slave probably thought, “I’m being smart here.” I really don’t know what is in the mind of the slave. He has his own reasoning. He has his own conclusions. He has his own priority. He has his own judgment, how he has reasoned it. But the master has come and has said, “You are evil. You are not serving the purpose that you’re supposed to serve.”

The normal thinking of the slave is not “me first,”; it’s “the master first.” That has to be the thinking of the slave. But something else has happened with that slave, and he’s thinking wrongly. He’s thinking “me first.” He’s thinking, “I don’t want to work, and it will be to some other person’s advantage.” The master is not buying the slave’s excuses.

And when the master said, “So you knew that I harvest where I didn’t sow and gather where I didn’t scatter?” (Matthew 25:26), that’s the whole point of having a slave: for the slaves to do the job for you.

So there is a misplacement of your role in this whole arrangement, a misplacement of your place. So that is why you are now called evil, and the person that has that tendency is the devil, right? Because we have the devil showing up in the Garden of Eden, who makes sure that Eve misplaced her place. Her place is as somebody who enjoys the garden, who obeys the word of God every day, not the one who tries to be God. So the serpent introduced an evil into Eve. Eve will later say that the serpent deceived her (Genesis 3:13), and Paul will say that Eve was completely deceived (1 Timothy 2:14).

That is taking over. The thinking process was taken over by evil. And what do we have here? We have a servant who just abandoned the role that he was supposed to do. Just abandoned it. Just abandoned it and started doing some other things, distracted by some other agenda, focused on some other things, and was perfectly fine until there was the judgment, and there was the conclusion that you are just being evil, you are just being lazy.

All other excuses that you have are just a cover for the evil in your heart, for the laziness that you have exhibited.

And look at the judgment here in verse 29: “For the one who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him” (Matthew 25:29), “and throw that worthless slave into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30).

So not just evil, not just lazy, but worthless. Talking about a misplacement of role, look at the way he’s even talking to the master. If you read earlier verses, you see how he’s talking to the master.

He said, “I knew that you were a hard man, harvesting where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed” (Matthew 25:24). Excuses and excuses and excuses for not executing on the mandate of the master, for not being on the mission that the master wants you to be on.

I pray that that will not be you, that that will not be me, in Jesus’ Name. God bless you. See you later.