If you have the privilege of knowing about the gospel and the way of salvation – and we all know to some extent through the voice of conscience and the instinct we have inside us that God is there – then this will be true of you. You may have heard these things many times, but you did not want to take them seriously because you knew instinctively that you would have to lose your life of self-determination.
Is that you? Have you had the wonderful privilege of hearing the gospel? Have you heard, perhaps repeatedly, how the mighty second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, humbled himself and suffered and died to make it possible for sinners to be saved? Have you heard of the glorious things of God, and yet you have not even sought him? You haven't prepared for him? You have just turned him down. What an insult! You have never repented. You have never prayed. Your heart has said to God, ‘I am God. He will not rule me. I hate him. I hate his laws. I am the all-important one. I am not going to seek him. I am not going to serve him.’ Then this verse applies to you.
But God is merciful. Oh, the mercy of God. At the beginning of this parable, a slave becomes a steward; a steward becomes a ruler; a ruler becomes an heir with the sovereign God throughout all eternity. No slave could ever deserve that. A slave becomes a ruler. A possessor of nothing becomes a possessor of all things in heaven with Christ, because that slave is faithful, because he believed in his Lord, because he realized how much he owed him, and he owned him for himself as Saviour, because he obeyed him and gave himself to him and served him: a faithful and a wise steward. Have you ever come to the Lord? Have you ever been converted? Have you ever passed from being a helpless, hopeless slave to a servant of God and a steward of new life and hope and forgiveness? Have you ever undergone that tremendous transformation, the triumph of the soul? You have it here in this unusual parable: triumph, tragedy, rise, fall. What's the position of your soul? Where do you stand before the living God? Come to Jesus Christ. Believe in him, trust in him, hand yourself over to him, ask him for forgiveness, ask him for life, and you will be with him through life, advancing in spiritual things, and then forever. Turn him down, insult him and your Lord will be your judge, and you will be given your portion, your horrible, eternal, agonizing, terrible portion, an eternity without God.