Voices of the Bible: Faithful When No One's Watching
Matthew 25:14-30 (CEB) · The Gospel on Stage and Screen
I invite you to connect with the voices of the Bible as we explore Matthew chapter twenty-five, verses fourteen through thirty, the Parable of the Valuable Coins. This passage sits near the end of Matthew’s Gospel, in a series of parables Jesus tells about readiness and faithfulness just days before his crucifixion. The stakes are high. These aren’t casual stories, they’re urgent instructions about what it means to live as God’s people when the master seems far away.
The setup is straightforward. A man about to leave on a journey calls three servants and distributes his wealth among them. The amounts vary, five valuable coins to one, two to another, one to a third, each according to that servant’s ability. This detail matters. The master isn’t setting up a competition. The distribution is personalized, intentional. Each servant receives exactly what the master believes that person can handle.
What happens next reveals everything about what faithfulness looks like. The first two servants go to work immediately. The text doesn’t describe what kind of business they conducted or how long it took. It simply says they put the coins to use and doubled what they received. The third servant digs a hole and buries the coin in the ground. On the surface, this looks responsible, safe, even. The money is protected. Nothing is lost. But the parable is going to challenge that logic directly.
When the master returns, the accounting scene unfolds. The first servant presents ten coins where there were five. The master’s response is striking: “You’ve been faithful over a little. I’ll put you in charge of much. Come, celebrate with me.” The second servant hears the same words exactly. Notice what the master celebrates, not the amount of profit, but the faithfulness of the investment. Five coins and two coins receive identical praise.
Then the third servant speaks. His explanation reveals the real problem: “Master, I knew that you are a hard man... so I was afraid.” Fear shaped his understanding of the master. He saw harshness where the first two servants saw opportunity. He read the relationship as threatening rather than trusting. The master’s reply is pointed: if you truly believed I was demanding, you should have at least deposited the money with bankers. Even minimum effort would have shown some willingness to engage.
This parable invites us to examine what drives our own faithfulness. The buried coin wasn’t stolen or wasted, it was simply unused. And that’s the challenge: gifts that sit dormant serve no one. The third servant returned exactly what he was given, nothing more, nothing less. From a purely mathematical standpoint, he lost nothing. But the parable insists that returning the original amount without growth is itself a failure. Something was expected of him that he refused to attempt.
Formation happens not when we protect what we’ve received, but when we risk putting it to work. The two faithful servants grew not just their master’s wealth but their own capacity, their own courage, their own readiness for greater responsibility. The celebration they’re invited into isn’t a reward for getting rich. It’s the natural outcome of people who engaged with what was given to them and discovered they were capable of more than they knew.
The parable pushes us to ask: what has been entrusted to us that we’ve buried out of fear? What gifts, opportunities, or callings sit untouched because we’re afraid of getting it wrong? The master in this story doesn’t demand perfection. Not one servant is asked to account for losses. The expectation is engagement, showing up, trying, investing in the work God has given us to do.
As you read Matthew twenty-five this week, pay attention to where fear might be keeping you from faithful action. The God revealed in this parable is not a harsh taskmaster waiting to punish mistakes. This is a God who entrusts, who celebrates effort, and who invites faithful servants into deeper joy.
This is part of the Voices of the Bible series from Andrew Conard. Each week we explore the scripture passage for the upcoming sermon, helping you encounter the text before Sunday morning.