SPRINGFIELD – Joby Martin exhorted messengers to be content in obedience wherever God has placed them for service in his message during the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) annual meeting here, Oct. 23.
Martin is the founder and lead pastor of The Church of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Fla, which launched in 2012.
He preached a sermon based on the Parable of the Talents found in Matthew 25. In that passage, the wealthy master expects obedience and productivity from each servant, even though he gave them differing amounts and they had different abilities.
Martin likened the property managed by the servants to churches led by pastors.
“One of the worst things you can do is comparing what God gave you to what God gave somebody else,” he said. “It’s His property.… The churches we serve, where we live, the relationship that we have – everything is a blood-bought, grace gift.”
Comparison is a lose-lose proposition, Martin continued.
“We either get puffed up with pride and think we’re better than someone else, or we beat ourselves up and feel condemned,” he said. “When we compare, it’s an affront against the sovereign King of the universe,” he said. “We’re telling Him, ‘You didn’t get it right.’ God isn’t comparing us to other ministers or other churches.”
God, like the master in the parable, is more concerned about faithful obedience, Martin said.
“The master tells the first two servants ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ not ‘good and fruitful’ servant,” he said. “The fruit is of the Lord, not the servants.”
Those two servants were obedient, regardless of the resources given to them, and “entered into the joy of their master.” In contrast, the third servant hid the wealth entrusted to him, because he was afraid to take any risk that he might lose it. He was called “wicked and slothful” and was cast out.
“The opposite of faith is not doubt,” Martin said. “It is fear. So many ministries are not doing what God has called them to do, and given the ability to do, because they are paralyzed by fear. He didn’t get cast out just because he was lazy; he buried the talent and was cast out because he didn’t know or trust the heart of his master.”
Martin closed his message by asking Missouri Baptists to consider the talents – in a Matthew 25 sense – that God had entrusted to them.
“What is that thing, what is that opportunity, what is that people group, what is that mission that He has called you to?” Martin asked. “Don’t bury it. Risk it all for the glory of God, so that one day we might hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”