While living on earth, we believers should bear fruit and save souls. Then when we meet the Lord or when the Lord comes, we will be able to settle accounts with Him and feel glorious. Otherwise, if we did not lead one person to salvation in our lifetime, we will be full of shame on that day and not have a good feeling.
In Matthew 25:14-30 the Lord Jesus spoke a parable about three slaves. One received five talents, another received two talents, and still another received one talent. The one who received the five talents went and traded with them and gained another five. Similarly, the one who received the two gained another two. But the one who received the one talent felt that he was useless. He did not know how to preach the gospel, how to give a sermon, or how to do any other kind of work. Therefore, in order not to disappoint the Lord or throw away His grace, he dug in the earth and hid his one talent. When the Lord returned, this slave thought he had done a good job because he did not lose the talent but had kept it intact. However, the Lord not only did not praise him but reprimanded him for being an “evil and slothful slave.” How strict the Lord is!
The Lord loves us, but sometimes He also rebukes us. If we are not faithful now, when He comes back, He will not let us get away with it; rather, He will rebuke us as being “evil and slothful.” The third slave was evil because he had the talent but did not go to work with it, trade with it, or even earn interest with it. Not only so, he blamed the Lord for not sowing or winnowing (Matt. 25:24). To trade with the talent is difficult because it requires psychological as well as physical labor. To earn interest with the talent is also not easy but troublesome because it requires some calculation. However, to wrap the talent in a handkerchief (Luke 19:20) is very easy; it is the slothful way. Therefore, the Lord called that slave an “evil and slothful slave.”
The Lord Jesus truly knows the hearts of men, so we all need to be reminded not to be like that slave. He may have thought, “I am not a co-worker or an elder. I cannot do any kind of work. I am slow of tongue and clumsy in utterance. I do not have the talent or the gift of speaking. When I speak, no one listens to me anyway. This is not my fault; the Lord created me this way. Therefore, I have a reason for not working, not preaching the gospel, and not saving souls. The Lord cannot rebuke me.” However, the Lord knew his heart and knew that everything he said was an excuse. To put it bluntly, he was lazy.
That slave was not only lazy but also evil. He miscalculated the Lord by making up some excuses, saying, “You created me to be untalented, and You caused me to be born without eloquence. Moreover, You did not give me a good environment to receive a great deal of education. It is already a fortunate thing that I learned enough skill to make a living. But now You are making things difficult for me by asking me to go and lead people to salvation. I do not have this ability. Not only so, Lord, but You seem to be very unreasonable. You asked me to reap where You did not sow; do You expect me to reap from bare land? You also asked me to gather where You did not winnow; are You not imposing a difficult task on me?” He argued at length with perfect assurance.
Nevertheless, the Lord’s answer was very remarkable. It seems that He admitted that He is such a Lord who requires His slaves to reap where He did not sow and to gather where He did not winnow. If you ask the Lord, “What do You expect me to reap if You have not sown?” the Lord will answer, “Do not care whether or not I sow. You simply must go and reap. When you go, you will see not only that I sowed but that what I have sown has grown forth.” Today you may not see the Lord winnowing, and you may feel that there are no gospel preachers sowing the seed. Accordingly, you may wonder where you can go to reap. In actuality, He has sown much seed, yet you may not know it. He has scattered many seeds, yet you do not see them.
When we were doing the Chinese-speaking work on American college campuses, we discovered a marvelous thing. It seemed that when we went to reap where there had been no sowing of the seed, there were clusters of fruit. In a Chinese-speaking gospel meeting for new students at the University of Southern California, fifty to sixty people came, and not one rejected the gospel. Who sowed the seed? I can testify that fifty years ago in China, in the early days of my service to the Lord, it was very difficult to preach the gospel to a college student. The college students at that time all thought of themselves as people of the modern age. They idolized science and rejected “superstition,” so no one would listen to the gospel. However, under the Lord’s sovereign arrangement, after the eight years of the War of Resistance against the Japanese, the situation became completely different. The college students began to be open to the gospel, and there were many who received it. When we resumed our work at that time, I was traveling back and forth between Beijing and Shanghai. One time when we preached the gospel at Chiao Tung University in Shanghai, seven hundred students and professors attended the meeting. The brothers and sisters all wore gospel robes and served in different ways, such as ushering the guests, conducting them to their seats, and conversing with them after the message was given. Over three hundred seventy were baptized. Who did this? It may have seemed to some that the Lord had not sown. Who would ever have thought that He had done much sowing in a hidden way?
When I first came to America, according to my observation the Chinese who came here for advanced studies were very proud, thinking that they were superior to others. When we preached the gospel to them, they would simply ignore us. Nowadays the Chinese who come to America to further their education come in groups and throngs, so they are no longer special, and as a result their attitude is different from that of their predecessors. When we invite them to come and hear the gospel, they come right away. Recently the Chinese-speaking saints in three localities near Dallas preached the gospel. There were a total of one hundred twenty students who came to the three meetings. They were all Chinese. This surely is the Lord’s doing.
Therefore, we cannot say to the Lord, “You did not sow, and You did not winnow, so it is unreasonable for You to ask us to reap and gather.” Apparently He is not sowing. In actuality we just may not know that He has sown already. Even when He was living on the earth, He said, “Behold, I tell you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are already white for harvest” (John 4:35). He then said, “The harvest is great, but the workers few; therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest that He would thrust out workers into His harvest” (Luke 10:2). This proves that the Lord had already sown the seed which had turned into a harvest that needed workers to reap. Today, this is even more the case.