In Matthew 25:24 Jesus recounted a parable where a one talent man defended his sloth by saying, “Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed.”
The master was not buying the story because the servant indeed knew his master–he was a hard man, and the master admitted as much when He said, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed” (Mt 25:26). Since Jesus told the parable to teach us a lesson about our relationship with our master, God, let us look at some ways in which God is a hard master.
In the first place, God created the world knowing full well that it was going to fall into sin and ruin. He knew it because Jesus was a lamb slain [in prospect] BEFORE the foundation of the world (I Pet 1:19-20), and the way of salvation from sin and death was already determined before sin ever occurred (Eph 1:4). God therefore created the world knowing that every man from Adam to the the Second Coming would be born into a world where he would die whether he sinned or not. For four thousand years every man died subject to incarceration in Hades and most souls ended up in there in the Devil’s prison with the full foreknowledge and approval of God. Since God is stronger than Satan, God can prevent any action that He does not want to occur. Since God is all knowing, He is aware of every action that occurs. Therefore, every murder, every dead baby, every rape, every death by starvation and pestilence was foreseen and tacitly approved by God. God is a hard master.
For people who are “lucky” enough to make it to moral maturity, they are all destined to fall into sin whether they want to or not. God says,
Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
I Kings 8:46 There is no man that sinneth not
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
No matter how we strive, sooner or later we fall prey to the Devil and end up in sin. The wages of sin is death, and man cannot pay that debt because his life is already forfeit to Adam’s transgression and the subsequent curse. Without further assistance, man was therefore forfeit to sit in the Devil’s prison for ever. God knew this would happen and permitted it to occur. God is a hard master.
God permitted His only begotten Son to come into the world as a poor man, to be hounded by bloodthirsty tyrants from infancy and be stalked, ridiculed, baited, and spied upon by jealous religionists through His entire ministry. They at last took Him through the wretched betrayal of one of His closest confidants, condemned Him on fabricated charges and through the influence of a mob scene had Him executed in defiance of all law. His mother did not even get the clothes that He wore, because they were taken by the soldiers. The Creator of the universe died naked before a mocking mob of His creatures on a tree He made. He died forsaken by God, though He had done not one thing amiss, hanged between two miserable thieves, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. God is a hard master.
Following the death of Jesus, the disciples who had the audacity to follow the teaching of God were hounded by the Jews and civil authorities to the ends of the earth. They were imprisoned, stripped of possessions, and often executed with the most exquisite tortures that men could devise. They lost jobs, families, lands, and houses and fled for their lives into foreign fields. These indignities continued more or less unababted for three hundred years. God knew this would happen and watched as His people were slaughtered by the thousands. God is a hard master.
At the end of the world, God is going to release every force of Satanic evil to work against His people. The saints will be delivered up into the power of the evil one through throughout the world. The elect will be hunted by demons like dogs and everyone that is found will either take the mark of the beast and worship him, or they will be killed. The ones left will be so few and far between that Jesus could wonder if He would even find any faithful when He comes again. Supernaturally equipped armies taken from the whole earth, hundreds of millions of cavalry mounted on demonically altered horses, demons from hell, fallen angels, the Antichrist risen from the dead, the False Prophet likewise risen from the dead, and all accompanied and empowered by Satan himself shall attack and overwhelm the last city of righteousness on earth. God sees it all happening and watches as Jerusalem falls to the attacking hordes and his two witnesses are murdered and their bodies are left unburied on the streets of Jerusalem, the women are ravished, and half of the last righteous city on earth is led into captivity. God is a hard master.
If the story were left at this juncture, one might justifiably be left to wonder why any sane person would be a Christian. Indeed, many an embittered parent grieving over the lifeless form of a departed child has cursed God over this very injustice of life and left off serving God to follow the Devil, because the Lord was perceived as too hard of a master, and even the Devil was a better master than One who they think pretends to love us and leaves us in such a plight.
What would you say to such a parent grieving over a dead child or to a sin-riddled, broken man with no lower place left to fall? Would you speak to them of the goodness of God? Yes, you would, because at this dark juncture, you have seen only part of the story. You have not seen an omniscient God who is preparing for eternity, and knows that to acquire an eternal “omelet” of a creation of men of free-will, He has to break the egg of human mortality. In other words, God has to permit some unpleasant things now to acchieve His eternal objectives. The bad things that He permits now, in His words, “Afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Heb 12:11). What if God permits the dominance of wickedness over His people to show the power of righteousness and His wrathful vengeance over evil at the end of the world (Rom 9:22, Isa 52:10, Ps 45:5).
If God let us live the quality of life that we wish we could live now, it would prevent Him from having a creation of creatures of free will. God needed sin and needed sinners and a place where sin could occur in order that He might offer His spotless offering for sin. He needed a sinful place in order that His spotless Lamb might be unlawfully slain as an eternal sacrifice for sin. He needed an eternal sacrifice for sin because His creatures of free will would certainly sin in eternity, and without His sin offering there was no solution but alienation from God. His holiness cannot abide sin. Without this world and its eternal solution for sin, God’s creation would be rendered vain and He might as well not create it. So, God imposes upon us mortal creatures to work His will. What He does now is patently unfair, but He does not leave us this way, and he eternally makes up to us for our trouble. He gives us eternal life, riches, glory, honor, power, and eternal peace and joy. He makes up to us eternally for our trouble, as Paul says, with “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (II Cor 4:17).
What God is doing now is really no different than parents who send their boys to military school or their daughters to finishing school. The Bible even compares the Law of Moses to a difficult schoolmaster (Gal 3:24, Acts 15:10) to bring men to maturity. Just like our fathers love us when they teach us to do hard work or they take a stick and whip our behinds, even so God is bringing us to maturity through His discipline, and He will afterwards reward us with our inheritance. After all, it was God who said, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him” (Pb 22:15 NASU)”, and “Do not hold back discipline from the child, Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die” (Pb 23:13 NASU). God has chastened us severely, but it does not result in our eternal death. As He says, “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.” We are experiencing the chastisement of childhood. Afterwards He gives us eternal rest. Let us be patient with God as He finishes His eternal work of atonement with our help. After all, He makes us rulers of the universe for our trouble and He rewards us with riches that increase eternally. We will have all of everything that we want and more than we can even use.
Everything that we would like to have He gives us eternally in superabundance if we will be faithful to Him. Do you want to live? God gives you eternal life as a son of the God of the universe. Do you want food? God will make it grow in such abundance that the fruitful fields of our day will be like a jungle in comparison to what He has prepared (Isa 32:15). Do you want women? God has promised that we will have multiple concubines (Isa 4:1) and thousands of children (Isa 49:19, En 10:17). Do you want power? God sets us to judge the world (I Cor 6:2, Mt 25:40) and to rule the nations with an iron rod (Rev 2:27) and to be absolute monarch over our kingdoms (Rev 3:21, Lk 16:12, 19:15). Do you want riches? God promises that we will increase without limit through eternity (Isa 9:7), and that wealth and riches will be in the house of the righteous for ever (Ps 112:3). Do you want rest from your labor? God has promised us eternal rest, every man under his vine and his fig tree (Micah 4:4), when He repeals the hard labour wherein He made us serve (Isa 14:3). Do you want honor? God has promised those who do well that they will receive glory and honor (Rom 2:7). Our people over whom we rule will treat us as if we were the greatest person in the whole world. They will bear us upon their shoulders to the feasts and cheer for us as we enter New Jerusalem (Isa 66:20, Rev 21:26). They will revere and honor us (Zech 8:23).
What do you have to do to enjoy an eternity of superabundance? You have to fear God and serve Him with all your might (Mt 10:37). You have to do good and hate evil (I Pet 3:10-11). You have to be faithful for the little while of your childhood and then you will experience freedom as a son of God in your eternal life. May God grant us all strength to overcome sin in our lives, and to enter in to what He has promised the faithful.
