At the press conference for the Trump takeover, the President spoke about scrubbing sidewalks clean. I didn't expect playing this clip would take us in this direction, but I'm glad it did, and we ended up in Matthew 25.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. Got an email. Slater at Breitbart.com.
This is from Brent in Texas. He said, today's show reminds me of Matthew 25. Ooh, love that. We have squandered. I always had a little trouble getting my head around this scripture because it seems to reward the rich person and punish the poor.
However, the concept of being given a country of great wealth, resources, and virtue, and letting it get to where we are now helps me understand it better. Really good. I don't exactly know what we said on,
this would have been, say it's Thursday today, so it's gonna be Wednesday show. I don't exactly know what we said on Wednesday's show that inspired Brent's email. It was probably the conversation we had on sidewalks. We spent an hour talking about sidewalks. Can I tell you how much I prepared talking about sidewalks?
Zero, I didn't prepare at all. I had no intention of talking about sidewalks. We did it for over an hour. And it started because I played this clip of Trump at the press conference talking about the need to take over DC and to beautify it.
And I played this as just a flippant little thing, but it turned into much more.
But here they're really bad. And we're gonna either put new or fix it. And it's not expensive, it's not really expensive. And we're gonna fix our roads a little bit. We're going to clean up our sidewalks. You have countries where, every Saturday, the people go out and they wash their sidewalks in front of
their stores and their houses. They scrub. They scrub their sidewalks. So we aren't quite at that level yet. I don't think, Gaddy, we're not quite there yet. But maybe we will. They go out and they scrub. I think it's so beautiful to hear that and to see those stories.
But we're going to make it clean. But just to finish with your question, it's a very, very strong reflection of our country. And when they see a bad city, you know, my father always used to tell me, I had a wonderful father, very smart. And he used to say, son, when you walk into a restaurant and you see a dirty front door, don't go in because if the front door is dirty, the kitchen is dirty also.
Same thing with the Capitol. If our capitals dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don't respect us. So it's a very good question actually.
So I really played it for that last part. That's what I intended to do. But everyone called in about the scrubbing of sidewalks. Before we get into it, I can't get over Trump taking over DC. This is such an opportunity. I forget if I said this here or not, but I'll do it again. Never in a million years would any city in this country say the
people in the city say, you know what? Let's clean house. Let's just elect a bunch of conservatives on the city council and the mayor for four years. And we'll give them a chance to see what that would never happen ever impossible. But here we now we have one, we have a city now. One of our cities we have total control over. One of our drug infested, crime ridden cities of squalor, it's ours now. And we can fix it.
This is our opportunity to show what can be done and to send a message to all the other people in the rest of the cities across this country that this is what's possible. What an opportunity. We would never get it in any other chance ever
to prove what we are capable of. This is totally nation changing in a profound way. Think of any other city, they're all nine- oh Democrat seats, right? City councils. Maybe one Republican, maybe.
This is just all Trump, all conservatives, all Pam Bondi, all Kash Patel, all, it was a total our team. We get the whole city. We'll get it for three and a half years and we'll see how clean and beautiful
and wonderful it can be. What an opportunity. But back to the sidewalks. Someone called in, they sent me an email and said, Slater, I grew up in Baltimore and there were all these apartments,
like town, like row houses in Baltimore that had these marble steps. And people here in America, we don't have to go to Europe or England or wherever, people in America would scrub these steps. And he sent me a picture of it. I put it on my Twitter Slater Radio on Twitter.
You can see it there. It's like the 50s, 60s. These kids, like 10 year old kids scrubbing their marble steps. It's like four steps, four big hunk of marble steps leading up to it. And the whole block, everyone is cleaning it. Just like Trump's talking about here.
Right on the front porch in Baltimore. So I did a little research on these steps. Baltimore made these steps, whoever built these, they made these steps from the nearby Beaver Dam quarry. And it's such a beautiful story because this means to me that we built these steps to last. It was important, it was beautiful.
The marble from this quarry was used in the Washington Monument and the US Capitol building and give a search of the Baltimore City Hall and the Maryland State Capitol building. Beautiful, stunningly beautiful buildings. A couple other buildings in DC, these beautiful marbles and and then also the same marble steps
of apartments in Baltimore. And they were so beautiful, they were like, oh, we gotta keep these clean. We have to. That's when we made things that we cared about and things that we intended to last. And we quoted this a couple weeks ago,
I don't know if we did it on this podcast here, but this author I like, Eric Sloan, he writes a lot about how things used to be. And he said, great-grandfather did things always with a purpose. He did them conscientiously because he did them himself. That is why he so often put his name
and date on his belongings. The date we see on old things was put there in pride, as if to say, in this year, I was satisfied with this piece of work, which I myself created.'" He said, "'A typical inscription on a 1771 date stone reads,
to thy care of Lord are commanded all in this household going in or out. Psalm 121. But we would put a date on things and we put our name on it because we had pride in it. And as our pride in things has eroded because we just replaced it with cheap crap from China,
I call it the H&Mification of things. It's probably a better reference I can think of, but you know, H&M cheap junky clothes, just throw it away, right? Throw it away and throw away. Our connection to things has eroded.
Also our pride in places around us has eroded. And with that also our care and attention of people. So we don't care about things or places or people. And I don't know if they all degrade at the same time or one leads the others, I don't know, but I see them all degrading around us.
We used to make things with our ancestors in mind, even the steps of our tenement housing. And now whoever thinks about making anything that your grandchildren will use. I was talking to Director Eric. Director Eric grew up in total poverty,
meth addict parents, total squalor. But he told me the story that his grandma was a farmhand in the Imperial Valley of Southern California, 120 degree farm valley. She lived in a tent. A tent, like a real tent.
And she would sweep the tent, the floor in the tent. It was a dirt floor. She would sweep the dirt floor. The dirt was packed down as hard as you could. And then there'd be like a little dirt. There'd be like some dirt particles on top of the dirt
and it would be dirty. And she would sweep the dirt off the dirt floor. And she would tell Eric, her grandson, you do the best you can with what you have. Poverty doesn't cause squalor and poverty doesn't cause crime either.
You can have no money and keep things clean and be neat and be virtuous. We've so lowered our expectations for people in poverty that we expect nothing out of anybody. We're so dedicated to this victim mindset. Oh, nothing's in your control, nothing. The whole world is against you in every way. We expect nothing out of anybody. We're so dedicated to this victim mindset. Oh, nothing's in your control.
Nothing. The whole world is against you in every way. We expect nothing out of you ever. Not even keeping things clean, not even not stealing. We expect nothing out of the whole world's against you no matter what. And this has just debilitated people even more. And Made a spiral meanwhile my friend's grandma is sweeping the dirt floor in her tent Let's turn to the Bible here Because of Brent and his inspiration let's talk about Matthew 25 starting in verse 14 is the parable of the talents Let's go through it. The Bible says for the kingdom of heaven is like
the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like this.
A man traveling to a far country who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. So he's going out of town. I need you guys to take care of my money. He gave to one of the servants five talents, to another two and to another one, to each according to his own ability.
And immediately he went on a journey. A talent was a lot of money. A talent was a weight. It was a weight of metal. So the value depended on the type of metal it was. But it is believed that one talent
was 20 years worth of wages for this laborer. It's a lot of money. So if you make $50,000, it'd be like someone giving you a million dollars.
Right?
That's what we're talking about here. So imagine you make $50,000, imagine you work at, you know, wherever you work like Best Buy and the manager comes in and says, here's a mill. I need you to take care of this million dollars. And that's just the one talent guy. So I think Brent said something like, the rich and the poor.
It's seeming to me he rewards the rich person and punishes the poor. They're both equally, they're all equally poor. They're all the laborers. But even the poor guy is given essentially a million dollars. 20 years worth of wages.
Let's see here. Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them and made another five talents and likewise he would receive two gain two more but he who had received one went and dug in the ground and hid his Lord's money. The idea here is that the people who were given a lot money, the two and the five, they did something. They worked immediately.
They went, they did something, they kept working. They were successful at it. They did it without delay. They felt a responsibility. Remember, this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. You should feel this desire to go
and use this money wisely to serve your master. I need to go do better. After a long time, a long time, right? So there's plenty of time for the servants to be like, maybe he's never coming back. Maybe I can use some of this money myself.
Maybe I can steal some, whatever. After a long time, the Lord of those servants came and settled accounts with him. So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents saying, Lord, you delivered to me five talents. Look, I gained five more talents beside them. His Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful servant.
You were faithful over a few things. I will make you the ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. He's talking to you by the way. You were faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things, enter into the joy of your Lord. He also received two talents, came and said,
Lord, you delivered me two, look, I gained two more. The Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things, enter into the joy of your Lord. It didn't matter that he gave one, two and one, five.
It's just that things with it. The reward was the same for both servants is my point. Even though one was given two, one was given five, same reward. Also good and faithful servant, isn't that wonderful? Charles Spurgeon wrote this, he says, it is not well done good and brilliant servant,
for perhaps the man never shown at all in the eyes of those who appreciate glare and glitter. It's not well done great and distinguished servant, for it's possible that he was never known beyond his native village. And I'd love this because it helps you analyze and dive in.
Oh yeah.
Good and faithful. Those are the words that God shows. Maybe in today's words, it would be, uh, you know, it's not good and rich servant. It wasn't the amount of money. It was good and faithful servant, which is what we need to be to God. Good and faithful. Back to the Bible. Then he who had
received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew you to be a hard man reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. Ooh. And I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours." So interesting point here. If you look at these three servants as a group, they did good. Uh, there's see, there's three, no five, six, seven, eight.
No eight, yeah. Five, two, and one, eight talents. Eight talents given and 15 returned. Pretty good. But it wasn't, you're not, God doesn't judge as a group. He judged each on their own individual faithfulness and effort, their own good and faithfulness.
So it doesn't matter if you're in a group, if you go to a good church, or if you associate with these people, or your parents, or your faithful kids, or your faithful that or this, no, that's not it. It's individual person.
You don't enter into heaven in a group. Also check out this insult from the servant. Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have, you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So he's blaming, blaming his master. Now you're only rich because of luck anyway. So I didn't do
anything special here. I just buried it, but you know, whatever. Here you get to have it back. And he was like, oddly pleased with himself. Like, Oh, here, I didn't, I didn't waste it. But the Lord answered to him, you wicked and lazy servant. Actually, this is to you. This is us. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather
where I have not scattered seed, so you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers. And at my coming, I would receive back my own with interest, like at least therefore take the talent from him and give it to him who has 10 talents. For to everyone who has more will be given
and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away and cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Ooh, wicked and lazy.
This is what the kingdom of heaven is like. We don't talk about laziness a lot in our culture, but laziness is a sin, a sin that you need to repent of. We don't ever talk about it. So much entitlement all over the place. We talked about some welfare queens today on the radio,
played a woman who she insisted that she is entitled to a brownie because food stamps, you can't, in a lot of states you can't buy junk food on food stamps. She's like, who are you to say that I'm not entitled to a brownie?
I am, like, what do you mean? So just so much entitlement, we can go on forever about that. This is FF Bruce, his Bible commentary. Not dishonest. The master had not misjudged as to that. So what he didn't call him a liar because he didn't lie. He said you're lazy, indolent, unenterprising, timid, slothful, a poor creature altogether. He said, you know,
I was afraid, suspicious, timid, heartless, spiritless, and idle. We can't be this for Jesus. That's it. We can't be this for God. This morning, I read Psalm 147. What are the chances? Just perfect. It's like unbelievable. Alright, starting verse 10. Here's verse 10. He, excuse me, his delight is not in the, this is God, his delight is not in the strength of the horse nor his pleasure in the legs of man. But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love." Good and faithful.
That's what God wants us all to be good and faithful. He doesn't delight in the strength of the horse nor the legs of man, but in those who fear him and put their hope in them." That's what we need to do. And if you have that, then you would go and be a good steward of what God has given you, which is what the first two servants did. One more scripture here. This is 2nd Corinthians 13, verse five, examine yourselves
to see whether you are in the faith. So that's what I have to do, we all have to do right now. Which of these servants are we? The first, second or the third, you don't wanna be the third. So examine yourself and see if you are good and faithful. See if you're in the faith.
Ooh, that's what it says in your faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves? That Jesus Christ is in you. If that is true, we're not looking for perfection, impossible, but there should be evidence of it. There was evidence from the first two servants.
Well done, good and faithful servants. So the question is, what have we done with our talents, with your talents? The word originally was a weight, like a weight of weight for money, but over time it took on the more metaphorical meaning of your abilities, your gifts and skills, but that's it came from this verse of the Bible, your talent. So what are you doing with your literal talents,
like the weight of money you own, but also of course, your talents, your time, your abilities. What are you doing? What are you not doing that you should be doing? We need to examine ourselves so that we too can hear at the end of our lives,
well done, good and faithful servant. Brent, thank you for the email. Slater at brightbird.com is my email, or my personal email is slaterradio at gmail.com. If you made it this far into this podcast, then you can get my personal email, slaterradio at gmail.com.
Mikeslater.locals.com is the website where we put this podcast up Mikeslater.locals.com is the website where we put this podcast up with the transcript and no commercials. Mike slater.locals.com.
