Faithful in Small Things
Transcript
I was reminded this week, more specifically this week than in other weeks, that pastors and preachers are not supposed to strut. They're not supposed to have swagger. There's not supposed to be, in pastoring and relating to people, you're not supposed to hold yourself too highly, and in preaching, you're not supposed to strut out to preach that actually good pastoring and good preaching is done. Our view of our finances, our view of our money, our view of eternity, what I was reminded of was that I like stuff. I have. One of the running jokes in my family that they point out was that when I was younger, when I would have a birthday or when I would have Christmas or whatever, my birthday's in the fall, that I would have a birthday, and I would open all my gifts, and I'd be all excited, and then the next day I'd start saying stuff like, hey, let me tell you what I want for Christmas.
I had in my mind all of this, and I already see that in my two-year-old. He does the same thing. You can buy him a toy, and he will play with it, and then he'll look at the box on the back and say, I want that, I want that, like I want. There was a little train set thing. He was like, he could barely talk, and it came with a little brochure for more train set stuff, and he started flipping through it, and he was like, I need a purple one. And I was like, that's the most coherent sentence you've ever said.
That came directly from me. Like I know where that comes from. And so it's like I just know that. Like I know as we talk about generosity in our gift series, which every year around Christmas we just take a couple of weeks to talk through how we view money and how that affects our hearts and how we walk in generosity. I'm sorry, this is distracting me. Can we get the lights, these two pole lights up?
Y'all seem like y'all are really dark back there. We've got to do some things to adjust with lights around here because it's not the brightest room in the world. Oh, no, sorry, that's not on y'all. That's on a switch up there. My bad. That was not for y'all.
That was for the, there we go. See, all right. We'll edit all that out of the online recording and make it seem really smooth. All right, anyway, as we talk about this at this time of year, this generosity, this walk in finances, I just got to thinking about the fact that really what I want, if I was completely honest, I want to be generous enough. That's what I want. I want to be generous enough.
I know that if I got more money, I don't know if my percentage of generosity would increase. I know overall, financially, I would increase in generosity because, you know, 10% of 100 is different from 10% of 1,000 or whatever. But my percentage would probably stay the same. I don't know if I would get more generous. I do know I'd have more stuff. And I'd feel fine with it because it'd be a smaller percentage of my budget.
Like, if I got more money, I would also have more stuff. I might have some land. You guys, you don't even know how much I want to just live around trees and not people. You have no clue. I would have more land. I would have, like, I just know that about myself.
And as I read this passage this week, I just was convicted. And so I just want to say that I feel like I have limped up here this morning. And I am a sinner in need of a Savior and in need of this truth and just trying to study it with you. That's not, that's not, the goal is not, hey, listen to what Jesus said and look at how awesome I do it. That's not what this is. That's not what this has ever been.
This has been, we're sinners in need of a Savior and in need of Him to go to work in our hearts. So let's study that together and let's walk in that together. So we're going to be in Luke chapter 16 and Jesus is going to tell a story that confuses people. I know it confuses people because as I read commentaries on it, they said, we're confused. It's not exactly what they said, but that's what they communicated. It confuses people, but I actually think it's a really straightforward story.
And so we're going to take the time to understand the story that Jesus is teaching so that we can understand His point. But His point is very simple. His point is this. Christians do not handle money well in light of the fact that they will exist for eternity. That's the point. And in general, Christians do not handle money well in light of the fact that they will exist for eternity.
That's what we're going to see today. So we're going to pray and ask the Lord to help us as we study this. And we're going to look at this story that Jesus tells. God, we thank You for this time we get to spend in Your Word. And we thank You that Your Word, through the power of Your Spirit, that You may have to ask for the ability to convict, the ability to speak into our souls, and the ability to actually change us and to save us. And so I pray, Lord, that we would not enter into this lightly this morning.
But with the weight of the task that we all endeavor to accomplish this morning, would be present and that we would study Your Word well, that You might work in our souls through it. We love You and we thank You in Jesus' name. Amen. Luke chapter 16, verse 1 is where we'll pick up. It says, He also said to His disciples, this is Jesus speaking to His followers. If you're a Christian, just kind of you can put yourself in the role of a disciple, someone who's trying to follow the will of Jesus, trying to be a follower of His.
When He leaves, He tells His disciples, those who He had trained to make more disciples. And so that's kind of the position we're in, is those who follow Jesus now are still disciples of Jesus. So He tells them a story. There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.
And the manager said to himself, What shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me? I'm not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do. It's kind of like an aha moment is verse 4. I have decided what to do. So that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.
So, summoning his managers, summoning his master's debtors, one by one, he said to the first, How much do you owe my master? And he said, A hundred measures of oil. And he said to him, Take your bill, sit down and quickly, and write fifty. And he said to another, How much do you owe? And he said, A hundred measures of wheat. He said to him, Take your bill, and write eighty.
Okay, so that's the basis of the story. Jesus is going to kind of sum it up in verse 8. The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, so now he finishes the story, now he's making a statement, a command to his disciples. I tell you, make friends for yourselves by the means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings.
Okay, let's retell this story, just make sure we got it in our head, and then we're going to zoom in on verses 8 and 9. And we're going to take a minute to walk through 8 and 9, because if we understand 8 and 9, we understand what Jesus is saying. If we miss 8 and 9, this is going to be a long day. All right. So, here's the story. There's a man who's so rich that he just has a manager to handle his wealth.
He's so wealthy, he just has a manager to handle his wealth, and he gets a report that this manager is doing a poor Job, so he comes to him and says, hey, turn in your books, you're done. So, the manager freaks out. He says, I'm not strong enough to dig. Like, I'm not a manual labor person. I'm a management person. And he says that I'm too proud to beg.
You know that song, Ain't Too Proud to Beg? He hated that song. He's too proud to beg. He's not going to. He says, I've got to figure out something to do, and he says, I got it. I got it.
I am going to cheat the master out of things, because he's firing me anyway. I'm going to cheat him out of what is due him, and I'm going to make people like me by doing this. That was his plan. And so what happens in verse 8 and 9, let's pull this back up, this story is weird. It's weird because it seems like Jesus just told a story about a crooked man and said, good Job. And we have a hard time with Jesus saying that.
And we should, because why would he say that? So here's what's happening in this story. Jesus is telling us a story of a crooked man, of a dishonest man, and saying, even crooked, dishonest people know how to do this. And then he says, and you don't. That's his point. Even crooked, dishonest people know how to do this, and you're not even doing that.
That's the point he's making. So let me show my work on that so that we can see this clearly. So it says, the master commended this honest manager for his shrewdness. Now, this is the first time dishonest shows up in the text. Earlier he was inept. The beginning he was mishandling things.
Now he's a liar. He wasn't, earlier he wasn't in the beginning of the text in verses 1 through 7, he wasn't called dishonest. It just said he was mishandling things. He wasn't being a good manager. Now he's called dishonest, which means that the transaction he just made, the list of bringing people in and saying, quickly, change the amount you owed, was cheating and stealing.
It was not, some people write that it was like him getting rid of his own commission. There's nothing in the text that says that. It says he's dishonest. Okay. He's dishonest. He's commended, not for his honesty, but for his shrewdness.
Now, shrewdness, we most often, you hear it in a negative context, but it really just means he's astute. He made a good decision based off of his position he was in. He made a good decision, a good business decision. He looked out for his own interests. That's what it means. So if you hear that someone's a shrewd businessman, it just means he doesn't do deals that are good for you and not good for him.
If you've ever watched Shark Tank, the people doing the business deals are shrewd. You'll see them put people in really bad situations. They'll make a terrible deal, but it's a good one for them. They'll make a terrible offer. It's a good one for them because they're shrewd businessmen. And so what it says is, he hands the books back to the rich man.
The rich man sees scribbles and Numbers changed and says, well played. Now get the heck out. Like that's what's kind of, it's understood in the text here. Okay. So then Jesus says, so he's not honest, he's shrewd.
He made a good business decision in his own self-interest. Okay. Then Jesus says this, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. Everything in yellow, we got to define because otherwise we won't know what he's talking about. Okay. Sons of this world versus sons of light.
Sons of this world are those whose existence, whose home is this world. And that's why he says their own generation, meaning that they exist around those who will be on earth while they're on earth and earth is their home. And he compares that to sons of light. And I want to show you this. So, uh, uh, John 12, 34, uh, 35 and 36 says this. Jesus said to them, the light is among you for a little while longer.
Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light. Jesus is talking about himself in John 12. What he's saying is it's where the light came into the world. Jesus says he's the light of the world.
So what he's saying is the lights in the world for a little while and your role is to believe in me, to believe in Jesus and you become a son of light. So go back to the, the colorful one that we just had. That's what a son of light is. It's a person who's believed in Jesus and has eternal life in Jesus. So a son of this world is someone whose life is here and then they will enter into eternal death, separated from Jesus and paying the penalty of their sin.
And a son of light is someone who has an eternal life through Jesus. Now, this does not happen often in scripture and I think Jesus did this on purpose to hurt our feelings a little bit. He says, the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. So, what we want to say is, oh, being more shrewd is bad because the sons of light aren't. We want to automatically say that those who are Christians are the good guys and those who aren't Christians have done it poorly. That's what we want to do.
I don't think that's what Jesus is doing in the text and the reason I don't think that's what he's doing is because his next sentence doesn't, doesn't hint towards that. So look at verse 9. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of the unrighteous wealth. So that first little part where he says, and I tell you, he looks at his disciples and says, sons of this world are better at, are more shrewd, make better business decisions than sons of light. And I'm telling you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous, oh, good one. You good.
Make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwelling. So what he's saying is he's then taking his story that he just had and he's using that idea from the story and saying, what I'm telling you is to be like the manager. Because the manager used the wealth he had at his disposal, which wasn't his, used the wealth he had at his disposal to create friends for himself and he says, I tell you, do the same thing. So go to the one that's just verse 9. Let's look at just verse 9 together.
And I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal dwellings. That's a really confusing sentence but here's what I think Jesus' point is. When he says, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth, he's going to use unrighteous wealth throughout the rest of this passage and all he means, and he says it here so that when it fails, all he means is the money and possessions that won't last forever. Non-eternal wealth. It's not in and of itself unrighteous, but what he's saying is the stuff that won't last forever, the stuff that's going to fail.
That's what he's talking about. When he says, make friends for yourself, I read a lot of commentaries that were like, we've got to figure out who the friends are. I don't think we have to figure out who the friends are. I think he's just stealing the idea from the passage, from the story he told. So the story was, manager mishandles his stuff, he's going to get fired, so he uses his master's wealth to gain friends.
And he's just using the concept of gaining friends, meaning, use your money now for your benefit later. Use your money now for your benefit later. The reason I think that's what he's doing is because I do this all the time. And so I'm meeting him like, oh yeah, I see what you're doing there, Jesus. He just in the middle of, he just tells him a random story. He's trying to teach him something and he tells him a random story.
Instead of just saying what it is, he tells a story. And I do this all the time. I'll be like, all right, it's like this. If we're all trees, and I do this over coffee, I do this over, I'll tell a story about scuba diving or I'll tell a story about, like I'll end with, I won't end and go so, and translate it, I'll end and say, so, be willing to share your scuba mask. Like I've really made some mm point. And you gotta figure out what the heck I was just talking about.
I do that all the time. I do it so much that I was, two days ago, I was at my house, my wife and I were having a discussion about something, and I said, well, it's like this. And she goes, no! She's on the couch across the room. She said, no, it's not like something. You were doing so good.
You were about to say something real. It is something. It's not like something. Please just say it in words. I was like, imagine you're at the Daytona 500. Like, I just can't not tell a random story and then say, so, put the pedal to the metal.
It's the last lap. I can't do it. I can't not do it. And so when he says, make friends for yourself, I think that's all he's doing. He just told you a story, and the guy in the story uses the rich man's wealth to gain his own friends. And so when he says, so make friends for yourself, I think what he's saying is this one simple concept.
See that word eternal? I think that's the main point here. And I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, it will not last. When it fails, they, those are the friends, that we don't know exactly who they are, may receive you into the eternal dwellings. Okay. Luke only uses the word eternal when he's talking about eternal life.
In all of his writing, we got Luke and Acts, he only uses the word eternal when he's talking about eternal life. Dwellings is the word for tabernacle or home. So he is not saying this sarcastically as use your money how you want and then you can go to hell. That's not what Jesus is saying. He's saying, use your money here that's going to fail for your own future eternal benefit. And this lines up with a lot of other things that Jesus says, even in Luke 12, what we looked at last week.
That there is a way for us to use our possessions, our finances here for our own eternal benefit. We would like to say, because it sounds more holy and pious, that we should not look out for ourselves. That sacrifice here should just be that, just painful, not self-serving at all. But when Jesus teaches on money, that's not what he says. What he says is, give it up here for your own eternal future. He doesn't say, get rid of money bags in last week because money bags are bad.
He says, sell your possessions, give to the needy, and buy for yourself money bags that don't go away, that last forever. True riches in heaven that doesn't fade, that can't be stolen. That's what he's saying here. Use the money you have now for your own eternal good, that you would be welcomed, that you would be accepted, that you would be brought in. So, recap, real quick. Sons of light, wild dishonest, wild crooked.
It's like when my dad used to fuss at us if we were mistreating my mom. He would, my dad would say stuff like, let me tell you something, you want to challenge me? We'll find out who's bad real quick. He says, you try something with your mama, I will kill you. And he says, boy, he would say, boy, sorry people are nice to their mamas. People in jail are nice to their mamas.
Criminals are nice to their mamas. The worst thug you can find anywhere that's running the mafia is nice to his mama. Don't you dare not be nice to your mama. His whole point was, even crooked dishonest people, that's what Jesus is doing. Even crooked dishonest liars who can't, who are inept, and then cheat people, still understand, I should make decisions that make sense for my own future. That's why he says, for their generation.
Okay. I don't usually do this, but I think it's helpful today. Now this is not to scale. Bianca, I'm still in your pen. This is not to scale, but this is a generation. So this is a timeline of life.
It's lime green. Can you see it over there? It's lovely. It's a string with duct tape on it. Right here is when you were born. This is right here.
A doctor slapped you, and you went, ah! And right over here, you went, ah! First one, last one. That's what that is. And if that scared you, I'm sorry, that's happening. All right.
We tracking? Somewhere right around in here. This is a generation. This is all the people you're on earth with. Y'all know some people, this little green piece of tape was 16 years. You know some people the green piece of tape was 55.
You know some people the green piece of tape is rocking on up to 95. For the sake of argument, let's say about 80. Okay? About 80. Somewhere around in here, you learned how to read and write and tie your shoes and some of you it was closer over here, some of you it was further over here, but you figured it out. Somewhere around in here, you kind of decided, here's what I want to do and be in life.
There's a lot of anguish over it. You're trying to figure it out. Some of you are still there. Trying to figure out, like, where am I going? What am I going to do? Who am I going to be?
What's this going to look like? Somewhere around here, you made a really good business decision or a really good relational decision. Somewhere around here, you made a really terrible one. Maybe around here, you got a bad diagnosis. Maybe around here, it got a good one. Eventually, though, everyone hits this.
And that's it. Sons of this world, that's it. You see, we're people who believe in eternal life. There are eternal dwellings. That's what we believe. And we believe that in Christ, there are sons of light who this life is as bad and as painful and as difficult and as much heartache as it will ever be.
You are as depressed here as you'll ever be if you're in Christ. You are as anxious here as you'll ever be if you're in Christ. Life is as difficult. If you don't know Christ, this is as good as it gets. So, Jesus says, sons of this world make good business decisions. They're shrewd.
They're astute because they make them based off of this. And that's as good as it gets. They make them based off of this. He says that sons of light don't make good business decisions. And that's because sons of light live well beyond this little green piece of tape. So, sons of light, when they go to make a business decision, when they go to make a financial decision, when someone who's going to exist for eternity tries to decide what to do with money, you see, their timeline, their generation is just different.
The decision making process should just look different. Because they're only going to be here for a little while. And then there's a life that's to come. There's time that's got to pass somewhere else. There's a future and a hope purchased by Christ. that financial decisions that only take into account the piece of tape are not good financial decisions. They're silly.
That sons of light aren't shrewd. Aren't good business deciders. Aren't good investors. Because they don't pay attention to their generation. They don't think about the amount of time that they're going to spend. The amount of life that they're going to have.
Let me explain something to you. If you're going to exist in Christ for eternity and this is not to scale. I said that earlier. This isn't how this would work. If this was eternal if this was eternal you wouldn't be able to see this and this part of the string would keep going so much that it would suffocate all of us destroy this building take over South Carolina engulf the world and swallow the cosmos. because that's how eternity works. But what he's saying is that sons of light if this is as good as it gets certainly make really good decisions for this amount of time.
If you're a son of this world and this is as good as it gets make good decisions here. But if you're a son of light making all your decisions for this is silly that we ought to that's why he says and I tell you make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that you'll have an eternal welcome. Not that using your money will save you but that there is a way to use your money with an eternity in mind. So let's read through the rest of the passage to understand what we're looking at here. That Jesus is saying use the money you have here for this amount of time that is to come. verse 10 one who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much.
One who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much. That's a basic life principle. If someone can't borrow a DVD without scratching it all up don't let them borrow your car. They'll say well no it's your car it means more it's like yeah it means more and you can't even handle like no no thank you like that's kind of the small principle that's where someone says I'm a terrible boyfriend I'll be a great husband. I know I can't even show up to work when I'm here to cook fries but I could totally be a manager. No you couldn't.
Good managers can cook fries. That's the point. But what he's saying is that that principle applies to this. If you don't handle this well very little why would you get much? He tells parables like this all the time where he says that a rich man gave a bunch of people money that was his money and he left and then he comes back and says what did you do with my money and one guy was like I turned it into a whole bunch of money and he says cool you can be in charge of some cities. One guy was like I buried it in the ground and he was like okay you don't get to be in charge of anything.
Don't banks exist? That's what he responds. At least could have gotten interest. I don't care how much money you make on earth it will only ever be very little when compared with this. it's very little. This is much. This is a funny looking timeline but it's much.
If then you have not been faithful in unrighteous wealth who will entrust to you true riches? this is not true riches. Lifestyles of the rich and famous not true riches. It's not. It has nothing on this. This has nothing on just what I can hold in my hand. It has nothing on eternity.
This next one was messing with me all week. And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's who will give you that which is your own? Now think about this for a second. Everything that you have on the green tape is on loan. You're a manager. It belongs to the rich man.
At some point he says turn in the account. At some point we walk to the rich man and we open the books. Everything. I don't care. I don't care what it is. I don't care if you have a prized possession so you wear it on a chain around your neck.
At some point that is no longer yours. Every piece of land you own own paid cash. It's mine. I pay taxes so I'm kind of renting it from the government but I own it. it was owned by someone else and it will be owned by someone else and ultimately it belongs to God. Everything on earth is on loan but guess what? When you get to eternity and he gives you something it's yours because this string doesn't end.
Now that's crazy. You get to own stuff. That's what he says. If you can't handle stuff that's borrowed who's going to ever give you something that you get to own? I was just blown away by thinking about I get to own things in eternity. That's crazy.
No servant can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Okay now here's the way he says this. He does not say you cannot serve God with your money and serve money. He says you cannot serve God the whole big concept and serve money. Cannot serve God and money.
Why is that? Why can't we just be unfaithful in money but faithful in everything else? Why can't we just say I don't serve God with my money but I serve God and everything else? I think it's because in order to serve God with our money which is so tangible, so clear, so clear. If I said would you like a thousand dollars? The answer is yes.
Yes I would like a thousand dollars. Would you like five thousand dollars? Yes. Would you like fifteen thousand dollars? Yes. Nobody's going I don't know if that's going to probably mess up my budget.
You're all saying yes. Because it's so tangible, it's so clear, I know exactly like that sounds wonderful. So clear. What we would use it for is so visible. And do you know what we have to have in order to handle money the way that Jesus tells us to handle money? Faith.
I've seen this. I know what this looks like. I know the palpable fear of having bills show up and not enough money to pay them. I know the fear of losing your job and not knowing what's going to happen next. I know the fear, I've seen it when people enter into a retirement and do not have enough money to pay their bills. I know that, I've seen it, I don't have to have faith.
I've also tasted steak, ridden a roller coaster, sat in a leather seat. I know what it's like. I know the promises it makes. I know what sitting in a hot tub is like. Nice. I've got to believe Jesus to do anything else.
I've got to actually believe. I've got to actually believe. Not just say I believe, actually believe. If I told you, if someone came to you and said, I've got a sure thing business investment, sure thing. Okay. Okay. how much money are you willing to put towards a sure thing business investment from a friend of yours?
What kind of sure thing trust you got? We've got some questions. Who's the friend? What else have they told me in the past? What is their job? Is this insider trading?
Well, I go to jail. We've got questions. I've been in multiple conversations where people talked about and argued about what to go, like if you could go back in time and invest in something, what you would invest in? Coca-Cola. If you could be in the ground floor. Microsoft.
That's what investing is, is people trying to figure out right now what's the thing that's going to, I looked it up, you guys. In 2010, there was a guy named Laszlo. I can't say his last name. His first name was Laszlo. He used 10,000 bitcoins to buy two pizzas. Now, if you are unfamiliar with bitcoin, it is online, encrypted, digital money, and it is insanely expensive right now.
2010. This isn't a long time ago. This isn't like the guy who messed something up in 1910 and if he had actually just kept blah, blah, blah. This is seven years ago. 2010, he bought two pepperoni pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins. If you could have gone to him and said, Laszlo, I'll tell you what, hold on to those 10,000 bitcoins for seven years and instead of two pepperoni pizzas, I'm assuming pepperoni, maybe he got pineapple and that just indicates how dumb this guy is. just messing with you all.
I just felt like alienating two people. I don't know. I do that every once time. If you could go to him and say, Laszlo, hold on to that for seven years and instead of two pepperoni or two pizzas, sorry, I just wanted to be pepperoni. Instead of two pizzas, you can have 110 million dollars. A Bitcoin right now costs $10,000, $11,000.
For what? I don't even know. I don't even understand it. I had to Google, like, what is a Bitcoin? It was like internet money and I was like, that's not real, you guys. Two pizzas, $110 million over seven years.
Now, if you told Laszlo, Laszlo, Laszlo, just, just don't eat pizza today or get a job, use cash. You can have $110 million and he responded to you, but it's meat lovers. If he looked back and went, oh, stuff crossed, you guys don't even understand how hungry I am right now. So the question would be, for Laszlo, how much did he believe you? How much did he think you knew what you were talking about? That's the question.
And I think the reason why finances are set up the way they are in the world and the reason why Jesus calls us to handle them the way he does is because the only way for us to handle money the way Jesus tells us to handle money is we have to believe that Jesus knows what he's talking about. And we have to believe that he's good. You see, we actually have to believe the gospel. in order for me to handle money for this, I don't have to believe in anything other than what I like or don't like. If I use my money for comfort my whole life and you use your money for security your whole life, neither one of us really had to believe much of anything.
I have to believe that I am a sinner who deserved the wrath of God, but that on Christmas, the God of the universe became a baby and that he lived a perfect life and that he went to a cross to bear the wrath of God on my behalf and one day when I take my last breath, I will take my next breath, entering into an eternity where I walk before the king of the universe. He says, open the books, it's time to turn in the account of your management and I will step into a life that does not end. I have to believe that to handle money the way Jesus wants me to handle it. And that's why I think he says. Handle money this way and you'll receive great reward.
You'll get to own something. You'll get to have true riches. You'll be welcomed in because it'll be a faith exercise for our entire life where we use our money and we say, I think that Jesus is real and I'm willing to bank on it. And I think that's why it says you can't serve God and money because what we want to do, what I want to do is kind to serve God with my money and then say I'll do the rest of my life for this. But the problem is money is so tangible and so real that if I'm only using it for here, there's a good chance I also don't care about my neighbors.
And if I'm only using my money for here, it's a good chance I'm not thinking about this very often. There's a saying that says someone's so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good and Jesus disagrees with that. The Bible disagrees with that, that we would think so much about an eternity that we would become extremely helpful on earth through generosity, through love, through sacrifice. Now, the question for us today and every day until this day is do we trust Jesus? Did he mean what he said? And I just want to tell you that the end of this gospel, if you keep flipping ahead in Luke, Jesus Christ goes to a cross because he so believed in this, he was willing to come just so that he, the eternal God, could take a last breath and make sons of life.
He so believed that all of us were headed for a Christless eternity of destruction and pain and hopelessness and despair where this is as good as it gets, that he was willing to come and die so that we could have hope, that we could be sons of life. And the question is for each of us today and every day, how much do we believe Jesus when he says he knows a sure thing? How much do we trust him when he says that what we're messing with right now is very little and one day there will be much? What we're messing with right now is on loan, but one day we get to own something. What we're messing with right now will fail, but one day we will enter into something that doesn't.
So here's what we're doing with our give series. we're trying to respond to right now. To begin to press our hearts right now to believe this so that we might believe it from now on. So what we do with our gift series is we intentionally try to give money away. Spencer earlier said that we're in the Advent season, which is where we kind of partner with the Old Testament church where they were looking forward to Christ, that he would come, that someone would rescue, that someone would redeem, that we as Christians remember that time and look forward to this eternity. And so one of the ways that we practice that here is that we have a give series where we give money away in looking forward to eternity, in looking forward towards a future hope that is offered to us only in Christ. that we remember and make good business decisions.
So we as a church family pick something, church leadership, we pick something around the give time of year to intentionally give money to, to intentionally cost a sacrifice for. Our hope is that we would grow as a church and we would grow collectively as a people in always picking something that's around you, that you would always be looking and saying, I'd love to give money to this, I'd love to help with this, and coming and even talking to your group and saying, hey guys, I'm working on this, can we rally for this, can we give support towards this? We just pick something on around Christmas for us to try to do collectively and we hope that we do this all the time. So here's what we're doing, we're partnering with Midtown Two Notch, which is a church plant in inner city Columbia.
I said last week that they're in a part of the city where people won't even deliver pizza. Because it's not a safe place in the city, that it's not a safe place to be, and so they intentionally went there and ordered to plant a church so that they might hold out the hope of the gospel towards people in an area where it's few and far between, where people are going in there intentionally. And here's what we're doing, we're doing three things. First one, is we're getting gifts, new toys, new and used, gently used clothing so that the Midtown Two Notch church family might serve the families in that area.
So here's what we did. We went to them and said, hey, we want to partner with y'all, we want to serve y'all, what would y'all like to do? And we just kind of held it out to their leadership team for them to say, here's what we think would be helpful and good in our area of the city. One of the things they said was around Christmas, a lot of the people right around where they are don't celebrate Christmas, they wait till tax time, or they do celebrate Christmas, but they really didn't have the means to do that. And they said, we'd love to just bless this part of our city, to just hold out a little bit of hope and a little bit of joy and cause a little less stress this time of year by having a party where we allow parents to come in and basically shop.
They pick out what they want to give their children. We don't let their children know. We don't give the gifts to the children. The parents get to give the gifts to the children. That's what they wanted to do. So we said, that sounds great.
We'll partner with that. So here's what we're looking at. Gifts need to be somewhere in the five to $15 range. I mean, they can be less. I'm just, this is kind of ballpark in it. They want gifts for ages three to 18 with giving a little more weight towards the younger ages.
Just because an eight year old doesn't handle disappointment as well as an 18 year old. They think they'll have a hundred to 150 children from right around that area. Like that we need gifts for. So that means if we got $5 gifts for a hundred kids, that's $500. If we get $15 gifts for 150 kids, that's $2,500 ish dollars. I'm just trying to give us a ballpark on what we're shooting for, what we have to accomplish here.
Boys and girls, for the older kids, you're looking more at gently used clothes. They even said you could go to Burger King and get $5 and $10 gift cards. You can go to McDonald's and get $5 and $10 gift cards. That's a cool gift for a 13, 14, 15, 16 year old. They also said, because they know their area of the city well, soccer balls are great, but not for that area of the city. Basketballs and footballs are going to get more traction.
They just kind of pointed out some like, here's some things that would be helpful for us. I'm sure getting soccer balls, if you already got one, somebody's going to love that. But that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to build a toy shop so that parents can come in and pick things out, so that Midtown Two Notch can take the credit and ultimately point to Jesus and his graciousness and love for that part of the city. And we're collectively trying to remind ourselves that our eternity is where our good things are. The second part of that is we're going to have a party, Saturday, December 16th.
They want to do the party from 2 to 5 p.m. So we said, sounds good if that's what you think will be best for this neighborhood. We probably need volunteers from 12 to 6 p.m. because we'll need some people to show up and help set everything up. We'll need people to be at the party from 2 to 5 and we'll need people to help tear everything down, clean everything up. Setting up takes longer than tearing everything down. We need two to three volunteers per station.
If you have a station idea, we're going to do some fire pits, some s'mores. If you want to face paint, if you want to say, hey, let's try to figure out how to do a bounce house, as much as we can set up so that parents can bring kids, kids can play, parents can shop. We want to do a Santa Claus. We're in talks with them right now as to whether or not we need to provide a Santa Claus or just a Santa Claus outfit. If they want to have one of their people be Santa Claus, we've intentionally said, look, we want to, as much as we can, be invisible here. Serve y'all so that y'all can take the credit.
Not just roll in and make it real obvious that some other people were doing this. That's our hope with them, but we're also going to let them set the pace for what they want done because we're serving them. And we know that they know their areas and good missionaries to that part of the city. So we'll need probably 15 to 25 volunteers for the party and probably another 20 to 30 for setting up and tearing down. Or 15 really exhausted, grumpy volunteers. Now you're going to have a good attitude if you come.
But we'd like to have a lot of volunteers, people who would show up, help set things up, people who would stay and run stations from two to five and people who would help clean up. Then the third thing. So we need to do this really well. We need to knock one and two out of the park. Given the amount of money we've raised in the past and the amount of gifts we've given in the past, I think we can. The third thing we want to do is intentionally help Aunt Frederick with his pay, with his salary.
He has to raise support all the time to be a pastor in this area. And we want to be able to say we want you to be able to minister and pastor there without having to worry about as much support as you raise. So we just want to raise support for it. That's our gift project this year. And hopefully our goal is not that we as a church would collectively think for a couple of weeks, oh, yay, eternity. Be real generous right now in a time when it's actually pretty hard to be generous.
We're trying to be generous with our church, with our family members and our church family and those around us. But that actually we would begin a lifetime process of thinking about eternity when it comes to our finances, holding out for ourselves the hope that Jesus holds out for us and trusting that he's good and he knows what he's talking about. The band's going to come back up. We're going to sing together. And prayerfully begin to ask Jesus. To help us to trust him.
To help us to remember that all we'll ever have here is on loan. All we'll ever have here is going to fail. All we'll ever have here is very little. All we'll ever have here is unrighteous wealth and that one day there's a hope for us in Christ that we would step into an eternity where there's life and joy, true riches, something that gets to belong to us because we've been welcomed into the eternal family that's provided for us and the eternal salvation that's provided for us through Christ. So when he says, make for yourself friends so that you'll be welcomed into eternal homes.
I think he's just taken the picture of the story where this guy used someone else's stuff to gain himself some good and saying, wise sons of light do the same thing. They take the stuff I've let them borrow and they intentionally let it walk out the door towards people who can't pay them back. They let it walk out the door for things they won't ever get credit for. They let it walk out the door in so many ways that honestly point to the fact that they trust that I'll make good on my promise to save, to redeem and to give them an eternal home. Let's pray.
God, we ask that through your Holy Spirit, you'd help us to have faith. To look beyond everything that we can see and feel everything that we know to be true because it's right in front of us, but that through faith in Christ, we would know your word to be true and the hope of the gospel to be true, that we might live wisely as eternal people. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.