The Incarnation

The Incarnation

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning. This is our Christmas gathering. We finished up our three-week Give Series this past week. And so what we do in our Give Series, we spend some time talking about generosity and how we ought to think about and handle money. And so I got kind of a report on our Give project and how some things went. So we threw a party with Midtown Two Notch.

And so what we did was we had three kind of aspects of our Give project. We were going to gather gifts to give to the children in the neighborhood, in the Two Notch area, the Pinehurst area, so that they could. The plan was, and this is not how it worked out. I'll explain how it worked out in a second. But the plan was that parents would be able to come.

We would distract the children with shenanigans and s'mores. We would stuff them full of chocolate, make them jump on a bounce house, let them see Santa Claus. And parents would get to go pick out gifts for the children to be able to have at Christmas. And so you can see in the background the bounce house. We actually went over to Midtown Two Notch's area and made a Christmas kind of shop. And so this is one of the rooms that we set up with all the gifts that y'all, our church kind of gathered together and brought over here.

If you were to turn back the other way, there's the other side of the room that looked like that. But the whole room was just filled with toys. It was really cool to see. And so parents were going to get to go in there and pick out gifts while their children were on a bounce house. And while we were giving them s'mores, we had a whole s'more set up. And it was actually really cool because a lot of the adults that ended up coming out had never had a s'more.

And so we got to coach them up on how to do that and how to make them. And it's really fun to get to watch a 30-year-old take a bite of a s'more and look at like, it's like, yeah, you've missed out on a lot, man. Like, yeah, your whole life, this is simple and you've missed out, you know. But we were able to do that. But here's what happened.

We learned a thing. And I think Midtown Two Notch learned a thing. So we came to them and asked them what they wanted us to do. They said they wanted us to throw this party. They wanted to gather gifts. They wanted to empower parents to be able to give gifts to their children.

And so we said, yeah, that sounds great. And so they said that's going to be a secret, though. And they sent out flyers and they kept it a secret on the flyer. But the problem was if it's that good of a secret, the parents don't know. So we had a pile of children showing up with no adults.

And so about 30 minutes in or something, the Midtown guys come around and they're like, hey, change of plans. We're giving gifts to children right now because we're not sending kids home without getting something. And if their parents aren't coming, we don't know how to fix that. And we were like, fine, sounds good. So they got to go in and see Santa Claus.

And so some of our people showed up early and set up a whole big Santa Claus area and made it look really beautiful. The only thing that was borrowed, I think, was chairs. Everything else was brought in and set up and made amazing. And so Santa Claus got to sit right there. And kids got to go see Santa Claus. And then they got to immediately go pick out a gift.

We had kids coming out with gifts. And they were like, I'm going to keep playing on the bounce house, but I'm going to go home first. We had some kids go home. They said, they were like, I'm going to open one now and I'm going to save one for Christmas. And there was these two boys. They were brothers.

Open one now. Save one for Christmas. That's a great idea. And they came back and they said, Grandmama said, we've got to save both of them for Christmas. I was like, all right, man, hop in the bounce house. That's a good idea.

Your grandmama ain't wrong. But the kids did really enjoy getting to see Santa Claus. Some had a wonderful time getting to see Santa Claus. Some of them not as good a time. But she ended up fine.

She and Santa Claus ended up getting along. But what we were able to do was give gifts to children and spend some time with them and just kind of love on them. And there was a lot of children. I remember there was a lot of children, you guys. And at one point I was like, okay, how are we doing? I looked at my watch.

The party was from 2 to 5. I looked at my watch. It was 2.20. I was like, I've got to quit looking at my watch. It's going to be a long day. I've got to just be happy, smile, walk around.

We had a really good time. And before we left, Mark Shingler, one of the leaders over at Midtown Two Notch, grabbed Raz by his collar. And he said, Mill City Church made a difference in Pinehurst today. And Raz was like, okay. And he said, no. You need tomorrow to tell them, Mill City Church, tell your church family y'all made a difference.

This was huge. And so they were very excited and got to have conversations with parents. And one of the cool things was, some kids were there. As soon as we said, hey, we're giving out gifts, they left. They were coming over to me saying, we're meeting people who live in this neighborhood we've never met. Because I'm meeting kids and parents and saying, hey, where are y'all from?

They're saying the neighborhood. It's like, oh, okay. So we hadn't gotten to meet these people, but as soon as we were able to do this, they started showing up. And so it was a really cool thing to be able to do. And just really excited that we got to be a part of that and see how Jesus worked through y'all. It's a fun thing.

The other part of our Give project was that we wanted to raise support for Aunt Frederick. Because he has to consistently raise support to be full-time in that area, which is a lower resourced area. It's high poverty, high crime, low education levels. They have to raise support all the time for him to be able to be full-time there. And so we just said we wanted to join in on that for our Give project. We wanted to not only give gifts.

We needed to do that first, but then we wanted to raise money. And so, so far, and we're still, you can give today towards the Give project by the envelopes that go in the box. Or you can give online if you do the drop-down tab that says Give. You can do that today. And through the middle of this week or so, we'll still be taking Give donations online. When you get online and click the little drop-down and there's no more Give drop-down, we have written a check.

We are done taking money, raising money for Give. We have so far raised about $5,500. So $5,500 will go towards his salary. That's exciting. We should be happy about that. $5,500 will be money he doesn't have to raise. And we're still raising some money.

And so we'll be able to, at the beginning of the year, say, here was the final amount that went on a check. That we just said, hey, we love y'all. We love what y'all are doing. And we want you to be able to keep doing it. And so really, really exciting, really encouraging. And so what we're going to do today, we have our Christmas gathering today.

And then we have our worship night this Thursday. And so we're going to study in the book of John this morning. So grab your Bibles, go to John chapter 1. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at what John has to say about Jesus coming. There was a famous author who was talking about her remembering her first journalism class.

And she was in high school. And her journalism teacher gets up and says, all right, I want to teach y'all how to write a lead. And a lead is the headline of a story. So the way a good newspaper article works is that the main thing that you need to get is in the headline. That's the information. Most good news articles do not work like internet things where they're like, you won't believe what this article has to say.

The third paragraph is going to be amazing. Like, they don't do that. That's not how news works. It gives you the information you need at the beginning. And then it works its way down so that the last sentence is the least important sentence. That's the way they're supposed to work.

So he's teaching them how to write a lead, which is, this is the main point of what we're talking about. And so he says, all right, I want y'all to write your first lead. He says, here's the information. This is the story you're going to write your headline for. Next Thursday, Principal Williams, so they're in high school, Principal Williams, is taking the faculty and staff to a symposium in the state capitol where they will train for the entire day. And he starts listening to the main speakers.

And everybody's writing down all the information, you know, who, what, when, where, why. They're writing it all down. And he says, now I want you to write your headline. So all the students sit out. They type out their first headline. They get it up.

They turn in their sheets. And she said that he took them and he flips through them really quickly and says, nope, none of y'all did this correctly. The headline is, no school next Thursday. That's the headline. He said everybody was just writing regurgitated parts of that information. He said, you missed the point.

And so what we're going to look at in John chapter 1, John was the last gospel to be written. Matthew, Mark, and Luke have already been written. And Matthew and Luke spend time talking about the birth of Jesus and give us some of the information about it. From Matthew, we learned that there were wise men that came, magi that had studied the stars and came. And we hear the story about them having to run to Egypt to escape the fact that King Herod is trying to kill all the children that were born in that area. From Luke, we learn about John the Baptist's birth and the fact that Jesus and John are cousins.

And we get all of this stuff and all these stories that go along with it. And we learn all the things that we celebrate and we put in the nativity. And John gives us none of that. John just says, no school on Thursday. Like he just cuts right to why all of that matters. What actually happened?

What was the main point of Jesus coming? And so that's what we're going to look at today. So on Thursday, we'll get to read some of the birth story and some of the stuff that we look at a lot at Christmas. Today, we're going to look at John where he just cuts right to here's what happened when Jesus came. So that for us, as we try to in this season, when everyone feels like they have a little too much to do, a little too much going on, a little bit too much pressure, a little bit too much weight, and it can easily get cluttered.

But we're just going to focus in on why the incarnation, why Jesus' birth, why his coming to earth matters. Just for a little while to be encouraged today, to be reminded today of the miracle that God was born as a human. And so let's pray for our time. And then we'll begin looking at John together. Father, I pray that as we study this this morning, that you would help it sink into our hearts. That we wouldn't just be reminded of things we already know, or we wouldn't just get to learn something new, but that it would become real to us so that we might actually worship.

So that today, our gaze might be turned to you. And we might grow a little more in awe of your goodness. And that as we go the rest of this week or so into Christmas, and as we celebrate with friends and family, and in all the different ways we're going to celebrate, that we might have a better handle on why we're celebrating, and why it matters. We ask for your help in this, in Jesus' name. Amen. John 1, verse 1.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. So that's the first two verses. That's what he says. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

Now, when this was passed out as a gospel of John, people at this point would have known that he's talking about Jesus. He gets down there in a couple of verses and says, this is Jesus Christ. So most people would have known, this is who I'm reading about, this is what's going on. And so he begins with, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now, that's kind of confusing, but what he's saying was, when he says in the beginning, he's immediately making us remember that's how the Old Testament begins. That's how Genesis starts.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And so when John starts his gospel off with, in the beginning, what he's saying is, that beginning you already know about from Genesis, that's the beginning I'm talking about. And Jesus was there. As the divine Word of God, Christ was there. And so what he says was, Jesus was with God. So the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Now, as we believe in a Trinitarian God, that God is one God who exists eternally in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, that's what John's talking about. It's confusing, but that's what he's saying, that he was with God as the Son of God, and that he was God as God the Son. So Jesus, the preexistent Creator, was in the beginning, and all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. My son is about to be three. He goes to a preschool that's like a Christian preschool at one of the churches down the road. And one day he just started asking me, he would be like, Jesus made this?

And he just pointed at the thing. And I'm great at that game, you guys, because I know John chapter 1, that disappeared, but it's still in your Bibles. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. John says that really confusingly, but he's making a point. It's just like when your mom says, I'm the only one who ever cleans around this house, and then doubles down on it and says, Not one single thing that has ever been cleaned in our home has been cleaned by anyone but me. So what are you doing?

All things were made through him, and without him was not one single thing. He's driving that point home that Jesus, this divine Word of God, was in the beginning and created everything. And so when you play with a three-year-old that did Jesus make this game, the answer is yes. We're walking down the road. He's like, Jesus made that tree? Yes.

That's an easy one, you guys. Trees? Yes. He pointed at a basketball goal. Jesus made that? And I was like, ah, yes.

Because all the things that were made were made when Jesus made them. Later, some people formed it into a basketball goal. But they're made. Now, at some point, he's going to be like, well, then why does my shirt say made in China? And I'll be like, who made China? I'm ready, you guys.

He made everything. It also says he was in the beginning with God. So this word is personal and masculine. He's getting to, it's Jesus. So verse 4.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. So the first thing that John tells us is that God has come. That it's God himself. When he gets to Jesus has joined us, he plants his foot. He makes it clear that this was divine, preexistent, eternal creator of all things that I'm talking about.

The eternal God is who I'm talking about. And then he says, and I love verse 4 and 5 because it's drenched with hope. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. I love that the creator of the world, and I'm assuming when he created light and darkness, he did this on purpose. Designed it the way he designed it so that he might later say, I am light, and we would understand what he's talking about.

Light always wins. Darkness cannot overcome light. You've never been in a place that was so dark that you couldn't see your hand, and when you turned your flashlight on, the darkness was just so thick it swallowed your flashlight. That's not how it works. That light always wins. And so when he says that in Jesus was life, and that life was the light of men, and the light has come into the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it, there's an immediate call to hope and joy in the coming of Christ.

That he brings life, and he brings a light that cannot be conquered. I love also how clearly that works in our mind when we think about darkness. That we would say to someone, yeah, man, it's just been, I'm going through a really dark time. It's been a really dark year. And nobody's ever responded to you like, what, you need like halogen bulbs? Everybody knows immediately what you're talking about.

It's been hard. It's been rough. It's been sad. It's been dismal. I can't see, but a foot in front of my face, like I don't know where I'm going. And the promise that we have at Christmas is that there is a light that brings life in Jesus that the dark times can't overcome.

That no amount of sin, and no amount of shame, and no amount of brokenness, and no amount of pain, and no amount of lies, and no amount of anything can overcome what's brought to us in Christ. Verse 6. We're going to read verse 6, 7, and 8 fairly quickly, because John is not talking about Jesus. He's talking about John the Baptist. So, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. So, John's just saying, John, the author John, is talking about John the Baptist, not the same guy. And he says, this guy came to proclaim and point to Jesus. He wasn't Jesus. He's not the light, but he came to point to him so that we might believe in the light. Then keep going, 9.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. So, what this is saying is that God, the creator God, who made everything, in eternity past, when he started time and began everything rolling, he created everything. And then he comes to the world that he created, and the world didn't recognize him.

Which is just baffling, but it's also amazingly beautiful to see how God humbled himself, that he would fit in. Like, that's, every little new show about an alien that comes to earth, or a robot, the whole funny part is that they don't really fit. Like, they're just weird, and they do, all the hijinks ensues when they do things that only an alien would do. And we're like, oh, this is, Jesus comes, and he's a builder for 30 years? Nobody notices? Like, even his parents, who had the angels come, and all the things happen, when he starts going and preaching, they show up, and they're like, hey, you need to come home, like, you're not, oh, I don't know what you're doing right now.

And how much honor God gives to humanity by joining us, it's, it's, it's baffling and beautiful that he would, that he would become one of us and fit in with us. And there are some things where he consistently, as we read the gospel, says some things that only someone who's existed for eternity and is God would say. Like, I'm God. And all the things we just talked about with how he talks about money and everything, but there are, it's just so honoring and beautiful that he would join humanity and live as a human, that he didn't just float down here, that he didn't just light up when he walked around, that, that he didn't, you know, he, he had feet, he had to walk places, he gets tired.

We get stories of him taking naps and eating food, that he joined us. The world didn't recognize him. It says he came to his own people, and his own people did not receive him. That's the Jewish people, that Jesus was Jewish, and he comes as the Jewish Messiah, and the Jewish people reject him. Because he turns their system upside down, and he calls them to something different, and they don't receive him. Verse 12.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. So what he's saying is that it was God's will that all who would believe in Jesus would be welcomed into his family, would become children of God. And so at this point, John is continuing to just say, here's, here's the point, here's the reason he came, so that God became human. He joined us, he came into the world, and he came into the world so that all who would believe in him would become children of God.

That at Christmas we celebrate that God was reclaiming his children. That he was broadening his family. That what he had created in the beginning to be a beautiful relationship between humanity and himself, and had been broken by sin. That at Christmas, Jesus is coming, born into the world that he might claim those in the world to be his children. All those who would believe. And so that's why at Christmas, as you get to, over the next week or so, we get to celebrate family, and we mourn family.

That's what happens at Christmas. That at Christmas, and during this season, we celebrate family. And for some of us, it's like, you have those moments when you're like, this is just right. And it's just a moment. You have this moment where you're like, oh, this is what it's supposed to be like. And then it's gone.

Because your mother-in-law says something, and your uncle does something, or one of your nieces or nephews smacks your kid. Like, whatever. Like, there's this moment where you're like, oh, happy family. And then you're like, okay, that's enough. But we also mourn family, so that there's moments over the next week or so that are going to be very painful.

As we miss loved ones, or as we feel like we're missing out, or that something is missing in life and in relationships. And one of the beautiful things about Christmas is that Jesus came to invite all those who would believe in him into his family. That he's the son of God who wants brothers and sisters. He's the good older brother who comes to rescue and redeem those who've wondered, so that we might all call God the Father, Father. And we might all join his table. And so, as you, over the next week or so, get to celebrate with family, remember that all the beautiful parts of that point you towards your ultimate family.

And as you, over the next week or so, mourn, and have places in your heart that just feel broken, that just feel empty, remember that that longing and that brokenness will never actually be filled up here, but is meant to call you towards something that will be able to fulfill it. something that is eternal and is joy-bringing, that Jesus Christ came so that you might be his brother or sister and children of God through belief in his name. 14. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So this divine creating Word that was God and was with God, becomes human, dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15. John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. Verse 16. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Christ. This is the main point of the incarnation. This is the crux of it. This is what he's getting at. That the eternal God who created everything joins us in humanity, puts on flesh, and that from him we receive grace. So here's grace.

Grace is receiving something good that you do not deserve. If we can go ahead and have 16 and 17 up, we'll spin. That from his fullness we've all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. That we receive what we don't deserve.

We receive something good that we have not earned. That it's a gift. That it's something applied to our account that we haven't gotten. One of the ways that we've talked about this before is that when you have sin in your life, a lot of times we feel like Jesus comes and he cleans our slate. Then he hands it back to us and says, Okay.

Keep it together. That's not grace. Grace is that he takes our slate and hands us his. And if he had not come, if he had not been born, he can't do that. You see, what it says here is so helpful. It says, For the law was given through Moses.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The law is the Old Testament law that was given to the people of Israel. That was Moses. A cloud comes down on the mountain. And Moses goes up and he meets with God. And he comes down with tablets.

And then later he writes out the rest of what God says. And what it was was, Here are the things that we have to do to be God's people. Here are the things that we have to do to be treasured, to be loved, to remain where he is. And the truth is that every philosophy and every belief system can only ever give us what the law gave the people of Israel. Here's the way to think. Here's the way to live.

Here's what you have to do to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be a good person, to have God love you, to be moral, to be free. That's everything we have. It can only ever give us advice. It can only ever tell us how to live and what to do. It cannot give us grace. Jesus coming as a human is what offers us grace.

My grandparents were missionaries in Nigeria, West Africa. And so they were in areas where they would have to travel. There were times where my granddad would ride a bicycle with vaccinations. He was a doctor and they did medical missionaries and they would ride and they would give vaccinations. They would deliver babies. They did a lot of different things.

But they also, because the church was growing in that area, they would do conferences and they would do trainings. And so my granddad was going to be speaking at a WMU training in West Africa. And the WMU is the Women's Missionary Union. I was going to say alliance and I was like, that's an A. It's the Women's Missionary Union. And so they were, all the WMU people in that area, all the ladies were going to be coming to this thing.

He was going to go speak. And so he's riding in West Africa down one of the roads in the middle of nowhere. And there are two seasons in that area in Nigeria. There's the dry season and the rainy season. It was the rainy season. And so he's riding, sloshing through mud and muck on this lonely road by himself.

And then he gets a flat tire. And so he's sitting in his car, rain pouring down. It's muddy and terrible outside. And he's wearing his suit that he's going to go speak in. And he's trying to decide what he needs to do. In the middle of nowhere, he has one suit.

He's got to go speak in it. Strips down to his underwear, climbs out of the car. And gets in the mud and begins changing this tire. One of the things that is nice about being out in the middle of nowhere in this area in West Africa is that you can do these things. You can take your suit off so you don't get it muddy and climb out in your underwear and work on a car. If you did this on Highway 26, I don't know how well that would work out for you.

I mean, you could go for it, but probably not great. One of the bad things about being in the middle of nowhere in West Africa is that you're on one of the only roads. That's heading to the place that you're heading to. So while he's in the middle of changing this, he hears a vehicle coming and he looks. And it's not just one vehicle. It's several vehicles.

Actually, several vans filled with WMU ladies headed to the conference. He stands up. He looks at them. And he sees faces he recognizes. People are looking at him as they're driving through the mud. And he just stands in his underwear.

He's like, ah. And they go on. And he changes his tire. And he puts on his suit and heads on to the conference where, you know how sometimes they'll say, like, if you're public speaking, you should picture people. I think it worked the opposite that day. Like, they were picturing him in his underwear.

It was probably hard for them to listen as he opened the Bible and taught them things. But all other belief systems, all other philosophies just tell us what to do. And in the gospel, we're met with a God who stripped himself down, humiliated himself to get dirty to fix the problem. We're met with a God who is born as an infant. Now, think about this for a second. God is infinitely useful.

That all that he thinks and does immediately works out. That he works everything out beautifully to his will. There's that Christmas song. We sang it with, we sang it last night as we were putting Archer to bed, but it says, the cattle were lowing, the baby he wakes, but the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. Like he's some sort of an infant, but he's also perfectly a God in the middle of that. And so he would just wake up and be like, hmm.

But that's not what happened. He cried. He wept. He had to grow in wisdom and stature. He fell down. He skinned his knees.

He had to clip his toenails. He had to cut his hair. He humiliated himself. Babies are cute, but useless. They're cute. But they don't accomplish much.

They're not pulling their weight. And the infinite God, who's infinitely useful, stripped himself to join us in the darkness, in the pain, in death, that he might share his life, and his light, and his hope, so that we might be free. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. That he stripped himself down and joined us in the mess, and that everything else is just going to give us law. Everything else is just going to say, here's what you have to do to be good, but from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. That's the gospel.

That we believe that from Jesus' fullness, we receive grace upon grace. That he is a fountain that overflows, and it's not because he's lacking, but because he has so much that he shares with us. That's our hope in Jesus. That's what we believe. That's why we gather. That's why we celebrate Christmas.

Not that Jesus has given us law to teach us how to be full, but that we might believe in his name, and from his fullness, we receive grace. That he earned what we could not earn, that he accomplished what we could not accomplish, that he did for us what we could not do for ourselves, and that we trust in Jesus, and he gives us his fullness. We believe that he's strong, and he's smart, and he's good, and he's righteous, and he's holy, and that we get to be all of those things through grace from his fullness that's given to us. So it says, the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

So grace is that Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves, that he joined us in humanity and offered us something that cannot be offered to you anywhere else, that he would do the work on your behalf, and then it says we receive truth. Jesus later in this gospel is going to say that he is truth, so that we get him, but I want to share one of the truths that I think is clearly shown to us in Jesus' birth, that God would become a human. One of the truths that I think becomes so clear. Have you ever lied a lot and had to keep building off of your other lie, and you have to kind of reconnect things, and because you're not in reality anymore, so you have to just keep tying lies together.

My brother and I were in high school, and we were at a friend's house, and he wanted to show us a shotgun, so he walked into the room and fired it into the ceiling because he had done none of the things that you were supposed to do if you're going to show someone a gun. After that, when he's like, hey, you want to say, no, no, don't want to be around you in a weapon. You're terrible. But he walks in the room and a group of people and just shoots it into the ceiling and then was like, oh, and he was like, it's not supposed to be loaded. It's like, what's that not supposed to be loaded? Your finger, what was your finger on the trigger?

It's not supposed to have a safety. Go, go away. Like, but what we did, because we're kind, is we went to our house and got some stuff and fixed his ceiling, which was in his parents' room. We actually, Logan did this, but he patched the ceiling and then we took white out and drew little dots because we didn't have the little bubbly stuff, but we tried to make it look like it had some contour and we did pretty good. And then we all came up with, like, here's what happened this evening. And we just kind of, you know, just omit the thing in the middle and some of the story didn't quite make a whole lot of sense, but we were just like, we got it.

And so then we proceeded to just lie about this for a while. And then my parents say, Logan, check, come in this room. That's my dad. That's my mom. You know, if y'all could tell. We walk in the room and that was never like a, hey, y'all come in this room.

It was never like you walked in and they were like, we got pie. Like it just was never, you could tell the tone. You're walking in the room immediately. Like, it's just like you hear that voice guilt, just like you put a blanket of guilt on. You start walking in, you're going, okay, hold on a second now. And you're trying to think, what did I do?

When did I do that? Maybe it's mostly Logan. Maybe it was a thing he did. And I just get to be like, yeah, it wasn't me. You walk in, you know, you don't know you're going to walk in. He's holding a can of dip.

Like, you don't know what you're walking into. You're just walking in. And so you walk in and they were like, um, they started asking a few questions about this event. And we were both like, you know, there's this moment where you're looking at your brother like, I don't, are we, we stick into our thing? Like, am I going to mess you up? If I like, what do we do here?

But you also have a pretty good understanding if they're asking questions about this, they maybe have some information that you didn't want them to have. And so we're sitting there and we kind of like, well, you know, being mumbly. And then my dad just kind of with the truth and it really felt like we had had this elaborate system and that once truth hit it, it just kind of cut through like a stick through a, through a cobweb. I could just immediately, once truth hits lies, the lies just fall all apart. And so he was like, what about this? And we were like, oh yeah, no, yeah, that's a good point.

And it ended up not being too bad because we were just helping our friend out. Like, he didn't know at this point who had done what with what weapon that caused their roof to leak. We didn't think about that part. Yep. We didn't caulk their roof. So anyway, we, and honestly, when it says that grace and truth came through Jesus, it feels like the God of the universe took truth and he just broke right through time and history and space and he just landed so clearly.

I want to share some reality and just brought it down. And here's the truth at Christmas that needs to seep into our souls. The sheer fact that the eternal creator God humbles himself to become a human so that he might live a relatively short life to die a brutal, painful death on a cross declares definitively, eternally, that you were not going to get this together on your own. That the law that was given to Moses was insufficient as are all other rules and philosophies that say, you need this to be okay. That he came as a rescuer because we needed to be rescued. And for any of us who are saying, I'm going to be moral, I'm going to be good, I'm going to live a right life, all we are saying is, I definitively reject Jesus.

That's why it says that those who would believe in his name would be welcomed in. That we believe and trust in him and him alone and what he has accomplished, not our good works, not our morals, that we trust in him definitively have been declared that we need a savior, that we need someone to do this on our behalf and that we trust in him and from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. That's what we sing about. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. That we have a God who loved us so much that he would send his son, that he would join us in humanity, humble himself, that he might do for us what we could not accomplish for ourselves.

And I pray and I hope that all of that was stuff you already know and believe and trust in and hope in and that maybe just a little bit of this today reminds us to focus on that and to have his light shine into the middle of this darkness and have his life buoy us and call us into hope and that we might remember again that it's not about our works and it's not about our effort but it's about what he's accomplished for us. That from his fullness we might receive grace. And if that's the first time you've heard it, the first time you've really thought about it, I want you to know that you can trust in his name. You can place everything on the name of Jesus so you can believe in what he's done and from his fullness you will be made full and you will receive grace and you will be given hope and you'll be invited into what happened in that moment a long time ago when a little baby was born in a podunk town in Judea that ended up being the light of the world and the hope for all humanity.

A band's going to come back up and we're going to celebrate today. We're going to remind ourselves of this and walk in this as we take communion. So communion is a celebration of the meal that Jesus had with his disciples the night before he was going to go to the cross and he takes a cup and he says, this is my blood shed for you and he takes bread and he breaks it and he says, this is my body broken for you and he says, do this in remembrance of me that as often as we do this that we would proclaim Jesus' death until he comes. You see, right now we get a communion meal. We get a meal that looks forward and backward.

We get a meal that looks back to Jesus' death and looks forward to his coming. And then when he comes we get a wedding meal. We get a consummation meal. We get invited to an eternal celebration where God the Father welcomes all his children home. And so today I want us as we take communion to do exactly that. I want us to look back and I want us to look forward.

I want us to hold the realness of the bread. Feel it. And realize that Jesus took on flesh. He became tangible for us to see and touch and hear that he was broken and that he bled so that from his fullness we might be made full. That we need him today. So if you're a Christian and you're part of our church family we invite you to pray.

We invite you to repent where you need to. Spend time with Jesus and then during this next song as they sing when you get ready come up take the bread dip it in the cup. Remembering that Jesus died for you and looking forward to the day when light fully pierces the darkness. And we're taking home to belong to him forever. Lord, let's pray. Let's pray.

God, we thank you for your grace. Thank you for your goodness towards us that through you we can be made full. And we ask that over the next week or so as we celebrate Christmas with friends, family as we walk through this season whether it's joy filled or mournful that we might remember the hope and the truth and the grace that we have in you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Lifetime Generosity

Lifetime Generosity

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm a pastor in training here with Mill City Church. We're going to be in 2 Corinthians 9 today, which is on page 563, if you have a white Bible. If you do not have a Bible, please take that home. That is our gift to you.

We are currently in our gift series. If you're new here, we do this gift series every year. It's a time for us in a culture that pushes possessions and material things all year, and it really heightens up right now. This is a time for us every year to reset and be reminded with the Bibles how it talks about money, how it talks about generosity, so that we can kind of reset and remember what the Bible teaches on it. So we're going to be in 2 Corinthians.

We'll get to that in a second. In seminary, I worked at a coffee shop. And this time every year in December was the best time to work at a coffee shop. It was my favorite time for a lot of different reasons. Firstly, this was the time of year that people, this is the season of generosity, that people would do one of those things where we had a coffee shop with a drive-thru, and the person at the drive-thru would say, I want to pay for the person behind me. And they'd start a chain.

You ever seen those or heard of those? So the person would pay for the person behind them, and then the next person would get really, really excited, and they'd say, oh, I've always wanted to be a part of one of these. I'll pay for the next person, the next person. The reason why I love this was because eventually someone was going to come up, and it was going to get awkward. And I just love to let awkward situations just simmer, let it go for a little bit. So someone's going to come up, and they're going to get a small coffee, which is like $2.

And then they're going to pay for the person behind them, and the next person, they're going to have the small coffee, and they're going to go, okay, well, that person paid for me. That's really cool. Like what? What did the next person get? I was like, well, they bought coffee for the office. Five drinks, all large, with espresso shots, $25.

And they would go, okay, and I just let it sit for a second. And eventually they'd either say like, I guess I'll do it, like reluctantly, or they'd just say, I can't do it. That was fun. That was a big part of December. Another big part of December, because this season, just a generous season, was you made more tips. This was the time of the year you could make the most tips.

So people would be dropping extra change in, extra dollars. I mean, this is the time of year that you would make the most money. And then January came. And when January came, it was like the holiday hangover. Everyone's 10 pounds heavier. They just got their credit card bills from December.

And they're like, how did this just happen? And then generosity culturally just goes to die in January. And that's kind of the cycle every year. It picks back up right around December. Remember, nonprofits that raise money for the next calendar year, they know this is the time of year where you're going to get the most donations. This is the time where you fundraise.

Like Giving Tuesday wasn't even a thing five years ago. And now, like the first Tuesday in December, there's a huge push because this is the time when people are culturally generous. So what I have for us today is to look at the season that we're in. To look at the season we're in and ask, do we want to be like the culture where generosity is just seasonal? Or do we want generosity to be a part of the regular fabric of who we are? Because the Bible calls us to regular generosity.

So as we take on this gift project, as we take on this gift series, I want to cast a vision for us that we might grow past this season. Because regular generosity is a Mark of maturity in the Christian life. And we're going to look at 2 Corinthians 9 today in verses 6 through 10. And we're going to see the vision he puts forth for this. We're going to see why it's good and give some practicals how we can actually get there. So I'll read it.

And then we'll dive in. Verse 6. I'll pray and we'll dive in. God, thank you for your word. Thank you that you speak tough truth to us. Money is such a difficult subject to grapple with because it's so connected to our heart.

God, I pray that you would help us put down our swords, that we would receive this, that you would speak powerfully to us and give us a vision for long-term generosity. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so. All right, so.

The context for 2 Corinthians here. All right, so. The context, if we go back to chapter 8. Paul is doing basically two chapters of expanding the Corinthian church's vision for generosity. And what he does in chapter 8, the beginning of chapter 8, is he gives an example. He gives an example of another church that's called the Church of Macedonia.

So this Macedonian church heard there was a need. There was a need amongst some of the churches in Jerusalem who were struggling. And the Macedonian church, he upholds this church as an example. This church being, we know from the context, being fairly poor. They didn't have a whole lot. And they responded in generosity in a big way.

He says in verse 3 of chapter 8, he says, for they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. So this church didn't have a whole lot. They were begging to take part that they might be able to contribute to help this church. So he walks through that in chapter 8. He gives this example. And then we get to verse 6 in chapter 9 when he says, the point is this.

Meaning he's laying out the why behind all this. The point is this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So he uses this language of reaping and sowing.

It's agricultural language that they would be familiar with. So in their culture, every year when they would harvest grain, they would bring in grain that they would use for bread. And if they ate all the grain at once for that year, they'd starve the next year. That's not how you farm. You have to set aside grain for the future, for future harvest. If you didn't have grain to plant for seeds for next year, you were not going to have grain for future harvest.

This language is built off of that. They might give to something in the future that will reap something, that will sow, that you'll reap something later. Now, prosperity preachers, they will hijack this passage. And they'll say, you see, if you give to our ministry, if you give to what we're doing, God's going to bless you. You're going to have material blessings right now. Your business will grow and you'll get cars.

Look at our ministry. We've got Learjets. It's awesome. And prosperity preachers, typically you'll see on TV, rule of thumb, nine times out of ten, if they're preaching on TV, they're probably a prosperity preacher. And they're going to stand up there and they're going to use this about the material now. If you give now, you'll reap material benefits now.

And they've completely ripped this from its context. This is not about the material now. This is about the eternal later. Now, there's an element for right now when we get to verse 10 where God provides for your needs right now. But it isn't the fleshly desires that you hear from some of those guys.

No, this is about the eternal later. It's building off the same idea that we've been building off the past few weeks. It's not about storing up treasures here. It's about storing up treasures in heaven. That's why I love what Chad did last week. If you weren't here, I encourage you to listen to the podcast.

But the visual, you won't be able to see. He took this long spool of thread. And he took this long spool of thread. At the very end, he taped one small piece of it. And he held it up and he said, this is your life. You're born here.

You die here. The rest of this string, and he kept unraveling and unraveling it, helping us see. The rest of this string is eternity. And it's not even to scale. Because eternity goes on and on and on. And what he helped us see was that we think about money in the context of this right here.

We don't think about it in the context of what the Bible calls us to. We have an eternal outlook on the way we spend money and the way that we think about money. That was a helpful visual for us. And that's what they are trying to communicate in this passage as well. Because culturally, we just don't do this well. We don't think forward enough.

I mean, the best kind of picture of how culture thinks forward and investing in something down the road is retirement. That's pretty much it. And retirement's a good thing. I mean, the Bible, the Proverbs teach about storing up for later, about leaving stuff for your kids. Somewhat downplaying retirement. You should be investing in retirement for later.

But, man, the way the retirement gets pitched in our culture is sad. I mean, the retirement commercials that you see, it's usually like a couple and they're on a boat. And maybe that boat, like the name of the boat is their retirement fund. And it's always on the Gulf because it's blue waters. They don't ever do it in the Atlantic where it's a little bit muddy. It's always blue waters.

And you work your whole life and invest in this retirement fund so you can get the boat, buy the ocean, and it's going to be great. And it's a sad picture for layers of reasons. Practically, how many hurricanes hit the Gulf on a regular basis? That boat isn't going to exist past a few years. Your beach home is going to get jacked up. And to think that we would invest so much and put so many eggs in that basket that for like 10 years we could actually enjoy that.

And then, I mean, you'll enjoy it for a moment and then it's gone. To think that we would put so much hope in the last few years of our life instead of thinking about the eternity that is to come is sad. And that's the best example we have of our culture investing in something down the road. So Paul is trying to expand the Corinthians, their understanding of this, that storing up treasures here is foolish. They're here for a moment and then they're gone. So he teaches on this and he's teaching on the heels of using this example of this Macedonian church, how they responded greatly in generosity.

And I think that's helpful. I think having examples of how other people, other churches have responded radically and generously, that's helpful. I don't remember a whole lot of sermons from when I was a kid. I didn't become a Christian until I was 17. But I do remember one sermon specifically.

And it was about, he used this example of this guy who had built this construction business. And he built this very successful multi-million dollar construction business. And he lived on 10% of what he made. And he gave 90% of the church, 90% to see the mission go forward. And I was like, man, that has always stuck with me, that kind of radical generosity. It's helpful when you hear about villages in Africa where churches don't have hardly anything and they come together and they pull the resources to be able to help somebody.

It's helpful to see stories like when Jesus told the parable of the woman, the widow, who gave everything she had. It was just two pennies, but she gave everything she had. Those stories are helpful because they give us a picture of what radical generosity looks like. But sometimes, if we're honest, sometimes they can be a little bit discouraging. Because hear this, if you're giving like 40 bucks a month and you hear stories like that, you're like, man, I am never going to get there. I can help out with your gift project.

I can pitch in a little bit there. But, man, I've got diapers I've got to pay for. And my kid's 529 educational account has like 80 bucks in it. And some of you are like, I don't even know what a 529 educational account is. Like, I've got needs that I'm trying to take care of right now. So I'll help a little bit.

But, man, I don't think I can do much more. Or maybe you've been in a state where you've been able to give for a season. And then all of a sudden some bills came. And it just, you got scared. And it was like, I don't know if I can keep this going. The credit card bills are coming in.

I don't know if I can do this. So if that is where you're at, if that's the zone that you're in, what Paul says next in verse 7 is of great value to us. Because he's going to expand our understanding of giving in a big way. In verse 7 he says, All right, so where he wants to move us to is regular sacrificial generosity that is cheerful. So if you're in the zone where it's like, I'm currently not giving at all.

Or maybe you're in the zone that I'm giving a little bit. It's not sacrificial. You may even be the person that's actually giving somewhat sacrificial. Maybe you heard about tithing growing up and you've always given 10%. That's been your mindset. But you don't do it cheerfully.

You do it because it's what you've always done. Or you do it reluctantly. Or maybe in your mindset it's like, this is how I peace God in some way. That I just give 10%. That's what I'm supposed to do. And Paul's trying to move us to know.

Sacrificial giving that is cheerful. If you do a word study and the word cheerful, it comes back cheerful. Joyful. That you might be excited about how you can give. Now in order to get there.

Which I don't know the word. In order to get there. We have to look at what he says here. When he says decision of the heart. Because that is huge for us. He says it's a decision of the heart.

That phrase right there is helpful. Because it reminds us. That this is a heart process. That giving is a part of our heart process. It's a part of our maturity. It's a part of what the Bible says is our sanctification.

Which is growing in holiness. Which is growing into Christ. It's a part of the process of maturity. And hear this. Maturity doesn't happen in a moment. It doesn't.

It takes time. My daughter. She's two and a half. And she's learning how to use sentences. So she's.

She'll come to me. Have you ever seen my daughter? She's really stinking cute. She's got blonde curls. And she comes up to me. And she'll go.

Daddy. Hold you. And I'm like. Oh. That's so sweet. Pick her up and say.

You mean. Daddy. Will you hold me? Daddy. Daddy. Hold you.

I was like. All right. We're working on that. Sometimes. Sometimes. She'll.

She'll get to talking. And she'll say. Daddy. Can you please. And she hears us talk. And we talk fast.

And she'll just all of a sudden go. Daddy. Can you please. Oh. And she starts speaking in gibberish. And I'm like.

Child. Are you speaking in tongues? What's going on here? Slow down. Like. You need to just.

Use. Like. Slow down. Work. And we work on that. Now.

Here's the deal. What kind of dad would I be. If my cute little daughter comes up to me. And says. Daddy. Hold you.

I say. Child. Please. No. You use correct English. We'll get somewhere.

Until then. Talk to your mom. Like. What. What kind of dad would I be. If I wasn't patient with her.

Knowing that. She's got a long way to go. She's got a long way to mature. And in the same way. We have a God who is gracious. A gracious heavenly father.

Who is waiting for us to mature. Waiting for us to grow. I mean. That's true for any part of your process of growing into Christ. Right? Like.

When you first learn. That. As a Christian. You're actually supposed to. To be reconciled in relationships. That you get angry with another Christian.

Like. You're not supposed to just be passively aggressive. And just. Let anger just brood inside. And never talk to them. No.

Like. You're actually supposed to address them. The first time you actually go. And try biblical reconciliation. Like. You may go for it.

And you may. Man. I just. I'm so angry with you. And it may come out complete. Gibberish.

But God's patient with us. Until we speak the gospel fluently. He's patient with us. Until we grow. In maturity. And we have to have that mindset.

And apply it. To our generosity. You have a ways to go. I have a ways to go. But we have a father who is generous with us.

Who is patient. With us. And who's given us the Holy Spirit. To work in us. I love the picture that Ezekiel 36. 20, 60, 27 gives.

It's looking into the New Testament. How the Spirit is going to work in the church. He says. And I will give you a new heart. And a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh.

And give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you. And hear this. And cause you to walk in my statutes. And be careful to obey my rules. The picture is that he's traded out a heart of stone.

And he's put in a heart of flesh. And he's put the spirit inside of us. Who is going to cause us to walk in his statutes. Who is going to cause us to walk in his ways. We're not alone. The spirit is working through us.

And we have to have a long term picture of what that looks like. So that we can extend our generosity past this current season. So if you're currently not living generously. If you're currently not giving to the church. If you're currently not living generously towards the needs of people in your community group. Like hear this encouragement.

You can get there. You can get there. The Holy Spirit is in you. Working in you. He can grow you in this. But it's going to take some time.

And it's going to take some intentionality. And that's true for anything. It takes time. It takes intentionality. This is the time of year we're getting ready to have New Year's. And with New Year's comes New Year's resolutions.

Which means the gyms are about to be packed. They are. Jeremy Powell is a personal trainer here. My father is a personal trainer. They call this season tourist season. Because this is the time when everyone shows up to the gym.

And they're like, I'm going to get fit. This is going to be my year. And I personally, I hate working out. Like I hate it. Like I despise working out. Like if you want to play basketball.

And I do like being active like that. But man, going to a gym working out is just not my thing. I hate it. There have been seasons where I was like, man, I think I could be a gym person. And I would go. And the only time I've ever worked out consistently was when I was in high school training when I was playing baseball and football.

And I'd go in the gym. And I'd pick up right where I left off and do hour workouts and work out early. And then two weeks in, I'd be like, what am I doing? Like I'm trying to pick up where I left off. I'm trying to be the most advanced version of what I was doing. Like what am I doing?

You just don't jump into the gym and start killing it. The same thing happens with diets. Like you don't go from McDonald's to Whole30. You just don't. Like I've tried. My wife does Whole30 about once a year.

It's coming up again. And the first time she ever did Whole30, I was like, baby, I'm going to come alongside you. I'm going to help you do this. And I did Whole30. Because it's the worst diet ever. You can eat like air, water, and squash spaghetti.

And squash spaghetti is terrible. It's an abomination of foods. Like it's awful. Like it's not spaghetti. If you just want to call it squash and eat it and realize you're eating something that's objectively terrible, go for it. But don't make spaghetti out of it and say, oh, this is great.

No. It's terrible. And I made it three days because I'm like, this is the worst diet ever. Because you don't go from McDonald's, which I enjoy sometimes. You have a McDonald's app. You can get $354 deals.

You probably judge me, but that's okay. You don't jump from McDonald's to Whole30. It takes time. If you actually want to have a diet and sustainable and go long term, you cut out some things. You introduce some vegetables. You introduce some whole grains.

Right? So in the same way, this give project. This give project is a small start for us. Right? Like it's a way for us to go check out the gym. It's a way for us to introduce some whole grains to start getting a little more healthy.

But we don't go from zero to 100 just like that. You just don't. That's not a sustainable outlook on giving. That's why I don't really like the language of tithe when it comes to giving. I just don't for a couple of reasons. Like tithe is an Old Testament concept.

It's an Old Testament concept of you would give a tenth of what they made to the temple. And then they've, you know, scholars have done the research and they've seen that it's a tithe on what they would make, a tithe on certain harvests, a tithe on certain festivals. And it ends up being somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. But they don't really know. There's not a New Testament command to go and tithe. The New Testament command is to give and give sacrificially.

And some of the reasons I don't like tithe is that for some of you, you're not feeling 10 percent. That's not sacrificial. You can just put auto-give 10 percent of your income and you'll never feel it. And it robs you of actually being able to grow into sacrificial giving. But the other reason I don't like the language of tithe is that if you're not giving at all, or if you're giving a few bucks a month, and your understanding of giving is I have to give 10 percent, you're like, I'm out.

I'm never actually going to get there. Like, what's the point? If giving is 10 percent, I'm never actually going to get there. So a more realistic outlook, a more realistic approach is to look at 2018 and think, you know what? I think if we move some things around, I think we can do 2 percent this year. We can do 2 percent this year.

And then having a long-term outlook that says maybe in 2019, we can give 4 percent. And maybe in 2020, we can give 6 percent. And having a long-term vision of slowly growing in this so that you can actually get to sacrificial giving. And as you do this, and as you think through this, we do it prayerfully. We don't do it reluctantly. We don't do it under compulsion.

We do it prayerfully. And we ask God to go to work in our hearts. We might do this cheerfully. And once you've prayed, and once you feel like God is calling you to give something, like this is a time to look at our budgets going into 2018. If you don't have a budget, you should. You should have a budget.

If you are currently struggling to live within your means, you should have a budget. And here's the deal. At our church, we have a toast team. They are our financially wise people in our church. They're here to help serve us. And they want to meet with you.

If you don't know how to make a budget, if you will help with your budget, if you're looking to get out of debt, we have a team that will sit down with you. And they will help draw up a plan. They will help you figure out how to grow in this. And this will actually help free you up to be able to start giving. And when you look at your budget, I just want to give you a few quick ways. If you look at these right now, you'd find some ways to grow and be able to give.

If you have cable, and you're like paying hundreds of dollars, if you switch to like Sling TV, which is like 40 channels, it's 20 bucks a month. If some of you can be looking at cheaper phone plans, some of us can start shopping for insurance rates. Because what I've noticed the last few years, there's like zero incentive to actually stay with an insurance company. They will just jack up the rates on you. For some of you, it's going to be looking at how many times a week you eat out. Because if you're eating out seven times a week and getting drinks five times a week, maybe it's time to pare that down a little bit.

For some of you, it's not jumping on every single Lula Rowe outfit that comes out, but thinking about Target. And for some of us who are due a pay raise coming up, so much of this is realizing that we either worship God or we worship money, like what Chet talked about last week. When it comes to getting a pay raise, it's having our mindset adjusted. When we get that pay raise, it's not how much more can I get? It's like, God, what do you want to do with this? What do you want me to give?

How do you want me to grow here? We had someone during this series who came up and said, I have a brand new car and I want to start living within my means. And I want to figure out how to sell this car and see if I can get a used car to have smaller payments. That's the kind of response that I love seeing. And the way we do this is we look at our budgets and we do some praying and we start considering things. And we also, maybe for some of us, is bringing people into this.

Because, man, I am naturally prone to worship money. And if I have my budget in front of me, I will try to justify it to myself in any way possible. But when I bring in somebody else and they're looking at it, it helps me think through what am I actually doing with my finances. All of us, this is a heart-level process. And, man, it's a heart-level process that we go to war in. It just is.

Because when you start to do this, temptation is coming. From your flesh, from the world, from the devil. Like, it is going to come. And you're going to feel the pull to want to focus on the possessions of this world as we strive to have a long-term vision of generosity. So, at this point, at this point, you may be frustrated. Like, you may be ready to, like, bow up or walk out.

Right? Because, I mean, talking about money, it causes us to sit in our seat a little bit. And you may even be a little bit discouraged. I feel like that Paul felt the same thing. And that's why in verse 8 he gives a pretty solid encouragement in verse 8. He says in verse 8, And God is able to make all grace abound to you.

What Paul gives here is that God is the sufficiency for our change. God is the one who's sufficient. He's the one that makes all grace abound. He's the one that is going to grow us. He's the one that is going to help us change. Because here's the deal.

If you try to muscle change yourself here, like, you're going to fail. Because we're not the ones that are sufficient to change our views on giving, to grow us in this. That Jesus is our sufficiency for change. He's the one that will change us. He's the one that will form us. And that comes, firstly, through believing the gospel.

Which is why I love what Paul says in verse 9. He says, As it is written, He has distributed freely. He has given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. Paul quotes Psalm 112 here. And I love what he's doing here.

Because when we connect this to the gospel, we see that Jesus embodied this perfectly. That he's the one who perfectly distributed freely and helped the poor. And that he distributed grace to those of us who are spiritually poor and spiritually bankrupt. That we might have a righteousness that endures forever. The God who generously poured out his son for us is the one who enables us. He is the sufficiency for our change.

And then he goes on to show us how we can continue to trust him in this. He says in verse 10, He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase your harvest. Increase the harvest of your righteousness. So Paul gives a picture of God as the one who provides here. Like God's the provider. He's the one who supplies.

I think oftentimes the reason that we get discouraged when we do this, when we try to step into this and live generously, is we just get scared. Like how am I going to do this? I'm looking at my bills. I'm looking at my income. How in the world am I going to actually begin to do this? Here's the deal.

I've never met anyone who began to trust Jesus with their finances. I've never met anyone who started to do this, and all of a sudden everything fell apart and God didn't provide. Like usually the story that you hear is, I don't know how all this worked out. I don't. Like I don't know how the math worked out, but God continued to provide. And as I increased my giving, God met me where I was at and he provided for my needs.

And as that process goes, you start to trust God. You start to realize how awesome this is to take part. And you start to grow cheerfully to the point where you're like waiting for someone in the church to have a medical bill or to lose a job because you're ready to come alongside and see, how can I come alongside this and give? God provides. We trust him with our finances. He provides.

And when we trust and have an eternal outlook on our finances in the way that we give, and when we do that and we give to the mission of God, what that means is it frees us up to be able to do more ministry. When we give to the church, it allows, like we have two full-time pastors. We have Matt and Chet that are full-time. It allows them to not have to go and get jobs. They can be able to strategically focus here. It allows us to be able to meet here on a Sunday.

I know you're thinking, this place ain't amazing, but if you actually took a step back and realized how many stories have changed happened in this building, it puts it in perspective. It puts it in perspective when you have eternal mindset that there are neighbors and coworkers and friends and family members who can come and hear the gospel here. That's eternal. It puts it in perspective when you think about our kids that are up in Kid City right now and someone is walking them through the gospel that one day we might stand in a baptism pool. And they might say, Jesus is Lord. That's an eternal outlook on the way that we give.

That's the eternal nature of what we're giving to. Because here's the deal. A thousand years from now, a thousand years from now, you're not going to care about that top-of-the-line remodel that you missed out on. You're not going to care about that you didn't have the newest and the nicest cars. You're not going to care about that you didn't have the newest and the nicest gadgets. What you will care about is who is standing with you in the presence of God for eternity.

You will care about your family, your friends, your coworkers and kids who through being here in community groups on a Sunday heard the gospel and were changed. That's the vision of long-term generosity that we have to have. Because we want to see long-term change happen in this city. Matt and Bianca are going to come up. We're going to close this in a song, a couple songs. A easy step to move into generosity right now is owning this gift project.

We've been doing this gift project, and there's been kind of two main goals here. The first, if you haven't heard what we've been doing yet, we're partnering with Midtown Two Notch. It's a church over on Two Notch on the other side of Columbia, and it's in an area of town that is way under-resourced. The average household income is like $18,000, and like the normal household income for the state is around $50,000. So they don't have a lot.

And there's a lot of families there that aren't going to be able to celebrate Christmas by getting their kids gifts. So one of the things that we're doing is we've been collecting gifts like this because this Saturday we're going to do a toy shop. So throughout the week we're still collecting gifts. This Thursday is the cutoff day. Please bring gifts by the office for kids ages 3 to 18. We're expecting 100 to 150 kids, so we need more gifts.

So if you're at Target this week or you're at Walmart, please pick up some more gifts and bring them by the office on Thursday. If you'd like to serve this Saturday for the toy shop that we're running at their church, you can sign up online. Please do this as soon as possible so we can have some Numbers of what we're going to do. And this Saturday we're going to show up, and we're going to play the background. We're going to serve, and we're going to let Midtown Two Notch be the face of who is helping do this. And there's going to be a toy shop for parents to go inside and be able to pick out toys for their kids.

And we're going to be outside doing games with kids like bouncy houses and hot chocolate and fire pits and crafts. And then the next Sunday, these families are going to be able to show up at Midtown Two Notch's gathering. And they're going to collect these gifts for their kids, and they're going to connect that to this as a church who is in our area, who is serving us in a big way. And God willing, we hope to see some people that will meet Jesus because of this. So if you want to serve in that, please sign up for that as soon as possible.

The last way we're serving that church, their lead pastor, Aunt Frederick, is support raised because he's in that area and it's underfunded. Like he may never be fully supported by the church, so he fundraises every year to get by, and we just want to bless him. We're collecting money right now to be able to help ease the burden of his 2018 salary.

Faithful in Small Things

Faithful in Small Things

Chet Phillips

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.

The Abundance of Possessions

The Abundance of Possessions

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Well, good morning. It's our first week of our Give Series. Grab your Bibles, go to Luke chapter 12. What we do in our Give Series is we take just a little time to focus our attention on God's generosity towards us and how we might in turn be generous, how we ought to think about our finances, how we ought to think about our possessions and our money. And so we just every year around this time, we try to just kind of push back on the cultural current of consumption and try to intentionally put our eyes on generosity and living in a way that makes sense financially. And so what we're going to do for the next couple of weeks is just spend some time looking at money and how to think about money and how to handle money.

And today we're looking at Jesus teaching on the concept of possessions. And we're going to pray and then we will begin looking at this passage together. God, I pray that as we enter this room, as people who have been blessed with possessions, and maybe a little bit different from the person sitting next to us, but as far as history goes, very blessed. And so I pray that you would help us to rightly look at this and to listen to what you have to say to us through your word, that we might repent where we need to repent, that we might grow in generosity where we need to grow in generosity, and that we might not be tricked by owning the things that we own.

And so God, we love you and we ask for your help this morning through the empowerment of your spirit. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, Luke chapter 12, we're going to read from verses 13 to verse 34, and we're really going to just kind of hone in on three verses. So we're going to read a lot of the text, and then we're going to spend most of our time talking about three verses and trying to dig as much out of them as we can. So let's pick up in verse 13.

Jesus is teaching a crowd at this point, and then he's interrupted, and that's kind of where we pick up this story. So someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? And he said to them, so first he says to him, he responds to the guy who just interrupted him, and then he says to them, the rest of the crowd. And he said to them, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. The word covetousness there means to desire something that's not yours or to yearn to possess or have something.

So he's referring both to, I think at this point he's responding to both the brothers. He's responding to the brother who does not have the inheritance and wants it, and he's responding to the brother who does have the inheritance and also wants it and does not want to share it to the point that it's become an argument. And when a traveling prophet and teacher comes through the town, this guy interrupts him and tries to get some of the inheritance. He's like, hey, you don't know me, you don't know my brother, but could you real quick, because you're a prophet and you speak on behalf of God, tell him to give me some of this money.

And Jesus is like, slow down. I have nothing to do with that. And then he just turns and immediately starts teaching on this. He's like, but while you brought up the subject and while you're here, let's talk about the issue that's going on in your heart and your brother's heart. And I think that guy thought, you know, I probably shouldn't do that again. Next time I'll wait until it's not a crowd, and maybe I'll just slip him a note or something.

Anyway, he turns and he starts teaching. So he says, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And he told them a parable, saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. Then he said, I will do this.

I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you.

And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God. Jesus tells this story, and in his mind, he's demonstrating something that most people believe, that people at this time definitely believe, and that we as Christians believe, which is that at some point this life will end, and when it does, we will be accountable to God. And I know this is a Christmas series, and so I hate to bring up the fact that the mortality rate in this room is 100%. That at some point we will die, and in that moment we will be accountable to God.

We will stand before God and enter into an eternity. And what Jesus is saying is that all that we see here and all that we handle here does not just terminate here, but it actually rolls up into an eternity that matters. But I want us to look at what he says at the very beginning of this in verse 15. Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. That's the first verse we're going to focus in on. He starts off by saying take care, be on your guard.

When do we say that? When would you look at someone and say watch out, be careful? We say that when there's a danger, when there's something to watch out for, when there's something to be afraid of, when there's something that is around us that could harm us. And so Jesus is saying, I'm about to tell you about something that could harm you. I got to thinking about this. What he says is, he says, watch out that you don't believe that life is found in your possessions.

And I got to thinking about what are the things that I'm on guard against. I used to didn't think about this stuff very often. I got married to my wife and immediately when I got married, I felt this weight of responsibility of if anything bad happens, I'm supposed to like protect her. Now, some of you, maybe your wife is a black belt. Mine is not. She weighs about 90 pounds.

She does not think about this at all. And one of the other things that she's given me a complex is she watches all these like forensic files and Dateline and all of these like any kind of creepy murder thing. And then she just is like, she's just, she can immediately just fall asleep. And it's just amping up this like fear intensity. Like I'm on guard. So one of the things that happens now is if I come home and realize that we left our back door open or I see the little stick out, I will walk through our entire house and check all the closets and stuff.

Because I've seen on those shows someone hid in a closet for five hours. And I know that I'd be like, oh, it's not that big a deal. And I'd lay in bed and it'd be about 10 o'clock and I'd be like, I wonder if there's someone in our closet. So I'm just skipping that step. I don't get ready for bed first. I have to fight someone in my underwear.

I walk around the house and I check all the closets. But what Jesus is saying is I'm on guard against that. What he's saying is that I've never once come and opened my closet and looked at my possessions and been like, what you playing at, shirts? Why do I need 45 flannel shirts? I've never looked and been like, why do I have five pairs of boots that look about the same, but I only got two feet? Like what?

I've never, I've never just been really concerned that my possessions were out to get me. I've never been on guard against my stuff. My radar is not up there. But what Jesus says is be watchful. Be on your guard against, and it's not just your stuff, it's this idea that's attached to your stuff. Be on your guard against the belief that life is found in your possessions.

Now, what does he mean by that? What does he mean that we would begin to believe that our life is found in our possessions, in the abundance of possessions? Because most of us would not say that our life is actually connected to it to the point that if you took my stuff, I would fall over dead. But he gives an example when he tells this story. What does the man say to himself? He says he's already rich, and then his land produces plentifully, and he says, I'll tear down my barns, I'll build larger ones.

And then I'll say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. What the temptation is with possessions is that we would somehow convince ourselves that the good life is found in them, that true comfort, that you'll say to yourself, you know, if I could just have this much money, then I'll finally be able to relax. Yeah, yeah, I'm tense now, and yeah, I've got stress now, and I'm on my grind now, but if I could just get to this place, if I could just get this promotion, if I could just get this job, then I'll relax. Then I'll finally be able to quiet my soul.

Or that you'll look and say, if I could just have that, then I'd be happy. That's why he says, eat, drink, be merry. That really what I need is, the reason I'm so frustrated, the reason that life is so difficult, the reason that I don't have any joy is that I'm stuck in this spot, and if I could just get this, or have this, or this vacation, or this amount of money, or this much in the bank, then finally I could be happy. That we've begun to believe that the abundance, the accumulation of possessions will give us joy. And this is a danger both for the brother that has the inheritance and the brother that doesn't.

So even as we begin this, don't sit and think, oh, that doesn't affect me because I don't have anything. It absolutely does. We can still begin to believe that the good life is found in possessions. One of the ways to help you think about this is when do you say in your head, or out loud, must be nice, must be nice. Like I have seen people pull up in beautiful trucks. Now you might not describe a truck as beautiful, and you would be wrong.

There are some trucks that are beautiful. I've seen them ride up, and I thought, oh, it must be nice. You ever just open the door to a brand new vehicle? Like if a friend of mine gets a new vehicle, I'm just like, hey, can I go sit in it? Like I just want to, just to see, just pretend, like what would this be like? Like I, just there's something new, there's something about like a big truck, but you have to actually like use a ladder to climb in, and you can ride around traffic and spit on other people's cars.

Like I, there's just something, and I've thought, man, it must be nice. I've never once had a friend show up to something, I was waiting on in the parking lot, and you can hear their vehicle coming, like from around the other side of the building. Like it announces that they're on their way, and I've never, and they pull around, and they've got one door that's a different color from the rest of their car, and I've never once thought, man, it must be nice to be free from this longing for possessions to define you. I've never been like, I'm so proud of you. You know what I've assumed? Oh, bro, you just only got the money to get a car that all the doors match.

Like I just, I didn't think you've taken a vow of poverty, I just thought, that's all you can handle right now. That's cool, I'm not judging you, but I didn't think, man, you must be, you must be so free from the love of possessions. I've never thought that. I've never been in someone's house that was just, you know, small and okay, and wanted to take pictures. I've been in rich people's houses and pulled my phone out because I know what type of person I am. I take pictures real quick and I'll show my wife, like, did you see this kitchen?

I think you could bowl in here. And what I'm saying, what I'm betraying in my heart every time I do that is this is the goal and this is where you'll finally reach. Like if I had this house, if I had this car, then, then I could say to my soul, soul, be happy. Soul, be at rest. You've done it. Hey soul, up top.

High five. We made it. That's what I'm saying. That's what we're betraying in our hearts. I don't know for you what it is. I don't know where you set your sights.

I don't know if you see somebody. There's a new eBay commercial that is, it is just covetousness, which by the way, that's what commercials are. This is a commercial about covetousness. It's like layers deep, like inception. It's like five. We're going in pretty deep.

It's an eBay commercial and what it is is it's like they see somebody walking and they see their boots and they're like, they immediately get their phone out and what it's telling you is when you see something you want, don't even wait. Get it right now. Which I don't know why I licked my finger. That's not how you use phones, you guys. If you're doing that, gross. But you don't even have to wait.

You can do it right now. Let's see somebody with a shirt and they immediately pull out and just, and that, honestly, I was watching that and I thought, no, that's us. How many products have you bought because you saw it at someone else's house or you saw someone else wearing it and you said, hey, where'd you get that? Where do you have that? That's covetousness and that's growing in our souls. That's, Pinterest is great in so many helpful ways and it's also covetousness, which is saying, if I could just have my house look like that, if it could just be like this, HGTV is covetousness.

It helps breed it in our souls. I'm not saying it's immediately evil. I'm not saying go home and get rid of HGTV, maybe, but I'm just saying that we have our whole economic system built around this and this time of year is that the goal of our economy is to whip us into a frenzy to buy things that we don't actually have to have, to accumulate an abundance of possessions with the belief that life will somehow be added to and made better and Jesus says, watch out. Watch out. I'm willing to bet many of us had a pretty good Christmas last year. I'm also willing to bet that most of us didn't roll into this Christmas and go, oh no, I did it last year.

I'm good. I got the thing. Life is complete. No, we're always consistently setting our sights a little higher and beginning to believe a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more would finally fix me, would finally make me happy. It doesn't matter where you are on the scale. If this is the poorest American and that's the richest American and all of us are lined up with this belief that possessions and vacations and corner offices that somehow fix us would somehow finally make us okay, if we're all on that scale, what happens to most of us if we stand right here and say, this isn't a problem for me, look at how far away I am from the top.

And it's a little bit like Jesus walked over to a cow and said, you're in line for the slaughterhouse. And they went, yeah, but I'm like 20th in line. I'm really far away. It's like the line still gets you slaughtered. It's a bad line to be in. And so for us, what happens is that there's this chance there's this possibility that we slowly over time begin to believe the lie that possessions will finally make us comfortable, will finally let us rest, will finally give us joy, and we keep kicking it further and further down the road.

I thought it was this amount of money, but it's actually not. It's got to be that amount of money. I thought it was this type of car, but it's actually not. It's got to be that type of car. And so what I'd like for us to do as we move into what else Jesus says here is to at least admit that this is a temptation and that this is a problem and that this is something that we should be concerned about, that we can actually begin to believe that life, that joy and fullness and satisfaction are found in our stuff. You see, as we desire possessions, pursue possessions, gain and accumulate possessions, we can begin to believe the lie that they offer us the good life.

All right, now we're going to keep reading from 22 on down to 32. And he said to his disciples, therefore, so therefore meaning because I said all this stuff about money and not being rich towards God and because I told you that your possessions can't give you life, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on, for life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?

And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you were not able to do such a small thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you? O you of little faith. And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried, for all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.

Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. All right, we're going to spend just a minute in verse 32. So he tells this whole big thing, and he's saying, don't be anxious. Don't be anxious about what you're going to eat. Don't be anxious about what you're going to wear.

Don't have your life and your anxiety wrapped up in finances. Don't have your life and your anxiety wrapped up in, how am I going to make it? He then says, fear not, little flock. That's graciously, lovingly, condescending to us. Calm down, little flock. Fear not.

He looks at us like we're a bunch of sheep that he's the shepherd over because we're a bunch of sheep that he's the shepherd over. And he says, fear not, calm down, quiet your soul a little bit. You see, when it comes to money, we actually do have a lot of fear. There's a lot of them. I'm going to quickly tell you four. I think there's more.

I just want to share four that I think we have wrapped up when it comes to money. I think one of the first and main fears is that we just have a fear of pain, suffering, difficulty. That our fear is placed on this idea that money would fix that. That's what he's talking about here. He's talking about eating and drinking and having your clothes. Like he's just, there's something about like I'm, we're not going to be able to make it if we don't have money.

When he's talking about, he says you'll eat, you'll wear clothes. Like that's bare minimum for existence. He says, calm down, you're going to be okay. But we have this fear of I won't make it if I can't, if I don't have stuff, if I don't have possessions, if I can't, I won't eat. I won't be okay. I think that when it comes to money, there's a fear of failure.

It's often hard to quantify how we're doing and money and possessions just makes it easy. I'm doing good. I'm doing this much, this amount, good. How am I doing? This amount in the bank, good. It's a quantifiable number that tells us we're okay, that tells us life is good.

People can actually look around and look around at their house and their possessions and go, okay, we're doing all right. Like I can see, I can see it and there's this idea that if I don't have that, then who am I and am I okay? And so there's this fear of if we don't have finances, we don't have possessions, how do we know, how do we know how we're doing? I think there's a fear of the future and uncertainty. All right, look, CrossFit's great.

Essential oils are fine. Drinking tea is good. From what I understand, if you do all three of those, you become immortal. If you read the stuff people say on Facebook. But there's no better way to prepare for the future than being really, really rich.

That's what we tell ourselves. Sure, being in shape's fine. But having a lot of money will fix that problem. Drinking tea is great, sure. But having money, like there's just this, nothing can get to me if I have a pad of money around me.

And so there's this amount of, I have to have this to be okay. And the last one, and I think this may be particular to us, I don't know. Maybe it's exacerbated in us, but there's a fear of missing out. My dad growing up would always say, he's like, money isn't that great, but the stuff it can get for you is. Like money itself isn't great, but it can buy you a boat. Like he just kind of has that, like that's good.

And I realize I just quoted the country song and you're welcome. But there's like, this idea that, like if I don't have money, if I don't work real hard, if I don't save my possessions, if I just give my money away, like everybody else gets to go to Disney World, I gotta go to Dollywood. Or tweets he railroaded. Like, there's this idea that like, I'll miss out. Everybody else is gonna have these good experiences. Everybody else will get to, like have you ever said to yourself, like I wonder if my whole life I'll never own a new car.

I wonder if my whole life I'll just always rent a house. You ever said that? Because what you're communicating to yourself is I'm going to forever miss out. I'm going to forever miss out on the thing that would fix me, that would make me okay, that would make life better. But I want to tell you why I think Jesus says it's dangerous.

Why we ought to be on our guard against it. Verse 32, some of this will be on the screen to help us see it. Fear not, little flock, for it's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. You see what he did there? What he did there, I want to show this to you before we move into why it's dangerous. Fear not, little flock, it's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

He just swapped it out on us. He doesn't say, fear not, little flock, it's your father's good pleasure to give you a bunch of possessions. No, he said he's going to give you something better. That the reason why possessions and the belief that they give us life is dangerous, we should be on our guard against it, is because he has something better to offer. And here's what we actually miss out on. You know when someone tells you you should wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle?

Or that if you've got little kids, you should watch out for them when you're out places. Do you know why we have to be on guard for things? It's because we have something of value that we might lose. I don't care how fast you're going, you can still flip a motorcycle over a curb and hit a tree. We have something valuable that we might lose. And so we're told to be on guard and to be watchful and to be mindful of the situations that we're in.

And so here's what he's saying that's valuable that we might lose if we believe the lie that possessions give us life. Fear not, little flock, it's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail. Let's highlight that.

Where no thief approaches, no moth destroys, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Here's the danger when it comes to believing that possessions give us life. First, we'll miss out on true treasure. What he does not say is money bags are bad. He just says your money bags will wear out. Get ones that don't.

He does not say treasure is bad. He says you're chasing fool's gold. There's a better treasure. See, if we believe the lie that our possessions here will give us life, we will miss life and we will never actually get true treasure. Secondly, the danger is that they can lead our heart astray. For most of us in this room, we love Jesus.

We want to follow Jesus. We want our life to mean something for Him. We want to be devoted to Him. And what he's saying is that your possessions pull at your heart. That if we're, as Christians, supposed to look beyond the horizon into an eternity where souls hang in the balance, where people will either spend eternity with Jesus in worship and in rescue because He died for their sins or an eternity separated from Him paying the penalty of their sin. And if we're supposed to believe that and know that and our value system is supposed to be different and we're supposed to look beyond the horizon, that possessions clutter up the view.

And rather than helping us look upward, they force us to look down and they can begin to lead our hearts astray. That's what's at stake when it comes to believing the lie that our possessions will fill us up and give us hope. They trick us. They trick us into believing to changing our value system and they lead our hearts astray. But Jesus came to wreck our value system and to steal our hearts.

Jesus comes from heaven, which is really nice. He leaves heaven and comes here and is born in a stable. We sang about that earlier, that He left the riches of heaven and was born in a stable and that He intentionally lived His life on purpose so that He could die in our place for our sin. And when He did this, He did this to wreck our value system so that if you belong to Jesus, what you value does not look like what your neighbor values. that He's changed our understanding of eternity and He's changed our understanding of what has value and what doesn't. And He came and when He died for us, He did this also to steal our hearts and He is not okay with us sharing our hearts.

They belong wholly to Him and they are not to be spent on loving and believing in our possessions. Jesus came to wreck our value system and steal our hearts. Paul talks about the same idea in Timothy and I want us to look at this real quick because I think it's clarifying. As for the rich in this present age, charge them, that means aggressively tell them, give them a rule, charge them not to be haughty nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.

So what He says is to the rich in this present age, tell them not to strut around and be all excited about being rich. Tell them not to place their hope in their riches. So what He's basically saying is tell them, set their hopes on God. Not on the uncertainty of riches but on God. So He's saying, tell them to set their hopes on God.

So let me point out a few things that I think are helpful from this passage. Paul does not say, tell all the rich people, you terrible, terrible person, don't be rich. He does not say, tell all the rich people to give everything they have away. No, He says, tell them not to hope in it. Tell them to realize where it comes from. Tell them to be generous and ready to share.

One of our general reactions to this when we start talking about this and we see how blatantly and bluntly Jesus says things is to go, oh, so I can't own a hot tub, I can't enjoy life, I can't, Disney World's wrong, I went to Disney World last year, it was alright. I've been to Tweezy Railroad too, it was alright too. Like, like to have this like, but what's He say? who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. Oh God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. That we actually can enjoy the things we're given. That we can, that it's okay, but that we can't, can't, place our trust in them.

That we can't let them begin to lie to us and tell us that they'll give us life. I'm going to tell you a situation that'll play out in a community group if you're in one long enough. You'll see something, something like this will happen. There'll be someone in the community group who will pull money out of their savings account or their retirement account, pay extra penalties on it, and use it to buy a hot tub. And they'll say things like, yeah, but I'm not going to retire for like 20 years and I can own this hot tub for 20 years. And there's someone else in your group who's like, I'm going to punch you in the face.

Because not only did you have to pay taxes on that, but now you paid extra penalties and taxes and also, that hot tub didn't going to last 20 years. And in the middle of that argument, you know what might, might be happening? You might have two people who both believe that possessions give them life, they just have a difference about going, a different way to go about it. You might have one that believes that possessing money in the bank helps you have security and hope that you can look at your soul and say, relax. And you might have someone else who's more going to say eat, drink, and be merry, but they both believe the same lie.

That possessions give us life and they're both confused. Now, that may be happening. The guy who bought a hot tub probably, wisdom-wise, is making a worse decision, but they both still have an issue. Could be. Could be that when we get in arguments with your spouse, my wife recently was saying, when we were coming up for Christmas and we were talking about my parents were saying, hey, what should we give Archer? And she was like, I wonder if they'd give money to his so that we can open a mutual fund for him.

Because she's been saving up and she wants a little bit more so we can open a mutual fund. And I was like, you're ruining Christmas. That sounds terrible. But the truth is, maybe in the middle of that argument, I'm saying the good life comes from eating, drinking, and being merry. And she's saying the good life comes from security. And I think that has a lot to do with how she and I argue about money.

But neither of us have looked beyond the horizon to an eternity where things actually matter more. Where we can give some stuff away and have treasure that doesn't fail. So let me ask, has it worked? Has it ever worked for you? Have you ever gotten to the point where you said, I did it, I reached the amount that I had set out to reach and now I'm fulfilled and now life is here and now everything's good? Let's imagine that you had a friend who told you every year, I save up $2,500.

I have a set amount that I set out of every single paycheck. And every year, I save up $2,500. And then, in October, when the state fair comes, I take a week off of work, I rent a hotel, and I go to the fair from open to close every single day. Now, even if you love the fair, you're saying, dude, that is the worst vacation I have ever heard of. Like, you can only eat so many elephant ears, you can only watch so many pig races, you can only spin counterclockwise and clockwise so many times. I don't care how many times you ride a camel, like, at some point, you are placing way too much weight, way too much pressure on the state fair to accomplish something for you that something else would do a better Job at.

How do we know that? We've seen the something else. We've seen the state fair. Jesus looks at us and says, if you believe and if you buy into, this is all we'll get, so I might as well get as much as I can. You're placing too much weight here and it will not accomplish what you want it to accomplish. Why?

Because he's seen this and he's seen the money bags in heaven. He's seen this and he's seen eternity. And he's saying, I've got a better deal for you. Can we enjoy the things we have here? Yes. Is it wrong to own a hot tub?

No. Not in and of itself. Maybe for you, yes. Is it wrong to save for retirement? No. It's actually a good idea.

But maybe for you, it's drifted into a place where you've begun to believe the lie that this will somehow fix you and this will somehow give you hope and this will somehow allow you to relax and yes. You've made a bad choice. You've made a bad switch. Jesus has seen both and he says, don't do it. So how do we fight it?

Jesus gives a very simple command on what to do to fix this in our souls. Verse 32, fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the needy. That that's actually how you provide yourself with money bags that do not grow old with the treasure in the heavens that does not fail where no thief approaches, no moth destroys for where your treasure is there will your heart be also. What he says is sell your possessions, get rid of the things in your house, give to the needy. Sell your possessions, give to the needy.

That provides for you money bags in heaven. Now, does that mean you cannot own a thing? I don't think so. Does that mean you have to sell all your possessions? I don't think so. I think there's actually some wisdom to having an income, having a home, having some things set up where you can consistently forever give to the needy.

But I will tell you this, I think as Americans, we try to talk ourselves out of this way too much. And we try to lower the bar way too much. And we even try to talk others out of it. Now, you should give some, but no, not like that. No, no, no, no. Like, I wouldn't make that decision.

Like, it's okay to, like, we try to talk each other into having extra things. And I honestly think Jesus would stand alongside us and nod us along on everything we decided to give away and everything we decided to pass along and to give to the needy. There's a missionary named Jim Elliott who eventually died for going and being a missionary. And one of the things he wrote in his journal was, he is no fool who gives away that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. The truth is, all the things you own, you won't keep. Everything you give away, you won't lose.

You'll keep forever. But I do think that this is a pattern of life more than it is a one-time thing. There's a pattern of life that we are on our guard against our possessions, that we fight our possessions and their ability to claim our hearts, that we sell them, that we give them away, and that we consistently let our money walk out the door. So sometimes when we do stuff like this or when we're called to give or when we're looking at it, we honestly just say, I don't have the income to do this. Like I'm strapped as far as income and so that's why Jesus says, sell your possessions. Some of us need a lower car payment.

Maybe some of us as we pray about this are going to be called to sell our beautiful truck, pay cash for one that's not as beautiful and every day when we crank it up and it cranks on the second try, we remember that eternity exists and that we've got better money bags and we've made a good investment. That this is to be a pattern of life, that maybe some groups are going to have some yard sales, but the way that we fight this is that we begin to give our money away. That if your possessions have begun to claim your heart, the way to move your heart is to begin to give them away. So here's our give project this year.

As we actively as a church fight our desire to spend all of our vacation time at the fair, that's what we're doing. We're actively as a church fighting our desire to put all of our eggs here and to believe that everything here and all of our possessions and having a hot tub and having a nicer house and finally getting that new iPhone X because it's a thousand dollars and apparently someone reviewed it and it's better than the Samsung. Like, ooh, like fight the desire to think that'll fix us so that'll make us happy as we fight that. One of the ways that we're going to begin is our give series.

But I do think this needs to be a pattern of life for all of us. So here's what we're going to do this year. Midtown Two Notch is a church plant in inner city Columbia off of Two Notch and Schoolhouse Road. They have a building that they lease over there. I was out there one time for a, I know Aunt Frederick was one of the pastors there. We actually kind of launched that at the same time.

I was out there for a pastor's like lunch thing and they had ordered pizza and so we're all sitting around, pastors are all sitting around waiting for pizza and they get a, they come back in and go, sorry guys, we're going to have to send someone to get it because when we told them the address, they said they don't deliver pizza here. And I was like, I didn't even know that was a thing. But they got a spot in Columbia that's marked off that they're not sending a truck. They're not sending someone to drive in there and deliver pizza because it has gone so poorly for them. Aunt Frederick felt called to plant in this area.

Let me explain to you about church planting. It is difficult. Financially, it is hard. They planted a church where there's no way to financially succeed. If he's going to be full time, if they're going to do the things they need to do to minister to these people, the average household income in that city, in that part of the city is $18,000 household. The average for the state is $56,000.

The average household income in that part of the city is $18,000. One of the issues with inner city church planting is that guys like Aunt will go to a place, try to plant a church. They consistently have to be raising support because they are missionaries where they are. They're running out of money and then a nice church in the suburbs that has a lot of money and is trying to grow in diversity goes to Aunt Frederick and says, hey, we'll pay you X amount of dollars to come be on staff here. And we, collectively, with the Grassroots Church Planting Network, never want that to sound like a good option and so we intentionally try to support this church plan.

And so we called them as we went in this next year and we just said, hey man, I think for our gift project we just want to love y'all. We want to bless y'all. We appreciate what you're doing. We want to help. And so there's three ways we're going to partner. We started talking to them about how we could bless that part of our city and how we could not just bless that part of our city.

See, it'd be cool if we just picked and said this is an area in our city that needs blessing. We're going to go bless. What we've actually said is this is an area in our city that needs blessing but they also need to be blessed by the local church and so we're going to partner with a church that's right there so that they can continue to walk with all the people that are blessed to see them grow in their love for Jesus and have their lives changed. So we, the first way that we're going to do this, Midtown Fellowship Two Notch, our first part of our give project is this. New toys, new and gently used children's clothing and shoes.

New toys, new and gently used children's clothing and shoes. So here's, here's why that we're doing this. They said, they have some people that work in social services and they said one of the biggest issues in that part of the city at Christmas, a couple things happen. People feel like they have to celebrate Christmas. They're going to and so they make poor financial decisions to do so because they don't really have the means to do it but they want to be able to give their kids something. They want to be able to have some kind of a Christmas.

A lot of them do not celebrate Christmas, wait and give their kids Christmas gifts at tax time when their tax return comes. And one of the things that they noticed was that for people who at times when they're given a gift, people do show up and make sure the kids have gifts, that organization gives them. And what they said they'd like to do is help parents be able to come and actually set up a toy shop at their building that they lease and let parents come pick out gifts and then they'll help so that the parents at Christmas can give the gift to their child and take all the credit for it. So that it empowers what they're doing and makes them feel like they were able to do it and the kids don't feel like somebody else had to come in and do this.

And so what the plan is is that we would get to be elves for three weeks, $15, $20 or less. We don't need to have some really big things stuck in there. We need to have a pile of things that parents can go in and pick out a few things for boys and girls. And so we're just looking at all new, $15, $20 or less on toys. Clothing, I don't know how much that's going to cost but just kind of find some things. But we're going to try to have new toys, new and used, gently used clothing and shoes.

And we're going to fill up a room. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to fill up that room. The second thing we're going to do is have a Christmas party where we're going to go volunteer to man all the stations so that the people of Midtown Two Notch can interact with everybody so that we're going to be the ones making sure everything's tended to so that they can be having all the conversations, loving and serving them. They want a Santa Claus. So if you feel like, I get Santa Claus, let's talk.

They want a Santa Claus. They want us to do s'mores and any other fun things that we can come up with so that the families can come, we can watch the children so the parents can go pick out what they're going to get. They won't take it with them right then. They're going to get to come back and pick it up later, but it gives a time for a whole big party. Kids get to talk to Santa Claus. Parents get to go pick out toys.

We get to be a loving, beautiful diversion. We're going to get to love and trick children and it's going to be awesome because I think that's what Christmas is about. So that's the second part. We want you to sign up. We're going to need people to show up early and set things up. We're going to need people there during the party.

We're going to need people to tear things down. You'll actually be able to sign up online tomorrow. So that's the second part of our Give Christmas project. We're going to help them bless these families with a Christmas as we sell our possessions and give our money away to the needy, intentionally setting our sights beyond the horizon. The third thing we're going to do, and if I'm honest, I'm a little more excited about the third thing, but we've got to do one and two first. We're going to actually give financial support to Aunt Frederick for his salary.

He has to raise support every year. We want to make that easier for him. This is his family. He has a young daughter now that's just been born, but I couldn't find a picture of all of them on Facebook. I guess I could have asked him to send me one, but I didn't. Those are his two boys, Colby and Malachi.

Malachi is the one on the right. He has venous vascular malformation in his face, head, and neck. We asked Aunt, hey, would you be willing to come and just kind of talk to us during the gift series? He said, no, I'm heading to Boston for surgeries number 19 and 20. What happens with Malachi's face is that the blood vessels don't close off properly, so his face just kind of fills up with blood. They go in, they open him up, they cauterize a few of the blood vessels, and they immediately have to close him up because his whole face is going to swell.

Then they wait until it goes back down and do it again. He's on surgeries number 19 and 20. So that this pastor who's in a difficult part of the city, actively having to raise support, he's also having to fly on a regular basis to Boston. There have been weeks where he said he spent 40 hours on the phone with insurance companies just having to get him to commit to do the next surgery. And that's a regular thing. He said he's getting pretty good at it, but he has to do it a lot.

And so one of the things I'd love for us to do is for us to collectively as a church start buying toys, you can bring them by the office during the week which is right down the hall, you can bring them on Sunday and we'll just pile them up here to start bringing used clothes and shoes and buying new clothes and shoes to sign up to serve on the party we're going to help throw.