Luke 19:11-27

Luke nineteen eleven through twenty-seven says this.

While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable because he was near Jerusalem, and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.

He said, A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king, and then to return.

So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minus.

Put this money to work, he said, until I come back.

But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, We do not want this man to be our king.

He was made king, however, and returned home.

Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it.

The first one came and said, Sir, your mina has earned ten more.

Well done, my good servant, his master replied, because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.

The second came and said, Sir, your mina has earned five more.

His master answered, You take charge of five cities.

Then another servant came and said, Sir, here is your mina.

I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth.

I was afraid of you because you are a hard man.

You take out what you did not put in, and you reap what you did not sow.

His master replied, I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant.

You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow?

Why then did you put my money on deposit, so that when I why did you not put it down deposit?

So that when I came back I could have collected it with interest.

Then he said to those standing by, Take this mina away from him, give it to the one who has ten minas.

Sir, they said he already has ten.

He replied, I tell you that to everyone who has more will be given, but as for but as for the one who has nothing, even that uh what they have will be taken away.

But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and kill them in front of me.

Let's pray.

God, we just pray that you would um touch us, speak to us through your word.

God, we each have a different story.

Um, and that story needs to be uh interrupted and intersected with your plan and your power, um, your glory.

So we just want to listen this morning for your voice in our life.

As we look into this text, would you speak to us, Holy Spirit?

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

You may be seated.

So, Luke 19, this is the last passage that we're going to look at in this section that leads up to Jerusalem.

You'll recall that we've been in this section since um probably June, um, May or June.

The 10 chapters that we've been looking at is this process of Jesus walking up to Jerusalem.

He did his first part of his ministry all around the sea, the area of Capernaum, um, the Sea of Galilee, and uh that's where he grew up.

And then uh starting in chapter uh nine, I think it was chapter nine or ten, he begins to move up to Jerusalem.

He's on his way to Jerusalem, and so that's where we're at in the text.

We're finishing up this section where he's walking to Jerusalem.

Last week we took, uh we looked at the story of Zacchaeus, which, if you want to summarize it, it's a man who's in a bad career.

Um the primary evidence of his lostness related to his career.

He was a tax collector, and he was using his career to rip people off, um, to take more money than he should have.

He was injuring his community, and because of that, he was a person that we would say was lost.

He had lost the plot.

He was living lost from the plan of God for humanity, but his encounter with Jesus causes him to turn and repent.

And then we finish the section of Zacchaeus with him being found, being rescued.

So it's a great story.

And it this text that we're gonna look at here follows Luke, Luke gives us the account.

He says Jesus continued, or he says these things to the same crowd.

They did not like, this is the crowd that did not like Jesus being associated with sinners.

Right?

They saw Jesus going to Zacchaeus's house, and they said, no, no, no, no, no.

That's that can't be.

You know, we can't have you, who, you know, you're a good religious teacher.

You can't be going over to that sinner's house.

Certainly that can't be the will of God.

It's that same crowd that we see in verse 11 that is thinking maybe the kingdom of heaven is going to appear immediately because Jesus is so close to Jerusalem.

Throughout this whole passage, 11 through 27, the language that's here is all about nobility.

We've got the kingdom of God referenced over and over again.

We have no king that's of noble birth.

We have a king, we have servants, we have subjects.

And so looking at this story, it's basically Jesus teaching a parable based on what he says in verse 11.

What he says in verse 11.

So again, verse 11, while they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought the kingdom of God was going to appear.

So the parable is this story of a guy who's in line for the throne.

It's come time for him to take the throne.

But he has to go and receive a coronation.

And there's kind of a journey in place, and while he's gone, he he gives money to his servants, ten of his servants, to invest.

We only see the results from three, but ten are called.

He gives each one, in this story of the minas, because this might sound familiar, you may be familiar with the story of the talents in Matthew 25.

In this story, he gives each one the same amount.

Do you remember in the story of the talents, Matthew 25?

Jesus gave different amounts to different people.

And and the results are somewhat similar.

We see one guy kind of doubles, uh, one guy doubles the amount, another one has a smaller return, and then there's a third guy who um is kind of uh he he's the foolish servant that doesn't do a good job investing the money.

I don't think that um Luke messed up recording this.

I think Jesus was teaching every day.

And so when we look at this parable, we're seeing a repeated lesson that Jesus taught.

Sometimes he taught it like the story of the talents, sometimes he taught it as the story of the minas.

Some commentators look at this and they go, well, because the stories are different, because you've got talents in one setting, which is a measurement of money, minas is another measurement of money, maybe that Jesus is making a different point.

I don't I don't really think that.

Um, but you're free to if you want to.

Um I think Jesus is overall conveying a point through the text.

Um I and I entitled this message, and I've kind of posted this on Instagram, that this is the this middle ground.

What happens between the first and the second coming of Christ?

And he's telling this parable on this occasion because he's getting ready.

Like we're we're like in the last eight days of Jesus' life.

He's going to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.

He's gonna get there, a whole bunch of stuff's gonna unfold while he's there.

He's gonna do his teaching from the Temple Mount.

So some of the images that Jesus uses in the last few chapters of uh Luke are going to borrow from imagery on the Temple Mount.

Um, but here Jesus is specifically telling this parable in order to teach and respond to an expectation.

Do you see that how these these Jews had a faulty expectation of Jesus?

Now you can't blame them.

You can't blame them for having this expectation.

They've been raised from a child to anticipate the coming of the Messiah.

It's just that they didn't understand how there would be a gap between the first and second coming of Christ.

If you were a young Jewish person, you would be raised in uh with an attitude of anticipation.

If you've done any studies of the festivals, uh Jewish festivals, what you see repeated in these festivals is an anticipation, an anticipation of the Messiah coming.

It looks, oftentimes they look back, but there's this eating these meals and doing these specific rituals that anticipate the future coming of the Messiah.

We saw other language like the language of this passage in Luke 16.

If you were with us a few months ago, we read Luke 16.

It says, Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.

So Jesus is working.

These ten chapters, which is composed of a few months probably, Jesus is really drilling down with his disciples onto a few key lessons.

And we've I've repeated this over and over again, but the stuff that comes up is like the kingdom is coming and how to enter the kingdom of God.

What does prayer look like?

The absolute nature of discipleship, that Jesus isn't just trying to get big crowds out to the edge of the water or big crowds to join him in a field.

Jesus is really calling for adherents, for people that will be um uh really wholeheartedly following him.

And one of the themes has been this idea of stewardship that I'm going, because remember, he's been warning them, I'm going away, I'm going to die, I'm gonna be raised.

And he's preparing these disciples to do what you and I do did this last week, right?

We lived with the absence of the physical presence of Jesus in our world.

And Jesus has been spending these 10 chapters preparing his disciples and us to live in that reality.

And one of the great themes that comes out in these in this teaching is this whole idea of stewardship, faithfulness, and being held to account.

So I've got this question for you.

Why didn't why didn't Jesus establish his kingdom on earth during his first coming?

Why didn't why didn't he just bring it to pass?

The Jesus is the crescendo of God's plan, right?

If you if you took music when you were in school, you know crescendo is when the music gets louder, right?

It gets intense.

That's what Jesus is.

He's the intense revelation of God.

That's what it says in Hebrews.

That Jesus reveals the Father.

God in past times, He's spoken through prophets, He's spoken in visions, He's done all these things, but then Jesus came as the revelation of the Father.

So why not just establish this kingdom?

Why is God allowed for 2,000 years of church history to unfold since Jesus walked the earth?

Why not fix everything and establish this kingdom?

This is what the Jews of the time were expecting.

You know, they weren't carnal.

When I when I was in Sunday school, like these kids that are over here, somehow I got this conception that like the disciples, because they asked, you know, because they had these expectations, or you know, in like Acts 1, when Jesus is raised from the dead and he's with them, and and they're like, Well, when are you gonna set up your kingdom?

Somehow I got this concept in my head that like the disciples were bad for wanting that.

They were they didn't get it, right?

Maybe, maybe they should have gotten it by then, maybe they should have understood it, but they weren't wanting something bad.

In fact, I think in all of us there's this longing for the kingdom of God.

I think that in all of creation there's a longing for the kingdom of God.

Can I can I um uh back that up with some scripture?

Look at Isaiah 55.

If you have your Bible in front of you, you can look at it.

I want to just read it for a second.

Um, and I have it up here on the screen as well.

This whole passage talks about um this is what a Jew would have read anticipating a future work of God.

Listen, listen to this, and then I'll go back and summarize this.

We're gonna read through the whole chapter of Isaiah 55.

Come, all of you who are thirsty, come to the waters, you who have no money.

Come, buy, and eat.

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

Why do you spend money on what is not bread and you're lay and you labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.

Give ear and come to me, listen that you may live.

I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David.

See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a ruler, a commander of the peoples.

Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you, because the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor.

Seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call on him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake their ways, and the unrighteous their thoughts.

Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth, and make it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out of my mouth.

It will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I desire and achieve, the purpose for which I sent it.

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace.

The mountains and the hills will burst forth into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn bush will grow the juniper, instead of the briars, the myrtle will grow.

This will be the Lord's for the Lord's renown, for an everlasting sign that will endure forever.

Isn't that beautiful?

Let me just suggest to you that that that so Isaiah 40 through 66 is pretty much that.

That's like that's the material of the second half of Isaiah.

It's this beautiful anticipation of the Messiah, of all that God does.

I mean, he look what he's talking about.

He's talking about drink for free wine and milk, an alternative to wages that do not satisfy.

He talks about the choicest food.

He talks about an everlasting covenant like the one with David.

A leader and a commander is coming.

Uh he talks about that leader being glorified amongst the nations, people turning away from evil and receiving the mercy or the compassion of God.

He says, Go out with joy.

Um, have peace as you travel.

He talks about this ecological flourishing.

So it's this it's this beautiful picture of um of paradise, right?

It's it's it's it's what what humanity longs for.

You don't have to be a Christian to appreciate the things that are listed here, do you?

Right?

You don't have to be a Christian to go, wow, that's a beautiful setting.

Where sinners, even evil people, are turning away from what's evil and they're receiving mercy from God.

I mean, that's that is so beautiful.

That that that he's talking about work, he's talking about food, he's talking about the just creation itself.

All of this is so good, but it's just not yet.

It's just not yet.

It's a good thing to long for, it's just not what we live in now.

So again, I ask you this question: why not yet?

Why can't we have this beautiful thing that is being described?

Part of this longing, we've got to be careful because um it's good to long for this, right?

We want to long for this, but we don't want to long for it for the wrong reasons.

There can be in the church this kind of escapism, right?

The world's so bad, it's going to hell in a handbasket.

I just want to get out of here, right?

That's not our attitude towards the world around us, right?

We're longing for this kingdom with all of creation that's growing, groaning, um, because it's God's good story being wrapped up on earth.

There's there's three reasons that I want to go over of why.

Why not yet?

The first is this the cross and the resurrection has to take place.

So Jesus, as he's telling this parable, he hasn't gone to the cross yet, right?

So if Jesus would have gone to Jerusalem, and in in just a couple of chapters, we're gonna see him riding on a cult, right?

Um, and there's gonna be singing and there's gonna be rejoicing, and the people are gonna think that they're welcoming the future king of Israel into Jerusalem, and yet that doesn't take place.

Only within another week they're crucifying him.

The cross and the resurrection have to take place, right?

In Colossians, this isn't in my notes, but I just is kind of coming to me right now.

In Colossians, Paul talks about us filling up what's left of the sufferings of Christ.

In one sense, in one very true sense, when Jesus died on the cross for us, he fully paid for our sin.

His suffering was sufficient to pay for our sinfulness.

But in another way, there remains a suffering that Jesus must still suffer as we're persecuted and as we remain on earth.

You see, there is this ongoing suffering that Christ experiences when we're persecuted for our faith.

As we face trials, as we suffer, we're filling up what's left of the sufferings of Christ.

I don't have the reference in here, but I think it's in, I think it's Colossians 2 or Colossians 3, where it explains it.

Jesus' death on the cross was sufficient to pay for sins, but there's still a suffering that remains for the glory of God.

The second thing is that God's God is glorified through the unfolding of a very long story.

Have you read um The Lord of the Rings?

That's what came to mind as I was looking at this and thinking about this.

There are in the Lord of the Rings, there are just almost unnecessary details in that story, right?

And then there's like, you could have put the whole story in one book, but he's like, no, we're going three volumes here, right?

And and you gotta love that, right?

You've got to just appreciate just the reality, the amazing reality of how God loves a long story.

2,000 years on, Jesus hasn't come back yet, not because he's like forgotten an appointment or because he's late, right?

No, God loves a long story.

You look at like God in the garden.

Do you remember what happened with Adam and Eve?

They sinned against God, they ate the fruit, and God appears to Adam and he makes a sacrifice for them, and there's the first foretelling of the Messiah that the serpent is going to bite your heel and you're gonna crush.

The seed of the woman is gonna crush the serpent's head.

That's the first promise of the Messiah coming to the earth.

But it's Another thousands of years later that actually Jesus walks the earth and fulfills that promise.

Then you go to Noah and the promise that's given to Noah that God's never gonna destroy the earth again.

And this picture of God's redemptive work in the earth, that God is like this ark that He provides an ark for His people to be rescued from judgment.

Then you get to Abraham, right?

And Abraham and his wife are barren.

And God says, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna make you the father of a great nation.

And through you the whole world is gonna be blessed.

That's God preaching the gospel to Abraham thousands of years in advance.

God loves a long story.

He loves your story.

Like he, like, as poetic as Isaiah 55 is, is how poetic he is with your life.

He is not in a rush to like perform his work in your life.

He's laid it out, the plan of history is laid out, and he's glorified by the unfolding of a long story.

The third here is that the pattern, there's this pattern of work throughout the Bible, which is this.

You can see it there.

God makes people to be oriented towards himself, right?

This pattern plays out.

The orienting of a person towards God is obedience, relationship, and work, right?

That's how you could break it down.

God rescues people when they fail this original purpose.

We call this redemption.

These first two repeat in a cyclical way, in anticipation that leads to Jesus.

Then Jesus comes on the scene and his message is about a life oriented towards God and his work to rescue people from sin.

And then God commissions his rescued people to live as a minority community.

There is a participatory work that God wants.

I want to show you a quote from this book.

This guy's an Anabaptist.

Are you familiar with the Anabaptists?

They're typically like pacifists.

Um they have a very flat leadership style in their church.

They've contributed a lot to um the church as a whole when they write about how we as Christians should engage the culture around us.

This is a quote I was reading this last week, and I I really appreciated it.

He says this in some, the church is in exile, while the Jews in Jerusalem's uh in Jeremiah's time, uh sorry, let's go back here.

In sum, the church is in exile, like the Jews in Jeremiah's time, because it is a minority community that cannot and should not attempt to dominate or control the world like it did after Constantine.

It is in exile, not because it feels alienated from creation or from other fellow human beings, but because Jesus' challenge to hunger and thirst for justice conflicts with the values and the practices of the dominant culture.

But this conflict of values should not lead the church to shrink from responsibility from public the public sphere by withdrawing into a separate enclave or by privatizing or specializing the Christian faith.

Exile is a call to proclaim God's rule, which is breaking into history and to live by practice by practices that can make life flourishing in the cosmos.

We are a people that live in exile, right?

We are a minority community.

So you're like, Josh, how does this tie in with the passage?

Okay, here's how it ties in.

Here's Jesus teaching, discipling his disciples, preparing them for this season, right?

In fact, most of the Old Testament is written to a minority community, right?

We're never intended, Christians were never intended to um set up a political reign of God on earth, right?

The first time that happened was under the reign of Constantine.

You see, Constantine mentioned here, he was, I think, 360 A.D.

And he became a Christian and he made the Roman Empire a Christian nation.

And it was the worst thing that could have happened to Christianity.

Uh, it was the blending of church and state, and um what fell out of Christianity was really the heart, the relationship with God.

So rather than us looking to a political solution, what we want to do is we want to engage culture, like he says here.

We want to live as those in exile, proclaiming God's rule, which is breaking into history to live by practices that can make life flourish in the cosmos.

Flourish in the cosmos.

You this week are gonna go into your work environments, your neighborhoods, and the question is how can you bring in that flourishing?

How can you bring in that flourishing in around the people uh to the people that are around you?

Instead of looking at the people around you that you're like, oh, I'm glad I'm saved.

I'm glad I'm not going to hell, right?

That's not our attitude, right?

No, our attitude is like gratitude, we're so grateful that we're that we've been forgiven of our sins, and then we're looking at the people around us through that lens of mission.

The flourishing of God, the rule of God is like breaking out in our midst.

I don't usually like to tell stories where I come off as kind of the hero of the story, but can I rejoice?

Again, I give a testimony from my own week.

I told you about my friend that I did the um Indian dinner with, right?

He was my Uber driver, and then I told him, like, let's get our families together.

I love Indian food.

You like Indian, you know how to cook Indian food because he's a Pakistani refugee.

And we cooked food.

Um, he came over with his family.

They cooked Indian food in our kitchen.

And then we said, well, let's let's do this.

Why don't we offer to my neighborhood a free one, not a free, uh, a paid cooking class, a one-night cooking class.

And uh we'll open it up to eight people.

It'll cost$50 per person.

They can come in for three hours and you can train them to cook Indian food, right?

And um I I don't want any, and I told him he's Muslim, he's an Ahmadiyya, uh Ahmadiyan Muslim, very, very devout.

And I I told him, I said, I don't want to make the money.

I want to help you, you're trying to make money, you'd like to open up your own restaurant, but I want to get to know my neighbors.

My neighbors in that area are wealthy, um, they're exclusive, they have tons of extra money.

Uh, me offering like a free event isn't gonna do much, it's kind of not gonna move the needle for them.

They can pretty much afford extra stuff in their life, but they'd be interested in a cooking class, and I want to tell them about Jesus.

So he's like, Ah, I don't, you know, okay, we'll try it.

Do you think people really would be interested?

Is what he said.

And my wife was like, I don't know, I don't know.

I thought I I'm gonna I'm gonna post this.

So um I put it up on Facebook this week.

Some of you who live in the neighborhood and and see our the Facebook page, I put it up there and I said, look, who would be interested in it in this dinner?

Who would like to be able to enjoy having a cooking class?

I I can't remember what I said.

Within the first 10 minutes, we had 13 people who are interested.

As of right now, there's like 300 people.

300 people who want to pay to come to my house and learn how to cook Indian food.

Thanks.

So now it's kind of like a little bit bigger than what I thought it was gonna be.

But I'm rethinking, I'm rethinking outreach in evangelism.

Like, well, maybe there's this aspect where there's some people who like they don't value it unless they're paying for it.

So anyway, that's gonna happen January 12th.

I think it's gonna be the first one.

But there's like five or six people who are like, we want to have him to our house, you know?

He can cook at our house.

And then there's other people who are like, we're doing a private party.

We want to pay him to cook for us at our house.

I'm like, this guy hasn't no, he barely speaks English.

Like, he has no idea what's coming at him.

He was texting me before I put up the post on on Wednesday or Wednesday or Tuesday.

He's like, um, how many people are interested?

So once he said that, I'm like, oh shoot, I've got to post that, you know.

So by the end of the night, I'm like, uh, 200 people are interested, right?

That's how many people had responded by the end of the night.

He's like, oh, we can do more.

I was like, well, you can't do that much.

We can't take that many people and put them in my house, you know.

Anyway, as I was watching this and just looking at the people responding on Facebook, one guy, one guy, classic, he's like, This is the dopest post on uh on this group ever.

And I was thinking, there's flourishing, right?

There's there's God giving me some like strain, some strange random idea, and it can lead to this flourishing in the neighborhood.

I don't know how Jesus is going to be proclaimed through that.

Um I know a bunch of people went to my website.

Well, a bunch of people friended me.

A bunch of people like messaged me and like, oh, that's cool that you're a pastor too.

You know, you're willing to have a Muslim over to your house.

One guy's like, hey, I might come check out your church.

Um, my neighbor, who I've been trying to reach for a while, she she friended me back.

She's like, um, and she she wants to come over.

So all that to say, you've got the Holy Spirit, right?

You're one of these disciples.

You have the Holy Spirit.

What's he gonna say to you this week about flourishing in your neighborhood?

What's he gonna what's he gonna what because because there's no methodology to this, it's a relationship, right?

What does John 15 say?

Abide in me and I in you.

Without me, you can you can do nothing, right?

Um so Jesus tells these servants, or he tells a story of these servants who are caretakers, right?

They oversee this money.

The master comes back, having been crowned the king.

Notice there's subjects in their servants.

The subjects are like, we don't wanna, we don't want anything to do with you.

And I would just say, based on this parable, you gotta understand that God's kingdom, there's an aspect of God's kingdom where everybody's in it, right?

There's subjects in God's kingdom.

Like God owns everything, right?

He owns the He knows the owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

We love to say that when we're broke, right?

So everything is in God's kingdom.

There are subjects and there's servants.

We, if we're a disciple of Christ, we're a servant, right?

But there's subjects.

I if you don't know where you stand on that, talk to me because we got to get that figured out fundamentally.

Let's let's land the plane here, though, because we've we're running out of time.

Um Jesus says that there's this grand story that's unfolding.

It's like this middle between the first and second coming.

You and I are part of it.

Then he says you're going to be held accountable for your participation in that grand narrative.

Do you see that?

There's a great story that's unfolding, and then you're held accountable.

In our culture, we live in a culture that is postmodern.

One of the main um definitions of postmodern is meaninglessness and despair, right?

Meaningless and despair.

So if you have a postmodern film or a postmodern book, the pieces don't necessarily have to fit together.

It's based on this belief that that there is no grand story unfolding in the world.

And yet the Bible comes along and says there is this grand narrative, you live in the context of God's great story unfolding.

We also see that there's accountability for actions.

Do you see that?

He this master holds these servants accountable for what they do with these resources.

We live in a culture that celebrates freedom, freedom to express oneself is an all-important value.

We're told avoid anything that impinges upon that freedom.

So accountability, you you'll notice one of one of the great things that you want to cultivate, and I'm gonna steal this from Tim Keller, one of the things we want to cultivate is this ability to critique the culture around us, not hatefully, not scornfully, but to point out its flaws.

It's kind of like it's kind of like a worldview that's um like when you put on a suit that maybe it fits you when you got married, but you've gained 40 pounds, and like any direction you turn, you're like gonna rip it, you know?

That's what our culture's worldview is like.

Like, like so our culture celebrates freedom, you know, and autonomy, but at the same time, it wants us to be ecologically responsible.

So there's there's always these in the world that we live in, there's these oftentimes these like c conflicting ideas, these conflicting values that our culture can't make sense of.

And it's it's like that suit that's too small.

You start to move around and all of a sudden, oh, it tore.

You know, it's in conflict.

But a but a Christian worldview, a biblical worldview, is like a suit that's too big.

You can never grow into it.

You can never grow, you're never big enough for it.

And and so one of the beautiful things here is as um Jesus explains life to these disciples, he's giving them this view of like, hey, there is a great story, there is a narrative, there is accountability.

All of these things are grand and great.

If you do well with what you're given, you're gonna be entrusted with more, right?

That that that what that means is there's a purposefulness about life that we don't have to despair.

We don't have to um you know question whether the pieces fit together in our life.

What Jesus says is the pieces fit together.

God has this grand story that's unfolding.

So just to finish up here, there's this there is this critique that kind of comes about through this text to the culture around us, and it says, there's a point to life, there is a grand narrative, and there is accountability, there's a responsibility that we do have that's given to us, it's bequeathed to us.

That's the responsibility.

It's been been given to us.

It's not that I just took up the this I decided to pick up, you know, the chip bag in front of my house this morning because I just am self-righteous.

No, there's a grand story.

There's this this um ecological redemptive work that God's going to do with with um creation.

So um that that may come up in your conversations this week with people around you.

People like, hey, why do you go to church?

What's going on with that?

Well, let me tell you this story about this this parable and these servants, right?

If you um have never trusted, have you if you've never decided to make Jesus the one you're gonna follow in your life, I want to invite you to do that.

Um Jesus came into the world to save and rescue people from their lostness.

He came Jesus came into the world to um uh take the sin problem that separates humanity from God and their original uh purpose, and he puts it away through the work of the cross.

But that can only be applied to your life if you receive Christ.

As if if you say, Jesus, I want to surrender my life to you, I want to place my faith in you, then all of those things you have access to.

You can be a part of God's great narrative, God's great story.

You don't have to be lost like Zacchaeus, you can be woven into the plan of God.

Amen.

So if you've never made that decision before, please talk to me or or one of the other leaders in the church and just say, hey, I want to make that decision for the first time.

We'll pray with you.

You can talk to God and tell him it on your own.

Um but I just want to encourage you, make that decision.

Make that decision to follow Jesus.

You won't regret it.

Let's stand together and we'll pray.

God, we thank you for your great love for us.

That we are allowed to be your servants, that we are entrusted with um responsibilities, opportunities, resources, and God, we pray that you would teach us by your Holy Spirit what it means.

What does it mean for us to be that minority community?

Lord, what does it mean for us to live in a despairing world?

In a world that's opposed and influenced by the devil?

What does it mean for us this week?

Lord, you've got to say that no sermon's gonna preach that to us.

Only your spirit can speak to us on those things.

So, Lord, teach us, be our teacher.

Teach us this week each day.

Where the things you've been prompting us in, the areas where we need obedience, Lord, give us grace.

Win our hearts, overcome our hearts, Lord, where we need your help, Lord, just to surrender.

We need your forgiveness, we need your inspiration, we need your hopefulness in our life.

Thank you, God, that we get to encounter you.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's worship.