The Dishonest Rascal

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And thank you for being part of what God is doing at His Hands.

Good morning.

Yay.

Man, that's that is a really powerful song.

And uh it'd be powerful no matter who sings it, but I have a feeling sometimes that I think God may have written that song for Nathan and Katie to sing together.

There's just something about that.

It's just really powerful.

That's awesome.

Well, we got it, we got a bunch of announcements this morning because there's a lot going on.

So I'm gonna try to burn through these and we can get to uh what we're gonna talk about.

Talk about Jesus this morning, shocker.

Fourth of July.

Fourth of July is this Thursday, and that is always an exciting thing no matter what.

But it's really exciting here at His Hands because the City of Woodstock shoots their official fireworks display off right over our building.

We get a front row seat to it.

So we just take advantage of that every year and open up our building and the parking lot, let you guys come hang out, let your kids play, set up tents, do whatever you want, grill food.

Uh the Salisbury's are gonna be here with a ton of food as always, so you guys will be able to eat here.

We're gonna block off a front section of the parking lot as well as the walkway for tents, for lawn chairs, all that good stuff.

And we're just gonna have a great time together.

One of the great things that I get to experience being part of the high school team and the junior high team is we just spend a lot of time together, just doing nothing but hanging out, getting to know each other.

And it's actually really good.

It's a big part of being part of the family of God, and this is just a chance for us to hang out with our uh with our God family.

So be here on Thursday, we'll open the doors at five, and then we'll hang out for the whole night.

It'll be a blast.

This is more of a Cherokee County announcement.

They reached out to us and a bunch of other churches to ask for some help.

And the help needed is for foster families.

Right now there's 250 kids in Cherokee County that need a home, but only 64 foster families that are ready to receive kids.

And so they've asked us, and I'm sure a lot of other churches, that if anyone is wants to be a foster parent, has felt like they want to be a foster parent for a while, now might be the time.

And so if that's something that you want to do or feel led to do, stop by the info desk when we're done, and you'll get all the information you need there on the next step to take.

A lot of us know that we're a volunteer church, and so we have a few people that are on staff, but really everything that gets done is done by you guys, by amazing volunteers.

And one of our teams could just use a little bit of a boost, and that's our big room brigade.

And this is the big room.

You are in the big room right now.

Take five guesses of why we named it that.

And so every Sunday we have this awesome team of people that just stay behind and help help clean up.

You can imagine how long it would take one person to clean this room after a Sunday morning, and we're fortunate that we have a lot of people that stay after to help.

And the way that team works is it's really simple.

It's a one Sunday per month commitment.

And uh you stay for a few minutes, the more people we have, the faster it goes.

And they've got it down to a science.

They're really fast at it.

And so after this morning, if you want to join that team and help out and commit to once a month, we would really appreciate it.

Shelby, hey, there you are.

I actually see you.

That's weird.

Shelby will be at the back of the info desk, or info desk, you'll be at the sound booth, right?

There we go.

It's a good thing I saw you.

Sound booth, Shelby has wavy black hair.

She's awesome.

You'll see her, she's great.

You just need to talk to Shelby, and she'll give you all the details for that.

Backpacks.

Every single year we help out with this thing called Give a Kid a Chance.

There's a bunch of needy kids in Cherokee County that need school supplies.

And so we've been taking up backpacks.

If you want to do that, there's still time.

You can grab a form at the info desk.

It'll have the school supplies you need to get.

But what we try to do is provide about 200 backpacks so kids have everything they need to start school, which is coming up pretty quick.

July 4th is the last day to drop those off.

You can drop them off uh Tuesday or Wednesday here as well.

There'll be people here to receive those, I'm sure.

I hope.

If not, Stephanie will be mad at me later.

I see you too.

That never happens.

Weird.

All right, so backpacks, drop them off, and uh and we'll we'll get all that stuff taken care of.

It'll help a bunch of kids.

Giving, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone that helps financially.

Uh, you guys do so much, and we really appreciate it.

God, God uses every single dollar that's given here for an incredible purpose.

Number one, people are knowing him, people are connecting with him, their lives are being changed.

And we really want to help this community.

So we've been doing something this year.

You probably heard about it, maybe not if it's your first time or something like that.

But 15% of every dollar that's given to us, we turn around and give to these three different ministries that we're not affiliated with in any way, other than that we we really agree with what they're doing and we want to support them.

And it's the Hope Center, which helps out with crisis and teen pregnancy.

There's Cherokee Family Violence Center, which helps with battered women and their families to get out of that situation.

And then Papa's Pantry, which is a food pantry, but also helps people in need with job placement.

Three really incredible ministries.

And so 15% of every dollar that's given to us, we just turn around and write a check to them.

It's a really exciting thing to do.

I know for myself and Megan, it's just cool for us to know that when we give here, we're supporting his hands, which we believe in, but we're also supporting this community, and that's really cool.

So if you want to do that, it would help out a ton.

Four kiosks at the back of the room you can give through or write checks and drop them in the boxes or something like that.

You can also give online or through our mobile app.

If you don't know about that, we have a free mobile app you can download on any smartphone.

Uh, really cool.

We fixed a few little bugs with it, so it's working really good now.

And you can listen to messages, check out events, all kinds of stuff.

So download that.

You can give through it as well.

And that's why I was talking about that.

Okay, one final announcement.

It's really not so much of an announcement as it is a recap.

I want to share something with you guys.

Uh, we have the most incredible group of teenagers at this church that I've ever known.

We do.

And they're clapping for themselves, and they they deserve to.

You guys should.

They really are.

I get to spend time every single week with this incredible group of young people, and I'm blown away.

I'm blown away every week by how much they love God, how much they love each other.

They serve, they help out in this church in tons of different areas.

And it's it's a situation that they love God so much that half the time I hang out with them, I leave, and I'm like, God, do I love you that much?

I'm challenged just by spending time with them.

So two weeks ago, we got back from our annual summer road trip.

And this road trip has always been a big deal for our group.

It's, I think it was our fifth year doing it.

We basically take them to Tennessee, rent a couple big cabins, one for the guys, one for the girls, and spend several days just spending time together, worshiping God, spending time with him, asking him to speak to us, growing together as a group.

And God shows up every year.

He shows up in big ways.

I've had a lot of people talk to me that see them worshiping on Sunday mornings and are really encouraged by that or even challenged by that.

And it was three years ago on the road trip where that whole excitement about God first ignited with our group.

And ever since then, it's just grown.

And now we just get to water something that's already growing really fast, and it's exciting.

And so um, I wanted to give a little update of what happened on the road trip.

It was exciting as always.

Nathan talked a few minutes ago about Satan sometimes trying to sabotage things, and he definitely did that this time, and uh, and it failed really bad because Jesus showed up in a powerful way.

I've got a little video highlight just uh to give you guys a couple minutes long, let you guys sort of experience that and see what happened.

And so I'll let you guys watch that, come back and talk about it for just a second.

So one of the one of the awesome things about about that trip is that, and the reason I wanted to share it is because um we're just seeing God do so many incredible things in the lives of our young people here.

As you saw in the video, we had over 20 kids go all in and get baptized, just give everything to Jesus.

We had a several kids who talked to me and said that for the first time ever, they just gave their whole heart to Jesus.

They got saved.

Um we've got we've got kids that God's, yeah, it's that's exciting.

That's worth clapping for.

And we we've got kids right now that God's calling to be missionaries.

We have kids that are leading worship.

I mean, it's just it's really cool to see what's happening.

And what's really incredible, and I just never experienced anything like this, I've had I've had tons of students the last few years that have come up to me and said, Hey, I'm I'm gonna stay local for college because I want to I still want to be part of his hands.

I want to be part of what's going on here.

And I'm trying to think back to when I was in high school making my college choice.

My my church didn't really factor in that equation, and it was a great church.

I just never experienced that.

And so we we have something really special with the young people we have here, and it's exciting for us as a whole group of people because it means that our future as a church is in really good hands.

And uh, and I just say this if you're a parent of a teenager and they're not involved, I would really encourage you to do whatever you can, or if you are that that teenager, get involved.

Our junior high group meets every single Sunday morning.

In fact, they're meeting right now over in the arena, and our high school group meets on Wednesday nights.

We take a break for July for the high school, but we'll be back the first week of August.

And I can just promise you this I I these these young people are loving.

They will, they're inclusive.

I mean, if you come for the first time, don't worry if you don't know anyone because you'll leave with like 20 new friends.

And it's just a lot of awesome people.

So please come be a part of that.

Stephanie had an announcement that she sent to me that I forgot about.

Um we have a chalk art contest that we're gonna do at the 4th of July as well.

It's a good transition, right?

Chalk art contest.

So you like art and chalk, then you need to sign up for this.

Sign up at the info desk today.

Uh it can be there's one for kids, one for adults, and we would just love it.

Actually, it's really fun on 4th of July when we do that because the whole sidewalk just gets covered with really, really great art.

And it's just kind of fun to walk around and look at it.

I might even do a square this year, and it'll look like a fifth grader did it because that's how good I am.

Um let's pray.

Let's pray and let's let's talk about Jesus.

Ah, Jesus, thank you so much for every single person that's here.

Thank you for giving us such a great family.

And and thank you, Jesus, so much for our young people.

They love you so much, and and they encourage and inspire all of us to do the same.

I just pray that you would speak to our hearts this morning through your word, teach us something that we need.

And pray all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Well, we have spent the last several weeks just looking at different stories that Jesus told.

Jesus is a great teacher.

And he always taught using stories.

His heart was always to make things as easy to understand for everyday people as possible.

In Matthew 13, 34, it says Jesus always used stories and illustrations like these when speaking to the crowds.

In fact, he never spoke to them without using such parables.

And these stories that Jesus told had a really specific purpose.

They were to take something that was challenging for people to understand, something about God, something about life, and to make it simple.

And it just shows us so much of who God is, because he didn't come to have these long debates with theologians and get into all this deep stuff.

And he came for regular people.

And he wanted regular people like us to be able to understand him and know him.

And that's why he told these stories.

And they were stories that anyone in that day and age could have related to.

We're a few thousand years after that, but even we can still relate to these stories.

So this morning we're gonna take a look at one more story that Jesus told.

It's actually one of my favorite stories that he told because it has a twist that you don't expect and it leaves you asking some questions.

Especially until he goes on to explain it.

Sometimes the greatest teachers aren't trying to hand you an answer, they're trying to get you to think.

So sometimes the best lessons are lessons that leave you asking questions and leave you thinking about it and wondering what it can mean, versus just telling you, hey, here's the way it is.

And that's kind of like what this one is.

Fortunately for us, Jesus does go on later to explain what he's talking about.

But it's a really, really cool story.

It's the story of a business executive.

In our culture today, he would be a CEO or maybe a CFO.

And his job is to manage the affairs and the money of a very wealthy person.

And Jesus tells this story in Luke 16.

It says, There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs.

One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer's money.

So the employer called him in and said, What's this?

I hear about you.

Get your report in order because you're going to be fired.

The manager thought to himself, now what?

My boss has fired me.

I don't have the strength to dig ditches, and I'm too proud to beg.

Ah.

I know how to ensure that I'll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I'm fired.

So the basic setup is this we have this man, he's dishonest, he's mismanaged his boss's finances, and when he finds out that he's about to be fired, the only thing that he can think of is how do I take care of myself in this situation.

He's not worried about making it right.

He's not worried about earning back the trust of his employer.

He just wants to make sure that he can escape taken care of.

And that's something we see all the time in the world today.

In fact, just this just last week on Thursday, there was a CEO of a company called Sandridge in Oklahoma City who mismanaged a lot of funds, did a lot of shady things at the company that secured money for he and his family at the expense of the shareholders and the other people in that company.

And when he was fired, he had worked out a little clause in his contract that he got a$90 million severance package.

$90 million.

And this man was fired for doing something wrong.

And it's not like he had this change of heart and says, you know what, I shouldn't have been doing what I've what I've done.

I've already cheated this company out of a lot of money for myself, so keep the severance.

I don't need that, I don't deserve that.

That's gonna put a big strain on the rest of the people that work here.

No, no.

He took it and took it gladly.

$90 million.

And just like that man, the man in the story that Jesus is telling is only concerned with himself.

We've already heard about his mistakes, but we're about to figure out how he works out his severance package.

And it's in Luke 16, 5 through 7.

It says he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation.

He asked the first one, How much do I do I owe him?

The man replied, I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil.

So the manager told him, Take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons.

So this man says, Hey, what do I owe?

You owe 800?

Nope, you owe 400.

How much do you owe my employer?

He asked the next man.

I owe him 1,000 bushels of wheat, was the reply.

Here the manager said, Take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.

Now he cuts the olive oil bill in half.

And then the amount that that would have been worth in that day was about 500 denarii, and the average person earned one denari a day.

So this is roughly two years of wages that he's he's giving back to this man.

Wheat was worth about twice as much as a gallon of oil, so he cuts that by 20%.

It's worth about the same amount money-wise, another two years of income.

And we only get these two examples, but in the story, Jesus infers that this happens several times because it says he called in each man that owed his employer money.

And he's not doing this because his employer has cheated them.

He's doing it for one very specific reason.

He's making friends.

He's making sure that when he gets fired, there are people who owe him something, people who feel endeared to him.

And this is a pretty underhanded move.

You can only imagine where Jesus is going next with a story.

Something is about to happen to this man, something bad.

He's gonna get caught.

There's no way to hide this from his boss.

He's gonna get caught.

He's probably gonna get thrown in prison or executed or something like that.

But there's actually a little twist here, it's kind of surprising.

The rich man does find out, and it tells us that when he finds out, he has to do something.

He's compelled to action.

He has to do something.

And we find that out in Luke 16, 8.

It says the rich man had to admire.

He had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd.

And that's all we find out in this story.

He admires how shrewd and clever this man is.

You read that and you're kind of like, whoa, that is not where I thought Jesus was gonna go with this story.

What's going on?

And it's something we can all relate to if you think about it.

I don't know if you've ever seen a really good heist movie.

Like an Ocean's Eleven or The Italian job, something like that.

A movie where these criminals pull off this incredible heist in a really creative manner.

If you ever see those movies, I hope it's not just me, you find yourself rooting for the criminals.

You know, at the end they they get the big score, and usually they wait till the end to show you how it all comes together and you're blown away by it, and you're like, yes, they did it.

And you have to stop for a second, wait a minute, this isn't Rudy.

This isn't some, you know, this isn't someone who overcame great odds to do something important.

This is these are criminals, and I'm just like, yeah, yeah, they did it.

You just find yourself rooting for the bad guys, and you do it out of the same thing that's going on here.

You just have to admire how creative they are, how clever.

Even if you don't condone the behavior.

We might even see that in our own lives sometimes.

Maybe with our kids, we see them do something.

We know it's wrong, and we catch them, and after we punish them, maybe we even laugh with our spouses.

We're like, man, that was pretty clever, though.

Like they that was good.

That was good.

We're gonna watch them really closely from now on.

I haven't had that happen with my son yet.

He's three, and so he hasn't quite figured out how to get away with things yet.

It's pretty obvious when he's done something and he's lying, but I know that day's coming.

We might even see that in our marriages.

I got permission to tell this story about my wife.

I just want to say that up front.

And and I'm gonna tell one about myself, so it's gonna even it out.

But but if we're honest with ourselves, we can all find experiences where we've been a little less than honest.

You know, maybe with finances, little things like that.

So when we were first married, my wife and I uh created a budget.

We were really good at making budgets, not as good at staying with them, but we created this great budget.

And each of us had a certain amount of money that was allocated to personal spending.

And so we would spend our money, and then every month we would get together, we'd look at all of our spending and sort of calculate it, figure out where we were.

We were almost always over on things like eating out, groceries we were usually over.

I was always over on personal spending.

Always.

And so I just had this shame every time we go over finances.

It wouldn't be by much, it would be 25 bucks here, 30 bucks there, and I'd just apologize and say, Megan, I'm really sorry.

I I guess I just lost track of what I was spending.

I'm so, so sorry.

And she would never be mad, she wouldn't chastise me, but she would remind me every time that she had never gone over on personal spending.

Never.

And so we get together and we do that, and it'd be very simple.

She'd be like, Justin, I just, I never, I've never gone over once.

I would love to have 30 extra dollars to spend too.

Come on.

I'd be like, I know, I'm so sorry.

So about a year into our marriage, I was helping Megan unload groceries.

And at the time we got all of our groceries at Target.

We lived really close to a super target in uh in Kansas City, Missouri.

And I don't know if you guys have the same experience as me, but with my wife going to Target, it takes hours because there's so many distractions.

We're going for something on purpose.

It takes us 10 minutes just to get past the dollar spot.

Target just has this hold on my wife.

And so we're unloading groceries, and I pull out this nice decorative candle out of a grocery bag.

And I go, Megan, what's this?

And she goes, Oh, that's a really cute candle.

I saw it, I wanted it.

And at first I was like, No problem.

We have our own money to spend.

This is this she wants to spend it on candles.

I wouldn't do that because we have light bulbs and stuff now, but that's fine.

No big deal.

But she bought the candle, and then all of a sudden I went, wait a minute, hold on.

This wasn't a separate purchase.

This was lumped in with our groceries.

And my mind started to race because I'm like, we are always over budget on groceries, and she is always under budget on spending, and so I went to her and I said, honey.

What how often does this happen?

How often do these how often is the is the candle smuggling going on?

How long has this been, you know?

And she just sort of looked at me with a smile, and I knew this happens all the time.

All the time.

And so for a year I've been feeling so guilty about going over, and she's just been hiding it with the groceries.

I was a little mad, but at the same time, you have to say, hey, that's that's not a bad, it's not a bad plan.

Similar to this story here, you have to admire that dishonest rascal for that.

Now I I wish I could tell that story and just say, so, you know, we we took care of that, and obviously, you know, I I would never do anything like that, but that would be a lie.

Because uh that actually sort of inspired me, I guess.

And one of the things that I got in trouble for a lot was was when I stopped for gas, I almost always go into the gas station and get something extra.

You know, I'll get a soda, a snack, something like that, a dollar fifty here, a dollar fifty there, but over a month that adds up.

And so we go over all of our expenses and we'd look at you know the whole history of it, and there'd be, you know, quick trip,$20.

That's gas.

Then right after that, quick trip,$1.50.

What's that?

Oh, I stopped and got a soda.

Justin, that adds up.

So I was like, you know what I could do?

I'll just go into quick trip first, get the soda, and then tell the clerk, charge me$20 and put the rest on pump seven.

And so I started to do that every time I got gas.

So then on our transaction history, all you see is quick trip$20.

Obviously, that was gas.

But I'm sneaking in sodas and snacks and all kinds of things in there.

So in another life, my wife and I could have been smugglers.

That's good to know.

But uh, I confessed that to her last night, and so we're good.

It's all good.

It's done, it's over, it's passed.

The truth is, when we have things like that in our life, we look at ourselves and we say, hey, I'm sometimes I'm not a hundred percent honest.

But even we can laugh and say, hey, but you know, it was, you gotta admit, that was that was pretty good.

Like it was a good system.

It may not last, and I shouldn't have done it.

I admit that God's not proud of it, but it was good.

And that's what happens here in this story.

This this man swindles his boss out of all this money, and his reaction is, hey, not that wasn't bad.

That was pretty, that was pretty smart.

I commend how shrewd you are.

Now, obviously, Jesus is teaching us something here.

And he's not just telling a high story and he's not commending dishonesty.

This is not a controversial story in the sense that Jesus is telling us to be dishonest in any way.

He would not condone what this man did.

He wouldn't condone the candle and the soda smuggling, he wouldn't condone any of that.

He's teaching us something, and he goes on to explain what he's talking about.

In Luke 16, 8 through 9, he says, the rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd.

And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than the children of light.

Today he might say, Hey, you know what?

Sometimes worldly people are better with money than Christians.

That's the way it is sometimes.

He says, Here's the lesson: use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends.

And then when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.

Now, by taking a criminal approach to this story, Jesus is adding a little shock value.

What he's wanting us to see is that we are the same as the dishonest rascal in this story.

We're the same in a lot of ways.

This man had money to spend, but it wasn't his money.

He was spending his employer's money.

When he was cutting deals with people, he wasn't doing it with his own finances, he was doing it with the finances of his boss.

And Jesus is trying to help us see something that we are managing the resources of God.

Everything we have belongs to him.

Everything we have, every dollar, every talent, every minute of time.

That we're like this manager, and that we have been entrusted with God's resources.

And here's the beauty of it.

Just like this man, we've mismanaged it plenty of times.

But even after being found to have mismanaged his master's resources, he still has access to those resources.

He still has the ability to use them.

And it's at that moment that he says, Hey, I'll use them to benefit other people.

Now he's doing it for himself.

That's beside the point.

That's just Jesus wrapping the story up in a way that kind of keeps us hooked.

But it's at that moment when he decides to use it to help other people.

What Jesus is saying is you have access to God's resources.

Everything belongs to him.

So use it to bless other people.

Use it to help people.

Be generous.

And when you do that, you're gonna get something out of it.

You're gonna, number one, you're gonna get lifelong friends.

When you help someone out in a pinch, when you when you're generous and you give to someone in need, they they generally appreciate it.

They really do.

You get the blessing of a joy that comes from giving that you don't get from receiving.

I know I've told this story before on a Sunday, but a few years ago I had this really cool experience.

It was a total God thing, but I basically got to be part of Press Row for the ACC basketball tournament that was here in Atlanta.

I'm a big basketball fan, huge basketball fan, and I really like Duke, and so Duke's in the ACC.

I got to be on Press Row.

I got to go to all these games, got to interview the players and the coaches afterwards.

It was a cool experience.

So I went there and I didn't know what to expect.

I got$100 out of the ATM.

I never carry cash, but I got$100 out of the ATM because I thought, man, I'll probably have to pay for parking or food.

I know my tickets are free and all that.

I get to the Georgia Dome and parking is free for members of the press.

So I have this badge and I got to pretend like, oh yeah, this is CBS.

Yes, I'm in.

I do this all the time.

Where do I go?

I got free parking.

And then I got there.

I had no idea about this.

If you're a member of the press, you get a free breakfast, lunch, and dinner buffet during the whole tournament.

So if there's a game that's boring, you just walk back there, eat some food.

I mean, it was free food.

I didn't have to pay for anything.

This was an all-expense paid weekend of basketball.

For me, that was like heaven.

Well, on the second day, I pull up to this stoplight on my way to the Georgia Dome, and there's a homeless man that's right next to me.

And so obviously I'm like, I need to do something, I need to help him out.

And I open up my wallet, and all I have are 20s because I had gotten 100 out of the ATM the day before.

And it's as much as it pains me to say, honestly, my thought was like, well,$20, man, that's$20, you know.

But I have this free trip.

I haven't paid a dime.

I'm having this incredible experience.

And God quickly was like, Justin.

I'm like, all right, fine.

You know, I'll give him a Johnson, you know, because I that's how I roll.

So I rolled my window down and I hand this man$20, and I'll never forget, honestly, it's the most memorable experience I have from that whole trip.

And it was a great, great weekend.

My team won the whole thing.

I got to be in the locker room afterwards as they were celebrating.

I got to talk to Coach K.

It was awesome.

That's not the most memorable part of that weekend for me.

It was this moment with this man because when I handed him$20, he broke down and cried.

He just cried.

And he said, I haven't eaten in days.

I'm gonna go have a nice meal.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And I was shocked.

I didn't know what to do.

I was basically speechless.

And I just, I mean, I think I said something like, Well, I'll pray for you, or something like that.

And I've never seen him before.

Or I haven't rather I haven't seen him since.

I hadn't seen him before either.

We never knew each other.

I haven't seen him since, but I can only imagine that if our fortunes were reversed and I was in that same situation, and he pulled up next to me and remembered that moment, he would gladly give back to me, and he'd probably give me a lot more.

Because that's what happens when we're generous with other people, that we're endeared to them.

They have a desire to help us, and that's what happens in this story.

Even though it was done in a dishonest way, Jesus is saying, hey, look, be generous with other people.

Be generous with your time, be generous with your talent, be generous with your money.

And you will make lifelong friends.

In fact, he says, when your earthly possessions are gone, those people will welcome you to an eternal home.

So he says that what we do on this earth, when we're generous, it echoes in eternity.

It's not just about what's here and now, it's lasting.

It's important to take a second and just remember who Jesus is talking to.

He's talking to his disciples here, and this is early in his ministry, so he's not chastising them or scolding them for not being generous.

He's telling them that this is something really important.

He's about to entrust with them the mission of spreading the message about Jesus to the entire world.

And he's saying that, hey, look, we've got to get this money thing figured out because money is really important.

We don't talk about money very much at his hands.

So if it's your first time here, you lost the church lottery or something like that, I guess.

I don't know.

We don't talk about that often.

And the reason we don't talk about it that often is because a lot of times in church it gets talked about way too much.

So we don't talk about it that much, but it affects us.

And Jesus talked about money and finances, how we manage our resources more than he talked about heaven and hell combined.

Because it affects our lives in a great way.

If we had two days to spend with Jesus, just to sit next to him and talk to him, we'd ask him the big questions first, right?

We'd be like, explain heaven, explain the Holy Spirit, tell me how this all works.

And he'd probably explain it to us really quickly with a great little story that would help it make sense to us.

And then we start to move on to the day-to-day stuff.

How do I get along better with my spouse?

How do I have a great relationship with my kids?

How do I help my child who's going through a really hard time?

How do I deal with stress?

And even if we didn't bring up money, Jesus would.

Because that's what he did a lot.

He brings it up because it affects us.

How we see money, how we deal with money, it affects us greatly.

It can either master us or we can master it.

We can either be generous or we can hold on to it like it's something we get to keep, which it's not.

But it affects us greatly.

And Jesus is telling these people if you don't get this right, you won't be able to do the things I'm asking you to do.

No one's gonna take you seriously if you handle money in the wrong way.

We see that happen in churches a lot where someone takes money, you've seen it happen in televangelist scandals where it comes out that they're spending lavish amounts of money on themselves.

And once that credibility's gone, it's really hard to listen to someone like that talk about Jesus and take them seriously.

And he's saying that.

You've gotta get this right because it's important.

It affects every single part of your life.

And so he goes on to explain that.

He says, if you're faithful in little things, you'll be faithful in large ones.

But if you're dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities.

If you're untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?

And if you're not faithful with other people's things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?

No one can serve two masters, for you will hate one and love the other.

You'll be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

So he gives us a lot.

A lot about finances packed into this very short story.

He tells us to be faithful with the details.

With the smallest details.

Be faithful.

Be honest.

To encourage us to be a hundred percent honest with our finances.

To be trustworthy.

You know, if you're not honest with money, you're not trustworthy with money, he's saying, no one's gonna listen to you when you tell them about me.

And then the big one, don't serve money.

Don't let it master you.

But master it.

So how do we do that?

Well, it's all in that thing that Jesus is wanting us to get.

It's that it's not ours.

It's God's.

And I've grown up in church, and so I've heard that a lot.

And honestly, it hasn't completely sunk in in my life yet.

There's times when it does, and I'm like, yeah, this is God's.

If there's a need that we can help out with, let's do it.

And there's other times where I very much view it as mine.

I look in that bank account and I'm like, that's mine.

It's kind of sad sometimes, but it's mine.

And the truth is it's not.

We like to think of ourselves as earners.

And when it comes to our relationship with God, that's what we were for for thousands of years as people.

We we earned his love or tried to.

We see ourselves as earners in this world.

We work for a company, we earn our paycheck.

And God rewards hard work, no doubt.

But we're not earners in our relationship with God, we're heirs.

We inherit.

And so when it comes to what we have, we have to always remember that we have what we have because we have a God that loves us and He's blessed us with this.

And the great thing about it is that if we are trustworthy with it and generous with it, He's gonna trust us with more.

Now, I have to say this: I am blessed to be part of this church.

This is an incredibly generous church.

There's things that I have to do a lot here.

I have no idea how to do, and I'm a phone call away from these amazing people that will come and use their time and their talents to help out and get things done.

It's awesome.

You guys are generous people.

That's why this is exciting.

It's almost like what I was talking about with the high school kids.

We're just watering something that's already growing.

We're a generous church.

Those three ministries that we talked about earlier that we're giving 15% every month to.

So far this year, we've given$50,000 to those three places.

That's exciting.

That's over, it's over$16,000 per ministry.

And if you've given a dollar this year, that has to excite you to know that you've been a part of that.

And the reason we gave them that money is because we know they can do a lot more with it in those areas than we can do ourselves.

So we know a lot of people are being helped with that.

I talked about the road trip a little bit earlier.

About two months ago, I stood right here and I said we were gonna have about 20 students, like we do every year, that needed sponsored to go.

We made an announcement on one Sunday.

I spent about two minutes on it and said, hey, if you can afford to sponsor a student, please do because it's gonna bless them.

Well, this year we had more than 20.

We had 24 actually that needed full scholarships to go, and we had over$5,000 donated toward that.

That's awesome.

And that's and that's from that one announcement.

And we didn't repeat the announcement.

Most of you were probably not even here.

I mean, it may have been a week that you weren't here, but that was one time.

That's how generous you guys are, it blows me away.

And I have to tell you this from my perspective, just know this.

If you're someone that gave to that, whether you gave a dollar or sponsored a full student, when we have kids that come up to us, they're always nervous.

No matter how many times we say, hey, we will we will send you on this trip, someone will sponsor you.

They're always nervous.

They come up and say, I need some help financially.

And when we say you're covered, it almost takes them about five seconds to get it.

They're like, Well, maybe I could pay for you know part of it.

No, you're covered.

I mean, if you need me to do any work around here, you're covered.

It's good.

You're good to go.

And the look on their face, it's amazing.

Because they've gotten a little taste of God's generosity.

And a lot of those kids were the same ones that you saw on that video getting baptized, getting saved, worshiping God all out.

I mean, it affects them.

And that's your generosity.

There's this other parable that Jesus told.

Actually, if the worship team wants to come up on stage, we'll kind of wrap up with this.

There's another parable that's sort of similar to this one that Jesus told, where this man is wealthy and he's leaving on a trip and he entrusts money with three of his servants.

To one servant, he gives ten talents.

Another servant he gives five, and the third servant he gives one.

And the one with ten talents doubles it.

He spends that time while his boss is away and he invests it, he earns double what it's worth.

And so when he comes back, the master says, Well done, my good and faithful servant.

You've been faithful with the ten, so I'm gonna give you ten more.

I'm gonna increase your responsibilities.

I'm gonna give you more to manage.

Same thing happens with the five-talent servant.

He doubles it, well done, good and faithful servant.

You've been faithful with a little, I'm about to give you more.

And the one with one talent doesn't waste it, he doesn't lose it, he just doesn't do anything with it.

And so he doesn't get more.

And what Jesus tells us through that is that if you will take every resource God has given you, view it as his, and use it, grow it.

Grow his kingdom, be generous.

Be generous here at church, be generous with your friends, with your family, be wise, but be generous.

You will be entrusted with more.

And I read that, and I want to be a 10-talent servant.

And I know God will get me there.

And I really believe that this is a 10-talent church.

That the more we grow in our generosity, which you guys are already so generous, the more we grow, the more God's gonna let us do in this community, the more people's lives are gonna get changed, the more people are gonna be in heaven, the more people are gonna get fed.

God is gonna do great things.

He already is.

So for us, this morning is really simple.

There's always certain things that we're good at and certain things that we struggle with.

Some of us might be extremely generous, but we have a hard time managing our money.

We're not that wise with it.

Can you imagine if that's you, if you're really generous and you give freely, but you have a hard time managing it, if you could get that down and be really wise with the managing of your money and honest with it, how much more you would have to give.

Some of us, we are great with managing that.

But it's hard for us to let go of it.

It's hard for us to see it as God's.

And the great thing is it's like a marriage, right?

We're a family.

So there's a whole mixture of us.

Anytime you're married, a lot of times one person's really good with money, the other person's really good with spending money.

You know, one person's really great at doing the budget, one person's not.

That's the way it goes.

So it's a team effort.

And as a church, we're like that.

We're a team, we're a family.

And so the more we all grow in that in our own lives, we're gonna see God do more and more and more through us as a church.

And I'm excited about that.

Is anyone else excited about that?

Because I am.

Agreed.

So let's just pray and let's ask God to help us remember that everything we have is his and just to ask him to lead us where what to do with it.

Just tell us what to do, God, we'll do it, and we'll trust you with it.

Because it all belongs to you anyway.

Let's pray and let's go to him with that.

Father, thank you so much for this morning.

And thank you for blessing us with every resource we have.

You know, your followers, Jesus, were not a big wealthy group of people.

Some of them had money, most of them were just regular people, fishermen, people that had normal jobs.

And we know that when we're generous with everything you've given us, you trust us with more.

You love us.

You put us on this earth for a purpose.

And just like that manager in the story, our time is short.

We don't have a lot of time.

So we have to use every day that we're given to manage your resources in a way that blesses as many people as possible.

So fill our hearts with that desire to do that.

Actually, give us a passion for being generous with everything we have.

And thank you so much, Jesus, for giving us a church that is that.

I pray that you bless every single person here in their finances.

I pray that you bless every single person here in their marriage, with their families, with their friends, so that we can be as healthy and generous and loving and gifted and everything that we need to be to see your kingdom grow.

Because that's what we want, Jesus.

We want your kingdom to grow in this community.

And we ask all this in your name.

Amen.