Giving

Hello, church.

Hear now the word of the true and living God, Luke 16, starting in verse 1.

He also said to the disciples, 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 am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.

I've decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.

So summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, How much do you owe my master?

He said, A hundred measures of oil.

He said to him, Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty.

Then he said to another, and How much do you owe?

He said, A hundred measures of wheat.

He said to him, Take your bill and write eighty.

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, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.

If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?

No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

I'm gonna pray for us.

I'm gonna pray mainly for me, and then uh we'll get started here.

Uh Father, thank you that uh um you have uh given us your word to learn from.

And uh we're we're going into uh dangerous waters today with money because uh money is one of those things that grabs a hold of our hearts and can pull us away from you.

And uh, as we we sit here and listen to the words that Jesus spoke, I just ask that you give us humble hearts and uh remind us um that you love us and uh that you have given us money so that we can steward it well.

Your name we pray.

Amen.

Um, so money, you know, it was funny.

I I told James I would do one of the sermons on giving, and he's like, What passage do you want to preach?

I was like, I've always wanted to do Luke 16, 1 through 13.

I was really excited, and then I started to study it, and every commentator's like, this is the most difficult parable to interpret in all of the Bible.

And I was like, oh, I like to make things easy for myself, I guess.

So um, so we're gonna get going, but um, money, right?

Uh the Bible has a lot to say about it.

Um, more than 2,300 verses are devoted to the topic of money, and 16 of Jesus's 38 parables uh deal with it.

So we should talk about it too.

And you know, the great thing uh today when when I talk about money is uh none of you can say, here comes the pastor asking for more money so he can have a bigger paycheck.

I'm doing this for free.

So you can't say that.

You can be like, he just wants our money.

No, no, no, no.

I do this all for free.

So um we've we've got a lot to cover, so let's dive in.

Um, in in today's passage, Jesus uses the illustration of a money manager who's going to get fired and has no future.

Uh, the manager acts decisively by reducing the amount of money owed to his master so that his master's debtors will welcome him into their homes.

In the same way, Jesus is teaching us as Christians that we are to act decisively with our material wealth so that we can be welcomed into eternal dwellings and break free from the bondage of money.

Okay?

That's kind of a nice little summary there.

Um, so let's start.

I think I think this is gonna be fun.

Uh, verses one through three.

He also said to his disciples, There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possession 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.

I think it's important to note that Jesus says this to his disciples at the beginning.

Um, so when we when we start to talk about money, uh I I love how when we prayed in the Lord's Prayer, Deliver us from evil, this is a teaching lesson where Jesus is saying to his disciples, there's there's there's a lot of pitfalls with money.

All right.

It can be your master, is what Jesus says here.

So this is a teaching lesson because he loves us.

And he's saying, I want you to avoid this.

I don't want you to be in bondage to money.

So when we hear this and we we're gonna get through a lot, we're gonna be thinking, why this sounds harsh.

This sounds, I don't know how to take this.

We take it as a loving warning where Jesus is saying, I'm gonna teach you as my disciples how to handle money because I love you.

And I want you to avoid the death that it has that it can bring in your life.

So it's geared towards his disciples, and Jesus begins the parable by telling us it's a Friday.

How do I know it's a Friday?

Well, everybody knows if you're gonna fire somebody, you do it on a Friday, right?

This was even a common HR practice back in first century Israel.

It's an old book, all right?

Um, so so all of these people start coming to the rich man and and they're they're accusing the his money manager of being wasteful.

The same word um kind of wasteful that's used here in this passage is used in Luke 15 of the prodigal son who wastes his inheritance.

So it's safe to say um that this money manager's expense reports are a mile long and they have nothing to do with the master's interests.

I mean, we're talking bottles of Don Perignon, we're talking private jets, yachts, all this stuff, five-star hotels, um, all getting expense to the business.

He he's not concerned with his master's money.

He's he's wasting it.

And the rich man doesn't even talk to him, but he just right away believes the accusations that were being brought to him.

And he doesn't believe they're far-fetched.

We we all know those people at work, right?

If you come in one day and you're like, hey, did you hear Todd got fired?

Yeah, oh my gosh, what happened?

He was drunk.

You're like, yeah, I can totally believe that.

Yeah, it's not far-fetched.

That's what's happening here.

The money manager's reputation, he he's built a nice one for himself.

And the rich master's like, I, yep, I can totally see that happening.

So the rich man calls the manager into his office and says, I've heard some serious allegations brought against you, and you're fired.

Turn in your books, you're done.

Verses uh three and four.

And the manager said to himself, What shall I do?

Since my master is taking away the management from me.

I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg.

I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.

So the manager leaves the office and he's like, What am I gonna do?

Right?

Nobody is going to hire me anymore to be a money manager because I just got fired for being a dishonest one.

And this was in the days before remote work.

Um, so he couldn't just go get a job at a different company on the other side of the country.

Um, chances are everybody's gonna find out about this.

So it's not like he can just walk to another employer across town.

So he starts running through his options.

Um, he says, if I can't, if I can't use my mind anymore, I suppose I could do physical labor, but I'm I'm too weak to even dig.

I can relate to that.

I can.

I remember uh last summer my neighbor was taking out a bush and he was trying to get the roots out.

And I was like, oh, I could go help him.

And you know, it's just 15 minutes of digging.

So I got it.

We we we got the bush out, and the next morning I woke up and I could barely move my back.

I had blisters on my hands.

I just kept telling my body, like, don't worry, on Monday, you're gonna go back to your ergonomic chair, you're gonna go back to your mouse and your keyboard, that you won't get blisters doing that.

But he's saying, I can't dig, right?

He he he has no option to go into the construction business.

And then his second option is, well, I can't I can't beg.

That'd be humiliating.

People would walk by and they would look at me and they'd think, hey, wasn't that the money manager that got fired for being dishonest?

Then he has an aha moment.

The the light bulb goes off in his head, and he thinks, I don't, I don't have much to offer anybody right now.

I'm lazy, I'm dishonest, I don't like manual labor, I'm incredibly prideful.

But I have one thing still in my possession.

I have the books, I have all the contracts, and I have a giant list of everybody who owes my master money.

And if I can play this right, this is gonna work out really good for me.

Verses uh five to seven.

So summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first one, How much do you owe my master?

He said, 100 measures of oil.

He said to him, Take your bill, sit down quickly, write 50.

Then he said to him, Another, How much do you owe?

He said, 100 measures of wheat.

He said to him, Take your bill and write 80.

So he gets home and he starts making phone calls.

All right, he's calling everybody who owes his master money.

And he's telling him, get in here quickly.

I've got the deal of a lifetime.

So the first guy comes in and he owes about 800 gallons.

That's uh um about 800 gallons of olive oil, which is a yield of about 150 olive trees.

Uh, that's a lot.

And he tells them, make a new bill.

Uh and this one is gonna say you owe 400.

Sign your name, and I'll sign mine, and we'll be done with it.

Also, take a copy of my resume.

If you're lucky, I might be looking for a job here soon.

The second guy comes in and he owes 100 measures of meat, uh, meat, wheat, excuse me.

Uh the second guy comes in and he owes a hundred measures of wheat, which is a yield of about a hundred acres.

Again, that's a large, a large amount.

And he tells him, Congratulations, you're debtor number two.

Your bill is now 80 measures of wheat.

Remember my face.

I might be in the job market soon.

We're only given the detail of these two, but it but it paints the picture.

He's got a line of people out the door who owe his rich master money, and he's just giving them pennies on the dollar for what they owe.

We're not given the exact amount, but the discounts, probably safe to assume, in the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars, depending how many debtors there are.

So let's just pause and acknowledge kind of what's happening here.

This manager is lazy, dishonest, and unrepentant.

Doesn't care that he got caught.

He's not asking for forgiveness from his master.

He doesn't want to change.

Um, he's also not all of a sudden had a change of heart and is trying to be super generous to people that owe his master money.

He's purely motivated by his own self-interests.

Now, we've cheated, we've read ahead, we've seen the end of the parable.

But if you were in the audience when Jesus first taught this, I know you're just waiting for the axe to drop on this guy.

Jesus is gonna end this parable, is probably what you're thinking.

Justice is going to prevail, the dishonest manager's going to prison, and then the master's gonna go out, and everybody's going to acknowledge that the contracts weren't legit, and then they're gonna get the real contracts back, and he's gonna be made whole, and it's just gonna be the best Disney ending ever.

But uh, what happens?

Verse eight.

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.

He commends him.

It's really important to note here that the master only commends the manager's shrewdness.

He's not saying, Well done, servant, you stole from me and you were completely dishonest.

I applaud that.

He's only saying, you were actually really shrewd in this situation.

He's saying, good job.

You finally realized the true purpose of money.

You've been negligent and wasteful and lazy, but you finally realized that you had no future unless you acted.

And you use money to secure that future.

That was really shrewd.

Smart.

You were thinking you finally acted with urgency, with money.

And now you've ensured that you will be welcomed into homes after you lose this job.

Good job.

You guys starting to understand how this is one of the most difficult parables to interpret.

Yep.

We're gonna keep going.

Um then Jesus in the same verse moves to applying this parable to his disciples.

And he says, You ready?

Jesus' words, not mine.

He says, Christians aren't the smartest with money.

That's what he says here.

By saying that the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light, he's saying the dishonest manager actually understood the purpose of money better than most Christians.

When reading parables, we we like to treat them as movies.

When you're watching a movie, you get popcorn, drink, you sit down to watch, actors act, right?

And and so far we've been watching the rich master and this dishonest manager, and we're treating it like a movie, right?

Jesus, this parable is two out of five stars, not your strongest one.

I like the prodigal song way better.

Five out of five.

But with parables, you end up being one of the main characters, and your reaction to the parable is like the climax of the movie.

Parables bring you to a watershed moment where you're forced to make a decision.

This is the purpose of parables.

It traps you, and your reaction betrays what you think of Jesus and what his teachings are.

And and it brings you to this moment where you're where you have to say, I'm I'm either going to reject what Jesus says completely, or I'm going to accept it.

If if you if you walk away from this parable particularly thinking, wow, very thought-provoke, very, very thought-provoking, some wonderful ideas.

I kind of want to, I kind of want to chew on this a little bit more, then you're missing the point completely.

If you understand what Jesus is saying here, then I promise you that you're going to have some very strong emotional reactions.

And that's the point of a parable.

You are now front-center stage based on your reactions.

It's at this point in the parable that the true actors are revealed.

Jesus shows himself to be the rich master in the parable, and he's saying, Now I want you to learn from the dishonest manager.

It's at this point we realize, oh, oh, you're you're saying the sons of light, i.e., Christians, aren't very shrewd with the master's money.

We're gonna start connecting dots here.

It's in this verse where he he seemless seamlessly goes from parable to application.

Like it happens in the same sentence almost.

It's a seamless transition, and it's in this verse that we realize just like the manager, these are the dots we're connecting in our heads now.

Just like the manager wasn't using his own money, we're not using our own money.

This means if if Jesus is the master, then everything that I have is his.

Whether you've earned your money or whether it was given to you, whether you have a little bit of money or whether you have a lot of money, it doesn't matter.

It's at this point we realize everything I have belongs to Jesus.

It's in this verse we realize that we are accountable to God for how we spend our money.

And just like the dishonest manager, we will one day we'll have to give an account for how we spend it.

And it's in this verse we learn that generally Christians aren't the best stewards because we're not very shrewd with it.

So the question that we are all begging to have answered is what does it mean to be shrewd then?

Right?

If that's the whole point of this parable, be shrewd with the master's money.

How does God want me to use the money that he's entrusted to me?

It's all about how you use it in this parable.

And Jesus is telling us to be generous with the money he has given us for eternal riches.

Don't believe me?

Well, let's go to verse 9, and I'm gonna show it to you.

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

Shrewdness, according to Jesus, is using the money we have in this life, that's what he means by unrighteous wealth, here and now to make eternal friendships.

Eternal friendships.

You can uh you can you can start to realize this is a pretty radical and different view on money than than what you can read in most financial books today.

I'm not the most financial guy, but I've dabbled, right?

Just enough to stay out of debt.

No.

Um, you know, you you can pick up all these books.

Looks like Dave Ramsey, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Richest Man in Babylon.

And they all teach you: hey, stay out of debt, increase your wealth, save your money, increase your assets, reduce your liabilities.

Not bad things at all, by any means.

Book of Proverbs has a lot to teach on money too.

We should be slightly educated on personal finances.

It's not a bad thing.

But in this particular parable, Jesus tells us what none of those authors would.

He says, use your money now to gain friendships that will last for eternity.

If you can find that in any book that's not written by a Christian, I'll pay you 20 bucks.

This is very unique with what Jesus is saying here, how we use our money.

Sorry, it's allergies now.

Received into heavenly dwellings is one of the most cryptic verses in this parable because we have to ask who's doing the welcoming?

There's two common views.

One is God Himself is doing the welcoming.

And the second one is that it's actual people in heaven who have been blessed by our money that are doing the welcoming.

So there's two common views.

And I'm going to ask, why not both?

Can I use both applications?

That God Himself and people will be doing the welcoming into eternal dwellings.

I'm going to do it.

Can't stop, won't stop.

We're taking both.

I'm not going to be forced to choose.

Jesus is telling us here that use the money that I have given you on earth so that when you get to heaven after you die, I don't know if anybody's told you, but none of us in this room will make it out of here alive.

We are all going to die.

And when we die, all of the stuff you have here on earth, you're not going to take it with you.

So Jesus is saying, when you die and you walk through the heavenly gates, use your money in such a way that God Himself will usher us in as good and faithful stewards because of how we use the money he gave us.

And I believe as well, when we get to heaven, we are going to meet Christians and have conversations with them about how we bless them by being generous with our earthly wealth.

And they are going to welcome you into their heavenly homes because you were shrewd and you used your money for eternal purposes.

To make this intensely practical, because I don't know if I've said it so clearly yet, Christians don't use people to make money.

We use money to love people.

Money is a tool which God has given to us so that we can be generous with it and to love people with it.

And our reward is eternal friendships.

We just had Brad and Amber, missionaries to Vanuatu, their whole family, in last week, just kind of explaining what they're doing there.

And uh as a church, we're we're giving them money.

And if you give money to redemption, you're you're included in on that giving to them.

We're going to meet the Christians of Vanuatu in heaven one day.

And we're going to get to hear their stories of how the money we've been giving them helped them do gospel work.

We're going to meet people who were saved by Jesus because of our giving.

And they're going to welcome us into their homes as brothers and sisters in Christ, all in the presence of God.

Do you see what Jesus is getting at here?

He's taking our paychecks and permeating them with the potential to give us eternal dividends.

I went to lunch with a colleague on Thursday.

He's a friend.

We're good friends.

We've worked together for four years now.

And uh went to lunch with him this week.

And, you know, we've had conversations about God.

I mean, he he kind of knows I'm a Christian.

I know he's not.

That's kind of the extent of it.

Um, but we went to lunch this week and and I'm preaching on this passage, so it's always at the front forefront of my mind.

And I was like, I'm just gonna pay for lunch, right?

I'm gonna use worldly wealth.

I'm gonna be a shrewd manager, I'm gonna pay for his lunch.

I know he's not a Christian.

So I picked up the check.

I mean, I'm not bragging here.

It was like 10 bucks, right?

So it's so so don't hear me wrong.

There he is again, talking how generous he is.

It was it was it was peanuts, right?

But I I did that with the hope that one day I hope he's saved.

And if he's saved, I I really want to meet him in heaven.

And I want him to say, hey, that lunch you bought me.

I didn't know it at the time, but it was one of the small steps that brought me closer to Jesus because you were you were generous.

And in the new creation, I I want to sit down with him again and I want to have another bowl of ramen with him.

It's gonna be way better because it's the new creation.

One we had was pretty good, but this one's gonna be way better.

Another story is uh I remember when my wife and I were first married, we were church planting in England, and we had just no money.

And uh I needed to convert my marriage visa into a residential visa, and that was gonna cost us about a thousand pounds.

And we were praying and asking God for money, and we were asking everyone we knew.

We just we we weren't getting the money.

And we were about two to three days away from the deadline.

And if I if I missed this deadline, I would have to then reapply for a marriage visa and then just go through the whole process again.

So I really wanted my my residence visa.

And I remember Liz's aunt came from Austria to visit her parents, and I'd never met her before.

And I remember we were at my wife's, my in-law's house, and we were there and we met her for the first time.

And this is one of the coolest stories.

She she just said, um, God told me to give you a thousand pounds.

Here you go.

Just wrote us a check for a thousand pounds.

And I remember I was just like, oh, what's going on here?

But I I remember how much that blessed us, her faithfulness.

And I'm gonna pay her back.

I'm gonna pay her back in heaven.

She's she's coming over to my heavenly home, and she's gonna be the guest of honor.

Now that sounds fanciful, right?

Everything I just explained about my friend and at work, and I want him to be a Christian, and I want to be welcomed to his home, and I'm I'm talking about this woman, uh, my wife's aunt, and I want her to be welcomed into my heavenly home.

But it's not fanciful.

That's that's actually how we're supposed to be thinking about our money, is what Jesus is saying here.

Whether it's a small amount or a huge amount, you need to start seeing money as a way to be welcomed into eternal homes.

Our our view of generosity needs to be elevated to include the eternal year.

I think we're pretty good at saying, you know, hey, uh, I know if like I want to be generous now, I'm gonna buy a coworker lunch.

And then I know if I buy him lunch though, I probably won't be able to afford lunch later in the week.

Or if I'm a little more generous, maybe I can't afford the uh vacation that I wanted this year, or put that money into savings.

We're pretty good at judging like for like, right?

If I give money now, I won't have this money tomorrow.

We're pretty decent at weighing those costs.

What we're not good at, though, this is where we're not shrewd.

This is what Jesus is saying.

Is saying this$10 or this$10,000 has the potential to bless Christians or the potential to see people saved on the island of Vanuatu and build eternal friendships with them.

That's where we're bad.

And when you start to see money that way, the return on your generosity becomes incalculable.

I don't even know.

I was thinking like, how do I how do I make math equations to figure this out?

And I don't think we can because your return on your money at that point becomes so large and so overwhelming.

Because how long is eternity?

It's forever.

How do I know what this dollar is going to do?

I don't know.

I won't find out until I get there.

But the potential is infinite.

Do you see this?

We're not, you know, when we invest money now, we're like, hey, 6%.

Yeah.

I wish my 401k was doing that now.

It's not.

But when we think that now we're like 6%, 7% return, that's great.

What Jesus is saying here though is no, no, no, no.

When when you cast it into the light of eternity, the returns are infinite.

You can't measure it.

Whether it's$1 or$10,000.

You just, your mind can't comprehend what it's going to achieve in this life.

You just don't know the ripple effects of how it will bless people.

But you'll find out when you get there into heaven.

And it's going to be really exciting.

Because it's going to be house party after house party after house party.

And we're going to see people there, be like, who are you?

And they'll be like, oh, let me tell you my story of how I was saved.

And you'll be like, no, wait, I gave money to help with that.

And they're going to be like, come on in.

This is great.

We're now best friends.

For eternity.

Isn't Jesus amazing?

Because you know what he could have said?

Be generous because I say so.

Isn't that what good Christians are supposed to do, right?

I do it because God told me to.

Didn't you hate it when your parents said that?

Do it because I say so.

Jesus doesn't do that, though.

He never does that, by the way.

Do it because I say so.

He says, be generous, because when you get to heaven, you're going to be blown away at the blessings you will receive from it.

You are going to be welcomed into eternal dwellings by God Himself and everybody that you've blessed.

So we need to introduce the second master of this parable now.

And that's money.

Let me read to you uh verses ten through thirteen.

One who is faithful and very little is also faithful in much.

And one who is dishonest and very little is also dishonest in much.

If then you have not been faithful in unrighteous wealth, who will entrust you, who will entrust to you the true riches?

And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?

No servant can serve two masters.

For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God in money.

Jesus is telling us that if we are unfaithful stewards in our worldly possessions, then we cannot obtain true spiritual blessings of relationship with people with him and his people.

Our money at this point becomes a test of our stewardship.

If we are faithful with it, then we prove that Jesus is our master and he will heap spiritual blessings upon us.

If we are unfaithful with it, then we prove that we are enslaved to money, and it is our true master.

Remember how I said this parable is gonna throw you into emotional emotional turmoil, and it's gonna drive you to a decision.

Well, here it is.

This is the tough part.

You either serve Jesus with the money he has given you with generosity, or you serve money.

Those are the two options that Jesus gives us here.

Ron Paul, uh, he's a Christian author and teacher.

He he's written more than 20 books on biblical finances.

And I'm I'm just gonna steal his his excerpt on this because there's so much going on in these verses, and he just does a wonderful job making it succinct.

This is what he says here.

The only way I've seen people avoid the trappings of wealth is to hold the money God has given them with an unflinching open hand.

These people are radically generous with their wealth.

They know if they're not, it's going to end up mastering them.

Luke 16, 13 tells us that we can't serve both God and money, that we will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

If we allow money to become our master, it'll always lead to fear of loss, resentment in our families, and ultimately a despising of God.

Money will never relent in its pursuit of everything we value.

We must understand that the only way to experience true freedom and contentment in finances is to become extravagantly generous, just like our Father.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, talk about extravagant giving.

Churches should talk about money not because they need it, but because people need freedom from it.

It's such a dividing line, it's such a black and white statement what Jesus is making because what he's trying to do is he's trying to save you from the love of money.

He doesn't want you to serve it.

And so he's saying, you you either give it away or you don't.

Those are the options that Jesus is painting for us here.

And and Rob described perfectly the effects of our love of money.

He says, it's it's a fear of loss, it's resentment in our relationships.

You'll start to realize you're you're you use people to gain something from them.

You're using them.

And it ultimately at the end leads to a despising of God Himself.

Jesus here talks about true riches, right?

He says, hey, if you're unfaithful in a little, you'll be unfaithful in a lot.

If you're faithful in a little, you'll be faithful in a lot.

And what he's saying here is, if you're faithful in worldly wealth, then I'm going to entrust to you true spiritual wealth.

And I think we we can get a little turned around here because we're like, oh, what is this like salvation by works?

What is he saying here?

No, no, I I think this is probably the best way to understand that.

Jesus wants to entrust to us spiritual blessings.

And these spiritual blessings are going to look like contentment.

They're going to look like joy.

It's going to look like generosity.

It's going to look like peace.

It's going to look like eternal friendships and eternal blessings.

And do you know what's in the way of all those spiritual blessings?

The love of money.

That is going to keep you from receiving all of the things Jesus wants to give you.

And here's the craziest thing about it all.

The spiritual blessings that Jesus talks about, he says they'll be yours, right?

They'll be yours forever.

So what he's saying is, give away money that doesn't belong to you, because it belongs to God, and I'm going to give you spiritual blessings that are yours forever.

We're playing with house money here.

Like he it's not yours to begin with.

So he says, give it away.

I can always give you more.

I'll take care of you.

It's okay.

And and then I'm going to give you something that will never be taken from you.

And you get to keep it for eternity.

When when we think like that.

Then then we're going to start understanding and receiving these spiritual blessings that he's talking about.

Who who who's here is scared of recession?

I'm a little bit.

Yeah.

I don't want to be though.

Right?

I I want to fully entrust that it was never going to be my money in the first place.

It's his.

I'm just a steward.

And whether he gives me a little or a lot, he just asks me to be faithful.

I I want those spiritual blessings.

I want to be free from the love of money.

I don't want to be enslaved to it anymore.

And Jesus doesn't want you to be either.

And the secret is be generous.

Um, any questions?

Do I do questions as a guest talk speaker?

No.

James doesn't trust me to answer questions.

That's fair.

That's fair.

Uh you know what I look like.

Come talk to me after the service if you have any questions.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this loving warning from Jesus.

I ask that as we look at this, all these questions are going to start arising, like, well, how much?

And do I give enough?

And am I generous enough?

You don't give us hard fast rules here in this particular passage.

10% is a great place to start.

But but what this is going to require of us, Lord, is for us to understand generosity, we're going to need to let you into our finances.

And we're going to need to pray about it.

And we're going to need to say, Am I being generous or am I not in this situation?

And it's going to draw us closer to you, which is what you've always desired.

I pray as we leave here.

We all draw close to you.

And we let you into our finances.

And we begin to understand the eternal spiritual rewards that will await us.

Your name we pray.

Amen.