Steward | Matthew 25:14-30 | Justin Leitch

All right, everybody, welcome back to King's Church. My name's Justin. If we haven't met one of the pastors here. And I want to tell you a little story to get started in the late 1990s, back in the 1900s, for many of you, there was a company that rose to prominence. Think like Apple today, just a massive business called Enron.

Enron was just growing rapidly. They were making money hand over fist. But this company eventually all fell apart. But here's what I want to tell you about. In the early 2000s, the executives of this company were going and talking publicly, telling everyone to buy the stock.

It looks a little fragile right now, but it's low. You should buy in while it's low and you're going to get rich. They told all their employees who had their retirement savings invested in stocks within the company. They said, keep it there, it's safe, you're going to be fine. Publicly, on news shows and in company wide emails, they're telling everybody, just keep your stock.

The company is doing great. But here's the problem. In July of 2001, one of the executives sold Enron stock every day except July 4th because the banks were closed. So how do you think the company was doing? The executives outwardly with their microphone are saying, hey, buy in.

Everything's going great. But with their money, behind the scenes, it told a totally different story. Later that year, Enron would collapse and many people would lose all of their life savings because of the lies and this dishonesty of the executives. We have to ask the question, all right, what was telling the truth? Was it the microphone or was it the money?

What told the truth was their wallets. And here's what I wanna remind you of church. Often, if we're gonna look at what you really believe, we, we need to look at how you spend your life, not what you say with your lips. All right, Oftentimes in church, we come in each week, we declare Jesus is Lord, but then we go out the rest of the week. And rather than living a life that's based on that belief, we live in a totally different way.

Here's the main idea for today that we're gonna walk through. In Matthew chapter 25, what you do with God's stuff reveals what you believe about God's son. All right? What you do with God's stuff reveals what you believe about God's son. We've talked about what it means to be a disciple.

These five core callings we talked about worshiper, family member. And today we're Gonna talk about being a steward. All right. A disciple uses all of the time, talent and treasure God has given them for his purposes. One of the core callings of a follower of Jesus is just that we use everything, our life and breath and everything.

We use all of it not for our own purposes and to build our kingdom, but to advance God's purposes in the world. All right, As I bring up the word steward and stewardship in church, I'm sure some of you have a little bit of a repulsive reaction. You hear, okay, this is the money talk in church. Maybe finances aren't going too well, or I need to make sure I have a fiver to throw in the bucket at the end of the service. But hear me, things are going great here.

We're about eight months old as a church, and heading into next year, we're gonna get to build our bud completely off internal tithes and offerings, which is usually a three year goal for church plants. But we have outside donors that we aren't gonna rely on their money anymore. But we as a church body are self sustaining. So, like, we praise God for that provision. So it's not this need, this is, we're talking about this because being a steward of what God has given us is imperative if we're gonna be a faithful disciple.

And while stewardship does include money and what you do with the financial resources God has given you, it's so much more. We'll talk about time and talent and treasure and all cards up front. We want you and your family, if you're gonna plug in here at this church, you're followers of Jesus. We want you to give sacrificially and generously to the mission of God here. We want you to do that.

But we also realize at the very same time that some of you are learning about King's Church, are growing to trust what's going on here. You may have had a bad experience with churches misusing giving in the past or being manipulative in some ways. And so we respect that and honor that. And I hope that as we leave today, you'll see that stewardship is more than just money, but also I want you to give somewhere even if it can't be here, right? Over time.

It's so important for your discipleship over time. I hope it can be here as you trust us. But this is just a faithful part of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna walk through Matthew chapter 25. You can turn there if you haven't yet.

And in Matthew 25, we find ourselves in the final week before the cross, leading up to the cross. And in these few chapters surrounding Matthew 25, Jesus is preparing his disciples for what is about to happen. He's gonna go to the cross, he's gonna pay for the sins of the world, he's gonna be buried, he's gonna rise again, and then he's gonna be away from them. And this is the answer or the question that he is answering with the parable we're about to read. The question they're asking.

The question they need to know the answer to is, what do we do, Jesus, while you are gone? What does faithfulness look like in the meantime? Like, you're here with us right now. All we need to do is follow you around and help you out. Like, that's faithfulness.

But when you're gone, what does faithfulness look like? So that's what he's gonna answer in this parable in Matthew, chapter 25. So if you wanna pick up with me in Matthew 25, verse 14, this is what Jesus says. For it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one, he gave five talents, to another, two to another, one to each according to his ability.

Then he went away. All right, so Jesus is telling a parable here. A parable is a story with a spiritual application. So in this story, the master is God, the servants are disciples, and the resources that he entrusts is everything that he gives to us to spend for his kingdom and also to use to survive for our lives. So he distributes these talents.

One servant gets five, another servant gets two, and a third servant gets one. And there's this kind of cheeky note in there. It says he gave them out according to their ability. He's like five all star. You're getting it.

I'm trusting. Return two decent. Let's do it. And then one don't want to lose too much. So we're gonna give this person 1.

Here's what this means. This is a truth. Mathematically, someone in this room is the worst disciple. Some of you are one talent disciples, right? If we just like, line you up on the wall, someone's gonna be the best disciple.

Somebody's gonna be the worst disciple. I like to think that the worst disciple is the person who always signs up to bring potato chips to community group instead of the person that would never speak up and pray and just lets the awkward silence go on too long. But the Reality is, someone is the worst disciple. But I don't say that just to be funny. I say that to tell you that one talent is a fortune.

The talent was £75 of silver. 20 years of wages for a common laborer. This is a fortune. So no matter if you are the best disciple in here, which also mathematically exists, or the worst disciple, you have a fortune that God has entrusted to you for his purposes. All right?

No matter if you don't know how to read your Bible, you just recently got saved. You know none of the answers. No matter what is going on, God has entrusted to you breath, God has entrusted to you life. God has entrusted to you time and talent and treasure. It's an immense fortune that can be used and multiplied for his kingdom.

So no matter how confident you are in your own gifts, abilities, charisma, ability to make disciples, your availability, your knowledge of theology, no matter what it is, you can be used by God for a powerful return on his investment. The reality is that Jesus shed his blood. It was poured into the soil to give you life, right? God's investment in you is the life of his very Son. So no matter who you are, no matter what confidence you lack, you can be used by God for incredible things.

Let's keep looking here. In Matthew, chapter 25, verse 16, it says, he who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he had two talents, made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. All right?

So these servants had a choice of what they could do with the resources that they were given. And we have a choice with what we do with the resources we are given. The first two servants went and traded on it, seeking to put the master's resources to work for the Master's purposes. When he returned, they gave him that return, right? But there was another choice.

They didn't just invest it or deploy it for the Master's purposes. The other choice was to bury it in the ground. To be nervous, to be uncertain, to not want to have nothing when the Master comes back. So buried it in the ground to keep it safe, and you have this choice in your life. All right?

With everything God has given you, you can invest those resources to advance God's purposes in the world. Or you can bury them. You can bury them with just like a conservative perspective of saving, of just like using everything, keeping it safe, not getting too overextended, not taking risks for the kingdom. Of God. But you also can bury it by spending.

And instead of using those resources to advance his purposes, you can just build your own little kingdom here. But the reality is, as we look at these next verses, that we're all going to have to give an answer when he returns. This is verse 19. After a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who received the five talents came forward bringing five talents more, saying, master, you delivered to me five talents.

Here I have made five talents more. Look at the master's response. Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much.

Enter into the joy of your master. One of the realities that we all face in life is that there is going to come a day when we give an answer to God for what we did with his stuff. There's two questions on that day when we stand before God and give an answer. I've heard it said this way. The first question that God will ask us is, what did you do with my son?

It's the question of salvation. Did you trust him? Did you trust what he did on the cross for you? What did you do with my son? There's a second question of stewardship.

What did you do with my stuff? It is an inevitable reality that all of us will be standing before God at one time. And we should live our lives in light of that guaranteed coming that we're going to answer that question one day. My wife hates going to the dentist. She hates going to the dentist because there's something always wrong with her mouth, something that's expensive and painful to fix.

She never wants to go. She always puts it off. But I tell her, avoiding going to the dentist doesn't make your mouth any better. It just lets whatever's in there fester a little bit longer and makes it worse. Right?

Just like there is an inevitable reality that one day we're gonna sit in front of the dentist and they're gonna know whether or not we flossed every day. In the same way, we are gonna stand before Jesus and we are going to have to give an answer for how we spent the this life that he has given us. And look in this passage, how the master judges. He judges not based on output, but he judges based on faithfulness. When you stand before God on that last day, he won't first look at how impactful.

You were right. The five talent servant and the two talent servant both have the same words. Even though one brought four, five back, one brought two more back. He Judges based on faithfulness. And so the question of your life, the question of your day, each morning when you wake up is just to say, God, how can I be faithful today?

How can I trust you more than I trust myself and just walk in the faithful steps that you have called me to. He judges us based on faithfulness. When we answer those questions at the end and then look at the reward, the reward is awesome. He says, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little.

I'll set you over much. All right? I'm not a prosperity gospel preacher. I don't believe that if you just have enough faith, you'll have health, wealth, and every day should be a Friday. But I do believe the Bible, and I do believe that God is not a dumb manager that's gonna set bad people over his resources.

So if you want more responsibility in your life, you need to be faithful where you're at right now, right? Young men, if you want to find a woman to love, to raise kids with, you need to be faithful in the season that you're in right now. Stop playing so many video games, get up and get a job, put on some shirts with a button, and go care for someone with an intentional way, right? You are called to be faithful with where you are at right now. If you're gonna have any more responsibility, right?

Every woman in here is a daughter of God. Do you think God is gonna give his daughter to you if you can't put on a shirt that doesn't have wrinkles? You need to be intentional and thoughtful about being faithful with what God has called you to, and then he'll give you more responsibility. And that applies to all different areas of life. But there's a second thing that God promises as a reward when we're faithful.

He says, I'll set you over much. And he also says, enter into the joy of your master. Enter into the joy of your master. The goal and the desire of our heart and the end of faithful stewardship is not just more responsibility, more stuff, more power, more strength, more money. The end of it is more of the presence of God.

Enter into the joy of your master. For many years, one of my favorite verses has been Psalm 16:11. Psalm 16:11 says, in your presence, there is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. When I was following Jesus as a new believer in college and shortly after, I memorized Psalm 16:11, and I was like, hey, I want to honor Jesus with my whole life. And it's a promise here, even if My flesh doesn't feel it that the joy and pleasure I'm longing for are found in the presence of Jesus.

So I'm going to choose honoring him over the other things. But something I learned a few years later is the second half of that verse. It says, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. In the Bible and for kings, the place of the right hand is the place of service. So what this passage is saying, hey, Jesus, in your presence, just fellowshipping with you, there is joy, but also fullness of pleasure is found in serving you right.

The Master says, hey, as you serve me faithfully, as you steward what I have given you for my purposes, you'll get more responsibility. But we also get more of Jesus pick back up with me. In verse 24 says he also who had received the one talent. So onto the one talent, servant came forward saying, master, I knew you to be a hard man. He starts with his defense case here.

I need you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. So I was afraid and I went and I hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours. But his master answered him, you wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gathered where I scattered no seed.

Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers. And at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from this guy and give it to the one who has 10. For to everyone who has, will more be given, and he who will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. As we read this, we read this story, this parable, the ending seems a little bit surprising. There's a few adjectives for that servant that makes sense. There's like worthless, useless and slothful, right? If I have like an employee that just gives me back and doesn't work what I asked, and it's like, yeah, they're like slothful, worthless.

But there's this last word and the conclusion that surprise us. He calls him wicked. Wicked. And really understanding why the Master responds this way unlocks the message of the whole parable that Jesus is trying to communicate. What that word wicked shows us is that the was not just a bad employee.

The third servant was a non believer. Or the third servant did not know the heart of the Master. The third Servant received the Master's stuff, and though maybe looked like a disciple from the outside, maybe even came to church each and every week, rather than honoring the servant, honoring the Master and risking for the Master and investing his life for the Master out of fear, he held back because he thought the Master was going to be harsh. All right, it's easy to read this parable and to think that the message that Jesus is communicating is if you want to be saved, you need to steward better and you need to make sure I get a return. But that is not the message of this story.

This story is a warning and a diagnostic. All right? The message of this story is this. It's what you do with God's stuff reveals what you believe about God's son. What you do with God's stuff reveals what you believe about God's son.

This parable is an opportunity for us to assess ourselves and to cut through the noise of our religious words and to actually ask, what does my life say about what I really believe? Right. Those Enron executives, publicly and with their words, said everything was fine. But behind the scenes, they knew everything was falling apart. And their money, their stuff, told the truth.

And so often, as followers of Jesus, we show up to church each and every week, we sing songs and we praise the Lord. And when we have an opportunity to speak, of course we say all the right things. But if we look under the hood, we'll have to be honest at one time or another that what we do with our stuff does not reveal that we trust very much in God's Son or what God will do for us. All right, so that's what we're gonna do over these next few minutes. We're gonna look at how this parable kind of leads us to faithful stewardship.

All right? If what we believe about God shapes how we invest our lives, what do we need to believe and understand about God in order to be good stewards about what he has entrusted to us? We're gonna look back at this story and just see a couple truths we have to know about God and believe about His Son if we're gonna be faithful to live as stewards. Alright, so here's the first truth that you have to believe. You have to know deep in your bones if you're going to be a faithful steward.

All right, this is the first one. Everything belongs to Him. All right? Everything belongs to him. Psalm 24:1 says that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and all those who dwell therein.

All right? God owns all of your stuff. God owns you. And did you know that God actually double owns you? God owns you two times.

He owns you first because of creation, all right? He knits you together in your mother's womb. You're fearfully and wonderfully made. He possesses you because he is the creator of you. In the same way, I make, like, a frozen pizza in my house, and I want to eat it.

It should be mine, but my kids all take it. You know, like. But I made it, so it should be mine. But God owns you because he created you. But there's a second way that he owns you.

God also owns you doubly because he saved you. Right after he created you, you ran away and fled from him, and he sent his son to chase you down and give his life on the cross so that he could purchase you back from condemnation. Right? He saw your sin, and in love and in mercy, he said, I love them enough. Even though they ran away from me, even though I gave them life and breath and everything, and they used it for themselves rather than me.

Even though they're walking in rebellion, I love them. And I'm going to go purchase them back. I'm going to redeem them. I'm going to bring them home, all right? So God owns your stuff.

God owns you. God double owns you. But in our culture, there's a lot of confusion about who owns what. One of the perspectives in our culture right now about ownership is this, what's yours is mine. We call that socialism or stealing.

It's, I'm gonna sit on the couch and I'm gonna government to take your money, and I'm not gonna do what I need to do, and I'm gonna have them put it in my bank account. Right? That's like one perspective on stuff in our world. All right? A second perspective would be what's mine is mine.

This has seeped into the American church. This is generally what our culture believes. I've worked hard for my resources, and what's mine is mine. And this has definitely seeped into the church in significant ways. Cause get these stats about generosity from American Christians that show how deeply we believe what's mine is mine.

This is this way. 2.5%. Or Christians give an average of 2.5% of their income. 2.5%. In the Great Depression, it was 3.3.

We believe what's mine is mine. In fact, only 1% of Christians who make over $75,000 a year hit the tithe. 10%. You know the word tithe means 10%. What 1% of Christians who make over 75,000 per year tithe right.

We believe so deeply in our culture. What's mine is mine. But the biblical perspective is what's mine is his. All right? Everything that I have, my time, my talent, my treasure, my thoughts, my personal life, my phone, all the apps, everything that I have, everything that I have, what's mine is his.

And he has entrusted it to me to steward for his purposes in the world. What's mine is his. There's a striking verse in Malachi, chapter three that reminds us of this. This is what Malachi 3, 8 and 9 say, will man rob God yet? You are robbing me?

But Israel, you say, how have we robbed you? And God responds, in your tithes and contributions. You're robbing me, the whole nation of you. What this shows us is that everything belongs to God. By not giving tithes and contributions to God, the people of Israel, God says we're robbing from him.

What that means is that it belonged to him. Everything belongs to God. If you are going to be a faithful steward, if you're going to use what God has given you for his purposes, and you've got to believe all the way into your bones that everything that you have is his. What's interesting in this story is the third servant, the wicked one, he knew this. How did the story end?

The master came back. He dug the talent out of the ground, dusted it off, and gave it back to the master. He understood that this is yours. It's all yours. He gave it back.

But the second truth is what he didn't know and that we need to know also if we're going to be faithful stewards. And the second truth is this. He will take care of me. All right? God will take care of me.

You see, the third servant, he said he was afraid. He didn't know the master's heart of care for him. He didn't understand the master's nature, and so he was fearful. And the interesting thing about this is you can be either rebellious or religious and still not believe that God will take care of you. You see, you're both running.

Whether you are the rebellious person or the religious person, you're both running from a master that you do not trust, right? The rebellious person says, he won't care for me. So I'm gonna do it my own way. I'm gonna use the time, the talent, the treasure that God has given me to build my own life and to make sure I take by force everything that I need for a good Life, I'm gonna use everything I need and the people around me to make sure I have what I want. And you can go do that in any number of ways according to the world.

But the religious person also does this too. See, the religious person might not run all over the world doing scandalous things to take pleasure and satisfaction. But the religious person, if we're honest with ourselves, will want to just check the religious checkbox, pay our religious God tax, and make sure that he is in our debt, make sure that we do enough good for him so he would never strike us with a lightning bolt or send a sickness to a loved one or a family member, right? We don't trust the Master. And if we're honest, oftentimes our motivation is not to honor him and to steward the resources for his kingdom, but just because the people around us and God himself looking at us, we gotta do some things in order to look good before them, right?

So whether you are rebellious or religious, you can not believe this truth of he will take care of me. And if we're gonna be good stewards, if we are going to use what God has given us rather than for building our own kingdom to honor him, we've got to believe that he's gonna take us, right? If you do not believe that God's going to take care of you, there's no way you're going to part with your time, talent and treasure in the way that God is calling you to. There's no way that's going to be a joy. There's always going to be a calculating and a bartering and navigating how God might feel about you if you give this much and not that much.

But if we are going to be faithful stewards that say, God, it's all yours and it's all on the table. It has to come from the fact that we know that. We know without a shadow of a doubt that God is going to take care of us. So the question is, can we have confidence that God is going to take care of us? Can we have confidence that God is going to look out for us?

And the answer of the Bible is a resounding yes. You can have complete confidence as a follower of Jesus that God will take care of you. God is not a harsh master like this servant thought, but he is a gracious heavenly Father who is looking out for your interest. One story from the Old Testament that really illustrates this truth is the story of Israel leaving Egypt and receiving the command of Sabbath. All right, hang with me.

Let me show you How God's desire is for his people and not to take from them. All right? So while Israel was in Egypt, if you've read your Bibles, you know the story. They were slaves for hundreds of years. And as slaves you gotta work every day, right?

Back breaking labor seven days a week. As they were getting to the place where they were crying out to God for help, they actually took straw from them and took resources from them and asked them to make more. I mean, just back breaking labor on the people of Israel because they had pharaohs worldly masters who didn't care for them except for what they could get out of them, right? That's how the world's masters dealt with them. And often that's how we view God.

But then God in His mercy, he heard their cries, he sends Moses, he brings the plagues, and God delivers the people of Israel out of slavery through the Red Sea and he brings them to a mountain where he gives them the law, alright? And one of the commandments that God gives his people because he loves them and he has saved them, is he commands them. After 400 years of working every day under harsh rulers as slaves, he commands them one day a week, you must not work, right? How often do we view a law like the Sabbath as God being a harsh master, keeping something from us, when in reality this is God saying, hey, I love you because you're my people. You're not my people because of your productivity.

I love you and care for you, so I want you to flourish in the way that I designed you, right? God is not a cruel and harsh master who is putting a burden on your shoulders that you can't bear. But God is a heavenly father that is seeking to bless you. Or look at Matthew chapter 6, where Jesus reminds the disciples, do the sparrows worry about their food? No.

For their Father in heaven feeds them. Do the lilies worry about what they're going to wear? No. They are beautiful because their heavenly Father clothed them. Or you look over just a couple of verses, just a couple of pages from Matthew chapter 25, and Jesus, who is teaching this parable once and for all with a shout, says, you can know that I will take care of you because I am pouring out my blood on the cross for you.

Anytime that you are starting to doubt if God will care for you or provide for you, just look to the cross of Jesus Christ. I mean Romans chapter 8. Just a few weeks ago we walked through it. And Romans 8:32 says, if God gave us His Son, will he not also give us everything? That we need, right?

God is not just going to give us the biggest gift, his only son, the precious blood of Jesus, and then leave us out to dry after. God will take care of you. If you are going to be a faithful steward of what God has given you, you have to know that it's all his. And you have to know that he is going to take care of you. It might not be the care that you want, the care might not look like what you think that you need, but you have to know and believe because of the Gospel of Jesus that God is always looking out for you and always taking care of you.

A story that really illustrates a life of someone who believed that everything is God's and everything belonged to him, everything's God's, and that I lost what the other one was. And he will take care of me. It all belongs to him. He'll take care of me. It's the life of William Borden.

William Borden was a son of a family that got rich selling milk. So he had a massive inheritance. And rather than following in his family's footsteps, he gave his inheritance away and decided to be a missionary to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. And William Borden, he was traveling to China to share the Gospel with a population of Muslims there. And so on his way, he stopped in Cairo to learn Arabic for a few months so that he could understand Arabic and then take the message of the Gospel to this region in China.

And while he was in Cairo, having left behind his riches and his family was pretty famous. So it was a story even in the news at the time. He contracted spinal meningitis and died about a week later. All of the news in the United States was that was a wasted life. How foolish was this young man to leave behind wealth and to go and throw his life away?

But William Borden, when he was praying about what God would call him to do and his sense of calling to go to the nations, he wrote down in his Bible, in the back flap of his Bible, three things at different points in the journey. He wrote down no reserves, no retreats. And even the last few days before he died, he wrote no regrets. What William Borden's life has done to this point is inspire thousands and thousands of people to give their life to world missions. So from a worldly perspective, it might look like a waste.

But to someone who understands that all of life is his and he will take care of us even through death, this is what a faithful life of stewardship sometimes looks like. In fact, there's a dusty street, kind of alley off the side of this main thoroughfare in Cairo where his grave is to this day. And there's a little plaque on it. And this is what the plaque says. It says, apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.

Apart from belief that everything belongs to God and God's gonna take care of me, there is no explanation for such. And this all brings us back to the truth that we talked about at the beginning. What you do with God's stuff reveals what you believe about God's son. So here's the question for you this evening. What does your life say that you believe?

Really? All right. What does your life say? If you looked at your time, your talent and your treasure, if you're standing before God and he asks you that second question, what did you do with my stuff? What would your life tell you believed about Jesus?

And at this point, there's a serious question we gotta talk about, all right? Because you might be a little frustrated at this point in the message, and you might be asking the question, okay, so, Pastor, you're telling me I gotta sell everything I've got, I've gotta leave all of my wealth and riches behind, and I've gotta move to the Middle east and die to be a faithful steward. So hear me. I'm saying that you might need to do that, but I'm definitely not saying that you do need to do that. Because if you're gonna be a faithful steward, you have to understand these two stages of stewardship, right?

The first. The first one is posture, and the second is practice. All right? The posture of a faithful steward every day says, my whole life and everything that I've got is yours. So, God, it is yours.

It's all on the table. I'm not asking the question if I'm going to do it. I'm just asking the question of God. Where are you calling me to and how are you calling me to gauge your mission? Right?

All of it is yours. Everything that I've got. That's the posture of a steward all in. But the second stage that you have to work through the is practice. It's wrestling with the Holy Spirit to understand how God is calling you to use the resources he's given you to advance his purposes.

I mean, we see this all throughout the Gospels. Jesus tells some people to sell everything they have, give it to the poor and follow him. Jesus tells other people to go back home, they can't come with them right now. Right? There's different practice of what faithful Stewardship looks like.

So the question for you, though, is twofold. Are you willing to open up your hands and put everything before Jesus saying, it's on the table, and Jesus says, let me know what to do with it. Is the answer yes, settled in your heart so that when the question comes, you don't even have to think about it? Right. That's posture.

But then practice is wrestling with the wisdom of community, faithful advisors and mentors through the Scriptures, listening to the Holy Spirit, saying, God, how are you calling me to engage with what you're doing in the world? All right, posture and practice. A disciple is going to use time, talent and treasure for God's purposes. It looks like that daily wrestling of saying, it's all yours. How can I use it today?

So as we close with these last few minutes, I want to share just a few categories these time, talent and treasure and what this looks like practically in the life of disciple to honor Jesus with it. All right, so first one is time. All right, time. Ephesians 5, 15 and 16. It tells us that time, the days are evil.

The days are evil. This is not saying that the days are filled with demonic power. But what this is saying is that time is filled with entropy. And without intentionality, time leaks. We have all been there when we have watched.

We're on our third Netflix show and we don't have to hit next in order to get it to keep playing, but it just pops up for us. This is the old language, but I remember just loving it. I remember this was back in Charlottesville. The college students had this new phrase, I don't know if you still use it, called goblin mode or bedrotting. And just laying in bed and just scrolling for hours at a time and just not being aware of the time that was passing by.

A real. But we have to be intentional, right? If we are not intentional with the time that God gives us, it just seems to slip through our fingers. I mean, ask everyone that we talk to about our kids. The number one piece of advice, even when we are not asking for it every single time.

We've got young kids, as they say, don't miss these days. Time moves so fast. Cherish them while you've got them, right? Because we know that experience. Time just slips by, it moves away and all of a sudden it is gone.

So what does it look like to redeem the time it looks like to be intentional? Be intentional. It means, hey, every day, spend time alone with Jesus. Open up your Bible before you open up your phone. Not as a legalistic Practice, but because you want to know him, you want to enjoy his presence, you want to be intentional.

College students, you are incredibly poor financially right now, but you are wealthy with time. You are wealthy with time. I know you feel like you're busy, but college students, you are the busiest people in the entire world, except for everybody else. You got 15 credits, you got flexible disposable time. Use your time in this season of disposable time wealth to serve.

To serve each week here at church, to invest in other people, and even to rest and take a Sabbath. I love our Thursday morning kids team. A few women in the church come in every Thursday morning just to get the kids ministry ready, to print out papers and to make sure the table is set for all of the kids ministry to flourish and to go. And they use that disposable time they have on Thursday mornings to serve and to strengthen the church. So here's the question for you.

What does how you spend your time say about what you really believe? What is how you spend your time say about what you really believe? You show me your calendar and I'll show you what might just be your God. All right? Time is number one.

Second is talent. Talent. What are you good at? What are you good at? Most of us, and most of you will spend a ton of hours of your life building your career, and you will get to be good at a very narrow set of skills, all right?

And so the biblical perspective, and you have to understand this with your career. The biblical perspective is not to worship your career as an idol. Idol. The biblical perspective is not to be idle at work. Idle, but you're working as unto the Lord.

But here's the biblical perspective, all right? It's that you would use your career as a tool to serve God, all right? You do not serve your career first, but you use your career as a tool to serve God. From the outside looking in, I can't tell what you're doing. You can make a decision to move to New York City to take a job, take a promotion, and that could be motivated from your heart of saying, jesus, this was on the altar and this is where you're calling me to go, to honor you, to build influence and intentionality, like praise God for that.

Or it could be just advancing your career, right? But you need to use your career as a tool to serve God rather than just serving your career. And I know many of you, especially early in your career, college students, you're stepping in. It might be a little while before you really enjoy your career. You Might never enjoy your career, but here are just a few ways that you can use your career, even if you don't love it, to serve God.

All right, first, the money that you make. All right, some of you are gifted in making money and you will be able to honor God by investing the resources that you make in your career to advance his kingdom. All right, second, another way that you can honor God in your career, the people that you're around are there people that you're going to be around in your workplace that you might be the closest they ever get to a Christian. And what they know about Christianity or about Jesus is just based on you. Third, you can honor God in your career by the actual work that you do.

Working as unto the Lord and not as unto a bad boss or a great boss, but you're working for Jesus, honoring him. You can make a real difference through the work that you do and by the example it sets. And then fourth, you might honor God in your career by the flexibility it provides to prioritize other interests. It's often gonna be a blend of these or one of these more than another. But just because you don't like your career does not mean that you can't serve and honor God with it.

But here's the headline. What the Bible would call us to do is to do what you do well for the glory of God in a place strategic for the mission of God. All right? Do whatever you do, do that well for the glory of God, and do it in a place strategic for the mission of God. And be intentional to use your career to serve God rather than serving your career.

So here's the question, all right? What does how you spend your talent, your career say about what you really believe? What does how you are spending your career or the season of preparing for your career? What does it say about what you really believe? So time, talent, and last one, treasure.

Treasure. And this is the big one, this is the uncomfortable one in church. But the Bible teaches again and again on money and resources. I mean, in the Gospels, Jesus made war on mammon, the God of money and the love of money more than anything else. Because he understood that there's a straight line from money to our hearts.

And we trusted money for so much that competes with our trust of God. So Jesus taught about it, we're gonna teach about it. But there's a lot of confusion about what the Bible teaches about money. And a couple extremes, alright? The first extreme of what the Bible teaches about money is this, that I'll give 10% and then the rest is all mine.

I'll just give 10% and the rest is all mine. This is paying the religious tax and saying, the rest is all mine, but it all belongs to God. The second extreme is that everything must go to missions. All right? Everything must go to missions.

And every luxury that I have in my life is the blood of the poor. Right? That's the second extreme. But that's not what the Bible teaches. God gives us at times material blessings because he's a father who loves us.

When I give my son a toy, I don't want him immediately to say, hey, dad, thank you for the toy, but I want to go give it to Goodwill because there are poor kids that don't have it. I'm like, hey, son, we can talk about that. You can give of your resources and grow in generosity, but I want to bless you and I want you to enjoy this. And so there's a lot of extremes, but the biblical perspective is nuanced, and you can understand it in these three statements. The biblical teaching on generosity, stewarding our treasure, is that we give first to honor God, we save to be wise, and we live off the rest to learn contentment.

We give first to honor God, we save to be wise, and we live off the rest to learn contentment. Chris, read 2nd Corinthians 8 earlier where it says that Jesus was rich and he became poor so that we, through his poverty on the cross, might become rich. And for followers of Jesus, generosity is a response of grace and gratitude, not a response of guilt and trying to earn something. Before. When we see what Jesus has done for us, we say, it is all yours and God.

I want to know how I can use the resources you have given me to advance your purposes. Now, one way that you and your family might implement this is just thinking through how can we be intentional about giving resources to the kingdom of God? Maybe each year we could try to bump up our giving by 1%. Maybe we could set a goal that with our lifetime earning, we join the million dollar given to the Kingdom Club. We want to give a million dollar by the time I leave this earth to the kingdom of God.

I don't know what it is for you, but the Bible says in response to the Gospel, the best way to spend your resources is helping more people get to heaven. College students, start now, right? Build a expectation and a standard of living in your life that honors God as your first and your best. So give first to honor God, second save to be wise. Proverbs tells us again and again that saving is wise.

The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance. But everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. When you're saving, you're declaring to the world and to yourself that there's a satisfaction you have outside of instant gratification, right? Saving is not just an ungodly trusting in wealth that you need to be aware that you might fall into that. But saving is intentional and purposeful to live wisely according to God's design for the world.

In Genesis, when Joseph was building was in his role, he could have told them, hey, we don't need to save any wheat because we're gonna trust God. When we need wheat, it will come. But God said, no, store up wheat. So in times of famine, you will have the resources available for you. All right?

Saving is an incredibly wise thing to do. And then third, live off the rest to learn contentment. Live off the rest to learn contentment. As Christians, we're called to live below our means. For most of us, that will mean that our standard of life is about 10% below what that of our neighbors and peers in our career and earning and age are at, because we are saying, hey, as the followers of Jesus, we're giving our first and best to him.

So our lives are going to look a little bit different when we are stewarding the resources God has given us. We give first to honor God, save to be wise, and then live off the rest to learn contentment. But question for for sure comes up like, how much should I give? Right? How much should I give?

How do I decide what God is calling me to give? And I think it's a question that we cannot answer. And the advice that I would give you, as you're praying and discerning what generosity looks like for you, is that you need to give to the point of trust, right? If you are giving to the place that you don't need to trust, then you are not trusting that it all belongs to him and he'll take care of you. CS Lewis said it this way.

He said, I don't believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts and luxuries and amusements, et cetera, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things that we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

In response to the Gospel, we're called to steward the resources that God has given us. Yes, at times to enjoy his material blessings, go on vacation and enjoy what God has given you. But we also should be making sacrifices to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. So what does how you spend your treasure say about what you really believe? Might we just be honest?

We can. What does what you spend your treasure on say about what you really believe? Time, talent and treasure. What you do with God's stuff reveals what you believe about God's son. The executives at Enron were declaring one thing with their mouth and then they were declaring another thing with their wallets.

And we as Christians do this far too often. So the question that you've got to wrestle with that you gotta be honest with if you want to be prepared to answer those two questions when you stand before God, what you do with my son? What'd you do with my stuff? You gotta be honest. What does what you do with your life, your breath, everything, Your time, your talent, your treasure?

What does it say about what you really believe about God? Because it's all his, every last bit of it belongs to him. And he will take care of you. You cannot out give God. One famous pastor who made a bunch of money writing books and stuff eventually paid back all of the paid back all the salary he'd ever taken and was living actually off 10%, giving 90% the refers tithe.

And he used to say, I was just trying to shovel money to God, shovel money to God. But God's shovel was bigger. He just keeps sending it back. God will take care of you. It's not always going to be and financial blessing.

It wasn't in financial blessing in William Borden's case. But you better believe. You better believe. When William Borden went and stood before the throne of God, he received well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.

Does your life tell the story of a bankrupt God who doesn't care for you? Or does your life tell the story of a God who owns everything thing and who will always care for you? Right. A steward, a disciple uses all of the time talent and treasure God gives them for his purposes. So go ahead and bow your heads.

I'll give you a chance to pray and reflect on your own. I'll just point you to that posture and practice question. You might be in the room this evening and need to say my life hasn't been on the altar. My time, talent, treasure, have been in my hands. You might need to just wrestle with the Lord right now and say, it's yours, God, it is yours.

I'll give it to you. I need to get in the right posture. Others of you might be in that place where the posture is taken care of. Yes, Jesus, everything's yours. But, Holy Spirit, what are you prompting me to give you in a new way this evening?

So I'll give you time to reflect and pray, and then just a couple moments, we'll worship.