Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, good morning and thank you so much for tuning into our west campus livestream. My name is Chet, I'm the campus pastor here. And if you're watching this for the first time or one of the first times, we're so honored that you are checking out our church and I'd love the chance to meet you, shake your hand, hear your story.
[00:00:18] In fact, we have an awesome event coming up that would be a great first time to come in person. We have our fall festival and we'll have a lot of fun events, hay rides, face painting, donuts, cider, all that kind of thing. But we also will have all the opportunities to get connected into the life of our church, all our groups, classes. So this will be Sunday, October 5th at 9:30 11. We would love to see you there. And also to the guys, I just want to speak directly to you. This Wednesday, Men will be our monthly men's dinner. So at 7pm we'll be getting together, having a good discussion, hanging out, building relationships, and having a great meal together.
[00:01:03] So if you are free, and if you're not free, then get yourself free and come at 7pm, Black River Tavern in Elyria. It's been an awesome deal and I'd love to see you there. Now, today we are starting a new sermon series. And for the last couple weeks, we talked about the sermon series, Strengthen My Faith, and we talked about our trust in God. But for the next two weeks, I want to show you that God trusts us with some things. And I want to talk about what that means and why understanding this is so incredibly important.
[00:01:43] Because I believe if we understand this reality, that God has entrusted us with some really important things, it will change our life and it will change how we see our life and what we do with our life. So we're going to dive into that.
[00:01:59] But before we do, would you just pray with me? Father, thank you. That you are a God who is infinitely trustworthy.
[00:02:09] Father, I pray you would continue to strengthen our faith and we would trust in you at all times. But Father, today I pray you could show us that you have entrusted us with some things of incredible importance. And Father, you've trusted us with things that are not ours, but they're yours.
[00:02:31] And so, Lord, help us to learn what it means to be a good steward, a faithful steward, and help us to live our lives with that perspective. And I ask this in Jesus name, amen.
[00:02:45] Well, several years ago, my good buddy, I went over to his house. He was at the time living in Eastlake, and he was renting a house. And when I got there, he was showing me around. He was showing me all these different projects that he had done, things he's fixed up here and things he's fixed up there. And as he was showing me all this, I kind of just stopped for a second. I said, man, you've done a lot of work here. You've done a lot of things that have fixed up this place, and you're just renting it. You don't own it. And I just kind of pointed that out. And he said to me, he said, well, I've always believed that you should leave things better than how you find them.
[00:03:25] And I believe it's my responsibility to make things better that have been essentially entrusted to me. And I remember it was kind of this, like, just sort of passing conversation, but I remember that mindset has stuck with me, and I've thought about it a lot. Now. This friend that I'm referring to, he has lived a really interesting life and done some really interesting things and had some amazing opportunities come his way. And I think a large part of that is because of that mindset that he carries, that wherever I'm at, it's my responsibility to make it better. Whatever I'm doing, I'm not waiting on someone else to improve the situation or improve the place. But. But I'm going to take that responsibility on myself.
[00:04:20] And I believe that this is a mindset that honors God. And this is a mindset that Jesus actually teaches us and calls us to have.
[00:04:32] And when we have it, not only will it lead to greater and more meaningful opportunities in life, but more importantly, it will honor God with the things he's entrusted to us in life. So I want to show this to you. And it's in this teaching of Jesus where Jesus tells a parable in Matthew 25. A parable is just a story with spiritual meaning behind it. So I'm going to read this parable to you, and then we'll unpack it. But here's how it goes. It's Matthew 25, starting at verse 14.
[00:05:04] Jesus says this. He says, for it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servant 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.
[00:05:24] Hewitt received the five talents, went at once, once, and traded with them, and he made five more talents. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more.
[00:05:37] But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money.
[00:05:47] And after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them.
[00:05:54] Who had received the five talents came forward bringing five more, saying, master, you've delivered to me five talents. Here I have five talents more. His master said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. And he also, who had the two talents came forward saying, master, you've delivered to me two towns, here I've made two more.
[00:06:21] His master said to him, well done and good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.
[00:06:31] He also, who had received the one talent, came forward saying, master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, gathering where you scattered no seed. So I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground, and here you have what is yours.
[00:06:52] But his master answered him, you wicked and slothful servant, you knew that I reap where I've not sown, gather where I've scattered no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was mine with interest.
[00:07:13] So take the talent from him, give it to him who has the 10 talents. For to everyone who has, more will be given and he 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.
[00:07:31] In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
[00:07:36] And that's the end of this parable.
[00:07:38] Now, this story, it helps us to understand the way that life works.
[00:07:47] See, ultimately, Jesus is sharing this story because saying, hey, I want to give you an image, a story, a metaphor in a framework to understand your life and what you're meant to do with it and how you're meant to go about it.
[00:08:05] And ultimately, what this story shows and what I want you to hear today is that our lives are not our own, that our lives have been entrusted to us by God, that ultimately you and I, we have valuable things in our life. If you're breathing air in your lungs today and you're alive and your mind and your body works and is active, that is something God has given. He's entrusted it to you.
[00:08:40] If you have, if you're married or have a family, if you have a career, if you have abilities, all. All these things in our life, what this parable is showing us, all this is from God, and all of it is his and all of it goes back to Him.
[00:08:58] We just lease it for right now.
[00:09:01] And he cares about how we steward it, what we do with it, how we take care of it. And so just to summarize this, all of our life is a stewardship from God.
[00:09:16] That's what we need to know today. Your life and my life, it is a stewardship from God, which means we are responsible to lead and to invest it and to improve it and to make it better and to take what God has given the goodness in it and to multiply it. And we are accountable to him for it, because it all goes back to Him. Now let me dig into this idea a little bit because I think Jesus is, this is such a brilliant way to communicate this idea through this parable.
[00:09:52] Because this parable, it gives us a whole new way of thinking about our life.
[00:09:58] And see, many of us, whether we recognize it or not, we have some kind of controlling narrative or controlling story or controlling parable or controlling metaphor for how we think life works and therefore what we're supposed to do. Because life works this way. Like let me give you some examples of this.
[00:10:21] So in, in the modern world, you've probably heard that phrase, the survival of the fittest.
[00:10:29] And that really is, that's a context to understand life.
[00:10:36] And this comes from all the Darwinian evolutionary theory from the 1800s, you know, into the modern world.
[00:10:44] And basically the idea of that is it's a dog eat dog world that you got to be competitive, you've got to be aggressive, you can't show weakness, you've got to be strong, you've got to be better than other people. Because life is a battle, it's a survival of the fittest.
[00:11:07] And when that becomes our frame of reference for life, that will guide our actions in a certain way, right? That might make us pretty harsh at times, that might make us competitive in an unhealthy way, that might make us put ourselves first completely. Because we're saying, oh, it's a survival of the fittest and I want to survive and I'm going to be the fittest. Here's another one. Philosophers say that our world today is an age of authenticity.
[00:11:40] And what they mean by that is that a lot of people think, well, the driving important things in life are my inner feelings and that the most important thing in this life is to be authentic to my feelings and the world should respect that and conform to that.
[00:12:04] And so then if that is our driving metaphor, the age of authenticity, then that is we're going to always understand and respond to the world from our own inner world. And everything's going to start there. And that's going to be what drives us. That's going to be how we decide what is important and what isn't. And it's going to direct our lives.
[00:12:29] Another popular idea out there is Joseph Campbell. He talks about the hero's journey, that life is this. This battle, and you're the hero and you have to step out of what's comfortable and into adventure and do hard things and. And there's a lot of cool elements of that. But. But notice that that's kind of this. This whole framework, and there's many more we could talk about. But I just want to show you today that we all have some framework by which we say, this is how life works.
[00:13:02] And then, therefore, if this is how life works, this is how I should live. This is what I should do. And Jesus gives us this incredibly powerful framework for how life really works. And he tells it through this parable. He says, well, here's what this means, because a parable has spiritual teaching within it. And so when we look at these elements of the parable, this is how we're to understand them. Number one, the master in this story is meant to be God.
[00:13:33] The servants are meant to be us.
[00:13:37] The talents is the life. The things of value that God has entrusted with us.
[00:13:45] And the accounting and the rewards and the punishments are meant to show that God treats us as stewards, that the master, God treats us, his servants, as stewards. He gives us stuff. And then he says, hey, I care about what you do with what has been entrusted to you because life is a stewardship. So then what. What are the lessons to pull out of this? Well, let me just walk through them quickly. Number one, God has entrusted you and I with things of great value.
[00:14:28] And I just kind of listed some things, but we could talk about so many others. But number one, one of the great things God has entrusted us with is time.
[00:14:37] Time is one of the most valuable things in this world. You can make more money, you can buy more stuff, you can fix things that are broken, but time, you can't get it back.
[00:14:49] Time is incredibly valuable.
[00:14:51] And so as a steward, God looks to us and he says, I've given you a lifetime.
[00:14:58] Now, our lifetimes may be shorter or longer. That's ultimately up to God.
[00:15:03] But he's entrusted whatever that span is to us.
[00:15:09] And you say, now what are you going to do with.
[00:15:13] Are you going to take it and do something that is adding value to the gift I've given. Are you going to make it better or are you going to bury that and let it to become less and less valuable? God's entrusted that to us. He's entrusted us with abilities.
[00:15:32] The people in our church are remarkable people.
[00:15:36] Some of you, God's given you an incredible intellectual.
[00:15:39] Some of you, God's given incredible organizational ability.
[00:15:43] Some of you can see into people's hearts and into lives, and you can empathize and you can meet them where they're at. And God's given you amazing relations, relational skills. So you God's given musical and technical ability. In each of our lives, every one of us has some innate qualities about us that are better than average, that are really good. And you know where those come from.
[00:16:12] It's come from God.
[00:16:14] And we are stewards of those abilities.
[00:16:18] So the question is, how am I going to use that? Am I going to use that for my own purposes only or alone? Or am I going to use those things for God?
[00:16:30] Am I going to see them as a gift to be developed and I'm going to try and multiply them? God's yes, giving me an innate gift, but I want to make it even better because I'm a steward. He's entrusted it to me and he wants me to.
[00:16:46] We all have spiritual gifts. The New Testament is very clear that every one of us has been given a gift by the ascended Christ to build up his body. And we are meant to use it in service of each other, something we've been trusted with. We've been trusted with meaningful relationships.
[00:17:08] Many of us, when we look at our life, we have great people in our life, got good friends, got good people in this church. That's something God has given us.
[00:17:20] Some of us watching, we're married.
[00:17:23] We have a person that we said, I love you so much, I will commit my life to you.
[00:17:29] That's something God has entrusted us with.
[00:17:32] Some of us, we have this amazing gift of God. We have sons and daughters, and those are from God, friends.
[00:17:43] He's entrusted them to us. He gave us a family.
[00:17:49] He's given us our bodies.
[00:17:52] Yeah, there may be many things you don't like about your body, but hey, at the end of the day, that's the one God gave you.
[00:18:00] And he has made you responsible to take care of it.
[00:18:04] He's entrusted us with ministries. I would go so far as to say that some of the things he's entrusted us with might present themselves as problems in our life.
[00:18:16] Maybe you're in a tough season and you're facing from difficult problems. But maybe that's actually God entrusting to you a really important situation.
[00:18:27] Maybe for others, there's great opportunities ahead that, that God is entrusting you with. In fact, I would say as a church family, God is entrusting us with an awesome opportunity. Friends, the journey that we're on, building a new building and all the ministry and the opportunity that is going to come with that and come through that, that is something God's trusted us with. That, that we didn't get here because we're awesome and smart and good. We got here by the grace of God. We got here by the hand of God. We're going to get into that new building by the power of God. But all of that is an opportunity that he's trusting us with and he's saying, how are you going to go through this? Are you going to waste this opportunity? Are you going to maximize it? Are you going to allow this opportunity to, to bring you together and to stir your faith and to glorify my name? Are you going to allow it? Are you going to miss it?
[00:19:28] Focusing on the Wrong things See, God's entrusted all of us with a lot of immensely valuable things. And that's the first thing we have to see. The second thing is we have to realize there is a lag between our stewardship and God's accountability.
[00:19:50] See, in this story, it says that the Master went away and after a long time he came back to bring all these things to account.
[00:20:03] And here's why this is important to know in your life, you can be a bad steward for a long time and get away with it.
[00:20:11] And you can be a good steward for a long time and not feel rewarded.
[00:20:16] See, there's a lag between both those.
[00:20:20] But what you. What we have to realize today is no matter what the lag is, how long it might feel or be, at the end of the day, we are still accountable that it all catches up with us and we stand before the Lord and the Lord says, all right, here's what I gave you.
[00:20:43] Let's talk about what you did with.
[00:20:46] None of us escapes that.
[00:20:48] And so the accountability is there even while we're in the leg. Here's the third thing I want you to see from this parable is that the faithful servants, they took action immediately to grow and multiply what was entrusted to them.
[00:21:06] Jesus says that that immediately they the man with five talents, he took and he traded and he made five more.
[00:21:13] And see, that's what good stewards do. They don't waste time.
[00:21:17] They go, they act immediately. They recognize that this is a privilege, this is a stewardship. God has entrusted me, and I'm accountable, and I'm not going to sit here on my hands.
[00:21:30] And they went and they took action to add more value to what has been given to them.
[00:21:37] What did the unfaithful servant do?
[00:21:39] He took no action.
[00:21:42] He went, dug a hole, and he buried the talent.
[00:21:47] Now, you might say, well, like, why? Why is that so bad? Well, just think about this for one second, because this has so much of a financial background to it.
[00:21:57] If you take an amount of money and that's what these talents were, many people estimate that at the low end, one talent would have been about $300,000, and it could be much higher than that. It's hard to know exactly these ancient measurements of currency, but this is. This is a large, large sum of money. Now, if you were to take today a large sum of money, let's say 300,000, and you were to just put it in a shoebox and put it under your bed in 10 years, is that money still worth $300,000 or not?
[00:22:36] Well, at face level, it is.
[00:22:40] But 300,000 10 years ago has way more buying power because of inflation.
[00:22:49] And so 300,000 10 years forward from now is going to be a lot less valuable than it is today because of inflation. And so when it's dug in a hole and it's just sitting there, it's not staying the same.
[00:23:04] It's actually losing value.
[00:23:08] And so when the master returns, he's actually just not returning what was given to him. He's returning less than that. You with me on this. And in the same way in our lives, we're not just ever staying the same. We're either growing forward where we're moving backwards. See, that's part of the wisdom of this parable.
[00:23:32] And so when we. When we just say, well, I'm not doing anything bad, but I'm just kind of not really doing anything at all, then it means we're. We're going backwards. And what we see is good stewardship, according to God, is not keeping things the same, and it's not letting things going backwards. It's making things better.
[00:23:53] When God says, what does a good steward do? A good steward makes things exponentially better from what they had originally received them as.
[00:24:05] A good steward makes the house that they live in better. It makes the relationships that they're in better. It makes a church that they're part of better. It makes a place that they work better.
[00:24:17] It adds exponential value to it. Says, God has entrusted me with some things. I'm going to maximize them, I'm going to multiply them, I'm going to make them better.
[00:24:28] Because that's what God considers good stewardship.
[00:24:34] And the unfaithful servant mischaracterized the master and tried to make excuses, and the master wouldn't accept it.
[00:24:47] And all of this Jesus shows came at a great consequence.
[00:24:53] In other words, when you read this story, it shakes us up a little bit, because it's meant to be a warning that God considers it a grievous sin to waste the gifts that he's given you.
[00:25:09] Church, do you see that God considers that a grievous sin to be given these great opportunities and these things of immense value and then to let them waste and deteriorate and become less valuable than what they were when God gave them to us.
[00:25:32] That matters to God.
[00:25:35] They're all his. And Jesus is not trying to do a scare tactic here. He's trying to show us, hey, this is how it really works.
[00:25:44] All the. All that stuff in your life, it goes back to God, and God cares about how we've used it. Now you might look at your life and you're like, well, I. I don't. I don't have all this great stuff. But again, recognize the genius of this parable. Some get five, some get three, some get one. We don't all get the equal amount of opportunities and talents and things like that. But at the end of the day, God only holds us accountable for what he gave us. And your focus. And my focus needs to be, what did he put into my hands? And how can I multiply and add value and do good with it?
[00:26:25] Because it's all his and it goes back to him.
[00:26:28] So what can we do with this teaching? I think this is so incredibly helpful. Well, number one, here's the first thing I want you to do. Take inventory of your life.
[00:26:40] I just want you to take a moment and I want you to ask yourself, what talents has God given me? I'm not talking about talents as in ability. Like, I'm taking my talents and going to South Beach. I'm not talking about it that way. I'm talking about what are the valuable things God has entrusted to you? Like, when I think about my own life, I think about my wife, Allie. I think about Emmy, Abby and Teddy. God's entrusted them, my family, to me. I think about you. I think about our church.
[00:27:10] I'm the West Campus pastor. God's entrusted this to me. I take that serious. I think about my health in my body, the time that I have. I think about the gifts that God has given me. And. And. And the list goes on. But. But when I think about this, when I take inventory, all of that is from God.
[00:27:29] And God looks at me, says, chet, I'm going to let you have this.
[00:27:34] You're responsible for it, and you're accountable for it. And it all is coming back to me. And I want you to look at your life, and I want you to just look and say, what.
[00:27:44] What inventory has God given me that he's made me both responsible and accountable to as a steward? Now, here's the second thing. I want you to take inventory, and I want you now to take action and to take action to make what has been entrusted to you better and to work towards making it exponentially better.
[00:28:11] And if you're listening to this and you're feeling convicted and you're feeling like, wow, this is making sense, but I've not been a good steward with my life.
[00:28:21] Well, here. Here's the good news. You still have time.
[00:28:25] God is patient and God is kind. The lag between what God gives us and God's accountability is meant to give us time to grow and to get better and to recover and to move forward from mistakes and failures and all those kinds of things. Things. And so what I'm saying to you today is you still have an opportunity right now, and don't miss it. If you've missed a million before, then don't miss this one right now. What can you do to make better what God has entrusted to you? And start small.
[00:29:05] I mean, honestly, I really believe, even if we just look at, like, our car or our house, and maybe things are a mess or there's projects sitting there, you know what? Maybe step number one is like, clean out the car, but do it from a place of stewardship. Say, I want to grow in my ability to make better what God has entrusted to me. And so I'm going to start really small. I'm going to clean the desk in my office. It's a mess. I'm going to clean my room. I'm going to do some laundry. I mean, it can start small, but. But then grow from there and keep learning how to do it. And I want you to think about this question today.
[00:29:47] How can I best steward this moment in the season God has entrusted to me? I've been asking myself that question a lot because I realized, man, God is entrusting me and our church with such an incredible opportunity. And I want to maximize it. I want to glorify him in it, in the good, in the bad, in the ugly. I want to honor him. Every step of this, I've been asking myself this question. And the answers that I just came up with were kind of threefold. I said, number one, I want to live by faith.
[00:30:21] I want to expect God to show up. I want to trust him. I don't want to live by fear, I want to live by faith. Second, I said, I want to lead by encouragement. I want to be an encouraging presence to everyone I'm around this season.
[00:30:36] I believe people are over challenged and under encouraged. And I want to be an encouraging presence for the Lord and for our church. And I want that to be how I lead, how I begin things. And I want to be thirdly disciplined at all times. I want to be disciplined in diet, in exercise, in my thoughts, in my finances, in my schedule and all these things. So I've been asking myself that question and saying, what does good stewardship look right now? And those are the answers that I came up with. But I want you to ask that for yourself in this season that God has for you. What does good stewardship look like? And then take action.
[00:31:19] Immediately they went and they made more talents. Take action. And third, take heart.
[00:31:27] Here's a beautiful thing.
[00:31:29] God rewards good stewardship. He rewards that. It's absolutely clear in this story. The man who has took five and made more, the Lord entrusted him with more responsibility and more joy.
[00:31:45] He says, you've been faithful little. I will trust you with more. Enter into the joy of your master. You see, when you are a good steward, you here's what you get. Yeah, you get more work, you get more responsibility. But that's a good thing because God is saying, I can trust you with bigger things, I can trust you with bigger opportunities, I can trust you with bigger problems. I can trust you with bigger responsibility, I can trust you with bigger challenge. He says, but you'll have that. But you'll also have more of my joy.
[00:32:19] You'll have more joy. Joy in the presence of your master.
[00:32:25] So number one, take heart. And take heart. Not only that God rewards, but also take heart in this. See, every parable breaks down at some point because they're parables, they're metaphors, they're similes, they're, they're, they're like the way things are, but they're not exactly it.
[00:32:45] And where this parable breaks down is that our master doesn't actually leave us.
[00:32:54] Our master doesn't actually go away from us.
[00:32:58] But our Master said, he will never leave or forsake us.
[00:33:03] Our Master said, not only that, but I will seal you with the Holy Spirit.
[00:33:10] And at all times, in all situations and all challenges and seasons of life, the helper will be there in you.
[00:33:21] God, the Spirit will live within you all the time. And at every moment of our day in our life, we can turn to him and say, lord, help me to steward this well. Give me your wisdom.
[00:33:37] We can turn to him and say, lord, help me to steward this well. Give me your strength things.
[00:33:43] Lord, help me to steward this well. Give me your courage.
[00:33:47] Lord, help me to steward this well. Give me your endurance.
[00:33:52] And in the parable, their Master leaves, but our Master never does. And so, yes, he says, you are accountable and you are responsible. But he also says, and I am with you always.
[00:34:04] You're not doing this alone.
[00:34:08] And every day and every moment church, we can ask for his help.
[00:34:13] And I know I need to do that and I need to be better about doing that. Because I wake up and I get going and I'm doing things and I can so easily forget that. Yes, it's good to be active, it's good to go after those things, but I gotta always do it, depending on God to help me in all of it. And he absolutely will. Because I want to hear those words, well done, good and faithful servant. I want to be a man in a church that God looks at and says, I can trust those guys.
[00:34:46] I've trusted them with little things and I can trust them with bigger things. I want to be found faithful and trustworthy before my God. And I know you do too. So let's ask for his help in it. Father, would you make us trustworthy servants that you can count on, that you can work through, that you can glorify your name? Father, would we just, Lord, with all of our heart, take so seriously the concept of stewardship? And could we live our lives that way, make decisions that way, and treat all our circumstances from that perspective? Help us in all this. I pray in Jesus name, Amen.
