Good morning, friends. Can you see me from here? Oh, there we go. Who said that? Beautiful. Welcome, friends. If you’re visiting, my name’s Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. It’s just so good to have you with us today on what is, if you’re familiar with the church calendar, the last week of the year. The Christian calendar goes from Advent, which begins next week, unbelievably, Christmas, quickly approaching, and then runs all the way through different seasons, all the way through to what’s called ordinary time that runs from somewhere around June.

to now, where we get to finish up the year. And we’re getting ready to start again. But as we conclude this whole year cycle, we’re going to finish our series on a generous life. Now, here’s like the caveat, the small print. If you’re coming and you’re coming for the first time, maybe you’re new to faith, you’re connecting for the first time, then this could feel at times like an awkward conversation.

Probably not for you, because you probably talk about money all the time. It’s probably regularly part of your family’s dialogue. People talk about money as a family. But in church, it can feel like when you were a kid when you went to a friend’s house and the family started having a blazing row in the middle of the living room and you’re like, what do I do here?

For some reason, when you combine church and money, it can feel like. Feel like a I’m just going to press it harder. That’s my way of solving technology. What do you think, guys? Can we sort that out? Did I do that? Did you do that?

Alright. It can feel like a complicated conversation. I’m going to trust that these guys can figure that out. There’s something about combining The two that just can make us feel a little bit awkward. The average pastor in the United States makes somewhere around 50, 000, but there are a few that we may be more familiar with that, that make a lot more.

This is a picture that a website called tithing. com, yes there is a website called tithing. com, put together, so you’ve got like this private jet here, change, there we go, and you’ve got like the smorgasbord of megachurch pastors that are riding their jet off into some beautiful island, maybe Hawaii or something like that.

There’s this story That is repeated over and over again. That church and money don’t mix. Next slide. This is Kenneth Copeland. Introducing his community to his third private jet. He needs three because, quote, You can’t talk to God when flying commercial. You need another plane so you can get to all these sorts of different places.

And then in one beautiful moment when he got his third plane and told his community that you needed to believe God and ask him to bless you, one clever person said, I’m believing God for your third private jet. Just hand it over, Kenneth. I’m gonna change my own slides. I’m gonna change my own slides.

And yet, this conversation around money is so essential for a couple of really good reasons. The first, most important being that Jesus was very comfortable talking about it, felt like it was an important part of the dialogue. When speaking of competing attractions in the marketplace of faith, when talking about the thing that was likely to keep you from following Him.

Jesus said out of all the things it could be Money is probably the thing so much so that to one young man who wanted to follow him He said okay first give away everything that you own Give it away It’s getting in the way. Controversial stuff for us today, when we like our stuff. Jesus spoke about money about 15 percent of his preaching and in 11 of his 39 stories or parables.

It’s all over the place. But as we’ll see, the second reason is also that almost all sociologists agree that generosity, giving, is actually good for you whether you follow Jesus. So to catch you up really quick, because we’ve got a lot to get through today. I’m a little worried about the time, so I’m just going to keep moving.

A couple of things that we talked about the last two weeks. The first invite was this. Was to live. To think about both budget and schedule, as things that you can cut back on to create space. The scripture reference was this teaching by this preacher, this Qo’oleth, who said, Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

We are often people that chase. And he says the posture is actually hold loosely. Rest. Find your place in that way. James Brown Smith said, When we lack margin in our lives, we become tired and lonely and joyless, which seems to invite temptation. Margin restores balance and restores our soul, thus increasing our capacity for joy.

So that was the invite on week one. And if you are wrestling with margin, I really highly encourage you to do high as I can recommend a class to you that’s beginning next week, December 1st, Steve Schroeder, our executive pastor, will be running this. If you have any questions about signing up, my suggestion is this, just sign up and get involved.

You will experience the joy of someone who cares about you, walking alongside you as you wrestle with some of these questions. Somebody that can speak wisdom into your life and to your budget and help you make a step along that journey. So even if you want to go on your phone. now and sign up while I’m talking.

I won’t mind. I won’t call you out on it. Live with Margin was week one, but then last week we had Dave Sherman, our good friend from South, come and speak on Live on Mission and Dave just brought it. He said he came across at times as rude, confrontational. The only time I felt he did that was when he talked about my hair.

The rest of the time, it felt like He just gave us this beautiful picture of what it is to use our resources for kingdom purposes, to what he called radical generosity, that maybe there’s times where we live selfishly, we move to unselfish, then we move to generous, and then finally he said to radically generous.

It left me with this question that’s floated around in my head for the last like week or so. For people in the most affluent and prosperous culture in history, What does radical generosity look like? Feels like there’s some good, challenging work there. But in the midst of those two weeks where I felt like God challenged us in different ways, I had some wonderful questions with some of you.

One of those questions being, aren’t these mutually exclusive things? How do you live on with margin and live on mission? Surely in that moment you create margin and then you get rid of it. by living on mission. Which one is it supposed to be? It feel like one of those things where there’s only one you can pick.

It’s if I flip a coin like a hundred times on this stage, it might be heads, it might be tails, but it’s never heads and tails at the same time. Are those mutually exclusive options? And as I thought about it, I thought, did I bury the lead on that maybe, because they are mutually exclusive?

Sure. In actual fact, the reason for suggesting live with margin is mainly the second thing, to live on mission. This is my hope for me and for you, that we can live with margin so that you can live on mission. The margin was never the point. The mission was the point. The margin is good because it enables us to step into opportunities to get involved in what God is doing all over the place regularly both with our time and with our money.

The so you can piece was always the center of what we were talking about. Throughout the New Testament, from the teachings of Jesus, you see this generosity question raised constantly, and I’m hoping by looking at a parable of Jesus today, we can unlock the reason that loads of us might say something like this.

I would actually like to be generous, but I actually just feel like there’s something getting in the way. Not just the learning to live with margin thing, but just. The something, some belief maybe that I have that just seems to get in the way. So we’re going to get eventually to Matthew 25.

If you have a text with you and you want to open it to verse 14 of Matthew 25, you can do that. I’m going to read it in just a minute. But first, let’s navigate through some of these conversations. In Acts 20, right at the end of his ministry life, Paul, this writer of most of the New Testament, is saying his goodbyes.

to some churches, and in the midst of one of those conversations with the church in Ephesus, he says this, In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. At least in the New Testament, Jesus didn’t actually say this.

It’s not in any of the Gospels we have, but Paul’s clearly heard it from some tradition. In actual fact, like little church history, Paul probably never read Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. They were probably written after he died. Somewhere this tradition has been passed down, and it’s close enough to other things that Jesus said that we’re like, yeah, there’s no real get out there.

He’s more blessed to give. than to receive. In Luke 68, he says, Jesus says this, Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use to give, it will be measured to you. Jesus constantly pushes this conversation of generosity, and the idea that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

And so here’s the hard part. Do we believe that? I love getting stuff. I’m a big fan of gifts that are directed in my direction. I’m not sure yet that I always believe that actually it is more blessed to give than to receive. Maybe some of us would say is that true for sure? What’s the data point on that?

The earliest Christians lived that way. The earliest Christians lived untethered. from their assets. They were generous with everyone around them. Whether follower of Jesus or not, they were generous towards those that were the weakest and most marginalized part of society. They lived that way. But what about us in the 21st century?

century. Generosity is not just a Christian idea, it’s actually something that, as I said, sociologists all over the place for a couple of millennia have said is great for you whether you follow Jesus or not. Marcus Aurelius somewhere around second century, as someone who opposed Christians pretty dramatically said this, some people when they do someone a favor are always looking for a chance to call it in, and some aren’t, but they’re still aware of it, still regarded as a debt.

Others don’t even do that. They’re like a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything in return. We should be like that, acting almost unconsciously. Jambanian, 17th century said, You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you. Maya Angelou, I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

Somewhere you let go of some of the selfishness around which we orientate, it changes us as we go about doing it. And finally, Adam Grant, modern sociologist. If you spend money on yourself, you’re not going to get it. Your happiness doesn’t change, but if you spend money on others, you actually report becoming significantly happier.

Jesus said generosity is actually life changing, and a whole bunch of other people say Jesus is right. People that don’t even follow him say he’s right. Generosity is transformative, and yet, we live in a society that is very structured. Around getting more stuff. We’re convinced perhaps that we can build the kingdom of heaven like a joyful life Just here on this earth Now anyone remember this great little meme that the Babylon B created maybe five six years ago Christian not sure why you should look forward to heaven when he already lives in America, especially in the 21st Century, right?

We’ve got So long as we can keep getting more resources sent our way by any means necessary. Montgomery Burns and the Simpsons. I am rich, but I trade it all for a little more. It’s just keep the possessions coming. Psychologically, we struggle with giving, perhaps because we’re just so much more concerned with us than those around us.

Did you know psychologically, you will lose more sleep tonight? If I tell you that tomorrow morning the tip of your pinky will be cut off, then if I tell you 100, 000 people in a country far away will die tomorrow, we’re just wired towards something like a, is that a minor inconvenience? I don’t know, but it’s not death.

We’re wired for some reason towards being very concerned about what happens to us. Richard Foster says this, the unreasoned boast a bounds that the good life is found in accumulation. That more is better indeed. And listen carefully. We often accept this notion without question, with the result that the lust for affluence in contemporary.

So society has become psychotic. It has completely lost touch with reality. We need more and more resources. And so we wrestle as a community, as an in and as individuals with this question, how do we learn? How do we practice generosity and what might be getting in the way? What might we need to learn?

What we might, what might we need to not just know intellectually, but know deep? within us to get over the line of generosity as a practiced way of life. And to Matthew 25, and just to prep the conversation, I’m going to need three volunteers in a minute, so Get your volunteer hat on, get ready.

I promise you will not be embarrassed. Verse 14, reading from the NIV. Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag each, according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.

The man who had received five bags of gold went at once, put his money to work, and gained five bags more. So also the one who had two bags of gold gained two more, but the man who had one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money. After a long time, the master of those servants returned, settled accounts with them.

The man who would receive five bags of gold brought the other five. Master, he said, you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more. His master replied, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.

The man with two bags of gold also came. Master, You entrusted me with two bags of gold. See, I have gained two more. His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness. Then the man who had received one bag of gold came.

Master, he said, I knew that you were a hard man. Harvesting where you have not sown, gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. So here is what belongs to you. His master replied, you wicked lazy servant. So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gathered where I have not scattered seed.

Then you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. So take the bag of gold with him. So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has 10 bags. For whoever has will be given more and they will have an abundance.

Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the Word of God for the people of God. Jesus, this is, this passage is a lot. Help me to talk about it bravely, because we maybe need that kind of conversation.

Help us to open our hearts to how we read Scripture, what we expect from it. Teach us to live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus, from this passage today. Amen. Three volunteers, do I have any volunteers? One at the back, I love it. Anyone else? Yes, one there, very good. Anyone else? I need one more.

One more, one more, one more. Brilliant, thank you. If you guys would like to come up to the front, I’m gonna ask you guys to stand here in any order that you like.

Okay, actually, Melissa, you come back. Okay perfect. You guys chose well. Thank you. So here we go. Let’s go back to the top of the text again for just a minute. Again, it will be like a man going on a journey. He called his servants, and he trusted his wealth to them. The man leaves, goes on a journey back to a different place.

Jesus, by the way, pitches this story in the middle of a bunch of stories about the kingdom and waiting for it to come. He hovers around this question of when will the kingdom thing, the thing you’ve been talking about, Jesus, when will it start? Is it now? Or is it sometime in the future? And all of these stories point to maybe some kind of gap that there might be some waiting for faithful followers of Jesus to do during that time.

season. It will be like a man who called his servants and entrusted them with his wealth. In actual fact, the language there is never wealth, it’s just simply possessions. And then we move down this kind of passage. Now, how many of you guys in the scripture you have in front of you have bags of gold in the writing?

Anyone? Anyone reading who’s I see bags of gold here, a few hands. How many of you have something else? Anyone? What do you have, Angela?

Anyone? Anyone at the back? Anyone? Talents? Some people with talents? Okay. Silver? Someone with silver? Talents. Okay so here we go. A lot of the time in a new translation it will say something like bags of gold. In actual fact, that’s a fairly horrible translation of what is said here. It’s something that’s supposed to engage a modern audience.

But in no point in this text does it ever say that what is handed over to is gold. In actual fact, as you’ll see, I hope, everything about the thrust of this text is not necessarily about money. It’s actually about weight. Now, it could also be about money, but primarily, that’s not what we read. As we go through this text, we have a few words that are important to know.

There’s a master. Kourtikourios in Greek, there’s possessions, hypercontra, there’s talents, a weight of about 75 pounds. So in gold, its value would be like 20 years of wages, maybe a million dollars per talent in today’s wages. And then there’s a doulos, a slave who is entrusted with the money, who has no rights of ownership or Whatsoever.

So possessions, talent, servant, all in that order. Again, we’re going to translate it slightly differently. Again, it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one, he gave five talents.

To another, he gave two talents. Feel free to put it down at any point you need to, guys. And to another, he gave one talent. There was a man who went on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, to another one talent, each according to his ability, and then he went on his journey.

When we read just money and something small like bags of gold, the thing we lose is the awkwardness of what is given. If you’re a servant and someone hands you over 75 pounds times five of any kind of substance, the first question you have is, what do I do with this? This is just a lot of stuff. A man who had received five talents went at once to put his money to work and he gained five more

So also the one who gained two, am I in the right place? Gained four more. So also the one who gained two more. All right, you got it. I, is this embarrassing? This is, no, this is great. You’re helping show the word of God and the one who had received one, talent went off. and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

This is the first time that money is mentioned in the text. To start with, it is simply they are given a weight and have to do something with it. Feel the weight because weight, as we come back, is important. Just feel that weight. And imagine, I actually was very generous, because this is like 50 pounds, and this is like 40 pounds, and this is 8 pounds, so I massively downgraded the weights based on what I had available.

Note the dust on these weights, that shows how much they get used. After a long time, after a long time, the master of those accounts returned and settled accounts with them. The master came back and said this possessions that you’ve had, whatever it is, you no longer have the stewardship of. I am going to allow you to put this down.

And thank you guys. That was brilliant. Thank you. You guys did a great job. What do you notice about what they are entrusted with? The conversation? is not necessarily, at least initially, about the value of the substance. It is about the weight of what they are holding. To a person in a Jewish society, as we’ll see in just a moment, this would have been instantly apparent.

But when your text simply says, bags of gold in a modern culture, it’s missed completely. The conversations that follow are around what they have done with the weight of the substance. that they have been given. The man who had received five talents brought the other five. Master, he said, you entrusted me with five talents.

See, I’ve produced five more. And he closes his account. His master replies, Well done, good and faithful servant. Something that, there’s the possibility that Jesus will say to people just like you and I, which if you just hold for a moment is one of the most beautiful things that you could hear spoken.

Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness. Notice, does he comment on how much the servant has produced? He doesn’t. The man who had two talents also came. Master, he said, you entrusted me with two talents.

See, I have gained two more. The master replied, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. Does he comment on what the servant has achieved? He doesn’t. Come and share your master’s happiness. Same promise, regardless of the production. No comment made, particularly on what is produced.

And then, we come to the third man. Master, he said, I knew you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See here is what belongs to you. The master replied, You wicked, lazy servant. So you knew that I harvest where I have not shown, and gathered where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed.

Then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned, I would have received it back. with interest. And then the talent is taken from him. Take the talent from it, give it to the one who has ten, whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance.

Whoever does not have even what they have will be taken from them, and throw the worthless servant outside into the darkness, whether by weeping and gnashing of teeth. I would suggest that this parable is not primarily about money, but helps you figure out the talent. what to do with your money, despite the fact that isn’t really what it is talking about.

What does this parable mean? A couple of things. This parable is one that gets avoided a lot in loads of conversations, even in seminary classes, because it’s complicated. The question is what’s the teaching point here? Is it interpretation one, that I have called graciously the Western capitalist reading?

Is it about production? Is it about earning more stuff? If you’ve been alive for somewhere in the last 200 years, you would say, yeah, quite possibly. We talk about that all the time. Our value is based on what we produce. Just read it. A man is going on a journey. He calls his servants and he entrusts his wealth to them.

Is this not what we might do with a retirement fund? Is it what we might not do as a venture capitalist? Do we not give funds to people and say, do something with them, make sure I get a return? And don’t throw my money away. Don’t miss the opportunity. Treat it. This is a picture of a gentleman who about 20 years ago now trade no 15 years ago now traded 10, 000 Bitcoin for two pizzas It was not a good investment.

The current value of that Bitcoin is just under a billion dollars Which he paid for his two pizza pizzas do not be someone like this might be the interpretation in this Interpretation you may say something like this The master is good. Of course You The first two servants are responsible and faithful to their good master.

The third servant is wicked and lazy. When you read this parable as being about money, because it says bags of gold, and about production because it talks about returns, you tie it very much to the last 200 years. But there’s a problem with this reading. If you were to go all the way back to the first century and ask them how they felt about earning money from interest, they would say, we’re not so sure about that.

The Torah even had whole rules about don’t lend to another Israelite to get interest back. We don’t do that kind of thing here. Even the idea that you should gather more possessions was somewhat frowned upon in that culture because the pie was only so big. And the more you took, the less somebody else had.

So while this passage might be used in Stewardship Sundays or Giving Sundays all over the country, this isn’t really what it’s talking about at all. That’s Interpretation 1. Second Interpretation, and I want to push on some buttons here, so just, take this loosely but just feel out why some societies have read this passage just this way.

a little bit differently. Interpretation 2 is the upside down liberation reading, where everything gets flipped upside down. Have you noticed, perhaps, how in other cultures, there’s ways that things are perceived very differently? Quick couple of examples might help us. This is a picture of the movie Inside Out from over out in Japan.

Maybe if you remember the movie well enough, you’ll notice that the food that the little girl has been asked to eat is not the same food that it is in America. In America, she’s asked to eat broccoli, but when you go out to Japan, nobody would say no to broccoli. It’s a delicacy. It’s a delight. So the idea of forcing a baby to eat broccoli is just, it doesn’t work.

But peppers? in Japan have the same reputation as Broccoli. It’s a different change because the story would not translate to a different culture. There’s an upside down ness to that presentation. There’s an upside down ness that we might put onto almost any story that we perceive in the world. This is a picture of the Wicked Witch of the West.

The villain of The Wizard of Oz. But is she? Is she the villain? Imagine if someone flew a house out of the sky and landed it on top of your sister, and then stole her shoes into the bargain. How would you respond? With a certain reading, the Wicked Witch of the West would say, is the good guy of the story.

And that’s where this version goes. Because in parts of South America, where they see the rich as oppressors, there’s a whole different reading to this parable. In this version, the master is one who persecutes the servant underneath him. They don’t read the master as being God at all, or Jesus at all.

There’s a whole different reading. Their version, the master is bad. He’s only interested in gaining more wealth for himself. The first two servants, in their reading, joined their master in this perverse attitude towards wealth at the expense. of others. The third servant courageously blows the whistle on what he sees and suffers accordingly at the hands of the master.

The master is bad, the first two servants join him in his wickedness. The third servant is a whistleblower who exposes the ways in which the master is not acting like Yahweh, the God of Israel. Two different countries, two very different interpretations, and if your instant response is that second interpretation is nonsense.

where you may never have lived in an impoverished country that feels like all of their wealth has been taken. There’s a whole different read depending on the society that you’re in. Now, I’m not saying either of those two readings are right at all because I actually think both of them miss the point.

I’m just pushing you on how you learn to read scripture for yourself and experience its challenges. Because when we look into the history of the first century, we might say there’s a whole different tale altogether. Interpretation three, the historical, contextual reading. The story is about what God has entrusted you with, whether wealth or power.

whether time, whether influence, whether charisma. It’s the mercy and grace that God has invested in you as a person and how you use it in the world. There’s a reason that the term talents in English came to mean abilities and gifting because This passage, according to this interpretation, talks about how you bring everything that you are to this kingdom narrative that God is building and working on.

In America, in the last hundred years, you might say that we’ve had something like an obsession with height. This is 40 Wall Street in New York. It was the tallest building in the world for about a month until the Chrysler Building was built. There was a constant battle back and forth. The Chrysler Building was going to be shorter.

Then they built this huge antenna inside it, and they put it on the top of the building. And it was a competition back and forth. We have this obsession with height. There’s a huge percentage of guys, it turns out, that will lie about their height if asked about it. In the gym, there’ll be guys that are 5’8 Now, if there’s anything wrong with that, they’ll say, I’m 6’2 and all these kind of different stories that go on.

We have this obsession with height. In the first century world, you might say that they had an obsession with weight. There were talents. And they weighed something in Jesus story. And you got a little picture of that, seeing someone kind of struggling under the weight. But for a Jewish person in the first century, when you talked about weight, the first place their mind would go would be to the weightiest thing of all, God’s presence in the temple right in their midst.

Or throughout the Old Testament, God’s presence, His kibbutz. The weight of God is a reference that is made over and over again. God’s presence carries weight. And so when Jesus tells a story to a whole bunch of people that references weight and what God has entrusted to them the first place in the first century their mind went would not be how wealthy are they but how much has God entrusted them with.

What has he given them. When Jesus tells this story about weight, he’s talking about what God has given to you and how you can entrust it or bring it to the world around you. When we read the story in this light, what do you notice, hopefully, about this third servant? The third servant cannot trust that the God who has entrusted him with everything he has is really good.

His problem is not necessarily that he’s incompetent or any of those things. He doesn’t believe the master’s story about himself. You might say in this interpretation really quickly, the master is good. The first two servants trust in the master’s inherent goodness and then they boldly represent him even though the world often rejects him.

In a story, Jesus tells about his coming departure and his absence from the world. He speaks of two servants who go and trade in his name. They bring everything they are entrusted with to this world and trade it under the name of Jesus. And then there’s another servant who cannot do the same. The other servant will say of the master, that I knew that you were a hard man to find.

And there’s no evidence he doesn’t believe what he says. It’s not a made up excuse. The truth is the master simply, the man simply doesn’t trust that his master is good. C. S. Lewis says there’s a beautiful gift to the follower of Jesus that knows how much they are loved by their God. In weight of glory.

Conveniently titled book. He says, To please God, to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness, to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted as in an artist delights in his work, or a father in a son, it seems impossible. A weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.

These two servants have the beautiful gift of bringing their whole life and world that God has given them home. to the kingdom as a gift. The third servant cannot do the same because in his heart, he may say the master is good to people around him, but he doesn’t really believe it. And in this moment, what we get from him is a confession.

I knew you were a hard man. I knew you were a hard man who sowed, who expects to reap where you did not sow. He believes that about his father. I knew you were a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seeds, so I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground.

In this third reading, the master is good. The first two servants trust in the master’s inherent goodness and boldly represent him even though the world often rejects him. The third servant questions the goodness of the master and cannot represent him to the god, to the world. So everything he has, he hides away from view.

The question this text asks us to ask of ourselves is, do I believe that the master is good? Do I truly believe that my father is good? I make intellectual assent to it. Sure, I proclaim that God is good and generous. But do I believe that? Do I believe that the one who has God and nothing else is good? As C.

S. Lewis says, has as much as the one who has God and who has everything? Do I believe that God’s presence for me and in me is enough? Is everything? Brennan Manning says this, No one can measure, like a believer, the depth and the intensity of God’s love, but at the same time, no one can measure, like a believer, the effectiveness of our gloom, pessimism, low self esteem, self hatred, and despair that block God’s way to us.

The lifestyle of the first two servants is determined by what they believe about their father. And the third, No, it’s the same. It’s determined by what they believe about the master. What do you believe about this God? To be generous, to open, in this context, our pockets, our wallet, our money, our resources to this God requires that we believe that he is generous, that he cares for us as a father would.

But to get there, Can be harder than it sounds when we did the sermon on the mount We look briefly at this passage in Matthew chapter 6 The eye is the lamp of the body if your eyes are good The whole body will be full of light But if your eyes are evil your whole body will be full of darkness if the light within you is darkness How great is the light?

that darkness. It seems like an obscure reference because a lot of the time when you’re a teenager your parents might talk to you as though this is about like watching the wrong movies or getting involved in the wrong things but in reality it’s thrown in the middle of a conversation about generosity and that’s what Jesus is talking about here.

In the first century, to have an evil eye was to be ungenerous. To have a good eye was to share healthily with the world around you. It’s the same if you want an image of this. It’s like the same conversation you maybe have when you’re a kid about cutting something in half with a sibling. Are you cutting that fairly?

Are you cutting that well? This is the kind of thing that Jesus is talking about. A person with a good eye shared generously with the world around him. An evil eye did the opposite. But an evil eye doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from that same conversation, that same story that we constantly tell ourselves about God and how he shares his resources.

The writer and speaker John Mark Comer says this, abundance and scarcity, two very different ways of seeing life in general and money in particular. Two people can live on the same street, in the same neighborhood, have the same income, and have the same economic responsibilities, and yet have two radically different experiences because they see the world in radically different ways.

How do you see the world? The idea of living generously in the parable that we read is centered around our experience of God and our experience of this world. That’s what determines how we act. It’s the question of, do we have a scarcity mindset? How do we think God reacts to our giving of resources versus an abundance mindset, a belief that God is generous with us continually and allows us to be generous with those around us.

Somewhere, this parable wants us to see God as the generous and good master that he is, wants us to celebrate in a father who cares for us. Intimately, I love about my kids that we walk into a restaurant and they have no suggestion or belief that they needed to provide the resources for the meal. They believe that their father has it covered, even though he’s paying for it on a credit card or paying it in stages.

There’s this beautiful belief about who my father is that, who their father is that determines how they act. Imagine my heartbreak if they came in, scraping together what’s left of their allowance, believing that the meal was on them. When they’re 18, they pay their own way, but now they’re like, they’re young and they’re kids.

There’s something about the image of the father that matters, and this is not about how much we have. It’s simply about how we believe our father has called us to operate in this world. Before we finish, one final story from the psychologist Dan Allender, who spent some time in a small village in Africa, he was invited out there to visit and to build relationship and in the midst of his visit, they threw a wild party for them.

There was like these beautiful tea ceremonies and this whole roasted cow that they’d brought in and cut up and served to the people that had come to visit these small group of missionaries that had arrived in their village. He said they spent two to three days being celebrated by this village. And as he left, he turned around to his companion and said, that must have cost them a lot.

And the man replied simply, you have no idea. And he said there was just too much to that answer to not pursue it further. So he said, what do you mean by that? He said that probably, that celebration probably cost them about one twelfth of the income for the entire village. It was a gift beyond your imagination.

Not necessarily huge in American terms, but for them, a ginormous gift. Dadala responded as I would probably respond. He was furious. He decided he was going to travel back to the village and he was going to pay back the money. He was going to make it right. And his friend looked at him with just this fire in his eyes and he said, don’t you dare, don’t you dare cancel out their gift.

You suffer the generosity of God. Suffer his kindness, because this God is infinitely generous. He is a good father and master, and he causes that generosity in his followers, even when they don’t have the resources they would love to have. This God is generous and inspires generosity. The first servant, the second servant, despite their resources, they believe the master is good.

The third servant cannot say the same. And so whatever you say publicly, wrestle with this question. Do you believe that your father is good? For our closing song, we’re going to sing again, this is my father’s world. Hold on to what you’ve learned, and allow that question to settle in your soul. Do you believe your father has your resources and your needs covered?

Do you believe he is good?