The word "traded" here means to do business. Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them". "To each according to his own ability."., how much ability the person had. Now, why would He do that? It doesn't sound fair. I'll tell you exactly how much money He gives in just a moment. "And to one he gave five talents."., now that's a sum of money. Just a question you can all answer out loud, whose goods are they? Okay, let's remember that. "For the kingdom of heaven is like a man," that's Jesus: "traveling to a far country, who called his own servants," that's believers, Christians: "and delivered," watch this very carefully: "his goods to them". It starts in Matthew 13, by the way, all right. And by the way, this is the eleventh time Jesus said, in the Book of Matthew, "For the kingdom of heaven is like.". He knows what heaven's like, would you agree? This is the Son of God talking. I'm gonna stop a few times 'cause I'm eaten up with this burden for this message. So you need to know, here's Jesus taking several verses talking about how we handle money, all right? This is a whole thing where God says I have given so much money to different people according to the ability that they have, and I expect money back. Okay, this talks about ability, but this is talking about a sum of money. And there are many people that say, well, some people have this much ability, some have this much ability. I can prove it theologically and historically. Here's the only thing you've got to know, and I'll explain it later in the message. It's the famous passage about God giving five talents, two talents, and one talent. So I'm gonna read you this passage in Matthew 25, and here's what you need to know. When you own it, it causes you a whole bunch of stress. Who's the Lord of the land? See, what's great is when God owns it, He fixes it. And think about that term even, the land-lord. Think about this, okay? If you're the renter, when stuff breaks, you just call the landlord. It comes whether in your heart you're the owner or the steward. And it is one of the greatest places to live in the world, but it comes not from whether you have a lot of money in the bank or not. I am overwhelmed right now with this burden. So, we're talking about "Good Stewards" this week, and I want to talk a little bit about ownership and stewardship, because this is a big issue for us to understand as believers. Just try it and watch the supernatural happen. Are you following me? I want you to know that, and I want you to just try it. There's miraculous blessings that happen from heaven. When you get your finances in order, there is a supernatural blessing from heaven. I want you to hear, because see, in the same way, we do want God's supernatural blessing on our finances, so when there's an opportunity to give, sometimes we give knowing, not in a bad way, but knowing that God's gonna bless us for giving. We have testimony after testimony after testimony, here at Gateway Church, of people who have gotten their finances in order and God has supernaturally blessed them. It's not just that you got on a budget and you're spending less in this column so you have more in this column. In the very same way that God supernaturally blesses you when you give generously, in the very same way God supernaturally blesses you when you operate your finances according to biblical standards and stewardship. Here's what I want you to catch about " Beyond Blessed". But when I wrote "The Blessed Life", we've talked about when we give and I talked about all of these testimonies about how God would bless. That's not what God's trying to do in our heart. If we're giving with a selfish motive, that's not gonna bring the blessing of God. That's just all through Scripture, and it's when we give with the right heart, obviously. We're in a series called " Beyond Blessed", And, I want you to understand that this is so big and so many people miss this, and I'm trying to think of how I can say it to make the impact that I want this statement to make, all right? We know that when we give, God blesses us.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |