Take your Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 25. So that's a good song, not my will, but thine Lord. So Billy, let's get that in again here in the next week or two so that we can learn it and sing it. This is a good song, not my will, but thine Lord. Matthew chapter 25. This evening, let's consider the parable of the talents. So Matthew chapter 25, we're gonna pick it up in verse 14 and read down through verse 30. And I think you know this parable. Many of you probably have heard this parable preached on more than once. And that's good. But let's read the text first and see what it says, and then we'll pray and consider this. Matthew chapter 25, verse 14. Let me read this to you. For the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents. to another two, and to another one, to every man according to his several ability, and straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth and hid his Lord's money. After a long time, the Lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. And so he that had received five talents came, and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliverest unto me five talents. Behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. His Lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliverest unto me two talents. Behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. His Lord said unto him, well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not strawed. And I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in the earth. Lo, there thou hast that is thine. His Lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. unto everyone that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance but for him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath and cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth let's pray and then we will consider this passage father thank you for leading us here this evening. Thank you for the singing the opportunity to lift our voices in praise to you and in our in our singing to offer ourselves to you not my will but thine Lord. What a what a good reminder that we are not here to accomplish our goals to reach our ambitions to achieve greatness for ourselves. We're here to magnify you to glorify you and may that be our prayer tonight. Not only when we sing not only as we examine the scriptures, but as we leave and go through our week. Father, we thank you that you are so generous to us. You pour out so many good things upon us. You shower us with good gifts, and we are so blessed. Thank you, Father, for blessing us. And thank you, most of all, for that salvation that we have in Christ Jesus, that freedom from guilt, freedom from the power of sin, the ability to operate free from our flesh and walk in the Spirit as we cooperate with you. We ask, Father, that our focus would be on pleasing you in all that we do and accessing your all-sufficient grace to accomplish your perfect will in our lives and to impact the lives around us. We ask that you'd open our minds to truth and help us understand not only the passage that we are to study, but also what its application is to us personally. And remind us to pray for these campers this week. Give us a heart for the young people at our church. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Many people are very interested in investing their money for the future. Now, I'm not a big investor, but if you've ever met someone who's into investing, they'll tell you what, well, when I was growing up it was mutual funds, but now I understand it's exchange-traded funds, ETFs. I don't even know what the difference is. I just know that if you're really into investing your money, you don't buy mutual funds anymore, you buy, by the way, this is not financial advice. I'm not making, telling you what, I'm just saying, I'm hearing these things as I talk with people who are really into investing for the future. But the most important thing to invest for is eternity. Marcos likes to say the Christian's retirement plan is out of this world. And it's true. I mean, we're not going to experience all the rewards and the finest rewards that God has for us until we leave this earth and we're with Him in eternity. And then we get to enjoy them forever. And moth and rust doesn't corrupt. Thieves aren't going to break in and steal. You don't have to worry about Bernie Madoff losing your investment. It's guaranteed. And that's what this passage is about. It's about investing for eternity. Now, he's using a parable that just everyday people could understand. But the point is not making money for when you turn 60 or 70 or whatever age you think you're going to retire at. The point is about investing for eternity. But before we get into this, I want I want you to notice what kind of Lord, what kind of master is portrayed in this parable. What kind of man is it that is in this parable? Not the three servants, but the Lord, the master. First thing I want you to notice about the master is that he is extremely generous. It says that he gives one man five talents, he gives another man two talents, and he gives one man one talent. Now, we use that word talent like some sort of skill or inborn ability. It's not inborn ability. It's not that type of talent. It's a measure of money. Today, you have what we call gold bars, and I've never held one. Anyone ever held one of those gold bars? Okay, a couple of you. Fort Knox, I understand, has them for our U.S. government. These gold bars, I understand, I did a little bit of research, each one is about 400 troy ounces, about 27 pounds. It's a little tiny bar, but gold weighs a lot. 400 troy ounces, which is the equivalent of about $900,000. So if someone were to say to you one day, would you like a gold bar? And they meant it. I'm not just saying, you definitely want to take one. $900,000. Estimates vary, but for the sake of tonight's parable, understanding the parable, imagine that one talent is two of those bars. almost $2 million. So the master gives one man five talents, five times two. He gives that man nearly $10 million. So we're not talking about little sums of money. Here, what do I got in my wallet? I got a $100 bill here. Not that type of giving. $10 million. The other man, he gives 2 times 2, which is $4,000,000. And even the last servant, the third servant, he gives the equivalent of $2,000,000 to him. We're talking about an extremely generous master. Now, let me remind you that we have an extremely generous God. I don't know. Sometimes we almost act like we're poor and poverty-stricken. And I know some of you, you really are struggling financially. I don't want to make fun of that. But even people who struggle financially in the United States are far beyond our brothers and sisters in Cuba. Right? Far beyond. People in Mongolia. My son has been in Mongolia for the last three weeks. He's coming back this week and he's sharing his pictures and telling us about it. The poorest person in our church is probably right up with some of the wealthiest people that Caleb's been with in Mongolia, just in what you have. There are many Mongolians, they don't have running water. You say, well, they have an outhouse, right? And every once in a while, they have to fill that one in and dig a new outhouse, because that one fills, I mean, it's just, that's the way it is. If you have running water in your house, you're better off than most of the Mongolians that we minister to when we are in Mongolia. God has been extremely generous to us. But it's not just the physical things that God's been generous to us, it's the spiritual things. That forgiveness that he gives us, that freedom from guilt. Now, if you've been a Christian a long time and you've learned to walk in the spirit, you should not experience a whole lot of guilt. But I remember when I experienced a whole lot of guilt, because I was guilty and I hadn't dealt with it. God takes all that away, doesn't he? That's generous. He forgives you. He doesn't say, when I come to God and I say, would you forgive me? He doesn't say, okay, but first you got to do penance. Now, if you come from a Roman Catholic background, that's exactly what they tell you. Well, we can forgive you, but you got to make up. God doesn't ask us to make up for it. We have an extremely generous God. The second thing I want you to notice about this master is he has intelligence and purpose in everything that he does. Look with me at verse 15. It says, under one he gave five talents to another two and to another one to every man according to his several ability. He gave the $10 million to the man who had the most ability. And he gave the $4 million to the man who had average ability. And he gave the $2 million to the man who he thought had the least amount of ability. Now, I don't know about you, but I sometimes I'm bothered that God doesn't give me more. And then I realized God gave me exactly what I needed to have to accomplish His will. If I can just refer to a person, it doesn't matter to me. But the reason that I'm not Paul Chappell is because God knows I'm not Paul Chappell. Praise the Lord for a man who builds a church of thousands. He has a Bible college. He's got a printing ministry. I pray for that man. But I'm not Paul Chappell. And if God wants you to go to church with Paul Chapel pastors, you should go to Lancaster, because I'm not Paul Chapel. I'm never going to be Paul Chapel. And notice that we're going to get to this more. I'm not going to develop this fully. But when it comes time to reckon with his servants, when it comes time to say, OK, let's let's settle up. He doesn't rebuke the man who only had four million dollars for only giving back four billion dollars, does he? He realizes this man has lived up to his potential. And he praises him. He says, well done, thou good and faithful servant. So if you feel like, well, I just don't have a whole lot of talents. And again, I'm now I'm talking about inborn ability. I just don't have a lot of things I can do. Or maybe the Lord has limited you physically. Or maybe the Lord has given you some responsibilities at home or at your work that you feel really keep you from being all the Christian, excelling at the Christian life that you want to have. You can trust God to give you what He wants you to have. And He's not going to ask me later on why I didn't start a Bible college. He's going to ask me what I did with the things that I had. So He's intelligent and He has a purpose. Here's a third thing that I noticed. In verse 19, after a long time, the Master, the Lord, is patient. He doesn't give him this money and come back a month later and say, Come on! Why would you have done more? He gives them a long time. And our God is so patient with us. One of the things that I remind myself as I'm dealing with people, whether it's my own family, if it's church members or people outside of our church, people need time. I've needed time. I'm glad people didn't judge me for where I was at at, name the age, right? I know sometimes we look at these young, younger people, I'm gonna call them young people, and they're in their 20s and we think, what are they thinking? Well, what were you thinking in your 20s? This master, he's generous and he's intelligent, he gives things with a purpose and he's patient. And if God can be patient with us, we can be patient with others. Look at the last thing, though, about this master. It's in verse 21. And again, in verse 23, it says this at the very end of both of those verses. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Now, joy of thy Lord. You know what that means? Number one, we serve a joyful God. The joy of thy Lord. The Lord is saying, the Master is saying to these servants, I have joy. I'm joyful. I want you to join me. That's the second thing. Number one, we serve a joyful God. And number two, He wants us to be joyful. These things, right? I unto you that your joy may be full. I like that. God wants me to be joyful. He wants you to be joyful. And there is no joy like the joy of serving God. Because the joy of serving God doesn't come with regrets. There have been some things I've done in my life that in the moment that I did it, seemed like a lot of fun. And then later on I was, oh man. But I've never done that with serving the Lord. The joy that he gives is not corrupted by later regret, consequences hurt people. leaving behind a wake of broken lives because I've been living selfishly. God's joy that he gives to his servants is not like that. So let's just go over the parables. I want to start there because we want to be a church that focuses on who God is. And we have a God, number one, he's generous. He's been generous to us. Number two, he's working with intelligent purpose. He knows who you are and he's given you just what you need to be the servant that he wants you to be. Boy, so many applications to that. Number three, he's patient. And number four, he's a God of joy. He wants you to be a Christian of joy. He wants you to be full of joy. So let's go back to this parable real quickly. The master, he's gonna go on a long journey. So before he leaves, he gives, and again, I'm just gonna use the million dollars because it helps me. He's gonna give $10 million to this guy. He's gonna give $4 million to this guy. And he's gonna give a million dollars to this guy. And after a long time he returns and the servant who received $10,000,000 has another $10,000,000. He now has $20,000,000 that he's earned, the Bible says, by trading. Now, how many of you have ever been in the type of trading wholesale retail work where you or your company purchases one item at a price and then resells it at a different price? Anyone been in that line of work? Okay. Now, would you say that that line of work is risky? Because sometimes you buy a product at a certain price, and it doesn't sell for that price later. Maybe nobody even wants it. You end up with a warehouse full of it. So there's a little bit of risk involved. And we're going to come back to this idea. But they earn this money in trading. The one man that's received $4 million, he's earned another $4 million. And when the master comes, he has $8 million to give the master. And when we come to the last servant, he's had a million dollars, he's had two of those gold bars given to him, and he took those gold bars, just small bars, 27 pounds of gold each, and he dug a hole in the earth, and he buried them in the earth, and when the master comes, he unburies them, he brushes them off, he probably sprays them down with some water, he cleans them up, and he says to the master, here's your million dollars back. That's all he has to offer. And to the first servant, The master says, well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is $10 million a few things? Not nearly, but you've been faithful over a few things. I will make the ruler over many things. That implies that whatever reward God, the master here, gives to the servant, it's more than the $20 million that he returns to him. Because if he's been faithful with a few things, $10 million, and now you're going to be Lord over many things, that reward's gonna be bigger. I love this thought. When we get to heaven, we are gonna be shocked and amazed at how generous God is with our rewards. We're gonna say, God, I didn't even earn that. He's gonna say, I know, go ahead, have it anyway. Because we serve a good God, and you're not going to out-give God. Young people, I know your whole life stretches out in front of you, and you think, boy, so many different things I can do. Investing your life for God's cause, for the sake of the gospel, pays huge dividends. Now, yeah, you may not get them all on this side of eternity, but trust me, on the other side of eternity, you get to enjoy them forever. I'm going to tell a little different parable. This is my own creation. It's not from the Bible, but it has some of the same truths of the Bible. Imagine that you have a fella, and he owns one of these warehouses over in Fairfield. You ever been down Highway 12 in that area? There's all those little warehouses and manufacturing spots. And he owns a warehouse over there, and what he has filled it with is he's filled it mostly with antiques. And things that are very rare, not just your standard manufactured goods, put them on a shelf, sell them by the box, but he's invested in centuries-old grandfather clocks, and he's got Tiffany lamps in there, and he's got furniture from the time of King Louis, the whatever, the one that's really expensive. He's got a warehouse full of stuff. Now he does have a little shop there next to the warehouse where people go in and they can buy, but people also get online and they're looking through the different items that he has and they can order them online and get them shipped to them all over the world. This guy owns this place and he's got about a half a dozen people that work there. Some of them work in the store. Some of them work in the warehouse. And one day he says, listen, I'm going to open up a new branch. I'm going to open up a new branch in New York, and I'm going to leave you guys here to run this part of the business. You've got all this warehouse full of stuff. You've got a shop here. You've got an online store. I'm going to leave you here to run the shop while I go to New York. And I'm going to start a new branch, and then I'll be back. So he leaves for New York. And it takes him a little bit longer than he expects. So he doesn't come back, let's say, for five years. And when he comes back in five years to his shop down in Sassoon, and he first arrives, he notices that the parking lot is just swept clean. It is so nice. It looks like nobody ever parks there. And he looks through the windows, and the windows are washed. And the windows are so clean. I mean, they've spent a lot of time cleaning the windows. And he goes into the shop, and everything is just, the shop looks immaculate. But there's one problem. It doesn't look like they've moved a lot of product. The shop looks good. I mean, they've done a good job. But they haven't moved a lot of product. And he says to one of the employees there, he says, you know what? How much have you sold recently? He said, well, you know, we haven't really, we haven't really been selling much. We've been keeping the shop clean. And, you know, look, we painted this wall. Don't you like the color of that wall? And the master says, now, now, wait a minute, I left you here to sell things. You're not selling anything. He goes into the warehouse. And the warehouse is still stocked full of stuff. And he hasn't sent new product. There's a few items missing, but mostly stocked full of stuff. He gets online. He gets on his cell phone. He starts scrolling through his website. And he sees all of these complaints in the comments. I ordered a Tiffany lamp and it wasn't shipped to me for three months. Or I ordered a grandfather clock and it arrived damaged. And so all of a sudden he realizes we haven't been selling a whole lot of stuff because the stockroom people haven't been doing their job. So he goes to the stockroom people and he says, hey, well, what in the world is going on here? He said, well, as soon as you left, we decided we were going to renovate our offices. They were so run down and we just it was really important to us to be able to work out of a out of a nice office. So why don't you come see the beautiful offices? Now, do you think that owner would be pleased or displeased? that his workers, his employees, he had left them with everything they needed for a successful company. All they had to do was work the system that he had set up. All they had to do was sell the product that he had left them. That's all they had to do. But instead of selling product, they're busy renovating the offices, cleaning the windows, keeping the parking lot swept. It's not that they were doing anything evil. They just weren't doing the right thing. And I think a lot of times as Christians, we find ourselves in the same boat where we're very busy. Don't misunderstand, you're busy. A few of you aren't, but most of you are really busy. But are you busy about the right things? Are you busy about things that are really gonna matter for eternity? When we were in Mongolia, we'd been there about four years, and so we're getting ready to take a furlough. And for the last about year and a half, we've been working with another couple. So there were two of us, my wife and I, we had some children, this family and they had some children. We were working on getting our church planted and we were just maybe, maybe two weeks, it was not very long before we left for our first furlough. When this family, family number two came to us and said, you know what? We're thinking about leaving the mission field. I said, well, that's very interesting. I said, just right now? Yeah. I said, well, could you wait one year? You know, we're going to be gone for about a year. We'd already planned the furlough. We bought tickets. I mean, literally, we were about two weeks out. He said, no, no. I think we're going to leave a lot sooner than that. I said, well, maybe there's somebody else that can help you for a few months, and you can get then trained, and then when you leave the mission field, they can take over. He said, yeah, I'll work on that. So sure enough, about three, four months after we left the mission field, the second family, family number two, also left the mission field. But before they left, they grabbed family number three. Family number two and family number three worked at, we had about, oh, I don't know, 15 or 20 people coming regularly on a Sunday when we left, and they were gonna work with this little group of people. And then family two left, and then family three left. And when family three left, before we even returned, they left it with family number four. And so when we showed up from our first furlough, we showed up on a, well, I don't remember exactly what day of the week it is. We showed up and we first went to family number four. We knew them vaguely from other things. And we said, what has been going on with the church? And they said, well, nobody's been coming. We said, oh, that's sad. Yeah, but we painted our apartment. I'm serious, I said that. Now, it was a good thing that the Holy Spirit had a hold on my heart because I felt like punching the guy. We've got 15 or 20 people. We left you with people. You don't have to go find anyone. We left you with people to minister to. And you've been busy painting your apartment instead of knocking on some people's doors and saying, hey, we missed you on Sunday. Are you okay? We love you. Can we come to your house and teach you? And I think that's a true story. That true story is sometimes analogous to what we're doing as Christians. We're busy painting our apartment instead of reaching out to people. Now, I paint my house. We're planning to paint the church. Please, please, paint your house. Don't misunderstand and think that I'm against painting. That's not the point. The point is, don't paint when you should be out ministering to people. That's what I'm saying. What are some lessons that we can learn from this parable? Well, lesson number one, and if this is the only lesson you take away tonight, lesson number one, there is a coming day of judgment. There's a coming day of judgment. I also taught in Mongolia, and it just would crack me up. It wasn't funny, but I didn't know how else to respond. We'd work for a whole semester trying to learn. My job was to teach them conversational English. They had other people that were teaching them the grammar. All they had to do was do their best to speak English to me, and they would refuse day after day after day to speak any English to me. And I can't force them, you know, I wasn't gonna beat them up or anything. So they just sit there, no, I don't wanna try, no, no, no, no, no. And of course they do this in Mongolian. And then we get about two weeks before the test and they'd say, you know, I've got a test coming up, what can I do to pass your class? I'd say, well, it's pretty late right now. Not a whole lot you can do. Folks, don't wait till you're 60 years old and say, what can I do for the Lord? You may not make 60. But number two, what about all those other years? There's a coming judgment, and we read this morning in Ecclesiastes, we read this morning in Ecclesiastes, that if you're young, yes, enjoy life, but remember that God's going to ask you for an accounting of those days. Now again, we serve a God who's a God of joy, and He invites us to enter into His joy, but He invites us to enter into His joy by serving Him, not by doing what pleases me in the moment. There is a coming judgment. Everyone gets judged. Revelation 20 tells us that those whose name was not written in the Lamb's Book of Life are cast into the lake of fire. I hope that everyone in this room this evening, who's old enough to understand what I'm saying, understands there's a coming day of judgment. And if you are not in the Lamb's book of life, the books are gonna be opened and you're going to be judged according to your works, the Bible says. And the problem is none of our works measure up. Nobody's, God's not going to look into the book for anyone and say, oh yeah, you're pretty good. You can enter into the joy of your Lord. But there's also a second judgment, and this one's in 2 Corinthians chapter five. Sometimes we call it the Bema seat judgment. I like to call it the judgment seat of Christ. Let me read to you 2 Corinthians 5.10. For we, this is Paul speaking, and he's speaking to Christians, and he says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. This is not the great white throne judgment that I just talked about. where we have people whose names are not in the Lamb's Book of Life. That's the Great White Throne Judgment. This judgment is for those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. And yet in 2 Corinthians 5.10, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. What that means is there's a day of reckoning, of judgment, coming for God's children also. Now, I don't want to scare any of you, because you are not in danger of hellfire, because God is a good God, and He's merciful, and we can praise Him for that. But 1 Corinthians 3, verses 13 through 15, I'm just going to let you read those later. 1 Corinthians 3, 13 and following, tells us that, he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. His things, wood, hay, and stubble, they're going to be burned up. Imagine, imagine living your entire life. God blesses you with 80, 85, 90 years of life, and you get to the end of that, and you are saved because God is good, because Jesus died for you, because he rose again, you're saved. You get before the judgment seat of Christ, and everything you've done in those 80 or 85 years is wood, hair, stubble, and it's all burned up, and there's nothing left. How disappointing. there's going to be Christians. On the other hand, there's going to be Christians you and I have never heard about. Their name isn't written down in some book about missions. It's not been broadcast on television. They never had a Twitter account. But theirs, their works are gold and silver and precious stones. And they're going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, maybe only having lived five years as a Christian, maybe only having lived 10 years as a Christian. But when the fire tries their works, there's going to be something that remains. And that's far more important than being well-known. It's far more important than being written about in a book or becoming a famous Christian. Number one, the first lesson we learn from this parable is that judgment is coming. Second thing we learn from this parable is that you are not going to have a valid excuse. It says right here that the third man, he said, I knew, let me pick it up in verse 24. Lord, I knew thee, that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not strawed. And I was afraid. He says, I knew that if I went out and I traded, remember I talked about that element of risk. He said, I might've taken that $2 million. those two bars of gold and converted them to some sort of money, and I would have spent the money on a product, and I would have tried to sell the product. I might not have been able to sell the product. I might have lost your money, and I knew you were a hard man, and I didn't want to lose your money. So I went and I hid the $2 million in the ground, and now, here, you get your $2 million back. You know what? The master is not impressed with his excuse. He doesn't say, well, yeah, I understand. He doesn't say that. Now, I don't know. It doesn't say, well, let me get to that in a minute. Here's the point. Your excuses are not gonna do any good when you stand before God. That goes for the great white throne too. I am sure there are gonna be people who are gonna try to wag their finger at God and say, but you weren't fair to me. God's fair. God's just. We know that. There's going to be people at the judgment seat of Christ, Christians. But you didn't give me what you gave to him. Remember what I said earlier, God has intelligent purpose. Some of us, and I thank the Lord for the good family I grew up with. Not all of us, all of you grew up in good families. And you might say, well, if I just had a good family, then I could do more for God. You know, God knows that. And God chose your parents, just the parents He wanted you to have. Some of you are on the other end, you're thinking, boy, if it weren't for my children, I could really serve God. Listen, God picked the children you have, and He knows exactly the children you have, and He gave them to you for a purpose. And He's not going to ask you later, why didn't you serve me like so-and-so served me? He's not going to ask that. When that man came back with $8,000,000, $4,000,000 he'd been given, he'd worked hard, he'd added $4,000,000, he came back with $8,000,000, the master did not say to him, why didn't you earn $10,000,000 like he did? Didn't say that, did he? Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Don't focus, when it comes to these excuses, don't focus on what you don't have, focus on what God's given you. Where are you at right now? And how can you go forward from there with what God's given you? But here's the third thing that we can learn from this parable. And I was sort of surprised as I contemplated this third lesson. Frankly, I was surprised because the third lesson doesn't sit well with conservative Americans. The third lesson is God wants you to take some risks. Now, I don't know about you. I don't like to take risks. You know, I don't invest my money at Cash Creek. That's the casino, right? You go down there, let's roll the big dice. I'm afraid I'll lose it. I don't even like to buy individual stocks. I have a little tiny bit of money I'm saving for the future. I don't like to buy individual stocks. Something might happen to those, right? But what does this master say to the one who took risks by trading? He took risks. And he turned $10 million into $20 million. He says, well done. And to the man who took risks and turned $4 million into $8 million, well done. And to the man who was conservative and he didn't lose his master's money, you wicked and slothful servant. Now, I wonder, the parable doesn't tell us, what if the master would have given somebody, let's say, $2 million, and he would have lost half of it, but he would have tried, right? He went out and he did some trading, but he was sort of stupid and he lost some money, and he comes back to the master and says, well, you gave me $2 million, but I only have $1 million left, I was working hard. I don't know, the Bible doesn't tell us, but I believe God is merciful. And because God is merciful, I think God wants some of us, me included, to take some more risks. Now I'm not talking about stupid stuff like, say what it is to drive a motorcycle down I-80 at 120 miles an hour. No, no, no. I'm talking about risks for God's glory. I don't know about you, some of the people that I have a hard time talking to about Jesus are people that are closest to me. Because it's one thing to tell somebody who's a complete stranger, and I'm never probably going to see them again. And it's something else to tell someone who's my next door neighbor, and I've got to see him again. And I don't know about you, but sometimes when it comes time to talk to my neighbor about Jesus, and I know that that's what God wants me to do, I say, you know what? He won't listen to me. So let me just hide this talent in the earth. Well, but he's told me before he's a Buddhist. So let me just put this talent in the earth. Maybe we need to take some risks and be a little bit bolder about speaking for Jesus Christ. Some of us need to take a risk and be more vulnerable with our spouse and just admit you're wrong. Because I know, to tell, here's Javan, if I say to Javan, hey Javan, I'm wrong, that's one thing. But to tell my wife I'm wrong, that's hard. Because I don't like to admit she's right. I like to be the one who's right. You know, sometimes you need to take some risks and just say to your spouse, you're right, I was wrong. You say, but they'll hold it against me. You know, let that be between them and God. Why don't you just admit the truth and just say to your spouse, hey, I blew it. Shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have done that, or should have done that, should have said that. Why did you take that risk? I think God's asking some of us to give more to Him in the offering. I don't know who it is. I know what God's dealt with me about. And you say, but if I give to the Lord, I won't have enough for me. Trust me, you can never out-give God. Now, I'm not asking you to give money that God is not asking you to give. But if God's asking you to give a little bit more in the offering, or give a lot more in the offering, give what God asks you to give. Take a risk. See, God says, try me. Prove me and see if I won't open the windows of heaven and pull out a blessing that's so great you won't be able to receive it. Maybe you need to take that risk. Some of us need to take a risk and tell an adult child, you know, living the way you're living is not pleasing to the Lord. It's not going to lead you to joy and fulfillment. I had that conversation recently with one of my children, and it was hard, because I love my children. I love my children. But it was an appropriate time, and the conversation was going in a particular direction. And I just said to this child, I said, listen, as long as you persist in not serving the Lord, you're not going to find what you're looking for. You say, well, if I tell my child that, they're never going to talk to me again. Why don't you take that risk? I mean, if the Lord's leading you, again, I'm not asking you to be crazy. I'm asking you to listen to what the Holy Spirit's leading you to do and stop arguing with God and just take that risk. I think some of us need to take a risk and go to the mission field. I don't know exactly what that looks like because the mission field can be right here. Right here in Vacaville, we meet people from Afghanistan, We meet people who say they're Baha'i. You say, I don't even know what Baha'i are. It's a religion. They say they're Baha'i. We meet people who say they're Muslims. Maybe you need to take that risk and say, God, you're calling me to this particular ministry. I'm going to do it. I commend John Custer for taking a risk. He and I talked through a lot of this together, and sometimes I sort of shook my head thinking, OK, well, Go ahead, roll the dice, John. And he rolled them. And God said, yes, that's what I want you to do. I'm speaking figuratively. He did not roll any dice, okay, but we weren't trying to decide God's will by rolling dice. Don't misunderstand. Yeah, we cast a lot. We drew shots. But he took a risk. We all have our excuses, but the excuses, they get rebuked. The two guys who took a risk, they get praised? What risk is God asking you to take? Are you ready for coming judgment? Are you investing in eternity? Much better than investing in mutual funds, ETL, whatever. Much better than the best stock you can own right now is investing in eternity. Father in heaven, thank you for this parable. It's a good reminder to me that you want us to be wise. And sometimes you ask us to do things that seem risky. We're not sure how it's going to turn out. And we can paint our apartment, or we can go out and meet people where they're at. We can redo the offices in the warehouse, or we can work on pushing product out the door. We can sweep the parking lot, or we can look to sell the product you've left us. And we're asking, Father, to be cooperative with what you're doing. We're not seeking glory for ourselves. We don't need to be famous. I don't need to be Paul Chappell, praise the Lord. We're just asking you, as you direct us, as you put on our hearts, we're asking you to soften our hearts so we say, yes, Lord, here am I, send me. Father, if you're calling someone from Elmira Baptist Church to missions, whether it's a young one, someone who's getting ready to go to camp, or someone who's older. Soften that person's heart so they say, yes, Lord, send me. If you're working on a husband, you're working on a wife, about being candid and honest with their spouse, may they too have a soft heart and say, yes, Lord, I'll say that, I'll do that, I'll admit that, Father, if you're working on a child, teenager, maybe an adult child, struggling with a parent, and you know that they need to go to their parent and make things right, and they don't want to. We don't like to, but we're wrong. Lord, I understand that, but would you soften their heart so they take that risk? Father, we don't want to take risks for our own glory. We don't want to take risks so that we look big. We want to take risks because you're worth taking risks for. We want to take risks because we want to glorify you. We want to take risks because you deserve to be exalted and magnified and glorified in our community. So Father, as you lead me, as you lead us, may we not worry about what's going to happen today as much as we worry about investing in eternity. May we not be as concerned about our May we not be as concerned about our retirement plan in this life as we are our retirement plan in eternity. And we are so grateful and we praise you that you are a generous God who looks to bless your people, who looks to say, enter in to the joy of your Lord. We look forward to that day, as Fannie Crosby saying, when we will see your smile, when we'll put our hand on the prince of the nails in Jesus' hand, and we'll recognize in a new and a fuller way just how much you've done for us. Until that day, Lord, we ask that we be motivated by our love for you to try to attempt great things for you. And we ask this in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.