Faithful and Wise Waiting

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Don Filcek; Matthew 24:45-51 Faithful and Wise Waiting

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called
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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Welcome to Recast Church.
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I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. And I missed you guys all very much last week. How many of you enjoyed Easter? You had a good
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Easter, Easter week? Good for you. I'm glad. It was, I'm just really grateful for your grace in my life in terms of being understanding about things like a pastor being gone on Easter Sunday seems almost like pastoral malpractice to some degree.
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But my son only has one senior year and only one senior spring break, and he wanted to go with his dad on a trip.
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And so we went last week and had a really good time. We went to Omaha, Portland, and Anchorage.
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So it was really cool to get out there and see some of the nation out there and stuff. And so we had a good trip.
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And I'm really thankful for Bill Smith being willing to open the word for us. I'm glad that we have other people in the church who are able to bring the word.
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Bill Smith has been here for years at this church, and so really glad that he was able to bring Easter message.
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I had a chance to listen in to that and enjoyed it very much. So here at Recast, those of you that have been around for a while, you know this.
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We talk about a simple model for maturity here. Simplicity is one of the core values. And what we mean by simplicity is that we believe in just really basically three simple things that you need to be growing in.
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You need increasing in your life to define yourself as mature in your walk with God.
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And that is that you need to be in an ongoing process of growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.
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What we mean by that is that we believe that a person who is trusting God more and more, a person who is being stretched to love others in the body of Christ more and more, and who is growing in the skill of using their spiritual gift to serve the body is a person who is in the spiritual sweet spot of what
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God desires for you. And remember that the word growing there is significant. So it's not just that you have faith, that you are in community, or that you serve, but it's that you're growing in those areas.
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And so that's what we mean by maturity here, and it's a quite simple process or program. This morning our text is going to hit heavy on that concept of growing in service.
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That's kind of really the heart of this message and something that's fundamental to all of us. I don't want to be heavy -handed, but Jesus kind of is on this subject.
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And so as you see it, you're going to, I think that as you understand this text, it's going to be eye -opening for some of us to actually recognize what it is that God is calling us to through this text in regard to serving one another.
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And so we're still in a portion of the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus is talking about end times, and so it's a little bit weird to be zeroing in on service in the here and now as we think about the end times.
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But in talking about His return, Jesus will tell us what He expects us to be doing when
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He returns. Does anybody have a guess? Are you starting to put the pieces together? What might Jesus say we ought to be doing when
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He returns? Well, we'll see it here, and He's going to let us have it with it. He's going to be very direct with us.
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Do any of you relate to this experience, though, kind of as we think and get ready to read this text together? I remember waiting for my aunt and uncle and grandpa and grandma to arrive at Christmas as a little kid.
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Do any of you remember, like, sitting and waiting for family members to arrive? Anybody with me on that?
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Can you relate to waiting for someone to show up, okay, at least that much? My sister and I would sit in the front window.
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We each had a little chair there, and we would sit and we would wait and wait and wait, and my aunt and uncle were notoriously late, like, always an hour after they said they were going to arrive.
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So we would sit there, and this is, of course, before cell phones. You couldn't text ahead and say, I'm on my way, I got delayed, or whatever.
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So, I mean, we were just waiting and waiting and waiting, excruciating as a young child, of course, to wait for anything, and we knew presents were on the way and all of that stuff, and so I'm sure you have similar recollections of eagerly waiting at the window for someone to arrive.
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So far in this section of Matthew, Jesus has told His followers to live with that kind of an urgent expectancy, with a waiting kind of mindset, that expectancy like a child at the window watching, but He has no desire for us to wait like my sister and I did at the front window.
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He has no expectation that we're going to be sitting there at that window watching the driveway for His arrival.
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He has other desires for us in the meantime. Jesus here tells a parable in our text this week that shows us what
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He expects from His people while we are waiting with expectancy for Him to show up. And so if you're not already there, turn in your
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Bibles or your apps or on your device, navigate over to Matthew chapter 24, verses 45 through 51.
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Again, Matthew 24, verses 45 through 51. And recast, this is
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God's Word. When understood correctly, when we take this on and we believe it, it will change us.
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And my heart's desire and prayer for all of us is that we're changed because we hear this.
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We're changed in the way that we view God and in the way that we view each other and the responsibility that He's called us to. So listen in with a heart to let
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God transform you. Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time?
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Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.
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Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, my master is delayed and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that house will come on a day when he does not expect him, and in an hour he does not know, and will cut him to pieces and put him with the hypocrites.
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In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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Let's pray. Father, we come to you from a variety of different circumstances this week.
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Some have been really busy. Some have had a little bit more chill. Some have been stressed to the max, and others this has been a good week.
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Some have heard bad news this week, and that's been the overall tone of their week, and some have received good news, and it's been pretty upbeat and encouraging.
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Father, I pray that you would meet us all individually where we're at. I know this isn't going to be necessarily a feel -good message, but it's a message that we all need.
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I'm confident that you can speak to every heart here and meet us right where we are. Father, I thank you for the call that you have given to us, a responsibility, a duty, a calling and an ability and gifts and talents to serve one another.
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And Father, I pray that the outpouring of this message through your spirit would be to speak this message into every heart so that we all understand that we have a role to play, and that we would get busy with that role.
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I pray that you would transform our hearts, open our eyes through this text this morning in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Okay. Well, a quick reminder to keep your Bibles and your apps open to this text,
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Matthew 24 verses 45 through 51, so that you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from Jesus.
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This is not me making this up. This is not me as a pastor saying, oh, you guys need to serve more. This is
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Jesus talking to us, and I want you to see that. I want to make sure that you've got that in front of you. And then, as I say every week, if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, if you need to caffeinate, that's available back there.
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But whatever it takes to keep our focus as much as possible on God's Word during the remainder of our time together.
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Jesus just told his disciples, to set a little bit of context here of what's going on when we get to the very end of Matthew 24.
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He's told his disciples to be ready because they do not know the hour or the day of his return. That's just a couple of weeks ago we talked about that.
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And now he introduces another aspect to this readiness by telling a parable of two types of servants.
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He's going to talk about, in contrast, two types of people, two types of servants.
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And he begins by asking us all a question. Who then is the faithful and wise servant?
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Who is the faithful and wise? How many of you want to be faithful, want to be known as faithful? And keep your hand up if you want to be also known as wise.
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Okay? You want to be known as faithful and wise. Those are good traits, right? That's a good thing. So how can you tell that a servant is full of faith and full of trust in his master?
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How can you tell that a person is wise in their service when God has set them over his household and given them a role to play in his household, he's asking.
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And I hope you can already, here at the start of this text, begin to feel the heart of Jesus in this question.
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The disciples, by the way, are the ones who started the conversation. Way back in verse three of chapter 24, they asked him a question.
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They started by asking him when he's going to return and what will be the sign of the end of the age, when he's going to start his new kingdom.
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When are you going to do this? When are you going to wrap all of the kingdoms of this world up and start your own
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Jesus? And Jesus has basically told them in many words over the entire chapter 24, where you can go back and listen to those messages.
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But over the course of this whole chapter, he said, don't worry about when. It's going to be the first question that everybody's going to want to ask.
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Jesus knows that. He knows that your curiosity is primarily centered on the question, when are you going to return?
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And he says, don't worry about that. Instead, he's going to hear spell out to us, live in a way that is always ready.
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He's been kind of pointing to that all of chapter 24. Live in a way that is always ready for me to show up at any moment.
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And now he is asking them, what does it look like? Now he's going to put some flesh on that. He's given us the skeleton of kind of the view of the end times, but now what does it look like to wait with faithfulness and wisdom?
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How many of you want to be found faithful when he returns? How many of you want to be determined to be wise in the way that you've used and spent this very life?
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How many of you know that there's a wise way to spend your days, there's an unwise way to spend your days? Did you already know that? We already knew that.
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So what does it look like to spend our days and so our days in wisdom, in faithfulness? Well in the text he begins with a parable and he talks about a specific kind of servant.
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Now this isn't a real servant, a real flesh and blood person here. He's telling a story and using an illustration.
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But he uses a servant who's high up in the pecking order in verse 45 and it's obvious by the context that the master has left.
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But he's left this guy with some responsibility. The servant is responsible. He's the one that's responsible for giving all of the other servants their food portions at the proper time.
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He is like the butler of the house, caring for the other servants. He's the Mr. Cosson of Downton Abbey.
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For any one of you who remember that show, there's a picture that reminds you exactly what the show is about right there, Downtown Abbey.
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So if you watch that show, you know all about that boom box there, right? But, you know, a little joke for a little
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Downton Abbey humor here. But don't limit your understanding then to only those who are over others.
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This is, he's talking about a servant here. He's still at the end of the day talking about one of his servants. He's talking about a servant that he's given some specific responsibility.
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He's speaking to his disciples here in the text and he sees all who follow him as responsible to minister to the needs of others.
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All who claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ are responsible to serve others.
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Did you hear that? All who call themselves a follower of Jesus Christ are called to serve his body, his people.
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All. The faithful and wise servant is the one who is discharging that duty, that responsibility when the master returns.
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And the person who's found doing so, he says in the text emphatically, will be blessed, is blessed.
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The one who is doing what the master has left them to do will be deeply blessed when the master returns.
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Now, how many of you here have ever either A, you have left a list for a child to do?
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Anybody here in that category? You have left a list for one of your kids to accomplish. Or on the flip side of that, how many of you have ever been left a list to accomplish?
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I think that ought to cover all of us. All of us have either been left a list or have left somebody else a list of things to do.
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Anybody ever show up, have your authority show up and your list wasn't accomplished? Or any of you ever show up and the person you left the responsibility to, it wasn't accomplished?
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I think this is something that we can all relate to here. This is a story that Jesus is telling about normal everyday life.
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All of us can relate to it. And Jesus is using it as a foundational principle for the way that we are to live in the here and now.
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We are to live in such a way that understands and believes that we've been left responsibility, we've been left stuff to do as followers of our
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Lord and our master. We are servants of the Lord and our master who has left for a season and he has given us assignments to accomplish.
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And he will return. And all of this discussion, of course, by the way, presupposes that you acknowledge
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Jesus as your Lord and master. We can't even really dive into this any deeper than this level right now.
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If he is not your Lord and master, then why would you follow him? Why would you obey him? Why would you even understand? So this message, at the end of the day, is for those who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ.
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Those who have come to faith in him, have recognized him as Lord and Savior, have recognized what he's done on the cross for us, and we are glad to call him
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Lord. Anybody need to testify right now and just raise your hand and say, I am glad to call Jesus Christ my Lord.
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Then this is a message that makes sense to you. It's going to make sense one way or another. Either it's going to make sense in terms of conviction or it's going to make sense in terms of what you're already doing, but it's got to make sense.
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If you are ready to follow him, he's going to tell you what to do. If you're ready and eager to call him
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Lord and master, then he is the one who has the right to call the shots, and here he's calling some shots. He's going to tell us some things to do.
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You understand what's going on here if you love him and know what it means to be loved by him.
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By the way, if you're here and that's not you, you're here because you're listening to it, but if that's not you and you're going,
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I don't really acknowledge him as my Lord and master. I'm here just checking things out. Then I would love to talk with you about what it means to start a relationship with him whereby he is both your
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Lord and he is your King, he is your Lord, he is your master, but also your Savior. You see, the beauty is that it's not just our
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King who sits on his throne and boom, boom, do this, don't do that, but he's loved us.
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That's what the cross is about, is his great and awesome love in purchasing us and bringing us forgiveness and hope for eternal life.
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Well, further, Jesus shows us in all these presuppositions of this parable that he does indeed have responsibilities for his followers to complete.
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He has expectations on those who are in his household. I hope that's not new to you, but it very well might be.
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But he has a desire, he has things that he desires each individual here to accomplish, and he's not just telling you to do it, but he's equipped you and he's given you what you need to do the things that he ...
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He's given you gifts, he's given you talents, he's given you abilities. Some of those are untapped, they're unmined right now, but they're there and he desires for you to step into them, to lean into them, to discover them, to practice them, to hone them, to grow in service.
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We are not, in this text, at all called to a living room window where we wait for the
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Lord to return. Maybe one eye on Netflix while the other eye's on the driveway, just kind of clicking through, got to binge watch these shows, right?
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We are called to a responsibility within his household. We are called, gifted, equipped, and commissioned to the responsibility, to a responsibility by our
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Lord to be servants to his body. What is his body? Look around. No, I'm being serious, look around.
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This is his body. One another, church, this is us serving each other.
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What a glorious and beautiful calling. The man in the illustration Jesus gives is called to a specific task.
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Sure, serving food to the other servants, but this is merely a metaphor for the service he calls all of us to in his church.
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Some will literally serve food, some will literally be back there doing the coffee and the donuts in the morning or helping us out with a potluck from time to time, which
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I'm really looking forward to get back to those, get back to church picnics and stuff like that, eating meals together, looking forward to the day when we can do that.
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Hopefully that's soon, but it's metaphorical here, the serving of food is just the task that Jesus chooses to give to the illustration, to the servant in the illustration, but it could be anything.
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And in the context of looking forward to his coming, he says, you've got nothing to worry about if you are a willing servant of the master, doing what he has left you to do when he returns.
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In other words, we want to ask when, when, when, and a lot of times the motivation for when, the question when, is not a good motivation.
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It kind of amounts to how much can I get away with before he gets back? It's often the case, right?
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Like the question when comes from all kinds of motives, but at the end of the day, they're not all great.
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And I would suggest to you that most of them are not good. But think of it this way, from a different perspective.
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It doesn't matter when the master returns if you serve him, if you're serving him.
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If you're discharging the duty and the responsibility that he's given you and you're using his gifts and his talents to serve his people, great, hopefully he comes back today.
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You're not going to worry that much about it. The disciples were concerned for when and how, how will we know that you're coming back and what will be the sign?
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And Jesus says, if you serve me well, it's going to be fine for you when I return. Just keep serving and leaving the timing up to God the
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Father. He's the one who knows. He's got a plan. He's working it. Great. And in verse 47,
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Jesus speaks of rewards at his return for those who are faithfully doing what they've been called to do.
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They will be given greater trust by their master, according to verse 47. And by the way, I would suggest to you that to our fallen ears, this may just sound like more work.
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How many of you are like, oh goody, more work? Right? Like, if I do a really good job here, then he'll give me more responsibility.
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How many of you love that? Like, it's like, maybe I'll just not take the promotion and keep doing the thing, right?
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But to be equipped by God and entrusted by him with more, that's an amazing, glorious, profound privilege, especially when you consider it's after his return in a world without sin.
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How many of you would like to serve more in a world without sin? Anybody with me on that?
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I think we all could agree. And we will experience, we certainly experience stress here and now in a way that we will never experience it in his new kingdom.
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I would rather shepherd 100 ,000 on the new earth than 250 in the here and now.
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Now, I love being a shepherd. I love this church. I love you guys. And I mean that sincerely.
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But how many of you knew that we're a fallen people in a fallen world? Did you know that? That gets messy.
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We all get messy. And by the way, don't at all let that interfere with the need that we have in my role for you to let me enter into that with you.
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That's part of what I signed up for. That's part of what I'm put together to do. So, if you're going through it, man,
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I would love to go through it with you in the early months of the problems and struggles in your marriage than to find out a year later we've given up.
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And often, unfortunately, that's the case. No, I want to enter into it early with you. If you're going through it, then set up an appointment and let me sit down and talk with you now.
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Not when you think it's too late. You get what I'm saying on that? And whatever that issue might be, it just often happens to be marriages.
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It often happens to be, boy, we've gone through a year of pandemic here and we've had to live together really close.
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A year. We realize that it's nice to go to work sometimes. So, and we laugh about it, but it's a mess out there.
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It is a mess. How many of you know somebody whose marriage is on the rocks right now? Anybody? I think all of us do. Because we have not sought each other out.
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We've not been accountable to one another. We haven't even been really using our gifts and the blessings that God gives us to enter into those things together.
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We are a fallen people in a fallen world. But in verses 48 through 51, this is where the dark side of the coin comes in.
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So far, he's talked about the faithful and wise servant. Now he's going to talk about the wicked servant in the latter part, contrasting these two by way of parable.
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If the servant is wicked, that is proving themselves, I think the opposite, the contrast to the wicked would be faithless and unwise.
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He's talked about the wise servant, the one who is wise and faithful. So now he's contrasting that with a wicked servant who is faithless and unwise, and he tries to take advantage of the master's absence, and he says that's going to go very poorly for that servant.
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Now, to clear something up right here at the start, some of your minds might be racing a little bit like, wait a minute.
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These are two servants in the same household. Are they not in the household of God? And so then we begin to, in our minds, wonder, are these two believers?
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Are these two believers who are serving the master, and then one of them falls away and gets cut to pieces and consigned to weeping and gnashing of teeth?
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When you read this, you're kind of like, which way does this go? How in the world could this be?
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If they're both in the household and they're both servants of God or whatever in a generic way, but I don't believe that everyone who comes into the household, think household like this, household, the church, household, the followers, the ones who call themselves followers of God, the gathering of the family of God.
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Not everyone who gathers and calls themselves a child of God is a true disciple or a true follower of the master.
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That's a theme, by the way, a significant theme. All throughout the New Testament, we find warnings about those who would come in among God's people, look like God's people, and would not be
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God's people, would not love him, would not have a genuine allegiance to the master.
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And we see that spelled out here pretty clearly. Paul, throughout the New Testament, calls them wolves in sheep's clothing.
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Jesus calls them weeds sown among the wheat. But whatever you call them, they ought to be an expectation in church life.
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It ought to be an expectation. It's so common in the New Testament. It's such a, I would almost call it mega -theme.
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Be watchful for false teachers. Be watchful for wolves in sheep's clothing. Be watching and cautious and careful.
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Well, here we have a wicked servant, play -acting, I would say, play -acting the part of servant.
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And I don't use that phrase lightly. I believe that play -acting is the right way to say it. They are pretending to be in with God.
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And I say play -acting or pretending in part because of the very words of Jesus here in the text that consigns them to condemnation among the hypocrites.
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And he uses the word hypocrite here, the Greek word for actor. He says they'll be consigned to condemnation among the actors, those who have been pretending to play as though they are my children.
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In other words, Jesus has a category of faithful servant and wicked pretend servant. And the wicked pretender sees that the master is delayed.
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And even the word delayed, by the way, in the text is interesting because it demonstrates that Jesus at least had some level of expectation that time would pass before his return and that time would go long enough that people would be able to take advantage of it.
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So there's some kind of indication that Jesus did add some expectation that it was going to be a while, at least long enough to be abused.
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And the wicked servant says to himself, Master's been gone a long time. How many of you would say that right now?
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Master's been gone a long time. He's been gone a whole long, long, long time.
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I can get away then would be the wicked servant's attitude toward that would be I can get away with whatever I want.
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I'm not going to have to give an account anytime soon. And I think it's very helpful to see in verse 48 that the wicked servant says this to himself.
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Look at the text at verse 48. But if that wicked servant says to himself, my master is delayed.
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And I just want to point out that often poor intentions are held in the inner counsel of our own hearts. We're smart enough to not share them with others.
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We're smart enough to have a dialogue in our head about evil and wicked and not let it out.
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That is precisely the way that a wolf can come in among the sheep. That's precisely the way that a weed grows among the wheat.
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It looks the same. By the way, just to clarify, church, we are to be a receiving and loving and trusting people.
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We are to be a receiving and loving and trusting people. We are not to stand at the door and say,
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Sheep or wolf? How many of you know that it's pretty easy to get in the doors here on a
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Sunday morning? We even greet you. We're glad to see you. And we are to be a trusting people.
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And it would be very rare for a false disciple then. We're pretty prone. We're pretty open.
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We're pretty open to this kind of abuse. And it's quite possible. It's very rare for a false teacher or false disciple or one of these kind of wicked servants to introduce themselves.
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Hi. Hi. I'm Blake. I'm a ravenous wolf. I would like to burn this church to the ground. I'd like to destroy it, tear the people apart.
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How are you doing today? People don't do that, right? That's not common.
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That's not the way that it works. By the way, if that is you, I would welcome that kind of blunt conversation. Come and talk with me afterwards.
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Introduce me to your intentions. I would love it. Be a lively conversation.
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But seriously, the false wicked servant who really has no respect for the master, and you could see it in the text, no respect for the master whatsoever, no desire to do his bidding, no real love for his household, all the way to the degree of abusing and beating up the other servants.
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He begins to beat them and assault them. And I think Jesus has in mind literally physical abuse because he's telling a story here, but I don't think it's a stretch to make this metaphorical, make this like the metaphorical destruction of a false teacher or a false brother or sister that often happens in churches at the hands of abusive servants, a metaphorical destruction, not a literal guy walking in and beating people up.
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How many of you have been in church circumstances? You don't have to raise your hand on this one, but how many of you have been in church circumstances where you've been beat up?
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And it would have been better if they had just punched you in the face. That's often the case, right?
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And I know many of your history, so I don't need you to raise your hand because I can look around the room and I can see people who I know who have been beat up in the past, and we know that it hurts.
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But further, the wicked false servant begins to fraternize with drunkards and lowlifes, and I don't believe that this is
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Jesus taking a pot shot at alcohol here, but he is indeed tying a licentious, wild lifestyle with the abuse of alcohol, and those two certainly go hand in hand.
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The wicked servant shirks his responsibilities in order to party with the bullies. That's what you have going on here, party with the bullies.
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There you go. Woo! All right. For both servants,
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I want to point this out. This is clear in the text, but it's worth stating. It's so obvious, but it's beautiful in what is obvious, and that is that for both servants, the master will return.
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For both servants, the master will return. But only one needs to fear that return.
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The one who didn't love his people, the one who didn't honor the master and faithfully trust him, the one who didn't take seriously the role that he was given, will find the return of the master jarring and terrifying.
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And Jesus uses a particularly graphic way of describing the punishment for the one who would tear apart his flock.
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I want you to remember what's happening here. When you read about the punishment, remember the crime.
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Tearing apart the flock, the ravenous wolf who shreds and tears his people, the one who abuses his God -given authority, the one who refuses to serve the
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Lord until his return, but pretends and acts to be a child of God, pretends to be his servant, all the while destroying the sheep, will be cut to pieces, says
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Jesus. This is a Greek word where we get our phrase dichotomy, to be torn in two is the idea.
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Torn to pieces, torn to shreds, torn in two. His fate will be to be consigned to the fate of the hypocrites, if it's naturally and well with actors who tried to play a part.
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He has been as fake as an actor playing the part of a servant. And the final description of his fate is one of Matthew's favorite euphemisms for hell and condemnation.
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That wicked false servant will be sentenced to the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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A place of deep sorrow and anguish and suffering that causes the clenching of the jaw and the grinding of the teeth.
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It's a pretty straightforward parable, pretty shocking parable. Anybody with me on that? Straightforward though.
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And I think it's obvious which servant Jesus desires for us to be. Is it obvious to you? Raise your hand if you find it pretty obvious.
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Where does he want you to be? The wise and faithful one is the one who serves the master with gratitude to the end.
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Hoping for his return. So let me point out that a follower of Christ is not one that lives in hope that Jesus won't come back today.
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We are not those who hope to get away with a little more sin before he returns. And further to clarify, his contrast between a faithful and wise servant and a wicked conniving servant.
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And in this, that's what he's contrasting. We are one or the other. The concern is not here about whether or not you prayed some prayer when you were a child.
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Whether you went to summer camp and they had a fire on Friday and you went forward and you said some words about trusting
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Jesus as your savior. That's not what this is about. And we might tend to go there with this and go, well, if you're alright, you're alright.
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And what's it matter if you tear apart a congregation because you're okay with God. I'd be careful about that kind of line of reasoning.
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The concern is whether or not we are a faithful servant or a wicked servant now.
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This is a time for assessment, church. This is a time for checking our own hearts. Be sure to let
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Jesus set the parameters of this discussion. We become a wise and faithful servant by grace through faith, but here
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Jesus is offering a caution to make sure you know where you stand. And so, as far as applying this text, let's kind of look at the first of two applications.
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The first is check yourself before you wreck yourself. Amen. Make sure you are all in with Jesus.
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Really, have a self -assessment right now. Are you his true, faithful, and wise servant?
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This can only happen and only begin by asking Jesus to forgive you of your sins based on his work on the cross and asking him to be your
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Lord and Savior. And if he is your Lord and Savior, then I believe that something in your heart comes alive when you hear this calling to do his will.
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When you hear his standard for you is to serve the body. When you hear that what he desires of you is to be discharging your gifts and your skills and your talents in the service of the
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King, your heart wants to do that because you belong to him and you know you belong to him.
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This doesn't mean that you are a perfect servant of the Master, but you want to be.
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You want to be. Is that you? Check yourself. Do you want to be a good servant of your gracious and kind and forgiving and merciful
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Savior? And when you hear his voice calling you to serve, you desire to serve him well because of the great love you have received from him.
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Now if you don't have that response in your heart, this is a part of checking yourself, there's no desire in your heart whatsoever to serve
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God, then it is reasonable for you to wonder if you are really following the Master at all.
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The answer isn't to get busy serving. The answer is to come to the foot of the cross in humility and say, save me, rescue me, give me a heart, a new heart that desires to honor you, that desires to serve you.
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That's where you start. So check yourself. Have you come to the cross and do you have now a responsive heart?
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Have you come to the cross in such a way that it's produced within you a heart desire to serve him? That's the question.
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And second, if you get through that check, and you check yourself, and you recognize,
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I am in, I do desire this, I do have a hunger and a desire to honor my
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Lord and King and the things that he asked me, even things like in this text where he says, when I come back, you should be serving my church.
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You should be using your gifts and your talents and your abilities to grow in service. You need that. And that's what
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I want to find you doing when I arrive. Well, then serve him.
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Then serve him. That's the second application. I know that some of you are feeling and experiencing in your heart right now a conviction.
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Man, Don, I've heard the message. I'm hearing the word. I'm hearing the word of my Lord. I'm hearing the word of my King. How do
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I get involved? You're thinking that in your heart because the conviction of the Spirit is there, and he is your
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Lord, and he is your master, and you hear his voice when he calls and says, here's how I want to call the shots, and I want you serving.
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You're already going, how do I plug in? And as a follower of Christ, you're saying,
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I've not been serving in the way that God calls me to serve, and this text is setting me straight. How do I get plugged in? And I commend that line of thinking, as long as it's not coming from some place of manipulation from me, but instead is flowing from the conviction of the
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Spirit of God alive within you that's taking this text and putting it in your heart. You see,
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I believe that if you belong to Jesus, you will want to serve him and his people. You will recognize his calling to your place in his household, which is this church.
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You will want to give others their food at the proper time, according to the illustration.
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You will recognize the purposes for which you have been given gifts and abilities and talents.
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It is in the service of who? Your King, Jesus. So your first step is a very practical step here today.
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I've given you a pretty simple entry level. The entire front of your worship folder this week is the launch point for your putting this message into practice.
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It has a really gigantic big old QR code on the front there. How many of you noticed that? And it was mentioned in the announcements if you were here for those.
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If you scan that with your camera, it's going to take you to a preliminary volunteer application. Now, it's pretty generic.
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It's intentionally open -ended, but it provides you a chance to see the ways that there are to serve here at the church and also lets us know ways that you could see yourself serving here.
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Filling it out, by the way, is not a commitment on your part to any specific area of ministry. There would be plenty of follow -up conversations about that, nor is it a commitment for the church to plug you into anything that you say you're good at.
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I might say I'm really good at playing guitar and I've never played guitar. So, I mean, just got to keep that all in good perspective here.
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But it is the first step in saying I acknowledge my calling from this text to be involved in the work of my master,
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Jesus Christ. There's, by the way, a handful of paper copies of this form.
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How many of you are intimidated? Just be flat out honest. I'm a bit intimidated by the word QR code. Didn't even know it existed. A handful of us.
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So, if that's you, no judgment here whatsoever. We've got some copies for you.
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We were thinking about you this week. So, we've got some paper copies of that out at the welcome table on your way out the door so that you don't have to feel left out.
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You can fill out the application too. But I do recommend that if you were even just trying to,
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I think I could like to learn how to use a QR code. I'd encourage you to try it first. If you have an iPhone, they make it super easy.
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You literally take and open your camera, point it at that thing, and it asks you whether you want to open up this application or not.
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You just tap it, and boom, there it is. Fill it out. That's a pretty cool process. Plus, it's easier for the office if you use that.
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So, otherwise, they have to manually enter all the stuff that you enter in on those paper copies. So, give that a shot.
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But Jesus is saying here in the text, let's get back to that for a second, there are two types of people. There are sus imposters who are doing their own thing until he returns.
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And then there are those who have a heart to serve him. So, if you're an imposter, trust in Christ and come into his family through faith in Jesus Christ.
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And if you are all in but not serving, then I'm confident that you just lacked the knowledge that this was his desire and his call for you.
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And now that you know his desire, I'm confident that you will step up and figure out your role in his church.
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Now, I'm excited to see what God is going to do in all of us as we become mobilized by this message, as we take it in and as we really...
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I mean, this is kind of a measure of whether or not we're actually in with God and whether or not we're really paying attention. But as we're in, we're going to want to serve.
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We're going to want to jump in. And I think that spells really good things that this message comes on at the time when we need to start getting momentum and movement back into doing the things that we need to as a church.
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Do you see God's perfect timing? How many of you say, this is beautiful timing. As things are starting to come back alive, we're talking about how we can serve one another.
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Well, we're going to come to communion now, and communion is a time in the service for those who belong to Christ to reflect on his purchase of us.
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We take the cracker to remember his body that was broken in our place, him taking the punishment that we deserve, to take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.
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And if you believe that he died for you to cover your sins, then I encourage you during this next song to go to one of the tables and remember his great and loving sacrifice that has brought you into his household.
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And then let's go out from here with a commitment to serve our master while we await his return. Please take the time to fill out that form sometime this next week and use that as a step in fulfilling the calling of Jesus to all of us.
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He's calling all of us to be servants that are doing our part in his family. So may he find us so doing when he returns.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the gifts, the equipping that you have already done, and I believe that you have put the right people together here in this congregation to do the things that you call us to do.
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And so, Father, I pray that you would allow this to be a message that's mobilizing to your people, but is also defining that as we have an opportunity to check ourselves, that you would genuinely by your spirit communicate with hearts even now as we come to communion to say, am
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I a wise and faithful servant who is recognizing the calling of my
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Lord and King to grow in service? I pray that the result of this message would be the edification, the building up of your congregation, the encouragement of people to use their gifts, and that as we get a chance to fill this out we would find that there are people who we didn't even know had certain gifts that can be applied here in this congregation, that we would all be built up and each individual strengthened by the gift of time and effort of each other.
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Thank you for the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ, and the hope that we have in his name, and the message of the gospel that sets us free to serve you with gladness this week.