Sermons in the The Storyteller Series

Listen, I'm supposed to dive into a sermon, but before I do that, I just wanted to stop and celebrate what happened here last weekend. I feel like that was a big deal. Yeah. For those that don't know, last weekend, our series, we had a campaign series that culminated in a pledge Sunday, and we had a goal to have $1.5 million pledged in a weekend. And I kind of just quietly thought maybe if we could crest $800,000, that would be great. That would be a step in the right direction. And then you guys blew us away, and God blew us all away with the fact that we hit our goal. And now our pledges are up closer to 1.6 as they continue to come in throughout the week. And if you are here, I've heard, I've talked to some different folks who have said, oh man, I haven't had a chance to pledge yet. I didn't get mine in. Is that still going on? Absolutely. Absolutely it is. And please don't think, oh, we hit the goal. So my pledge isn't useful. That's not true. Everything we get above and beyond, we're just going to buy that much more of an expensive building and really leverage. Everything we get goes to step closer to getting out of debt and helps our payments be lower so that we can do more with the resources that we have. So every bit counts and every bit helps. And I just stand totally humbled at our God. And I also feel like I owe you guys an apology for underestimating your spirit of generosity, for being hesitant about whether or not we can do it? That's right, that's right. I must have had small faith. You guys expanded it. I know for me, it's an affirming moment. When I opened up the series, I opened it up by saying, God's hand has always been on this place, and we believe that it still is. And my goodness, did he affirm that. So before we continue on, I just wanted to stop and praise God together. So would you pray with me as we praise God for what he did? Lord, I know that a lot of us have given you exaltations this week, have praised you this week, have exclaimed towards you this week and just saying thank you for your hand being on this place. Thank you for caring about our little church. Thank you for caring about this community. God, we have faith in you. We have faith that you're guiding us in this direction, that you're inviting us down this path, and so we are here to walk with you. We are here to thank you. We are here in gratitude for you, God. May this church be a place that always honors you. Thank you for loving us and looking out for us. In Jesus' name, amen. I'm so excited for our new series because our new series is all about stories. And I think that stories are a big part of the human experience. I think we all love a good story and we really love good storytellers. You all probably have that person in your life that you can think of who, when they start to tell the story, the whole room leans in. Everybody at dinner stops. Have you ever been in a place where somebody, you're with one of those storytellers and they start telling a story at the end of the table and whoever you're talking to, you're just thinking, please hurry up. Like I want to hear this story. For me, it's a guy named Billy Bryce, just this big, huge bear of a man. Every time he tells a story, I'm leaned in, man. I just want to hear it because there's something about stories that just connects with us. There's something about a good story that we all pay attention to. The more I thought about it, the more I realized stories are so powerful because that's for millennia how we as people have transferred truth and values to the next generation. And stories are powerful because they're emotive and participatory. They invite us in. Rather than just giving us a list of facts or a bullet point of suggestions, stories invite us in. We empathize with the characters. We put ourselves in the story. We feel what the people in the story felt. It invites us in to participate and to feel what's going on in a way that just a cold list of facts doesn't necessarily. This is why stories are so powerful in driving home points. A friend of mine this week that is, he makes short films, he makes movies, his whole life is invested in story. I called him and I said, give me your best 30 seconds on why stories are so valuable to us. And he brought up a great point. He said the things that I did, the stories invite you in and that they're emotive, but he said that stories invite you to mine for your own truth. They invite you to find the truth within the story, to find what's being communicated, to find what the real point is and make it your own. Rather than someone just dictating to you a list of facts and things that are true, a story invites you in to mine for your own truth. And this, I think, is why Jesus so often taught in stories. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we have a collection of teachings of Jesus that are called parables. A parable is a short fictional story that's used to make a point, typically a moral point. And Jesus was famous for teaching in these stories. To me, they're the greatest stories ever told by the greatest storyteller to ever live. And he told these stories to multiple audiences, and it would strike them all differently as they listened. To some, it was the Pharisees and they would hear the stories in a certain way. To some, it was common folks who were trying to figure things out and they would hear the story in a certain way. And then there was the disciples and they would hear in a certain way. And Jesus was always saying things like, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. He taught lessons in these stories so that you really wouldn't get it unless you were inclined to get it, unless you were open to the message of the story and to the hidden meanings of the parables. So for the next seven weeks, we're going to go through these stories of Jesus. We're going to look at the parables. I went through and basically just picked out my favorite ones, ones that I love, that have resonated for me over the years, that mean a whole lot to me. And the great thing about these parables is I'm going to tell them and I'm going to mine them for some truth that I think can serve all of us, but there's multiple applications to these. So you are invited to participate and come along and let these stories strike you however they would as we study them as a congregation together. So I'm excited to jump into these stories. I'm also just excited and relieved because I felt like in the campaign series, every week I had to like rally the troops for this new great vision of grace, and that was a lot of pressure. And now I just get to kind of open the Bible and be like, here's what I think it says. And that's way easier. So sermon prep this week was a lot of fun. I felt way less pressure. And this is one of my favorites. But before we dive into the parable this week, I wanted to preface it so that it hits us in the right way with something that I believe is common to the human experience. I think that to be a human is to feel the weight of expectation. To be a person, to be alive, to be human is to feel the weight of expectation. Here's what I mean. When I first started my career, when I went pro as a Christian, I worked at Greystone Church, which to be in ministry is just to be a professional Christian, and it's ridiculous, okay? We all have assigned roles, and you're going to see that as we go through this parable today. But when I started at Greystone, I think I was about 28, 29 years old, and I was the student pastor. I was the middle school pastor and the small groups pastor. And somewhere in there, I got invited to begin teaching on Sunday mornings. And as I did that, the more I did that, the more I taught on Sunday mornings, every time I would do that, people would come up to me afterwards and they would say, hey, what are your plans for your career? What do you want to do with your ministry? Do you want to be a senior pastor someday? Do you want to maybe plant your own church? Which in church world, I don't know if you know this, but if you're kind of entrepreneurial and you want to do your own thing, or if you're just a punk and you can't get along with anybody, then you go out and you plant your own church, right? That's what you do. And I always said, that looks like really hard work. You kind of parachute into a city, you get people to believe in you and give you money. And then you plant a church. And it seems like super hard work. And I said, I don't really think I'm wired to do that. But I don't know what I'm going to do. And people would ask me, are you going to plant a church? Are you going to be a senior pastor? Like, what are your goals? What do you want to do one day? And I just remember thinking, gosh, you know, I haven't really thought about it. Like, right now I have 150 kids. I'm trying to convince them that I know what I'm doing. I have no goals beyond trying to not screw up Sunday. That's all I got. But the more people would ask me, the more I felt like that was something I needed to think about. What are my goals for my life? What do I want to do? And I began to feel this weight of expectation. And the truth of it is, the weight of expectation that I felt is no different than what we all feel at different seasons in our life. When you're in college, the question when you meet anybody is, what's your major? What are you studying? Which begs the question, what do you want to become? What do you want to accomplish? What kind of person do you want to be? In your 20s and 30s, you're trying to figure out in your career, who am I? What am I going to do? What am I going to give myself to? What is my career going to look like? What are the expectations that are being placed on me? In your 40s and 50s, you begin to evaluate, how did I do? How's it going? Sometimes we do a mid-course correction. Sometimes we go, I'm nailing it. But we all feel this weight of expectation, this pressure to produce and to perform and to be. It reminds me of a comedian jokingly attributed a quote to Abraham Lincoln one time because all of Abraham Lincoln's quotes are so very simple. And so he made this one up, but I think it applies here. He says, whatever you are, be a good one. And I think we all feel that weight. Whatever you are, whatever role you find yourself in, if you're a daughter, be a good daughter. If you're a husband, be a good husband. If you're a teacher, be a good teacher. Whatever we are, we want to be a good one. We all feel this sense of responsibility and this weight of expectation that I'm supposed to accomplish something. I'm supposed to be something. I'm supposed to matter. And I think that that's an important thing to feel. It's a fair thing to feel. We should feel a weight of expectation. It's not good to drift through life never accomplishing anything. But to that weight of expectation, I think this story directly speaks. And this is probably my favorite parable. It's why we're kicking off the series with this one. This one is found in Matthew chapter 25, verses 14 through 30. I'm not going to read them all to you, but this is the parable. It's the parable of the talents. In the parable of the talents, Jesus is describing to the listeners the kingdom of God. And he says, the kingdom of God is like a master who assembles his servants. And he has three servants, and to one, he gives five talents, and to another, he gives two talents, and to another, he gives one talent. Scripture says, each according to his own ability. And he says, I'm going to leave. I'd like for you to invest these talents how you see fit. And a talent is just a denomination of money, okay? I'd like for you to invest this money how you see fit. And the master goes out of town for a long while, and he comes back. And when he comes back after being out of town for a while, he gathers the servants together, and he asks for his report. What'd you do? And the one with the five talents says, here, master, I know you to be a shrewd man, so I took the talents that you gave me, and I invested them, and I traded them in the marketplace, and here I have for you five more talents. So he hands back to him 10 talents. And the second servant does the same thing. He says, I knew you to be a shrewd man. You gave me two talents. I went, I invested them in the marketplace, and I traded, and now here are two more talents. He hands him back four talents. Each of them doubled the master's investment. And to each of them, the master says the exact same thing. Look at verse 21. It'll be up on the screen. After the one with the five talents gave him back 10 talents, two talents more, a total of four. He says the exact same thing. Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will set you over many things. Enter into the joy of your master. It's the same response. And then he goes to the one that he gave one talent. And the one talent person responds this way. Master, I knew you to be a hard man reaping where you did not sow and gathering where. He's not the most capable employee, but at least he's got his money back. No harm, no foul. But that's not how the master responds. But his master answered him, you wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers and at my coming I should have received what was my own in interest. So he takes the talent from the one and he gives it to the one with five and he says, whoever has much more will be given and you will receive nothing. And he kicks him out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's an intense ending. I've always thought, man, I do not want to be that one talent servant. I do not want to be the one that takes what God gives me and buries it and gets in trouble for not producing. So we're going to come back to something in that story. We're going to come back to a statement that's made by the master, by Jesus. But before we do that, I don't want to miss the main point of this parable. The main point of this parable, what Jesus is driving at, if we want to do justice to it, I can't just blow by this. So the main point of this parable is the unavoidable truth that being a Christian means getting to work. That's the point of the parable. Being a believer, being in the kingdom of God, being a servant of the Lord means getting to work. It is an unavoidable truth. No one signs up to be a Christian and then just coasts the rest of their life like they're on a cruise ship or something at a buffet. We all have to get to work. So that weight of expectation that we talked about, that we all feel, is very real, and it comes from God himself. He places on us, if we are believers, he places on us a weight of expectation that we will get to work. Three weeks ago, I talked about some of this work when we talked about evangelism, and I shared with you the parable of the sower that scattered seed over four different surfaces, and the best surface, it took root, and the plant shot up, and what does Jesus say that the plants did? They reproduced 30, 60, and even 100-fold. And we said that's a tip of the cap to this weight of expectation that when we are believers, God expects us to reproduce ourselves. God expects us to share the gospel. He expects us to make disciples. We talked about the Great Commission the week before when we're told to make disciples, and we said, this is not optional. These are Jesus's marching orders to the church for the rest of time. Go and make disciples. Make no mistake about it. To be a Christian is to get to work, and there is a weight of expectation on each and every one of us who would claim faith to reproduce ourselves and others and to share the love of God with them. That's the point. But there is a beauty to this parable as we seek to bear up under this weight of expectation. And we see, I think, the beauty of this when we look at God's interactions with the five-talent servant and the two-talent servant. And we ask ourselves, okay, God does have an expectation of us. What is it? What are God's expectations of me? What are God's expectations of you? If we want to understand this, I think the first thing we need to do is be honest about the responsibilities that we've been given. The first thing we need to do is be honest about the talents that have been assigned to us. Be honest about the responsibilities that have been handed over to us. I think everybody reads the story and we go, man, I don't, I mean, I don't want to brag. There's a chance I'm a five-talent person. I think God's probably apportioned that to me. Maybe not. Maybe I'm this two-talent. I'm definitely not a one-talent. But here, let me help us all out, all right? Ain't nobody in here a five-talent person. Let's just get that off the table. One of the things we need to do in life is come to grips with the responsibilities that God has assigned to us. I think one of the damaging things we do in life and one of the damaging things we do in the church is we are a bunch of two-talent people running around disappointed in ourselves because we're not producing five-talent results when God never asked us to do that. So one of the first things we need to do is come to grips with the responsibilities that we've been assigned. If you look at the parable, who assigns the talents? The master does, according to their abilities. And if you take that a step further, in our life, who assigned, who gave us our abilities? God did. He's designed each of us. He's wired each of us. And he apportions to each of us responsibilities in his kingdom. But one of the worst things we can do is run around beating ourselves up because we're a two-talent person trying to produce five-talent results. I think of Metta this weekend. This weekend, we had our big student student event and we've got our great student pastor, Kyle, who's kind of heading that up. And we had about 40 kids participating in Metta. And in church world, we look at the way that Metta broke down and we tend to go, Kyle did the most. Kyle was the biggest deal. He had an impact on all 40 kids. He's the one that really nailed it with the responsibilities. And then we might look at the small group leaders and we go, they did good, but they did a little bit less. I think of a girl that we have, Jordan Shaw. She leads songs up here sometimes. She's a friend of ours. She's got two little kids. And her assignment for the weekend was to minister to a group of middle school girls, six to eight middle school girls. That was her assignment for the weekend. And what we're tempted to do, particularly in our American culture, is economize those things and say Kyle's impact was greater than Jordan's impact because Kyle impacted 40 and Jordan impacted eight. And I think that's entirely erroneous. Kyle is a single guy. He gets paid to do that. That's his job. That's what he has been assigned to do. Jordan did it for free. She left two kids at home. You know who the real hero of the weekend is? Dylan. Because he watched the kids to free her up to do that ministry, right? That was her responsibility for that weekend. And the difference she's going to make in the lives of those girls in a lot of ways is greater than the difference than Kyle is going to make. So it's not a value. It's not a numbers game. It's not a largeness of impact that we're comparing. It's simply what are the responsibilities that God has assigned to you? And to Kyle, he assigned the whole group. And to Jordan, he assigned a portion of the group. And I think the temptation is, if we're not even participating in something like that, is to degrade what we're doing even more. I think of Faith, who was over here. She left the service because her infant baby was fussing, and she knows that I'm easily distracted. And so she walked out, and it would be very easy for her to sit here and hear about Jordan investing herself in the lives of others, to hear about the great things that Kyle is doing, to see the people in charge of the food drive and think, gosh, I'm not doing anything for the kingdom. I'm not doing anything that matters. And to beat herself up for not returning the investment that God is making. But you know what she's doing? Her life is consumed with three kids. She's got Wyatt and Henry and a new baby, Katie. She can't see straight. She's probably not sleeping. And for now, for this season of life, those are the responsibilities that God has apportioned to her. It is not her responsibility to run around trying to impact everybody. She has those kids to think about now. I think so often we see five-talent people doing five-talent things, and we beat ourselves up because we're not doing that either. And that's the wrong way to think about it. The first thing we need to do under this weight of expectation is be realistic about what God has assigned to us right now. God has assigned to each of you, according to the way that he's wired you, according to the way that he's gifted you, he's assigned to each of you a ministry. It might be your kids. It might be a business. It might be a small group. It might be a single friend. But God has assigned to you responsibility of ministry. And your responsibility is to be realistic about what he's assigned you. And stop heaping guilt and pressure on yourself to do more outside of what God has asked you to do. And here's the really freeing part about that. Here's what I love about this parable. God's response to the five-talent person and the two-talent person. It's the exact same. It's the exact same. He doesn't look at the five-talent person and be like, whoa, you gave me 10 back. This is super impressive. Well done. You are a big deal in my kingdom. And the house that I'm making you in heaven is going to be nice. It's going to be on the lake. Two-talent person, thank you. Your community will have sidewalks. That's not how he does that. That's not how he does that. He says, well done, good and faithful servant. To both of them, you did the best you could with the resources that I gave you. And at the end of the day, that's the only weight of responsibility that we need to feel. We need to do the best we can with the resources that we've been given. In your season of life, in where you are, and the responsibilities that God has apportioned to you, your job, the weight of responsibility that you should feel, and the only weight of responsibility that you should feel, is to do the best you can with the resources that you've been given. If you're in your 20s and you're setting up life goals, you need to make it your goal that no matter where I am, no matter what I'm doing, no matter what God's apportioned to me, I want to know that I'm doing the best I can with the resources I have. If we're in our 40s and our 50s and we're assessing how have I done so far, the question we need to be asking based on this parable is, can I honestly say I've done the best I can with the resources I've been given? If we're trying to figure out how good of parents we've been, if we're trying to set goals for how good of a husband or a wife we want to be, if we're trying to assess whether or not we're a good friend, the one question that matters is, have I done the best I can with the resources that I've been given? Have I honored God with the opportunities that he's given me? Have I been realistic about the responsibilities apportioned to me? And have I done the best I can with those responsibilities? That's why when people kept asking me that question early in my career, what is it that you wanna do with yourself?? Where do you think God's going to take you? My answer became, my goal is to hear well done, good and faithful servant. My only goal, the only thing I want in life, the only thing I want in my career, the only thing I want to hear about my efforts as a pastor, about my efforts as a husband, as a father, as a friend, the only thing I really want to hear is one day when I get to heaven and I finally get to see the face of Jesus, I want to hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant. I wanna know that I did the best I could with the resources that he gave me. And I wanna be so bold as to put that in front of you and let you make that your life goal. I don't know what your life goal is. I don't know what you came in here thinking you should do with your life. I don't know what your mantra has been, but if you don't have one, I would invite you to borrow that from me. That one day when we see the face of Jesus, he will look at us and he will say, well done, good and faithful servant. Let us not put any more pressure on ourselves. Let us feel no more weight of expectation than to simply honor God with the responsibilities that He's given us, with the gifts and abilities and the way that He's wired us to do what He's called us to do. Let us collectively make our life goals well done, good, and faithful servant. Can I tell you that frees you up from so much? Can I tell you it frees you up from so much pressure, from so much comparing, from so much, man, that mom is doing all of these things and I feel like I can't get my life together. That guy has eight side hustles and I don't have any. That person is crushing it in ministry and I don't feel like I'm doing anything. Let's stop doing that and playing the comparison game and just ask ourselves, am I doing the best I can with the resources that I've been given? One day when I see Jesus, will he tell me, well done, good and faithful servant? What if we make that our collective goal as a church? We're dreaming big dreams and we're moving forward and we're gonna build a building and it's gonna be bigger than this one and we all have hopes and yada, yada, yada. But what if instead of worrying about all of those things, what we worry about is week in and week out in our small groups, as we serve the kids, as we pass baskets, as we encourage one another, as we rally around one another. What if what we worry about is simply hearing those words from our Savior, well done, good and faithful servant. If we do that, He will say, you have been faithful with a few things. I'm going to trust you with more. I think it is one of the most freeing life goals and truths that we could have, and I would encourage you to adopt that as well. Let's pray, and then we'll celebrate communion together. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for loving us. God, I pray that we would accept the responsibilities that you've assigned to us. I pray that we would be comfortable and secure in knowing that we are working for you. We are working under your weight of expectations and no one else's. God, I pray that one day as we see your face, we would hear those incredible words, well done, good and faithful servant. I pray that those who are faithfully serving, faithfully giving, faithfully working and have been quietly for years, that you would bolster them, that you would be with them, that you would give them confidence and courage to continue walking in their quiet ways. Father, I pray that we would honor you, that we would do the best we can with everything that you give us. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.