Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / August 29, 2021 | Good Question - Why Should I Look for Opportunities to Share the Gospel?

Transcript

August 29, 2021 | Good Question - Why Should I Look for Opportunities to Share the Gospel? · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: How you doing?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Staff was back at the back.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just we were just trembling with excitement, hoping that Doug would be surprised.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: That was so much fun.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he deserves all the accolades and uh that he gets from you.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking to see if my wife is here.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're not supposed to wish your wife a happy birthday on her birthday, but anyway, yeah.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we're in a series called Good Question.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about it.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is the next to last week of that series.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought long and hard about the question that I would use today.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the question that I've chosen for a variety of reasons.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why should I look for opportunities to share the gospel?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, this is a question that I was asked by a buddy, by a guy who's a friend of mine who happens to be a prominent white-collar worker.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the city said, I mean, but really, but why?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And over the years, people have given me some pretty good, sound reasons why they shouldn't look for opportunities to share the gospel.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not good at talking about spiritual things.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had it's the knowledge thing.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I haven't been to seminary, haven't been to Bible school, don't quite know what if they were to ask questions.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not really good at talking about those kinds of things.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Another one is I'm scared it might hurt our relationship.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is the person that if I was going to talk about Jesus and my faith, this would be the person, but I mean, that relationship's really important to me.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in this current world, you know, I'm scared it might hurt our relationship.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I want to sound pushy or preachy, and I I don't know how to do this in such a way that it wouldn't sound, you know, preachy religious or pushy.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Another reason that I hear is I'm afraid of what they'll think of me.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably maybe the most common of all the reasons.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm afraid of what they'll think of me if I share.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So when I think of the reasons that we have and that we give, and I'm including myself, I'm a founding member of the Order of the Chicken, um, the reasons that we give for not sharing the gospel, and then I counter that with, well, why should I look for opportunities to share the gospel?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: To be honest, most often uh I think of a certain accountant.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You may have you may have read about him.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: This uh this accountant worked for a really big businessman, very wealthy uh businessman, landowner who had hired the accountant to manage his his property.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and um but then uh unfortunately the owner, businessman, had gotten word, had gotten solid evidence that the accountant had been stealing money from him, was not handling his business well, and had been costing him money.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so the businessman uh called in the accountant and he said, What is going on?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that conversation ended with him saying, You've been with me for a long time, but I'm sorry.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh starting Monday, you're out.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You've got 48 hours to clean out your office and get things settled.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um the accountant was hit like a ton of brick.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: He did not expect this.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: He went home, he laid awake all night, and he's thinking, wow, what am I gonna do now?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've been, this has been basically easy living for a couple of decades.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really not physically fit to do manual labor, and I do not want to go down to the club and start asking people for a job, and I don't want to be in welfare, you know, the rest of my life.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it was sometime in the middle of the night that a thought occurred to him, and he fell asleep, woke up the next morning, went down to work, and started putting it into action.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: He told his secretary to call up some of his key clients and tell them he'd like to see them in his office.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the first one that came into his office was an oil driller who uh who, you know, there was a lot of, oh, there's a lot of land that he was managing, and this uh oil driller had a contract with uh uh uh, because he was renting the land, he had a contract with a businessman for a certain quantity of oil, I think it was 80,000 gallons to be exact.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he was supposed to deliver it uh uh for the cost of renting the acreage, but the cost of oil and gas had skyrocketed like it has this year, about 40%.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was obvious that that man was gonna lose a lot of money in the bargain, and um and so the manager, accountant, he said to him, Look, I know that your back is against the wall, and I've convinced my boss to give you a break.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's change the contract for your sake.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of 80,000 gallons of oil for the price, let's make it 40,000.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: That way I figure you'll come out of it okay.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And naturally the oil man was overjoyed, and as they shook hands over the deal, uh he said, I want you to know that you and your boss have done me a big favor, and I'm grateful for it.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: You've been a real friend, and any time you can use a hand, just let me know.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Later on that afternoon, another client stopped in the office, and um and uh this fellow had leased a section of farmland in order to in order to grow wheat, and he had contracted to deliver a quantity of he of wheat for uh for the for the rental fee, a thousand bushels of wheat to be exact, quite a bit of wheat.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the harvest had been disappointing, it had been extra dry, and and then uh suddenly rains had hit, sort of ruined the crop and so forth, and so he too was facing a bath in red ink.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh without any of the usual hellos and jokes about the humidity and and the bad weather, the accountant leaned forward and he said, Listen, I've been giving this a lot of thought, and uh I really believe we drove too stiff a deal with you.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I've convinced my boss to let me change the contract.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of uh a thousand bushels of wheat, what do you say I make it just eight hundred?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: That way I think you can keep your head above water.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: The farmer, of course, was enthusiastic, and as they shook hands over the new contract, he said, you know, your boss is a top-notch guy, and you can tell him that, and you can tell him I'm gonna pass the word around, and you've done me a good deal, a real service, your true friend, and I hope one day I can I can repay you.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: At any rate, when that accountant cleaned out his office the next day and he stepped into the street, he ran into a number of folks who were ready to hire him, for after all, they'd found that their relationship was mutually beneficial.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and they were convinced that he could work their side of the street as well.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, when the when the owner came in, and when the when the owner looked at the books and discovered what his managing accountant had done, he was not nearly so excited.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: But as he sat there stewing, his telephone started ringing.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: First it was uh Joe down at the gas station, and then Bill down at the store, and then the then the editor of the newspaper, and then the TV station called, and all of them calling to praise him for being the most generous, understanding, compassionate kind of a boss to ever rent out land in their county because of the inflation going up and everything else.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they were going to do a story on him.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when he hung up the phone, the owner sat there and he looked at the accounts and he considered his alternatives.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: He could go back and he could correct those contracts, explain it was all a mistake.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if he did that now, then all that goodwill would turn to anger, and instead of being praised publicly for being generous, he would be cursed for being stingy.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: The other option, of course, is that he could be silent, he could accept the praise that was even now already being showered on him, and he could allow that clever steward to get away with it, to ride the wave of popular enthusiasm.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And after all, he thought he really didn't do anything illegal, he'd simply used his position and the possessions entrusted to him to make some good French.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the wealthy businessman, the landowner, decided to take the whole thing philosophically.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Got to hand it to him, he said to his friend.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's a shrewd guy.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: When he was up against the wall and the chips were down, he didn't run away, he didn't fall, he made the best of a bad situation.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's somebody else who uh had a compliment for that unjust accountant.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: For some of you, I imagine, have recognized this story as coming to us out of Luke chapter 16.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Open your Bible if you have one.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's read precisely the way Jesus told the story 2,000 years ago.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: The story goes like this: Jesus told his disciples, this is Luke 16, 1 through 9, there was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he called him in and he asked him, What is this I hear about you?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Give an account of your management, because you can't be manager any longer.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: The manager said to himself, What shall I do now?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: My master is taking away my job.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know what I'll do, so that when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he called in each one of his master's debtors.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: He asked the first, How much do you owe my master?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: 900 gallons of olive oil, he replied.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: The manager told him, Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it 450.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then he asked the second, and how much do you owe?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: A thousand bushels of wheat, he replied.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: He told him, take your bill and make it 800.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And as the story ends, Jesus turns to his disciples and he says, For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus is a terrific storyteller.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: We all know that.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: We love his stories, but here at least a lot of people think that Jesus kind of engaged in a slip of the tongue.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: That for some reason Jesus here is praising uh someone who's dishonest for being dishonest.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is Jesus really endorsing here the idea that the end justifies the means?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is why this parable is called the most difficult parable of all the ones that Jesus told.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: But frankly, when you start putting yourself back in Jesus' day and with his listeners and looking at the rest of the stories Jesus told, you realize that this isn't the first or only time that Jesus drew a good lesson from a bad example.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, just two chapters later, there's a story of an unjust judge.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And a woman who has a case, a widow, and she's helpless, and so she starts bugging him.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: In the morning, she's grabbing hold of his robe as he goes to work.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: At noon, she interrupts him at lunch.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: At night she's banging on his door.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, just to get rid of her, he answers her complaint.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: He says he'll work on it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, God is like that unjust judge.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you should be like that nagging widow.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: You should just bang on his door again and again.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: God knows you're serious if you just keep praying about something like that.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus saying that God is unjust.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, what he's comparing, he's saying that like that unjust judge, God is someone who will respond to people who persistently pray.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Unlike that unjust judge, of course, God is just and he's loving.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's our heavenly Father.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or take that time when Jesus, speaking about his return, says, I'm gonna come back like a thief in the night.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I'd been around, I'm gonna said, rewind that, Lord.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good at editing.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can we change that a little bit to like a doctor in the night or maybe a nurse in a hospital at night, popping into your room?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thief is not really a good picture to compare yourself to.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would have been like a lot of Christians.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're a lot more picky spiritually and a little bit neurotic about the way Jesus presents himself, but Jesus seems to be a little sloppy about these things.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't really care how he appears.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: He just says, No, I'm not like a criminal, but I'm like a big surprise that you won't expect.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or then there's that time where Jesus says, I want all of you to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know my fifth-grade Sunday school teacher that that used to teach us way back before the flood, you know, and she would have stopped him at that moment and said, Jesus, let's recall what serpents are in the Bible.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: You remember Satan's a serpent.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're telling us to be wise as serpents.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Could you say wise as dolphins and innocent as doves?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes, you know, we're more righteous than God.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it is.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you just became a Christian, you'll find that out.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of people around you that are going to be more righteous.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: But but Jesus doesn't seem to have a problem with that.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's happy to draw good lessons from bad examples.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the good lesson that he draws from this example is that God is hanging out a wanted advertisement.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking for good men and women, dedicated, honest, but with that guy's business sense.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because that guy is smarter than a lot of my own children.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he makes that clear in verse 8 when he says, for the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light, and that's not a good thing, that's a bad thing.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the first lesson I think that pops out of this, and it's just the first lesson on which we will build, is it's not enough, Jesus says, for us to be good.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: We must also be shrewd.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it is true, isn't it, that the people of this world are more shrewd than are the people of the light.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I could give examples of the last 2,000 years of how unshrewed the church has been.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things you often hear when you're in church ministry when you make a decision, someone will come up to you and say, uh, you shouldn't be running the church like a business.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the problem is that churches are almost always run like businesses.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's income, there's secretaries, there's treasurers, and so forth.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that churches are oftentimes run like bad businesses.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we really need is is for churches to be run well.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And for the last 2,000 years, imagine.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I mean, my number one job and yours, if you're a believer, is the Great Commission to lead people to Jesus Christ.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, imagine how much more work the businessman or businesswoman does than the Christian does to share Christ.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: In those years when I, followed by my five younger brothers, went out to go door-to-door selling for the Southwestern Company to earn our way through college, Pennsylvania and Florida, we would get up at 6 every morning.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: We would knock on the first door at 8 a.m.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: every morning.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I would mainly be riding my bicycle or hitchhiking and so forth through Pennsylvania and Florida.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would be not stopping for anything except for a quick cracker lunch.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I would be uh hydrating like crazy.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I would end at 10 p.m.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would do this six days a week, and us boys, we would work 84 hours, 7,000 students working 80 to 84 hours a week, and that was to make money, which I made none of my first couple of summers, but I wasn't there to make money.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually there to learn how to meet and deal with people because I was the shyest person that I knew in the entire world.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, all of that work to make a little bit of money and to and to grow, and yet how much effort and how much time and how much thought do I put in to fulfill my reason for existing as a Christian?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Great Commission.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So without putting too much guilt on myself, I'll just say, and Jesus is right, isn't he, that the people of this world are more shrewd than the people of the light, and that's not a good thing.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's a bad thing.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the notice what he says is that the shrewdness is interesting.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Shrewdness has to do with making friends.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now there we're on more comfortable ground.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Shrewdness in making friends.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: The people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kinds.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I tell you, use worldly wealth to make friends.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: They use worldly wealth to make friends.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: This man in the story used worldly wealth, wealth that's passing away to make friends.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Jesus does, that we can make friends for ourselves so that when that wealth is gone, we'll be welcomed into eternal dwellings or houses.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's another word for heaven.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So what he's saying is shrewdness makes friends now, who will be our friends forever.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's a startling idea, isn't it?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: So all of a sudden, we add to our first principle, it's not enough to be good.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: You must also be shrewd.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Shrewd Christians make friends for eternity.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And third, to lay up treasures.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when you were little in Sunday school, or maybe even now?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: I remember being young and having that five-word riddle stated in Sunday school to us, lay up treasures in heaven.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed like such a cool idea.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea how to do it, but this story tells us that maybe the most effective way of laying up treasures in heaven is to use them to make friends for ourselves for eternity.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Invest in people who are going to heaven.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we do that in a couple of ways I'll talk to you about later, but that leads, of course, to the fourth point.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Use your position and possessions, Jesus is saying, to make forever friends in heaven.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what an idea that is.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the interesting thing about this is Jesus ends the story with three verses where he gives a couple of arguments that to clear up some confusion we might have.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: When he says, whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of our own?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: His point here is that we need to be reminding ourselves at all times that like the steward, we're a lot like this unjust steward, what we're giving up is so little.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: What we're gaining is so much.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Trusted with little, trusted with much.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter whether you are a multimillionaire now and you give a million dollars to make friends for eternity, or whether you're a 10-year-old and you give$5 to, let's say, a missionary, or five dollars to win someone to Christ.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, you're giving up something that's so little for something that's so much.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you put funds on one side of the scale and friends on the other side of the scale, it doesn't matter how many funds you have, friends in heaven.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Heaven for eternity will always outweigh it, right?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now that we you and I have begun to value friends like we should, we would do almost anything to add a close friend in this life.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea that we might add a friend in the next life forever who will know and cherish us in a special way because of how we used our position and possessions.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Remind yourself, Jesus says first, that like the steward, what you're giving up is so little, what you're gaining is so much.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, he says, remind yourself that like the steward, what I have is lent to me to use.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not mine to keep.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 12, if you're not trustworthy with someone else's property, whose property is it that you have now?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's God's.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Everything you and I have is on loan from God, not ours to keep, it's ours simply to use.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, why would we give you property of your own?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh when I was uh, well, I won't tell that story, that's too embarrassing.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing he says in this passage is remind yourself that like the steward, what I have I can't take with me, but I can send it on ahead.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Remind yourself constantly that what I have I can't take with me, but I can send it on ahead.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, um uh we talk a lot, and I'm interested in investing in the stock market, using a maritrade and so forth, thinking about the future.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm at that stage in life where I think about my children, I think about my grandchildren, I think about my wife as we should.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs says that we should prepare for the future, but the comparison, Jesus says, between investing in the stock market and investing in the forever friends market is huge.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing gap.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: I remember talking with a multimillionaire.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the back of a limousine one day and uh didn't realize he was gonna stiff me with the price of it.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: But um so uh uh and and I was talking with him and he and he uh he started the discussion asking me how much of my income I give and so forth.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he was just really frank.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: He actually uh uh he he ran he ran on entire health care.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and I told him, and I asked him, since he was being so open with me, how much he gave.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, well, right now not, not a lot, because he says I'm have yet to have two million saved in the bank.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really close, but when that happens, I'm gonna start giving.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I just remember being being shocked at the idea that that he could go at any time without having sent anything on ahead.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: So each of us is like that unjust steward in that what we have is so little, what we gain is so much, what I have is lent to me to use, not mine to keep, and what I have I can't take with me, but I can send it on ahead.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So let me get to the uh let me get to the to to to the to the conclusion here.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, uh how do you actually do this?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: What's the Pacific Pacific as versus the Atlantic or Mediterranean way of doing this?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um exactly how?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that there are two answers to that question, two simple answers.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: One is I invest in the friend-making ministry of others.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: One, I invest in the friend-making ministry of others.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not able maybe to go to certain places in the world to make friends, uh uh, but what I can do is I can invest in the friend-making ministry of others.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think Paul's referring to this in Philippians 4 17.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, he praises the Philippians because Paul was going around the Roman Empire, and as he preached, he would pass the plate for the poor people in Jerusalem.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're poverty struck for the church and so forth, and and and for that ministry.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that's how he stayed alive as well.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So and at the end he says, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your gift.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: He says earlier in Philippians they gave more than they were able.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, it's not that I'm looking for a gift, but I'm looking for what may be credited to your account.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I take it that what he's speaking about there is an account in heaven, laying up treasures in heaven, and by giving to him and his friend-making ministry, and the friend-making ministry in Jerusalem, what was happening is that the Philippians were not investing a lot of money because they didn't have much, but they were investing in the friend-making ministry of others.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And by doing so, those people, those people who became friends of Christ, who trusted Christ as their Savior, would know where that money came from in heaven and would forever after welcome the Philippians, whom they'd never met, welcome them into their eternal houses.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I must say that this changed my thinking so much about giving to missions and about giving to the church, realizing that giving is not God's special way of raising money.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Giving is God's way of giving us a chance to earn credits to our account and make friends for ourselves in eternity.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm convinced that when Melody and I go to heaven one day, we will be welcomed by people from places that we've never gone and cultures that we cannot imagine in Africa and India and Europe and so forth, simply because we invested in the friend-making ministry of others, especially those dozens of missionaries associated with our church and other ministers.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, can I say this is what gives me a little bit of a caution.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, I love giving to social action.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's it's easy to raise money today in the church for social action, for feeding children and adults and clothing children and adults, for building buildings here and around the world.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: But while giving generously to those things, let's recall that those things do not by themselves address what Jesus is talking about.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because those things, food, clothing, buildings, will of course burn up.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: What you really want to do, if you're shrewd, is you will invest in people who are using food and clothing and buildings and so forth to win friends.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: So lead people to Jesus Christ and therefore will be in heaven, knowing that you've given to that cause, they will welcome you forever into their eternal habitations.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: In that day, when all is known, they will know when they see you that you gave to them to win them to Christ.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why they are there.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: So invest in the friend-making ministry of others.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the second, of course, is make friends yourself using what you have.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: I remember I couldn't understand.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a large family, we didn't have very much money, we lived in a small house and a little three-acre farm in Oregon, and yet at Halloween, my mother would go to the store.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea where she got the money since there was not a lot of money.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she would buy the best candy.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Huge suckers, boxes of cracker jacks, which were like solid gold at our house, you know, as we dished them out one at a time.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And these were not for us.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: We were not to touch them.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: She hid them so that we wouldn't steal them.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then Halloween, she would stand at the door, and we were in a location where a lot of kids came, and she would hand out one of these prizes with a children's track to every kid who came.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't, I'd be.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have a friend here in town, and he will sometimes leave a tract with uh uh with the waiter or waitress, but he'll always enclose, you know, a$5 bill with it or something else, and and and say something like that.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Just appreciate it very much, and I just wanted you to.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he writes a little note on that.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I have a guy that uh lives in another part of the country, and he does it, he regularly goes through uh the fast food places and pays for the person behind him and then leaves uh a pamphlet, a book, or something else as a gift.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: He asks, he said, uh, would you just hand this to them?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: He writes a note in it, he's already written the notes out, signs his name, and would you just give this to them and tell them it's paid that the car ahead of you?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he puts his email address in there.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And one time uh he he went through and and the next day he got an email, and the woman said, I was the car right behind you, and you paid for my meal.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I gotta tell you, we have almost nothing, and I was only buying food for my two boys, not for myself.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when we heard that our meal was being paid for, whatever it was, and they could order whatever they wanted, my young son said to me, Mom, don't you, and he saw the books cover, he said, Don't you think it's time we went back to church?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, I just want you to know that really ministered to us, and we'll be going back to church this week.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know, but that's exactly what I think Jesus is speaking of here, where you use your position and your possessions in order to win yourself eternal friends.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you do that by investing in the friend-making and ministry of others, and you do that by making friends yourself, using whatever it is that you have.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Some uh years ago, oh, by the way, let's go back to the initial question.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why should I look for opportunities to share the gospel?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: I know that popping up inside you, there are reasons, you know, why should I risk my relationship?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't quite know what to say, it's a little scary, I'm afraid, and so forth.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: But this morning, I'm not arguing against those.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna put a guilt trip on anybody because I'm right there with you, but I would just say that for me, the most compelling reason to look for an opportunity to share the gospel is that by doing so, with my money, with my possessions, with my tongue, I can win myself forever friends in heaven.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Some years back, uh, Ray Boltz uh sang a song that was a little bit like this.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: It went, I dreamt I went to heaven, and you were there with me.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: We walked upon the streets of gold beside the crystal sea.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: We heard the angel singing, and then someone called your name.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: You turned and saw this young man, and he was smiling as he came.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Friend, you may not know me now.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then he said, But wait, you used to teach my Sunday school when I was only eight.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And every week you'd say a prayer before the class would start.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: One day, when you said that prayer, I asked Jesus in my heart, using your position to win friends for eternity.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving to the Lord.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: I am a life that was changed.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving to the Lord.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you gave.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then another man stood before you and said, Remember the time a missionary came to your church and his pictures made you cry?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't have much money.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: But you gave it anyway.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus took the gift you gave.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm here today.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving to the Lord.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a life that was changed.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving to the Lord.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you gave.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome into my eternal home.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for a reminder that heaven is real.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's so real that it consists of places to live and people who are friends.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you that by doing such little things we can make for ourselves special friends, not just for time, but for eternity.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.