What are True Riches and How do we Get Them? | The Book Of Luke Week 4

00:00:00

- Today on Crossroads our Senior Pastor Brian

00:00:03

takes one of the most fascinating

00:00:05

and confusing stories in the entire Bible

00:00:07

and explains why Jesus wants us

00:00:10

to be shrewd and resourceful.

00:00:13

- Hey, welcome to Crossroads. My name is Hannah.

00:00:15

- And I'm Kyle.

00:00:16

- Today, our Senior Pastor, Brian Tome,

00:00:18

is going to teach us about one of

00:00:19

the more confusing parables in the book of Luke.

00:00:21

- Which is good because I'm kind of confused right now

00:00:24

how I got so much taller than you.

00:00:25

I can't say I hate it, I'm just -- I don't know.

00:00:27

I don't know why it happened.

00:00:28

-You know, what also might be confusing

00:00:30

to some of our people watching right now

00:00:32

is a spiritual discipline we call giving.

00:00:34

Did you like how weaved that in?

00:00:35

- That was nice. - Yeah, it was nice.

00:00:37

If you're interested about giving

00:00:38

or you just want to learn more,

00:00:39

you can go to Crossroads.net/give

00:00:42

for more information.

00:00:43

- With that, let's see what Brian has to say.

00:00:52

- There's such a thing as the spirituality of finance.

00:00:57

Hey, my name is Brian. Welcome to Crossroads.

00:01:00

We're looking at a passage today in the Book of Luke 16:8.

00:01:04

I'm going to share with you the nugget,

00:01:07

the controversial part of the passage

00:01:09

we're going to look at today.

00:01:10

Here's what it says:

00:01:27

Jesus commends somebody who is dishonest or shrewd?

00:01:32

We think of shrewd like a greasy salesman.

00:01:36

Like a, "Pst.

00:01:44

I got some goods for you, just keep it to yourself.

00:01:47

I give you kind of a deal deal."

00:01:50

We think of greasy salesmen when we think of,

00:01:55

many of us, when we think about money and finance.

00:01:58

It just sounds so dirty to some of us

00:02:02

because we don't actually know how money works.

00:02:06

Jesus teaches today how money actually works.

00:02:13

I went through the Book of Luke

00:02:14

getting ready for our talk today,

00:02:16

and I just highlighted all of the places

00:02:20

in the Book of Luke where Jesus talks about money

00:02:23

or possessions or assets or resources.

00:02:26

And when He talks about something like a,

00:02:28

you know, a cattle or something like that, a cow.

00:02:30

That's a resource,

00:02:31

that's how they viewed it way back when.

00:02:33

22 times just in the Book of Luke

00:02:36

Jesus talks about money and resources or uses them

00:02:40

as the foundation for the teaching

00:02:43

that He's going to give.

00:02:44

Now, as we talk about this story,

00:02:46

a parable is something that Jesus made up

00:02:49

to give us a spiritual truth.

00:02:51

Many of us are very confused by this,

00:02:54

and scholars can't even agree on what

00:02:56

the name of the passage should be.

00:02:59

In the Bible, based on what Bible you have,

00:03:01

they have little title markers overtop

00:03:05

of certain sections.

00:03:06

Some Bibles, these are editors later on,

00:03:09

just put up there something like the unjust steward,

00:03:12

some say the dishonest manager,

00:03:14

some say the shrewd manager.

00:03:16

All depends on what translation you use.

00:03:18

But Jesus starts this message with a firing.

00:03:22

There's a rich man who's unhappy with his manager.

00:03:26

Rich man and manager.

00:03:29

Let's go ahead and read it

00:03:31

and see what Jesus has to say to us

00:03:33

about the spirituality of finance.

00:03:36

Verse one:

00:03:59

He is wasting the rich man's finances.

00:04:03

See, he's got a job of managing,

00:04:06

managing this money, taking care of this money,

00:04:10

keeping accounts of this money.

00:04:12

But whose money is it?

00:04:14

It's not his money.

00:04:15

It's the rich man's money.

00:04:17

And apparently he's not doing a very good job at it.

00:04:21

It's kind of being wasted or frittered away.

00:04:25

The manager is labeled dishonest,

00:04:27

not because of what he's going to do later,

00:04:30

but because what he's already done here.

00:04:32

He hasn't been managing these things right.

00:04:34

He hasn't been making a proper account

00:04:37

of all of these things.

00:04:38

He believes, the rich man does,

00:04:40

that this guy has been wasting his possessions.

00:04:44

The rich man, not the guy's possessions who's managing,

00:04:49

but the rich man's possessions.

00:04:51

Or he had resources that he was managing

00:04:54

and there wasn't an increase in the ledger

00:04:56

because it wasn't growing the way

00:04:58

the rich man expected his manager to grow it.

00:05:01

If you have any investments

00:05:02

or you've got any retirement accounts

00:05:04

and somebody is managing your money,

00:05:06

you may not be the rich man, but it is your money.

00:05:09

You expect those things to grow,

00:05:11

and if they're not growing,

00:05:12

even over a long period of time,

00:05:15

you're eventually going to say,

00:05:17

"I need to find somebody who's going to make this grow."

00:05:20

That's what's happening in this situation.

00:05:23

This guy who's managing this finds out

00:05:26

that he's about to be let go.

00:05:27

And let's see what his response is in verse three.

00:05:44

The manager knows he's about to be unemployed

00:05:47

and he understandably starts freaking out.

00:05:49

He's a weak little weenie boy

00:05:51

with small muscles and a weak back.

00:05:53

He realizes, "I can't do manual labor.

00:05:55

I'm perfectly suited to sit behind a desk

00:05:58

and write numbers down,

00:06:00

but I can't actually do anything with my body."

00:06:02

But he has one thing going for him,

00:06:04

he's got a strong mind.

00:06:06

No strong body. A strong mind.

00:06:08

This manager may not have been able to figure out

00:06:12

how to grow the accounts of his rich owner,

00:06:16

but he is no dummy.

00:06:19

Was there just a bad market condition?

00:06:21

Was that he had a bad run for a couple of years?

00:06:24

We don't know.

00:06:25

This is a story, again, Jesus makes up.

00:06:27

So the money isn't growing,

00:06:29

but he actually does understand money.

00:06:32

So here's what he decides to do in verse four.

00:07:06

The manager sends out word

00:07:07

to all the people that he's gotten his ledgers,

00:07:09

all the people he says, "Come in.

00:07:12

How much? How much do we owe?" "A hundred."

00:07:15

He goes, "How about we mark down 50,

00:07:20

50 cash on the barrelhead today? Good for you?"

00:07:22

"Yeah." "Good."

00:07:24

"How much for you?" "A hundred measures of wheat."

00:07:27

"How about -- How about we say 80?

00:07:31

Can you pay 80 today? How's that sound?"

00:07:33

"That'd be amazing." "Good. 80."

00:07:36

And he does that with everybody.

00:07:41

This is why some people look at this as dishonest.

00:07:44

Some people look at this as shrewd.

00:07:46

There's different ways to translate this

00:07:47

and to look at this.

00:07:48

Basically, though, this guy is understanding how finance works.

00:07:53

This is legal. This is legal.

00:07:57

Roman and Jewish law is very clear on this.

00:08:00

You can do research on this if you want.

00:08:01

Let me just tell you, it's very, very legal.

00:08:04

While you actually have control of someone's finances,

00:08:08

you can choose where to shift it and what to do with it,

00:08:13

assuming you're trying to help everybody.

00:08:17

The crazy thing is, everybody actually gets helped here.

00:08:21

The people who are in deep, deep debt,

00:08:23

they get help because they have less to pay,

00:08:26

less money to owe.

00:08:27

Actually, and this is why this was legal,

00:08:29

the rich man could actually be helped as well,

00:08:33

because in writing down some debt,

00:08:35

he now gets money that comes back to him immediately

00:08:38

when it's just been sort of in arrears.

00:08:40

So now he gets money and this guy,

00:08:43

he's taken care of financially as well

00:08:45

because now he has all these people that he has helped.

00:08:49

And they know that he's the one who's helped them.

00:08:51

And so in their oil empire or their wheat empire,

00:08:54

they may just hire this guy to help them out.

00:08:59

This guy gets in the good graces of the debtors,

00:09:02

in the good graces of the tenants,

00:09:04

and good graces of his master. Everybody wins.

00:09:10

This is why Jesus tells a story, verse 8, goes like this.

00:09:29

Sons of this world, the basic people of this world

00:09:31

who understand how money works, or the sons of light,

00:09:34

the basic people of this world

00:09:36

who understand how heaven works.

00:09:37

Let me tell you something.

00:09:39

There tends to be two kinds of people,

00:09:41

those who understand the world of finance

00:09:43

and those who understand the world of spirituality.

00:09:46

They do mix, they do come together.

00:09:48

And every once in a while you'll find somebody

00:09:50

who understands how both of those work out.

00:09:52

But most of the time they're separate.

00:09:55

Jesus trying to help us understand the world of finance

00:09:58

and help those of us

00:09:59

who are into the world of spirituality see

00:10:01

that the world of finance can inform us

00:10:04

about how God works.

00:10:06

It is possible to buy friends with money.

00:10:10

That's what this guy does.

00:10:12

He buys friends by writing down their debts.

00:10:15

Several years ago, I was out at a big motorcycle event.

00:10:18

It was down in Tennessee

00:10:19

and there was a bunch of guys riding,

00:10:21

a bunch of guys from the area where where I lived.

00:10:23

And I didn't know everybody, but it was pretty cool

00:10:26

and everybody then after this trail ride,

00:10:28

we went to go have lunch.

00:10:30

And like I said, there's probably 20 of us at lunch

00:10:34

and I got down to the end to pay my bill

00:10:36

and they said, "Oh, it's already been paid."

00:10:38

I said, "What?" "It's been paid?

00:10:40

Yeah, that gentleman over there paid for it."

00:10:42

"Who are you? What is your name?"

00:10:45

He says, "My name's Tom.

00:10:46

And I had the best, most fun today riding a bike

00:10:49

I have for a long, long time."

00:10:50

He was a guy who's a little older than me.

00:10:53

I said, "Tom. Awesome."

00:10:55

Now, I've often said,

00:10:56

if God could give me one miraculous gift,

00:10:59

and I'd mean this completely,

00:11:00

if God could give me one miraculous gift,

00:11:02

it would be to remember the name of everybody I meet

00:11:06

the first time, because there's something powerful

00:11:09

when someone remembers your name and says your name.

00:11:11

I honestly pray for that

00:11:12

and I'll continue to pray for that.

00:11:14

I want to have supernatural ability to remember names.

00:11:17

When somebody does something for you financially,

00:11:21

it's amazing how you remember their name. Amazing.

00:11:24

It's like Tom. His name was Tom.

00:11:26

I didn't know him before.

00:11:27

Tom was part of Crossroads. I don't know if --

00:11:29

I don't know what campus Tom goes to, what site.

00:11:31

I don't know if he's streaming it.

00:11:33

I don't even know if he's part of Crossroads. I don't.

00:11:35

I know this though: if I saw Tom again,

00:11:38

I would know his name because what Tom did is

00:11:41

he bought a friend by paying for my lunch.

00:11:45

That's what Jesus talked about.

00:11:46

This guy understands that money can be buying favor

00:11:51

and earning us friendship.

00:11:53

And so remember that.

00:11:54

Bono, the great singer for U2 years and years ago,

00:11:58

he was in a personal friendship with George W. Bush.

00:12:02

And George W Bush had gotten behind legislation

00:12:06

to give Africa billions and billions of dollars

00:12:09

in AIDS relief.

00:12:11

Bono, with all of his progressive left leaning friends

00:12:17

and his kind of artist community,

00:12:18

they were cracking on him.

00:12:20

Like, "Who do you think --

00:12:21

you can't be friends with George W. Bush.

00:12:23

You're out seen smiling with him

00:12:24

and laughing with him, going places.

00:12:26

You can't do that."

00:12:27

And Bono said this, he said this.

00:12:29

He said, "I can be bought, but I'm not cheap."

00:12:34

He said, "I was bought.

00:12:35

I might not agree with everything

00:12:37

that President Bush believed,

00:12:38

but when he put billions of dollars

00:12:41

into helping suffering people who had AIDS,

00:12:43

he bought my friendship."

00:12:44

This is what Jesus is talking about.

00:12:47

You can buy friendship.

00:12:49

You can, in fact, you can buy a lot of things.

00:12:53

And people who are here in the world

00:12:57

and understand the world of business and finance,

00:12:59

everyone's going like, "Of course, of course you can.

00:13:01

I know that.

00:13:02

That's why I have expense accounts. Of course.

00:13:04

That's why I take people out to lunches.

00:13:06

Of course, that's why we have golf outings

00:13:08

for certain clients we're trying to woo.

00:13:09

Of course, of course."

00:13:11

People don't understand that,

00:13:13

they really get freaked out about this

00:13:15

because you don't understand money.

00:13:17

Jesus understands how money works,

00:13:19

and it's worked the same way since Jesus's time to now.

00:13:23

You can use your money to positively influence things,

00:13:27

and this shrewd manager used his authority

00:13:31

over all of these things to positively influence

00:13:37

things that included blessing himself.

00:13:41

Here's what Jesus says in Luke 16:9:

00:13:57

When Jesus calls this unrighteous wealth,

00:14:00

He's not saying you're unrighteous if you have wealth.

00:14:05

He's saying wealth in and of itself isn't a sign of God.

00:14:10

Money in and of itself, like,

00:14:12

Jesus doesn't die for money.

00:14:15

Jesus dies for people.

00:14:17

Jesus doesn't love money. Jesus loves people.

00:14:20

Money is like -- it's like oxygen.

00:14:23

Jesus didn't die for oxygen either,

00:14:25

but you got to have it.

00:14:26

Money is like oxygen.

00:14:27

Money is like the environment that we live in.

00:14:29

It's not righteous in that

00:14:32

it's not at the center of God's will,

00:14:34

but it's a necessary thing.

00:14:35

And Jesus says,

00:14:36

people in this world understand unrighteous wealth.

00:14:40

But you and I have got to be able to understand it

00:14:42

and translate it to the spiritual realm.

00:14:46

This is where the twist comes.

00:14:48

Jesus is talking,

00:14:49

not about increasing our physical holdings.

00:14:52

He's talking about increasing our eternal dwellings.

00:14:55

He's talking about buying the friendship of God.

00:14:59

He's talking about buying the attention of God.

00:15:04

That is crazy.

00:15:06

See, we all [indiscernible grumbling]

00:15:07

Yeah, of course, of course.

00:15:09

The business people are like, oh, of course,

00:15:10

yeah, you've got to have the right assets.

00:15:12

You've got to leverage them. Yeah, yeah.

00:15:14

You've got to have expense accounts, of course.

00:15:16

But the spiritual people

00:15:17

get really, really uncomfortable over here

00:15:20

with the whole business aspect of money.

00:15:23

Like they think this is dirty.

00:15:24

It's not, Jesus uses it.

00:15:26

Then you get the spiritual people over here

00:15:29

who understand spirituality, they understand prayer.

00:15:31

They're all having --

00:15:32

And the business people are over here like,

00:15:34

"You people, what are you doing?

00:15:36

What are you talking about,

00:15:37

just talking about these ethereal things?"

00:15:38

But they're perhaps right

00:15:40

in what they're saying and what they're doing.

00:15:42

Jesus is encouraging us

00:15:43

to bring these two worlds together.

00:15:46

The shrewdness of business

00:15:49

and the idealism of the heavens

00:15:53

and to bring them together.

00:15:56

Jesus is telling us this story,

00:15:59

not just to help us get ahead financially,

00:16:01

but to get ahead spiritually.

00:16:03

And this tells us who God is and who we are.

00:16:06

God is the rich man. He's the rich man,

00:16:09

and all the possessions are His

00:16:12

and we are the managers of

00:16:15

whatever God has entrusted us to manage.

00:16:25

This parable that Jesus tells backs right up

00:16:29

into another teaching that's critically close.

00:16:32

In fact, they're right -- it's part of the same teaching.

00:16:34

Oftentimes we divide them.

00:16:35

I'm going to give you that teaching just a little bit.

00:16:37

But we can't divide them because

00:16:39

what Jesus is trying to do here is

00:16:41

He's trying to get our attention

00:16:42

and He's trying to tell us we get God's attention

00:16:47

based on how we use our money.

00:16:49

If we use it in godly ways, we get God's attention

00:16:52

and we end up being ourselves

00:16:54

an actual shrewd money manager.

00:16:59

This is not about figuring out a way

00:17:01

to get the thing that I want to get.

00:17:03

We're not talking about being a penny pincher

00:17:05

because you like being cheap.

00:17:06

We're not talking about getting your kids

00:17:08

to private Christian schools because that's what you want.

00:17:10

We're talking about God's resources that I'm managing,

00:17:14

what can I do with them that makes my rich God

00:17:18

thankful and happy and is a wise move?

00:17:22

Are we using and consuming everything

00:17:25

for here right now, or are we storing things away

00:17:28

for a big move much, much later on?

00:17:32

Whether this guy is moral or not really isn't the point of story.

00:17:36

Whether he should have done what he did or not

00:17:38

isn't really the point of story.

00:17:39

The point of the story is Jesus saying

00:17:41

this is the kind of attitude

00:17:43

that my followers need to have,

00:17:45

a shrewd attitude of understanding how money

00:17:49

and how spirituality works together.

00:17:52

Again, Jesus is not impressed

00:17:54

when someone understands the ways of money

00:17:56

and they have a lot of money.

00:17:57

He's not impressed when someone has

00:17:59

the ways of spirituality and they're a spiritual guru.

00:18:02

He's impressed and he's trying to get us

00:18:03

to mix those two and be incredibly wise people.

00:18:08

Three ideas here, number one:

00:18:10

Shrewd people are always looking for opportunity.

00:18:13

They're scanning their eyes

00:18:14

and trying to find out where there's opportunity.

00:18:17

That's a shrewd manager.

00:18:19

This manager knows he's going to be fired

00:18:21

and he's trying to figure out how to rectify it.

00:18:24

He could have sulked about it.

00:18:26

He could have been depressed.

00:18:27

Instead, he goes into action.

00:18:29

I've been looking for opportunity for decades now,

00:18:32

actually decades.

00:18:34

I had in college a 1978 CJ-7

00:18:39

with a V8 in full time four wheel drive.

00:18:41

I had it for about a year, year and a half, two years,

00:18:44

something like that and then I had to sell it

00:18:47

because I couldn't afford it

00:18:48

on a college student stipend.

00:18:50

I couldn't afford it.

00:18:51

I kept running out of gas.

00:18:52

It got like eight miles to the gallon.

00:18:54

Literally every week I'd have to walk to class

00:18:58

at least one day a week

00:18:59

because it would run out on the way to class.

00:19:01

Sold it and got a -- went the opposite direction

00:19:03

and got a Volkswagen diesel Rabbit.

00:19:06

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

00:19:08

When I sold that Jeep

00:19:10

and I saw the guy drive off with it,

00:19:12

I said to myself, "Someday

00:19:15

I'm going to own that Jeep again

00:19:16

and I'm not going to be stressed out about the gas."

00:19:20

I've been looking for opportunity

00:19:22

to have a 1978 Jeep for a long, long, long time.

00:19:26

Just to just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine

00:19:29

who's on the west side of Cincinnati,

00:19:31

if you're in Cincinnati, which is where I live,

00:19:32

you know there's this thing on the west side

00:19:34

and the east side.

00:19:35

The ones the more working class it seems.

00:19:38

The other is the more kind of white collar.

00:19:41

But people in the financial industry

00:19:43

would say East Side,

00:19:45

which is supposed to be the professional side,

00:19:47

the white collar side of town.

00:19:48

The east side has the big houses,

00:19:51

the west side has the big accounts.

00:19:54

The West Side knows how to manage his money better

00:19:57

and build more wealth, while the east side

00:19:59

spend their money on all these stuff.

00:20:01

But my buddy on the west side

00:20:03

goes into a customer of his, his house,

00:20:07

and squirreled away in the basement

00:20:10

is the actual 1978 Jeep CJ-7 with a V8,

00:20:16

virtually the same vehicle that I had.

00:20:19

And I got to purchase the thing.

00:20:21

It had been in disrepair for 5 to 10 years.

00:20:24

The guy's son had started working on it

00:20:26

and he kind of gave up and it was sitting there.

00:20:28

So I came in and got this.

00:20:30

And I happen to think that God blessed me

00:20:32

with this opportunity because he's seen

00:20:37

how I want to be shrewd with His money

00:20:39

and His resources.

00:20:40

As I've been pouring money into this Jeep,

00:20:42

I'm restoring it from the frame up.

00:20:44

I'm tearing everything down, grinding down the frame,

00:20:46

replacing stuff, new wiring harness, all that stuff.

00:20:48

As I'm doing that stuff and spending money,

00:20:50

the Thank our Educators Initiative comes along

00:20:54

and I have the opportunity to be a part of that.

00:20:57

I want to be shrewd with God's money,

00:20:59

not my money, with God's money.

00:21:01

And so as we went through the process

00:21:03

of not buying any meals out that week

00:21:06

and saving that money to give to educators

00:21:09

and bless educators.

00:21:10

When we came to write that check

00:21:12

or actually tap in that amount,

00:21:14

realized God has blessed us way, way more

00:21:17

than the amount of meals we would actually spend

00:21:20

eating out that week.

00:21:21

And we gave more than that

00:21:24

because we wanted to be shrewd towards God.

00:21:27

See, shrewd people look at the long game.

00:21:31

We look at the way, way out, long arc.

00:21:35

When I manage my money, which it's actually God's money,

00:21:40

I manage it looking at the long arc of saying,

00:21:42

"How will God reward this, recognize this

00:21:46

in the long, long haul of the rest of eternity?"

00:21:50

That is being shrewd.

00:21:54

The manager in Jesus parable

00:21:57

was risking his master's wrath,

00:21:59

but he was risking it because he was looking at

00:22:02

the long haul of what the rest of his life looks like.

00:22:05

What's the best thing that can happen?

00:22:06

How can I set myself up for the rest of life?

00:22:08

Jesus would tell us we need to not just

00:22:10

set ourselves up for the rest of our life,

00:22:12

we need to set ourselves up for the rest of eternity,

00:22:14

if we actually believe it.

00:22:16

Most of us don't believe it. We just don't.

00:22:19

We say we believe in heaven, we say we believe, you don't.

00:22:21

Your life doesn't show that,

00:22:23

the way you manage your money doesn't show that,

00:22:25

the the things you pray about,

00:22:26

the primary affections of your heart.

00:22:29

Most people who say they believe in heaven

00:22:30

and have received Jesus, think about the next decade,

00:22:33

2 decades, 5 decades, 7decades of their life and that's it.

00:22:36

And their money management and everything else

00:22:39

isn't affecting the next run, it's only that.

00:22:42

The old song Everyone wants to go to heaven

00:22:44

but no one wants to actually go there.

00:22:45

Everyone wants to believe in heaven,

00:22:47

No one actually wants to go there.

00:22:48

Very few people, and Jesus saying this,

00:22:50

very few people are actually shrewd

00:22:53

to think about the long game.

00:22:56

They're thinking about the game

00:22:57

of getting through the end of this month.

00:22:59

See, shrewd people serve one master

00:23:03

and that master is God Himself,

00:23:05

the most shrewd serve God himself.

00:23:07

The Book of Luke 16:10,

00:23:10

here's that whole section that the whole story

00:23:13

about the shrewd manager and the rich man

00:23:15

was a setup for this.

00:23:16

It's all mashed in one section of scripture.

00:23:18

Here's what it says:

00:23:56

Jesus is trying to get us to be investing

00:23:59

in such a way that we get true riches,

00:24:01

not a 12% return on our brokerage account

00:24:05

or or an increase in our home's value

00:24:09

if you happen to be blessed enough to have a home

00:24:11

and an increase in value.

00:24:13

Jesus wants us to have true riches.

00:24:16

That's what He says, true riches.

00:24:18

If we can't figure out how money works

00:24:21

in the physical realm, how do we figure out

00:24:23

how money works in the spiritual realm?

00:24:25

That's what He's talking about here.

00:24:26

This guy has the riches

00:24:28

of a more secure financial future because

00:24:31

he's bought the favor of other people.

00:24:33

But Jesus wants us to understand true riches.

00:24:35

What's true riches?

00:24:37

True riches are things that are rewards in heaven

00:24:39

that God is going to bless us for in heaven.

00:24:41

Yes, there are unique rewards in heaven.

00:24:44

True riches, true riches,

00:24:47

things like spiritual gifts you can have right now.

00:24:50

That's a true rich.

00:24:52

Maybe something like the gift of tongues,

00:24:54

the gift of prophecy.

00:24:56

That's true rich.

00:24:58

Or the gift of servanthood.

00:25:00

These are all gifts and they are riches.

00:25:02

Or the riches of having a platform to share Christ

00:25:07

and increase capacities of what we have right now.

00:25:10

Jesus is saying that how we manage God's money,

00:25:16

how we give the things that are God's money,

00:25:20

how we purchase the things that are God's

00:25:22

with God's money, that will dictate

00:25:26

some of what we get from God.

00:25:29

Wow. Wow.

00:25:32

Dudes, you realize you can buy a friend in Jesus.

00:25:38

You can't -- You can't buy forgiveness

00:25:39

because He forgives you.

00:25:40

He goes to cross to forgive you.

00:25:42

You can't do that. You can't buy His love.

00:25:45

But Jesus says, "Make friends in heaven,

00:25:48

make friends in heavenly places."

00:25:50

How many people are there going to be in heaven

00:25:54

who are thankful for how you manage your money right now?

00:25:58

How many people are there going to be in heaven

00:26:00

who will be thankful for how you alleviated

00:26:03

some of their suffering here right now,

00:26:05

which is why we do Compassion International,

00:26:07

blessing and building into kids who have food

00:26:10

and education because of us doing that for $38 a month.

00:26:13

You got any money up there?

00:26:14

I got a few up there.

00:26:15

They're going, "Oh, yeah, that guy.

00:26:16

I like him. I like him. I know him."

00:26:19

How many people are there who are going to be in heaven

00:26:21

because you funded some outreach or some church

00:26:25

that brought them to faith

00:26:27

and you're going to be reaping that dividend forever.

00:26:29

Or do you just not believe it?

00:26:33

You may believe the nebulous idea of heaven,

00:26:35

but do you believe that it really matters?

00:26:40

We have got -- we have got to stop

00:26:44

just having financial gurus and spiritual gurus,

00:26:50

people who know how to make a buck

00:26:52

and people who know how to give a prayer.

00:26:55

We've got to be people, and this is what Jesus saying,

00:26:57

we've got to be people who can do both,

00:26:59

who can bring wise finance

00:27:02

and deep spirituality together.

00:27:05

When you can figure out how money works

00:27:09

and you can use money in a way that sets you up,

00:27:13

that buys a better future for you in heaven,

00:27:16

you are going to be in the top 1%.

00:27:20

Be shrewd. Don't be like everybody else.

00:27:23

Be a shrewd, deeply abiding, spiritual person

00:27:27

who has bought friends in heaven

00:27:29

and is approved of by Jesus.

00:30:49

- Hey, we hope you enjoyed the message today

00:30:50

and that is a little less confusing.

00:30:52

- Definitely less confusing. I thought Brian did a great job.

00:30:55

I'm so confused how I'm taller than you.

00:30:57

I'm still okay with it. - I have no idea.

00:30:58

Anyway, we're doing this message

00:31:00

as a part of something called the Bible Challenge,

00:31:03

where we are looking to get into our Bibles

00:31:05

every single day and you can join us in that

00:31:07

by going to Crossroads.net/BibleChallenge

00:31:10

for more information.

00:31:11

- Awesome. That's it.

00:31:12

We'll see you next time on Crossroads.

00:31:14

- There are blessings God has in store for you

00:31:17

that you will not get until you pray.

00:31:20

Yeah, I know, I know.

00:31:21

The pastor guy is going to talk about prayer.

00:31:25

Let me tell you why.

00:31:26

Because I want more stuff for you. I really do.

00:31:40

- There are bad ways to wake up

00:31:43

and there are great ways to wake up.

00:31:46

Start your day connecting with God and your community.

00:31:49

Explore the app and grow deeper daily

00:31:51

with the Bible Challenge: A great way to wake up.

Recent Series