Video of Sermon: 

n the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

At the end of the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus says that it was the tax collector who went down to his house justified and not the pharisee. Our Lord explains why this was the case by adding, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” So, here Jesus reminds us that it’s only humble people who are justified before God. To be justified before God, means to be declared right with Him. It means that God doesn’t count your sins against you, but rather He forgives them and you’re no longer responsible for them. When God justifies someone, He makes it so that their sins don’t condemn them. He makes it so that your sins don’t keep you out of heaven. And so, if only humble people are justified, meaning only humble people are saved, then obviously it’s very important for us to know what it means to be humble. We need to be certain of the exact kind of humility that is Jesus talking about, because humility comes in many different forms, and not every form of it is the same. 

In the first place, to be humble in the way that Jesus talks about it our text doesn’t just mean that you get embarrassed by things in general. Yes, the word humility has to do with humiliation, but not everyone who’s ever embarrassed themselves because they did something dumb should expect to be saved. To give a Biblical example, think about what happened with King Herod. When he got drunk at one of his parties and promised a pretty girl that he would give her up to half of his kingdom, he was clearly embarrassed when she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. But that wasn’t true humility. Herod wasn’t sorry for what he did. He was sorry that he looked like a fool. And that obviously is not the type of humility that justifies you before God. Just because bad things happen to you in your life and you don’t always feel proud of yourself doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to something better once this life is over. 

Along those same lines, it isn’t even true humility simply to be embarrassed by your sins. To be sure, you should be embarrassed by your sins, and no one will be saved who isn’t sorry for them. As the prophet Jeremiah tells us in Jeremiah chapter 8 about the people of Israel, “Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among the fallen, when I punish them, they shall be overthrown.” Cleary, God does want us to be ashamed of our sins. But shame by itself is not enough. We also need to acknowledge our shame before God. Lots of times even when people get embarrassed by their sins, they still refuse to admit them. Even when they’ve been shown from God’s Word that what they’re doing is wrong, and even if they know in their hearts that God’s Word is right, they still won’t come clean and stop doing it. They deny that they’re sinning because they are too embarrassed to confess it and too ashamed of what others would think if they made a change. They care more about the temporal consequences of what will happen to them when they repent than the eternal ones. King David describes this exact kind of situation in Psalm 32 when he writes, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For night and day your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” Even though David knew that what he was doing was wrong, he still wouldn’t come clean and accept the consequences. So, David had no rest for his consciences. It was only when he confessed his sins to the prophet Nathan that he finally was able to be at peace. 

Whenever we’re talking about true justifying humility, we always need to keep in mind what the Bible says about repentance, and especially the fruits of repentance. There’s a very common false teaching in our day which totally overlooks the need for repentance and reduces it something like, “Nobody’s perfect” or “We are all broken.” But simply admitting that you’ve made mistakes before or that you’re a broken person isn’t the same thing as taking accountability for your sins and wanting God’s forgivness for them. It isn’t the same thing as trying to amend your life with the help of the Holy Spirit. Even the most devout atheist will probably still tell to you that they’re not perfect and that they’ve made mistakes before. But they’re not sorry for their sins. They don’t even think in terms of sin. 

Even Christians sometimes fall into this kind of thinking when they talk about their sins as if they’re no big deal, or even as if they’re a good thing. Have you ever heard this before? “I’m glad I made the mistakes that I did, because those mistakes helped turned me in to the person that I am today.” Well, that’s not how Christians are supposed to talk. Our sins aren’t what make us better people. Christ is the one who does that. And He does that not because of our sin, but in spite of it. So, we shouldn’t speak about sin as if it were a good thing by itself. We shouldn’t use the fact that we have a sinful nature, or that in our weakens we still sometimes fall into sin, as an excuse to sin even more. Our sin is what kills us, not what makes us alive. Our sin is what can drive away the Holy Spirit if we don’t repent of it, not what keeps the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Any kind of humility that avoids repentance and turning away from sin, is not the kind of humility that Jesus describes in our text. It is not the humility that justifies us.

Another kind of humility that doesn’t justify us is the kind of humility that demonizes good works. It’s true that the pharisee in our reading was not justified like the tax collector was, but that wasn’t because the pharisee was doing things that were bad in and of themselves. It was because he trusted what he did for righteousness. It’s not bad to try and avoid stealing, murdering, or committing adultery. It’s not bad to be faithful to your spouse and not sleep with people that you’re not married too. It’s not bad to tithe to the church and put ten percent of what you have in the offering plate. All of those things are good. But none of those things by themselves are what justify you before God. None of those things are what make you a Christian or give you God’s grace and eternal life. Thinking that not stealing, or not committing adultery, and giving money to the Church earns you a place in heaven is like a child thinking that not hitting his sibling or cleaning up his room means that he should automatically get dessert after dinner. Those are the things we are supposed to be doing anyway! They’re not something that we should get a reward for. As Jesus tell us elsewhere, “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”

The Pharisee’s problem was not that he tried to do the right thing, but that he thought that his righteous looking efforts were enough to save him and that he didn’t have any sin. The Pharisee forgot that the law was not given to show sinners how to justify themselves, but in order to show them that they can’t justify themselves, and that they need a Savior to do it for them. The Pharisee forgot that even if we think we’ve done a lot of good things, as God’s Word also tells us, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” If the pharisee considered himself in the way that the Bible does, he would have known that he was just as guilty in the eyes of God as the tax collector. But we don’t need to demonize good works in order to prove that everyone is a sinner. In fact, a humble spirit lifts up good works, even though a humble spirit never trusts in them for salvation.

Similar to the kind of false humility that demonizes good works, there’s also a bad kind of humility that attacks the idea that we should have certainty in God’s Word or the assurance of our salvation. Now, certainly, we shouldn’t boast in ourselves for those things, or act as if we could never fall away from the faith, but that’s not the same thing as having confidence in the promises of God. As Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” And Jesus tells us in Mark chapter 16, “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” These passages are important for us to remember because we often hear the argument, especially as Lutherans, that it’s somehow arrogant for us to claim that we’re right about something and that others are wrong, or that it’s somehow bad to be confident that we’re going to heaven someday.

But it is never arrogant to stand on the clear testimony of God’s Word. In fact, that’s part of what it means to be truly humble. When God tells us something in the Bible, He wants us to believe it. For example, when He tells us that “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” that’s what He want us to think. Or, when He says that the bread in the Lord’s Supper is His Body, and that the wine is His Blood, that’s what He wants us to say too. And if others won’t say it, or say something else that disagrees with it, God wants us to disagree with them. He wants us to hold onto His Word and insist on it. It’s the people who teach against God’s Word that are not being truly humble, not the people who stand firm on it. They’re the ones putting themselves above the Scriptures, which is the most arrogant thing that you can do. But the most humble thing to do is to confess the Scriptures and not give them up for anything. So again, to be truly humble doesn’t mean that we doubt God’s Word or that we’re always unsure about our salvation. It means that we trust what God’s Word says. 

Ultimately, the kind of humility that justifies, and this is the main point of today’s sermon, is the humility of having faith in Jesus. It means to be repentant of your sin and trust in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. That’s the humility that Jesus is getting at in our reading. That is the true humility that God praises. When the tax collector prayed in the temple, he beat his chest and said, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” The word that he used for mercy, is the same word for propitiation. Literally, the tax collector said, “God be propitiated to me,” as is, “God be the remedy for my sin.” The tax collector wanted what Saint John describes for us in 1 John chapter 4 when he writes, “Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins and not for our sins only but also for the sins of the whole world.” What the tax collector was praying for was that God would forgive him of his sins on account of the blood that Jesus shed for them. That is what he clung to. That is what he put his trust in. Not himself, not his own works, not even his own faith, but the work of Jesus in his place.

The tax collector was a real sinner. He had done terrible things. He stolen from his own people and took sides against his own family. But Jesus says that he went home that day justified. That’s the most comforting message that there is in the whole world. It’s only thing that can give someone true and lasting peace. Because you’re a real sinner too. You’re just as guilty as the pharisee was, who looked down on the tax collector, and the tax collector who was ashamed of his past. You’ve also have treated others with contempt before and committed a whole litany of sins against God’s Word too. Pick any one of the ten commandments and you’ve have found a way to break it. You should be ashamed. It’s no one else’s fault but your own. You deserve to go to hell. But listen again to the words of Jesus, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Despite your many sins, God still makes you a promise. When you humble yourself before Him, meaning when you confess your sins and turn away from them, He promises to forgive you. He promises that regardless of how many or how bad your sins have been, you’ll still go down to your house justified. And when Jesus makes a promise, you can be certain that He’ll keep it. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sometimes people try and divide up the different characteristics of God and ignore the parts of Him that they don’t like. The most common way of doing this in our time is by talking exclusively about the love of God without ever addressing His justice or His wrath over sin. When that happens, though, we end up creating a different Jesus than the One that’s in the Bible. God’s love gets redefined into something that’s opposed to what we find in the Scriptures, and souls are led astray by a delusion. The solution to this problem, though, like every doctrinal error, is to return to the text of Scripture and pay careful attention to what it tells us.

Consider, for example, our Gospel lesson today from Luke chapter 19. That’s the account of when Jesus came into Jerusalem and predicted how it would one day be destroyed. This is an excellent passage not only for demonstrating God’s love toward sinners, and how, ultimately, He desires their salvation, but also His righteous anger towards sinners, and how eventually He will bring His judgment upon them if refuse to repent and receive His grace.

First, this text clearly shows us just how angry God can get with our sin. We see that both in the words of Jesus at the beginning of our text, as well as in His actions at the end of it. What did our Lord say about that holy city when He first saw it at the distance? “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

The name “Jerusalem” literally means the “place of peace.” It was the place that had the temple and the sacrifices. It was the place where God pictured the coming of the Savior through types and signs, and showed how He would one day suffer and die as a substitute for our sins. The people of Jerusalem had every opportunity to turn away from their sinful deeds and believe in Jesus. He taught among them. He did miracles among them. He was crucified and raised right before their eyes. And yet, as Jesus said, “they did not know the time of their visitation.” Even though they had the Scriptures that prophesied about Christ, and even though He fulfilled them at every turn, still they refused to recognize Him. Jesus came to die for them, He visited them in peace, but they wanted nothing to do with His salvation. And in response to that repeated rejection, God visited them with wrath. In 70 A.D., to be exact, at the hands of the Romans, the words of Jesus from our text came true. Jerusalem was invaded, many of its inhabitants were killed, and the temple was completely torn down. 

What happened to the people of that once great city, shows us what will happen to everyone who despises God’s Word and refuses to accept His grace during the time that God gives. Eventually, they’ll come into His judgment. It might not happen right away, because God is very merciful, but sooner or later, it will. It happened in the days of Noah. It happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. It happened to the citizens of Jerusalem. And it could also happen to us. In fact, eventually it will happen everyone who rejects God’s Word, when Jesus comes again on the last day.

Those who think of God purely in terms of modern categories like being nice, or tolerant, should also think about what Jesus did at the end of our text today and how He drove out the money changers from the temple. Elsewhere we learn that Christ made a whip of cords and physically turned over the tables there. If you can’t image your Jesus ever doing something like that, then maybe you’re not worshiping the right one. The real Jesus cares about sin. The real Jesus gets anger when people persist in their sin and won’t repent of it. This is especially true when it comes to those sins that undermine the Gospel. And that’s what was going on in Jerusalem. People were coming from all over the world to worship the Lord in His house. They traveled from faraway places and didn’t always bring with them the animals they need for the sacrifices. So, when they arrived at temple, they had to buy them from those who were already there. And what should have been an opportunity to help one’s neighbor, turned into an opportunity to make money. Whether it was through price gouging for the animals, or inflated exchange rates for the use of the mandatory Jewish currency, some people took advantage of the situation for their own personal gain. They turned God’s house into a den of thieves. And that made God mad.

Knowing and believing that God does actually get angry with sin, and that He will punish all those who refuse to repent of it, is an important truth to remember because there’s always the temptation to think that our sin really isn’t that big of a deal. That’s the most popular error of our time. It says that because God is love, that means that He must accept and approves of us no matter what we’re doing. It makes it seem as if God doesn’t care about our sin, which isn’t true at all. Of course, He cares about our sin! Just look at what Jesus did in the temple!

Even within the church we are face with the constant threat to think that we’re beyond the scope of God’s wrath. Because we’re good old Missouri Synod Lutherans, who got confirmed when we we’re younger, and take Communion a few times a year, sometimes the thought is, as long as I keep doing that, “I’m good to go no matter what else I do.” But no one is outside the possibility of falling away from the faith. No one can provoke the Lord to anger through unrepentant sin without facing consequences. The people of Jerusalem had the temple and God brought it to nothing. We our own gifts too, but if we don’t use them to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth, which includes living lives according to His holy Word, then it’s only a matter of time before we’ll lose what we have too. What did the prophet Jeremiah say to the people in our Old Testament lesson, “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known and then come and stand before me in this, which is called by my name, and say ‘We are delivered,’ only to go on doing all these abominations?” Showing up in church doesn’t mean squat if you are embracing a life of sin outside of it. Nothing will spare you from God’s wrath if you’re living in unrepentance.

Today’s readings, and the whole Bible for that matter, teaches us to take our sin seriously. They teach us that God hates sin, and that even though He wants us to have His forgivness, if we refuse it, He will eventually judge us. 

But God does not want to judge us! He wants to save us! That’s why Jesus reacted the way that He did when He saw the city of Jerusalem. How does our text tell us that Christ reacted when He predicted what would happen in that place? It says, “and when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it.” Jesus wasn’t happy about what was about to take place. He was grieved by it. He the Lord of Glory, was so upset but it that He broke down into bitter tears at the mere sight of seeing them. As the Bible tells us, “[God] desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” He wants everyone to turn away from their sins before it’s too late and look to Him for forgivness. 

And not only does God want that, but He is very patient for it to happen. He puts up with our stubbornness all of the time and doesn’t destroy us immediately even though He has every right to do so. As the Psalmist also says, “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” God isn’t fair. And praise the Lord that He isn’t! Even when He eventually does bring His righteous judgment down upon someone, almost every time, that doesn’t happen without repeated warnings. It took Noah 100 years to build the Ark. God gave the Canaanites 400 years until their iniquity was complete. And Jesus preached and taught and did miracles in Jerusalem for 3.

Why does the Lord put up with our sin? He doesn’t do it that that we can persist in it, but so that we would have more time to turn away from it and be saved. As Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 2, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”

We see the patient and loving kindness of God above all in the person of Jesus Christ. Our Lord not only wept for the holy city of Jerusalem, but He went to the cross to die for sins of the people who lived there. He not only predicted how the temple would be destroyed, but He allowed His own body, the true Temple, to be torn down and raised up three days later too. Jesus bore the sins of the whole world in His flesh so that all those who repent and believe in Him would be spared from the wrath to come. He suffered God’s total judgment for sin, so that everyone who takes refuge in Him would never have to come into that judgment eternally. 

Just like there is the temptation to think that God doesn’t care about our sin, there’s also the temptation to think that He cares about it in such a way that He won’t ever forgive it. But that isn’t true either. The only reason why God shows us His wrath is for the sake of showing us His mercy. Again, He wants us to have His forgiveness. He wants to be with us. And nothing gives Him greater joy than when that actually happens. When we are sorry for our sins, God says that He’ll forgive them. When we turn away from our evil deeds, no matter how awful or how frequent they’ve been, God assures us that He’ll wash them away. That’s why His Son died. And that’s what He promises to give us in His Word and Sacraments. As we read in Isaiah chapter 55, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that He may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

So, being a Christian isn’t just about believing in God’s love, or just believing in His wrath. It’s about believing in both. Our Scriptures readings today put both of those truths in front of us so that we would learn to know God rightly and live by repentance and faith.

The city of Jerusalem is a great example. God destroyed in in 70 A.D.  by the hands of the Romans because the people there did not know the time of their visitation. Even though they had every opportunity to recognize Jesus for who He was, and what He came to do for them, they wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t turn away of their sins and instead embraced them despite God’s clear Word. May we not make the same mistake as them.

For today is the day of our visitation. Today is the day that Jesus comes to us to gives us the things that make for peace. Today God shows His loving kindness towards through His Word and Sacraments that offer us forgivness. He promises to abundantly pardon all of our sins by His grace when we come to Him for mercy. So, let us listen to the voice of our Savior, and run to Him for grace. Let us not bury our heads in the sand, and try and soothe our screaming consciences with false assurances of peace, but turn to the Price of Peace Himself who alone can give us cleansing for our souls. For just as Jesus drove out the money changes from the temple, when we come to Him in sorrow, He will drive our sins away from us as far as the east is from the west. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Sermon on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pu_IwN3reo

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The parable of the dishonest manager from Luke chapter 16 is notorious for being one of the more challenging parables in the Bible. That’s not because the main point is necessarily hard to find, at least I don’t think so, but because the way that Jesus gets there is a little bit different than normally does. Usually, Jesus compares the Kingdom of God and how it works to something positive that we can copy directly. He’ll say that God’s Kingdom is a like a sower who goes out to sow seeds, or a fisherman who casts His net in the water. But in this instance, the point of comparison kind of works in reverse. Jesus uses a negative example, to encourage us to do something good. It’s sort of like saying, you should love God just as much as those guys on wall street love their money.

Obviously, Jesus doesn’t want us to act exactly like the manager did in the parable. That guy was the worst. In fact, he was a thief. He wasted his master’s money, and then we he got caught, he came up with a plan to functionally steal even more of it in order save his own rear end before he got fired. Clearly, Jesus isn’t teaching us that it’s okay to steal things from our boss and protect our livelihood at all costs. But what He is saying is that we should be just as wise in the godly use of our possessions, as the dishonest manger was in the ungodlyuse of his. That’s what Jesus means at the end of the parable when He says, “The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” He means that sometimes unbelievers are better at sinning than we Christians are at doing good works. Especially when it comes to money, sometimes they put more effort into keeping it, than we do in sharing it. And Jesus is saying that we can learn from that. Not that we learn how to sin, but that we learn how to be zealous. We should be just as zealous to do the right things with our possessions as unbelievers are to do the wrong things.

So, the parable really is just a basic overview of Christian stewardship. It’s about learning to be generous with what you have, and especially as it pertains to the support of the proclamation of the Gospel.

The right perspective on Christian stewardship always starts with the Gospel. It begins with that central truth that everything that we have is a gift that comes from God, including our salvation. Not only does the Lord promise to give us everything that we need for this body and life, but He’s also secured for us eternal life. Through sending His Son Jesus to cancel the debt of sin that we owe, by suffering for it in our place, God has provided us with an eternal home. We don’t have to run around like the dishonest manager did, frantically trying to secure a place to live. We have a place to live! Through faith in Christ, we will live with Him forever.

And because we already have such a great treasure in Jesus, that changes the way that we look at our earthly treasures. It changes the way that we use them. On the one hand, it makes it clear that we can’t and shouldn’t try to use our money to buy God’s favor. We don’t put things in the offering plate to try and make up for our sins or get on God’s good side. Some people actually do that. They think that if they send in a monthly or yearly check to church that that will keep them in God’s good graces. But that shows that they don’t really believe in the grace of God at all. They think that God’s grace is something that needs to be bought without realizing that Jesus Christ already paid the full price for it when He died. So, any attempt to buy if for ourselves completely undermines the work of our Lord. It makes a mockery of the Gospel and the free forgivness of sins that we have in Jesus.

The other thing the Gospel does to us when the Holy Spirit causes us to believe it is that it inspires us to use our money in a different way. Those who don’t know the love of Jesus, see money as a security blanket. They think that the more that you have, the safer you’ll be, so they try and hold on to as much of it as possible. But when we know that our security comes from Christ, and that even if we should walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we don’t have to fear any evil, because our Good Shepherd is with us, then we don’t have to be so worried about our money. As the hymn writher says, “What is the world to me with all its vaunted pleasure, when you and you alone Lord Jesus are my treasure! You only, dearest Lord, My soul’s delight shall be; You are my peace, my rest. What is the world to me?” The world means nothing to us as Christians. The things of this world are passing away. But we have the one thing that endures forever. We have salvation in Christ. So, now, we’re called to use our worldly possessions for heavenly purposes. We use our money not for self-preservation, and self-fulfillment, but for the sake of serving others, and especially creating opportunities where others can come to faith.

“Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth,” Jesus says, “so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” Our money is going to fail. We can’t take it with us when we die, but if we use it in the right kind of way now, such as supporting the Church, and making sure there is a place for others to hear God’s Word and receive His sacraments, then when we die, there will be more people waiting for us in heaven when we get there. All those individuals that were saved by the Gospel that we supported with our meager tithes and offerings will greet us as friends when we enter into God’s eternal kingdom.

There are always opportunities for us to use the things that we have to spread the Word of God. We can use our time. We can use our talents. And we can use our treasures. And the most basic thing that we can do is not let the offering plate get passed in front of us without putting anything into it. We need to have a regular habit of giving to the church. That’s what the Bible says, and that’s what we all learned in the Catechism: “Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor.” Galatians chapter 6 verse 6. I’m not talking about pastors getting rich off the poverty of their people. I’m talking about full time Ministry, and making sure not just that you have a pastor, but that everyone else who needs one can have one two. We don’t just use the money in the plate to pay the bills. We use it for all kinds of things that advance the Kingdom of God. Last year we helped out a seminarian finish his pastoral training, and gave him a few extra dollars to make it out of there with less debt. That’s wonderful! Through the generosity of this congregation, we were able to send 6 of our youth to a conference that taught them to love the liturgy and love being a Lutheran. Do you know how many 25-year-old I’ve talked to that went to Higher Things growing up who say it made them realize why Lutheran worship was such a blessing? We took 3 young men to a week-long summer camp and one of them told we afterward that maybe he might want to be a pastor someday. None of that stuff would have happened if we didn’t have the money to do it. And image what else we could do, if we each gave a little bit more?

Sometimes what stops people from being regular givers to the church, and I’ve seen this everywhere I’ve ever been, is the idea that now’s just not a good time: “I don’t have enough right now to give, but when I do, I’ll start to be generous.” Dear brothers and sister in Christ, that is not how it works. As Jesus also tells us in our text, “One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much.” If we aren’t faithful with what we already have, why do we think that we’ll become faithful when we get even more? We won’t. The same attitude that is holding us captive to our possessions now will only rule over us even more when they increase. But if we see Christ as our treasure, and trust that in Him we have everything that we need already, then we can let go of what we have, no matter how much or how little it is.

I’m going to get very practical in this part of the sermon, because sometimes that’s the only way for things to stick. My parents taught me before I even had a bank account that whatever money you get from work you need to put 10% of it in the plate. That’s how the Israelites did it. And even if that’s not a command from God that still applies to us in the same way, it’s still a good place to start. How could we who know the full picture of the Gospel do less than those who only knew it by types and signs? In the Old Testament, the Jews were told not even to eat with the Gentiles. Their God-given missionary strategy, if you want to call it that, was to provide for the Levites who served in the temple as priests and stayed put. But after Jesus rose from the dead, He told His disciples to go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel. He told them to go and make disciples of all nations, meaning from all over the earth. So, is there more work for us to do now, or less? There’s much more. And that means that we should be willing to be even more generous to get it done. Let’s start with 10% and go from there. I don’t say that as a law to bind consciences. I say it as godly wisdom for your encouragement. If you really don’t think that you can live off of 90% of your income, and that you’re going to starve to death if you try, then by all means, give what you can. But at the same time, what does the Psalmist say, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.” The Lord will provide. He always does. And you can be sure that He will even if you give 10% to the church because He gave much more than 10% for you. He gave everything that He had. Jesus let His very life be taken away from Him so that you would be forgiven and live forever. You can’t out give God. And whatever you do give in faith, you’ll get back a hundredfold when you’re in heaven.  Whatever you miss out on in this life, because you couldn’t afford it due to your giving, won’t even compare to the joy you’ll have with the saints and angels when you are standing before the throne of God free from sin and sorrow.

So, do what Jesus says and make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth. Use your worldly possessions in support of the things that you know matter the most. Let your money follow your heart, which loves Jesus, and don’t let your heart follow after your money. Jesus is your priceless treasure. He is the fount of all true and lasting pleasure. And by grace He has entrusted you with all the riches of His Kingdom. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.