God's Successful People

How does a person become one of God's successful people? How do we become successful for Jesus? You might hear this and be like, "Hey, that means I just need to work harder for the church. I need to work harder to live out my faith. I need to work harder." And it can almost be this performancebased salvation that if I do enough for Jesus, if I work hard enough, IF I DO ALL THIS, I will earn what God has given me. The work never purchased the relationship. the work to prove that they had a relationship with God in the first place. Thank you for joining us. If you don't know me, my name is Andrew. I'm the pastor here. But as we heard uh kind of about just schools starting and and we got to hear from Mrs. D. Ashley who leads our school here. I want to brag on our school and give just an update about what's happening here on our property is we have a preschool and an elementary and I've been involved with that school for 10 years a do an amazing job with Miss Tammy that leads our preschool with Ashley that leads our elementary. We have teachers that attend our church. Gabrielle who leads us in worship will be teaching first grade this year and all of that here. Here's what I want that's so exciting is we have over 200 students, our highest enrollment ever on campus Monday through Friday that are going to hear the gospel that are being raised in the church and doing great things, right? Give God some glory for that. And we're just excited about this ministry and the success it has had. And what's funny is you hear that word success and sometimes success feels like a dirty word in the church. Like it's like, "Hey, I came to Jesus. I need to my life needs to be hard. I need to be poor and beaten down and persecuted. I've been studying through the book of Job that we're going to preach in a couple months and it's filled with that." And you're like, "As a Christian, everything should be hard. We don't need money. We don't need stuff. It should just be beating down on us." We hear that word success. We're like, I don't know if that jives with the Jesus who had no place to lay his hand and just roamed through the Roman world teaching about him. But let me tell you, success is not a bad word. Success is not even something that God doesn't want for us. Today, as we wrap up our series through the parables that we've been going through for the last nine weeks, it ends with the master, God himself, telling a servant, "Well done." And those two words, well done. We're not well done. Here's your participation trophy, which we do give out at the end of soccer season. just a little um preview, but that well done was a performance review and and the man passed. And today, as we dive into our text, here's the question that I just want to lay over our hearts that I think is scattered throughout God's word here is how can we be successful for Jesus? You see, here's the deal. It is God is not afraid of success. God doesn't even want us not to be successful. But what I think God doesn't like is our definition of success. And today in Matthew chap 25, starting in verse 14, we're going to see exactly what that looks like. What is God's definition of success? And let me give you a little spoiler alert. It's not having more followers on Instagram. It's not having more B money in your bank account. It's not having a more comfortable house that you can be. It's not having your children become more worldly successful. It is not our world definition of what success might look like. But here we see how despite when we follow him that he wants success for us, but he wants it on his terms. And in Matthew 24 starting in verse 14, the first thing that we're going to see about being successful for Jesus is it requires all of us to recognize our unique gifting. to recognize our unique gifting. Check this out starting in verse 14 as we dive into this text. This is the last parable that we're going to see Jesus teach in here. But he says this, "For it is just like a man about to go on a journey. He called his own servants and he entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one one talent. depending on each one's ability. Then he went on a journey. As we dive into this text, the first thing we need to notice when we talk about receiving or to recognizing our unique gifting is the first thing we see here is whose money this is. It says right off the bat that it was his possessions. Verse 18 actually says it's the master's money. What's we need to notice in this story is not $1 ever belong to the servants. They are not owners. They are simply stewards. And hear this. So are we. Everyone sitting in this room watching online as we go out. We are all stewards of the gifts that God has given us. Your lungs, your paycheck, your calendar. You know your calendar is not yours. It belongs to your wife, right? um your kids, your voice, your Tuesday afternoon, every single bit of it was handed to you by someone in that someone, the God of the universe is coming back one day to talk about it. Now, here is where this story uh gets away from us because the word talent has actually fooled us for the past 600 years. In this uh story, it uses the word talent, which is the Greek word for talon. And when we hear that, we think of our talents, right? Our abilities, our gifting. But what it was actually meant in the Greek word, it was a lump sum of money. It was actually 20 years worth of wages. It was cold, hard cash. It was silver. It was gold. It was given to you in a form that you could spend it. And what's funny is the church actually has taught this story so much over the past 2,000 years that about in the 1400s uh around that time the English language actually started translating because the church taught the story so much they translated that word to mean ability. See the irony in that is Jesus told a story in a different language and it changed the meaning of a word in a language that he never spoke. You just see the impact that Jesus has through generation and generations. It's kind of like how it's 2026 because that's how long it's been since he was born. But as we pick this apart, you hear talent. You hear ability. And here's the problem we have when we read this text is we immediately start judging ourselves. You might be like, I'm the one talent guy. I can't sing. I can't teach. But that guy over there, man, he's so talented. He's the five talent. He's the two talent. And and I want to say right off the bat that we need to stop this line of thinking in this story. A talent is not a skill. It is money. And I want us to take a minute and feel how much I'm going to make you do a little bit of math. And we actually did math. Not as much math as we did a couple weeks ago. All right. I know you guys loved it. I got so many comment cards. Do more math in church. And I'm like, all right, if you guys want. Uh but in this uh here here look if you in my Bible there's a footnote and it says in my CSB Bible right there on verse 15 it says that uh uh one um talent is about 6,000 dinari. A dinari is a single day's wages. So about it's about 20 years worth of labor. If you take 20 years worth of labor, you bring that to today's term which is about $60,000 is about the average salary in Arizona. Does anyone know what 60,000 time 20 is? A lot of money. That's very helpful. All right, you guys have calculators on your phone and you're on Instagram right now. Just change the tab. All right, um over there it is $1.2 million. So, think about this for a second. The the guy with five talents, he had $6 million. The guy with two talents had $2.4 million. And the guy with one talent, the loser, the guy we feel sorry for, the guy that he doesn't have enough cuz he wasn't talented enough. He didn't have enough ability. He wasn't this. The guy that got shortch changed, got overlooked, that got the leftovers. He was handed $1.2 million. After church, we're going to hand all of you $1.2 million. And we have a assignment for I'm just kidding. Uh, I didn't say that in first service, but you look a little dead, so I was trying to encourage you, all right, with a lie. Um, but he was handed $1.2 million. And here's what's important, church, is there is not a single person in this story who got a small assignment. And look at how the master hands these out. He says the criteria for handing them out a five, two, and one was depending on each one's ability. The master is not being careless. He's being precise. And and here's what we need to hear is he did not hand you more than you could steward. But here's the scary part. He did not hand you less than he intended to use through you. Which means the comparison that we have been running in our head this whole Christian life that that guy got five, that guy got two, that I only have one. That is a math problem that we have invented. What you need to hear right off the bat is you are not holding leftovers from what God has entrusted to you. You are not holding scraps. You are holding millions of dollars that has been given to you from the creator of the universe. This past Sunday, I was gone and Kyle preached and did a great job and he just yelled the whole time at you. It was awesome. That's Kyle's energy. But but as the reason I was not here is I went with a couple guys from churches. I went to Warp Tour. All right. I went to Long Beach and went to a two-day music festival with hundreds of bands and out in the sun for 10 hours a day. I did that 21 years ago at Puria Sports Complex when it was 115 out as a 14-year-old. I did that last weekend and thought I was going to die. I had a hydration pack on. I had SPF 70 that I applied seven t times a day. Like it was it was fun. But man, I'm so old. But as I'm sitting there and I'm listening to all these bands with 80,000 friends that I made last weekend, I was watching these guys and I always wanted to be a lead singer of a band. And I want to be a lead singer so bad. And I had all the things for it. Like I knew how to be a front man. I knew how to be on stage. I knew how to do so much. There was one problem. I could not sing and still can't to this day. And I looked at these bands and as these people are singing out these lyrics, I'm like, man, like, God, why didn't you gift me to be a lead singer? Like, I could have done that. I could be selling band t-shirts to put my kids through college right now. And as I was like feeling sorry for myself throughout my time and throughout my life, like, I wish I could do that. God's like, but what did I entrust in you? What did according to your ability did I tell you to do? What did I wire you for? And and you know what he wired me for? To preach the word of God. And I love it so much. You know what he wired me for is to lead on and off stage and to develop people and say, "I see something in you. I want to help you harness it to do God's work." And so often we look at the world around us like, "I wish I could do that. I wish I could do that. I wish God put me here. I wish God did this for me." Instead of recognizing what he has put in our life, how he has wired us and the things he has, the millions of spiritual dollars that he has put in our hands. So the money is in our hands. The master is on the road. Now the only question left is what you do with it. And that leads into our second point is we need to receive our unique assignments. Receive our unique assignments. Keep going on in verse 16. Actually, you start at the very end of verse 15. The last word in verse 15, it says, "Immediately the man who had received five talents went. He put them to work and he earned five more. In the same way, the man with two earned two more. But the man who had received one talent, he went off. He dug a hole in the ground and he hid his master's money. I I love how this section starts. And then the last word of verse 15, he says immediately that there was no committee meeting. There was no six-month prayer retreat about whether he was really called to do something with this money. The master's dust was still in the air from leaving. And the man with five, the man with two had already put their hand to the plow and started working. Why? Because they understood something that the third man never did is the money was not a gift to enjoy. It was an assignment to execute. And as they work that in verse 19, it tells us what it was pointing to. It says, "After a long time, the master of those servants came and he settled accounts with them that they knew this day was coming." in verse 19 that after time passed as they're working that the master came back and was asking what did you do with my money let's settle accounts let's see where things are at and I love that both the two talent and the five talent they doubled their assignment and listen to the two conversations that you have to hear backtoback in verses 21 and 23 as they present what they earned to the master in verse 21 says this his master said to him well done. Good and faithful servant, you were faithful over a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master's joy. Skip down to verse 23. His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You are faithful over a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master's joy." You notice anything between those two verses? They're exactly the same. They're identical word for word. Not one syllable of a difference. They're the exact same. In the original Greek language, each stroke has no difference. The five talent man walked in with $6 million and he produced 6 million more that he could then give to his master, the 12 million sum. The the two talent man had 2.4. He multiplied it to become uh 4.4 4 and he gave it to the master 4.8. I'm sorry, your math is rubbing off on me. I'm actually good at math. And the master gives the same message to both of these guys. Here's what I love about this. The master, God, does not grade on a curve. He grades on an individual basis based on the proportion that he has given us. And then you look at the phrase he uses. I love this when he says, "Hey, you guys did a great job." He says, "You are faithful over a few things." Now, I I love that word, a few things. Like, he's giving them millions of dollars. And he says, "That's few. That's little. 20 years wages, that's nothing." He's like, "Those are a few things." The guy with 5 pounds, 100 years worth of working, that's nothing. You are faithful over a few things. So, what is he going to do? I will put you in charge of many things. I love this church. The reward for good work is more work. Some of you know that in your job cuz you're the good employee, so you do the bad employees work as well. The re the reward for more for good work is more work. Bigger fields. If you are faithful with a million, God's going to give you billions. If you're faithful with billions, he's going to give you the kingdom. This is not prosperity-ish. We're going to talk back a little bit in here in a second, but let me go off on a tangent. I could preach a sermon on this. I think we're living in a day where today's generations and the future generations and it's probably wired by a lot of things including our phones and our devices that are giving us hits of stuff that fills us up temporarily and leaves us empty. But we have lost the art of just wanting to be great and working and moving forward and saying I was good with this. I tell my staff all the time they're like things were good. I'm like are we okay with good? They're like huh? And I'm like do I look like I like good things? Like I want great. I expect greatness out of everything except for my sports teams because I'm depressed and have been hurt too often with Arizona sports teams. All right. But in my personal life, I don't want to be good. I want to be great. When God has given me things, I want to keep being better. I want to keep growing in my leadership, growing in my preaching, growing as a father, growing as a husband. It is not okay to just be okay or to be good enough. We want to be great. And as we work the things that God has given us, what he does is he just keeps giving us more to work with. But here's the best part of this. Look at the last line. Cuz he's not saying like, "I'm going to give you a bunch of money. I'm going to all of a sudden like give you a cut of this money." Instead, he says, "Share your master's joy." Guys, the reward is not a bonus. It's not a plaque. It's not a pay raise. It's not a payout. The reward is the master himself. Three weeks ago, we said the kingdom of God is a treasure that's worth selling everything else for. And here is where that lands is the paycheck at the end of a Christian life is the very presence of the creator, almighty, eternal, holy God, that we get to be in his presence for all of eternity. And the door is standing wide open. and he says, "Come in and share in it." In 1855 in Boston, there's a Sunday school teacher named Edward Kimell, and he worked up the nerve to walk into a shoe store where one of his students worked and he was terrified. He said later, he could barely remember what he said. This sounds like all my sermons that I preach. All right? And uh as he went in and had this conversation, he was sure in his words, he had bungled the whole thing. I think bungled is a word they probably use a little bit more in 1855. But he found this student, this kid in the back of the store stocking shoes, and he stumbled through a conversation about Jesus, about do you truly trust Jesus? Do you want to follow him? And he and he gave him an invitation to follow Christ and actually be a part of the church and truly live in knowing his salvation is secure. And that kid's name of the conversation that he thought he just completely failed was Dwight Moody. DL Moody went on to preach the gospel to millions of people over two continents. DL Moody went to write books. He went to start a university. Actually, Pastor Josh went to Moody Institute, Moody Bible College for his undergrad. And here's all this is Edward Kimell. He never filled a stadium. He got two talents maybe in a shoe store if we put our perspective on this. But he put them to work. Church, the master is not waiting for you to determine how many talents you have and determine on how hard you will work. He is waiting for whatever he has entrusted to you to put the plow to the ground. Which brings us to the man in the story that most of us are actually afraid we might be. It's our last point we see in here. We need to resist our unique fears. To resist our unique fears. Uh keep reading in verse 24. It says, "The man who had received one talent also approached him and he said, "Master, I know you." And we're going to see the problem of him saying this in a second. He said, "You are a harsh man, reaping where you haven't sown and gathering where you haven't scattered seed. So I was afraid and I went off and I hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours. Now, as we read this in a second, we're going to see how what Jesus has to say about this servant. But this man's a little bit more respectable than we give him credit for. First, he did not steal the money, the $1.2 million. He did not gamble it away in Vegas. He did not lose a dime of it. Instead, he walked in and he handed the master back every single penny exactly the way he had received it. By the standards of most people in our world, maybe most people in this room, he did nothing wrong. It was like he was moneysitting for however long the master was gone, right? He left it in the same shape that he got it in. But Jesus condemns him. And and we ask, so what is the sin here? It it it and it's right in the middle of his speech as he's telling the master in verse 24. And in verse 20, uh, he says in here in verse 25, "So I was afraid." But watch the order of his words because it tells us everything is he does not say, "I was afraid so I assumed the worst about you." He said, "I was afraid because I know you." And then he calls the master. The master in the story who literally represents the God of the universe. He says, "Because I know you're a harsh man." Imagine telling God, "You're harsh." and I'm afraid of you. You're mean. You're a thief. You steal. Which is the things he accuses God of here. And this is his sin is he had a wrong view of the master. His fear did not come from his circumstances. His fear came from his bad theology. And this wrong view of the master. It will always produce a buried life every single time. You see, this guy did not have a talent problem. He didn't even have a courage problem. He had a God problem in who he thought God was. He looked at the most generous man, the most generous God he had ever met, a man who had handed him millions of dollars on a handshake, and he called him a thief. Now listen to the ma master's answer in verse 27 and starting actually in verse 26, he says, "His master replied to him, you evil lazy servant." He doesn't mix words here. He calls him evil lazy servant. If you knew that I reap where I haven't sown and gather where I haven't scattered, he's saying this sarcastically because that is not the character of God. But in verse 27, then you should have deposited my money with the bankers and I would have received my money back with interest when I returned. Now, last time I'm going to make you guys do some math, okay? Bear with me. I know this is tough, but I want to run some numbers on this. Take $1.2 million, dig a hole, put that money in the hole, bury the hole, put the put some stuff on there. Time passes. Come back, open up the hole again, take that money out, and then hand it over to the master. How much money is there? It's 1.2. I'm concerned with some of you guys. All right. That wasn't even a money problem. It's literally the same number. It was just a listening problem, which that's a different story. All right. Um, but it's 1.2 million. IT'S THE SAME AMOUNT THAT HE PUT IN THE GROUND IS WHAT HE GAVE to him. Now, he lost the money because of interest that ate it away. We know a thing about that. But here, that's where the master gets mad at him. He says, "You you gave me back exactly what I had. Like, if you would have get a banker, put in a nice money market savings account, earning like 2% interest a year, then I at least would have covered inflation." And here's the thing is the master was not asking this man for a generational talent. He was asking him not to dig and bury what he had entrusted him with. And church, here's the problem is we dig. We bury the gift because we are afraid that we will fail with it. We bury the conversation with the neighbor because we are afraid of how it will go. We bury the reconciliation with our spouse because we are afraid of what it will lead to. We bury the responsibility of raising our children the right way because we are afraid that we will fail them. Every one of us has a hole in the backyard with something of the masters in it. And here's the hard thing. As we see this, even after we're saved by Christ, we still fall into this trap. This past week, I need to get my haircut. And I'll say this past 2 years, I've been in surprise. I've had the hardest time finding a barber. I had a guy who I used to go, he had owned his barber shop for 30 years, Rody. We like talked about life, watch sports. It was great. And and I miss Rody in North Phoenix. He's 45 minutes away, so I'm not going to drive there anymore. So, I've been looking for a barber and and I've been going all these places and it charges so much. It is so expensive. It's like 60 bucks to get your hair cut and if you're a cheap tipper, maybe 50, right? It's ridiculous. So, as I'm going by, Great Clips had a $10.99 special. And I had some like horror vibes from Great Clips. I remember as a kid, but I'm like, you know what? How bad could it be? Give it two weeks and I'll be all right. So, I went into Great Clips and paid my $1099. Felt bad. got to give a $10 tip cuz it was only $10.99. I'm like, "Man, I'm generous." Uh, but as I'm getting my haircut, which was very clean place, it was very quiet and calm and and she was so nice. I was just like checked out for the day. And as she's cutting my hair, she's asking me so many leading questions like, "How was your day? What do you do for work?" Like all these things. And I'm like giving these one-cllable answers and thinking in my head like, "I don't want to have a conversation. cut my hair so I can leave because I'm tired. And as soon as I walked outside that door, I was like, I could have told her about Jesus in the church like that. I could have found out about where she was at, what what would she likes to do, what her family situation like. I had so many opportunities to have a gospel conversation, to invite her to church or see if she knows Christ. And I put it in a hole cuz I just didn't feel like it. And church, all of us have those things where God is entrusting us with something. God is opening a door. God is handing us opportunities. And when we don't feel like it, we just put it in a hole and cover it up and say, "No, God, not this time. I'm a little tired. I'm a little lazy. I I just don't feel like it in this moment." But here is the danger. When we continually reject to use the gifts that God has given us and placed in our hand, we see it in verse 29. It says for to everyone who has more will be given and he will be have more than enough. In this story they take the one talent and he gives it to the one who has 10. He says but the one from the one who does not have even what he has will be taken away from him. He's saying he's going to take everything from the servant with one. In verse 30, this is the this is a scary verse, the judgment verse that should send shivers down our spine. He says, "And throw this good forno servant into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and nashing of teeth." This is harsh. And I'm not going to try to soften it or sugarcoat it because it's Jesus saying it. Now, hear this. This is not a believer who underperformed and lost his salvation because read what came out of his mouth. He called the master harsh. He called the master a thief. He stood in front of extravagant generosity and he saw a god that was not loving. You do not talk about like to talk to someone and about someone like that that you actually know. You see the buried treasure was not the cause of his judgment. It's not that he didn't work hard enough. Instead, it was evidence of it. So here comes back to the question we ask is how does a person become one of God's successful people? How do we become successful for Jesus? And church, it is not by producing what the master never gave you, but it's instead it's by investing everything he did. Now let me kind of clarify this because I think in a people full of hard workers, you're not the lazy servants, you're the hard workers. You might hear this and be like, "Hey, that means I just need to work harder for the church. I need to work harder to live out my faith. I need to work harder." And it can almost be this performancebased salvation that if I do enough for Jesus, if I work hard enough, if I do all this, I will earn what God has given me. But that's not the story here is not about earning your salvation. Look at how it starts again. Every talent in this was a gift before it was ever an assignment. None of these servants bought used the stuff to buy it with their own money, their own capital. It was placed in their hands free by a master who owed them nothing. The work never purchased the relationship. The worked proved that they had a relationship with God in the first place. And here's the deal that leaves every one of us in this room and watching online with a problem. Because if success is measured by what we did for God and with what God has given us, then if you are honest, there is a hole in your backyard and there is a hole in mine. You have failed in your job. You have failed as a parent. You have failed as a a spouse. You have failed as a citizen. You have failed time and time again in your sin, in your life. You have buried the good gracious things that God has given you. There are unused abilities that you haven't put to work. There are missed gospel conversations that have happened. There is hoarded money. There are misplaced talents. Every one of us has that hole. So the question becomes, how does any of us then hear those two words we long to hear of well done? Well, it only happens this way that there is one servant who was faithful over all things. Not a few things, but all of them. There is one servant who was handed everything the father had and he buried none of it. There was one servant who spent every ounce of the life he was given and invested it free of charge. And when there was nothing left to spend, he spent his own body too. And the one servant that went to the cross, who took on the outer darkness of verse 30, that is promised for us, that belonged to us, who have dug the hole. Jesus instead, by his death and resurrection, he dug up what you buried and he paid for the hole that you dug. So when the master comes home, the word over your life is no longer you evil lazy servant which all of us deserve. Your spouse has maybe said that to you, right? All of us deserve that. But because of the death and resurrection of Christ, we can hear those two words that we've been longing to hear since the Garden of Eden is well done. Not because you earned it, but because he did and he put your name on it. And church, this is where this whole series has been going. We've talked about through this time how this whole summer we've got to do some amazing things in VBS and in city camp and in youth camp and our Mexico mission trip and so many more. But we've also during that time been spending 17 weeks through the book of Matthew looking at the miracles of Jesus and the parables of Jesus. And where all of this started when we started this journey, it started with a few disciples who were sitting on a boat looking around at Jesus who just told a storm to sit down and the storm did. And in Matthew 8 27 it says the men were amazed and they asked this question. What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the seas obey him. You see as we studied the miracles of Jesus for 8 weeks. We came to see this truth so clearly that the miracles declare that Jesus is God. The miracles declare it. They present it. The miracles declare he is God. For eight weeks, we looked at how miracle after miracle showed that he has authority over nature, over the demons, over darkness. He has authority over your life, and he has authority over death itself. That Jesus is God and no one else. I love as we reflect on this, we get to engage in an act where we remember this through our action and we get to show our devotion and our love for Christ. At this time, I want to encourage you to take out the communion elements that we take communion as a church once a month, usually the first Sunday of the month, because we remember and we reflect on how Jesus is God, how he broke his body and shed his blood for us, and how his authority knows no bounds and it changes everything. And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:23 says, "For I received from the Lord while also passed on to you on the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread." If you haven't already, grab those elements as we take these elements to remind us of what Christ has done on our behalf. But I love that the miracles declare and proclaim and they point to and they show that Jesus is God. But we didn't stop there cuz then on a mountain when the father himself opened his mouth as Jesus' transfiguration happened and he revealed his authority. We see this in Matthew 17:5. It says while he was still speaking, this is Peter being interrupted, suddenly a bright cloud covered them and a voice from the cloud said, the cloud is speaking. That is scary. But he said this the voice of God himself. This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And listen to these three words. Listen to him. The miracles declare that Jesus is God. But the parables define how we follow Jesus. That has showed us over and over for nine weeks. That is all we have done is defined how we follow Jesus. What does Jesus teach about this? How does Jesus go forward is it shows us that hey we follow him because seed falls on our heart and we need to re receive it and receive it in the right way that we cast out seed and tell more people about him. We see, we saw it in the wheat in the weeds, how our world is broken and there will be people that will reject him. But he has told us that we just stay faithful and we follow him over and over and over again. The parables define how we follow Jesus and how he is better than anything else our world has. As Paul continues in talking about communion and we how we regularly practice this act, Jesus told us what to do. And one of the reasons we take communion is cuz Jesus told us to. That's a good reason. Maybe it doesn't work as a parent, but it works as God. He told you to. But he told us to do this so we can remember the impact he has had on our life and why we follow what he does. And Paul continues in verse 24 in 1 Corinthians says, "When he had given thanks, he had broke it and he said that this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Church, this this bread represents the broken body of Christ. Let's take this together as we remember his sacrifice. He continues in verse 25 and he says in the same way he also took the cup after supper and he said this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. The juice represents the blood of Christ that covers our sin and forgives us of what we have done. Church, let's drink this together. remember his sacrifice. And I love how this leads that we declare that Jesus is God. We define how we follow him. But ultimately, this gives us to our task. And in Matthew 13:9, Jesus is very clear on what we are to do. It says, "Let anyone who has ears listen." The last time I checked, I can only see most of you, but you looks like you all have ears. If you're watching online, you probably have an AirPod in listening to this with your ears. When I walk outside, most people I see have ears. And he says, "Let anyone who has ears listen to this God man that is Jesus, who is God, that tells us how we should live our lives." And here's what this causes us to do is the gospel that Jesus shared by his death, by his miracles, by his parables, and ultimately by his death and resurrection is the gospel drives us to make Jesus known that we know who he is because of the miracles. We know what how we should live our lives based on reading the words of his books. But then there should be this drive of the good news of Christ. Now we tell other people about him. He is God. It is settled. This is how we follow him through this book. It is settled. Now go make him known. That is the assignment. And Paul says, "This is part of why we take communion because we are reminded of this." In 1 Corinthians verse 26, he says, "For as often as you eat this bread and you drink this cup, I love this. You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Church, are we proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes? Are we like the servants who has Jesus dug up your talents that you have buried? Dug up the gifts that you have buried. He has wiped your slate clean. He has earned you the words of well done. Not by what you have done, but by what he has done it now with the resources and the things he has put in your possession. Are you truly making Jesus known and loving the world around you and proclaiming that good news? If you're a believer in this room, here's my challenge for you is this week, pray a prayer that says, "God, open a door to share the gospel and to invite someone to church." And then be faithful when it comes. It might be the barber that's cutting your hair. It might be the car that you want to follow home after they cut you off. It might be the person that's waiting in line at Sam's Club trying to get gas with you. I guarantee if you pray for an opportunity to share the gospel or to invite someone to church, God will provide it. Will you be faithful in living it out? And maybe you don't know Jesus yet. My encouragement is stop burying the things that are placed in your life. Stop trying to to find success like the world does and look to the God of the universe who has dug up your stuff, who has paid the price for your garbage. And that one day at the end of our life here, we will get to meet that God face to face. And my prayer is that we get to hear the two words that are said in this passage. Well done.