The Cost of Control | The Gospel of Mark: From Throne to Cross and Back

All right, tonight's teaching comes from Mark chapter 10 verses 17 through 31 and here we read

this account of the rich young ruler. As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell

on his knees before him. Good teacher, he said, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Why do you call me good? Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone. You know the commandments,

you should not murder, you should not commit adultery, you should not steal, you should not

give false testimony, you should not defraud, honor your father and mother. Teacher he declared,

all these I have kept since I was a boy. Jesus looked at him and he loved him. One thing you lack,

he said, go sell everything you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven

and then come and follow me. If this demands face fell and he went away sad because he had great wealth.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom

of God. The disciples were amazed at his word, but Jesus said to him again, children, how hard it

is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than

for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples were even more amazed and they

said to each other, who then can be saved. Jesus looked at them and said, well with man, this is

impossible, but not with God. All things are possible with God. Then Peter spoke up, we have left

everything to follow you, Lord. Truly, I tell you, Jesus replied, no one who has left home or

brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and for the sake of the gospel

will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age. Holmes, brothers, sisters,

mothers, children, fields, along with persecutions and also then in the age to come, eternal life.

But many who are first will be last and the last will be first. Again, we're making our way to

the end of the gospel of Mark. We're almost there. We're a week away from getting into the Palm

Sunday weekend, which enters us into Holy Week. Jesus and His disciples are enroute down to Jerusalem,

and it's at this point that a man comes and falls before Jesus and he says to him,

good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Now, if you pay real close attention with

the synoptic gospels, the other gospels that teach the same thing, one of the things you'll find out

is Matthew's gospel adds that this guy is young, Luke's gospel adds that he is wealthy and a synagogue

and pastor high and adds that he's real impossibly good looking because why not?

You're rich, you're young, you're powerful. Tell me there's any chance that that guy's not

also good looking to. There's something off with him. There's something off with him and I know

that Jesus says there's one thing that he lacks, but the man himself knows that there's one thing

that he lacks. Otherwise, he wouldn't be coming to Jesus in the first place. Remember, his question

is, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus responds to that is, well, what's the law? And he gives

the superficial laws about interacting with your neighbors. So you shall not murder, you shall not

steal, you shall not lie, you shall not commit adultery, all that kind of stuff. And the man says,

yeah, all of those, I have kept since I was a little boy, since I was a child, okay? The problem

with that, however, and here's the catch in this, is if you think that you can leverage the law of

God to earn your salvation, to inherit eternal life, and you believe that you have kept God's law

pretty perfectly since childhood, at least relative to your peers, then why are you even bothering

coming to Jesus and asking? You know, why would you say what must I do to be saved? If you think you

can get salvation through the law and you believe that you've kept the law perfectly, then what

different, why should you come to Jesus and ask him what must I do? The only reason you would ask

that is if deep down, at least to some extent, you know, you know, you cannot actually leverage your

behaviors to earn salvation, okay? So what this man, there's a little level of internal angst going

on in this young man's life. He is in so many different ways blessed in this world, right? He's moral,

he's healthy, he's influential, he's faithful, all those different things, but he recognizes that

that actually is a spiritual disadvantage to him, because he's looking to those things to earn

his eternal life. You can tell the man is lost, you can tell the man is searching in part because

when he comes to Jesus, did you see how he addressed him? He called him good teacher and the

interesting follow-up to that is Jesus immediately says to him, well, why do you call me good? Only

God is good. And the whole deal with that is you get understand, in that time, Jewish rabbis would

refuse the label of good as that's only a divine label. So what you have then is a young man who

is coming to Jesus and recognizes his majesty, his power, his goodness, his love, and he addresses

him with a divine label, and yet he's simultaneously thinking that his salvation is ultimately his to

perform. And that's why he's got this existential angst. Anybody, any person, whether you self-identify

his Christian or not, but if you recognize Jesus as the Son of God, and you simultaneously think

that you can contribute in any way, shape, or form to your salvation, you are necessarily going to

have a level of internal angst in your life. And that's what's going on. And as such, Jesus is going

to wisely, lovingly counsel this wayward young man. And what it specifically tells us at the

beginning of these verses in our second point, Jesus looked at the man and he loved him. So everything

that he's going to say to him moving forward is a product of his love, even though it's going to be

a little bit painful for the man to hear. He looked at him and he loved him. And I've learned

through pastoral counsel over the years, affirming love is very easy and condemning truth is very easy.

Most of us temperamentally and by personality, we kind of drift towards one of the others and

furthermore socially, in public, we tend to drift towards affirming love because we don't want to

be perceived as particularly critical. Behind closed doors in our minds on the internet, we tend to

drift towards condemning truth. Affirming love is very easy. Condemning truth is very easy.

Speaking truth and love, holy smokes, that is, it takes a level of care for an individual

that you non-judgmentally guide people from death to life, from darkness to light. It's supernatural.

The reason it's supernatural is none of us. I don't know a single person that intuitively is

really good at speaking truth in love. Temperamentally, they tend to go one way or the other too far,

right? But Jesus is a wonderful counselor and he's counseling this young man.

And he's trying to extract what he knows to be the root obstacle, the root idol that exists in

the young man's heart. And so he says to him, yeah, there's just one thing that you lack. I want you

to go and sell everything that you have and give it to the poor and then you will have treasure in

heaven. And we know the very next words in the text, the man immediately does what? He doesn't

even stop to think. He doesn't stop to pray. He immediately walks away sad because he has great wealth.

And it's at that moment that Jesus gives what is in all likelihood the probably the most famous

passage in this entire text, which is it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle

than for a rich man, a rich person to enter into the kingdom of God. Now, I'm guessing most people

in here, even if you've never read the Bible at all before, you've probably heard that phrase at some

point along the line. And it's been, you know, there's certain statements of Jesus that are

widely misconstrued. The camel in the eye of the needle one is definitely one. People over the

years have tried to interpret that as saying, I guarantee some people in here have heard this,

that there was a gate that enters into Jerusalem that was named the eye of the needle and camels

had to duck low and duck down in order to get in. And that Jesus really isn't saying it's impossible

for rich people to enter heaven. He's saying it's, it is difficult. It takes some work. No, that

gates, there was a gate like that. It didn't exist. It wasn't named that until the middle ages.

So Jesus isn't talking about that. Secondly, I've heard people try to say like to the word for camel

in Greek is camelose. And the word for rope in Greek is camelose. And people have said this is

a scribal error. And so what he's really trying to say is it's, it's easier to get a rope through

the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter. In other words, they're trying to make it more

palatable. They're trying to make it easier. Jesus is talking, I'm telling you, he's talking about

a literal camel and a literal eye of a needle. And his entire point is it's impossible.

It's impossible. It's impossible for someone who is rich. The real question is what does it mean

to be rich? And what he means by being rich here is anybody who thinks that they are

deservedly rich. Anybody who thinks that they are relatively good compared to the common man.

Everybody who thinks that they are generally good and competent and can earn their own

salvation cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Rich people cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Only beggars can enter God's kingdom. Only beggars can enter the kingdom of God. Now this text

isn't actually about money. Not really. And it's one of the reasons why if you look throughout

the rest of the Bible, you find a host of other characters. There's not another time in the

Bible where God says, you should give away all your money and then come and follow Jesus. That's

a requirement to enter salvation. Give away all your money. There's not another spot in the

Bible that says that. Furthermore, there's a bunch of other believers in scripture who do get

into the kingdom who seemingly are relatively wealthy. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, Lydia, Cornelius,

Zacchaeus, I'm sure I'm missing a bunch, but there's a bunch of wealthy people who are very

generous, but they nonetheless enter the kingdom. It's not this prescription. You have to get rid

of all your wealth in order to follow. What Jesus is doing is he's extracting what you do have to

get rid of your idol in order to enter the kingdom. And a very, very common idol that people give

gives people perceived control in their life is the idol of wealth. It's the controlling factor.

So Jesus is trying, he says very specifically to this guy, you, not everybody, you must get rid

of all your wealth in order to enter into the kingdom, in order to be my disciple. And the man

can't do it. Why can't he do it? He can't give up the money because money gives him perceptions of

control. And we know this. Money is not wrong. God created money. Money is good. Money as your God

will kill you. That's the tension. Money is very good. Money as your God will kill you. And the

reason so many people make money a God in their life functionally is because it does give us a

perceived level of control, at least temporarily. If I have more money, I have more options in what I

eat and what I wear and what I drive and where I go to school and where I live, money absolutely

does give you a superficial temporal level of control. But that's the thing. The controlling factor,

the unique temptation for having riches is that you start to transfer your perception of control in

your life from a God who is good, who is sovereign over all to your money. Okay. And that's where it

becomes extraordinarily spiritually dangerous. It's the controlling factor. So how do we know that

this man has an idol of wealth? It's because when Jesus asks him to release his money, he can't do

it and he goes away sad. The thing about sins is that the sins that you struggle with the most

because sin is inherently blinding, you probably are blind to it. So how do you know whether or not you

have an idol of wealth? What's the undeniable test? Whether or not you're letting go of it in your life?

See, undeniable evidence. If you don't give away any of your, if you're not releasing wealth

in your life, money is a controlling factor over you. There's other tests, by the way, emotion.

If you have a lot of emotion attached to wealth, if you, when you get depressed, you buy something to

make yourself feel better. If you get a certain sense of liberation, when you get to go out and do

something and put it on your card and all that, if you have a lot of emotion attached to money,

that might be an indication that money is an idol. But the first and most important

principle, what could the rich young ruler not do? He could not release wealth because he had an

idol of wealth. If you can't release wealth, you probably have an idol of wealth. And Jesus tries to

surgically extract our idols from our hands lovingly, like a, like a good counselor. I am guessing

some of you have perhaps heard before, maybe I've used it before, the illustration of how do you

catch a monkey? Have you ever heard this before? How do you catch a monkey? There's, it's an old

Indian proverb. But the whole deal is if you want to catch a monkey, what you do is you take a bunch

of monkey treats and you bring them to a jar or something like that. Apparently coconuts are still

used for this, but you hollow it out and what you do is you have a weighted jar and you take a bunch

of monkey treats and the biggest, fatdest monkey treat you put actually in the weighted jar.

And the jar, the opening at the top, it's, it's big enough that the monkey can fit their fists down

into it, but it's small enough that when the monkey grabs something, it can't actually get its

hand back out and it will not release it. And then all you have to do is you go over and you

grab the monkey. And that's how you catch a monkey. So what does that mean? If the test for whether

or not we're controlled by money is whether or not we can release money in our lives, how do you tell?

You have to release money in your life in ways so that Satan can't come and grab you.

You got to not be controlled by it. This text actually, Jesus is a wonderful counselor and one of

the ways I know it's not about money is the text that makes me think of the most is actually a text

in the Old Testament, the story of Abraham and Isaac. And in the story of Abraham and Isaac,

God tells Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your dearly loved, dearly prized, dearly treasured

son that you've waited 100 years for and I want you to take him up on a Mount Mariah and sacrifice

him for me. Now throughout the rest of scripture, God absolutely forbids child sacrifice.

God doesn't want Isaac to be sacrificed. What he knows is that if he knows Abraham has a temptation

that all his hopes, all his dreams, all his identity and security rests in the Isaac.

And the only way Abraham is going to have a healthy relationship with Isaac is if Abraham loves

God more than Isaac. And therefore he has to be willing to sacrifice. He has to be willing to put

him on the altar, right? Now you'll also know how that story ends when Abraham's up there, he's ready to

do it. He's going to bring the hand down with the knife and he's going to slaughter him. God says,

stop. Now I know that you love me because you have not withheld from me your son, your dearly

treasured son. This is speculation, but you know, I think Jesus would have done if the rich young

ruler had said, gladly, Lord, I will gladly sell all my stuff and give it all away and come up

follow you. You know, I think Jesus would have said, don't bother because now I know that you

love me because you have not withheld from me your dearly treasured prizes, okay? I want to be a

little hesitant on this because I don't want it to be prescriptive like a mechanical algorithm.

But I also want you to know that as somebody who understands and recognizes the spiritual

connections to money and watch people in their generosity, I absolutely, anecdotally,

experientially have seen in my own life and in the lives of others, those who tend to be the best

and most trusting and releasing wealth in their life tend also to be highly blessed by God and

receiving blessing back. Okay? Now, I don't want that to be prescriptive. That is absolutely an

observation. It's not that they give away money once they get money. It's that they have a posture

of a generous heart that leads them to give away and God blesses and honors that. More than my

experience of observing that, though, I would much more authoritative is what scripture actually

says about it. Do you know money is the only thing in scripture that God says, I want you to

challenge me on this? There is not everything else. God is like, do not put the Lord your God

to the test. Don't try me, right? Money is the only thing from the wisdom literature of the

Proverbs where it says, honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of your produce,

then your bonds will be filled with plenty and your vets will be bursting with wine or how about

from the prophet Micah says, bring your whole tithe into the storehouse, test me in this and see if

I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be

room enough to store it. That is not, by the way, Jesus says the same thing on the sermon on the

Mount. Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness, I will make sure that all your material needs are met,

but I need you to trust me tangibly with your things. That's not prosperity theology. God does not

do prosperity theology. He does good Christian theology. He's a wonderful counselor and he challenges

us to trust him in our lives by the releasing of wealth. The Old Testament believers, he gave a very

prescriptive command about that. It was called, anybody know what that was called? That was called a

tithe, a 10% of your income. That was the way so that you couldn't delude yourself into thinking

like, so what exactly does generous mean? I have to sacrificially give away 10% of my income.

We'll talk about what that might mean for us here in a couple of minutes, but moving on,

what we read here is the disciples, they have heard, they've seen this rich young ruler,

they have seen how he has all this leadership potential, they have seen that Jesus essentially

lets him go and they have heard Jesus say it's easier for a camel to go through and I have a needle

than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. At that point, it says the disciples were

absolutely amazed because they said to each other, who could possibly be safe? If not that guy,

then who? And Jesus looked at them and said, well, yeah, with man, this is impossible, but not with

God, all things are possible with God. And here's what he means. In the ancient world,

some people today still operate this way, but especially in the ancient world, there was a

perception that if you had a particularly blessed life, that means you must have been, God was

favoring you. So like if life was going well, you must be pleasing God. And the opposite was also

then true. If life was going poorly, God must not be a fan of yours. Do you remember when the

disciples during Jesus ministry at one point come to them and say that they see a man who's been

blind from birth? And they say, teacher, who sinned? This guy or his parents that he would be born

this way, right? They absolutely had that worldview. And so it is a complete shock to them

that a young man who looks so enormously blessed, he's wealthy, he's competent, he's moral,

he's faithful, that he could possibly not enter the kingdom. That's shocking to them. And they're

like, well, who possibly could get in? And that's the moment when Jesus says, well, yeah, for him and for

humans, it's not possible. See, you notice here, he doesn't say for the rich, it's not possible.

At this moment, he says with humans, with man, this is impossible, but nothing is impossible with God.

What he's trying to condition us to understand is that humans cannot produce their own salvation

if they're going to receive salvation. It entirely has to be by way of the gift. The reason that's

harder for the rich to accept is because they tend to believe they have more control over their

lives. It has to be a gift. It can't be something that your high competence has earned.

The good news is that's the entire point with which Jesus came to this planet.

I want you to consider this gospel in light of who Jesus actually is. Remember,

the text is a rich, young, powerful ruler who refuses to give away his wealth in order to bless the

poor. Who is Jesus? Jesus is young, especially by rabbinical standards. The idea of a rabbi that was

only 31 or 32 years old was pretty ridiculous. He was rich yet all the wealth of heaven,

not to mention the fact that all the entire universe ultimately is under his dominion and blondes

them. He was powerful. All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me and he has all the

angels at his back and call. He's rich, he's young, he's powerful, he's faithful, he gives all that

up. He releases all of that to come to the planet and humble himself down into human flesh.

And he's born like a poor little kid in a manger with the animals and he lives such a modest life

that the son of man has no place to rest his own hat. He never had, he never owns a place.

That's not enough though. The father was going to ask for more. He's going to ask him to give

even that up in order to go to the cross and it's so scary. The idea of letting go of the things

that you do control is so scary that he actually sweat drops of blood in the process.

But you know what he did? He refused to walk away sad. He was sad and he was scared and he

went all the way to the cross. And he paid for our idol of money so that the riches of God

are going to be ours for all eternity, all eternity. Jesus sank into deeper, more hellish poverty

than any person on this planet has ever experienced so that those of us who are genuinely in need

could taste and see that the Lord is good. It's love. The real, the real rich, unruled or died

so that you and I are going to be rich for all eternity, guaranteed by grace.

All right, now what does that mean? We come to the end of the conversation with Jesus

and his disciples and Peter is the one that interjects at this point and you know he says,

Jesus don't, don't forget, we left everything to follow you. Just so you know when it's time

to bring those, those blessings. We left everything. Jesus doesn't like shut him down at all.

In fact, the matter is the disciples did leave a lot. We talked about this. If you were here with

us back in the beginning of January and the calling of the disciples, Peter and some of the other

disciples, they left the fishing nets behind. They left their professions. They left their careers.

They left the family business. They left all the income behind to go and follow Jesus as a

disciple. And Jesus responds then to Peter as, yeah, Peter don't worry, I am going to bless you.

He says, truly, I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father

or children or fields for me and for the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much.

In this present age, homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fields,

a long with persecutions, but then also blessing in the age to come that is eternal life. Now,

there's three things embedded in here that are really important. He says that if you give away

blessings right now for the sake of the gospel, one, there's going to be blessings in this age.

I already alluded to it earlier and I do believe there is a level of absolute expectation with this.

The people that I know who functionally have been the most generous with the gospel,

the Lord very often blesses that. I'm just telling you, I've seen it. I've experienced it.

What it also though means without question, it's not like a calculus in order to become rich.

What it also means is if you are willing to give up something right now in order to become a

disciple of Christ and become part of the body of Christ, you're going to have access to a hundred

times more. It works like this. If I stop thinking about my stuff as my stuff and I let it go,

because I share it with my brothers and sisters in Christ, then I don't just have my stuff. We have

our stuff, right? So if I let go of my home right now with hospitality and invite others in,

then we probably also get hospitality from others. I have access to a hundred homes, not just one.

I know many people who are in here today have absolutely received as much or more blessing

financially, emotionally, relationally spiritually from their brothers and sisters in Christ,

then they have from biological family, okay? So the fact of the matter is, if you release your

blessings in this life, you will receive blessings in this age. He promises it. The second thing,

this is how you know it's not prosperity theology, because he also says, and when you release those

blessings, you're also going to at times face persecution. So it's not like just a trick by which

he's producing wealth in your life. You will face opposition. The third thing that he adds is also

important though, not only we receive blessing in this lifetime, not only will you live in as a

Christian in generosity, your brothers and sisters in Christ face a level of pushback and persecution,

but you will be blessed in the life that is to come. Sowing seeds of generosity today will be

rewarded handsomely in eternal life. You will absolutely receive blessings in heaven for your

release of blessings in this world for Christ, for the gospel and for the poor, okay? Now, what does

this mean? Final thought here, I get, okay, exercise your faith and be generous. All right, we've got to

be very practical. I've learned, especially when it comes to financial things, that people, like,

they need a level of black and white, or it doesn't click. It just, it doesn't click. And so I want to

try something that I think would click. Our church staff recently went through, we brought in a

consultant to do a staffing and structure review. Amongst other things, there was an overall assessment

of health and operations and things like that. And a lot of the report back is really great. You know,

our trend for attendance at church year over year had grown pretty significantly. For the past

several years, that's wonderful. Our amount of adults who are serving regularly was great. Our

new members and baptisms and stuff like that was great. One of my favorite ones, our paid staff

to in-person attendance ratio was fiscally conservative. And I was very excited about that.

But the consultants said to me at one point, she said, well, James, the one thing that wasn't a

glowing review, she said, based on all of your other metrics based on your demographics, here's

what we would expect. A church in your congregation, size and demographics and location, et cetera,

what we would expect, generally speaking across comparison with other churches, as we would expect

about $60 given in generosity per adult person per week, where yours is at is about $46 per person

per week. Now, here's how I process that. My first feeling was tremendous gratitude for

so many different things trending in the right direction that are beyond our control,

but God has blessed us and so many things moving in a good direction. It was really grateful.

Then I experienced a level of conviction. And I was like, I have not taught people very well

about generosity, or maybe I haven't even worse modeled for people what generosity looks like.

I don't think I have. I don't think I have very well. And so I'm sorry about that. And if you are

visiting tonight and you're thinking, yes, it's one of the churches that I always talk about money.

I would say ask somebody who comes here regularly. What was the last time pastor

talked about money? I bet you can't remember, right? But I probably haven't been doing it enough.

I haven't been teaching it. The third thing that I felt was a level of defensiveness.

Like, fleshly defensiveness now is like, well, we have a lot of young adults. We have a lot of

college students, a lot of people with like student loans and stuff like that. The fourth thing

that I felt where I landed and where I stand with you tonight is that I think we probably have a lot

of people who are exactly the way I was prior to studying, learning, and praying, and being taught

about generosity. Some of you have heard me tell this story before, but when we were dating,

Aid called me out on not giving an offering. And I might have given like an offering, but it was

not thoughtful. It was not sacrificial. It was not generous. It was not any of those things,

okay? And she called me out on it. And Aid's been one of the most financially generous people

that I've known in my life. And I felt, she called me out and I felt bad. And I repented. The

thing was she was right. I knew she was right. And so she taught me to give and to give generously.

And the thing, my experience of that, what I noticed, and I had had very little money throughout

the course of my life. On the day that I got married, I'm pretty confident I had less than a hundred

bucks on my, to my name, okay? So like I didn't have a whole lot, but I had been afraid about money

all my life. And when I started to learn to release money, what the most shocking thing I didn't

like become rich, what I experienced was from that point on, I didn't feel the weight of fear

attached to finances, sitting on my shoulders that I had all of my life up at that point.

I realized that even though I didn't really have a whole lot of money, I had functionally been

kind of enslaved to the money for most of my life, certainly afraid of it, intimidated by it.

Now, I'm going to tell you today, I don't really feel much at anything about your money. If somebody

here dropped 10, a lot of people don't know how church finances work, if somebody here dropped

10 million dollars on St. Marcus tomorrow, I don't get a dime more. And my lifestyle doesn't change

at all or anything like that. What I actually do care about is if I'm pastoring you, I don't want you

to be afraid of anything, I don't want you to be mastered by anything, and I do want you to be generous.

So here's my encouragement for you, all right? I'm going to be as tangible as I can about it.

Some of us have never given an offering before or aren't, okay? If you are at that point,

I'm going to encourage you. I want you to try to move from zero to $20 a week, push yourself,

okay? Test the Lord, if you will. If you currently are somewhere in the range of like $20 a week,

I'm going to ask you to push yourself. Do you remember that number 60 that I mentioned earlier,

that there was this level of like, you know, I know everybody's situation is a little bit different.

I totally get that. But that was some level of expectation for what an adult would give in a week.

If you are at 60, but that's not tithing for you, I would ask you to consider testing the Lord

with your tithe. I do believe everything that those passages that I read earlier state,

because I believe everything that the Lord says. And I think if you test them with your wealth,

he will bless that. This is, it's tithing's one of those things. If somebody comes up to me,

sometimes people just, they want, they just want like yes and no answers. They want it to be as

blunt as possible. And if you, if you asked me, what do you believe the Lord would have me do?

I would tell you, I believe the Lord would have you tithe, okay? But I understand that it takes

some thought and some planning and some figuring out how to get there. But I want you to push yourself

and test and trust. If you are currently at a tithe, I want you to consider adding 1% annually

to what you do. When, when Ed and I sat down and we sit down, do you do this every year?

We sit down. We look at our finances. We look at what we anticipate the Lord blessing us with.

We fill out that pledge card that we have up on the altar right now. And we push ourselves

usually annually to do like what can we do that will actually stretch a little bit at least 1%.

We need, we need to grow. So Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8, I want you to excel. I want you to excel

in the grace of giving, okay? I want you to try an honest period of testing the Lord.

It's really easy to say I trust the Lord. That whole expression put your money where your mouth,

those things. First of all, disgusting because money is very dirty. I don't recommend putting your

money anywhere near your mouth. But you are to test the Lord. You are to see if he floods your

barns. You're supposed to, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, right? You know the grace

of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich yet for your sake, he became poor so that you through

his extreme poverty will become guaranteed eternally wealthy. I have, this is what I close it

to, I have a simple kind of dream as we're planning, doing some master's site planning for our

congregation and stuff like that. I have kind of a dream that one day we can't afford it, we can

afford it right now. But as a congregation, we would be able to afford putting up some housing

for single mothers very near our church. And the thing I know about that is proximity. The closer

a lot of our single mothers that we serve are to our church, the more support I believe they'll

receive. I also, in that dream, I have a dream for housing for a lot of young men, I know a lot of

young single men, I know who have addictions and struggle with behaviors and they need accountability

and they need encouragement. And I would like them to get together and live as close to the church

as possible to get that kind of community. And I, my, the seniors in our congregation that I talk

to and I know how many of them struggle with like loneliness. I would love to be able to start to get

them in almost housing, near here, near their church so that we can be a more present community

in their lives. And I shared, I shared this with somebody at one point, I would love to have

that kind of like communal interaction and living going on within our congregation. I shared

that with somebody and they said, that sounds like people would, I mean, I think people would

think that was kind of weird. And I said, I hope so. You know, join me in praying towards that

end. Lord Jesus, you have given us so much. You have promised us so much. And we come as

beggars with open hands that release what we do have and that expect so much more according to

your promises. May we do this in faith, may it glorify you. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

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