- How can we measure success differently for the next decade? What would it look like not to just bring people into the church, but to send them back out into the world? At Grace, we wanna follow Jesus in our whole lives, where we live, work, learn, and play. The church isn't just here to meet your needs, it's here to train and equip you a need to meet the needs of the world. Join us in September as we think big, start small, and go deep as a missional force in our communities. - Well hello everyone, welcome to church today. We've come to the final week of our vision series called Awake the Lake. And today I wanna reveal some big dreams for our future at Grace. Now it's a little different than other vision sermons I've done over the years, because this is not just kind of a new project or a new initiative out there. This vision is attached to an entire shift in how we're approaching church. And so we kick things off talking about our missional reorientation and then about changing the scorecard as we get more intentional about measuring our success as a church based on discipleship outcomes. And then moving the finish line of that discipleship outside the walls of the church as we help more people to discover their divine calling. And so if we double down on those two things, a deepening discipleship and a clear calling, this vision is gonna be the natural outflow of that. So here's today's big idea. God has entrusted grace with great influence, will we be faithful? We've been using some well-known passages for this series and today is no different. We're gonna turn, if you will, to Matthew 25, 14 to 30 in your Bible or your Bible app. This passage today is known as the parable of the talents. And at first glance, this appears to be a story about money and it has application in that arena for sure, but it's really a parable about stewardship. That is faithfully stewarding all that God has entrusted to us. And this includes our time and our energy and our influence. It's this aspect that I wanna look at in this parable today. So let me give you a little bit of context for the parable as we begin. So the parable of the talents is immediately following what is called the parable of the wise and foolish virgins where we read about a bridegroom who is left and is gonna be returning soon. And the virgins are urged to be ready for the return of the bridegroom. The whole story is about being ready for his return. And obviously a reference to being ready for the return of Christ. Then our parable today picks up on that same theme. It's also about someone who left and is coming back, but instead of a bridegroom, it's about a master who has left his servants behind. Our parable also encourages readiness, but it shows in great detail what readiness looks like as we wait for the master's return. And while the parable of the virgins is a call to be prepared, the parable of the talents shows us that to be prepared is to be productive. The first one emphasizes watching for the Lord. And the second suggests that while we're watching, we must also be working. And so let's dive into today's story of the three servants who represent you and me and all of us. These three servants are given the chance of a lifetime. They're master leaves and he's gonna be gone for a long time. But before he leaves, he entrusts these three servants with his whole estate. And there's not only a transfer here of resources, but also a transfer of authority. And so I wanna pick it up in Matthew 25, 14. It says, "Four." And then it, which is the coming of the kingdom of heaven. It will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one, he gave five talents to another two, to another one, to each, according to his ability. And then he went away. Now, these were very large amounts of money that he entrusted to these servants. One talent was about the equivalent of 15 years' worth of wages, that means in today's world, each talent was worth upwards of a million dollars or much more. So five talents was five million dollars, a staggering amount of money. But the master gives it and then he goes away. And at some point after the master left, it must have dawned on these servants that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. That they weren't entitled to this by any stretch, but the master saw fit to leave them with this responsibility. Ever had that conversation with God when he entrusts you to something important, where you look back and go like, "Hey, God, we both know who we're dealing with here, right? "This is me we're talking about." That's how these servants must have felt. It's also instructive that the master gave to them it says according to each's ability. And so this shows discernment on the part of the master. It also shows differences in the capacity of the servants, none better or worse than the other, just different in their capacity. And so in this moment, the three servants have a decision to make. They can exercise initiative and kind of rise to the challenge or they can shrink back and fold. And we're left asking, "Well, what will they do?" They've reached a defining moment. They have some choices to make. And I believe we too, as a church, are in a decisive moment. Now, let me break all the rules for a minute and give away the ending, okay? The servants with whom the master is pleased are the servants that he calls faithful. And the one he's not pleased with is called wicked. And the whole point of Jesus' parable here is that we want to be on the side of those who are called faithful. In fact, I think one of the great questions that you and I can ask at any given moment in our own individual lives and our work lives and if you're leading something, whatever, is what does faithfulness to God require in this moment? This would be a good question to wrestle with God with during your chair time. If you're facing a decision or something is going on with your kids or at work, what does faithfulness require in this moment? It's the question I've been wrestling with God with on behalf of Grace Church for the past couple of years. What does it look like for us to be faithful? And that's really how I want to frame the rest of the text today. It's three choices of those who are faithful. So here's the first one. It's to choose urgency over apathy. Look at verse 16 how this plays out. It says, "He who had received the five talents "went at once and traded with them "and he made five talents more." And so also, he who had two talents, made two talents more. But he who had received one talent, went and dug in the ground and hid the master's money. Now, after a long time, the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with them. And so the first two servants notice it says, "They went at once. "They didn't know when the master might return "but they knew their assignment "and they lived with a sense of urgency." And so they immediately set out and went to work. The third servant on the other hand dug a hole and hid his talent. And I've often wondered what motivated him. Like at the end of the story we find out, he was afraid of the master. He was afraid of the risk that was involved. And so he chose to do nothing with his talent. It's interesting to note that his talent wasn't misused, it was unused. And there's a price to pay for being apathetic with the gifts that are given to you. It's easy to get lulled into thinking that the stakes aren't really that high and then you just kind of go through the motions of your life. But here's the truth. The Lord could return at any moment. And until he does, we're in a spiritual battle. Like the stakes couldn't be higher. And so we must approach our purpose on earth with urgency. I heard a story one time about a US Army officer who told a story about his instruction at an artillery training school. So teaching how to use weapons in Oklahoma in 1958. He taught a course on artillery training in which he couldn't keep the students awake. They were bored to tears. They were falling asleep, completely uninterested. And then in 1965, just seven years later, that exact same professor with the exact same lectures at the exact same school, he had classes who were filled and students who were glued to his teaching, banging on every word, taking meticulous notes. Do you know what the difference was between those two classes? Well, in 1965, we were in the middle of the Vietnam War. And the students in that class knew that in a few short weeks, they were gonna be staring across a field at people who were trying to kill them. And suddenly, artillery training took on a whole new sense of urgency. This wasn't just book knowledge anymore. This was life or death. See, your actions and your decisions get much more urgent when you know you're in a battle. And that's where we find ourselves, Church. The time has never been more urgent to use what God has entrusted to you and me. You know, I mentioned in week one, some of the trends of our society that are moving away from God and away from the Church, the growth of the nuns and the nuns and the alms. The church has gone from being the good guy in society to being the bad guy. And moral confusion is winning the day and a whole new generation is at stake. The world has never needed a strong church more than it does right now. We must respond with urgency. So back to verse 20 in our story. And he who had received five talents came forward, bringing the five talents more, saying, "Master, you delivered to me five talents. Here, I have made five talents more." His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful, over a little. I will set you over much." Enter into the joy of your master, verse 22. And he also who had the two talents came forward. "Master, you delivered to me two talents. Here, I have made two talents more." His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful, over a little. I will set you over much." Enter into the joy of your master, verse 24. He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, "Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed." And so I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. "Here, you have what is yours." But his master answered him, "You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have scattered no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers in it. My coming, I should have received what was my own with interest." Here's the second choice of those who are faithful. It's to choose risk-taking over playing it safe. So look what happened here. The master comes back and he's measuring the faithfulness of the servants and he's measuring it based on the risk they assumed on his behalf. Two servants report back stories of their boldness. Notice they acknowledge that the master first as the giver of the talents. The first servant says, "You entrusted me with five talents." And the second one says, "You delivered to me two talents." They never made the mistake of assuming that the talents were their own. Also notice that although the five talent servant and the two talent servant yielded different results, five and two, Jesus sees them as equal in their faithfulness. Why? Because although the amounts were different, the servants capacity was different. The risk that they each took was equal. And so he seems to be measuring the faithfulness of his children based on their willingness to take holy risks on his behalf. This is consistent with the biblical narrative all the way through. Think about the risks that some of our heroes of the faith took for the kingdom of God. Abraham leaving Ur for this unknown future. David had no idea how the whole Goliath thing was gonna turn out. Daniel didn't bow knowing a den of lions awaited. Esther went before Xerxes and said, "If I perish, I perish." I love the account in 1 Samuel 14 of Jonathan and his unknowing armor bearer when they, they're about to take on an entire garrison of Philistine soldiers. Listen to how Jonathan invited his armor bearer to join him. He says this, he says, "Come, let's go over to the outpost "of those uncircumcised men. "Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. "Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, "whether by many or by few. "Perhaps the Lord will act." I can imagine that the sermon goes, "Seriously, perhaps, like if I were the armor bearer, "I'd be like, sorry, bro, I'm gonna need more "than your perhaps. "If we're taking on an entire fortified garrison "of trained Philistine soldiers." But yes, God was in it. And God gave to Jonathan and his armor bearer a great victory on that day. Again and again, you see the kingdom of God requires God's people, God's servants to choose taking risks over playing it safe. I think another Old Testament account when the children of Israel approached the border of the Promised Land. This is an opposite example. 12 spies went in, 10 of those spies came back and they said, "We should probably play it safe. "There are giants there. "We look like grasshoppers in comparison." But there were two spies, Caleb and Joshua, who said, "Yeah, they're big, but we believe God wants us "to go in there and take the land." And Israel said, "No, too risky. "Let's stay and let's wait for a more opportune time." And God's verdict? Wrong decision. In fact, in Numbers 13, God calls the fearful report of the 10 spies evil, evil. Every word of their report was true, but it was evil because they refused to see their moment through the eyes of faith and take the risk. And the result, Israel wandered in the desert for 40 more years until an entire generation had died. And the lesson, risking for God can be dangerous, but not risking when God asks you to is even more dangerous. See, it's not gonna be worth it to avoid what God is asking you to do. The definition of safe is the only place where it's not safe. Like if you go, "Here's the safe thing to do." That's probably the most unsafe place you can be. Playing it safe is a serious sin because it speaks to our unrealized potential. Theologians have created a category for this spiritual inactivity. It's called sins of omission. They're the sins, the things that we should do that we're called to do, that God commands us to do, but for whatever reason, we leave them undone, sins of omission. And for the Christian, not using the influence that has been entrusted to you is a sin of omission. Did you notice the third servant? He was scrambling around, he was blaming everyone. He said, "You know, it's because of your heavy-handed approach, "but the master called out his lie." And he focused instead on the servant's unwillingness to take a risk. He wasn't punished for doing bad things with his talent. He was punished for doing nothing. See, it's hard for us to accept that when it comes to using our talents, inactivity is just as bad as misuse. That the third servant is called wicked and slothful, wicked and lazy. And those don't seem like really bad sins. Not bad enough to warrant the master's harsh judgment. In fact, one of the Gnostic Gospels from the second century, it's not in our current Bible. This was a Gnostic gospel, but it tried to improve on the parable of the talents. So this so-called gospel adds some sins to the story, to try to spice up the third servant's wickedness. It says that he squandered his money. It wasn't just that he buried it in the ground. He squandered his money on, he says, "Harlets and flute players." Apparently, at the time, those were the two worst categories of people. I've always said, "Watch out for those flute players." But anyway, none of those sins were required to make this a travesty in Jesus' eyes. The sin of omission, the sin of unrealized potential was enough. So part of our waiting for the master's return is the working. It's the prioritizing God's kingdom above all. Do you know the number one mistake most Christians are making right now in our country? Here it is. The number one mistake most Christians are making is they're asking the question this way. They're saying, "How can I fit a little bit of God "into my busy life?" People are, "Yeah, yes, yes, I want God. "Yes, I'd love to experience God in my life. "Yes, I would love to have my chest bursting with the joy "and the overflow that comes from the presence of God. "And I desperately want to be filled with compassion "for the broken and for the Holy Spirit to guide my mind "in heart as I go about my day's decisions "and my day's interactions. "I want that so bad. "And so could you give me like the two-minute version of that? "Is there a way that I can sneak that in "while I'm having my toast in the morning? "Like if I could just squeeze that in "around the other really important stuff "that demands all of my time. "And here's the point, it's a risk to go all in with Jesus. "It's a risk because it will demand "a reprioritization of your time and of your energy "and of your responsibilities and of your relationships, "of your money, and not only is that whole thing "a risky endeavor, but then Jesus is gonna invite you "to take a series of smaller risks "in order to advance his kingdom "in order to make more disciples. "And so if you're looking to play it safe, "don't bother with the whole Jesus thing "because he's gonna call you to take risks. "There are bold prayers that need to be prayed. "There are desperate people who need to be one. "There are controversial invitations that need to be made. "There are unifying meals that need to be served. "There are life-giving conversations that need to be had. "There are anxious children who need to be mentored. "There are history-altering projects that need to be led." See, God's kingdom will advance because of people like you and I stepping up and stepping in. Remember, God gives varying degrees of talents, but he expects equal risk. And for many of you, it's time. Like no matter how inadequate you feel. Listen, God has experience filling in the gaps for the risk takers. Remember the little boy who took a risk stepping forward with his little, you know, luncheables meal. And Jesus fed 10,000 people with it. He filled in the gaps. Remember the woman who took a risk by dropping two small mites in the offering plate. It was all that she had and Jesus told us to follow her lead. He filled in the gaps. Remember, you serve the one, this Jesus, who used dirt and spit to make sightless eyes see. He's the one who makes corpses inhale. He's the one who used 12 unqualified followers to change the course of human history. He used a waiter named Stephen to spark a revolution. And listen, above all, Jesus was the ultimate risk taker himself. He's the one who left Heaven's abundance and entered the world to be murdered for you and me. And then he turned around and he handed that mission off to us. And he said, "Just like I risk everything to save and serve you." Now, you go and risk everything to save and serve this world. And so I ask you today, is what you're currently living for worth what he died for? Is what you're doing with your life worthy of the price that he paid for it? Don't get mixed up in this Christianity thing if you're looking to play it safe. For the final choice of those who are faithful, I want you to look at at verse 28. It says, "So take the talent from him," says the Master, "and give it to him who has 10 talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Here's the third thing I want you to see. It's the choose to share in the Master's joy over becoming an object of his wrath. Compare what I just read, those disturbing words of the Master's response to what he said about the five-talent servant back in verse 21. Remember he said, his Master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of the Master." So Master's joy or Master's wrath. This seems like the biggest no-brainer in history. But it's amazing how many people don't choose it. What could be better than to reach the end of our days and to have God say, "Well done!" Why? Why is it well done? Well, here's the punchline. Because you were faithful. Not spectacular, not magnificent, not stupendous. You were faithful. I entrusted you with stuff. Like I entrusted you with a life, and you spent it on the most important stuff. What a rewarding moment that will be. And really we get a little glimpse into what's next. He says, "Enter into the joy of your Master. When you're found faithful, you will finally get to experience the reality that you were created for every longing of your heart. Every dream you've ever had will be fulfilled and far surpassed. The Lord will invite you to your ultimate assignment to spend eternity serving and savoring the happiness of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine what God's joy is like? Like think of the happiest moment of your life so far. Maybe some huge accomplishment that you did or the birth of a child or your wedding day or when you overcame some huge challenge. And it felt like your heart was about to burst with joy. That was your greatest joy, but your mind can't even comprehend how much greater will be the joy of your Master that you and I are gonna enter into. But our passage doesn't end with the bliss of heaven and reward. It ends with verse 30. The unfaithful sermon is removed from the Master's happiness to an eternal reality of sadness and pain. Throughout the New Testament and in Jesus' own words, hell is a real place. I struggle with this so much, but hell is a real place. And it's not figurative and it's not made up and it's not metaphorical. And according to this passage, one of the markers of unfaithfulness is not investing the resources God entrusted you into kingdom efforts. Like this whole scene is a reminder to us that when the Master returns, there will be life and death consequences, not just for our moral decisions, not just, you know, how did I treat people or did I smoke or drink too much or did I catch myself from saying bad words in time? It's not the hat. So much is, how did you use what God gave you? God says I gave you a life and I gave you breath and skills and gifts and resources. I gave you a family and a career and some influence. How did you use all that I gave you? Did you have a sense of kingdom urgency? Did you take some gospel risks or did you build your life around yourself? And in that moment when lavish reward is being offered and you think back over your life, every moment that you were distracted from that divine purpose, every season of selfishness will seem so silly in comparison to the beauty and majesty of your eternal home. Enter the joy of your Master. The pathway to that joy and I believe that joy even in this lifetime is to take all that He's given us, every talent, every resource, every idea, every project, every influence, every patch of land you occupy on this earth and pushing it all back into the middle and saying God, it's yours, it's all yours. And I'm gonna spend every day I have left leveraging it all for your glory and for your kingdom and for your advancement and for your fame and for your acclaim. God, I am all in. I've said for a long time when I read this parable where one servant got five talents and another servant got two and another got one that when I look around at us, when I look around at Grace Church, I can't help but shake this feeling that God has given us more like 10 talents. Like there's just such an abundance of resource and abundance of amazing people and abundance of connections and access to every segment of our society. Guys, I just can't shake the feeling that we're at 10 talent church and there's a lot required of us. And the question becomes what are we gonna do with what's been entrusted to us? That's what this 10 year vision is about. See, part of our awake the lake process has been to look at what we call the collective potential of Grace Church. And let me just summarize the results by saying our collective potential is a lot, it's massive. And in fact, I don't know of anyone else's position to have an impact on this region like we are. I don't think Fortune 500 Erie Insurance is positioned the same way. I don't think Wabtech is. I don't think Erie News now is. I don't think any of our great colleges and universities are. I don't think any of the great hospitals that we have are as well positioned with their collective potential to reach our region as much as we are. Do you know why? Because they're only working in one focused channel of influence, but the church, the church is represented in all of those channels of influence. I remind you in his book, "Next Christian's Gay Blinds" talks about the seven channels of cultural influence. These are called different things in different settings. Seven mountains, seven sectors, seven spheres of society, whatever, but they're simply these seven things. Media, arts and entertainment, business, education, government, church, social sector. And when you look at these seven channels through a lens of influence, a collaborative effort by all seven holds the power to change an entire society. That there are many examples of this through history when massive social change can take place in the span of just one generation, if even just a few influencers from each of those seven channels kind of work together on a common goal. In fact, Lyon says it takes relatively little time and energy to bring meaningful change to a culture provided leaders from these sectors are all working together. And here's why I'm so optimistic about our collective potential. Because the church is the only one of those seven spheres that convenes people together from all the other six every week in one place and then disperses them back into those fields of influence every Monday morning. And so we have not just loads of people at Grace, but loads of key leaders in every one of those spheres of influence that could move the needle of change in this whole Lake Erie region. Think of the kingdom potential. So how do we leverage that? And what's this big vision? Well, let me remind you first that as a church, we're going to obsess about a couple of things. We're going to obsess about our desire to first help every believer at Grace to walk in deep discipleship. This is one of two key pillars upon which this vision for the future rests. I'm inviting all of you to turn up the heat on your own discipleship commitment. You use these four dream disciple roles and all of the tools and all of the trainings that go with them as we follow Jesus together. In fact, as a major next step out of this series, can I just urge you, we've created a great website that I would just ask you to explore, peruse the site, experiment with some of the tools, use the four roles in the discipleship questions with a friend or a mentor or a life group. I just dare you to lean into that and to come away unchanged. So that website is over at whoisgrace.com/dreamdisciple. But our vision doesn't stop with a deepening discipleship. It includes a reimagining of the church dispersed. Most people, when they think of the church, they think of a church like a crowd that's gathered. But we wanna get creative about multiplying and resourcing and then encouraging and partnering with the church scattered. Not just the church on Sunday, but the church on Monday through Saturday. For many years, I've asked God what geography is Grace Church's responsibility? Obviously, we're called to be a source of hope in Erie and Erie County. But I've always wondered, is it more than that? Or is that our spot? What's our regional reach? And for many years behind the scenes in small confidential staff circles and elder circles, we've wrestled with the idea that God might be calling us to have an influence in the larger Lake Erie region, specifically Cleveland to Buffalo. To be honest, I've kind of moved on from this idea after COVID. It looked like our multiplication efforts were gonna go in a different direction. And as we were working through this awake, the lake vision process over the last year or so with our leaders. In the last hour of our last session together, as we were hashing out some of the final details of this vision, someone said, you know what, I can't get that Cleveland to Buffalo thing out of my head. And that phrase sparked our imagination once again. And so as this vision started to take shape, that dream of a regional reach came back into play. Not necessarily as a forward-facing goal, but more of a downstream outcome. Like, what if all these growing and maturing disciples at grace get it? Like, what if it clicks? What would happen in the next 10 years if we actually do this? So last week, we talked about the second key pillar of this vision, which is our desire to help every believer at grace to live out their kingdom calling, to understand why God has put you on this planet and then to carry that calling into every aspect of your life, everywhere you go. You're investing the talents God has entrusted to you. And so when we look at Cleveland to Buffalo, there are nine counties in between there, Cuyahoga and Lake and Ashtabula and Erie and Crawford and Warren and Chautauqua and Erie again and Niagara. Living in those nine counties are approximately 3 million people. And data shows that if you can change the mind and heart of 1% of a population, you have a real chance to move the needle and to make an impact in that region. And so we asked, what if over the next 10 years we could help 1% of that population to discover and live out their divine calling? That's 30,000 people. Now it takes about two seconds to realize that we can't do this alone. And so we wanna seek out and multiply like-minded partners who have a similar God-soaked vision for this Lake Erie region. We're figuring out what it means to have partners and businesses and churches and nonprofits and individuals who have hands in the middle to help many more people to live out their calling. This isn't just a grace church thing. This is a gospel thing. And we don't have all the details of this part worked out yet because frankly, we need your help to figure it out. What does it look like? That this might take the form of a business owner who wants coaching or cohorts to help them to lead a Christian business or organization or maybe a nonprofit whose board or executive team would like to go through the handcrafted calling experience together to figure out how God has uniquely positioned and wired them. I already had an individual reach out to me with a small building in a nearby town asking what it might look like to put a grace church kind of missional outpost in that building where a small group could gather for worship on Sundays, but then also meet during the week as they live out their missional callings in that community. These are like micro sites and these micro site expressions are probably gonna be what we pursue going forward in the future. Not necessarily more big building multi-site locations like we have right now. And one of our core dreams is to see churches of all kinds come together. Big and small across every denominational reach. Maybe there's a church who wants to use some of our discipleship materials and metrics or maybe there's a pastor who wants to take his whole church through a calling experience or maybe there's a church who's in a leadership transition and would like to explore what partnering up with grace would look like. Our horizon goals for the next three years look something like this. You can take a picture of the screen here if you'd like, but we wanna start with 1% of people in Erie County having named their kingdom calling that we've developed a pipeline of leaders including co-vocational residency program who are gonna be movement leaders. That we have over 500 maturing disciples at grace who rank themselves a six or higher on our discipleship metrics and that we are a player in facilitating a Lake Erie network of churches and organizations and movement leaders who are dead set on changing this region with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, when God looks down on this Lake Erie region and when he looks around for his church, let me tell you what he doesn't see. He doesn't see what we see. He doesn't see just the individual brick and mortar structures that say church on the sign all separate from each other. You know what he sees? He sees his echlecia. He sees his children. He sees a movement of people scattered throughout those nine counties and businesses and in schools and in their homes. And can you only imagine if we put our hands in the middle to start working together for the kingdom of God? We might just in our lifetime, in our generation, see revival in our land, see a spiritual renewal so deep that it begins to reverse the curse of sin all around us and awakening to movement of God in our midst. And so I want to invite you into the next chapter of Grace Church's rich history to see maybe in our lifetime if God might just awake the lake.
