A Window of Opportunity That Will Soon Be Closed

sermon transcript

So turn in your Bibles to Luke 16, the passage you just heard read. I just want to kind of embarrass myself here right from the start. The sermon outline you have on the back of the bulletin has a sermon title at the top, which is the title of all of my sermons before I write them. It’s the template that I use on Microsoft Word. Now, I didn’t need to tell you that. I don’t think very many of you would be shrewd enough to say, “The sermon actually had nothing to do with the power of the Gospel.” I think….generally, I think the power of the gospel relates to everything in the Christian life. But if I were gonna give this sermon a real title, it would be something like this: “A Window of Opportunity That Will Soon Be Closed.” That’s what I think this text is about. This is how it spoke to me.

Now, as I begin, I think about the roles that we play in our lives. I’ve read through The Chronicles of Narnia to my kids. The first one is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And the wardrobe was a wooden box, a standalone closet that was a passageway into another world, and it had garments in it and all that. And my kids had something like that when they were growing up. It was called “the dress-up box.”

And I don’t know, some of you may know exactly what I’m talking about, but inside were all manner of wild kind of clothing that our kids, when they were little, would put on and they could be, for a very short time, someone else. They could first just be grown-ups, or they could go to another kind of era in history: they could be colonial-era men and women, or they could be prairie folks, or they could be kings and queens for a day. And sometimes they would write plays and they would play roles and we parents would have to watch those play… I’m sorry, get to watch their plays. The plot development was scintillating, it was amazing, the different lines that they would have. And for a while, they would play those roles, and then they would surrender their dress-up clothes and go back to their normal lives. I think it’s important for us to see our lives, our physical lives, and the roles we play like that, to some degree. They are all of them temporary. Everything that characterizes you, your life in this world is temporary, your intelligence, your physical strength, your wealth, your job, your role as parent or child, husband, wife.

For me, a senior pastor, all of these are like to some degree, dress-ups, and the Lord is watching to see what we do in those roles. They do not finally define us. They are all of them temporary. And we’re going to be shucking off those robes and standing stripped of them before God on Judgment Day to give him an account of what kind of people we were in those temporary roles. And the more you immerse yourself in this mentality, the more your pride in that position will go away. Paul says in Corinthians, “What do you have that you didn’t receive? And if you did receive it, then why do you boast as though you did not?” So as Jeremiah said, “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, or the strong man boast of his strength, or the rich man boast of his wealth, but let him who boast boast in this that he knows me.” Or as it says in 1 Corinthians 1, “Let him who boast, boast in the Lord.” We’re gonna get stripped of all of these things. Life is fleeting and temporary, and someday we are going to die. All of us are going to die if we’re not part of that mysterious final generation, and we will stand before God and give him an account.

So this is the third and final sermon I’m gonna be preaching on stewardship in connection with our More Than A Building campaign. Some of you have been here for the other two. Some of you are just here visiting this morning. For those of you that were not with us for the last two sermons, let me just remind you what this is all about. The elders of First Baptist Church are calling on members of the church to give sacrificially over the next three years to renovate our building. The reason for this is that our building is aging, and there are some significant areas that need to be addressed in order just to keep the building simply running: talking about electricity, plumbing, HVAC, different things like that, structural things, things that are not incredibly exciting or interesting, but they are aging and they just need to be upgraded. But beyond that, on top of that, a desire to freshen up the space of some aspects of our building, not all of it, to make it more architecturally attractive, bring us into the 21st century in appearance, similar to what was done in the Welcome Center right behind me, and its transformation from the Betsy Cheek Chapel to the present Welcome Center

We have in mind that kind of transformation for some of the other spaces in our building. And our desire is that this work on the building will enhance the building’s role as a platform for ministry. That’s all. We’re living in a booming region of the country, population-wise. People are pouring in here to live and work and study, and that provides an opportunity for us. As Christ said to the church in Philadelphia, “Behold, I’ve set before you an open door which no one can shut.” And so we have an opportunity to reach people who are pouring into this area, many of whom are unchurched, who are unsaved. They are without hope and without God in the world. We wanna reach out to them. And we want to interact with them, get to know them, build relationships with them, and share the gospel with them, the word of truth, the word of life, which alone is the power of God for salvation. We want to see them rescued from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Beloved Son, and then we wanna see them built up in their faith, see them sanctified, growing and developing to Christ-like maturity, so they themselves can be labors for this growing harvest field, a multiplication ministry.

We wanna see all of that happen here. Now, we’re well aware, the elders are, that a building cannot achieve any of this. We could have the prettiest building in the state with breathtaking architecture, state-of-the-art technologies, lavishly comfortable furniture. We can have all of that. But if the Word of God is not being taught here, it will all be for nothing. If men aren’t meeting with men and women aren’t meeting with women for discipleship, if groups aren’t gathering, ad hoc groups just led by the Spirit to intercede and pray for each other and for the community and to the ends of the Earth, it doesn’t matter how beautiful our building will be, it’s just deadness, if the Spirit isn’t at work here.

Now, there are many texts that I could take to persuade you to give financially, but this one captivated my mind just ’cause it’s so fascinating. Isn’t it an amazing parable? It’s definitely a head scratcher, don’t you think? As you’re listening to Herbert read it, I’m like, you probably were saying, first of all, “What in the world? And why would the pastor picked this one, and why would Jesus tell it to begin with? I mean, honestly, it seems a little sketchy, don’t you think?” But the basic point, if I could just boil it down to the point, the key for me in this parable is that the master didn’t fire the guy right away and escort him off the property. That’s the key to everything. He had a window of opportunity in his role, and boy did he take advantage of it. And in that brief window, that closing window of opportunity, he used his position to build relationships. And Jesus grabs hold of that and says, “You need to do that same thing with your money, and I’m gonna extend it to your time and your energy, I’m going to advocate that beyond just money, but your time, your energy, strength and your money, you should use these spendable resources, which are gonna go away anyway, you should use them while you have them for the kingdom of God. Because some day all of them will be taken from you.” We are stewards, and so we have a closing window of opportunity and we need to seize it. So this is far bigger than the building. That’s why the elders have been saying, “More Than a Building.” The principles by which the money will be raised will be lifelong for all of us. They go well beyond the refurbishment of this aging building. It just has to do with how you look at your life, how you look at the resources that you’re stewarding. Are you thinking with an eternal perspective about these things, or not? That’s what we’re about.

The Parable of the Shrewd Steward Explained

So let’s walk through the parable of the shrewd steward, we’ll try to explain it. I’m just gonna summarize it. A wealthy owner, a rich man finds that his steward, his servant — a steward, is just somebody who takes care of someone else’s possessions — has been squandering his wealth. He doesn’t go in the parable into details, but he was probably living high on the hog. He doesn’t want to lose that privileged lifestyle, we find that out later. So the owner is very angry with this manager, this steward, and he comes to him and says, “Settle accounts because you’re gonna lose your position. I hear this report about you and you’re out. So get things figured out and soon, you’re going to lose your position.” Well, this guy ruminates in the parable within himself, we get to listen to his thoughts. He said, “What shall I do?” He said, “I don’t wanna dig and I’m too proud to beg.” So those are his two options. He doesn’t wanna work hard, he’s lazy. He’s used to the cushy life. And he doesn’t want to beg. That’s shameful. So he’s got some pride here despite the fact that he’s dishonest. And so what is he gonna do? He wants to land on his feet. So he comes up with a brilliant idea, shrewd idea, which his master later commends him for. Though he had been ripped off, he commends him because it’s a very shrewd idea.

He said, “I know what I’m gonna do.” And so he begins to call in the people who always master resources, the people who are indebted to his master, and he significantly reduces their debt. The first man comes in, owes his master 100 measures, maybe about 800 gallons of olive oil, that’s a big amount, and the steward tells him quickly to sit down and cut it in half, down to 400 gallons. I think quickly, because I think he’s looking left and right to see if the owner’s coming in at any moment. “So let’s get this done quickly.” So he writes a new IOU, legal, because this man had the authority to do it as a steward, sends him off happy. Does the same thing with the next guy who owes 1,000 bushels of wheat, cuts off 20% in that case, and reduced it to 800 bushels of wheat. So the result of all of this is that these people now have a strong sense of gratitude to this man, and he expects that when he loses he loses his position, and then he goes out and knocks on the door of one of these people, they open the door, just happens to be dinnertime, says, “You know, I just lost my job today, maybe because I cut your bill in half. Any chance I might be able to grab dinner with you?” “And anything else?” “Well, I could use a place to stay for a while,” this kind of thing.

That’s what he’s thinking is going to happen. He’ll be welcomed into their homes and offered hospitality out of their sense of indebtedness. Now, the master finds out, as I said about this, and praises him for his shrewdness. So why is that? I can’t imagine exactly how this would go, he’s like, “Wow, you got me. You got me. That was pretty good. I don’t know I would have come up with that, but that was good.” Something like that, whatever the first century version of that was.

So this is a very strange parable, honestly. This would be straight unethical if it were a government figure today. It’s called “influence peddling.” In some cases, depending on what it is, it’s a crime to use your position in government to build connections so that people then give you kickbacks or jobs when you lose your position, something like that. It’s illegal. So Jesus is using some pretty questionable ethics to teach us a valuable lesson, and what is that? You are all, we are all stewards of God’s possessions. The possessions are not our own, they belong to God.

And just like the steward in the parable, someday we will all be losing our stewardship position. There is a closing window of opportunity. And so the clear command here is use your temporary wealth to make friends for yourself for the sake of an internal kingdom, specifically zeroes in on money, what he calls unrighteous wealth numerous times. I’m not gonna go into that, but it’s just worldly wealth, tempting wealth, and as Jesus implies, wealth that really isn’t wealth. It’s not the true riches. Anyway, use that to build connections. Look at verse nine, verse nine we’re gonna return to it several times in the sermon, but that’s the number one verse I want you to zero in on, verse nine. Jesus applies it in this way: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” So that’s the parable, just walked through and explained. Now let’s apply the parable generally to our Christian lives.

The Parable Applied to Our Christian Lives Generally

First, we need to understand the brevity of life, the brevity of life. All of us are mortal. We are all going to die someday. It says in Hebrews 9:27, “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” Now, the focus of my sermon here is an appeal to church members to give sacrificially to a building campaign or a capital project, but I’m aware that every single week, God brings us visitors. Church members are  faithful throughout the week to have built connections in the spirit of this parable, friendships, and have invited some people to church, it happens every week. And so I would be remiss if I just focused on stewardship and didn’t preach the Gospel to you who are not yet saved. Let me just say to you directly, someday you are going to die. You don’t know when that is. Your window is closing too. And after you die, it’s not nothingness. There is something after you die. It’s appointed to you to die once and after that, something, and what is that? Judgment. And at that judgment, you will be evaluated by the perfect eyes, the holy eyes of the judge of all the Earth, and there will be no hiding, there’ll be no escaping, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account, and on that day, you will not be able to save yourself from your sins.

And so Jesus Christ came, the Son of God, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, he was fully human, fully God, but lived a sinless life, did incredible miracles, taught parables like this one, but the central purpose of his physical life on Earth was to die on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sinners like you and me. And so he took the wrath of God and the punishment of God on himself and died under the wrath of God. The death penalty we deserve for the wages of sin is death. He died, but God didn’t leave him in the grave. He raised him from the dead on the third day, and he was seen by many eye witnesses, and he ascended to Heaven and now sits at the right hand of God, and someday he will judge the living and the dead. That is the gospel, and all you have to do is believe that what I’ve just said is true, and that you are a sinner, you have violated your conscience, you have violated the laws of God, and apart from this gospel, you are lost.

But this is the day of salvation. All you have to do is hear this message and believe it with faith. And so I urge you to do that. Not urging you to put a card of commitment in the tray as it goes by at the end of the sermon, I’m urging you to cry out to the Lord now inside your heart, say, “Oh God, be merciful to me. In the name of Jesus, be merciful to me, a sinner, and forgive me.” Alright, so this parable, the stewardship, key to the idea is this window of opportunity is closing, it’s closing because we’re mortal, where all of us is going to die. Genesis 3:19, “We’re gonna work by the sweat of our brow. We’re gonna wrestle with the Earth and it’s gonna produce thorns and thistles for us, but also some harvests. And then in the end, in our wrestling with the dust of the Earth, we’re going to lose and sink down into the dust from which we came.” That is the curse we have in Adam, and therefore our lives here on Earth are fleeting and uncertain.

James, chapter four puts it this way, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, I will live and do this or that.’ Instead, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.” So James is saying very clearly, our lives are very temporary. Every morning, I drive across a bridge near where I live and there’s a lake there, Little River Lake. Frequently, especially this time of year, there’s a mist that covers and it’s a wispy kind of fall. If I were to pull up a chair in the woods near there and just watch the lake… I’ve never done this, but I can imagine this happening. As the sun comes up and the day starts to heat up, that mist will burn off, and it would be like it was never even there. And so it is with our lives. If the Lord doesn’t return for another 100 years, 150 years, who is gonna remember any of us, 150 years from now? So our lives here on Earth are fleeting and uncertain.

Secondly, everything that we own, we own in stewardship, it is not our stuff. It’s such a satanic deception, that your money is yours. In some sense, it is. That’s why there’s laws against theft. Against stealing, ’cause possession does matter. But before God, it’s not the case. Everything you have is God’s, you are a steward. Look at verse 12, he said, “If you’ve not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?” So, the someone else is God. The property of your own? Now, that’s very provocative about Heaven. Real ownership is in the next world, not in this one, where we will not die and the things we have, we’ll have forever.

David said, as I mentioned two weeks ago, 1 Chronicles 29, when they were raising money for the building of the temple, he said, “Who am I and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers, our days on Earth are like a shadow without hope. Oh Lord, our God has for all this abundance that we have provided for, building you a temple for your holy name. It comes from your hand and all of it belongs to you.”

It’s a principle of stewardship. So since everything we have is really God’s, and since our time here on Earth is so brief and uncertain, we are exactly like the steward and the parable, we will soon lose our position, it will be gone. We have a rapidly closing window of opportunity, and Jesus said that we should use worldly wealth to gain friends for ourselves, so that when it is gone, not that it might be gone, it will be gone. When it fails you, one translation has “they”… the friends will welcome us into eternal dwelling places. So someday, everything you think is yours will be taken from you and you’re gonna leave it all behind because it really wasn’t yours anyway. Randy Alcorn in Money, Possessions, and Eternity, said this, “Money can be a tool of Christ, but it must be used as such now, before our period of service on Earth ends. There will be no second chance to use the money for Christ later. After his termination was effective, after he could work no longer, the manager would have no more leverage, he used his final days of service to win friends who could take him into their dwellings when his work was done.”

So thirdly, use temporary resources to build friendships. Though the money really belongs to God, and it’s only temporary, it does actually have some value, eternal value. If we are generous with our money, it will be useful in building relationships for the eternal kingdom of God. Look again at verse 9, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Well, how do you do that? How do you use worldly wealth to gain friends? Well, as we generously see needs and meet needs with our temporary resources — I’m gonna extend it beyond money to time and energy as well, strength — as we use these commodities to meet people’s needs, to connect with people, it creates a relationship and a sense of gratitude and a desire for mutual blessing that comes back. It’s just natural. This certainly works in terms of giving a party or a banquet in which you roll out the red carpet, you serve the best foods and there’s beautiful decorations and all that — creates inside the people a desire to do the same thing for you. Jesus even talked about that. They’re gonna want to connect with you. Your guests will feel cared for, they’ll feel loved, that you’ve looked after their needs. That’s why we yearn to use hospitality as a platform for evangelism.

So I just wanna say, make friends with your lost co-workers, make friends with your lost neighbors, make friends with people and invite them into your home. It’s a powerful platform for evangelism. So also when we give to the poor and needy, Jesus said, “They can’t repay you, but you will have built a connection with them that will last beyond the grave, into eternity.” Now, money can’t buy anything directly, spiritual money, can’t buy conversions, money can’t buy spiritual growth, money can’t buy any of these spiritual things. It’s just a tool. But those physical things, like rich, warm hospitality, create the context for lasting friendships, and if they’re done in the name of Christ, they can be instrumental in winning the lost people to Christ. That’s the rationale for a beautiful, comfortable building. It’s not gonna win anybody. It’s a platform in which people feel loved and welcomed, just like cleaning up your house and putting on a nice tablecloth before you have guests.

Now, for twenty centuries, Christians have used their time and their strength and their money to spread the gospel and to alleviate temporary suffering, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and heal the sick, and do that when it was best done, by far, as a platform for sharing the words of life. As we said at a conference I spoke at a few years ago, we care about all suffering, but especially eternal suffering, and so there’s a desire to alleviate temporary physical suffering, but ultimately that they would be delivered from eternity in hell and instead spend eternity in beautiful dwelling places in Heaven. So money paid the fare for missionaries throughout the modern mission movement, it was money that was raised for William Carey that enabled him to go to India. It was money that was raised for Adoniram Judson that enabled him and his team to go to Burma. It was money that was raised by Hudson Taylor that enabled him to take the gospel to the inland regions of China. As an IM trustee, I can just tell you financially, the IMB is healthy and stable. We just voted in the annual budget, $264.4 million.

And they followed some really healthy financial principles, but they said something very striking. The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering that makes up about two-thirds to three quarters of the annual mission budget that enables missionaries to go on the field has plateaued pretty much, and what that means is that they can’t very well expand and send more missionaries. They need to keep caring for the missionaries they have and replacing the ones that are retiring or moving off the field. And so it’s kind of a stable…

Now, those 3600 or so missionaries are doing phenomenal work around the world, but we shouldn’t see any kind of exponential growth to 4,000, 4500, 5,000 without a staggering work of God in financial generosity on the part of people like you and me, and people all around the country. And so, being generous with our money now will enable people to go on the mission field. It doesn’t buy souls, it doesn’t buy churches planted, but it does serve as a physical platform. When Christi and I and our two older kids were missionaries in Japan, it was the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, and it was the cooperative program that combination that paid for our salary to live in Tokushima and share the gospel with Japanese people. So money enabled these things, but it didn’t buy any souls for the Kingdom. What’s happening is relationships are being built, friendships are being built that are useful for the eternal gospel.

Now look at what Jesus says in verse 9, he says, “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves,  so that when it’s gone [and it will go], you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Now, what does that mean? It’s time for some eschatological speculation. Eternal, I think, means heavenly. Dwellings is a place where people live. In heaven. So one concept of this is that you’re receiving like 2 Peter 1-11, a rich welcome when you die. I think that’s possible that that’s all that’s saying, But that’s not the connection here. The connection is people who felt a sense of gratitude to you want to express it to you, but Jesus says, make sure they do it in Heaven, not now. And so they’re going to want to welcome you into their heavenly homes. They’re like, wait a minute, Pastor, and this is getting straight weird, they’re gonna have eternal dwellings in Heaven? Yes, they will. You know why? ‘Cause they’re going to have resurrection bodies, and those bodies need to be somewhere, and Jesus said openly in John 14:2-3, he said there, “In my Father’s house, there are many rooms [sometimes translated mansions, but just dwelling places]. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I’m going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come and take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am.”

Many of you are with us as we travel through the Book of Revelation. You remember the New Jerusalem described very plainly, descending and prepared and glorious. But then it was measured, as you remember, by an angel with a measuring rod. It had dimensions. So there is such a thing as eternal dwellings, and the idea is if you build friendships with people, they’ll want to have you over in Heaven to say thank you. You’re like, “Wow, that’s pretty amazing.” And perhaps before you made the friendship, they weren’t gonna have any dwelling in Heaven at all, instead they would have made their bed in the depths of Sheol, in the Lake of Fire, but because you gave sacrificially, there is that connection and that desire to be thankful. Alcorn says this, “One day, our money will be useless. While it’s still useful, Christians with foresight will use it for eternal good.”

So I thought about an analogy. I have lots of analogies on this. One of them is a ticket to Super Bowl 51. It’s got a perforation in the middle, but both sides are still there with the hologram on it and all that. You’re like, “Well, wait a minute, Pastor. Super Bowl 51 was a couple years ago.”

Yeah, that’s right. What’s that ticket worth right now? Straight nothing. What was it worth, an hour before kick off? Oh, a lot. But there came a moment in which that thing went from valuable to worthless. So that’s the way it is with our unrighteous wealth, so to speak. It’s an interesting word, but just for a while, it’s got value, but at some point it will flip and become worthless. And that’s what he’s saying. Or another analogy, when you land at a city, a major city or any city in a foreign country, you might, if you’re gonna stay there any length of time, exchange money, because they just don’t take American currency over there. And so, you go up and you exchange the money to the local currency because they’re just not gonna take it. You have to exchange this money to Heavenly currency, they don’t take American dollars in Heaven. And so, you have to exchange it. How? By being generous with it in the name of the gospel.

Look at verse 10. “He who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and the one who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much.”Jesus is effectively saying, God is continually testing us all the time. You’re presently in a job interview for a possible bigger role in the Kingdom of Heaven. The interviewer is God, and he’s watching you to see how faithful you are with the small role you have now. If you want a larger role, be faithful.

That’s what he’s saying. God pays attention to small details, and Jesus says effectively, money is a little thing. It’s not a big deal. Do you get that sense here? He’s saying, It’s not true wealth. Look at verse 11, “If you’ve not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” Jesus is totally denigrating money in some kind of sense here. It is not true wealth.

What is? People. Eternal souls are true wealth. Influence you have for the gospel. That’s truly wealthy. That’s genuine wealth. So the bottom line for us is spend it wisely while it’s yours to spend. We’ve got these three commodities. We talk about them often: time, energy, money. Unlike other things that are gifts of God, they decrease with use, they go away. So unlike a spiritual gift that actually increases with use, the more you use your spiritual gift, the better you get at it. It’s not like that. This is the opposite. Your time, you spend it and it’s gone. Your money, you spend it. And it’s gone, your strength that God gives you your energy, you spend it and it’s gone. Now they can be replenished with more gifts from God, God could wake you up the next morning and give you another day, praise God for another day. This is the day the Lord has crafted with good works to be done. Today, we will rejoice and be glad in it. But you’re gonna spend it. And then it will be gone. Time is short. Death will take away everything.

And friends, can I say this? Not just death. Other things take things away. Have you noticed that money just goes away? Have you noticed? Here is a scary thought, I’m ready to scare you with a thought. If God wants you to give X to something, and you give 90% of X, whatever that is. Is it possible at least, that God might go ahead and take that 10% of X away anyway? Car repair, house repair, medical need you didn’t think you had, it just goes away. Cast but a glance at wealth and it flies away. You didn’t get a chance though, to convert that 10% to Heavenly currency, so you get no credit for it on judgment day. So be very careful what God is telling you to do and give X, whatever X is. I can’t tell you what X is, only God can. The time is short. On the flip side, speaking more positively, if you do give it away by faith exactly what God wants you to do, he will never forget and you will never lose your reward. You have converted it to Heavenly currency. 

The Parable Applied to the More Than a Building Campaign

So now, let me apply this to the More Than a Building Campaign and we’ll be done. Over the past month, we’ve been hearing what God’s Word has to say about stewardship, so this morning we have, as church members of FBC, an opportunity to apply these truths by responding to what God’s Word says, and recording our commitment to the More Than a Building Initiative. Now the elders are fully aware, the building doesn’t save anyone, as we’ve said. With that in mind, we know that since 1927, this building has been a great tool. And since 1962, the educational wing been a great tool and a home base for ministry. In an effort to steward our location, our strategic location as well, and to move forward in ministry, the church has voted to go ahead with a $3.5 million renovation initiative into that, and we’ve come to a time now, of corporate commitment. So as you heard last week, we already have a number of individuals who have made their pledges, their commitments already, and we have more than a third of the amount raised in commitment. So in your bulletin, if you could look in your bulletin or maybe find out there, you find a commitment card, just like this one, you see that.

Now, if you didn’t receive a bulletin, there’s gonna be cards at the end of the pew, so just take it in your hand. And in a few moments, I’m gonna pray, and the team, I’m gonna actually invite the worship team to come on up now. They’re gonna play and we’ll quietly… And we’re gonna ask you to record your commitment and then fold the card up, so that you can give anonymously. Fold the card up and the ushers will come and collect it and pass it to the middle aisle where the ushers are gonna come. So I’m gonna pray that God would lead us in this time of commitment.

 Closing Prayer

Father, we thank you for the things that we have learned, not just over the last three sermons, but just in our entire Christian life on stewardship. Lord, these are not new ideas to us who are Christians, we know these things, we know them. God, help us to live out now, what you want us to do. God, I pray for the members of our church, and indeed for anyone else who was not a member, who wants to contribute as well. Father, I pray that you would enable each person to give what you want them to give. Help them to give by faith. Help them to give sacrificially and cheerfully, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Help them to give with eyes of faith. I pray that you work in all of us that we would give just way beyond the More Than a Building campaign, that we would give of ourselves, our time, our strength, our money, for the rest of our lives, to build friendships with people, so that we can see people rescued from darkness, we can see churches planted in unreached people groups, we can see churches planted here in the Triangle region of North Carolina. So Lord, just give us courage and give us faith now, as we make our commitment. In Jesus’ name. Amen.