Winning

Everybody else, let's take out our Bibles, and if you have a Bible, turn with me the book of Matthew as we look together at this same theme. Matthew, chapter 16, if you don't have a Bible, not to worry, we have some Bibles. They are underneath the chairs on the chair racks. Pull out one of those Bibles. Keep it open while we study God's Word. Turn to page 973 in that Bible. Matthew, chapter 16, is our passage this morning, and we're going to look at verses 24 through 28. While you're turning to that, let me remind you that we've been in a season known as Momentum, a five-week study of this topic of stewardship. And by the way, let me just make a little promotional announcement right now, that after the service today, we're going to celebrate what God has been doing here at UPC over the past 13 weeks. We've been taking a bunch of people through a course called Financial Peace University. It's something that is the brain child or the result of the work of Dave Ramsey. And we've been going through that here as a church, and many of you have been attending the classes, as well as going through FPU in your life group. My wife and I and our life group are going through it together. And now we reach the end of the semester. So right after this service and the other building in the place we call the commons at the other end, we're going to have a party. And I would invite all of you to join us for the party. We're going to celebrate the hard work that's been done by those people in FPU. We're going to have a short time in which we recognize their accomplishments and what they've learned. And we're going to have a little bit of dessert. So it's for the whole church family. It's not just for the FPU grads. So please feel free to join us. Have a great time. Have some good dessert. That's right after this service and the other building. What we've been learning over the past five weeks goes along hand in glove with Financial Peace University. Let me review for you in case you're a little new here. These are the things we've talked about so far. We've said that in order to be a good steward of God's resources, you need to be content rather than covetous. Secondly, we learned that you need to be a saver instead of a spender. Third thing we talked about was to be a manager of God's resources. Rather than a master thinking that they're yours. They're not yours, they're his. And finally, last week, we talked about being sacrificial instead of stingy. So that's where we've come. Now today, we're going to finish this five-part series with this. I want to talk with you this morning about commitment. And the theme of the day is to be committed rather than careless. In other words, if we're going to be good stewards of God's money and the Bible commands us to be good stewards, we've got to get serious, right? We've got to get serious about this topic. We're not just playing here with something way out on the periphery of the Christian life. This is something very central to our being God's people. Being a steward is central to the plan of God for his church. And so I call on all of you, I call on myself today to be committed rather than careless. You know, if we come to these five topics that we've learned about over the past five weeks, and we just sort of blow it off, and we say, well, okay, I guess that's going to be good for them, but I'm not going to reorient my priorities. I'm not going to take these things seriously. Then it will have been all for nothing. We will have really wasted our time. And we dare not waste our time with these matters. And so I'm calling on you, Jesus is calling on us to be committed rather than to be careless about the topic of stewardship. So let me read for you then, Matthew 16, as we look at this topic of being serious and being committed about stewardship. Chapter 16, verse 24, here God's word. Then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come and his father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here today will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. The Word of the Lord. Weak, weak. Try again the Word of the Lord. Amen. Great, thanks. If you've been following pop culture in recent days, you know that all over the news has been Charlie Sheen. If you don't know what's going on with Charlie Sheen, obviously you haven't been watching the news or reading the paper much lately. Charlie Sheen, you know who he is, right? The star of a lot of hit movies from the past movies like Platoon, Wall Street, Festbueller's Day Off, Major League, Hot Shots, and so on. And then more recently he's become the star of a couple of popular TV shows, such as Spin City and two and a half men. He became, which you may not know, the highest paid actor in television history. He was paid $3 million per episode of two and a half men, $3 million per episode. And he came to his producers one day and said, that's not enough. I demand a raise. He demanded a 50% raise on top of $3 million. What Charlie Sheen perhaps is better known for among some circles is his widely known reports of misbehavior, of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, anti-symmetism, and a lot of other things that have made him pretty notorious in Hollywood. Well, finally on March 7th, just a couple of weeks or a month ago he was fired from his role in the TV show Two and a Half Men. CBS and Warner Brothers fired Charlie Sheen, among other things for derogatory comments that he had made about the show's creator. And now Charlie Sheen is adding to his resume by going around the country and doing a nationwide tour which has received very mixed reviews to say the least. Charlie Sheen's favorite word, winning. Take a look at this video and you'll see what I mean. Good start. It's a good start. It's a great start. It's the first win. But we can claim to be completely original which excites me in which puts me in the zone of winning. I'm by winning. I win here and I win there. Now what? Let's just do it. Let's meet this thing head on and you were in it to win it. Talk about an education and then like this and then that's the guy and he's our dad and we can get all the answers and the truth. Wow, winning. That's how you perceive it. I'm not very good at it and they keep winning and building bigger houses than mine defeating the naysayers. So the winning or your losing is nothing in between you. How do you plan on winning that war? With zeal and focus and violent hatred. Just define this guy. Good luck. You're going to need it. I'm going to be over here like winning. Come Wednesday morning. They're going to rename it to Charlie Brothers and not Warner Brothers. Winning. Winning in what sense? Just winning. Because some would say that you defeated now. They can say that but what kind of car are they driving? What kind of girls are in their home? I said girls. I'm going to live my life the way I want. I'm going to win inside of a room moment and they can just find the most comfortable chair in their small house and sit back and enjoy the show. You make a choice to win and you win. Like I have to call you here all the time. It's awesome. I'm sorry. Winning. You're starting to get the concept now? Oops. Winning. It's often times as unknown but occasionally a giant marquee name comes through on your caller idea and it's like winning. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning. Winning. You know, it's easy to be critical of Charlie Sheen. I find myself being very critical of a person like that until I realize that there is a lot of Charlie Sheen inside all of us. If you know your heart well at all, you know there's a little bit to a lot of Charlie Sheen in your heart too. In other words, there's selfishness and self-centeredness within our hearts just like in his. And Jesus takes aim and blasts away at our self-centeredness when he says in Matthew 1624, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. What does that mean when Jesus says to deny yourself? Does it mean that all of your desires are bad? That you should repress your desires, ignore them or try to be something you're not? No, it doesn't mean that. Does deny yourself mean that you must be miserable and not enjoy life? Does it mean that you have to deny yourself all pleasures and have no fun in life? No? And when Jesus says, take up your cross, does he mean that you're just supposed to put up with a bad situation, that you shouldn't try to change things in your life or improve something that you can improve? No, it doesn't mean any of that. To deny yourself, as I see it from God's word, means two things that we're going to look at this morning. One, it means to surrender your will and secondly, it means to invest in God's kingdom. Surrender your will to God's will, invest in God's kingdom. Let's look at those two ideas this morning as found right here in Matthew 16. First, if you're going to deny yourself, that is, be committed, take up your cross and follow Jesus, you've got to surrender your will to God's. Look at verse 25, it says, whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will find it. You know, the Bible is full of paradoxical statements, right? You've seen many of them. The Bible says when you're weak, you're really strong, says when you're last, you're really first. So if you want to be great, become like a little child, and here's another one of these paradoxical statements. If you live for yourself in the end, you'll lose everything. If you surrender your will to God's, you'll discover the life that's really life. That's the message of this passage right here. As we wrestle with what its meaning really is, and as I was studying it, I thought of what David says in Psalm 40, and I find a lot of light thrown on this passage from this one. Look at it with me on the screen, it's from Psalm 40, in which King David writing this Psalm says, sacrifice and offering, you did not desire. He's speaking to God. Sacrifice and offering, you did not desire, but my ears, you have pierced. Now that's a strange way of speaking about it, isn't it? We're going to come back to that momentarily. Sacrifice and offering, you didn't desire. My ears, you have pierced. Bird offerings and sin offerings, you did not require. Then I said, here I am. I have come. It is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, oh my God, your law is within my heart. Now let's go back and think about this a little bit more. David says, sacrifice and offering, you didn't desire, but my ears, you've pierced. What is he getting at? It appears that David is referring back to something that we read in Exodus chapter 21. You don't have to turn to that. I'll tell you what happens in that chapter. In Exodus 21, we find a little bit of law that's easy to pass right over, if you're not careful. It's called the law of the bond servant in Exodus 21. Let me tell you what the law of the bond servant was. Back in Old Testament times, there were a lot of wealthy landowners who owned servants. Some of their fellow Jews came up under servanthood to these more wealthy landowners. And every seven years, according to Old Testament law, these servants had to be set free to go back to their homes, to back to their families and back to their land and start all over again. It was a great system every seven years. But at the end of seven years, a servant could, if he so chose, say to his master. Master, I don't want my freedom. I don't want to go free. I don't want to go back to where my property used to be. I want to stay with you and serve you for the rest of my days, my family and I. And what would happen in that case was that the landowner would take the servant over to the doorpost of his home and stand him up next to the doorpost with his ear up against it. And then he would pull out an all AWL and pierce his ear through the earlobe onto the doorpost. Creating obviously a pierced ear. It wasn't just a fashion statement. What it was was a statement by the servant that said, I am now yours. I have surrendered my liberty. I've surrendered my rights. I've surrendered my freedom. And I, for the rest of my life, belong to you, my master. My family and I will stay right here because we love you and we know you love us. And so that servant became a bond servant. So David, reflecting back on that and looking into his own heart, says God, you didn't really want sacrifice and offering in the first place. You don't want my things. You want me. And so I have come to you, my Lord, and I have given myself to you. I am now your bond servant. You've pierced my ears. And I belong to you for the rest of my life. Does that help you to understand what Jesus is now talking about in Matthew 16, where he says, if you're going to come after me, you need to deny yourself and take up your cross daily and follow after me. You need, in other words, to become a bond servant of God. I could probably ask no more important question than this right now. And that is, have you come to that place in your life? Are you at a place in your life where you've said, God, I don't want to just give you my things. Now it's important to give God our time, our talents and our treasure as we've talked about in this series. But have you come to the place where you recognize that, that's not actually enough. Because a lot of people with a half heart can give away money. A lot of people with a half of a heart can give time to serve God in the community and in the church. But what God is really after is our hearts. Have you come to the point in your life where you've recognized that God's love for you means more than anything else. And you're willing to give away your freedom and your liberty and to say, Lord, not my will but yours be done. That's what God's after. And Matthew 16 is a call to that because in this strange paradoxical kind of way, Jesus says, when you lose your life, you actually find it. When you surrender your will to God, you actually discover true freedom. A guy called me the other day in the midst of struggle. I don't need to elaborate on what those struggles are. But he's in the midst of a lot of different challenges in his life. And things have been hitting him right and left over and over. And he said to me on the phone, he said, Mike, what God's been trying to teach me is to surrender. And I'm learning to surrender and I've never felt so close to God before. See, that friend is learning what a bond servant is all about. He is surrendering his liberty, his way, his will. And finding that in so doing, there's true liberty, true freedom, true happiness, true life. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus tells us that when he was there, that's what he was doing. Garden of Gethsemane, just hours before his arrest, his betrayal, and his crucifixion, Jesus Christ, you've heard the story. We're going to be looking at it on Monday, Thursday. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said, Father, I sure wish you could remove this cup of suffering from me. But not as I will, but as you will. And the Bible tells us that for the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross, despising its shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the Father. See, that's how it works. It's when you say, not my will, but yours be done, that you discover true exaltation, true life, and true freedom. So if you want to get serious about stewardship, and I hope you do, if you're not serious about it, this whole series has been for nothing. But if you want to be serious about stewardship as Jesus wants us to be, and the first thing to do business with is surrender, surrendering your will to God's. I don't know where you are this morning. I don't know if there's something you're hanging on to. I don't know if there's some little bit of Charlie Sheen saying, you know, I really want to win, and to win, I'm going to do my thing here in this area of my life. I don't want God's way. I'm going to do it my way, Frank Sinatra like. I don't know where you are, but Jesus is saying, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow him in true surrender, and then you'll find joy. Well, the second thing we learn about commitment and seriousness about stewardship is not only that negative concept of surrender, but the positive concept of investment, invest in the kingdom. Jesus is calling you and me to invest in God's kingdom. Look with me at verse 27. He says in verse 27, for the son of man, another title for Jesus, for the son of man is going to come in his father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. Now on one hand, that's a sobering warning to us, isn't it? Particularly those of you who are not Christians this morning, if you're not a believer in Jesus, that statement ought to, ought to pretty shake you up, gives you something to think about. That one day, time as we know it is going to cease. Jesus Christ, the Bible says, is going to come back, and when he does, as this verse says, he is going to repay or reward each person according to what he has done. Now that verse, just so you know, does not teach salvation by works, but what it does teach is that if you are in Christ, your works will follow your salvation, your works demonstrate your salvation, or your lack of works, good works, demonstrates your being outside Christ. So Jesus is coming back, and this is a sobering warning, but on the other hand, those of you who are in Jesus today, you ought to be very encouraged by verse 27. Did you notice that in verse 24, it says Jesus is speaking to his disciples? He's speaking to Christians, and he means to encourage his people when he says that the son of man is going to come back and reward each person according to what he has done. You will be rewarded, Christian, for the time that you give to spread God's good news in some way by word or by deed, you will be rewarded for the skills and the abilities that you contribute to the building up of the Kingdom of God. You'll be rewarded for the money that you give away to bless the church and the poor and the community and the world around you that needs the gospel. You will be rewarded for those things. You know that even a cup of cold water giving to a fellow disciple will certainly not lose its reward according to Jesus in Matthew, I believe it's chapter 10. And so everything that you have done to invest your time, your talents and your treasure in the Kingdom of God will come back to bless you. It will be the collection of quarters that I was talking to the kids about. When you give it away, it will come back with greater value someday. We've come to the end, you know, of another semester of financial peace university, like I said earlier, and that is not insignificant. It is relevant to what we're talking about here. A bunch of people in our church decided to invest time in being equipped to become better stewards. And I wanted to say how proud I am of you for going through that. It was a good thing for you to do. And some of you have already done it in the past. If you've never gone through FPU, I urge you to do it. My wife and I, as I said, are finishing it up right now with our life group. It's really radical stuff. It's good, beneficial stuff. And about 108 households of our church family went through FPU this semester. Many of them turned in statistics on what effects FPU has had upon them. Not everybody turned in statistics, only about half of the group of 108 households did that. But of those who did turn in their statistics, let me tell you some stuff that ought to be encouraging to you. Total money saved by these roughly half of 108 households was over $63,000. That's good saving. Total debt paid off is over $57,500. A lot of good debt paid off. And the average giving percentage among the people who turned in their statistics was amazing. 8.38%. Over 8% of their money, they're giving away. That's way more than the national average. I believe the God tells us to be at least 10%. But my goodness, 8% over 8%. That's really, really good. So way to go, you guys, did that. And first time givers, there are three people among the people who turned in their stats who have started giving for the very first time in their lives. Now, that is awesome. And I really do congratulate all of you to them. I want to say to these people to you who've been through FPU that you will certainly not lose your reward. Now, I want to do something right now and ask some people to come up front. I've already arranged for them. They know who they are. If you'd walk on up and take your seats up here on the stage, I want to introduce some people to you who have been learning about stewardship. Some of them through FPU, others of them through other means. Because, you know, FPU is not the gospel. There are other good programs out there. There's crown, lots of other, lots of other things. But these are a few who have learned about stewardship. And I've asked if they would please share a couple of lessons that they've learned or one main lesson that they've learned about stewardship. Let's start by letting them introduce themselves beginning with you all the way to the end. I'm Tim Stoker. I'm Nick Anders. Ryan and Laura Jensen. Jonathan and Ashley Kirkman. All right. Great. Jonathan and Ashley, since you're on the end, why don't we begin with you and then we'll come back this way. What would you say is one benefit of your learning about stewardship over the past number of weeks? Well, one benefit is that I grew up in a home where money was, there was no plan for it. And so because of that, money was always talked about. And it was something that was always worried about. And I just thought that's the way that you were supposed to live. But after going through FPU, I realized the kind of financial freedom you can really have from planning every dollar that comes into your house. And because of that money is not a worry. And even further, Jonathan and I have learned that we can really intentionally save a lot of money. And because of that, we've been able to experience God's blessings and ways that we just can have imagined before. And one of those is that we were able to buy our first home about a month ago. So it's just really exciting and we've been able to really find a place where we can grow our roots. Lauren, we grew up, well, Laura grew up in a ministry home. And I grew up, I've been serving with Campus Crusade for Christ for the last 12 years. And we were newly married four months ago, which has been great. And I think the biggest thing we've learned from this is I think we are not huge financial spenders. But one thing we realized is we didn't have a good solid financial plan. And one thing that the Lord had really called both of us to serve in as doing ministry together in the future. And right now, Laura isn't, but she wants to join with me. And unfortunately, we have a tremendous amount of school debt that is keeping us from that. And so financial peace has really been a tremendous resource in helping us to put a solid financial plan together. And as a result, we, it has brought, the result has been just tremendous amount of peace of mind. And our, just as you guys have said, we know our money is going now instead of just seemingly flying out of our pockets. And we have a firm plan where we can be completely debt free in a very short amount of time. And so we are just blessed and are excited about that. Dave Ramsey seems really good at making people emotionally uncomfortable with debt. And I think that's probably the best thing he did for us. My wife, Kathleen and I went through the program about two years ago right around the time of our wedding. And we both brought a significant amount of debt into the marriage. And we had been pretty flippant with our spending up to that point. But Dave Ramsey, you know, transformed our thinking and kind of turned all that around and made us really think seriously about our debt issues. And we dug in and took some steps and by God's grace we've been able to pay off about $18,000 in credit card debt over that two year period. So we're really thankful for that. Our debt payments every month have been lowered by about $700. And one very tangible benefit is that last year we, we had been driving around fairly old unreliable cars and we lost both of them to serious issues in about a 24 hour period. So we were, I was a pretty big need, obviously, but because of the steps we had taken up to that point, we were able to get a new safe reliable car with zero percent interest because of the improvements to our credit that had been made. So we also have, we're expecting our first child in about three months and he's coming into a much more financially secure home thanks to Dave Ramsey and financial peace. Jan and I have been blessed by tithing both in the giving and the receiving. Jan and I have been part of Wickliffe Translator, Wickliffe Bible Translators for a little over 25 years. And all that time we've been supported by gifts of friends and relatives and churches who share an interest in our ministry. And a few of those people who give to us have given what we, what looks to us like beyond their means, sacrificially. That has really meant a whole lot to us. Most have given extremely faithfully. Some have not missed a month in 26 years. That's just an incredible blessing to us. Early in our marriage, we made a decision on a percent of our income that we were going to give. And by the Lord's grace, we've been able to be faithful to that commitment all these years. Has it always been easy? No, it hasn't. There have been times that I've wavered in my commitment. Are there times that I've thought about other things that I could be doing without money? Yeah, I've thought about other things. Have I always given willingly? No, not necessarily. But at times when I wavered, I've gone to Jan and I've talked to her about it. And she's always said things like, you know, it's not our money in the first place. And remember how faithfully people have given to us. So it's been a discipline for us. But it's also been an investment that's had quite a reward. We've been able to participate in four Bible translations from start to finish over the years. We've been able to participate in a radio ministry that covers the world with shortwave broadcasts. We've been able to be part of a ministry that brings media to the Arab world. We've been able to participate in this church, the ministry here, the building, the land. And lately, one of the things that's blessed us is being able to have money to give to children of friends here in this area, children who are going on mission strips. And to us, that's kind of coming around full circle. It was our parents' friends who gave to us when we started in our ministry. And now we're able to give to others as their children are getting started in their ministries. So it's been a tremendous blessing to us to be able to give. Awesome. Thank you, Tim, and everyone else. Let's give these guys a big hand. Thank you. That's really awesome. And I know there are others in our church family who would easily tell stories like those. People in our church who have done the two things that we've seen Jesus calling us to do today. Surrendering your will, deciding Jesus is worth more to me than anything else. I want to be a bond servant. And secondly, making steps, taking steps to invest in the kingdom of God with our time, our talents and our treasure. We're going to close our time together with the look at a little card that's inside your worship guide. Would you guys pull this out for me, please? It says up at the top, my declaration of financial peace. And this is not a card that I'm going to ask you to turn in. Sometimes we do that. Sometimes we ask you to fill out a card and turn it in. This is not for that purpose because we can turn in cards and we do turn in cards a lot. Instead, I'm going to ask that you look at this carefully. We're going to read it out loud together and then take it home and you individually or with your spouse or with your family can talk about it and come to terms with what we have learned over these past five weeks. As I said earlier, if it's just been an intellectual exercise, you know, that's a waste of time. It's meant to bring us to the point of commitment. And so I would ask that you, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to read the Bible verses that are on each point, but I'd like for you as a congregation to read out loud the bullet points where it says be content, be a saver and so on. So if you're able to stand, would you stand to just add a little bit of a serious note to this commitment here? It says up at the top, because I've learned God's plan for handling the resources with which He has entrusted me. It is my desire to, together, be content. And it says in Philippians 4-12, I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. Secondly, it is my desire to, Proverbs 21-20 says, in the house of the wise are stores of choice, food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has. Thirdly, it is my desire to, says in Deuteronomy 8, you may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands has produced this wealth for me, but remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth. Fourthly, it is my desire to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, it says in Malachi 3, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord, and see if I won't throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you won't have room enough for it. Number 5, it is my desire to, and Jesus in Matthew 25 says, well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, come and share your master's happiness. And then finally, if you are a parent, you still have kids living under your roof, this one is for you, please say this one out loud, it is my desire to, and the promise is train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not turn from it. Now let's together read the final lines at the bottom, with God's help, I will live like no one else, I will give like never before, I will acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ with my money, this is my declaration. Thank you, you may be seated. My request of you is to take this card home, and sign it if you really mean it, and if you are married, let's have both you and your spouse sign it, if you have kids, let's let the whole family sign it, and maybe put this thing up on your refrigerator door so that you remind it daily to be content, to be a saver, to be a manager, to be sacrificial, and finally to be committed with surrender, and investment, because friends, Charlie Sheen is just wrong, he is just wrong, the way to win is to lose your life for the sake of Jesus Christ, and invest in what he's doing in the world. Let's pray, our father, thank you so much that you sent your son, you sacrificed that dearest son of yours, and had to turn your back as it were to him, as he was dying on the cross, and Jesus thank you that you invested in us, you said yes to the father's will and gave your life, that we might have life. Holy Spirit of God, we ask you to come inside us and take this word, and so ground it deeply into our hearts, that we do see the joy of surrender, and we do see the value of investing in the kingdom of God, we pray all this in Jesus' name, Amen.