God’s Gifts, Man’s Duties

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm still Woe. On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing talents and gifts and our duties and Thanksgiving. As we're recording this the week of Thanksgiving, we thought that it'd be a nice way to tie all those things together. We had a question about one of 'em and we realized the the uh concept of having duties to do things, being thankful for for our gifts and for the opportunity to to be a benefit to others. All kind of ties together nicely and in a timely fashion. Today's gonna be hopefully a speedrun episode. Uh if we succeed in what we're hoping to do, this will only be about an hour long. Of course, we do this all in one shot, so as you

1:21 look at the actual runtime, you will see how wildly wrong we were. I think it will be pretty short. Uh today we want to especially welcome all the new folks from the P. Kinona show audience who've joined us recently. Corey and I appeared on that show last week and that was a lot of fun. It's ironic that the best introductions to Stone Choir have not been on Stone Choir. They've been shows that we did with Adam on Myth of the Twentieth Century and with Pete on his own show. I'm thankful for folks who are discovering us that way because it kind of gives you the lay of the land. Uh we did an episode early on where we talked about why we're Lutheran and that's kind of part of the explanation for why

2:04 we did the show. There's a lot more to that episode than that. As I mentioned in the episode last week that we did with Pete, if you're a new listener, we really highly recommend that you go back to the beginning. The episodes we do are not ripped from the headlines, so they will generally almost never age on you. You can go back years from now and find that these will still be relevant topics to listen to. I mention that in particular because not only is this going to be a short episode this week because of Thanksgiving, but we're taking next week off because the following week we're going to finally be tackling Eastern quote unquote orthodoxy. And that's a really important one to get right.

2:43 So we're doing some finishing touches on research and prep so that we can really nail that one because it's going to be vital to a lot of folks, particularly as r as reference material. So next week when there's no episode, you know, if you want to go back and listen to some prior episodes, it's worth it. It's worth listening to episodes more than once. That's one of our goals when we we made these shows is to try and make them worth revisiting. Since this is Thanksgiving, I do want to highlight a couple episodes that if you're gonna go be sitting down with your family and gonna wanna be talking about politics and religion and red pilling the old folks on stuff. They're two episodes that are vitally important for for you to hopefully

3:23 have in mind before you open that can of worms. Honestly, just don't do it. Just love your family. Forgive them when they're dumb. They're family. They're yours, for better or worse. They're not yours to fix. Uh the two episodes we did fairly recently were titled Persuasiveness Matters and Conspiracy theories and truth. We did those kind of in reverse order. We did the one on conspiracy theories and kind of got people psyched about red pilling people on all the weird stuff that you discover on the internet. And so we did another episode that kind of should have come first saying Now that you know this stuff, be careful and don't just run your mouth and go wild because people aren't ready. Let people take things at their own pace.

4:04 And that's another part of the reason we lay down these episodes. You can have a nice peaceful conversation. And if something comes up with family, maybe if it would make sense, you can say, Hey, I heard this interesting uh episode, talk about this in depth. I thought it was cool. Let me know what you think. And then you can just blame us if they think it's all terrible. And you don't have to make an enemy of someone in your own household. So to get into it today, the the question we had had to do with the blessings that we receive from God and what we do with them. You know, basically in the church stewardship parlance, it's often talked about in terms of time, talents, and treasure. And first of all, in terms of thanksgiving, it's important for us

4:47 to always remember that all of those things are gifts from God. Whatever you have, whether it is your time, every breath you take, every day that you have on this earth, is appointed by God. The day of your death has been appointed already. He knows. So you don't need to worry about it. And between now and that day, you're spending your days, just as you're spending your money and you're spending the talents that have been given to you for one purpose or another. And you get up every morning and it's completely up to you. You know, most people listening are adults. there's nobody looking over your shoulder saying you need to do X, Y, and Z today. And you have a boss, you have you know husband or wife.

5:25 So there are people to whom you answer to some degree, but you had input on who your boss was, and you had input on who your spouse was. You can opt in and out of those things to some degree. And so that's one of the burdens of adulthood is that when we when we have these opportunities to do anything you want, it's like, you know, you first reach adulthood and maybe you had a pension for sugary cereal as a kid and your parents would only occasionally let you have it. And the first time you go to the grocery store as an adult, you're like, oh man, I'm gonna I'm gonna fill my car with peanut butter cap crunch. That was my weakness. Dumb, bad idea. You know, make you sick, rye your teeth. But there's nobody telling you no.

6:08 And so when we have these abilities in this time and you know, our money and whatever other gifts God has given us. The key takeaway from scripture is that these are not just for your own personal amusement. They're there to sustain your life and they're also there for you to help take care of other people. And principally those people will be your immediate family, your extended family, and then your immediate neighbors, and then your extended neighbors, and your extended family, you know, going out to the you know the local and you know, the level of your nation in some cases. But those concentric circles are always present in whatever we do. You know, you don't live your life on the internet.

6:48 You live your life around the people that you interact with. So as we as adults choose to allocate our time and our talents and our treasures, it's important to remember that not only did God give us those things for our benefit, but almost more importantly, He gave them to us for our neighbors' benefit. And the key point that I hope we can get across today is that when you have that in mind, it may trigger small or perhaps large changes in how you live some part of your life, but the important part is actually thinking about it, thinking about the fact that whatever you have, you didn't just earn, you know, you did earn it to some extent, but it was God giving you the opportunity to earn it, giving the ability to earn it,

7:34 and then giving you whatever it is that you earned. So even the things that we somewhat kind of want to take credit for, ultimately it all comes from God. And once we realize that, it becomes a lot easier when we're looking at how do we dispense what we've received. Because if God is just pouring these gifts out to you, are you the endpoint? Or is there the opportunity in your life for them to flow through you to others to whom you have some sort of duty? So recently there's been some discussion of the phrase Christ is king, and I'm not going to make this episode topical because we don't try to do that. The point that I'm making is timeless insofar as this era is concerned. Christ is king and he is reigning now.

8:24 However, he's not, so to speak, physically reigning now. Christ isn't holding court somewhere on the earth. He doesn't have a castle. You can't go there and serve him by sweeping the floor or working in the kitchen or whatever it happens to be. Assuming those are talents or callings that you have. And so you can't serve Christ directly. But that's sort of the point of how God has organized things in this life. You don't really serve God directly. You serve God by serving your neighbor. As Luther put it, God does not need your good works. That should be fairly obvious. God doesn't need anything, but your neighbor does need your good works. And so you serve God by serving your neighbor. That's the point.

9:25 That's why God gave you your talents, your abilities, all of these gifts that He has given you, these things that He has entrusted to your care in this life, they are for the purpose of serving of benefiting your neighbor, and that's how you serve God. Your good works flow to your neighbor, but that is worship of God in service to your neighbor. And it's sort of a mirror image of the way that God also himself works through creation. Because yes, there are gifts that God gives you directly. Your attributes, for instance, are gifts from God that flow directly from God to you. Yes, they also flowed in a way through your parents because obviously much of it is genetic. But there are things that are more or less direct from God

10:15 to you. But most of the things in your life that are good flow approximately through someone or something. And so when you were young, your mother made your meals, assuming you lived in a home with a mother and a father who were married or at least one parent was present, your parents prepared your food for you. Your parents provided clothing for you, provided the roof over your head. These are all gifts from God, but they are provided proximately through others in creation. The good that God delivers to us, he delivers to us through means. And so it's important to keep that sort of framing, that understanding of the way that things work in both directions in mind, because we return thanks to God and service to God by rendering

11:15 good works to our neighbors, and God gives us good gifts primarily through others in creation, and not just other people, but other parts of creation. The fact that your dog is loyal is a gift from God, that is a gift from God through part of creation to you. One of the key texts that often comes up in the context of church itself is from Romans twelve, which reads For by the grace given to me I say to every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith a God is assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same functions, so we through many are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another, having gifts

12:03 that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them, if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. I think one of the importance of highlighting this passage and the gifts that Paul is discussing here specifically is I think one of the mistakes that we make in the church as we're talking about giving to others, serving others, is that because most of the passages that scripture addresses directly are talking in the context of the congregation. I think the mistake that we tend to make rhetorically when we're

12:50 talking and focusing on this is we limit it to Sunday morning effectively. We limit it to what we do at church with other church people. And that's one aspect of it, but is in no way, shape, or form limiting of our duties to neighbor. This Romans 12 passage illustrates clearly God gives these gifts unequally. The person who has nothing can't give generously, or you know, if it's the widow's might, her generosity is all that she has, but it's only a drop in the bucket for the needs downstream. So it does not in any way diminish what the poor give. Frankly, it's often the poor who give more proportionally than the rich because they're so s so close to the edge that they can see over and they tend to do a much better job of

13:40 taking care of people who are adjacent to them because those who are adjacent to them are in even more need than them and they understand just how dire those needs can be. And those are usually not spiritual needs. I mean, spiritual is always part of it. Spiritual is part of part of everything. There's never any diminishing of the importance of the spiritual welfare impacting everything in our lives. But when we talk about these gifts from God, I think it's crucial that we understand that it's not just a Sunday morning thing. It's not, you know, between whenever Sunday school starts and you have the service and maybe have a potluck afterwards, you know, three, four hours if you're super into church.

14:19 And then you go home and you have the other 164 odd hours of your week to do whatever you felt like doing. And I think that when we focus in the church on limiting gifts to spiritual things or even indeed even to I'm going to use my gifts only for spiritual purposes. You know, so maybe you have money and you can write big checks. And so you think, well, I want to write big checks for evangelism. You know, and usually most of the so called evangelism programs end up shipping that stuff overseas. when you look at a map of your neighbor your area, you'll find that the vast majority of your neighbors are going to hell. They don't go to church, they don't have any faith. That's overwhelmingly the majority of the people all around us.

15:04 And so today this modern notion of I'm just gonna write a check and send it overseas, and then I've checked the box on doing my duty as one who contributes in generosity, it's kind of missing the mark because you've neglected your neighbor, you've neglected the people right around you. You know, we've often neglect even our own family. And to look at our gifts in terms of the benefit that they do to those who need it, i it just needs to be something that we're thinking about all the time. Not thinking about it all the time, but the consideration should be an ever present part of the calculus of how we allocate our our gifts, whatever they are. You know, Corey and I are we're gifted in many ways.

15:50 We tend to be good of virtually everything and we do. So in I'm not saying this to brag. I'm saying it's i in some ways it's a burden to be good at stuff to the point that it doesn't make it easy to decide what to do. You know, from almost the very first episode of Stone Choir, they're really good, well done, polished episodes. I think even the first one was good, but you know, that the very first episode of Stone Choir was the very first time that Corey and I had ever spoken. So, you know, we're kind of knocking some of the rust off, just getting to know each other a little bit verbally, even though we've spoken for years online. When we're able to knock something out of the park the way we have with this podcast, that's because you know, we've been given

16:31 the gift to do this well. And we didn't know when we put it out there, if anyone would listen, if anyone would care. The feedback has been overwhelming, not only in terms of being positive, but in terms of people giving thanks to us for the things that we've shared on many of the past episodes. And again, I'm not saying any of this to point to us. I'm pointing it just as a specific example that we can give that you're all familiar with because you're listening. We did this because we felt compelled by God to do it. We felt the gifts that we had align perfectly with being able to explain some of these subjects in ways that people find very beneficial. And we're situated our lives in such a way that the

17:10 threats and then the delivery of doxing didn't slow us down. So we can continue to do what we've done, even in the face of hatred and death threats and all the other terrible things that are happening to so many people today. We're in a position to do that that frankly most other men aren't. And so the gifts that we were given to be able to do this one specific task. Yep, I I'm not I don't want to hold this out an as an example that more of you should go start podcasts. Please don't. You know, one of the reasons not to do this is the the last thing the world needs is another podcast. But what was missing was these specific discussions having taken place in a way that was accessible to normal people.

17:51 Like this isn't a big brain podcast. It's not weird Weirdos screaming into the void. There's actually some good material here that you can share with completely normal people and it will resonate. Agree or disagree, it's gonna trigger thought and probably some really good conversation. That's not typically the case in most sermons and most episodes, anything you find. So when we started delivering and people started sending us messages and saying, thank you so much for that, we're very appreciative of people letting us know that they appreciate it. But it's also in a way, very consciously, we receive that as God saying, Yeah, you got to keep doing more of this because what we are doing, God is using to bear good fruit.

18:34 Hundreds of people have been in joined churches, baptized, all because of a year's worth of episodes. That's something that Corey and I've been doing online for many years, just you know, tweeting and talking to people. Much as people think we're bomb throwers, the fact that we were able to clearly communicate these things in public has fired something up in a lot of people and they want to join churches or they want to get more serious about it. That is something that's tremendously beneficial in all your communities. So it's ironic that as we're saying focus on neighbor, this is one example where none of you are our neighbors. You're all just you're strangers somewhere in the ether. And yet when these ripples spread throughout all of your communities, the

19:18 benefit and the dividends that that pays is to everyone around you. And that's the true blessing of being able to help someone in a big way or a small way. So you know, when you're given a gift to do something, you can't just keep it for yourself. It's important to be able to deliver those benefits to others. And so podcasts is is a small example, but I think it's an important one in this case because we know from many of your messages that it's had a real positive impact on people's lives that are going to change the trajectory of your families for generations. That's God's doing to be explicit. That's not Cory or me doing anything. That's God working through whatever we've said and not gotten wrong to

20:02 benefit your lives. That's the way we interact with each other. You don't even know whom you're going to help when you do these things, but you know that when you're using your good gifts in a positive way, the God will give the growth where he sees fit. And you will often find that's the case, sometimes in the least expected places. I want to go back for a minute here and focus on those numbers because I think people lose sight sight of the importance relatively speaking of the time we spend doing certain things. And so you have 168 hours in your week. Each of us does. We don't get more hours or fewer hours. We all get one hundred and sixty eight hours, and you're awake for one hundred and twelve or so of those, maybe a few

20:52 more if you sleep a little less. On Sundays, you're in church for two, three, maybe four hours. Let's say it's four hours. That's a little over three and a half percent of your waking hours, assume you sleep about an average amount of time. What are you doing with the other ninety-six percent of your week? That's the time where you have opportunities to serve your neighbor. And yes, of course, much of that is going to be absorbed by preparing food or traveling to and from work. Obviously, your working hours, various things like that. But just because you have these various tasks that are required for life, doesn't mean you don't have opportunities within those time periods to serve others. For For instance, if you're preparing food for your family, that's a

21:50 good work. You are serving others, and you are giving thanks to God in that. Perhaps you can say a little prayer and give thanks to God for the food that He has provided you, hopefully all of you will be praying before your meal on Thanksgiving day this week. Assuming you're American if you're Canadian another time during the year, or if you're listening somewhere else in the world. You should pray before every meal, of course, but there is an opportunity when you come together as a family for a particular holiday meal to make a point of giving thanks to God. And of course, thanksgiving is a very appropriate holiday on which to do that. But the point is that you have all of these opportunities

22:34 to serve your neighbor, and you serve your neighbor by doing a good job of those things that God has given you to do. And I want to go to another passage in Scripture, another one from Matthew. There are many passages in Scripture that are related to these issues, and I will put a number of them in the show notes. We're not going to go through all of them in this episode. It's not the point of the episode. But I do think that if we're discussing talents, we must certainly at least go over the parable of the talents and so from Matthew twenty five for 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,

23:20 to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came, and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, Master, you delivered to me five talents, here I have made five talents more. His 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.

24:08 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, 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. 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, 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 scattered no seed.

24:55 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So you So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one 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 and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. To start off, it is important to note that the issue in this parable is not money. Yes, a talent was an historical measurement of an amount of money, typically gold, a very large amount of money, incidentally, and that is part of the point.

25:43 But the talents are a stand-in simply for the gifts that God has given us. And of course we can look at the parable and know this. Because very obviously what is happening with these servants when they are called to give account is the last judgment. This is the final day. Well you don't take your money with you when you go to the last judgment. This isn't money we're dealing with. These are the gifts God has given you, the attributes, the abilities, all of the things that flow from God to you, and you are being called to account for how you use them in this life, and how you use them in the service of your neighbor. And so if you've been given many talents, it is expected that you will have accomplished more with those talents than if you were

26:32 given less. The point is not that the servant who was given the one talent was somehow incapable or lesser, because you can see the servant who had the two talents and made two more, is given the same praise as the servant who had the five talents and made five more. And so the same holds, if the servant who had the five talents and gone and buried his in the ground, he would have received the same rebuke, the same condemnation, as the one in the parable who had the one and buried it. The point is that you must use what God has given you to complete the task before you. God has prepared beforehand good works for you, so that you can walk in them. All of this has been prepared beforehand by God.

27:23 He has prepared the good works for you, He has given you the ability to execute those good works. Yes, it relies upon you to do these things, because again, sanctification is synergistic. You work with the Spirit in the performance of these good works, and you do in fact get credit for them, you get praise for them, you get rewarded for them at the final judgment. Justification again, monergistic. You are justified by faith alone. But sanctification is a matter of cooperation with the Spirit. It is a matter of the good works, and Scripture is very clear. You will be rewarded for these. That is what we see here in the parable of the talents. One of the things that strikes me about this parable is that

28:10 it really slaps my own life in the face. I've always had incredibly low time preference. We were very poor growing up. You know, I there were years when all of our Christmas presents were donated by others or years where a lot of our food was donated by strangers. I didn't know how poor we were. Like we weren't dirt poor, but we were kind of one wrong up from that. And so even in that circumstance, I by the time I turned 18, I had saved twenty thousand dollars from mowing lawns and small gifts I received for Christmas and uh birthdays from friends from family and uh paper app that I had. I saved basically everything and I didn't have anything particular in mind, it's just well I'm accumulating and then and then I will have

28:55 something to do with it later. That's just kind of my personality. And that continued in in my professional life. When I worked at Apple for fourteen, fifteen years. I made a great deal of money. And, you know, when you're making that much money, the government takes over half of it. So whatever number you look at, you basically are giving away fifty percent and not giving away is taken from you. That's one of the reasons I left that world as I was disgusted that with the amount that I was receiving, over half of it was being taken, and it wasn't the taxes that offended me, although they really bothered me, especially as a libertarian. I was disgusted by what was being done with that money.

29:36 You know, perpetual war. I I was making enough money that I was paying, you know, bombs and missile money. Actual entire missiles that killed people could have been financed with the money that was taken from me in taxes. And I did not want to be part of that system. And I'm not going to evade taxes. You know, I'd you'd rather deal with the cops than the IRS and I don't want to deal with either. So if avoiding taxes isn't an option by m not paying, the next the best thing you can do is just not make the money in the first place. And so after a while I decided I'm just I'm done. I I I had and it didn't make me any happier and I knew it wouldn't. And I spent about five years working on the distillery and that

30:22 didn't pan out and so I sold that. And then when I got doxed, you know, I'd been paid maybe fifteen percent of what I was owed, the rest became uncollectible. So that's kind of a write off. As that trajectory was winding towards where I am today really kind of last three, four, maybe five years, as I was paying less attention to the material world of kind of you know, material wealth, not creation, and paying more attention to spiritual matters as they intersect with you know created life, I started to focus more and more on these things, on on, you know, talking to people about what God wants from us. And in the last couple of years, as you know, before we started the podcast, Corey and I and some others would be brainstorming.

31:06 Here's all this stuff that we could do. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to publish some books that should really be back in print or you know help people go to seminary or whatever? And as I started having all these big ideas about things that re needed not really a whole lot of money, I started thinking about, well, when I had that money before, what I could have done if I had had it. And for about a week I was kinda not moping, but like I was just sort of fantasizing about the life that I would have led differently if I had used those resources when I had them on godly things instead of things that I'd spent them on. And towards the end of that little period I realized you're full of crap.

31:51 I realized that I was just it was completely dishonest. Because when I had those things, when I had these blessings that God had poured out, I didn't none of that occurred to me. Yeah, I gave far more to the Mises Institute than I gave to my own church. And it wasn't that my church was hard up as a very successful church in in Cupertino, they were not lacking for funds, but that's no excuse as a Christian. There's other stuff I could have been doing, but I was putting my money, my treasure where my heart was. And that was in Austrian economics. And so as I look back, I realized that no, I having that stuff, I don't know if it was part of the problem, but I know that for me personally, if I still had what

32:33 I had then, I'm convinced that I would continue not to care about these things. And for me personally, I had to lose that stuff before I began to realize what is supposed to be done with it. So it would be hypocritical if I still had that and I was saying, Oh, we should do this, but I don't and that's fine. I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful to be back to the point that I hardly spend anything and I'm content. You know, I was I was never discontent, but I realized that having more materially didn't change that in the slightest. And I think that's important for us that different people are different, you know. For me personally, my flaw is that when I had things, I was not focused on God's stuff.

33:20 That's not the case with some people. There's some of you who are listening. When you have an extra doll in your pocket, you start looking around for someone to give it to. That's not me. And I can't pretend it is. It should be, but it simply isn't. So I think one of the things when we're considering how to be a blessing to others is the the gifts that you have, when you have them, maybe you have to change something about what you're doing with them. You know, Corey was talking about vocation, like preparing meals for people in your home. And like there's service that we do just naturally. And I think that one of the useful things about viewing our gifts from God as a 24-7 thing and not a Sunday morning

34:02 thing is that you're all good for something to somebody. There's something that you do in your life that is already benefiting some people. Maybe there's a way to extend that in some small way to help more people and have a bigger impact. You know, one example would be maybe someone's an electrician or a plumber or you know mason. That's something that you do professionally. You go out, you do it every day, you make money from it. You know, maybe if you happen to own a business that's doing that stuff, consider possibly and as we're as we're talking about these things, I want to make it very explicit, these are matters of wisdom and consideration. This is not laying down the law. This is not that if you have turned a profit, you must

34:44 then do X with it. If God has given you more than you need, the what then of the Christian life should be different than it was in my life. When I had more than I needed, I just continued to save it. I just continued to accumulate. Like it happened when I was a little kid. Like I just didn't do with it. I wasn't really profligate with my spending. I just saved and saved and saved. But that's exactly what the the faithless steward was in that parable. He'd basically just buried it in the ground. You know, I buried it in the bank, saving it for I don't know when. And it wasn't a lack of trust in God per se, but I think functionally it kind of sort of manifested that way. If you have a business where you're already doing something professionally, maybe,

35:29 you know, I know that in the last couple of years, pretty much all professional services and you know, blue-collar work is tends to be very heavily oversubscribed. Yeah, there's stuff that you need to get something done in your house. It might take four or six months to be able to get somebody out to do it because there's been so much activity. One of the things that you could possibly consider this is not laying down the loss, just it's something to think about. Maybe if you're in a position where you're turning a profit and you're oversubscribed, you have more customers than you can possibly service service, you know, in a timely fashion. Consider possibly doing what you know even the bar association recommends that

36:11 attorneys do, where they're expected to try to have at least 50 hours a year of pro bono work where they expect little or no compensation in return for the work that they do. And the premise of that within their guild is to try to benefit those who don't have the resources who could really use the help. If you own a business that's doing some sort of service or you know providing something in the home or in whatever it is that you're doing, maybe there's someone in your community that could really, really use the work that you already are doing, but they can't pay for it. And so they would never ask for it. Maybe it's a retiree, they're living from social security to social security check. If they don't have the means to get stuff fixed or

36:58 repaired, if it you become aware that they exist, maybe one thing that your business could do would be to start doing some pro bono work, just a little bit, where you willingly set aside a few hours of paying customers once in a while and go do work for someone who can't pay you. And you know, you can coordinate this with your accountant so that you can you can use that as a write-off because you're you know, if it's billable at X dollars and you are delivering it for as charity basically, you know, talk to your account, but typically that's something that can be written down as you know to to reduce your overall profit. So you have less taxable. So even the amount of income that you would forego would have

37:41 a positive benefit on the relative amount of tax you'd pay. Like you're still going to come out behind, but the nice thing about that is that it's something you're already doing. You know, you're already doing it forty, fifty, sixty, seventy hours a week. If instead of you know, one of the hard things, if if someone has a professional vocation, you know, if you're an electrician and you do that all day, every day. The last thing you want to do on your day off is do more work like that. I don't think that anyone should be expected to do that. If you just love it so much that you can't get enough of it, great, whatever it is. Yeah, I'm talking about the trays in particular, but it can apply to anything.

38:18 However, if in the context of a business, particularly if you're a small Christian business owner, maybe you make a conscious shift to do a small amount of pro bono work, knowing that it will cost you a little bit of money, but the upside to someone in your community, and it necessarily has to be in your community because you know they gotta be your neighbor. You're not gonna go six thousand miles away to install a toilet. You're gonna do that someplace within driving distance. There may be some little old lady who really needs that and to whom that would be a tremendous blessing. It's just an idea, you know, the matchmaking for that is a difficult thing. It's not, it would be some more work.

38:53 And it would be it would mean less money to do it. But I think if your gift, if your vocation and the abilities of God is given you are such that you can do things with your hands or with your brain and make it easier for something, like maybe you build websites or something. If the thing that you're already doing pretty much automatically, whether or not you're getting paid for it, if you could consider making slightly less and doing it for somebody who really needs it, that I think would be very much in the spirit of kind of what we're talking about here. Again, this is not to bind conscious like we're not saying you must do pro bono work or you're sinning. We're pointing out that this is an opportunity to make a small

39:32 change in the way that you're already doing what you already do that could have a profound benefit to the very people that God is putting us around us to try to help. So you know if if the trades and the other professions want to let the lawyers continue to have the moral high ground with their pro bono work, I yeah, I I know there's certainly some businesses that do that, but I think that model is a it's at least an important one for consideration. It should always be in our minds. What can I do with what I already have? You know, in my case, my skills weren't really transferable to neighbor, but the money was, and yet I didn't spend the money on neighbor. If you have those resources and you can allocate them in

40:10 a way to help someone, someone nearby, that can have a tremendous benefit. And you would find it very rewarding too. Like the thanks and the gratitude from someone who could never possibly pay you for a professional job that they badly need. That would be something you can never understand how much that person would appreciate it. It would it would probably make their year in some cases. So these sort of opportunities are all around us, but they're invisible. And because we never think about them, we either never go looking or we never even see them when they're right there in front of us. A vitally important point here is really a point that I already made when I mentioned that the parable of the talents is not

40:48 primarily about money. Although it's not not about money, it can also be about money. We all have different talents. There are many thousands, millions of different talents, attributes, abilities that God has distributed unequally. That is part of his good design. And so it may be that you are good at making shoes or you're good at gardening gardening or you're good at accounting, whatever it happens to be, whatever gifts God has given you, you can use those in service of neighbor. And it may be that you have a handful of different gifts. You may work as an accountant, but happen to be particularly good at gardening, and so you go and work on the garden of a retiree d on the weekend. That can be how you contribute to neighbor in some way.

41:39 The purpose and the point is that you should do what you can with what you have been given, because that is the whole point of the parable of the talents and many other passages in scripture. God God has given you certain gifts. He has given them to you for the purpose of serving your neighbor, because in serving your neighbor through those good works, you are praising God, you are worshiping God. That is how we actually render unto God service and thanks for what He has given us. Because again, God does not need our good works. God does not need anything. In the words of the Psalm he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, meaning, of course, all things in creation, not just a thousand hills.

42:26 Your neighbor needs your good works, because every single person needs something. Even the wealthiest individuals need something. They're going to have something in their house that needs fixed. And yes, of course they can pay for it, and I'm not saying you have to do pro bono work for your particularly wealthy neighbor. But just because your neighbor is wealthy doesn't mean that you shouldn't want to render good works to that neighbor, of course that person in return, not as a quid pro quo, but in light of the fact that God has given him this material resource, this wealth, he should use that for the good of his neighbor, this case you and others. But the point is that if we're going to have a Christian

43:14 society, is that we all have to view each other as neighbors because God has put us in a particular place at a particular time surrounded by particular people. And that's what neighbor means, as we went over in previous episodes. It is the person next door. It is the person nearby. Neighbor and nearby are basically the same word. It's the nearby farmer if we're going back to the old English. But you are to serve your neighbor because it's we're going back to that issue of the concentric circles. And so when you look at your resources and you look at the needs around you and you look at what you can do with your resources to serve those needs, you start with the inner circle and you move outward.

43:59 The inner circle is of course your immediate family. Then it is your extended family, the family that are still closely related and incidentally nearby. And then it's your neighbors, and then your slightly more distant neighbors, and then it's your city, your town, your state, moving outward concentrically to those who are less closely related, less close physically to you, but still someone to whom you owe a certain duty. And as we've mentioned, these are not hard and fast rules because this is not a matter of math. We are not going to give you a bunch of formulae and say that if you make x, then you must do y with z percentage of x. That's not how any of this works. This is not math. This is a matter of wisdom.

44:52 This is a matter again of looking at what you have been given, looking at the needs around you, and looking at your duties with respect to those who have those needs, and then acting appropriately. Now that sounds complicated, but it's not. If you see that your elderly neighbor's yard is overgrown, and you have a working mower, you can help. If you see that your neighbor's animals are escaping because there's a problem with his fence. And you happen to know how to fix a fence because not everyone knows, but most of us could perhaps manage. You can help. It is a matter of looking around you and seeing what needs to be done, and then doing what you can with the abilities that you have. Now, it is important to note that part of this is knowing

45:43 your neighbors, which is a very real obstacle in modern society. Most people, even in suburbs where we practically live on top of each other, at least I used to live in a suburb, I no longer do, but very few people really know their neighbors. Some don't even know their neighbors' names. Go knock on the door. Introduce yourself to your neighbor. If you don't even know your neighbor, you're not going to know the needs your neighbor has. You're not going to know if you have the ability to serve your neighbor, if you have the ability to render good works to your neighbor. And so part of it is just building that relationship, being aware of the people around you, and again, building a relationship with those

46:30 people, building up a Christian community. Now it may be that some of your neighbors are not Christian, but if you have this relationship with them and they see that you are willing and even eager to help others, that may open up a door, it may open an opportunity to discuss the faith with that person at some point. I'm not saying do the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormon thing, and go and knock on your neighbor's door and immediately say, Have you heard about Jesus? That's not usually the best approach. Develop a relationship with your neighbor. You have to build that rapport. You have to be someone your neighbor can trust. And then, eventually, there will be an opportunity to broach that subject.

47:16 That is going to be more effective than if you do the if well, the equivalent of a cold call. And all of this again, you must absolutely bear in mind when it comes to these issues, it's in God's timing, and so you don't have to worry about it. Don't be anxious. Scripture's very clear about that. God is going to use you as he sees fit. He has prepared the good works beforehand, and that includes introducing your neighbor to the Christian faith, if that is going to be your role. And so you don't need to worry about it. But do lay the groundwork. Do the actual necessary prerequisite work in order to develop that soil so that when the opportunity arises, there's an opportunity, there's a chance

48:10 to sow that seed and have it actually yield some sort of result. The greatest Christian witness that you will ever give is the life that you lead when you assume no one is watching because they are. We're always watching each other and we always are continuously evaluating other people relative to ourselves and relative to whatever ideals we may have. And so it may very well be that the most important message that you give to someone is to stand out from the crowd somehow. If you are always the kindest or the most generous or most patient, or if you're just always there. If you show up when others won't show up, if you will deliver when others fail to, that stands out. And maybe they don't know why.

48:55 Maybe they don't know, but you know, at some point it will probably come up in conversation. You know, you seem different than other people. What is it? That's your opening. That is God saying, here you go. You have spent months or years cultivating trust and rapport and in being a good neighbor, being a genuine Christian in your community, being the salt and light of the earth, now is the opportunity that God is giving you to explain to them why you are the way you are. And you know, it's it's important for us as Christians to re recognize that a lot of pagans live the same way. You know, in fact, that is very much a part of you know some groups like Freemasonry and some others, because they see it

49:38 as works righteousness, it's urgent for them to do those works because the insinuation into the community and the the delivery is the it's the tikan alam. it's the it's the making this world world a paradise for its own sake. And that's not, it's the opposite of the Christian impetus. Ours is to glorify God. But to glorify God, not in some high fluid and spiritual way. It's right here. When your conduct and your behavior and your way you deliver to your neighbor is a credit to yourself, and you can point to God, that may be the thing that opens someone's eyes. if you know maybe they don't they don't know anything about Jesus or anything about faith or sacraments or whatever is important in your

50:25 Christian life, if they know that there's something in Christianity has changed you and they see it as a positive, that's that's the door open. And I think it's important for us as we're looking at all these things to be thankful when others are a blessing to us and when we're given the opportunity to be a blessing to others. You mentioned earlier, and I mentioned several times that we frequently get messages from people thanking us for Stone Choir. And I say that again only to acknowledge that that is God's work through us. I don't get those messages and think, wow, yeah, you're a really great guy. You really nailed it. I am humbled and I don't want to say terrified, but it's we're we're chained to this thing now.

51:12 We can't go anywhere. We don't have any choice but to continue doing this because of the fruit that God is growing through our words here. And so when you say thanks to us, it is a kindness and then we receive it in humility and grace. But it's also a price signal, like we talked about last week in the market episode. When you say yeah, more like this to something that's just a good work, to something that's beneficial, that has no the purpose is not to do something for ourselves. The purpose is to do what God wants. And when God bears good fruit through that. We're thankful to hear it. So we're we're we're at least as thankful to you when you tell us as you are to us for having received what God

51:59 is delivering through these episodes because you know, if no one listened, if nobody cared, we wouldn't do it. It'd be a waste of time. The fact that it's actually bearing fruit means that it's it's a good thing. That's we judge our own tree by the quality of its fruit. And if the fruit were not good, we would need to change something or we'd have to chop the tree down. But in this case, all we can do is continue to you know fertilize and and water this tree and continue to grow as long as God is bearing good fruit through it. Keep both of those in mind. I've said this before. If you are able to do something for someone and they say thank you, you know, or if someone if you someone apologizes to

52:41 you and there's a there's this sort of I'll call it false humility, but it's there's a modern, especially American notion that nothing can ever be serious. So when someone says, I'm sorry I did something, the natural response is don't worry about it, forget about it. You should say as a Christian, I forgive you. I'm sorry should always elicit I forgive you. You should immediately announce God's forgiveness to them, because that is the same forgiveness that God announces to you when you confess. And the same is true with thanksgiving. If someone is thankful to you for something, don't just say, oh, don't worry about it, it's nothing. Say you're very welcome. And you know, maybe it's an opportunity again to point to why

53:27 you're doing it or you know, how you came to be doing that thing for them so that you're not taking credit and you're not making it about yourself. On the flip side of that, if your pastor is typically doesn't deliver whatever kind of sermon you think maybe your congregation needs is a kick in the butt, and one Sunday he really nails it and you're kind of surprised and maybe he's outside his comfort zone and I think the best thing you can do is just after the service and you're walking out, say, Thank you, Pastor, that was a really great sermon. I really needed to hear that and I hope that it bears fruit for everyone. Giving thanks for when someone is doing their job is a key part of all of this.

54:07 It's you know again, it's it's a price signal, not with uh money, but simply with the affirmation that yeah, that that right there, do more like that. Yeah, me personally, if someone blows something, I'm almost always just gonna keep my mouth shut. I don't wanna start anything. If someone does really well, I try to go out of my way to give thanks to them to say that was really good. More like that. You're really good at that. Because sometimes that's all people need. Because you never know. You know, when you're doing something, you know if if you're a professional, you know whether you're doing a good job of something, but when it's a little more subjective and you're not quite sure if it lands for somebody to actually go out of their way to

54:47 give positive feedback instead of complaining, which is our natural nature. You know, the I think on websites like Yelp or whatever, uh, if if I remember correctly, it's like four or five times out of, you know, four times out of five, the feedback is going to tend to be negative versus a positive view of something because that's just kind of how we're wired. It's you want to complain when something is done wrong. You don't want to say thank you when something goes well because of a sense of entitlement. Like if you go to a restaurant and have a good meal, well they did their job. Of course they had a good meal, that's what you're paying them for. The thoughtfulness of just going a little bit extra and extending

55:26 thanks to someone when maybe they're not expecting it, is is a part of also, you know, us paying dividends in the world as just good members of the community, as good neighbors. Because when you stop taking those things for granted, it's again a chance to point to God. Yeah, I think that one of the worst things about our world today, as I've said before, is that we have grocery stores and we have specialists for all these things and we have online purchasing and you can have anything you need virtually anytime. Certainly in the week or the month. There's no need to wait almost ever. You can get vegetables year round, even if you don't know anything about growing vegetables. You can get meat if you don't know anything about slaughtering animals,

56:08 because of the specialization of labor and the fact that there are other people who are good at that and they do it for you. That intermediate step that has removed us from God's providence at the front end, where the cow was conceived and the seed was germinated. All those things are miracles, even as they're also a natural part of creation. And so when they happen and then they move through all the process of the system, the market, and get onto your shelves at home, when we forget how miraculous it was that it began and indeed that it came through all those steps to finally come to us in a relatively affordable fashion. It's easy to forget to give thanks to you know the butcher or certainly to God for having delivered that food to you.

56:58 You know, we say give us this day our daily bread, it should be in cognizant recognition. It should be cognizant of the fact that that's actually happening. Whatever you ate today, God gave to you. Yes, you may have earned the money, or maybe it was given to you as a gift. Whatever it was, it came to you by God's providence. No matter what, the food would not exist if God didn't turn the sun on, if God didn't send the winds and the rain, all the natural elements that make those things possible are they it. They're why we have anything. And so the world of plenty that we have makes it really easy to forget to give thanks. And so as you know, we're we're observing Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

57:44 I think it's important to remember just how easy it is for all those things to go away. We talked about the normalcy bias episode. the state that we have today is not a natural one. The stuff can all very easily just vanish. think we should be thankful for every day that we have it. Before we close out this episode and sort of tie up these three issues, duty, talents, and thanks into a sort of neat little package. Perhaps an early Christmas present. Although don't worry we won't change the outro music, it's not even advent yet. But before we do that, I want to make a point that may seem a little esoteric or arcane, but I don't think that it is, and I want you to think about it a little bit. For a number of years now I have come to

58:32 Almost hate the term human being for a very specific reason. I think that it implies the wrong sort of thing. It gives the wrong idea. Because a human being implies that humans are just existing. Yes, I recognize that being is used in partly a different sense in this term. But my point is that humans are never being. Humans are becoming. Humans are doing. We exist in the act. And we've mentioned before in previous episodes that you are always moving Godward or hellward. And so the whole point of this topic and of this episode is that when you use your talents to serve your neighbor, that's moving Godward, that is sanctification, that is your faith working out through

59:33 works, that is working out your faith in fear and trembling, that is showing your faith by your works, and yes that is scriptural. Again, you aren't justified by these works, but a living faith produces works. And so this is how you move Godward. That is how you are a human becoming. You are becoming what God wants you to be. That is what sanctification is. It is the making righteous of one who was once a sinner, and has now been justified by the blood of the Lamb. And so the whole point is that you have duties. Just as a Christian you have duties, but just as a person, as a man or a woman, you have duties. And those duties radiate outward. You have the highest duty to your immediate family.

1:00:30 And then you have the extended family, your town, your city, your nation. These duties radiate outward. And so yes, the ones that are more immediate trump the ones that are further out. But how you execute, how you fulfill these duties, is through the use of your talents, those things that God has given you, your attributes, the gifts, abilities, whatever they happen to be, all of these things that flow down from God. You use those to fulfill your duties. And then you give thanks. You give thanks both for the fact that others have rendered good things to you because those gifts ultimately come from God, He uses others to deliver them to you. But then you also give thanks for the fact that God has

1:01:25 created all of these opportunities for you to use your gifts to do good because that is your opportunity as a human becoming to move Godward. That is your opportunity to work out your faith in fear and trembling. That is your opportunity to demonstrate that you have a living faith. And that is a great thing, that is a great gift from God. That is God choosing you and making you into one of his sons, and I mean that to apply both to men and women, because sons are the ones who inherit, that is the point of the scripture passage. And so when you have these opportunities from God to use your talents to fulfill your duties, give thanks for that. He is giving you the opportunity to demonstrate your Christian faith, because

1:02:24 ultimately that is the heart of the Christian faith. Yes it is belief in Christ, it is the belief in Christ that justifies us. But is the good works rendered unto our neighbors, that our true worship of God, that demonstrate that we have a living faith, and that we are true sons of the Father. And so we will close out this episode with a passage that we have used a number of times before, but as with all of Scripture, it is worth revisiting, and this one is particularly worth revisiting here at the end of this episode, and that is part of Matthew 6 about not being anxious. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body,

1:03:15 what you will put on, is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them, are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so close the grass of the field, which today is alive, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what

1:04:04 shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the heathens seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about to-morrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.