Transcript: Episode 0053

“God’s Gifts, Man’s Duties”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
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00:00:00 – 00:00:13:	SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE!

00:00:30 – 00:00:45:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Moeller and I'm still whoa. On today's Stone

00:00:45 – 00:00:51:	Choir, we're going to be discussing talents and gifts and our duties and Thanksgiving. As we're

00:00:51 – 00:00:55:	recording this the week of Thanksgiving, we thought that that'd be a nice way to tie all those

00:00:55 – 00:01:01:	things together. We had a question about one of them and we realized that the concept of having

00:01:01 – 00:01:08:	duties to do things, being thankful for our gifts and for the opportunity to be a benefit to others,

00:01:08 – 00:01:14:	all kind of ties together nicely and in a timely fashion. Today's going to be hopefully a speedrun

00:01:14 – 00:01:19:	episode. If we succeed in what we're hoping to do, this will only be about an hour long. Of course,

00:01:19 – 00:01:25:	we do this all in one shot. So as you look at the actual runtime, you will see how wildly wrong we

00:01:25 – 00:01:30:	were. I think it'll be pretty short. Today, we want to especially welcome all the new folks from

00:01:30 – 00:01:36:	the Pete Kignona show audience who've joined us recently. Corey and I appeared on that show last

00:01:36 – 00:01:44:	week and that was a lot of fun. It's ironic that the best introductions to Stone Choir have not

00:01:44 – 00:01:50:	been on Stone Choir. They've been shows that we did with Adam on the 20th century and with Pete on

00:01:50 – 00:01:55:	his own show. I'm thankful for folks who are discovering us that way because it kind of gives

00:01:55 – 00:02:01:	you the lay of the land. We did an episode early on where we talked about why we're Lutheran and

00:02:01 – 00:02:06:	that's kind of part of the explanation for why we did the show. There's a lot more to that episode

00:02:06 – 00:02:13:	than that. As I mentioned in the episode last week that we did with Pete, if you're a new listener,

00:02:13 – 00:02:19:	we really highly recommend that you go back to the beginning. The episodes we do are not ripped

00:02:19 – 00:02:25:	from the headlines, so they will generally almost never age on you. You can go back years from now

00:02:25 – 00:02:29:	and find that these will still be relevant topics to listen to. I mentioned that in particular

00:02:29 – 00:02:33:	because knowledge isn't going to be a short episode this week because of Thanksgiving, but

00:02:33 – 00:02:39:	we're taking next week off because the following week we're going to finally be tackling Eastern,

00:02:39 – 00:02:44:	quote unquote, orthodoxy. That's a really important one to get right, so we're doing some finishing

00:02:44 – 00:02:49:	touches on research and prep so that we can really nail that one because it's going to be vital to a

00:02:49 – 00:02:56:	lot of folks, particularly as reference material. Next week when there's no episode, if you want to

00:02:56 – 00:03:00:	go back and listen to some prior episodes, it's worth it. It's worth listening to episodes more

00:03:00 – 00:03:05:	than once. That's one of our goals when we made these shows is to try and make them worth revisiting.

00:03:05 – 00:03:11:	Since this is Thanksgiving, I do want to highlight a couple episodes that if you're going to be

00:03:11 – 00:03:16:	sitting down with your family and going to want to be talking about politics and religion and

00:03:16 – 00:03:22:	redpilling the old folks on stuff, there are two episodes that are vitally important for you to

00:03:22 – 00:03:28:	hopefully have in mind before you open that can of worms. Honestly, just don't do it. Just love

00:03:28 – 00:03:33:	your family. Forgive them when they're dumb. They're family. They're yours for better or worse.

00:03:33 – 00:03:40:	They're not yours to fix. The two episodes we did fairly recently were titled Persuasiveness

00:03:40 – 00:03:45:	Matters and Conspiracy Theories and Truth. We did those in reverse order. We did the one on

00:03:45 – 00:03:51:	conspiracy theories and got people psyched about redpilling people on all the weird stuff that

00:03:51 – 00:03:55:	you discover on the internet. We did another episode that should have come first saying,

00:03:55 – 00:04:01:	now that you know this stuff, be careful and don't just run your mouth and go wild because

00:04:01 – 00:04:05:	people aren't ready. Let people take things at their own pace. That's another part of the reason

00:04:05 – 00:04:10:	we lay down these episodes. You can have a nice peaceful conversation. If something comes up

00:04:10 – 00:04:15:	with family, maybe if it would make sense, you can say, hey, I heard this interesting episode.

00:04:15 – 00:04:20:	Talk about this in depth. I thought it was cool. Let me know what you think. Then you can just

00:04:20 – 00:04:24:	blame us if they think it's all terrible. You don't have to make an enemy of someone in your

00:04:24 – 00:04:31:	own household. To get into it today, the question we had had to do with the blessings that we

00:04:31 – 00:04:38:	receive from God and what we do with them. Basically, in the church stewardship parlance,

00:04:38 – 00:04:45:	it's often talked about in terms of time, talents and treasure. First of all, in terms of

00:04:45 – 00:04:49:	thanksgiving, it's important for us to always remember that all of those things are gifts from

00:04:49 – 00:04:55:	God. Whatever you have, whether it is your time, every breath you take, every day that you have on

00:04:55 – 00:05:01:	this earth is appointed by God. The day of your death has been appointed already. He knows.

00:05:01 – 00:05:07:	You don't need to worry about it. Between now and that day, you're spending your days just as

00:05:07 – 00:05:12:	you're spending your money and you're spending the talents that have been given to you for one

00:05:12 – 00:05:17:	purpose or another. You get up every morning and it's completely up to you. Most people listening

00:05:17 – 00:05:22:	are adults. There's nobody looking over your shoulder saying, you need to do X, Y, and Z today.

00:05:22 – 00:05:28:	You have a boss. You have a husband or wife. There are people to whom you answer to some degree,

00:05:28 – 00:05:34:	but you had input on who your boss was and you had input on who your spouse was. You can opt in

00:05:34 – 00:05:40:	and out of those things to some degree. That's one of the burdens of adulthood is that when we

00:05:42 – 00:05:47:	have these opportunities to do anything you want, it's like you first reach adulthood and maybe

00:05:47 – 00:05:52:	you had a penchant for sugary cereal as a kid and your parents would only occasionally let you

00:05:52 – 00:05:56:	have it. The first time you go to the grocery store as an adult, you're like, oh man, I'm going to

00:05:57 – 00:06:02:	fill my car with peanut butter cap crunch. That was my weakness.

00:06:03 – 00:06:10:	Dumb, bad idea. You'll make you sick, rye or tea, but there's nobody telling you no. When we have

00:06:10 – 00:06:15:	these abilities in this time and our money and whatever other gifts God has given us,

00:06:17 – 00:06:23:	the key takeaway from scripture is that these are not just for your own personal amusement.

00:06:23 – 00:06:28:	They're there to sustain your life and they're also there for you to help take care of other

00:06:28 – 00:06:33:	people. Principally, those people will be your immediate family, your extended family,

00:06:33 – 00:06:37:	and then your immediate neighbors and then your extended neighbors and your extended family,

00:06:37 – 00:06:41:	you're going out to the local and the level of your nation in some cases,

00:06:42 – 00:06:48:	but those concentric circles are always present in whatever we do. You don't live your life on

00:06:48 – 00:06:55:	the internet. You live your life around the people that you interact with. As we, as adults,

00:06:55 – 00:06:59:	choose to allocate our time and our talents and our treasures, it's important to remember that

00:06:59 – 00:07:04:	not only did God give us those things for our benefit, but almost more importantly, He gave

00:07:04 – 00:07:11:	them to us for our neighbor's benefit. The key point that I hope we can get across today is that

00:07:11 – 00:07:16:	when you have that in mind, it may trigger small or perhaps large changes in how you

00:07:16 – 00:07:22:	live some part of your life, but the important part is actually thinking about it, thinking about

00:07:22 – 00:07:27:	the fact that whatever you have, you didn't just earn, you did earn it to some extent, but

00:07:29 – 00:07:35:	it was God giving you the opportunity to earn it, giving the ability to earn it, and then giving you

00:07:35 – 00:07:41:	whatever it is that you earned. Even the things that we somewhat kind of want to take credit for,

00:07:41 – 00:07:47:	ultimately, it all comes from God. Once we realize that, it becomes a lot easier when we're looking

00:07:47 – 00:07:53:	at how do we dispense what we've received, because if God is just pouring these gifts out to you,

00:07:54 – 00:07:59:	are you the end point, or is there the opportunity in your life for them to flow through you

00:07:59 – 00:08:01:	to others to whom you have some sort of duty?

00:08:02 – 00:08:10:	So recently, there's been some discussion of the phrase, Christ is king, and I'm not going to make

00:08:10 – 00:08:16:	this episode topical because we don't try to do that. The point that I'm making is timeless,

00:08:17 – 00:08:25:	insofar as this era is concerned. Christ is king, and he is reigning now. However,

00:08:26 – 00:08:34:	he's not, so to speak, physically reigning now. Christ isn't holding courts somewhere on the

00:08:34 – 00:08:41:	earth. He doesn't have a castle. You can't go there and serve him by sweeping the floor,

00:08:41 – 00:08:48:	working in the kitchen, or whatever it happens to be, assuming those are talents or callings that

00:08:48 – 00:08:58:	you have. And so you can't serve Christ directly. But that's sort of the point of how God has

00:08:58 – 00:09:05:	organized things in this life. You don't really serve God directly. You serve God by serving your

00:09:05 – 00:09:15:	neighbor. As Luther put it, God does not need your good works. That should be fairly obvious.

00:09:15 – 00:09:22:	God doesn't need anything. But your neighbor does need your good works. And so you serve God

00:09:22 – 00:09:29:	by serving your neighbor. That's the point. That's why God gave you your talents, your abilities,

00:09:29 – 00:09:34:	all of these gifts that he has given you, these things that he has entrusted to your care in this

00:09:34 – 00:09:40:	life. They are for the purpose of serving, of benefiting your neighbor. And that's how you

00:09:40 – 00:09:48:	serve God, your good works flow to your neighbor. But that is worship of God in service to your

00:09:48 – 00:09:56:	neighbor. And it's sort of a mirror image of the way that God also himself works through creation.

00:09:57 – 00:10:03:	Because yes, there are gifts that God gives you directly. Your attributes, for instance,

00:10:03 – 00:10:08:	are gifts from God that flow directly from God to you. Yes, they also float in a way through

00:10:08 – 00:10:13:	your parents, because obviously much of it is genetic. But there are things that are more or

00:10:13 – 00:10:22:	less direct from God to you. But most of the things in your life that are good flow approximately

00:10:23 – 00:10:32:	through someone or something. And so when you were young, your mother made your meals, assuming

00:10:32 – 00:10:38:	you lived in a home with a mother and a father who were married, or at least one parent was present,

00:10:38 – 00:10:45:	your parents prepared your food for you, your parents provided clothing for you, provided

00:10:45 – 00:10:51:	the roof over your head. These are all gifts from God, but they are provided

00:10:51 – 00:10:59:	approximately through others in creation. The good that God delivers to us, he delivers to us

00:10:59 – 00:11:06:	through means. And so it's important to keep that sort of framing, that understanding of the way

00:11:06 – 00:11:13:	that things work in both directions in mind, because we return thanks to God and service to God

00:11:14 – 00:11:21:	by rendering good works to our neighbors. And God gives us good gifts primarily through others in

00:11:21 – 00:11:27:	creation, and not just other people, but other parts of creation. The fact that your dog is loyal

00:11:27 – 00:11:32:	is a gift from God. That is a gift from God through part of creation to you.

00:11:33 – 00:11:40:	One of the key texts that often comes up in the context of church itself is from Romans 12,

00:11:40 – 00:11:45:	which reads, For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of

00:11:45 – 00:11:50:	himself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to

00:11:50 – 00:11:56:	the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members

00:11:56 – 00:12:01:	do not all have the same functions, so we through many are one body in Christ, and individually

00:12:01 – 00:12:06:	members of one another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use

00:12:06 – 00:12:12:	them if prophecy and proportion to our faith, if service in our serving. The one who teaches

00:12:12 – 00:12:17:	in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity,

00:12:17 – 00:12:22:	the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

00:12:23 – 00:12:28:	I think one of the importance of highlighting this passage and the gifts that Paul is discussing

00:12:28 – 00:12:34:	here specifically is I think one of the mistakes that we make in the churches we're talking about

00:12:35 – 00:12:42:	giving to others, serving others, is that because most of the passages that scripture addresses

00:12:42 – 00:12:48:	directly are talking in the context of the congregation, I think the mistake that we tend

00:12:48 – 00:12:55:	to make rhetorically when we're talking and focusing on this is we limit it to Sunday morning

00:12:55 – 00:13:02:	effectively. We limit it to what we do at church with other church people, and that's one aspect

00:13:02 – 00:13:09:	of it, but it is a no-way shape or form limiting of our duties to neighbor. This Romans 12 passage

00:13:09 – 00:13:16:	illustrates clearly, God gives these gifts unequally. The person who has nothing can't give

00:13:16 – 00:13:21:	generously, or you know if it's the widow's might, her generosity is all that she has,

00:13:21 – 00:13:29:	but it's only a drop in the bucket for the needs downstream. So it does not in any way diminish

00:13:29 – 00:13:34:	what the poor give. Frankly, it's often the poor who give more proportionally than the rich,

00:13:34 – 00:13:39:	because they're so close to the edge that they can see over, and they tend to do a much better job

00:13:39 – 00:13:44:	of taking care of people who are adjacent to them, because those who are adjacent to them

00:13:44 – 00:13:49:	are in even more need than them, and they understand just how dire those needs can be.

00:13:49 – 00:13:53:	And those are usually not spiritual needs. I mean, spiritual is always part of it.

00:13:53 – 00:13:58:	Spiritual is part of everything. There's never any diminishing of the importance of

00:13:59 – 00:14:07:	the spiritual welfare impacting everything in our lives. But when we talk about these gifts from God,

00:14:07 – 00:14:11:	I think it's crucial that we understand that it's not just a Sunday morning thing. It's not

00:14:11 – 00:14:15:	between whenever Sunday school starts, and you have the service, and maybe you have a pollock

00:14:15 – 00:14:22:	afterwards, three, four hours if you're super in the church, and then you go home, and you have the

00:14:22 – 00:14:29:	other 164 odd hours of your week to do whatever you felt like doing. And I think that when we focus

00:14:29 – 00:14:36:	in the church on limiting gifts to spiritual things, or indeed, even to, I'm going to use my gifts only

00:14:36 – 00:14:43:	for spiritual purposes. So maybe you have money, and you can write big checks. And so you think,

00:14:43 – 00:14:48:	well, I want to write big checks for evangelism, and usually most of these so-called evangelism

00:14:48 – 00:14:55:	programs end up shipping that stuff overseas when you look at a map of your area, you'll find that

00:14:55 – 00:14:59:	the vast majority of your neighbors are going to hell. They don't go to church. They don't have any

00:14:59 – 00:15:05:	faith. That's overwhelmingly the majority of the people all around us. And so today, this modern

00:15:05 – 00:15:10:	notion of I'm just going to write a check and send it overseas, and then I've checked the box on doing

00:15:10 – 00:15:17:	my duty as one who contributes in generosity, it's kind of missing the mark because you've neglected

00:15:17 – 00:15:22:	your neighbor. You've neglected the people right around you. You know, we often neglect even our

00:15:22 – 00:15:31:	own family. And to look at our gifts in terms of the benefit that they do to those who need it,

00:15:32 – 00:15:36:	it just needs to be something that we're thinking about all the time, not thinking about it all

00:15:36 – 00:15:42:	the time. But the consideration should be an ever-present part of the calculus of how we allocate

00:15:43 – 00:15:51:	our gifts, whatever they are. Corey and I were gifted in many ways. We tend to be good at virtually

00:15:51 – 00:15:58:	everything and we do. So I'm not saying this to brag. I'm saying it's, in some ways, it's a burden

00:15:58 – 00:16:03:	to be good at stuff to the point that it doesn't make it easy to decide what to do. From almost

00:16:03 – 00:16:09:	the very first episode of Stone Choir, they're really good, well-done, polished episodes. I think

00:16:09 – 00:16:13:	even the first one was good. But the very first episode of Stone Choir was the very first time

00:16:13 – 00:16:18:	that Corey and I had ever spoken. So we're kind of knocking some of the rust off just getting to

00:16:18 – 00:16:25:	know each other a little bit verbally, even though we've spoken for years online. When we're able to

00:16:25 – 00:16:31:	knock something out of the park the way we have with this podcast, that's because we've been given

00:16:31 – 00:16:35:	the gift to do this well. And we didn't know when we put it out there if anyone would listen, if

00:16:35 – 00:16:41:	anyone would care. The feedback has been overwhelming, not only in terms of being positive, but in

00:16:41 – 00:16:46:	terms of people giving thanks to us for the things that we've shared on many of the past episodes.

00:16:46 – 00:16:52:	And again, I'm not saying any of this to point to us. I'm pointing it just as a specific example

00:16:52 – 00:16:57:	that we can give you all familiar with because you're listening. We did this because we felt

00:16:57 – 00:17:02:	compelled by God to do it. We felt the gifts that we had aligned perfectly with being able to

00:17:02 – 00:17:08:	explain some of these subjects in ways that people find very beneficial. And we're situated

00:17:08 – 00:17:13:	in our lives in such a way that the threats and then the delivery of doxing didn't slow us down.

00:17:13 – 00:17:19:	So we can continue to do what we've done, even in the face of hatred and death threats and all the

00:17:19 – 00:17:24:	other terrible things that are happening to so many people today. We're in a position to do that,

00:17:24 – 00:17:30:	that frankly, most other men aren't. And so the gifts that we were given to be able to do this

00:17:30 – 00:17:37:	one specific task, I don't want to hold this out as an example. More of you should go start

00:17:37 – 00:17:42:	podcasts. Please don't. One of the reasons not to do this is the last thing the world needs is

00:17:42 – 00:17:49:	another podcast. But what was missing was these specific discussions having taken place in a way

00:17:49 – 00:17:56:	that was accessible to normal people. Like this isn't a big brain podcast. It's not weirdos screaming

00:17:56 – 00:18:01:	into the void. There's actually some good material here that you can share with completely normal

00:18:01 – 00:18:06:	people and it will resonate. Agree or disagree, it's going to trigger thought and probably some

00:18:06 – 00:18:11:	really good conversation. That's not typically the case in most sermons and most episodes,

00:18:11 – 00:18:16:	anything you find. So when we started delivering and people started sending us messages and saying,

00:18:17 – 00:18:22:	thank you so much for that, we're very appreciative of people letting us know that they appreciate

00:18:22 – 00:18:28:	it. But it's also, in a way, very consciously we receive that as God saying, yeah, you got to

00:18:28 – 00:18:35:	keep doing more of this because what we are doing, God is using to bear good fruit. Hundreds of people

00:18:35 – 00:18:42:	have been enjoying churches, baptized all because of a year's worth of episodes. That's something

00:18:42 – 00:18:46:	that Corey and I have been doing online for many years, just tweeting and talking to people.

00:18:48 – 00:18:51:	Much as people think we're bomb throwers, the fact that we're able to clearly communicate these

00:18:51 – 00:18:56:	things in public has fired something up in a lot of people and they want to join churches

00:18:56 – 00:19:02:	or they want to get more serious about it. That is something that's tremendously beneficial in

00:19:02 – 00:19:08:	all your communities. So it's ironic that as we're saying focus on neighbor, this is one example where

00:19:09 – 00:19:13:	none of you are neighbors. You're all just your strangers somewhere in the ether.

00:19:13 – 00:19:19:	And yet when these ripples spread throughout all of your communities, the benefit and the dividends

00:19:19 – 00:19:25:	that that pays is to everyone around you. And that's the true blessing of being able to help

00:19:25 – 00:19:30:	someone in a big way or a small way. So when you're given a gift to do something,

00:19:32 – 00:19:37:	you can't just keep it for yourself. It's important to be able to deliver those benefits

00:19:37 – 00:19:44:	to others. And podcast is a small example, but I think it's an important one in this case because

00:19:45 – 00:19:48:	we know from many of your messages that it's had a real positive impact

00:19:48 – 00:19:53:	on people's lives that are going to change the trajectory of your family for generations.

00:19:53 – 00:19:59:	That's God's doing to be explicit. That's not Corey or me doing anything. That's God working

00:19:59 – 00:20:05:	through whatever we've said and not gotten wrong to benefit your lives. That's the way we interact

00:20:05 – 00:20:10:	with each other. You don't even know whom you're going to help when you do these things,

00:20:10 – 00:20:13:	but you know that when you're using your gifts in a positive way,

00:20:13 – 00:20:19:	that God will give the growth where he sees fit. And you will often find that's the case,

00:20:19 – 00:20:21:	sometimes in the least expected places.

00:20:23 – 00:20:29:	I want to go back for a minute here and focus on those numbers because I think people lose sight

00:20:29 – 00:20:37:	of the importance, relatively speaking, of the time we spend doing certain things.

00:20:38 – 00:20:45:	And so you have 168 hours in your week. Each of us does. We don't get more hours or fewer hours.

00:20:46 – 00:20:53:	We all get 168 hours. And you're awake for 112 or so of those, maybe a few more if you sleep a

00:20:53 – 00:21:02:	little less. On Sundays, you're in church for two, three, maybe four hours. Let's say it's four hours.

00:21:03 – 00:21:10:	That's a little over three and a half percent of your waking hours, assume you sleep about an

00:21:10 – 00:21:18:	average amount of time. What are you doing with the other 96% of your week? That's the time

00:21:19 – 00:21:25:	where you have opportunities to serve your neighbor. And yes, of course, much of that is going to be

00:21:25 – 00:21:33:	absorbed by preparing food or traveling to and from work. Obviously, you're working hours,

00:21:33 – 00:21:39:	various things like that. But just because you have these various tasks that are required for

00:21:39 – 00:21:46:	life doesn't mean you don't have opportunities within those time periods to serve others.

00:21:46 – 00:21:53:	For instance, if you're preparing food for your family, that's a good work. You are serving others

00:21:53 – 00:21:59:	and you are giving thanks to God in that. Perhaps you can say a little prayer and give

00:21:59 – 00:22:04:	thanks to God for the food that he has provided you. Hopefully all of you will be praying before

00:22:04 – 00:22:10:	your meal on Thanksgiving Day this week, assuming you're American, if you're Canadians another time

00:22:10 – 00:22:15:	during the year, or if you're listening somewhere else in the world. You should pray before every

00:22:15 – 00:22:21:	meal, of course, but there is an opportunity when you come together as a family for a particular

00:22:21 – 00:22:27:	holiday meal to make a point of giving thanks to God. And of course, Thanksgiving is a very

00:22:27 – 00:22:34:	appropriate holiday on which to do that. But the point is that you have all of these opportunities

00:22:34 – 00:22:40:	to serve your neighbor and you serve your neighbor by doing a good job of those things that God has

00:22:40 – 00:22:46:	given you to do. And I want to go to another passage in Scripture, another one from Matthew.

00:22:46 – 00:22:53:	There are many passages in Scripture that are related to these issues and I will put a number

00:22:53 – 00:22:57:	of them in the show notes. We're not going to go through all of them in this episode. It's not the

00:22:57 – 00:23:03:	point of the episode. But I do think that if we're discussing talents, we must certainly at least go

00:23:03 – 00:23:08:	over the parable of the talents. And so from Matthew 25.

00:23:33 – 00:23:46:	Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them.

00:23:47 – 00:23:52:	And he who had received the five talents came forward bringing five talents more saying,

00:23:52 – 00:23:57:	Master, you delivered to me five talents, here I have made five talents more.

00:23:57 – 00:24:02:	His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant,

00:24:02 – 00:24:05:	you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much,

00:24:06 – 00:24:11:	enter into the joy of your master. And he also who had the two talents came forward saying,

00:24:12 – 00:24:16:	Master, you delivered to me two talents, here I have made two talents more.

00:24:17 – 00:24:22:	His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant,

00:24:22 – 00:24:25:	you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much,

00:24:25 – 00:24:31:	enter into the joy of your master. He also who had received the one talent came forward saying,

00:24:32 – 00:24:37:	Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you

00:24:37 – 00:24:43:	scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground,

00:24:43 – 00:24:47:	here you have what is yours. But his master answered him,

00:24:47 – 00:24:52:	you wicked and slothful servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown,

00:24:52 – 00:24:58:	and gather where I scattered no seed, then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers,

00:24:58 – 00:25:01:	and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.

00:25:02 – 00:25:08:	So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents, for to everyone

00:25:08 – 00:25:13:	who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not,

00:25:14 – 00:25:19:	even what he has will be taken away, and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness,

00:25:19 – 00:25:23:	in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

00:25:24 – 00:25:31:	To start off, it is important to note that the issue in this parable is not money.

00:25:32 – 00:25:38:	Yes, a talent was an historical measurement of an amount of money, typically gold,

00:25:38 – 00:25:42:	a very large amount of money incidentally, and that is part of the point.

00:25:43 – 00:25:48:	But the talents are a stand-in, simply for the gifts that God has given us.

00:25:48 – 00:25:54:	And of course we can look at the parable and know this, because very obviously,

00:25:56 – 00:26:00:	what is happening with these servants when they are called to give account

00:26:00 – 00:26:06:	is the last judgment, this is the final day. Well, you don't take your money with you

00:26:06 – 00:26:09:	when you go to the last judgment, this isn't money we're dealing with.

00:26:10 – 00:26:14:	These are the gifts God has given you, the attributes, the abilities, all of the things

00:26:15 – 00:26:22:	that flow from God to you, and you are being called to account for how you used them in this life,

00:26:22 – 00:26:27:	and how you used them in the service of your neighbor, and so if you've been given many talents,

00:26:27 – 00:26:33:	it is expected that you will have accomplished more with those talents than if you were given less.

00:26:33 – 00:26:37:	The point is not that the servant who has given the one talent

00:26:38 – 00:26:45:	was somehow incapable or lesser, because you can see the servant who had the two talents

00:26:45 – 00:26:51:	and made two more is given the same praise as the servant who had the five talents and made five

00:26:51 – 00:26:57:	more, and so the same holds if the servant who had the five talents and gone and buried his

00:26:57 – 00:27:03:	in the ground. He would have received the same rebuke, the same condemnation, as the one in

00:27:03 – 00:27:09:	the parable who had the one and buried it. The point is that you must use what God has given you

00:27:11 – 00:27:16:	to complete the tasks before you. God has prepared beforehand good works for you

00:27:16 – 00:27:23:	so that you can walk in them. All of this has been prepared beforehand by God. He has prepared

00:27:23 – 00:27:28:	the good works for you, He has given you the ability to execute those good works.

00:27:29 – 00:27:35:	Yes, it relies upon you to do these things, because, again, sanctification is synergistic.

00:27:36 – 00:27:39:	You work with the Spirit in the performance of these good works,

00:27:40 – 00:27:44:	and you do in fact get credit for them, you get praise for them, you get rewarded for them

00:27:45 – 00:27:52:	at the final judgment. Justification, again, monergistic. You are justified by faith alone,

00:27:53 – 00:27:59:	but sanctification is a matter of cooperation with the Spirit. It is a matter of the good works,

00:27:59 – 00:28:03:	and Scripture is very clear. You will be rewarded for these. That is what we see here

00:28:03 – 00:28:10:	in the parable of the talents. One of the things that strikes me about this parable is that it

00:28:10 – 00:28:16:	really slaps my own life in the face. I've always had incredibly low time preference.

00:28:17 – 00:28:22:	We were very poor growing up. There were years when all of our Christmas presents were donated

00:28:22 – 00:28:28:	by others, or years where a lot of our food was donated by strangers. I didn't know how poor we

00:28:28 – 00:28:35:	were. We weren't dirt poor, but we were kind of one rung up from that. Even in that circumstance,

00:28:35 – 00:28:42:	by the time I turned 18, I had saved $20,000 from mowing lawns and small gifts I received

00:28:42 – 00:28:49:	for Christmas and birthdays from friends and family and paper out that I had. I saved basically

00:28:49 – 00:28:55:	everything. I didn't have anything particular in mind. It's just, well, I'm accumulating, and then

00:28:55 – 00:29:02:	I will have something to do with it later. That's just kind of my personality. That continued in

00:29:02 – 00:29:08:	my professional life. When I worked at Apple for 14, 15 years, I made a great deal of money.

00:29:08 – 00:29:14:	When you're making that much money, the government takes over half of it. Whatever number you look

00:29:14 – 00:29:21:	at, you basically are giving away 50% and giving away is taken from you. That's one of the reasons

00:29:21 – 00:29:28:	I left that world is I was disgusted that with the amount that I was receiving, over half of it was

00:29:28 – 00:29:32:	being taken. It wasn't the taxes that offended me, although they really bothered me, especially as

00:29:32 – 00:29:39:	a libertarian. I was disgusted by what was being done with that money, perpetual war. I was making

00:29:39 – 00:29:46:	enough money that I was paying bombs and missile money. Actual entire missiles that killed people

00:29:46 – 00:29:52:	could have been financed with the money that was taken from me in taxes. I did not want to be a part

00:29:52 – 00:29:59:	of that system, and I'm not going to evade taxes. You'd rather deal with the cops and the IRS,

00:29:59 – 00:30:06:	and I don't want to deal with either. If avoiding taxes isn't an option by not paying,

00:30:06 – 00:30:11:	the next best thing you can do is just not make the money in the first place. After a while,

00:30:11 – 00:30:20:	I decided I'm done. I had, and it didn't make me any happier, and I knew it wouldn't. I spent about

00:30:20 – 00:30:25:	five years working on the distillery, and that didn't really pan out. I sold that. When I got

00:30:25 – 00:30:31:	docks, I'd been paid maybe 15% of what I was owed. The rest became uncollectible, so that's a

00:30:31 – 00:30:37:	write-off. As that trajectory was winding towards where I am today, really last three, four, maybe

00:30:37 – 00:30:45:	five years, as I was paying less attention to the material world of material wealth, not creation,

00:30:46 – 00:30:51:	and paying more attention to spiritual matters as they intersect with created life,

00:30:52 – 00:30:58:	I started to focus more and more on these things, on talking to people about

00:30:58 – 00:31:04:	what God wants from us. In the last couple years, before we started the podcast,

00:31:04 – 00:31:08:	Corey and I and some others would be brainstorming. Here's all the stuff that we could do. Wouldn't it

00:31:08 – 00:31:15:	be nice to be able to publish some books that should really be back in print or help people go

00:31:15 – 00:31:21:	to seminary or whatever? As I started having all these big ideas about things that needed

00:31:21 – 00:31:27:	not really a whole lot of money, I started thinking about, well, when I had that money before, what

00:31:27 – 00:31:37:	I could have done if I had had it. For about a week, I was not moping, but I was just fantasizing

00:31:37 – 00:31:43:	about the life that I would have led differently if I had used those resources when I had them

00:31:43 – 00:31:48:	on godly things instead of things that I'd spent them on. Towards the end of that little period,

00:31:48 – 00:31:55:	I realized you're full of crap. I realized that it was completely dishonest because when I had

00:31:55 – 00:32:01:	those things, when I had these blessings that God had poured out, none of that occurred to me.

00:32:01 – 00:32:07:	I gave far more to the Mises Institute than I gave to my own church. It wasn't that my church was

00:32:07 – 00:32:12:	hard up as a very successful church in Cupertino. They were not lacking for funds, but that's no

00:32:12 – 00:32:17:	excuse as a Christian. There's other stuff I could have been doing, but I was putting my money,

00:32:17 – 00:32:25:	my treasure, where my heart was, and that was in Austrian economics. As I looked back, I realized

00:32:25 – 00:32:30:	that no, having that stuff, I don't know if it was part of the problem, but I know that for me

00:32:30 – 00:32:37:	personally, if I still had what I had then, I'm convinced that I would continue not to care about

00:32:37 – 00:32:44:	these things. For me personally, I had to lose that stuff before I began to realize

00:32:45 – 00:32:50:	what is supposed to be done with it. It would be hypocritical if I still had that, and I was

00:32:50 – 00:32:55:	saying, we should do this, but I don't. That's fine. I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful to be back

00:32:55 – 00:33:02:	to the point that I hardly spend anything, and I'm content. I was never discontent,

00:33:02 – 00:33:07:	but I realized that having more materially didn't change that in the slightest.

00:33:09 – 00:33:14:	I think that's important for us. Different people are different. For me personally,

00:33:14 – 00:33:22:	my flaws that when I had things, I was not focused on God's stuff. That's not the case with some

00:33:22 – 00:33:25:	people. There are some of you who are listening. When you have an extra doll in your pocket,

00:33:25 – 00:33:30:	you start looking around for someone to give it to. That's not me, and I can't pretend it is.

00:33:30 – 00:33:36:	It should be, but it simply isn't. I think one of the things when we're considering

00:33:38 – 00:33:42:	how to be a blessing to others is that the gifts that you have, when you have them,

00:33:43 – 00:33:47:	maybe you have to change something about what you're doing with them. Cory was talking about

00:33:47 – 00:33:54:	vocation, preparing meals for people in your home. There's service that we do just naturally.

00:33:54 – 00:34:01:	I think that one of the useful things about viewing our gifts from God as a 24-7 thing,

00:34:01 – 00:34:06:	and not a Sunday morning thing, is that you're all good for something to somebody. There's

00:34:06 – 00:34:12:	something that you do in your life that is already benefiting some people. Maybe there's a way to

00:34:12 – 00:34:18:	extend that in some small way to help more people and have a bigger impact. One example would be

00:34:19 – 00:34:24:	maybe someone's an electrician or a plumber or a mason. That's something that you do professionally.

00:34:24 – 00:34:29:	You go out, you do it every day. You make money from it. Maybe if you happen to own a business

00:34:29 – 00:34:35:	that's doing that stuff, consider possibly. As we're talking about these things, I want to make

00:34:35 – 00:34:41:	it very explicit. These are matters of wisdom and consideration. This is not laying down the law.

00:34:41 – 00:34:48:	If you have turned a profit, you must then do X with it. If God has given you more than you need,

00:34:49 – 00:34:54:	the what then of the Christian life should be different than it was in my life. When I had

00:34:54 – 00:35:00:	more than I needed, I just continued to save it. I just continued to accumulate. I just didn't

00:35:00 – 00:35:05:	know what to do with it. I wasn't really profligate with my spending. I just saved and saved and saved.

00:35:05 – 00:35:12:	That's exactly what the faithless steward was in that parable. He basically just buried it in the

00:35:12 – 00:35:17:	ground. I buried it in the bank, saving it for, I don't know when. It wasn't a lack of trust in

00:35:17 – 00:35:26:	God per se, but I think functionally it manifested that way. If you have a business where you're

00:35:26 – 00:35:31:	already doing something professionally, maybe, I know that in the last couple of years,

00:35:31 – 00:35:39:	pretty much all professional services and blue collar work tends to be very heavily oversubscribed.

00:35:39 – 00:35:42:	There's stuff that you need to get something done in your house. It might take four or six

00:35:42 – 00:35:46:	months to be able to get somebody out to do it because there's been so much activity.

00:35:48 – 00:35:51:	One of the things that you could possibly consider, this is not laying down the law,

00:35:51 – 00:35:58:	it's just something to think about. Maybe if you're in a position where you're turning a profit

00:35:58 – 00:36:02:	and you're oversubscribed, you have more customers than you can possibly service

00:36:03 – 00:36:11:	in a timely fashion, consider possibly doing what even the Bar Association recommends that

00:36:11 – 00:36:18:	attorneys do, where they're expected to try to have at least 50 hours a year of pro bono work,

00:36:18 – 00:36:22:	where they expect little or no compensation in return for the work that they do.

00:36:23 – 00:36:29:	The premise of that within their guild is to try to benefit those who don't have the resources,

00:36:29 – 00:36:35:	who could really use the help. If you own a business that's doing some sort of service or

00:36:35 – 00:36:42:	providing something in the home or in whatever it is that you're doing, maybe there's someone in

00:36:42 – 00:36:47:	your community that could really, really use the work that you already are doing, but they

00:36:47 – 00:36:52:	can't pay for it, and so they would never ask for it. Maybe it's retiree, they're living from

00:36:52 – 00:36:58:	social security to social security check. If they don't have the means to get stuff fixed or repaired,

00:36:59 – 00:37:05:	if you become aware that they exist, maybe one thing that your business could do would be to

00:37:05 – 00:37:12:	start doing some pro bono work, just a little bit, where you willingly set aside a few hours of

00:37:12 – 00:37:18:	paying customers once in a while and go do work for someone who can't pay you. You can coordinate

00:37:18 – 00:37:24:	this with your accountant so that you can use that as a write-off, because if it's billable at X

00:37:24 – 00:37:30:	dollars and you are delivering it as charity, basically, talk to your accountant, but typically

00:37:30 – 00:37:35:	that's something that can be written down as to reduce your overall profit, so you have less

00:37:35 – 00:37:42:	taxable. Even the amount of income that you would forego would have a positive benefit on

00:37:43 – 00:37:46:	the relative amount of tax you'd pay. You're still going to come out behind, but

00:37:47 – 00:37:51:	the nice thing about that is that it's something you're already doing. You're already doing it

00:37:51 – 00:37:59:	40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week. If instead of one of the hard things, if someone has a professional

00:37:59 – 00:38:04:	vocation, if you're an electrician and you do that all day, every day, the last thing you want

00:38:04 – 00:38:10:	to do on your day off is do more work like that. I don't think that anyone should be expected to

00:38:10 – 00:38:14:	do that. If you just love it so much that you can't get enough of it, great, whatever it is.

00:38:14 – 00:38:17:	You know, I'm talking about the trays in particular, but they can apply to anything.

00:38:18 – 00:38:22:	However, if in the context of a business, particularly if you're a small Christian

00:38:22 – 00:38:27:	business owner, maybe you make a conscious shift to do a small amount of pro bono work,

00:38:27 – 00:38:32:	knowing that it will cost you a little bit of money, but the upside to someone in your community,

00:38:32 – 00:38:35:	and it necessarily has to be in your community because they've got to be your neighbor.

00:38:35 – 00:38:40:	You're not going to go 6,000 miles away to install a toilet. You're going to do that

00:38:40 – 00:38:45:	someplace within driving distance. There may be some little lady who really needs that,

00:38:45 – 00:38:50:	into whom that would be a tremendous blessing. It's just an idea. The matchmaking for that

00:38:50 – 00:38:55:	is a difficult thing. It would be some more work and it would mean less money to do it.

00:38:55 – 00:39:01:	But I think if your gift, if your vocation and the abilities that God has given you are such that

00:39:01 – 00:39:05:	you can do things with your hands or with your brain and make it easier for something,

00:39:05 – 00:39:10:	like maybe you build websites or something, if the thing that you're already doing pretty much

00:39:10 – 00:39:16:	automatically, whether or not you're getting paid for it, if you could consider making slightly less

00:39:16 – 00:39:20:	than doing it for somebody who really needs it, that I think would be very much in the spirit

00:39:20 – 00:39:25:	of kind of what we're talking about here. Again, this is not to bind conscious. We're not saying

00:39:25 – 00:39:31:	you must do pro bono work or you're sinning. We're pointing out that this is an opportunity to make

00:39:31 – 00:39:36:	a small change in the way that you're already doing what you already do that could have a

00:39:36 – 00:39:41:	profound benefit to the very people that God is putting us around us to try to help.

00:39:42 – 00:39:46:	So if the trades and the other professions want to let the lawyers continue to have the

00:39:46 – 00:39:52:	moral high ground with their pro bono work, I know certainly some businesses would do that,

00:39:52 – 00:39:58:	but I think that model is at least an important one for consideration. It should always be in

00:39:58 – 00:40:03:	our minds, what can I do with what I already have? In my case, my skills weren't really transferable

00:40:03 – 00:40:07:	to neighbor, but the money was and yet I didn't spend the money on neighbor. If you have those

00:40:07 – 00:40:14:	resources and you can allocate them in a way to help someone nearby, that could have a tremendous

00:40:14 – 00:40:19:	benefit and you would find it very rewarding too, like the thanks and the gratitude from someone

00:40:19 – 00:40:25:	who could never possibly pay you for a professional job that they badly need. That would be something

00:40:25 – 00:40:29:	you can never understand how much that person would appreciate it. It would probably make their

00:40:29 – 00:40:34:	year in some cases. So these sort of opportunities are all around us, but they're invisible and

00:40:34 – 00:40:38:	because we never think about them, we either never go looking or we never even see them when

00:40:38 – 00:40:45:	they're right there in front of us. A vitally important point here is really a point that I

00:40:45 – 00:40:49:	already made when I mentioned that the parable of the talents is not primarily about money,

00:40:50 – 00:40:54:	although it's not not about money. It can also be about money.

00:40:55 – 00:41:02:	We all have different talents. There are many thousands, millions of different talents, attributes,

00:41:02 – 00:41:09:	abilities that God has distributed unequally. That is part of his good design. And so it may

00:41:09 – 00:41:15:	be that you are good at making shoes or you're good at gardening or you're good at accounting,

00:41:15 – 00:41:22:	whatever it happens to be, whatever gifts God has given you, you can use those in service of

00:41:22 – 00:41:27:	neighbor. And it may be that you have a handful of different gifts. You may work as an accountant,

00:41:27 – 00:41:33:	but happen to be particularly good at gardening. And so you go and work on the garden of a retiree

00:41:33 – 00:41:37:	on the weekend. That can be how you contribute to neighbor in some way.

00:41:38 – 00:41:45:	The purpose and the point is that you should do what you can with what you have been given,

00:41:46 – 00:41:52:	because that is the whole point of the parable of the talents and many other passages in Scripture.

00:41:53 – 00:41:59:	God has given you certain gifts. He has given them to you for the purpose of serving your neighbor,

00:41:59 – 00:42:04:	because in serving your neighbor through those good works, you are praising God,

00:42:04 – 00:42:11:	you are worshiping God. That is how we actually render unto God service and thanks for what he

00:42:11 – 00:42:17:	has given us. Because again, God does not need our good works. God does not need anything.

00:42:18 – 00:42:22:	In the words of the psalm, he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, meaning of course all

00:42:22 – 00:42:28:	things in creation, not just a thousand hills. Your neighbor needs your good works,

00:42:29 – 00:42:37:	because every single person needs something. Even the wealthiest individuals need something.

00:42:37 – 00:42:40:	They're going to have something in their house that needs fixed. And yes, of course,

00:42:40 – 00:42:45:	they can pay for it. And I'm not saying you have to do pro bono work for your particularly

00:42:45 – 00:42:50:	wealthy neighbor. But just because your neighbor is wealthy doesn't mean that you shouldn't want

00:42:50 – 00:42:57:	to render good works to that neighbor. Of course, that person in return, not as a quid pro quo,

00:42:57 – 00:43:04:	but in light of the fact that God has given him this material resource, this wealth,

00:43:04 – 00:43:08:	he should use that for the good of his neighbor, this case, you and others.

00:43:10 – 00:43:16:	But the point is that if we're going to have a Christian society, is that we all have to view

00:43:16 – 00:43:22:	each other as neighbors, because God has put us in a particular place at a particular time

00:43:22 – 00:43:28:	surrounded by particular people. And that's what neighbor means as we went over in previous

00:43:28 – 00:43:33:	episodes. It is the person next door is the person nearby, neighbor and nearby are basically the

00:43:33 – 00:43:37:	same word. It's the nearby farmer, if we're going back to the old English.

00:43:40 – 00:43:44:	But you are to serve your neighbor because it's we're going back to that issue of the concentric

00:43:44 – 00:43:51:	circles. And so when you look at your resources, and you look at the needs around you, and you look

00:43:51 – 00:43:58:	at what you can do with your resources to serve those needs, you start with the inner circle and

00:43:58 – 00:44:03:	you move outward. The inner circle is of course your immediate family. Then it is your extended

00:44:03 – 00:44:11:	family, the family that are still closely related and incidentally nearby. And then it's your neighbors,

00:44:11 – 00:44:16:	and then you're slightly more distant neighbors. And then it's your city, your town, your state,

00:44:16 – 00:44:26:	moving outward, concentrically to those who are less closely related, less close physically to you,

00:44:27 – 00:44:35:	but still someone to whom you owe a certain duty. And as we've mentioned, these are not hard and

00:44:35 – 00:44:42:	fast rules, because this is not a matter of math. We are not going to give you a bunch of formulae

00:44:42 – 00:44:49:	and say that if you make x, then you must do y with z percentage of x. That's not how any of this

00:44:49 – 00:44:55:	works. This is not math. This is a matter of wisdom. This is a matter again of looking at what you

00:44:55 – 00:45:01:	have been given, looking at the needs around you, and looking at your duties with respect to those

00:45:01 – 00:45:08:	who have those needs, and then acting appropriately. Now that sounds complicated, but it's not. If you

00:45:08 – 00:45:15:	see that your elderly neighbor's yard is overgrown, and you have a working mower, you can help. If you

00:45:15 – 00:45:22:	see that your neighbor's animals are escaping because there's a problem with his fence, and you

00:45:22 – 00:45:27:	happen to know how to fix a fence because not everyone knows, but most of us could perhaps manage,

00:45:28 – 00:45:35:	you can help. It is a matter of looking around you and seeing what needs to be done, and then doing

00:45:35 – 00:45:42:	what you can with the abilities that you have. Now, it is important to note that part of this

00:45:42 – 00:45:50:	is knowing your neighbors, which is a very real obstacle in modern society. Most people,

00:45:50 – 00:45:55:	even in suburbs where we practically live on top of each other, at least I used to live in a

00:45:55 – 00:46:01:	suburb I no longer do, but very few people really know their neighbors. Some don't even know their

00:46:01 – 00:46:09:	neighbor's names. Go knock on the door. Introduce yourself to your neighbor. If you don't even know

00:46:09 – 00:46:15:	your neighbor, you're not going to know the needs your neighbor has. You're not going to know if you

00:46:15 – 00:46:20:	have the ability to serve your neighbor, if you have the ability to render good works to your

00:46:20 – 00:46:26:	neighbor. And so part of it is just building that relationship, being aware of the people around you,

00:46:26 – 00:46:32:	and again, building a relationship with those people, building up a Christian community.

00:46:33 – 00:46:39:	Now, it may be that some of your neighbors are not Christian, but if you have this relationship

00:46:39 – 00:46:47:	with them, and they see that you are willing and even eager to help others, that may open up a door,

00:46:47 – 00:46:53:	it may open an opportunity to discuss the faith with that person at some point. I'm not saying,

00:46:53 – 00:46:58:	do the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormon thing, and go and knock on your neighbor's door and

00:46:58 – 00:47:04:	immediately say, Have you heard about Jesus? That's not usually the best approach. Develop a

00:47:04 – 00:47:10:	relationship with your neighbor. You have to build that rapport. You have to be someone your neighbor

00:47:10 – 00:47:17:	can trust. And then eventually, there will be an opportunity to broach that subject. That is going

00:47:17 – 00:47:23:	to be more effective than if you do the, well, the equivalent of a cold call.

00:47:26 – 00:47:31:	And all of this again, you must absolutely bear in mind, when it comes to these issues, it's in

00:47:31 – 00:47:37:	God's timing. And so you don't have to worry about it. Don't be anxious. Scripture is very clear

00:47:37 – 00:47:45:	about that. God is going to use you as he sees fit. He has prepared the good works beforehand,

00:47:45 – 00:47:52:	and that includes introducing your neighbor to the Christian faith, if that is going to be your

00:47:52 – 00:48:01:	role. And so you don't need to worry about it. But do lay the groundwork. Do the actual necessary

00:48:01 – 00:48:07:	prerequisite work in order to develop that soil so that when the opportunity arises,

00:48:08 – 00:48:14:	there's an opportunity, there's a chance to sow that seed and have it actually yield some sort of

00:48:14 – 00:48:20:	result. The greatest Christian witness that you will ever give is the life that you lead when

00:48:20 – 00:48:26:	you assume no one is watching, because they are. We're always watching each other, and we always

00:48:26 – 00:48:31:	are continuously evaluating other people relative to ourselves and relative to whatever ideals we

00:48:31 – 00:48:38:	may have. And so it may very well be that the most important message that you give to someone is

00:48:38 – 00:48:44:	to stand out from the crowd some way. If you are always the kindest or the most generous or most

00:48:44 – 00:48:50:	patient, or if you're just always there, if you show up when others won't show up, if you will

00:48:50 – 00:48:56:	deliver when others fail to, that stands out. And maybe they don't know why. Maybe they don't know,

00:48:56 – 00:49:01:	but at some point it will probably come up a conversation. You seem different than other

00:49:01 – 00:49:07:	people. What is it? That's your opening. That is God saying, here you go. You have spent months

00:49:07 – 00:49:13:	or years cultivating trust and rapport and being a good neighbor, being a genuine Christian in your

00:49:13 – 00:49:20:	community, being the salt and light of the earth. Now is the opportunity that God is giving you to

00:49:20 – 00:49:26:	explain to them why you are the way you are. And it's important for us as Christians to

00:49:26 – 00:49:34:	recognize that a lot of pagans live the same way. In fact, that is very much a part of some groups

00:49:34 – 00:49:41:	like Freemasonry and some others. Because they see it as work's righteousness, it's urgent for them

00:49:41 – 00:49:48:	to do those works. Because the insinuation into the community and the delivery is the

00:49:49 – 00:49:56:	teak and alarm. It's the making this world a paradise for its own sake. And it's not,

00:49:56 – 00:50:02:	it's the opposite of the Christian impetus. Ours is to glorify God. But to glorify God,

00:50:02 – 00:50:08:	not in some high fluid and spiritual way, it's right here. When your conduct and your behavior

00:50:08 – 00:50:14:	and what you deliver to your neighbor is a credit to yourself and you can point to God,

00:50:15 – 00:50:22:	that may be the thing that opens someone's eyes. Maybe they don't know anything about Jesus or

00:50:22 – 00:50:27:	anything about faith or sacraments or whatever is important in your Christian life. If they know

00:50:27 – 00:50:31:	that there's something in Christianity has changed you and they see it as a positive,

00:50:32 – 00:50:39:	that's the door open. And I think it's important for us as we're looking at all these things to be

00:50:39 – 00:50:46:	thankful when others are a blessing to us and when we're given the opportunity to be a blessing to

00:50:46 – 00:50:50:	others. You mentioned earlier, and I mentioned several times that we frequently get messages

00:50:50 – 00:50:58:	from people thanking us for Stone Choir. And I say that again, only to acknowledge that that is

00:50:58 – 00:51:04:	God's work through us. I don't get those messages and think, wow, yeah, you're a really great guy.

00:51:04 – 00:51:12:	You really nailed it. I am humbled and I won't say terrified, but we're chained to this thing now.

00:51:12 – 00:51:18:	We can't go anywhere. We don't have any choice but to continue doing this because of the fruit that

00:51:18 – 00:51:25:	God is growing through our words here. And so when you say thanks to us, it is a kindness and then

00:51:25 – 00:51:32:	we receive humility and grace. But it's also a price signal, like we talked about last week

00:51:32 – 00:51:39:	in the Market episode. When you say, yeah, more like this to something that's just a good work,

00:51:39 – 00:51:45:	to something that's beneficial that has no, the purpose is not to do something for ourselves.

00:51:45 – 00:51:50:	The purpose is to do what God wants. And when God bears good fruit through that,

00:51:50 – 00:51:57:	we're thankful to hear it. So we're at least as thankful to you when you tell us, as you are at

00:51:57 – 00:52:03:	us for having received what God is delivering through these episodes. Because if no one listened,

00:52:03 – 00:52:07:	if nobody cared, we wouldn't do it. It would be a waste of time. The fact that it's actually

00:52:07 – 00:52:15:	bearing fruit means that it's a good thing. We judge our own tree by the quality of its fruit.

00:52:15 – 00:52:19:	And if the fruit were not good, we would need to change something or we'd have to chop the tree

00:52:19 – 00:52:25:	down. But in this case, all we can do is continue to fertilize and water this tree and continue to

00:52:25 – 00:52:32:	grow as long as God is bearing good fruit through it. Keep both of those in mind. I've said this

00:52:32 – 00:52:40:	before, if you are able to do something for someone and they say thank you, or if someone

00:52:40 – 00:52:48:	apologizes to you, and there's this sort of, I'll call it false humility, but there's a modern,

00:52:48 – 00:52:55:	especially American notion that nothing can ever be serious. So when someone says, I'm sorry,

00:52:55 – 00:53:01:	I did something, the natural response is don't worry about it, forget about it. You should say,

00:53:01 – 00:53:08:	as a Christian, I forgive you. I'm sorry, should always elicit, I forgive you. You should immediately

00:53:08 – 00:53:15:	announce God's forgiveness to them. Because that is the same forgiveness that God announces to you

00:53:15 – 00:53:19:	when you confess. And the same is true with Thanksgiving. If someone is thankful to you

00:53:19 – 00:53:25:	for something, don't just say, oh, don't worry about it, it's nothing. Say, you're very welcome.

00:53:25 – 00:53:30:	And maybe it's an opportunity, again, to point to why you're doing it or how you came to be

00:53:30 – 00:53:35:	doing that thing for them so that you're not taking credit and you're not making it about yourself.

00:53:36 – 00:53:42:	On the flip side of that, if your pastor typically doesn't deliver whatever kind of sermon you think

00:53:42 – 00:53:47:	maybe your congregation needs, is a kick in the butt. And one Sunday, he really nails it,

00:53:47 – 00:53:52:	and you're kind of surprised. And maybe he's outside his comfort zone. And I think the best

00:53:52 – 00:53:55:	thing you can do is just after the service and you're walking out and say, thank you, pastor,

00:53:55 – 00:54:00:	that was a really great sermon. I really needed to hear that. And I hope that it bears fruit for

00:54:00 – 00:54:07:	everyone. Giving thanks for when someone is doing their job is a key part of all of this.

00:54:07 – 00:54:14:	Again, it's a price signal, not with money, but simply with the affirmation that, yeah,

00:54:14 – 00:54:19:	that right there. Do more like that. Me personally, if someone blows something,

00:54:19 – 00:54:23:	I'm almost always just going to keep my mouth shut. I don't want to start anything.

00:54:23 – 00:54:28:	If someone does really well, I try to go out of my way to give thanks to them to say that

00:54:28 – 00:54:34:	was really good. More like that. You're really good at that. Because sometimes that's all people

00:54:34 – 00:54:38:	need because you never know. When you're doing something, if you're professional, you know

00:54:38 – 00:54:43:	whether you're doing a good job or something. But when it's a little more subjective and you're

00:54:43 – 00:54:49:	not quite sure if it lands for somebody to actually go out of their way to give positive feedback

00:54:49 – 00:54:54:	instead of complaining, which is our natural nature. I think on websites like Yelp or whatever,

00:54:56 – 00:55:01:	if I remember correctly, it's like four or five times out of five,

00:55:01 – 00:55:07:	the feedback is going to tend to be negative versus a positive view of something. Because

00:55:07 – 00:55:12:	that's just how we're wired. You want to complain when something is done wrong. You don't want to

00:55:12 – 00:55:17:	say thank you when something goes well because of a sense of entitlement. If you go to a restaurant

00:55:17 – 00:55:20:	and have a good meal, well, they did their job. Of course, they had a good meal. That's what you're

00:55:20 – 00:55:27:	paying them for. The thoughtfulness of just going a little bit extra and extending thanks to someone

00:55:27 – 00:55:33:	when maybe they're not expecting it is a part of also us paying dividends in the world

00:55:33 – 00:55:38:	as just good members of the community, as good neighbors. Because when you stop taking those

00:55:38 – 00:55:44:	things for granted, it's again a chance to point to God. I think one of the worst things about

00:55:44 – 00:55:49:	our world today, as I've said before, is that we have grocery stores and we have specialists for

00:55:49 – 00:55:55:	all these things. We have online purchasing and you can have anything you need virtually anytime.

00:55:56 – 00:56:01:	Certainly in the week or the month, there's no need to wait almost ever. You can give vegetables

00:56:01 – 00:56:06:	year round even if you don't know anything about growing vegetables. You can get meat if you don't

00:56:06 – 00:56:12:	know anything about slaughtering animals because of the specialization of labor and the fact that

00:56:12 – 00:56:19:	there are other people who are good at that and they do it for you. That intermediate step that

00:56:19 – 00:56:27:	has removed us from God's providence at the front end where the cow was conceived and the

00:56:27 – 00:56:32:	seed was germinated. All those things are miracles even as they're also a natural part of creation.

00:56:33 – 00:56:39:	When they happen and then they move through all the process of the system, the market,

00:56:39 – 00:56:45:	and get onto your shelves at home, when we forget how miraculous it was that it began,

00:56:45 – 00:56:49:	and indeed that it came through all those steps to finally come to us in a relatively affordable

00:56:49 – 00:56:56:	fashion, it's easy to forget to give thanks to the butcher or certainly to God for having

00:56:56 – 00:57:04:	delivered that food to you. We say, give us this day our daily bread. It should be in cognizant

00:57:04 – 00:57:11:	recognition. It should be cognizant of the fact that that's actually happening. Whatever you ate

00:57:11 – 00:57:16:	today, God gave to you. Yes, you may have earned the money or maybe it was given to you as a gift.

00:57:17 – 00:57:23:	Whatever it was, it came to you by God's providence. No matter what, the food would not exist if God

00:57:23 – 00:57:28:	didn't turn the sun on, if God didn't send the winds and the rain. All the natural elements that

00:57:28 – 00:57:38:	make those things possible are there. They're why we have anything. The world of plenty that we have

00:57:38 – 00:57:43:	makes it really easy to forget to give thanks. We're observing thanksgiving this week in the

00:57:43 – 00:57:48:	United States. I think it's important to remember just how easy it is for all those things to go

00:57:48 – 00:57:54:	away. We talked about the normalcy bias episode. The state that we have today is not a natural one.

00:57:54 – 00:57:59:	This stuff can all very easily just vanish. We should be thankful for every day that we have it.

00:58:01 – 00:58:07:	Before we close out this episode and tie up these three issues, duty, talents, and thanks

00:58:07 – 00:58:13:	into a sort of neat little package, perhaps an early Christmas present. Although don't worry,

00:58:13 – 00:58:18:	we won't change the outro music. It's not even Advent yet. But before we do that,

00:58:19 – 00:58:24:	I want to make a point that may seem a little esoteric or arcane, but I don't think that it is.

00:58:24 – 00:58:30:	And I want you to think about it a little bit. For a number of years now, I have come to

00:58:30 – 00:58:41:	almost hate the term human being for a very specific reason. I think that it implies the wrong

00:58:41 – 00:58:48:	sort of thing. It gives the wrong idea because a human being implies that humans are just

00:58:49 – 00:58:56:	existing. Yes, I recognize that being is used in partly a different sense in this term.

00:58:57 – 00:59:06:	But my point is that humans are never being. Humans are becoming. Humans are doing. We exist in the

00:59:06 – 00:59:13:	act. And we've mentioned before in previous episodes that you are always moving godward or

00:59:13 – 00:59:23:	hellward. And so the whole point of this topic and of this episode is that when you use your talents

00:59:23 – 00:59:30:	to serve your neighbor, that's moving godward. That is sanctification. That is your faith

00:59:31 – 00:59:38:	working out through works that is working out your faith in fear and trembling. That is showing your

00:59:38 – 00:59:45:	faith by your works. And yes, that is scriptural. Again, you aren't justified by these works,

00:59:45 – 00:59:54:	but a living faith produces works. And so this is how you move godward. That is how you are a human

59:54 – 01:00:01
becoming. You are becoming what God wants you to be. That is what sanctification is. It is the

01:00:01 – 01:00:07:	making righteous of one who was once a sinner and has now been justified by the blood of the lamb.

01:00:07 – 01:00:16:	And so the whole point is that you have duties. Just as a Christian, you have duties, but just as

01:00:17 – 01:00:26:	a person, as a man or a woman, you have duties. And those duties radiate outward. You have the

01:00:26 – 01:00:33:	highest duty to your immediate family. And then you have the extended family, your town, your city,

01:00:34 – 01:00:43:	your nation. These duties radiate outward. And so yes, the ones that are more immediate trump the

01:00:43 – 01:00:52:	ones that are further out. But how you execute, how you fulfill these duties is through the use

01:00:52 – 01:00:59:	of your talents, those things that God has given you, your attributes, the gifts, abilities, whatever

01:00:59 – 01:01:06:	they happen to be, all of these things that flow down from God. You use those to fulfill your duties.

01:01:07 – 01:01:15:	And then you give thanks. You give thanks both for the fact that others have rendered good things

01:01:15 – 01:01:20:	to you because those gifts ultimately come from God. He uses others to deliver them to you.

01:01:22 – 01:01:27:	But then you also give thanks for the fact that God has created all of these opportunities

01:01:28 – 01:01:39:	for you to use your gifts to do good. Because that is your opportunity as a human becoming

01:01:39 – 01:01:45:	to move Godward. That is your opportunity to work out your faith in fear and trembling.

01:01:46 – 01:01:51:	That is your opportunity to demonstrate that you have a living faith. And that is a great thing.

01:01:51 – 01:02:02:	That is a great gift from God. That is God choosing you and making you into one of his sons.

01:02:02 – 01:02:07:	And I mean that to apply both to men and women because sons are the ones who inherit.

01:02:07 – 01:02:12:	That is the point of the scripture passage. And so when you have these opportunities

01:02:12 – 01:02:19:	from God to use your talents to fulfill your duties, give thanks for that. He is giving you the

01:02:19 – 01:02:25:	opportunity to demonstrate your Christian faith. Because ultimately that is the heart

01:02:25 – 01:02:31:	of the Christian faith. Yes, it is belief in Christ. It is the belief in Christ that justifies us.

01:02:31 – 01:02:37:	But it is the good works rendered unto our neighbors that are true worship of God,

01:02:38 – 01:02:43:	that demonstrate that we have a living faith and that we are true sons of the Father.

01:02:44 – 01:02:50:	And so we will close out this episode with a passage that we have used a number of times before.

01:02:51 – 01:02:57:	But as with all of scripture, it is worth revisiting. And this one is particularly

01:02:57 – 01:03:06:	worth revisiting here at the end of this episode. And that is part of Matthew 6 about not being anxious.

01:03:07 – 01:03:13:	Therefore I tell you do not be anxious about your life. What you will eat or what you will

01:03:13 – 01:03:20:	drink, nor about your body what you will put on, is not life more than food and the body more than

01:03:20 – 01:03:26:	clothing. Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns,

01:03:26 – 01:03:31:	and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

01:03:32 – 01:03:36:	And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

01:03:36 – 01:03:42:	And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow,

01:03:42 – 01:03:48:	they neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like

01:03:48 – 01:03:54:	one of these. But if God so close the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow

01:03:54 – 01:03:59:	is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

01:04:00 – 01:04:05:	Therefore do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink,

01:04:05 – 01:04:11:	or what shall we wear? For the heathens seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father

01:04:11 – 01:04:16:	knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,

01:04:16 – 01:04:21:	and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow,

01:04:21 – 01:04:26:	for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.