Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 16:1-13
Passage this morning is Luke chapter 16. There is an outline. If you'd like to follow along and take notes, you can do that. This is a challenging passage this morning. Last week's passage was challenging. We looked at the parable. Most of us know it as the parable of the prodigal son. We talked about last week, it's really the parable of a forgiving father who had two lost sons. We talked about that last week and the challenge last week is the passage is so familiar to us. We think we've got it all figured out and hemmed in. And sometimes we just need to step back and listen to what the word is actually saying and a familiar passage can be challenging in that regard. This morning, the passage is challenging for a different reason. It's just a hard passage to figure out. In fact, I was struck this week as I was studying for Luke 16, one to 13. I have a stack of about 11 commentaries that I read every week, okay? There's my books. I start reading through them for the passage. You know how hard it is to get 11 Christians to agree on anything? (congregation laughs) It's almost impossible. And almost every week I'm working through these 11 guys and this guy says this and this guy says that and this guy says no, they're both wrong and this guy says no, they're all idiots. And you sort of wade through it and pray for wisdom and try to figure it out. Okay, these guys are all in perfect alignment this week. Every one of them, when I turn to Luke 16 says, this is a very difficult passage to understand and to apply to our life. And nine of the 10 said this is without a doubt the hardest parable of Jesus to really wrap your mind around. All of them agree that this is a challenging passage and what they all say is it really sounds like when Jesus tells this parable, it really sounds like he's making the thief the hero. There's a bad guy in the story. It's pretty obvious who he is. But when you read it, you come away saying, it sounds like Jesus is making him the person that I ought to emulate and the person that I would be like. So it's a challenging passage. What's not debated, okay? What's not difficult is to read these verses and to say Jesus is talking about money. Look what he says in Luke 16, 13, the last verse of our passage, no one can serve two masters. He will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. So he's talking about money. It shouldn't surprise you that Jesus would talk about money. Money's a big part of your life. You spend a lot of time making money. You do a lot of things to try to save money. You think about paying bills and can you cover this and cover that money's a big part of life, whether you like it or not. And so Jesus is talking about it and it shouldn't also surprise you that he talks about money here. Think about the story he just told, the forgiving father and his two lost sons. The tension in the drama in Luke 15, in the passage we looked at last week, revolves around money, who loved it, who loved it more than the father. What did they do with it when they had it? How did they think about money and handle money? And so Jesus now turns around and he's gonna teach us some things that we need to know about money. Here's one thing that would be a mistake when you look at Luke 16. It would be a mistake to take Luke 16 one to 13 and to treat it like an encyclopedia article. You know how you read an encyclopedia, right? You just sort of flip around. You look up the topic you're looking for, you find the section on it, you read it. You don't have to read anything before it. You don't have to read anything after it. You get a sort of self-contained thought right there in the encyclopedia. Don't treat your Bible like that. Especially one of the Gospels, for example, the Gospel of Luke. This is not an encyclopedia article, this is a story. And if you take these verses and you just lift them out, you can say, look, Jesus gave us nice four points or five points or three points or however many points you come up with. Nice little tips about how to manage money. No, no, no, no. You gotta put this passage that is about money in the context of the story of the Gospel of Luke. And every week I tell you, Luke, 1910, covers everything in Luke. It says, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." And when you take these verses and you put them under that one big idea that governs the Gospel of Luke, here's the big idea of our passage. The Son of Man came to seek us and to save us so that we would serve Him being Jesus, not money. He came to rescue you so that you don't have to be a slave to money, so that you can be a slave to Him. Can we have one moment of transparency and honesty before we read the passage? Just one. Not one person in this room wants to raise your hand and admit that you serve money. Most people in this room think that you know someone who in your opinion does serve money. You're pretty good at that. That guy. Maybe you think that guy or girl sitting next to you this morning. He served money. None of us want to think that we serve money. You know, as a pastor, people come and talk to me with lots of different problems and struggles. And I just tell you, if you need to come talk to me, there's nothing you're going to say that I haven't heard or that's going to surprise me or shock me, okay? People come with lots of things. Can I tell you one thing that no one has ever come to me and said they struggle with? Serving money. No one has ever come to me and said, "I need 10 minutes of your time. "Can I sit down and talk to you?" I find myself worshiping money. It's a pretty remarkable, right? I mean, I'm not really old. I haven't been a pastor a really long time, but about 10 years, pastored three different churches in three different states and no one in any of my churches has ever had a problem with money. That's a pretty good streak, don't you think? I hope you don't mess it up for me. The reality is we do have problem with money, right? We'd like to think we don't. We'd like to think our problem at least isn't as big as somebody else's. And so therefore it's relatively okay in God's eyes. Let's clarify a few things. What does it look like to serve money? Sometimes it just looks like greed. And sometimes greed can look very, very rich. Maybe you've heard the name John D. Rockefeller, the richest American who's ever lived. If you take his wealth at his death and you adjust it for inflation, he was worth about $350 billion. He had a lot of money. And some of you guys know where I'm going with this. Someone wants to ask him, "How much is enough?" And what did he say? "I just need a little bit more." "350 billion, I need a little bit more." So sometimes greed looks rich, but can I be honest with you? Sometimes greed looks poor. Okay, look at this building. I bet none of you have ever been there. That is a soup kitchen in Frankfurt, Kentucky. And when I was a pastor in Frankfurt, we used to go down the fifth Tuesday of every month when there was a fifth Tuesday and we cooked at the soup kitchen. And at the soup kitchen, it opens at about 11. And every day, about 30 minutes before the doors open, Kroger, which is a grocery store there in Frankfurt, Kroger brings a massive truckload of day old bread. Stuff they can't sell and they bring it in and they just dump it in the lobby of this soup kitchen. I'm telling you, they drop enough bread every day at this soup kitchen that every person in there can take home way more starch than they can eat in 24 hours. And they do it on Monday and they do it on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, every day of the week. Can I tell you something that happened every time we went and worked at the soup kitchen? A fight over bread. I'm not talking like, "Oh, I had that first." No, I had that first. I'm talking like a fight over bread because somebody got it in their mind. I'm not happy to go home with 10 loaves of white bread. I need to go home with 12 loaves of white bread. I need to take 30 rolls of biscuits home. It's greed. It can look rich, like Rockefeller, or it can look poor, like somebody taking more than they need to at a soup kitchen. How do we serve money? Sometimes we serve money when our standards get skewed and we don't even realize that we're serving money but our standards get skewed. Here's an example of this. There's a basketball player named LaTrell Spreewell. Spreewell, LaTrell Spreewell. 2004, he played for the Timberwolves and he was a pretty good basketball player and his contract was coming up and they offered him a contract extension. They offered him sort of this re-up with the team, stay a little bit longer. They said, "We'll offer you $21 million over three years." "21 million dollars over three years." Now, there's a place for negotiations, regardless of how much or how little you make. I'm fine with that. But do you know what Mr. Spreewell's answer was? Seven million bucks a year. He said, "I got kids to feed." (audience laughing) He didn't take it. And his stated reason was, "I got kids to feed." Now, I don't know how many kids he has, but I'm thinking seven million can cover it. His standards are skewed. And how easy is it for you to hear that story? I was reminded, I came across it this week and I thought, "Oh, that's a great story." He's such a jerk. How easy is it for us to have our standard skewed? Look, you can drive to the one side of town in Odessa and realize your standards are not what somebody else's are. Take a mission trip. Go visit the Okelos around the world. Go visit my friends that I just went to work with down in Argentina. You'll learn real quick that your standards might be just as skewed as literals. And sometimes we end up serving money. We don't even realize it because our standards just get flipped upside down. And we say, "Well, look, Mr. Rockefeller, "he had $350 million. "Clearly, he served money. "I don't have near that much. "Check your standards." Sometimes we serve money by looking to money to make us feel secure and safe. Certain amount in our bank account. Certain dollar amount on our paycheck makes us feel safer. Sometimes we serve money or possessions. We're gonna talk about mammon, all the wealth that you have. We serve those things by thinking that it's gonna make us happy. I'll be honest with you. This happens to me every time I go to academy sports. Walk into academy and I start thinking, "I need that, and I need that, "and if I had that and that and that, "I need a bigger basket. "I need all this stuff." And in my mind, it just, it kicks into gear. You start thinking it's gonna make me happy. If I have all these things, I'll just, "No, it won't, but we think it will." Sometimes we serve money by delaying our giving, okay? You're all Sunday morning. You woke up early, came to church. So I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, and I'm gonna say nobody here thinks it's not important to give to your church or to charity or to missions. Most of you would probably say, "Yeah, you should do that." But a lot of us fall into the temptation of thinking, you know, I'm gonna be able to give a much bigger percentage later. Right now, it's just, I just don't know if I can do it. So I'm gonna drop a 20 in the plate and feel like I've put in my tithe of some sort. Now, maybe a 20 is a tithe for you. Maybe that is 10% of your income, fabulous. But a lot of us fall into this trap of saying, "I can give more later." I'll do it later. Once I reach the next plateau, once I achieve the next level of security. I read a study, 2010 study. Said that in 2010, American Christians gave a smaller percentage to their church than they gave during the Great Depression. Great Depression giving averaged 2.4%, 2010. Christians in the United States gave 2.3%. It's gone up since then. The economy's improved. And now, best I can figure from different studies I looked at, we're hovering around 3%, 3%. You know, I love it political seasons when politicians have to release their tax returns. We get to see how much money they made and how much they gave, and we just look at them and say, "You tight-wad." Some of us better be glad ours aren't released. Some of us serve money by racking up massive debts because we can't control what we spend. For whatever reason, we can't control it, so we just put it on credit, charge it. I'll pay it back later, and we just build up these massive debts that we'll never be able to pay. I was gonna give you statistics on the average debt load of the typical American family. Just look 'em up if you're interested. It'll blow your mind. We are a debt-laden society. We're serving money. We don't even realize it. So on the one hand, we can take a poll, and I could say, "How many of you want to admit "that you worship and you serve money?" And we say, "No, I don't think that's me. "Maybe it's that other guy, but not me." But when you really start to think about what it looks like to serve money, all of us need to step back up and say, "Okay, maybe I should listen "to what Jesus has to say in this passage." So that's what we're gonna do this morning. Look with me at Luke 16, beginning in verse one. He, that is Jesus, said to the disciples. "There was a rich man who had a manager, "and charges were brought to him "that this man was wasting his possessions." And he called him and said to him, "What is this that I hear about you? "Turn in the account of your management. "You can no longer be manager." And the manager said to himself, "Well, shall I do? "Since my master is taking the management away from me. "I'm not strong enough to dig. "I'm ashamed to beg. "I've decided what to do "so that when I'm removed from my management, "people may receive me into their houses. "So summoning his master's debtors one by one," he said to the first, "How much do you owe my master?" He said, "A hundred measures of oil." And he said to him, "Take your bill, sit down quickly "and write 50." He said to another, "How much do you owe?" And he said, "A hundred measures of wheat." And he said to him, "Take your bill and write 80." The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much. And one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's who will give to you that which is your own, no servant can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Let's pray. Father, open our hearts to your word this morning. We know that we are prone to deceive ourselves and to fool ourselves and to think that this is not something that is an issue for us, but it very well may be. And so as we look at your word, we pray that your spirit would illuminate to our minds and bring conviction to our hearts. We pray in Jesus name, amen. We begin by talking about the parable itself, okay? First thing I want you to see about this parable is that it is addressed to the disciples. And this is a shift from Luke 15. We left off in Luke 15. We read that the tax collectors and the sinners are following Jesus and the scribes and the Pharisees are grumbling, they're complaining. They don't like the fact that Jesus is hanging out with the tax collectors and sinners. They have a beef with that. And so Jesus tells them the three stories that are really one story, parable of the lost sheep, parable of the lost coin, parable of the two lost sons. And he's speaking to the Pharisees and to the scribes. And now there's a shift. Now he turns around, back to the tax collectors and the sinners, the disciples who are following him. This is not just the 12 apostles, but it's all this massive people that have said, we want to follow you Jesus. And he looks at these people and he says, okay, I just got onto them about their self-righteousness and their arrogance and the fact that they're lost and they don't think that they're lost. And he sets them straight. He says, while we're talking about money, let me tell you guys a few things about money as you think about following me. So he is speaking to the disciples. Second thing you need to see is this, the quote unquote hero of the story is a crook. If you got that feeling reading the passage, you're right. The hero, the one set up as an example, and I put hero in quotes so that you understand he's not somebody we want to emulate, but he is somebody that Jesus wants us to learn from. The hero of this story, the central character, is this manager and he's dishonest. He's a crook. Again, Jesus doesn't tell you this story so that you go out and say, okay, so I'm supposed to steal from my boss and waste his stuff and then write off all his debts and waste it. No, no, no, no. What Jesus is saying is even in this crook, there's something that you can learn and I can learn when it comes to thinking about money. So let's talk about the story. It's really simple. There's a rich man. The rich man hires a manager. The manager's job is to manage the wealth, the money, the possessions, the quote unquote, mammon of the rich man. Jesus tells us that this guy, for whatever reason, is wasting the rich man's possessions. That's the exact same word used of the younger brother in Luke 15 where he takes the third of the father's estate and he goes to a distant country and he does what? He wastes it, exact same word. So we don't know exactly what's going on, but we do know that he is wasting this money. The manager is confronted by his boss, by the rich man and the rich man says, you're fired. You can't be my manager if you're wasting my money. And to put it in our lingo, he says, clean out your office, close up the books and bring everything back to me, okay? This is not an uncommon situation, either in Jesus' day or today. People, businesses all the time, hire accountants to keep track of the money that comes and goes in their company. You, if you have a retirement account, you probably have somebody that manages that for you. And so somebody is managing the wealth, he's wasting it, he's caught, he's fired, and the owner says, clean out your locker, bring everything back to me. Whatever you say about the ethics of this manager, you gotta at least give him credit for being a little bit intelligent. 'Cause he sits down, as he's ready to clean everything out and he says, I got a problem on my hands. I am not cut out for manual labor. I like managing money. I need a desk job, but I just got fired from my desk job. And I have too much of an ego to go beg. So I need a plan. And the plan he comes up with is really simple. He's already wasted a lot of the boss's money, and his plan is to waste more of it. One by one, he calls in the debtors, and he says, how much do you owe? 100 of oil, 100 of wheat, whatever it is. And he says, cut it in half, I take 20% off. He's reducing the rich man's wealth. He's taking what truly belongs to his boss, and he's just sort of cooking the books, fixing the numbers so that it's just written off and it disappears. He is stealing again from his boss. The boss finds out about it. Now, if your boss found out that you wasted all of his money and he fired you and then he found out you wasted more, do you think your boss would be amused? No, he'd be furious. He'd be outraged. Jesus tells this story and he says something interesting. The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. And he'd say, didn't he care about all the oil and all the wheat that he just wrote off? Of course he cared about it. He was probably outraged. But he can at least step back and say, that was a pretty smart move. That was pretty intelligent. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Corey told me this story. Corey is homesick this morning. But he told me this story. There's a family that lives up around the Lubbock area. And they woke up one morning and they went out in their driveway and their car had been stolen. Just right out from under their nose, car stolen. They sort of think, did we leave it somewhere? What in the world is this a joke? They call the cops, it's gone. It is really stolen. And so they report it to the police. The police say, OK, we'll look for it. Day goes by, two days go by, nothing. Police can't find it. Then about three days later, the car shows back up in the driveway. Nothing wrong with it. Not even a McDonald's cup left in the console. I mean, it's perfect. The gas tank is full. And there's a note in the car. And the note in the car says, thank you for the use of your car. We had an emergency. And I can't explain, but we needed a car. So we used yours. We're very grateful. We cleaned it. We filled it up with gas. And included in this note, here are tickets to tonight's Texas Tech basketball game as a-- we're sorry to make it up to you. So they read the note. He called their friend, did you do this? Is this a joke? What are you doing? Nobody knows. So they get in their car, and they drive that evening to the Texas Tech basketball game. They have great seats. They enjoy the game. They get back in their car. They drive home. They open the front door. Empty. [LAUGHTER] Everything gone. Everything in the house gone. Like movers showed up and moved everything. Not like they came in and flipped stuff upside down. Gone. OK, now if that happened to you or me, you'd be outraged. You'd be furious, OK? But you've got to admit that's pretty smart. [LAUGHTER] You've got to admit that's a pretty good plan. They went to the game. They thought they were having fun. And you've got to step back and say, ah, you got me. That's what this rich man is doing. He's not happy to lose all his wealth. But he steps back and he says, ah, I see what you did there. You're about to be in trouble on the streets. And you just made a bunch of friends with my debtors because they love you now. You wrote off all these debts. You don't care that you wasted more of my stuff. But now, once you're really gone and fired and you turn all the books into me, now you've got some people who owe you favors when you need them. OK? That's the story. Let's talk about application. The first point of application is this. Good stewardship requires you to think critically about mammon. The Greek word is mimonos. It refers to money. It refers to wealth. It refers to possessions, to all the stuff you have. Jesus wants you to think critically about your stuff, about your wealth. Critical here does not mean negative. Critical is like back if you could go back to fifth grade and you have to take the standardized test. And they sort of want you to write a critical response to something. They don't want you to just sort of summarize it. They want you to really think about it. They want you to digest the information and process it and bring it back. They want you to give it some thought, some investigation. They want you to analyze it. They want you to evaluate it. Jesus is saying, with the stuff that you have, the mammon that you're's, you need to think critically about that stuff. Businesses have to do this, or you close the doors. Businesses have to think, how much money do we have coming in? How much money do we have going out? When is the debt payment due? Do we have enough cash flow to manage everything that's going on? Can we make payroll? Can we expand in this market? Do we have the money to expand in this market? All these things going on, it takes a lot of thought. And Jesus is saying, look, you need to sort of run your finances like a good business would do it. You have to think about it. You have to plan. You have to strategize. Understand this. There are two ways for you to be controlled by money. One, worship money, it will control you. Number two, ignore it, and it will control you. Jesus says, look, I certainly don't want you to worship money. We come down to that in verse 13. But you can have to think here. You can't just sort of put it on autopilot and pretend that finances don't matter. You've got to think critically about the money that's been entrusted to you. Number two, material wealth should be used for eternal returns. That's what Jesus is saying in verse 9. I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings. Jesus is saying, take your money now and leverage it for the sake of the kingdom. Do you hear what he's saying? I haven't just given you wealth and mammon and stuff so that you can enjoy it all. I've given it to you for the good of the kingdom. Tell you about a real life example of this. A guy I know named Ray Brown. That is Dr. Ray Brown over on the left. He'd be so flattered that I put him in his salmon shirt and his swim shorts. But that's him. And that's his family, his son, right next to him, and his son's wife, and then Ray's wife, and then his other son on the end. The Browns lived in Florida, and he had a successful medical practice. And the church that they went to was active in missions, and they decided that they thought they were called to missions. And so they closed the practice, sold the things that they had, and they moved to Chad in North Africa. Now, this is not a story saying every one of you should do what Ray Brown did. But listen to this story. He packs up, they moved to Chad. You think Odessa is dusty, Chad is dustier. It's a dirty, dry, miserable place. And he just goes out in the middle of nowhere, and he opens this medical clinic, and he starts ministering to a group of people called the Chadian Arabs. When Ray Brown showed up, there were no Christians among the Chadian Arabs. None. Generations back and back and back and back. Zero believers, and he starts sharing with him, and he starts witnessing to them. And he is able, through his witness, to see the very first ever Chadian Arabs come to faith in Jesus Christ. First, there's one, and then there's another, and they just start coming. These people trusting in Jesus Christ. And he said, man, it was amazing to listen to them talk about the weight they felt, that all of their ancestors had never heard about Jesus. Their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents, their great-great-grandparents, none of them heard the gospel. But they had this hope. They had life, and Ray said it was such a privilege to see these people come to faith. You understand that Ray Brown was able to go and do that because churches like ours take up money every year. Sometimes it's called a lottie moon Christmas offering, sometimes it's called a world mission offering, and we give that money all of it away. We don't keep it so that we can send missionaries to go to people like the Chadian Arabs who have never heard the good news about Jesus. And you understand that it's not just Dr. Ray Brown, who when he gets to heaven, he's gonna have a whole bunch of Chadian Arabs hugging his neck, saying thank you for coming. But if you have leveraged your wealth for the sake of the kingdom, and you come to the end of the year when our church takes up this mission's offering, and you say, you know what? We're gonna give, somebody told me this this week, I like to give until it hurts a little bit. I'm gonna make a truly sacrificial gift, meaning if I give this much, there's something I'm gonna have to cut out of my life. And you start to give like that. Do you understand what Jesus is saying here in verse nine is then when you enter the kingdom one day, heaven, there's gonna be Chadian Arabs and people from every tribe and nation who are gonna wanna give you a hug. And you say, well, I didn't leave, I didn't go. The missionaries did that great thing. Some need to go and some need to send them. And if you're a cinder, those people are gonna hug your neck just as much as Dr. Ray Brown's. Jesus says, you take what you have here and realize it's not just about here, but it's about eternity. And you need to make it, use it now so that you make a difference in the kingdom for all of eternity. And you use your money now in a way that when you get to eternity, there's people who welcome you in and say, we would not be here if you had not used your money the way that you used it. That's how Jesus wants you to use your wealth. You say, sounds like he's asking me to give up a lot. Now, like he's asking me to make a lot of sacrifice. He's asking you to do what he already did for you. Gave up the riches of heaven, humbled himself and came to seek and to save people like you who were lost. It required sacrifice. And if you're gonna follow him, he's calling you to the same thing. Number three, application, applying this parable to our life. Stewardship requires faithfulness in small things. This is not just for Rockefeller and his $350 billion. This is for you regardless of what your income is. Small things. We read a great story about John Wood in this week. He's a men's basketball coach at UCLA. One 10 national championships in men's basketball. He won seven of those championships consecutively. Had four undefeated seasons. You know what he did day one, the first practice of every year? He taught his kids how to put their socks on. Day one. This is how you put your socks on. Wait a minute, let's shoot three pointers. Let's get in the layup. No, no, no, no, no. We gotta start with socks. This is how you put them on. You don't want blisters. I need you on the floor. It may seem small, but this is how you do it. Be faithful in the small things. You may say Jesus has just entrusted to me a dirty pile of socks when it comes to wealth. Be faithful with it. It may seem small to you, but small things matter. You understand when Jesus says, what he says here about being faithful and small things preparing you for greater things. You understand this is not health and wealth. This is not Jesus or your pastor saying, look, if you'll be faithful with your salary this year, Jesus is gonna double it next year. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, you be faithful with what I have given you here on this earth, and if you can do that, you'll be entrusted with something much greater in the new heavens and the new earth. Be faithful in small things. Number four, a fitting summary. No one can serve two masters. Verse 13. Either he will love the one and hate the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Please don't leave a sermon on money at church with low-level guilt about the fact that you're probably not gonna go home and sell everything you have and donate it to goodwill. That was not a point of application this morning. You understand that? That's not good stewardship. That's not thinking critically about what Jesus has given you. And the worst thing that could happen is that a room full of people come together, talk about money, and then we all go out and eat and we feel like, "I'm just a lousy, worthless person." What I do want you to do is to leave thinking. Who will you serve? Will you serve your mammon, your wealth, your money? Will you serve Jesus? And I want you to bow, and I just want you to think about this issue with me for a minute. I want you to spend a minute thinking about whether you control your money or whether money controls you. Are you controlled by desire for money? Are you controlled by debt that is just crippling? Are you willing to fight greed? And again, that's not a factor of how much you have. That's a factor of your heart. Are you willing to fight it? Are you being faithful in giving? Realizing that what God has given you is not only for your enjoyment, it's for the good of others. Do you find your security in money? Father, as we think about this issue, most of us come and we confess that at different times in different ways, we've missed it. And we live in a place that is all about money. We live in a country and a time that has too much. And it's so easy for us to have our standards out of whack. It's so easy for us to compare ourselves to people we think are worse than us. And our prayer this morning simply is that first and foremost we would look to Jesus, not our ability to be good with money, but that we would look to Jesus for salvation. Confessing our sins and trusting in Jesus. We thank you that He came humbling Himself, making a sacrifice, leaving the riches of heaven to be a servant and to seek us and to save us. We think you that He frees us from serving wealth. We don't have to be tied to that master. And we pray that you would give us wisdom to understand the issue, to think about what it looks like in our lives and to leave this place willing and ready to respond in a way that would honor what Jesus is calling us to. Be honored as we sing together this morning as we continue in worship. We love you and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.