God’s Economy Series
God’s Prosperity, Our Participation
We greet you today in the Name of our Lord and Saviour, praising God from whom all blessings are always flowing because every good and perfect gift comes from the Father up above. I am grateful to be before you for the preaching and teaching of God’s word on today for I am glad to be in the service of God, the ministry for with God has chosen and called me to. I came today with expectation and anticipation of what God can do and is doing and will do in our personal lives and among us in this local church body.
As we go into the Word of the Lord today I invite to repeat this affirmation after me…I believe that God is who God’s word says that he is and I believe that God can do and will do what God’s word says that God will do. Thank you….Man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God.
I invite you now for the preaching of the word to the Gospel of Matthew chapter 25 vss. 14-29; Matthew chapter 25 vss, 14-29. When you have found it, let me hear you say amen. Let us stand for the reading of God’s word. Thanks be to the Lord for the reading, hearing and doing of God’s Holy word. And you may be seated. We are inspired today to go back and pick up on God’s Economy Series and speak to our hearts on the subject entitled, God’s prosperity, our participation. God’s prosperity, Our participation. Repeat that after me, God’s prosperity, our participation.
As you may or may not know, we have been dealing with this theme of God’s economy for sometime now. We have not preached on the subject every Sunday of course but we have been steadily working on this theme of God’s economy. It has been a few Sundays since we’ve returned back to this subject for we are always opened to God’s leading of what he wants to say through the Word of God on a given Sunday. So today we are inspired to go back to God’s Economy and to deal with a matter that is certainly something that we cannot omit in teaching on how God can supernaturally intervene and bless us in our personal lives and the church. Let me say from the outset that we have established that there is a definite economy that God has of which supercedes and is exceedingly and abundantly and above what we can ask for or think.
God has a definite economy that operates without any obstacles or hurdles or hindering from any of man’s doing. God has a definite storehouse in the holy heavenly spiritual realm that is endless and limitless with all the resources and more, to keep us from a state of lack and to bring us to a place of blessing where we can always be a blessing however the Holy Spirit may lead us.
We’ve established that there is a real God’s economy that we, just do not seek, to be a part of, and take advantage of and share in while being in God’s family and doing God’s work. We’ve overlooked it for some reason or another perhaps the erreroneous teaching that some of have heard that to be poor is evidence of holiness which we also have said is the furthest from the truth as any other deception and untruth that is told to us.
We know now clearly that it cost money to do ministry. It costs money to help get souls saved. It cost money to established the covenant of Jesus Christ throughout the world by teaching and preaching and reaching with the Gospel. It cost money. It cost money at this church just to do what we are doing now, and it will cost much more money to do what God has us dreaming about. We have it clear my brothers and sisters that it just will cost us a pretty penny to be the blessing that God has really called us to be.
And let me tell you something else, we have discovered in this teaching on God’s economy that when we don’t have money to do what needs to be done in the Lord, it costs us everything else…it costs us our joy…it costs us our peace…it costs us by way of worry and fretting and doubting. It costs us by the fact that we miss opportunities for ministry because we are preoccupied with our state of lack. We don’t have to come up with some great big polish example. All we have to do is think about the regularly monthly bills in our homes that need to be paid …and some of us just start thinking at the beginning of the month and we don’t stop thinking about those bills until the end of the month…and then when the new month comes we begin the same mind preoccupation of our grave concern about bills all over again….and everyday that we spend the bulk of our time being engulfed with our bills we miss precious golden opportunities to reach out and touch somebody with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I say all of this again today so that it can be clear of why we here at this church are talking how the Lord can bestow his prosperity upon us…it’s not just to say I’m blessed…look at me…brag on me….look who I am…look who we are…no no..no no…We have a job on our hands my friends…a job that requires a certain level of resources to always be in reach without lack so that the work here at this church is never interrupted because of the lack of funds. No…no it should not be that way especially when we serve a God who owns everything good and perfect thing and every good and perfect gift.
So, that now that we’ve said all of that…we want to go now and look at how we are to participate in God’s sharing of His blessings upon our lives and this church.
Matthew 25 vss 14-18….For the Kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability…and straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two he also gained other two. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth and hid his lord’s money.
Now as we read this text the temptation is to jump right into teaching and preaching on this story that Jesus is telling…this is the red letter words of Jesus… and the temptation is to immediately begin to spiritualized what’s happening in this story… in other words often times we hear this story told or preached or taught from the standpoint of our natural talents that can become spiritual gifts or our straight spiritual gifts that we receive at the point of our salvation. And it is nothing wrong in preaching about this text on the meaning of spiritual gifts and talents that we can offer to use in God’s service… But one of the things that I have been challenged to do in my training for the ministry is to always dig into the text and find out the real meaning of the words in the scripture and start from there… yes text can always be spiritualized and fitted to mean what we thinks it means but lets go to the source the greek meaning of these words and define what talent really means.
Defintion of text words(talent)
This word talent in our text today means a weighted sum of money… In other words…there’s a rich man who has a great sum of money that he has divided among three persons who work for him as investors and brokers in the stock market of that day…
Really the word is every bit of it true when Solomon says there is nothing new under the sun…this text today is really a story about wall street before there was a wall street. It really is a story about investing funds even before there was mutual funds as we know it today…and if you read this story all the way through, since Jesus is telling this story, it gives us some insight on when usury which is interest is acceptable in the sight of the Lord…usury and interest is acceptable in the sight of the Lord when money is put in investment to exchangers. And exchangers is another word for other money- brokers, bankers….other people who deal with investing of monies. Follow me in your Bibles …Matthew 25 vs 27..thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury which is interest. And notice that it has nothing to do with loans or debt that Christ is talking about usury or interest here in this text…it is only talking about equity financing…what is equity financing well it is when you have money to make money… not when you don’t have money and you loose more money because there is so much interest attached to your debt. You see that’s the difference between the world and Christ when comes down to the need for interest… Christ mentions a story about interest where a person has money and he allocates his money…he gives out his money to three persons who are suppose to invest his money with money exchangers who deal with profit…not non-profit situations… so that he can make more money out of the investment. However, the world makes its money off of equity financing… folk who have money… and off folk who don’t have money…debt financing…where you are paying significant interest on money that you didn’t have in the first place.
Oh we don’t want to keep going down that road today…but at any rate…look at the 18th verse once again, Matthew 25 chap…there was one gentlemen here who instead of investing the money he buried it in the earth…..In other word’s here is a man who was due a blessing if he would have done for his supervisor, his boss…what he was suppose to do…but instead for some reason he did not do what he was suppose to do…
and the lord or the boss or the supervisor of this brother…knew that this man could do what he was being asked to do…
this man, just like the other two was trained to invest money…he had been trained to take money and make more money with it….This man was not being asked to do something that he was not able to do without his supervisor’s instruction and guidance. And still this man went and buried that money in the ground rather than seeking to make more money with the money.
And for you and I my brother’s and sisters, some of us we have the same problem with God…we stand in a place of blessing…we need a blessing…we need to come out of lack…and yet we will not do what God knows that we are able to do if we follow God’s instruction and guidance. This man in this text he was all but at a point of lack himself…he was down to only being able to manage one talent of money according to the skills that he had developed and then he turned around and lost that talent that sum of money to the one who had five…because he did not want to do what he was well able to do after he had been asked to do it.
Now, let me say to you that God can rain resources out of the sky…He did it for the children of Israel. God can send an angel to put some money into our hands…he put a coin in a fish’s mouth. God can touch the hearts of anononymous donors to send us funds…And I encourage us to pray for that to happen. God can send folk right in this church in the next few moments of whom can take care of all our resource needs for this church until Christ comes back, doesn’t matter if the world last for 500 to a 1000 more years….that’s how much resources God can lay up for this church in seconds…not years not days or months but just let there be…God is well able to do that.
But, the truth of the matter is my friends is that God has invited you and I to participate in the coming about of supernatural blessings in our lives…God works primarily with our participation…when we are well able to participate with him in seeing a blessing become a reality in our lives….
We are going to have to understand that God will bless us continually time and time and time again…if we time and time and time again make our utmost business to do all that God instructs to do so that He can do what we cannot do… and what we are not asked to do…
Let me tell you something that I am learning about our God… our God is waiting to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves…but a lot of times God just doesn’t get the chance to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves because we refuse to do for ourselves what we can and are well able to do for ourselves according to God’s instruction…
This truth applies in all areas of our lives, whether it is spiritual maturity, relationships, finances, every area of our lives… we can become stagnant and complacient when we refuse to do what we can do as we are able to do in the Lord. And yet we tell God… God I want to be blessed. God I want to grow up in you. God I want to move on up a little higher… and God has already provided and instructed for some things in which he wants us to do so that our desires in Him can become a reality. But if we choose not to do those things that God has instructed…what we desire…will not become a reality.
Let’s just take spiritual maturity…one can find himself or herself failing and stumbling in a certain spiritual area. Now yet when that person who is loosing the battle in certain spiritual areas goes to God, they are constantly saying Lord I want to grow in you… And the Lord says are you constantly praying… are you constantly reading the word.. and applying my word to your life…. Are you constantly keeping your thought life…your mind stayed on me. My friends, if we don’t do those three things constantly….praying…reading God’s word and keeping our mind stayed upon God…we can forget about spiritual maturity…we can forget about growing up in the Lord…we are not going to grow up in the Lord…if we don’t want to really touch God’s throne in prayer constantly….if we don’t really want the word to be revelation and light to us constantly where we can walk into more light…and if we do not want to keep our minds stayed on him continually….we are not going to grow up in the Lord….
Oh we are still in the text today and with our subject of our participation in God’s prosperity…but right now we are yet bringing home the point clearly…that there are certain things in this life that we can do…there are certain things in this life that is possible to us….God has already provided and instructed..He is just waiting on us to do it… now there are other things that are impossible to us….but that’s God’s business. God deals with the impossible…God makes those impossible things become possible according to His working and as we believe that He is able to do so. But we cannot stress it enough today…that a lot of the reason of why some of us are not moving in the Lord has everything to do with our participation. We want everything good to happen to us … but we want it on a silver platter with a silver spoon. And we want a bib around our neck and we want God to feed it to us like a baby who has just started to eat from a spoon. We don’t want to do anything. We don’t want to experience the fire oven situations of life….Don’t you know that there are some blessings in life… that you are not going to get until you have been baked in God’s oven….until you have been tried in the fire….so that you will never forget that God did it…and only God did it….But no we will sing the song…He’s preparing me or It’s just a test ..oh we will sing them they sound good…but really we don’t want to go through any preparation and we certainly don’t like taking test…..
But there should be no secret of why it says in Genesis that God led Abraham into the wilderness of Mount Moriah to test him.(Genesis 22) ..the test before the blessing for Abraham was that God wanted Abraham to know that his first love is to always be God and nothing else even God over Abraham’s son Isaac…because Isaac was a sho nuff gift from God to Sarah and Abraham and God wanted Abraham and us to know since it is recorded in the word…that we are never to worship the gift but always to worship the Giver….God himself…
Oh, and there should be no secret of why Jacob wrestled with the Angel all night long…until he received his blessing….until Jacob was able to hear the Angel name him with a new name, the name of Israel….that Angel told Jacob, Jacob let me go…and mind you Jacob had been wrestling that Angel so long until Jacob’s hip was out of joint.. but Jacob said I am not going to let you go until you bless me(let’s turn there Genesis 32)…you see this business of Jacob wrestling the Angel for Jacob’s blessing was God’s way of informing Jacob…that Jacob you are not just going to be automatically blessed… what God was really telling Jacob is that Jacob, all of your conniving, and trickery and deception and buffaronry that you have been doing with Esau and Laban….that’s not how you got your blessing…Jacob…you are going to wrestle with this Angel all night long for your blessing so that you will know that I the Lord God am the one who gives you this priviledge to be blessed so that you can be a blessing. The truth is as we see in the word…Gen 32 chap… Jacob was not going to be blessed unless he wrestled that Angel….even though Isaac his father had already pronounced the blessing upon Jacob since Jacob deceived Isaac…..Jacob was not going to be blessed until he wrestled that Angel…and when Jacob wrestled that Angel all night long..you better believe that he came to know God for himself…Yes Grandfather Abraham had talked about God.. and daddy Isaac had talked about God..but you better believe that when son and grandson Jacob wrestled with the Angel of the Lord all night long…Oh he came to know God on that night. you can’t wrestle God’s angel all night long and not know something about God. And Jacob recognized that even though he stole Esau his brother’s birthright…that did not guarantee him the blessing because the blessing didn’t come from Isaac it came from God.
The problem with us is that want to be blessed but we don’t want the stretching before the blessing…we don’t want the testing before the blessing and we don’t want to wrestle anything for our blessing…we won’t even wrestle against our worries so that we can received a blessing….much less wrestling the devil who seeks to steal everything from us…. And we can just forget about God asking us to get in the ring with one of His angels…..
Listen, all of us we just got to get it clearly into our heads that there are things that God has asked us to do because he knows that we can do it… and God will not do what he is able to do until we do what he has asked us to do…
And we cannot afford to and bury what the Lord has already enabled and equipped and provided for us to do. This brother in this text he went and buried what he had been equipped with..He went and buried what he had been provided with.. This brother went and buried his blessing…Tell your neighbor I’m not going to bury my blessing…After all the Lord is to you, don’t bury your blessing…After all the Lord has done for you, don’t bury your blessing…After Jesus has already done it all and already paid it all and already shed all of his blood on calvary, don’t bury your blessing. After God has already preordained, and predestined before the foundation of the world that there would be a you on the face of this earth…don’t bury your blessing….And since you know that God has a plan and a purpose and a direction, and a hope and His will for your life, you and I cannot afford to bury our blessings. And since you know that your days are numbered and the hairs on your head has been counted, and you cannot take up anybody else’s space Sis. Washington…don’t bury your blessing….Yes, yes, yes, when you know that you know that you know that when you keep bringing your burdens to the Lord and leaving them there…that your load will be lighter and your yoke will be easier because you are in Christ Jesus, you cannot afford to bury your blessings…
If you have buried your blessing, you need to dig it up, dig it up, dig it up…get your shovel and dig it up…don’t wait for the Lord to come back for you….if you have buried your blessing…get your shovel and dig it up now…take it out of the ground…wipe it off…and offer it up to the Lord…and tell the Lord…tell him, tell him tell him…Lord what you have given me…whatever is in my hands right now…I offer it to you…make me useful in your kingdom…make me a blessings to others who stand in a need of a blessing. God’s prosperity, our participation…don’t bury your blessing.
