Follow the Money - Ben Stuart

Well, we've been continuing our series in the book of Acts, the story of the birth of the Christian church. In Acts season one, we saw the establishment of the church of Jesus Christ. And here we are in Acts season two, where we've seen the expansion of the church all the way into Asia and into Europe. And here we are at the end of season two. We're gonna do this message today. We'll take a little break for a couple weeks, talk about some other things, and then we'll return in September for season three, the finality of the book of Acts, where we watch the gospel enter the political halls of power in the two capital cities of Jerusalem and Rome. So this fall is about the intersection of politics and religion. Should be fun. Today, we're gonna do something far less controversial, the intersection of religion and money. As we begin, let me say, one of the most important movies about the economy came out 25 years ago, and it's entitled Monsters, Inc. And if you recall, the entire monster economy was built on the screams of children. But then some of them began to wonder, is this really the best way to fuel our society? And the realization came, what if it's better to fuel our economic engine with love rather than fear? What if love drove us rather than fear fueling us, right?

And of course, some people understood and realized they were trying to replace fear with love, and people who were invested in this old system got really angry at the people who were trying to do this new system, and chaos ensued. I mean, that's the idea. Why mention this? Because what's happening in Acts chapter 19, Ephesus is one of the most powerful cities economically in ancient Rome. And we've been watching the gospel of Jesus Christ invade the city. This is incidentally, almost 10% of the book of Acts is about the gospel taking root in Ephesus. And the Ephesians are written too in the book of Ephesians in first, second, third John, first and second Timothy, they're mentioned in Revelation. This church gets a lot of energy in the Bible because in many ways, they're a picture of how the gospel takes root in an individual, in a community, in a society, and changes it. And I don't know if you saw it in this text, but suddenly we're gonna see, as it takes root, a strong reaction emotionally. And the reaction is around the fact that the arrival of the gospel of Jesus Christ and people putting their faith in him, their faith changes their feelings, which changes the flow of their finances. And their faith in Jesus affects their finances

in such a way that it begins to impact the entire Ephesian economy. And we're gonna watch today some strong reaction against that, you heard those words, of danger and enraged and confusion. There's strong feelings about the fact of their money changing direction, right? Because we have strong feelings about money. Now I know as soon as I say that, some of you may go, well, Ben, look, this isn't New York, okay? They're driven by money, all right? This is DC, we want power. So read the room, man. But here's the thing. Every one of us is a steward of finances, be they many or few, right? That you are meant to be a steward of your finances. And many of us have feelings about those finances, we do. So just check in with your feelings. If I say this to you today, hey, Jesus is coming for your money, how do you feel? For some of you, intrinsically, you're like, but I hate this, I picked the wrong Sunday to be here, right? There's a fear, right? Others of you, maybe, maybe it's a faith. I know for me, I had someone who was a very successful financial advisor who was helping me with our ministry, said, you know what, Ben? Let me help you with your money.

And so when he came after my money, I didn't react in fear, I said, oh, thank God. Because I need someone who's wiser than me and cares about me to help me manage it to take care of my family. When I say Jesus is coming for your money, do you get fearful? Don't you dare touch my money. Or do you respond with faith? Who else would I trust with it? I just want you to check in with yourself periodically as we talk about the Ephesians, right? Because we might also be talking about you. All right, as we look into this, to review, Ephesus was one of the largest, most powerful cities in that day. It was the third largest in the Roman Empire. All the milestones in Asia were counted based on their distance from Ephesus, major city, right? It had big athletic arenas, libraries, museums, and it had the massive temple to the goddess Artemis, which in Ephesus, their Artemis was an amalgam of the Greek goddess Artemis or Roman Diana and an ancient fertility goddess. who was surrounded by orbs that are variously described as different body parts I will not enumerate. But this amalgam goddess had a temple that was one of the seven great wonders of the world, larger than a football field in the center of Ephesus. So major religious town and a lot of money

flowed into Ephesus because of the temple of Artemis. And yet here we saw last week as the gospel moved into this city, Ephesians began to put their faith in Jesus and they saw Jesus was stronger than the dark spiritual forces around them. That was the message from last week. And as they saw, hey, Jesus rules all things. This isn't just, I try to have a little spirituality to feel better about myself. This is actually the son of God who rules all things. He's stronger than any of these things I'm afraid of. It says the name of Jesus became extolled, honored, valued. And what we saw last week is the people who put their faith in Jesus took their magic books and burned them. And we talked about what's the significance of magic. So back then magic was a way to try to control unseen forces to benefit you primarily economically. That was sort of how magic worked. There's a lot outside of my control. So let me buy little books or amulets or charms or whatever to try to get the gods to bless my crops, bless my animals, or at best leave me and my animals alone, right? So magic was manipulation for my own personal gain. Very different from miracles. Paul shows up and does miracles. And it's not, hey, give a little seed of faith and I'll bless your family. The miracles were, no, God does powerful things

to authenticate the message that Jesus is the son of God who loves you and gave his life for you. And as they say, no, that's the kind of God I wanna worship, one who came while I was a sinner, died for me while I didn't deserve it, loves me and reigns over all things. I trust him. I don't need this system of manipulation anymore. And so they burn the books. And Luke tells us the economic value of them, 50,000 pieces of silver, 137 years worth of wages, massive economic movement. They said, I don't need to do this anymore, right? And now what we're gonna see is the response. And it's interesting, you saw in verse 21, it says, now after these events, Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying after this, after I've been there, I must also see Rome. And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while. This is interesting, because this verse is a preview of season three, by the way. Paul kind of Babe Ruth calls his shot, right? I'm gonna leave Ephesus, go east to Jerusalem and then west to Rome. That's true. He sees that, that's true. He doesn't realize he'll be in chains while he's doing it, but that's a different sermon for another day.

But he decides, hey, before I go to Rome, I gotta go back to Jerusalem. Now, when he wrote to the Romans, he tells them why. And I mentioned this because it's relevant to our time in Ephesus. Romans 15, starting in verse 24, he says this to the Romans. I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain and to be helped on my journey there by you once I've enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I'm going to Jerusalem, bringing aid to the saints. Why? For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them, for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you. So he's in Ephesus, about to go to Rome, and he tells the Romans, I gotta go the other way first. Why? Because what was happening in Ephesus and in all those churches in Macedonia

he's been visiting in season two, he says they're not investing their money in manipulating the gods anymore, but they heard about a need of the poor and they were pleased to give their money away. So rather than trying to manipulate unseen forces to get money for them, now they're giving money away, so I gotta go drop this money off among the poor, right? So there's this whole different set of feelings that are affecting the flow of the finances of these Ephesian believers. Suddenly they're not buying a bunch of trinkets and amulets trying to get a bunch of money for them, and they're giving money away to poor people somewhere else, a totally different flow of finances out of a totally different set of feelings, different motivations for where their money flows. And so Paul tells them, that's what I gotta do. And as he does that, what we saw in our passage was suddenly there's this different community of Ephesians that has strong feelings about what's going on. They go, wait a minute, that money used to flow towards us. And you get a very different emotional response around money. So to answer the question posed by Shabuzi, who in here is about to start a riot? The answer in Ephesus is Demetrius, verse 23. About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the way, for a man named Demetrius. It's a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis,

brought no little business to the craftsman. So he would pour little silver molds and make little maybe statues of Artemis, statues of the temple that you would use as votives to Artemis or maybe take home as souvenirs. And so he gathers all the smiths together, people who worked with different jewels and different kind of mediums to create trinkets around this goddess. And in verse 25, he says, he gathered them together with the workmen of similar trade and said, men, you know that from this business, we have our wealth. And you see in here that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people saying the gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger, not only that this trade of ours come to disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing. And she may even be deposed of her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship. Notice he doesn't even pump the brakes to ask, is it true? He's not looking for truth. What's he concerned about? Well, he starts with it. I'm concerned about my money. At the end of the day, it's not about Artemis, it's about my money, right?

And whenever you see the Gentiles mad at the Christian advance of the gospel in the book of Acts, it only happens in two places, Philippi and here. It's when the gospel starts messing with their money, right? Worship whatever you want, but don't come near my money. And as soon as it begins to affect him economically, he freaks out. But I want you to notice how he appeals to them, because this is what I care about the most. Notice he appeals to their fear. He appeals to their fear. We are in danger. This is a threat to us. We're gonna lose. He motivates their actions around money by what? Fear. Fear impacts the flow of my money. That's where he starts. We are in danger, we're gonna lose. But notice, what does he say? You know from this, we get our wealth. What he's not concerned about is, hey, if this continues, we may not be able to feed our kids. He doesn't say that. He's not worried about starving to death. He says, men, you know that this trade has made us wealthy men, right? So interesting little sidelight too, in Greek, the word wealthy is a combination of two words, good and to go.

He's like, guys, you know we're good to go. And these guys are messing with our good to go. He says, this is our engine to do whatever we want. So we're not worried about starving to death. We're worried about being able to buy the stuff we like. The houses, the vacations, the food, the meals, the parties with our friends, the stuff that makes us happy. They're threatening our ability to spend the money on us. So he appeals to their lust. You're gonna lose your ability to spend your money on whatever you want. And then he says, and if this continues, our trade will fall into disrepute and Artemis may be deposed. What's he worried about there? It's not fear and lust per se. He's saying, hey, we won't get the honor we used to get. And the goddess who supports this whole enterprise won't get honor either. So he says, I'm worried about pride. Interesting, his argument is we gotta shut Paul down, but it's not an argument based on truth. Who really is God and what is it to know him? His argument is based entirely on feelings. And what are the feelings that drive his finances? Fear, lust, and pride. And he appeals to it enough that what do they do? They get enraged. They cry out, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. They start a riot.

The riot goes on for hours. They won't listen to Paul. They won't listen to anybody until finally the town clerk comes up and goes, what are you guys doing? We're about to get in trouble with Rome. That's his argument at the end to summarize. He's like, hey, Rome doesn't really deal in misdemeanors. You're either good with Rome and you're good, or you're bad with Rome and they kill you. So knock it off. The courts are open, get out of the theater. And he confronts their fear with a bigger fear and they're like, you know, he's got a point. And it disassembles, that's the end of the chapter. But what's fascinating is it's about finances, but it's not really about finances. It's about the feelings that determine the flow of your finances, which is the case for many of us. We have arguments for why our money flows the way it flows, but at the end of the day, so much of the energy that determines it is how we feel. And I just want to ask you, does the flow of your finances have a similar fountain to Demetrius in the Smiths of the Ephesians? Some of us, we save money. I was going to say hoard money, but that may be too real. We save money and there's a place for saving. And there's a logic to it. You should save to pay bills, to have some margin in case something breaks.

to provide for your children, there's a logic that's good and godly. But for some of us, if we're honest, we say that logic, but at the end of the day, we are scared that I'm gonna lose. And I'm afraid of the world, and I'm afraid of y'all, and so I've got a hoard money for me, and if anyone says something like, hey, you should give away your money, Jesus said sell your possessions and give to the poor, you're like, I don't trust that guy, that guy's probably a liar, he's trying to steal from us. And instantly, we react in fear, because money is where I get a sense of safety and control. Others of us, you don't hoard a lot of money, but you like having money, because you like buying the stuff you like. I wanna go to whatever restaurant I want, I wanna go on whatever trip I want, I wanna go on whatever journey I want, any boat ride I want, I wanna be able to spend on whatever I want, and so if someone says, give away money to the poor in Jerusalem, give to others, you go, if I give to them, then I won't have it. And I like having it, because I like to spend it, so I want it for me. And so no, I won't do that, because I'm gonna do this. Or others, maybe you give, maybe you save, but at the end of the day, you go,

no, I care about having money, because it makes me feel important. I'm not necessarily fear of, or not being able to get what I want, I like money because having money makes me feel important. I like being a part of the echelon so people sort of know I've been successful. It says success. It gets me into rooms. It gets people whispering out, there she is, oh, there he is. It makes me feel important, feel valued. I can be ugly, but if I'm rich and ugly, someone's gonna care about me, wanna be near me, right? I just, money makes me feel significant and valued. So I want the money because it makes me feel like a success. It's pride. So some of us, the way money flows in our life, if you really paddle upstream, where does your money go? Just look at where it goes. And if you look at the flow of your money, if you paddle upstream, what are the feelings to determine the flow of your finances? For many of us, if we're honest, it's fear, lust, and pride. We look like Demetrius. And I know we don't like that. And so it makes Demetrius angry. And I would guess for some of you, like this whole conversation, I'm like, I made a huge mistake.

Why did I come here today? And you get angry, you're like, and so the objections come. Okay, this is all you trying to get money for your church. Well, no, we're not gonna put the QR code back up, but you should give to your church, whatever church you go to. But some of you go, well, but they're all charlatans, Ben. Look at how many pastors steal money. And I would say some do, for sure. And if you look at the book of Acts, there's a couple of people that try to use religion for money, and they are roundly condemned by God. So God hates that more than you do. But the fact that charlatans exist does not exempt you from the obligation to steward the resources God put in your hands. It doesn't. Some of you go, I don't have enough. Let the rich people give. I don't have any money. Parable of the talents. I only got one talent, he got 10. You're still responsible for what God put in your hands. The fact that he has more does not exempt you from the obligations to steward what you have, right? That's how this works, okay? But Ben, I'll starve to death. If I get my money away, I'll die in the streets.

What drives that? Check in with your heart. What are the feelings affecting the flow of your finances? Is it fear, or is it faith? There's another crew. There's Demetrius and the Smiths, fearless in pride, riot in the streets. And some of you aren't gonna riot in the streets, but there's a little voice inside of you rioting right now, get out of here. Is there another way? There is another way. And we saw it in the Ephesians who had faith. One is, before they were using their money to buy all these religious trinkets to try to control the world to bless themselves economically. Why did that change? Why did they burn all the magic books? Because they suddenly realized, I'm secure. I'm not giving money to make the gods happy. The son of God, Jesus, came and gave his life for me. He loves me. He gave all first. He cares for me. He controls my destiny. And so I don't need any of this fear anymore. I trust him. And you see this.

interesting faith, take root in them. I don't have to fear the uncertainty of the world anymore. I trust God to take care of me. And because of that, Jesus was extolled, he's honored, I trust him. They gave generously to the poor. Poor are people that can't pay you back. Why did their money flow that way? Because they go, they're the saints. Did you notice in that passage what I meant? The saints in Jerusalem, it says it twice. It says twice they were pleased to give to the saints who were poor. I actually derive joy from giving to the saints. That means holy ones. What does that mean? Those who are set apart to God. I actually derive pleasure in giving to the people God loves who don't have any money. So they go, I'm not anxious anymore about money. I trust God will take care of me. He guides my story. And yes, I'm supposed to be responsible, but I just obey what he says and he obligates to take care of me. I trust him. And because I trust him, I'm not held captive by fear, I'm liberated to love. I love him. If he loves these people and they're in need,

I'm gonna help them. And you see, they have no problem in extending money that direction, right? And so they have faith, they have love, and they have hope. I believe that what God is doing with my life and my finances has good in the future. We'll look at that in a moment in 1 Corinthians. But I wanna say this. As we're talking about the arrival of faith in your life, changing the flow of your finances, I feel like it's important to say any relationship you're in changes your relationship to your resources. It does. And I say this because I've been counseling a lot of newlyweds, engaged people lately. And in your generation, many of you primarily are young, you're getting married later than a lot of generations before you. Earlier generations got married when they were very young, 20s, didn't have any money, and they sort of figured out finances together. Many of you are getting married in your 30s, so you've had maybe a decade to sort of get your rhythm of handling resources down. And by resources now, I mean like widely your time, energy, and money. You go, man, I've had a decade to go, this is how I move to the world, this is how I spend my time, this is how I spend my energy,

this is how I spend my money, right? And you've figured that out. And so I'm talking to a lot of 30-somethings that have had a lot of time to figure out, here's how resources flow through my life, time, energy, and money. And then suddenly they introduce this relationship into their life, and this relationship changes their resources. Where you spend time, what you spend energy on, where you spend money. And it's been fascinating to watch the feelings that come up because of that. Some people go like, well, she wants to spend time together, but I gotta work. You go, yeah, you used to work all the time because there was no person there. But now you have this person, do you think it's wrong to spend time with her? No, well, then you'll have to spend less time at work. But I spend this time at work. Yeah, but you can't anymore. And you gotta see, do I see that as an opportunity or do I see it as a threat? No, I spend this amount of money on entertainment. Yeah, but she wants a duvet cover. I don't know what that is. And I don't wanna spend my resources on that. Yeah, but you've got a relationship now. Do you think it wouldn't impact your resources?

And now you gotta decide, do you see this as opportunity or threat? You gotta figure out how to treat her and how you feel about money is one of the major stresses in marriage. Not about how much money you have, how you feel about how you spend it is one of the major things you gotta figure out. So I just gotta be honest with you, church, let's confess. When I got married, I took an immediate and measurable hit on my resources by associating with Donna. It cost me. I'll tell you where it cost me before I even get to money. It cost me with time and energy. So I was in seminary at the time because I felt like God had called me to be in ministry, called me to preach. I went to a seminary that was rigorous academically because I wanted to really handle this book well. Right? So I would go to class all day and then study all night. And on average, every class had five books you would read. So I would read five books and you would write papers. I would spend an enormous amount of time on these papers. And I remember when I got married, she wanted to like have dinner together and stuff. And I felt just without even trying to control it was like, you're trying to keep me from the thing. You're a threat to the thing.

I'll never forget. I was riding in the car with a guy from the seminary and we were driving through Dallas and he pointed out this building and he says, that's where, and he named this. He's a professor, he says that's where he lives. And when he said the name, I was like, that dude's a legend. Like I was using a study Bible with his name on it. I was like, he lives there, like this is like a Bible study phenomenon, like no way. And he goes, yeah, yeah, he lives there. I'm like, that's crazy. And he goes, yeah, he moved there after he got divorced. And I said, what? He got divorced? And he said, yeah, man. His wife was in the courtroom and she said, he's married to his books, let him have his books. He just never spent time with her. So she left him. And when he said that, I went, oh, I could line up all my excuses. Hey babe, I'm studying the word of God, okay? For the sake of the people. But the reality is there was some other fear and pride behind that flow of time and energy. And I realized this relationship matters to me. And so it changes the flow of my resources of time and energy.

And so what I would do is I'd be studying and I knew dinnertime was coming, but I'd only read four books. There's five books. And I would look and go, I'm not a victim. And I would pray, and I'm being serious church. I would say, win at life. And then I would shut that book and I would go sit with my wife. And I gotta tell you something. None of you have ever asked me, did I read all five out of five books? None of you have asked me what scores I got in my classes in seminary. And because I got married, my grades went down from a 99 to like a 92. Can you believe it? Does that rattle your faith? But I wanted life. And Donna cost me time. She cost me energy. She cost me money. And like a hero, I sacrificed. Because that's what heroes do. Heroes sacrifice and I was like a hero. And then the craziest thing happened. As we would walk and talk, I would learn things about my wife in particular, but like women in general. I was like, oh, that hurts people's feelings.

Well, that would explain why so many of my staff cry sometimes in meetings. Maybe I should change the way I say that. And then we would run into a meeting and she would say, did you notice this person at a meeting? I didn't notice that at all. And she had an eye for things I would always miss. And then whenever I was discouraged, she would know how to encourage me. When I wasn't sure, she would bounce ideas off. And I look at our life and I took a hit in the short term, but I have so much more in the long term. This was a good investment. And I haven't even brought up the kids and all the good that has come from our life. But what felt like a hit in the short term by letting this relationship impact my resources led to exponential blessing on the back end of my life. And the same with hers. I mean, I broke up the band. Okay, she had a band that was touring. I was like the Yoko Ono of Donna's band. So she sacrificed too, but you look now at the opportunity she's had and say this relationship was a threat to my resources in one sense, but actually has left a wake of blessing that far exceeds what I could ask her to imagine. That's a long illustration, but here's the point I'm trying to make. Some of you, when Jesus arrives in your life,

what does he say? Jesus said, you can't serve God and money. So sell your possessions, give to the poor and you'll have treasures in heaven. By faith, Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain. What was the better sacrifice? He gave of the first and of the portions. I don't wait and give God leftovers at the end of the month. I give my first and best. Well, if I do that, I may not have enough money. What's the driver there, brother? Is it fear or faith? Because you're a steward of the resources God has put in your hands. And if you have a relationship with God, he says, I steward you, you await me, I bless you. Watch, it may feel like a loss in the short term, but I promise you it'll be blessing in the long term. And then you have to decide, will I make my decisions by faith or by fear? And the smiths had fear, but the stewards had faith of I trust you, God. I trust you with my life. And so I'm free to bless. And out of Ephesus came an ocean of blessing. He wrote to the Corinthians later, if there's no resurrection from the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. Our preaching's vain, you're still near. your sins, so eat, drink, and be merry

because tomorrow you die. Paul said that to the Corinthians. If there is no resurrection from the dead, then don't listen to anything I'm saying. He said, but if Jesus Christ really beat death, then our story runs on into forever. And so there's a bigger story here playing out. And then do you know where he goes to the Corinthians? So trust God with your money. He says, don't be so scared. Give it away because what's gonna matter at the end are souls that live on forever. Invest in eternal significance where moths and rust can't get to it. Invest in the things that ultimately matter. And he says, hey, I'm passing through. I'm gonna pick up some money from y'all. I got the money from Ephesus and from Macedonia. And he names drops this moment again. Hey, these people who've been liberated from fear by faith are giving to the poor in Jerusalem. I'm coming through your town too. And you saw there was this whole different set of Ephesians that weren't locked up in fear anymore. They were free. And I want us to be like this because I'm promising you, for some of you, you're so scared to give and the statistics are really sad about giving in America, giving in the church.

The internet likes to show us these manipulative pastors, but at the end of the day, for many of us, that doesn't exempt us. And so if you don't trust whatever church you go to or don't trust me, don't give here, but give somewhere. Your skepticism doesn't release you from your stewardship under God that he tells you to be generous. What I'm trying to do is argue from a different place of, I know the flow of your finances start from your feelings. And I want you to have that sense of, I trust God to take care of me. And because I trust him, I love what he loves. And he loves these people that I wanna invest in them because they're gonna run on it forever. And I want the economic engine of your life to not be fear, lust, and pride. I want it to be faith, hope, and love. That's the way the stream broke in Ephesus, and that's the way it'll break in your heart too. Donna made a little chart of it. If you wanna take a picture of it, you can. So it's the difference between those who see themselves as a steward of God's resources and the smiths, the smithies like Demetrius. Stewards say, I wanna honor Jesus. He gave all to me, I'm gonna give back. They wanted to manipulate a system to try to ensure blessing. One says, I'm done trying to control God.

The other rioted to maintain control. One, their faith fueled generosity. The other, their fear fueled anger. One was pleased to give to the poor. The other was just afraid. One was blessed by God to be a blessing. I receive spiritual gifts, I'm gonna give financial ones. Others said, no, I wanna use this system to enrich myself. One was motivated by faith, hope, and love. The other motivated by fear, lust. And pride. To close, I'll tell a story, maybe two. I've got four, I'll pick two. When we left Breakaway, the ministry I led in Texas, we would encourage students to give. And it was really fun to watch them see the joy of it. We would aim them at some things, and I remember one time it was aiming them at helping these kids who'd been rescued from human trafficking. We had the opportunity to build them a shelter in Nepal. And I told them, I know you're poor college kids. Jesus said, sell your possessions and give to the poor. So if you don't have any money, I was like, that's no problem, just sell something. And I said it just kind of half-heartedly, like, I don't know, just sell something. And this kid came up to me the next week in tears. And he said, I sold my PlayStation. And he handed me the money.

And I was like, don't blow by this, we're having a moment. This was an idol in this man's life. This was the thing that, and he said, I would rather invest in these kids than invest in this. And when I told them the amount of money they raised, they erupted in cheers, crying, hugging each other. They just experienced the joy of not being captured by fear, but motivated by faith and hope and love. One year we inspired them to help give towards translating the Bible into languages that don't have it. It's something that we do here as a church. You'll hear us talk about it more in the weeks ahead. There's people in the world right now that don't have the Bible in their heart language. And there are teams right now working very hard to get the Bible in every language on planet earth in our lifetime, in less than 20 years. And it's pretty inspiring to just see what God's doing. And if you haven't gone to the Museum of the Bible and seen it, just, I've literally every year go and watch more and more translations come in. But we had inspired these kids to give towards this translation. And it was part of our swan song as we moved ultimately here. And we lived in Atlanta for about 15 months in preparation to launch wherever God was gonna call us. And I remember when I got there, we got this copy of the Bible.

And I don't know if you can see this. Some of you might be able to read it. I can't read a word of it. But I remember we needed to find a babysitter. And this young woman came to our house from the church and showed up and we were introducing her to the kids. And she just walked around the house and she walked past our mantle and this was sitting on our mantle. And she just stopped short and goes, "'Why do you have this? "'Why do you have this?' And I was like, um, we didn't steal it. Like it was, it felt a little like, there was a lot of emotion around it. I'm like, ah, I was like, it's actually kind of a neat story. Like all these college kids got together and they gave money to the translation of this Bible. And when it got translated, they sent me a copy. This is cool. And she goes, "'My dad just got this. "'These are my people.' Showed me the picture of them getting it. And I looked at this and was like, I got a piece of that. I got a piece of that. You invest in something, you have some piece in it. You don't invest in something,

you don't have some piece in it. I got a piece of that, man. I went on a compassion trip not that long ago. You'll see us talk about Compassion International. And we've supported compassion kids for years. Just got our new photo of our kid, one of our kids that we support. But it was wild going on this trip. And standing there and really seeing, dude, like 35 bucks a month feeds and educates you for a month. You're living on 35 a month. How does those numbers even work? It's pretty amazing. And I was there on a compassion trip in Bolivia. And they sat some translators around us at this one meal. And they said, just pick a table, sit by them. And I picked this table. And there was a young woman there that was a translator. We began to visit and she asked, where do you live? And I said, in DC, I'm part of Passion City Church. And she's like, Passion, are you serious? Yeah, she was like, I've been to Passion. I've been on stage at Passion. I'm like, okay. So we started talking about the fact that we are basically family. And then about midway through the meal, somebody mentions that one of the guys on our trip was the former CEO of Compassion.

And they named the years he was CEO. And when they did that, the weirdest thing happened. The translators were there to just kind of help us. But you just watched them start doing the math. He led Compassion when I was a kid. And the whole evening got hijacked. One after another, they began to stand up and say to him, I was living in these slums, on these streets. This program got me, fed me, educated me, led me to Christ. I'm a lawyer now. And I moved back to that neighborhood. And I'm influencing kids. And it's downstream of your faithfulness. And one person said all that to him, because they were like, this is my shot. Crying. And the next one was like, well, then I gotta do it. And we were there for like an extra two hours. As this man stood there, and one after another, these people just started saying, I'm in the wake of your generosity. And there's a wake behind me of generosity. And as they were saying all that, you're like, that is totally worth 35 bucks a month. It's the coolest story ever. Last story, I said I'd tell two, I'll tell three. We had a kid in our ministry that every time we'd see him, he was always talking about his truck. Always working jobs to kit out his truck. Every time we saw him.

I got new rims. I got a new lift kit. I got a new this and that speaker system, floodlights. I mean, it was always something. It was exhausting. And I remember seeing him after he went to college, a couple of years later. It was the craziest thing. I saw him and his truck looked the same. His truck never looked the same every other time I saw him. And so now like three years have passed and his truck looks the same. So I instantly was like, what happened? Like, what's wrong? What happened? He's like, man, you know how I used to be obsessed about my truck? I was like, yeah, yeah, I do. And he said, I just got convicted one day that all my money terminates on me. He said, and then this ministry came and I had an opportunity to invest in the lives of other people. people, and I got convicted. I'm held up by fear, lust, and pride, and there's a whole different economic system available to me. And then he just started talking about the missions he supported, and I just watched his face light up, his joy light up, and you just saw, he's like,

let me tell you about these kids, let me show you these letters, let me write them, let me show you, and he's just showing me all that God is doing through him, and I'm like, man, you're not losing money, you're gaining life, look at you, you're alive, because you see, I'm liberated from the tyranny of my fear, and I'm set free by faith, and yes, he still pays the bills, yes, he still saves, yes, he's good financially, but he said, hey, my life is now aligned with the belief that there really is a God, and he really loves people, and I really wanna be a part of what he's doing, because I believe their souls will run on it forever, and I wanna be a part of that story. And friends, I just want that for you too, that's all. Some of you, that'll mean giving to our church, that's great, but that's not really what this is about, this is not a sermon trying to get to your wallet, this is a sermon trying to get to your heart, and so you give wherever you want, but you should give somewhere, because Christ gave all, and then tells us, trust me, live my life, my way, and watch and see if it's not a better way.