Great Expectations | Victory Church

Well, good morning, Victory Church. How are you today? It's good to see you. I'm so I'm so privileged to be here with you. It's man, it's just a joy for me. And I just wanted to give a shout out to our lead pastor and say thank you for the opportunity to trust. Pastor John, come on, give Pastor John a great big hand. As well as the senior leadership team here. Happy birthday, America. 250, right? That's awesome. I love the Fourth of July, it was a great time of celebration that my whole life growing up, but even today, I, I kind of reflect this is a maybe it's my age or where I'm at in life. But I just find myself reflecting a month, what it means to be an American and looking about 250 is not very long in the scope of things. But I also realized how much America's changed just in my own life's lifespan. Right. And so I certainly love America. I love the freedom that it gives us the liberty that it gives us. And the it's also a great time to reflect and remember that that didn't come easy. There's some sacrifices made. But even today, I find myself looking around going, wow, it's it's different. Right? We live in a crazy world. And and we can be so bombarded by the things of this world that we might find ourselves one day looking around going, wow, is this really what it's supposed to be like? What does it really mean to be in America? What does it mean to be an American, all those kind of things. And I found myself through this process kind of thinking about that. In the church, we we see the world is crazy. And we have some understanding about things, but it's really easy to kind of lose the focus of what we need to be focused on. And I cracked open the Bible and there was a verse that kind of stood out to me, I'll share a little bit with you on that one right now. But I see Paul is handling a similar situation. In First

Corinthians chapter four. Let's read that here real quick starting at verse one. It says this is the way any person is to regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards to be found trustworthy. But to me, it is an insignificant matter that I would be examined by you or any other human court. In fact, I do not even examine myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself. However, I'm not vindicated by this. But the Lord who examines me, but the one who examines me is the Lord. Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time. But wait until the Lord comes, who will bring both light to the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of human hearts. And then praise will come to each person from God. So as I'm thinking through this, so you look at what Paul is kind of doing. Paul's in a similar situation. He's got a group of people in the church in Corinth that have kind of lost focus on what it what's going really all about what's happening. If you read in chapter three, you see that there are guys that are teaming up, right? Some of her saying, Oh, I'm with, I'm with a Paul. And the other ones say, Well, I'm with a Paulist. And the other ones are saying, I'm with Peter. And as you know, whenever you kind of align yourself with a team, the tendency may be that you kind of disregard or disrespect or judge other people's teams. Do I have any OU fans out there today? Talking to talking to you guys. So there was this division in the church of Corinth. And Paul had decided that everybody was kind of losing sight of what was really important. And so in chapter four, he begins to kind of lay out, hey, guys, all that stuff does not matter. Here's what matters. And I found myself in this process, doing the same thing as being a

believer, a follower of Christ. Here's what matters. So Paul uses a couple of verbiage here. And in verse one, he says, this is the way that any person is to regard us, he's talking about believers in the church. And he says, as servants, now that word servants, when you look it up, it actually means under rowers. And that's exactly what it sounds like. It's the guys in the bottom of the ship that were rowing the boat. Typically, they were slaves, they were chained to that. And they would row at the command of whoever was on the deck, because whoever was on the deck would give them direction and they could see was going on and they knew where they were going and their job was to row when they were told to row and to stop when they were told to stop. And so Paul paints this picture of what we are to be as believers is that we're a servants. When God says, jump, we say, don't say how high you just jump. He'll tell you if it's high enough. It's that kind of a response that we see is we need to be moving. We need to be obedient to God. But then he uses another word. He goes on to say that as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Well, that's interesting. Stewards is a different meaning. A steward is someone who manages the household of someone else. A steward is someone who is responsible for the resources of someone else.

They make decisions based on the benefit of the master is what a steward does. They evaluate what they have and they're tasked with managing and overseeing. Different than servitude, where we're very obedient and very responsive, but also stewards. So this is the way that everyone should see us. This is what Paul is saying. And he says, what are we stewards over? What are we supposed to be managing? And he tells us it's the mysteries of God. And that's really anything that was once hidden, which is now revealed through Christ. It's the gospel. It's the truth. And as believers, it's not about who you're aligned with, but this is what becomes true. Paul is saying, hey, it's about this. It's not about what others say. I love how he's so savage. He says, it's of no consequence what you think of me. But how often do we allow the judgment of others to affect our behavior, our response, our communication, our actions? And Paul's saying, what other people say? They're not the standard. He even says, I'm not the standard. I don't even judge myself, he says. And he's saying that I am not vindicated,

nor am I condemned by my own behavior, because guess what? I'm not the standard either. But Paul is saying there is gonna be a judgment for sure, and it's gonna be from God. And we need to be found. This verse two is what really hooked me in this passage. And I'll read that for you. It says, in this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that we be found trustworthy. Despite these judgments, the one that matters is the one that God gives us. And what he's looking for is faithful stewards over his mysteries, over the truths that he's given us, over the information that he's shared with us, over the talents that he's given us. And so, I just kind of wrap my brain around that, and then I wanna know exactly, God, what things do I need to be stewards over? I'm from what they call the streetlight generation. One of my favorite things to do kind of on social media is to see the modern day version of back in my day. You've maybe seen that. My favorite meme about my generation is that we were raised on hose water and neglect. I'm part of the streetlight generation, and we're called streetlight generation because that's what time we had to be home, was when the streetlight comes on. I look at the world today, even when I was a child,

a younger person, an adolescent, it's vastly different. I think about my grandson, and I wanna wrap that kid in bubble wrap. And I think about the stories that I lived, and I tell those to my kids, and they're just, their jaws drop, and they're like, I can't believe you lived like that. And we would ride our bikes everywhere. We knew every inch of the town. Every cardboard box was a potential fort. Every dirt hill was where we would have a dirt clod war. Bumps, scrapes, bruises, they were all a daily occurrence, and they were either badges of this victorious win or reminders of this epic failure. It was a different time. In this time, though, there was, I had a ton of liberty and freedom. My mother and father both worked. They worked for a time. We'd go out, and we'd be gone all day, and then we would come home, and it would be great. But there were occasions when I would receive responsibility. In the form of a list. You guys know the list I'm talking about? We call it a chore list, right? But really what it was was a list of expectations, right? So it was clear expectations. And there was also a clear deadline. Does anybody know what the deadline was?

When she got home from work, right? So it's a clear deadline, right? And also with this, because I knew my mother, I also knew that there was a clear reward structure in place. I'll call it a reward structure. There were other things besides rewards, one way or the other, right? So this clear expectation of what had to be done, and I knew my mom, I knew that I couldn't just, when it said clean your room, I couldn't just throw all my clothes in the closet. I had to clean my room. I had to actually scrub the bathroom. If I cleaned that, I had to actually run the vacuum, right? So there's an expectation. There's a standard, and Paul is saying, in 1 Corinthians 4, there's a standard, and it's not your standard, it's God's standard, right? And so I had this clear expectation. I also had this clear deadline. I knew that it was gonna happen when she got home. And I also knew that I was a kid that liked to go and do. In order for me to be able to go and do, I had to meet the standards, the expectations. Otherwise, I was not able to go and do. It was my choice. Had full reign in it. And it got me to thinking about what did Jesus say in the context of what Paul is telling us to do,

is to be good stewards. And it brought me to Matthew chapter 25, if you guys wanna turn there. Matthew chapter 25 is the second half of what is called the Olivet Discourse. Context matters in this conversation, because the Olivet Discourse is a very impressive and interesting conversation that Jesus has. This happens the week of his crucifixion. This is early in the week. And so this is one of the last deep teachings that Jesus gives his disciples before going to the cross. So he wanted it to stick. And it's called the Olivet Discourse because it starts with them having a conversation by the temple. And the disciples point out the temple. And they said, look how awesome that is. And Jesus says, man, keep in mind, this is a time of celebration. This is Passover week. Everybody's flowing around. There's lots of energy. It's all cool. The temple's beautiful. All these things are going on. And they pointed out, they said, look at the temple. And Jesus says, man, don't you know, this thing is gonna be flattened. The temple's gonna be destroyed.

Not one stone left on another. And he walks away and he goes into the olive grove. Now, when my wife and I were there a couple of years ago, you can see the temple mount from where it would be the olive grove, kind of where they suspect that it happened. It's beautiful. Everything is, you can see the temple mount everywhere, basically. But he goes into this olive grove and begins to teach his disciples. That's why it's called the Olivet Discourse. And in that, there are, when Jesus said that about the temple, he really got the disciples' attention. And they, boy, they perked up and they listened. And they said, okay, they had three questions. And the three questions were this. When will this happen? What will be the sign of your return? And what will be the sign of the end of the age? And Jesus begins to answer these questions. And he lays out the conditions and the expectations of what was going on. And I gotta be honest with you. It's not much different than the way it is right now. Wars, rumors of wars, nation versus nation, earthquakes, famine. These are all signs that things are coming. He's laying all of these things out of this.

And this gets into an eschological message. Today's not an eschological message. Perhaps we'll do that some other time. But it does set the tone. Jesus says, this is gonna happen. The disciples say, oh, when, how? Because we always wanna know when, right? The last possible moment. I'm not saying anybody in here, but you probably know somebody who wants to know the last possible moment that they can be ready. How long is the trip? What time do we need to be there? I'm gonna wait till the last minute. Hey, procrastinators, meet tomorrow. It's a joke. No, no, no, we like to push it to the last minute. And the disciples were no different. They're like, so what are we waiting for? And Jesus lays all of this out. And he says, these are the conditions. These are the expectations of what is gonna be going on around you. These things are gonna be happening. But then something shifts in 24, chapter 24, and Jesus shifts his focus from what's going on in the environment to what needs to be going on inside and internally. He's saying, this is what the world will look like,

but I want you to know that I'm gonna be looking for something too. And he begins to lay out the conditions. these great expectations. So if you need a title for today's message, it is great expectations. Jesus proceeds on the second half of the Olivet Discourse after talking about what the end times would look like and what his return would look like, he finishes with two parables and a judgment story. We're gonna cover those today kind of from an aerial view, a 30,000-foot view, and just kind of look at what Jesus is saying in this. He starts out in verse 1 of chapter 25. Then the kingdom of heaven will be compared to ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the groom. Five of them were foolish and five were prudent, for when the foolish took their lamps they did not take extra oil with them. But the prudent ones took oil in a flask with their lamps. Now while the groom was delaying, they all became drowsy and began to sleep. I'll stop right there because I think it's important for us to realize a little bit of backstory about a Jewish wedding. You gotta ask yourself, why is Jesus starting this conversation or in the process of this conversation, why is he talking about a wedding? And it was important because this is what's going on. So in the Jewish wedding, there's several steps that have to happen. First of all, there's the engagement. And the engagement in that Jewish wedding was that that was the the groom approaching the groom, the bride's father. And there was a conversation and there was worth measured and all those kind of things. As the father of a bride, I've had this conversation. And I was fortunate to have a wonderful man who loves my daughter very much as for a son-in-law. So I was fortunate in that area. But that conversation is what starts the engagement. From that point, it's a betrothal. And so by society's terms, they are married. So they've agreed, the bride and the groom have said, we're gonna get married. But they don't live together, nor do they consummate the marriage. They live apart. And the betrothal is a period of time that's undetermined. It's determined by the

father of the groom. And so the bride goes to her home, and the bridegroom goes to his home. And the father of the groom determines it based on the readiness and the preparedness that the groom goes and he builds a room and he builds a space and he prepares a place for him and his bride to come into. When he is ready, the father gives him the clearance and he goes. And typically this happens at night. It's called the processional. And this happens at night for some reason. I don't know why, because maybe Jewish calendar, they start their day in the evening. So maybe that's why it happened at night. But the job was they would go and they would get their bride and they would bring her home and they would immediately go into the wedding feast and ceremony, which typically lasted several days. There's a couple of key things that are really important about this, because we as the church are known as the Bride of Christ. And so Jesus is giving us a very clear picture about him coming at a time that we need to be ready for. And he uses the example of these virgins, five of them being prudent, five of them being foolish, about readiness and unprepared. They use the illustration of oil, because oil in the Bible represents the Holy Spirit and anointing and preparedness. And so now all of a sudden we see this picture and the five that had oil, they all wake up, the Bible says they all trim their lamps and they get ready. And the five who didn't have any oil went to the ones who did and said, hey, give us some of your oil. And the girls that had oil said, no, sorry, there's not enough for both of us. You got to go get your own. They went away to get their own. And so this is what we pick up at verse 10. When they come back, it says, but while they were on their way to go buy the oil, the groom came, and those who are ready went with him into the wedding feast, and the door was shut. Yet later, the other virgins came and said, Lord, Lord, open up for us. But he answered, truly, I say to you, I do not know you beyond the alert, because you do not know the day or the hour. Why does Jesus use this example, in this particular point in time, when he's talking about what it looks like when he comes back? He wants to create the right expectations for his disciples, because when you love

somebody, you give them the right expectations. Why does he use a wedding? A wedding is personal. It's meaningful. Who do you have at your wedding? People you love, family, friends, close relationships. Jesus is illustrating this with the wedding, because he wants us to realize that our relationship to God is vital. 10 bridesmaids, which are essentially, they had one job. They had relationship. And when you get to the end and he says, I don't know who you are, he obviously knew who they were because they were part of the bridal party. The word no there is actually translated to more like approval or acceptance. So when we see the context of what is going on here, there's five that were prepared, they were ready, their oil was filled. They had a feeling of their relationship with God. And there were five that were not, although they were part of the party. So what is Jesus really telling us in this? We can be so distracted by what is going on in the world that we will compromise our personal devotion. We can be so jaded by what's going on in the world, we may focus on public appearances and being at church, but we don't spend the right amount of time in a personal devotional practice with God. See, the oil is non-transferable. You can't just give it to whoever you want. Your relationship does not translate to your kids, nor does your parents' relationship to God

translate to you. It's individual. And these girls had one job. Their job was to light the way at night for the processional. Jesus is telling us we've got a job. We must be filled enough with his spirit and his love and his truth that we can light the way in a dark world. This is a relationship that is built from personal devotion, not public appearance. It's important that we're at church. What's more important is are you spending time in communication with God? And you do that through a relationship. A relationship is built on communication, talking, prayer, reading the Bible, listening, growing in that relationship. It's important. We have to be aware of spiritual fatigue in a world that takes us off our pace. Jesus is focusing on this part about the relational side of ours with Jesus. Secondly, Jesus tells another story, starting at verse 14. It says, for it is like a man about to go on a journey who has called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, each according to his own ability. And when he went on his journey,

the one who received five talents immediately went and did business with them and earned five more. And in the same way, the one who had received two talents earned two more, but he who received the one talent went away, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. Man, interesting stuff. Why would he use that? Why is he telling us about that? So he goes from a wedding, which we understand is very personal. It's about relationship. But now he goes to management of resources, really being a steward. And so we get this story of these two guys. One were getting five talents, one getting two. They do great. They come back, there's an accounting for it. Once again, there is a separation and then there's an accounting. There's a time that things are gonna be called on. So Jesus is telling the disciples, hey, you need to pay attention because there's gonna come a day that we're gonna have to account for this. And so the one with five talents goes and he says, hey, I turned it into five. And he tells him, well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge over many.

Enter into the joy of your master. Same thing happens with the guy with two talents. Same exact verbiage. He goes and he says, you gave me two, I turned it into two. And the master says, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful with a few, I'll put you in charge over much. Enter into the joy of your king. But the third guy, the one talent, he dug a hole and buried the talent in the ground. Verse 24 tells us it's now when the one who had received one talent also came up. Master, I knew you were a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed. And I was afraid, so I went away and I hid your talent in the ground. See, you still have what is yours. But his master answered him and said, you are worthless, lazy slave. Did you not know that I reap where I did not sow? So, and when I read this part, I always kind of read it as kind of sarcastically because obviously this guy did not know who his master was. Did you not know I reap where I did not sow and I gather where I did not scatter seed? Then you ought to have put my money in bank and on my arrival, I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore take the talent away from him

and give it to the one who has 10 talents. When we see this story, it seems very harsh, but it's very clear a few things about this. I think that God uses, or excuse me, Jesus uses this teaching. He reminds us that it's personal, but also we have a responsibility. This is kingdom business, right? He wants to give us clear expectations. And so he's telling his disciples, hey, it's personal. It's about your relationship with God, but also this is about business. This is not, we think about the things that we have in our life, our talents, our gifts. And a lot of times we think, oh man, that's there to benefit me. I'm so glad I'm good at that. I really get nice things out of that. And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, you need to think about this. The Bible tells us every good and perfect gift comes from the Lord. So everything that we're good at, every gift that we have, it's all his. Stewardship is about all his. We're just managing his stuff, his gift for his benefit. We're kingdom citizens doing work of the kingdom for the benefit of the kingdom. That's the focus we've got to have. And so we see this kind of play out.

And this one guide, just to give you guys the kind of a method of this, this is kind of interesting to me because he says, if you're faithful with a few things. I did some math on it and a talent was a measurement of weight of precious metal. And so a talent in today's economy, if we've used just money as the scope, it'd be worth about $800,000. So the guy who got five talents is worth about $4 million. And when he does well with it, the master says, man, you were faithful with a few things. That tells us something about the master. He's loaded. He got Elon Musk type money in there. He is loaded. He's got so much. But the other thing that stands out to me about this story, and I feel like what Jesus is telling us, is yes, it's about a responsibility, but it's you against what you've been given. He didn't line the three up and go, well, look what this guy did. What do you answer for that? He didn't do any of that. He said, each gift had been given according to their own abilities. God entrusts us according to our own abilities. We're not responsible to do the things

that other people are called to do, but we are responsible to be good stewards over the giftings and talents that God has given us. What are those? Are we using them to the best ability to benefit the kingdom? Are we using them for kingdom business? Man, as I'm thinking through all this, I'm asking myself these questions. I'm gonna be, my personal relationship is important. My responsibility to manage kingdom business, which are the gifts and the talents that he's given me. Maybe you have a wonderful smile. See, typically we always kind of either defend or we self-deprecate, right? When we think about the gifts and talents that we have, we always like to say, oh man, I'm really good at this. I had really good intentions, but I wasn't able to do that. I meant to do that. I meant to take care of that, but it's okay. So we always kind of defend ourselves or we go, God, I'm no good at anything. I'm worthless. Maybe somebody has spoken that over your life. I'm telling you, that's not true. God has given you gifts. God has given you talents. And we have to be good stewards for the kingdom. Jesus loves us enough to speak the truth. He doesn't want us to have any surprises.

He's gone away. He's coming back. In the scale of the Jewish wedding, we are in the betrothal stage. We are the bride of Christ. He's coming back. And the things that he's measuring is gonna be our relationship, personally, devotionally. And he's gonna look at the gifts that he's given us. They're not ours for our benefit. They're ours for the kingdom benefit. How are we managing those? Finally, Jesus wraps it up with an apocalyptic tale. In which case, he lays out this moment of judgment. I won't read it all, but I'll read some of it. You get this view, and he basically just jumps to the chase and says, this is what's gonna happen, guys. I'm coming back, and this is what is gonna happen. At the end of things, I'm gonna figure it out. It's the way it's gonna be. I will separate you by sheep and goat. And the sheep will be on my right, and the goat will be on my left. And the sheep all say, man, you are exactly who I want you to be. Well done. When I was sick, you were there for me. When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was naked, you clothed me. When I was in prison, you came and visited me.

When I was sick, you cared for me. Enter into the joy of your Lord. And he turned to the goats, and he say, goats, you're out. Why? Because when I was sick, you didn't care. When I was naked, you didn't give me clothes. When I was hungry, you didn't feed me. When I was thirsty, you didn't give me anything to drink. That's the separator, is what is inside of us. Now, here's the interesting thing about this story that I wanna point out. When he addresses the sheep and the goats, the righteous, in verse 37, says, then the righteous will answer him and say, Lord, when did I see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? And when did we see you as a stranger and invite you in or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to see you? And the king will answer and say, truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it for the least of these, my brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me. And then when he turns to the goats, they say the same thing. Then they say also in verse 44, then they will answer also, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or as a stranger or naked or sick or in prison

and did not take care of you? Then he will answer and say truly to you, to the extent that you did not do it for the least of these, you did not do it for me either. Jesus in this story gives us a very clear picture of what he's looking for. He's looking for our relationship, our responsibility. And finally, he's looking for his reflection. See, the interesting thing is they didn't realize the time. This was not presented as a checklist, a to-do list to earn favor with God. These sheep were not going, man, okay, there's a hungry guy, I fed him. There's a naked guy, I clothed him. There's a guy in prison. They're not going down a list. It's just flowing from who they are. They reflect the image of God. And the cool thing about this progression is I believe that Jesus is telling us, dude, if you'll focus on the personal relationship, put the work in, do the job, be ready to light the way. If you'll ask yourself some questions, what do I have, what am I good at, what is my giftings, what are my talents? Am I using them for the kingdom? If we'll do those things, then the natural ability to be the image of God will flow from you. Jesus is telling us the expectations. It's not hidden.

He loves us. He wants us to be clear. We are made on purpose for purpose. The cool thing about this, guys, is that this is not new. This goes all the way back to the garden. Genesis chapter one, verse 27. Verse 27, it's just so God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created a male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over it, over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every little thing that moves on the earth. God created us out of love. To resonate in his image, we are called to be stewards over that relationship. When he put Adam and Eve in the garden, he gave them a responsibility. This wasn't a punishment. This was before the fall. This was before the curse. This is what God created man for. Put him in his garden and said tend it and care for it. The fall happens, Jesus comes the first time and restores that relationship. And then he says, it's the same job. It's the same commission. It's the same responsibility. You're built for relationship,

to steward God's resources in your life and to be the reflection of Christ to those around you and model love and kindness and charity. It's easy to get distracted in this world. I'm so thankful that we can refocus. Bow your heads and close your eyes with me today. I wanna pray for you. Father, in Jesus' name, we thank you. We thank you that you love us enough to speak truth to our hearts. Lord, help us to land where it needs to land in our spirits, Lord. Help us to encourage us to step in and lean in, Lord, and focus on our relationship with you, on being responsible with the giftings and talents that you've given us so that we may truly be the reflection of who you've called us to be. We're so grateful that you joined us today. At Victory, we pray big prayers to a big God and we expect big results. If you would like to receive prayer, you can submit a prayer request by visiting victory.church slash pray. If this message or any of our messages have impacted your life and you would like to partner with us through giving, you can do so at victory.church slash give. Thank you again for joining us. At Victory Church, we live life to the full.

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