Jesus For Messiah | Week 6 | Sermon · Rewind

Jesus For Messiah | Week 6 | Sermon · Rewind

Pastor Bill Bush · Nov 12, 2024

Big Idea

An invested life is the ideal life — investing what God has entrusted to you in His kingdom is the path to real joy, peace, and purpose.

Jesus tells His disciples a story about servants entrusted with their master's money to show that God has given every one of us time, talent, treasure, and testimony — not to own, but to manage. When we surrender the idea that any of it is truly ours and invest it in what God has asked, instead of burying it out of fear, we find the joy, peace, and eternal impact He designed us for.</thesis> <parameter name="key_points"> <parameter name="points">[]

Key points

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1There are only three ways to live — wasting your life, merely spending your life, or investing your life — and only the invested life is the ideal life.
Pastor Bill opens with the sermon's big idea, contrasting the fool who wastes his life, the average person who just spends it climbing life's ladder, and the person who invests it in what God has called them to. He says only the invested life leads to true happiness, joy, peace, contentment, and eternal impact.
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2Jesus' parable of the three servants shows that what looks safe can actually be unfaithful, and God is watching what we do with what He gave us.
Pastor Bill walks through Matthew 25:14-30, where a master entrusts bags of silver to three servants according to their ability. Two invest and are praised as good and faithful; the third, out of fear, buries his and is condemned as wicked and lazy, suggesting he never truly trusted the master at all.
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3Everything we have belongs to God, and we need to surrender to being managers, not owners.
He explains that the first principle we must embrace is surrender: our money, time, and life aren't ours, they're entrusted to us. An owner mentality reacts in fear and resentment, while a manager mentality trusts the one who actually owns everything.
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4God has entrusted us with time, talent, treasure, and testimony, and He asks for our first and best, not our leftovers.
Pastor Bill unpacks the four things God calls us to steward, spending time on giving and tithing, referencing Malachi's charge to test God with the tithe and the Israelites' failure to give their first fruits. He cites a secular study showing generosity at the 10% mark is the one factor that frees people from fear of money.
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5We can't please God by playing it safe — fear, not lack, is what keeps us from investing.
He names three fears that keep people from investing: self-doubt, self-pity, and self-consciousness. He tells the story of a church member who almost skipped a Rescue America outreach call out of fear but went anyway, and a woman was rescued from trafficking as a result.
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6Playing it safe can cost more than any amount of money, as history and Rock Point's own story show.
Using stories of Kodak burying digital photography and Ronald Wayne cashing out his 10% Apple stake for $800, Pastor Bill contrasts worldly missed investments with the eternal payoff of 4,539 people trusting Jesus and nearly 2,000 baptisms this year at Rock Point.

Application

Pastor Bill's charge is to stop burying what God gave you out of fear and start investing it as a manager, not an owner.

Recognize what God has actually given you
Take stock of your time, talent, treasure, and testimony as things entrusted to you by God rather than things you own or earned on your own.
Surrender your ownership mentality
Come to grips with the fact that your money, time, and life belong to God, and choose to manage them as He directs rather than react in fear or resentment.
Give God your first and best, not your leftovers
Practice giving, starting with the tithe, before paying your bills or spending on yourself, trusting God to take care of you rather than giving Him what's left over.
Name and push through your fear
Identify whether self-doubt, self-pity, or self-consciousness is keeping you from serving, giving, or sharing your faith, and take the step anyway, like the member who almost skipped an outreach call.
Join in on what God is doing here
Whether that means standing to go with the Echoes church plant or investing time, money, and testimony at Rock Point, choose to step into the opportunity rather than just sit and watch.

Take it into your week

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7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

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Day 1

Jesus opens this parable with a quiet but striking detail: the master doesn't distribute the same amount to every servant. One receives five talents, another two, another one — each according to his own ability. There's no injustice here, no favoritism. The master simply knows his servants, and he entrusts to each exactly what fits them. Pastor Bill pointed to this as the foundation of everything else in the parable. Before any of us can talk about investing well, we have to settle one prior question: who owns what we have? If it's ours, we manage it for ourselves. If it belongs to God, we manage it for Him. That shift — from owner to manager — changes everything about how we hold our time, our gifts, our money, and our story. The servants didn't earn the talents to begin with. They were given. And what was given can be entrusted back. That's not a burden; it's actually a relief. You don't have to protect what isn't yours to lose in the first place. You simply have to be faithful with what the Master has placed in your hands for this season. Start there today. Not with a plan or a percentage, but with a posture — an open hand instead of a closed fist.

For reflection

In which area of your life — time, gifts, money, or your story — do you most naturally think like an owner rather than a manager, and what might it look like to loosen your grip there?

Pray

Pray for a genuine shift in posture — from ownership to stewardship — in the area where you feel the most resistance.

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Think about someone you've seen take a real risk for something they believed in — and it paid off. This message is about what it looks like when followers of Jesus do the same with everything God has placed in their hands.

Discussion questions

1
In Matthew 25:14–15, the master distributes different amounts to each servant 'according to their abilities' before leaving on a journey. What does that detail suggest about how God thinks about what He entrusts to people?
2
Pastor Bill drew a distinction between believing *in* Jesus and actually believing *Him* — trusting Him enough to act on what He says. What difference does that distinction make in the way a person actually lives day to day?
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The servant who buried his talent explained himself by describing his master as harsh and frightening. Looking at that moment in Matthew 25, what does Jesus seem to be saying about how fear shapes the decisions we make with what God has given us?
4
Pastor Bill identified four things God entrusts to us — time, spiritual gifts, money, and our story. Which of those do people most commonly think of as fully their own, and what shifts when we start treating it as something we're managing rather than owning?
5
James 4:17 says that knowing the right thing to do and not doing it is sin. Pastor Bill connected that to the idea that faithfulness isn't only about avoiding wrong — it also involves a 'to-do list.' How might that reframe the way we think about what it means to live a faithful life?
6
Pastor Bill described three fears — self-doubt, self-pity, and self-consciousness — as the things that cause people to bury their gifts instead of investing them. As a group, what are some practical ways a community like ours could help one another move through those fears and say yes to what God puts in front of us?

Pray together

Courage to move from holding on to stepping out — trusting the God who produces harvests where there are no crops

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Topics

Faithful Investment Generosity Kingdom Purpose Overcoming Fear Stewardship of Gifts

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