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Hope Channel

InVerse 3rd Quarter 2024: Stories that Transform

Sikhu Daco

Justin Kim

Israel Ramos

Joe Reeves

01 Rooted in Faith

02 Lost but Found

03 Discovering the Treasure

04 Caught in the Crossfire

05 Persistent in Prayer

06 Loving our Neighbor

07 The Wedding Garment

08 Bearing Fruit

09 Giving to God

10 Called to Serve

11 Living for Eternity

12 Filled with the Spirit

13 Building on the Rock

Good job is what we want to hear from everyone and where better to hear this compliment than from God himself.

Hey everyone, my name is Justin Kim and you are on Inverse And we're gonna be studying the Bible on how to receive not only a mere compliment or mere praise, but the greatest words of all.

Congratulations, good and faithful servant from the Lord Jesus himself, we found from Jesus's parables.

Hey guy And we have you guys and we want to say welcome and thank you for joining us We're going to be studying the Bible.

So we want to encourage you to take out your Bibles and also go to Many websites to go to let's say you can go to inverse Bible org download Bible study guide You can also go to hope TV org slash Inverse Bible and you can actually watch the previous episodes.

We've been looking at all the parables of Jesus, and we are in episode 9 of this arc on stories that transform.

Joe, if you can pray for us, and we'll jump to Matthew 25 right afterwards.

Heavenly Father, as we read the words of Jesus today, we pray that our hearts might be open to receive them and apply them and live them through the power of the Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus name amen amen amen amen see who we're gonna go to Matthew 25 is it in verse 13 14 excuse me verse 14 and then we'll just take it in bite-sized chunks yeah it says For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them.

And to 1 he gave 5 talents, to another 2, and to another 1, to each according to his own ability, and immediately went on a journey.

Then he who had received the 5 talents went and traded with them, and made another 5 talents.

And likewise he who had received 2 gained 2 more also.

But he who had received 1 went and dug in the ground and hid his Lord's money.

After a long time, the Lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them." Okay, let's stop there and maybe we'll take a little pause.

And Israel, can you kind of give us maybe, I know we talked about it, but you can repeat it again.

I think it's worthwhile for us to hear it also.

But Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven, kingdom of heaven and parables.

Like what is this kingdom of heaven motif?

Yeah, you know, the, the, contextually speaking, historically speaking, the people of Israel, they thought that the Messiah would come and establish his, he would take over the, the, the throne of David, his father, And he would establish this new order, world order here on earth.

And so they were expecting for the Messiah to come.

When Jesus came as the Messiah, he was trying to instruct the children of Israel that his kingdom was not of this world.

And so he would try to, The parables are designed to kind of help our minds understand and grasp the policies, the government of a world that we've not really seen yet.

And so he tells us the kingdom of heaven is not like any kingdom that you've ever experienced on earth.

It's not a kingdom that you rule with power or force, but it's a kingdom that is designed to, first of all, grow in your heart from within you, and then express itself in your actions with the world around you.

And then finally, when he comes, it'll be a kingdom that we get to experience.

You talking as me has spurred on this question.

We did talk about had a whole quarter on it on on religious liberty.

And you're talking about these are political assumptions that the people had.

And Jesus is dressing those political assumptions by really not talking about the politics, but talking about spiritual things instead.

Joe, how much does what Jesus is saying, how should it, or should it at all, inform our political views?

Well, certainly Jesus' parables put into perspective the political challenges we have in this world, because there's an ultimate kingdom.

So this throne of David that you referenced, that is a promise from the Old Testament that the Messiah would reign on the throne of David.

That was repeated through the angel to Mary, Jesus' mother.

But the New Testament teaches that that throne of David is in heaven.

And so I guess 1 basic principle, first of all, is that that is the ultimate kingdom and the ultimate citizenship that puts the problems and politics of this world, it downsizes it into its proper perspective.

So it's a matter of relativity in a sense, what's objective and what's subjective.

You have a twinkle in your eye that you want to jump into this question.

Yeah, and that since God's kingdom is ultimately going to be established not on this earth, not on the sinful earth, because sin needs to be done away with for his kingdom to operate optimally.

Bringing God's kingdom is not about politically trying to establish God's kingdom on this earth.

It's not what when he's talking about, you know, thy kingdom come in the Lord's prayer.

He's not saying now we're going to force people to abide by the rules of the kingdom of heaven that I have set out through political means on this earth.

What he's saying is that there's a spiritual, there's the spiritual kingdom of God we can experience here on this earth, but the ultimate reality of it is not going to come until Jesus comes and sin is done away with.

And so that ought to inform, yes, we are promoting the principles of God's kingdom on this earth, but we recognize that it's not through force, as Israel was saying, but it's through conversion.

It's through an inward experience that makes us subscribe to the government of God, but not by trying to force people to abide by what God has said that we ought to.

It seems like any political system that we have here now is a temporary on how tolerant we are with the sins of humanity, right?

It's really conversion that's going to help us transform, but we have greed, we have hatred, we have violence.

And with these things, like how do we just get along with unconverted, untransformed, including ourselves in that, into tolerant?

And God and Jesus's words are a lot more, they transcend all that.

But the thing is, for the audience of Jesus, they would have loved if Jesus would have spent his time attacking the abuses of Rome, the Roman Empire, and there was a lot of corruption in the Roman Empire, just like there is in the kingdoms of this world today.

But Jesus spoke to problems much closer to home, which was so much more uncomfortable for his audience.

He dealt with problems in Jerusalem, but he was really dealing with situations of the heart.

And this is why Jesus says in Luke 17 verse 20 and 21, that the kingdom of God does not come with observation, but the kingdom of God is within you.

And so while man is trying to look for all these political solutions to spiritual problems, Jesus isn't going to pursue political solutions to spiritual problems, he's gonna deal with the heart.

Well, from that perspective, I just want to ask a good foundation.

And we're looking at and we're looking at Matthew 25 in Matthew 24 and 25 are about Jesus coming again the second time.

And then here we see in 14 and 15, Israel, what's going on?

We have a guy here and he's giving his goods out to 3, was it 3 people?

Yeah, so the perspective here of the kingdom of heaven is the fact that the story is told about a man who is going to a faraway country and he has talents, gifts that he has to, that he wants to gain interest on.

And so he gives them to his, I don't know if they're his servants.

And then it is a responsibility of these servants to make best use of these talents or these funds by growing them.

It's not like talents, like a talent show, like I can swing a bat.

Oh this guy has 5 talents, he plays the piano, he plays the, you know, he sings, you know.

Well, yeah, it says it's based according to his own ability.

So not each is given the same amount of talents because we all have different levels of ability and we have different gifts and contributions.

So God's not going to expect me to do the same thing as each 1 of you because he's given me something different.

So this is investment ability, like in the immediacy of the of the of the text so this guy has the competence to do produce 5 he's given 5 1 has the competence of 1 he's been given 1 okay all right and and also it's I think it's noteworthy that when he gives each according to his ability, there's no reprimand for the 1 who gets 1 talent.

It's not like, oh, you can only manage 1 talent, so I'm giving you 1, and you bad servant for only being able to manage 1.

He just recognizes that everyone's capacity or capability of managing the funds, the resources that he's going to give them is different and that apparently is okay and you're not required to manage 5 talents if you are a 1 talent guy and God, the master is totally fine with that.

This is why later in the parable he expresses equal appreciation For the 1 with 2 talents and the 1 with 5 5.

I'm like, oh the 5 1 gets more appreciation Mm-hmm.

Series

InVerse 3rd Quarter 2024: Stories that Transform

09 Giving to God

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2023: God First

02 Cain and Abel: The Conflicting Givers

28m

InVerse 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

10 The Keepers of the Flame

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2020: How to Know God’s Will for Your Life

07-Closer Than a Brother

27m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2023: God First

08 Jeroboam and Hezekiah: The Giving Motivators

28m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2020: Daniel: Practical Principles for End-Time Living

05-End Time Accountability

27m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

08 The Sabbath and the End

29m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2023: God First

05 Isaac: The Altruistic Giver

28m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2021: Romans

04 Abraham and Faith

27m

InVerse 2nd Quarter 2025: Back to the Altar

08 The Altar Life of Jesus, Part 1

29m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2023: God First

09 The Phoenician Widow: The Trusting Giver

28m

InVerse 2nd Quarter 2025: Back to the Altar

09 The Altar Life of Jesus, Part 2

29m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2021: Romans

03 The Gift of God’s Grace

27m

Sound Doctrine