Thanks for listening to Foundry Cast this week's chat here. We had a little bit of a problem with our recording this week, and so we had to use a secondary source, but this passage was important to us as a church, and so we still uploaded it. So it's not our normal quality, but thanks so much for tuning in to Foundry Cast. When I was a kid, I was really, really bad at Mass.
There was a lot of tears, shit, in the Brooks household when I was seven, eight years old over Mass, over me not one who knew my homework, over me trying to complete my homework, over my father, not understanding why I could not understand why. I was really, really bad at Mass. My problems with Mass, I see people in my yard, I see us work with bad at Mass, people together, go up for us. My parents send me a tiny little private Christian school that kind of plays where you weren't having trouble even better.
I was in junior high, I was there for four years. And at this school, at this class, I just were so small, they couldn't fail you. They like screw up the schedule into the whole next year. And so I quit the learn alongside of many other people, that at this school, I had 61 D in Mass from seventh grade to tenth grade.
When I was in college, we laughed at all this at a six point, and I was like, we all kind of learned that party tricking with it. I started on a public school again, and I had to take the Mass section of the LEAP test seven times in two years, and I passed it by like two points. I had a 12 in Math on my ACC. I was horrible at Math, and to compound my unbad math, I decided the best idea was when I got to college.
I was at every algebra 2 at the Business Math my junior year. Just like back before top, so there was no incentive to graduate by performing at Mass classes, so I had to business math, and I loved it, because it's involved, I think, I'm going to add this traffic. So my worst decision I made about Math was when I get to college, and I said, you know what, I'm going to wait until my fifth year of college take a video on it. The third time I was in the class, the same teacher, I figured it would at least pick a different teacher by now.
I was kind of gay to go every single time I take this class, I get a little bit better at it. So it was going to take a class three times and fail it before they can take you out of school, I took a real math three times. The best thing about me and Math was when I got married to Meredith, I actually did the very first time pass a Mass class in one trial. I stayed in college for an extra year, because I could not pass Mass class.
So, thankfully, I got in grad school with the GRE, they did not read the Mass scores. I didn't take it. I got a horrible in Math. But this last year, you're going to catch up with one of the Mass, and I heard about Jesus, that's going on here.
This last year, we decided that we wanted to understand the truth, what he calls us to, and what he asked us to do. So we've been just doing gospel passages on Sunday morning this year. And because of that, I just kind of felt like it's only, I've been reading the gospel a lot more this year than I normally do. Just kind of constantly just going through and going through.
And there's this recurring thing that I'm seeing all across all of them. And the last six months we kind of have our background kind of things. So there's no time for us to start asking us this question. Okay, now how we respond to all of this.
And what I've been seeing for the last three, eight or nine months that started this journey in 2018, is this thing called Jesus Mass. And it's this way that Jesus calls us to see the world and his eyes that makes us reframe the way we look at abundance, the way that we look at numbers, the way that Jesus does things. He has a different way of doing Mass. And we do that.
It's a different way of doing that. It's always in the therapy. He's asking us to look at things and ways that we need to thrive beyond our importance of understanding. The founder, one of our four values we talked about, the four Jesus assumptions that personally is that we, the Jesus is here, the Jesus is doing things, the third one is that we believe Jesus asks us to do those things with him.
And that fourth assumption is our greatest fulfillment in life will be found is we participate alongside Jesus. And this fourth one is the one that's hard for us. We still want to always say, I can fulfill myself pretty, pretty alright. I might not even say this fourth one is where a lot of this constant of matter starts seeing these ways that Jesus talks about seeing the world in different ways.
So we're going to start off this morning. We're going to be a lot of scriptures. We're going to pop around a good bit. We're going to start off with the great commission, the very, very gospel of Matthew, the last words that Jesus said to his disciples before he left, before he went and the head of him, he kind of leaves us here to do our thing.
So Matthew chapter 28, 16, through 20, this is what it tells us. The 11th cycle is left for Galilee going to the mountain where Jesus told him to go. And they saw him, they worshiped him, but some of them doubt. Jesus came and told us the disciples, I've been given all authority on heaven and ours.
Therefore, we're going to make disciples of all the nations. That's how I see him in the name of the Father and Son of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus, He's new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
There's a couple of details that Jesus just converses for us to think about this morning. But the first one I want to do is I want to build a number for it. So Jesus said He's meeting there with the 11 disciples. There's a 11 in that one time.
Jesus sends it to heaven. He says, right now God's Father. He tells them that the first chapter of Acts actually kind of splashes out the story a little bit more to us. And when He tells them that this moment says, now I'm calling you to go to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.
And you just kind of spiral us out of their world. What Jerusalem is their center. It's just bigger and bigger and bigger. So the disciples do what Jesus said.
There's a few weeks after this. They're there. They're in John Mark's house. We talked about this lately.
This is kind of their home base in Jerusalem. They're there. They're going to make a hundred point believe. A hundred point people left when this is Jesus.
A hundred and thirty died. They believe they saw him and believed this was continuing on. So you go from 11, we find there's a hundred and twenty of them on the day of Pentecost, the Jewish festival. And the Holy Spirit comes and it fills the room and comes to fire.
All this by crazy Bible stuff starts happening. Peter puts kind of being able to food and starts speaking to Peter a lot in this last couple of months. And Peter starts speaking very boldly to people. And it says, end of it.
And that day, three thousand people came to believe. So we see the group go from 11 to 120 to 3000. A couple of chapters later Peter begins speaking out in the streets again and say the group grew to 5000 that day. A few chapters later and the stowing in the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, early church historians, who looked at this by three or four years after this new Jesus movement began.
It says, in the three or four years afterwards Jerusalem, there was around 20,000 people who called themselves followers of Christ. So in three or four years you see 11 dejected followers to 20,000 people. Does anybody else have questions about that? What on earth makes that happen?
That's able to happen I think because the ways that disciples were called to follow Jesus. They simply just did the same thing. They didn't do it for three years. They believed into those same things.
He's been doing it for three years. And they spoke about the world and they saw the world in a way that Jesus had divided them into. A passage in asking me just read Jesus. All of the already has been given to me.
All of the earth and under the earth. All of the earth already in the world is now mine. Therefore go and make silence, go and make followers. That mind, this should not even make sense in our head.
Jesus is saying, I've got all the power everywhere. And the only thing I'm asking you to do is to go and buy people to follow me like you've been following me. He's removing so many questions and so many things. The only thing you have to worry about is going and buying people to follow me like you have followed me.
My grades in church, I've been reading them a lot lately. I have a little bit of a pre-chir crush on them. We have those sometimes. But my grades says this.
If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get the disciples. There's a little bit of paradox there. The disciple needs to follow.
The disciple needs to imitate you. The disciple needs to take on this original call that God gave his people thousands of years ago. And he says, listen, I just need you to reflect who I am. So simply look at me, see who I am, see how I reveal myself, see how I react in situations, see how I ask you and call you to see and look and ask in the world differently.
And just do that. Just imitate me. That's why the Old Testament God had that saying about idols and grieving images and attempting to make themselves something new, image other than me. Because God just asked to want my people to speak truthfully to who I am through their actions.
So disciples, this multiplied like this simply because disciples took on that call and they were able to remove all the questions and the doubts. So what happens when people are getting followed in Jesus and he's going to be the church rapidly, multiply? 11 to 120 to 3000 to 20 thousand just the space of a few years. The followers create other followers.
So Jesus made lessons for us to think about. There's three lessons that we see inside Jesus and what he asks him to do that. I believe are part of us living in this sort of place. The first is this.
The first lesson. First lesson. First lesson. And last, first.
The more chapter 10, Jesus says this. The translation is a whole circle. Peter, you say to him, look, we have left every saying in follow. Jesus said, truly, I tell you, there's no one who's left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or feel.
For my sake, for the sake of the good news, you will not receive a hundredfold now in this age. Houses, brothers and sisters, mothers, children and feels, or persecutions in the age to come to the final part. But many who are first will be last in the last little being first. So this is the only teaching of Jesus that we find in all four Gospels.
Like there's a couple of miracles that show up in all four Gospels before they can teach Jesus. There's a lot of children too, it's more children to read. But this is the only one that shows up in all four Gospels and it just doesn't happen four times. It happens around nine times.
Those who make themselves first will be last. Those who make themselves last will be first. And if all four Gospel writers feel the need to include it and what they say to us, there's something special that's going on here. There's a formula for Kingdom of London because it asks us to realign our hearts and to realign our souls.
Towards a new humility, it's based off this new understanding we have of our salvation. When we begin coming to terms with our sin, but we also begin coming to terms with the sacrifice that Jesus made for each one of us as individuals. A lot of people in our area, a lot of people in the United States, a lot of people in the West, a lot of people in the world, kind of believe on Jesus as a theoretical level. I can get behind that, but in a deeply personal level, that's a struggle for us.
There's only one way to come to terms with that. Personally, we understand, okay, every single thing I think I find in Jesus. The validation I've been trying to find, I find in Jesus. The worst that I might have been trying to find, I find in Jesus.
All these things that we look for, but think about it, how many times are we willing to do not nice things other people are pressing into validation or something? I think that phrase, like a climb on top of the back of someone else. If I can think about that. When we truly begin to come to terms with what Jesus has done for us, then we understand we only have one relationship to actual matters.
We know that we are safe, we are secure, that everything we're looking for is found inside of that relationship. Then we don't need to seek to find an award and argue and to fight for that security and the eyes of other people. We're able to take on that posture of, I'm willing to be less. I'm willing to not have to try to prove my importance.
I don't have to try to find or prove my ability to. I like to find or prove my validation to you because I find it and Jesus and I don't care about anything else. Then call Jesus to a man's a total break from our past and our past is going to continually try to break into our grasp. Those words in the back of our head, first of all, we can't do it one time.
It's a posture that we take into the disciples and learn that lesson. We have to move into that our submission to Jesus allows Jesus to grow in us and to grow in the group. We can call ourselves followers across from us. This is a vision, another popular thing in our world now.
This is never going to talk to our thing in the world period. This is an eternal lesson. Those who make themselves first, we will ask themselves last, we will be first. We might have some frustration.
There's a lot of stuff I'm worried about. A lot of things I'm concerned about is the journey that disciples went through. Those three years of Jesus. Listen, I do this.
There's some stuff that is keeping me from it. That's the next lesson that we learn. It's so much disciples. It's not only spirit abundance.
In Luke 511, we talked about this story a few weeks ago. We talked about Peter's call inside of the Gospel of Matthew. I want to read Peter's call from the Gospel of Luke. I don't want you to think about this.
Think about this in terms of what people say, I have enough if I follow you. One day is Jesus was preaching on the shore to see a valley, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word. He had two empty boats and the water set for the fisherman and left them and were washing their nets. He said, one of the boats used a sign in his own to push it out towards the water.
So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there. When he finished speaking, he said, the sign of the note. Now go out for where it's deeper and let down your nets and catch some fish. Master Simon replied, you worked hard all night long.
He didn't catch a thing. If you say so, I'll let the nets down again. This time the nets were full of fish that began to tear and shout for help. For all the partners in the other boat and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking.
We're not here. When Simon came to realize what happened, he felt his needs for Jesus and said, but Lord, please leave me. I'm too much of a center to be around you. For he was also struggling the number of fish they had called as they were, as were others with him.
His partners James and John, the sons of Zebedee were also amazed. Jesus replied to Simon, don't be afraid. For now I'm going to be fishing for people. And as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed him.
Always fear of bunnies. There are times when we know what we're doing and we know it should have been better and nothing has happened. When Jesus steps in, we see everything happen. But what's the love about this story is Jesus does not have his first encounter with Simon and Peter.
In a place he does not understand. He has this encounter with Simon Peter in context. In context of who Simon Peter was, in context of where Simon Peter was used to Jesus. Always want to call us in context.
He always wants to meet us in context. He meets us right away. He calls us. He speaks to the bottom of our soul, the things that we were made to do, the things that we already understand.
He asks us to trust us in those ways. Simon Peter, the professional fisherman, who had called nothing all night long. Washing us next, I'm ready to go home and go to sleep. It's time for me to end my day is traveling for each year, comprehensive hymn that are both back out in the water.
As much as he meets us, I've read the story and realized that Peter had to close it. Jesus asked us to teach. That was what Jesus was. We have Peter here in close proximity to Jesus during all of this.
After this teaching, Jesus met Peter in context. He asked me to throw this over. We see the abundance that happens. I learned the story by the time that carp jumped in the boat with us.
I'm here to finish the boat. That carp jumped in the boat. Remember? There's a 40 pound carp on the edge of the boat.
I'm sitting on the edge of the boat. I'm like, get it back. I'm coming back. I'm coming back.
A whole boat. A whole boat full of fish. This is abundance defined in the context that Peter can understand and abundance that happen through Peter's obedient ashes. Jesus always meets us in context and he calls us in context.
This shift asks us to reframe our idea of abundance. What does abundance look like in your context? This is the disciples immediately. It's Peter, James and John.
This is the people who became Jesus in inner circles. They immediately left everything and followed him. It's what abundance looks like in their context. They experienced Jesus in a Holy Spirit in a way that was different from the lives they had before.
Holy Spirit abundance leads to the realization that I don't need to hoard this on. He can make more things happen. The dollars create other followers. They can take us to create other content.
The last lesson really here is this is abundant response. We've read a lot of big pieces today. We're not going to read this one. There's a terrible thing.
Three of the gospels tell us it's called the parable of talents. I've got an interesting relationship. We talked about four or seven more but I used to be terrified of this parable. It goes like this.
A wealthy business man was going away on a business trip. He's got to take some time and cause three of the servants together and he trusts each of them according to their abilities with a portion of his wealth. He gives one servant five talents. That's a sum of money.
He gives another servant two talents and he gives another servant one talent and according to their ability. The story tells us immediately after the man gave his money to his service, the first one who received five talents. First of all, one talent. The one that's earned, if you've got the least, just one talent, is this unbelievable amount of money.
So the one who has five, we're talking bigger than we can comprehend in our heads. That's the power of all the numbers get really big amount of money. So he immediately takes it into the marketplace, invests it and works with it. The second one does the exact same thing.
The first one, the third one, has one talent, he varies his in the back yard. At first time, the business man comes back and he calls his service together to make a count of what he trusted with according to their abilities. Well, I took it and I went and worked with it and I'm now double it. So where you have five talents, now you have ten talents.
The second one said, well, I did the exact same thing. I took my two talents, which you gave me and I took in the marketplace with that and now you have four talents here to go. And the first one came to this, I'm actually kind of scared of you. So I buried in the back yard.
So here you go, here's your one talent. I showed that that third servant has changed the idea of the master one. He had an untruthful idea. He not experienced him fully, he understands the truth of who he was, and he gets nervous and he's safe.
And in the parable, the master Jesus said, so much has been given, much will be expected. I used to be terrified of that because I was scared that I would react differently. But reacting away, it was not the way Jesus was asking me to act, what I have. But over years and years and years of reading this, it's realizing, no, what Jesus is asking us to do is asking us to show our faithfulness.
He's asking us to respond over the deep. He's asking us to say, hey, relax what all you've done for me and I'm willing to put this back into play for you. This is not a new idea. This is actually going back and beginning.
This is already God and His people. So we take the things that we have and we put them back and give them back. The person who gave them to us in the first place, Deuteronomy chapter 6, 10-12. This is the beginning of a covenant relationship with God and this is what it says.
The Lord your God will soon bring you into the land he swore to give you when he made a vow of your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a land for large, prosperous cities that you did not build. The house of the Wurci's sake of goods, you did not produce. You was our water from cisterns, you did not do.
And you will keep from vineyards and hollow trees, you did not plant. You did not eat in your fill of this land. Be careful not to forget the Lord who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt. God's telling us to be like, hey, I'm going to throw you into every single thing that you need.
You're going to walk into living your best life. And you do not do anything that I'm giving all of this. And the only thing I'm asking you to do is to re-wise where it came from. To re-wise the way that I am willing to make a covenant work in a holy spirit way.
The Old Testament is called the word, the word is called the tithe. It's a proportional gift that God's people bring back to the temple. And bringing back to the temple, that means that that gift is used for the service to the Lord. It's used for the relief of the people.
There's a much more complicated system of equality that works out in Old Testament. It's real to make sure everyone always has every single thing they need. But you brought that proportional gift into the temple every year. And the whole proportional thing mattered because when you had a great year, you brought in a proportional gift.
That's the same thing that's 10% of people. You had a really common year. You brought in a proportional gift. I think that matters about that.
A couple of things. Number one, we're talking about this after we took up the offering. We realized that. I'm not doing this before.
When we were able, when we had a good year, we were tempted at that point in time to say, you know what? I don't think I really need to do that much. And we're having a really hard time. It's really easy for us to think really really really need this.
God asks us people to do adgo meetings to come into a proportion. To say, hey, listen, no matter what life is life, in an inscripture they refer to this time as a first fruit offering. No matter what life is life is the first thing I'm going to do. Go get like trust you.
That's what you're doing. And I struggled. If you've been around family for a long time, you realize that we don't talk about this that much. On this confession point, I'm a little nervous to do this right now.
But this is a realization I've come to in the last four or five months. If we're going to say, anytime you invite Jesus into a space in our life, we're going to see a abundance and growth through that. Is it right for us to not talk about that exact same thing? And one single part of our life that makes us nervous and insecure.
We truly believe that every space we invite Jesus into that abundance happens. We have to realize that means that every space we invite Jesus into a abundance happens. One thing that we say every single Sunday is that we believe that you can do more than what we have than what we can do with what we have. And that when we, as your church through obedience and through sacrifice and through trust, and we believe that supernatural things happen with those gifts.
It happens always through multiplication, through the actions of the local church. It also happens inside of our hearts and our home that we trust you. With our time, with our skills, our resources, our finances, everything, we trust that you can do more. We see why you know what I can have.
This is an important thing to God with these people. But then say, realize that when we're holding back anything from Him, and we're actually saying, Jesus, you don't know about this and you can't do this. You're not big enough towards it. We're completely and wholly offered ourselves knowing that who is last and first and first will be last.
Know that Jesus steps in abundance happens and provides for the needs so that the people can't go through this mission. Then the last place for us to come to this many times, giving is the last one in the discipleship. It's the last piece that we're willing to give, it's that piece of control that we can still identify and maintain and think we have enough. But for us, before four hours of Jesus Christ, that means we have to give a full responsibility.
But think about that, man. There wasn't my life all the time when I was just kind of sketching the issue. Eleven, dejected, and broken disciples of Jesus Christ. We see a resurrection, we see a resurrection.
He says, all authority on heaven and earth and under the earth is mine, and so just simply keep on doing what you've been doing. They gather up everybody who's left at 120 of them. They go hang out and upstairs rooms are used only. They just follow the Father and follow them.
Just doing what they've been doing. All those three are coming. First, like, 3000. Couple weeks later, five, seven, four years later, 20,000 people.
It says that Jerusalem was about 60,000 at the time. This swell that we read about the way the church, the early church community acted in the book of Acts and sharing things to each other and making sure everyone had every single thing they needed. We're from an economic perspective. This isn't some crazy form of first century giving economy.
This is, this scene cannot support all of these people. All those people are just coming and coming to Jesus and coming to Jesus and they realize this is the place where this whole group starts from. This invitation to a completely different style of life. Jesus, we've all, we're going to experience you.
We're sitting here in this room right now. We're sitting here in this room because we've experienced you, because somebody we care about is experienced. Experience grows. We realize that there might be things in our life that we are holding back in this period.
Jesus, I know a child, personal life. I don't want to see you face to face one day. If you're sure it's the things I missed out on, because I was not willing to trust enough and I was not going to go. Jesus, I believe, if we all believe that our greatest fulfillment in life that we found is we're alongside of you.