"Risking It All"

Introduction: What if I told you today church, that i have an investment opportunity for you. This investment opportunity is not without cost though. As a matter of fact, it requires everything you have. But…if you give it all to this cause, the benefits last forever. You may be thinking I’m talking about monetary things, which yes, I think this will include monetary, but more importantly, it will assume your whole life, invested in something greater than yourself.

Sound like you want in? No. Well, that was a little vague, so let me explain this investment opportunity today.

CTS: Risk it all for the kingdom of God.

I. Invest Your Life (1-2)

A. Invest everything (1)

Cast your bread: Set your grain out on the ships. The interesting thing of that day was that it wasn’t trackable. It was risky. You could sell and not know what was going to come of it. The Preacher is telling us to invest, even when we don’t know the outcome. Invest your life for a return. What is that return? In the kingdom? That which truly matters. God’s glory, men, women, and children saved and becoming disciples of the Lord Jesus.

Hosea 10:12 ESV

12 Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

B. Invest widely (2)

We invest in the kingdom of God by doing it widely. That means we invest in many areas. There’s something to be said, to be focused on the singular Gospel. That’s important and we should always be focused on that one thing. But we also can do that and invest widely that singular purpose. Every thing we do on a personal level and at a church level. Invest in the kingdom at home, at work, at the soccer field, in the neighborhood. Invest in Sunday School, Discipleship training, youth and children’s ministries, senior adult ministries, camps, men’s and women’s ministries. Start new churches and new ministries.

2 Corinthians 9:6 ESV

6 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Proverbs 22:9 ESV

9 Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.

Transition: Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. We can often get fearful of failure. But we can’t know everything and make sure everything is in our perfect little boxes before we invest. That’s the point of the next few verses.

II. Don’t Procrastinate (3-4)

A. Waiting until the time is right is useless (3)

I’ve heard it and said it myself. I’m going to wait until the time is right before I do this. I’ve heard couples say that when our lives our ready for it, we’ll have kids. Guess what? You’re never ready. This also applies to the spiritual. When I’m not as busy, I’ll do more in the church or more for Jesus. Maybe what needs to happen is that other things get set aside for that which truly matters. I’m reminded of when Jesus told the crowds to come and follow Him. Some of them said they wanted to follow Jesus. Jesus told them to come now. They came up with excuses. The time wasn’t right. I have to bury my father. I have to say goodbye to my family. I have to make sure the harvest is taken care of.

B. Procrastination leads to nothing

This is procrastiation. The right time is right now to invest in God’s kingdom. But Pastor, I don’t think I’m good enough to do that. That’s ok. You’ll learn on the job. Sometimes we are so afraid of failure, yet failure can often be our greatest teacher. Sometimes I bomb my sermons. But I need that sometimes so God can teach me something, not to rely on my own ingenuity or my own cleverness. Sometimes we try and it doesn’t work out. We get back up and learn from the failure and do it better next time. A ministry fails. Ok, let’s pray and ask God how we can learn and adjust. Maybe the time wasn’t right, but that’s ok. You don’t know when the rain will fall. You don’t know where the tree will land. Invest anyway. If you don’t invest, you will reap no reward.

Matt 25:14-30 relays one of the clearest teachings of Jesus on this matter. (TURN IN YOUR BIBLE HERE)

III. Trust God Even When You Don’t Understand (5)

Sometimes, you won’t understand life. You can’t control it. It doesn’t make sense. Just as a child growing in the womb, as the child has a soul in the midst of all of the building and growing inside a mother’s womb. Creation is incredible. I don’t understand it. Billions and trillions of stars, galaxy upon galaxy, and we haven’t even begun to understand it all. I don’t understand how God could save us the way He did. How could Jesus be willing to endure what He did for me? How could he be worshiped on Palm Sunday like today and then Friday comes and He was brutally beaten, scorned, naked, and alone. Killed. Was it the only way? Yes. But I don’t understand completely all the workings of it. I don’t understand the Trinity in fullness. I don’t even understand life in general at points. Why did this happen this way? Why am I suffering? Why do my prayers seem to go unanswered?

The church can seem confusing too. Why does the gospel spread faster in persecution than in prosperity? What will God do with the nations, and how will He save them? But we must say with the Preacher, we do not know the work of God who makes everything.”

So what do we do in response? Do we cower in the corner? Give up? If God is sovereign, what’s the point? Yet the Preacher tells us our response. Keep on sowing and reaping. With humility, we don’t know, but that doesn’t stop us from His command to go forth and make disciples and invest in the Kingdom.

IV. Sow and Reap (6)

Jesus sowed himself as the seed of salvation. He invested himself fully in those he came in contact with, he invested his life for them through His death and resurrection, in complete obedience to the Father. The harvest is his saving work of forgiveness and eternal life for all who believe in Him. The King came on a donkey, worshiped, yet came to be enthroned on the cross.

John 12:24 ESV

24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

A. The Gospel, the Word of God is the seed

B. We sow it everywhere

1. Our homes

2. Our neighborhoods

3. Our workplaces

4. Our friends

5. Our churches

Galatians 6:8–9 ESV

8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Isaiah 55:10–11 ESV

10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Luke Short, at the tender age of 103 was sitting under a hedge in Virginia when he happened to remember a sermon he had once heard preached by the famous Puritan John Flavel. As he recalled the sermon, Short asked God to forgive his sins right then and there, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He lived for three more years, and when he died, the following words were inscribed on his tombstone: “Here lies a babe in grace, aged three years, who died according to nature, aged 106.” But here is the remarkable part of the story: The sermon that old Mr. Short remembered had been preached eighty-five years earlier, back in England! Nearly a century had passed between Flavel’s sermon and Short’s conversion, between sowing and reaping.

Conclusion: This is one pyramid scheme that I am absolutely okay with. Why? Because God is the top, the center, and everything revolves around Him. My investment is for His glory. And that’s the way we were created. By doing that, we will find true purpose. Yet what is radically different from a pyramid scheme is that though God gets all the glory, we reap all the benefits of eternal life. Purpose. The good life that God has given us. It’s all His. But we get to enjoy it. He’s not a stingy CEO. There is nothing more exciting than living for the kingdom of God. It isn’t boring. It’s risky, at least risky to a worldly view of things and life. It’s actually the best place to be. Not always the safest, but the best place.

So what are you investing your life in? The Kingdom of God, or the kingdom of self? I’ll tell you, that second kingdom is temporary and ultimately broken and worthless.