Doing Business for the Kingdom

I want to talk about doing business for the Kingdom, how to do business for the Kingdom. The key word in this message is business, doing business. I say that quite intentionally. We are referring to a posture, an attitude that we must have when we approach Christian work: doing business for the Kingdom.

This passage also reminds us that preaching the Gospel is a serious matter; it is something that has to do with life or death. It is something tremendously deliberate. And I am going to read the parable that the Lord told concerning this aspect of the Kingdom, and remember that we are in this series of sermons dealing with the call to evangelize. What I want to do and accomplish through this series of sermons is to sharpen your awareness of the importance of preaching the Gospel, of viewing this as a serious responsibility, as a privileged burden that we bear, as our commitment as believers—the fact that our identity as believers resides in this evangelistic activity, in this call to share with others what Christ has done in our lives and what Christ means to us.

If our lives are not saturated with that urgency to preach the Gospel, then we are living the Christian life off-center, because at the heart of our calling, of our existence, is sharing the word of God. And I believe this will become very clear through this message. As I say, all these messages are intended to enrich us and establish a solid theological and biblical foundation so that we may pursue the evangelistic call with full awareness and in a fitting manner.

So, it says here in verse 11, Luke 19: “…While they were listening to these things—because the Lord had already spoken about other situations and other subjects—Jesus went on and told a parable because he was near Jerusalem—and this is interesting—and they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear immediately…”

So the Lord offers this parable as a corrective, to correct an error on the part of his disciples, a mistaken perception they had about the coming of the Kingdom of God and what it would be like. This parable is a correction of that mistaken perception. So the Lord says:

“…A nobleman went to a distant country to receive a kingdom and then return.—Ask yourself who this nobleman is, what that kingdom is about, and what it means that he went to a distant country. It is a parable; it has its equivalents.—“…he went to a distant country to receive a kingdom and then return. And calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas…”—minas refers to a coin of a certain value.

I did a little research about this, and it is said that a mina was roughly equivalent to 100 drachmas, and if he gave him ten minas, that means he gave him 1,000 drachmas. And a drachma was another type of coin; one drachma was equivalent to one day’s wages for a laborer. In other words, by giving them ten minas, he was giving them the equivalent of 1,000 days of a laborer’s work, practically three years of work. It was a fairly substantial amount. Today, it might be the equivalent of almost 100,000 dollars if we estimate that a laborer earns 30,000 dollars or something like that per year. So it is an amount of some significance. He therefore gave each of them ten minas; a mina is the coin, a unit of money.

“…And he said to them, ‘Do business until I come.’”—I want you to reflect on that word, do business, because it is not a casual word. For me, when I understood the meaning of the word do business in the original Greek, it opened up a much broader, deeper understanding of this parable. He tells them:

“…‘Do business until I come.’”—And here the Lord, interestingly, adds another element that is not necessarily essential to the rest of the parable, but which I find interesting.—“…But his fellow citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’

Here, in his account, the Lord adds an element of conflict and opposition, of drama in a sense, to the rest of the narrative. He has enemies who do not want him. Who might those enemies be? Ask yourself as I read. What is the Lord referring to here regarding the Kingdom of God, the world, and all these things, and how many people perceive Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God, and the Gospel?

“…It happened that, after returning once he had received the kingdom, he ordered those servants to whom he had given the money to be summoned before him, so that he might know what each one had gained by doing business….”

Once again, the word business comes up. And it is not put in terms of how much they had done or how much they had obtained—no, but how much each one had gained by doing business, how much profit they had earned specifically through their investments and business efforts. It is profit that he is talking about here, using that same business terminology. This parable is saturated with a business atmosphere, a corporate atmosphere—a corporation, rather, a business.

“…Then the first one, to whom that nobleman had given ten minas—100,000 dollars, let us say—came and said, ‘Lord, your mina has earned ten minas.’”—Interesting; think about that too: your mina has earned. How interesting that he does not say, “I earned” or “I did.” No, he says, “Your mina has earned,” a very interesting and revealing little detail, in my opinion.

“…your mina has earned ten minas. He said to him, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little thing, you will have authority over ten cities.’”—He earned ten minas, and now the Lord gives him authority over ten cities. That seems like a good deal to me: some effort, but now he is governor of ten entire cities.

“Another came, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has produced five minas.’”—This one earned only half of what the other earned, and one might think that perhaps he deserved less approval or less praise from the Lord because his return was half that of the other, but notice that he receives the same expression of recognition from the Lord, and he also said to this one, “You too, be over five cities.”—In keeping with his return, he is also given a reward of five cities, but he is praised because he produced a return, made an effort, and did what his lord had commanded him to do.

“And a third came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your mina, which I have kept stored away in a handkerchief.’”—I picture him taking out a little handkerchief with four knots, with the coin inside, and as he speaks, he is undoing the knots one by one.—“Here is your mina, which I have kept stored away in a handkerchief, because I was afraid…—Think about that too.—…of you, because you are a severe man, who takes what you did not deposit and reaps what you did not sow.”

This is the perception that this servant has of the nobleman. It is interesting because one of the things I like about this parable is the way it portrays this nobleman. Who do you think this nobleman is? Jesus Christ—everyone say it—Jesus Christ. This is the man… Jesus is telling the parable, but he is speaking about himself, this nobleman who goes to a distant country. What is that distant country? Heaven. So when he returns from heaven, he summons him, and this servant knows something about this man’s character.

To me, this parable is also very revealing because it tells us something about Jesus Christ, for those of us who are accustomed to thinking that he is a meek little lamb, always with blond curls and languid eyes and kind of low energy, as Donald Trump says. But here we are shown a severe image of Jesus Christ; he is a man one must be careful with, because this man knows what Jesus—or his lord—is like. And notice that this lord does not tell him, “How can you think that, boy, when I am as gentle as a lamb? I am so good, so easygoing.” No, he says—look at how he answers him:

“…Then he said to him, ‘You wicked servant, I will judge you by your own words. You knew that I was a severe man…—in other words, you are right; you know that I am like that—…that I take what I did not deposit and reap what I did not sow. Why, then, did you not put my money in the bank, so that when I returned, I could have collected it with interest?’

Why, at the very least, for goodness’ sake, did you not put it in Cambridge Savings to earn 1.9 percent interest? Instead, you bring the money back to me here after inflation has already eaten away two percent of it. Why did you not at least deposit it in a high-yield bond or something like that? If you were afraid of losing it, you could at least have found a basic way to keep the money from lying idle, if fear was what caused you to refrain from doing anything.

“And he said to those who were standing there, ‘Take the mina away from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’”—That is the counterintuitive logic of the Kingdom of God.—And they said to him, “But Lord, the other one already has ten minas. In other words, that is unfair. How can you take away the one mina this poor man has and give it to the one who has ten?” And look at the Lord’s answer:

“For I tell you that to the one who has, more will be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.”

The idea is that the one who has little or almost nothing, if he does not make it yield, if he does not do something with it, even that little bit he has, which is almost nothing, will be taken away from him and given to the one who is… To whom do you want to give your money, brothers and sisters? To a hardworking investor who knows the market and is diligent, wise, and shrewd, or to a loafer who does nothing and simply lies in bed all the time? To whom are you going to give it? To the diligent person, right? And in whom will the Lord invest his gifts, resources, energy, and power? In those who will make them profitable for the Kingdom. That is very logical.

Again, the logic of this parable comes from the business world. As I tell you, this parable is permeated and saturated with the logic and ethos, the mindset of the corporate world, the business world, the world of profits, the world of investments. And that is interesting when we apply it to the Kingdom of God. And then it says:

“…And as for those enemies of mine—now we return to that little detail we lost sight of at the beginning, that there were people who did not want him to reign—those enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and behead them in front of me…”

How many of you can reconcile that final image with Jesus? Very few, right? Nevertheless, there is an aspect of Jesus that is like that. The Christ who comes at his second coming is not the one who was crucified; he is a judge, a king, who comes to take possession of his inheritance and to demand an accounting, both from those who serve him and from those who oppose his coming.

Now, let me clarify here that this is not to… For believers, for those who have believed in Christ Jesus, salvation is not based on what you do; you are saved by grace, but there is a cost. The Bible says that we believers will appear before the judgment seat of Christ. There are several passages in Scripture; I do not have time to develop that point too much right now. We will appear before the judgment seat of Christ, but it will not be to determine whether or not we will be saved; it will be to determine what kind of rewards we will receive.

I believe that in the coming Kingdom of God there will be all kinds of glory and activity. I think many people imagine that in the Kingdom of God in heaven, we will all be given the same-size white robe and a harp so that we can sit on a cloud and play it for all eternity. The Kingdom of God will be a place of tremendous activity. The truth is that, to me, hell would be sitting on a cloud in a white robe and playing a harp for all eternity. But glory to God that the Kingdom of God will be a place with different levels and a great deal of activity, with effort but without the sharp edge that work has in this fallen world. God will allow it—I do not know what that will be like—but the Kingdom of God will have nations, it will have government, it will have glory, it will have different ranks, different levels of glory and authority. And what will determine all that? What we do, the effort we put forth here.

It is like a competition in which bronze, silver, and gold medals are awarded for different levels of excellence in an athlete’s performance. Some will receive an aluminum medal, while others will practically receive a wooden one, if anything, but we will all receive something according to the level of effort we have undertaken here on earth. So think about that.

And Scripture is very clear; there are many passages suggesting that according to how we have sown and labored here on earth, and invested in the Kingdom of God, at that same level we will receive an equivalent reward. So I am getting a little ahead of myself, but it is good for us to keep that in mind.

Now then, let us go back a little. What we have here is this idea of a nobleman who is Jesus Christ, and the disciples think that the Kingdom of God is going to come immediately, that Jesus will not go through the cross, that there will be no crucifixion, no death, none of this. They refuse to believe this. They are thinking that this will be something quick and simple; that is why it says that it “would appear immediately.”

As Jesus is heading toward Jerusalem at this very time, the Lord is drawing near… Holy Week is that approach of Jesus to Jerusalem to be crucified. But they think that Jesus is going to Jerusalem to take the city, declare himself the Messiah, and establish his kingdom, and that each of them is going to have a position of some importance in this new political government. But the Lord tells them, “No, it is not going to be that way; it is going to take time, and there is going to be drama in between.” So that is why he tells them this parable and says to them that a nobleman went away to a distant place; that journey to a distant place has taken 2,000 years—it was a very long trip. At least we know that, for us, that journey has lasted 2,000-some years.

That nobleman went to a distant country, which is heaven, where the Lord is seated at the right hand of the Father, waiting for the precise moment to descend once again, come, and take possession of his Kingdom. So the Lord goes away to a distant country, and before leaving, as the Lord Jesus Christ did—remember the Great Commission in Matthew 28—he told them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth; therefore go, preach the Gospel, make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey the things I have commanded you.”

And while the Lord was here on earth, he was preparing those servants. These 10 servants are simply an example of all those men and women with whom he worked while he was here in the world; he trained them, put them through different kinds of evangelistic and missionary exercises, instilled his word in them, did all sorts of things, prepared them, and left them with a commission. “Go into the world, make my church grow, develop my church, preach the Gospel,” and that is what this church of Jesus Christ has been doing for the past 2,000-some years: evangelizing, sowing the seed, developing the Kingdom of God, establishing all kinds of institutions, and making every kind of effort to advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ, with varying degrees of success and clarity.

But the Lord was saying, this is not easy; it is going to take time. I am leaving, but I am going to return. Then it says that he gathers them together and gives each one an endowment; he gives each one a mina. That symbolizes what every believer receives when they receive the Holy Spirit upon receiving Christ as Lord and Savior. Did you know that within you there is a gift that God has placed there, a mina? It does not matter what your level of education is; it does not matter whether you are a man or a woman, young or old: God has placed something of value within you—a capacity, an endowment of power; there is grace within you. There is a potential in you that God has infused into your life. Say amen to that. You have it within you. God has given you something: an ability to sing, an ability to teach, an ability to give, an ability to serve as an usher or teach children, or to be a philanthropist who advances the interests of the church, or to lead, or preside. There is something within you that God placed there so that you may use it to advance his kingdom.

I want you to understand this: there is a mina, and I would also say a mine, in the sense in which we know that word—a mine of possibilities within you, so much that God has placed in your life. The Apostle Paul tells Timothy, “I advise you to fan into flame the gift of God that is within you.”

So if this morning you can take hold of and internalize this idea that God has placed within you something that is valuable to his kingdom, perhaps you do not know what it is, and one of the believer’s tasks is to discover the gift of God. What is the gift? What is the specific potential that God has placed in me? But do not ask yourself, “Could there be anything of value in me?” No. Say, “How can I use the valuable thing within me for the Kingdom of God, and how can I begin using that gift?”

How are gifts developed? That is a topic for a sermon. But one way is by serving. Begin with what is at hand; begin with the smallest, easiest thing. Perhaps the easiest thing for you will be to speak to your own flesh-and-blood brother or your biological sister, someone with whom you feel comfortable; you know her, she is your friend, you get along well, but she does not know Jesus Christ. You can begin there. Give her a book, show her a video, sit her down one day and tell her about your experience with Christ. That is something simple. It may be a friend at work. It may be someone you meet on the bus, and you begin a conversation, and he tells you about his family and about his son, or that he is ill, and you ask him, “May I pray for you? I invite you to church. Do you know Jesus Christ? No matter what happens, if you know Christ, do not worry; God is with you, and he will carry you through. I am going to pray for you. Here is my phone number; call me.”

Begin with what is at hand. Right now, for example, we need help with the children on Easter Sunday. Many of us say, “Lord, take me to Africa so that I may die for you there, so that Muslims may martyr me and I may shed my blood…” But if they tell you, “Look, serve the children here for one day,” you say, “Oh no, that is far too small for me. I want to go out in a ball of fire, immolating myself; I want them to sacrifice me.”

If you are not faithful in a little, you will not be faithful in much either. Begin where you can; do what you can. Tithe, give an offering. Many people say, “Lord, my life is yours; do whatever you want with me,” but when the time comes to give to the Lord, oh no, that is where we freeze up. Many of us are not going to be able to…

Not long ago, I was told the story of a group of young missionaries in the nineteenth century who wanted to serve the Lord by preaching the Gospel in foreign missions, and not all of them could go. So these young men—and this is true—made a pact and said, “We are going to send—I think there were about 10 of them—you are going to India, Africa, wherever it may be; you will go as missionaries, and we will stay here in the United States and work and earn money to support you.” And throughout their lives, those young men who stayed behind supported those who went to the mission field in their missionary needs.

Which of those two groups do you think deserved more praise? I believe that both were working as one organism to advance the Kingdom of God. Some people may not have a missionary gift, but they have the gift of making money and could give more to the Kingdom of God and serve in that way. You can help advance the Kingdom of God by using your skills; if you work in technology, for example, like Brother Javier Encina, do you know how many things you make possible by working in technology?

I see Brother Mario Ulloa back there. You should know that those first two buildings were made possible by the generosity of people such as Mario Ulloa, Brother Roberto Naranjo, and others like them who worked so hard. And now Brother Mario comes here and sits there, and no one knows who Mario Ulloa is. That gentleman over there with the beard, that gentleman right beside the window, is… honestly, there are few people on this earth whom I admire as much as that man. And nowadays people come here and no one knows about his sacrificial work for the work of God. But we would not be sitting here today without the work of people like him.

And to me, people like him are worth 10 evangelists because they make this kind of work possible, because they are investing their gifts in the Kingdom of God. There is something you can do to advance the Kingdom of God. The mina you have received in your hand—what are you doing with it? You have to put it to work, you have to invest it, you have to ask the Lord, you have to feel restless and say, “Lord, I do not want to leave this earth without leaving my mark on the Kingdom of God. I want to do something for you; use me.” Pray, begin; in the process of beginning and doing something, God will reveal the next stage of the journey to you.

Back when cars had those heavy standard transmissions, you remember that if the car was in neutral—I do not know whether it is still like that because I do not drive a standard-transmission car—but when the car was stopped, if you tried to move the gearshift, it was very difficult. But when you took it out of neutral, put it into gear, and began moving the car, it was much easier to move the gearshift. That is how it is with gifts. When you begin moving in faith and take one step of faith after another, and you do what is at hand, and you begin in the name of the Lord, God gives you wisdom about what comes next.

At the beginning of the Bible it says, “Come, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much.” If you are faithful in giving the Lord a year of service working with children, for example, or as an usher, or cleaning some part of the church, if you are faithful in that and do not concern yourself with being given glory and praise, or being brought up here to the front of the platform, or whatever it may be, but you do it for the glory of the Lord and are faithful in what you do, the Lord will place you over other things. Perhaps one day you will evangelize multitudes; perhaps you will write a book for the glory of the Lord; perhaps you will sing before multitudes. But begin with something simple and small, and be generous with God.

I have learned that when a person begins in this way and serves not so that anyone will see or praise them, but as though God were watching—and that is what matters to you—the Lord blesses your life, blesses your gift, multiplies it, expands it, and uses it on a larger scale. So do not be intimidated because you do not know where your gift lies. Begin exploring. Embark on that wonderful journey of exploration that will last your entire life, and little by little you will discover new aspects of God’s endowment in your life, but you have to begin with the small things. Do not worry about the outcome; concern yourself with being faithful to the Lord and obeying the commission you have received.

So this man has gone away; he goes to that distant country, his servants begin to work and invest, and the instruction he gives them is very important. I do not want to omit this: the word “do business,” pracmateusaste, is the word in the original Greek. It is an imperative. You have seen the words pragmatic and praxis; that is where they come from—practical. This word in the original Greek, translated into Spanish as “do business,” has at its root the idea of working in a practical, coherent way. I have put a brief definition here that gives us a little insight into this idea.

It says here that the head of the corporation, because that is what this man is, tells them, “Do business until I come.” The word “do business” in the original Greek is pracmateusaste; this word comes from the business world. It conveys the idea of conducting business diligently, investing great energy and effort in order to produce effective results.

It is not merely a matter of working at something, but of working diligently, with a sense of purpose, with discipline and persistence, with a clear goal in mind and a well-defined methodology. In other words, it is an organized, deliberate, disciplined, calculated, strategic effort; that is how the work of the church should be.

Churches that work without discipline—one thing today, another tomorrow, everything in disarray because it is all for the Lord and the Lord is merciful—should not expect to do anything with excellence. I have always believed that the church of Jesus Christ should be the best-organized and most excellent organization in the entire world, the one that uses the resources at hand most efficiently and effectively.

I am stingy with the Lord’s money. We have to squeeze every last drop out of every dollar; we have to multiply its return, and the church of Christ must reflect excellence, effectiveness, and efficiency; it must reflect organization, discipline, and purpose. To me, the church of Jesus Christ is an organism of great coherence, and the work of the church must be carefully thought out, well planned, well executed, coherent, decentralized, and directed according to sound principles, protocols, and procedures; it must overflow with excellence, because we have the mind of Christ. And what does it mean to have the mind of Christ? It means having the mind that structured the world, the universe, the atoms, the cells of every living organism, and the order of a living body.

That mind, the Logos, which created the universe, is what is within you. That is why I encourage young people and my brothers and sisters to study, to develop their understanding, and to expect great things from the Lord. If you are going to study, set yourself the goal of being the most accomplished student in your class; set yourself the goal of reaching the highest level, not out of pride but because the Lord has placed something incredibly powerful within you. If you are going to be a mother, promise yourself that you will be the most outstanding mother in the world, with greater ability, more knowledge, more wisdom, and more anointing, because the Lord is willing to teach you the best principles of motherhood.

If you are going to be a factory worker, make sure others envy the skill, discipline, and excellence with which you do your work. No matter what we do, no matter what our territory may be, God has entrusted the earth to us, and we are supposed to work with a full sense of discipline and purpose. Do not tell me that you cannot, because Christ is within you. And you yourself have said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

The mind of Christ is a thinking mind, it is a logical mind, it is a coherent mind, and we have to proceed with that same kind of endowment, that sense of high esteem—not for ourselves, but for the God who is within us. The church has to overflow with excellence. The church is a great corporation that does business for the Kingdom of God, and that is why it has to be strategic in its interventions, its planning, and its work. And we are workers. You are an investor, and you are also a customer and an employee, and that is why every believer has to live the Christian life with that sense of duty, but also of privilege, of endowment.

God is not a God who tells you to do great things but equips you minimally. No. He gives you a great endowment so that you may achieve great results in every area of your life. We believers have to be excellent in every aspect of our lives because we have a powerful God moving within us.

That is why Paul tells Timothy, “I advise you to fan into flame the gift of God that is in you, because God has not given us a spirit of cowardice”—which is what this unfaithful servant has, cowardice—“God has not given us a spirit of cowardice or timidity—another translation—but of power, love, and self-control.”

And you know that the phrase “self-control” is a poor translation; the original Greek says a sound mind. That is why in English it says, “He has given us a spirit of power, of love and a sound mind.” Look it up in one of the translations. “Sound mind” is a mind that thinks well; it is a mind that accurately perceives reality. That is the mind God has given us. There is no excuse for us not to develop the gift of God that is within us, because God’s endowment is so great.

I say that there are two ways in which Christians can proceed through life: either from a mind of sufficiency or from a mindset of lack. There are Christians for whom everything is, “I can’t, I don’t have it, I don’t know, they didn’t give it to me, they didn’t do it for me, they didn’t give me the opportunity,” and they spend their lives complaining about so-and-so, the government, the injustice in the world, how people are bad, how pastors are corrupt, how churches are bad, and so they are always stuck there, sitting on a pew doing nothing.

That is called proceeding from a mindset of lack, of insufficiency, like the ten spies who come to Moses after examining the land and say, “Yes, Moses, it’s true, that land is tremendous; it produces grapes so large that a single one yields a whole bottle of wine, but the men who are there are giants. They could all be members of the MBA—look, they’re six foot eight and their bones are extremely hard—and therefore we can never enter that land.”

There were two, Joshua and Caleb, who said, “Look, if the Lord has given us the land, we are going to eat it like bread, like butter.” I added the butter. If the Lord has given us the land, we are going to win that land. That is called proceeding with a mind of sufficiency, of endowment. And who were the ones who entered the Promised Land? The ten spies ended up dead; only Joshua and Caleb, out of that entire first generation, entered the Promised Land. All the others died in the wilderness. Why? Because they had a different spirit; that is what the Bible says.

Which group do we want to belong to? The group of the ten spies, or the group of the two spies, like Joshua and Caleb? So, which team do you belong to? The one that says, “I don’t have it, I don’t know, I can’t, they didn’t give it to me, they didn’t do it for me,” or the group that says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I am going to preach the Gospel, I am going to share with others, I am going to do everything I can to advance the Kingdom of God.” Give the Lord a round of applause.

Do business until I come. How can you do business for the Kingdom of God? What can you do to advance its interests? How are you doing business for the Kingdom of God? I want Lion of Judah to do business until Christ comes, for Lion of Judah to be a corporation known for the excellence with which it carries out the directives of the CEO of the church, who is Christ Jesus, in every respect, and for us to have members who are equally committed to moving this vessel, which is the Kingdom of God, forward.

Then this parable says that when this lord comes, he calls his servants to account. I find that interesting. How does he come? I picture him lining them up before him and saying, “Okay, let’s see now.” This is not a matter of, “Oh, brother, how are you? How did it go? I know that what you did for me was a favor, and thank God you accepted that mina. Were you able to do anything with that mina?” No, he calls them to account.

There is another parable in Matthew 25:14–30, and you can read it later and compare a couple of things. It has a few differences, but it is practically the same parable. He called them to account, gathered them together, and I picture it happening in a very businesslike way: “Okay, I gave you one mina. What did you do with it?” They give him a report of what each one did, and then there is the third man, who tells him, “Look, I know what you are like. I know that if I had squandered that mina, you would have cut off my head, so what I did was keep it under the mattress.”

Then the reaction afterward, as I have said, and this man’s attitude reveal something to us. You know, when you look at that parable of Jesus Christ about service, giving an account to the Lord, and all of this, it is all permeated by an atmosphere of seriousness, severity, and clear expectations. And this is interesting: there is a passage where the Lord Jesus Christ says, “Whoever does not gather with me scatters.” Have you heard that?

How interesting. It is as though there are two extremes in the Christian life: either you serve as an instrument for the advancement of the Kingdom of God, or you are an obstacle; you are draining energy. Forgive me for being so clear. I hope no one is offended, because I am not the one saying that; the Word says it. You are either a facilitator or an obstacle to the Kingdom of God.

Let me put it this way: the branches of a tree—as a tree keeps growing and growing, its branches multiply, and a point comes when every branch, every leaf, and every extremity of the tree is demanding sap, demanding energy, because it needs the nourishment the tree is drawing from the soil. And when a tree has so many branches, the risk is that it will not produce enough fruit, because all its energy is wasted by being distributed among so many branches. That is why a point comes when the fruit is weak, small, or sour. And what does the farmer do? He prunes. He prunes the branches that do not bear fruit so that those that do bear fruit will have more nourishment and produce more fruit. That is the principle behind pruning.

So, I think that many times—something occurs to me, though I don’t know; I submit it for your consideration. I am not sure I can say this, but in any event I am going to muse freely, and you tell me—it occurs to me that many times we pastors want churches with many people, even if they are only half converted, even if they do not believe in so much as electric light, but we want them to come because we want a big church, we want a church with many people. And sometimes what we do is bring the Gospel down to a very basic level so that many people will come.

And I wonder whether, in the Lord’s mind, that is what God truly wants. I do not know whether God prefers a church of 100 people who work hard and are each committed to the Kingdom of God, or one of 1,000 in which 800 have doubts about whether or not they are saved and do not know why they have believed, why they have been called to the Kingdom, or what it means to have a sense of commitment, duty, and total surrender to the Lord. I don’t know. I ask you that question. I must ask it of myself, because it is the same thing: one wants a leafy tree, a tree with many leaves, with many branches, very large, very beautiful, very striking—but is that truly what constitutes a healthy tree?

What do you want: a fig tree like the one the Lord went to, full of branches and leaves, but when he reached in, he did not find a single fig and cursed it? Or do you want a... There are some little mango trees; they are not very tall, but you reach in anywhere and grab ten mangoes. What do you want: an enormous tree with many leaves but no mangoes, or a small tree loaded with fruit?

So, the Lord uses that principle. If we do not bear fruit, the Lord is not pleased, and at the very least he is going to fine us. Many people wonder, “Why don’t I feel the joy of the Lord? Why haven’t those promises spoken of in the Bible been fulfilled in my life? Why is it that I do this and that and go to church, yet I do not feel the joy of the Gospel or see those changes in my life?”

Ask yourself whether perhaps you are giving the Lord everything you can. Are you praying? Are you fasting? Are you reading the Word? Are you worshiping the Lord? Are you serving? Are you giving to the Lord? Are you working for the Kingdom of God?

I have learned that the joy of the Lord comes when we give to the Lord, when we surrender ourselves to him, when we serve him. There is no greater joy than for a soul to come to know Jesus Christ through one’s work—not one’s own work, but Christ’s work within us. But to know that my life helped someone be blessed by the Gospel—wow, that is worth millions of dollars, honestly. For me, the greatest privilege is knowing that I am advancing the Kingdom of God.

What do I care about the glory bestowed by men and the applause of humanity, when the greatest joy is that one day I will hear the voice of God saying to me, “Come, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much”? That is the greatest privilege a man or woman can have: serving the Lord. What good does it do us to have vast sums of money sitting in a bank account when there are so many things we can do for the Kingdom of God? It is not that we should not save and be wise, but many times we grasp and grasp and grasp, and the money slips through our fingers like water. We get sick and the doctor takes it all, or a lawyer takes it because of a divorce, a marital dispute over dividing the assets.

But when we serve the Lord, God blesses us and makes what we have go further. I have learned that when you give to the Lord and serve the Lord, the little you have tastes heavenly. You eat a plantain with olive oil, and it tastes like a delicacy prepared by a French chef, because you are at peace, because you know where you are going and where you have come from, and you have the peace of the Lord in your life. There is nothing like serving the Lord and hearing that voice of God say, “Come, good and approved servant.”

Enter into the joy; enter into your Lord’s delight. Brothers and sisters, I leave you this morning with the thought that serving the Lord is serious business; it is a business in the best sense of the word. It is a sacred, sublime, glorious, eternal business, a tremendous privilege, and an obligation accompanied by great satisfaction, because serving the Lord is not a sterile duty; it is continual delight, it is growing and growing, knowing that the Lord’s sap is flowing through us. It is a business. What are you doing to serve the Kingdom of God? How are you doing business for the Kingdom? Let us do business for the Kingdom of God. Amen.