‘Are you envious because I am generous?’. Such a question has the ability to cut all of us right to our core, it exposes our jealous hearts, our resentful spirits, our entitled ways, our wounds and our disappointments. The Kingdom of God, as we have learned, is unexpected, is upside-down, is not measurable by the world’s standards and yet so often we still push ahead and try to squeeze it into our human-sized metrics. This parable shows the immense and confusing generosity of God as well as showing us the shadows that creep into our own hearts. How can we realign our hearts towards God’s metrics instead of our own?

The Kingdom of God is costly. Jesus speaks so strongly in this passage around the theme of wealth and it can be hard for us to hear, lots of us (but not all) live fairly well-off lives and in our society there is a growing chasm between the rich and the poor. Jesus is saying something so subversive here, it would be commonplace in Judaism that riches were a mark of God’s favour, no one would imagine that they could be a stumbling block to entering the Kingdom! Isn’t it the same with us? We live under the guise that money gets us what we want (and for the most part, it does) yet that is not the way of the Kingdom. The Jews could not pay their way and neither can we, our money and possessions will not come with us. What hold does money have on our lives? Has it grown any pride in us? Has lots of it or lack of it let fear grow in us? How can we allow Jesus to shape our worldview of wealth and live differently in this generation?

We’ve seen over the last two weeks the work of mystery and the work of the small and unexpected and these same themes continue here. These two parables teach us how the Kingdom of God spreads – just like the tiny mustard seed and hidden yeast, the Kingdom of God grows and spreads, it pervades society and permeates the whole world! How can our faith be orientated towards this aspect of the Kingdom of God, living with expectation of its wide reach?

In the present, the way that God's Kingdom works is often unexpected. It can be messy, often doesn't work to the timescales we would like, and while we would like to see evil fully rooted out our experience is that God works in amongst the brokenness of this world, and good and evil often grow together. The promise of the kingdom of God is that this will not always be the case, it is messy now but, in the end, evil will be rooted out, God’s justice will be enacted, but for now we are called to wait, to worship and to work in the midst of the messiness.

The Kingdom of God is mysterious, we are trusting in a work that is unseen and not within our control. This parable speaks of small and unseen beginnings that result in a wonderful harvest. Jesus’ ministry didn’t look like the sort of kingdom-of-God-movement people were expecting, it was small and unknown in the beginning and yet the miraculous harvest of it was incredible and we still live in the light of it today. Similarly, God’s work in us is often small and unseen, there is a mystery to the Kingdom of God being realised in our lives and much of it is out of our control. How can we learn to lean into the mystery of all that is beyond our control and lean on the One who is in control?

God is holy and just, and invites us to be people of justice who fight for freedom from injustice. Jesus consistently draws near to the marginalised and oppressed. He ushers in this ministry to the most vulnerable. The victims of injustice need our consistent loving mercy as we respond to Jesus' call to love people as He loves them. In what situations are we being called to persevere, to act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with Jesus?

The most important thing about us, before anything else, is that we are followers of Jesus! Like the first disciples, we are called to follow Jesus, we get to respond to that call by yielding to his plans for us and taking time to listen to who he is pointing us towards, because this life is not just for us, we are disciples who make disciples. How can we continue to live into the vision that we have as a church to follow Jesus with everything we have?

There are many people in this church being very generous with their time and money. How can we be increasingly sacrificially generous with our time, our talents, our gifts and our money - what is God saying to us? It's about our heart - not obeying a command, but expressing gratitude for the grace we have received. It's also about our holiness - giving is between us and God, having the same attitude as Jesus. It's about the health of the church - equality means that those who need to receive will receive, and those that are able to give more abundantly will do so. And it is important that the church has transparent finances and stewards really well all money given. Let's be a generous church, loving this city, going the extra mile, being sacrificial.

We have laid some foundations to encourage us to step out into what God has for us, through establishing our security in Him and depending upon His grace. We want to help our church family step into what God has for them. This series leads into the calling day (24th September) where we hope the church family will begin to discern where their particular gifting and calling is for the next season.

In Ephesians 4, we are reminded that we have one Lord and one Spirit that unites us and whom we collectively serve. We are representatives of Christ here on earth and His power lives in and through us. As he lives within us he has given us all ‘special abilities’ to serve the church and kingdom. The purpose of this last talk isn’t to go through all the gifts in depth but to help our church family appreciate and value one another’s gifts and consider how they can explore theirs. We also want to encourage our church to call out and affirm the gifts of service we see in one another.