SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.
SPEAKER_01: And a happy Thanksgiving weekend to everybody in this house, all over our campuses, our prison campuses, and everybody watching online.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, being a European and not really having Thanksgiving as part of our culture, this must have been one of the best things that ever come out of the United States of America.
SPEAKER_01: An entire holiday dedicated to gratitude and thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: What an amazing idea.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, U.S.
SPEAKER_01: This is incredible.
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna stay on this theme of gratitude and thanksgiving throughout the service.
SPEAKER_01: But before we dive into the word of God today, I just want to share a little anecdote from my home country, Sweden, that actually ties in perfectly with this season.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to bring us back to the year 1885 and I want to introduce y'all to a pastor called Carl Boberg.
SPEAKER_01: Now, at the time, Pastor Carl was pastoring a small little church in a tiny little village in southeast Sweden.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Pastor Carl was a man of God and also a worshiper.
SPEAKER_01: And one day in the late summer of 1885, Pastor Carl was out doing a walk in the forest land that surrounded his little village.
SPEAKER_01: And um it was a beautiful late afternoon, clear skies, evening sun was shining.
SPEAKER_01: But all of a sudden, within minutes, the whole sky was covered by dark clouds, and there was a thunderstorm, a dramatic one.
SPEAKER_01: And Pastor Carl was watching as lightnings lit up the sky and colored the uh clouds purple and pink, and then uh a huge rain started to fall, but then again, after a minute or two, all the clouds dissolved, the sky went back to being clear.
SPEAKER_01: He saw the stars and the moon appearing, and Pastor Carl was just standing there in awe of the amazing beauty of the creator displayed through his creation.
SPEAKER_01: So, being the worshipper that he was, he fell down on his knees and he started to praise and give thanks to the creator of all things.
SPEAKER_01: And as he did, he started to sing a new song, a spontaneous song that was given to him by the Holy Spirit at that moment, and he sang it as a song of praise to the Lord, the Creator.
SPEAKER_01: And then when he got back home, the song was still ringing inside of him, so he wrote down the lyrics, he wrote down the melody as it had been given to him by the Holy Spirit in that moment, and he went on to teach his little tiny church this song.
SPEAKER_01: But because Pastor Carl was not a man of great influence, the song never really spread outside his own little church until one of his church members later emigrated to the USA and had the song translated to English, and from over here, the song spread like wildfire.
SPEAKER_01: After a few years' time, it was translated to every major language all over the world and became one of the most beloved songs from in all the worldwide church.
SPEAKER_01: And Gateway, you know this song well, but today I thought it might be great for you to hear it the way it would have sounded as it first came out of the mouth of Pastor Carl back in Sweden in 1885.
SPEAKER_01: So I actually asked my beautiful wife Maria to sing this song to you in Swedish, and then uh uh John Wiles will join, and we can all sing it together in the language that you know.
SPEAKER_01: But just would you open your heart and hear this song as it was as it was first sung in that forest in Sweden back in 1885?
SPEAKER_02: Literally, thank you, Lord!
SPEAKER_01: You are truly great, and all people said, Amen, amen.
SPEAKER_01: Give someone a Holy Spirit high five on your way down, and and you may be seated.
SPEAKER_01: So great to be back in the house of the Lord with y'all.
SPEAKER_01: And and like I said, I want to stick to the theme of Thanksgiving and gratitude on this Thanksgiving Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to share a little bit about living Thanksgiving, how to make Thanksgiving not just a holiday, an annual holiday, but a daily lifestyle.
SPEAKER_01: And why is this important?
SPEAKER_01: Because Psalms 100 says that we enter into his courts with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: So if we lose the element of thanksgiving, we also lose the element, the ability to enter into the courts of the Lord, and God will start to feel distant.
SPEAKER_01: But as we keep stirring the thanksgiving and the gratitude in our hearts towards Christ, we will be able to access his courts on a daily basis and live our lives under an open heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Can we say amen in the house of the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: If you brought your Bible, I would like you to turn to Matthew chapter 18, and we're gonna read one of the parables of Jesus that really unlocks the whole element of thanksgiving and gratitude.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 18 from verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus shares a story and he says, Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.
SPEAKER_01: And when they had when he had begun begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owned him 10,000 talents.
SPEAKER_01: But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made.
SPEAKER_01: The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.
SPEAKER_01: Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt.
SPEAKER_01: But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me what you owe.
SPEAKER_01: So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay you all.
SPEAKER_01: And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt.
SPEAKER_01: Now, from just reading through the story, the parable, like we just did, we understand the basics.
SPEAKER_01: We understand that the king represents God, and that first servant who owned the king a great debt represents you and I, who were, you know, standing before a holy God with sinful lives, uh, a debt that we couldn't repay.
SPEAKER_01: And then that second servant that owed the first servant, he would represent our fellow man.
SPEAKER_01: And the basic story, the basic truth is just as we have been given mercy, we should give mercy to our fellow man.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That's the basic story.
SPEAKER_01: However, there's another element to this story that most Christians will never ever understand.
SPEAKER_01: Because the key is in the currency, the key is in the amounts of money that Jesus on purpose, obviously, is using.
SPEAKER_01: And because we don't deal with talents and denarii anymore, but with dollars and cents, this is completely lost to us.
SPEAKER_01: So I just wanted to kind of uh unlock this treasure that is found in this story, in this parable, without us even being really aware of it.
SPEAKER_01: So in the first part of the story, we see the king and the servant, and there's a depth of 10,000 talents, which means absolutely nothing to us because we don't know the value of talents.
SPEAKER_01: Now, how can we break this down?
SPEAKER_01: How can we make this relevant to you and I 2,000 years later?
SPEAKER_01: Well, dealing with converting money from one time to another is always tricky because monies tend to lose their value all the time because of inflation, right?
SPEAKER_01: If you've been around for four, five, or six decades or more, you clearly remember when you were a kid and the value of one dollar was significantly different than the value of one dollar today.
SPEAKER_01: And we keep telling our kids that and our grandkids.
SPEAKER_01: Back when I was a child, I remember blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we understand that due to inflation, the value of money is different at all times.
SPEAKER_01: However, there is one constant that we can always use while kind of converting the value of money from one time to another, and that is one day's wages.
SPEAKER_01: One day's wages.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the amount of one day's wages will be different, but the value of one day's wages is pretty much the same.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be the amount of money needed for you to pay rent or mortgage, to put mu food on the table, and to live a decent life with your family.
SPEAKER_01: So one day's wages in the day of Jesus will represent more or less one day's wages today, not in the sum, but in the value.
SPEAKER_01: Capish?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
SPEAKER_01: So let's break this down and and try to understand a little bit more about those 10,000 talents.
SPEAKER_01: One day's wages in the day of Jesus was called one denarius or one silver coin.
SPEAKER_01: So one silver coin or one denarius equaled one day's wages.
SPEAKER_01: Now, a talent, the currency that Jesus is using for this part of the parable, hold on now.
SPEAKER_01: One talent represented six thousand denarii.
SPEAKER_01: That's six thousand days wages, or the amount of money that you would earn from having worked 16 and a half years.
SPEAKER_01: That's an insane amount of money.
SPEAKER_01: What I did just for you guys to understand it, sorry, you all to understand it um yeah a bit better, is that I took the average salary, the average annual salary in the US from last year, and I multiplied it by 16 and a half, which would represent basically one talent.
SPEAKER_01: And that amount is$620,152.
SPEAKER_01: That's the average annual salary of the US times 16 and a half.
SPEAKER_01: One talent would represent this sum.
SPEAKER_01: And that's a lot of money, right?
SPEAKER_01: However, please bear in mind that Jesus did not say that the servant owned the king one talent, he said he owned the king 10,000 talents.
SPEAKER_01: That's an insane amount of money.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus said that sum as he was sharing this parable, there would have been a gasp in the crowd going, What did he just say?
SPEAKER_01: Because 10,000 talents using the same math would mean in today's money worth 6,201, 525,000 dollars.
SPEAKER_01: That's insane, right?
SPEAKER_01: So, what does Jesus want to tell us by using such an astronomical sum for this debt?
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's this raises actually so many questions.
SPEAKER_01: I want to know how did this servant spend that amount of money?
SPEAKER_01: And also, I mean, his try, his excuse is quite pathetic now, saying, just give me a little time, and I'll I'll find a way.
SPEAKER_01: That's male optimism at its worst, right?
SPEAKER_01: No, no, I'll work it out somehow.
SPEAKER_01: What is Jesus trying to tell us by using this specific sum of 10,000 talents equaling six billion dollars?
SPEAKER_01: That you and I all had a debt before God that we could never ever repay.
SPEAKER_01: No good deed, no act of self-righteousness could even come close to repay the debt that we all owed to the King of Kings.
SPEAKER_01: Six billion dollars tells us there is no hope for me unless there is a savior.
SPEAKER_01: And praise God, there is a savior, and his name is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And then we have the the second part of this parable, that other servant who had a debt to the first servant.
SPEAKER_01: Again, Jesus is very specific.
SPEAKER_01: He says that debt was 100 denarii.
SPEAKER_01: Why is he using that specific amount?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if it was only after the contrast between the six billion and and wanted to like emphasize the vast contrast, then he could have said that he owned him one denarii, which is approximately a hundred dollars.
SPEAKER_01: But he says no, he owed him a hundred denarii, which equals ten thousand dollars in modern word money worth.
SPEAKER_01: What is he trying to say by using this specific amount?
SPEAKER_01: Well, ten thousand dollars, my friend, are a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of money, and if somebody owed you ten thousand dollars and then all of a sudden say, Sorry, mate, sorry, I went Australian there.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I can't repay you.
SPEAKER_01: I've lost your money, you will never get it back.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that will cause most of us massive problems, right?
SPEAKER_01: Losing ten thousand dollars would cause pain, would cause grief, would cause major problems.
SPEAKER_01: You would lose sleep over that, and you will feel that because someone else treated you wrongly, you ended up in a tight spot, and now you have to work your way out of this horrible situation.
SPEAKER_01: $10,000 is a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01: Basically, what Jesus is saying, can I just have$10,000 on the screen, please?
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Basically, what Jesus is saying by using the reference to a approximately ten thousand dollars is yes, maybe someone really hurt you.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe someone really treated you bad, maybe you were a victim of someone else's choices and that affected you, and it was not fair, and you feel disappointed and you feel betrayed, and you ended up in a problematic situation that you did not deserve.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that is your reality because ten thousand dollars is a lot of money, and losing ten thousand dollars would hurt.
SPEAKER_01: However, ten thousand dollars is only a lot of money until you compare it to six billion dollars, right?
SPEAKER_01: And this is really the main point of the entire story.
SPEAKER_01: You might feel disappointed, you might feel hurt, and Jesus is not downplaying that, but he says, you can choose to either dwell on the fact that somebody hurt you, or we can choose to dwell on the fact that somebody saved me, somebody released me from a debt that I could never ever repay.
SPEAKER_01: And that, my friend, is the source of gratitude.
SPEAKER_01: Knowing where we would be without Christ, and at the same time knowing where we are in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, gateway.
SPEAKER_01: Knowing who we would be without the grace of God, and at the same time knowing who we have become through Christ, through Calvary, through the cross, and through the blood.
SPEAKER_01: Paul writes it beautifully and connects to this thought in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Therefore, remember, can we say remember?
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
SPEAKER_01: But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He starts by saying, Remember that once you were far off, remember that once you had no hope, remember that once you had no God, remember that once you were cut off from Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And I wonder why we should remember all these negative things so that we never lack gratitude for what he has done in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Remember the six billion dollar debt so that you will always remain in gratitude and thanksgiving because God your Savior has released you from it.
SPEAKER_01: This is the key to living thanksgiving, remembering who you were without Christ, and remembering who you are with Christ and because of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to tell you one more story and read one more.
SPEAKER_01: Story from the Gospels.
SPEAKER_01: This is from Luke chapter 7, and it's one of my favorite stories in the Gospel.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I don't even know if I'm allowed to have favorite stories in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_01: If I don't, forgive me, Lord, but I do.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 7, verse 36.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Then one of the Pharisees asked him, that is Jesus, to eat with him.
SPEAKER_01: And he went to the Pharisee's house and sat down to eat.
SPEAKER_01: And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil and stood at his feet behind him weeping.
SPEAKER_01: And she began to wash his feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair, the hair of her head.
SPEAKER_01: And she kissed his feet and anointed them with a fragrant oil.
SPEAKER_01: Let's explain this and break the story down right here.
SPEAKER_01: This nameless woman is referred to as a sinner.
SPEAKER_01: When you look at the Greek word, it's obvious she is a prostitute.
SPEAKER_01: Now, being a prostitute, this woman would have been cut off from society.
SPEAKER_01: She would be despised, she would have been rejected and looked down upon, especially by the Pharisees who were world champions in judging other people and pointing out the sins in other people's lives.
SPEAKER_01: Now, why in the world would a woman, a prostitute, even approach the house of a Pharisee?
SPEAKER_01: She would have known that if I enter into this house, I will be rejected, I will be uh mocked, I will have all the fingers on the house pointed at me, I'll probably be thrown out.
SPEAKER_01: Entering into a Pharisee's house for a woman of her kind would have been like self-destructive, but still she does because there's something inside of her that is stronger, that is her own self-perservation, and that is her gratitude for the man that is inside there, the man called Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And she brings her alabaster box.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I know I want you to know the significance of that.
SPEAKER_01: You see, back in the days of Jesus, Jewish parents tended to give their young daughters an alabaster flask with precious perfume.
SPEAKER_01: Now they were given to the to the girl of the house, the daughter of the house at a very tender age.
SPEAKER_01: And an alabaster flask was not the kind of container that you can open and then seal again.
SPEAKER_01: It could only be opened once by breaking off the top of it and then pour out the perfume only once.
SPEAKER_01: And the little Jewish girl knew exactly when that occasion would be.
SPEAKER_01: It would be on her wedding day.
SPEAKER_01: Where she would break that alabaster flask and she would pour out the beautiful perfume and she would anoint her husband, proclaiming him to be her first love for life, proclaiming that he would be her best friend, her number one person in the world.
SPEAKER_01: So as the Jewish girl, growing from a young girl unto a young woman, kept watching that alabaster flask on the shelf, it represented all of her dreams of one day finding true love and marriage and family.
SPEAKER_01: But for this woman who at some point in her life made the horrible decision that she needed to start selling her body, she would have realized from that moment on that that day would never come.
SPEAKER_01: No man would ever have me.
SPEAKER_01: I will never experience love and marriage and a family.
SPEAKER_01: So that alabaster flask on her shelf would have looked down upon her every day, representing her broken dreams and her shattered future.
SPEAKER_01: But then at some point, she met Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know how, the story doesn't tell us.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe he spoke to her personally, or maybe she was in the great crowd hearing him as he shared the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: But she must have heard hope in his words, and she must have heard about a God who loves her, even though she owns him six billion dollars, a debt she can never ever repay.
SPEAKER_01: She must have heard about forgiveness and hope and a new start and a new life.
SPEAKER_01: That there was hope and a new life, a new future, even for her.
SPEAKER_01: And now she brings her alabaster box, the alabaster flask representing her dreams and broken dreams, and she brings them into a house where she knows she would be despised.
SPEAKER_01: She breaks the flask, she anoints the feet of Jesus, and she proclaims him to be her first love ever.
SPEAKER_01: And at that same moment, Simon the Pharisee, the host of the dinner, despises her in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: And she and Jesus understands this by this Holy Spirit, and he starts to speak to Simon.
SPEAKER_01: We drop down to verse 44.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, Do you see this woman?
SPEAKER_01: I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head.
SPEAKER_01: You gave me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss my feet since the time I came in.
SPEAKER_01: You did not anoint my head with oil, but this woman has anointed my feet with fragrant oil.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.
SPEAKER_01: But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.
SPEAKER_01: Then he said to her, Your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: What I want you all to understand here, Gateway, is that we have two people in this room apart from Jesus that the story focuses on.
SPEAKER_01: We have a sinful woman and we have a sinful Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 3 verse 23 says, All have sinned.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: The sinful woman was a sinner owning six billion dollars.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisee was a sinner owning six billion dollars.
SPEAKER_01: The difference between them was that one was aware of her need for Jesus, and one was not.
SPEAKER_01: One ended up in a place where he thought, you know, I'm good enough to hang out with God.
SPEAKER_01: I've been living a nice life, but one was completely dependent on the grace of God, and she was the one who had her sins forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I pray to God every single day?
SPEAKER_01: As time goes by, never let my heart turn into the heart of a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: Let me live constantly aware as I move through life, of where I would be if it wasn't for the grace of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Let me never lose sight of that six billion dollar debt that I could never repay.
SPEAKER_01: So I constantly live in a spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude for the one who has saved my soul.
SPEAKER_01: And I want just to open this house now to a moment of gratitude and thanksgiving where you can break that alabaster flask spiritually and just come to the feet of Jesus and give him your worship and your gratitude all over the campuses.
SPEAKER_01: Let's stand to our feet in the sweet presence of God right now.
SPEAKER_01: If I could have the prayer team come to the front, please.
SPEAKER_01: And then when I close that prayer for us all, we're gonna dismiss the campuses and move into a moment of thanksgiving and worship.
SPEAKER_01: And I would like to ask you if you feel, Lord, I want that first love stirred in my heart.
SPEAKER_01: I need to take this moment, this opportunity to break my alabaster flask and just come back to the feet of Jesus once again and tell Him once again that yes, you are still my first love, and I'm eternally grateful for the sacrifice that you gave.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you need to be touched by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you need burdens lifted from your shoulders, maybe you need physical healing in your body, or maybe you just want to take some time in the presence of God and just again experience his beautiful presence on your life.
SPEAKER_01: Then I want to invite you as we start to worship in just a few seconds to just make your way down here to the front.
SPEAKER_01: If you need prayer, if you want to commit yourselves to Jesus, if you need forgiveness and salvation, talk to somebody up front.
SPEAKER_01: Or you can just stand here on your own with Jesus and just give him praise and the gratitude that he deserves.
SPEAKER_01: Reminded of the six billion dollar debt that he has canceled on behalf of you and your future.
SPEAKER_01: So let's lift up our hearts right now all over the campuses and lift up holy hands to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And on this Thanksgiving weekend, let us tell him that we are grateful for him and for his mercy.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Here we are, knowing that we all owed you a debt we could never ever repay.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, we thank you forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: We will thank you on earth and in heaven for canceling that debt through the cross of Christ and through the precious blood that was shed for our sins.
SPEAKER_01: May we never take this for granted.
SPEAKER_01: May we always fall down at your feet, break our alabaster flask, and pour out the oil that says you are and will always be our first love.
SPEAKER_01: We give you all thanksgiving, all of our gratitude, all of our praise, all of our worship.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' mighty name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have a great week.