0:01 Okay, good afternoon, MCCF. So good to see everyone today. I wanted to share today about being faithful in the little things. I believe that faithfulness is something that God looks for. But unfortunately, there's not a lot of 0:17 faithful brothers and sisters that are out there. Why do I say that? Because there's a verse in Proverbs 20:6. I'll just read it. Part of it says a faithful man who can find. So in other words, it's very difficult to find a faithful 0:34 man. And my desire is that I would grow up to be a faithful person that there'd be many in NCCF who would be considered faithful by the Lord because that would be something that's very precious to the Lord and valuable in his sight. So 0:47 that's what I want to talk about today, being faithful in the little things. And so I want to talk about first of all, what does it mean to be faithful? Secondly, um what are what are the reasons why we should be faithful? And 0:59 then lastly, what are some areas where we can practically live out faithfulness? So, first of all, what does it mean to be faithful? So, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 4. Let's start there. 1 Corinthians chapter 1:12 4 and verse 2. So, in the context of this verse, Paul is talking about himself as a servant of Christ. And I like what it says in verse two. I'll read from the King James. It says this,"Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be 1:31 found faithful." And I like the Living Bible translation of this. It says this, "Now the most important thing about a servant is that he does just what his master tells him to." I love that translation. So what is faithfulness? So 1:45 faithfulness, you could say, is to do just what his master tells him to do. And we know that this is tested in not the big commands but in the little commands. As we know the Bible says don't kill anybody. Well, I don't think 2:01 anyone in this church is at risk of doing that. But the Bible does say things like do everything without grumbling or complaining. And that's a much smaller commandment. But it's in our obedience to the smaller commandments that's where God can test 2:13 us and see are we truly faithful or not. So what does it mean to be faithful? Faithfulness means to do everything doing everything just the way his master tells him to do. So then the next question is well then why should we be 2:26 faithful? What is the reason we should be faithful? And I want to share a few reasons why we should seek for that. And the first reason is that we should be faithful because it's something that's pleasing to the Lord. So please turn 2:37 with me to Luke chapter 12. I'll share a story there that Jesus talked about. Luke chapter 12 and verse 36 to 37. Luke chapter 12 36- 37. And he gives this parable about being ready for his return. And I'll 2:56 read it real quick. He says this, "Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes and knocks. And blessed are those slaves 3:08 whom the master will find on alert when he comes. Truly I say to you that he will gird himself to serve and have them recline at the table and will come up and wait on him. And so what this parable is saying is that there's these 3:22 uh slaves who are call it manning the house. They're watching the house and the master is at a wedding feast and this master comes back from the wedding feast and perhaps it's it's really late and you can imagine the scene. The 3:32 master walks up the stairs and he knocks at the door and at the first knock of that door the door opens. the slaves as welcome. And you can see the the light there is on the the master's face when he sees these these slaves being ready 3:46 for him. And what I like about it, he's so delighted that this master girds himself to serve. And you can imagine this master just came back from wedding feast. He's in his wedding clothes and now he puts on the the servants apron. 3:58 Maybe it's late at night, but he's willing to serve these slaves now because he's so happy with them. And it reminds me sometimes of my life as a father. Sometimes when the kids do really well, I give them some treats, maybe ice cream, and then I say, "Hey, 4:11 what type of ice cream you want? You want which flavor? You want sprinkles? You want a cone?" And I don't mind giving them these things because they did so good. And it's my delight as a father to reward them for for for doing 4:20 good. And I see that same heart that's here in in the Lord that when he finds people who are faithful, it pleases him so much. And that's one reason why I want to seek for faithfulness because it it pleases the Lord. Another reason I 4:33 want to seek for faithfulness is because I want to get God's best. We know that in in life there are some things where it's considered good. We get things that are good from the Lord. But I don't want just good. I want that which is the best 4:47 from the Lord. And there's a difference. And so please turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 44. I want to share from a story there. Ezekiel chapter 44. And just for context, uh last week we heard from brother Sil about some people 5:03 who were very loyal to the Lord. We heard about the the Levites and then we also heard about Phineas who is a descendant of the the Levites. And today I want to talk about a people who called the sons of Zadok. So Zadok was actually 5:15 a further descendant of Phineas several generations later. And Zadok was a priest during the time of David. And he stood loyal to David. Even though David went through a lot of trials, he stood loyal to David. And here we're going to 5:27 talk about the sons of Zadok. So it's all along that same lineage of people who are so faithful to the Lord. And so first of all, let's start with verse uh 10. So what the Lord is doing here is he's comparing two sets of people. 5:39 There's these Levites and then there's these sons of Zadok. Okay? So look at verse 10. Ezekiel chapter 44 and verse 10. And look what look what these Levites did. But the Levites who went far from me when Israel went astray, who 5:54 went astray after me, after their idols, shall bear the punishment for their iniquity. So there were some Levites, there are some priests who were supposed to stay loyal to the Lord, but they went after idols. So what happens? And then 6:05 in verse 11, the Lord says, "Yet they shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having oversight at the gates of the house, ministering in the house, etc." And so even though these Levites were unfaithful to the Lord, you could say, 6:19 well, the Lord forgave them and he still in his mercy gave them a place to work in the temple, calling it maybe general house maintenance, taking care of the gates, taking care of the home, etc. Okay, so that's the Levites. But look 6:32 what the Lord allows for the sons of Zadok. Couple verses later, look at verse 15. Verse 15. But the Levitical priests, the sons of Zadok, who kept charge of my sanctuary when the sons of Israel went astray, shall come near to 6:46 me. And what I want you to count here is the number of times that the Lord says me. Okay, look at the number of times he says me. These sons of Zadok shall come near to me to minister to me, and they shall stand before me to offer me the fat and 7:02 the blood. and verse 16, and they shall enter my sanctuary and they shall come near to my table to minister to me and to keep my charge. So you see the number of times that the Lord emphasizes me or my there. And what's the difference? And 7:16 so these levites were out there taking care of the general house maintenance of the temple. But these sons of Zadok, they were serving the Lord himself. So you see there's a big difference there. What is better to general general 7:28 maintenance of the gates or do you want to serve the Lord himself? There's no that's the difference between what is good and versus what is best. And why did the sons of Zadok get the best? Because they were faithful to the Lord 7:39 and they kept his charge. And what was the charge that the Lord had given to them to keep the temple holy? And so that was a beautiful picture for me of someone who was faithful to the Lord and through that they got the best. And I 7:52 also love if you just turn a couple pages over to verse 48, I love one of the descriptions about the sons of Zadok. So go to chapter 48 and verse 11. Ezekiel 48 and verse 11. It shall be. So the context of this is 8:11 that the Lord is now dividing the land uh in Israel to the different tribes. And it says this, it shall be for the priests who are sanctified of the sons of Zadok who have kept my charge, who did not go astray when the sons of 8:24 Israel went astray. And I love that phrase. The sons of Zadok were described as someone who kept my charge. And what does that word charge mean? So let's say you have a man and he needs help from a friend and maybe he needs this friend to 8:39 take him to the airport. You wouldn't say, "Hey, I charge you to take me to the airport." That would be a little extreme. You say, "Hey, I need help to go to the airport. Can you take me to the airport?" But if this man had 8:50 children and if this man were to die, he might say to his friend, "Hey, I charge you to take care of my children to raise them up and to take care of them." That's when someone might use the word charge. So, this is a much more solemn 9:02 word. And what does the Lord say here about the sons of Zadok? They they kept the Lord's charge, which was to keep the temple holy. And so can you imagine dear brothers and sisters if the Lord could say that about us that we also kept his 9:16 church to keep our home holy for him or to keep this church holy for him. What a wonderful way for the Lord to remember us. And if we can seek for that then that's one way for us to make sure we get the Lord's best. So that's the 9:29 second reason we want to get the Lord's best and we want to be faithful. The last reason why we want to seek for faithfulness is that God is faithful. And as we grow to be more and more like Jesus, we say we want to grow to be like 9:43 him. Then it makes sense that we should be more faithful as God himself is faithful. So one of the verses that I we've all heard in this church many times is 1 Corinthians 10 uh verse 13. I can read it real quick. It talks about 9:56 temptation. 1 Corinthians 10:13. It says this, "No temptation has overtaken you, but such as common to man." And here's the phrase, "And God is faithful." How is God faithful? God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what 10:13 you are able. And so you can imagine what we face every single day. I see all these temptations coming. And so what does that mean when God is faithful? God, it means that God is looking at every single one of these temptations 10:23 and he's saying, "Hey, some of these temptations when I can handle, some of these temptations when I can't handle. And the ones that when I can't handle, put God puts a filter on those temptation and make sure it doesn't come 10:33 to me." And he doesn't just do it for me, but he does it for all of his children. And so I can imagine one day when we are in heaven, we can ask the Lord, Lord, hey, what were those temptations that you didn't allow me to 10:45 be fa to face? And I'm sure we'll be surprised, Lord. Wow, you cared for me that much. You protected me from so many things which you knew I couldn't have handled. And so that is the faithfulness I believe we'll see in eternity when we 10:57 go to heaven. And we can ask that question, what are those temptations that you didn't let me face? And so my main point here is that God is faithful. He has never uh left us down. He's never let me down. And I believe that when I 11:09 get to my end of life, I'll say the same thing. God has never left me down in my entire life. And so because he is faithful, if we want to grow to be more like him, then we should grow in faithfulness as well. So those are some 11:19 reasons for us to consider why we should seek to be faithful. But then practically, how do we apply this in our life? So let's say we want to be faithful. Okay, we agree this is important. But then practically how do we apply this in the different areas of 11:33 our life. And so I just want to share about a few areas today for us to consider why how we can apply faithfulness. And the first area I want to talk about is faithfulness in the little things as it relates to money matters. And so please turn with me to 11:48 Luke uh chapter 16. Luke chapter 16. This is our memory verse from a few weeks ago. And the context of this verse is it's talking about money. Okay. So our memory verse says he who is faithful uh Luke 16:10 Luke 16 verse 10 he who is faithful in a 12:07 very little thing is faithful also in much and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much and verse 11 if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth who will give the true riches to 12:21 you and so the context of this verse is that Jesus is telling a story to his disciples in earlier verses so I'll try to summarize that story real quick. And the story goes like this. And there was a there was a money manager uh that 12:34 worked for this rich man. And the rich man or the master said to him, "Hey, you're going to have to be kicked out. I'm going to fire you because you're you're you're not good enough. You're going to have to leave." So then this 12:45 money money manager thinking, "Well, now what am I going to do? If my my master fires me, I can't go out to the fields and dig. I can't beg for money. What am I going to do?" So this money manager has a really brilliant idea. So, he goes 12:58 to all the people who owed his master money and says, "Hey, how much tell me how much you owe my my master." And if I were to use, let's say, today's terms, let's say you owe my master $1,000. Fine. Take that bill, scratch it out, 13:10 right? 500. Or, "How much do you owe your master? 800 bucks." Fine. Scratch out 800, right? 400. And he keeps on doing this. And at the end, uh, in verse 8, 16:8, it says, "The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had 13:25 acted shrewdly." And so what is the point of that that parable? Is Jesus telling us to uh cancel our our debts and change our debt numbers? No. No. That's not the point. What is the point of this this parable? The point of this 13:37 parable is that this money manager, the good thing about him was that he thought about the future. He thought about what was going to happen and he prepared for it. And I'll just read the verse 8 in the Good News Bible. And it says this, 13:51 the people of this world are much more shrewd in handling their affairs than the people who belong to the light. So in other words, this earthly uh money manager who was just thinking about money, he was willing to cheat. The good 14:05 thing about him was that he thought about the future. So therefore, he prepared. But if you think about us as Christians, how do we prepare for the future as it relates to money? And one way we can prepare for the future is 14:15 that we become faithful. And I want to share there's a difference between being righteous with money and versus being faithful with money. If we're righteous with money, that means that hey, we don't cheat the government of taxes. We 14:26 don't steal money. That's good. We need to be righteous with money. But this is talking about being faithful with money. And being faithful with money has to do with how we spend our money. The question is, do we really need to buy 14:37 the things that we need or looking to buy? Are we learning to live simply? Those are the questions that we can ask ourselves to say, hey, am I really being faithful with money? And why is it important that we become faithful of 14:48 money? Because if we're faithful in the way we spend, that's how we can get the true spiritual riches. But what this verse is telling us is that there's people, there's Christians who are just think concerned about buying things. 14:59 They're just concerned about the money that they can spend and they're not thinking, hey, if I just spend any way I want, how's that going to impact my spiritual well-being? How's that going to impact my spiritual future? A lot of 15:09 Christians don't think about that. And so that's why in verse 8, we see that the people of this world are more shrewd in handling their affairs than the people who belong to the light. And so that's one thing I want to just 15:21 emphasize again in this church. It's so important, especially being in a Bay Area where there's so many ads, so much marketing everywhere. There's such a temptation to spend. But may we be a people who learn to live simply and be 15:33 faithful with how we spend our money. That is one way we can be faithful. So money m money matters is an area that's very important to be faithful in. Another area I want to focus on today is to be faithfulness towards our wives. 15:46 And I speak this to myself as a um as a man and to all the brothers here that we need to have utter faithfulness towards our wives. So please turn with me to Malachi and chapter 2. It's a couple books over Malachi chapter 16:02 2 and verse 13 and 14. So the context of this verse is that there's these Israelites who have been seeking the Lord. And you look at verse 13, it says that they're covering the altar of the Lord. Malachi 2:13, it says, "You're covering the altar of the 16:19 Lord with tears, with weeping, with groaning, but he's no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor." So why is it that these people who are seeking the Lord, they're at the altar, they're giving offerings to the Lord, crying to 16:32 him, weeping, but the Lord says, "No, I don't want it." Why is that? Verse 14, it says this. Yet you say, "For what reason? Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth against whom you have dealt 16:46 treacherously with, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant." So because these people were unfaithful to their wives, that the Lord said, "Hey, I don't care what you pray or seek me with. I'm not going to listen. You did 17:00 not um you did not um be loyal to your wives." And so I think for our church, I don't think we're as much in danger of um divorcing our wives. But the question is in a new covenant, what is that level of faithfulness that we are to our 17:13 wives? And one thing I was doing uh earlier was I was looking at back at my wedding video from uh like 8 years ago. And I was thinking, hey, what did I promise my wife on when I did my wedding vows? So I went back to to listen to 17:26 that and some of it's quite convicting. So I'll just share some of the things that challenged me. For example, one thing I said on my my wedding day was this. Um, I shall share all that I have with you and provide and care for you to 17:39 the best of my ability. And especially that last part, I shall care for you to the best of my ability. So, I was thinking, Lord, am I am I doing that? And I say that because sometimes in the home, uh, there's there's a lot going on 17:51 with with little kids. And when I do things, there can be sometimes a spirit of grumbling or complaining in there. But I thought, Lord, if I'm faithful to that promise I said, then I wouldn't complain if I have to do some extra work 18:01 in the home because that's what I signed up for. That's what I promised. And so that's just a one again a little thing where I can say, Lord, I want to be faithful to what I promised my wife on my wedding day. I want to care for her 18:11 with joy and without any cumbling uh compl complaining or grumbling uh if I have to take things around the house. That's one example. Another thing I said to my wife, I shall cleave to you alone and be loyal and true to you in all 18:24 situations. Especially that last part, be loyal and true to you in all situations. You we live in a day and age where we go online and we see so many different pictures and advertisements. And the question I was thinking for 18:37 myself is how quickly do you turn your eyes away from an image that you're not supposed to see online? Okay, maybe when you just got married, when I just got married, maybe I turn away immediately, but maybe after a few years, the 18:51 response is not immediate. Maybe it's a couple of seconds, maybe it's a minute. So, it's a good question, I think, that we can ask ourselves, hey, how true are we to that what we've promised our wives to be true to them in all situations. 19:03 So, again, these are little things, but I believe that we're utterly faithful towards our wives. This is something the Lord will will honor. So, that's something I want to to seek for. Um the next area I want to share about 19:14 is faithfulness in our workplace. Uh most of us are spending most of our times um in in the office for the majority of the week. And one thing we see in throughout scripture is that God never picks lazy people. God never 19:27 called a prophet or called a king while the king was while the person was taking a nap or sleeping. They were always working in every single example. And I just want to share one example of that just to highlight. Um and so this is 19:38 from the example of King Saul. And so King Saul started off well and we want to look at what was some good qualities about him in his early days as it relates to faithfulness in work. So if you turn with me to 1 Samuel and chapter 19:51 9, 1st Samuel chapter 9. Okay. And the context of the story is that the donkeys of his father were lost. So Saul and one of his servants went to go look for these these donkeys. And so the question I want to ask is how many different 20:07 places did Saul go to to look for these donkeys? Okay, so I want you to count. So 1st Samuel chapter 9 and verse4. Okay, how many places did he did he go to? It says this, he passed through the hill country of Ephraim, one and passed 20:22 through the land of Shalisha, two, but did not find him. Then he passed through the land of Shaleim, three, but they were not there. Then he passed through the land of the Benjamites, four. Okay. And they did not find him. Verse five, 20:36 when they came to the land of Zuf, five five places. And then it says later that he went to look for Samuel in a in a different city. So I think that's that's six. So he went to at least six places. And if you read the story, it was 20:47 actually over the course of 3 days. So think about it. How many people if your dad or mom asked you, hey, we we lost a we lost a dog, we lost a cat. How many of you would go to San Jose, go to Mountain View, go to Sunnyvale, go to 21:02 Militus, go to Fremont, go to Hayward to look for a lost animal? I don't think a lot of people would, but that's what Saul did. And we see his faithfulness again in this little thing. And what's amazing about this is that Saul didn't 21:16 actually have to do this. He could have said to his father, "Hey, dad, you're a rich guy. Can't you just buy another pair of of donkeys?" Why did I say that? Because you look at verse one. Who was Saul the son of? He was a son of a man 21:28 named Kish. And look what it says about Kish in the end of verse one. Okay, Kish was it says here a mighty man of valor or in my margin it says wealth. So Saul's father was a rich influential man. He could have said hey dad just buy 21:44 another pair of donkeys. But he didn't do that. So even in those little things, Saul was so faithful for and I believe that's one of the reasons why God picked him to be the first king of of Israel. And so may we be faithful in our 21:57 workplace to do our work well. And I'll just share a quote from uh 1 Timothy, I think chapter 6 and verse one, it says this in the Living Bible. Let it let it never be said that Christ's people are poor workers. May that never be said 22:12 about us that we're poor workers. May we all be diligent in our workplace. That's another place of faithfulness. Lastly, I'll just share uh one other area for us us to consider and that's to be faithful in the church. To be 22:25 faithful in the church in the little things. And so I'll share a few examples. Let's say one thing we're all have in common is that we're all part of some cleanup crew. Okay? We all have a cleanup crew. So the question is, what 22:36 is your attitude when you see a piece of trash on the ground? Is your attitude to say, "Hey, I'm going to go pick that up." Or to say, "Hey, maybe that's someone else's responsibility. they can go pick it up. It's a very little thing 22:47 like that, but I believe God looks and sees, hey, who are these people that actually care about my home? Even if it's just a piece of trash, to pick up those little things. Or another area we could consider. Let's say the memory 22:57 verse. It's a very small thing. It's a very little thing, but the question is, how many of us take the time to actually memorize just a short sentence or two? It's for our good. But even more than that, I believe that the Lord looks and 23:09 say, "Hey, who are the people who are faithful, who are willing to be faithful in these little things and to um and to memorize the verses every week." And so again, regardless of whatever we do in the church, God has given us different 23:20 ministries, different responsibilities, whatever it is, I just want to urge everyone, let us be faithful in these things, in the little things. And so, I'll just say one last thing in inclusion, in conclusion. Um, as we look 23:31 at the news today, there's a lot of things going on uh in the world. Um there's a lot of uh news, some scary, some confusing. What do we do? We know that Jesus is going to come back soon, but how do we get ready for his coming? 23:43 And one thing is that I've noticed that when Jesus used the word faithful, often times he used it in the context of some parable that talked about his return. Okay, for example, well done, good and faithful servant. Like some of these 23:56 parables were talking about him coming and how we can get ready for him. And so it just reminds me, Lord, as I see all these things in the news and everything that's happening, I don't need to spend time looking to understand how what 24:05 everything is going on. I can prepare by seeking to be faithful. That's my best way of preparing for your return. And so that's what um God has challenged me with. And I hope that as we said earlier, that there can be many people 24:17 that God finds in his church who are faithful. Uh thank you for giving me a chance to share.
