0:00:00 - 0:00:22 Um briefly talk about Matthew 20 verses one through 15. And if you, if you, um, if you would, I would ask you to just pause this and go and read that quickly. And, uh, I'm serious about that. If, if you, if you really want to get the most out of that, you're gonna have to go do that. Um I don't really 0:00:22 - 0:00:41 want to make this presentation right now. Uh Typically, what I do is as I have thoughts, I'll, I'll note down everything I need to, to reproduce the f the bulk of what I'm thinking about or feeling at the moment. Uh, and I'll come back to it when that becomes the highest priority. But in this case, the 0:00:41 - 0:00:58 priority got boosted because I'm, I'm convinced that if I wait to talk about this a whole lot of it's gonna evaporate. I, I don't think, uh I don't think the notes I've taken will be adequate to reproduce it. So I'm, I'm boosting it to the top of the list, but I, I don't have the time to sit here and 0:00:58 - 0:01:20 read you the scriptures. Um, that, that this passage wouldn't be a line by line commentary. And so it's not worth my time to, to read that to you. So please go read that Matthew 21 through 15. And then with that, there's only actually one slide to this. So take a look at this picture. Um So on the left 0:01:20 - 0:01:44 , we've got these rings and it's just, it's just a diagram. In fact, this one is extraneous. This is just a diagram. Whoops of um of people and they, they're actually their states. OK? So a person begins here, a person begins here and a person begins here and then they traverse through this network to 0:01:43 - 0:02:10 the same state. OK. That's a gist of what's going on. So the red arrows, that's one person agree. It's another, the blue is another. So if you did what I asked you to and you read that passage, then, um, what, what we arrive at is this state where each servant is receiving the same amount of money even 0:02:10 - 0:02:32 though they worked at different times and, and four different durations. So when we read that, we say, well, that seems rather unfair. The question is, is it, is it? So let's peel this apart. The first question is what, what are you actually receiving when you go through these states of improvement following 0:02:31 - 0:02:59 God's voice? If you were to arrive at the same state as another person, was your path exactly the same. No, it wasn't for any two people, there will be a different path right. And in that path, there are going to be differences in price, so to speak, in the level of sacrifice. And uh you could, you could 0:02:59 - 0:03:20 parse that out in any number of ways. But let's just keep it generic to, to uh keep it brief. So there there are massive differences between the pathways that these people took. So is this a violation of the laws of cause and effect? So we read that God is no respecter of persons. It means that He's 0:03:19 - 0:03:46 impartial. All people are governed by the same law set of laws. So how is it that people taking different paths can arrive at the same state? Well, the, the answer lies in the fact that there are similarities in their state and there are differences in their state. And this diagram I focused on the similarities 0:03:45 - 0:04:07 . Let's talk about what the differences might be. So let me just give you a contrived example. Let's say you and I are sitting in a living room and we're just sitting there and we each have a glass of water and let's say it's ice water. And uh we, we let's say we're in the United States. So unless we're 0:04:07 - 0:04:30 in Flint, Michigan, the water is clear, it's clean. Now, we're both drinking the same water. So my question is this, what's the difference in how much we appreciate that water between us? Now, uh Odds are, I don't know you, I don't know the vast majority of people that watch these videos and uh those 0:04:29 - 0:04:55 who I have interacted with. II, I barely know for the most part. So, um how can I be so confident in a presumption that, that, uh, what I'm about to say is true because I would bet that I appreciate that ice water at least 10 times more than you do. And it might be one or two orders of magnitude greater 0:04:55 - 0:05:15 , which is insane. I mean, uh I don't even know if you can wrap your head around what that would mean uh in terms of a difference because you, you probably were just like, well, jeez, how, how much, how much difference could there actually be in what someone appreciates and how much, but how much they 0:05:15 - 0:05:37 appreciate it. Now, if we had time, I I could lead you through the many reasons why I appreciate ice water so much. Um Some of them are generic in, in the sense that it's a, it's a generic gratitude that I apply to all things in my life and many of them are specific to ice water and I, I don't want to 0:05:37 - 0:00:00 bore you with those details. Uh Just to give you two brief, brief pieces. Um One, I happen to have a condition where I am very thirsty all the time. My body doesn't process uh water correctly. And so ideally I should say. And so um if you were to imagine what it's like to go without water for a day. 0:00:00 - 0:06:25 Say, um, that's what I feel like after maybe an hour of not having water or even a half hour. And, and some of you have done that, you've done fasting from food and water for 24 hours. And imagine if you felt like that all the time every day. So, of course, you would appreciate water a lot more than 0:06:25 - 0:06:50 you do. Right. And then another, just very brief snippet is uh during the years I was in the military. Um There were many times where we were off someplace we didn't have access to good water and uh either we were drinking it out of nasty canteens or, or whatever. Um But it was almost always warm, sometimes 0:06:50 - 0:07:14 moldy uh out of like a nasty canvas bag or something they had hanging up. And um, so not having sufficient water. Now that that was compounded by the fact I didn't know it back then that I have this, this condition. And so, um I really appreciate ice water. That was just too very brief pieces of that 0:07:13 - 0:07:43 to, to not belabor the point. So it's absolutely the case that we all have different appreciation levels for the same things. So given any specific situation, uh idea person or feeling, we're all going to value those differently. Uh An essential part of the gospel is coming to value things as God does 0:07:43 - 0:08:11 . That almost always includes greater general gratitude and it certainly includes differences in the value we um associate with specific, we say things, but I mean, the entire set of everything. So in this parable, when you have these workers, they're not, they're all, they're all working uh different 0:08:11 - 0:08:35 amounts of time doing different specific work. But while they're receiving the same amount of money, they're not receiving the same set of outcomes. Now, this has some really deep implications and we could talk for a long time about this parable, but I'm just gonna keep it capped. I'm giving you tons 0:08:34 - 0:09:14 of uh keys to understanding much more about this and everything it touches. But the idea is there are two components of joy. One is the amount of joy. That thing is capable of providing two is what share of that you perceive. Both of those are really important to navigate if you want to maximize the 0:09:13 - 0:09:39 joy in your life and in the eternities. And of course, God has this all figured out, but everybody gets off the rails by thinking that they know better than he does in this and everything else. And so a huge chunk of coming up to more of what he has to give us is truly trusting him so that he can guide 0:09:39 - 0:10:06 us through the situations in life that will help develop our accuracy and depth of gratitude for the things that have greater value than we know. OK. So uh carrying on with this, let's just make sure I'm hitting the points I intended to which of these people has greater love and why? Now that might seem 0:10:06 - 0:10:37 like an odd question. So love is a willingness to suffer for the benefit of another. Now, we haven't talked about how any of this has anything to do with other people, but the more you have, the more you have to give, right. And while our minds instantly they, they just constantly, uh, they constantly 0:10:36 - 0:11:12 associate anything like that with money or at least material well being, that's not the most important thing. Jesus said, a man's abundance is not uh measured by what he has in terms of material substances. Instead, it's measured by what we're talking about here. The value you derive from who you are 0:11:12 - 0:11:41 , what you do and why you do it, you could call that meaning, right? So one's abundance comes from their meaning. You could also say it comes from your joy. Those things are intricately coupled. You could say that joy is a measure of how much of your meaning you've accomplished subject to the limits 0:11:40 - 0:12:05 of how much joy your meaning can provide because you could rank different options for meaning. The greatest of these is love. That is the greatest meaning in the definition I provided, which is the Lord's definition. So if that sounds like it's too much of a stretch to claim that I somehow know that 0:12:05 - 0:12:33 if you're more comfortable with it, we can substitute that out for what he said, which is love others as I have loved you. OK. So the love that Jesus has for others is our, our um are obtaining and practicing that. So us loving others as Jesus loves us, that is the highest meaning period. Nothing's better 0:12:33 - 0:13:04 than that. And so how does this diagram relate to that? Well, you have to have more to give in order to love more and you have to suffer more in order to love more. That's another basket of topics that we could talk about for a very long time. But the point is the, the bigger the distance between where 0:13:03 - 0:13:24 you started and where you end up, the more you're able to love other people and that matters, it matters a lot. So if I, if I asked you, if you had to pick one of these tracks, the red one, the green one or the blue one, which, which would you pick and why? So s some people they choose to be this green 0:13:24 - 0:13:56 person. Now let me describe more about this green person. You might be one, but you might know one. These are people who come to the world with lots of light. They are very capable of doing extraordinary things with relative ease. Maybe their advantages are not limited to what's inside of them. Um Maybe 0:13:56 - 0:14:23 they have external advantages too and I'm not just talking about, let's say looks or um I guess physical capabilities would, would be describable as external but situational advantages as well. So maybe they're born, born to wonderful parents or prosperous circumstances or in a culture that has many 0:14:22 - 0:14:55 principles for success or um an environment that's wealthy or whatever, prosperous society, whatever. So that person is given great uh advantages. So a lot of people would say, well, this is a shorter path. Wouldn't that be better? Yes and no, it would be better under certain circumstances. Namely what 0:14:55 - 0:15:20 that person would choose in the red path or the blue path because getting to the end is more important than anything else. Getting to this end state. And so if you're out of the way, meaning that these bonds are disconnected and you're just free floating, that's a worse situation than the three that 0:15:20 - 0:15:53 we see here. So objectively, it's worse. And so it's better to be green than nothing. However, the ideal is not green. So for two reasons, at least one green people, they have a huge problem in accepting greater truth or greater things. It doesn't, we don't have to constrain this to just truth. Any improvement 0:15:53 - 0:16:18 is very hard for them. The reason is they don't have contrast, right? And so in every situation has its pros and cons, but in their case, the, the downsides are that they're just not very hungry for anything because they've been satisfied their whole lives. And so what you'll find, which is really interesting 0:16:17 - 0:16:41 , uh, zooming in specifically to the topic of light. People who were born with an abundance of light, they're not necessarily holy and this is a surprise. So they're, they're very aware of things but uh and they're very capable but they might not be very good. And I'm not just talking here about people 0:16:41 - 0:17:06 who are overtly evil. So in the scheme of things, you could make an argument that people who are capable, who have a great potential, but very little actuality. Um not that they use their capacity for evil, but that they don't use it for good, that they're neutral, that they're lukewarm. This is very 0:17:06 - 0:17:26 bad. You could argue that those people do more harm in this world than overtly evil because of all the good that they don't do. And this obviously has a rippling effect through, through the entire world and it's, it's extraordinarily significant. It's one of the saddest things. So, so I've met people 0:17:25 - 0:17:56 as you probably have too of all calibers. And um I feel a lot less bad about folks who start out on the bottom rung and don't get very far than I do about people who start high up the ladder and don't move at all. So these people, their lives are, are, are um their lives are characterized by this connection 0:17:55 - 0:18:22 here. It's the first time they're put in a situation where what they have is not way better than what they could have and almost all of them blow it. Almost all of them blow it. And it's so, so, so sad to see because they instantly lose, you know, you could say their birthright, they instantly lose this 0:18:22 - 0:18:45 tremendous blessing that they've been given that they've never earned. And they start on the shoulders of giants and then jump off onto the ground face first. And so I would not choose that position. However, there are many people born into situations like this for whom it's better because if you use 0:18:45 - 0:19:07 that and if you react properly, yes, it is a shortcut in a sense. Now that being said, like we've talked about, there is something you miss out on which is the gratitude you would have for this. I'm not convinced that you can make up for experience through, let's say faith. When it comes to gratitude 0:19:07 - 0:19:25 , you can't just sit there and really, really, really imagine what it might be like to be grateful for something and then magically you're grateful. I really think there are certain things, you know, we read in Hebrews that the Lord learned obedience by the things he suffered. Um That doesn't really 0:19:25 - 0:19:53 mean what people think it means a more accurate way of saying that is the Lord learned the value of who God is and what he offers who the father is and what he offers through the things that he suffered. Uh He, he wasn't disobedient ever but through the suffering that the father led him uh to, he massively 0:19:52 - 0:20:15 increased in the value he associated with everything the father is and offers as it is with all of us. So to the extent that you trust him, he's gonna lead you through experiences in life, that that skyrocket, your appreciation for things that are good, that are actually good in his sight. And that will 0:20:15 - 0:20:43 feature many shifts of appraisal value on your part. So I would not pick the green one. Now that being said I want to and, and this is gonna introduce a limit of this model, this picture, this paradigm when we talk about the blue, OK. There, there is a terrible false tradition among us that could be 0:20:43 - 0:21:04 described in the phrase, go direct to God. I don't. Well, II, I was gonna say, I don't know why this has become a sacred cow, but I know exactly why. Um I'm not sure why so many people have fallen for it. But um it's, it's very appealing to human nature and that, that's a sufficient reason. So, so often 0:21:04 - 0:21:24 in life, let me give you a practical example of this idea. And then maybe we can talk about the directly spiritual application or form of it. So often in life, you will be taken to a fork in the road and the decision will be before you and on the one hand will be a decision that's obviously good, but 0:21:24 - 0:21:52 it's really painful. It has a high cost, it's uncomfortable, it's new. It, it'll make you look like a fool, it'll expose your weakness, whatever. And then the other fork in the road, it's, um, it's something that's later in time, but it seems like it would be better. So what happens is people facing 0:21:51 - 0:22:15 these choices that allow Satan to trick them by discounting the good of what's right before them, uh, in, in pretending that the reason they're doing so is so they can free themselves up for the better thing later. Now, the reason this is an effective trick is that there are genuine situations where 0:22:15 - 0:22:36 you cannot have what I've called a placeholder. You can't hold to a placeholder because that same slot has to be open in order for the greater thing that happens later to happen. So a really simple example of this is if you're dating someone who you don't want to get married to, you're not single so 0:22:36 - 0:22:58 that someone who you do want to get married to can come into your life, right? So, uh a quality person is not gonna be interested in someone who dumps the person they're with to be with them, right? So there's an example of a placeholder that's got to go if you're dating someone and you know that you 0:22:58 - 0:23:20 don't want to get married to them, you should immediately stop dating them, period. There's no by print, there's no qualifications on that. However, let's say, and this is not a hypothetical. So I had uh a person that I employed and I gave them a job even though they didn't have the skills for the job 0:23:19 - 0:23:41 , which I, that, that's happened dozens of times. Um, and it was very clear from the get go what the expectations of the job would be. And so as this person started training on the job, getting paid reasonably well, uh, given the situation, they were quickly exposed to some faults that they had, that 0:23:41 - 0:24:02 absolutely would prevent them from doing the job. And so these were, were minor things, not a very big deal, you know, just slightly tweaking the way you handled certain situations. But this person did not want to do that. The biggest problem wasn't the change. It was that this particular person had 0:24:02 - 0:24:30 lived their lives in such a way that they had never really been in a situation where they had to change in order to improve. And that first exposure was really hard for them. And so they contrived a story in their minds about how they were going to go pursue this, uh, training program for this completely 0:24:29 - 0:24:50 different field that was gonna take years of really hard work, way harder than anything that they were challenged with in, in the, in the, and that present situation. And so they were saying, no, I'm not gonna do this thing, but it's not because it's too hard and I don't feel like doing a hard thing 0:24:50 - 0:00:00 . It's because this better thing is over here and I'm going to quit this job so that I can go do that. Now, would it surprise you to hear that they never went and did that? I knew in the exact moment I was told this, that that was never gonna happen, right? Because I've seen this way too many times, 0:00:00 - 0:25:33 this particular thing. OK. So that's a practical application. Let's talk about the spiritual version of this. This is when you completely ignore all invitations for improvement that are all around you saying, well, I'm just going to go directly to God. What's the problem with this? This is these are 0:25:33 - 0:26:01 the people who say, don't you dare tell me more about what God is like because who gave you the right? I don't care what you think. I'm going direct to God because God's so great, we can just go direct to him. Well, obviously he is that great. He's not the problem. We are the problem. So we've talked 0:26:00 - 0:26:24 many times about the difficulty of going into God's presence. It's, it's not a trivial thing. And to, to think that somehow you as AAA flawed person with, with uh all kinds of things that, that you do that you know God does not want you to do and all kinds of things that you don't do that, you know God 0:26:24 - 0:26:52 wants you to do. If you think that magically, you can just just get more from God, quote unquote, what you're capable of receiving from him is what you already have. So just let that sink in for a second. If you want more than what you have, you need something different than, than what you have to get 0:26:52 - 0:27:22 it. You have to be different than you are to get it. And that introduces a chicken egg problem, a race condition. And so the solution to that is to look around you because for all people, God has intricately designed this creation as a, as uh providing every ladder rung for us to climb higher. And so 0:27:22 - 0:27:40 when people say I'm going to go direct to God, what they're actually saying is I reserve the right to completely ignore all the attempts. God makes to invite me to improve in my life because I believe there's going to be some magical, better thing that's easier than all these things that are right in 0:27:39 - 0:28:02 front of me and that they'll, they'll result in the same exact outcome and thats not true. That's looking beyond the mark. It's the, the textbook definition. You're, you're looking at something that you imagine in the future, you don't really have rational basis for what you imagine it to be. And uh 0:28:02 - 0:28:34 you're preferring that that thing that you're vainly imagining to what is before you. So the truth is you can't actually do this, this is a figurative drawing. Um It, it can be true, but only when these things can actually do this when these things have not happened yet. That's key if, if these people 0:28:33 - 0:29:00 are not around yet, it's possible to do this. Once these people appear, this blue person would actually have to do this because this one's higher, right? He's not gonna have visibility on these because even if these people are in his life, he will not regard them as better. And that has to do with this 0:28:59 - 0:29:22 , this windows of truth windows of value, idea that I've taught before. It's step by step. You find the best thing that you know, and you go with it, you find the best person that you know, and you model your life after them, or at least facets of your life after the facets that you recognize is better 0:29:22 - 0:29:44 between you. Ok? So maybe you don't have life all figured out. The question is for the next step, what's the best thing you got it? Ok. So that's really important. So you can't, it's kind of hard to go directly to God when you have no idea what he's like. It's kind of hard to go directly to God when 0:29:44 - 0:30:05 you're not worthy to hear his voice. So what can you hear? You can hear the voice of improvement through your conscience and you can fix all that first before you have these grandiose ideas of going direct to God, quote unquote. It's not the point of this presentation, but I needed to say that because 0:30:04 - 0:30:31 I don't want to give people ammunition for false beliefs if I can avoid it. OK. I, I'm pretty sure that the last thing I need to talk about here is that this little sketch you could, you could, if you zoomed out of this, you'd see that it's just a subset of a much larger network and it's, it's fractal 0:30:31 - 0:30:59 in nature, meaning if you zoom in or zoom out, you'll just see more of the same at different scale. And this is the way it goes all the way up to God. And so the magnitude of the joy that you can have in life is going to be ultimately limited to the delta between where you start and where you end, not 0:30:59 - 0:31:29 the um subset of qualities of that end state that are shared between all people who are there if that makes sense. So put, put into one specific application, maybe this will help if you were to go to any place in heaven, what you would find is that it would be occupied by people who are very similar 0:31:28 - 0:31:57 in certain ways, but they'd also be very different in other ways. So even though they'd be in the same place, cause you're in a specific place in this situation, they're going to have very different levels of gratitude. But at the same time, their gratitude will, will fit into one homogeneous class compared 0:31:56 - 0:32:23 to other places in heaven. So if you want a tremendous example of this, you go to revelation, go to the part where the different beings in heaven are praising the Lord and look at the differences between what they say in praise. So there are the people that are right around his throne, they are the people 0:32:22 - 0:32:45 that are a little off from that. And then there are the people who are significantly off from that and they each are less grateful as a class for what he did. And you can read why it's right there in their words, it's very interesting. I highly encourage you to look at that. So um so different, some 0:32:45 - 0:33:07 differences persist in heaven. Uh And, and it has to do with this too. So in heaven, um there's a distinction between those who have given their lives for the gospel and those who have not and they are co located, those, those people um have access to some of the same places. I want to be careful about 0:33:07 - 0:33:35 how I say that. Um So there, there are certain experiences that you can have in life that serve as gates, that limit where you can go in heaven. But um there, there are um there are other criteria for where you go in heaven that are, are, are widely shared among people. So anyway, it probably gets messy 0:33:35 - 0:33:55 trying to parse all that out. I hope this is helpful. Um If I, if I had to give a, a summary of all this, uh I would just say there's actually, there's probably a whole bunch of things that I've said here that different people will take different things out. So maybe it's better for me not to try to 0:33:55 - 0:34:08 shove all of that into one overarching conclusion. Um, but at a minimum, I hope you understand the parable in Matthew 20 a little better than you did before.