Living with Significance — Part One

Can I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the Gospel of Luke and to the nineteenth chapter? We’re going to begin reading this morning at Luke 19:11:

“While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once. He said: ‘A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. “Put this money to work,” he said, “until I come back.”

“‘But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, “We don’t want this man to be our king.”

“‘He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it.

“‘The first one came and said, “Sir, your mina has earned ten more.”

“‘“Well done, my good servant!” his master replied. “Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.”

“‘The second came and said, “Sir, your mina has earned five more.”

“‘His master answered, “You take charge of five cities.”

“‘Then another servant came and said, “Sir, here is your mina; I[’ve] kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you[’re] a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.”

“‘His master replied, “I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?”

“‘Then he said to those standing by, “Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten minas.”

“‘“Sir,” they said, “he already has ten!”

“‘He replied, “I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be [a] king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.”’”

Now, if you just keep your Bibles open there, we’re going to study this passage together—at least begin to.

And we’ll pause and ask God’s help:

Our God and Father, we pray that as we study the Bible together now, that you will come and help us, that only that which is of yourself may be heard and understood, and anything that is extraneous, irrelevant, or untrue may be forgotten even in the speaking of it. So, guard my words, and guard each of our hearts, we pray, so that we might be found among your faithful servants on that day when you return. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Those of you who have been around for some time over the years will doubtless have heard me refer to a gentleman who stands out in my memory from Scotland. His name is Mr. McPherson. He eventually emigrated to Australia. And if he’s still alive, I’m sure that he is roaming one of the coasts of Australia today and proudly wearing his kilt. Because he always came to church on Sunday wearing his kilt. It was at least his Sunday dress. Actually, after he retired from his routine employment, he wore his kilt two or three days a week, because he took a volunteer position on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. That is the mile that runs from the castle on one end to Hollyrood Palace on the other, which is the residence of the Queen when she is in Edinburgh. And you could find him in the midst of a normal working week out in the street with a group of tourists from somewhere in the world, regaling them with the news of the architecture and the geography and the history of this most significant place. He’s a very eloquent man, a typical Scot in many ways: he was very forceful in the way that he spoke, and yet he was tenderhearted underneath it all.

The reason I remember him more than any other is because of a particular Sunday when Sue and I had been invited to lunch in the home of a family in the church. And while lunch was being prepared, it was in the summertime, and it wasn’t raining, and so, given the uniqueness of that day, we were told that it would be fine for us to wait for lunch to be called by sitting out in the garden. And so a cluster of us were out in the back garden, including the son and daughter of this home. The daughter at that time, I think, was just about twenty, and the boy was in his middle teens. I’m not sure just how it came about, but in the course of the conversation, there was a lull, and suddenly, Mr. McPherson turned to this teenage boy, and he said to him, “And what about you, son? What are you plannin’ on makin’ o’ yoursel’?” I can still remember the embarrassed silence as this teenage boy, recognizing that this man, this kilted man, had asked him what he was planning on doing with his life… He really didn’t know what he was supposed to say. And I often wonder, as I think of Mr. McPherson and that question, whether this young man, who has now gone on to live and to be married and to have children of his own—I wonder if he still recalls that Sunday afternoon when this very important question was put to him. “And what about you, son? What are you plannin’ on makin’ o’ yoursel’?”

Now, why do I mention this? Well, because it is a very important question. I want you to ask it this morning too. I want you to consider that it demands a striking answer if we’re going to live significantly. It actually demands that we ask a question before that, which is essentially this: “Am I living significantly? Do I even know what it would be to live significantly?”

Now, poets throughout the twentieth century have seized on this essential question, because it is good for business. It finds an identifying reverberation in the hearts of the listeners. That’s why the pop group could sing, “What [am I] living for? Two-roomed apartment on the second floor.”[1] Or “What am I living for? A pint of beer and the girl next door.” And it sold in its hundreds of thousands because a generation was growing up asking the same question: “What am I living for?” A more mature audience, tuning into their gigantic, big record players, began to sing along with “What are you doing the rest of your life?”[2] Because they recognized that that wasn’t simply a question in a love song, but it was a significant question at whatever point they found themself on the pilgrimage of life. It is a significant question this morning. Do you hear it? “What are you doing the rest of your life?” Or, “What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?”[3] Am I living a significant life? Am I living life with significance?

The question is not “Am I busy?” For a congregation like this is, by and large, full of busy people. But busyness may actually simply be a cover-up for the fact that we feel ourselves, at the very core of our being, to be less than significant in what we’re doing with our time and what we’re giving ourselves to. It’s not unusual to find that individuals like ourselves—or perhaps even, if we’re honest, ourselves—to find that we don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what we’re doing; that quite honestly, we have nothing important, nothing big enough for which to live. There is nothing, actually, that makes sense of our Monday-through-Friday routine. We’re just doing it. We go out. We work to get money, to buy food, to live, so that we can go out, to work, to get money, to buy food, so that we can live. And we are tempted sometimes, in our quiet moments, to believe that Shakespeare was perhaps right when he said that life “is a tale told by an idiot,” it is “full of sound and fury,” and it “signif[ies] nothing.”[4] Looking into the future, we understand the cynical quip of Woody Allen. (Who is now quoted three Sundays in a row! This is a record. But anyway… I’m sure he would be delighted to know that here, on a corner of Bainbridge, Ohio, he is well quoted. Would to God I had the opportunity to share his quotes back with him and to talk with him. Still, we can pray.) Looking forward, we understand why Woody Allen said, “The future isn’t what it used to be.” And some of us have a sneaking suspicion that he has said something really significant when he says that. Now, I want you to keep this question in mind throughout today: “Am I living with significance?”

Now let’s turn to this story which Jesus told. And I hope that it will become apparent as to why I’ve begun in this way.

The Parable’s Context

First of all, you will notice the context in which this parable is delivered. Verse 11: if you allow your eyes to scan it, you will see that it tells us that it was as “they were listening to this.” What was “this”? Well, look back up to verse 9, and what we have there is the explanation, provided by Jesus, of what had happened in the life of this little man, Zacchaeus. Clearly, there had been a big change in this little man. And Jesus says, “I want you to understand what has happened: today salvation has come to his house. The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”[5] And so the life of Zacchaeus had taken on a whole new significance.

I’m sure, like me, you often wish that there were places that we could go to find out what happened to Zacchaeus afterwards. You know, what did he do next week? And of course, we have to beware of all this kind of conjecture, but I envisage him slipping back to that tree every so often. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he went back to that tree the very next week. I actually imagined him this week up the tree. Up the tree, nobody knows he’s up there, and he’s just singing to himself. And what is he singing? Well, you would have him singing one thing; I have him singing another thing. But what he’s singing when I saw him up the tree was:

I’m on the top of the world looking down on creation,
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around.[6]

“Jesus, your love put me on the top of the world!”

He’s a changed man! He was an irrelevancy! He was a sideline! He was obscured as a result of his evil activities. And suddenly, his life has taken on a completely new significance. That’s what it means to be changed by Jesus: not that he had adopted some external lifestyle that replaced his old one, not that he had signed up for a plan of external activities to which he was going to commit himself like a slave—no—but that he had now found that Jesus was in him, if you like, and he had been placed in Jesus.

And while his audience has this event and this explanation in mind, Jesus goes on, we’re told, to tell them a parable. A parable. Now, we’ve been following these parables through the Gospel of Luke, and they haven’t always been easy, have they? It’s difficult for us. We have to be careful that we don’t read into them what isn’t there or seek to extract from them material that we can’t justifiably do. I’m always encouraged by the fact that when, back in chapter 8, if you can remember that far back—Jesus traveling from town to town and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God, with the Twelve with him, and a large crowd gathering, and people coming to Jesus from town to town… Once the big crowd assembles in Luke 8:4, Jesus then gives them a parable. You might remember this. He said,

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. [And] still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.

That’s it. Can you imagine? He gets the big crowd together, he has the disciples there, and that’s what he says. And then he caps it off by saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And the disciples look at one another and said, “What’s that? What is that about? What are we supposed to make of that?” And he said, “Well, let me tell you: these parables are like a filtration system. For some, it simply drives them away; and others, it draws them in.”[7]

And on that occasion, mercifully for the sake of the disciples, he actually goes on to unpack the parable, and he says, “The seed is the word of God” and so on,[8] and we understand that these soils are representative of the hearts of men and women. In that instance, the disciples are helped. But here, when you come to this parable—the parable of the ten minas—there is no subsequent explanation. Therefore, we have to understand that the events that precede it and the events which follow it enable us to try and make sense of the central emphasis of the story that he tells.

The context not only looks back to the change in Zacchaeus, but the context is also directly affected by the fact—as we’re told by Luke in verse 11—that “he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.” You notice the word “because”: “He went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem.” And the closer that he got to Jerusalem, the atmosphere of expectancy was building. Back in Luke 9:51, Luke has told us that Jesus now had set his face steadfastly towards Jerusalem. And since then, right up until now, everything has been moving towards this great crescendo when he finally reaches his destination in Jerusalem. And the closer he gets, the question continues to bubble. Back in 17:20: “Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘Listen, the kingdom of God doesn’t come in the way that you are anticipating it.’”[9]

Now, for those of us who know our Bibles and have read in the Old Testament, we recognize that the Old Testament prophets were speaking of a day—a time that would come—when the world would be ruled not simply on the basis of God’s sovereign providence, but that there was going to come a day when God would rule the world directly through his Messiah. And the whole Old Testament is pointing to the coming of this Messiah and then the rule and reign of this Messiah. And given that the disciples now have begun to understand who Jesus is—at least have an inkling of this—they themselves are having difficulty working out this matter of the kingdom. Is it going to come in one great denouement? Is it going to happen in one extraordinary moment? After all, Jesus had been doing all of these miracles. It seems to be building up towards something. And of course, it was building towards something. He told them repeatedly that when he reached Jerusalem, it would involve suffering and death and resurrection. As recently as 18:31, he

took the Twelve aside and [he] told them, ‘We[’re] going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. [Namely,] he will be [turned] over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him … kill him. [And] on the third day he will rise again.

But they didn’t get it. Luke’s second writing is, of course, the Acts of the Apostles. And by the time you get to Acts 1:6, the disciples still don’t get it: “When they met together, they asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’” The disciples themselves couldn’t shake the standard Jewish expectation that the kingdom of God was about to arrive here in Jerusalem in a single earth-shattering moment.

The whole Old Testament is pointing to the coming of this Messiah and then the rule and reign of this Messiah.

Now, the strategy of God was clearly different from popular expectations. I actually purposefully went back to Luke chapter 8 and the story of the sower and the seed because that provides for us the three phases in the strategy of God in relationship to how his kingdom will come in all of its fullness. Let me just identify them for you.

Phase 1 we may refer to, if you like, as the planting phase, when the Messiah arrives incognito—which, of course, he has done. People are asking, “Who is this person? Is he Elijah? Is he Jeremiah? Is he one of the prophets? Who is he?”[10] The Messiah has arrived incognito to sow the seeds of the kingdom in the hearts of a few chosen disciples. That’s what’s taking place here in the record of the Gospels: Jesus the Messiah has come, and he is proclaiming this to those who have ears to hear. And those who have ears to hear and whose hearts are inclined in repentance and in faith are then those who become the recipients of the seeds of this great news.

Phase 2 is, if you like, the growing phase: a period of growth as the seed which has been sown then multiplies in the disciples’ lives and through the disciples’ lives—not only in what we read subsequent to the Gospels in the Acts of the Apostles but now all of the way down from the time when Jesus has gone into heaven. And the seed of the Word of God has been multiplied and multiplying in the lives of men and women. Their lives are fertilized by the gospel, and the spores of the kingdom, if you like, are becoming distributed throughout the world, looking forward to the day in Revelation 7 when there will be a great company gathered around the throne of God that no man can number that has come from every tongue and language and tribe from across the totality of the earth.[11]

The kingdom of God, first of all planted in the hearts of the disciples, then growing as a result of the exercise of the ministry of those who are the disciple of Jesus—and then phase 3, when Jesus the Messiah returns, bringing in the full manifestation of the kingdom of which the prophets had spoken.

So you see, they were having difficulty, and understandably so, trying to make sense of this. They said, “If Jesus is the Messiah, and he’s here, then presumably, when he gets to Jerusalem, the kingdom of God will be ushered in.” The disciples are looking at one another, and they’re saying, “I can’t wait to see the faces of those Roman soldiers when this thing blows. It is going to be fantastic when finally Jesus stands up and says, ‘Fellows, it’s over. I am Lord and King over all the earth.’” And it doesn’t happen. And so they’re confused, and they’re bemused, and it takes the unfolding of the story and the drama to finally dawn in their hearts as the Spirit of God brings to mind the things that Jesus had taught them—John chapter 16[12]—and they suddenly say, “Aha! This is it.”

So Luke, who, of course, in his introduction to his Gospel, told us that this Gospel was the product of careful investigation and that he had sought in the writing of the Gospel to provide us with “an orderly account”[13]—on the strength of that, in consistency with what he had affirmed, he now tells us why it was that he told them this parable. While they were still listening to his explanation about the transformation of Zacchaeus—which, of course, was an evidence of the kingdom being sown in the heart of a man, as had been the transformation in the life of a blind man—and with their minds rushing forward seventeen miles, which is all that remains now: seventeen miles forward to Jerusalem, or fifteen miles forward if you include the precinct of Bethany in Jerusalem… There’s only fifteen miles to go, and the temperature is rising, and the crowds are growing, and the festive procession towards the Passover is elaborate and driving forward. And in the midst of all of that, the buzz is around, and the disciples themselves are not exempt from it. They’re saying, “Maybe at this time he’s going to appear as Lord and King, and the kingdom of God is going to appear at once.” And so it is in order to address the wrongful expectation of the crowd that Jesus tells the story.

Now, that, of course, you see, is so helpful to us in understanding the story that then follows. If we didn’t have that little note from Luke, if he hadn’t been involved in careful investigation and providing an orderly account—if he had simply said, you know, “And then Jesus told a parable about ten minas”—we would have been in a worse position than we are right now. At least he is able to say, “While they were still listening to this, and because they were looking to Jerusalem and thinking this, Jesus then told them this story.”

So, in other words, to correct mistaken notions about the nature of the kingdom and to correct a preoccupation which we’ve already seen about the when question—“When, when, when?” And nothing changes even at the bridge of the twenty-first century. Still you find Christian people—if they want to talk about the coming of the kingdom of God, what are they talking about? They’re talking about when, you see: “When is it going to be?” “I’ve got a book, and I can tell you when.” Well, you can sell a million copies. If you write about how you should be living irrespective of the when, you might sell fifty copies, because of the perversity of our hearts. We’re intrigued by all of these things. But Jesus is saying in this story, “I’m not so interested in you getting fixated with the when. The question is not ‘When will it be?’ The question is ‘Irrespective of when it will be, how will I live?’”

The Parable’s Content

“Now let me tell you a story,” he says, “about somebody—a nobleman.” And you’ll notice the content of the story.

Now, the listeners wouldn’t have had any great difficulty in dealing with this. They were familiar with this. In the Roman Empire, it was a routine matter for an individual from an outlying precinct of the Roman Empire, if he was going to be given rulership or kingship over a region, he would need to make the long journey to Rome in order to have the kingship conferred upon him, in order for his rulership to be ratified.

In fact, it is even possible that the readers, the listeners to the words of Jesus here, would have immediately identified a reference, however oblique, to the circumstances concerning the son of Herod the Great—namely, Archelaus, whom we referenced last time, saying that he had a fabulous palace, remember, in Jericho. And he was the one who’d put in this amazing irrigation system. And as a result of that, he had these balsam groves and these phenomenal rose gardens. Well, Archelaus, upon the death of Herod the Great, had then gone on a long journey in order that he might have the rulership of one of three regions that had been bequeathed to himself and his two brothers on the part of Herod the Great. And when he took that journey, history records that he was so detested by the people that when he set off on the journey, the population sent a delegation to try and get to his destination before he got to the destination, requesting that he not be given the kingdom, because he was such a scurrilous rascal.

Now, when Jesus tells this story—says, “There was a nobleman, and he went off to a great country in order that he might have a kingdom conferred upon him”—for us at the start of the twenty-first century, sitting here in America, we say, “Well, that’s very interesting. I’m not sure what that means.” We’ve no point of reference! That’s why I have to study: so that I can teach you as a result of my reading. But I’m saying to you that his audience would have had no difficulty. They could have identified with it generically, and they would certainly, some of them, have been able to identify with it specifically, saying to one another as the story begins, “You know what? This sounds an awful lot like what happened to Archelaus.”

The irony of this unfaithful servant is that in trying to avoid taking risks, he actually takes the biggest gamble of all.

Now, whether that’s the case or not is by the by. What matters is that this nobleman—verse 12—in going to a distant country to have himself appointed king, was planning to come back. And while he was gone, he appointed ten servants to conduct his business affairs. In order that they might be able to do so effectively, he entrusts them each with a sum of money. An equal sum is given to the ten. It’s referred to as a mina. We could try and suggest what it is in a dollar amount today, but it is largely irrelevant. All that we need to know is that he gave each of them a sum of money, and he gave each of them an equal share. He goes away. He wants them to put the money that he’s given them to good use in his absence. And having been made king in verse 15, he returns. He sends for his servants, inquiring of them, at the end of verse 15, to find out what they had done with the money that he left them.

Now, the interesting thing is that there are ten servants in the story, but only three are mentioned. There’s only three guys mentioned—which is a reminder to us again of the use of parables: that if we try and press all the details of a parable into some kind of application, we will get ourselves in a dreadful, dreadful mess. Clearly, these three individuals are illustrative. Number one, in verse 16, we might refer to him as Mr. Faithful: “The first one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned ten more.’” His report was good, and his reward was commensurate with his report. Verse 17: “You have been trustworthy in this small matter. Here, take charge of ten cities.” Verse 18, we’re introduced to the second servant, Mr. Less-Faithful, whose report is not as good (it’s still good), but his reward is great (but it’s not as great).

In verse 20, we’re introduced to Mr. Unfaithful. The first two servants belong to, if you like, the profitable division, this one the unprofitable. This one uses as an excuse his fear of his noble master. As a result of that, he says in verse 20, “Because of the way I perceive you to be, I simply took the mina. I’ve done nothing with it except wrap it up in a piece of cloth.” Well, in verse 22, the master says, “If your assessment of me is accurate, why didn’t you simply put the money on deposit? At least then, by the time I came back, there would have been some interest that would have accrued.” And then he does a dramatic thing: he orders those standing by to take the one mina that he had given to this fellow—which was the same, of course, as he’d given to all—to take it away from the fellow and to give it to the one who had ten.

What do we discover? Well, we’ll deal with this later on today, but essentially this: that by attempting to play it safe, the servant not only failed to multiply what he had been given, but he lost the initial sum that he had. The irony of this unfaithful servant, as we will see this evening, is that in trying to avoid taking risks, he actually takes the biggest gamble of all. By trying to play it safe, he gambles, in the parable, with his soul. By trying to find his significance in insignificance—in nothingness, in safety, in parochialism, in passivity, in laziness—he finds that that which he’d been given, the same as the rest, is taken from him.

The Parable’s Contact

Well, I hope you’ll read this this afternoon, because that is essentially the content of the story. What we need to come to—and we’ll come back to this tonight—is the contact. The context is there in verse 11, the content emerges in the subsequent passage, but we’re going to deal with the contact.

I use the word contact because I had a couple of c’s, and I wanted a third one. Essentially, what we’re talking about is application. But contact is a good word. When something over here touches something over here, we say that contact has been made. A contact, in electrical terms—or two contacts placed together—make possible the flow of an electric current from one point to another. It’s there in the contact.

Now, here we study the Bible. What’s been going on? I’ve been speaking now for about thirty-four minutes. It’s hard to imagine for me; I’m sure it’s very difficult for you. I’m about to stop, for your encouragement. You say, “Well, here is a man, and he stood up, and he took his Bible, and he talked and he talked and he talked, and I wish he would stop talking. Now, he told us about the context, and he told us about the content, and now he says we’re going to discover something about the contact.” How then can this contact happen, you see?

This is the issue! I’m not giving a speech! I’m asking God, through his Word, to contact me! “Make contact with me, God! Contact me in the Bible! Contact these people! Touch them! May it be like an electrical current that comes from the Bible to their souls.” Who can do this? Only God. That’s why we pray. That’s why you pray as I preach—I hope!—praying that something supernatural would happen: that when the voice of a mere man speaking about this ancient book is to be heard in a room like this, that the very voice of God goes home to the lives of men and women. And as a result, their insignificant lives become significant in Christ.

Well, we need to understand—and we’ll come back to this tonight—that if we’re going to make proper application of it, we need to do so in light of the controls that are around us in the text and the controls that are around us in the Bible. Jesus… And I’ll give you this little hint, and then we’ll come back to it tonight. But here’s the point. Here’s the point that the average bright eighth grader can get this morning. You go home, and you discuss this, and you’ll be, “Well, I’m not sure about the other seven. And I was thinking about the seven. And what about the thing and the ten cities? And do you get cities in the kingdom? And how do you get ten? And who’s getting five?”—and everything else. And in the midst of all of that, your son or your daughter’s going to say, “Mom, Dad, put your knife and fork down, and let me tell you what this parable is about.”

And this is what they’re going to tell you: “Listen, Mom. What Jesus was saying is this: ‘I am the heir of the world. I’m not about to claim my kingdom immediately. I have a long journey to take before my coronation. I’m actually going to leave the world altogether. But when I come back, upon my return, I will be publicly enthroned. Therefore, in the meantime, I am leaving you, my servants, with the glad tidings of redemption through me so that you, my servants, may fulfill the task of living out your faith, of conducting your lives in such a manner that through your word and through your example you might see unbelieving people become the committed followers of Jesus Christ.’” In other words, says Jesus, “I am leaving you a demanding task. It will take everything in you. I am leaving you a significant task.”

Throughout all of history, the significance of this task has been plain to those who have taken it seriously. Richard Baxter, the Puritan writer, says to the men and women gathered in his day,

We have greater work … to do [here] than [merely] securing our own Salvation. We are Members of the World and [the] Church, and [we] must labour to do good to many: We are trusted with our Masters Talents for his Service, in our places to do our best to propagate his Truth, and Grace and Church; and to bring home Souls and honour his cause, and edifie his Flock, and further the Salvation of as many as we can. All this is to be done on Earth, if we will secure the end of all in Heaven.[14]

It is a demanding task. It is a significant task. And it remains an unfinished task. The question is: Who will take up the torch that fell flaming from the hands of a previous generation who lived their lives declaring who Jesus is and why he came? Will you? Will you? Will I?

Is it possible that my routine of tomorrow can be become profoundly significant because I suddenly realize that what I do is not an end in itself but is a means to the end? Who are you? Mr. Faithful? Miss Less-Faithful? Mr. and Mrs. Unfaithful?

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[1] Ray Davies, “Dead End Street” (1972).

[2] Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Michel Legrand, “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” (1974).

[3] Hal David and Burt Bacharach, “Alfie” (1966).

[4] William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.4.

[5] Luke 19:9–10 (paraphrased).

[6] Richard Carpenter and John Bettis, “Top of the World” (1972).

[7] Luke 8:9–10 (paraphrased).

[8] Luke 8:11 (NIV 1984).

[9] Luke 17:20 (paraphrased).

[10] See Matthew 6:14; Mark 8:28; Luke 9:19.

[11] See Revelation 7:9.

[12] See John 14:26; 16:13–15.

[13] Luke 1:3 (NIV 1984).

[14] Richard Baxter, Dying Thoughts upon Phil. I. xxiii., 2nd ed. (London: H. Clark, 1688), introduction.