Sermon November 24, 2019 – The Blessing of Giving

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How many times a day do you think about money?

Whether it is the lack thereof, or the abundance of money, both can be a snare.

In Malachi 3:6-12, God rebukes the nation of Israel because of their lack of faith with their finances. God had blessed the nation and things were going well, but there was a problem. The people had become complacent and their true devotion and worship of God had become mere religious activity.

In verse 6, God declares his immutability. The Immutability of God means that God is unchanging in his character, will, and covenant promises

God then pleads with the people to repent (see Malachi 3:7). The biggest problem was not that the people were needing to repent, but that they didn’t even know they were outside of the will of God. This is sadly the state of much of the church in the 21st century. It is exceedingly difficult to convince someone that they need to repent when they think that what they are doing is okay with God.

People can even do good things “for God”, but without a personal and growing relationship with Jesus Christ, they are destined to spend eternity separated from God in Hell.

Being a Christian is not about the things that we do for God. It is everything about what Jesus has already done for us when he died and rose again.

The key issue that God is dealing with in the nation of Israel in these verses is their finances. As we see in verse 8, “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions.”

Our finances are a big deal to God. Of all that we have recorded of what Jesus taught, 15% of  was related to money. The foundation of our understanding is that God owns everything (see Psalm 24:1). Everything we have comes from God and we are called to be stewards of God’s wealth. The dictionary defines stewardship as “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care”

In verse 9 of Malachi 3, God not only rebukes the nation, He actually says that they are under a curse because of their lack of stewardship.  

You may argue that we are under the New Covenant and we are under grace, so this principle does not apply to us today. You would be right that we are under the New Covenant, but remember the words of Jesus in Mathew 5:17 where he says that he did not come to abolish the Law, but rather to fulfill the Law. Jesus took the law and raised the bar. He made what was a legal system of rules and regulations and turned it into something so much more significant, a personal relationship.

In verse 10 God challenges the people to test him. This is the only time in the Bible where testing God is seen as a positive action. God is challenging the people to step out in faith.  

As a church we rely on the gifts and tithes of attendees to maintain the budget. But what if we didn’t focus on meeting a budget, rather we were giving so that the church could advance the Kingdom of God, reaching the lost and setting the captives free.

One of the lessons Jesus taught on money is recorded in Mark 10:17-25. As Jesus was walking a man ran up to him and fell on his knees, crying out, “what must I do to inherit eternal life”. This man claimed that he had kept all the commandments, he was living a holy life, the Bible even says Jesus looked at him and loved him. But then Jesus pressed to the heart and told him to, “go and sell everything he had and give it to the poor, then you will have treasure in heaven.”

Sadly, the man couldn’t do it, he was tied to his wealth and he got up and walked away broken. Jesus went on to teach how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

The rich man was looking for a set of rules. He was looking for a checkbox that he could tick off to say that his eternal salvation is secure, but Jesus saw deep into his heart and knew that he was seeking rules rather than a relationship. This is still the situation that so many people find themselves in today. We don’t give to God because the law requires it, we give because He has already given us His only Son. Jesus Christ gave everything to purchase our salvation.

When Jesus taught, he always raised the bar of the law, and made it clear that our response to the Gospel is much more than 10% of our income or following a set of rules. The truth is that God doesn’t need your money, He already owns it, He wants your heart.

The challenge for us today is not if we should be giving 10% of our income, that is a given, the real challenge is what about the other 90%? How do we steward the money that God has given us? You may not be wasting money on lottery tickets or cigarettes, but what about things like cable tv or high interest rates on debt. Living according to and within a strict budget is the very definition of what it means to be a good steward.

During the year, I frequently challenge the church to give over and above their regular giving to the church. Right now, we are raising money for the end of the year mission offering, going to support international missionaries. From time to time we have a visiting missionary or a team heading on a mission trip. All these special offerings are times when we pray and ask the Lord how much we should give, but this is not out of the 10%, this is out of the 90%, this is trusting God for the supply. Giving in faith deepens our walk with the Lord and we are blessed as we do.

This is not a prosperity gospel teaching. God doesn’t promise wealth, he promises a blessing and a lack of need (see Malachi 3:10). God promises to meet our every need, and that is a blessing.

This Thanksgiving week, demonstrate your faith in God by giving, testing the goodness and faithfulness of God.  

Sermon – Starting Over Part 4 – February 5 2017

 

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Part 4 – The Discipline of Giving.

Luke 12:13-34

As the final discipline in this series, we are going to briefly look at the discipline of giving. More often than not, the one discipline we struggle with the most is the giving of our financial resources.

From time to time we all worry about our finances, but many pastors don’t want to preach on money and the rewards of giving for fear of sounding like the prosperity gospel peddlers. Those who preach this way teach that we must become transactional in our dealings with God. But we cannot bribe God, He doesn’t need your money, he already owns it all (see psalm 40:6 and Psalm 24:1). The bible tells us that ‘God loves a cheerful giver’, but if we give out of our selfish ambition and self-interest, God sees it for what it really is.

Stewardship is a term that has been in the church for centuries. In our modern English, stewardship seems to have been assigned to building campaigns or fundraisers. But The word comes from an old English concept of being a steward of the property owned by the lord of the land. The lord owned all the land, the buildings and all the commerce that took place in his realm. The stewards didn’t own anything, but they managed the crops, the labor, the taxes and all the day to day running of the land. In return for this service the lord of the land gave protection, food, housing for the steward.

God owns it all, he owns everything that you think you own. But just like the old stewards, we are called to be stewards for our Lord. We are going to be called on to give an account for what He has given us to manage or to steward. That is what Stewardship is. This is a huge paradigm shift for most people, as we have been raised and taught all our lives that we own things, that we have things and money because we deserve them. But the reality is that everything we have is only ours to steward or manage for God, because after we die, we no longer have ownership over it.

There is a fundamental connection between our spiritual lives and how we think and act about our finances. Fifteen percent of all the teaching we have recorded in the Bible from Jesus relates to money.

The passage of scripture found in Luke 12 is a passage that the western church finds uncomfortable. This is one of those passages that we try to rationalize and water down, because the raw truth is hard to take. Is Jesus saying that we shouldn’t save for a rainy day, or save for retirement? Our culture says that is not wise, it is simply not prudent. This wealthy man had wealth stored up for years, and God said, “you fool!” Now, I am not saying that it is wrong to be wealthy and to have wealth, but this man’s error was that he looked at his wealth as his security, he no longer trusted God for his daily bread, his wealth took the place of God in his life. His wealth had become his idol, his prudence had become his idol. And in many cases in our lives there is a very fine line between prudence and idolatry.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”Jim Elliot

As Jesus turns aside to his disciples in verse 22, and in the next few verses Jesus uses the words, “do not worry” or “do not be afraid” four times. Jesus isn’t suggesting this, he is giving a command; “do not worry”. It is a directive from the creator of the universe, therefore, if we worry about possessions, food, clothing or that rainy day that may never come, it is a sin that we need to repent of.

(see also 1 Timothy 6:17-19)

Randy Alcorn in his book “the treasure principle” breaks down this teaching and Matthew 6. As we give away what we cannot keep, we literally are putting treasure in heaven.

The legalist will tell you that you must give, but in reality, you don’t have to give, but you will be so glad you did. You will be eternally blessed as you give.

Imagine you were Alive during the civil war, you are a northerner, however you were living and doing business in the South. During this time you had accumulated a lot of confederate currency. As you saw the war coming to an end you planned to go back home to the North. So what do you do with all the confederate money you had saved up? After the war it would be worthless as it was not official US currency. Well naturally, you would cash in the money and change it for US currency. You would keep only enough confederate money to meet your immediate short term needs. As Christians, we have inside information, knowledge of how this all ends. We know that when Jesus comes again, all our hard-earned currency will be worthless. Everything you have will be worthless to you when Jesus comes again, or you die. Either of those could happen today.

Some years ago I obtained a real treasure, it is a 500 million Zimbabwean dollar, however it has an expiration date. At the time the country had an inflation rate of 3000%, and the money became worthless after a certain period of time. We may laugh at this, but do you realize that every dollar you have has an expiration date; when you die, it becomes worthless to you.

500 million zim

We have this false idea that as long as we get through this life and believe in the name of Jesus, then we will get wonderful blessings and rewards in heaven. The bible is clear that there will be different rewards given to different people. Those who have not invested in eternal treasures will get a meager reward in heaven. Those who have little regard for temporal treasures, but rather choose to invest them eternally, will receive a return on investment that will make any wall street stock market gain seem miniscule.

Gaze upon Christ long enough and you will become more of a giver. Give long enough and you will become more like Christ.”  Randy Alcorn

Run the Race Part 2 February 21, 2016

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Romans 8: 1-17

Using the analogy of a race, a marathon, there is so much that we can look at that applies to the Christian life.

We are called to a new life, a life that is led by the spirit, Paul says is that we need to be led by the Spirit of God, as we run the race that God has for us.

Now human nature is that we make rules, and when we disciple new believers, we inadvertently make rules for them to follow, because of the mistakes we made when we were in their position. Sometimes these guidelines can be made to look like laws. Romans 8:2 says; “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death”. When we run the race that is the Christian life, we do things differently, we are not under the law that leads to condemnation and death, but we are led by the Spirit which leads to life and peace.

Our disciplines and our training for the race are not governed by law, but they are governed by the Spirit and this brings life. Verse 11 tells us that the same Spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you and me! Our old way of viewing time, money, family, possessions all changes, and we see things from the perspective of heaven.

And then there is the unbelievable promise in God’s word in verse 14, we are called the children of God! I know our minds cannot grasp that, we have no idea what it means to be adopted into the family of God. We are called children of the creator of the universe. And verse 17 says that as a result of our adoption as God’s children, we receive an inheritance. We have an inheritance simply because we believed that Jesus died for our sins. He did it all, we die to our old way of life and begin to live by the Spirit, and we get to receive an inheritance from God.

But as we read verse 17 a little further we read these words: “if indeed we suffer with Him…” Suffering? That is not the wonderful Christian life the Walmart book aisle speaks about? Going back to the analogy of running a marathon, if any of you have run a long race, you will know that there are periods of suffering that you go through, occasionally you will “hit the wall”, using running terminology, when your tank is empty. But you push through, others encourage you, and you reach the finish line. Immediately the suffering becomes something you joke about because it is so small in comparison to the joy of the finish line. Verse 18 sums it up; “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us..”

Suffering and discipline are a part of the Christian race, but we must not shy away from them, they are building us and growing us to be more like Christ.

Let’s look at four Christian Disciplines that will help us run the race that is set before us:

  1. Reading and meditating on God’s word

This Bible is contains your heavenly Father’s love letter to you– it is your daily bread – it is your sword of the spirit – it is the truth that gives light to your path.

It is no ordinary collection of pages and ink. It is supernatural in its authoring, it is supernatural in its reading and it is supernatural in its application (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

If you are led by the Spirit, you will need the sword of the spirit.

Do we daily discipline ourselves to read, study, meditate on the word of God?

  1. Prayer

Prayer is a discipline, it is hard work, when we don’t discipline ourselves to spend time alone with God we limp along in the Christian race, missing out on so much that God has for us. Discipline yourself to pray, it will transform your life and the race God has called you to.

  1. Tithing

Tithing is something we seldom view as a discipline, but the way we handle our finances is either worship or it is idolatry. Either God is more important than your money, or your money is more important than God in your life.

We don’t tithe because God needs our money, he already has all things. No, we tithe because it is worship. Tithing is an act of worship, because many times we look at our income and our expenses and wonder how we can afford to give 1/10 of our income to the Lords work. Well if the Bible is correct, and we know it is, how can we afford not to give to the Lord, knowing that he is our provider and that he will take care of all of our needs (see 2 Corinthians 9: 6-8). You will have all you need to do the will of God for your life.

  1. Evangelism

Evangelism is a spiritual discipline that we are all called to participate in. Evangelism that is led by the Spirit is a joy and a blessing, but we make it out to be a fearful chore.

Evangelism that is fruitful and effective is evangelism that is led by the Holy Spirit. Daily discipline ourselves to pray: “Lord bring someone into my path today who needs a touch from heaven, let me be used by you, almighty God, to bring a miracle to someone’s life” That is the discipline, being available, daily being led by the Spirit to look for the person that God wants to touch through your life story (see 2 Peter 3:15).

Notice two aspects in this verse: firstly – it starts with “revere Christ as Lord”. If Jesus Christ is truly Lord of your life, it will be evident to those around you and your life will be a testimony for Jesus.

Secondly: “always be prepared to explain the reason for your hope” – because, if you are living by the Spirit, people are going to want to know why you are different.

Remember not everyone is gifted as an evangelist, but we are all called the spiritual discipline of sharing the story that God has given us and the reason for our hope.

Remember that the Christian life is a race, it is not a stroll or a wandering along the pathway, there is a very definite end goal. And to keep us running diligently we need to develop Spiritual disciplines, Prayer, Reading God’s Word, Tithing and Evangelism are just a few of them.

But why do we do them?

Because they are good for us? Or because we become more fruitful and lead others to Christ? Yes, but there is a greater reason.

We develop Christian disciplines, because our lives will bring Glory to God.