There are things we do now that matter later more than we realize they will. Mickey Mantle once said, ‘If I would have known I would live this long I would have taken better care of myself’. A healthy faith is knowing now what will matter then.
This morning is a very important moment in the life of Holly Brook Baptist church. You have hopefully seen and heard the information regarding our 4 year campaign with commitments being renewed each individual year.
Not everyone enjoys hearing a message where the central theme is about giving.
Several years ago, the largest Assembly of God Church in Denver Co. asked their radio and T.V. audience, and their congregation to tell them what they wanted their minister to preach on. Over 7000 people responded. The pastor wrote a book about those sermons, and then he wrote the last chapter on the sermon that no one asked for.
Not one person in 7000 asked for a sermon on giving.
We may not like having our cages rattled when it comes to issues of money and especially when it comes to giving.
People are often offended by the question, ‘How much do you make?’
The question God is most likely to ask us is ‘how much did you give?’
While our status on earth is based upon how much we make our status in heaven will be determined by how much we gave away.
AW TOZAR wrote, ‘If the rich man with difficulty enters the kingdom of God, then it would be logical to conclude that a society having the highest percentage of well-to-do persons in it would have the lowest percentage of Christians’.
The truth is that what pastors talk the least about the Bible says the most about. MONEY. Both Jesus and Paul talked and wrote much about money.
16 out of 38 of Christ's parables, deal with money.
More is said in the New Testament, about money then about Heaven and Hell combined?
Five times more is said about money than about prayer. Over 2,000 verses out of over 7000!
There can be extreme consequences when we don’t discuss money:
I know one MARRIAGE ENDED OVER MONEY:
A man named stumpy and his wife Martha went to the state fair every year and every year when Stumpy saw the antique bi-plane he would say, “Martha, I’d like to ride in that airplane.” Martha always replied, “I know Stumpy, but that airplane ride costs 10 dollars, and 10 dollars is 10 dollars. One year Stumpy said, “Martha, I’m 81 years old. If I don’t ride that airplane I might never get another chance.” Martha replied, “Stumpy, that airplane ride cost 10 dollars, and 10 dollars is 10 dollars.
The pilot overheard them and said, “Folks, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take you both up for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and not say one word, I won’t charge you: but if you say one word its 10 dollars.”
Stumpy and Martha agreed and up they went. The pilot did all kinds of twists and turns, rolls and dives, but not a word was heard. He did all his tricks over again, but still not a word.
When they landed, the pilot turned to Stumpy and said, “By golly, I did everything I could think of to get you to yell out, but you didn’t.” Stumpy replied, “Well, I was gonna say something when Martha fell out, but 10 dollars is 10 dollars.”
1. Jesus warned about the eternal consequences of the wrong use of money.
Matthew 6:19 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
I am amazed at how significant the investment in this world is by most believers. We live in a very materialistic society which exceeds any culture in history. WE ARE CONSUMED WITH CONSUMING.
Money magazine - not only do we consume like no culture before us but we pursue money like no other culture.
"Money," the magazine said, has become the number one obsession of Americans,
We want the money and we want the stuff the money buys.
Americans seem to be afflicted with the flu bug…the AFFLUENCE bug.
Americans today give an average of 1.9% of their income away. In the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930’s Americans then gave an average of 3.3% away.
A study of 30+ denominations said that although income increased 31%, giving has gone down 8.5% in the same period of time.
What does it mean when God has entrusted more earthly treasure to professing Christians, who have greater wealth than ever had in human history, and are giving proportionately less to the Kingdom, because they are consumed with the culture.
How much of what we buy could our great grandparents have lived without?
The Bible says that we are stewards of God's money. If you managed anybody else's money the way you manage God's money, would you be in prison? If you were managing somebody's money, and they said to you, "Well, where did you get that big new house?" Well, I took your money and bought it. That happens all the time with what God entrusts to many in the church.
A few years ago a man who now sits in prison with a 150 year sentence became famous for his 65 billion dollar scam of some pretty famous people.
For years a man named Bernie Madoff made off with the money of people like Kevin Bacon, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Steven Spielberg, Larry King, Jane Fonda, Sandy Kofax and even 3 million from his own sister.
Something has captured our heart and Jesus warned us about the consequences of it.
Russian Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in assessing western culture, "We are always paying dearly for chasing what is cheap."
It has a dramatic effect upon the Church that exists in this materialistic society.
Learning to invest in what really matters to God is one of the great discoveries of a lifetime.
I was listening to Dennis Rainey this week on the Radio. He talked about a time years ago when they had six kids and money was tight. He was walking out of church and a young man in the youth group approached him about helping with a Mission Trip fundraiser by buying some wrapping paper. He told the young man he didn’t need any wrapping paper but would it be ok if he just wrote him a check to help out and the boy could keep the paper. He wrote out a check for $30 and gave it to the youth. As he walked on to his car he was chased down by the mother of the boy with the boy in tow. ‘I want to thank you for what you did. I am a single mom and I didn’t think there was any chance my son could go on this trip with the church. Now I do. Thank you for giving and for the way you gave’.
We are so quick to give to those who are doing the wrong things. Making movies, books, magazines, selling harmful products. Or even things that the importance of will never leave this world. We are surrounded by things that really matter.
Things that will never stop mattering.
Materialism has stolen away our perspective of what really is important to the heart of God.
In Luke, chapter 12, verse 16, Jesus tells a parable. "The land of a certain rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?'"
One of the largest growing businesses in our generation has been "storage places."
It's incredible that we have become a society where people rent places to store what they want to buy but don’t need to use! We even have TV shows where others come to try to get a bargain off of what someone else put in these places.
The rich man said, "Where am I going to store my crops?" "This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones." He wasn't about to give any of it away. He had more than he needed, and he wanted to keep everything that he had.
While visiting a very poor neighborhood in Brazil we walked house to house to invite the people to an upcoming crusade. I wondered how much these small attached homes cost so I asked a Brazilian pastor with us to inquire about one with a ‘For Sale’ sign on it. The cost to buy and move in there was $2500.
On other thing I noticed the most about this community was that in the middle of it was another home. One home that stood 2-3 stories with a balcony to look down on the others from. IT was surrounded by a large fence(mote) with was obviously much more valuable. We could not even begin to get to that front door to invite that person to the crusade.
HAS OUR MONEY BECOME A MAJOR BARRIOR BETWEEN US AN GOD?
God said to him, "You fool! This very night your soul is required of you. You are going to die. I am going to take your life tonight, and now who will own what you have prepared? So is the man who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God."
Almost half of all charitable giving in the United States, comes from households with incomes under $45,000. The people above that proportionally give less.
A leader in the Romanian Church in Romania said, and I quote, "In my experience, 95% of the believers, who face the test of persecution, pass it. 95% of the believers who face the test of prosperity, fail it.
Hosea 13:6 may sum it up, "And being satisfied, their heart became proud; therefore, they forgot me."
Paul warned, "Those who want to get rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge men into ruin and destruction, for the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many a pang."
In our society money is considered to be the ultimate measure of success.
People count their personal worth by how much of it they have.
J. H. Jowelet said, "The real measure of our wealth is how much we would be worth if we lost all of our money." How much would you be worth to God, to the Kingdom and to others?
Materialism is less about what you own and more about what owns you.
In 1982 I went to Seminary in Mill Valley California. I had worked with my brother for my father in a sporting good business. My dad split some money between me and my brother and I planned on using it to pay my way through Seminary. During my first semester in seminary I tried to set up some important disciplines one of which was a regular prayer life. I would go to one of the prayer rooms in our dormitory and pray there as often as I could. At first prayer seemed easy and predictable until about halfway through the semester. From that point on every time I went to pray my thought kept being dominated by one particular item. It was the last thing I wanted to pray or think about. After weeks of wresting with it I finally realized that God was saying to me, ‘Guy you have never learned one of the most important lessons of what it means to follow Me. You have never learned what it means to depend upon Me’. I don’t know what learning that lesson means to you but for me it became unmistakable clear and I did not again get peace until I did what I knew God was telling me to do. I got my checkbook and wrote a check back to my home church. It was an amount big enough to have gone done to the local car dealer and have bought a new car or to have tithed for 4 years off of what I make now. What was the end result of such a crazy decision?
1) In the following weeks(not at all before) different people began to ask me if I had any interests in certain jobs they knew of that were available.
2) I worked at various jobs(about 8) before finally settling in at one at a nearby medical clinic. I worked there as a janitor after the clinic closed for the day. The clinic was two floors and divided 4 ways between four different seminary students.
As summer approached the guy who shared the second floor with me was going home for a couple of weeks and asked if I would do the entire floor until he returned. To do this I arrived right at the end of the clinic workday and started in his area.
My supplies were in a hallway near the clinic break room and as I walked back that direction I passed a young lady coming out of the break room. I had to chase her down because when she passed me she took my heart with her. It was ‘oh my goodness’ at first sight.
I began my shift for a few evenings by getting the trash out of the medical records area where Lynne and others, including her boss worked. On Friday evening her bossed surprised me by asking me if I would be interested in working in the medical records area as the first male they ever had. I saw it as a job with one particular benefit and said yes.
What would have been the cost of my financial disobedience to my life, to Lynne’s life and to 6 other lives that have come along so far?
Every time we pass the offering plate it is an opportunity for obedience to the financial stewardship God has placed upon our lives. Many just push it along to the person next to them. Our obedience or disobedience affects more than just the financial area of our lives. Many push opportunities that are passed to them along to others as well. Opportunities to share their faith, pray for and encourage other are just handed down the pew.
2. Paul addressed the benefits of the right use of money.
Proverbs 3:9-10: Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.
Paul said to Timothy, “Tell those who are rich in this present world to be ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for time to come.
LUKE 6:38 "Give and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return."
I TIMOTHY 6:6,8 "But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment’. "If we have FOOD AND COVERING, with these we shall be CONTENT."
Godliness with contentment. The word translated contentment literally means self-contained.
This was a favorite word of the philosophers of Paul’s day. The idea was that man lived in detachment from the externals of life, and he found his happiness within himself.
Self-contained people don’t have to keep adding and accumulating things in order to be happy. They carry their happiness within themselves.
A lot of times we buy things because it makes us feel good.
March 11, 1856, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal,
“That man is the richest whose pleasures are cheapest.”
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
ECCLESIASTES 6:9 says, "Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have."
In Ecclesiastes 5:10 Solomon says, “Whoever loves money never has money enough.”
An American factory in a third world village paid their workers in cash. Their problem was that the people would often stop working when they felt they had “enough” for their needs.
The Americans solved this problem by giving all the people a Sears catalog! They never felt they had enough ever again!
Someone has written, “Change your measuring stick: measure wealth not by the things you have, but by the things you have that you would not take money for.”
THE RIGHT USE OF MONEY INCLUDES
1. Recognize money for what it is: A stewardship of opportunity to bless others.
a. Paul tells us that in NT giving there is a GIFT OF GIVING. Just like some are given more in other areas so that they might spend them on the needs of the church so God gives to some in the gift of giving to help supply for the needs of the church. Actually it is also the gift of getting so you can give.
My father had this gift. I knew I never would since I was in the ministry but because of his example I would use 100% of the gifts God did give me. Once while sitting on a church bus I was told by the pastor that my father had paid for the A/C units on the roof of it. I watched as he cashed the pay check of the pastor because the church bank account had to little in it to do so.
My dad didn’t necessarily stand up and preach and teach or hammer nails like others could but he was very faithful in the area God had blessed him.
b. In our attempt to get everyone to give 10% we have missed the fact that God has equipped many in the body to give much more.
Noone who has the gift of giving should ever stop at 10%
.
Henry Crowell, founder of Quaker Oats was also a contributor to the Moody Bible Institute. As a young man, he received Christ as his Savior. When he began his business career he promised God that he would honor Him in his giving. As his business grew, he increased his giving. After more than forty years of giving 60 percent of his income to God, Crowell testified, "I've never gotten ahead of God. He has always been ahead of me in giving."
2. Recognize opportunities for what they are:
We are always asking God for do overs while giving to Him our leftovers.
a. Learn to purposefully give. Realize that how you give to God is more important than how your employer gives to you.
b. Learn to give with an attitude of faith: Trust God as you give.
Trust is a powerful thing and allows us to see the true power of God.
We Thought We Heard The Angels Sing, written by Lieutenant James Whittaker who was one of seven men whose plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean on October 21, 1942. Their leader was the famous Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, and these seven men found themselves stranded on three rafts with no water and only four oranges. Tying their boats together, they drifted day after day without food or water, sometimes delirious, tortured by the relentless sun, and constantly encircled by the dorsal fins of sharks. It seemed impossible for them to survive, but one of the men, Private Johnny Bartek, was a dedicated Christian who always carried a little New Testament with him so that he could have his daily devotions. It was a pocket-sized with a zipper arrangement that made it waterproof. There, in the middle of the Pacific Bartek had his devotions. It wasn’t very private and the other six men wanted to know what he was doing. When he explained to them about his daily Bible reading and prayer, they asked him why they couldn’t all share in that. And so the men started having their daily devotions and they started at the beginning of the book, in the Gospel of Matthew. Soon they came to 6:31-34. It immediately became their hope, inspiration, and prayer: What shall we eat? What shall we drink? —Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. As the men read those verses day after day, a remarkable series of miracles started happening. Just when they were near starvation, for example, a bird landed on Rickenbacker’s head and they would grab it, carve it up for food, and use its innards for fishing bait. Just when they were near death by thirst, a cloud would drift over and fill their raft with water. Day after day as they read these verses, prayed, and claimed these promises, God would somehow send food and water, sometimes even a fish jumping into their raft. For 21 days they drifted under the blazing sun in the middle of the Pacific. Through that experience, Lieutenant James Whittaker, for one, the author of the book, gave his life to Jesus Christ. "I don’t think there was a man of us who didn’t thank God for that little khaki covered book," he said. "It led us to prayer and prayer led us to safety."
3. Recognize eternity for what it will bring:
a. Money is one of the few things in this life that can have an eternal impact.
How we handle it here impacts how it affects us in eternity.
THE REAL QUESTION IS NOT - WHO OWNS THE MONEY?
THE REAL QUESTION IS - WHO OWNS YOU?
Bernard Ettinger said “the world will not be won to Christ on what we can conveniently spare.”
2 Cor 9:6 He who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, but he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully.
b. How we give is an evidence of how we honor and glorify God
Read this week about the life of Nathan Barlow who was a missionary Doctor to Ethiopia. He served there for over 60 years primarily helping people with an affliction called Mossy Foot. This caused swelling and ulcers in the feet and lower legs and caused people to become social outcasts. When Nathan’s health began to fail his daughter brought him home to America. He couldn’t handle it in the states because the people he still loved were in Ethiopia. His daughter flew him back there to spend his last days. Once while on the mission field Nathan got a toothache and had to leave. He decided he would never leave the mission field for the sake of his teeth again and had all of them pulled out and false ones put in. He didn’t want God’s work to ever be slowed down in Ethiopia again.
When it comes to your life story how will your faithfulness be written.
How will it be reflected in how you chose to give?
I think all of heaven will probably know that we came from the most wealthy people that ever walked on this earth.
What will they think of how we sacrificed and gave to God out of the most abundant resources any people of God ever had stewardship over?
