Grace, mercy, peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today is Stewardship Sunday. Today is the day that, and let me be straight forward with you, today is the day that we talk about money. About giving, about generosity.
But I’m not going to try and guilt you into giving more. I’m not going to make false promises to you and say rubbish things to you like “if you plant a greenback seed, then the seed will grow and you’ll be rich” and all of this ridiculousness. I’m not even going to make a demand from you today that you give more.
But what I am going to do is share with you some sound, biblical advice with regard to your resources, you money, and how you use those resources in godly ways. And I know and I understand that we Lutherans do not like to talk about money. Well, we’re gonna talk about it, and I hope and pray that by the end of this conversation, you will have a better understanding or a stronger understanding of God’s will for you with regard to what He gives you and calls you to.
And that’s the first thing: God’s gift. For those of you who have been attending the L-101 class and were here this past Wednesday or Saturday, you’ve already heard what I’m about to say: everything we have and everything we are is because God has graciously given it to us. God created all things, everything, right down to the smallest atom, and He created it out of nothing. And why did God create everything? Two reasons, really. First God created because God is one who loves to create good things. Every part of His creation in Genesis, every day that occurs, God blesses and says “it’s good”, in other words it puts a smile on His face, in other words it is completely and totally in step with the will, mind, and heart of God. God loves to do this; God loves to create, He loves to bless, He loves to give.
And He also loves to be in relationship with His creation. And that’s the second reason God creates. He wants to be in relationship; He wants to share Himself. And so He creates. And the peak of His creation, the pinnacle of His creation, is YOU.
God wants to be in relationship with you. And so He continues to give and to bless and to invite. And even when you have fallen, when you have walked away, God continues to seek out that relationship with you, not only because it pleases Him, but also because, as His creation, you cannot be truly what you are created and meant to be without Him.
That’s why He sent His son. He sent Jesus so that He might bring that relationship back, so that you might again receive from God His gifts of grace, mercy, love, salvation, eternal life.
Just sort of a plug for L-101: if you want to hear and grow and learn more about stuff like this, you need to be in the L-101 class! We meet again on the first Wednesday of November and the first Saturday of November. I encourage you to attend and I encourage you to bring your unchurched, or “underchurched” friends.
But, before we can talk about giving, we need to talk about receiving. As God’s creation, as people who cannot in any way separate ourselves from needing God in every aspect of our lives, we must acknowledge to ourselves that we depend on God. God gives and we receive. God gives us life, He gives us health, He gives us time, He gives us family, He gives us work, He gives us food, He gives us rest, He gives us voices, He gives us breath, and He gives us every last penny that we like to say we’ve earned ourselves. We could not earn our money if God did not first graciously give us the ability, the skill, the talents, the gifts, the resources to earn it. Scripture says that all we have belongs to the Lord, and how true it is. It belongs to the Lord, but He has given it to us to enjoy and to use. Even the gift of His only Son is a gift given to us for our enjoyment! We can rejoice, we can be joyful because we know that on account of that gift, on account of Jesus Christ, we have also been given forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
And because of that joy, because of that confidence, what do we do? We share that gift, we share that message others. Not out of compulsion, not out of some legal demand, but because we know and experience this gift of God to be so wonderful and so beneficial that we want, we desire others to know of it as well.
And the other gifts God gives us, the gifts of family, of friends, of work, of vocation, of money…these are the tools, you see, of how we go about sharing the message of grace and forgiveness which we live under.
This is a way of life! This receiving from God all of His gifts, and because we’ve received we turn around and we share what we’ve received…this is a way of life. It’s not a law; it’s not a demand; it’s not a threat. But it is a joy, a joyous response to all that we’ve received.
Think about that. Set aside all the possessions and the physical things for a moment and just think about what you’ve received from God regarding salvation. Your sins are forgiven, the guilt and that pressure and weight is gone. You don’t stand before God the great judge in certain fear of death and destruction, but you stand before God in confident hope of your salvation.
What greater thing is there than that? What greater thing is there than knowing that God loves you, is for you, is on your side, and that He is your protector, you advocate, and because of what He has done for you, that relationship is secure and eternal?
That is wonderful news, isn’t it? Death DOES lose its sting; the grave does lose its bite, because a victory has been won for you, in Jesus Christ.
And with that wonderful news in mind, of course we respond with generosity, of course we respond with joyful giving; joyful tithing.
But you know, that sinful nature within you, it’s already talkin’ to you, isn’t it? It’s already trying to take the joy and confidence away. What’s the first thing you’ll hear on the radio when you get in your car after church? What’s the first thing you’ll see when you turn on the TV? “protect yourself,” “fend for yourself,” “buy gold because you don’t know what the future brings,” “protect that nest egg, invest, keep as much as you can, horde for yourself…”
That’s the sinful human nature. It’s that very carnal, very basic earthy nature within us. It’s the same dark and backwards gospel that the serpent spoke to Adam and Eve, and what did He say? He said that God lies, that God’s holding back, that if they truly really want to be fed and filled, that Adam and Eve must fend for themselves, much reach up and eat and stop trusting God.
And how far does that dark nature go? When we DO give, we like to attach strings. When we ARE generous, we tend to think to ourselves, “what’s REALLY going on with MY money?”
Our motives for giving, for volunteering, what are they? Why do we come to church? Why do we involve ourselves in the community? If the answer is that we hope to “get something” out of it, then our giving and our volunteering is dirty; it’s stained. And I can tell you that churches crumble to the ground on account of such giving. Even the most wealthy and financially prosperous churches and congregations crumble because they are built with dirty money, with wrong intentions; they are built on sand dollars.
This is why our favorite tele-evangelists don’t last very long before their empire crumbles. You can listen to their preaching and you know that it’s a wolf speaking! And yet we are attracted to it because our old man, the sinful nature, is attracted to the backwards understanding of giving.
I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine…this is BACKwards. This is the same lie that has haunted us since the beginning. This lie has caused problems in marriage, families, work, government, church. This lie has caused us to despise tithing, to despise our giving of our first fruits.
It has caused us to not really, truly understand the depth and the height and the endless joys of the gift that WE’VE been given in Christ.
God says to us “I am giving you my Son, complete forgiveness, eternal life, the riches of my Kingdom, no strings attached, it’s yours! Take it. You have trouble taking? I’m even giving you the gift of faith and my Holy Spirit to help you and breathe life into you; it’s all yours; I’m giving you Baptism and the Lord’s Supper so you can see my salvation and feel it as it splashes on your forehead and as it runs down your throat. I give you my Word so you can hear what I’m telling you; so you can read it and understand.”
And what do we do? We say to God, “yeah I don’t want to burst your giving bubble, but uh, let me think about this a little bit first. Let me get my thinking right first; let me get to a certain age first; let me find the right church first; let me find a church and a worship style that interests me, that makes me feel good inside; let me find a theology, a teaching about You and your Word that really drives my interests…yeah then, God…then…you’ll be worthy of me…” You see?
You see the whole problem with that sort of thinking, that sort of reasoning? It’s everywhere in our church. The reason we have denominations and church bodies is because everyone wants to add conditions to God’s gifts. God doesn’t add any conditions…why must we?
God gives you His gifts freely. He attaches no conditions, no strings. It’s YOURS! It’s yours for enjoyment, it’s yours for life. That is God’s will for you, that you might have life and have it to the fullest. The devil attaches the strings and tries to tell you otherwise, but God does not. God’s gift of forgiveness, salvation and eternal life are free and they are yours.
And a church that preaches this message, a congregation which faithfully believes this, clings to it like a lifeline, such a congregation is built on a solid foundation which cannot be moved, which cannot be blown away by the storms of life and which will break through the gates of hell in the name of Christ. Are WE such a congregation, the congregation of St Paul?
By God’s grace, I believe we are. By God’s grace we know that it’s not our GIVING which makes us right and just to receive, but it is our receiving of God’s righteousness and His justice that we joyfully and generously give.
We give of our time, we give of our talents, and we give of our money, not because as a result we “get”, but because we know and have been promised by God that in doing so, in giving of ourselves the Kingdom of God grows.
Therefore we want to give, we want to give of our time and we want to give of our resources, because we have received so much. But how much do we give? What portions of the gifts that I have been given do I return, do I use to further the Kingdom of God?
Well to be true, all of it. All of it. “Wait a minute pastor, I’m not giving 100% of my paycheck to the church; that’s not reasonable” Well, no of course it’s not. You give a certain percentage to the church, a percentage that is between you and God. Tithing was the practice in old testament times, and has been a tradition throughout church history, but it’s not a demand. But then you also use a portion to feed yourself and your family so that you can be strong as you go about your day sharing Jesus with others. You use a portion for the upkeep of your home, another gift God has given you. You use a portion for car maintenance and fuel so you can get to the places God has entrusted you with. You see…all of it. You invest a portion of it, so that maybe 10 or 15 years you can use that investment in a wonderful way to help the needy, to help this church or whatever. You see…all of it is to be used. When you recognize that “all of it” doesn’t mean that you give all your money to some church or to some organization but it means a recognition of whose it is that you are giving and why you as a child of God have received, then “all of it” makes perfect sense.
And by that, you are truly saying to the devil “I don’t need your strings and your lies, because I’ve got Jesus, and I want others to have him too.”
Therefore you give to the church what in your heart and in your wallet you know you can give, and you give it freely. Who cares what the person sitting next to you is giving, it doesn’t matter. If you know that the church is behind budget, then you do what needs to be done. If you know that the church is working to pay down a debt, then you do what needs to be done. God gives to you with no strings attached so that you can be stewards of His gifts, so that you can share the gift of Christ with others.
I close our conversation when this, and I want you to always remember this: We don’t give so that God gives, we aren’t generous so that God is generous. God gives so that we can give. God is generous so that WE can be generous! That is the truth, the truth that you can take to the bank, but be sure to take it out so that you can also share it with others. Amen.
