Note: This sermon was introduced with a drama sketch called "The Offering"
People share what they have for very different reasons, as we saw illustrated in the drama. Some people share what they have out of guilt. Others share what they have to be seen by others. But still other people give out of a genuine, heartfelt response to God’s love and grace in their lives.
I’ve been the pastor of teaching here at Life Bible Fellowship Church for over ten years now, and I believe this congregation is filled with people who give of themselves out of a sincere and honest response to God’s grace in their lives. I was reminded of this when our elder board started working on our church’s annual budget a few weeks ago. Our new fiscal year starts July 1, so we’re in the budget planning process right now. We always start by spending time in prayer, and then looking at how much money came into the church the previous fiscal year. Last year we took a huge step of faith and adopted an operating budget that was 15% more than the money that had come in the previous fiscal year. But when we compared what actually came in, we were amazed to see that we’re on pace to see 20% come in above the previous year, 5% more than we thought was a huge step of faith. That’s a testimony to the sharing and generous spirit of the people of this congregation.
I was also reminded of the giving character of this congregation when we went through Beyond Every Limit a few months ago. Most pastors I talk to dread giving campaigns, where they have to address issues like paying off construction loans, buying more land, and facilities renovation. But you make it easy to talk about these kinds of things, because you’re not afraid to take new steps of faith. So I believe this congregation is a giving congregation.
Today we’re going to talk about Wising Up about Sharing. We’ve been in a series through the Old Testament book of Proverbs called Wise Up About Life. We’ve been looking at different topics addressed in the book of Proverbs and how to live with the grain of God’s wisdom as it relates to each topic. In week’s past we’ve talked about wising up about the environment, about sex, about alcohol, and about parenting. In weeks to follow we’re going to talk about wising up about our parents, about leadership, about our legacy, about our words, and so forth.
But today we’re going to talk about wising up about sharing. Now I realize that just four weeks ago we talked about wising up about money. In that message we talked about working hard to reach our earning potential, avoiding foolish debts, seeking moderation in our lifestyle, and sharing what we have with those in need. The kind of sharing we focused our application on four weeks ago was sharing through our consistent giving to the church. Most of you are doing that faithfully.
So today I want to focus our application on our sharing with individual people we come in contact with. I find that if I’ve been faithful in my giving to the church that I have a tendency to think my sharing is done. So because I’ve written my tithe check for the month, I inadvertently close my eyes to the needs I see each day. I don’t see my neighbor who needs my help fixing his car or the single mom at church who needs those baby clothes I have boxed in the attic. I don’t think about the homeless person on my way to the grocery store or the teenager who doesn’t have quite enough money for summer camp.
So today we’re going to talk about why it’s wise to share what we have with other people. Today we’re going to see four reasons why it’s wise to share our resources with other people.
1. Demonstrating God’s Kindness (Proverbs 19:17)
Let’s look at this first proverb together.
"He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done" (Prov. 19:17 NIV).
The Hebrew verb for "kind" here means to be gracious and generous. It focuses both on the motive for giving something--that it’s graciously motivated, without strings attached--and on the action itself, that it’s actually given. So the focus of this Hebrew verb is on both the motive and the action.
And the word for "poor" here simply describes anyone who’s in need. The Hebrew word for "poor" is a very general term that can describe virtually anyone. So it’s not just the homeless or the destitute that this word includes. This is simply any person who’s suffering hardship, a person who’s been laid off because of the recession, someone who’s medical bills have caused them to hit hard times. It includes a single mom who’s on her own with the kids.
Now kindness to a person who’s in need can take many forms. It might be helping the person pay one of their monthly bills, lightening their financial load for that month. It might be buying them groceries or fixing the brakes on their car. It could be loaning them money without interest to keep their business afloat.
Now often what holds us back from doing these kinds of things is fear that what we give will be used wrongly. So this proverb tells us that giving to a needy person is like loaning money to God. Can you think of any other person in the universe who’s in a better position to pay back a loan than God himself? God’s credit rating is off the charts. God himself guarantees what we share to those in need, so even if that person misuses what we give, God still makes it right.
Now this proverb is not a guarantee that we’ll always get our money back with interest, like with a conventional loan. It’s simply saying that God will take care of us and reward us when we open our hearts to needy people. Often God will bless us financially, but this proverb is certainly not limited to financial blessing.
So here we find the first reason to share. When we share we demonstrate God’s kindness to those who are in need.
The kindness that we show is a reflection of God’s kindness for the person. Let’s face it: talk is cheap. We can say, "God loves you" until we’re blue in the face, but until we’re willing to demonstrate that love in tangible ways, our words are empty.
I used to believe that all poor people were poor because of their own laziness and sinfulness. I’m ashamed to admit that now, but it used to me my attitude. But my attitude started to change about fifteen years ago when I was camping at Cachuma Lake. Like most state camps, Cachuma Lake had a Sunday morning chapel service on Sundays, so Chris and I decided to attend. A husband wife team came out to lead the chapel service. The wife led us in worship on her beat up guitar, leading us in many of the same worship songs I sang here at LBF Church. The husband preached a Christ centered, biblical sermon, ending it with a gentle invitation for people to place their trust in Jesus Christ. But then I found out that the couple was homeless and did the chapel service each Sunday in exchange for sleeping in one of the boats at the lake. Here was a couple who’d simply met hard times. This husband and wife didn’t fit my preconceived assumptions, and that got me started in rethinking my paradigm.
If anyone needs to experience God’s kindness through us, it’s a person who’s in need. We know that’s true in other areas of life. When a person is discouraged, we try to encourage them to show them God’s kindness. When a person’s diagnosed with an illness or their spouse serves them with divorce papers, we try to show them God’s kindness. But it’s also true financially, that when a person can’t make her bills, that person needs God’s kindness. That’s a powerful reason to share what we have, to demonstrate God’s kindness in tangible ways.
2. Opening Ourselves to Blessings (Proverbs 28:27)
But you know, sharing doesn’t just help other people, it also helps us. Let’s look at the next Proverb, Proverbs 28:27.
"He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses" (Prov 28:27 NIV).
There’s a contrast in this proverb between giving and closing our eyes to the poor. There’s also a contrast between lacking nothing and receiving curses. A curse in the Old Testament usually refers to a sign of God’s judgment. A curse is the opposite of a blessing, which is a sign of God’s favor and touch in your life. So if we follow the logic of this text, those who share what they have receive blessings, while those who refuse to share receive curses instead of blessings.
So here we find the second reason to share. When we share, we open ourselves to God’s blessings in our lives.
A sharing heart opens the door to God’s blessings in our lives. Now once again, don’t misunderstand: I’m not just talking about financial blessings. This verse is not a name it claim it guarantee that some have twisted it to look like. God’s blessings encompass every area of our lives, including financial blessings, but certainly not limited to financial blessings. The idea is that giving people are open to whatever good gifts God wants to bring into their lives.
Picture your life as like an ocean, and God’s blessings are what God wants to bring into your life through the various streams and rivers that flow into the ocean. In order for that ocean to be vibrant and alive, you have to have water flowing in and water flowing out. What flows out are the things we share, and what flows in are God’s blessings. If there’s nothing going out of our life, you’ll be like the Dead Sea. There’s nothing alive in the Dead Sea, that’s why it’s called "dead". It’s not dead because there’s no life coming into the Dead Sea; there are lots of inlets. But there’s no outlet, not one. As soon as a fish comes into the Dead Sea it dies instantly because of the high salt content. If we’re not sharing the resources out of our lives with those around us, then we close the to God’s blessings.
But if we build outlets in our lives by sharing, then we open the door to God’s blessings.
3 . Counteracting Our Craving (Proverbs 21:25-26)
That brings us to our next Proverb, 21:25-26.
"The sluggard’s craving will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work. All day long he craves for more, but the righteous give without sparing" (Prov 21:25-26 NIV).
We’ve met the sluggard before in Proverbs. In our modern day slang, a sluggard is a slacker, someone who finds any excuse to avoid working hard. It reminds me of a homeless guy I saw in Dana Point a few weeks ago who was holding up a cardboard sign to drivers that said, "Why lie? I need a beer." One Proverb says that the sluggard is so lazy that he doesn’t even have the energy to bring his hand up from his plate to feed himself (19:24).
Now we’ve talked about the work ethic of Proverbs four weeks ago, so I’m not going to revisit that topic again. But notice the focus on craving in these two verses. The Hebrew word for "crave" in the particular form it appears in this verse means "to desire something selfishly."
The Bible has another word for this, the word "covet." Perhaps you remember the tenth commandment, "You shall not covet." Coveting refers to a focus on what you don’t have, being unsatisfied with what you have, even when you have enough to meet your needs. Coveting is what characterizes media millionaire Ted Turner, when he says that he feels like a failure because Disney CEO Michael Eisner is richer than he is. But all of us covet in life when we want more of anything even though we have enough. It’s this coveting, this craving, that rules the sluggard’s life.
But people who love God and walk with God seem unaffected by this craving, covetous desire.
So here we find the third reason to share. When we share, we counteract our craving to accumulate things we don’t need.
Giving is the antidote for craving. Sharing is the antidote for coveting. In fact, giving is the only antidote for the sickness of coveting. We think getting what we covet will make our craving go away, but instead getting what we want just feeds our craving all the more. What we were satisfied with yesterday doesn’t bring us the satisfaction it used to bring us, and suddenly we’re coveting and craving all over again.
In fact, sometimes our coveting makes us so focused on what we crave that we can’t see the riches we do have. I thought about this when I heard about a man named Danny Simpson this week (www.preachingtoday.com). Back in 1990 Danny Simpson robbed a bank in Ottawa, Canada. He stole $6,000 but he ended up getting caught and sent to prison for nine years. The gun he used during the robbery was a .45 caliber Colt semi-automatic, and because it looked kind of old, it was sent to a museum after Danny went to prison. The museum found that the gun Danny used in the robbery was a very rare antique gun. In fact, they appraised the value of the gun at $100,000. If he’d only knew the value of what he already had, Danny Simpson probably wouldn’t have risked his freedom for a mere $6,000.
Our nation’s advertising industry knows that all of us covet, and advertisers target this part of ourselves. This has created a consumer culture in our country, a culture where we define our worth and our value by what we buy.
Churches can become just as infected with this greedy toxin of coveting as individual people can. I thought about this when I heard about a guy named William Bailey, a man who died two years ago at the age of 88 years old (www.preachingtoday.com). Bailey had no family, and to the best of anyone’s knowledge, he hadn’t been to church in over twenty years. So everyone was shocked to find out that William Bailey left $60 million to St. Mary’s United Methodist Church. The will included no instructions on how to use the money, so the church set up an advisory board to try to figure out what to do with $60 million. Suddenly the church was besieged with phone calls asking for money. Church members who hadn’t darkened the doors of the church in decades started showing up, looking for their piece of the pie. The Pastor Derek McAleer worries that greed will consume the entire congregation. Giving away a bulk of that money to other organizations and ministries would counteract that pull toward coveting. In fact I called that pastor offering to take some of the money off his hands (just kidding!).
Sharing counteracts the sickness our craving for things we don’t need.
4. Keeping Ourselves Pure In Relationships (Proverbs 25:21-22)
Now up to this point, most of us can look at ways we’ve shared with people in our lives. We share with our kids, perhaps even more when they move out of the house. Perhaps we help pay for their wedding, or college tuition, or helping them get into their first house. We share with our friends, perhaps fellow church members we’re close to. But God wants us to not just share with those we’re naturally drawn to--our kids, our spouse and our friends--but to step out of our comfort zone to share with those we aren’t naturally drawn to. This is one characteristic that separates followers of Jesus Christ from people who don’t know God, who they’re willing to share with.
Let’s look at our final Proverb, Proverbs 25:21-22.
"If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward him" (Prov. 25:21-22 NIV).
This proverb is as close as the Old Testament gets to the idea of loving our enemies. Here we’re told that it’s wise to meet the needs of our enemies. Now an enemy in this text is simply someone who doesn’t like you. We all have those people in our lives who just don’t like us. Perhaps they’ve misunderstood us, or perhaps they’re holding on to a grudge against us from long ago.
Here we’re told that sharing with our enemies heaps burning coals on their heads. Now to be honest, no Bible scholar I’ve read knows exactly what heaping burning coals refers to. Some think that it refers to an ancient Egyptian rite where a person did penance for some wrong that they committed. In that case, heaping burning coals would mean bringing a person to repentance. Others think that the burning coals are God’s judgment on the person, that we literally burn them with our kindness. So the more kind we are, the more God’ judges them! Others think that the coals are talking about the burning shame a person might feel when someone they don’t like is kind to them. Whatever it means, certainly it refers to our responsibility to act in a loving and sharing way with people who don’t like us.
But Jesus went even further than this proverb does.
Jesus said, "Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (Luke 6:27-28 NIV).
This is one of those radical statements of Jesus that most Christians spend more time trying to find loopholes in than actually trying to obey. This command simply goes against every fiber of our nature, yet this is a big part of what it means to live as a follower of Jesus Christ.
Christians tend to be like other people, loving those who love us and disliking those who dislike us. Yet followers of Jesus are called to go beyond this, to love both friend and foe, both those who love us and those who despise us. That’s certainly what Jesus himself did when he went to the cross for us while we were still enemies of God because of our sins. That’s what Jesus did when he asked God to forgive his own executioners. Jesus gave away his rights to share his life with us, even at great cost to himself.
We show love to those who dislike us by doing good to people, by blessing them, by praying for them. We tend to do good to people who we think deserve it, blessing people who seem bless-able, praying for people who we know will pray for us. We work on the basis of who deserves our love, who deserves our good, who deserves our blessings and our prayers. But following Jesus means acting on the basis of grace, just like God has acted on the basis of grace with us. Loving those who we find unlovable, doing good to those who don’t do us good, blessing those who curse us, praying for those who seek to do us harm.
Here we find the final reason to share. When we share we keep ourselves pure in our relationships with those who don’t like us.
These relationships are where we tend to fail the most, especially when the feeling of dislike is mutual. That neighbor with the barking dog. That boss who treats us unfairly. That coach who won’t play your kid in the infield. You know the kind of relationships I’m talking about.
God wants us to live as Christ followers in these relationships as well as with our families, our spouses, our church, and our friends. When we keep ourselves pure in these relationships, that gives God room to work in amazing ways.
If you want to know how to do this, just look at the life of Jesus. Meditate on how Jesus himself lived, how he responded to people who criticized him, how he loved those who hated him.
Conclusion
Why share what we have with other people? People who share demonstrate God’s kindness to people who need it the most, they open the door to God’s blessings, they counteract the craving covetousness that characterizes our world, and finally they keep themselves pure in their relationships. And we’ve focused on sharing our money, but the reality is that we have lots of resource to share. In many ways, our world today works more on the basis of time instead of money. So we do this by sharing our time, by sharing our possessions, by sharing our attention, and by sharing our money.
I don’t know about you: But that’s the kind of person I want to be. I suspect that if you’re a Christian, that’s the kind of person you want to be too.
We can’t become that kind of person by simply trying harder. It’s only as we grow in our love and passion for Jesus, as we worship God together, drawing strength from our sense of community, that we become that kind of person. It’s only as we appreciate the generous, loving heart of God toward us that we become the kind of person who wises up about sharing.
