The Key Question of Life

  I have to confess that I lost it on the phone a while back. It was dinner time when the phone rang. But, as a conscientious pastor, I answered the call. I mean, it could have been one of you.

       It wasn't. It was a person I had heard from at least once a week for several months either at home or at the office: "May I speak to the person who is in charge of making decisions on long distance service?"

        Something snapped. I raised my voice a few decibels and replied, "No one seems to be in charge of that around here. The place is chaos!" and hung up.

       They never called back.

       As you can see, I don't have a lot of patience with canned sales pitches over the phone. I thank God or the FCC for the “do not call” list.  But I recently received one from an investment broker inviting me to a special one-day seminar for investors just like me."

        I told him that I hoped his business really didn't depend on investors "just like me" because I don’t really invest.  Yes, I have a 403b but no one could call that investing – not now.  Besides that, I have another place to put my treasure -- a place with a great, guaranteed return.

       In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives the following command: "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 and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

        The hard question Jesus faces us with is: "Where is our treasure?" Where do we put our hearts? What do we value? Jesus suggests that this is the key question of life.

       You may know the man who was thrown from his car in a traffic accident. When a paramedic approached the bleeding man, lying in the road, the victim was moaning, "Ohhh, my BMW, my BMW!" "Forget your car," the paramedic told the man. "We can’t find your left arm!" The man, horrified, looked to his left side and moaned again, "Ohhh, my Rolex, my Rolex!"

        We certainly can become prisoners of all our "stuff." We are certainly encouraged this way by those who want to sell us even more stuff.  A Toyota ad showed a 25 year old guy sitting in a lotus position, his hands curled in meditation. He is sitting on his shiny new Toyota truck. Behind him is a boat, a jet ski, a surf board and other assorted toys. The caption read: "In order to be one with everything, you have to have one of everything."

       That’s the message we are handed by our culture.  But it is a message, Jesus warns, that can twist our lives. 

       This morning, we continue our fall focus on stewardship. This can be a time of great discomfort for some people who think that it's not appropriate for the church to talk about money -- that talking about money is somehow a sign of a lack of true spirituality.

         And that may be true. But if it is true, then Jesus is both inappropriate and lacks spirituality. He falls below our standards of conduct. One verse in five in the New Testament refers to money and property and people's relationship to them. Of Jesus' 38 major parables, 19 concern money, property and people's relationship to them.  In fact, there are 2350 verses in the Bible about how we spend our money.  I only plan to cover half of those today. 

        Jesus said five times more about stewardship than about any other subject. He said more about stewardship than He said about salvation, preaching, baptism, or any of the major doctrines. God knows that if He can get us into the right relationship to material things, it is not difficult for us to grow in those things which are spiritual and eternal.  This is because we put our hearts where we put our treasures. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  Our wills follow our wallets.

      Now I realize that when we talk about giving, especially when we are talking about giving around stewardship time, everyone gets a little nervous. Because we have all heard so many of those appeals that try to drive us to give out of guilt or some other misguided motive.

       I'm not preaching today because there are financial problems in the church or because this is what I’m supposed to do once a year.

        Sure I am aware of the state of the economy.  After all, I live here too.  I know that we are swimming against the current financially.  It seems that everyone is entrenching and battening down the hatches while we’re looking to move forward in local mission and sharing the good news.  But the Bible says that we are to be faithful in season and out of season.  This means that we are not to take our spiritual temperature from the economic indicators around us.  We need to be Spirit-directed people – shaped by the love of God and our response to His love.

        So numbers and needs aren’t what I’m about today.  I am up here this morning because I believe God wants me to share about His Word. He wants me to share that in His Word there are principles that if we choose to live by them, will permit Him to give the full measure of blessings that He desires to give us.

       We cannot out give God. God promises that the purpose of our giving is not to make us poor but to open our hands so He can fill them to overflowing.

       Now I am frankly a little embarrassed by this biblical principle. It has been badly abused by some health and wealth churches in recent years. But it is still a promise -- Malachi 3: 10: "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and test me now in this' says the Lord of Hosts,  if I will not open for you the floodgates of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows."

       Do you know what a floodgate is? It is the gate at the top of a dam where water is released to keep the dam from breaking during heavy rain. Before moving here to Moorpark we lived about five miles downstream from the great Oroville Dam. One wet year the lake was rising so fast that the floodgates were opened wide and 185,000 cubic feet of water per second were released. You could see the plume of spray for ten miles.

       That's what God wants to do for us -- open the floodgate of his blessing.

       God is concerned for our spiritual maturity. I like the way the Living Bible translates Deuteronomy 14:23 – that “ the purpose of the tithe is to teach us to always put God first in our lives.”  I know from Jesus that getting a right attitude toward money is the key to getting a right attitude toward a lot of other things. I know that a failure to tithe or at least head in that direction usually grows out of a lack of faith in God’s provision.  It did for me.  I also know that ever since we, as a family, began to give according to the biblical ten percent, the tithe, our finances have improved. If you do not tithe, and if you have the power to make that decision in your family,  I urge you to take God at His word. God tells you to put Him to the test. "See if I will not open for you the floodgates of heaven."

       The Bible declares in 1 Peter 4:10 that we are the stewards of God. This means that all that we have is a gift from God to be used for His purposes -- our time, our abilities, our property, our money, the world we live in -- even life itself.

       But what is the basis of our stewardship? How can we respond?

       One dubious way to approach our stewardship is to treat God like a heavenly banker from whom we have taken out an "interest only" loan.

       In this model, we view God as requiring a 10% interest on the time, property, and abilities He has loaned us with the balance payable when we die -- sort of a cosmic "balloon payment" to the heavenly bank. Each year at stewardship campaign time, the bill collectors send out their notices. And if we don't want to respond, we don't have to because we know that God doesn't go in for "strong-arm" methods any more like He did in the Old Testament. If we don't pay the interest on the loan, we figure that God will just add it to the bill when we die -- which He will.

       This approach treats stewardship as a kind of legal obligation. We look to see what is demanded -- what is the minimum response of the creature to the creator -- and give that amount. It reduces our relationship with God to the level of a contract.

       Too many Christians seem to see themselves as God’s probationary employees instead of as God’s daughters and sons.  We aren’t on probation.  We don’t give in order to become part of the family but because we are part of the family.  Our Christian stewardship is a God-given opportunity to be part of what God is doing in the world. 

       A second dubious approach to stewardship is to approach God as if He is running a heavenly protection racket. "I'll give you anything you want God if you'll just give me what I want or if you'll just keep this awful thing from happening.

       The third, and Biblical approach to stewardship is the response of the saved to the Savior. This approach doesn't ask: "What can I get by with?" but "What can I give to the one who gave Himself for me?" This is the approach of love. It isn't a response to an emotional appeal or to an exciting idea that captures our attention —“O yeah, I’ll buy a piece of that” — but to the Christ who has called us and saved us.

       Mark 12 records the story commonly known as the widow's mite: "A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a penny. Jesus called His disciples to Him and said to them, "Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned -- all she had to live on."

       There is something very fascinating here -- especially for people who look for flaws in the church as an excuse not to give.

      Think about it.   Jesus had every reason to oppose the widow contributing to that treasury at all. The temple had become a place of corruption with the buying and selling of animals. The money the widow gave would go partly to the support of the very chief priests who were to condemn Jesus to death later that week. Maybe that mite would form a small part of the thirty pieces of silver that bought Jesus’ life. Even the temple, which was also supported by her gift, was doomed to be destroyed in another forty years. Jesus knew that. All in all, her contribution to the treasury could be seen as a poor investment.

       And yet, Jesus honors her gift -- and that gift was laid up for that widow in Heaven, because it was a response of faith.

       Some evening when you have nothing to do, the TV is broken, and the kids are hogging the computer, take out a pocket calculator and figure how much that widow's penny would now be worth if she had invested it at 4% interest in the First National Bank of Jerusalem in the year 30 AD.

       It would take eighteen years for her money to double -- to be worth two cents. It would take 125 years for her investment to go over one dollar. But by 250 years, her penny would have increased to $257.98. By 300 years, she would have $1,839.39. And by 400 years, she would have $92,595.32.  This year she would be worth a number I can't pronounce, but it starts with 90 and is followed by about forty zeros. My numbering ability stops at a hundred gazillion and it's way over that.

       That is what a human bank could accomplish at a low average rate of interest. Just think of what God has done with that investment of a small amount of money, but a great amount of faith. That poor widow is a fantastically rich woman. For she put her treasure where thieves cannot steal and moths and rust cannot corrupt and destroy.

       A man was watching his ninety year old neighbor plant a small peach tree. He asked: "you don't expect to eat peaches from that tree, do you?" The old man rested on his spade. He said, "no, at my age I know I may not. But all my life I've enjoyed peaches -- never from a tree I planted myself. I’m just trying to pay back the other fellows who planted the trees for me."

        Let me encourage you to plant your own trees -- not just for the benefit of others — not just for the future -- but for your own spiritual growth. Jesus puts the issue plainly. He said, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." In other words, our hearts tend to follow our money.  Who do you want to be?  Do you want your heart top be like God’s.  Then give like He gave to us.  He put his treasure in us.

       I read of a six year old child who wanted to give a gift to the Lord at Christmas time.  She didn’t have any money so she took the doll she loved best and put it in the cradle of the manger scene the church had in its lobby.  That was her gift to Christ and His church.

       The pastor was deeply touched by what the child had done but he didn’t want her deprived of her favorite doll.  He took it out of the manger and offered it back to her with thanks. She looked at him in a fierce sort of way and said, “I didn’t give it to you.!”  She grabbed her doll, turned on her heels, walked directly to the narthex, and put her doll right back in the cradle.

       The pledge card that comes in the mail this week comes as an appeal to your life and to mine. It’s not a contract between you and the church treasurer.  It’s a faith statement between you and God. Giving is a matter of our own hearts and the Lord. 

       But don’t just take it from me.  Take it from three wise men who made their debut last Christmas with our Christmas with Carol musical.  If you saw it, you knew you wanted to see it again.  As soon as I saw that I knew they had to be here today.

“Let’s Give”