IT ALL BELONGS TO HIM
7/28/2003
Today we’re going to talk about and think about something that in the two years I’ve been your pastor, I have never discussed. When I thought about it, I thought how odd that is, that I’ve never spoken to you about this topic, especially since Jesus taught about it more than any other single topic, more than on divorce, theft, homosexuals, peace, retaliation, prayer, lust or anger. That subject is money. MONEY.
And unlike all of my messages to you so far, there isn’t just one scripture passage, because the word, “money” is mentioned 55 times in the New Testament alone! But I have listed all the verses I’m using in the bulletin.
The early church--just like the church today--depended on financial assistance. The Hebrew word translated as “offering” means “to carry to”. The word was used to describe the blood offerings in the Hebrew Temple. The blood of the sacrifice was “carried to” the altar. This is a strong symbol of carrying our gifts to God, placing them before Him, for His use. In some churches, the people walk up to the front with their offerings. Perhaps that is something we all should be doing.
See, I think we have lost the realization that our offerings are a very deep and spiritual part of our worship. And we have lost the realization that “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1)
It all belongs to God. God owns you and he owns everything you have. Every tractor, every home, every new car and truck, every computer, every spiritual gift He gave you, such as teaching, accounting, nursing, caring for others, and getting a crop to grow from the soil. 1 Cor.6:19-20 says “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price…”
Christ’s death was the price paid for your body, your life, and that act obligates you to His service. If you live in a building owned by someone else, you don’t violate the landlord’s rules. Because your body and all that you have belong to God, you cannot violate his standards!
God owns it all. We are only managers of what he trusts us with. We are stewards. A steward manages assets for the owner’s benefit. The steward carries no entitlement to the assets he manages. It’s his job to find out what the owner wants done with his assets, then carry out his will.
And what is the Lord’s will where our assets are concerned? Well, one thing the Bible tells us is that this world we live in is not our home. I’m convinced that the greatest deterrent to giving is the illusion that earth is our home. We are but pilgrims passing through, strangers and aliens here on the earth because our citizenship is in heaven (Heb.11:13, Phil.3:20). Think about this: No one stores their best possessions in a hotel room, they store their prized stuff in their homes!
Matt. 6:19-21 (NLT) “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves. Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be.
Never forget who gave you what you have today. It is not due to your ability. You owe it all to God! And your heart goes wherever you put God’s money.
We KNOW this, don’t we? Sure! We KNOW it in our minds, but sometimes it seems to me that it’s longer than a ruler’s length from our heads down to our hearts! We must live with a spirit of thanksgiving in our hearts 24/7. Often we miss the lavish provisions of God – the air, the sunshine, the rain… When we have a spirit of thanksgiving we become consciously aware of all that God provides us. We learn to receive and not to grab. We finally become aware that our lives do not consist of the things we have, for we live and move and breathe in God, not in things.”
There are just two points I want to instill within your minds and your hearts this morning. One is that you are not your own. What you have is not your own. All you have belongs to the One who graciously gave it to you, our Lord and Savior. Got that? (SMILE)
The second point I want to cover is what we should be doing with God’s money. And if you truly understand what I’ve spent the last 10 minutes or so trying to tell you, you KNOW in your hearts that the money in your purses and wallets, the money in your checking and savings and CD accounts, it all belongs to God.
1 Timothy chapter 6 gives us some great insight into money. Verse 6: “there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment for we have brought nothing into the world so that we can take nothing out of it.” Verses 17-19: “…those who in the present age are rich (are not)…to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share…storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that is really life.”
Every single one of you is rich compared to the rest of the world! You may not feel rich right now, but just think about it for a moment. Do you all have enough to eat? Clothes to wear, in fact, closets of clothes? A reliable car or two or three to drive? A warm, leak-proof roof over your head? Carpet on your floors? More than one room in your home? Each of us here in this room is rich indeed!
I like the way Eugene Peterson translates 1 Timothy 6:17-19 in his paraphrase of the Bible. He says: “Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.” Verse 9: “Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” Any of you who have been involved in settling the estate of a dead loved one should be able to relate. When families get a whiff of thinking about all those things they could do and buy with that money, that greed destroys more relationships than anything else I can think of.
Verse 10: For the LOVE OF MONEY is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. Indeed.
The love of money is a source of grief. It is a spiritual fight. Why? Greed. The demon in money is greed. Nothing can destroy human beings like the passion to possess.
Ecclesiastes 5:10-15 (NLT) gives us a fresh perspective. 10 Those who love money will never have enough. How absurd to think that wealth brings true happiness! 11 The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what is the advantage of wealth—except perhaps to watch it run through your fingers!
12 People who work hard sleep well, whether they eat little or much. But the rich are always worrying and seldom get a good night’s sleep. 13 There is another serious problem I have seen in the world. Riches are sometimes hoarded to the harm of the saver, 14 or they are put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost… 15 People who live only for wealth come to the end of their lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day they were born.”
The more we have, the more we want. And that wanting is greed, no matter what words you would rather call it. Greed. And the Bible gives us many warnings about what will happen when we put our wants before God’s.
I think about the Jesus’ experience with the ten lepers, as told in Luke 17:11-19. Remember that one? As Jesus was traveling to Jerusalem, ten lepers approached him asking Him to heal them, which he did by telling them to go and show themselves to the priests. Only one of the ten who were healed came back and thanked Jesus. I can see Jesus himself scratching his head as he says what is written in verse 17: “Wait a minute, here. Didn’t I heal 10 men? Where are the other nine?”
It is easy to read that passage and condemn the other 9, yet each one of us has probably been guilty of receiving God's blessings and not being as thankful as we should be. We can get to a place in our walk with the Lord where we get used to His blessings. We get used to spending our money on ourselves. We can even get to a place where we expect His blessings.
As His children, we should be enjoying these rich blessings of God. The problem comes when we take His blessings for granted and aren't as thankful as we should be. We must never forget, we are blessed by His grace...not because we deserve to be blessed.
God knows our hearts. He understands our motives. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows how much we should give (of money, time, talents, and resources), he knows what we’re actually giving, and he knows why we’re giving.
This brings me to the very heart of the matter. Church giving is not a membership fee we pay to belong; it is an act of love. It is an act of worship. We would do well to ask ourselves what we tend to hold back from the Lord, and why. To make an analogy, how much love do so-called “dead-beat dads” –those men who do not pay child support for their kids—how much love do they really have for their children? If they can give, but refuse to help their children, how much do they love?
The Bible gives us some stern warnings about this. Deut. 8:11-18 chills me to the bone when I see the way today’s Christians live. (READ FROM THE BIBLE)
When you have eaten your fill and built your nice homes and summer homes, when your herds have multiplied and your dollars have multiplied…don’t forget God. Don’t forget the Lord who led you through the dry spells, who fed you, who GIVES YOU THE POWER TO EARN MONEY.
“If you forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.” (v.19)
Beloved, “don’t be deceived. You can’t ignore God and get away with it. You will always reap what you sow! Those who live only to satisfy their own desires will harvest the consequences of corruption and death.” These very words from Galatians 6:7-10 go on to say, “But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So don’t get tired of doing what is right, don’t get discouraged and give up, for we will reap our blessings at the appropriate time. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those in our family of faith.”
People, look around you at this room. No, really, I want you to take a good look! Look at the worn, outdated carpet. Look above, at the old rickety lights that look like they could fall down on our heads at any moment. Look at the decrepit and unsafe pews. Look at the walls which need painted. We should hang our heads in shame that we have let the place where we come to worship a God who has blessed us with so much get into such deplorable shape.
Just like the dead-beat dads, when you put your offerings in the plate each Sunday, how much love are you showing God? Are you giving 10% of your earnings, whether those earnings be from a regular pay check, interest on your investments, or your Social Security? Because, see, God gave us that 10% tithe as a guideline for our lives.
Give him the FIRST fruits of our labor. Give him the cream on the top of the milk bottle. Then the rest He generously allows us to do with whatever we want. The Bible warns us over and over not to test the Lord our God. But did you know that there is just one area where God tells us it’s okay to test him? In fact, he eagerly invites us to test him on this one thing!
Malachi 3:8-10 says, “Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings! You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you! Bring the full tithe into the storehouse…and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.”
Put him to the test, God says. Begin giving Him the full 10%, and see if He doesn’t open the very windows of heaven and pour down blessings upon you!
If I decided to pass the offering plates again this morning and asked each of you to give me just the extra change in your pockets, would that change the amount of food or gas you could buy this week? Would it keep you from paying your rent or the mortgage payment or the NIPSCO bill?
How about if I asked for $10 from each of you? Or $20? What if I asked you to give until it hurts, how much money would you have to part with? More importantly, would you give cheerfully? Would you give with gratitude for all that God has given you? Would you not hold back, the way God did not hold back His only Son who died for you?
I have shared with you recently that I believe God is leading this congregation to a mighty work for Him, which He has not yet revealed. I believe we must first get our house in order, we must make this worship place presentable! So I am going to give you the opportunity to show your gratitude to God this morning by passing the plates once again. I encourage you to put God to the test and give the balance of that 10% tithe. Or, remember the story of the widow who gave everything she had, although it was only two pennies? I know God would be overjoyed to get all you have.
This special offering, and more to come, will be used to glorify this dwelling place, to make it fitting for worshipping our King. (And if you don’t run me out on a rail,) soon I will also be asking you for your time and talents, also, to clean, paint, wash windows, and other tasks.
The reminder today is to never forget when God is blessing you, it is because He loves you and cares for you. The natural response to that love should be to love Him, adore Him, worship Him and give Him the thanks He is due. Check yourself and make sure you are not like the nine lepers who took their blessing and went on with their lives.
References:
Alcorn, Randy. (2001). The Treasure Principle: Discovering the Secret of Joyful Giving. Oregon: Multnomah.
Foster, Richard. (1985). Money, Sex and Power: The Challenge of the Disciplined Life. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Stott, John. (1980). “The Just Demands of Economic Inequality.” Christianity Today, 23 May.
Biblical Attitudes Toward Money by Andrew Chan, Sunday School Lesson, Grace International Baptist Church
