How The Kingdom Works: Part 3 – Funding The Kingdom
Feb 18, 2007
Intro:
“The offering” video, from Good $ense.
Why Do You Give?
That humorous clip shows several different motivations for giving: glory, guilt, gratitude – what is yours? Why do you give?
Ministry Takes Money
Over the past two weeks we’ve been talking about what it takes to make the Kingdom of God work. We’ve looked at how it really does work, and how it takes each of us using our Spiritual Gifts to make it work. This morning I want to explore one more thing that it takes to make the Kingdom of God work – it takes money. Ministry takes money – that is a reality – it has been like this since the very beginning of God’s Kingdom in the nation of Israel, it was like this in the time of Jesus, and it is like that today.
Over the past month or so we’ve been introducing you to two new ministries we are partnering with in Bolivia. The first is a ministry to kids forced to live in Bolivian prisons with a parent, called the Casa de la Amistad. The second is a ministry to kids who live on the streets in Cochabamba, called Jireh. Well, both of those ministries cost money – it costs money to have and operate a facility for the Casa programs, it costs money to hire staff to work with the 170 children in the program, it costs money to purchase medical insurance for each of those 170 kids, it costs money to feed them. Likewise with Jireh – it costs money to hire a man named Thomas to be their pastor/surrogate father/counselor/teacher/advocate, it costs money to rent the tiny building from which they are being kicked out and it will cost even more money to find a new suitable, hopefully permanent space, and it costs money to feed those 45 kids one meal a week and sometimes a little more often.
Just like in Bolivia, it costs money for ministry in Canada. It costs money for us to heat our church building, it costs money to hire pastors to teach and lead worship and mentor teens and do evangelism, and more importantly to lead and encourage and equip all the people to do ministry. It costs money to buy Sunday school material and paper for bulletins and to support missionaries sharing God’s love in other cultures.
Where does all that money come from? It comes from people like you and me, who give it away.
Now kids, let me talk to you for a moment. I’m so glad you are joining us for this talk today, because what I am talking about is radical and rebellious. It is the complete opposite of what you are going to hear about money everywhere else in our culture. It is upside down, and perhaps one of the most important things for you to discover if you are going to have a great life. I’m going to talk about giving money away.
When was the last time you saw a TV commercial telling you that you had so much, you should really give some to others? When was the last time you saw a print ad telling you that you should be content with what you have? When have you ever walked into a store and seen a sign that said, “just buy what you really need, and then get out of here and use the rest of your money to help someone else.”
The Context:
Let me begin with a question: what is it that we need, in our hearts, that brings us to the point of giving? (it’s a real question! Go ahead and answer!)
I believe that the starting point for giving is the same starting point for everything else in the Christian life – it is love.
Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matt 6:24, NLT). That is pretty straight talk – if you love money, you hate God; if you are devoted to money, you’ll despise God – and the opposite is also true: if you love God, you’ll hate money and if you are devoted to God, you’ll despise money. Pretty blunt, pretty harsh, and it begs the question: who do you love? Who has your heart? Are you running after money, or after God?
Since Jesus told us that we cannot love both God and money, it is obvious to me that we as Christians must be different. And that is why giving money away is so important, and so good. Giving breaks the hold money has on us. Giving gets rid of the competition for our love. Giving puts God ahead of money.
1 Tim 6:6-8 (NLT)
In all the Bible’s teaching about money, Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 6 stand out. “6 Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. 7 After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. 8 So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.”
Does that describe you? Are you content with enough food and clothing? Again, contentment is a matter of the heart, just like love. Can I make a radical suggestion? As long as our focus is on stuff, we will never be content. We will never have enough. Our culture has a limitless imagination that continually dreams up new, better, more expensive things that we suddenly “must have.” Here is my suggestion: focus on giving. Here is why I believe it is radical – our desire for more stuff is really a manipulated desire for more meaning in our lives – for more significance – for more alive-ness. And that is never satisfied in pursuing material things, it only comes through giving. A little further down Paul writes, “19 (through generous giving) they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” That is where we find life!
1 Tim 6:9-10 (NLT)
“9 But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.”
Ok, let me pause here for a moment and talk about my hammer. It is a nice hammer. Even a pretty color. Now, would you say my hammer is good, or evil? Of course, it is neither. I can do good things with my hammer, like build a birdhouse to sell to raise money for our Bolivian partners. Or I can do evil things with my hammer, like smash a window. The hammer is just a tool. And so is money. With money I can do good things, like feed a hungry child or buy a Bible for a grade one Sunday school child. Or I can do evil things that pierce my heart with grief, like gambling or buying something I really don’t need because I believe the lie that it will make me happy and make my life more full (and then feel worse afterwards).
This is important, because money is not the problem. Our love of money is the problem. You know, it is popular to say that many people in our country don’t have a religion. But that is completely false – we have one, and it is this: materialism. The god is money – it is sought after, worshiped, sung about, temples (in the form of lavish office towers and mega malls) are built to show it off, whenever a wrong has been done the answer is money (victim compensation), when a problem comes up in our society the answer is always, it needs money, the people we admire and talk about and emulate have money, we often even end up measuring our very worth as human beings based on how much money we have or appear to have. Any objective, rational look at the hearts and lives of most North Americans would come to the conclusion that we worship money.
Scripture tells us that loving money and pursuing money ends in grief. In fact, the passage says it twice: first it says, “people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.” Then it says that people who pursue money, “pierced themselves with many sorrows.” There are many reasons, and tons of examples, but the bottom line is back in verse 7: we started with nothing material, we’ll end with nothing material. “You can’t take it with you.” Spending our lives pursuing money is such a waste! It ends in ruin, destruction, and sorrow. It doesn’t last, it doesn’t bring happiness, it doesn’t satisfy. So what is the alternative?
1 Tim 6:17-19 (NLT)
“17 Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. 18 Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. 19 By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life.”
I chose 1 Timothy for two reasons. The first is because of how direct Paul is, as he instructs a young pastor in how to teach on money.
The teaching is straightforward. Don’t be proud. You might be rich – in fact, by any global measure every single one of us in this room right now are incredibly rich – but do not put your trust in money. It could be gone in an instant. Money does not make us secure – our only true security comes from God. So don’t trust your RRSP or pension or emergency reserve for your security – at the very most those will provide financial security. But what about your health? What about your relationships? What about your soul? Ultimately, those matter far more than the size of our bank account, and the only place we can entrust those is to God.
Paul is blunt in telling Timothy to tell the rich to “use their money to do good”. To be generous. That is the command – use the money you have to do good things, things that help those in need, things that support the work of God in your community. It comes with a promise, in vs. 19, that as we do we’ll discover that it really is for our own good, so that we find “true life”.
The second reason I chose 1 Timothy is because it speaks directly to us. We are “those who are rich in this world”. We are not condemned for our riches, in fact the passage affirms that “God richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.” God is not anti-money, but He is definitely anti-love of money. Anti-selfishness. We are free to enjoy what God has given, provided it is in the context of “using money to do good”, in the context of “generosity” and a willingness to share.
Conclusion:
Most of us have probably seen the TV commercial where an angry army of Vikings comes charging over the hill, weapons high, war cries raging, ready to destroy. The scene then shifts, to a man about to make a purchase, who opens his wallet and pulls out a certain brand of credit card. When the Viking army sees that particular band of credit card, they stop, disappointed, hang their heads, and turn around and slowly go home. The tag line comes, “What’s in YOUR wallet?”
I want to end this talk back where I started, and ask a slightly different question. “What’s in your heart?” In the next couple of weeks we are going to get our final tax documents, and we are going to all go through that annual process of completing our tax returns, which will include seeing exactly how much income we earned in 2006, and seeing how much we gave to the church and other Christian ministries that issue tax receipts. As you do, I challenge you to ask the honest question of what that says about what is in your heart.
A couple years ago, when teaching my son how to pray, we had a conversation around the dinner table. “Why do we thank God for the food when it came from Sobeys?” A great question! We responded, “because God made the sun and the rain that made the vegetables grow, He created the animals that we eat as meat, it all comes from God, so we thank Him.” The follow up comment came, “yah, but we still had to pay for it.” The answer to that was an exploration of how God gave me and Joanne minds and hands, opportunities to learn, and good jobs where we could earn money to buy food. It still all comes from God. It was a good conversation around our dinner table, which reminded me again that it all comes from God. It all belongs to God. I am given it, but not to “have” or “own”, but rather as a trustee.
And what I do with that which has been entrusted to me reveals what is in my heart. What’s in your heart?
Generosity? Sacrificial generosity? Contentment? A trust in God rather than in money? Good usage of money for the Kingdom of God? A spirit of control, or of freely giving and trusting God and the church to use it wisely? Most of all, is there a deep love, for God and for His Kingdom, that shines through? Those are difficult questions, but ones which, if answered honestly, will allow the Kingdom of God to really work.
