Good morning. We’re in the 3rd Sunday of a four-part series focusing on Christian stewardship.
The central idea which we’re working with is this:
Disciples of Jesus Christ are faithful to God in stewarding all that He owns by disadvantaging themselves in order to advantage His kingdom.
On the first Sunday, we looked at the Context for Stewardship. We learned that the context for stewardship is our covenant relationship with God.
We learned that a personal relationship with God is really a covenantal relationship based on loving loyalty.
We saw how the new covenant enables us to be faithful to God because God transforms us by writing His law into our minds and hearts. Instead of administrating obedience through outward conformity to a law, God gives us a new nature in which we want to obey Him.
But we also noted how we can short-circuit His transforming work by resisting His efforts to write His law into our minds and hearts.
And we faced this question: “Will you participate in the new covenant by allowing God to write fully His laws into your mind and your heart?”
Last week, we looked at the Foundation of Stewardship by diving into the parable of the bags of gold from Matthew 25.
We learned about ownership and entrustments. We learned that God owns everything and all which we have is really a matrix of entrustments from God to be stewarded by us to further God’s Kingdom. And these entrustments are given to us according to the abilities God has given us.
We also learned that as stewards, we need to draw close to the heart of God if we’re going to manage well what God has entrusted to us.
And finally, we learned that our present stewardship of God’s entrustments to us is preparation for us to reign with God in eternity. No matter what we’re doing here on earth, it is preparatory for our stewardship role of reigning with Him.
We faced an important question: “Will you be a faithful steward who properly cares for God’s entrustments and takes the time and effort to intimately know Him?”
IOW, will you give up being an owner and become a steward?
Today, we’re going to look at the Life of Stewardship. We’re going to consider three areas which, it seems to me, must be managed well if we’re going to become generous toward God: Debt, Savings and Hoarding.
Until we have come into alignment with His instructions in these three areas, I doubt we’ll be able to become generous toward God.
So let’s get started.
A Biblical View of Debt
Debt has two sides: lending and borrowing.
Let’s start by considering Deuteronomy 15.6 and 28.12:
15:6: For the Lord your God will bless you as he has promised, and you will lend to many nations but will borrow from none
28:12: The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none.
According to these scriptures, faithfully obeying God’s commandments results in being blessed, giving you the ability to lend, having little need to borrow. The blessing doesn’t mean you’ll be financially rich, but you will be able to live today on the fruit of today’s labors. You won’t be living today on tomorrow’s income.
R.C. Sproul has written one of the best books I’ve ever read on economics: Biblical Economics: A Commonsense Guide to Our Daily Bread. He wrote:
“Debt, whether you are buying hamburgers, books, CDs, or a car, is the practice of consuming today the fruit of tomorrow’s labor. It is consuming more than you produce…If you consume today what you will produce tomorrow, what will you consume tomorrow?
When we perpetually live consuming tomorrow’s wealth today, we place ourselves into a never-ending cycle of “feeding the beast” – working to pay off debt while accumulating more debt for the future.
As a country, we have already spent decades of future productivity on ourselves through our national and state debts. So, at the personal level, we take on debt thinking it’s not a big deal. And for some here today, our lifestyles are built largely on debt. We go into debt for homes, cars, cabins, furniture, boats, season tickets and so forth. We think as long as we can make the payments, we’re OK. We’ve been taught by our culture to take on debt – as long as you can afford the payments, then you’re managing your money well.
Sometimes, debt is thrust upon us through medical bills, unforeseen accidents, business failure and so forth.
Sustained, high debt levels have really negative consequences. For example, missing one or two paychecks can put some forever behind, unable to get caught up on your payments.
High debt leads to high stress. Sustained stress, in turn, can cause physical problems that may persist for long periods of time, degrading the quality of our lives.
Debt harms our marriages too. In a study of more than 4500 married couples, researchers saw that couples who took on more debt over time became more likely to split up. Couples with higher debt also fought more about money and reported lower marital satisfaction.
Debt harms our church too. Many Christians are in bondage to debt and are significantly hindered in their service and generosity to the Lord because their debt. God can’t call them to the mission field or to any full-time vocational ministry nor can He call them to meet the needs of their next-door neighbor because they are so laden with debt. IOW, high amounts of debt limits our productiveness for the Lord.
I believe debt is one reason over half of our church body never gives any money – not even $1 – during any given 12-month period. Many are unable to give simply because their debt has a claim on their income for years to come. This harms our church. This harms our witness for Christ. This harms our effectiveness for the Kingdom.
Debt divides our allegiances. Let’s look at Proverbs 22.7:
The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender.
When we take on debt, a portion of our labor is now serving the interests of another.
When our allegiances are divided, we’re not fully available to God. This is why many mission organizations require those going to the mission field to be completely free of any debt. Debt divides our loyalties. Debt can hinder our effectiveness for God.
For some listening this morning, you’re challenge in becoming generous toward God is less about your willingness to give and more about a long-term, structural challenge: how will you become generous toward Him when you can barely make your monthly payments now?
If you are in debt then what should you do?
- Stop the bleeding – stop going into more debt
- Work with a financial planner to create a debt-reduction plan
- Start giving to the church – even if it is only $1/week
- Slowly build an emergency fund for those unexpected expenses
The hard part here will be to stop using debt to prop-up a standard of living above where we should be. In some situations, debt allows us to instantly gratify our desires. The structural change is submitting to God, who may ask us to live with prolonged, delayed gratification just so we can stay out of debt and be more available for ministry.
So this really begs the question: when should we take on debt? The Bible doesn’t give us any explicit instruction in this question, so what I’ll suggest here is Bill, not Bible. But I do think I have the mind of God on this: we take on debt only when we’re led to do so by God.
This comes from the general notion that when we’re walking in God’s will, we hear His voice, and we follow Him. If we take on debt when He doesn’t want us to do so, then we get outside His will, His provision and His protection. But when we stay inside His will, we enjoy the blessings of His provision and protection. So, it seems wise to take on debt only when God tells us to do so.
To sum up, here is the core, Biblical principle for assuming debt:
When we borrow, our allegiances become divided between God and our lender. So don’t borrow unless God leads you to do so.
A Biblical View of Saving
On the opposite end of borrowing and consuming the fruit of tomorrow’s labor today saving for future expenses. Saving is setting aside some of the fruit of today’s labor to be consumed tomorrow.
Believe it or not, the Bible does speak to saving. So the logical question is this: what does the Bible have to say about saving for the future? Well, the Bible emphasizes two main reasons to save:
Let’s look at paying for future expenses by reading about Joseph in Genesis 41.46-49:
46 Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from Pharaoh’s presence and traveled throughout Egypt. 47 During the seven years of abundance the land produced plentifully. 48 Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities. In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it. 49 Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea; it was so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure.
Joseph’s preparation for famine in Egypt is a prime example of seeing one’s need for money and resources in the future and saving for the future out of one’s abundance in the present. Because the king trusted Joseph, he knewthe lack of grain in the future was going to be severe, so the king allowed Joseph to save up grain out of the seven-year abundance.
The principle to learn here is that our present saving should be roughly equivalent to our future need. Biblical saving attempts to save for future needs out of present abundance.
Secondly, saving in the present to give in the future is also encouraged and illustrated in 1 Corinthians 16.1-2:
1Now about the collection for the Lord’s people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. 2 On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made.
The Jerusalem church oversaw the churches that Paul founded. Yet we have no scriptural evidence that the Jerusalem church levied taxes on Gentile Christians, unlike the Jerusalem priests who compelled the Jews in Israel and in dispersion to pay the annual temple tax.
Rather, Paul taught Gentile believers that they should joyfully share material blessings with the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, because the Jerusalem saints had shared with them spiritual blessings. Paul wanted them to be cheerful givers who, without reluctance or compulsion, generously gave their gifts to support the poor.
Since they didn’t have banking system with electronic transfer capabilities, physical money had to be physically carried from point A to point B. So Paul was asking the gentile believers in Corinth and other cities to save up so that they could give to their brothers in Jerusalem who were in desperate need.
The principle here is this: It is honoring to God to set aside a portion of your wealth with the express intention of giving it away. So, it seems to me that the thrust of what pleases God is for us to structure our lives so that after reasonably saving for the future, we give the balance of our wealth away.
I can’t point to a single chapter and verse which says this, but when we align passages that illustrate saving with passages that talk about meeting the needs of our brothers, I think this notion accurately represents the mind of God. We save for the future to cover future expenses during those times when we’re not able to generate wealth like we can today. Then we give the rest of our wealth away.
The huge benefit of giving the rest of our wealth away is that it will cause us to remain dependent on God. This notion of financial security – financial independence – is lethal to the cause of Christ. God always provides for our needs, but He will not provide enough for us to become independent from Him.
At this point, some may be saying “Wait a minute – what about providing an inheritance for our children? Are you saying it’s wrong to leave an inheritance for our children or grandchildren?” Not at all. The Bible speaks positively about leaving an inheritance for your children and grandchildren. So while I don’t have time to give this topic the attention it deserves, bear in mind there is a basic principle which scholars and Pastors use to interpret the Bible – which I think is relevant here: Emphasize what the Bible emphasizes and don’t emphasize that which the Bible doesn’t emphasize.
For example, when we combine the frequency of how often the Greek and Hebrew words for giving, gold, silver, wealth, money, generosity, stewardship and so forth appear in the Bible, you’ll find this larger topic of money and wealth is mentioned over 1000 times in the Bible. Now, consider that there are only 1189 chapters in the Bible. This means that, on average, the Bible talks about money and wealth, on average, nearly once per chapter in the Bible.
By the same token, when it comes to giving to others who have a present need vs. leaving an inheritance of wealth for your children, I think you’ll find the Bible emphasizes the former much more than the latter.
Finally, leaving a moral inheritance to your children is valued much more in Scripture than leaving a financial inheritance. Perhaps at some point in the future, we’ll be able to dive into this area more fully.
So our two saving principles are as follows:
- Our present saving should be roughly equivalent to our future needs.
- It is honoring to God to set aside a portion of your wealth with the express intention of giving it away.
A Biblical View of Hoarding
If the Biblical principle for saving is to reasonably match our savings with future expenses, then it stands to reason that hoarding is excessive saving. It is saving more than we need.
One of the best examples of hoarding as well as one of the stronger teachings against greed is in Luke 12.16-21:
And he told them this parable. “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
This is the parable of the rich man who was successful in business and who decided to build bigger barns to hold his increased wealth. He was so successful that he literally didn’t have enough room for all his wealth. So he built larger barns to hold his increase of possessions. There is nothing in this story to suggest he acquired his wealth unethically or illegally or through oppression.
His actions alone would have revealed what was in his heart. But his words confirmed it: “I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry.'” It was all about him: his money, his wealth, his comfort, his security, and his enjoyment. He had no thought about what God would have him do. He had no thought about giving his wealth away because he had no love for God.
In this parable, the sin of hoarding is about amassing wealth and fortune for ourselves. Hoarding is grounded in the belief that our wealth belongs to us, not God. Hoarding does not see wealth as an entrustment from God. It is based in the pride of what one has accomplished, bathed in delusion that I did all this on my own, refined in the school of placing my interests ahead of the interests of others and expressed through the discontent of always wanting more luxuries in life. Hoarding places one’s security for the future in one’s money, not in God.
Hoarding distorts what a “need” is. I’ve seen men in business who have a net worth well beyond $30M talk about needing to “add to a bit more to their nest egg”. Hoarding creates an insatiable appetite for more and more and more. How much is enough? Always just a bit more.
Hoarding is excessive saving. It is saving more than what you need. And know this: hoarding is lethal to the cause of Christ.
When we consider our covenant relationship with God, we’ll find that hoarding is wholly incompatible with it. In our covenant relationship with God, we pledge ourselves to be faithful to Him. We are loyal to Him. When we hoard, we’re being faithful to ourselves and not to God. We are loyal only to ourselves. In our covenant relationship with God, we love God more than anything or anyone on this earth. When we hoard, we develop a love for God love our money and what it buys us more than anything else on this earth. Our covenant relationship with God is characterized by love and loyalty which flows both ways. When we hoard, we show that our love and loyalty is to ourselves and our money. When we hoard, we are acting completely outside of our covenant relationship with God. This is why Christ said we’ll have to choose: we’ll either love money or God, but we can’t love both.
The principle we learn is this: amassing unnecessary wealth for ourselves reveals a love and loyalty for ourselves and is a rejection of our covenant relationship with God.
So, what have we learned this morning?
First, we have learned that taking on debt is the practice of consuming today the fruit of tomorrow’s labor. The principle we learned about debt is this:
When we borrow, our allegiances become divided between God and our lender. So don’t borrow unless God leads you to do so.
Secondly, when it comes to saving, we learned two principles:
- Our present saving should be roughly equivalent to our future needs.
- It is honoring to God to set aside a portion of your wealth with the express intention of giving it away.
Thirdly, we learned that hoarding is excessive savings. The principle we learned is this: amassing unnecessary wealth for ourselves reveals a love and loyalty for ourselves and is a rejection of our covenant relationship with God.
Disciples of Jesus Christ are faithful to God in stewarding all that He owns by disadvantaging themselves in order to advantage His kingdom.
We disadvantage ourselves by purposefully living at a lower standard of living so that we can give more away. Even thought we could qualify for to take on more debt to live at a higher standard of living, Disciples of Jesus Christ reject this notion. Instead, we minimize debt. We reasonably save for the future. And then we give the rest away.
And when we do this, there is a joy and an excitement which is nearly impossible to describe. Borrowing from last week about the paradoxes in Christianity, we will gain by giving. We become rich when we give away our money. We find our lives when we lose them.
So, the stewardship question for us today is this:
Will you intentionally disadvantage yourself in order to advantage the Kingdom of God?
Let’s pray.
