"He Will Provide"
Pastor Harvey Brink
Bellevue CRC, Bellevue, WA
Text: Various
The gospel invites us to follow our Lord Jesus Christ and in that following
to become fully devoted disciples of Jesus. Paul says, "Imitate me as I
have imitated the Lord Jesus Christ and in that imitation we are to view
ourselves and our possessions with Christ's viewpoint". If we pray to the
Father that His will will be done in our lives, how in the world is that
going to happen? Well, Paul assures us in Philippians 1 that in his thanking
God for what the Lord has done for the Philippian Christians, in his continual
prayer for them, he recognizes that the one who has begun a good work in
them is going to complete that good work. In other words, if we have given
ourselves to becoming fully devoted disciples of Jesus Christ, God has
begun that good work in us and He will see to it that it gets completed.
Let's read the very words that Paul writes in Philippians
1:3-6.
"I thank my God every time I remember
you, in all my prayers, for all of you I always pray with joy because of
your partnership in the gospel. From the first day until now being confident
of this. That he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion
until the day of Jesus Christ".
He who has begun that good work and part of the good work that God begins
and completes in fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ is our understanding
and relationship to our possessions. It is amazing how frequently Jesus
talks about money. How frequently Jesus talks about possessions, how graphic
and specific He is when He talks about possessions and Paul carries on
the same vein. Paul is willing to talk about money and possessions with
a kind of frankness that we find somewhat amazing.
One of the reasons why we find that amazing is because in the history
of the Christian church, we've been so obsessed with our possessions that
we have found ourselves halting between two opinions. On the one side,
we've said possessions are so important and since we tend too quickly to worship
our possessions, what we've got to do is get rid of our possessions. So there were those who devoted themselves to an ascetic way of life and
they climbed up poles. You
had people who called themselves pole-sitters who climbed up a pole
and lived up there in full view of everybody so that it became perfectly
obvious that they didn't have any possessions up there. Thereby demonstrating
the fact that if you have a problem with possessions, the way to respond
to that problem is to get rid of your possessions. Go sit on a pole, have
some food raised to you from time to time. But that mindset was pretty
prevalent. There were a lot of Christians who said, "you can't have any
possessions if you're going to be a fully devoted follower of Christ".
Well, there were others who said, "Wait a minute, That's not scriptural
talk". If you consider what the scripture says, you know that God has given
us possessions and that we as fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ are
to luxuriate in our possessions. After all they are good gifts from God.
(Topic: Material Management) I have
heard it said, maybe you have too, that when Jesus called His disciples,
He called people who were astute, entrepreneurial business men. They owned
their own fishing companies and they brought all of that drive and verve
and resource to the disciple band. They showed to us that as Christians,
we can own the cattle on a thousand hills. Isn't that what it says? Oh,
no it's God that owns the cattle on a thousand hills. That's the same thing.
You see, He wants us to have the cattle on a thousand hills, that's not
exactly what He said, but it's close enough. Christians are to increase
their possessions. So, which is it? As the church has halted between these
two extreme positions, either we go sit on a pole or we embrace the cattle.
Is that the good work that God is completing in us as fully devoted disciples
of Jesus Christ? Is that why the scripture spends so much time talking
about our possessions so that we can flop from one extreme to the other.
The scripture understands perfectly well that we have this real situation
deep inside of us in that we would like to define our
worth on the basis of what we're worth. We find all kinds of indications
of what our worth is. We can talk about grades in school, about advance
degrees, about possessions and Cadillacs, possessions in land holdings.
We can talk about corner offices, in the number of children, possessions
in the number of times we go to church, possessions in the form of the
costumes we wear to church. We can talk about possessions in all sorts
of ways, even spiritual sounding ways.
But what we are attempting to do is demonstrate that we are worthwhile
in God's sight on the basis of what we think we are worth. Jesus says...Paul says...
the Word says... let's find out what the Word says. Philippians
4:10 I'd like to begin with. This is Paul as he continues to teach in Philippians.
He's responding to a gift that the Philippians have sent to him. "I rejoice
greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me.
Indeed, you have been concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.
I'm not saying because I'm in need for I have learned to be content, whatever
the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is
to have plenty. I've learned the secret of being content in any and every
situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
I can do everything though him who gives me strength".
Now what we would like to do
is lift a phrase or two out of this paragraph of Paul's teaching and say,
see, Paul teaches us how to have abundance. Paul wants us to know that
we can embrace those cattle on a thousand hills. What a vision! What magnificence
in Paul's view of God's provision for His people. There are those who say,
any Christian who weighs more than 87 pounds has not learned the message.
We have got to be denying ourselves, morning, noon and night and the midnight
snack too. Just say no. But Paul is driving us to a middle ground. He is
driving us to a position where we say, "Lord, you know me and you know
my circumstances now and in the future. You know me so well that I can
trust you for what I have and what I don't have". Paul says, I've learned
contentment. (Topic: Contentment) Now
do you think that Paul got himself in the corner of that jail cell and
said to the guards keeping watch over him, "now don't bother me, I'm going
to go learn contentment". Pressed his nose in the corner of that jail and
said, contentment, contentment, contentment. Do you think that's the way
it happened? No, because when we assign ourselves that task and we say
now I'm going to learn contentment and if anybody asks me how things are
I'm going to say, I'm content. The one thing people are going to know about
me, the one thing they're going to put on my gravestone is that this brother
was content! When God says, why should I let you into my Heaven, I'm going
to say to Him, "I was content". I think the Lord may say, I think you were
contentious.
Contentment is a gift of God's
grace. It is a gift of God's grace to be content. We let go of our stuff
and let go of our personal pride in contentment, let go of all of that
and say, "Lord, you deal with me according to your good pleasure". You're
going to find almost consistently, without exception, that the phrases
that we have selected for our consideration this morning are in a context. That context has got to be taken seriously if we are going to hear
what scripture says about God's desire to develop us into fully devoted
followers of Jesus. (Topic:
Contentment)
Two - lay up for yourselves. Jesus talks about that in Matthew 6. We
know the context of Matthew 6 don't we? That's when Jesus is teaching and
He's giving the rule book of the Kingdom. He is talking about a book of
discipline. He's saying that citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, fully,
devoted followers of me, Jesus says, are going to have this kind of an
attitude toward possessions. Matthew 6:19 and 20.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures
on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal,
but store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where moth and rust do
not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal."
Is that a pole-sitter text or is that a cattle on a thousand hills text?
Neither and both because he concludes with the truth that needs to grip
us. "For where your treasure is, there your heart
will be also".
There are some computer catalogs that have hearts hiding in the pages.
There are some advance degree programs that have hearts beating in catalog
descriptions of courses. There are some human resource files that have
hearts lodged there in the files. There are some dates that occur in which
there are heart involvement beyond description. There are treasures that
we long for, treasures that we possess. There are hearts that are struggling
for life in safe deposit boxes. Jesus says, if your treasure is the treasure
of the Kingdom, then that's where your heart's desire is going to be, the
passion of your life, the commitment of your existence, your fully, devoted discipleship to My
Son is going to be characterized by the treasure you recognize He represents
and the place where your heart is. You know where a lot of our hearts spend
a lot of time? In this fancy piece of leather. We build ourselves a shrine
to our billfolds. I'm not the only one who's going to be showing my billfold.
Let's have them. Take them out. Do you realize that in a very real sense
our self-awareness is tied up with what's in this thing. Here it is. Our
drivers license, our address and on mine it shows I'm certified to ride
a motorcycle. I've got some measure of pride tied up in that. There was
a time in which I had a license that said I was qualified to drive a school
bus. There's a lot of pride tied up in that. I don't have any pride tied
up in donating my organs to somebody because my organs aren't going to
be donated, nor is my library system card, or my Starbucks card, or my
cue card from Egghead. Then in here, my credit cards. Mine's a pretty lean
and mean billfold. I've seen people with billfolds that are so fat, they
don't have any bills in them, but they have little pieces of paper in there
from the local health club. The fact that you are a member of a health club in '73 does
not do you a great deal of good so far as your cholesterol count is concerned.
Why is that card still in there? Well you know, when this defines your
reality, when this is your life, it is very difficult to get rid of some
things. Where your treasure is, that's where your hearts going to be. Do
you have your billfold in your hand? Give it to the person next to you.
If you're sitting next to your spouse that may be the riskiest things that
you've done all morning. But with your billfold firmly in the hand of somebody
whose existence and personality and sense of worth is not attached to that
piece of leather, now deacons it's time to take an offering. Where our
treasure is, where our sense of self is, that's what our heart is attached
to. That's frankly what happens sometimes when an offering is received.
We say to ourselves, but I'm never going to survive a hit in my hip pocket.
Let's take #3, shall we. This is in II Corinthians. It's not going to
be easy to find because we spend most of our time in I Corinthians. But
II Corinthians is a magnificent letter in
which Paul talks at great length about the possessions of the Corinthian
Christians. Let's take a look at Chapter 9 verse
6.
"Remember this, who ever sows sparingly
will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously".
It would be really appealing to preach a message on that text, just that
text. It would be really appealing, particularly if the church was a little
behind the 8 ball in the financial statement. Really appealing to say what
has become a totally and oft repeated, unbiblical falsehood that what you
and I do with our gifts is prime God's pump. There is a fellowship in our
area in which the pastor suggests that if people contribute to the church
and he gives them an ink pen that he has blessed, that they will then be
in a position to write checks on their bank account that have been guaranteed
to be blessed by the Lord and funds that weren't there before will be there
because they're using that pen. This text gets ripped out of the heart
of its context. Like a potential cadaver, it is laid before God's people as
being truth. Please, let's keep reading shall we.
"Each man should give what he has decided
in his heart to give. Not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves
a cheerful giver and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that
in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound
in every good work. As it is written, He has scattered abroad His gifts
to the poor. His righteousness endures forever".
God loves a cheerful giver. The
word that is found there is the word that we find in our English "hilarious"
and some folks have suggested that what that means is that when you give
you ought to lose your mind for a little while. You ought not to make good
decisions, you ought not to make choices, you ought not to exercise responsible
stewardship, but that's not what Paul is emphasizing at all. What he's
emphasizing here is that when we give and we give out of a sense of what
the Lord has given to us--the provision that He has made for us. When we
give out of that sense, we derive a blessing of satisfaction. It is a good
and positive feeling to give. That's a little bit of what stands behind
the statement, it's better to give than to receive. Quite frankly, the
giver feel a whole lot better than the receiver because the receiver has
the tendency to focus on that gift as being the be-all and end-all and
the giver knows better. One sense of relationship to God, one sense of
relationship to others is not tied up in what we have to give or what we
in fact give, nor in what we receive, but Paul says, someone who really
understands what God is doing, is someone who recognizes that to give is
to receive the blessing of a sense of satisfaction.
(Topic:
Giving)
Let's press on. Why Timothy needed to receive as much instruction on
giving as he did receive I'm not sure, but I'm glad that Timothy received
it. Timothy was a young man in preparation for the ministry, that's perhaps
why he received all of this instruction. This passage we want to look at
is in 1st Timothy 6 beginning at verse
17.
"Command those who are rich in this present
world not to be arrogant or put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain,
but to put their hope in God who richly provides us with everything for
our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be
generous, willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves
as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life
that is truly life".
If you're willing to say "Lord, what I have
and what you give to me is your business. and I will try to do the very
best to be honest and responsible with what you have given me" then you'll
find out that you're somewhere in that middle position. Given the possibility
of enjoying what you have and also being generous to those who have need.
We think sometimes that because we live in a relatively affluent place
and time that this whole business of possessions is a new problem. But
these words are being written to someone who leads believers in the first
century and echoes teaching from the early interaction of God with His
people in the Old Testament. This business of what we do with our possessions
and the attitude that we have toward them is as old as God's relationship
to His people. It keeps coming up because it keeps finding its problem
spot inside of us. Paul and Jesus are both teaching us what it means
to have a God-glorifying attitude toward our possessions. It doesn't involve
one extreme of denying that we have possessions or the other extreme of
saying that everything that's possible to be had I can have. It's to live
in that middle place called contentment and when you're content you can
enjoy what the Lord has given to you. You can also be open to opportunities
to give it away because His resources are never ending.
There are folks who are really embarrassed by what they possess. They
enjoy what they possess, I think, but there's so much embarrassment, you
wonder if there's possibility of enjoyment. There is so much striving after
what might possibly be true that the present is neglected. Paul says, be
content, enjoy.
In 1 Corinthians 16 Paul is setting the stage for some of the teaching
that he gives us in 11 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians he reminds the people
in Corinth, folks that had been given a great deal. From what we know about
the Corinthian church, these people were movers and shakers. They were
traders. They were very well fixed for the most part. There were probably
some slaves that were members of the Corinthian church, but the fact of
the matter is, they had some where-with-all. Paul wants to receive an offering
for the Jerusalem church from the folks who are living in Corinth. So he
says to them in 1 Corinthians 16, "about the collection
for God's people, do what I told the Galatian churches to do. On the first
day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping
with his income saving it up so that when I come, no collections will have
to be made. Then when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to
the men you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem. It seems
advisable for me to go also, they will accompany me".
Now why in the world does the Holy Spirit have these kinds of mundane
instructions. This is diaconal stuff. Does this have a place in the proclamation
of the gospel? Big time. Because what Paul is saying is "I can talk about
these things because the money that I'm talking about is not your money,
it's God's money. Remember, you gave it someone else, didn't you? I can
talk about these things because the people of God in Jerusalem have a great
need. I can talk about these things because you have been blessed. I can
talk about these things because we as human beings need to be reminded
about an appropriate way to accomplish these things. I can talk about this
because everything that we are and everything that we possess belongs to
God. I don't want you to plan this offering as if it's all spontaneous.
I want you to recognize that this will take some saving up on your part,
you're going to have to manage your finances. You're going to have to look
for that opportunity to contribute your gifts on the first day of the week
on a regular basis. Make sure that you have some control over your budgeting
policies and practices so that you know where the money is going to come
from and how much it's going to be". We think that if we give under the
inspiration of the moment, we think that we're going to give more generously.
I wonder sometimes if those who
talk about giving think that they are so persuasive, that they are so powerful,
that they can somehow influence people to give more on a one shot deal,
on a spur of the moment situation. Paul doesn't think so. Paul has a deep
concern for the Christians in Jerusalem who are being persecuted, who are
losing their jobs, who are starving, who are in jail, fathers, leaders
of households who are in prison, leaving a household without any income,
without any resources whatsoever. Paul is saying, these folks need money
and whatever I need to do in order to get God's resources from Corinth
to Jerusalem, I'm going to do. The best way to do that is to have a planned
process. The first day of the week, save up, set it aside, agree on a sum
and give it. I'm not going to be hitting you up for money when I come.
Paul says, I want this thing to be accomplished before I get there. (Topic:
Giving)
I have the dubious privilege to serve on a committee in which I served
several years ago. To be on a committee to set up a revival in town and
the revival was going to feature one of the well known preachers of our
day. He had very specific requirements about fund raising for that revival.
He said, "I don't want any fund raising to take place until I get there.
When I get there, I will do the fund raising. My people will receive the
money. They will count the money, they will deposit the money in my account
back in New Orleans and none of you folks are going to have anything to
do with that". At that point I mentally checked out. You know why? Because
of the warning that Paul gives again in Timothy about how closely connected
our view of our possessions and our view of the gospel and God come together.
We'll get to that one in a minute, but I need to say one more thing. Discussions
about money ought to have zero hype. Discussions about money ought to be
faced and placed squarely on the meaning of the gospel, the trust of God's
grace and our obedient, exuberant response. Discussions about money ought
to be so low key as to be downright boring. The reason why they're not
boring is because discussions about money have to do with what's in here.
But the way to confuse the issue is to slop it all up with hype. Somebody
starts hyping you, there ought to be a flag about 4 ft. wide and 6 ft.
long and bright red. Conversely, if you have some little awareness of your
financial situation, that you don't know what you are going to give in
support of the Lord and the acknowledgement of His generosity to you, then
you have some homework to do. You've got some business to do with God because
of the final passage we need to look at.
Back to 1 Timothy 6. I'm going to read with you
from verse 3.
"If anyone teaches false doctrines and
does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to
godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy
interest in controversy and arguments that result in envying, quarreling,
malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt
mind who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is
a means to financial gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain
for we brought nothing into the world, we can take nothing out of it. But
if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who
want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish
and harmful desires and plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love
of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money have
wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs".
I have a friend who is the son of people who used to work in carnivals.
They were the folks that have the booths along the boardwalk. When you're
17 and you're with your favorite girl, then those are marvelous opportunities
to prove your worth. But when you have put away the childish things you
recognize that those are cons. They are designed to separate you from your
hard, earned money in a way that feels painless until you look back at
the situation and you see the people walking around the carnival with great
big stuffed animals. Those are called shields and you are led to believe
that they won those things fair and square trying to toss basketballs into
baskets that are crooked, trying to break balloons that are made out of
the most indestructible kind of material there has ever been. You're led
to believe that you can throw hoops over milk bottles when if you tried
to set a hoop over the milk bottle, you'd realize it was too small. The
shields lead you to believe that you can earn something cheap. Carni-folks
they're called. Dennis is the son of carni-folks and he looks me in the
eye and he says, "you know, preachers have got the biggest con of all".
You want to know what hurts me the most about that? 1900 years ago Paul
said to Timothy, you know there are going to be folks who do that? There
are folks today who do that and what happens is that they confuse the meaning
of the gospel. They drive people like Dennis away from the Kingdom because
they are greedy, malicious, fascinated, obsessed with possessions. If the
leaders of God's people are willing to do that, are God's people going
to have any different attitude? By the grace of God perhaps they will. But if you and I are committed to being fully devoted followers of the
Lord Jesus Christ, disciples of Him, holding in our hearts His attitude
toward our possessions, then we need to be aware that God is going to continue
to do His good work in our lives and He will teach us. He will show us,
He will draw us away from our possessions and give us our possessions back.
But He will let us know that we can trust Him for the most important issues
in our lives and that is that we belong to Him and to nothing else. We
belong to God and if you love money, if you think about it, if you worry
about, if you're possessed by your possessions, that is the root of all
kinds of nasty stuff in your life.
Paul says, "I've learned to be content". Lets pray for contentment.
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