"Financial Freedom--Catching God's Vision"
Pastor Larry Fryling
Christ's Community Church
Oct. 6, 1997
You know we're going to continue on this theme of God's goodness and
grace to us and we're going to pick it up in talking about all things money
because often times we see God as some sort of kill-joy when it comes to
us and our happiness. Rather what we need to see is that God is going to
give us the benefits when we live within those boundaries of what He has
told us. If you find in your bulletin this morning a peach colored sheet,
that's going to be the outline that we're going to be working on. If this
is your first time here, you need to know that you're coming at the tale
end of a series of messages that I'm doing. This is the last one and I've
called the series, "Financial Freedom". So what we've done in the past
few weeks is, well let's go with the first line, "I remember". Let's go
back through the messages that we've covered so far.
Number one message we said we have to start at the point where the Bible
starts and that is everything that we have belongs to God. Everything that
I own is really just leased to me for a certain period of time, either
temporarily or as long as I'm alive. I can't take it with me. So because
God owns everything, God has a say on everything. So I need to see my possessions
as not mine, the selfish side of me wants to do that, but I've got to see
them as God's.
The second message that we talked about was the idea of what brings
happiness. What actually is wealth. The passage says, "watch out. The love
of money is the root of all evil". We said if we decide to go for money,
there are going to be certain consequences that we're going to have. On
the other hand, the Biblical view of wealth is Godliness, that is become
like Jesus, plus contentment. To be happy I can get more or want less.
So I'm going to be content and that the Bible says is wealth.
The third message we said we imagined all of the stuff that we had on
this huge pile and this enormous pile brings us a lot of peace and contentment
and joy and as long as I have all of these things, I can be happy. If I
have more things, I'll be even happier. The problem, we said, was that
never works. If we want to build our contentment on our stuff, it's going
to be scratched, it's going to rust, it's going to be stolen, it's going
to wear out. I can't build my contentment there, but rather I've got to
build my contentment on God and what happens then is I'm now in a position
to stop worrying. If my contentment is over there, I worry about my stuff.
If my contentment's with God, He's the same yesterday, today and forever.
I have a certain peace and contentment built here.
Then last week, we narrowed things down even further. We talked about
living within the provision that God has given us. If we make $10,000 a
year or $110,000, that's the provision God has given us. We said a lot
of times we want to step outside of that and by gambling and by stealing
and by credit card debt, we want to go out and get more and have more than
we can actually afford. We talked about the difficulty and the struggle
with that. In this past week I came across something, it's the hot pink
sheet in your bulletin, building on last week. I found the cheap-skate
flow-chart, which I thought was great. This was sent by Barnabas Foundation,
the people that are giving the material for our Stewardship class, and
for those of you who said, "how can I control my spending?", here's a flow-chart
and how to make it work. The first question I ask is, "can I afford it?"
If the answer is no, I go to the box that says "phew, saved from a foolish
purchase". If I say yes, I ask "do I need it?" If I say no, it's back to
the big box, if not, I need it. Do I already have something that will do
just as well? NO. Can I wait until I find it cheaper or a more reasonable
substitute? NO. Am I certain I've located the best deal, meaning the best
price for the most quality I need for the intended use? Okay, I've done
that. I will wait a full 24 hours. That sort of ends that compulsive going
out and buying it thing. I'll wait 24 hours before completing this transaction.
I'll go home and sleep on it. Am I still certain of my decision? Finally,
if yes, now I can purchase, guilt free, knowing I've made the correct decision
and found the best deal.
What I'd like you to do with this is every time you go to the mall,
stick it right here on the front of your face! You don't have to do that,
just hold it in your hand. Just hold it up in front of the VCR and the
computer and the TV. I saw that and I thought, that's good. We've got to
pass that one on. Also, for your information, I was going through my shelves
and I have a Guide to Family Budgeting and I'll throw those up here this
morning. If after the service you want one, I had extra so I thought I'd
pass them on. But I'd encourage you, if you're really serious about the
budgeting thing, go down to your local Christian book store, look for books
by Ron Blue, Larry Burkett, how to get out of debt, and start a process.
Last week's message I found very helpful from some stuff put out by Willow
Creek and Bill Hybels. There's a lot of stuff out there. You just need
to be willing to do it. But now, this morning, let's go into it right now.
This morning we're going to talk about the last in the series and that
is about tithing and giving. I know some of you are perhaps like the little
girl in the front this morning going, "oh no, not this" because some of
you have a sense and believe that that's all the church ever talks about.
This morning what I want to do is first to get that misperception cleared
up. We don't always talk about money. That's not part of who we are. Let's
assume that we do, for a moment. Tell me about the places that you go in
your life that talk about money. If after church this morning you go to
a restaurant, do you think there is some point in the discussion with the
waitress that she'll talk about money. Yeah. If you go to the mall, do
those people talk about money? You bet. When you go home and turn the electricity
on, does PG&E remind you about money? Yes.
The church talks about money as does, in many ways, the rest of society.
It's not that we're obsessed with it. It's simply something that's needed
for us to continue to function. So by us bringing it up and taking an offering
every Sunday doesn't mean that we're somehow, "that's all we ever do".
It's just a natural part of living. The other side of it is that a lot
of people are sensitive to money be spoken of in the church because you've
watched certain people on television who say, "if you want an answer to
your prayers, send $1,000 into this ministry. Let's pray together. Put
your hand on top of the TV set, the other hand in your wallet and let's
pray. Plant that seed of faith and God will bring your prayer to answer".
We look at these people that live in 3 or 4 mansions and they have millions
of dollars and we say, "that church, all they do is talk about money".
Well, hopefully we aren't that kind of organization.
In a couple of months we'll send out this year's budget and you can
find out exactly how many millions of dollars I make. Find out what Elly
gets paid and Dan for doing the youth and Debbie for being in the office.
It's all above board, we get paid no more than that. The idea is we're
accountable to each other and we're not trying to pull a fast one. I've
never yet been paid under the table, anything like that and so let's bring
that sensitivity down a bit. What we're going to do this morning is talk
about what is God's prescription in terms of His ministry.
We're going to look at two passages and there are a couple of them listed
in your bulletin. I'm just going to pick a couple this morning. The 1st
one is Malachi 3. Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament, page 1490
in the Bibles in the pews. Malachi was a book that was written because
the people of Israel were being very disobedient to God. What they were
doing is they were starting to live their own way and God came and said
through the prophet Malachi, there's some things wrong. This is probably
one of the famous verses in the Old Testament about giving. Malachi 3 beginning
at verse 8.
"Will a man rob God, yet you rob me. But you ask, how do we rob you?
God says, in tithes and offerings. You're under a curse, the whole nation
of you because you are robbing me. Bring in the whole tithe to the storehouse
that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty,
and see if I will not throw open the flood gates of Heaven and pour out
so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent
pests from devouring your crops and the vines in your fields will not cast
their fruit, says the Lord Almighty. Then all the nations will call you
blessed. For yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty".
What God is saying in this particular passage is this. "Everything that
I give you is yours. I retain ownership but I give you money, I give you
possessions". What God was telling the people in the Old Testament was,
"I want you to give 10% of that back to me and I want it for use in my
temple, in the use of my work". He said the problem with you people is
you're not giving that and you're stealing that from me or taking what
is not yours and using it for your own purpose. That's theft. As a result,
you're under a curse. You should be giving that 10% to me and if you do,
I'm going to make sure that the 90% that you have is going to be more than
adequate. So that's the Old Testament passage.
Let's turn to a New Testament passage. That's in II Corinthians 9, page
1802, beginning at verse 6. Now the New Testament has a slightly different
spin on the idea and the apostle Paul is writing to the church here and
he's telling them about giving. II Corinthians 9:6.
"Remember this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever
sows generously, will also reap generously. Each man should give what he
has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion,
for God loves a cheerful giver. 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. He who supplies
seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your
store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will
be rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and
through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service
that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but is
also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service
by which you have proved yourself, men will praise God for the obedience
that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ and for your generosity
in sharing with them and with everyone else. In their prayers for you their
hearts will go out to you because of the surpassing grace God has given
you. Thanks be to God for the indescribable gift".
What happens in the New Testament is that you find you don't find the
word tithe. The apostle Paul was writing to the Corinthian church and what
he's saying to them is this. You have given generously. That's the phrase,
generosity. In the early church people didn't sit around debating percentages,
they gave everything. Many people gave all their possessions and lived
communally. As Paul looks at the Corinthian church, he says to them, "you
have given a lot and the gospel's going forward, people are praising God
because of your generosity". Here now begins to develop the whole idea
, 'don't give because you have to, but give out of a cheerful heart'.
What I'd like to do is take some of these things out of the Old Testament
and New Testament, start pulling them together and start talking about
us now in terms of what this kind of generosity looks like.
Number 1 on our list. I put these in forms of questions that you can
ask yourself, so they're in first person. Ask yourself these questions.
#1 - Where is my faith and trust? Perhaps one of the greatest challenges
that I had in terms of finances was when, a few years ago because of the
church's failure to thrive, we closed a church in San Diego. Suddenly I
found myself unemployed. I don't know what you think, but pastors really
have a lot of different skills but not something that people are looking
for, so I was finding myself at a point of real stress of, "here I am,
not working, how am I going to bring the money in"? One of the things that
struck me at that moment was, here comes the time that tries your faith.
You've stood in front of groups of people and said have faith in God, have
confidence in God, trust in Him. Everything will work out all right and
now's the time to test the faith to see if it's real. It's easy to talk,
but it's much more difficult to actually do. So this morning the first
question we have is, as we think about our faith in God and our trust in
God, how solid is it?
Picking up what we talked about last week. Living within what God has
provided. We talked about that God has given us the $10,000, $30,000, $110,000
a year. We live within that provision. But the question is, do we trust
enough that we can live with 90% of what God has given us? Have we come
to the point where we say, "I can live within 100%, I'm not going to do
the credit cards, the gambling, the stealing". But have we come to the
point where we can step back even further and say, "instead of living with
everything, I'm going to live with 90%". This is a test of our faith. It's
easy to say God will provide for me. God will take care of me and it's
another thing to give away 10% of your income or more. Talk is cheap. So
this morning we have is where is my faith and trust? The next line says,
if I can't live on 90%, I'm probably not making it on 100% and I believe
that. Where's my faith and trust this morning? Is God going to take care
of me or not? The last part converted is my wallet. For it is a matter
of trust. Boy, God's taken care of me. He is. But when you sit down and
write out the check or give away the cash, that's where the rubber meets
the road.
Number 2 - what are my priorities? I am convinced that we are busy people,
that financially we are strapped people, but we have time and money for
our priorities. If my priority happens to be in collecting a certain item,
whether it be small or large, then my money will go there. If my priority
is to be best dressed or dressed the newest car or whatever, that's where
my priority is, that's where my money will be. I'll let other things go
to put the priorities there. I had someone one time as I was talking to
them I said, "do you tithe?" He said, "I sure do. I tithe when I can afford
it." What he was saying to me was as I get to the end of the month, if
I have any money left over, that's what I give to God. What he was saying
was out of all the priorities in my life, the very bottom of the barrel
is God. I'm going to give to him what I have left over. Instead the Bible
teaches a thing called Firstfruits
, we have a class named after that. The
idea is if God's number one priority, He gets the first cut. So as you
get the paycheck, the 10% comes right off the top and as some of us have
learned by saving plans that the money is diverted into a savings plan
before we receive the check, we never miss it. The question is, what is
the priority in my life? As I look at my paycheck, I have to say this part
is God's. This is God's stuff.
Let me tell you the danger here. That's the line, the greatest danger
here is to be cheap. CHEAP. I've listened to Christians that come together
and they say, "it's wonderful what Jesus did for us. We celebrated communion.
He laid down His life for us. He's forgiven all of our sins. We're part
of a church, a community that loves us and supports us and they promise
to help train our kids and all that kind of good stuff, but I give time.
I give time, that's what I give. Or, do I have to give out of gross or
net?" To one hand say, God has given me so much and then on the other hand
to stand back and say, I don't about giving a whole lot here. It's just
plain cheap. How would you like a relationship in which you gave everything
and the other person felt like it was a major obligation. We've got to
be careful here. Remember that passage 11 Corinthians, "God loves a generous
giver". He wants it to overflow out of our hearts and He says, "here it
is. I've given you this grace, lovingly, freely now". The expectation is
because He touched our lives that we can in return give it generously and
freely also. But it all depends where our priorities are.
Number 3 - what is my calling as a disciple of Jesus Christ? Sam, come
up here and stand on this step. You know what I found in my office? I found
this old pulpit Bible and I'd like you to hold this for me. Wow, that is
one heavy Bible! Then I found this one, this is a Hebrew and Greek Bible.
Here, hold that one too for me. You doing okay? Let me know if you have
trouble. One of the things that we do is what I'm going to illustrate with
Sam in just a minute. The fact is that God puts you and me on this planet
to do some things. What we end up doing is messing it all up. Let me illustrate.
Sam, are those books heavy? Sam says yes. What do you think is going to
happen if you stand here for an hour holding those books. Are you going
to get tired? Sam says yes. Here, hold my notes for me! Let's suppose it's
5:00, you've been doing this for 5 hours, do you think they're really going
to get heavy. Yeah! It's obvious here that Sam has a burden so we're going
to pray for him. "Dear Lord, we know that Sam has this big heavy burden
on him, so we just pray that you're going to bless him and help him, in
Jesus Name, Amen". See ya! Sam asks, "how long am I going to stand here?"
Well, I'm not sure yet. But you see what I just did to him, what I did
was I acted for God as a spotter. God..problem. You deal with it and I
turned around and walked away. The other thing I could do is, Sam, are
those books heavy"? YES! Can I help you? YES! Okay, I'll hold them for
awhile and then after that, we'll share them together. Okay? Does that
sound good? OKAY. I'll just set them down here a minute. You see what happens
is, Sam has a problem and then we stand back and say, "God, problem, you
solve it" and we turn around and walk away. We did our part. We put our
hands on him, we prayed for God to bless him and now that's it and we're
all done. We walk away. It reminded me of a church that I served in previously.
A huge church, had a full time janitor and the janitor one time came to
me and said, "I'm sick up to here of this building committee. I've got
this building committee in the church and they think their sole responsibility
is to tell me there's a cob web over there, or that bulb is burned out,
there's a spot in the carpet. I don't need five people telling me what's
wrong. I need five people who are willing to help". What we do in the church
is often times like I tried to do with Sam. The idea of God hear our needs.
There are people on the other side of the world that are starving to death.
God, my next door neighbor doesn't know Jesus Christ. We want to reach
our community. Here God, here's the problem. You solve it and we turn around
and we walk away and say there, we handled it. We prayed about it and meanwhile
Sam's still holding the books. Our neighbor still doesn't know about Jesus
Christ. Our ministry slow down because we're somehow expecting God to answer
the problem without seeing our responsibility. Do you want to stay up the
rest of the service or do you want to sit down? Okay, you can stay.
When it comes to finances, somehow we imagine that God is magically
going to just do things. The line in your bulletin says, 'God and Wells
Fargo', our church has a checking account at Wells Fargo Bank. Rich Sims
is the treasurer and Ron Van Klompenberg, is the bookkeeper, as they sit
down, they have not yet found a deposit that was made very magically and
mysteriously in our checking account. It wasn't that God said, this church
needs $30,000 and silently just slips it into Wells Fargo Bank. God doesn't
do it that way. What God does with this ministry is He blesses this ministry
through you, through me, so when the deacons sit down with the money at
hand they have a paper trail that they can follow back to this check or
this donation and they can see the source and it came back to you and the
gifts and abilities and the job that God has given you. Out of that generous
heart it all came and the ministry support it. You see, the cheap thing
to do is say, "God we pray that you'll bless our church". The discipleship
thing, where we actually get involved in the ministry, is where we take
what God has given us and say, it's part of my responsibility to give.
It's part of my responsibility to get involved in Sam's life and help bear
the burden. Not toss it to God and let Him do it but to actually share.
What's my calling as a disciple of Christ? It's to get involved in the
ministry with my time but also with my money. The last line is God provides
through me and I'm talking about you as well as myself.
The last one is what is my vision? It's like the phrase, let's now give
to Jesus. As though the offering plate somehow magically go up into Heaven.
But really what happens is the idea of the church is that we have God's
vision for this world. That the idea of this church is a place where we
can gather to worship and to learn and to do ministry, to reach into the
community and literally to reach around the world. Often times our generosity
is limited by our vision. What is the vision that God wants His church
to have? What is the vision that you have for God's ministry? If you have
an excitement about what God is doing, I guarantee you, you will be generous.
Look at all the Christian organizations. Today we announced in the bulletin,
CRWRC working around the world to help people that are starving. We're
going for a whole month give to them. To me, I can get a vision for that.
I go to bed every night filled, they go to bed hungry. Prison Fellowship,
that works with prisoners, I get moved by that. When I look at the ministry
of this church, VBS and Coffee Break, Cadets and Gems and all the other
ministries in this church, are we this for God and if we are then it is
worthy of our financial support. I know there are parts of the ministry
that don't seem glamorous, like painting the inside of the sanctuary or
paying the electric bill, or buying postage stamps but it all goes to the
idea of we are here to promote the Kingdom of God. I've had people say,
"wait a minute. If grace is free and Heaven is a free gift, why do we have
to pay for the church?" The answer is. I want you to imagine you have a
cabin alongside a river and the cabin is up on the hill and the river is
down there. You can go down to that river and get the water and it's free
but one day you decide to put the pipe in to run from the cabin down to
the river so that the water can be pumped into the cabin. You had to pay
for the pipe. That's what the church
is, the pipe. The river is God's love,
the cabin is the world and the church is the pipe that bring the two together.
How can we, as a church, bring the message of Jesus Christ if we don't
have the resources to do it? The problem in churches is when the money
doesn't come in, the church, by necessity, reduces its vision. The church
sensing the reduced vision decreases its giving and suddenly we're caught
in a viscous cycle. As the deacons are working on the 1997 budget, one
of by concerns I raised with them was, "don't get that narrow view that
we can do just a little. Let's stretch ourselves like we did in this year's
budget and try to do more than we could. Let's support the new church plants,
let's support the missionaries, let's support new ministries in this congregation
and let God work through the people of this church to make it happen. Catch
the vision of what God's doing. I'm not building my Kingdom, this church
isn't building it's own Kingdom. We are here because God called us to serve.
The simple matter is we need all of us to make it happen.
Today, get a Kingdom vision. That last line in the bulletin, 'only one
life which soon will pass, only what's done for Christ will last'. That's
an important statement. Invest in the Kingdom of God. Give out of hearts
that are filled with generosity and love. Take someone and don't just pray
for them, really help them.
Let's pray together.
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