A Biblical Economic Model

SERMON: 2009-12-13--ac0936--a-biblical-economic-model SOURCE DURATION: 00:45:14.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Segment [0] begins the sermon exposition by referencing previous weeks' material. Segment [483] concludes with a prayer/devotional application, which is integral to the sermon's conclusion. Both are core parts of the recorded message. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:42:27.820-00:45:12.400 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, I want to pick up this morning where we left off three weeks ago, and that is the fact that one of the ways in which the early church demonstrated the transforming power of the gospel was in their generous sharing of their worldly goods with each other. Acts chapter 2, the verses 44 and 45, "All the believers were together and had everything in common, selling their possessions and goods they gave to anyone as he had need." And later on, two further chapters along, in Acts chapter 4, we have a similar declaration where it says in verse 32, "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had." I don't know if you can picture this, but my chariot is your chariot. My house is your house. My bank account is your bank account. And best of all, being as human as we are, my debt is your debt. You know a community has been transformed by the power of Jesus when their wallets and their bank accounts and their possessions have been touched by the grace of God. And so in the time that we have together this morning, one of the things that we want to do is we want to try to examine why was this? Why was this early church so transformed by the saving power of Jesus? Well, I can think of three reasons. Number one, they knew that God loved them immensely. Perhaps you will remember from three weeks ago, what were two of the distinguishing characteristics of this transformed community? Well, first of all, they were filled with awe. Secondly, they were impressed by signs and wonders. And so here you have a Christian community that is so filled with a presence and with the power of God that they are so aware of his power and his provision that their hearts automatically overflow with generosity for one another. One John 4.19 puts it this way, "We love because he first loved us." They knew the love of God. But secondly, they expected Jesus to come back at any moment. Perhaps you will remember the story of the ascension in Acts chapter one. And maybe you can remember the words of the angel as Jesus was being taken up in heaven. Here is what he said, Acts one verse 11, "This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." And it's very clear from the rest of the New Testament that the early church expected the imminent return of Jesus in their lifetime. They like expected him to come back any moment. And because they expected him to come back any moment, the things of earth grew strangely dim as the old song says, "In the light of his glory and grace." It's like, why bother with earthly possessions when you have eternal possessions? It's like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic when you know the Titanic is going down. And you get a glimpse of that in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 1034, "You joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you yourselves had a better and lasting possession." I don't know if you've ever pondered that verse. But can you imagine joyfully accepting the plundering of your possessions? These are Christians who are being persecuted. Their possessions are being taken away from them. Their relatives are being put in jail. Some people might even have to lose their lives for the gospel. And the writer to Hebrews says, "You joyfully accepted the plundering." Why? Because you know that you have an eternal inheritance, an eternal possession that nobody can take away from you. And so it comes as no surprise, as we'll see later on, that as it became clear to them that Jesus was not coming back just as quickly as they were expecting, that their views of sharing their common goods with each other underwent an alteration. And we'll talk more about that later on. So here are people who are passionately in love with God, and they know that God loves them. Here are people who know that they have an eternal possession, expecting Jesus back any moment. And then, of course, a third reason is here you have a people who truly love each other. As you've heard me say many times now, it is inconceivable in biblical thought that you can say that you truly love your neighbor and close your heart to his needs when you have within your power the ability to meet that need. 1 John 3.17 puts it so powerfully, "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Your children," he goes on to say in verse 18, "let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth." I was listening just recently to a message that Bill Heibel shared with the Willow Creek Community Church about a year ago when the economic downturn in the United States and in North America and around the world really began to take root. And he tells the story of how, in the early years of their ministry, they all lived a hand-to-mouth existence. They were meeting in the theater. They were not being paid by the church. In fact, the church had barely enough money to pay its own bills. And eventually, as the ministry grew and more people began to attend and their financial situation improved, they were able to start drawing a salary. And as time went on, he was able to lay aside $20 here and $20 there and $20 there. And so eventually, this built up into a tidy little emergency fund of $1,000, the first time that he had that cushion to fall back on. And then it so happened that along came a man who, because of some unfortunate financial choices that he had made, was in danger of losing his condominium and needed help to get over the hump. So Hybels asks him, "How much do you need?" And you can guess what the answer was, "$1,000." So Bill goes home and discusses this with his wife. And it's a demonstration, I think, of his character and his wife's character and their faith in God, that for all the time they spent trying to save up that money, there wasn't a moment's hesitation in that particular instance to take that $1,000 lended to the man and help him get over the hump. And in the particular message that I listened to, he talked extensively to their community of faith about the fact that some people who had been able to contribute richly in the past now had to be bold and brave enough to come forward and ask for help, and that other people who had more than enough for themselves would have to step forward and share their resources with those in the community who were more in need. You see, it's inconceivable that you love your neighbor and have the resources to meet their need and turn a blind eye and a cold heart. That is not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth. All right, that was the experience of the early church, and that's how it's being lived out in some other churches. But really, what do we learn together from this story here in Acts chapter 2? Again in the time that remains, I want to highlight two or three main lessons that I want us to walk away with today. And the first lesson is this. Many commentators are of the opinion that this passage is descriptive, not prescriptive. And the difference is this. Descriptive means it is a model, it is an example of what the early church did in the particular economic situation in which they found themselves. It is not necessarily a formula for all of God's people throughout history in all places. That's what prescriptive is. If the passage is prescriptive, then we have an example here of what God requires all of His people to do throughout the course of history, which is to live with their goods held in common. As I said, most commentators agree that it is descriptive and not prescriptive. Now there are believers and groups of believers who take this passage very literally, and who do believe that it is not merely descriptive, but that it is prescriptive. And one such group is known as the Hutterites, or the Hutterian Brethren, as they prefer to be known. The Hutterites are one of three main branches of the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation. The word Anabaptist means to be baptized again. And when the Reformation took place, there were believers who believed that the Reformers were not going far enough in breaking away from Roman Catholic traditions and practices. They're known as the radical wing of the Reformation. They believed in the separation of church and state. They believed in believers' baptism by immersion, and they had varying opinions about holding their goods in common. They were tremendously persecuted, both by the Catholic Church and by the Reformers. They're listed in our Belgian Confession as being detestable, but yet in many ways were probably some of the most spiritually wonderful people coming out of the Reformation. Leonard Verduijn, in his book, The Stepchildren of the Reformation, argues, I think very precisely, that what the Anabaptists died for, in many cases, hundreds of years ago, now has become largely mainstream in many evangelical churches, a very interesting observation about the power of their witness. Well, the Hutterites had their beginning way back in the year 1528, when a group of 250 Anabaptists, the forebears then of modern Baptists and Mennonites, under the leadership of a Jacob Weidman, left their church in Moravia to start a new community in Austerlitz, which is now in the Czech Republic. There, their leader laid a cloak on the ground and invited everybody to throw their possessions onto the cloak. And out of those humble beginnings arose then the community that we know of as the Hutterites, named after their leader, Jacob Hutter. And they still exist to this day. They're about 50,000 strong, mostly in the western United States and in western Canada. And they are one of the few groups left today that, as an identifiable group, takes seriously this idea of holding all goods in common. As well, there have been numerous Christian communes over the years. One very interesting book that describes this whole journey is a book called Pilgrims of a Common Life by Trevor Saxby, Christian community of goods throughout the centuries, and as I understand it, he is part of an ongoing Christian commune in England to this day. Now there are some positive things about that. If you consider the resources that that frees up for the kingdom of God, that is not inconsiderable. Think of it this way, the single largest investment that most of us make is in the investment of our homes and the mortgages that we pay. Now if you take a number of families and put them all in one big house, as do some of the East Indian folks for example, they buy a big house in Brampton or out in BC and they load it up with half a dozen families, you free up an incredible amount of cash that some people decide to use for the coming of the kingdom. Now the downside is that you better have the character to live in close quarters like that. Because fact of the matter is that unless you are really super sanctified, or have been brought up living that way, the chances are, and history shows, that these communities fall apart because of internal conflict. But as I said, most commentators do not agree that the words here are prescriptive, but rather they are descriptive and some people would go so far as to argue that the poverty of the Jerusalem church later on, when offerings had to be taken among the Gentiles to support the Jerusalem church, some people would argue that it's because in their generosity one to another, they destroy the economic infrastructure of their community. Other people disagree with that interpretation, the Bible tells us it was a famine, it doesn't tell us where or where for. So this passage is descriptive, not prescriptive, and the second conclusion then that we can make or lesson that we can learn is that every age has to develop its own economic model based on biblical principles, and I want to give you four such biblical principles quickly. The first is we are managers of our resources, not owners. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, says scripture. The distinction is critical because an owner can do with his or her possessions as he or she pleases. Do I want to build a big million dollar mansion? That's my business. Do I want to stick my money in some fancy expensive car? That's my business. Do I want to give all my money away to somebody? That is my business. Do I want to buy out other businesses? It is my business. I'm not accountable to anybody, but a manager is a different story altogether because a manager manages on behalf of the owner, and so the manager must always fulfill the wishes of the owner. He's always responsible for the owner's best interests. When he exceeds the limits of his authority, he needs to go back to the owner and say, is this something that you want me to do, and at the end of the day, he's going to be held accountable for the choices that he has made. And scripture is categorical in telling us that much as we would like to deceive ourselves into thinking that we are owners, we're not. We're managers, and there are many parables that Jesus tells us in the gospels that bring this story home again and again and again. One story is Luke chapter 16, where you have the unjust manager who is being held accountable by the owner. And then, of course, in Matthew chapter 25, we have the parable of the talents where the master hands out five talents and two talents and one talent, and the manager is responsible for managing these on behalf of the owner, and eventually the owner comes back and he holds each person accountable. And listen to this, the biblical teaching on the day of judgment is that everybody that has ever lived, it's a sobering thought, everybody that has ever lived is going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, who is the owner of all things in heaven and on earth, and we're all going to give account of how we have stewarded our time and our talent and our treasure. Sobering, isn't it? And if we're going to be held accountable for every idle word that we have spoken in the course of our lives, how much more are we going to be held liable for how we have stewarded the time that God has given us, the talents that God has given us, and the treasures that he has entrusted to us. So whatever economic model every generation creates, it has to begin with the understanding that the earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof, and we are stewards who must give account to him for how we are using the resources entrusted to us. That's one principle that we need to be very clear on. The second principle that we need to be very clear on is that God wants among his people a measure of equality. And by equality I don't mean that everybody should have the same amount, because I don't believe that's biblical. But by equality I believe scripture means that everybody needs to have enough of their earthly goods so that their needs are satisfied, and if I have more than what I need and you have less than what you need, I need to freely share that with you. And the definitive passage for that is Paul's verses in 2 Corinthians chapter 8, the verses 13 and 15. Let's read those together and then allow me to say just a couple of things about this passage. Paul says, "Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard-pressed, but there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality as it is written, 'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.'" And you may recall that that last sentence or two is a quotation from the Old Testament book of Exodus and it refers to the story of the manna. And to recall how God fed Israel with manna in the wilderness, it came down every morning and God's instruction to the people of Israel were very clear. You gather in the morning, you cannot save up for the next day except for the Sabbath when you have to gather it for two days. The Bible says God used it as a test to lay bare what was in the hearts of people. And the whole point of the story and the whole point of the quotation was that at the end of the day it didn't matter if you gathered a whole lot or if you gathered little, everybody managed to gather enough. It sounds a little bit like, "Give us this day our daily bread," doesn't it? And so Paul in the context of this Corinthian passage where he is talking about gathering the offering of the Gentiles for the Jerusalem Church, which now has hit upon hard economic times, he says, "I don't want you to give more than what you've got, no, no." He says, "I want there to be equality so that if you have too much, you share it today with somebody who doesn't have enough. And when that person has too much down the line, he in turn can share it with you." Every economic system that honors God is an economic system that knows how to distribute wealth in a way that truly meets the needs of the most needy of people. So we're stewards, not owners. God wants equality. And the third principle is this, God wants generosity to be freely given. God wants generosity to be freely given. Not only does Scripture say each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver, but it goes on to tell us that any economic system that you try to create has to be based on the free desire of people to share what they have. You can't legislate it or make it happen. And very instructive in that is the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5. But you know the story of Ananias and Sapphira, how they had land, they sold it and they brought the money to the apostles. And Peter asked them point blank the question, "Is this what you sold the land for?" And Ananias and Sapphira both lied about it because they wanted a better reputation. They thought they could have their cake and eat it too. They lied to the Holy Spirit, but in the context of addressing him, here's what Peter says. Peter says, "Didn't it belong to you before it was sold, that is the land? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to man, but to God. The land was yours and you could do with it what you wanted." You see therein lies the fatal flaw of communism, for example, as an economic model. You know when Karl Marx and others came along and they saw the huge disparity between the rich and the poor, which worldly economic systems always develop by the way because to him who has will more be given, to him who has not even the little that he has will be taken away. The rich get richer historically, the poor get poorer. Karl Marx and others looked at that difference and they said, "It is wrong." In fact, they went so far as to blame the Protestant work ethic for it. And they said, "By force and by legislation, we're going to distribute all goods to be held in common. It might have sounded great in theory, but 70, 80 years later, we know the nightmare that communism has produced." Because you see, you can't force the distribution of wealth. You can't make people give what you want them to give without turning the whole society upside down, it has to come from the heart. And that's why it's significant that here in Acts chapter 2, it's the early church filled with the grace and with the power of God. These are the folks whose lives are being transformed by the presence and the power of God. I've told you before, it's not the atheists that have built the hospitals around the world. And it's not the atheists that generally have founded the schools of higher alerting. It has been almost without exception God's people motivated by the presence and the power of God. We're not owners, we're stewards. God says let there be equality. God says let that equality come from a generous heart. And then God says any economic system that is going to be biblically based must honor personal initiative. That is to say it must empower people not only to look after themselves, but to look after everybody whom God has entrusted to them. Paul writing to the Thessalonians puts it this way, he says to a church where people were so anticipating the immediate return of the Lord Jesus that they just sat around drinking beer and tea or whatever they did and waiting for Jesus to come he says even when we were with you we gave you this room. If a man will not work he shall not eat. We hear that some among you are idle, they are not busy, they are busy bodies. I like that play on words. When you're not busy you really do become a busy body. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus to settle down and to earn the bread they eat. Throughout scripture there is an emphasis on personal responsibility and again the day of judgment is God's way of holding everybody accountable for what they have done or they have not done. And so whatever economic model that every generation dreams up it has to be a model that encourages individual initiative. You've all heard the saying, I'm sure, give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. There are interesting variants of it. One goes like this, give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Teach him how to sell a fish and he'll eat steak. There is another more cynical version of it that says teach a man to fish and he'll sit in his boat and drink beer and fish all day long. But you understand what it is that I'm trying to get at. And herein lies a significant problem with much world aid. We're all familiar with the famines that take place across the world and we've all had the appeal to send goods to third world countries and indeed we should and we must. But you know, part of the challenge in supplying those needs is to do it in a way that doesn't rob people of initiative. But that instead empowers and encourages them, unfortunately often that is not the case. Real quick example, my brother-in-law Conrad van Dyck is a poultry specialist and he's part of an organization that is at work in Sierra Leone, one of the most needy countries of the world and he has been hard at work there with some others in setting up an indigenous chicken operation. And so you can imagine their dismay as they're trying to make this self-sustaining and self-sufficient when there is a whole boat full of frozen chickens that gets turned down by whoever imported them into Europe. And somebody in a very generous way decided, "Why don't we take all these chickens and ship them off to Sierra Leone? The people there would love to eat chickens." Well, maybe they do. But can you imagine what that does to a burgeoning poultry industry? Praise it, because who can compete with stuff that is being dumped on the market? Very often, Western aid with the best of intentions, and the intentions aren't always good, but even with the best of intentions, destroy the local economy. The farmers in Afghanistan went back to growing poppies because when Western grain was dumped on their market, they could not make a living farming grain. And so now they grow poppies and there's real good money in heroin, because they're not going to flower shops, let me tell you. Anyway, there's a lot more to be said about that, but very quickly, we need to understand that the model was descriptive, not prescriptive. We need to understand that every generation needs to develop its own economic models based on some of the biblical principles that I've outlined, and there are, of course, many more. And then just in closing, very quickly, I want to raise the question, what does a biblical model look like? When you take all of these principles, and you take them seriously, and you try to apply them to your life, what does it look like for Christian community? Well, I think it's multifaceted, one facet is that we must always provide emergency aid. As Jesus said, the poor, you have always with you. There are always those who cannot earn a living, there are always those who are handicapped mentally or physically, and there are always those who, for whatever reasons, get caught up in a negative economic cycle, and who become the responsibility of the broader community. And many of the aid programs that we have in Western countries are the result of the influence of the gospel. And one of the ways in which we do that in this community is by the deacons taking offerings for the poor. And just this past Tuesday, we had a congregational meeting, and I got to see some of the figures from 2008, and in 2008, you as a congregation contributed $19,000 that were distributed largely in this community, and sometimes on the outside a little bit. You have contributed another $13,000 for tuition assistance. You have contributed more than $28,000 for Christian Reformed World Relief, and another $7,000 or $8,000 for agencies like the Belleville Pregnancy Crisis Center and the New Life Girls Home. And that's the fruit of the gospel in our collective hearts, for which we could be incredibly grateful. Now, you know, we live in an economic downturn, and the deacons now have a situation in which the needs outstrip their resources. And so next week in our communion service, we're going to take a special offering for the cause of benevolence, and if God stirs your heart and you want to be part of that, we would ask that you give and that you give generously to that, as well as to our general church budget as we see the year come to a close. A biblical model will always keep its eye on emergency needs. Secondly, a biblical model will always seek to empower people. As I said earlier, it's not good enough just to keep feeding more resources into a bottomless pit, sometimes that can't be avoided, but the best of both worlds is to be able to take people by the hand and to help them to become financially self-sufficient. And so as parents, we try to teach our children how to manage money. And as parents, we need to take that seriously beginning when they're very young. As a church, we run programs, the deacons run a program, the Peace University with David Ramsey, principles of financial management. Around the world, one of the most exciting new developments is a thing called microcredit or microloans, where individuals can contribute a certain amount that is now loaned to individuals around the world who run their own little businesses. And so I'm a lady in Africa somewhere, and I'm running a little fish stand beside the road. I can apply for a loan of $1 or $10 or $15 for a new pot or a new pan, and I pay that back with interest as time goes on. And hundreds of thousands of people are being helped all over the world by that simple process. There's one organization that's called Kiva that currently as of October of this year has $95 million loaned out to 135,000 people contributed by half a million donors. An incredibly powerful way of helping people to become self-sufficient and self-sustaining. And even that is not the full answer, because truth of the matter is that if we really want to provide aid to third-world countries, then we not only need to fund individual people who are running their one-person business, you want to create multi-person, mid-size type businesses, and that involves a greater investment. And so the third thing I want to point out before we wind up here this morning is that if we really want to make a difference, God's people especially need to come alongside other people and provide the resources to make things happen. And as some of you know, one of my visions, and it's not always easy, but one of my burdens is to see God's people in community band together on an economic basis where wise and experienced entrepreneurs come alongside young and struggling entrepreneurs to provide accountability, to provide direction, and even to provide resources. Because at the end of the day, everybody benefits when it goes well. Are there risks? You bet there are risks. Every time I give you $20, there is the risk that you're taking advantage of me. Every time I invest myself in you to try to help you along, there is the danger that it will be in vain and you will walk away, and my heart may well be broken. And every time I come alongside you and pour my resources into your venture, I may discover that that venture does not turn out the way that it should. You cannot live in community. You cannot live a common life whereby God's people take seriously the biblical mandate to care for each other without taking a risk. And I'm not saying that we should take careless risks. I think we should minimize risks. But you know, there's always the danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water. As I have researched the history of the common life, this past week I have been struck by how many different models, different communities have taken upon themselves, and how hard it has been to move from talking to doing. Because Christian people throughout the centuries have talked a great talk. One of the reasons the Hutterites were so insistent on sharing a common life is because they figured it was the best discipline that God could bring into their lives. If he could loose their grip on their material resources, then he could do anything with them for the glory of God. And so every so often in the history of God's people trying to live this out, there is a model that emerges, and it really works, and it gives glory to God. And so we ought not to be afraid to try. We ought not to be afraid to fail in the trying. As if we ever hit a home run, what glory abounds to God, and what blessings abound for God's people. I want to leave you this morning with this little picture. What do you see? WD-40. First of all, how many of you here use WD-40 at your house? How many of you know what WD-40 stands for? Water displacement is the WD. What does the 40 stand for? It took 40 tries to get it right. Do you know how many light bulbs Thomas Edison made before he got one that was marketable? The figures are somewhere between 3,000 and 9,000. And at any given point he could have thrown in the towel and he could have said, "This is not worth it." And at any given moment when you invest your life in somebody else's life, and when you share your resources with somebody else, and it goes wrong, or it hurts you, or it gives you trouble, there will be a temptation to throw in the towel and to say, "This is not worth it." But the real changes in the universe come about when people with grace and wisdom hold on to the vision and they persevere until they hit a home run. And so in this Christmas season, here's what I want you to think about. Who or what does God put at my heart that I can share myself with? Maybe it's just baking a batch of cookies for my neighbor down the street. Maybe it's helping somebody out who is struggling and he needs $5 to get over the hump or maybe even more. But let's never close off our hearts and let's ask for God to give us grace and faith to step into whatever it is that he gives us grace for. Not that we should be deprived at somebody else's expense, but so that there may be equality [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:42:27.820; remove through 00:45:14.000] in the body of [CUT] Christ. Brother, let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you. Pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant too. We are pilgrims on a journey, we are brothers on the road, we are here to help each other, walk the mile and mend the road. I will hold the Christ light for you, in the night time of your fears. I will hold my hands out to you, speak the peace you want to hear. I will weep when you are renewed, when you laugh I'll laugh with you. I will share your joys and sorrows till we've seen this journey through. When we seek to God in heaven, we shall find such harmony. Lord of all we've known together, of Christ come and beg of thee. Sister, let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you. Pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant too. 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