Cultivating Stewardship

SERMON: 2014-09-28--cs1401--cultivating-stewardship-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:41:20.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with the speaker establishing a core argument about God's people and generosity (exposition) and ends with a theological conclusion regarding giving and thanksgiving, marking the full scope of the main sermon material. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- It's no secret I think that historically God's people have been among the most generous people in all the world. Let me just show you some stats that I think are really interesting in that regard. What you see here is the difference between religious people, those are the bar in blue, that is people of faith and secular people, people who do not have faith. Who is more giving of time and money, religious or secular people? Here you see four categories, give money to any cause, volunteer for any cause, give money to a non-religious cause, volunteer for a non-religious cause. You will notice in each of these the religious people out give the secular people by a considerable margin. That's the number of people who do the giving. When you start calculating the amounts they give, the figure is even more dramatic. Believers in North America in general give four times as much as secular people do, seven times as much as professing atheists, they volunteer twice as often, and eighty seven and a half percent of all charitable donations in North America come from people of faith. In fact, atheists are being so shamed by the contrast between Christian giving and their own giving that in the state of Georgia they have set up a fund or an association to encourage atheists to be more generous. So far they have raised in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars, which sounds like quite a bit, but when you divide it by the number of donors the average donation is all of twenty six dollars. I think the atheists have a way to go before they can match Christians in generosity. So here's the question, why historically have God's people been so much more generous than people who are not a faith? And the answer, of course, lies in a biblical world and life view. We've been looking at that in recent weeks. It is looking at life through the perspective of scripture that has created God's people in good times and in bad times to be exceptionally generous. And in the time that we have this morning I want to try to give you three reasons why a biblical world and life view encourages generosity among God's people. Reason number one, because a biblical world and life view points to the character of God. It points to the character of God as one of the primary roots of generosity among his people. All through scripture God is pictured as a generous God. Paul in Romans chapter 11 getting carried away with one of his doxologies from him, through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. And I love the way the Belger Confession, one of the confessional standards of our denomination, puts it in article one. Here is what it says, "We all believe with a heart and confess with the mouth that there is one only simple and spiritual being which we call God. And that he is eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable." That means he never changes. Infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just good. And then notice the overflowing fountain of all good. From the very beginning Satan has been lying to the human race to convince us that God is not good, that he is not generous, and that he doesn't overflow. James picks up that confession, so to speak, or predates the confession obviously, when he says in James chapter 1 verse 17, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows. Every good and perfect gift comes from above from the Father of lights." Christian generosity is rooted in the generous nature of God's character. And that generosity of God's character, I believe, comes to expression in at least four ways. Again, let me try to walk you through that as quickly as I can. The generosity of God is demonstrated, first of all, in the creation of the universe. Psalm 33, the verses 6 and 9, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their story host by the breath of his mouth, for he spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood firm." God spoke the universe into being. You know, we live in a day and age where a lot of people think the findings of science point away from God. And the reason for that, of course, is that science has sort of demystified the forces of nature. What what our forebears would have thought was, you know, God causing the thunder or God speaking through the lightning or, you know, the gods at work and the plagues that came upon the human race. Science has now shown us, of course, that there are many natural causes behind the phenomenon of nature and the universe. And we understand that. But that doesn't mean that the discoveries of science are leading us away from God. As you know, I'm really a bit of a scientist at heart. Myself, I study it, I read about it, I'm fascinated by the discoveries of science. And I'll tell you one thing, the more that I discover about the discoveries of science, the more I want to fall down on my knees and say how great thou art. I mean, what we know today about the universe, what we know about galaxies, what we know about planets, what we know about the interior workings of how the universe is put together. Some of you will remember the little clip we showed last week about light being at the heart of all substance and matter. What an amazing reflection of the character and the nature of God. No wonder the psalmist was way ahead of his years ago in Psalm 19 when he says, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Creation demonstrates God's generosity. Not only that, but we notice God's generosity in his provision for all that he has made. I love Psalm 145, 15, "The eyes of all look to you and you give them their food at the proper time." And I ponder that sometimes when I when I think of how inherent in the created order are all the things that we need to do life in a physical plane. I mean, think of the water that we get out of the ground, think of the minerals that we find there, the oil deposits. You know, we were supposed to run out of oil back in 1972 already, I recall, and now there's more oil than ever. And all the other things, how the earth itself produces life. What an amazing thing. And how generous is our God in looking after the needs of every one of his creatures. Great is your faithfulness. Third place where we see this, more obvious perhaps than any other place from a biblical point of view, is in the gift of his son. You all know John 3.16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." God's generosity, it's demonstrated not only in creating the world for you and me to enjoy and to appreciate and to study, God's generosity is demonstrated not only in the fact that he provides us with the very breath that we need, let alone food, clothing, and shelter, but from a biblical point of view, it's demonstrated most clearly in the gift of his son. And people ask the question sometimes, "Why when Adam and Eve fell into sin, did God not stop them from doing so?" Did you ever ponder that question? Look at all the trouble that would have been avoided, all the misery that we would have escaped. God could have stopped them, why didn't he? Well there's all kinds of complicated answers to that, but the simple fact is that God allowed sin to happen so that he could demonstrate the full depth of his love for a fallen creation. I sometimes picture it this way, and you may have heard me talk about this before, picture yourself as a man or a woman of a virtually infinite wealth. You have servants more than you can name, you have possessions greater than what you can even count in, and you have glory and honor and respect beyond anything that anybody else has, but you've got no child, nobody to share it with. And so you look at yourself and you say, "Look, I've got all of this that belongs to me, I want to share it with my offspring." And so you beget a son or a daughter and you invest in them, you train them and you teach them all with the view of sharing your wealth with them. And every time they succeed and every time they prosper your heart is glad, but then they reach a certain age and they throw your love back in the face and like the prodigal son they tell you, "Give me my inheritance now," and they go squandering your love in a foreign land with stupid living and your heart breaks. Now let's suppose that because your heart is full of love for this child, you not only want him back, but you're prepared to do whatever it takes to get him back. And so you know, you send out agents to try to win him back, you try to pave the way for him to come back and at an incredibly great cost to your own pride and ego and wealth, you lay everything on the line for that son to come back and thank God one day he does and he resumes his position as son and heir. Now you recognize the gospel in that obviously and if not certainly you recognize is not the story of the prodigal son, but do you understand that the love demonstrated in the redemption of that son is of a higher nature than the love demonstrated in begetting the son? Does that make sense? When you begot the son to share your love with him, that was as much love as you had and as much love as you could show. But when he threw your love back in your face and kicked you in the shins and and ridiculed you and humiliated you and and did all manner of evil against you and then at great cost to yourself, you want him back. You now showed and demonstrated a level of love that could not have been demonstrated before he wandered away and that is one of the reasons, biblically speaking, God allowed the world to fall into sin. Doesn't mean he caused it, but God allowed it to happen so that he in the gift of his son could show the whole universe the nature of his love in giving his own life even for those who were still his enemies. 1 John 4 9 spells it out this way and notice the wording here, "In this the love of God was made manifest." Other translations have this is how God showed his love. "In this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him." Again as Paul said, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and in that way God demonstrated his love." So he demonstrates his love in creation, he demonstrates his love in provision, he demonstrates his love in the gift of his son, and of course he demonstrates his love in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus speaking to his disciples just prior to his departure in John's gospel puts it this way, he says, "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you." And we know from the rest of the New Testament that that finds its fulfillment in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead, he's the one who connects heaven and earth, he is the one who reveals the Father heart to us so that we know him, he is the one through whom we are born again into the family of God, he is the one who imparts to us all the riches that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is the one who empowers us and prepares us for the age which is to come and the Holy Spirit is given generously, generously to God's people. Titus puts it this way, he says, "He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior." The emphasis is on generously, other places talk about God lavishing his love upon us. If you know anything at all about the God of Scripture, whether in creation or in provision or in redemption, he never does things halfway, does he? I mean look at all the wild flowers that grow in places where nobody ever sees it. When you seniors go on your color trip later on this week and you see every leaf painted in vivid colors, he didn't have to do that, and when he puts food on your table or when he reveals himself to you or to me in some way rescues us from where we find ourselves and transforms us from the... he doesn't have to do any of those kinds of things, he does them because that is who he is. And historically Christians are generous because they know the generosity of God, that is the foundation where it all begins because the God you serve dictates the kind of people that you become and people whose God is violent or bloodthirsty or otherwise oriented shapes his people by the revelation of his character. So God's generous, that's the root of our generosity, a second root of our generosity biblically is that we are created in the image of God. We are created in the image of God and here again is a verse you know so well. So God created man in his own image, Genesis 127, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. Volumes have been written on the image of God, sermons have been preached, profound wisdom has been laid bare but at the end of the day what does it mean to be in the image of God? It's to share his character and to share his nature and if he is a God of generosity and if he is a God of love then he reproduces that in his creation by virtue of creation. Paul puts it this way in the context of redemption admittedly but I'll talk about that more in a moment, Ephesians chapter 5, be imitators of God as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Be imitators of God and just as in the natural our children carry a mixture of their parents DNA and reproduce their character both good sometimes and bad, God in his original creation made Adam and Eve in the image of God. Do you know what that means? That means at the root of our creatureliness there is a desire to be generous and a desire to share. Now as we'll see in a few moments that's been distorted by sin, it's become extremely self-centered but even among unbelievers in a fallen world there remain what theologians call vestiges of the image of God and one of the places where you see this is that survey after survey of people around the world whether they're rich or whether they're poor, whether they're male or whether they're female, whether you know whatever they are. You know who the happiest people are? You know what gives people the most satisfaction? You know what distinguishes well-adjusted people from maladjusted people? It's generosity. It's people who take their time, talent, and their treasure and they invested in something or somebody other than themselves. You know where that comes from? That comes from the image of God. That's the character of God and we've often said around here if you're stuck in the Christian life and you wonder where God is and why things seem to be so treadbare, sometimes one of the quickest ways to kickstart your engine is to get involved in somebody else's life. Invest your time, talent, and treasure in somebody else because that's what you've been designed to be and yes in a broken world there's sometimes a high cost and we get weary and things go wrong we understand all of that but the image of God in you and me is meant to respond to what we see and if you look at your own life today and your heart has been touched by by love for something or somebody and you have spoken into that or given into that or invested into that then you will know that there is there's something that happens sometimes sometimes it's the giver who's more blessed than the person who does the receiving. That's how we've been designed. You know is it the the the Red Cross blood campaign that says it's in you to give? Well it's in you to give not just blood it's in you to give by virtue of being made in the image of God. Now I said a moment ago the image of God of course has been distorted by sin and you and I both know that we live in a world where selfishness has overtaken and for all the good that exists there's also a lot of brokenness and that's caused by sin. We know all about that. Genesis 2 10 just to backtrack for a moment there's a verse that says a river watering the garden flowed from Eden from there it's separated into four headwaters. You're saying to yourself what has that got to do with it? I believe in the very created order. We have a picture of a river that flows into the garden where Adam and Eve are living in a blessed condition and then the river splits into four different directions. Again many different theologies and many different theories but my conviction is that those four rivers in Genesis and a couple of them are easy to identify and others are not is God's way of saying the blessings of God are intended to flow from God to his creation to his people and from his people to the four quarters of the earth because that river reoccurs of course it reoccurs in Genesis in in the book of Ezekiel the 47 chapter where there's water coming out from under the temple it reoccurs in Revelation 22 the river of God making glad the city of God and producing life and healing wherever it goes that's why when we draw these circles that you've seen so many times I always picture it this way here's God the overflowing fountain of life we find our life in him as we find our life in him then we share it with each other and you have the kingdom of God when the curtain falls on history this is how it's going to be God will be all and in all and everything you and I need will be fully satisfied in him and the brokenness of life that we are so keenly aware of here because we have been cut off from God we have bought the lie we're looking after our own interests more than anything else under the Sun that reality is restored in Christ and so here is the third key route to generosity not only is it rooted in the character of God not only is it rooted in the fact that we are made in the image of God but in Christ we are being restored to the image of God listen to how Paul puts it Ephesians 424 he says put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness and another verse that closely parallels it Colossians 3 10 you have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator we were created in the image of God the image of God got all distorted and twisted and we've lost our faith and we've lost our confidence in God and we've become selfish and you see it in the battles that rage anywhere from two children fighting over the same toy to two girls fighting over the same boyfriend or two guys fighting over the same girl to nations going to war and we know all too clearly what that looks like if you consider the turmoil that is in the world today but in Christ we are being restored to the image of God in true knowledge righteousness and holiness that means the generosity of God's character is being reproduced in you and me as we abide in Christ now I have to confess that when I look back to the years that I spent in catechism classes like probably most kids there is precious little that I remember that's a sad commentary but it's confession time and it's reality but there's one thing that I remember indelibly written on my heart and that was a comment by one of my catechism teachers years ago that in Christ we are being restored to the image of God in true knowledge righteousness and holiness I don't know why it was that those words winged their way into my heart but they did and in some ways they have become the foundation not only of who I am and what my ministry represents to this day and I marvel at how God took those words and winged them into a place that has continued to bear fruit this many years later and last summer when Michelle and I were in PEI this man who was now quite elderly happened to be visiting there and we got to talking after the church service and and he expressed amazement that anything he said had said as a layman in fact had made an impact on somebody and imparted truth to somebody's life and I said to myself and I want to use this to encourage any of you that ever teach kids don't ever give up or underestimate the power of the seed of the Word of God you never know whose life you're going to impact or whose life you're going to change even when it doesn't become evident maybe for years and years to come the Word of God is living and active and when it finds fertile soil it will sprout it will grow it will germinate and it will begin to bear fruit and this morning if you're in Christ then from the inside out by the Holy Spirit God is reproducing in you the image of God and imparting to you true knowledge true holiness and true righteousness he creates in you the desire to change you and become like God how does he do that he does that first of all by showing us as the catechism says our sin and misery showing us the fact I'm selfish I don't want to share I don't have it to share I don't want to do what God wants me to do and the world's a big mess everybody is selfish and you begin to understand that the selfishness is rooted in our separation from God because we don't believe there is ever enough to go around do you know that it doesn't matter how much you've got it's never enough you know he could be the richest in the neighborhood and you will still feel that it's not enough because there will be somebody somewhere who's got more than you got and our wealth is not measured by how much we've gone it's measured by how much other people have got and so we really learn how to be discontent real fast because there's always more and there's never enough so when you grow in Christ you begin to understand what the roots of that are and then he opens your eyes if we can put those circles back up for a moment then he opens your eyes and he begins to show you that redemption lies in Christ and that at him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and that in him we have been blessed in heavenly places with all the resources of God so you put your faith in Christ Christ comes to live in you and then he begins to reproduce in you his character and now you begin to understand that God is the overflowing fountain of every good and perfect gift your heart has been changed you're filled by the Holy Spirit and you start acting in ways that are contrary to your old way of living because now the generosity of God is being written upon your heart and therefore things begin to change not because anybody's putting pressure on you from the outside but because it is coming from the inside love the way Paul puts it writing to the Thessalonians 1 4 9 now about brotherly love we do not need to write you for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other fruit begins to grow because it grows from the inside out according to its nature and that's why how we steward the resources that God has given us is never just about time talent and treasure it's not about how much do we have or how little do we have it's always a measure of to what degree do I have faith in God that as I follow his word and the prompting of his Holy Spirit then he will allow my life to flourish and to prosper and that gift of faith that gift of generosity that has been planted in us through the Holy Spirit doesn't just automatically bear fruit any more than your garden doesn't automatically bear fruit yes the life is in the seed but it needs tending it needs watering it needs cultivating from the inside out again as you know when we were on holidays we were out of Nova Scotia as well as in PEI and I had an opportunity to visit one of my friends who runs an apple orchard there got a large one with his sons and one of the things that struck me both in PEI talking to the potato growers and in Nova Scotia talking to the apple growers is how agriculture has changed and how they're constantly trying to find new ways to grow more so here's a picture and I won't take a lot of time for this but this is the new way in which apple orchards are now planted in much of North America you know it used to be you see the old orchards and the trees line up this way and the trees line up this way have you ever noticed that it's amazing how they they they plant them in that fashion but now they've gone to what they call high density apple growing and this particular system is called the tall spindle system and here's what you see you see these bamboo poles they're 15 or 20 feet high and they are strung along string or long wires like you've seen great great vines you know poles on the end and then lines across well these are much higher and then you have in this instance they're bamboo in Nova Scotia they all use electrical conduit pipe I think they they sell more of that to the farmers than they do to the electricians and so these are attached to these wires and then they take these trees you see these little trees here and they tie them to these poles and they plant them two feet sometimes three feet apart and what it does is it stabilizes the tree so it doesn't have to fight the wind it doesn't spend energy building wood it spends all its energy building fruit these things grow up tall as spindly as they can but they start bearing fruit in two or three years and after seven years you have your investment back whereas with a regular orchard it might not be until 15 years and I mentioned that because this is a lot of work because not only do they have to set this all up plant these trees they have to trim them they have to bend branches down and tie them down in order to get the kind of quality fruit that they want and my point here is this new life in Christ will bear fruit but it needs cultivating and that's one of the things that Paul is talking about here in these verses that we have read from second Corinthians chapter 9 he says remember this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously and the image here is one that all of us are familiar with because it comes from agriculture and every home gardener knows that reality if you want a crop you've got to put seed into the ground and the more seed you spread within certain limits the better your harvest but it's counterintuitive to put your seed in the ground when you could be eating it my brother-in-law Conrad van Dyck is a vet he's been involved a number of years now in trying to establish a poultry industry in Sierra Leone and Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world and it's been in the news a lot because of the Ebola crisis but one of the things that he comes up against all the time is a world and life view that is far removed from the biblical world and life view because you see they live for the day of today you don't worry about the day of tomorrow so why put your seed as feed for the chickens when you could eat it yourself that's a very short-sighted vision but if that's your world and life view precisely that's what happens and of course scripture says if we want our lives to bear fruit then unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains only a single seed but if it dies it produces many seeds and so the key to generosity is knowing God as creator it's knowing that we're made in the image of God it's in you to give the image of God is being reproduced in us in Christ and then as we abide in Christ and learn to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit then God gives us faith to believe that we cannot out give him that he is the God who supplies our needs generously and that's why Paul then goes on to say God is able to make all grace about to you so that in all things at all times having all that you need you will abound in every good work and he goes on in the next two verses now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness you will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous in every occasion and through us your [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:41:16.840; remove through 00:41:20.000] generosity will result in Thanksgiving to go on [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:41:20.000; resume after this marked segment]