Cultivating Stewardship

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 87.5% 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 $200,000, which sounds like quite a bit,
but when you divide it by the number of donors, the average donation is all of $26.
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 here.
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.
He 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 Belgium 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 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 117, "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 verse 6 and 9, "By the word of the Lord, where the heavens made, their
story host by the breath of his mouth, for he spoke, and it came to be, he commended 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 our forebears would have thought was, God causing the thunder or God speaking
through the lightning or the gods that work in 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.
Now 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 that a 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.
And the 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 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.
To all know, John 316, for God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son, that
however believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
God's generosity is 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 a very breath that we need to 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 to give her?
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 they?
Well, there's all kinds of complicated answers to that, but the simple fact is that God
allows 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 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 the 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 leaving 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 send out agents to try to win him back, you try to pave the way for him to
come back and add an incredibly great cost to your own pride and ego and wealth.
You lay everything on the line for that son to come back.
I 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 in that
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 ridiculed
you and humiliated you and did all men are of evil against you and then at great cost
to yourself you won 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.
Does it 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.
Even 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.
And 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 sing yours, 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 in 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 the 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 atheroot 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
for maladjusted people. It's generosity. It's people who take their time talent in 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
tread there, sometimes one of the quickest ways to kickstart your engine is to get involved in
somebody else's life. Invest your time talent in 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 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 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, a certain moment ago, the image of God, of course, has been distorted
by seeing. 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 a backtrack for a moment, there's a verse that says,
"A river watering the garden flowed from Eden, from there it separated into four headwaters."
You're saying to yourself, what does 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 and 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, the reoccurs in Genesis,
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 310, 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 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
Gohan 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 said 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 Michel and I were in PEI this man who was now quite elderly happened to be
visiting that and we got to talking after the church service and he expressed amazement
that anything he said, head 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 what he used 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
but it doesn't become evident maybe for years and years to come. The word of God is leaving
and active and when it finds fertile soil it will sprout, it will grow, it will germinate and it
will begin to bear fruit in 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
are 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 what? You 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 got. 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 and 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 I hit 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 the 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 being in 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. Freed 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 at 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 strong along string or along 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 their bamboo and Nova Scotia they all use electrical conduit pipe
I think that 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 mention 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 2 Corinthians chapter 9 he says remember this
whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever soes generously will also reap generously
and the image here is one that all of us are familiar with because it comes from agriculture
in 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 Vendique is a vet he's been involved in 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 in life you that is far
removed from the biblical world in life you 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 in life you
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 abound 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 bred 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
generosity will result in thanksgiving to God