Generosity: All We Have Belongs to God - John Mark Comer

[ Music ] >> Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. My name is John Mark. It's great to see you. Welcome this morning. If you are new or visiting, we are in a four-part practice on generosity. And this morning is week three. After last week, I'm shocked that anyone else is still here. So, only the few in the brave, right? Well done. It's great to see all of you. Please turn your Bibles to Luke 12. If you don't have a Bible on your person, there should be one in the seat in front of you. We invite you to take that out to open to Luke 12. If you're new to the Library of Scripture, there's a table of contents in the first few pages. And once you arrive at Luke 12, please stand with me for the reading of Scripture. Let me just give you one passing moment to just quiet your heart before God before we read. Invite you just to open that inner folkroom of your heart to just receive whatever God would speak over your life. So, the text for this morning is Luke 12. Let's read from verse 35. Be dressed, ready for service, and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, they can immediately open the door for him. Good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly, I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will make them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or towards daybreak. But understand this, if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready because the son of man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. Peter asks, "Lord, are you telling this parable to us or to everyone?" The Lord answered, "Who then is the faithful and wise manager?" "Who the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time. It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. Truly, I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions." But suppose the servant says to himself, "My master is taking a long time in coming and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and even women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour he is not aware of, he will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers." Look at the end of verse 48, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." Take a seat. I came of age in the era of pastor scandals. It feels like every few months there is yet another horrific story that is an embarrassment to any of us that follow Jesus. Early on, I found myself in friendship with a number of other pastors. We were all in very secular cities around the world and solving for similar problems. We made a pact to walk together over a long period of time and attempt to go the distance. Eventually, we started living by a rule of life together. We were all very young, we were all church planting in urban context, we had zero extra dollars. But this very wealthy and Jesus business person that we never even met to this day, never met him, had this gorgeous home. Up on the coast near Big Sur, private coastline, built into the side of a cliff, built off of a rock quarry on site designed by these famous L.A. architects 100 years ago, more castle than house. The story is Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, honeymoon there. For seven years, we would make pilgrimage and spend a week on this property. Just praying for each other. I don't know if I would be standing before you today if it was not for this family's generosity. The owner passed away a year or two ago and the house sold to Brad Pitt for this public record for $44 million. So I don't know where you vacation, but that's just kind of how I roll since we're teaching on pastor scandals, money and generosity. I just thought I would tell you where I vacation personally. Now the entire time that we all those years that we would make pilgrimage to this special place, there was a caretaker on the property, this lovely, godly Christian woman, I'll call her Mary. And she lived on site. Her job was very simple. It was to steward this architectural masterpiece, to make sure it was ready any time that the owner and his family would come to visit, and that it was put to good use whenever he was away. She was loaned out constantly, it was not precious with it. It was just loaned out to people all of the time. And she ran a small staff, there were botanical gardens, it was not like, you know, Mothalon once a week, it was a lot of work. And she lived in this small cottage, it was very modest, but the small cottage at the top of the property, but I mean it was sweet, Pacific Ocean right in front of you. And the private coastline botanical gardens, that was her home. But she was not the owner, she was the caretaker. The problem is that when many of us think about our home, and I know it's incredibly difficult to ever own a home anymore, but for those of you that own a home, or our possessions or our money, we think of ourselves as the owner, not as the caretaker. That's not actually the view of Jesus. We are working through four major themes from Jesus teachings on money and generosity. There's no way to cover everything Jesus said on this subject in four weeks. But if you had to kind of categorize Jesus teaching into four major themes, and this language comes directly for the most part from Jesus own mouth, you could say it was something like one, there is more joy in giving than in receiving. Two, watch out for greed. Three, all we have belongs to God. And four, be generous to the poor. Next up on the docket for this morning is all we have belongs to God. As we said a few weeks ago, scholars estimate that just around 25% of Jesus teachings have to do with money and generosity. For the parables of Jesus is actually much higher, it's closer to 50% of His parables. Have to do with how Jesus disciples or apprentices, that's you and that's I for the most part, are to steward our resources. And Luke 12 that we just read is one of the best examples. A little backstory before we work through the text line by line. Of the four gospels, if you're new to the New Testament, there are four first century biographies of Jesus, Luke is number three. Luke is the highest volume of Jesus teachings on money and generosity. They all have a lot, but Luke has the most. And Luke is the only one of the four that was written two a person. So if you read the introduction, it's written to a person named theophilus. You're pregnant, thinking about a cool creative LA name, just saying right there for you. And most likely theophilus was Luke's patron. Books were very expensive to write in the ancient world. They were written by hand. And even more expensive to copy by a scribe for dissemination. So it's highly likely that this was a biography that was commissioned by a wealthy patron. And at this point, we're into pure theory. The theory is that theophilus would have been a wealthy Christian. And that he may have asked Luke, hey, rumor has it that Jesus said a lot on this subject. Give me like all of his best stuff and tell me what this means, all this kingdom of God, language and invitation to discipleship. Tell me what this means as a wealthy Christian. Now whether that theory is true or not, Luke has the highest volume of teaching on this material. Luke 12 is either one of or the longest of all Jesus teachings on money and generosity. Now in the middle of Luke 12, we do not have time to go through it all the way. In the middle of the chapter, in the middle of the passage or teaching, is Jesus command, in verse 33, sell your possessions and give to the poor. That's kind of the one line summary of the whole thing. Now ancient near eastern rabbis would teach in a kiosk structure. This is daylight savings. You got an extra hour. You can do this the next two minutes. I believe in you. I know it's L.A. but you can do this. You have it in you. You don't need to remember anything about what I'm about to say. But Western thought is more than that. So if I were to tell you a story or I were to attempt to tell you a joke very badly, the punchline or the climax of the story would be at the end. But ancient Near Eastern thought, and this is true of much of Middle Eastern thought today, is kiosk, meaning the main point is in the middle. So for you English majors, to just nerd out on you, a kiosk structure is a literary structure that goes A, the argument goes A, B, C, D, C, B, A. Some of you are like, "That extra hour was not enough. You can do this." Now, meaning the whole point of this is the main point is in the middle of the teaching. This becomes very important if you're reading a teacher like Jesus, who was an ancient Aramaic Rabbi. You're always searching for, where's the middle of that chiasm? So Jesus' main point is sell your possessions and give to the poor. But he bookends this teaching with the two A blocks, with two parables. The first parable will look at next week. It's called the parable of the rich fool. And the next parable of the one at the end that we read a moment ago is called the parable of the faithful servant. And the two parables are a compare and a contrast. The first one is a negative story about a rich man who was evil and hoarding all of his wealth. The second is a positive story about the servant of a rich man who is good and highly generous. Look again with me at verse 35. Jesus says this. "Be dressed, ready for service, and keep your lamps burning like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet. So that when he comes in knocks, they can immediately open the door for him." So this is thousands of years before text messaging and, you know, ETA on maps or whatever. And weddings were often a week long. Travel was, you know, precarious. So if your master were to go away to a wedding on another town or another village, you would not even know exactly what day he would return much less what time. This is also a long time before electricity and like automatic lights that come on when you pull up in the driveway. It would have been dark, hard to get in. So you would want, if you were to come home at night, you would want the lamps burning if you're a wealthy aristocrat to come into your home. So be dressed. This is the imagery. There's a wealthy aristocratic owner. You're the servant or the manager of the household. Be dressed and ready. Otherwise, it will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. So in this parable, there's a master, it's like a wealthy aristocrat, and then there are disciples of Jesus who are like the servants. Verse 7, "Truly I tell you," remember Jesus would often buffer kind of incredulous or hard to believe teaching with that line. He will dress, he, the master, will dress himself to serve. We'll have them recline at the table and we'll come and wait on them. This is like the twist in the story that you are not expecting. This is Jesus upside down vision of the kingdom of God where the master takes the role of the servant. Let that sink in. This is Jesus picture of God, the father. Yes, he's like a wealthy or aristocratic owner. But when he gets home after a long exhausting trip, he doesn't say, "Poor me the wine, give me a back massage and put the teabow on the table." He says, "Where's the apron? You take a seat. You must be tired from watching. Let me serve you. Let me love you. Let me sit at the table with you." This is Jesus picture of what God is like. Jesus goes on, verse 42, "The Lord answered, 'Who then is the faithful and wise manager?' So inside this parable, there's a comparing contrast between the bad one and the faithful and wise one, two adjectives, faithful, wise, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time. You need to manage the house while he's away. It will be good for that servant, whom the master finds doing so when he returns." So it's good for you. You want this to be true of you. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all of his possessions. Meaning if the kind of lead servant does a good job stewarding the master's house, the master will give him even more resources to steward. Remember that for later. But, verse 45, "Suppose the servant says to himself, 'My master is taking a long time in coming and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women. And to eat and drink and get drunk, of course, all on the master's resources." The master is wine, the master's food. He begins to waste the master's resources and treat terribly the people under his care. 46. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and on an hour he is not aware of, he will cut him to pieces at the first century idiom, saying he will deal with him severely and assign him a place with the unbelievers." Then here is the summary line at the very bottom in verse 48, "The end of this entire teaching. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded." Like, isn't that line from Spider-Man? No, it's from Jesus, to clarify. Jesus first. And Spider-Man. From the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. The radical idea that Jesus is laying out here in Luke 12 has come to be called stewardship. Randy Alcorn has done a lot of good work on this subject material. He's our recommended reading for this practice. Define stewardship as the active and responsible management of God's creation for God's purposes. And this idea was just as radical in Jesus' day as it is in ours. There are three basic components, and this is where at summary level at this point, but there are three basic components to a biblical theology of stewardship. The first, if you're taking notes, is that God owns it all. In Jesus' day, there were two basic views of wealth. The first was non-ownership. So, again, you English majors. If you read Plato's Republic, you may remember that in his mythical utopian society, the rulers own nothing. All resources belong to the society as a whole. You see parallels to this in many indigenous cultures, including the original inhabitants of California, where people care for the land, but they do not buy or sell it because they don't believe they own it. More recently, you see a version of this line of thinking and Marxist thought where wealth belongs to the state to distribute to the whole. The other basic view is ownership. This was the Greco-Roman view, where you had absolute authority over your property. If you had a barn, you could burn your barn down with impunity, because it is your barn. This is the majority view of the modern west. We live up in the mountains, and I actually have a small 120-year-old barn on our property. It's kind of starting to fall over, but it's also really cool. So, I'm trying to decide, we're remodeling a house right now. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to tear it down or turn it into my office. Guess who's decision that is, people? That's my decision. Right? Now, I can't burn it down because it's the Santa Monica Mountains of California, so we don't light anything on fire. But, I can tear it down if I want. It's my decision, both by law and by the majority cultural consensus of our society. But the Judeo-Christian view that comes to us through Jesus and the Library of Scripture is a radical third way, not of ownership or of non-ownership, but of stewardship. Or another word for that is caretaking. In this biblical theology, God is the owner. He's the master of the house. We are the caretakers. I mean, in the very first story of the Bible, God creates, this is chapter 1, verse 1, the quote, "Heavens and the earth." That's a Hebrew idiom. It was a way of saying, "Heavens and earth is a way of saying, 'everything there is in existence.' God made it all." If you made something with your own resources, you own that something. That's a way of saying, "The universe is God's creation." There is creator, there is creation. We are part of creation. Then God creates a garden. Then He literally breathes life into Adam's lungs. So, in the imagery of Genesis 1, life itself is a gift. It's such a tricky thing because human rights is a thoroughly Christian concept. It makes no sense in a secular frame. It is a Christian idea to the core. But yet you have to hold it in tension with the reality, especially as human rights begins to evolve in our society into new ideas and new realms. You have to hold it in tension with the reality that all of life is a gift. We did not earn. We do not deserve breath itself comes from God. And then He puts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, too. Here's one of the first lines, quote, "work it and take what? Care of it." And this theme of humans as caretakers of God's creation, caretakers of the arrests in Hebrew of the land runs all the way through the Bible. It's central to even how you understand the gospel of Jesus itself. Leviticus 25, for just a quick flyover, the land and it's a wreath there in Hebrew, the land or the earth is another way to translate that. Must not be sold permanently because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. So you could translate that as refugees and aliens. Now this was Israel's ancestral land. God is saying it's my land. You are here as refugees and as aliens. Deuteronomy 10, "To the Lord your God, "belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, "the earth and everything in it." Psalm 24, I love this, I read it a few mornings ago. The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. The world and all who live in it, that's you and me. Psalm 50 for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills, the world is mine, and all that is in it on and on. We could give you example after example after example. The idea all the way through the library of Scripture, and here with Jesus in Luke 12, is that God owns it all, and He is generous and willing to share. He's a father, a provider, all of life is a gift. We buy and sell and farm and build and invest and do what we do, sure, but we are the caretaker, not the owner of the house. The second component to this is, we are entrusted by God with His resources to do good. God owns it all, but He entrusts most of it to you and to me, to take care of or to steward or in Jesus' language here to manage. Many of us live under the false assumption that whatever money we receive, from our work, or in inheritance, or the lotto, or tax mistake, whatever, that that money is ours to do whatever the heck we want with, just to consume. As we said last week, most of us live at or above the line of our income level, maxed out with little to no margin to share with others, or even worse, in debt, rather than under the line with breathing room to live simply and joyfully and generously with God in the kingdom. We often don't realize or think deeply enough about the truth that not all of our money is for us. Some of it, unless if you are extremely wealthy, most of it is for us. It's for us to live. God is our provider. It's for us to have a roof over our head and clothes on our back and food in our stomach and to live together in community, even more to enjoy our life before God. We read last week from Timothy 6, in the passage to wealthy Christians, there's that beautiful line that God has given us all things richly for our enjoyment. God is not the cosmic killjoy. He's a generous father. He wants you to enjoy your life with him within good measure, but it's not all for us to spend on ourselves. Some of it is to give away to the poor, to the church, to the gospel of Jesus, and some of it is to build for the future. For whatever God has put in your heart, what you were made to do, whether that's your business or a call of God on your life or a ministry that God is stirring in you or your family or some kind of a kingdom dream. And we are entrusted by God with His resources to channel every penny to the right place or stewards or in Jesus' language managers. Now again, we don't live in an agrarian economy. Most of us did not grow up in downtown Abby, so we get the Netflix version, but whatever that was on, sorry, if I messed up there, this is LA, I probably just broke your heart if that's your show or something, I'm so sorry. You get what I'm trying to say. We're not used to this. A more salient example from our kind of world would be, think of like an asset manager. I'm sure many of you work in finance. I know quite a few people that work in finance and their job is to invest other people's money. And they make a living off of good stewardship. So if a person, let's say a very wealthy person gives them, let's just say a million dollars to invest. If they through a combination of work ethic, diligence, wisdom, the economy, lock, whatever, grow that by say 10%. They make $100,000. I believe the rule of thumb is that an asset manager keeps 1% of total assets. So that's 11,000 goes to them, 89,000 to the owner. That is a win-win. But what would you say if they, even if the economy is good, if they lost 10%, they lost $100,000? Yeah, you would say they're a bad steward. I don't know if they were lazy or on TikTok instead of the stock market, whatever. They did not do it. What would you say if they made a hundred grand and they bought a sweet house in Costa Rica to go surfing? What would the master do? She would call the FBI right away. But what if you were to make not 10%, but 20 or 30 or 50 or to double the owner's investment? She would likely give you even more resources to steward because she would say, oh, you are a good manager. You can do good. I want to put my money with you for you to grow it and make it do even more good. In the world, this is how Jesus is thinking about how His disciples are to view their relationship to every dollar in our bank account, which leads to the final component of biblical theology of steward chip. Number three, God blesses us to give more, not just to have more. You see this in almost all of Jesus parables on steward chip, that those who steward the master's resource as well are given more resources to steward. Now, no one does a better job of working this principle out than Paul. And if you want, I wish we had more time. But if you want, turn with me to two Corinthians chapter 9. Two Corinthians chapters eight and nine, by the way, if you want, like, to do some extra study, are two of the most beautiful passages in the whole Bible on a theology of money and generosity. I just want to read a short-- I want to discipline myself to read a short selection from it to you. In context, Paul is raising money for the church in Macedonia, a modern day Greece-- or sorry, from the church in Macedonia, to fund kind of relief, poverty relief, for the church in Jerusalem that is living through a very severe famine. And chapter 9, if you look at verse 7, he writes this, as he's kind of in context, he's fundraising for poverty relief. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give. Not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. God loves a person who is not coerced into giving a minimum percentage because it's the rule, but who prayerfully listens to God under what's stirring in their own heart, and with joy gives resources to a good cause. Then here's what I want you to see, verse 8. And please just really pay attention here. This paragraph is gold. And God is able to bless you abundantly. And in context, bless here, for the most part, has the connotation of bless financially. So that-- here's why-- in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will bound in every good work. There's an abundance mindset for you. You will have so much. You will have everything you need to do good in the world as it is written-- here's a quote from the Psalms-- a Psalm that is a poem about the ideal righteous person. They, the ideal righteous person, have freely scattered their gifts to the poor, their wildly generous, their righteousness in derives forever. End quote. Now, he who supplies seed to the sower-- that's God and the sower, the farmer, and the metaphor here is us-- and bread for food-- will also supply and increase your store of seed-- again, financial connotations-- and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be-- this is straight up-- like the translation here is enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. And through us, your generosity will result in Thanksgiving to God. People will start praising and blessing and thanking God because of how generous you have been with your extra resources. Now, if we're honest, if you were to just take this paragraph out of context and chop it up a little bit, cut off the end of a couple sentences. This paragraph sounds suspiciously like the prosperity gospel, which if you're new to the Jesus thing, this is a uniquely modern American heresy. That's wildly popular in particular this city-- is one of the hallmark cities in the country for the propagation of it. It's often a little lighter here, but it's fair here-- continues to spread throughout the church. And put crassly, it says, you give to get. And if you give to God, he will give back more to you, which means at some level, ultimately, only God knows the heart. But ultimately, it sounds like the motivation there for generosity is greed, not love. Two words separate Paul's theology from the prosperity gospel heresy. Just that one phrase, so that you will be enriched in every way, not period, not even a comma. so that you can be generous on every occasion. You see, the prosperity gospel is not a lie. That's why it gets so much traction. It is a half-truth. When we give, when we are good stewards of what has been entrusted to us, and for many of us, that is just like barely enough to make rent, and for some of us, it is way more than we need. We're all across the spectrum here, and that's very OK. But when we are good stewards, whether we have a little or a lot, whether we have just enough or way more, when we are good stewards of what has been entrusted to us, God often does give us even more. Often. It's not formulaic. There's no math equation. It's not 10x or 7x or 1.0-- there's no formula. Often, you will get back more than you get. Now, here's the caveat. In Paul's metaphor, there's sewing and reaping. So think of you're a farmer, and you put a seed into the ground, and you get back a harvest. And you may get back a good harvest. That's 10x or 100x. You may get back a lousy harvest, where there's almost nothing back in return. But in Paul's metaphor, you sow a seed into the ground. You give generously. You will reap a harvest. That harvest may be more money for you to steward. Probably any of us that have ever even dabbled with obedience to Jesus' teachings on generosity would all be able to go around. If I said right now, take two minutes and tell each other stories of when, like, in faith, you gave, whether it was a huge check, or it was $15. And that was all you had that week. And then, some out of the balloon miraculously, there was the weird tax return, or the person that gave you this, or the refunded medical check, where they messed up. So I bet you every single one of you could probably tell some version of that story. I could tell you a bunch of them. Most of them small, some of them not small. So that money may come back to you as more money. It may come back to you not the form of finances at all. You may give away $1,000, and it's just gone. You're now $1,000 poor. But you may become richer in new friends, or spiritual authority, or health in your own body, or freedom from that chained emotional attachment to things and looking for your safety and security and money that goes back to deep wounds from your family of origin, or whatever. It may come back to you as like new opportunity, where God will then open new doors for you to do what God has put into your life. Either way, it will come back to you. Like as that Christian cliche goes, you can't out give God. And that's true as long as you're thinking broader than just money. But the purpose, whether that seed comes back to you as more money, or more opportunity, or more authority, or more health, or more whatever, the purpose is not to make us rich. It's to make us even more generous. Not to build bigger barns like the man in the parable will look at next week. But just steward more of God's resources to the right and appropriate place. As Randy Alcorn put it, and this is a bit cheesy, but it's good. God blesses us to raise our standard of giving, not our standard of living. Now, we'll put out for you after next week a piece that we put together with various strategies for how to incorporate generosity into your daily life. And it's really hard to talk about that because it depends a lot on how much money you make and what your stage of life is, if you're single, or you're an empty nester, or you're raising three teenagers, or have kids in college, or we're just starting your career. And so there's all different strategies, some of which will apply to you, others of which will not, based on where you're at financially, or where you're at in your stage of life. One strategy that a number of upper middle class or wealthier Christians that I know use is called a lifestyle cap, where I know a lot of people that do this, where they basically set a lifestyle that they're going to live on, that they feel prayerfully is an appropriate way of life for a follower of Jesus in our world, or their particular station. They may have particular duties responsible with their work, or where they live, or whatever it may be. And that may change over the years, it may adjust for inflation, or when your kids are in college, or whatever, but they basically decide, this is our cap, we're going to live at this level, and 100% of whatever we make over this level, we're going to give away to the kingdom of God. Another strategy that works, whether you are a multibillionaire or barely just making rent, is called a graduated tithe. And the idea is you pick a percentage, and you can start at 1%, or 0.5%. You pick a percentage of your giving that you're going to give away, and the more money you make, the higher that percentage goes. So a dear friend of mine, as an executive, started doing well at Eurelena's career, and he and his wife committed every year to try to raise it 1%. So I think they started it like 7%, and now they're at 17. I know people that live on 20%, and give away 80%. I know someone that lives on 10%, gives away 90, and his life goal is to get down to 1.99. It's me, but I just want to be humble with you guys. [LAUGHTER] I know somebody who has a cool strategy, they live super simply. They calculate what their basic needs are, like rent, groceries, or whatever. And then anything over that, they give away 51% and keep 49% so that they always give more than they keep. By the way, that is a family of four that makes about $70,000 a year. So my point is, these are various strategies. Now, some of those maybe wildly, you're like, yeah, I don't live on 10% of my income. That may be wildly inapplicable to you. My point is, I tell you those stories because I want your imagination to start to click with the right heart. It's 1,000 different strategies for 1,000 different people. But there's one heart. It's the heart of a steward, the heart of a manager, someone who says, everything I-- this is gift. How do I steward this well? So one, God owns it all. Two, we are entrusted with His resources to do good. And three, God blesses us to give more, not to have more. If this is true, radical as it is, then it means the question is, less, how much should I give away? And we'll get to that question at some point. It's not a clear answer. But the question is a little bit more, how much should I keep? I grew up in an evangelical church tradition that had a particular interpretation of a few biblical passages that led people to believe that the Bible clearly teaches that you are to give 10% of your gross income to your local church. So I grew up in that. I still practice that. And I don't really agree with the biblical mandate part, but I still practice that. I think it's good with some. And so I grew up in a tradition where every Saturday night, my parents would sit us down. We'd have family devotions. This was like old school '80s, '90s style. And they would give us an allowance. It was very small. They'd give us an allowance. We'd calculate our tide. And in the next morning, we'd come to church and we'd give our offering to Jesus. And it's a beautiful practice. There's lots of debate about whether or not it's a command or a wisdom principle. If you set that aside, either way, it's a beautiful practice in particular for middle-class people. And so I grew up in it. But somehow, I inbibed the message. My parents never said this to me. My church never said this to me. And I'm not going to blame them. I'm sure it was 99% my own messed up heart. But somehow I inbibed the message that, hey, 10% of whatever I make is for God. But the other 90% that's for me, baby. So with 10% of my finances, I'm going to live like a Christian. With 90%, I'm going to live like an American. I'm going to get whatever I can. I'm going-- shopping this week, and we're going out to a new restaurant. You do you, right? But I'm doing my own thing. But that's not true. Everything I have belongs to God. And I'm entrusted to use 100% of it, well, not 10% of it. There's the famous dichotomy between savers and spenders, right? So savers, this is a gross oversimplification. But savers are a bit more motivated by fear. We've been talking about the primal energies, survival instincts in all of us of fear and of greed. So they're a bit more motivated by fear, by the need for safety and security. Whereas spenders are a bit more motivated by greed. I want more. That kind of lust for things. I never really know what I am. I feel like I somehow I'm the worst of both. I have both fear and greed in my heart. But there is a third option, not a saver or a spender, but a steward. One who as an act of apprenticeship to Jesus is working to thoughtfully, wisely, intelligently, humbly, quietly in a disciplined manner, channel God's resources to a good end. But this raises, of course, 8,000 questions. What do I keep? What do I give? And where? And to whom? What's my relationship to the church? What about to the poor? What's an appropriate standard of living? Where's the line between enjoying our life before God and wasting his resources? How expensive of a dinner is too much of a dinner? What kind of car should I drive? How often should I replace it? How many pairs of shoes should I own? Hint less than 19, et cetera. Like there's just a million questions. And I get how complex this is. in Los Angeles, we live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I'm raising three teenagers, which are just like giant holes in my debit account. It's like, you know, the bank now texts you like an alert when like they think somebody may have like stolen your money. And it's like, no, that's just my teenager, my teenager, my teenager, all of the time. It costs so, in all seriousness, it is insane. How much it costs just to get by here? How do I, for one, weigh generosity to the poor next to my responsibility to my kids? I get that it is not simple. So I'm not here to offer you black and white dogmatic answers. But these are still the right kinds of questions from the right kind of heart. Now I hate to break it to you. The New Testament does not clearly answer these kinds of questions. Life is relative. Most of us, even if you, the poorest person among us, likely lives as good or better than most kings and queens did for most of human history. Well if it is relative, it changes from place to place and time to time. There are not clear, black and white dogmatic answers. The New Testament does not spell it out. Instead, it calls us to the practice of discernment. To listen deeply to God with a singular desire to know and do his will. There is a practice of discernment, like a way that you kind of discern how the spirit of God is wanting to gently direct your life and how you operate, not just with wisdom or kind of street smarts, but really like with a prophetic intuition to the work of the spirit wanting to come through your life, like Paul writes in Philippians, "God is at work in you to will and do his good pleasure." It was like a technique and we could do a seminar on the practice of discernment and seven or eight kind of techniques or best practices, but it does not matter. It is a waste of breath unless you have the heart of a disciple of Jesus. Let's just speak Lord. Your servant is listening. That's what Mary said to the servants. Whatever he says to do, do it. That's what Mary said to the angel. May it be to me according to your word. That's the heart. It's what Jesus said to the Father, not my will, but your will be done. You have to have that heart. God, I just want to know and do your will. By the way, the Father may come back to you and say, "What do you want to do?" This is what's really confusing. As you mature in your faith, the answers get less clear, not more clear. And God start asking you questions. Like, wait a minute, it's supposed to go one way. Straight, right? I thought you're the boss and I just do what you say. No, you're the lead servant. Sit at the table. Let me make you dinner. Let's sit. Let's dream together. What ideas are in your heart for how to stew or these resources to a good end? That's what our God is like. So there aren't clear rules to follow, but that doesn't mean that we're flying blind. There are in Paul at least six basic guidelines, just from his letter to the Corinthians. Our giving should be, let me just blow through these, one regular, not sporadic. He writes, "On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money." Notice he says, "A sum of money." He doesn't say a number or percentage, but he does say a timestamp every single week or regular. You, proportional, each of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income. Meaning the more money you make, the greater percentage you should give. This is where tithing is a horrible strategy for anybody beyond a very basic middle-class life. If you are barely able to fund your basic necessities, you're still called to generosity, but it's going to look very different for you than if you say start a company and it goes wild and you have way more than you need to live on. The basic principle is the more you make, the more you give. Three, sacrificial. They gave as much as they were able, referring to the Macedonians, and even beyond their ability. Meaning our giving should hurt a bit. There should be times when we give, and it's like that story from last week, we have a churro party afterwards and we're like, "Yeah, that was a beautiful story." Some of you were not here last week, that was the weirdest aside. It's a good story, all right? And it's just like a churro dance party. Great. There are other times when we give, and we're like going to a mild depression for a few days afterwards. Not mild depression. Times when we feel pain in our heart, because it's like a cutting away. There's very few of us that do not have an unhealthy, inordinate attachment to our money and our stuff. And so when we often cut it away on the other side of that, down a ways, and I'm not talking about the $20 churros here, I'm talking about the bigger stuff, down a ways is joy and freedom, but short-term and often just is like going into surgery for the heart. It's like, "Ah, that hurts. There should regularly be things that we want to buy and we don't in order to give." Here's CS Lewis. I do not believe one can settle on how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, if we just live like anybody else in our tax bracket, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them. Fourth, our giving should be voluntary. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion. What God is putting in your heart, not what you put a guilt chain, trip on you or some legalistic rule, but what is God stirring in your heart, which means we have to set aside time and space to listen to God, to listen to our own heart. Fifth, it should be joyful. Four, end of that sentence, God loves a cheerful giver. Front of mind said to me recently, "God doesn't want your grumpy money." God wants a joyful freeze, I am trying to coerce you, he is invetational. And finally, motivated by a apprenticeship to Jesus, not by religious duty to check off your whatever or make sure to earn heavenly merit or something, not even by philanthropy as good of a thing as that is. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor so that you through His poverty might become rich. That's, there's only one true and proper motivation. Just we love Him because He first loved us, gratitude towards God, God's generosity. We sacrifice, we let pain into our heart, we let pain and love and life and blessing throw flow through us because it has already come to us through Christ's death and resurrection. We have to see growing in generosity as an aspect of our training under Jesus and living in the kingdom of God, all motivated by love and gratitude. So my point is we're not flying blind, there are at least basic guidelines, our giving should be regular, proportional, sacrificial, voluntary, joyful and motivated by love. But the lack of a clear rule to follow means we have to learn to listen to the spirit of God in our heart. We have to learn how to like put away our phone, that right there might take you seven years and to sit quietly before God to let our heart come to peace. But the deep desires where the spirit of God is one with our own spirit come to the surface as God's gentle invitations. With the words and phrases and scriptures and truths of God's gentle loving direction come into our mind and pass before our field of vision and let God direct our life. To sit there quietly before God on a regular basis and hold up our resources, whether it's twenty extra dollars or a company we just sold or anything in between and say, "Okay, Father, what do you want me to do with these resources?" I'm your steward, I'm your manager. How should we channel these together to the good and the beautiful and the true? Do you do this? Do you listen to God? If I were to send out a quick digital survey right now with three options, which one would describe you best? One, I do not listen to God either because I don't want to or just I want to know how to hear God's voice. I'm new to this whole thing and I have a phone and I have no idea how to hear God's voice. I don't even understand what you're talking about with thoughts coming into my mind that are from God. I don't listen to God. Two, I listen to God but not about money and generosity. I don't ask them about that. That is, I would imagine 70 or 80% of us were like, yeah, I listened to God about like, who should I ask out on a date or what fun things should I? I listened to God all the time about my identity or whatever, but I don't like listening about my budget or whether or not I should buy this pair of shoes or this car or I don't listen about that kind of stuff. Or three, I listened to God about money and generosity. This is for me to live, to enjoy gratitude and joy. This is for me to give away where to whom? This is for me to build for the future, what when? Many of us don't listen to God about money and generosity because we're scared of what God may say. Terrified. And you know, like there's a story about him asking, you know, people to give away a lot. And every sermon I've ever heard on a story explains how that's not for everybody. It's just for that one person. Like yeah, but you know, like the Bible is for everybody and it's in the Bible. So it's clearly for some people, not just one people, we're so scared that God may ask us to give something away because still believe the lies of our culture, whether it's fear, what if I give that away? Will I be safe? Will I be okay? Will I make it? Will I end up poor like my family, like my old dad or greed? But yeah, but I won't be happy anymore. How, that's gonna be a miserable way to live even though it's actually the opposite. You still believe, lie after lie after lie. We don't actually believe, we don't actually trust, I think it's a better translation of the Greek word. That God is our Father. And He's our provider. I'm new to LA and I am so stressed out about how expensive this city is. You know who did not go to bed last night stressed about money? It's my kids. But I just, I've not even thought about it. (audience laughing) At all. They will. But they have not. And I have a thousand flaws, thousand and one, but they have a mom and a dad who are hardworking and do our best to steward our resources well and love them a lot and we will do what we will take care of them. They don't have to worry. They should just be kids and go to bed and sleep well. What if we were to actually believe that God is our Father? What if we were just to sleep and trust and then wake up and dream with Him about what to do joyfully with the resources, whether it is hundreds of millions or $500 or $5 or $6 or $7. Either way, what we do with what we have. This is why God, why Jesus in this very same passage and I wish we had time for the whole thing, says, do not be afraid. Right before His command to sell your possessions and give it to the fourth, line before 32, do not be what afraid little flock. For your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. I don't have an accurate statistical breakdown of Spender, Savior, who is more motivated by fear or greed. My suspicion is there are more of us for whom fear is the dominant emotional challenge than greed. Don't be afraid. You don't have to worry, little flock, little sheep with a shepherd. Children with a Father, your Father has been pleased. God is not a stingy investor out to maximize His profit margins. He's not coming in hot with venture capital buying out your company, trying to shred 30% of costs and just twist the thing in a year to make maximum amount of money. That's not who God is. That may be who your boss is. That may be who you are. That may be, but that's not who God is. He is a loving, generous Father who wants to bless you as a son or a daughter and through you wants His blessing to come to all. To that end, our exercise for this coming week. If you want to do more than just hear this, you want to actually in Jesus' language put it into practice. You want to not just let this truth come in one ear and out the other. You will forget everything I said by Thursday afternoon, probably by this afternoon. If you want to actually get this into your body, just an exercise for you this coming week is to begin listening to God about money and generosity. We put a discernment exercise in the guide for you. If you don't have one yet, you can get one outside or a free digital version online. This will guide you step by step through some reflection questions designed to get you to listen to God, identify what barriers stand between you and a life of generosity, whether they're pragmatic barriers. I'm in debt or we over bought our house or I need to figure out a job situation or deeper psychospiritual ones of resistance in your heart or whatever it may be. We'll gently guide you through that. Our reach exercise is twofold for those of you that want to level up and do even more. This is a little surprising. Enjoy something good in your life and share it with someone else. So this could be as simple as like you love coffee, it's a new coffee shop, you found out about, you want to just invite your friend out to coffee and you pay. It's nine bucks, no it's LH, it's 29 bucks. And you just want to bless somebody, right? Or it could be much more significant than that. Just open a bottle of wine, you've been saving or go out to coffee or just watch the sunset, doesn't even have to cost a penny. Just go to a bluff over the ocean with your friend and watch the sunset together and enjoy your life as an act of gratitude. What's the best thing you can give somebody who gives you a lavish generous gift? Go enjoy it and be grateful. I do that to God. But really our invitation this week is to radically rethink our relationship to money and our resources, to begin to think of ourselves not as owners or non-owners, but as caretakers, as stewards, and ultimately as sons and as daughters of a loving, generous, joyful father. Let's stand together and pray. Jesus, we are so grateful. Your teachings often sound so hard at first. They often sound like bad news, frankly, not good news. But when we have the faith to just obey you, even if in simple, small steps, we quickly realize you are so kind. And we thank you that your way is not like Los Angeles way, that your values are not America's values, and you invite us to live in a whole other kingdom, by a whole different way of life with you. Thank you. We love you. Amen. [Music]