I’ve not been a pastor for 14 years now, and I was a pastor for 14 years. So I’m kind of finishing a phase of my life of not being a pastor equaled the time that I was a pastor. Yet I feel very close to pastoral ministry probably because several of my very closest friends are pastors, a couple of my own pastors I meet with every Thursday morning in a Bible study. I have a special love for pastors and appreciation for you and what you do and what you face. I’ve asked God if he would do a miracle of grace in my life that he might in some way use me to serve you in these few days that we have together. And in doing that, to serve him.

Rejecting a Life of Ease

Sixteen years ago, my family went on a two-month missions trip when my daughters were turning nine and the other six. Nancy and I and our daughters went to six different countries to visit missions work. One of them was Egypt. When we got into Cairo about the second or third day we were there, our friends who were missionaries in Cairo drove us down some garbage lined alleyways to a gate opening to a bunch of overgrown grass. It was what appeared to be an abandoned graveyard. Our friend Pat Thurman took us there and took me over to one tombstone in particular. He said, “I want you to take a close look at that.” So I got down on my knees, dusted it off, and what I saw were these words on this faded tombstone: William Borden, 1887 to 1913.

It was William Borden, also known as “Borden of Yale.” He was a Yale graduate. He was an heir to vast wealth. He was a millionaire by age 21. He rejected a life of ease in favor of his goal to bring the gospel to Muslims in China. But he wanted to go to Egypt to study Arabic before actually going to China. Borden gave away nearly all of his wealth to missions. After only four months of study and zealous ministry in Egypt, he contracted spinal meningitis and died at the age of 25, never having realized his dream to go to China. But William Borden’s death inspired hundreds, ultimately thousands to become missionaries, as much as 40 years later, those five men killed by the Auca Indians did.

I dusted off the inscription on the headstone of Borden’s grave after describing his love for Christ and his commitment and his love for the Muslim people and his sacrifices for God’s kingdom. The inscription ended with some words that I wrote down on the spot and I have never forgotten to this day: “Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.” I thought, “Lord, what’s the explanation for my life?” I’ll ask you, what’s the explanation for yours?

Well, our friends, not by design, but this is just the way it worked out in the schedule, took us straight from Borden’s grave to the Egyptian National Museum where we saw the King Tut exhibit, which was mind-boggling. It was not the one that toured the US with just a tiny fraction of the holdings, but the whole thing. Tutankhamun was a boy king, only 17 years old when he died. He was buried with solid gold chariots, thousands of golden artifacts — gold tombs within gold tombs within gold tombs. It was tons and tons and tons of gold.

Now, I was struck by the contrast between the two graves, so to speak, I had just visited. Borden’s was obscure, hidden off this back alley on a garbage littered street. Tutankhamun’s overflowed with unimaginable wealth. But I kept thinking, “Where are these two men now?” One who called himself king and had incredible wealth, as far as we know, is in a Christless eternity. And the other, who lived a generous, modest life on earth in service of the one true king, by the grace of Christ, is enjoying his presence forever. You can’t take it with you. The Pharaohs thought you could. That’s why they had all that stuff buried with them. They thought they’d take it in the afterlife. They even had other slaves buried. They have slaves buried with them that they thought that they could take. But of course they were wrong. When Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb in 1922, all the riches, all the gold, all the wealth was still there, but Tut was gone. He didn’t take it with him.

Wealthiest in the World

Now, nearly all of us in this room share something in common with these men and you may wonder, “What is it?” Well, we are all among the top 10 percent of the wealthiest people who have ever lived. Many of us are in the top 5 percent. The poor people in our churches are among the top 15 percent of the wealthiest people who have ever lived. These two young men epitomized two life options that are available to us all. One hoarded wealth for the glory of self, the other yielded wealth and used it joyfully for the glory of Christ. Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.

Will that be said of our lives? Is that the heritage we are leaving our children and our friends and our churches? You know, it doesn’t take much to leave an inheritance. Pretty much all you have to do is accumulate and die. Most of us are fairly good at that. But it does take a great deal, doesn’t it, to leave a heritage? It is difficult to leave a godly heritage that transforms by virtue of a contagious example.

Potential for Joy

Now the topic of money is massive, it’s convicting, it’s guilt producing, and it’s also potentially joyful and liberating. I struggle to know where to draw the lines in my life. I have some progress and victory in some areas in terms of money and money management and investing in God’s kingdom. But I have so far to go. I am not presenting myself as an expert, but I am presenting myself as a fellow disciple of Jesus Christ who desires to please him. The tension we live with in this area will never be fully resolved until we meet him face to face. But we can’t wait until then. We dare not wait until then to come to grips with his truths. We need to address them now while with God’s empowerment, we can revise our lives in light of those truths.

So I readily acknowledge I’m unworthy and inadequate, but what else is new? So are you. Unworthy and inadequate. And may our unworthiness and our inadequacy provide the backdrop for the magnificence of Christ, for the glory of God who should get any credit for any change, any transformation, or any miracle of grace in our life that it has taken or is going to take for us to follow him in this area of money and possessions. Tonight, we’ll look at money in the disciple. Tomorrow morning, money in the pastor tomorrow evening, money in the church. There will be considerable overlap In some ways, it’ll be a single message given in three parts.

Sayings of Jesus

Now to begin with, I’m going to read some words of Jesus, what Jesus said about money. And you may even wish to close your eyes and let the words sink in. Pretend that you are hearing them for the first time. It’s hard to do because you have heard them before, but don’t let their familiarity take the edge off these words:

• Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal (Matthew 6:19–20).
• And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mark 10:21).
• And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).
• But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation (Luke 6:24).
• And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).
• Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys (Luke 12:33).
• Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 16:24).
• So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:33).

Now, have you ever studied passages of Scripture in the hopes that the original languages will somehow help you get around them? I have done that. And sure enough, in the original Greek it says “does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” means “does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” That’s why they translated it that way. That’s what it means. I’ve looked at some of these passages and I’ve really wanted to kind of do something with them to kind of twist them and tweak them a little bit or more than a little bit. But we are not God’s speech writers, are we? We are not God’s editors. We’re just his messenger boys. And as pastors, Christian leaders, it’s not our job to airbrush what he said; it’s to communicate and obey what he said. Sometimes I think that we kind of feel like we need to bail God out and make him appear to be more reasonable than he sounds.

As C.S. Lewis put it, Aslan is not a tame lion. You can’t just take him and make him be the way you want him to be or make him come across better. So let’s not go in front of him as his PR entourage. He doesn’t need that. Let’s go behind him as his disciples, his followers, as men who are sold out to be who God has called us to be and to do what he has called us to do. In the process we will see some hard things, but we will also see that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and there is that paradox that’s always there.

The American Church and the Words of Christ

I do all right when I compare myself to the American church at large. I can think, “Well, I’m not as materialistic as most Christians, so there.” That is kind of like saying, “Most Christians worship 12 idols. Me, I only have three or four.” We have to say, “Well, you know what? Comparing ourselves to each other is not what it’s about. What we’ve got to do is say, ‘Is Mammon a stronghold in our lives? Is it having a grip on us and on our churches and our evangelical community and our families?’” And if it is, idols need to be dealt with in very strong and very harsh ways. The true God needs to be enthroned in our lives so that we can see him and everyone else can see him by what we do with our money, which we’ll see in a little bit of course is really his.

Now, where I really come up short is when I compare myself to all these many, many things that Jesus said. Fifteen percent of everything Jesus said related to money and possessions. He made more references to money and possessions than to either prayer or faith. He talked more about money and possessions than he did about heaven and hell combined.

I remember 17 years ago when I was a pastor, I planned a three-week sermon series on money and I started studying it and I did what probably a lot of you do. I just started compiling passages and I thought, “Well, I’m not going to deal with all these passages, but I’m just going to put some together here and sort of piece it together.” Well, three weeks later I was still trying to piece it together. I was finding all of this stuff and I thought, “This is really amazing. I’ve read the Bible for years. I’m a pastor for crying out loud, but I never realized how much it had to say about money and possessions.”

My friend Howard Dayton who’s now CEO of Crown Financial Ministries back then was a businessman and he went through the Bible and underlined all the verses that he felt were dealing directly with money and possessions and he ended up underlining nearly 2,400 verses. The study I did for those messages became the core ultimately of my book, Money, Possessions, and Eternity. I was putting a lot more research into it, but I thought it was amazing that Scripture says so much.

I went to Bible College in seminary and I never had a single course on money and possessions or stewardship or giving. There were no required classes and there were no electives. I had courses on subjects that the Bible had a great deal less to say about. In fact, I had courses the Bible had nothing to say about, and so did most of you. But why is something so important left out? I mean, we’d touch on it occasionally maybe in a Bible class. If I happened to be in the stewardship parables, we’d really quickly move from this one to the next one, but nothing was carefully addressed.

Fruit in Keeping with Repentance

I remember some years ago I was on a plane. I opened up my Bible and I turned to a passage. The passage was in Luke 3. Have you ever had passages that just stick out to you and you’ve seen them so many times before, but all of a sudden your eyes are open to something that you’ve never seen before? In Luke 3:7–8, it says:

[John] said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.

Moving ahead a couple of verses, they’re responding directly to his statement “produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” The crowd asked, “What should we do then?” They’re getting the message that they know that he means that something needs to be done that’s different. Produce fruit that’s in keeping with repentance. John answered:

Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise (Luke 3:11).

So give your tunic and give your food. Then it says:

Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” (Luke 3:12).

So he says to them:

Collect no more than you are authorized to do (Luke 3:13)

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied:

Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages (Luke 3:14).

Now, the only part of this passage that is subject to a certain amount of interpretation to try to figure out what he meant was the second thing he said when he said to the soldiers, “Don’t accuse people falsely.” How would a soldier accuse someone falsely? Well, probably the best understanding is that what they would do is they functioned as military police. And so if they saw somebody who had a possession that they wanted for themselves, they could say, “That’s been reported as stolen. That’s really not yours. I will confiscate it for the government.” And then they would take it and keep it themselves. That’s probably what it means.

But in any case, John has given six answers to the question about what we should do to show that we are repentant, that what fruit is being produced that demonstrates repentance. And incredibly, at least five out of the six (and probably six out of the six things he says) are all about money and possessions and having to change attitude and actions concerning money and possessions.

A Transformative Work Related to Possessions

Well, what’s really amazing is nobody asked John about money and possessions. That wasn’t what it was about. He could have used any number of illustrations and you would have thought that he’d throw in something about family life, relationships, Bible study, prayer, fasting, sacrifices of the temple, attendance at synagogue, etc. I mean it’s all about money and possessions. When a life is changed, it is demonstrated through a changed outlook, a changed attitude, and changed actions concerning money and possessions.

You see that in Acts 2 and Acts 4. You see it in Acts 19 with the Ephesian occultists and Luke proves how serious they were and how committed to Christ they were by the fact that they burned these magic books that were worth 50,000 drachmas. A drachma was a day’s wage. In our economy, that’s something like 10 dollars an hour for a day’s wage. This all might amount to 4 million dollars worth of books that were destroyed and nobody would do that unless there was a transforming work of the Spirit of God in their lives.

Likewise with Zacchaeus, he said, “I’m going to give half to the poor, payback four times those I’ve cheated.” And Jesus said not just a good idea, he said, “Today salvation has come to this house” because clearly a man would not do that unless he was transformed, unless he had a movement of God’s Spirit in his life that had brought him to repentance and change and transformation.

Likewise in Matthew 19 with a rich young ruler, he’s kind of the negative counterpart to Zacchaeus because he isn’t willing to part with what he has and he goes away sorrowfully and it says that Jesus loved him, but Jesus measured that he had not been converted, that he had not been repentant, that he had not come to faith by virtue of the fact that he was unwilling to change his attitude and actions concerning money and possessions.

Monetary Sensibilities

Well, let’s test ourselves. Let’s imagine we have two pastoral appointments with people in our church this afternoon. First, there is an elderly woman who’s living alone on Social Security with no family and then a middle-aged man who’s a successful businessman. You’re the pastor. The woman says to you, “Pastor, my cupboards are bare. This two dollars is all I have, but I feel like God wants me to put these two dollars in the offering.” What would you tell her? Well, maybe you’d say something like this. Doesn’t this sound reasonable? “Well, that is really very generous of you, dear. But God gave you common sense. He knows your heart. He knows that you want to give, but he wants you to eat. And surely, God would have you keep that two dollars and buy food. We have a deacons fund for people like you. God wants us to do the sensible thing. If you really have to give something, maybe you could give 20 cents of that two dollars, but no more.”

Your next appointment is with a businessman. His company is growing. He tells you, “I’m planning on tearing down the old warehouse, building a new one. I’m going to store up more inventory. My goal is to generate enough money, put it into the bank, retire early, and spend some time on the beach and get some golfing in.” Okay, what do you think? What’s your answer? Well, I can’t say what you would say, but I could imagine somebody saying, “Well, okay, sounds good to me. I mean, you’ve worked hard. The Lord has blessed your business. He’s provided this money. Hey, if you can save enough to take care of yourself for the rest of your life, go for it. Maybe one day I’ll be in the position to do the same.”

Now, doesn’t our advice to this poor widow and this rich man seem reasonable? What would Jesus say? Well, we really don’t need to speculate, do we? Because we know what he said. Jesus watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury.

And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on” (Mark 12:41–44).

Well, does Jesus say it was unwise for her to surrender her only remaining resources? No, he commends her. That’s interesting. We might have talked her out of it, but he commends her for it.

A Rich Fool Living the American Dream

Well, then comes your second appointment, and this sets the context.

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’” (Luke 12:15–19).

Now, we are not told that this rich man gained his wealth dishonestly. It does not say he cheated. It doesn’t say he stole. It doesn’t say he beat his wife. It doesn’t really say anything bad about him beyond a description of something which would be quite familiar with us in this culture. For all we know, he may have gone to synagogue regularly. He may have prayed, he may have visited the temple, and he may even have tithe. He wants to retire early, relax, and enjoy himself. Sound familiar? Well, it should. It’s the American dream, isn’t it? So then Jesus added:

But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God (Luke 12:20–21).

So clearly, here was a man who was storing up treasures for himself on earth but was not rich toward God. The poor widow was rich toward God and therefore had a giving heart. The rich fool was rich toward himself but not rich toward God.

Statistics on Giving

Now, you’ve probably heard some of the alarming statistics on the giving of American Christians. And they are very alarming. I like the way that David Livingstone put it when he said this:

I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interest of that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by the giving or keeping of it I shall most promote the glory of him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity.

Sometimes it’s just fine to keep. We all keep a certain amount. We need to. We have to do that to live on things. But even as we keep, we keep to the glory of God. And certainly as we give, we give to the glory of God. But when we are called to keep, we hold it very loosely.

The average evangelical Christian in America gives away 2.5 percent of his income. That includes his local church and anything and everything else including in an animal shelter or United Way, you name it.

Now, during the Great Depression, the average American household, not the average American Christian household, just the average American household gave away 3.2 percent of its income. So the average Christian today in the wealthiest society in human history gives less proportionately than the average American gave during The Great Depression. Well, if our handling of money is a test from God of our faithfulness, I fear men that we and our churches and our families are failing that test. Do you remember when Jesus said, “If you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?”

How many true riches are not being entrusted to us because we have not learned what it means to reciprocate God’s grace? Because God’s grace to us is lightning and our giving to him is thunder. There is a proper order for lightning and thunder. Lightning comes first. God moves in his grace in our lives. We respond reflexively in reaction to what he has done in us, and we give. What is grace, but giving? That’s what grace means.

The grace of God is God’s giving nature, which he extends to us in a gift, in repeated gifts, in gifts in the air that we breathe, gifts in the common graces of creation, and gifts above all in the Lord Jesus Christ.

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 by his poverty might become rich.

This is the grace of God. And do you know, the passage I just quoted is right in the middle of a passage of Scripture that’s all about giving. It’s the biggest passage on giving in Scripture. Right at the heart of it, it even ends with, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift” (2 Corinthians 9:15). It’s his gift in Christ. So our giving is a response to God’s grace which he extends to us.

An Alarming Lack of Generosity

Now, this is what alarms me most about the 2.5 percent figure. It’s not simply that not enough is coming in to do God’s work that does concern me, but my concern is what does it say about the extent to which we are experiencing the grace of God in our lives? Because if we were really experiencing the grace of God in our lives, wouldn’t it be overflowing in giving? Here’s another thing that concerns me about that statistic. I know people who give away 90 percent of their income to the Lord. I know people who give away 60 percent, 50 percent, and 40 percent. And then there’s a fair number of people that give away 10%. And you know what all those levels of giving do? They pull that 2.5 percent figure way up to 2.5 percent. Statistics indicate that about 40 percent of those who call themselves evangelical Christians, born again Christians, give absolutely nothing.

I would suggest that without being judgmental, that that probably reflects that they don’t know Jesus. Or if they do, they don’t understand grace very much. It seems like you’d have to have at least a little inkling of grace to have a relationship with Christ. And it falls upon our shoulders of course as pastors, whether you’re a preaching pastor or teaching pastor, you work with a certain age group in the church or you’re in an administrative position, whatever it might be. Or maybe you’re a layman that’s very active in your church, church leader and elder, a deacon, whoever you are. It falls upon our shoulders to figure out what’s going on in our churches and what we can do to make the grace of God more real, or to extend it to people’s life, or to help them see the implications of his grace and what it really means to be a disciple, a follower of Christ. Of course, in order to do that, we must experience it. We must be givers.

Examples to the Flock in Giving

Analysts project that 41 trillion dollars will be transferred in the U.S. over the next 50 years. A trillion is a million millions. So this is just unimaginable wealth. The U.S. has 4.5 percent of the world’s population but controls over half the world’s wealth. But here’s a really more staggering statistic. Of all worldwide wealth that is in the hands of Christians, about 80 percent of it is controlled by American Christians. Now think about that. Of all the worldwide wealth that is in the hands of Christians, about 80 percent is controlled by American Christians. So who is trading and guiding these American Christians in their stewardship? Who is shaping their theology and mentoring them in their walk with Christ? Who is their shepherd? Who is their pastor? I bet you have it figured out by now.

We look in our mirror, brothers, and it’s us. And I say it’s us because in my heart I feel that I’m still a pastor and I work closely with the pastors of my church and we’re called the shepherd people. But in order for us to be guiding them to this radical place they’ve never been before in terms of giving and experiencing God’s grace related to it, we need to not fear to tread there ourselves because the sheep don’t go where the shepherd doesn’t take them. So we have to search our hearts, and sometimes it’s painful to search our hearts. So how do you live differently? How do you give differently? How do I live and give differently because I’m his disciple? Paul tells Timothy and all pastors, “Watch your life and doctrine closely” (1 Timothy 4:16). We need to take a close hard look at ourselves on our own stewardship, our own giving, our own lifestyle choices.

More Blessed to Give

I was raised in a non-Christian home when I came to Christ as a teenager. I read God’s Smuggler and Tortured for Christ. My heart was so moved. I took the money I earned berry picking and harvesting cauliflower. I gave a lot of it away to persecuted Christians. I’ll never forget how I felt. I could hardly sleep at night because I was so excited that I had the privilege of helping somebody who was in need. I can tell you that wasn’t my spirit before I came to Christ. That was one of the evidences of the presence of God in my life. I was a changed teenage boy who had been pretty selfish. And I don’t mean that there’s no selfishness left in me, I just mean there was a joy in giving.

Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). What blessings are our people missing at that 2.5%? What blessings are we missing because we have not learned to give. Giving ultimately is the only antidote to materialism. I think it’s the only way to break the back of Mammon, the money god. Pascal said:

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remains to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from his surroundings. Seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object. That is to say, only by God himself.

Looking for God in a Brothel

Every time we or our people are trying to find happiness in money, it’s not really money we’re looking for. It’s not really what money can buy that we’re looking for, is it? It’s God we’re looking for. We’re just looking in the wrong place. That’s what people seek. To get it straight from Scripture. Jeremiah 2:11–13 says:

Has a nation changed its gods,
     even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their Glory
     for that which does not profit.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
     be shocked, be utterly desolate,
     declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters,
     and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
     broken cisterns that can hold no water.

That’s what Mammon is, the false God of materialism. Money and sex are probably two of the greatest false gods in our society. People go after them and go after them and they think that they’re really looking for things that money and sex off — including adulterous relationships and fornication and everything else — when in fact who they’re really looking for is God. Wasn’t it Chesterton who said that every man who goes to the door of a brothel is looking for God? It’s so true. We need to show people the one who can meet the deepest needs of their soul. So every time you preach about the magnificence of Christ and you lift him up, he’s lofty and exalted and people see him, you are, you are resisting and fighting and laying a blow to Mammon.

Every time we make it clear to people that they’re made for a person and they’re made for a place, Jesus is that person and heaven is that place, we affirm the Lordship of Christ, the centrality of Jesus, that he is the one that people long for and that nothing else can satisfy them. No other person and no other place can ultimately satisfy the deepest longings and needs of your soul but Jesus. There is no other person than Jesus and no other place than heaven.

Accountability for Materialism

One of the things that we’ve got to do, men, is that there is a final frontier in accountability. We have not reached it yet. I praise God that much has been said and in fact done about accountability in the last number of years. It’s increasingly common for Christian men to be asking each other the tough questions: “How’s your prayer life? How’s your marriage? Are you spending time in the word? Have you been guarding your thought life? How about your sexual purity?” But how often do we ask? “So Bob, how much have you been giving to the Lord? Have you been robbing God lately? Are you winning the battle against materialism? How’s your thought life when it comes to covetousness, which is idolatry? Have you been staying away from those magazines? You know the kind I mean, the kind that keep tempting you to spend more money on things you don’t need.” We’re not there yet, and I think we need to be, don’t we? I mean, seriously, don’t we?

Maybe if you walk away with one thing from what I’m saying, if it’s a vision for introducing this whole area of money and possessions into the realm of the accountability that we’re trying rightly to foster among the men in particular and the women as well of our churches. I congratulate all of you who labor to do that and are doing a magnificent job in getting people to open up in these important areas of their life.

While we’re talking about that, gods of sex and money, let’s face it, men, we’ve read the statistics. We know that in a gathering of this size of pastors, that there are hundreds of men who are addicted to internet pornography — not dozens, hundreds. It’s very clear. All the different poles show that. And if that’s true of you, let this weekend be the beginning of deliverance for you. Talk to somebody. Pour out your heart. Repent. Then enjoy the rest of the weekend as a disciple, a learner because your heart has been free from one false god and then can be perhaps free from another.

We all struggle in these realms, but we can have victory and should have victory in these struggles and consistently be living lives of purity and lives characterized by the love of Christ, not the love of money. This is not an impossible dream. God does not command us to do these things without his grace empowering us to do these things. So we must raise the bar for each other, not lower it.

Mammon Must Come Down

I remember a number of years ago when I was still a pastor, a single man in our church felt God wanted him to sell his house and give it all the money away to missions. He was really excited about this. He told me about it and I said, “Go for it, brother. I’m thrilled for you. I’m proud of you.” He had a great income. It was no problem for him to relocate. In his excitement, he made a mistake. Do you know what the mistake was? He shared it with his home Bible study group. And guess what? They talked him out of it.

Disciples do not talk each other out of giving, any more than we would talk each other out of purity. The Christian community should be filled with people who set a cap on their lifestyles: “This is all we need to live on. By God’s grace, we will live at this level and everything beyond that that God provides will go to help the poor, will go to the cause of world evangelism, will go to missions, will go to the glory of Christ because I don’t need it.” To a disciple, this should be common sense, but it’s not common sense. So some idols are going to fall on their own when people learn to think correctly and follow Christ, but the idol of Mammon is one that takes the ropes to be thrown around it and pulled to the ground like those statues of Saddam Hussein.

I remember my friend Steve Keels, one of my pastors, in 1991 we were in the Ukraine, still under the former Soviet Union at that time. We were there on Lenin’s Day, this great national holiday of Lenin’s birthday. We looked out the window of our hotel and there were a whole bunch of people that had thrown ropes around a huge statue of Lenin and they were pulling it to the ground. We were standing there trembling, thinking about the implications in that society, not knowing what was going to happen next. But you know that statue of Lenin did not come down easily. And Mammon does not come down easily. Some idols require a frontal attack.

God’s Investment Manager

In your registration packet, in that sack, there’s a little card in there, a business card type size. Some of you have that with you, some of you saw it. You don’t have to look at it now, but you might be interested in this. It’s something that I designed a while back and put some Scripture together and saw that I could first stick it in my own wallet next to my cash and credit card. And it says, “God owns everything; I’m his investment manager.” I’ll show you the passages of Scripture here that are on it:

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,
     the world and those who dwell therein . . . (Psalm 24:1).

The land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me (Leviticus 25:23).

The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts (Haggai 2:8).

Are you starting to get the point? Right about now you’re thinking, “Okay, well I guess it pretty much all belongs to God. I guess the only thing that belongs to me is myself.”

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

None of it belongs to us. It all belongs to him. Aren’t you glad by the way? What a relief. It’s my stewardship. I’m God’s money manager.

[God] gives you power to get wealth . . . (Deuteronomy 8:18).

Not only money belongs to God but the ability to produce wealth. We don’t get credit for that either. Paul says:

What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? (1 Corinthians 4:7).

It is required of stewards that they be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4:2).

We will all stand before the judgment seat of God . . . then each of us will give an account of himself to God (Romans 14:10–12).

That little documentary there, that three-minute documentary about Stanley Tam. He was impressed with his concept of God’s ownership. It wasn’t enough for him to give token amounts. It wasn’t enough for him to say 51%. He said, “No, it all belongs to God.” It’s all his. I am his money manager. It doesn’t belong to me. God does not give us a title deed or a certificate of ownership. He grants us a temporary use permit. We need a theology of stewardship in our churches. Spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

A Sacrifice of Life for the Cause of Christ

Question: How does a young Christian in our churches learn to give? Where can he go to see what giving looks like in the life of a believer captivated by Christ? Then why are we surprised when seeing no other example he takes his cues from a materialistic society and the church becomes essentially just a baptized version of the world? It pretty much has the same values, hopefully a little higher moral standards, though you wonder about that sometimes. That’s why I am about to tell you a personal story. But before I do, I’m going to tell you another story.

From my novel Safely Home, I’m just going to read to you the dedication because that dedication briefly tells a story about some people that we spent some time with. Gladys and Esther Staines. My daughters and my wife and I had dinner with her in San Diego with Gladys and her daughter Esther about four years ago and decided to dedicate this book to them and also to Gladys’s husband and two other children. Here’ what it says:

To Graham Staines who left his home in Australia to serve lepers in India for 34 years. Philip Staines, age 10, and Timothy Staines, age 6, who at half past midnight on January 23rd, 1999 as their father held his arms around them were burned to death by a mob in India, murdered because of the Christ they knew and served. To Gladys Staines, who continues to minister to lepers and who said to all of India, “I am not bitter or angry. I have one great desire, that each citizen of this country should establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ who gave his life for their sins.” And to Esther Staines, Graham and Gladys’s daughter (age 13). She said, “I praise the Lord that he found my father worthy to die for him.”

Now, where do you suppose that girl got her theology? It was from some faithful parents passing on an incredible perspective. I just exchanged an email last week with Gladys. She was telling me again of how the painting that is inside the cover of Safely Home that my friend Ron DiCianni painted. We sent her a copy of the painting and it hangs in her home. She’s in India ministering to lepers in the name of Jesus just a few miles from where three of her family members were murdered. She is faithfully serving Christ. In the email she said, “I’ve been thinking about heaven a lot lately.” And so should we all.

Now, there’s two reasons I tell you this story. One is these are the kinds of stories that we need to know and that we need to hear, so that then it really sheds a light on things like 2.5 percent. Even 10 percent of our income in the wealthiest society that’s ever existed is an incredibly small amount. And ultimately, the shameful level of our giving comes out of a life where things have mass and mass has gravity and it holds us in orbit around it, and we have to break out of it. But the only way we can is to shift our center of gravity to the ruler of the universe — the only one who is God, the only one who is worthy to open the scroll. It’s he who purchased men for God from every tribe and nation and language.

When he’s the center of your life, the center of your gravity shifts over here. All of a sudden now your life goes in orbit around him. And a way that happens is because your heart follows your treasure. The more you give your treasures to God, the more your heart is with God. Do you want a heart for missions? Give to missions. Your heart will follow your treasure. Do you want a heart for IBM or Microsoft? Buy up shares of them. I don’t mean that it’s wrong to buy up shares in the stock market. I’m just saying it’s a reality. You buy up shares of something and you have vested interest in it. Buy up shares in the kingdom of God. Well, that’s exactly what the Staines family has done. And that’s exactly the kind of model, the kind of history that we need to know and that we need to be able to follow.

A Story of Dependence, Grace, and Generosity

Now I’m going to tell you some of my personal story, and that’s the other reason I told the Staines story because I want to make clear that what I’m about to tell you does not constitute sacrifice in any real or meaningful way because the story I’ve just told you is a story of true sacrifice. But I am going to tell you the story because I believe God can be glorified in it because he has been glorified in the lives of myself, my wife, and my family.

In 1977, a group of us started a church in Boring, Oregon. How many of you have been in Boring, Oregon? Some of you are from that area. Yes, welcome, Boring brothers. And it’s true by the way, that in those early days the local ministerial group was named the Boring Pastors Fellowship. So we’re in Boring, Oregon and a group of us started a church. Two of us were pastors. That was in 1977. By 1990, the church was large. I was making a good salary. I was earning book royalties. I’d been on the board of a crisis pregnancy center. We’d open our home to a pregnant teenager. We’d help her give up her child for adoption to a Christian family. We had the joy of seeing Diane, this girl who had the baby, come to faith in Christ. She’s a part of our church to this day. She’s a close friend to this day. Nancy and I were burdened for dying children.

In addition to the work with crisis pregnancy centers, I started participating in peaceful non-violent civil disobedience at abortion clinics. Some of you did as well back in 1989 and 1990 in particular probably. I was arrested. I went to jail. An abortion clinic won a court judgment against me and 20 others. I told a judge I would pay anybody anything that I owed, but one thing I could not do was hand over money to people who would use it to kill babies. I discovered my church was about to receive a writ of garnishment demanding that they surrender one-fourth of my wages each month to the abortion clinic. The church would have to either pay the abortion clinic or defy the court order. To avoid this, I had to resign. The only way that I could avoid garnishment was to make no more than minimum wage.

So suddenly, I, who loved being a pastor, who if the week before you would’ve asked, “What are you going to be doing in another 20 years?” I would’ve said, “Well, as far as I know, I’ll still be a pastor at Good Shepherd Community Church.” That’s what I was doing and that’s what I loved to do. Suddenly, not only was I no longer a pastor, I couldn’t make more than minimum wage. Our daughters were nine and 11. They had a remarkable perspective. They’d been with us on mission trips as I said before. Fortunately, our family had been living only on a portion of my church salary and we’d just made our final house payment. So we were out of debt.

Judged Before Men

Another court judgment followed involving another abortion clinic. And even though our actions were completely non-violent, we’d done no damage, we received the largest judgment ever against a group of peaceful protestors, and that was 8.2 million dollars. It appeared that we would likely lose our house. We probably wouldn’t be able to keep our kids in Christian school. It seemed that our lives had taken a devastating turn for the worst. Yet it was one of the best things that has ever happened to us. It ranked right up there with another thing. In 1985, I became an insulin-dependent diabetic. And here I got this serious disease and God used it in wonderful ways to show me his grace and to cultivate dependence upon him.

By nature, I tend to be an independent person. It just has helped me so much. I take eight or nine blood tests a day. I take five insulin injections, and God has used that in terrific ways. But the other great thing that he did was through these lawsuits, it was hard. One of the things that was hard was being on the front page of the Sunday Oregonian and having even my fellow Christians believe things about me that certainly were not true that were depicted in the media as if they were. God taught me much there about entrusting myself to the one judge who judges rightly. What others intended for evil, God intended for good. And you know that it doesn’t say that they intended it for evil, but God made the best of a bad situation. It says they intended it for evil, but God intended it for good to save many lives. And that’s just what he did.

A Risk for the Sake of Love

By the way, just before that month-long court case for the 8.2 million dollar lawsuit, I was given an opportunity by the clinic to be removed from the case. But I was called the night before we were going to court by my lawyer. He said, “But because they’re doing it at the last minute, you have to agree to it or they can’t, by law, drop you. Now, of course you’re going to agree to it. And as your lawyer, it’s obvious that you should.” I said, “Well, why do you think they’re wanting to drop me?” And we started speculating about what some of the reasons might be. Maybe because I was a pastor and because I had some opportunities with the media to be able to speak up for those who could not speak for themselves, they decided perhaps it wasn’t in their best interest for me to remain on the case.

So I got off the phone. I said, “I’ll call you back, but I got to talk with and pray with my family.” So I go to my wife and my daughters. As I said, my daughters then were 11 and nine. I sit down with them and I say, “I have to tell you, we have an opportunity and here’s what it is. If we stay in this case and we don’t allow ourselves to be dropped from it, there’s a very good chance we’ll lose the house. There’s a very good chance, girls, that you won’t be able to continue to afford to go to our church’s Christian school.” I said, “I don’t know. There’s no way of knowing, but I doubt that we will win this case. What do you think we should do?”

My daughter, who is 11 years old, said, “Well, dad, I think if the abortion clinic wants to drop you from the case, it’s probably a sign that God wants you to stay on it.” And my nine-year old, Angela went, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” I looked at Nancy and she had tears in her eyes and God had already said the same thing to us really. We knew that that was the right answer. But what an encouragement to hear it from your daughters especially because one of the things that people would say was, “What are you doing to your family?” I said, “Well, I didn’t choose any of this. I didn’t want any of this, but I praise God that he did a work not only in our lives but in our family’s as well.”

An Avenue of God’s Resources

Well, we began a new ministry reflecting our love for missions and the pro-life cause. My name wasn’t on any bank accounts or checkbooks. Nancy worked at a secretary’s salary. I made minimum wage. I don’t own anything at all. I haven’t since that time. I have access to plenty. I live in a good house, drive a decent car, but I don’t own anything legally. I began to understand what God means when he says, “It all belongs to me.” And it’s very ironic that the first edition of Money, Possessions, and Eternity, in which I had given quite a bit of attention to this matter of God’s ownership came out in 1989, and that’s the year that I started in civil disobedience. And by the next year, because of the lawsuits, I no longer owned anything. Be careful what you preach on and write about. God was teaching me the life-changing implications of his ownership. I realized our house belonged to God, not to us. Why worry? God would take care of the girls. Having no legal ownership was God’s gift to me to further adopt a stewardship mentality.

Well, despite the $8.2 million court judgment, we never lost our house. Through an anonymous donor, our daughters were able to still attend our church school. Eternal Perspective Ministries, this mission and pro-life organization that we started owned every book I wrote. And then something interesting happened. When all of the books went over to Eternal Perspective Ministries and I no longer had any ownership and no longer received any of the royalties, what happened was that suddenly my books were on the bestseller list. I thought, “That’s interesting. When I owned them, they weren’t. And now they are. Wow.” Royalties dramatically increased and we gave them away, 100 percent of them went to missions, famine relief, pro-life work, urban ministries, racial reconciliation ministries, prison ministries, and other kingdom interests.

And now that I’m telling part of our giving story, I will later probably in the session tomorrow morning, give you a biblical basis for sometimes telling stories of giving. For now, trust me that I think there’s a biblical basis for doing it. I’m going to tell you this and I hope you can rejoice in God’s grace with me. We started the ministry in 1990, but I didn’t go back that far to get these figures. I had a bookkeeper supply me with the figures. Since 1997, by God’s grace, the ministry has given away more than 1 million dollars of royalties to these different causes of Christ. Sometimes I think God sells these books just to raise funds for the things that are close to his heart. There is something humbling about that because you can tell your people, “Your business, the goods and the services that you produce and offer, hopefully they’re good and hopefully they’re high quality. But maybe God is blessing your business more than anything else because he just wants first to take care of you and then to give you an excess, a lot of excess so that the majority of what he provides for you, you can give away for his kingdom to his glory.”

Hedonistic Giving

Five weeks ago, I had a wishlist of ministries and amounts I wanted to give away at the end of December. We had given away 220,000 dollars by God’s grace during the year. And it looked like we could come up with maybe another 30,000 dollars. But I was looking at all the letters and reports from all of these worthy organizations. I wanted to give more. The next day a check arrived from a publisher and it totally took me by surprise. I blanked out on this. And the check was for 62,500 dollars. And so we added it in. Our bookkeeper said, “Now Randy, I don’t think we can afford to give even with this extra 62,000 dollars more than 85,000 dollars because we’re going to have to dip into our reserve that the board wants us to have.” It looked like 85,000 dollars was the most we should reasonably give.

So we gave away 105,000 dollars, which was 20,000 more than seemed wise, cutting in significantly to that reserve. The thought occurred to me that I was going to have to explain some things to the board meeting if the Lord didn’t choose to replenish some of that. But it just seemed right because I question our need for a reserve in comparison with the needs of children dying of AIDS in Africa.

So we gave to these 16 ministries, including Operation Mobilization and Action International, organizations headed by George Verwer who’ll be speaking on Wednesday, and Doug Nichols, who came up and greeted John and I here tonight. I’m so glad that Doug’s here. If you want to talk about worthy missions organizations, Action International is one of them. So we got it together and we sent the giving checks. And I’m going to want to tell you something. The entire office was just giddy. We were laughing. We were having so much fun, so much joy because by God’s grace, the bar keeps rising year after year and it is a wonderful thing.

Brothers, I went into my office and I got down on the floor and I put my face on the ground and I wept at the privilege and the joy of giving. And you know what? When you get something out of giving like you get out of giving, it’s really not only in the best interests of God and to his glory and the people you’re giving to; it is absolutely in your best interest, and that really cuts the knees out of pride because all you’re doing is what is bringing you the most joy. And is there anything to congratulate yourself about when you’re doing the thing that brings you the most joy?

So on December 31st, we sent off those final giving checks. And then on January 12th, we received a check from someone who had never given to our ministry, didn’t know the situation, had no idea what had happened, and it was probably the second-largest check we’ve ever received in our history and it was for exactly 20,000 dollars.

The Only Antidote to Materialism

There’s so many stories like that that have happened so many times over the years, and many of you have had the same things happen in your personal life. I just want to emphasize what Nancy and I have learned — the trust, the closeness, the joy near to God and the joy. One last thing I should tell you to maybe complete the story a little bit. Three years ago, the 10-year judgment from the abortion clinic expired and our ministry board said, “Randy, we think you should start taking the royalties again because you can have them now and they can’t get them from you.” Well, Nancy and I talked about this and we prayed about it and we came to the conclusion that God had faithfully provided us for us for the past 10 years, and then he had gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars into missions and pro-life causes and all of these things. Now, why would we want to change that arrangement? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

We don’t need a higher standard of living. We don’t need a better house. We don’t need a better retirement program or more insurance. Arguably, we could do fine with less of any of those. So with joy in our hearts, we said, “No thanks. We want the ministry to keep giving it away.” And two months later, we were informed that the abortion clinic had somehow gotten the judgment extended for another 10 years. But we’re thankful we didn’t know that when we made our decision. So it all belongs to God, not to us. But he does let us put our name on the account with his and then all of us get to pay ourselves a salary out of that and take the remainder and invest it in the kingdom of God.

Giving is the only antidote to materialism. Giving is a Copernican revolution of the Christian life. The sun doesn’t revolve around the earth. The earth revolves around the sun. That’s a Copernican revolution. And giving is that. It’s that radical in the Christian life because it moves our possessions to their proper center of gravity. Giving breaks us out of the orbit of money. It breaks the hold that money has on our life. It gives us vested interest in the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is there, your heart will be also.” And in that context, Jesus said:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:19–21).

I leave you with this question, why are so many Christians today afraid to die? Do you remember the old black spirituals from the slavery era?

Soon I will be done With the troubles of the world, I'm going home to live with God. No more weepin' and wailin'

Swing low, sweet chariot Coming for to carry me home.

It’s the anticipation of being in the presence of Christ. Why are so many Christians today afraid to die? Well, I think one reason is this. We have laid up for ourselves treasures on earth, which means that each day of our life, as we get closer to the day we die, we are moving away from our treasures. Jesus said, “Turn it around. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. And then every day of your life, instead of backing away from your treasures, you’ll be headed toward your treasures.” He who spends his life moving away from his treasures has reason to despair. He who spends his life moving toward his treasures has reason to rejoice.”