“Good and Faithful Stewardess”
Sept. 20, 2008/ Proverbs 31:10-31 /Rev. Steve Young
A church was in the middle of a capital campaign to raise money for a new roof, and the donations were running far behind the campaign goal. So the pastor decided to make a personal appeal to the congregation. He would address the congregation from his heart. And in conjunction with the appeal, he asked the organist to prepare some appropriate music to play after the appeal was given.
The pastor made his best pitch to the congregation, detailing the current state of the roof, the potential damage to the church building if the roof remained
unrepaired, how much more money still needed to be raised, and he ended with words of Jesus about generous giving. He urged the congregation on: “My friends, we need your gifts today. The church needs your gifts today. Christ needs your gifts.” Finally he said, “The Lord is leading me to challenge you this morning. I would like to challenge each of you who can to pitch in $100 to this cause. I want you to stand up right where you are and make your commitment to contribute $100 to this important cause.”
For a few uncomfortable seconds there was no response. No one stood up at all.
And then the organist began to play a rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
That’s not the first time that a good organist has rescued a fumbling preacher.
Now when many people think of stewardship they do tend to think of those tricky little gimmicks that churches sometimes do in order to get people to part with their hard-earned dollars. When some people hear the word “stewardship” they think of a package or a program or a campaign or a drive.
But in the Bible, stewardship is not about financial campaigns at all. Rather, in the Bible stewardship is about doing what we can with what we have in order to honor God and to further his kingdom.
Stewardship is not primarily about money—stewardship is about all of what we are. It’s about the use of our time, the use of our talents, the use of our material resources, and the use of our personalities. Stewardship views all of life as a gift, a gift from God to us. And stewardship involves our responsibility to use whatever gifts God has given us to honor and glorify him. The biblical notion of stewardship teaches that we are all stewards accountable to our Master and that one day each of us will have to give an account of our stewardship to him.
Now accountability according to the Bible is based on what one has been given by God, not on the basis of what someone else has been given. Do you remember Jesus’ parable of the talents? The man in Jesus’ parable who received one talent is not judged because someone else had been given five talents. Not at all. Rather he was judged because he did nothing with the one talent that he had (Matt. 25:24-27).
Stewardship is doing what you can with what you have for the glory of God. The person who can’t carry a tune in a bucket is not judged because he doesn’t join the choir. Actually some choir members may actually breathe a sigh of relief if he doesn’t join. The person who can’t handle public speaking is not judged because he doesn’t volunteer to teach a class. The class will be better off with someone who is comfortable speaking before a group.
In the realm of the stewardship of time, the person who is holding down two jobs and still has responsibilities at home is not judged because he can’t commit to serving as a volunteer for church or community. Stewardship is based on what we first have been given.
And the person who is living on a shoestring is not judged because he cannot make a $10,000 gift to the church or to charity. By the way, that insert in the bulletin last Sunday of a stair-step that represented ever-increasing levels of giving—we decided not to identify the numbers of people who were giving at each level here at Bethany. Because it might give the impression that stewardship is about how much you give, and not on what you are doing with what you have.
The Apostle Paul said, “If the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have” (2
Cor. 8:12).
And Jesus once said, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48). And we may assume that the corollary is true that from those to whom less has been given, less will be required.
Now so far this morning I’ve been using masculine pronouns exclusively in my references to stewardship. But biblical stewardship is gender neutral, even though all the particular stewards mentioned in the Bible are male--Joseph’s steward (Gen. 43:16-17), David’s stewards (1
Chron. 28:1), Herod’s steward (Luke 8:3), the stewards in Jesus’ parables (Matt. 20:8; Luke 12:42-46; 16:1-8). But it is obvious to us that women are no less responsible than men to live lives as unto God and to do what they can with what they have.
Today we look at two women from the Bible who were good stewards, even if the scriptures do not refer to them by that name.
Now I know that my sermon title this morning is totally politically incorrect. We don’t say “waitress” any more; we say “waiter”, whether they’re male or female. We don’t say “actress” anymore; we say “actor”, whether they’re male or female. And we don’t say “stewardess” any more; we say “steward” or “flight attendant”.
Let’s turn to Proverbs 31 and look at this biblical example of a good and faithful steward of the female variety.
She is the unnamed wife of excellent quality--the good wife. This woman is privileged—for she has servants to give tasks to (v. 15). Only the upper crust in ancient Israel had servants. And she married well—her husband is one of the ruling elders of the community (v. 23). She was especially blessed in Israel. And although temple and synagogue are not mentioned in chapter 31, nor are priest or prophet, the key to her behavior is found in verse 30—her life is governed by her fear of the Lord. That is to say, she is one who tries to honor God in the way that she lives.
And although women in biblical times in general had very few rights—they were often regarded as the property of their husband and as an extension of their husband’s will, this unnamed woman of Proverbs 31 is presented as having a mind of her own. Of course, she has the expected cultural responsibilities of the day: providing for the needs of her household, feeding her family, rearing her children, supporting her husband. But there is a whole lot more.
She has a sewing ministry. She spins wool and flax (v. 13). She weaves cloth--wool and linen. She makes clothing for her husband, her children, and herself (v. 21). And not just run-of-the-mill clothing, but purple and fine linen (v. 22). She makes for them warm clothing, should snow fall on those Judean hills. And she makes money for the household as she sells her clothing to the merchants (v. 24).
She not only has a sewing ministry; she also has a sowing ministry. She has a business sense, and she has a green thumb. She finds a field and uses it to plant a grapevine there (v. 16). To provide fruit and drink for the family.
And on top of this she has a ministry to the poor. Verse 20 tells us: “She opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hands to the needy.”
In all matters she works hard and is industrious. Because she possesses many gifts from God, she is able to do much for him. She is a good and faithful steward. She does what she can with what she has, for her family and for others, because she wants to honor God.
Well done, good and faithful steward!
And in our New Testament lesson (Acts 9:36-41) it is a woman named Dorcas who is shown to be a good steward.
Dorcas lived in the seaside community of Joppa. And she was well known for her skills as a seamstress. She used her sewing skills to provide clothing for the poor widows of the church who had no other means of support. You see, providing for the needs of widows without families was one of the great ministries of the early church. Dorcas provided many a widow with clothing to wear. So that when she died the loss was so great to the church. While she was alive she did what she could with what she had, to honor God and to further his kingdom. Dorcas was a great steward of the gifts of God.
Well done, good and faithful steward!
I think of the prayer shawl ministry that this church has sponsored since early this year. Women in the church who perhaps do not teach a Sunday School class or sing in the choir or help with the youth or go out on mission work teams use their hands to crochet lovely prayer shawls to give to people going through tough times in the name of the Lord. Including the prayer shawls on display to be consecrated today, well over twenty have been made by the women of this church.
Well done, good and faithful stewards!
On our vacation in August Susan and I stayed in a few bed and breakfasts as we rambled through the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. We like to stay in bed and breakfasts, because it’s fun to stay in a home for one night that we could never hope to own ourselves.
One of our stops was particularly memorable. It was a bed and breakfast just outside the little town of Dublin, Virginia. Set on 68 acres of farmland, it was a 130-year-old mansion that could easily have come right out of “Gone with the Wind”. Four white two-story columns out front. Ten thousand square feet of living space. Twelve-foot-high ceilings. Seventeen fireplaces. Ornate plaster work with medallions on the ceilings. A huge center hall with a floating staircase connecting three floors, with a skylight overhead. To my mind it could have been a museum. Everything was perfectly decorated and well maintained. We knew that its owner must be a multi-millionaire.
On that Monday evening we were the only guests. On our arrival, Frank, a gentleman in his mid-50’s, greeted us. He introduced himself to us as the son of the owner. He offered to help us with our bags and asked whether there was anything that we needed. I asked him if perhaps the house had a Scrabble game--we had forgotten to bring our own. He said that he would check in the house and also in his own house.
Less than an hour later Frank appeared with a shopping bag. At the top of the shopping bag was a brand-new Scrabble game still in its plastic wrapper. He had gone out and bought a Scrabble game for us to play that night. And he said to us, “Oh, mother will want to meet you later on. She likes to meet all of our guests.”
Later, as we descended the huge wooden staircase to go out to dinner, our feet echoed heavily in the hall. And we heard a voice calling from the library, “Hello! Hello!”
I whispered to Susan, “It’s Frank’s mother. I think that we need to go in and speak to her.” And so we went to the door of the library where Frank’s mother and her husband were sitting watching TV. They both appeared to be in their 80’s. She asked whether we would come in and sit with them for a while, which we did. I shared with them that I was a United Methodist pastor. And we talked about the weather--Hurricane Bill was churning in the Atlantic, about her interest in genealogy—she wanted to do some research on the Eastern Shore--and about where Susan and I might want to go to eat—yes, there was a Mexican restaurant in town!
She told us that she grew up on a farm right next door to Emory and Henry College. She used to walk to school there. When her father died he willed his farm to Emory and Henry, 166 acres, doubling the size of the campus. She was now a trustee of Emory and Henry. She had graduated from Richmond Professional Institute, the precursor of
VCU, with a degree in interior design. She had purchased the estate where the B & B was located from a cousin who had let it run down, and she completely renovated and remodeled it. All the decorating ideas displayed in the rooms of that mansion were hers.
Breakfast was set for at 8:30 the next morning in a dining room fit for royalty. Bright yellow walls, tall windows, chandeliers, oval tables set with white tablecloth and china. And a place set for us with the best view, looking out the bay window into the backyard. There was a cup of coffee poured at the place next to mine. It was the place where Frank’s mother had set for herself. She and her husband were in the kitchen fixing our breakfast! After a delightful cup of fruit and yogurt came the hot muffins. And then the main course. Her husband brought out a plate of scrambled eggs and fried apples and sausage—she apologized for cooking the sausage a little too hard.
She asked how our room was and whether we had had enough hot water. I assured her that we slept well and that we had plenty of hot water. And we talked about the church she attended, Dublin Presbyterian Church. And she mentioned how the Sunday School had this wonderful program for children and that one Sunday they actually had live monarch butterflies to illustrate the resurrection!
After I had a second cup of coffee and we had finished eating, she got up, walked behind my chair, leaned down, kissed me on my neck, and whispered, “God bless you.” And then she did the same thing to Susan. This
multi-millionairess—excuse me, multimillionaire—in her 80’s who, one would think, would have had more important things to do with her time!
And we were blessed. I don’t think we had ever had quite such an experience before at a bed and breakfast. This was more than a business proposition for the owner. She shared her time with us, her personality with us, her love with us.
Well done, good and faithful steward!
In 1992, when I was in Richmond, several Saturdays I visited Imperial Plaza, a nearby retirement community, for the monthly meeting of their association. People came into the auditorium with creaky joints and with canes and walkers. Some were rolled in in wheelchairs. Many had hearing aids. I’m sure the average age was at least 85. Seventy-five or so of them gathered for their meetings.
They began their meeting with a song and the pledge of allegiance. And then this affirmation, adapted from words written by Edward Everett Hale. They all said it together:
“I am only one, but I am one.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something.
What I can do, I ought to do.
And what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I shall do.”
Isn’t that what stewardship is all about?
Doing what you can, with what you have, to the glory of God?
“Making a Profit”
Sept. 13, 2009 / Mark 8:34-38 / Rev. Steve Young
Once upon a time a stockbroker was making cold phone calls, trying to drum up business. He found a hot prospect in Mr. I. M. Grasping at the other end of the line. The stockbroker said, “Mr. Grasping, I’ve got a penny stock that I think will really move. It’s only $1 a share.”
“Buy me 1,000 shares,” said Grasping to the broker.
The next day Grasping saw that the stock had doubled. It was up to $2 a share. He called his broker and said, “You were right about that stock. It looks like a real winner. Buy me 5,000 more shares.”
“Done,” the broker answered.
The following day Mr. Grasping looked in the paper and saw that the stock had doubled once again. It was listed at $4 a share. He ran to the phone and called his broker. “Buy me 10,000 more shares!”
“Got it!” exclaimed the broker.
The next day when Grasping looked in the paper he saw that the stock had doubled again and was listed at $8 a share. Seeing what a great profit he had made in just a few short days after investing $51,000, he phoned the broker and said, “Sell all my shares.”
The broker cleared his throat and said, “Ahem, Mr. Grasping--and just to whom shall I sell them? You were the only one buying that stock.”
Uh-oh! You can make money in the stock market. And you can certainly lose it.
We come this morning to look at what Jesus said about making a profit. “What does it profit a man…?” Jesus once asked.
According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is up in the country north of Galilee, in the region of Caesarea Philippi, and he called together a crowd along with his disciples, and he explained to them what following him really meant, what it meant for them to be his disciples.
And he began to talk about discipleship with the language of profit and loss. In verse 36 we find the Greek word κερδαινω
(kerdaino), a common financial word, meaning “to gain” or “to profit”. And we find there, too, the Greek word ζημιοω
(zemioo), a common financial word, meaning “to suffer loss” or “to forfeit”. And we find in verse 37 the Greek word ανταλλαγμα
(antallagma), a common financial word, meaning “to give in exchange”.
Jesus was using the same language that an accountant might use to talk to an employer about the financial health of his holdings. Or the language that a steward in charge of finances might use to talk to his master about his accounts. Or the language that a shopkeeper might use to describe his financial situation at the end of the month. We might well assume that when Jesus took over his father’s carpentry shop in Nazareth he knew what it meant to make a profit or to suffer a loss.
But the profit and loss about which Jesus was speaking of to the crowd at Caesarea Philippi was not the dollars-and-cents accounting a business owner might make, but rather the currency of human life. Gaining or losing not one’s income, but one’s life.
That kind of profit. The stakes were much higher with Jesus; the ante was up. It was not $1,000; it was not $50,000; it was the inestimable value of one’s life that Jesus was talking about.
Jesus said, “Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mark 8:35-36).
Now we should note before we go on that some translations in verses 36 and 37 don’t use the word “life” at all; they use the word “soul”. From this we might get the impression that verses 36 and 37 are speaking about something different than the life one might save or lose that is spoken of in verse 35. In actuality it is the very same Greek word ψυχη (psyche) that is used in verses 35, 36, and 37. Most scholars today believe that it is more faithful to the original to translate psyche in the same way in verses 36 and 37 as it is translated in verse 35. They say: translate it as “life” in verse 35 and then again as “life” in verses 36 and 37. And that is the translation that I am using today.
Now in addition to the translation issue, at first glance Jesus’ words look a little bit paradoxical. A difference in meaning between verse 35 and verse 36. It’s almost as if Jesus is saying two different things. Do you try to save your life at all cost? Is losing your life the very worst thing that could happen to you? That’s what verse 36 seems to say. Or are you better off losing your life? Is it true that in losing your life you end up saving it? Like the TV show where the biggest loser is really the biggest winner. That’s what verse 35 seems to say.
What is the bottom line of this divine accounting? Where is true profit to be found? Is it in losing? Or is it in saving? Can we unravel what Jesus was saying? And can we apply his teachings in a way that would help us today to make a profit in the deepest and fullest sense of the word?
Let’s look at verse 35 first. May I suggest that verse 35 teaches that a person gains true life by giving it away. Jesus said: “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
Now in the earliest historical context, “losing one’s life” might have meant a literal martyrdom. You take up your cross and follow Jesus, and, as Jesus was killed in obedience to his mission, we might also lose our lives. There were dozens of examples of that very thing happening in the first three hundred years of the church.
One particularly moving story told of a monk named Telemachus. The story is related by an early Christian historian named
Theodoret. Somewhere in the late fourth century, there lived in the East a monk named
Telemachus. He had determined to leave the world and to live all alone in prayer and meditation and fasting, and so to save his soul. In his solitary life he sought nothing but contact with God.
But somehow he began to feel that there was something wrong. One day he rose from his knees, and it suddenly dawned upon him that the life that he was living was based, not on a self-less love, but on a selfish love of God. It came to him that if he was ever to serve God, he must serve others, and that the desert was no place for a Christian to live, but it was in the cities that were full of men and women in need.
So Telemachus set out for the greatest city in the world, the city of Rome. He begged his way across land and sea until he finally reached Rome. By this time Rome was officially Christian. But even though Rome was officially Christian, the gladiatorial games still survived. And those captured in war had to fight and kill each other as entertainment for the crowds.
Telemachus in his hermit’s robes found his way to the stadium. There were as many as 80,000 zealous spectators. The chariot races had ended, and the gladiators prepared to fight. Into the arena they marched with their greeting: “Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!”
The fight was on, and Telemachus was appalled. Men for whom Christ had died were killing each other to amuse an allegedly Christian crowd. He leapt over the barrier. He moved in between the gladiators, and for a moment, they stopped fighting.
“Let the games go on,” roared the crowd.
The gladiators pushed the old man aside. Again he came between them. The crowd began to throw stones at him. They urged the gladiators to kill him and get him out of the way. And a gladiator’s sword stabbed
Telemachus, and he fell to the ground mortally wounded.
Suddenly the crowd was silent, shocked that a holy man had been killed in such a way.
According to the report of the historian, the games ended abruptly that day and never began again. Telemachus by his dying had ended them. The 18th century British historian Edward Gibbon said of him, “His death was more useful to mankind than his life had ever been.”
Jesus said that whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but that whoever loses his life for his sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it.
For people in some parts of the world even today there is the real possibility of dying for Christ. But for most of us in America that prospect is not a likely one. But there is another sense in which Jesus’ words are true for us. It is that those who are always thinking first of their own profit, ease, comfort, and security—those who are trying to make life as trouble-free as possible--are losing life all the time.
But, on the other hand, if we spend our life for others, if we forget health and time and wealth and comfort in our desire to do something for Jesus and for those for whom Jesus died, we are making a wonderful profit in life. As many have said, “It is better to burn out than to rust out.”
True profit is found when we spend our life generously for Jesus and his cause. Verse 35 teaches us that we gain true life by giving it away for Jesus’ sake.
And verses 36 and 37 teach us that if investing in the things of this world is our sole focus--I’ll let you spell “soul” any way you want to here--we’ll find ourselves bankrupt of the true life. Jesus said, “What does it profit a person if he gains the whole world and loses his life. What can a person give in exchange for his life?”
When making a profit in the things of earth becomes one’s sole focus all sorts of bad things can happen.
Jesus told a parable once about some good seed of the Word of God being sown in soil that also had thorns growing (Mark 4:7). And the thorns grew up along with the young plant and ended up choking the plant, and it produced nothing. Jesus said that the thorns were “the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things” (Mark 4:19).
It’s usually a subtle thing. How do briers grow up? At first, you hardly detect them. They are almost indistinguishable from the stalk of the plant. But let them grow unimpeded, and they will end up choking out the growth of that good plant and making it unproductive.
Scottish author George MacDonald once spoke of a seller of cloth who wanted to become rich, and he would always stick in his thumb as he was measuring the cloth, so to make that measure of cloth a little shorter than it ought to have been, thus cheating the customer. MacDonald said of the dishonest merchant, “He took from his soul and put it in his money bag.” It’s just a little, I’m sure the cloth merchant rationalized. They’ll never notice. And by that cheating mechanism his soul was being parceled away, measure by measure.
Jesus said, “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and to lose his life?”
In one of my churches in North Carolina, we had a new member come into the church. He was well-dressed, polite, and helpful. He asked if he could be an usher in the church. And we made him an usher. And in several months he was rewarded by being made the head usher of the church.
One time early in his tenure in the church, I heard him say, “Pastor, I want to make a million dollars.”
I should have said something to him at the time. I should have said, “There are other things more important than making a lot of money.” “Don’t let the quest for money make you lose your focus on God.” But I said nothing at the time.
The whole church was shocked when it came out in the local papers. Our head usher had been arrested for trafficking in cocaine. And he was sentenced to prison for five years.
“What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and to lose his life?” Jesus asked.
In the year of 1576 Sir Martin Frobisher went sailing in the good favor of Queen Elizabeth I in search of the Northwest Passage, a northern water route that would connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific. Frobisher and his crew were unable to find the Northwest Passage, but on what is now Baffin Island they found a quantity of shiny black stone that appeared to have value. The brought some of the ore back to England to be analyzed. One assayer was convinced that the ore contained gold.
The news spread like wildfire. Another much bigger expedition was outfitted for the next year. Queen Elizabeth herself contributed 1000 pounds to the project and contributed a ship from the Royal Navy. The next summer three ships left England with a crew of 150 men. No longer was discovering the Northwest Passage the primary item on their agenda. Rather, the main goal of the expedition was to bring back to England some more of this black ore that would likely make them all rich. Approximately 200 tons of the ore were collected, and the ships returned to England. Frobisher received the queen’s commendation at Windsor, and the assaying of the ore began. A preliminary report said that the ore would yield 5 pounds of gold per ton of ore.
And so it was resolved to send an ever-larger expedition out the next year, again with the queen’s blessing. She placed a necklace of fine gold around Frobisher’s neck. Fifteen vessels sailed this time. Several mines were dug near what is now Frobisher Bay, and 1,350 tons of ore was shipped back to England, where it was taken to a new smelting plant built in Kent. But after countless attempts, no gold was ever extracted from the ore. And the tremendous quantity of that ore that was brought back from the New World ended up being used for road construction. Fool’s gold, they called it.
How much of the quest for worldly riches must come under the category of fool’s gold?
When investing in the things of this world is our sole focus, we’ll end up bankrupt of the true life.
What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose his life?
What is worth the loss of our integrity, our health, our family, our faith?
You know, no one on their death bed ever says, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.” But rather, “I wish I had spent more time with my family.” Or “I wish that I had given my life to Christ sooner.”
The real profit in life comes when we make the effort to put Christ first in our lives.
“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” Jesus once said. And the rest would follow as a byproduct.
“And all these things shall be yours as well” (Matt. 6:33).
And that’s no fool’s gold.
“Free Financial Advice”
Sept. 6, 2009/Proverbs 22:1-2,9,16,22-23/Rev. Steve Young
A pastor once received a call from an auditor from the Internal Revenue Service. Hearing the voice of the IRS agent at the other end of the line, his heart dropped. But it turned out that the call wasn’t about his own income tax return. Rather, the agent asked him this question: “Do you know a person by the name of Jeremiah Peterson?”
“Yes, I do,” the pastor answered. “He’s a member of our congregation.
“Can you tell me,” the agent asked confidentially, “did Mr. Peterson donate $10,000 to your church?”
The pastor thought for a moment and then shrewdly answered, “He will. He will.”
With today’s sermon we have moved from the consideration of the sublime--the lofty phrases of the Apostles’ Creed--to the mundane, to a focus on money.
I’m not quite sure how some of you reacted when you opened up your September Banner or this morning’s bulletin and saw that the title of today’s sermon was “Free Financial Advice”. One member told me that she was intrigued by the title and was sorry that she would be missing the message because she would be away this weekend. Perhaps the topic holds an interest for you, too. Many people like to skim financial advice columns for hints about how to manage their money, especially in this difficult economic climate. And I must say that on occasion I’ve dropped in to Suze Orman’s TV show and listened to her pointed advice about whether someone had enough money to do this or that.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “free” I’m a little skeptical. If I hear about a free dinner at the Marriott followed by a presentation on seven secrets for achieving financial independence, I’m skeptical. I know that there are no free lunches. Can there be free dinners? Well, there may be no cost for the dinner, but you can be sure that the evening will end with a whole lot of pressure to buy whatever financial instrument the presenter is selling.
But today’s financial advice is as free as the Word of God. It doesn’t cost you a red cent. And it’s not secret knowledge. It’s not inaccessible knowledge, but it’s right there in the Scriptures. Surprising as it may be to some folks, the Bible has quite a lot to say about money and the use of our possessions. And today we look at some of these teachings as they are found in Proverbs chapter 22 and in 1 Timothy chapter 6. And for Bible-believing people, biblical teachings should carry some weight. They should make us sit up and take notice, even if we find some financial tidbits challenging to our 21st century ways of thinking.
Now obviously the financial advice that we find in the book of Proverbs, compiled between the 10th century BC and the 6th century BC, and in the book of 1 Timothy, written in the second half of the first century AD, came to people who lived under vastly different circumstances than we live under today. The outward particulars of life are quite different from those of today. But may I suggest to you that there are underlying biblical principles in those two chapters that have not changed at all over the many centuries that separate us from them.
There are three pieces of financial advice from Proverbs and 1 Timothy that I would like to lift up this morning.
The first bit of financial advice is no surprise. It is that in God’s scheme of things, money is not the bottom-line of life.
There is this ascendant myth in our culture today that says that money is the most important thing in life. It says that you have to have a certain amount of money to be happy in life, or to be considered as successful in life, or to have security in life, or to live “the good life”. There is this ever-present myth that having a lot of money is the true bottom-line of life.
But, you know, it’s not true! The Christians’ bottom line is not the accountant’s bottom line! We need money to live, of course. We live in an economy based upon money. Bartering is largely a thing of the past. And the prevalent use of plastic in our economy just postpones the use of money until the bill comes due. And we know that it is the “love of money” and not money itself that is the root of all evil. But the Scriptures teach that there are other things that are a lot more important than having money.
According to Proverbs, one’s reputation and esteem fall into that category. Proverbs 22:1 says: “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.”
What price tag can a person put on a good name or a good reputation? Think of Kenneth Lay, the late humbled CEO of Enron, or Leona
Helmsley, the late “queen of mean” in the hotel industry, or, more currently, the master swindler, Bernie
Madoff--whose name is Mudoff in my book. These were immensely wealthy individuals, who at one time had everything that money could buy, but who were bereft of integrity. When one thinks of them today, their names are deeply soiled and tarnished.
A good name is worth so much more than money.
The possession of wealth is such a transitory thing. 1 Timothy reminds us that you can’t hold onto it forever, because you can’t take it with you when you die (1 Tim. 6:7). And great possessions in this life have no lasting value in the life to come.
The things we should be rich in, according to 1 Timothy, are faith in God, contentment with the life that God gives us, and good deeds (1 Tim. 6:6-7, 17-18). Those values, and not money, are our bottom line. Those are the things that we should strive after. Those are the things that we can take into eternity with us.
Christians ought neither to get hung up with how much money they have or how little money they have. On the one hand, if God happens to bless us with a lot of money, then that becomes our opportunity to share it with others. We ought not to hang onto our possessions too tightly, because it won’t be too many more years before we’ll have to let go of those possessions anyway and turn them over to someone else.
On the other hand, if life withholds material blessings from us, that becomes our opportunity to learn to live simply and to find contentment in what we have. And if we lack the things that some people enjoy, we need not be green with envy toward the proverbial Joneses and their material success and try vainly to keep up with them. Rather, we learn to live within our means and to give God thanks for what we have!
The advice from Proverbs and 1 Timothy is to remember that in God’s scheme of things there are more important things in life than having a lot of money. Money is not the bottom-line of the Christian’s life.
There is a second bit of financial advice from Proverbs and 1 Timothy. And that is this: the “haves” in the world have a responsibility to help the “have-nots”.
Proverbs 22:9 speaks of the blessing from God that comes to those who are generous, who share their bread with the poor.
And 1 Timothy 6:18 counsels those who are rich in the world to be generous and ready to share with the needy.
Helping the have-nots has been a part of our Judeo-Christian heritage from the earliest days of Israel’s history. From the earliest times the people of Israel were taught that they had a responsibility to help those who were the most vulnerable in society: the widows, the orphans, and the aliens in the land (Deut. 24:19-21). Those who were young or elderly and unable to work. Those who had no other family support. Those who owned no land upon which to provide for themselves. We’re told that Israel was to have a special concern for the poor because Yahweh their God also had a concern for the poor (Deut. 15:10-11).
By the time of Jesus, giving alms to the poor, freewill offerings, was considered a highly regarded and expected devotional practice (Matt. 6:2). Jesus even once told his disciples to sell their possessions and to give alms (Luke 12:33).
And in the early church we find the same responsibility taught and demonstrated, that the wealthy should help care for the poor. Wealthy believers sold property and made the proceeds available to help the poor in the church (Acts 2:44). A special organization of helpers was created to make sure the widows in the church received their daily food ration (Acts 6:1-5). And 1 Timothy 5 talks of the church’s responsibility to take care of widows who have no family to lean upon (1 Tim. 5:16). I find it interesting that the Apostle Paul related that the only thing the leaders of the Jerusalem church asked him to do while he was away preaching the gospel was to “remember the poor” (Gal. 2:10).
The Scriptures indicate that looking out for the needs of the poor should be a priority of those who have the means to help.
This is an area of my life where God has really had to work with me. Growing up, I used to be a real miser, counting my piles of coins as a kid, and later finding undue pleasure in tracking my mounting savings account. In my young adult days I always used to vote my pocketbook. That is to say, I didn’t necessarily vote for a candidate based on what he or she stood for. Rather, I would vote for the candidate who, I thought, would leave me with the most money in my pocket. And that desire to keep as much of what I had for myself often trumped the scriptural teaching that I ought to help those who were needy. And God has been showing me that keeping the most money in my pocket might not always reflect the values of the kingdom of God, where the haves have a responsibility to look out for the needs of the have-nots.
There are some Christians today who try to apply biblical teaching to their investments and only invest in specially developed mutual funds that avoid buying the stock of companies that blatantly do not reflect the values of the kingdom of God, especially those companies whose output especially impacts the poor in a negative fashion.
So secondly, the scriptures teach us that those who count themselves as the “haves” have a responsibility to help those who are the “have-nots”.
And now the third piece of financial information: God will reward the generous, but the greedy will eventually come to misery.
Proverbs 22:9 says: “Those who are generous are blessed, who share their bread with the poor” while “oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself…will lead only to loss”
(Prov. 22:16).
And 1 Timothy 6 teaches that those who are “generous and ready to share” are “storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future” (1 Tim. 6:18-19), but that “those who want to be rich” become entrapped and end up in ruin and “pierce themselves with many pains” (1 Tim. 6:9-10).
The Scriptures speak of two outcomes based on one’s attachment to money, don’t they? One is an outcome of reward and blessing, while the other is an outcome of misery and despair.
It is the generous who receive God’s blessing. Sometimes the blessing of the Lord comes to a person in this life. As that person enjoys material prosperity and the good things of life. And as that person experiences the good feelings that come that person has done something good for others. Sometimes our ship comes in in this life.
But sometimes the ship only comes in in the life to come. The rewards will be heavenly ones. The crown will be a heavenly one. The treasure will be a heavenly one. The blessings will be exclusively spiritual blessings. And that person never enjoys a whole lot of material blessings here on earth. It just doesn’t happen. But they live with the hope of God’s own promise of spiritual riches to come in heaven.
On the other hand, there is a high price to be paid by the greedy. So often those whose lives are consumed by greed become more and more obsessed by their greed. And they need to spend more and more time making more and more money to buy more and more things. And the time they spend making money takes them away from their families and away from their faith community and away from God. And it frequently puts a strain upon their health. And a whole host of worries ensue. They worry about protecting the value of their investments and worry about the health of the stock market and worry about the strength of the economy and worry about taking a big loss.
Some of the rich gain great possessions at the cost of their families and the cost of their health. And to what gain? They have to say good-bye to it all when they die.
The advice of Proverbs and of 1 Timothy is to learn to share with others and to develop the practice of generosity--because God rewards the generous.
Now the advice of the Scriptures is not the same advice that we get from many of our financial columnists and commentators. Almost always, their advice is to act to maximize our financial position. For them our financial bottom line is the bottom line.
But we have seen that the Scriptures have a different set of values, a different bottom line. What have we learned?
Money is not the most important thing in the world.
We have a responsibility to help those who are poor.
And God will bless the generous, in this life and the next.