It never has the sacrifice of a saint gone unnoticed by God. Still today, from Rwanda to Iran to the People's Republic of China, there are people being killed for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We in this culture have it differently, however. For the persecution, the challenge to our faith that we face is not so much from a tyrant that sits on the throne as a tyrant that appears in commercials on television. I am speaking about King Materialism.
I'd like you to open your Bible with me to 1 Chronicles, chapter 29. We're going to read some words of David. As they gathered in offering for the building of the temple of the Lord. First Chronicles, chapter 29, beginning in verse 10. So David blessed the Lord in the sight of all the assembly. And David said, blessed art thou, O Lord God of Israel, our Father forever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty.
Indeed, everything that is in the heavens and the earth. Thine is the dominion, O Lord, and thou dost exalt thyself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from thee, and thou dost rule over all, and in thy hand is power and might. And it lies in thy hand to make great and to strengthen everyone. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee and praise thy glorious name. But who am I, and who are my people that we should be able to offer as generously as this?
For all things come from thee, and from thy hand we have given thee. For we are sojourners before thee, and tenants as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope. O Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided to build thee a house for thy holy name, it is from thy hand, and all is thine. Today we are thinking about the stewardship of all of life, including our life's blood. Every aspect of stewardship is a test of faithfulness.
The Dr. Erwin Lutzer rightly points out, our attitude toward money is an especially accurate barometer of our relationship to the world. I would add to that that it is also a thermometer of our walk with God. God has a great deal about our stewardship of life and of our resources in the Bible. Over 700 verses deal with it. It is an important part of our daily lives because statistics say that 80% of our working time is spent thinking about, talking about, or working for money.
This morning we want to think about what our Lord Jesus has taught us that God wants regarding our money. The Lord Jesus had a great deal to say about our money. One of the key texts is Luke chapter 16, and I invite you to look there with me in the Gospel of Luke the 16th chapter. Jesus tells a parable about a rich man who had a steward who acted shrewdly with his money. Jesus does not necessarily commend what the man did, except that the man was shrewd with his money.
Jesus says in verse 9, And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. He who is faithful in a very little thing, that is like money, is faithful also in much. And he who is unrighteous in a very little thing, is unrighteous also in much. If therefore you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous mammon, that is money, who will entrust the true riches to you?
And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Again I say to you that the tyrant we face today is not the one on the throne, it is on the tomb.
It is the tyrant that confronts us day after day in a materialistic world like we live in, to use our money for ourselves. There are three things I want to say this morning that I think God wants us to realize regarding our money. First of all, God wants us to have money. You see if God wants me to have money, well that's two of us, right? Indeed God does want you to have money. It is all His as David pointed out to us. It is He who gives power to men to get it.
In Deuteronomy 8, 18 it says, the Lord gives you power to make wealth. In Proverbs 10, 22 it is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich. And Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6, 17, God richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Contrary to what some people think, God does not condemn having money or making money. Indeed God gives us the ability to do so. God wants us to have money. Now that's not the same thing as saying that God wants us to be rich. Some God chooses to make wealthy.
He does not choose that for all of us. But God wants all of us to have money. Now we need to recognize that with the money comes temptation. The money itself is amoral, depends upon how we choose to use it that makes it good or evil. Wealth is not in itself inherently evil. Abraham, Job, Jacob, David, we are all extremely wealthy people. God wants us to have money. There are certain biblical principles that are designed to help us gain wealth.
So when we say that God wants us to have money, we should not think that God is going to send us a check every Monday morning. We need to apply the principles that God gives to us in His word as to how to gain wealth. The first principle is that of work. Sorry to start there, but that's probably the one that's most important. God expects us to work for it. Proverbs 14, 23 says, in all labor there is profit. The apostle wrote to the church and said, if anyone will not work, neither let him eat.
He should not be living off of other people. There is the principle of work. God expects us to work to gain wealth. Secondly, the principle of saving. The wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends whatever he gets. Proverbs 21, 20 in the Living Bible. The third principle is to plan and to plan carefully. Again from the Living Bible, Proverbs 27, 23. Plans can disappear fast, so watch your business interests closely.
The principle of planning carefully makes us aware and hopefully causes us to beware of impulsive buying, which is at the heart of so much of the commercialism of our day. I have a brother-in-law who stocks shelves for a certain company, and he has shared with me how carefully, indeed what a science it is as to what items go on what shelf. We walk into a grocery store and we think, well somebody just put them there.
In fact, it is carefully planned where every item in the store is to gain the greatest advantage over you to cause you to buy things that you might not have wanted when you went into the store. We need to plan carefully when we go to the store. We need to plan carefully by budgeting our money so that we don't just spend according to the line in our checkbook. And then there is a fourth principle by which God has designed we should gain wealth, and that is through gifts and inheritance.
For example, we have the prodigal son that Jesus told about. He wasted his inheritance, sadly, not the first one to do that. But inheritance and gifts are another way that God intends for us to gain wealth. I have not yet been able to uncover the principle of gambling by which God wants us to gain wealth, by the way. It is a tragedy in the state of Minnesota how many people are going to the casinos and hoping there to make it rich.
My son works for a local gasoline station as a cashier and tells me about the people who come in to buy lottery tickets and other forms of gambling in the state. And he has talked to them, found very few of them have won anything, and their statement seems to be over and over again, well, I've got to get it back, all the money I've lost. I've got to get it back and keep buying these things until I win. And the gambling industry is sucking the people of this state dry as a result of that.
That is not a biblical means of gaining wealth. In fact, it is an unbiblical means of losing wealth. God wants us to have money. He wants us to have more than we need so that then we can be free to share it with others as He directs us in life. But I don't have enough money, somebody says. If we respond that way, we have to ask ourselves some questions. First of all, do I really need more money? Do I need it? Or do I simply want it for certain things that I want for myself?
I have to ask myself, is God testing my faith by withholding for a period of time? Is God wanting to see whether I trust my checkbook or Him? Third question I have to ask if I say I don't have enough money is have I wasted what God has already provided for me? And do an honest examination of how I've handled my finances. I have to ask myself fourthly, have I violated some biblical principle so that God is not able to bless me as He wants to? For example, have I been impulsive? Have I been lazy?
Have I been self-indulgent? Have I been careless? Have I procrastinated? You see, those are all problems that hinder God from blessing us as He wants to. So we have to examine our hearts to see if we have violated some biblical principle. Not only does God want us to have money, He wants us to think properly about it. In the first place, He tells us in 1 Timothy 6 verses 6 through 10 not to love it. We are not to love money because it will destroy our lives. It will make us useless to God.
It will lead us to compromise. The love of money will lead to ruin and destruction of our souls. Somebody has said, well, everybody has a price and you know that can be true. Hopefully it's not true of you and me, but what's your price? If you establish a price for your faithfulness to God, Satan is going to be willing to meet that.
I heard a story that John MacArthur told a number of years ago now and I've shared it here in the past about a nationally known author who was at a banquet in New York City. At this banquet he was seated next to a very lovely lady and he asked her the question, would you be willing to spend the night with me for $100,000? She blushed when he asked the question and said, well, yes. He said, well, how about for $10? And she said, well, what do you think I am?
He said, we've already established that now we're just negotiating for the price. What's your price? The devil will be willing to meet it. If you want to love money and establish that as a goal in your life and a high priority of having it and using it for yourself, it will compromise you. God wants us to think properly about money, not to love it, first of all. Secondly, to be aware of its nature, money is deceitful. It tricks us.
Mark 4.19 warns about the deceitfulness of riches which chokes the word of God in our lives. Money is also temporary. I've not seen a hearse with a U-Haul trailer behind it yet, have you? Money is for this life. When we leave this life, it's gone, it's left behind. It is not eternal. That's why Paul writes to Timothy, don't fix your hope on the uncertainty of riches. God wants us to think properly about our money, not to love it, to be aware of its nature.
And thirdly, He wants us to make it our servant. That's what Jesus is talking about in Luke chapter 16 in this rather strange parable that we've not taken time to read this morning. In the parable, Jesus is simply telling us that proper handling of our finances is a key to spiritual fruit in our lives. God will not entrust to us true riches if we do not learn how to use money.
And when He tells us to make friends with our money, He is saying that we are to use it in such a way that as a result of the use of our money, people are one with the gospel to faith in Jesus Christ and they're in heaven to receive us there when we die. That is captured so poignantly and touchingly in that song, Thank you for giving to the Lord.
If you've not heard that or you haven't heard it recently, dig it up and listen again to the words that remind us all that the use of our money is important and the best use that we can make of it is to invest it in such a way that people are one to faith in Jesus Christ and as a result of our investment, then they are in heaven there to receive us with thanksgiving when we arrive.
God wants us to have money, He wants us to think properly about it and finally God wants us to manage our financial stewardship well. We do that first by recognizing that our priority responsibility is to God. I think one of the key texts that underscores this is found in Proverbs chapter 3. Proverbs chapter 3 verses 9 and 10 tell us this, honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.
Honor the Lord from your wealth, the first of your produce. That is we're not to leave our giving to God to the leftovers, to whatever we have after the bills are paid. We're to honor God with the first of our produce. Now how do we do that? Well I believe that while it's not a legal regulation in the Word of God that God has established a principle of giving in the Bible that He has chosen to bless. It is the principle of tithing, of giving 10% of our income to God.
Now it's not that that is the high range, it's not that when we've done that we've done everything that God could ever ask of us, it is that that is a principle and we may choose to give far more than that, like Zacchaeus for example who gave 50%. But the point is that we need to recognize God first in our finances. The tithe is a way to do it. We are also to recognize our responsibilities to our families.
To me this is one of the subtle ways which gambling erodes society because the ones who ultimately suffer from it are families. We need to recognize that we have a responsibility to our families. If we don't take care of our families, the Word of God says, we are worse than infidels. Now we need to be careful not to pamper our children or to lavish things upon them that do not help them develop character. But we need to help our children see that God does provide for us in our families.
That is a way that children interpret God's faithfulness by how their parents meet their needs, not their greeds now, but their needs. And when they see that happening in the home, they grow up with the understanding that God takes care of me. We do have to be careful and guard against the pressures of our world toward materialism. We have to control the expectations of our children that are so puffed up by television commercials.
But let's recognize that we do have a responsibility to our families. Thirdly, God wants us to think properly about our money by, and being good stewards of it, by recognizing our responsibility to the poor and to the needy. Throughout the New Testament you see this. And in the context, it is not so much the needy of the world, though we ought not to have hard hearts toward the needy of the world, but it is especially the needy among the Lord's people. We are to defend the poor.
We are to reach out to them to help meet their needs. So God wants us to have money. He wants us to think properly about money. He wants us to manage our money well as good stewards. As you know, stewards are those that take care of the wealth of another person. David, with all of his wealth and his honor, his power, recognized that God had given him everything. He said, all is yours, Lord, and we are returning to you, but what is yours?
A basic principle of stewardship in the Bible is that first we give ourselves to the Lord, and once he has us, he has all of our stuff. Our money can be a curse. Our money can be a blessing. It depends upon our attitude toward it. It becomes a curse to us if we covet it, if we are greedy for it. Consider Achan in the Old Testament, who was greedy for some of the leftovers of war, or Ananias and Sapphira, or Judas, who stole from the disciples' purse.
Money can be a curse to us if we don't handle it rightly, if we don't have the right attitude toward it. But money can be a blessing if we see it as a stewardship. It is more blessed to give, said Jesus, than to receive. And all of us have had that experience of giving to someone else without any strings attached and seeing the joy that comes to their face, to seeing the relief in their lives as God provides something. It is more blessed.
It is a greater joy to give than to receive when we understand that our money is God's. And we're willing then to share God's money with others. It becomes a blessing to our lives. All we're really doing when we give is taking our hands off of what belongs to God anyway. And surely we can't help but give when we realize all that God has done for us, can we?
When we understand the grace of God that is so exceeding toward us, can we help then but be generous in our giving to God and obeying the principles of stewardship in His Word? We are responsible to be stewards of all of life, and there may come a day when some of us will be good stewards by laying down our lives as martyrs like those that we heard earlier in the service.
But I wonder if there isn't a greater challenge to our fleshly human hearts than martyrdom, and that is learning to be good stewards of the possessions that God puts into our hands. If we can learn to do that, then we can be entrusted with the true riches. Let's pray. Father, on this day as we reflect over the generations of saints who have testified and confessed the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we want to stand up too and say that we pledge allegiance to the Lamb.
And we want to show that allegiance even in the little things of life like our giving. And so may the Spirit of God work in us afresh, a deep desire to be good stewards of what belongs to you. And to think properly about those things that you put into our possession, and to use them well in a way that honors you first, and in a way that meets the needs not only of our families but of others in the family of God.
Would you, by your Spirit, fasten this upon our hearts that we are stewards of those things that you have graciously put into our hands. In Jesus' name, amen.