COVENANT PULPIT Your Wallets on the altar Romans 15:22-29 August 14, 2011 Pastor Trent Casto Covenant Church of Naples PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples, FL 34108 (239) 597-3464 www.covenantnaples.com
It s a well-known preacher joke, and way overused, but I m going to tell it anyway. A mother wanted to teach her daughter a lesson about giving. So she gave the little girl a quarter and a dollar for church. Put whichever one you want in the collection plate and keep the other for yourself, she told the girl. When they were coming out of church, the mother asked her daughter which amount she had given. Well, said the little girl, I was going to give the dollar, but just before the collection the man in the pulpit said that we should all be cheerful givers. I knew I d be a lot more cheerful if I gave the quarter, so I did. There s a reason why this little story is told over and over again in sermons on giving. It s true! That little girl had the guts to say out loud, what all the rest of us are quietly thinking. Given the choice between giving a little and giving a lot, most of us would be more cheerful if we gave a little. Why? Because for most of us, parting with our money does not make us cheerful, it makes us sad. When was the last time you were invited to a friend s house to celebrate the fact that this year he finally made enough money to give 35% of it back to the government? Who has been given a high-five from a man who just found out how much money that little two mile ambulance ride was going to cost him? Yeah, nobody. We hate parting with our money, whether it s a tax or the cost of goods and services rendered. For most of us, our cheerfulness is directly proportionate to the amount of money we don t have to part with. And so to maximize our cheer, we do our best to only part with our money for things that add value to us. We are now in the thirteenth sermon in a series of sermons called Laying All Upon the Altar. The principle underlying all of the sermons in this series comes from Romans 12:1-2 which says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. All along the way in the series, Pastor Bob and I have tried to show you that living the Christian life is impossible, unless we have first laid all we are and all we have upon the altar of sacrifice, in response to the one who laid upon the altar for us. Included among the things we are called to lay on the altar of sacrifice is our money. What does it mean to lay your wallet on the altar? Does this mean you need to sell all you have and give it to the poor, like Jesus told the rich young ruler? Maybe for some of you. Does it mean you should give away half of all you have to the poor like Zacchaeus did? Perhaps it does for some. The particular applications will differ, but here s the underlying principle: Laying your wallet on the altar means to present all of your
money to God for his use. It s to offer it up and say, it s all yours Lord, show me what to do with it. This is what I believe God s Word calls us to, what I m calling you to do today because I believe this is the only way we ll be released from our slavery to money. Yet most of us are more than a little reluctant to do this. Many of you were very thankful for last week s sermon addressing anxiety because none of us wants to be anxious. We all see anxiety as being a problem we don t want to live with. Today we re talking about how to give your money away. I suspect that few of you are sitting out there this morning saying, Oh good, I ve really been disturbed by my lack of generosity lately and I m looking forward to hearing how I can become more generous! But our money can be just as much or more of a hindrance to our joy in the Christian life than our anxiety. My goal today is to help you see not only why you should lay your wallet on the altar of sacrifice, but why you actually want to. So, why should you lay your wallet on the altar? Because: I. Missions Makes It Pressing. Jesus made it clear that it is the task of the church go to every inch of this planet and proclaim the good news that Jesus Christ is King, and that there is forgiveness and pardon for everyone who turns from their rebellion and submits to him. People need to hear this message. People need to see this message lived out in local churches and communities. And in order for that to happen, missionaries have to go and they have to keep pressing into areas where there is still no established church. That s what Paul was trying to do, and that s part of the reason he sends this letter to Rome. Paul s strategy as a missionary was to go where there was no church, and plant self-sustaining indigenous churches that could preach the gospel and plant more churches. Now that he has finished his work in the region between Jerusalem and Illyricum, he desires to go west. Why? Because there are people in the West, and he s thinking about Spain particularly, who do not have Christ. Well, what s the big deal about that? Here s the big deal: People without Christ aren t giving glory to God as he deserves. People without Christ don t know that life isn t supposed to be like this, that they were made for something more. People without Christ have no hope of resurrection. People without Christ go to hell. This should disturb us and it should disturb us immensely. If we care about the glory of God and if we love our neighbors, then we cannot be indifferent to missions. John Piper has said that there are really three types of Christians: those who go as missionaries, those who send and support missionaries, and those who are disobedient. Paul is a goer. The Romans are senders. And so,
in verse 24 we read I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you Paul expects that these Roman Christians share his conviction that missions make it pressing that we lay our wallets on the altar, so he can take the good news of Christ to Spain. Two-thousand years later, the Great Commission Jesus gave us to make disciples of all nations is not yet complete. While great progress has been made, there is still a massive amount of work to be done. The Joshua Project is a research initiative that has sought to identify all of the people groups of the world and determine which ones are still unreached by the gospel. According to their latest statistics, there are 16,713 people groups in the world. Of those 16,713 people groups, 6,926 remain unreached. That s 41.4% of the world s population or 2.83 billion individuals who have no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize them. i Do you see? Missions must be done. And missions costs money. Therefore missions makes it pressing that you lay your wallet on the altar. But there s a second reason we should lay our wallets on the altar: II. Mercy Makes It Paramount. If Paul was feeling the pressure to get the support he needed to go to Spain and preach the gospel, even more paramount was the task of taking aid money to Jerusalem. We read in verses 25-26 why Paul needed to go to Jerusalem first: At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. There were two reasons why Paul felt it absolutely necessary to take aid to the Christians in Jerusalem. The first reason is that the need was severe. Historically we know that around this time, there was a humanitarian crisis in Jerusalem caused by a series of droughts and poor harvests. But there was another reason Paul felt that it was so absolutely necessary for the churches to give in support of the church in Jerusalem. They had a spiritual obligation. We see it in verse 27, For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. Paul says that the Christians in Macedonia and Achaia who gave relief money did so not only because it was a matter of mercy, but because it was a matter of justice. Continue with me in verse 27, For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. In other words, all the covenants of God and, even the Messiah himself, came to Gentiles through Jews. Therefore, since these Gentiles have benefited spiritually from the Jews, they should give material blessings to benefit the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Paul says that these folks
owed the poor in Jerusalem that money, and to withhold it from them would have been equivalent to stealing. Well what difference does this make to us today? Clearly Gentile Christians had an obligation to the Jewish Christians, but does this text apply beyond the relationship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians? I say that it does. Paul writes in Galatians 6:10, So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. Christians have an obligation to do good to everyone, especially to fellow Christians. What does doing good consist of? At the very least it means feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty. And this costs money. A person would have to have had their head in the sand over the last couple of months not to have heard about the severe drought and famine taking place in the Horn of Africa right now. Reports indicate that nearly 10 million people are critically short of food as a result of the region s worst drought in over 60 years. I can guarantee you that some of those hungry and thirsty people are Christians. Many of them aren t. They re just people, created in God s image, a broken representation of the God we serve. But can we say about this situation in the Horn of Africa, that s not my problem? I don t think so. Not when John says in 1 John 3:16-17, By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God s love abide in him? Do we have to physically see our brother in need before we help him? Paul didn t seem to think so when he collected money from Macedonia and Achaia to take to Jerusalem. It was enough that there was a need. But perhaps we should consider how many needs we do see here in our families, in our communities, in our spheres of influence. We all have opportunities for a ministry of mercy. But maybe you don t know what to do. One way you can feed the hungry and clothe the poor is to give to our deacons fund. Our deacons are using that money on your behalf to reach out in mercy to members of our congregation and to the community at large. In order for this ministry of mercy to continue, we need to give. But you don t have put all of your giving in that fund. If you see needs around you that you want to meet personally, then go for it! How you do it is secondary; that you do it--is paramount. We should lay our wallets on the altar because missions makes it pressing, and mercy makes it paramount. But it s time that we actually stop now and answer a question that I think is worth asking: Why would anybody do this? Why would these Roman Christians, give their hard-earned money to support this guy Paul
that they don t know, to go to Spain and preach the gospel to a bunch of other people they most certainly don t know? Or what would possess these Christians in Macedonia and Achaia to contribute money so that Paul can take it all the way over to Jerusalem to feed people they re never going to meet? What would motivate a person to give their money away in Paul s day or in the present day? Let me lay out for you some reasons that motivate people to give, and you see if you recognize yourself in one of these five categories. Some give out of guilt. Someone says to them, Look, you have all these churches where you can hear the gospel, and they don t have any. You have all this money you spend on toys and they can t buy food. You re selfish. And the person agrees and feels guilty about having stuff and decides they should do something. So they give a token offering to the missions fund or the deacons fund to ease their conscience and then they try to avoid sermons, infomercials, or people who might stir up their guilt again. This is why some of us give. Others give out of fear. You read in the Bible that those who neglect the poor won t go to heaven (Matt.25:31-46). You re afraid of going to hell, so you try to give whatever you think is the minimum you need to give to not go to hell. Or you read that he who is faithful over a little will be trusted with much. You figure if you don t start giving away some money, God s going to make you poor. So you give to whatever degree you think will keep God off of your back or keep you financially secure. So we give, because we re afraid not to. Some give out of pride. This motivation is not as obvious but it s real and it s got two sides. Some people give primarily because of the way it makes them feel about themselves. I like to think of myself as the kind of person who is generous and giving to the church or missions or the deacons fund allows me to feel this way about myself. Or, the other side is that my pride is fed when other people think I m generous, so I m going to make sure that somehow people know about it. So we give so we can think well of ourselves or so others will think well of us. And some give out of habit. Perhaps you grew up in the church, a strong tithing family. You don t even think about it anymore. You take your gross income for the year, figure out 10%, divide it up over 52 weeks, and drop a check in the plate each Sunday without a thought. When special needs arise and an appeal for help is made you get nervous about giving because you haven t budgeted for this. You give faithfully every week, or every month, or every year, because that s just what you do.
The problem with all these motives is that they don t produce the kind of radical and generous and cheerful giving the Bible describes as characteristic of Christians. These motives for giving will lead us to consider how we can part with the least amount of money possible, either to not feel guilty or not have God ticked off at us, or to feel good about ourselves. There s nothing specifically Christian about this kind of giving. In fact, if you only ever give because of the reasons above, you need to check your heart. You see, one of the surest signs that we are a Christian is the way we give. And a lack of this radical, cheerful generosity is cause for concern. This is why the great Scottish preacher Robert Murray M' Cheyne said to his congregation, "There are many hearing me who now know well that they are not Christians because they do not love to give. To give largely and deliberately, not grudging at all, requires a new heart." What can enable me to give radically, generously, and cheerfully, and to actually want to do it? III. Poverty Makes It Possible. How does poverty make laying our wallets on the altar a cheerful endeavor? Look how Paul describes the way in which Macedonia and Achaia gave for the needs in Jerusalem, verse 26: For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it The point Paul emphasizes here is that they wanted to do this. We re told in 2 Corinthians 8:4 that these same people begged for the opportunity to give. Why? Did they feel guilty? No, they were poor themselves! Were they afraid God wouldn t bless them? Not at all. Was it so they could feel good about themselves? It doesn t seem so. The reason they gave above and beyond their means was because their hearts were gripped by poverty. Not their own poverty, though they were poor, but by Christ s poverty for them. Listen to the truth that set their hearts free for radical giving: 2 Corinthians 8:9, 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. You will never be a cheerful and generous giver to mercy ministries or to missions unless your heart is gripped by the poverty of the Savior. Look at the radical generosity of Jesus! He possessed all of heaven s treasures, wealthy beyond compare, and he set it all aside to be born of a woman, born under the law into a poor family to make you rich. Christ radically, generously, and cheerfully impoverished himself to give you everything. He held back nothing for you, he gave it all for you so that you could be free to give to others. You see, when you realize you have everything in Christ, then giving some money away to bless somebody in his name is as easy as breathing. John Piper recounts a story that took place in Haiti a few years back. A particular local church there was having a Thanksgiving festival, and each
Christian was invited to bring a love offering to give. One of the envelopes received was from a Haitian man named Edmund and it contained $13. It doesn t sound like much, but $13 was equivalent to three months income for a laborer like Edmund. The man counting the money looked around the festival for Edmund but couldn t find him anywhere. Later, he ran into Edmund in the village and asked him about the $13 gift. After pressing him, he found out that Edmund had sold his horse in order to give the $13 to God. And when asked why he didn t come to the festival to give his gift personally he said, I had no shirt to wear. ii What prompts someone to give so freely, so sacrificially, so joyfully? Only the gospel. If you don t have the freedom to give like Edmund, or like the Macedonians or the Achaians, to give generously and cheerfully when it hurts, to give abundantly when you don t even own a shirt, go back and meditate on the gospel until you re changed. For some it s hard to be generous because so much of your trust and security are wrapped up in your money. Don t you see? Money can t hold your trust, it can t make you secure. Take a look at your money. It says right on it that it can t be trusted. Our money preaches the gospel to us and says, In God we Trust. Is he your trust? Did he give up everything to make you rich? Do you believe you are rich in him? Then lay it all on the altar for him, who laid on the altar for you. When out of response to the gospel, you lay your wallet on the altar, then and only then does giving become a spontaneous expression of joy. Mercy and generosity arise from your heart not because it is commanded, but as a natural response to the generosity you have received. And the deeper this experience of God s free grace, the more generous we must become! My money now has a purpose that goes beyond my security and comfort and stockpiling more stuff. My money is a tool to serve people, it s a way to show my love to Christ and to others. When the gospel grips your heart, money loses its power over you. And the only way you ll ever be free of money s hold on you, is to lay your wallet on the altar. Missions makes it pressing. Mercy makes it paramount. And poverty grace makes it possible. Copyright August 14, 2011 by Covenant Church of Naples PCA i http://www.joshuaproject.net/great-commission-statistics.php ii John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 2003), 103.