At the church
where I serve, we just came to the conclusion of a sermon series entitled
Invest. During this series, we discovered why investing our time in a community
group, our talents on a ministry team, and our treasure in a way that reflects
the generosity of Jesus results in us experiencing a growing and maturing
relationship with Jesus. And as we go
through this series, our hope and prayer was that God would move by the power
of the Holy Spirit in our heads, hearts, and hands in a way that results in us
investing in these environments so that we can move on a spiritual journey that
results in us taking the next step in our relationship with Jesus, regardless
of where we currently are at in our relationship with Jesus.
This week I would like for us to spend our time together looking at
the third of the three ways a person who is involved in a growing and maturing
relationship with Jesus will invest their lives. I would like for us to spend
our time together discovering why consistently investing our treasure in a way
that reveals and reflects the generosity of Jesus through regular and proportional
giving results in a growing and maturing relationship with Jesus. To do that, I
would like for us to look at a section of an account of Jesus life in the Bible
called the gospel of Luke.
However, before we jump into this section of the gospel of Luke, I
would like for us to address a potential elephant in the room, so to speak. And
that elephant in the room involves how many people perceive how the church
talks about money. You see,
unfortunately in the American church, there seems to be two extremes when it
comes to how the church talks about the issue of money or finances.
The first extreme is a
stream of Christianity which is called the prosperity gospel movement. These
are the people that you see sitting in the big golden chairs on TV that tell
you that if you just had enough faith God would give you health, wealth and
prosperity. The problem with the
prosperity gospel movement is that the message of the prosperity gospel is a
false message that promotes a means to an ends spirituality- have faith in God
so that you can use God to get what you really love and are devoted to, which
is money, health, and great relationships.
So other churches,
responding to the false message that is the prosperity gospel, end up not
talking about the issue of money at all. There are churches and pastors that are
afraid to talk about money either because they are afraid that they may offend
someone or that they may give the appearance or impression that all the church
wants is money. Now the reason why these extremes of how some churches talk
about money or finances are inaccurate is due to the fact that they do not
reflect how Jesus talked about the issue of money and finances.
You see, when we read the
four accounts of Jesus life in the Bible, we discover that Jesus talked about
money a great deal. Money and material possessions were a constant theme of
Jesus teaching. In the four accounts of Jesus life, there are approximately 500
verses on the subject of prayer. Similarly, there are approximately 500 verses
where Jesus talked about the subject of faith. Now faith and prayer are
essential aspects of our relationship with God, so you would expect Jesus to
spend a lot of time talking about them. If you were to guess, how many verses
do you think there would be in the Bible where Jesus talked about money? 50?
100? 500?
What if I told you that
there are approximately 2, 350 verses where Jesus is dealing with the issue of
money. Now you may be here and are wondering “why would Jesus spend so much
time talking about money?” There are two reasons why money and material
possessions were a constant theme of Jesus teachings.
First, Jesus knew what we
know, which is that much of our life involves the use of money. Jesus talked a
lot about money because He knew that much of our lives revolve around its use. This
morning, is there anything in our day to day life that does not involve money?
And because of this
reality, money and possessions often compete with the Lord for our devotion. Jesus,
understanding this, spent so much time talking about money because He also knew
that how we handle and spend money reveals our love and the depth of our
relationship with the Lord, because we spend our money on the things that we
love, don’t we?
And it is in this section
of the gospel of Luke that we are going to look at this week that we will see Jesus
make a statement that reveals a timeless truth when it comes to how our
management of money and finances can impact our love of God and our spiritual
maturity. Tomorrow, we will begin to look at this statement together…
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