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Welcome to Gospel and Life why does the Bible talk about money so much? How we think about and use our money is one of the most common subjects throughout Scripture. And the Bible tells us something striking. You cannot experience deep spiritual growth without putting your money and your attitude toward it in God's hands. Listen as Tim Keller shows us why generosity is not optional for Christians, but a vital mark of authentic faith.
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Bringing your Gospel of John to church for the last year and a half, you have to look over into somebody else. If you somebody else's Bible. I'm going to read to you from Second Corinthians, chapter nine. I'll explain why the detour in a moment. Second Corinthians, chapter nine, verses six 15 Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, his second one. At least the second one. We have verses six to 15. And Paul says, remember, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written, he has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. Now he who supplies seed in the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed, and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people, but also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the Gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you, their hearts will go out to you because of the surpassing grace God has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift. This is God's word. Now, one of the things you can always expect near the end of the year is you've got a lot of special features. You've got Christmas coming and Advent, you've got Thanksgiving, and therefore we're going to move back and forth. And each week you may get a John sermon, you may not. But we'll finish John up this spring. Now, here's what I'd like to talk about today. I'd like to talk about money. One of the very first things that I learned when I came to New York in figuring out where people were at, I found out that New Yorkers get extremely nervous when ministers talk about money. And part of the reason, partly because of that research that I did, I've stayed away from the subject. And one of the good things is that many people like about the church is that there don't seem to be lots of appeals and canvases and things like that. But there's an imbalance that can happen. And here's why I have to make sure that today I talk about money. It's coming up on Thanksgiving. We're presenting a budget today to the congregation. It's a traditional time to talk about money in a congregation. Why should I do it? Why should we do it? For this reason? It's artificial, very artificial to avoid the subject when a so many of your problems, I know I listen to them. So many of your worries, so many of your difficulties, so many of the complexities of your life revolve around money. And then secondly, it's artificial because so much of the Bible is about money. The Gospel of Luke is almost completely about money, if you read it through and see how often it's mentioned. And therefore it's very artificial to stay away from something that's so central to in many cases, it's the thing that's really right now been worrying more than anything else. So we obviously can't, in the name of being careful and sensitive to a culture that is very distrustful of organized religion, especially when it comes to money, that we would avoid the subject because you need to hear it. And the Bible says this. There can be no significant spiritual growth unless you put your money and your attitude toward it into God's hands. There can be no significant growth, no significant spiritual growth in your life unless you put your money and what you think about your money into God's hands because it's just too big and too pivotal an issue. If you would go to a doctor and you go because of a general need to improve your health. If you went into a doctor and said, doctor, I am just not healthy. I'm always tired and I'm constantly getting sick. Can you help me? What would the doctor say? She would look at you and she would say, listen, you're going to have to tell me everything because I can't just give you a physical checkup. You're going to have to tell me how you're sleeping, how well you sleep, how many hours you sleep. You have to tell me what you're eating and how much you're eating. You need to tell me about your work. How many hours are you working? How satisfying is your work to you? You have to tell me about personal stresses may be happening in your life. You got to tell me everything. And if you looked at her and said, no, wait a minute, you're a doctor. You stick to the physical. I don't want to talk to you about my personal stresses, and I don't want to talk to you about the personal problems I have at work. That's not your department. You help me with my health. What would she say? She'd say, I'm sorry. The answer is, I'm sorry. They're all connected. You can't break your life into departments. Maybe the reason that you're always getting sick is because there's some kind of psychological strain on you. And the physiological effects are real. They're not psychosomatic, but they're being caused by psychiatric something. You might need counseling as well as my treatment. And therefore you gotta tell me everything. Of course that's what the doctor's gonna say. And in the same way God says, you come to me because you want meaning, because you want renewal, because you want strength, because you want forgiveness, you want me in your life, then you've got to let me talk to you about your money. You see, if you want, I want God in my life, But I don't want anybody talking to me about what God says about money. That's impossible. And just like the doctor will kick you out after a while and say, I'm sorry, what you want is impossible. You want me to deal with your health, but you won't tell me everything. And you won't see that you're an interconnected whole. The same way God says, unless you're willing to talk to me about your money, unless you're willing to put your money and your attitude toward your money in my hands as well, we can't do business. Therefore, we have to take a look at the passages. And here's a passage. I mean, just see the practical implications of that. That's a powerful argument and it makes so much sense. Now, the scripture says gives a lot of places where it gives you principles for what it means to put your money in God's hands. What does that mean? You say, what does the Bible say our attitude has to be? Well, there's a number of passages, but we're going to look at this one and what this passage will tell us about is that it's the mark of real Christians to be radically generous. Did you notice as we read through there, how often in many verses the word generosity. Generosity, generosity comes up. Radical generosity, remarkable generosity. That's the mark of a Christian. Now, I'd like to show you that this scripture teaches us about the impact of that generosity, what the effects are then secondly, the motivation for that generosity. Where does it come from internally? And then lastly, the measure of that generosity. How do you know that you're generous or not? How much? You know, Bottom line, New York, right. So the impact of that generosity, the motivation for that generosity, and the measure of that generosity. Let's run through those three things because they're all here now. First of all, let's see. I'm going to actually, you know, you could easily turn this around and put the impact last. But I want to put it first because I want you to see the importance of radical Christian generosity for the world. Paul says, pardon me, you have to keep this in context. Paul in Second Corinthians is raising money for famine relief. There's hints of it in the passage I read you, but you see it over in Second Corinthians 8, there's been a famine in Jerusalem. There's many people there who are in need. And Paul is going to Asia Minor and to the churches in that area, and he is raising money. He's asking for money for the Christians there to give money to do famine relief in Jerusalem. And therefore, if you look carefully, you'll see that Paul is saying the impact of this generosity will be twofold. Not only will there be people who are physically fed, but secondly, we see, for example in verse 13, radical generosity will also lead people to praise God. See, there's a twofold impact to radical generosity. Let me show you what that means and then how radical generosity brings it about. Twofold. Not only does it feed people, but it also leads them to praise God. You see, you are two parts. You are body and soul or body and spirit. You can put it either way. There's an immaterial part to you and a material part to you. The physiologist will tell you that you are a bag of chemicals. But if somebody tells you you're only a bag of chemicals, you'll punch them in the nose. Why? Because you know you're more than just chemicals. You know that if you are, frankly, if you're not more than just chemicals, then you have the right to Treat a human being the way you would treat a real bag of chemicals. And the fact that we don't treat human beings the way we treat other bags of chemicals shows implicitly we believe there's a material and an immaterial part. There's more to us than meets the ey or the microscope. There's two parts to you. Now, there's many ways to help people, and churches have always helped the body. Churches have always fed people, they've always built hospitals. They have always worked with the elderly and the disadvantages. And any city in this country where churches stop doing that, you know, there'd be an immediately negative impact on the quality of life in those cities. So obviously, the church has always dealt with the body. But the church, unlike any other institution, religious institutions can deal with both the body, the material, and the immaterial. Because the religious institutions not only can do the feeding and the medical and so on, but they can also give you meaning in life, tell you what the purpose of things is. Without which, if you don't have that, all the dealing with the body and the physical, the material really is kind of meaningless. For example, what can botanists tell you about a tomato? They can tell you a lot of things about tomato. They can tell you a lot more than I know about tomatoes. There's only one thing they can't tell you, and that's the most important thing. They can tell you everything about the tomato except why. Why the tomato? They can't tell you about that. Do you see why that's important, though? Look, is this tomato a beautiful work of creation, or is it, and please excuse me, is it a beautiful fruit or is it just a damn tomato? It depends on the bigger question. See, is this thing. When you look at it, do you see something that's full of beauty and order and symmetry, a wonder of creation, a joy? Or do you see it as something just to squash or throw at somebody? It depends on whether you believe there's any meaning in life at all. The point is, unless you see the big issues we talk about, what will help people, friends, if people don't know why they are living, if people don't know what the purpose of things is, if people don't know how you know what's right and wrong, if people don't know who they are in the universe, if they don't have both the big picture, the big issues, if they're not dealt with spiritually as well as physically, they're not being dealt with. One of the most important and interesting one of the most important and interesting things that's happening in the world today is what's happening religiously in Latin America. Recently there have been two major studies written by sociologists not writing from a Christian point of view, not published by Christian houses of. But two sociologists have written books on the fact that in Latin America, the poor are turning to traditional Protestant Christianity in incredible numbers. In Brazil, 500,000 people a year are joining these churches. Guatemala is 30% now evangelical Protestant. Now, let me tell you what I mean by traditional Protestant. I mean this. That is traditional Christianity without the modern bias against the supernatural. Up until 50 years ago, this is what all Christians believed. And still traditional Christians believe this. They believe in the supernatural. The modern mind has faith that there is no supernatural, but that can't be proven. It's a bias. It's not objective. It's a faith assumption. Traditional Christians have always believed that the Bible is God's revelation. It's a miracle. It's God's word that there is such a thing as a new birthday, that Christ can come on in and change you from the inside, that he can live with you and give you power, that the kingdom of God can move into our lives and give us power to change lives and social structures. And those are the kind of churches that the poor are flooding into in Latin America. Lots of people have been trying to help the poor in Latin America in all kinds of very important ways, extremely important ways, community development and. And hunger relief and so on. But the poor themselves, the kind of help the poor are getting themselves is they're flooding into these churches. You know why? These two sociologists have written these two different books independently of each other. And they say that classic Christianity is radically empowering. What the poor realize when they get a hold of the Gospel is that whether you're high or low, socially, we're all sinners. And then secondly, no matter who you are socially in Christ, every human being has equal dignity before the father. See, that's radically empowering. It's radically democratic, you might say. It's democraticizing. That's what they say actually in the books. And the fact that through Christianity they got power for the present and hope for the future means they're able to face their lives. And where there are whole villages that are coming to Christ, what happens is families come together and the economic conditions change. Because you see, these people are having the big issue addressed. Not simply that what the church can do is not simply feed people, but it can lead them to praise God. And the fact is, unless you've got something to praise. You've got no meaning in your life and a full stomach is not enough. Don't you see? Don't you see? You say, what does the world need? What does the world need? Paul was in the Roman world, and the old religions and philosophies of that ancient world were disintegrating because they couldn't bear the freight of people's real meaning needs. The Church came in and could do it all. It could feed people and it could lead them to praise God. And it ran through the Roman Empire like lightning. Do you see how it changed things? It changed things radically. And here's how it changed things. It changed things through radical generosity. A lot of people say, well, it's fascinating. How did Christianity actually move through the Roman Empire and change it the way it's moving through cultures today? Wherever the church spreads in New Testament purity, it changes everything. It addresses both the body and the soul, both the material and the immaterial. And only religious institutions can do that. And the only ones that can actually do it, they have to multiply. For example, there would be nothing better for New York City than in the next 10 years to have 2,000 new churches planted. The way that's the rate that things are being planted in parts of Latin America and parts of Korea. There is nothing that could possibly change people holistically, completely, you see, physically and spiritually than a church. There's nothing more important to spread than that. Now, how does it happen? It spreads through radical generosity. Listen, when the church becomes what it ought to be, there's a magnetism and an attractiveness about people's lives in the church that attracts people. And radical generosity is a key. 20 or 30 years after the last apostle died, after John the apostle died, there was a. We don't know who wrote this, but we have a very, very ancient Christian document. And it was, it's called the Episcopal to diognitus. Diagnosis was a non Christian. And somebody wrote him a letter saying, trying to explain Christianity. And this is what it says, and it's very interesting. It says, let me tell you why Christianity is spreading so fast. Christians busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. Listen real carefully. They live in their own native lands, but they live as aliens. For every foreign country is to them as their native land, and every native land is as their foreign country. They marry and have children, but they do not kill unwanted babies. They are poor. Oh, pardon me. They share their table with everyone, but they don't share their bed with everyone. They love Everyone, but are persecuted by all. They are poor and make many rich. They are short of everything and yet have plenty of everything. They are treated outrageously but behave respectfully. They are mocked and blessed in return. When they do good, they are attacked. When they are attacked, they rejoice as if being given new life. Now look and see for a moment four qualities that these Christians had that everyone marveled at. The first one was the complete absence of racism. It says, their foreign countries were as their native lands and their native lands were as their foreign countries. See what that means? I have to run through these more briefly. You see, the Christians were Jews and Africans and Greeks and Romans, but they were Christians first. And they were Greeks and Jews and Romans and Africans second. What Christianity does is it gives you a higher authority than your cultural tradition and it gives you a higher loyalty than your race. It relativizes your relationship to your own culture so that you can critique it. And it says here, Christians could appreciate other people's cultures and they could be critical of their own. They no longer took their identity from who they were racially, and it cut racism down at the root. See, their native lands were as their foreign lands and their foreign lands were as native lands. So the absence of racism. Secondly, a high, high view of life. It says they do not kill the unwanted. Back then, it was normal that when you had a female child to throw it in the river and parents had the right to do that, slaves also were expendable. You could kill a slave if you wanted to. Christians, though, saw every life, no matter how unwanted or expendable, to be absolutely inviolate, infinitely precious, that view of life. Thirdly, they had an unusual view of sex. The third reason that people looked at them as so strange was because it says they share their table with all, but they don't share their bed with all.