The Church and Giving

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Transcript:

Acts chapter 4. Acts chapter 4. We’ve been looking since the beginning of the year at some of the reasons why the world looks at the church and says, I want nothing to do with it, or why they look at Christianity and say, I want nothing to do with that.

And then whether you like it or not, what’s our response to that? Because we hear the objections and a lot of times our response is to get defensive. I know mine is.

People start griping about the church. People start griping about Christianity. I want to get defensive because I know it’s not true.

At least it’s not always true. Now, to be fair, some of the meanest people I’ve ever met have been in church. And some of y’all know some of the kinds of people I’m talking about.

And if you don’t, you may be. No. Some of the meanest people I’ve ever met have been in church, but also some of the most wonderful, caring, godly people I’ve ever known have been in church.

And so I hear these horror stories, and I think, but it’s not all true. But in their mind, it is. And so it doesn’t matter whether it’s uncomfortable for me or not.

What matters is there’s an obstacle here to the gospel. There’s something in these people’s minds and experience that puts up a wall that keeps them from hearing and responding to the gospel. And whether I like that wall or not, whether I think it’s a good wall, whether I think they should have that wall or not, reality is it’s there.

And I can either get mad it and I can get defensive about it and leave them with the wall up and leave them with the obstacle and leave them rejecting the gospel or I can get over myself and I can do my best to try to tear that wall down. And so we’ve started over the last few weeks looking at what some of these objections and obstacles are. We’ve talked about how the church is full of hypocrites.

Is it really? Depends on how you define hypocrites. Remember last week I brought out the masks?

Hypocrite isn’t just, oh, you say you’re a good person, but you live this way the rest of the week. You look good on Sunday, but you live this way the rest of the week. The hypocrites that Jesus talked to, the Pharisees, they pretended to be good all the time.

The problem wasn’t that they failed. That’s how we think of a hypocrite. Oh, you say you’re a good Christian, but look what you did.

You failed. Being a hypocrite is more about pretending. Oh, I’ve got everything all together.

Oh, I’m so holy. I’m so wonderful. I do no wrong when we know it’s not true.

That’s hypocrisy. We talked about the church being too political. Is it too political? not necessarily when it takes a stand for things that the Bible says are right or wrong.

Unfortunately, too many churches don’t take a stand on those things. Problem is when we tie ourselves too much to one party or one candidate, and we’re selective in how we apply the Bible. I heard something else this week that made me uncomfortable, but it’s true.

God is not a conservative Republican who cheers for the Sooners. As much as many people might want that to be true, it’s not. And we can’t say, oh, he’s off the hook because he’s got the right letter after his name.

Now, biblical principles apply regardless of who they are or where they come on the ideological spectrum. Right is right and wrong is wrong and it always has been and always will be. We’ve talked about some of these things and how we step back and say the most important thing is not my preference.

The most important thing is not my comfort. The most important thing is that people hear the gospel and we give them every opportunity to respond. And I tell you that because what I’m going to talk about this morning is not comfortable for me.

I do not like preaching about money. I never have. I don’t, probably to a fault, I don’t like to have anything to do with the money at church.

Now at home, I’m counting every penny, but at church, I’ve seen better men than me fall prey to temptations. And I’ve seen people get mixed up in things that they shouldn’t have. And I just want nothing to do with it.

Now, like I said, to a fault maybe because I can be so hands-off I don’t even know what’s going on. That’s a problem too. But you have on the other end of the spectrum preachers who are just all about money.

And that’s one of the objections that the world has as we’ve gone through this list. One of the objections the world has is the church just wants my money. They only care about my money. And as I was thinking about this, I remembered back to my grandmother’s funeral when I was a junior in high school.

And we’re sitting in that little church and the preacher was praying. Mind you, my grandmother spread out here in a box in front of the altar. And he prays and he says, Lord, bless this offering we’re about to receive.

Going, what’s about to happen? What are we going to be offering here? And I realized that he’s just in the mode of praying over the offering at church.

Now, mind you, I have relatives who aren’t involved in church and have some of those same objections, I thought. I don’t think he’s all about the money, but how do you explain that, that he’s got money on the brain? Here we go.

We’ve got to fight against that. We’ve got to fight against the impulse, or we’ve got to fight against anything that makes it look to the world like we just care about their money. And with that said, I’m going to talk about money this morning, and it’s uncomfortable.

But the Bible teaches that we’re not to love money, and we’re certainly not supposed to love people because of their money. The first church I ever pastored was struggling. They voted me in on a six to zero vote, And that was the whole membership of the church.

And we grew a little bit after I’d been there, but we still were having financial difficulties. And somebody said, well, we need to go out and reach more people. I thought, amen.

And then they finished the sentence with, and then they’ll tithe. Oh, that’s not going to work. And then somebody said, yeah, but then they’ll want to come in and change things, and we can’t have that.

So you want to go out and reach people who don’t know Jesus, so they’ll come in and give you their money and sit down and shut up. This is a great plan. I didn’t last there very long.

Or maybe they didn’t last with me very long, I don’t know. But we’ve got to avoid the perception that we love money or that we love other people’s money. Jesus said the love of money is the root of all evil.

And this morning there are several verses that I’ve looked at that talk about this in the New Testament. And just to give you a quick overview, 1 Timothy 3. 3 talking about the pastor says he shouldn’t be given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre.

That means greedy for money. In the same chapter, talking about the deacons, in verse 8, it says, Likewise, the deacons must be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre. In both places, it’s talking about the leaders of the church and says, Don’t let them be greedy people.

When you’re choosing these men to lead you, they shouldn’t be greedy. Titus, Paul wrote in Titus 1. 7, for a bishop, meaning a pastor, must be blameless as the steward of God, not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre, not a greedy person.

Are you detecting a pattern here? Later on in Titus chapter 1 verse 11, he’s talking about false teachers and he says, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not for filthy lucre’s sake. He said, there are false teachers among you and they are subverting the churches and they are doing it out of a sense of greed.

And I think we see some of that. I think people, I think what happens a lot of times is people will watch some of the TV preachers. Now, there are good men who are on television.

I love Adrian Rogers. I love Charles Stanley. There are some good men on television.

I’m not saying everybody on television is evil, but you know the ones I’m talking about. Send me your last dollar and God will buy you a new house. Really, you’re paying for my airplane is what it comes down to.

Send me an offering for this prayer cloth and it’ll take away all your problems. It doesn’t work. You’ve heard me tell the story about Charla and me in New Mexico and go to the church where they sell the holy dirt. And people rub it on themselves and it’s supposed to take away all their problems. For a donation, you can have this holy dirt.

They don’t recommend you eat it, though. But I hear that some people still do. There are churches that it seems like that’s all they talk about is money, and that’s all they want is your money.

Because we need people to support our programs and our building And don’t get me wrong, there’s a need for a meeting place. Even if you meet in homes, somebody’s paying for the heating and cooling. There’s a need to support our programs. If the programs we’re doing are for ministry, if they’re ministering to people, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But we need to be selective of what we do and say, if this program is not helping us reach people, why are we spending all this money on it? To be able to help people who are in need. There are some things the church needs money for.

and there are other times when the church just wants to build the big edifice to say look at us there’s times the pastor wants the airplane and the the giant house and there’s all and and in many churches and I don’t know what percentage but in many churches there’s a sense that the world looks in and sees all they want is more more more more more and it’s all for us and then they’ve painted us all with the same broad brush that we just want their money well folks that’s not true I don’t believe that’s true of us today, and it’s not true of me, and I don’t think it’s true of you that all we want is their money. As a matter of fact, what I’ve seen over the last few weeks is the incredible generosity of this church.

I shared with you back at the beginning of the year that last year, I forget the exact number, and I think we weren’t sure on the exact number, Kathy, because some of it came in in material goods, but this church gave well over $7,000 not only to the cooperative program missions, NAM and IMB last year, but to local missions and the food pantry, and helping people out who had serious needs. We helped a single mother get into a home. We helped another single mother get back on her feet and get her electricity turned on after she lost her job.

There were several things this church did supporting the House of Hope in Ada, supporting pure water, pure love. There were all sorts of things that you did. And then just in the last week, this church gave somewhere north of $500 to help D.

Reed after her house burned down in one week. And we’re not a big group. So I don’t believe that this is a church that just loves money.

But it’s better to tell you about the problem before it becomes a problem. And we’re going to look at Acts chapter 4 this morning. Because when I think about conflicts in the church, or when I think about conflicts over money, and I think of the scriptures, I think about Ananias and Sapphira.

Now, before we get into this, this passage teaches really about their greed and them lying to the Holy Spirit. But I think from this story, there are some examples we can draw out and learn from as far as how the church is supposed to view money and how the church is supposed to work with the funds that it has. And I just realized I didn’t start my timer up here, so I’m just going until I get done this morning.

Acts chapter 4 verse 32. It says, and the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul, neither said any of them that ought of the things which he had possessed was his own, but they had all things common. Now they didn’t have all things in common, they had all things common.

So if somebody had a need and somebody else had a way to meet that need, they said, hey, what I have is yours. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet, and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

And Joseph, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, which is being interpreted the son of consolation, a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet. So what we have happening here is the early church was very unselfish. And they came in, and if they saw somebody who had a need, they were taking what they had that was extra, and they were selling it, and they were bringing the money together so that they could give it to those who had a need.

And by the way, I hear arguments all the time that, oh, the Bible supports socialism. There’s a very important difference here, a very important distinction I want you to understand. Nobody is here at the point of a gun making them give up all their money.

They’re doing it for one very simple reason, that they love Jesus, and out of that love for Jesus, they love other people. And I think that’s so much more incredible, that they were willing to give up voluntarily what they had to make sure that those around them had what they needed. Nobody in the early church was going hungry because they were making sure that all the needs were met.

And they named some of the people. Barnabas had some land and he went and sold it and they brought it and they laid it at the apostles’ feet. And we don’t see here that the apostles are getting a commission on what’s coming in on the plates.

The apostles were not getting rich. Now, Paul does teach that they supported those who did the work of the ministry. But these men were not getting rich and living extravagantly.

They were taking the money in and they were sending the money back out to those who had needs. Verse 5, chapter, I’m sorry, reverse that. Chapter 5, verse 1.

But a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession and kept back part of the price and his wife also being privy to it and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. So what he’s done, Ananias has sold a piece of land and he’s taken the amount of money. Let’s just say hypothetically he sold this parcel of land for $10,000.

What he’s done is taken a part of that $10,000, say he’s taken five out and said, let’s give that to the apostles. And Sapphira, his wife, is in on the plan. She thinks this is a great idea.

So he goes and takes the $5,000 to the apostles and leads them to believe that, yeah, I sold my land for $5,000 and here I’m going to give it all to you. Why would he do that? Because he wants to look generous without being generous.

When in reality, selling your land and giving $5,000 to the apostles to help meet the needs of the poor is pretty generous. Just don’t lie about it. And in verse 3, we see Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the price of the land?

He doesn’t even say you’ve lied to us. He says you’ve lied to the Holy Spirit. And he says, why did Satan fill your heart and lead you to do this?

This is not just no big deal. He said, at this point, you’re doing what Satan would have you do, and you’re trying to lie to the Holy Ghost. I think we try to hide things from God sometimes. And when we’re not doing it, we can look and see how silly that is. Right?

God knows everything. God knows absolutely everything about you. There’s nothing you can hide from Him.

And a few years ago, I realized this because I’d be in prayer trying to justify what I was thinking. And, you know, God, I want this for the right reasons. And I finally got around to God knows what’s in my heart.

I might as well just tell him I’ve got really selfish reasons here, God, and you know what they are. And this is what I’d like to see happen, but do what you want. God knows everything.

You are indwelled by the very Holy Spirit of God if you’re a believer this morning in Jesus Christ. It was last June or July, Benjamin got saved. And I was there when it happened. And we saw, we discussed back and forth, does he understand?

Does he really? But I tell you what, he understood the basics and the change that we saw in that boy’s attitude over the next week or two convinced us that the Holy Spirit was there. But somewhere along the lines, because you don’t teach them all of Christian theology at once, I mean, we’re just now getting near the discussion of the Trinity.

You don’t understand the Trinity, and you don’t understand anything unless you can explain it to a five or six or seven-year-old. So we didn’t explain all the finer points of Christian theology. He’s only just in the last month or so realized as he heard charla and I talking at the kitchen table that the holy spirit lives inside him he said the holy spirit lives inside me I said yes so he sees everything that you do and knows everything you think even if mom and dad don’t catch you and the look of fear I can imagine what ananias looked like because there are things that go on at school that he thinks we don’t know.

And daddy has a knack for just showing up at school at just the right time to see things that are going on. Anyway, and I, so I know that looked very well. He realized the Holy Spirit lives inside of him.

The Holy Spirit sees and knows everything. The Spirit of God lives in you this morning. And so it wasn’t the apostles he was lying to.

He had first lied to the Holy Spirit. And Peter says, why would you do that? Why would you do that?

He says in verse four, while it remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Private property here.

He says it was yours. God entrusted it to you. You weren’t being compelled by anybody to give this up.

You weren’t compelled to give us the 10,000. You weren’t compelled to give us the 5,000. He said God entrusted this to you.

It was yours. It was in your own power before you sold it. The money was in your own power.

It was God had entrusted you to do what you thought was right with it. so why is thou conceived this thing in thine heart so why that what then why lie about it it’s not like he’s trying to hold something back from the irs because he has no say in the matter and I’m not advocating that either by the way but at least you might understand it if you want to give us half the price that’s your prerogative if you want to give us the whole thing that’s up to you if god leads you to give leads you to give none of it get none of it it’s it’s up to you. It’s between you and God.

He says, so you’ve lied to God. Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias, hearing these words, fell down.

He fell down and gave up the ghost. Now, for those unfamiliar with King James English, that means he died. He was so shocked, not only by Peter’s insight into what he had done that he thought was so secret, but so shocked by the realization that he had tried to lie to God that the man fell over dead. That’s not that hard to believe.

I mean, people have heart attacks all the time. People, they say you’re not supposed to sneak up on somebody with a heart condition. I believe that’s kind of the same thing that happened here.

He was shocked and he just died from it. And Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and gave up the ghost. And great fear came on all those, on all them that heard these things. I’ll bet.

Some guy lied to God and when he was confronted about it at church, he died. I think everybody else starts getting their lives in order. If I started saying, and I’m going to pick on Kay because you’re a very sweet lady.

If I started saying, Kay, God told me what you did, and how dare you, and why would you do that, and Kay just fell over dead, I think the rest of us start hitting our knees and confessing and repenting, right? Really? Nobody’s afraid at all?

Maybe I haven’t grown out of my childhood mindset, but I’m still afraid of what God could do to me. There’s a love for God, and there’s also a healthy fear of God, just like with my parents. So fear came upon the whole church.

Everybody there was afraid. And the young men arose and wound him up and carried him out and buried him. It wasn’t wound him up like Julie winds up Charlie before church.

They came and wrapped him in his burial clothes and they carried him. He was dead. They had to carry him out the door and buried him.

They were so sure he was dead, they went out and buried him. Yeah, you want to make sure first, right? Verse 7, and it was about the space of three hours after when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in.

And it just occurred to me now as I’m rereading it, but why was his wife three hours late to church? She comes in three hours later, had no idea what had happened. Apparently the word hadn’t gotten back to Sapphira.

And Peter answered her, tell me whether ye sold the land for so much. And she said, yea, for so much. So what he’s asking her, did you sell the land for this amount, the amount that Ananias had tried to tell him?

She said, oh yeah, that’s what we sold it for. Verse 9, then Peter said unto her, how is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the spirit of the Lord? He asked her, why did you think it was a good idea to make up this conspiracy with your husband?

It’s a lie to God. Behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. She knew she had been caught, and she fell down straightway at his feet and yielded up the ghost. And the young men came in and found her dead, carrying her forth and buried her by her husband.

And again, and great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. So again, the real meaning of this passage, because I don’t want to read meanings into it that aren’t there. The real meaning of this passage, the real point of this passage, is about their greed and their lie to the Holy Spirit.

But I think we can also learn from this in how the church, how the early church viewed the money. How they viewed the money, and I think that can be an example for us. And will we, as the small group that we are, will we be able to change the minds of everybody all around the world about church just wanting your money?

Probably not. First of all, there are people that are going to believe that just because they don’t want anything to do with the church. And we’re not going to change their minds.

Secondly, we don’t come in contact with everybody. And third of all, that’s been ingrained in a lot of people for a long time because of things they’ve seen and it takes a while to change. Is it our fault?

Probably not. But as I said to you at the beginning of this series, when somebody knocks the milk off the table, we don’t stand around pointing fingers first. We can get to that later. No, we set the glass up and we grab a mop.

And our job is to look at what the things are that people here in Seminole would look at and say, I don’t want anything to do with the church. I don’t want anything to do with Christianity. And us to change our attitudes and for us to change our mindset and for us to come into line with what God wants in such a visible way that we begin to chip away at that wall that keeps people away from the gospel.

And as we look at this, one thing we need to understand is the early church encouraged generosity. I don’t preach on giving a lot, and I probably should more because the Bible says so much about it. But they weren’t shy about it.

The early church encouraged generosity. Now, fortunately, for my dereliction on that issue, you all do a good job of it, as I’ve already pointed out. But they encouraged generosity.

It says in chapter 4, 34 and 35, Neither was there any among them that lacked, for as many as were possessors of land or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the apostles’ feet. And distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. And then we see in the next few verses the example of Barnabas doing just that.

So they encouraged generosity and they practiced generosity. This was part of the culture of the church. This was part of who they are.

This is not the church at Corinth that we talked about a few weeks ago before we had the Lord’s Supper. Where they would come in and they had just turned the Lord’s Supper into this pagan feasting party. And so some of them are getting drunk and pigging out, excuse me, all the while the people next to them have nothing to eat and they didn’t care.

And they’re stuffing themselves and letting their brother go hungry and they didn’t care. This is not the church at Corinth. They’re looking around saying, who has a need?

We’re not going to let it go unmet. They encouraged generosity that was part of who they are. And that needs to be part of any healthy church who we are.

Not only our generosity to give to the church, but our generosity as a church to then turn around and give to those who are in need. And that’s, I’ve told you before, there are some things about the Bible that I believe but I’m still really uncomfortable with. And I hope that’s not shocking for you to hear that I would say that as a pastor.

I’m not saying I argue with it, but I’m a sinful human being, and so God’s working on me just as he is you, so there are things that I read and hear and I’m like, oh, that’s not really what I want to hear. And I’ve been burned enough times by people trying to scam us that a lot of times my default is, no, I don’t even want to hear, you know, you’re coming in requesting gas money, you need your electric bill, I don’t even want to hear it. And that’s wrong.

As Christians, we should be characterized by generosity. Now, I’m not saying stupidity. We’ve got to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

When he tells us to give, we give. When he tells us to close that wallet, we close the wallet. But a lot of times, I don’t even give the Holy Spirit that room to operate.

I just say no before they get the sentence out of their mouths. We need to be characterized by generosity. Again, both giving to the church.

Oh, here he is. He wants your money. I don’t know who gives what or how much you give or what percent.

And one of the times that I’ve made people the maddest in church was when I preached that I don’t believe that the tithe is a New Testament requirement. Some of you may disagree with that. Does God in the New Testament teach that we’re required to give 10%?

I don’t believe so. God’s standard for giving in the New Testament is that we give freely and that we give cheerfully. sometimes that’s going to mean more than 10% sometimes it may mean less and I know I’ve struggled and worried about money but it seems like when I feel led to give to something when we commit when Charla and I commit to give and I think how are we going to afford that it seems like we rarely miss it and whether that’s a check to the church whether that’s a check to the local association or the fellowship of Native American Christians whatever mission work we support when God leads me to give I worry, so I don’t sound super spiritual here.

I worry, okay, what are we going to do without those dollars, however much it is? But it always seems to work out where I never miss it. It never seems like, does that make sense?

It never seems like we’re down any. God always takes care of it. And I feel like I’m still learning this, that he calls us to be generous and to trust him.

And now, I’m not telling you give more to the church. When I say generosity, I’m not telling you you need to give more to the church. If the Holy Spirit tells you to give more to Trinity, then you follow his lead.

If the Holy Spirit says you’re already given sacrificially and you’re given cheerfully and faithfully and freely and all that, deal with him about it. If he says you’re good, you’re good. It’s not for me to say.

If the Holy Spirit says you need to give more to this ministry, maybe the Holy Spirit wants you to write a check today to pure water, pure love. That’s what the WOM thing is called, right? Build wells for people in Africa and give them an opportunity to hear the gospel.

Do that, and it has nothing to do with Trinity. As a church, we need to encourage generosity. Not just giving to our church, but we need to encourage generosity.

And then we as a church need to meet the needs of people around us, which we’re going to get to in just a moment. But they encourage generosity. It was part of who they are.

Everybody just, what they had, they came and they gladly, except Ananias and Sapphira, they came and gladly laid it down at the apostles’ feet. Also in that, though, was the trust that the apostles were going to do the right thing with it. There’s got to be trust there that the leadership of the church is not mismanaging what God has entrusted with them.

The early church, second of all, trusted its member stewardship. See, we can encourage generosity but not say, you need to give this much to us and you need to give more to us because we need to trust that what you have doesn’t have my name on it. You know, sometimes I feel like everything I have, the government has already stamped, that’s ours, and we just let you use it.

The church should not be the same way. The church should not give you the same impression. God has entrusted that to you.

Okay? Am I letting you off the hook a little bit here? The house you live in, the car you drive, what’s in your bank account, God has entrusted that to you.

It’s not mine. God’s entrusted that to you, and he’s given that to you to live off of, yes, but also to do his work as he leads you. Now, as a part of this church, I hope you’ll give part of that to us to do our ministry together.

But it’s more important that you do what God leads you to do with what he’s entrusted you with. And they trusted their people to give. He said in chapter 5, verse 4, while it remained, was it not thine own?

And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? He says, God, put this in your hands. You didn’t have to come in here and lie.

You didn’t have to try to justify anything to us. God entrusted you with that. And I think that’s the right attitude for the c