Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] I look a little haggard this morning. It's because last night at 11 o' clock, a Texas longhorn stomped my heart into the ground.
[00:00:17] Oh. Oh, no.
[00:00:22] Ah.
[00:00:25] Ah.
[00:00:27] I thought Sarah did a remarkable job last Sunday.
[00:00:37] We can't ever ask ourselves too often, what does Jesus Christ really mean to me?
[00:00:47] We can't remind ourselves too often that every good and perfect gift in your life has its origin in the heart of Jesus Christ.
[00:00:59] Everything good in your life, you have because Christ loves you. And he loves you with an incomprehensible love.
[00:01:09] Our dear Heavenly Father, I pray this morning that I could.
[00:01:14] I could speak by the guidance of your Holy Spirit.
[00:01:20] I pray that I could say what I should say. And I pray that you'd put a guard on my lips and I wouldn't say things I ought not to say.
[00:01:28] I pray that the people of God would be built up today.
[00:01:32] I pray that we would be inspired.
[00:01:35] I pray that we would dream dreams and see new visions and would live richer and more beautiful lives in Christ's name. Amen.
[00:01:46] We're studying a series called the Theology of Money.
[00:01:52] And this morning I want to tell you a parable that Jesus himself told.
[00:02:00] Jesus said that this guy had a very successful business and he had set very high goals for himself.
[00:02:12] And he had outperformed all of his goals.
[00:02:20] His flocks were bigger than he could shepherd.
[00:02:27] His herds were bigger than. Than he could care for.
[00:02:32] His barns and his warehouses were all full.
[00:02:38] And he looked at his life and he came to a moment where he had to decide what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
[00:02:52] And he said, I'm just going to tear everything down, build everything twice as big.
[00:03:05] And fill it all up again.
[00:03:08] When I do that, then I'm going to retire and I'm going to eat and drink and be merry. That's exactly what he said.
[00:03:19] I'm going to eat and drink and be merry.
[00:03:24] And for many of us when we read that, that sounds just like the American dream.
[00:03:32] You build a business, it thrives, you reach a point, you get to up the ante, and the business can be twice what it was.
[00:03:42] But listen, Christ said something very, very shocking to the American ear.
[00:03:52] He said to the man, you are a fool.
[00:03:59] You have misjudged life.
[00:04:03] Tonight your soul will be required of you.
[00:04:08] And then everything that you've worked for, where will it go?
[00:04:16] Because naked came I into the world, and naked will I leave.
[00:04:22] And then Jesus made a big application and he said, this isn't about one guy.
[00:04:29] This is about every single Christian who doesn't come to terms with what it means to be rich toward God.
[00:04:42] All this was prompted because somebody interrupted his teaching and said, lord, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.
[00:04:55] And Jesus said, it's not my job to be the arbiter of your family's will.
[00:05:05] And then he looked at the crowd and said, I want you to watch very carefully and I want you to guard against.
[00:05:17] Against every type of greed, because a life is not judged by what you possess is Luke's gospel.
[00:05:31] And there are some very big principles in this that I'd like us to think about together.
[00:05:38] First of all, Jesus told a parable.
[00:05:41] And Jesus said, I want you to understand not everyone learns from parables.
[00:05:47] So I fully expect today that the bullseye for this sermon is narrower than the bullseye for a lot of sermons.
[00:06:02] But I also expect that this parable is going to do, in some hearts, remarkable things.
[00:06:11] This parable asks us to confront the gift of abundance.
[00:06:20] When you have the. When you are given the gift of abundance, it's a time for thoughtfulness and wise advice.
[00:06:30] All right, I know. Because we all compare ourselves to the person who's next above us.
[00:06:40] We rarely compare ourselves to people who have less than we have. We're always comparing ourselves to the people above us. And so it's hard for to say. It's hard for many of you to admit that you have been given the gift of abundance, but you have.
[00:06:55] Ah.
[00:06:57] Ah.
[00:06:59] If you study American history, the American middle class has never been better off than it is right now.
[00:07:10] I'm talking about economics, so please don't send me an email about politics. I'm talking about economics.
[00:07:19] We have all been given the gift of abundance. All right?
[00:07:24] We all don't live in abundance because we have not used the gift of abundance wisely.
[00:07:31] And Sarah reminded us yesterday that every healthy family has a budget.
[00:07:38] And if you don't have a budget, we'll help you write one.
[00:07:43] Ah.
[00:07:45] So Jesus said, I want to shock you into thinking differently about what you do when God gives you the gift of abundance.
[00:08:02] And Jesus also said, I'd like to challenge you with something else.
[00:08:09] Ah.
[00:08:11] This guy thought he outperformed his goals because he was smarter, worked harder, and was more diligent than everybody else.
[00:08:23] Okay?
[00:08:25] I want to remind you that often God blesses us in spite of ourselves.
[00:08:37] Church, many of you have to admit God blessed you in spite of yourselves.
[00:08:45] You can point to times in your life when you could have ruined yourself.
[00:08:50] You can point to times in your life when you were making Bad decisions.
[00:08:55] You have memories about failures at work that could have cost you your job.
[00:09:03] So we can't be arrogant and say, hey, I have more than other people that because I'm smarter, more hardworking, more diligent. Because we all have memories in our heart where we screwed up.
[00:09:17] And if. And if God had not blessed us, things would not have turned out well.
[00:09:22] Church, the Bible says Jesus said in his. In his parable, the land of the rich man produced plenty plentifully. You know what's implied there?
[00:09:39] Who controls the land? It's God.
[00:09:43] He got rain when he needed the rain. He got dry when he needed the dry. He had. He had pastures when he needed pastures.
[00:09:52] It wasn't just his own hard work. It was also that God had blessed the work of his hands.
[00:10:02] I believe that outperforming our goals is a divine blessing and it should cause us to rethink what we're going to do with the abundance that God has given us.
[00:10:18] This is very interesting.
[00:10:21] Let me read this. I'm gonna try to emphasize it, and you pick out what I'm emphasizing.
[00:10:27] What shall I do?
[00:10:30] For I have nowhere to store my crops?
[00:10:35] He said, I will do this.
[00:10:39] I will tear down my barns and build larger ones there. I will store all my grain and my goods.
[00:10:49] Ah.
[00:10:50] Do you hear it?
[00:10:53] Ah.
[00:10:55] The man's abundance made him spend too much time looking in the mirror.
[00:11:03] Church.
[00:11:05] He lost focus of the bigger context of his life, and it all became about him and what he wanted and what he was going to do, and he lost the bigger context of his life.
[00:11:19] I told you several weeks ago that we have to define enough.
[00:11:23] And this is another story in the Bible where the rich man was not able to define enough.
[00:11:29] Ironically, this is this month's Psychology Today.
[00:11:36] Can you see the lead article?
[00:11:39] It says, the Power of Enough.
[00:11:42] How letting go leads to fulfillment.
[00:11:46] This is not just a biblical idea. This is a life skill idea that got the feature article this week. This month in Psychology Today.
[00:11:59] It's not just the Bible that says you need to define enough. It's healthy. People who work in psychology their whole life, they say when you define enough, you have a better chance at living a good life.
[00:12:17] Ah.
[00:12:20] But this rich man, he didn't just have enough.
[00:12:24] He had more than enough.
[00:12:29] This rich man had not just succeeded, he had succeeded abundantly.
[00:12:35] Ah. I want to talk to some of you. You have to admit you've been very successful in your life.
[00:12:42] Ah.
[00:12:44] You can remember a time when you were young.
[00:12:48] From time to time, she and I talk about the best meal we ever had. We were broke.
[00:12:55] We could afford one Whopper cut in half and one Coke.
[00:12:59] And we bought that Whopper. We went to the park.
[00:13:03] She ate half of it. I ate half of it.
[00:13:06] Best meal I've ever had in my whole life.
[00:13:11] You can remember a time when you struggled.
[00:13:15] You can remember a time when it was hard.
[00:13:19] You can remember a time when getting a week's worth of groceries was a challenge.
[00:13:28] Can I have an amen?
[00:13:30] All right. Some of you are still dealing with that. Ah, come to our budgeting class. We'll help you. All right.
[00:13:38] But many of you, that's just a memory of another time in your life because you don't live that way anymore.
[00:13:52] Back in the day when Sharon and I would get groceries, we would add up what everything cost because we didn't want to get to the counter and not have enough money.
[00:14:02] Anyone?
[00:14:04] Okay, we just throw stuff in the cart now.
[00:14:09] Now I don't have five kids who eat everything every day, so it's easier to go grocery shopping. We don't add anything up. We go to the grocery store, we throw stuff in the cart, we go up and pay for it. All right?
[00:14:28] In a healthy Christian life, there needs to come times where we say, God has blessed me abundantly.
[00:14:39] Now, what am I going to do with this abundance that has real meaning?
[00:14:46] What am I going to do with this abundance that affects what God accomplishes in the world in my lifetime?
[00:14:56] Or. Or you just push the issue to the side and say, I don't have to do that. Doc's talking to somebody else, not to me. Church.
[00:15:12] I believe that God gives us abundance because he wants us to partner with him in funding good in the world.
[00:15:20] I want to be very clear.
[00:15:22] I've tried to share this issue before. Everything you get, God doesn't give to you. For you.
[00:15:28] Some of it is supposed to pass through your life and fund the good that he wants to do in the world.
[00:15:38] Defining a lifestyle allows people with abundance to be partners with God in funding good.
[00:15:48] I want to remind you, as I have on many occasions, evil is fully funded.
[00:15:56] Evil is fully funded.
[00:15:59] I also want to remind you, political agendas are fully funded.
[00:16:05] They're going to spend millions and millions of dollars in Ohio this year for a Senate election.
[00:16:14] Millions and millions and millions. And guess what?
[00:16:18] All that money is given by someone.
[00:16:22] Someone like you budgets into their life and they give millions of dollars.
[00:16:29] And one of those candidates is going to spend millions of dollars and lose anyway.
[00:16:36] Politics is fully funded.
[00:16:38] Winners and losers, charities are fully funded.
[00:16:46] Obviously, sports are fully funded. We know a team that can't win three games a year and they're going to build a billion dollar stadium.
[00:17:01] Sometimes I watch a college game day every Saturday.
[00:17:07] Pat McAfee, a sports announcer, picks a kid out of the crowd. Anybody watch game day picks a kid out of the crowd.
[00:17:18] They set up a goal post 30 yards away.
[00:17:22] McAfee starts out at, if you kick this field goal, I'll give you $500,000. Well, he always ends up over a million.
[00:17:30] Yesterday it was a million two hundred thousand dollars and this kid stepped up there barefooted and Pat lost a million two hundred thousand because that kid lift the upright.
[00:17:47] You say, well, he's rich, okay?
[00:17:51] I don't care how rich you are if you work for a living, a million dollars is a million dollars.
[00:17:59] But guess what?
[00:18:00] In the way he has defined his life, that's meaningful to him and he wants to do it.
[00:18:08] Do you see, ah, foundations are fully funded. Do you ever watch public tv at the end of the shows they got all those foundations who are fully funded and their help funding the shows. Okay? I look all around and I see people being very, very generous with things that they have defined as important in their life.
[00:18:34] Political agendas, charities, sporting things, foundations.
[00:18:43] And I'm asking the church, does Christ mean to us what sports means to some people?
[00:18:58] Ah, ah, every year at the super bowl, the tickets are unbelievable, but guess what?
[00:19:08] They sell out anyway.
[00:19:11] You know why? Because people have defined their life and they say that that super bowl is worth the $500,000 so I can sit on the front row or the whatever it costs to sit in the nosebleed seats. They have defined their life and they say it's worth it to me.
[00:19:33] The people are given millions of dollars for these political campaigns. They have defined their lives and they say this is worth it to me.
[00:19:43] And I'm asking us as Christians to do the very same thing that people all around us are doing. But I'm asking it to do it in a relationship to Jesus Christ.
[00:19:57] I'm asking you to start thinking, does Christ mean more to me than a political party means to my neighbor?
[00:20:06] Does Christ mean more to me than these people dress up like absolute maniacs and go to football games and pay fortunes? Does Christ mean to me what football means to them?
[00:20:23] That's what I'm asking us to ask ourselves, the world. We are surrounded by people who give a lot of money to a lot of things because they have defined in their life and said this is worth it to me.
[00:20:40] And I'M asking us as a church to have another moment where we say to ourselves, I'm going to redefine my economic life because Christ is worth it to me.
[00:20:56] I want to be a fully funded church.
[00:20:59] And by fully funded, that means we have enough resources to do things to advance the kingdom of God in northeastern Ohio.
[00:21:10] Ah, we're gonna start another campus.
[00:21:20] We spent hours and hours in our leadership planning, and we're gonna start another campus.
[00:21:28] And we're gonna start another campus where the neighborhood needs a church, because churches are going to business in those neighborhoods.
[00:21:37] That's kind of our modus operandi.
[00:21:39] We like that idea. All right.
[00:21:43] I want to be a fully funded church. This church feeds hundreds and hundreds of people every month.
[00:21:51] And we do that because you give.
[00:21:55] Ah.
[00:21:57] This church has met incredible needs of people.
[00:22:01] I could get. I just could go on and on and on. I want to be a fully funded church so God can do through us what he wants to do in northeastern Ohio.
[00:22:12] Ah.
[00:22:14] I want to be more influential than northeastern Ohio. I want to. I want our church to have influence in America.
[00:22:21] This may come as a surprise to you, but on any given week, There are about 1,200 people who watch our service online all over. All over America, Florida, Texas.
[00:22:35] We have. We have people watching us. We want to create a ministry so that even if they can't ever come here, we are helping them grow spiritually.
[00:22:49] We want to hire an online campus pastor who will pastor the people who watch our church online and provide all kinds of ministry opportunities to them. All right.
[00:23:01] I want to be an international church. I want to fund good in places in the world where people are living desperate and broken lives.
[00:23:13] And to do that, we have to reconsider. What does Christ mean to me.
[00:23:20] Ah.
[00:23:22] Ah.
[00:23:24] I want to. I want to. I want to.
[00:23:26] I want to give you some ideas to be fully funded.
[00:23:33] Ah.
[00:23:34] Ah.
[00:23:36] I'm asking you to do budgeted giving.
[00:23:39] You write your budget and what you're going to give to God, you put right in your budget instead of. Instead of giving when. When it feels like it or if I ask in the right way. I. I'd like you to consider it being part of your a budget.
[00:23:56] And you just say, God means enough to me that every week when I pay my bills, God is on my budget list.
[00:24:07] She and I get paid twice a month.
[00:24:10] And when we get paid, she's got our budget all written out. First check we write every payday is to God because I want him to be first in my life in everything.
[00:24:30] So budgeted Giving would mean something like when you get paid, you.
[00:24:36] You make giving to God part of it. All right, now, some of you, I want to talk about visionary giving.
[00:24:45] Ah, there are things that get accomplished in the world that are remarkable because somebody has a vision and other people will help them fund it.
[00:24:59] Some of you know, we did this.
[00:25:03] We knew through the city mission.
[00:25:08] We knew a lady who had five kids and was homeless. The city mission took her in, tutored her, got her a job, helped her write a budget.
[00:25:18] We had a vision to get that lady out of the city mission living and into her own home.
[00:25:28] Ah, originally this project was supposed to cost about $100,000.
[00:25:35] But then.
[00:25:36] Covid.
[00:25:38] Anybody remember Covid?
[00:25:40] Anybody remember what happened to building?
[00:25:42] Building? Surprise on Covid, we could get one week bids. Our bid was good for one week, and it ended up costing about twice what we originally thought it would. But listen, people did visionary giving and that house was paid for.
[00:25:59] When they moved in, it wasn't just paid for. It was thoroughly furnished.
[00:26:05] Living room, bedrooms, kitchen. People. This church went out and bought plates and forks and knives and man, the place was gorgeous. I thought I'd go homeless myself if I could get a house like that.
[00:26:21] Ah.
[00:26:22] So I want some of you to pray about being a visionary giver. That when God asks us to do hard things, it's just a natural part of your spiritual process where you will pray and say, dear God, what would you like me to do in funding this vision?
[00:26:43] Ah, I'd like to. I'd like to remind you that we do special offerings. We pay for the whole food for the whole year. At our Christmas offering, I'd like some of you to think about bonus giving.
[00:27:00] You get a bonus.
[00:27:02] Okay, think of the word bonus.
[00:27:09] You're getting more than what your normal hourly pay is or your normal hour salary. You're getting a bonus.
[00:27:19] What if you made it part of your spiritual life, that when you got a bonus, you gave a bonus?
[00:27:28] When you got a bonus, you give a bonus.
[00:27:31] Ah, ah, ah. One more, one more.
[00:27:39] Then some incredible things have been done in our church because people did creative giving.
[00:27:46] They made a donation that made it possible for us to create a new ministry.
[00:27:54] I'll give you an example.
[00:27:57] We have a scholarship fund that we have for kids in our church who need a little help.
[00:28:08] That scholarship was started by several people because they said if we do something, if we start this and we do it right, we're going to create something in the future that we couldn't otherwise do.
[00:28:29] Do you see?
[00:28:31] Kids get a chance to get a better education.
[00:28:36] Because of creative giving, we created a scholarship fund.
[00:28:42] And that scholarship fund has transitioned into kids lives being different. You see what I'm saying?
[00:28:50] Creative giving is when some people will band together and say if we, if we invest in this, things will be better. Because of this.
[00:29:04] I'll tell you another creative giving.
[00:29:08] Our columbarium.
[00:29:13] The columbarium was funded, originally funded out of our church margin.
[00:29:23] And as we sell the niches, we pay the church back and the church will be fully paid back. All right, some of you are with me.
[00:29:38] And that place is going to be important to your family someday.
[00:29:45] And it wouldn't be there without creative giving.
[00:29:49] Do you see what I'm saying? All right, so I believe that we ought to be doing the same thing for Christ that other people are doing for what's important in their life.
[00:30:04] And I believe if you will be serious and you'll sit down in your life at the place like the rich man did and say, I have the opportunity to just expand my leisure and my luxury or I have the opportunity to do something meaningful in the world, I believe this is going to make perfect sense to you people online.
[00:30:35] I'm killing them here. So I'm coming after you too.
[00:30:40] People online, you could partner with us.
[00:30:47] Just because you don't sit in the auditorium. You're still part of Christ Church. And I'm asking you to pray and I'm asking you to be creative and see how God might use you to help us fund this incredible ministry that we want to do in the world.
[00:31:10] All right, we'll skip that page.
[00:31:17] The rich man said, I'm changing my lifestyle.
[00:31:25] I have enough now that all I have to do is eat, drink and be merry.
[00:31:33] And I am changing my lifestyle.
[00:31:36] You know what he did?
[00:31:37] Please.
[00:31:39] He changed his lifestyle, but he gave up meaning for leisure.
[00:31:49] The meaning of his life was no longer doing something purposeful. The meaning of his life was no longer producing. The meaning of his life was no longer being helpful. The new meaning of his life was, I'm just.
[00:32:03] I worked my whole life and now I'm just going to please myself.
[00:32:09] And you know what Christ said to that?
[00:32:12] He said, that is senseless and foolish.
[00:32:17] Never trade a purposeful, meaningful life for simple leisure.
[00:32:26] Let me remind you of something.
[00:32:30] Why is it always more fun looking forward to vacation than coming home from vacation anyone?
[00:32:41] I love going on vacation and I spend a whole week just horsing around.
[00:32:49] If leisure satisfied us, I would be happier driving home than driving there.
[00:32:56] Because I've just spent the whole Week.
[00:33:00] It never feels that way to me, though, because leisure is not capable of giving you your soul richness and meaning.
[00:33:10] It is fundamentally incapable of making your soul satisfied.
[00:33:16] Ah.
[00:33:19] And so Jesus says to the rich man, you have made a very foolish decision.
[00:33:30] What you're doing is senseless.
[00:33:34] And I believe God might look at some of us this morning and say the same thing about our economic plans.
[00:33:46] I think God might look at some of us this morning and say, you've missed the point.
[00:33:56] You've missed the point.
[00:33:58] Your life has to add up to more than what you consume.
[00:34:04] And your life has meaning when you are sharing the richness of your life in something much bigger than yourself.
[00:34:15] And your life becomes sadly empty when your biggest goal is to simply do the next thing that amuses you or gives you leisure.
[00:34:33] Jesus also said your economic plan needs to. You need to remind yourself that you can't take any of it with you this night. Your soul will be required and everything that you've worked your whole life for will be gone.
[00:34:50] All right.
[00:34:52] I've been doing funerals for 40, 44 years.
[00:34:59] I did one yesterday morning. I've been doing funerals for 44 years.
[00:35:06] Ah.
[00:35:11] The most meaningful funerals aren't where people say, man, were they rich.
[00:35:20] Man, did they live in a great house.
[00:35:23] You know what the really rich funerals are? People are saying, ah.
[00:35:29] Ah.
[00:35:31] When I was in a very bad way, my grandpa went out of his way and helped me out when my car broke down, my grandmother went out of her way and helped me out when I lost my job. My uncle was kind to me. That's what you heard. When people start talking about the meaning of someone's life, It always goes to what they did for others, not what they did for themselves.
[00:36:12] Do you know it's true, Church?
[00:36:14] I'm going to tell you another thing. Some of you know, some of you don't know.
[00:36:19] People get ugly about money when you die.
[00:36:25] Ah.
[00:36:26] I just got a long, ugly email myself this week. All right.
[00:36:34] You're probably not doing anybody a favor without being very thoughtful about what you're going to do with what God has blessed you with.
[00:36:45] You say, oh, my kids would never do that. Yeah. You know how many times I've heard that?
[00:36:53] Oh, my family would never do that. I did a funeral.
[00:36:56] A family didn't come to the burial because they went to the house to get the stuff they wanted at the house while everybody else was at the burial.
[00:37:06] True story.
[00:37:08] All right, now Jesus says something that's important here.
[00:37:15] Ah.
[00:37:18] Verse 21, The parable of the rich man is a parable about people who put their whole life effort into their own treasure and they are not rich toward God.
[00:37:38] That's the key phrase of this.
[00:37:40] The key phrase of this is not that this rich man worked. It's not that he earned. It's not that he was rich. It's none of that.
[00:37:47] It's that he misappropriated his Life.
[00:37:54] Matthew, chapter 6, verse 19.
[00:37:58] Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moss nor rust destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there, where your heart be also.
[00:38:19] Skip that page. Skip that page.
[00:38:27] All right.
[00:38:29] Ah.
[00:38:31] Ah.
[00:38:32] Jesus said, God, examine your life for greed.
[00:38:38] What is greed? You're insatiable about something.
[00:38:42] You assume that you deserve more, you're exploiting other people to get more or you're coveting. That's what greed is. And Jesus said, examine your life to make sure that you haven't given place to greed. And then he says, after you've examined your heart, do everything you can to guard your heart from greed.
[00:39:04] So here's what I'm asking you four questions.
[00:39:09] One, Will you redefine yourself as a generous person?
[00:39:15] Would you say, because I am a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm going to be a generous person?
[00:39:22] Two, Will you regularly invest in Christ Church and our mission? Would you make it something you do regularly and not just periodically?
[00:39:35] Three, will you be a self motivated giver who's prompted by God and not appeals?
[00:39:44] Four, will you permit Christ to be the Lord of your economic life?
[00:39:53] I have to bring this up because I get people ask me from time to time, okay, I don't own this church.
[00:40:01] We are a non profit organization.
[00:40:06] The church is owned by our corporation. In fact, since we're non profit, if we went out of business tomorrow, everything here would have to be given to another nonprofit.
[00:40:21] No one person would be allowed to absorb it. Because we're a non profit organization. You get tax deductions for everything you give here. All right, so sometimes people say, well, Doc, giving makes sense to you because I don't own anything here. Do you get it?
[00:40:39] There's nothing here I own that you don't own.
[00:40:43] This is not about me trying to make my life easier. This is about us being a force for Jesus Christ in the world.
[00:40:59] Our dear Heavenly Father, I hope in you, I believe in you.
[00:41:05] I want the cause of Jesus Christ to triumph in the world.
[00:41:10] I want to get up every morning and do good.
[00:41:13] I want to live a generous life. I want people to be blessed around me.
[00:41:18] I want our church to be influential for good.
[00:41:22] And I pray that your Holy Spirit would do what only he could do, and you'd whisper to the hearts of souls today and we could redefine our lives.
[00:41:32] And instead of Christ saying that we have been foolish, he would say, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a few things. I'll make you lord over many. Amen.
