The following sermon is from the Westminster Pulpit, extending the worship ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We are a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Please contact us for permission before reproducing this message in any format. I'm obeying today a request, a desire from our session, and I'm not obeying it at all reluctantly, quite happily, to put an emphasis on the subject of stewardship. And it was really providential the way things ended with John 12, and I didn't really manipulate that, believe it or not, with what we had last time there, and I'm going to remind you of it this morning. But I go on today. to look at 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and read the first 15 verses. This is one of the strongest, most complete sections on the subject of our giving. 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 both treat this. Listen to this beginning of chapter 8. Paul writes, we want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia. For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. And this, not as we expected, they gave themselves first to the Lord, and then by the will of God to us. Accordingly, we urge Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace, so that as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in earnestness, and in our love for you, see that you excel in this act of grace also. I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. 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. And in this matter I give my judgment. This benefits you who a year ago started not only to do this work, but also to desire to do it. So now, finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have. For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened. But that as a matter of fairness, your abundance at present should supply their needs so that their abundance may supply your need, and there may be fairness. As it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Just about two and a half years ago in the spring of 2012, this congregation had a stewardship campaign designed to challenge us to quicken the elimination of mortgage debt. We named that emphasis time pursuing God's plan. If you can remember it, if you were here, you I hope will recall that it wasn't a time of high pressure, hype, and arm twisting, but it rather was teaching on biblical and sacrificial stewardship in light of definite goals that we felt the Lord has laid before us as a church. And we can certainly say thank you because many of you wonderfully responded to that time of teaching. Today, you can see our subject is once again unapologetically biblical stewardship, partly because this topic needs emphasis from time to time, even though many people would profess to know something about it, many show that they don't really fully understand what scripture teaches. Not just the idea of the church pumping you up somehow to get you to give dollars, but rather speaking to that rooted attitude of a man or woman remade and occupied by the spirit of God who has a different heart and a different mind towards using material things than others do. The elders and other leaders here at Westminster have recently been examining what it will mean to keep on pursuing God's plan for this local church in future years. Especially our leadership and vision committee has been very engaged with this now for about a year and a half and has produced some documentation and just actually this last week The session had a special meeting to review and consider what we're calling a strategic plan document that tries to draw together what we know about the church and what we want to see remain to be true as we walk down the road of the future. And you all will see this plan, by the way, in January when it's had a little more review and strengthening. As we strive to pursue ministry that God wants Westminster to have, fully assure you that our feet are absolutely set in concrete about what we believe. This is not a discussion about faith or creeds. Our beliefs are strong and sure and are not going to change. And along with that faith, there are many kinds of core values and principles that have shaped this church into a healthy, Christ-centered ministry for the past 46 years, and they are mostly going to endure. But there are things that have and will change. You know, some of you might say, well, what is there for leadership to study? And some might say, I like the church just the way it is. Just don't change anything. Well, actually, to even consider and not change anything requires tweaking and changing and adjusting as we face new situations and a new culture and an attack on our moral values. And as we think about the fact that there are aging leaders, one of them standing right here, who will not be leading this ministry in five to eight years. The world is changing. The cultural and moral language that our world speaks to us and into which we must speak is vastly changed. I'm sure you know this. What we've called the Judeo-Christian ethic that has largely stood as a core trunk of values and principles for America for all the way back even before the Revolutionary War, back when we were the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans who came here. The values that our country has been shaped by right through the mid-20th century, I'm sure you know, those values have holes being blasted in them from left and right and center now all the time, from the highest levels of our government to the lowest levels of pop culture. It seems like the Judeo-Christian ethic has filled with holes like Swiss cheese today. If I was somehow the captain of a great ocean liner, I know that that ocean liners are a little out of sync today, and if we want to cross the ocean, we'd probably fly. But just imagine an ocean liner going from Liverpool, England to New York, and I want to say, well, let's chart a route. And you'd say, well, that's very easy. Just lay a ruler on the Atlantic Ocean and draw a straight line. from Liverpool to New York. But the captain of any ship knows better than that. Even though that actually is the point A to point B straight line, he knows that in order to make that trip, he's going to have to have many on-course navigational turns, three degrees here, seven degrees there, four degrees back here, to account for tides and weather systems and icebergs and other traffic in the ocean. Who knows what? Even to get in a straight line, you have to have careful, prayerful guidance of a ship like a large church to get from point A to point B. And besides what the leaders do, we also need many willing believers, our members, our faithful supporters who are going to say, yes, I'm on board too. Don't forget me. I might be the cook on the ship or, you know, the man in the engine room or the navigator. I may not be the admiral, but I count too. And you do indeed. We all need a passionate, selfless commitment to live for Christ. in a wise way in the fearful times of this 21st century. And I'm asking today what is a fundamental attitude that scripture says would govern the way we all give ourselves to the task of the church as we continue to pursue God's plan in times like this. What I want to do first of all today is just take a few minutes and turn back to what I talked about last week from John Just to remind you, or maybe you weren't here, to recap the issue about Mary of Bethany and what I call Christian extravagance. And I remind you of Mary breaking her jar open of perfume or ointment, and we believe as we put the several accounts, Matthew, Mark, and John all together, she first anointed his head and then his feet, and wiped his feet with her hair, and the aroma filled the house, you remember that? seeing your senses are engaged as you think about that beautiful aroma filling the whole room. And Jesus praised her and said, this is a symbolic anointing for his death. And it was a costly sacrifice. It was a good thing. But there was another strident voice there in the room saying it was a waste. Mary gave her best. And she gave all of her best. and laid a sacrifice at the feet of Jesus. And that isn't there simply to tell us, well, here's somebody once upon a time who did something great for our Lord and Savior. It rather, I believe, is given to us as a living model of something we as Christians might not only observe and say, that was great, but we might observe and say, how would I do something like that too? How would I, as a Christian steward, joyfully, even lavishly, knowing what I give or how I offer myself might be something that worldly people would even criticize or say, waste. How could I respond in any manner as Mary did, believing that Jesus would expect and accept that kind of praise from me? I had a theme last time and I told you it was this. It is vain to expect a person to do much for Christ who has no great sense of debt to Christ. Now, I believe that as we look at what you might call extraordinary giving by one believer in Christ like Mary of Bethany, that it's intended to become, in a sense, an ordinary thing as a model for us. We use a phrase today when we say that something has become the new normal. You've heard that before. It has sort of changed the model of how we think in days when we see a new principle there to be guided by. And whether we're thinking of how we volunteer in kingdom ministry, how we give time and skills to the Lord's work or money to the Lord's work or how we pray for and befriend some needy soul whose life is in chaos that might be at our doorstep and we would be perhaps a person who ought to respond and become a stabilizing factor. The principle that John 12 gives us is a principle for Christians of unselfish, open-handed giving of yourself. And this is true even for those that might believe in the 10% tithe. So happens that we finished our new members class today, and if you've been through that, you know the last lesson is on grace-based giving. And I semi-apologize to the class because they were getting a one-two punch today from both the classroom and the pulpit on this subject. But even as we teach and believe that the tithe, the 10% tithe, is a biblical principle, an honorable principle to think about, We also believe that it's not something that we undertake pharisaically and say, okay, right to the dime, I have given my 10%, I've done what God wants, that's it. No, it seems that we need to understand the tithe is taught as a base principle. And that God will enrich and often enable his people to give even well beyond that as they strive to do so. I put before you a little known, a little noticed parable. I think perhaps one of the least of all Jesus' parables in terms of general notice. It's only in Luke. It's Luke 17, beginning at verse seven. It's only a few verses. Jesus there talks about a servant toiling out in the field, probably a hoe or a shovel in their hand, working hard in the hot sun all day. And he says, now, here's this man. He is the servant of a master. When he comes back in the evening to the household, would it be that servant's expectation that the master would thank his faithful servant and say, oh, faithful servant, you've done such a wonderful job. Sit down here at the table. Let me bring you a cool drink. Let me wash your feet for you. Let me fetch you a fresh robe and cook your dinner. Why, no, Jesus said. It would be the other way around, if anything. And Jesus said there, the attitude of the servant to his master must be this, when you have done all that you were commanded to do, you shall still say, we are but unworthy servants and have only done our duty. I might suggest to you that I think that's a parable that really ought to speak to American Christians. There would be many conservative evangelical American Christians who I have encountered or who I've read about or who I've seen in various cultural examples who really do regard God as being the one who's supposed to be serving them. Because at the end of the day, they say, well, look at my life. Look at all that's going wrong here. I'm suffering. I'm deprived. I'm out of a job. This isn't going well. My health is turning. And they say, why, where's God? He's supposed to be fetching and carrying for me. He's supposed to be bringing me good things. Why isn't he giving me a more comfortable, trouble-free life? And do you see what Jesus taught? He said, you're not the master, you're the servant. And your job is to serve the great one who is over you. Is that what you really believe? Now I leave that example of Mary of Bethany and Christian extravagance and bridge to our text that I read today, and I'm going to treat it in a quicker fashion than usual. But 2 Corinthians 8 here, I say to you, teaches Christian extravagance reinforced. Same basic lesson as John 12. The situation was Paul is writing to the Corinthian church, and he is writing to urge them to participate in a collection to relieve poor believers, poor Christians, in Jerusalem. There was a famine that had been going on for years. People were in very tough shape. And the apostles' logic as they went out and appealed to the various churches of the Mediterranean area was, look, if it hadn't been for those folks back there, you never would have had the gospel. Now they have a need. Please help. And so Paul appeals to the Corinthians who had begun this collection. You get the sense that maybe they had set it aside for a while because they had so many internal problems. And by the way, those have been written about in the first seven chapters. And Paul is saying, now you need to complete this task of helping and relieving your poor brethren in Jerusalem. And he begins by holding up for them a shining example in this of other Christians in what is called Macedonia. Now that's an area that actually included a church like Philippi, which was more or less a model congregation. And Paul writes and he says, look, let me tell you what others have done. I just want you to be informed. During a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and extreme poverty overflowed into a wealth of generosity so that they begged us for the favor of taking part. Anyone ever involved in church finance can't quite believe that there were Christians who were begging for the chance to take part, but that's what Paul says. These Macedonians, we know that persecution against Christians was heavy in that region and there were probably some who had lost jobs. They couldn't be employed anymore because Christians were being put out of public places. One commentator on this passage writes and says that the Macedonians, the Philippians, and others made a joy of robbing themselves for God's sake. And the key is stated in verse 5, they gave themselves first to the Lord, then to us. So this wasn't a thing, this wasn't about fundraising. And I don't care what you believe or you can say, oh yeah, you can say that pastor, but I don't believe it. I'm not preaching about fundraising today. I'm preaching about stewardship. It's absolutely different. It begins with your heart. It begins with your mind. It doesn't begin with my hand in your pocket or anybody from this church doing that at all. They gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us. And then three times here in verses one and six and seven, occurs a very important word. This is an act of grace. Grace. It is a response to God's unmerited favor shown towards us in sacrificing himself for us. Christian giving then has the base motivation of grace. It doesn't have a motivation of, well, I have to prove something to God. or I have to prove something to other people in my church. One of the worst catastrophic things I ever saw in church stewardship was a bulletin somebody showed me from a church in Kansas. This was 10, 15 years ago. I saw this little tiny church somewhere on the plains of Kansas, and at the end of the year, or maybe it was like the first of January of the new year, they published the name of every member, and there weren't that many, maybe 40 members, something like that, and how much money every member had given the previous year going down the list. That is never going to happen around here, folks. I can tell you that. What a man-centered thing to do. It was a competition. You know, here was probably the town doctor or lawyer or somebody up at the top of the heap. And wow, he stood way above everybody. And then down here was somebody who could only give $100 for the year or something like that. But what a ridiculous thing to do and call it biblical stewardship. Paul never called for that. Jesus never called for that. What they called for was redeemed, changed, transformed hearts responding as the Spirit of God motivated all their lives, including their pocketbooks. And Paul goes on here to, in verse nine, to not just point to the human example of the Macedonians, but he says, look, I've got another example to offer. Verse nine, you know, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, although he was rich for your sake, he became poor. Christ descended from the heights of heavenly glory to a bloody cross. And Paul is saying, in light of that, could there possibly be a true Christian disciple who is actually stingy and greedy and entirely self-centered in material things? To do that would be a complete denial of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the self-giving Savior. So that a non-generous Christian, Paul would say, is a contradiction in terms. How could you belong to the Jesus who poured out the supreme act of grace on the cross and then turn your back on your brother or a genuine need in the kingdom of God? And so financial stewardship is not a way of proving something to God. It's not competing against others. It's not impressing God or impressing the elders of the church or anything of that kind. It is an act of grace in our lives, responding to the God of grace. Therefore, it's really an act of worship. And Paul says here, near the end of this passage, I'm being very quick with this here. He says, finish doing what you intended to do. You made a good start, but it's time to finish. Acts prove intentions. And it's not time to sit down and say, well, I'll do something about that when I have a larger income or, you know, I've got a promotion coming, then I can take care of it. Very clearly, this passage says it's not about what you'll do with what you don't have, but what you are doing with what you do have. And that may be much less than somebody else has, but it's an equality thing. Each one is to be generous and open-handed in the cause of God. Now, as you might suspect, I have a couple of applications to make. By the way, this is a sermon for the family, okay? This one's not gonna be on the radio because it's for us and the applications are for us. But let me make those couple of applications as we take this principle of Christian extravagance to ministry at Westminster. Each of several congregations that I've served in my ministry I have sought to look at their situation and see what is going on and consult with the elders and so on and decide how do we challenge this people of God, this particular people, to reach beyond their easy grasp. The biggest experience I had was in the smallest church. God started through our agency a new congregation in 1980 to 88. I remember very well my dad and I going to the bank to start a bank account in the name of the new church, the Church of the Savior it was called. And we put in $400 of our own money to start the account, to just seed it and get it going. And then we met with 12 people in a living room and we went on from there and on from there and God built a church and One of the things we did as soon as we had a regular meeting place that we had some control over, I asked one of the members to make a sign with calligraphy, they were very good at that, and made a framed sign that we hung near where you entered and left the worship service. And it had on it, not a verse of scripture, but a saying that you may have heard before. The saying said, attempt something so great for God that it is doomed to fail unless he is in it. I believe that is a kind of motto that founding members of Westminster Church showed in 1968 when they stepped off almost into the void and said, God wants us to start a church here in Lancaster. And to do it, we're going to face some ostracism from people that don't think we should be doing that. and we don't have any kind of a big bank roll, and we don't know who will follow or where we will go or where we will worship, but we'll do it. And God used a group of laymen to make that determination. And I ask now, we see the descendants linearly in the church family of those folks that took that step of faith. Here we are in a fine building, lots and lots of us, hundreds of us. Does God want us to attempt great things? that are doomed to fail unless he is in them. Can we just relax and say, oh, well, you know, that's something founders face, but the rest of us don't have to face that. How dare we? How dare we think there's a day in the kingdom of God when we can relax and do just the easy things? One of the characteristics you know, and I reminded our new members this morning, that Westminster has long practiced a self-imposed, not a biblical, but a self-standard that we set up at one point and said we would give 30% or more of general fund giving to missions and to ministries that happen outside our own walls. Nobody ordered that. As I say, there's no biblical verse to point to to determine that number, but it's a high number. And I'll tell you that those who would study church economics and say, well, what is normal for a church to do, they do tell us in our denomination, how do you do that? You're a large church. You have a building. You have a big staff. How do you do that much for missions? And our answer comes back, well, in light of God's outpoured grace, how can we do less? In fact, we do more because we take special offerings through the year on top of that. How can we do less? I'm outlining for you today a twofold appeal from our session to you, the people who are one in heart with those elders I trust. Two things to think about financially as stewards of this church as we look both at the short term in the next two months and at the next year or more. The short term one is to appeal to you. We need your help in our general fund this year. We publish a monthly report. You see how we stand. Maybe you've been watching it. Maybe you don't pay any attention to it. I don't know, but here's where we stand. We did a great thing for God that would have been doomed to fail unless he is in it earlier this year. It was called Proclamation Presbyterian Church. It meets every Sunday night at five o'clock in Mount Joy. God is prospering that venture. with souls, with new people who are not from Westminster, attending, hearing the gospel, responding to it. Guess what is happening? We sent 50 to 60 of our own members out. We did it knowingly. We knew that we would suffer loss by this. We sent them. They're now about double that number, attending pretty regularly. to a fine ministry of the word, and guess what is amazing if you don't know this? That ministry is already self-supporting. It's not only self-supporting, it has a very healthy bank account to tide it over. It may well be that in fact that some of you have been giving and designating giving to that and thinking, gee, we better help this new church. It must be weak and struggling. It's not weak and struggling. Pastor DeBruin might not like to hear that I said this, but let me tell you what to do if you're giving to that church. Stop. You know, we gave 50 to 60 people who are giving to that church and they and others have made it self-supporting. Now we need to supply that lack because what has gone out the door with those folks is just about our shortfall for the year. Is this a problem we didn't anticipate? Were our elders stupid in starting a church? No, we anticipated exactly this. We anticipated this dilemma. Why could we anticipate it and go ahead? Because we believe the generosity and the extravagance of God's open-handed givers would supply any lack. And with seven Sundays to go, I believe that's going to happen. Quickly, there's another specific opportunity, and it beckons to us. Let me just remind you, I'm building from principle to practical here about our building mortgage. It's just about 80% paid off, praise God. We don't know exactly where it'll be at the end of the year, but somewhere, we hope, close to no more than a million dollars. A million dollars, that's a lot. I don't have a million dollars, do you? There are some of you that actually can say yes to that, of course, but many cannot. Where will we get a million dollars? Well, where do we get the five that has already been paid off? From God's open-handed givers. Here's a little thing you don't get to do very often in church. Take your bulletin and open it. Come on, it's okay. Not your Bible, your bulletin. Page 14, open it up. There's a visual aid. I love visual aids when it comes to finances. You can see there, Not the whole history going back 10 or 11 years with our mortgage, but at least a number of years. And you can see something dramatic took place in the middle of 2012. That was our program pursuing God's plan. And you can see the difference it's made. Now, at the right of that bar graph are three black bars. Those are purely theoretical. They haven't happened yet. That's what could happen if Pursuing God's plan paid the mortgage in three years, exactly three years from when it started. Is there any magic to three years? No. Will it happen in three years? I don't know. God knows. Will it happen by the end of 2015? Highly likely. Highly likely, according to the patterns that you and your generosity have established. You know what? when I can come to you, and I hope I get to do that, if God keeps me in this pulpit another year, I'll be here at the end of 2015, in December, whenever it is, and be able to say, folks, the mortgage is gone. Now I'm gonna expect somebody other than just Jeb Bland to say, amen. A Presbyterian hallelujah will be in order, big time. Because you know what that'll do? That not only will discharge an obligation to a bank, it will open up all kinds of possibilities for us to now say, look at what else we can do. As we channel resources to new ministries, to missions, to staffing that will help those ministries, to the many ways that God is going to continue to challenge us. I'm aware of time today, if you'd just allow me a couple minutes. Here's something I never told you before. When I came here 20 years ago, I already knew Dr. Steve Beck in Ephrata, who was the pastor of our first daughter church, Ephrata Reformed, at that time. He'd been there for a while. So I called Steve up and said, Steve, it looks like things are working to bring me and Westminster together. I said, tell me what you know from a distance of 10 miles about Westminster. And Steve was very thoughtful. And I think I'm quoting just about his exact words. He said, Michael, I respectfully think of Westminster Church as kind of like a slumbering giant, which has not entirely realized its potential to do great things for Christ. I think Steve was right on. And I think the giant has awakened. I think the giant has awakened. And the giant needs to be awake for the coming years of ministry challenge that are ahead of us. And I ask you today, has God, by his Holy Spirit, given you a radically new heart that lets you joyfully embrace the idea of giving beyond what the world would say, well, that's enough. You don't give more than that. No, you go over the top. You open your hands and your heart. You give of your time. You give of your involvement to human lives. Our dear friends here in our refugee ministry would tell you that this church hasn't just created a ministry where they can learn English as second language and have a class to help them. Lives have invested themselves in their lives. That's what it's about, right folks in the front row? Isn't that what it's about? Other lives investing in yours. That's what we want to do. With Paul I say to you, since you excel in spiritual gifts, faith, speech, knowledge, love, this is a gifted church. You excel in many things. We are gifted with so many mature Christians here. I can say with Paul, See that you excel in this act of grace. Do this as well to the glory of God. Father, I pray with thanksgiving for this church that Steve called a slumbering giant. Keep the giant awake. Keep prodding us, reminding us, challenging us to be like Mary of Bethany. offered up and poured out for Jesus' sake until he comes. We ask in his name. Amen.