INTRODUCTION: STEWARDSHIP AND THE
KINGDOM OF GOD
There is a crisis in Christianity
today. Many churches and
denominations are struggling to reach their financial goals and fund their
visions. We in the Christian
and Missionary Alliance are no strangers to this
struggle. But the crisis we
face is not primarily a struggle of
stewardship. It is crisis of
discipleship. Certainly, stewardship
flows out of this broader category of discipleship, but the central issue
is the totality of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the
21st century.
The church in North America has tragically and unknowingly reduced
following Jesus to a series of creeds to believe and a group of prayers to
be prayed. Lost in our evangelism
is the radical call to leave the kingdom of this world and come under the
rule and reign of God. Our call
to become a citizen of the Kingdom of God has made few demands on previous
worldly allegiances. We have
produced a generation of disciples who do not mind taking up their cross,
so long as it is not too heavy, fits into their schedule and does not conflict
with their lifestyle. We have
preached a bloodless cross, which has robbed Christianity of its power and
has turned the biblical teaching of stewardship into a task most preachers
would rather avoid.
The time has come for the Christian and Missionary Alliance to revisit
the meaning of biblical stewardship, to relearn the principles that guide
our earning, saving and giving, and to recommit ourselves as men and women
devoted to radical obedience.
Toward this goal, as with all areas of daily discipleship, we must
remind ourselves of the central message of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“The Kingdom of God is
near.” What did Jesus
mean when he made that declaration in Mark
1:15? What relationship does
it have to a biblical theology of
stewardship? Jesus’ bold
proclamation addressed directly humanity’s central problem: its
fallenness. The Fall of
man resulted in a hostile take-over of this
planet. The ensuing alienation
between man and God and between man and his fellow man horrifically displayed
the rule and reign of evil on this
earth. Jesus’ mission was
to reestablish the redemptive beachhead of the rule and reign of
God.
Dallas Willard paraphrases Mark 1:15 to convey this awesome
truth: “Jesus then came
into Galilee announcing the good news from
God. ‘All the preliminaries
have been taken care of,’ he said, ‘and the rule of God is now
accessible to everyone. Review
your plans for living and base your life on this remarkable new
opportunity.’”1
In other words, Jesus was making available a whole new economy under
which we may live. “Here
it is,” declares Jesus, “the Kingdom of God is within your
reach. God’s rule and reign
is available to all who will receive
it.”
Matthew’s record of this announcement includes the well-known
directive, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (Matt
4:17). Inherent in this call
is the requirement to turn from the direction in which one is heading and
to move into a whole new reality.
Repentance (Greek:
metanoeo) means to change one’s mind or
purpose.2“Change your
life. God’s Kingdom is
here,” is how Eugene Peterson renders this verse in The
Message. He captures the
heart of Jesus’ message. You
can enter into the Kingdom of God only if you are willing to let go of the
“apparent” control you have over your own
life. A Kingdom proclamation
that neglects the call to reconsider and repent of previous values and priorities
brings forth lifestyles that fall short of what Jesus sought.
Some have suggested that this kingdom reality was and is for a future
time, that the kingdom is not available now, but someday will
be.3 While there are certainly elements of the
kingdom that we have yet to experience, Jesus appears to have been inviting
his hearers to enter into something immediately
accessible. The perfect tense
of eggiken, usually translated “is at hand” or “has drawn
nigh” (Matt 3:2; 4:17; 10:7; Mk 1:15), indicates that the
“coming” is a past action with present
results.4 Jesus proclaimed that the rule and
reign of God, though not yet fully consummated, is available
now.5
If Jesus’ call to the Kingdom was really a call to receive the
rule and reign of God, it is obvious that the one responding to this call
cannot remain the same. Clearly
falling under God’s lordship would be the use of his or her money, gifts,
abilities and all resources. We
who enter the Kingdom therefore undergo a radical
change. We serve a new Master
and everything we have belongs to Him (Psalm
24:1). If God owns our hearts,
He will most certainly have our “wallets” as well.
Any discussion of stewardship must
therefore begin with a healthy understanding of Kingdom
discipleship. We must resist
our tendency to limit our concept of stewardship to matters of money and
finance, because biblical stewardship encompasses far more: it means coming
fully under the reign of God in every area of our
lives. A. B. Simpson, in his
article, “The Grace of Giving,” describes this wonderful connection
between Kingdom Discipleship and stewardship.
When we began our mission on Tremont
Street in Boston, I remember taking up an offering for it at an afternoon
meeting in the city. The largest
gift was $25—a substantial sum at that
time. I was curious as to who the “$25 person”
was. At the close of the meeting
I was introduced to him—a poor shoemaker who had a small
shop. When I spoke to him about
his generous gift he said, “If you only knew what the Lord has given
me, you would not wonder at all.”
Subsequently I became better acquainted with the
man. Every time I went to Boston,
there he was, shouting his hallelujahs.
He was converted many years before, but he could get no
joy. He was hungry for more
of God’s presence. He sought
a deeper experience with God, but the members of the church he attended told
him his quest was nonsense.
“You must be contented to sin like the rest of us,” they
advised. The man backslid and
for several years he kept a saloon in
Boston. But his heart hunger
would not go away. One Thursday
afternoon he stumbled into our Alliance meeting in Boston and he heard people
talking about the riches of Christ’s
grace. Before the afternoon
was over, he had received the Holy
Spirit. He went home to pitch
his whiskey into the sea. He
closed his saloon and returned to making shoes for a
living. There in his little
shop he preached the gospel all day long to the
customers. And that was the
man who gave $25. It was a gift
that God enabled and that God impelled by the fullness of the Holy Spirit
and the overflow of His
grace.6
The distinguishing factor of this man’s giving was
his heart. Though he had been
a Christian for years, he hungered insatiably for more of God’s
presence. He finally experienced
it only after he was willing to abandon his idols and return to the simplicity
of pure devotion to Jesus.
Monetarily he made little as a shoemaker, but receiving wholeheartedly
from the One who owns it all made him rich
indeed. As a result, his desire was both to tell and to
give. He didn’t just preach
about God’s grace. He lived
it. People who understand what
they have in the Kingdom of our Lord give generously and
joyfully. People who have not been so taught will
not.
This
conviction, we believe, serves as the starting point for the proper stewardship
of all that we possess. The
principles that we present and the issues we address in the pages that follow
cannot be understood without the Lordship of Christ as their true
foundation.
7 Because of the limited scope of our
discussion, we cannot address every point of Scripture and every matter of
concern.8 Nevertheless, our hope is that this
paper will serve as a concise summary of what every pastor, elder and layperson
should know about biblical stewardship.
I.
Stewardship
Defined
Webster’s New Collegiate
Dictionary defines a steward as “one employed in a large household
or estate to manage domestic concerns (as the supervision of servants, collection
of rents, and keeping of
accounts).”9
In short, a steward is a person who takes care of someone else’s
property. There are several
examples in the Old Testament, where they are described simply as those
“over the household” (Hebrew:
al-habbayit, e.g. 1 Kgs 4:6; 16:9;
Isa 36:3), as well as in the New Testament, where they are called managers
or stewards (Greek: oikonomoi,
e.g. Luke 12:42; 16:1). We
should also mention Paul’s illustration in Galatians 3:24 likening the
Old Testament law to a household slave put in charge of children (Greek:
paidagogos). Perhaps
the most vivid biblical story illustrating stewardship is Joseph, the manager
of Potiphar’s house (Genesis
39:4-6).10
While these passages offer helpful illustrations of the occupation
of stewardship, the heart of Bible’s teaching on stewardship as a point
of discipleship goes much deeper.
A.
The Concept of Stewardship in the Old Testament
The Hebrew concept of stewardship begins and ends with
God. God is the creator and
possessor of all things. Human
beings who possess God’s creation do so only as God graciously
delegates. This idea may be traced throughout the entire Old
Testament. In Genesis 1 and
2, when God grants Adam and Eve dominion over the creation, He is asking
them to rule on His behalf. The
responsibilities of naming the animals, filling and subduing the earth show
that they are being given an ambassadorial reign as God’s
vice-regents. However, there
is never any doubt as to who is the true
Sovereign. The judgment Adam
and Eve undergo after they chose to go their own way and come out from under
the rule and reign of God in Genesis 3 shows that they were held accountable
by the Lord. Stewardship
responsibility in the Kingdom of God was established from the beginning.
In Genesis 14, when Melchizedek brings out the bread and the wine
and blesses Abram, the first words out of his mouth are, “Blessed be
Abram by God Most High, Possessor (Hebrew:
qanah) of Heaven and earth”
(v.19). Verse 20 records the
first tithe in Scripture: “And he gave him a tenth of
all.” Two verses later
Abram raises his hand and makes Melchizedek’s blessing personal, in
essence declaring, “Lord God Most High, everything I have belongs to
You.” It is fitting that
this tithe is framed by the bold declaration that the Lord is the creator
and possessor of all things.
In Deuteronomy, when the Israelites
were poised to move into the Promised Land, they were carefully instructed
to remember that the land truly belonged to
God. They were, at best, temporary
tenants. The land was God’s
gift and their inheritance from Him (Deuteronomy
25:19). They could not do anything
they pleased with it. Rather,
they were to be good stewards of the resources God had entrusted to
them.
This notion was behind many of the
Laws concerning their use of the land.
Two examples are worth noting
here. First, God commanded that
His land was to lie fallow every seventh year to receive a Sabbath rest from
planting and harvest. “For
six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the
seventh year let the land lie unplowed and
unused. Then the poor among
your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they
leave. Do the same with your
vineyard and your olive grove” (Exodus
23:10,11). The crops from preceding
years were promised to be sufficient to carry them through the Sabbath year
of rest. Through this law, God
was teaching His people that He was to be their source of sustenance, that
they should trust in His ability to provide for them more than in their ability
to provide for themselves. Over the years, the people of Israel sadly ignored this
Sabbatical year law. When the
Chronicler looked back on the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, he interpreted
the people’s downfall and the Babylonian captivity in terms of their
inability to trust and obey God in this very matter: “He carried into
exile to Babylon the remnant . . . The land enjoyed its Sabbath rests”
(2 Chronicles 36:20-21).
Second, the concept of stewardship
underlay laws concerning the Year of
Jubilee. Every 50th
year was consecrated as a fresh start throughout the land (Leviticus
25:8-54). Outcasts and prodigals
were to return home. Debts were
to be forgiven. Land was to
be returned to the original owners.
Why was this done? The
Lord declared that the land rightfully belonged to Him and no one but He
could claim absolute ownership of it.
“The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine
and you are but aliens and my tenants (Leviticus
25:23).”
Thus, the covenant people of God in the Old Testament had a very
clear understanding of the concept of
stewardship. Even their
songs of worship contained references and reminders to this important spiritual
principle. “The earth is
the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
for he founded it…(Psalm
24:1,2).” Again, through
the Psalmist, God asserts, “For every animal of the forest is mine,
and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird in the mountains and the creatures of the field
are mine. If I were hungry I
would not tell you, for the world is mine and all that is in it (Psalm
50:10-12).”
This theology of God’s ownership also undergirds the Israelite
practice of tithes and offerings. There are three different tithes mentioned
in the Old Testament: a tithe for the Levites (Numbers 18:21-24), a celebration
tithe of agricultural products (Deuteronomy 12:6,7; 14:22-26), and a charity
tithe (Deuteronomy
14:28,29).11 Regardless of the earthly purpose,
the core purpose of these offerings was always to be the heart worship of
the God who was the owner and giver of everything. We will address this concept
of the spirit of the tithe more fully in another
section. For the moment, we might say that this heart worship is
beautifully illustrated in the Chronicler’s description of the gifts
the people of Israel brought for the building of the temple. “The people
rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely
and wholeheartedly to the Lord” (1 Chronicles
29:9). David, overwhelmed by
this outpouring of generosity, breaks into praise saying,” Who am I,
and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as
this? Everything comes from
you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. . . . I know,
my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with
integrity. All these things
have I given willingly and with honest
intent. And now I have seen
with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to
you. O Lord, . . . keep this
desire in the hearts of your people forever” (2 Chronicles 29:14-18).
.
The Old Testament teaching on stewardship may be summarized in three
principles:
1) God is the owner of everything.
2) God’s covenant people are held responsible for their management
of God’s resources. 3)
Giving is a worshipful response to God’s ownership of all things.
B.
The Concept of Stewardship in the New Testament
42The Lord answered, "Who
then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of
his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time?
43It
will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns.
44I
tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.
45But
suppose the servant says to himself, 'My master is taking a long time in
coming,' and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and
to eat and drink and get drunk.
46The master of that servant will come on
a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will
cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
47"That
servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do
what his master wants will be beaten with many blows.
48But the one who
does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few
blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and
from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be
asked.
Luke 12:42-48
Jesus’ Parable of the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants continues
the theology of God’s ownership found in the Old
Testament. The master in the
parable who is “coming” and entrusts his possessions to his servants
would have been recognized by Jewish hearers as God, whom the prophets said
would “come” on the Day of the
Lord.
For many first-century Palestinian
Jews, this “coming” meant the arrival of a political messiah, who
would deliver them from the rule of the Roman
Empire. Their expectancy that
Jesus would usher in the Kingdom of God was
high.12 However, Jesus’ introduction
to this parable reinterprets this expected Day of the Lord as the day of
his own Second Coming: “Be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an
hour you do not expect” (Luke
12:40).13
The effect of this interpretive move had profound implications for
Christian stewardship. In effect, Jesus was teaching them not only that the fullness
of the Kingdom of God was to be delayed, but that in the meantime, while
the Kingdom is “now” and “not yet,” they must live a
life of faithful stewardship.
The word “manager” (Greek:
oikonomos) in Luke 12:42 appears
frequently in Greek literature, in both literary works (e.g. Philo and Josephus)
and non-literary works (receipts, lease agreements, etc. on Greek
papyri).14
It referred to managers of payable accounts (e.g. Luke 16:1-8) as
well as city treasurers (e.g. Erastus in Rom
16:23). Yet common to all of
them was that they were responsible for property that wasn’t theirs
and were accountable for what they did with
it. By analogy, Jesus’
parable calls God’s people to live as responsible and accountable stewards
of all that God has entrusted to them.
A final word about the “coming” of the master: the time
period envisioned for the reward (v. 44) and punishment (v. 46) of the stewards
is clearly the parousia, when the Kingdom of God is
consummated. But the eschatology
of the New Testament is a “realized”
eschatology. The heart of
Jesus’ message was that end-time realities (healing, defeat of demons,
the presence of God in the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, etc.) are
present in token form now.
Even though the faithful may anticipate heavenly rewards (being put
in charge of everything the master owns, v. 44) and the unfaithful punishment
in hell (being cut up into pieces, v. 46), there is no reason why these future
outcomes cannot be experienced on a smaller scale on earth
now. Kingdom theology must be
open to the possibility that people within God’s kingdom, both the true
and the false (cf. Matthew 13:24-29; 36-43; 47-50), may undergo
in this life the material blessing and material curse (!) of
God.
As we move beyond this parable
to the rest of the New Testament, it becomes clear that our stewardship consists
in more than just material things.
In 1 Corinthians 4:1, Paul says Christian workers are stewards (plural:
oikonomoi) of “the mysteries
of God.” Paul here is probably
referring to the gospel, the mystery of “the manifold wisdom of God,”
which the church has been entrusted to make known (Ephesians
3:9,10). Related to this is
his use of the word “stewardship”
(oikonomia) to describe his preaching
of the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:16-17). In Titus 1:7, while listing the qualifications for elders,
Paul describes the overseer as God’s “steward”
(oikonomos).
Paul is teaching that church leaders who are entrusted with God’s
church are accountable to God for their
oversight. Finally, 1
Peter 4:10 says, “As each one has received a special gift, employ it
serving one another, as good stewards
(oikonomoi) of the manifold grace
of God.” Peter then goes
on to list speaking and serving gifts as the domain of our stewardship (1
Peter 4:11). The gospel, our
churches, the gifts of the Holy Spirit—none of these wonderful blessings
belongs to us. We are the gracious recipients of the good things of
God. Therefore, we are responsible
for their use on this earth, and we will ultimately be held accountable for
our faithfulness with them (Matthew 16:27; Romans 14:10-12; 1 Corinthians
3:10-15; 2 Corinthians 5:10).
Unfortunately, this concept of
stewardship may be more palatable when it remains a mere theological principle
than when it becomes a call to practical Christian
living. It is not difficult
to accept Christian stewardship in the abstract, but we are slow to embrace
it when it impinges upon tangible
realities. “Yes, I know
God owns everything, but why is it so hard for me to surrender my children
into His care when they want to pursue
missions?” If we are
responsible for the use of our gifts and abilities, why do we conduct our
ministries more out of our own convenience than out of a sense of God’s
calling? Why do we look down upon sacrificial giving as a
legalistic practice done only in those “radical”
churches? These questions point to matters of the heart and
challenge us in our willingness, or perhaps unwillingness, to
obey. We each must pause and
“consider our ways” (Haggai 1:7), allowing the Spirit to convict,
that we might learn how and when we give into the false assumption that we,
and not God, are true owners of what we
have. It is with this spirit
that I offer these five practical principles that build upon the Biblical
material we’ve covered.
C.
Principles
of Stewardship
1.
Good Stewardship Begins with the Recognition that
God is the Owner of All Things
The prayer of David quoted earlier summarizes
beautifully the foundational idea of stewardship: “Everything comes
from you” (1 Chronicles 29:14).
The plea of the preacher to “give God ownership of your life”
is based on a false premise. Our lives and everything we have is not ours to
give. We cannot “give”
God ownership of our material goods.
He already owns it all. We
can only recognize and submit to His
ownership.
In
addition to the Parable of the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants (Like 12:42-48),
there are other “stewardship” parables, most notably the Parable
of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13) and the Parable of the Talents (Matthew
25:14-20 and Luke 19:12-27). Taking these three parables together, we can set forth
the next three principles about our stewardship before
God.
2.
As Stewards We Are “Entrusted” with
“Goods” to Care For As Part of Kingdom Discipleship Until the Return
of the “Master” Jesus Christ.
A
few points may be drawn from the Parable of the Talents concerning the ways
in which God’s entrusts his “goods” to
us. First, the servants received
different amounts. In the same
way, not all of us are entrusted by God with the same things—some receive
greater responsibilities, some lesser.
Second, Matthew’s version tells us that the master distributed
the talents “according to their own ability” (Matthew
25:15). We can trust that God
in his providence puts into our hands only what we can aptly
handle. Third, the master expected
an increase. Judgment
came to the third servant for failing even to bring interest (Luke 19:23;
Matthew 25:27). Likewise, God
expects us to bear fruit in His kingdom.
Finally, in Matthew’s version, the master is equally pleased
with the second servant who yielded two talents as he is with the first who
yielded five talents. We should
not look to how God has dealt with others to evaluate how he deals with
us. He is mainly concerned with
our being faithful (Luke 12:42) with what we have been given.
3.
Our
Stewardship Must Serve Not Our Own Purposes, But the Purpose of the
“Master” Jesus Christ
The Steward in Luke 16:1-8 is
“unjust” mainly because he dealt with his master’s debtors
to his own advantage instead of his
master’s. He was commended
for his “shrewdness,” but he is not the example of faithful stewardship
the Lord wants. Likewise, the
third servant in the Parable of the Talents did what appeared right in his
own eyes, but was judged for not obeying the will of the
master. Indeed, the greatest
punishment in the Parable of the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants comes to
the servant who knew the master’s will and did not do it (Luke
12:47). By contrast, the Parable
of the Servant in Luke 17:7-10 reminds us of the primacy of obedience in
the Master-servant relationship.
Even if we do everything God has asked us to do, we should remember
that obedience is only minimum
expectation. We are in line
for no special reward. We are
simply serving our Master.
4.
We Will Be Held Accountable for Our Stewardship
In all three “stewardship” parables, there is a moment of
reckoning. The Unjust Steward
faces it at the beginning of the story when he is
fired. The stewards in the Parable
of the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants and the Parable of the Talents face
it at the end, when they are rewarded and
punished. The New Testament
reminds us of the Christian’s day of reckoning before the Judgment Seat
of Christ, sometimes referred to as the “Bema Seat” (2 Corinthians
5:10). Salvation is a free gift given by God’s grace (Ephesians
2:8-9), yet each of us will still be judged by Christ to determine our rewards
for how we have lived. Our
redemption does not free us from responsibility and accountability before
God. The Covenant people of
God will one day give and account for our stewardship (Matthew 16:27; 1
Corinthians 3:10-15). Paul tells
the Romans that “each of us will have to give an account of himself
to God” (Romans 14:12). This
means that we will have to give an explanation for what we did and why we
did it. It will not only be
an evaluation of deed, but also an evaluation of the
heart. The judgment for poor
stewardship will not result in the loss of salvation, but there will still
be loss: “If what he has built survives, he will receive his
reward. If it is burned up,
he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through
the flames” (1 Corinthians
3:14,15). To put it bluntly,
“They will be saved, but with the smell of smoke all over
them.”
5.
Our Stewardship Embraces Both the Spiritual and the
Material
We have already mentioned the New Testament passages that use the
words oikonomos or
oikonomia which describe the items over which Christians are
stewards (the church, the gospel, spiritual
gifts). There are other passages that do not contain these key
words, but still set forth items that properly fall under our stewardship
care. The use of time and
opportunities to minister (Ephesians 5:15,16) certainly must be governed
with wise stewardship. Since
our physical bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19),
our care of them is also something of a
stewardship. Finally, the Lord
would be well pleased if the stewardship of our homes included the welcoming
of others in hospitality (Hebrews 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9).
II.
Practical
Directives on Four Related Issues
A. Spiritual Warfare
Why are Christians resistant to
the issues of stewardship? Why
do we not live as Jesus taught us to
live? Two possible answers to these questions are hard-heartedness
(we know what God says and we don't care) and ignorance (we don't know because
we haven't been taught). Certainly
these are issues that need to be addressed, but could it be we are overlooking
a further possible cause?
In our Western sophistication we
have often neglected the influence of the
spirit-realm. We believe Jesus
made reference to the presence of spiritual warfare in relation to stewardship
in Matthew 6:19-24:
19"Do not store up for
yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves
break in and steal.
20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and
steal.
21For
where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22"The
eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will
be full of light.
23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will
be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great
is that darkness!
24"No one can serve two masters. Either he will
hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise
the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Note in this passage the strongly worded statement that one
cannot serve two masters (kurios =
Lord). In particular, these
two Masters, God and Money (v. 24), are diametrically opposed and cannot
coexist. The impossibility of
serving both is expressed well by the metaphor of servitude. There is no
such thing as a slave’s “part-time” obligation to his
owner. A master’s control
over his slave was total and complete.
One writer puts the conflicting demands of the two “masters”
this way:
The
one commands us to walk by faith and the other commands we walk by
sight. The one calls us to be
humble and the other to be proud.
The one to set our minds on things above and the other to set them
on things below. One calls us
to love light, the other to love
darkness. The one tells us to
look toward things unseen and eternal and the other to look at things seen
and
temporal.15
Could it be that Jesus’ slave
imagery is a clue that he views a believer’s allegiance to money as
a form of spiritual bondage?
Certainly those who have ministered to parishioners who live under
the rule of materialism, workaholism, gambling, and the bitter fear of losing
what they have, know that there is an oppressive and binding nature to these
sins. Jesus’ personification
of “Money” or
“Mammon” (Greek: mamonas,
derived from Aramaic) may be more than a mere literary
device. We must be open to the
possibility that he is speaking of Mammon as a demonic spirit, a rival god,
a ruling principality.
Many today indeed take the word “Mammon” in Matthew 6:24
this way. Richard Foster, in
his book, Money, Sex and Power, says Mammon is a spiritual power that
seeks to dominate our
lives.16
One pastor has suggested that the roots of this word come from a mining
term meaning to dig in the earth; to find one's sustenance in the
ground. The picture is that
of a man digging and clawing at the earth, constantly looking downward, drawing
his life not from above, but from the world
below.17
Though a word’s meaning can never be derived from its etymology,
we nevertheless have a convenient picture illustrating the spiritual bondage
of a person for whom wealth has become a
god-substitute. Those ruled
by Mammon suffer under the Satanic lie that man-made things (employers, the
stock market, one’s own toil, even luck) are their provider, instead
of God, their true Provider.
In recent days, some missiologists have suggested that societal ills
and widespread sins are in part the work of ruling or “territorial”
spirits, whose domain covers large geographical regions and even entire
nations. If this is an accurate
assessment of the warfare situation in the heavenly realms, then there is
certainly a “spirit of Mammon” that is active in the United States
of America. Christians must
therefore be alert and ready to employ the weapons of spiritual warfare,
not only in extraordinary situations involving the occult and demonic
manifestations, but also in the ordinary world of wage-earning, bill-paying
and tithing. A life of good
Christian stewardship is a spiritual battle that must be waged and won.
There are many different understandings of how to go about spiritual
warfare. Some of these are extremely
controversial. Let me suggest
a method of spiritual warfare that I believe will be widely
accepted. It is also a good
course of action even if the manifestation is not primarily
demonic. Whatever spirit appears
to be manifesting—pride, greed or anger for example—live out the
opposite spirit. In Proverbs
15:1, we read, “A gentle answer turns away
wrath.” When a person is
exhibiting anger or wrath, the best course of action is to respond with the
opposite spirit—gentleness.
Jesus instructed us to respond to cursing with blessing and to pray
for those who were mistreating us (Luke
6:28).
Where a spirit of pride has taken
over, nothing will expose it like a spirit of
humility. A friend of mine (Ron
speaking) who is a missionary with Youth With A Mission told me of an outreach
they were doing in a large South American
city. During the first few days
they had little success in their
evangelism. Several of the team
members had been verbally abused and all of them had been openly
mocked. No one would even take
the tracts the street teams were trying to hand
out. They decided to fast and
pray for a day to see if they could discern what was going on in the realm
of the spirit. Several of the
team members sensed that there was a strong spirit of Pride over the city
that needed to be broken before the Gospel could go
forth. After further prayer,
they decided to respond with symbolic acts of humility throughout the
city. Team members scattered
and knelt on street corners to pray for the people of the
city. They began to offer themselves
for humble acts of service throughout the business
district. Some voluntarily cleaned
filthy bathrooms and emptied trash for shops and restaurants. Within 24 hours
something dramatic and supernatural began to take
place. People began to listen
when they shared their faith. They
took their tracts and actually read
them. Team members began to
ask people if they could pray for them and many graciously received in the
middle of crowded sidewalks. Prior
to their acts of humility, no one had received
Christ. By the end of the week, more than 300 people had said
yes to Jesus, praying to be born again with the team
members.18
Was there really a demonic spirit of Pride over that
city? I do not
know. But I do believe that
whether a stronghold is rooted in the demonic or the sin hardened heart of
people, living out the opposite spirit can bring the light and freedom of
God.
This directly relates to the spirit
of Mammon in our culture. Whether this is demonic or not, our response should be
the same—practice the opposite spirit by the grace of
God. Where there is greed, let
generosity abound. Where materialism
and worldly wealth have become all important, let the church of Jesus Christ
live by a different economy—one ruled by the King of Love and generosity,
Jesus Christ. "For you know
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich”
(2 Corinthians 8:9). This
verse describes the ultimate generosity of the God-Man Christ Jesus, “who
being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to
be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, being
made in human likeness” (Philippians
2:6,7). Jesus freely gave of
Himself and generously laid aside his rights and privileges that we could
be free. Jesus became poor for
us, so that we through his poverty might become
rich. This is the ultimate act
of generosity. Jesus’ intention
was that His disciples would follow His
example.
B.
The Health
and Wealth Gospel
Does God promise to bless His children
with health and wealth? Many
of us have encountered preachers and writers in the health/wealth/prosperity
movement who have led many to believe that the answer is a resounding
yes.19
We love these Christian brothers and sisters like family, but We believe
they are in error in some significant
areas.
Before we speak words of correction,
allow us to offer a word of caution to those, including ourselves, who are
prone to denouncing the faith movement
harshly. First, as we disagree
we must refrain from being censorious and
judgmental. If in our effort
to speak the truth we hurt and slander, we will not only lose the opportunity
for godly correction, but we will invite God’s discipline on our own
heads. Second, as we bring
correction we must be careful not to cast away God’s truth in the
process. A parallel situation
will illustrate what we mean. For
the past thirty years God has been restoring the use of spiritual gifts to
the church, particularly the so-called “miraculous” ones (e.g.
healing, prophecy, etc.). Along
the way there have been some poor teaching and bad
experiences. Thankfully, much
of the excesses have been corrected.
Looking back, few evangelicals would be willing to trade what we have
gained (albeit at times painfully) for the little we had before the spiritual
gifts movement began. I (Ron) have a good friend who likes to say concerning
the gifts, “Disuse is not the answer to misuse, but rather right use
is the answer to misuse.”
In the same way, we must be careful not to throw out the baby with
the bath water and abandon some of the good emphases in Scripture about
God’s material blessing.
With these cautions in mind, we
may identify a few extremes to which the Health and Wealth Gospel has fallen
prey. First, we must reject
as unbiblical the suggestion that God has set up universal laws of prosperity
that govern the cosmos, which are put into operation by faith and positive
confession (“name it and claim
it”).20
Second, we must reject as unbiblical the claim that God wants to meet
not only the believer’s every need, but to grant every desire as well
(“King’s Kids ought to ride in Rolls
Royces”).21 Finally, we must reject as unbiblical
the claim that Jesus died to redeem man from poverty, and that a believer
who is poor has dishonored God because he has failed to appropriate the
deliverance from poverty provided in the
atonement.22
Though the men who have popularized these ideas were well meaning,
their teaching has done more harm than
good.
On the other hand, our misgivings
about the Health and Wealth Gospel must not lead us to devalue Scriptural
passages that show that God’s desire is to bless and even prosper His
children. The Old Testament
describes many examples of people whom God materially blessed: Abraham (Genesis
13:2,6), Isaac (Genesis 26:13-14), Jacob (Genesis 32:9-12), Job (Job 1:3;
42:10) and Solomon (1 Kings 3:13).
According to Deuteronomy, God used prosperity to confirm his covenant
with Israel and to teach the nations to fear them (8:18;
28:8-10). The familiar verse,
“This is the day that the Lord has made” (Psalm 118:24), is followed
by a less familiar plea for success: “O Lord do save, we beseech Thee;
O Lord, we beseech Thee, do send prosperity” (Psalm 118:25
NASB). Ecclesiastes sanctions
satisfaction from food and drink by affirming that such enjoyment is not
sinful, but a gift from God (2:24-25).
The New Testament, while it focuses less on material blessings and
more on spiritual blessings, nevertheless affirms that we should enjoy the
material things God gives us. The early Christians “partook of food with glad and
generous hearts, praising God” (Acts
2:46-47). Paul, in spite of
his warnings about riches, tells Timothy that even wealthy people should
set their hopes on God “who richly furnishes us with everything to
enjoy” (1 Tim 6:17).
Yet this teaching on God’s
desire to bless stands in tension with other passages, especially in the
New Testament, that warn against riches.
Jesus condemned the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-20) and warned about how
hard it is for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God (Luke
18:24-25). How do we reconcile
the positive and negative teachings on
wealth? The best way is still
to affirm that wealth is not evil in and of
itself. It is our attitude towards
the wealth, namely our desire for it, that can make its possession evil (1
Timothy 6:9,10).
But if, as we said earlier, God’s
desire is to bless, what should we make of believers who are in
poverty? We must first affirm,
against the Health and Wealth Gospel, that there is no shame in being
poor. Jesus himself had
“nowhere to lay his head” (Luke
9:58). Paul described himself
as “ill-clad” and “homeless” (1 Cor
4:11). Jesus pronounced a blessing
on the poor: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God”
(Luke 6:20). James tells us
that God has “chosen those who are poor to be rich in faith” (James
2:5). God is in no way dishonored
by believers who have little or no possessions.
On the other hand, we must secondly
affirm, against a more widely held sentiment in evangelicalism that romanticizes
being poor, that material poverty is part of the
curse of our fallen
world. There are, of course,
persons who choose a simple lifestyle out of obedience to the call of God,
but I am not addressing their situation.
We are addressing those believers who have been “taken by”
poverty, and who have not chosen it.
It is time to reconsider writers like Ron Sider, who, while acknowledging
that not all instances of poverty are immediately caused by sin, recognizes
that “poverty and suffering are not inherently
good. They are tragic distortions
of God’s good
creation.”23
In this sense, poverty is much like sickness or
disease. God in His sovereignty
allows men and women to suffer from physical ailments, yet it is never his
pleasure or delight that they do so.
In the same way, though it is “God’s will” that some
will remain poor, and even if He comforts them through the trial and uses
the experience as a vehicle for their growth, it is never “God’s
wish” that they lack what they
need.24 The poverty that remains among
God’s people is a sign not that the Kingdom is “now,” but
that it is still “not yet.”
For this reason, we call upon pastors
and leaders in the Christian and Missionary Alliance to challenge the poor
in their congregations away from the false belief that God wishes for them
to remain in their poverty. It
is said that the Hebrew word for “be prosperous”
(tsalach) means “to push forward;
to break out
mightily.”25
If this is so, it serves as an apt word picture for what God desires
for them as part of the advancement of His
Kingdom. Poverty carries with
it the idea of being bound up and
contained. Prosperity would
then be the poor person “breaking free” from that which keeps him
or her confined, kept from enjoying the good gifts that God wishes to
bestow.
But from a Kingdom vantage point,
how does a person “break free” from poverty and experience the
blessing of God? Here we must
refrain from the Health and Wealth Gospel’s tendency to trumpet
“success formulas” and “rules of prosperity” that all
but guarantee affluence to the faithful.
Yet, as wrongheaded as the Prosperity movement is, its error lies
merely in the distortion of principles
that are biblically true. In
Jesus’ parables, which stewards are the ones who receive the master’s
blessing? The ones who were
faithful with the talents they were given!
We mentioned earlier that the rewards
(Luke 12:44; 19:17,19; Matthew 25:21-23) and punishments (Luke 12:46; 19:24;
Matthew 25:30) in the parables are primarily eschatological, but that in
the “realized eschatology” of the Kingdom, they may be experienced
in token form now. Without drawing
dogmatic conclusions, we should be open to the possibility that material
prosperity and poverty can be the result of our faithfulness and unfaithfulness
in the use of God’s wealth.
Of course, we recognize that there are a variety of poverty situations
in the church today and that their immediate causes are complex, which serves
to warn against simple solutions.
And we recognize that biblical teaching we have offered resembles
the teaching in the Book of Proverbs: more general principle than specific
promise (see, e.g. Proverbs 3:9-10).
Nevertheless, the Bible appears to connect faithful stewardship with
material blessing.
Two additional Old Testament passages
bear out this link. First, Haggai
testifies that the returning exiles, after becoming preoccupied with their
own homes and forsaking the rebuilding of the Temple, suffered terrible poverty
at the hand of God: “You have planted much, but harvested little. .
. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it” (Haggai
1:6). But Haggai also
testifies that when they reordered their priorities and began to spend their
lives on God (1:12), the curse that had been on their crops, their livestock,
and their finances was lifted. The
“holes in their purses” were
closed. The crops in their fields
began to yield good fruit. The
material blessings of their God began to
flow.26 Second, Malachi proclaimed
that the people of Israel during the Persian period were under the curse
of God for robbing Him of His tithes and offerings
(3:9). But Malachi then offers
to the people this promise: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse,
that there may be food in my house. Test me in this . . . and see if I will not throw open
the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not
have room enough for it” (3:10).
Once again, the connection between faithful stewardship and material
blessing is clear.
Our contention is that if the church
embraces the reign and rule of God in the management of all its possessions,
then it will see, as a by-product of the advancement of the Kingdom, a powerful
liberation of God’s people. Christians will be released from their bondage under the
Spirit of Mammon, which keeps them impoverished, and be lifted to the joys
of God’s material blessing.
If or when this happens, the church must remember Luke 12:48: “From
everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one
who has been entrusted with much, much more will be
asked.” It must be ready
to preach the importance of generosity, hospitality, tithing, and caring
for the poor. Christians must
strike a balance between the enjoyment of, and detachment from, their
possessions. It is said that
John Wesley often earned more than 1,400 pounds a year through the sales
of his books, yet he normally spent less than 30 pounds on himself
annually. The surplus he generously
gave away. He wrote, “If
I leave behind me 10 pounds (when I die), you and all mankind bear witness
against me that I lived and died a thief and a
robber.”27 Wesley’s self-abasement may
seem radical and extreme, but it stands as a fine example of a Kingdom mentality
over one’s wealth. Richard
Foster wisely says, “We need instruction on how to possess money without
being possessed by money. We
need to learn how to own things without treasuring
them. We need the disciplines
that will allow us to live simply while managing great wealth and
power.”28 This is the Kingdom of God Jesus
came to inaugurate.
C.
The Spirit
of the Tithe
Christians today disagree over the place of the tithe in the theology
of stewardship. Some claim the
tithe is still valid for the present day, while others claim the tithe is
no longer a valid category in the age of “grace
giving.” The intricacy
of the debate is well illustrated by the interpretation of Abram’s giving
a tenth of his military spoils to Melchizedek, the first instance of the
tithe in Scripture (Genesis 14:20).
Those who affirm the tithe note that the event precedes the time of
Moses and is therefore not part of the superseded Mosaic
law. Those who deny the tithe insist that this is an isolated
event and never becomes regular practice in the pre-Mosaic era.
Both of these positions miss a deeper
truth. Historically, the tenth,
or a tithe, has always been symbolic of the
whole. Immediately after
the Genesis 14 event, Abram aligned his heart to God, the creator and possessor
of all things (v. 22). The tithe
was a token symbol affirming that the whole belonged to
God. Viewed this way, the amount or percentage given is not
the issue with God. Rather,
it is the spirit or the heart behind the
gift. This, of course, does
not mean the specifics of amount or percentage are
unimportant. Perhaps it is best
to affirm that both the heart and the “specifics” must come together
as single point of concern in the life of the disciple.
The spirit behind the tithe or
“the spirit of the tithe” is seen and emphasized throughout the
history of God’s
people.29
We have already mentioned how Abram gave with “no strings
attached,” from a heart aligned to God (Genesis
14:22). But we see sadly this
heart diminish with Jacob, who, in Genesis 28:20-22, offers the second instance
of a tithe. Jacob, the so called
“heel-grabber,” tries to “strike a bargain” with
God:
20Then Jacob made a vow,
saying, "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I
am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear
21so
that I return safely to my father's house, then the
Lord will be my God
22and this stone that
I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of all that you give me
I will give you a tenth.
In essence he is saying, “OK God, here's the deal:
If You do all these things for me, THEN, You will be my God and I will give
you ten percent!" The spirit
of the tithe that was behind his father’s gift begins to wane in his
own distorted covenant.
We mentioned earlier the various
tithes in the Mosaic law (Numbers 18:21-24; Deuteronomy 12:6-7; 14:22-29),
but again, God's desire was for their hearts to be aligned to His heart
first. Deuteronomy 14:23 says
the purpose of the tithe was “so that you may learn to revere the Lord
your God always.” They
were to give God the first and best of what they earned as an ongoing reminder
that all they had belonged to Him.
The law was never to be “performed” as perfunctory
obligations. It was intended
to be an expression of a grace-birthed heart relationship with
God. The spirit of the law was
always more important to God than the letter of the Law and correspondingly,
the spirit of the tithe was always more important to God than the letter
of the tithe.
The spirit of the tithe among the
Pharisees of Jesus’ day had all but disappeared (Matthew
6:2-4). In one passage, Jesus
affirms the tithe, but rebukes the Pharisees for losing the Spirit behind
it: “You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But
you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy
and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting
the former” (Matthew 23:23).
Once again, the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart (cf.
Matthew 6:21).
Of course, there is a danger to
this teaching on the spirit of the
tithe. Some may say in response,
“My heart is right with God—I don’t have to
give.” Our reply is that
this is a deceived position that is not built upon the testimony of
Scripture. If comes from the
spirit of Mammon and not the Spirit of
God. The one harboring this
mindset is like the person who sins against his brother and then says,
“I’ve confessed my sin in my heart before
God. I don’t have to make
the situation right.” The
Spirit of God seeks not the “saying” alone, but also the
“doing.” In the words
of James, “Faith without works is useless” (James
2:20). On the other hand, we
must be just as quick to affirm the
converse. Just as claiming the
right heart without giving is wrong, so also giving without the right heart
is equally wrong. The Parable
of Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14) reminds us that tithing
is not to be regarded as a spiritual
cure-all. What justified the
non-tithing tax collector and condemned the tithing Pharisee was the state
of their hearts.
On the subject of giving, the New
Testament appears to de-emphasize the notion of percentage or
amount. Nowhere does any New
Testament writer call for a ten percent
tithe.30 If in fact, the heart is the
key issue, and if we are merely stewards of what is ultimately owned by God,
then the driving question we must put to ourselves is not, "How much do I
give?" but "How much dare I keep?"
The New Testament Church is to be filled with missionary people, not
maintainers of the status quo!
What a wonderful truth for the Christian and Missionary Alliance to
proclaim as we move into this new
millennium. The question must
not be, "What percentage must I give? but "How much dare I spend on
myself?"
Perhaps here it would be helpful to suggest five practical, Biblical
principles to apply in this area of the spirit of the
tithe. First, we should be
encouraged to Give
First. Jesus says, “Give,
and it will be given unto you. A
good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured
into your lap. For with the
measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke
6:38). The major purpose
of the tithe was to remind the people that God comes first in our lives,
that He alone deserves preeminence.
The spirit of the tithe is well expressed in Proverbs 3:9-10: “Honor
the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your
barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new
wine.”
I (Ron) heard an Alliance missionary
tell the story of a young African boy who came to his door one day with a
large fish in his hands.
"Missionary, you taught us what tithing is, so
here. I've brought you my
tithe." As the missionary gratefully
took the fish, he asked the boy, "If this is your tithe, where are the other
nine fish?" At this, the boy
smiled and said, "Back in the river.
I'm going back to catch them
now." To “Give First”
is a matter of faith and priority. It's not because we are spiritual that our tithe check
is the first one we should write every
week. It is because we are weak
and forgetful and we need that reminder of priority and heart alignment in
our lives.
The second principle Scripture
suggests is to Give
Cheerfully. Paul says,
“Remember this: 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” (2 Corinthians
9:6,7). Some preachers try to
make a semantic connection between the Greek word for “cheerful”
(hilaros) and the English
word “hilarious,” as if to say perhaps we could all use some
“holy laughter” in our tithing! Whatever we think of this thought
or the phenomenon, we could all benefit from more joy in our giving.
I'm reminded of this every year
as I (Ron) do my taxes. During
the year I rejoice at the paychecks and any extra income that comes in, but
sometimes I flinch when I write my tithe and offering
checks. But when I'm figuring
my taxes I wince at every source of income and rejoice with every tithe and
offering check--more income means more tax, but every tithe dollar means
less tax. Everything is turned
upside down or perhaps more appropriately, right-side
up. That is the perspective
of eternity and the (hilarious?) spirit I want to have in my giving all year
long!
The third principle is that we should
Give
Faithfully. When Jesus says,
“Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21,23) to the
good stewards, he is speaking of
reliability. Faithfulness is
the heart of Biblical stewardship.
Faithfulness is in short supply in the church
today. The church growth experts
are telling us that the new generations will not give the way the preceding
generations gave. They are calling
for new techniques and marketing
strategies. While there are
good aspects to these methods, they must never become a crutch to make up
for our lack of faithfulness in
stewardship. Adequate discipleship
must call each new generation to be sacrificially faithful for the cause
of the Kingdom.
The fourth principle is that we
should Give Wisely. Where we give
our tithe and our offerings is an
investment! Give with
wisdom. The church has lived through multiple financial scandals
in recent years. Many failed
churches and Christian organizations have been unwise in their stewardship
and given without wisdom.
Hopefully, we have learned from our past
mistakes. Thankfully, year after
year the Christian and Missionary Alliance has been above reproach in our
financial integrity. We can
invite people to invest in the Kingdom through the C&MA without
reservation.
It is wise, we believe, to give
first to one’s home church.
In 1 Corinthians 9:11, Paul says, "If we have sown spiritual seed
among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from
you?” The spiritual principle
is simple: Give where you are being fed
spiritually. Give where you
see Kingdom investments multiplying.
Let us loudly and joyfully proclaim what God is doing through the
ministry of the Christian and Missionary
Alliance. Let us then assure
our people that they are giving wisely when they entrust their finances to
our care.
Finally, let us encourage our people
to Give
Secretly. A well-known
motivational speaker encourages pastors to know the amount every person in
his congregation is giving. While
serving as pastor, he regularly took his top ten givers out to eat at a very
expensive restaurant once a year, just to say
“thanks.” This is
dangerous. Not only does this
come perilously close to violating James directives against favoritism (James
2:1-7), but it is also indirectly robbing people of their spiritual reward
in giving. Jesus
saw the hypocrisy of the Pharisees’ public giving and said, "When you
give (not if), do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is
done in secret, will reward you" (Matthew
6:3,4). Secret giving is instructed
not only because it guards against religious pride, but because it is one
of the primary ways God builds faith into our
lives. If our confidence is
in God, we will give without anyone else knowing and be
content. Someone has rightly
said, “Tithing is not God’s method of raising money, it is His
method of raising children.”
Giving in secret is an important part of that process.
Some years ago I (Ron) heard
about an Alliance church where the missionary pledges had regularly been
collected and totaled during the last Sunday night service of the missionary
conference. A very wealthy man
in this congregation made it a practice to wait until the entire church had
pledged, after which he would ceremoniously walk to the front with his pledge
to dramatically increase the total.
A new pastor had arrived at the church that year and he had been informed
of the annual tradition. With
great courage, he went to the large donor and explained the Biblical concept
of giving in secret. He informed
him gently that it was inappropriate for his pledge to be public knowledge
and that according to scripture he was missing a greater
blessing. The wealthy man graciously
received the correction. The
missionary pledge was higher than ever before that year and everyone involved
received the reward of secret giving.
One of the greatest messages I (Ron) ever heard growing up was a message
on “Storehouse Tithing” by the late Rev. Richard Harvey at Edinboro
Camp. On this occasion, Rev.
Harvey waited till the end of his message to take the
offering. He said that if he
were preaching on salvation he would have given the altar call at the end
of the sermon so people could respond in
obedience. Since the message
was on giving, he wanted to take the offering at the end of the sermon to
give us the opportunity to be obedient to the Lord in
giving. I will never forget
him looking into the buckets, shaking his head, after the ushers had come
back to the front. “Is
that all you’re willing to give for
Jesus? Send them around
again!” I know the utterance
sounds abusive, but my memory of that moment was one of great joy and
excitement. I remember digging
deeper into my own pockets and putting in the money my mother had given me
for ice cream that night. I
felt for perhaps the first time (but thankfully not the last) the wonderful
privilege of sacrificial, yet joyful
giving. I do not remember the
details of that message, but I will never forget Rev. Harvey’s passion
and the text of Scripture from which he
preached. Both have influenced
and shaped my view of stewardship to this day:
“Bring the whole tithe into
the storehouse, that there may be food in my
House. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if
I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing
that you will not have enough room for it." (Malachi 3:10)
D.
The
Stranglehold of Debt
The final issue related to biblical
stewardship is the stranglehold of debt.
Many believers in this nation are unable to obey the clear directives
of God because they cannot pay off money owed and its accruing
interest. They are in bondage
to the tyrannical demands of debt.
The story is told of two men talking about
money. One asked the other,
"Joe, what would you do if you had all the money in the
world?" Joe thought for a moment
and replied, "I'd apply it to my debts as far as it would
go!" We may laugh at Joe’s
reply, but many of us have felt the same way about the size of our accumulating
debts. And far too many Christians
are in deep despair because they foolishly underestimated their ability to
pay them back.
Incurring large amounts of debt
has become a lifestyle in our nation. This year, the federal government will spend more money
on interest than on the entire federal budget in
1962. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that 51% of
all corporate profits are now being eaten up by interest on
debt. The average American family
holds a credit card debt of $7000 on 7-8 credit
cards. This is in addition to
their debt on cars and
RV's.31 A recent Gallup poll showed that
56% of people having undergone divorce cited “financial tensions in
the home related to debt” as a significant
factor.32
Our stewardship teaching must
address this problem or it will fail to produce effective
disciples. Several years ago
I (Ron) felt the Lord directing me to preach a series of sermons on what
the Scripture says about debt.
First, I began to search the Word of
God. Then, I looked at my own
financial situation. Suddenly
I realized I was in no position to preach on this
issue. Beyond that, I realized
I had been sinning and was in need of a time of repentance and
restitution. At that point,
my wife and I began a serious attempt to pay-off all of our debts as quickly
as possible and live according to biblical principles of stewardship, rather
than our culture’s “consumer
discipleship.” Three years
later, we were completely debt free and were able to say “yes,”
when God called us to take a teaching position that paid considerably less
than my previous salary. Debt
reduction had freed us to be obedient.
Two stories in the Old Testament
illustrate the ways in which wise people operate toward
debt. First, in Genesis 14,
after Abram returns captured goods to the King of Sodom and is offered the
chance to keep them for himself (v. 21), he refuses with these words: "I
have raised my hand to the
Lord, God Most High, Creator
of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging
to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never
be able to say, 'I made Abram rich.’” (v.
22-23). Although the goods were
apparently a free “gift” from the King of Sodom, Abram shrewdly
saw there were unspoken “strings attached.” Receiving them would
result in an ungodly obligation to an evil
king. He wisely refused to take
on the debt.
Second, in 2 Kings 4:1-7, the widow
who was about to lose her sons as slaves to a creditor exhibits good sense
in the way she gets out of debt. (a) She cries out for help to the man of God (v. 1). In
other words, she sought God and wise counsel as her first step in her dilemma
with debt. (b) She assumes,
with Elisha’s prompting, that she must pay her debts (v. 2). She did
not act as the wicked, who “borrow and do not repay” (Psalm 37:21).
(c) She was willing to part with what she had (v.
2). The “little oil”
she offered to the prophet started her on the road to “financial
freedom.” Such detachment
from our “non-negotiable” possessions is possible when we believe
that all truly belongs to God. (d)
She trusted God to multiply her efforts (v.
3-7). By listening to the man
of God, little became much.
The Book of Proverbs does not forbid
the borrowing of money or goods, but it does point out the dangers associated
with taking on debt. Proverbs
24:27 says, “Prepare your work outside, get everything ready for you
in the field; and after that, build your
house.” The wise man admonishes
us to work hard at ensuring a source of income
before improving our
comfort. He may also be warning
against “purchasing large numbers of goods before we have earned the
money to pay for
them.”33
Proverbs also warns against being a
co-signer for someone else’s
debts: “A man lacking in judgment strikes hands in pledge and puts up
security for his neighbor” (Proverbs
17:18). The reason, of course,
is that the co-signer is in danger of losing his possessions, including his
very own bed, if the borrower defaults (Proverbs 22:26-27).
Finally, the Mosaic law offers a few insights into the dangers of
debt. The blessings and curses
at Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal in Deuteronomy mention
debt. To be blessed is
to “lend to many nations and to borrow from none” (v. 12) and to
be cursed is to borrow from the alien and to lend to none (v.
44). The law also limited what
was could be offered as collateral on loans to protect a debtor from terrible
harm if he failed to pay. When
Deuteroronomy 24:6 forbids a pair of millstones from being put up as security,
it is protecting the debtor’s livelihood, so that, in the event of default,
he will not be condemned to perpetual
indebtedness. When Deuteronomy
24:12-13 requires a creditor who has taken the debtor’s cloak as collateral
to return it at night, protecting a person’s ability to keep warm, a
basic necessity of life. The
same law also protects the debtor’s
dignity. The creditor could
not go into the debtor’s house to take the security; he could only stand
outside and wait for the debtor to bring it out to him (Deuteronomy 24:10-11).In
these ways, the Mosaic law recognizes the destructiveness and humiliation
uncontrolled debt can bring upon a person.
To summarize: The Old Testament 1) warns against borrowing money and
goods we are not prepared to pay back. 2) recognizes the threat uncontrolled
debt can be to our well-being. The
New Testament continues the Old Testament’s warning about
debt. Romans 13:8 says,
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to
love one another” (NIV), although a more literal translation presents
a more strict prohibition: "Owe nothing to anyone (Greek:
medeni meden opheilete), except
love…" (NASB). It is debatable whether this verse denies all loans,
including student loans and home
mortgages. The goal in applying
it is not to be legalistic or foist false guilt, but to ask ourselves, "Are
my finances headed in the direction Scripture is pointing? By God's grace,
am I heading for freedom in this area of my life?"
We will never get free from the
grip of Mammon or debt until we learn and practice the spiritual disciplines
of contentment and simplicity. In
his groundbreaking book, Margin, Dr. Richard Swenson dissects the
pathology of our debt-ridden culture.
“Discontent as a driving force for a society might make that
society rich, but it will bankrupt it in the
end.”34 Swenson correctly points out
that God not only commends contentment (1 Timothy 6:6), He
commands it. “Be
content with what you have” (Hebrews
13:5). Unfortunately, in our
debt-driven culture, “our quest is usually not for contentment but for
more.”35
The full context of 1 Timothy 6 is worth noting here:
6But godliness with
contentment is great gain.
7For we brought nothing into the world, and
we can take nothing out of it.
8But if we have food and clothing, we will
be content with that.
9People who want to get rich fall into temptation
and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into
ruin and destruction.
10For the love of money is a root of all kinds of
evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced
themselves with many griefs.
At the root of much (not all) of our debt is greed and
the spirit of vs. 9,10. If this
is true, then we must repent and find
forgiveness. It is time to align
our hearts with God and our financial priorities with His
Word.
It is not the will of God for His
people to be enslaved by debt.
Indeed, the whole message of the Gospel is about Jesus paying a debt
we could not pay. Jesus paid
a debt we could not pay. His
heart’s desire is that His people be free in all areas of their lives.
And when you were dead in your
transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together
with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out
the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile
to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the
cross.
Colossians 2:13,14
1 Dallas Willard,
The Divine Conspiracy, (San
Francisco:
Harper Collins
Publishers, Inc. 1998), 15.