Mistaking Control for Ownership

Tom Shrader examines the story of Ananias and Sapphira from Acts 5 to illustrate the sixth dumb mistake: confusing control with ownership. He explains how God transfers possession of time, money, and resources to us but retains ownership, making us stewards accountable to Him. This perspective transforms how believers approach finances, parenting, and life decisions, recognizing that everything belongs to God.

“God has transferred to all of us possession but not ownership - there's a day of reckoning coming when He'll ask what you did with the stuff He gave you.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Dumb Mistakes: How to Avoid Them (2017)

Recorded: 2017

Duration: 39 min

Themes: stewardship, ownership, control, money, resources, accountability, trust, responsibility, managing finances, business owner, parent, struggling with greed, wealthy believer, financial decisions, resource management, budget planning

Scripture: Acts 2:41-47, Acts 5:1-11, Luke 9:18-25, Matthew 22:15-22, Acts 1:8, Matthew 5, Ephesians 5:18

Theological Themes: stewardship theology, divine ownership, biblical stewardship, covenant responsibility, God's sovereignty, faithful stewardship, biblical economics, spiritual accountability

Full Transcript

This is session six of an eight-session series on dumb mistakes. If you're here for the first time, we'll get you caught up really quickly. It's not the title "Dumb Mistakes" but the subtitle "How to Avoid Them" that is key to this. What we've done is look at illustrations of individuals and said these are lessons we can learn. We can learn from a book—that's fine. Learning from the School of Hard Knocks is okay, though both are expensive. But to learn from others' mistakes is great.

In this process, let me reinforce something because I'm not sure how often everybody talks about this: theology has huge practical applications. Steve Wheeler and I do something called Book Talk about every six weeks at church. We take a book, and they're all over the place—they're not Christian books. We did a book called *When Bad Christians Happen to Good People*, a book called *Ten Dumb Things Smart Christians Do*. The most popular was *How to Win Friends and Influence People*. If you've got kids or grandkids, taking them through that book would be really helpful. It's amazing how good that book is.

Learning from History's Practical Principles

We did a book called *The Mayflower* the other day. The book came out four or five years ago, and in it there are all sorts of things that have huge applications. They were having a hard time with the yields they were getting on their corn. They were having a difficult time. Here's the idea they came up with—it's on page 165: Why don't we deed the land to the people and let them farm it? The next year, you know what happened? They had an abundance of food. It's very interesting. Principles don't change.

The English, when the flint musket came in, had a very hard time adapting to it. The Indians adapted right away. The Indians were the early adapters because the English had the old muskets and they didn't want to give them up. The Indians saw it was brand new. It's a really interesting book, though really cumbersome in the first two parts. Skim them and then go—it's worth a read.

When you get to part three, you meet this woman named Mary Rowlandson—they didn't call them women then. She's married to a pastor and is a prominent person in the community. A group of Indians come and take hostage this lady and three of her kids. She gets separated from her kids, finally finds this daughter that she has a deep relationship with, then finds her son. One night, her daughter dies and she needs to use the corpse to keep her warm. It's just an amazing story.

The next day, she talks about—now when I say this, you might check this out because I went online and it looks like you can just download it. She wrote a book called *God's Goodness* or something like that, and it came out of this experience. She talks about thanking God that next morning for her daughter's warm corpse and the fact that God preserved her in so many different ways.

Theology Drives Behavior

Here's the point—it's huge. Theology is not this academic study that's remote from our lives, but it's the very thing that influences our behavior. What we believe affects how we behave. When we started this series, we said dumb mistake number one is a failure to fear God. Once I understand who God is, now I begin to live this.

Dumb mistake number two—you have your Bibles, open them to the book of Acts, Acts chapter two. We're going to follow the premise of the outline. I don't know if we're going to get through all these points—doesn't matter. But we'll use this same thing: a background, a mistake, I'll give you the result, and a couple of principles.

I mentioned Larry Wright earlier. When I had been a Christian a while, I thought I might want to do what Larry did, which was to teach. I know me well enough to know I'm not going to go to seminary, I'm not going to go to school—that's not going to happen. So I thought I'll just follow Larry and mimic him. That's when I adopted the phrase: everywhere that Larry went, Tom was sure to go. I followed him around—literally carried his briefcase, set up his tape recorder, did everything.

Learning from a Mentor's Passion

I went to him one day and said, "I've listened to you. I would listen to Larry teach at least three times live, at least three times a week, and on tape all week long." This is still my bet: You can take any tape, you pick it—Numbers chapter 12. When you go to Larry's section on that, with very rare exception, there'll be a reference to marriage. Larry's driven by marriage. To this day, if you go on the Abundant Life website under Larry Wright, his series on marriage—there's nothing better in my mind.

I said, "But you always talk about marriage." He said, "You know what, here's what happens, Tommy: you develop a passion, you morph, God uses something, and then it'll surface."

So today's one of those passions for me. If you've been around, you're going to think this is not new, and I apologize for that. But this is one of those things—and this is not hyperbole, this isn't hype—I can tell you just from my own personal experience: if you get this principle today, it transforms your life. I don't say that every week, but if you get this today, everything changes. This is a game changer—bigger than a game. This is a life changer.

The Background: A Transformed Peter

Here's the background. Acts chapter two, verse 41: "And those who accepted his message were baptized and about 3,000 were added to their numbers that day." That's from the NIV. From the New American Standard, it says, "So then"—so you're parachuting in to the middle of a story. The "his message" here refers to Peter.

There are about four or five things today that could be elaborated on but won't be because of time. But Peter's one of them. Here's a mistake I make, and I assume if I make it you do too: I give myself credit for maturing and growing and changing.

but I don't give anybody else the credit for the ability to do it. So I might have somebody that I knew two years ago or three years ago, and it never occurs to me that we could change. But I see myself growing and developing and not the man I used to be, blah, blah, blah.

Peter's Transformation

Here's a guy that is a victim, I use that term consciously, of our thinking, and His name is Peter. Because if I say Peter, almost everyone associates Peter with Matthew, Mark, Luke, John: "I never knew Him, I never knew Him, I never knew Him." That's like everybody's story of Peter. Big, dumb fisherman, foot and mouth disease, all this stuff. Well, that's not how that story ends.

When you get to the book of Acts, and you get to Acts chapter two, Peter's a whole new guy. Now, I'll give you the secret to the change. It's in Acts chapter one, verse eight: "You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you." The transforming force in Peter's life was the Holy Spirit. And let me help you with this, and it's the same Spirit that you have.

So here's Peter who said, "I never knew Him," who's intimidated by this little servant girl. He stands up in Acts chapter two and delivers this powerful message. And He doesn't shy away from the truth. Acts chapter two, verse 22: "Men of Israel," so He's speaking to the Jews, that's why He's going to illustrate from the Old Testament. Listen to these words: "Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst just as you yourself know. This man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death, but God raised Him up again and put an end to the agony of death."

That's the transforming message. That's the gospel that Christ died for our sin. He rose again from the dead. Whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. And everlasting life never ends—at least begins today for us.

The Response to Peter's Message

Peter delivers that message. People say, "What do we do?" And He says, "Well, you should repent and be baptized." Let me just add this real quickly and you do whatever you want with it. How many of you became Christians after age 21? Yeah, see, it's always a bunch in our room. I attract a certain kind of degenerate type of group like you, okay? That's how it is.

Here's what I find often among people who become Christians later in life: they neglect the command to be baptized. So if you're taking communion when it's offered, you should be baptized. Not to be saved, but as an obedient response. And the longer the time between when you became a Christian and now, the longer the time you go, "Geez, I'm embarrassed by it." Well, this isn't about embarrassment. This is about obedience.

3,000 people are saved that day by this incredible message. Verse 42, what do you do? "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking of bread and prayer." So that essentially is what this early church does. And we have four things.

The Four Pillars of Church Life

So when we started East Valley Bible Church, now Redemption Church, that first Sunday, I taught Acts 2, verse 42. That's not novel, by the way. That'd be a passage that many churches would go to. So if you're looking for a church, here's what you should see.

Number one, are they teaching God's word? And that could be taking place in a book study, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. It could be a topical study, which is coming out of the scriptures. What it isn't is a guy with like a poem and three PowerPoints and action and a sweet song and give you a flower and out you go. But they're teaching God's word.

The second thing you see they're doing is there's this thing called fellowship. A few years ago, I decided I was going to teach on fellowship. So I was doing a little bit of research and I went back and I have this, I don't know, 5,000 volumes of Spurgeon or something. And so I thought, well, I'm going to see what Spurgeon said. So Spurgeon would have taught around the Civil War time in London. I go back and say, what did Spurgeon say? And He had not much on fellowship. Now, this is really important. And everything on fellowship was our fellowship with God. We don't even think of that when we use the term. We think of fellowship horizontally.

And so here's the point. Spurgeon, I think, misses something when He doesn't talk about it horizontally. We miss something when we don't talk about it vertically so the one leads to the other. If I'm in right relationship with God, I want to be in right relationship with God's people the best I can. So that's the fellowship. Here's what it means. It means living life together. It means being in a situation where I'm concerned about one another.

The third thing they're doing is breaking bread. That's communion. That should be something that's a part of what the church does. And every church is going to kind of approach that a little bit differently. At our place, we take communion every week. And then the idea of prayer. So if you're looking for a church, I saw a study, it's a little dated now, maybe 10 years ago, and they said the number one thing people look for in a church, top priority is good ingress, egress. I'm for that, I guess, getting in and getting out.

Life in the Early Church

So that's what they're engaged in. Verse 43: "Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe. And there's many wonders and signs are taking place." And look who's doing the signs and wonders. It's not just anybody, it's the apostles. "And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common. And they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all as anyone might have need."

Now, background's important. Remember the timing here is what, two, three months after Christ has died. Jerusalem's population swells with Jews making a pilgrimage there for Passover. We said as many as three million in the city. God's doing something, so many of

These people are staying. Now understand the condition. If you're in Jerusalem at this time, you couldn't go on Expedia and say, where can I get a room, where can I get the best deal? They didn't have ATMs, and most of them didn't have much money. So they came with the intention of staying a week, 10 days. They're now two, three months into it. What do you do?

All of a sudden, Christians are looking at Christians and saying they have a need, here's what I'll do. I have a resource, you need the resource, I'll sell it and share the benefit with you. Everybody's uncomfortable with this one. But that's what they were doing. Am I saying do that? No. Do I say we hold everything in some communistic way? No, I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm saying there was an attitude here and a spirit here of I'll share.

The World's Reaction to Christian Unity

The result is pretty powerful. Day by day, continuing with one mind, so there's a unity here, breaking bread from house to house, they're taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God, and here you go, verse 47, and having favor with all the people. When the world looked at that, they said there's something extraordinarily compelling here. Even if I'm not going to respond, I have to admire it.

So when those early days of the church, when they started using the word like love, most of you, or many of you know, there are four or five Greek words for love. The one that Jesus used to describe our love or His love for us is agape, this unconditional love, almost never used by the Greeks. When Paul wanted to talk about a characteristic that I think is essential, like love, to the Christian life, humility, he had to invent a word. They didn't even have a word for that because to show anything about yielding to another or humility or anything like that was not a sign of strength but a sign of weakness.

Look out for number one, take care of number one. In a sense, it's almost survival of the fittest. And along comes this New Testament, along comes Paul. Remember, Paul writes to the church at Philippi and he says, I'm going to send you a guy. I don't have anybody else like him. I'm sending this guy, so boy, the buzz. Well, he's sending us one of a kind. He must be really something. I'll bet he can really teach. I'll bet he's a leader. I'll bet he's a manager. And here's what Paul says: Nah, he really cares about people nobody else does.

The Distinguishing Mark of Christian Faith

It's one of those distinguishing characteristics of the Christian faith. All of a sudden, not just God's agenda, we'll talk about it in a bit, but your agenda becomes more important than mine. Your success becomes more important than mine. I'll put myself in a good light here, why not? I long ago gave up the idea of writing a book. If another person says to me, you ought to write a book, I'm going to puke. I don't write my mom, I'm not going to write a book.

So my goals changed from writing a book to seeing how many acknowledgement pages I could be listed in. How many people can I help with the thought process of their book? And right now it's like four. And that's my goal. I don't need to write, why would I write a book? I got nothing to say that hasn't already been said.

It's more important to me, and this is a missing ingredient in all of life, especially as you age. I'm seeing this now in my own life. I'm a heart patient. I've got this other thing going on that's been very, I got a whole bunch of these. My memories exceed my dreams. I'm not out dreaming a bunch of things. I don't think I want to take that mountain anymore. I think I'll watch it on the Discovery Channel.

The Danger of Selfish Ambition in Ministry

As you do, at least for me, I'm sure I'm not unique, you can get bitter pretty fast, and a curmudgeon pretty fast, and selfish pretty fast, especially if you're still in the game because you don't want to pass the baton because if you pass the baton, you may be put out to lunch. Here's the problem, and it's within the church. Look at all the churches around town that seat 5,000 but have 500 in them. Almost always, it's the ego of the guy who wouldn't facilitate the transition because though he preaches God's kingdom, he's concerned about his own.

That's really judgmental. I got it, but that's okay. It's that pride, it's that ego that gets in the way. If you can deal with that, amazing things are going to happen. And the world, and that's the point, the world will be stunned.

God's Focus: Obedience, Not Results

Our job, we talked about it yesterday, we had a, every Wednesday, we meet to talk about the sermon that's a week and a half away, and it's usually three or four of us and a bunch of young guys. It's funny, I made a point that's 101, and you all know it, but it's kind of new to them apparently, is that God's concerned about obedience, not results. So like when the paper comes in today, the first thing I do is look to the standings. I look at wins and losses. God doesn't look at wins and losses. He looks at box scores, and moving runners, and stealing a base, because it's His job to win the game, not ours.

It's our job to play it. It's obedience that He's looking for from us. Not wins and losses, obedience. And obedience means, you know what, God'll fix this. That's all back, in that process, evangelism is not about winning people to Christ. Evangelism is about proclaiming the gospel. Whether they come or not is God's business.

Making the Invisible God Visible

Our job is to make, and this is exactly what this church is doing here, is to make the invisible God visible, Matthew 5, let Him see your good works, and then to speak the truth boldly. So if you just make the invisible God visible, they're going to go, well, he's just wired that way. You go, no, no, no, I'm not wired that way. I'm a selfish pig just like you, but God's come along and changed my life, and Christ is the answer. That's evangelism.

All that's background. Dumb mistake number six, turn to Acts chapter five. You're going to meet a couple. I don't know if this registers for you. We're teaching on parenting this Sunday, and it is striking how little there is in that Bible about

parenting. Now, there's principles, but there's not much. Fathers, don't exasperate your kids. That's kind of it, and some other things. And there's some wisdom things. Marriage is the same way.

If I say to you, let's get a role model for marriage in the New Testament, there may be others, but I can only think of two couples right off the top. One's Priscilla and Aquila, who are mentioned, I think, three times—Book of Acts, Book of Romans, couple other places, maybe. And the other is the couple we're going to look at here, Ananias and Sapphira, who I thought were Marvin Gaye's backup singers for a long time, but they aren't. Ananias and Sapphira. And they're not the role models you want.

The Story of Ananias and Sapphira

Chapter five, verse one: "A man named Ananias, together with his wife, Sapphira, sold a piece of land." So they sell—you get it, this is self-explanatory, at least at this point. "With his wife's firm knowledge"—so there's collaboration here, this is a joint project, they're in this together. "Ananias kept back money for himself, put the rest at the feet of the apostles."

So let's assign some values so we understand. They sell a piece of land for 100 bucks. Ananias comes to Peter, and he says, "We want to present to you all the proceeds from the sale of the land, all $50 of it."

Peter says, verse three: "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled you"—that word that's translated "filled" is the same word that's used in Ephesians 5:18 to talk about being filled with the Holy Spirit. Don't be drunk with wine. In other words, how is it that Satan is controlling you or driving you like this? "He so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and kept for yourself some of the money which you receive from the land. Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing this thing? You have not lied to men but to God."

So here's one of those points that's huge. Can't mention it, spend time on it. Verse 3: Ananias lies to the Holy Spirit. Verse 5: he lies to God. The Holy Spirit is God.

The Real Problem

So here's what Peter says. Peter says, "I don't understand this. It's your money. What is it that prompted you to lie? To come in and say, 'Hey, here's all 50 bucks of it' when there was a hundred?"

Now I can go outside the scripture because I've watched things like this happen, and it could be as simple as this: Ananias and Sapphira are watching all of these people that are doing all this stuff, and they're seeing all the adulation and admiration that goes to these people. And they're going, "We want a little piece of that action. We want to be highly thought of too." So we'll come in.

They would have been totally justified in coming in and saying, "Here's our gift." The problem wasn't that they didn't give enough or that they held some back. The problem was they lied about it.

Dumb Mistake Number Six

Dumb mistake number six—and it's a big one—is to mistake control for ownership. Now this is revolutionary. You can go online. I think Priority Living AZ dot org. And first of all, anything that's on there is free. If you want copies of it, you simply call Sharon and she sends it to you. But I think you can go online there under the financial foundation series, and the first session is on ownership. This baby changes lives, and it changes lives because it changes thinking.

So here's what needs to be understood, and again, a ton of you already get this: our tendency is to confuse possession with ownership. What God has done is put in our possession our time, energy, effort, money, resources, but He hasn't relinquished ownership.

Possession vs. Ownership

So if I say I've got this cash, and I give it to George, I said, "Here you go, man. This is yours. You can have it. Do whatever you want with it. Knock yourself out. There's five dollars in here. Have a big meal. Just kill yourself." So I give him that. And he does whatever he wants with it because now I've transferred both possession and ownership.

But if I give it to him and I say, "Listen, I understand you're pretty good with cash. I want to give you this. There's a day coming—six months, nine months, a year, don't know when—I'm going to want this back plus your return. Will you knock yourself out and see what you can get me for return?" Look at this. Now I've transferred possession to him but not ownership.

When Rush Limbaugh says, "I have talent on loan from God"—though he doesn't mean it this way, I don't think he comprehends it—he speaks the truth. God has transferred to all of us possession but not ownership.

Are you free to do whatever you want with your assets? Well, in a sense, yes. But there's a day of reckoning.

Understanding Stewardship

I'm redoing my will, and so we just got—this is why I don't do this. I think I'm just going to die and let everybody argue over it. I mean, it's like all of this stuff—I don't know any of that. I hate that stuff. But I'm going to meet with him, and before that, you meet with a guy who handles the finance stuff. And the guy that handles the finance stuff will always say, "These were your goals. This is what you wanted to accomplish." He doesn't say, "This is what I wanted to do," because he understands it's my resource, possession transferred to him but not ownership.

One day God's going to say to you, "What'd you do with the stuff I gave you?" The time—see, we always think—when I say "stewardship," you grab your wallet. Whatever, fine. Keep your filthy money. No, I'm teasing. But it's time.

I haven't played golf in a while, but my favorite place to play, if I can play, my favorite place to play is at PV. I love playing at PV. So if I'm going to drive from the East Valley, I'm going to play with Scotty. So I drive from the East Valley, takes me 32 minutes to get there. Hit a few balls, play. Let's say the course is moderately crowded, so let's say it's a four-hour round. So we'll play. Then afterwards, you know, Scott may say, "Hey, you want to grab something to eat or you want to grab a coke or adult beverage or whatever?" So we do. I drive home. Well, when you're all done, that

That's seven hours. Now what I'm saying is that's seven hours that one day I'm accountable for. I'm not saying don't play golf. I'm just being honest. I'm just saying understand every aspect of your life that God's given you He will judge you on that one day. If you understand this, it begins to change everything.

So every year at the end of the year, Susan and I would sit down, and our goal was to give away more money the next year than we did that year. Now that sounds like this big ambitious goal, but sometimes maybe it's like only increasing giving by a percent. But think with me for a second. Most people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a decade.

Think about a decade. Let's say God convicts you that 7% is all you can give. If you up that 1% every year, in 10 years you're giving away 17% of your income. That's a big deal. And it's something that is pretty interesting. 1% a year doesn't seem like a big deal as you're increasing it.

I'm not putting that out there for you. I'm simply saying here's how it changed for us. When we sat down every year and we would say "how much money should we give," we got one answer. When we sat down and said "how much of God's money should we keep," we got a very different answer.

Reframing the Question Changes Everything

It's like that election that's coming up. Who's going to win this election? Whoever can frame the issue and sell the American public on it. So how you frame the question is really important. "How much money should I give?" - this looks really good. "How much of God's money should I keep?" - and it doesn't look so good. It's His asset, and that changed everything.

By the way, this changed our parenting. When we understood these are not our kids but God's kids entrusted to us, it changed everything. Every Saturday now I go to a coach pitch game - that's six and seven year olds - but Yale plays in this league. You had a great play at third the other day, Yale!

Yale's just fun to watch. He's Dustin Pedroia without probably any talent, but I mean he's so hard, he's so tough, he's so tenacious. It's just fun to watch him play. But he's four. There's so much. He said after the game, he said when I got to second, the one kid said to me "how come you're so small?" and he said "I really just wanted to pop the kid right," you know. So this is just the way it is.

I'm watching this, but here's what I see. They don't even keep score. This doesn't matter. And yet there's parents who at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning have their shorts in a bunch - not because, you know - "but he was safe there!" It doesn't matter. There's no video to review. "He's out!" It doesn't matter. Doesn't count if he scores. It doesn't matter, you know?

But here's what's wrong. That parent almost always is not concerned about justice. He's concerned about his kid looking good so he looks good. Because "that's my boy!" No, that's God's kid that perhaps mistakenly He's entrusted to you to develop. That's what I need to understand in this whole process.

The Fatal Result of Their Deception

It's really simple. Here's the result. Acts chapter 5, verse 5: "When Ananias heard this" - so Ananias now has been exposed - "when Ananias heard this, he had a strong response. He fell down and died. And fear seized all that had heard it. And then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, carried it away and buried it."

Three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Let me just stop right there. This may be the most amazing part of the entire story to me. If I say something on a Sunday, I mean within 60 seconds I'm getting tweeted back on what I said. Nobody can keep anything quiet. This lady's husband has this incredible death, and three hours later she doesn't know. That's amazing to me.

Peter said, "Hey, tell me, what's the price you and Ananias got for the land?" She said, "$50." "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door. They'll carry you away." And at that moment she fell down and died. And the young men came and, finding her body, carried it away and buried it next to her husband.

And here you have it - up in verse 5 and in verse 11 you see a phrase repeated: "great fear seized the whole church."

When God Deals with Sin

Let me take just a second on that. If you knew - let's pick a church, Scottsdale Bible Church, that's a good one - if we knew God announced, came to you in an email, that next Sunday all the hypocrites at Scottsdale Bible Church were going to fall down and die, my suspicion is we've solved the parking problem. I don't know that to be true. In fact, I would get a text from Jamie saying, "I have the flu, can you teach?" I mean, I just think I know how this would be.

Well, God deals with sin. Well, God doesn't work like that anymore - not necessarily. But God is concerned about sin within the body. And that's Matthew 18, and that's when He says, "I just want you to deal with sin."

So here's what I think. We have a lot of bad kids in the world today because we got terrible parents. We got a lot of goofy Christians in the world today because we've got lousy churches. And one of the mistakes churches make is not dealing with sin when they confront it, when it's there. And God gives you a prescription. If somebody sins against you, you go to them. If that doesn't work, then you go with two of you. And ultimately, if in rare instances, you take it to the church.

God is not acting in a capricious way here. He's taught this church a valuable lesson, and that is that God cares about sin. The result of their dumb mistake is they lost control of what they wanted so desperately. They've lost control of it. It's not theirs anymore.

Keep your finger right there in the book of Acts. Turn to the left to the Gospel of Luke. Luke is the same guy that wrote the book of Acts. Luke chapter 9. Great scene here. Time's going to be an issue here - seven, eight minutes.

Luke chapter 9, verse 18. Jesus is with the disciples. And Jesus said to them, verse 18, "Who do the people say that I am?" They say, "Some say you're..."

Elijah. Some say you're a prophet. Then in verse 20, He asks the question that absolutely echoes over years and into our ears, I hope: "Who do you say that I am?" Most important question you'll ever have to answer.

The right answer is the answer Peter gives. "You're the Christ. You're the Messiah." And then Jesus talks a little bit about what our life's going to be like. Verse 22: "The son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and raised in the third day." Now that would, again, as grandpa says, draw your preserves because the Messiah they're looking for is not going to be a suffering Messiah but a conquering Messiah. And indeed, in His suffering, this would be my point, indeed, in His suffering, He does conquer sin and the effects of it.

The Call to Surrender

Verse 23: "And He was saying to them all," so this is Jesus speaking to you and me, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me." All of a sudden, in this idea of following Christ, there's a surrendering that takes place. I deny myself. That's not giving up candy for Lent. That's the idea of saying, I'm going to take my agenda and I'm going to submit it to Christ. I'm going to surrender it to Him.

There's a song we sing. It's an old song from 1896. Every time we sing it, I always have a hard time singing it. Not because I don't like the song, I do. I just know that as I sing it, if God's killing hypocrites, I'm going to get killed at the first note. "All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him in His presence daily live." I just screw this up at the first red light that I hit in the morning. The idea is, I'm going to bring it all to Him. Now, that's the goal. So I can sing it with the attitude of, this is my desire, not in the idea of, have I accomplished it? Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him.

The Paradox of Saving and Losing

Then He says, almost paradoxically, but you see it in the context of Ananias and Sapphira, "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it." You want to hang on to it? You want to hang on to your resources, your agenda? You're going to lose it ultimately. "But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it for what is a profit of man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself or his soul."

The idea there is, here's a guy who's got it all. He's on the cover of Forbes, but it doesn't really do him any good because ultimately all that stuff's going to burn away. The dumb mistake is, I confuse control and ownership. The result is, these things that I want so desperately, I ultimately lose. The principle is that Christ expects His due.

The Trap Question About Taxes

Look at Matthew chapter 22, and there's a scene here. Matthew chapter 22: "The Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap Him, and they sent their disciples along with the Herodians." I'll give you a real quick background. The Pharisees are religious people. The Herodians aren't. The Pharisees hate the Romans. The Herodians are in cahoots with the Romans. And these two guys, the Pharisees and the Herodians, hate each other. There's one thing they hate more: Jesus. So this unites them. They decide that they're going to come, and they're going to trap Him.

"Teacher, we know that you're a man of integrity and that you teach in a way of God in accordance with the truth, and you aren't swayed by any man because you pay no attention to who they are." That, by the way, is a great thing to say. "Tell us, is it right to pay tax to Caesar or not?" Jesus understands the evil intent of their heart. "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me a coin." And He doesn't say, just show me a coin. He says, "Show me the coin that's used to pay taxes." This would specifically be the poll tax. This was a tax that was most hated among the Jews. It demonstrated complete authority the Romans had over them.

Give to Caesar What Is Caesar's

So He takes the coin, you know this, He takes the coin, and He says, "Whose picture's on it?" And they said, "Caesar." And Jesus says, "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar, to God the things that are God." So I'll give you a practical point. All of you who want to do a tax protest, and you don't want to pay your taxes, I got that, but you better be ready for the wrath if they can figure it out and find you. Which, if it's to deliver a letter, they can't. But if it's for this, they might. You're going to jail. And you know what, rightly so.

Now, this tax thing's a big deal. I'm listening to them last night going, "These oil companies and the tax loopholes," they're not tax - you must have written a crummy law. All they did was file a return in compliance with the law that you wrote. Take all the benefits you can, but then pay your taxes. All of that can wash over the principle.

Whose Image Is on Your Heart?

The principle, so Jesus said, "Who's it?" Caesar. "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar, to God the things that are God." If we want to apply that to your life, here it is. If I were to, cut me slack, hold up your heart, whose image is on your heart? Andrew Jackson? Jesus.

Now, we understand, we live in that world. We carry this dual passport. Our ultimate citizens, ultimately, we're citizens of heaven, not of earth. We live in this government and in this country where we understand that. We're a country of laws, we're grateful for that. And as Christians, we live under those laws, unless they command us to do something God forbids or forbids us to do something God commands. So 99.9999999% of the time, we just do whatever it is they tell us to do. Let's not get sidetracked with that.

Here's the question: Are you acting as though the image of Christ is the one that drives and motivates your life? That's the principle. God expects us to understand what He wants from us, and then to do it. Because obedience is the issue, not the result. Dumb mistake number six, it's a huge one. Life-changing. It's the idea...

that this is to not confuse possession for ownership. Next week, dumb mistake number seven.

Father, help us see this truth, drive it deep into our heart. Let us love You. If we say You, Jesus is Lord, then let us live like it. God, You have blessed us with so much time, energy, effort, money. Help us understand that we are accountable to You for how we invest those resources.

God, You take seriously this issue. It matters to You how we live. God, let us feel the weight of that. If we're going to say Jesus is Lord, then help us deny ourselves and take up that cross daily and follow You, willing to lose everything so we gain in Your world. God, help us see life that way. We ask it in Christ's name, amen.