Stewardship: God Gives
Tom Shrader argues that God owns everything — time, talents, money, even people — and has transferred possession but not ownership to believers, making every person a steward rather than an owner. Drawing from Romans 12, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, and 2 Corinthians 8–9, he challenges the separation between sacred and secular work, insisting that every job and relationship is a ministry calling. He addresses financial giving directly, presenting the Old Testament tithe as a floor rather than a ceiling, and calls believers to give obediently and consistently as an expression of worship.
“God says everything in your life, including you — all the resources, your time, your energy, your effort, your money — all of that is His, and He's transferred possession to you, but not ownership.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Doctrine
Recorded: 2011 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 52 min
Themes: stewardship, giving, tithing, money, work, worship, calling, generosity, struggling with finances, new believer, working professional, questioning tithing, young adult, feeling secular work is meaningless, parent, new to church
Scripture: Ephesians 4:1-6, Colossians 3:1-2, Romans 12:1-2, 1 John 2:15-17, Deuteronomy 10:14, Psalm 24:1-2, Psalm 50:10-12, Haggai 2:8, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Titus 1:7, 1 Peter 4:10, Matthew 6:19-24, 1 Timothy 6:10, 2 Corinthians 8:1-4, 2 Corinthians 9, Colossians 3:23-24
Theological Themes: stewardship theology, imago dei, spiritual gifts, sanctification, vocation, biblical giving, lordship, common grace
Full Transcript
Introduction to the Series
Open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand really high, keep it up, and wave it. The ushers will bring you a copy. If you get a Bible from us, it will be page 634. We are in week 12 of a 13-week series on doctrine. Maybe because it is not what we typically do — typically it is a book study — I have had more positive response to this series than any series we have done in a long time, especially among so many of you who are not just new to Gilbert, but new to the things of God and the Scriptures.
We talk about this as a staff: we are seeing a huge number of people we have never seen before. When we talk to you, we discover that you are new to redemption, new to Gilbert, and for many of you, it is all brand new. We have seen people consistently, in the course of these 12 weeks, come to Christ in repentance and faith as we begin to unpack God's story.
I have been on vacation. Susan and I finally got out of town — we were over on the coast and had a great time. I came to a conclusion on the beach: not everyone was made for swimwear. Myself included, just so you know. Speedo doesn't go with everything.
The Arc of God's Story
In this series we have seen so many people saying, "Here is a story that makes sense." From the triune God, to His revelation to us through His Word, to creation, to man's sin, and then God promising, "I am going to address this." God becomes flesh and dwells among us. Christ dies on the cross and rises from the dead. That is part of the story, but it is not the end of the story.
Even as we look at the Acts 29 network, people say, "Wait, there is no 29th chapter in the book of Acts." That is exactly the point. It is the continuation of God writing His story through your life and mine today. We try to keep this in front of you: if all God wanted to do was get you to heaven, He would have taken you there at the moment you believed in Him. But He left you here for a reason and a purpose.
Over the last two weeks we looked at things that apply both corporately and individually. We looked at the church, and then last week Tim took us through a study on worship. In the course of that study, Tim made a statement in the form of a question: "When was the last time you were offended by something you heard in a message?" He went on to say that it is possible you would see or experience that as we talked about worship.
When the Message Gets in Our Grill
The statement Tim made is exactly true: we tend to be offended when we hear something that gets in our grill, that invades our space, that exposes a weakness or a sin in us — when God holds up a mirror and we look in it and say, "That is me right there, and I don't like it. Who are you to tell me?" Anytime I teach on kids, I always get that reaction, and I understand it. If there is anything that fills you with guilt, it is dealing with your children.
I don't care how old your kids are — my girls are 30 and 31. Once you have a child, you have a little piece of your heart out there walking around in the world. The most perfect parent can always look back and say, "I should have done this differently." Well, today we come to a topic where, if you made it through last week without being offended, there is a good chance we could accomplish that today.
The Topic of Stewardship
Today we are going to talk about stewardship. If you have been around church culture long enough, the moment you hear that word you immediately think: money. You grab your wallet and brace yourself. Maybe you came today suspiciously or antagonistically. Maybe you have been here a while but are uneasy about it, and you say, "Here is one of the things I don't like about church — all they talk about is money."
One of the consistent criticisms I get from staff, elders, and the leadership team is that I do not talk about money enough. So we are going to talk about money. Even so, it falls within the broader discussion of stewardship — money is not the main focus, though we will spend time on it.
Paul's Pattern: Doctrine, Then Application
In Ephesians chapter 4, where you are right now, we see a pattern — a pattern found in three letters Paul wrote: Ephesians, Colossians, and Romans. It is a pattern we have acknowledged before, but we need to remind ourselves of it continually. In general terms, each of these three books is written in two big buckets: doctrine and application. Here is what happened, here is the truth — so what?
In Ephesians chapters 1, 2, and 3, Paul has laid heavy, beautiful doctrine before us. Then in chapter 4, verse 1, he says, "Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness and patience, showing tolerance for one another and love. Be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." In verses 4 through 6 he uses the word "one" seven times.
He uses the word "walk." He says, "Therefore" — because you are a new creature in Christ, because you were dead in your sin and trespasses but now you live, because you are a new creature — "walk in a manner worthy."
Walking Worthy of Your Calling
The word translated "walk" is not a reference to some primitive form of transportation. It speaks to the way we live. Because of the great riches of God's grace and mercy, because you were saved by grace through faith, because Christ is in you, now live that way, act that way, behave that way.
Turn to Colossians, chapter 3, verse 1. Again, the New American Standard begins with the word "therefore." Paul has been talking about Christ's riches and Christ's gifts, Christ creating and holding together, and us being built up in Him. So he says, "Therefore, if you've been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things of earth." It is essentially the same idea as walking in a manner worthy of your calling.
Belief Shapes Behavior
This brings us to a fundamental, basic principle: what I believe affects how I behave. We have a very volatile stock market. If you believe Wells Fargo stock is going to be at fifty dollars by the end of the week, you are going to act on that belief with whatever resources you have — it may only be one share, or it may be many. In the same way, if you believe Jesus is who He said He was, that you are who He says you are, and that you are now a new creature, you are going to live accordingly. It is going to require thinking differently on the inside — placing your mind on the things above.
Present Your Bodies as a Living Sacrifice
Turn to Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. Once more, the passage begins with "therefore." Paul has laid out these amazing truths: no one is good, no not one; all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus; and nothing can separate us from that relationship with Him. He then says, "Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship."
What Paul is saying is that worship is not limited to what we do in this room, or to things we would clearly label spiritual — Bible reading, teaching, prayer, fellowship, small groups, singing songs. It includes all of those, but it is far more than that. He kicks the slats out of that limit and says, present your bodies — meaning all that you are and all that you have: your time, your energy, your effort, your money, everything. Present it to Him.
Then he gives a warning in verse 2: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." Conformity to the world is what slows this transformation down. The renewing of the mind is what drives it forward.
The Only Reasonable Act of Worship
One translation calls this the only reasonable act of worship. If God has truly redeemed you, if the Holy Spirit has truly come into your life, if you have a new heart, a new mind, and you are a new creature, then the only reasonable response is to give Him everything. It is where Paul speaks of being a bond-servant — the lowest form of slave — a slave who says, "Everything I have is not mine; it is the master's. Even my life itself, even my own desires, are not mine. What I do is what the master desires."
Years ago I was invited by the University of Arizona, when the Wildcats were up here to play ASU, to do a chapel for the football team. Being relatively new and perhaps overly confident, I decided to teach this passage, and in my own naive way I paraphrased verse 1 as: "What God is saying here is, give your bod to God." What I did not know was that a writer from Sports Illustrated was in that chapel, writing an article on the game. That week's issue quoted "give your bod to God" — and while he did not call it clever, he strongly implied it. That is, clumsily stated, what the verse says.
Everything on Loan from God
When Rush Limbaugh said, "With talent on loan from God," he may not have known all of the theological implications, but he captured something true. Everything we have, God has given us, and our response — which we come to today — is to steward it.
The Battle Against Conformity
What will get in the way is conformity to this world. John writes in 1 John chapter 2: "Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life — is not from the Father, and the world is passing away." So here is the battle: we have the battle with the flesh, and we have the battle with Satan.
God Claims Ownership Over Everything
We have the battle with the world — and that doesn't mean the globe, it means the world's system. Paul is getting at a worldview: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed" — how? By the renewing of your mind. The J.B. Phillips paraphrase says it this way: "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold, but let God remold your minds from within." In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases it this way: "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God, and you'll be changed from the inside out." Not an outward conformity to some sort of system — legalism, religion — but a heart that's changed.
That's what it's getting at. I'm a new creature. My mind should be different, my heart should be different, my desires should be different. So it's the way now that I live.
God talks about ownership, and if we take the Bible from a huge macro view and narrow it down, we find that God claims ownership over the entire universe. Let me read four passages. Deuteronomy 10:14: "To the Lord your God belongs the heavens, the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it." Psalm 24, verses 1 and 2: "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it." Psalm 50, verse 10: "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." Then He narrows it down to commodities in Haggai 2:8: "The silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord."
We can read all of that and say, okay, God claims ownership over all these things. But look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 19: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? For you are not your own, for you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body." So here is what God says: the world and everything in it — the birds, the beasts, the cattle, the gold, the silver — all of it is His, including you.
The Key Distinction: Possession vs. Ownership
This is very important. This is the key. If you don't get this, the rest of this is a total waste of time. This is the key, and it's transforming.
What God says is that everything in your life — including you — all the resources, your time, your energy, your effort, your money, all of that is His, and He has transferred possession to you, but not ownership. So my time, my energy, my effort, my money — I couldn't even take a breath if it wasn't for God. This very day is a gift from God. He has transferred possession to you, but not ownership.
We easily make the mistake of saying, "Because I have possession, it's mine. Because I have possession, I can do whatever I want with it." But the reality is, no — I'm not an owner, I'm a steward. Mark Driscoll writes this: "Generally speaking, there are two ways to see our life and possessions. One is through the perspective of ownership, whereby I, my life, my possessions belong to me alone. The other is the perspective of stewardship, whereby I, my life, my possessions belong to God and are to be invested for His purposes."
In Titus chapter 1, verse 7, Paul tells us as leaders to steward the church. In 1 Peter 4:10, he tells us — all of us — to be stewards of the gifts that God has given us. You are a steward, not an owner, and that changes your relationship with everything.
What Stewardship Looks Like in Practice
Let's deal with money for a moment. If this is my money, I can do whatever I want with it. I don't have to answer to anybody about it. If I want to blow it, I can blow it. If I want to save it, I can save it. But if this is God's money entrusted to me, I'm not free to do whatever I want with it.
If this 24-hour period today is mine and I can spend it on anything I want, that's very different from understanding it as a gift from God that He's given to me, and that one day I'll be accountable for it. If I look at my job and understand it's not just about punching in and punching out — it's understanding that God has placed me there and will one day judge me accordingly. The same is true of the family that God has given me.
Think about Bernie Madoff for a moment. If Bernie Madoff had done all of that investing with his own money, he wouldn't be in jail. We might say he was stupid, reckless, that he miscalculated — but he wouldn't be a criminal. That wasn't the issue. What happened is that people had given him money, entrusted him with it, and he misused it, misrepresented how he used it, lied about it, moved things around, and invested for his own benefit rather than theirs. He acted as though it was his own.
The term is fiduciary. He had a fiduciary relationship with his clients. In a sense, you have a fiduciary relationship with God. All of your resources — your time, your energy, your effort, your money — are gifts that God has given you to use, yes, but also to one day be accountable for.
Even the language breaks down at points, and I don't get hung up on this. But I call her my daughter — she was sitting right over here in the first hour. We share DNA, but in reality she's not really mine. She's God's, entrusted to me. My responsibility in raising her was not to make her everything I wanted her to be, but to make her independent of me while being totally dependent upon God. That was our whole objective in child rearing, worked out through many different approaches.
Time, Family, and the Question of Ownership
Sarah's not mine — she's God's. Haley's not mine — she's God's. So we go through the whole list. Brayden's God's. Gracie's God's. Reagan's God's. Brooklyn's God's. Yale's God's. Lucy's God's. They're all His. He has entrusted them to us, but they are His.
You may not get offended today, but you could easily get frustrated. I'm not going to give you a lot of answers. I'm just going to get in your face over and over again and say, you have to figure this out. And what happens is, my pride, your pride, my ego, your ego — so often gets in the way.
I say this a lot, and sometimes just as a matter of fact: most of the people I know don't really love their kids. Because if they did, they wouldn't treat them the way they do. If you push and push and push, I don't know if you even want that child to come to Christ and have a relationship with Him. You just want a better kid you don't have to deal with.
That's not true of all — but it's true of some, and I see it all the time. People say they want to spend time with their kids, and they'll have one in Seattle, one in San Francisco, and one in San Diego. The kid in Seattle is great, the kid in San Diego is a mess, the kid in San Francisco is somewhere in between. They always go to the child who is doing well. They never go to the troubled child who needs the work. They never move to be near the child who is struggling.
So we're really only going to be with a child when we can get something out of it too. Our hearts are pretty dark, aren't they? That's just how we are. And that's why I want you to look at all of this and ask yourself: what are you doing with your time, your energy, and your money?
The Great Equalizer: Time
When it comes to time, R.C. Sproul writes this: "Time is a great leveler. It is one resource that is allocated in absolute egalitarian terms. Every living person has the same number of hours to use in every day. Busy people are not given a special bonus added on to the hours of the day. The clock plays no favorites."
We can talk about money in a minute. We can talk about gifts, abilities, appearance — some are handsome, some are pretty, some aren't, some are tall, some are thin, some are smart, some aren't. We have all of that variation. But when it comes to time, everybody has 168 hours this week to invest, spend, or waste. That's why Paul tells us to redeem the time.
So I have to ask myself those hard questions. We were in Coronado recently, and I love to sit and talk to strangers there. I'm sure they're thinking, please go away, but I talk to them anyway. There were a great many retired people, and every single person I asked — how do you like being retired? — said the same thing: "I'm so busy, I don't know where the time goes."
Now I don't mean to be harsh, but God is one day going to hold us accountable for that time. I understand the need to rest. I understand wear and tear. I don't have nearly the energy I used to — I once taught seven times on a Sunday and now I teach four and I'm physically spent. Rest is legitimate. But sitting all day reading the paper, or listening to political commentary from morning to night — I can tell the people who have done exactly that, because they grow angry, bitter, and they spew out talking points. Turn it off. It's affecting your thinking. It isn't going to change anything. Put on some music — if not Glenn Miller, then something. Redeem the time, because He is going to ask you about it.
Work as Sacred: Formal and Informal Ministry
Mark Driscoll has a paragraph in his book that I had to read and re-read to make sure I was representing it accurately. He writes that Jesus' life exemplifies both the formal and informal aspects of ministry work. Until roughly thirty years of age, Jesus worked a common laborer's job as a carpenter. For the remaining roughly three years of His life, Jesus said He was about His Father's work. Jesus' ministry work included exhausting preaching, teaching, demon confronting, feeding, healing, and traveling by foot, among more.
When you read that casually, it might sound like Jesus spent thirty years as a carpenter and then three years doing ministry — as if the carpentry didn't count. That is not what Driscoll is saying. He is making a distinction between formal and informal ministry, and I want to obliterate any misunderstanding on this point.
Here is what God is saying: everything in your life is sacred. When you go to school tomorrow — whether you are sitting in a mathematics class or teaching one — what you are doing is sacred. You sitting and taking notes in a classroom is no more sacred than what happens in this room on a Sunday. You who are teaching math tomorrow are not doing anything less sacred than what I am doing here.
One of the huge problems we have is that we draw a line between "ministry" and everything else. Someone asks what you do, and you say, "I just work at Intel," or "I just work at Discount Tire," or "I just teach at Mesquite," or "I just work at Shea Homes." What do you mean, just? "I just stay home — I'm just a stay-at-home mom." Are you?
Every Vocation Is Sacred Ministry
Every one of these are sacred ministry positions. You don't have the luxury of saying Sunday from 10:30 to noon is sacred and everything else is a lead-up to that, or that Wednesday Bible study is sacred and nothing else is. Your whole life is a ministry. Colossians 3:23 says, "Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Jesus Christ."
You may be keeping books, doing accounting, or administrative managing work — whether at Chapman Chevrolet or here at the church. One is not less spiritual than the other. So many people say, "I would love to go work in full-time ministry." You are in full-time ministry.
That came home to me with a man who said, "I want ministry." I asked what he did for work. He said he was an attorney who practiced family law. Family law — divorces, bankruptcies, all sorts of issues. That is sacred work. God has given you that, and He will judge you on how you work.
So when someone says, "I'm too busy," that is impossible. If God has given you something to do, He is going to give you the time to do it. You may be wasting that time, or you may have assumed God wanted you to do some big thing when He actually called you to something smaller. But whatever it is, if God gave you the call, He gave you the time.
Stewards of God's Various Gifts
There is one other thing worth touching on before we talk about money. Turn to 1 Peter 4:10, page 658. Peter writes, "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's very grace." That phrase — good stewards — is our word for the day. God has given us various gifts, various spiritual gifts.
Even when He gives the same gift, He seems to give it in different doses. Take the gift of teaching. There are some people I listen to and think, that person has the gift of teaching, but I would say it is at about a four. Another person has the same gift, but at an eight. Two important insights come out of that.
First, I can develop gift envy very quickly. I suddenly find myself wanting that person's gift, and I fail to understand that God gave me the gift He wanted me to have, at the dosage He wanted me to have it, and He is going to hold me accountable for how I use it.
The Misconception About Spiritual Gifts
The second insight concerns a common misconception about gifts. About 25 or 30 years ago, I was teaching a Wednesday night Bible study at Grace Community Church. A man came up afterward and asked if he could take me to lunch to help identify his spiritual gift. I said yes, and I thought nothing more of it.
But I started to notice a pattern. The class was at 7:00. When I would arrive at 6:30, he was already there. He had set up the room, turned the air conditioning down, gotten out a music stand and a stool, placed a bottle of water for me, and made sure everyone was comfortable. When we finished, he was the last one out. He has the gift of service, I thought.
So we went to lunch. We ordered, and he said he wanted help figuring out his spiritual gift. I told him I had prayed about it quite a bit and asked him, "Do you have the gift of service?" He said no. I said yes. He insisted he did not. I walked him through everything — the 6:30 arrival, the tables, the chairs, the water — and he finally said, "It cannot be the gift of service, because I enjoy it so much."
That is the misconception. In our minds, we assume that if we are going to do something for God, it will be awful — that we will hate every minute of it, that it will be pure agony. But no. When God gives you a gift and you are in the zone, everything flows. At the end of the day, you do not feel worse — you feel better. You may be tired, but it is a good tired. The gift is the thing that excites you and charges you up.
Your Gift in Everyday Life
Your gift may have nothing to do with a Bible study. You might be the person in your neighborhood who fixes everything, and people love to come to you. Just recently I met our new neighbor. The house had been empty for about three years, and after introductions he asked what I had been up to. I told him my toilet was broken and I could not get it fixed. He offered to come over and fix it right then. I thought, this is the perfect neighbor — when he is here, he is working on projects for me.
You may be that person in your neighborhood. Everyone comes to you, and that is your avenue of ministry and service. And when someone asks why you do it, you can say, "That is the way God made me. Let me tell you about Him."
You may also be an older woman or man who thinks ministry is out of reach. If you want a bucket load of ministry, I can tell you exactly how to have it. Move into —
Stewardship, Comfort, and the Question of Money
Let me talk about money. Jesus is very clear — He doesn't stutter or stammer. In Matthew chapter 6, verse 19, He says, "Don't store up treasures for yourself on earth, but in heaven." And in verse 24, "No one can serve two masters; he'll love one, hate the other." You can't serve God and simultaneously serve the world. You can't serve both.
Paul writes to his young protégé Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:10, and let's make sure we get this correct — it's very important. The *love* of money is a root of all sorts of evil. He doesn't say money itself. In his book *Business for the Glory of God*, Wayne Grudem writes this: "In fact, money is fundamentally good because it is a human invention that sets us apart from the animal kingdom and enables us to subdue the earth by producing from the earth goods and services that may benefit others."
Mark Driscoll puts it this way: "Simply put, if we love money, we use God and people. However, if we love God, we are free to use money to love God and to love people." Our money is inextricably linked to our worship, both corporately and individually.
Here's why we're going to talk about money — not because we need it or want it, but because it's a spiritual issue. These next several minutes are not calculated on how to get your assets into the church, though I think that matters. The reason we talk about it is that it is an indicator of your spiritual condition.
Why We Avoid Talking About Money
You don't want to talk about this. Why is it that I can talk about adultery, celibacy, or stealing — I can talk about any of those other things and people say, "Go get them, brother." But the moment I start talking about money, the response is, "All you guys want is money." That is simply not true. I don't think you can find a place that is any more low-key about money than we are. It is not at all unusual for someone to say, "Hey, I waited the whole service for you to pass the baskets — did you forget?" No. We put boxes by the door, because we believe that the people of God, with a little education — not guilt, not manipulation, but education — when they are confronted with it, will want to give and will do it.
What Happens When We Teach on Giving
When I taught 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9, there is a great deal in there about money. I remember this specifically: we were averaging around $70,000 a week in budget and income at the time. The first week I taught on it, giving the following week was $110,000. Because it was a two-part series, the next week giving was $125,000. Then we finished the series — and the next week it was $110,000, then $100,000, then $90,000, then $80,000.
That pattern could actually be a strong signal that we need to talk about this more. If we really believe this is a spiritual issue — and I do — then we need to keep it in front of you.
Cheerfulness, Obedience, and the Heart of Giving
I taught one time that God says He wants a cheerful giver, and I concluded by saying: if you can't give cheerfully, don't give at all. A man involved in Crown Ministries here at church came up afterward and told me he thought I had taught that completely wrong. He asked me: do you think giving is an obedience issue? I said I do. Do you think it's a spiritual issue, and that God will hold you accountable for whether you give, how much you give, and where you give? I said I do.
So he said, "How can you tell someone it's an obedience issue, but if they can't do it cheerfully, they shouldn't do it at all? Would you tell someone who is single and sexually active, 'If you can't be cheerful about celibacy, don't be celibate at all'?" I said no — not really. And that was a great lesson for me. God wants a cheerful giver. He does not say that if you can't give cheerfully you shouldn't give — it is an obedience issue. But if this grappling with money is going on inside you, you have to ask yourself why. Why is this so hard?
The Example of the Macedonian Churches
Now we come to 2 Corinthians chapter 8. Paul is writing to the church at Corinth. He says in verse 1: "Brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great deal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality." There is a very poor church in Jerusalem, and these churches in Macedonia — Thessalonica, Berea, Philippi —
Stewardship in Practice: What the Macedonians Model
The Macedonian churches were really hurting. They were under persecution. When they heard of the famine in Jerusalem, they gave toward that need. Paul says in verse three, "I testify that according to their ability and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, begging us with much entreaty for the favor of participation in the support of the saints." This is really important, and it fits well for where we are in the economy. These were people who were genuinely suffering, but they knew there was a need, and they knew it was an obedience issue.
Rather than saying, "I'm going to give when things get better," they said, "No, we're going to give now — sacrificially, obediently, voluntarily." As 2 Corinthians 9 instructs, they gave according to how they had been blessed.
How Much Should We Give?
No one ever asks whether they should give. People do ask how much they should give and where they should give. You should give where God is blessing you, and if you are a member of or attend this church, you should be giving to this church.
People talk about the tithe — tithe means a tenth — and we certainly saw that in the Old Testament. In reality, the Old Testament included tithes, gifts, and offerings. When a Jewish person was finished with all mandatory giving, they were giving approximately 25% of their gross income. So when someone says they want to tithe, that is a wonderful starting point.
We are in the process of redoing our membership standards as we bring our campuses together, and one of the areas we are addressing is giving. Where we are landing is similar to what Driscoll argues in the book: we can look at the Old Testament tithe of 10% and say it is a floor or a base — not a ceiling, not a final goal. Whether you are working at Starbucks making thirty dollars a week or babysitting on weekends, giving is an act of obedience. The question is not how much of your money you should give to God. The question is how much of God's money you should keep.
What the Statistics Tell Us
The facts tell a very different story from what faithful stewardship should look like. More than one in four American Protestants give nothing. From 1968 to 2005, giving declined from 3.1% of income to 2.6% of income — and remember, 10% is the floor. The median annual giving of a Christian is $200.
About 27% of evangelicals give 10% or more of their income, which means roughly 73% are giving less than what we consider the baseline. Just 5% of Christians provide 60% of the money, and 20% of all Christians account for 86% of all giving. Among Protestants, 10% of evangelicals, 28% of mainline denominational members, 33% of fundamentalists, and 40% of liberal Protestants give nothing at all.
If we are correct — and I believe we are — that giving is a spiritual issue, then 25% of people are not even approaching the topic.
A Personal Story About Accountability
I was talking to Neil this morning, and I asked whether I should tell this story. I told him the story, and he said I should. I mentioned that Susan probably would not want me to share it, but she is sick and not here today, so here we are.
Some of you already know that for about thirty years I did essentially nothing around the house. Absolutely nothing. One day Susan asked me to put out the garbage. I put it out. She said it was Friday. I said whatever. She said they pick it up on Tuesday. I said, how would I know? You said put out the garbage. Things have changed considerably since then, and I now do a great deal more around the house.
The one thing I never handled was the bills. When Susan became very ill, she continued paying all the bills, and I understood why. I think psychologically it was one of the last things she managed, and she did not want to let it go. I had already taken the car away at Christmas, and I think losing that independence made holding onto the finances feel even more important to her.
Early this year, however, it became clear that our bills were not getting paid — not because the money was not there, but because things had slipped. And let me be clear: that was not her fault. It was mine. I should have been more proactive and more aggressive in stepping in sooner.
So I went into Bank of America and asked who their most patient person was. They told me that was Hannah. I sat down with Hannah and said, "Hannah, I want to tell you a story. In 1978, I married this beautiful girl." She looked at me and said, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be a long story." I told her it was going to be a very long story — that we could go to lunch if she needed to. When it was all over, I asked Hannah to treat me like I was her dad and help me the way she would help him, because I was completely helpless. We moved everything to autopay, and anything that was not on autopay went onto a credit card with autopay attached.
I was telling Neil this story, and he stopped me and said I had not given to the church this year. I told him that could not be true. I clearly remembered standing in the conference center and dropping a check in the offering. And I was sure Susan had given on the Sundays she had been present. But Neil said it was April and I had given only once, when I normally give once a month. He pulled up the record and showed me: I had given once, and then nothing.
Giving as Stewardship
I have to be honest and lay myself as bare as I can before you. Between now and the end of the year, I have to figure this up and get caught up. I know these things happen, but this giving thing is not an optional deal. If you say Jesus is Lord, then you ought to be writing checks.
For those of us who have jobs, as difficult as times are, we need to write bigger checks — understanding that some people cannot. But if you can find money for cable, internet, and smartphones, and you are not giving, your problem is not me. Don't be writing me emails. You are your problem, and your problem is between you and God.
Some of you feel guilty right now. You know why? Because you are. How much should you give? That is what I mean by frustrating. Some of you look at ten percent and you are dying just to get there. Others of you, that is chump change. I will let all of that sit.
The Greatest Gift
When we talk about giving, there has never been a gift like the gift of eternal life that we received in Christ Jesus through His death on the cross.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for these amazing, awesome truths that change our lives. God, we are Yours. You own us. You transfer possession, but not ownership, to us — of our time, our energy, our effort, and our money. God, make us faithful stewards. We love You, we worship You, we praise You. In Christ's name, amen.