Money and the Kingdom of God

Disclaimer: I realize money is a sensitive topic. In this sermon message I began by telling the congregation that I don't think it is a sin to have wealth, nor do I think it is a sin to have nice things and enjoy the blessings God has lavished on us when it comes to wealth. However, I did tell them that there is a responsibility that comes with that and that we are called to help others who don't have as much and that there will be sacrifices and choices we have to make if we are to use our money to influence the Kingdom of God.

This Sunday our church started a series entitled " Money and the Kingdom of God." Basically what prompted this was two reasons. First, I absolutely reject the fact that Jesus taught us to give only 10% of our money to the church, then we can spend the other 90% on whatever we want and be called good stewards of our money. Second, I read so many articles about stewardship when I preached on the Ananias and Saphira passage for last week (out of context in my opinion), that I felt it necessary to explore more what Jesus says about money. Our first stop was the parable of the Rich Fool.

Now I went to a "liberal" seminary. I say "liberal" because honestly it is all relative and if we weren't in Texas, it would not have been labeled liberal at all. Anyway, while in seminary I heard all the time that this passage of the Rich Fool building bigger barns was an indictment against Capitalism. The argument would go, "See this farmer was just being a good Capitalist and God kills him." So, they say, Jesus is pro-Socialism, pro-Communism, but when it comes to Capitalism He sees it as evil. This is utterly ridiculous because in the passage God never condemns the farmer for being rich. He only condemns him for hoarding the riches for himself.

In fact, in the beginning of the passage a man asks Jesus to settle a dispute about an inheritance his brother won't share with him. To which Jesus replies "Who sent me to be a lawyer among you." In other words, Jesus is telling the man not to use Jesus' name to propagate any personal agenda. Jesus is not pro-Socialism, not pro-Communism, and not pro-Capitalism. The Kingdom that Jesus came to establish is so completely other than any man made governmental system. There is no government system that tells you to turn the other cheek, love and pray for your enemy, etc. Further, there is no government system that will change the hearts of humanity. It is only in the bottom-up approach (the mustard seed Kingdom) that the Kingdom of God will be established. So lets stop saying Jesus is pro any sort of man made government. He is in the words of Greg Boyd about "power under" (kingdom established through grassroots, prayer, etc.) not about "power over" (governmental, top-down approach).

I apologize for my soap box, but it really irritates me when we try to make the Bible say things that it is not really saying at all.

Back to the text...

The point of the text is being rich towards God and to answer the question: "What does it mean to be rich towards God?" I chose to look at how God has been rich towards us and then go back and answer the question of what it means for us to be rich towards God.

Basically what I did was trace God's interaction with humanity from Genesis to the giving of the Holy Spirit. God created humanity out of love. This alone makes God an unselfish God. But something went wrong and Adam AND Eve sinned against God. God would have had every right to wash His hands of us and choose to leave us to our fallen state. However, God did not do that. He started laying out a long process by which he would progressively reveal himself to humanity (and I will shorten this for time sake). But basically he gave us the Law, then he spoke through the prophets, and eventually Jesus left his throne to come down and live among us. Took on our hell, and our sin, and walked to Calvary, and died. He then ascended and had this been the end of the story then that would have made God a compassionate God. However, God didn't stop there but he sent his Holy Spirit and gave us EVERY spiritual blessing (Eph. 1). God held nothing back from us. He went all the way. It wasn't just salvation from hell, but a total salvation where we begin to live a new and redeemed life here and now.

So God was rich towards us in that he went all the way with us. Gave us everything, and held back nothing!

Ephesians 5 says that we are to be imitators of God. Meaning as God has entered into us through his Holy Spirit we are in turn to lavish blessings on all those we come in contact with. I continued reading the passage through Jesus telling his disciples not to worry about to wear, what to eat or what to drink because God provides for his children. He then tells the disciples to sell their possessions and give it to the poor.

Notice Jesus doesn't say "give to the poor only if they really deserve it." Or, "give to the poor after you have examined the reason why they are poor and figure out if they will squander what you give them." Or "give to the poor only if you deem them worthy enough of your help."

There were no qualifications. The command was simply give because you know God will take care of you.

The point of this teaching is this: To the extent that we are Rich towards God we look like Jesus. To the point that we aren't we look like the farmer.

If we in America buy into this idea that its ok to give only 10% to the church and then hoard the other 90% for ourselves then we delude ourselves and are not using our money to build the Kingdom.

ALL that we have is a blessing from God and we are called to pour out that blessing on those less fortunate (incidentally there are over 2,000 passages that talk about taking care of the poor in Scripture). And we are called to imitate God in holding nothing back when it comes to taking care of the poor and needy.

This Christmas season we will be blasted with commercial after commercial of the new things we "need." And we will even get Christians telling us that as long as you don't go into debt you can buy as much as you want because "who is it really hurting?" But I think this question is wrongheaded. The question should be "who is it really helping?"

As Christians we are called to put everything under the subjection of Christ. This includes our money--even the 90% that we don't tithe.