Luke 12: 16-34
Theme: Stewardship
NO RESERVATION, NO RETREAT, NO REGRET
One day this week, I was watching an interview with Richard Hatch on the Early Show on CBS. You know Richard Hatch, he is the guy who ran around naked and became the winner of Survivor. Hatch is a corporate trainer and consultant. Now that he won a million dollars, everyone wants to hear from him. So, he wrote a book 101 SURVIVAL SECRETS: How to Make $1,000,000, Lose 100 Pounds, and Just Plain Live Happily. In the interview, Bryant Gumbel raised one controversial issue found in the book. Hatch advocates utter selfishness. He says he does everything for selfish reasons. It is the secret to survival and the secret to happiness. He said it is liberating to be selfish and everyone is ultimately elevated by your own selfishness and are inspired to be selfish themselves.
This is the basic philosophy of the modern man. You could not find a more different attitude from what the Bible teaches. Paul admonished us to (Phil 2: 3) "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself." Contrast Richard Hatch with the Moravians. When I was studying Church history, I was always impressed with the Moravians’ willingness to follow Christ no matter the consequences. The Moravians were a protestant group banished from their homeland in Bohemia because of their religious beliefs. They were exiled to various countries in 1620. Some came to Germany and found refuge on the estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1756). It was here on his estate that they became known as the Moravian Brethren and the forerunners of the Protestant Missionary Movement.
In 1730, Count Zinzendorf told the Moravians about the urgent need for missionaries to evangelize the slaves on the Virgin Islands. Leonard Dober listened to Zinzendorf’s appeal. As he pondered God’s calling, Dober felt excited about this opportunity to serve, but he also envisioned the severe persecution he would endure by selling himself into slavery to evangelize these people. He anticipated the horrible working conditions, but above all the degradation of slavery. No price was too high, he thought, when Jesus Christ endured persecution and died for him. So, Leonard Dober, at the age of 18, became the first Moravian missionary to the Virgin Island sugar plantation slaves.
Dober found himself ridiculed, mocked, and chastened for his decision to go to the Virgin Islands. The Christians asked him incredulous questions about how he planned to live in the Virgin Islands or how he intended to minister to the slaves. The persecution climaxed when the Christians discovered that Dober planned to sell himself into slavery.
Dober arrived in the Virgin Islands in the late 1730s, but he did not have to become a plantation slave. Instead he became a servant in the governor’s house. Soon he resigned his position, as he was concerned that this position was so superior to that of the slaves that it was detrimental to reaching them for Christ. He chose instead to live in a small mud hut where he could work one-on-one with the slaves. In three years his ministry grew to include 13,000 new converts. (J
onathan Cederberg, "Christian Martyrs: The Hidden Stones in Our Foundation," The Voice of the Martyrs, [Evangelical Press Association; August 1998], p. 11)What a contrast between Richard Hatch and Leonard Dober. Who do you think was the proper steward of the life that God had given him? How do you think Jesus would have reacted to these two men?
The man who interrupted Jesus while he was talking about spiritual things, had a problem with greed. His father had died and one son would not share his inheritance with the other. Jesus asked him why do you think that I care about all of this? The man was more concerned about material things than about spiritual things and that attitude never sat well with Jesus.
Jesus' response was to tell a story. A certain rich man was a farmer and his land was very productive. In that day as in ours, productivity equaled wealth. One year the man's crops were so productive that he did not know what to do with all of it. He had raised enough to retire on and to retire in style. He decided to do the extravagant thing, he tore down the old barns and built new ones, big ones, big enough to hold his new wealth.
Notice the man's attitude. What will I do? I will tear down my barns and I will store my grain and my goods. And He said to his soul, My soul you have it made, take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry. The man was full of himself. He was a self-made man. He owed no one. He was the master of his fate and the captain of his soul. So it was his grain and his barns and his goods and his soul. Do you recognize the problem here? He was utterly selfish and self centered.
The man's total self centeredness, his intentional blindness to ultimate reality drew the wrath of God. "You fool, this very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?" What was the man's problem? He had laid up treasures for himself and was not rich toward God. He was, by choice, a spiritual pauper.
Jesus said the wise man is the one who is rich toward God. The proper attitude toward our money, our bodies and our lives is that they belong to God, how will He have us use them? Jesus gave us three principles to use as we make stewardship decisions. The first is not to worry about money, God is in charge of these things. It is presumptuous of us to believe that our wealth and income are ours to use as we see fit. God is the giver of all good gifts and it is He who directs our spending habits. And yet it is uncomfortable when we are on the short end of the stick. How can we lay up treasures in heaven when we can’t pay the bills? I know what it is like not knowing how you will pay this months bills or how will you pay for that emergency. It is a human tendency to worry about such things. But, it can do great damage to our spiritual lives to do so. It is a form of slavery to worry about money.
The second principle is to seek first the kingdom of God. Because God is in charge of our welfare, we are free to pursue His kingdom with abandon. What would happen to us as a church if we placed our trust in God’s leadership and did all that He calls us to do without regard to cost? What great things we could do if we gave with abandon? That which keeps us from accomplishing God’s work is not God, it is us!
The problem is found in the third principle, Where you treasure is, there will your heart be also! It is all about attitude and disposition. If we are followers of Jesus Christ, we have a new heart with Godly attitudes. What we treasure is the problem.
William Borden was a man born to be rich. His became the heir to a multimillion dollar estate. He learned to love God with abandon as a youth. After going on a trip around the world and seeing the poverty and need, he told his father that he intended to become a missionary to China. His father tried to dissuade him, but William would not budge. He did one thing his father wished for however, he went to Yale. While there he used his wealth to start and finance the Yale Hope Rescue Mission that reached out to those who were down and out and lost.
He went on to Princeton Divinity school. After graduation, he went to Egypt in December 1912, where he studied Arabic and Islam in preparation for mission work. He spent his time distributing Christian literature and preaching among the sickly poor. While doing his work, he contracted meningitis. His mother and sister were traveling in Europe and could not immediately be found. When they were located, they were urged to come to Egypt as soon as possible, William was dying.
His mother arrived in the evening of April 9, 1913 to find that her son had died only a few hours before. He was 26 years old. She wanted to go into him and see him but was not allowed to enter for fear that she might catch the disease. But she was given a card that was found by his hand when he died. In his last few hours, this young man summarized his thoughts on dying. He was twenty-six, he did not even reach his destination. Yet his last words were, no reservation, no retreat, no regrets. He died with his treasure in heaven.
What a philosophy! I can’t think of any other philosophy that should drive the Christian in his or her daily life. Look what great thing God has done for us! How are we to live our lives? How are we to use our money, our time, our bodies and our talents? How shall we live? In the name of Christ with no reservation, no retreat, and no regret!