“A Generous Life”
 Stewardship Sermon 2005
(1Tim. 6:6-19)
Dr. Peter Barnes
First Presbyterian Church
October 23, 2005

Introduction
      A hypnotist and a pastor were talking together one day. The hypnotist boasted, “I can put someone in an unconscious state just by saying a single word.” 
      The pastor replied, “Oh, that’s nothing. I can do the same thing with an entire congregation!”
      “Really?” said the hypnotist. “What’s that word?”
      And the pastor replied, “Stewardship!”[1]
      It is stewardship season, and, at the risk of putting some of you to sleep, there are some things I feel called by God to share with you from 1 Timothy 6. I believe they are important principles to live by, and all of us would do well to consider them and put them into practice. This morning I want you to notice what Paul had to say regarding: a warning about wealth; a call to contentment; and the blessing of a generous life.

I. A Warning About Wealth
      In his first letter to Timothy, Paul wrote to his young apprentice about many matters. Timothy was the pastor of the church in Ephesus, which Paul helped found about eight years before. The occasion of the letter was the fourth and last of Paul’s missionary journeys, during which the apostle, realizing that he would not be able to return to Ephesus, wanted to give Timothy, whom he had left in charge, advice about living the Christian life and leading the Christian church.
      One matter about which Paul wrote had to do with a warning about wealth. It seems that there were some slick deceivers in the church in Ephesus who discovered they could cash in financially on the Gospel. According to 6:5, these people treated godliness as a means of financial gain. It was an early version of the health and wealth gospel we sometimes hear about today. These people were so addicted to the love of money that Christ and His truth lost their rightful places in the hearts of these people.
      Here Paul writes, “People 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. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (6:9,10).   
      Money has a way of displacing God in our lives. It provides a false sense of security, it skews our values, and people are willing to sacrifice body and soul just to get a little more of it. Often we can become so focused on finances that the really important things in life get overlooked, and we find ourselves in a place we never, in our wildest imagination, dreamed we would ever end up.
      If you don’t believe what I say is true, consider these statistics:

      Nowhere in Scripture does it ever say that money or worldly possessions are a bad thing. What Scripture does say is that making money or worldly possessions our central hope or our primary desire leads to disaster. History is replete with the names of people who sold their soul for the almighty dollar, and we never quite have enough. If you focus too much on money, you’ll loose your perspective on what really matters.
      Henry Ford once asked one of his associates, D.W. Flint, “What is your chief ambition in life?” Flint thought about it for a moment and then replied, “To make a million dollars and take life easy. My big objective in this world is dollars and more dollars.” 
      A few days later, Ford walked into Flint’s office and laid a package on his desk and said, “This is for you. Open it.” 
      The package contained a pair of rimmed eyeglasses from which the lenses had been removed and two round silver dollars had been substituted. “Put them on. Now, what do you see?” asked Mr. Ford.
      Flint replied, “I see nothing. How can I? The dollars get in the way.”
      Ford grinned and said, “That is right. Make dollars your objective, see nothing but money, and the dollars will indeed get in your way. But if you forget about the money and focus on the things that really matter in life, the dollars will take care of themselves.”[7]

II.  A Call To Contentment
      The second thing Paul urges Timothy to remember in this passage has to do with the call to contentment. G.K. Chesterton, the great British journalist and Christian writer of a previous generation, once said, “There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less and less.”[8]  That is the challenge for every person in this room, myself included.   
      We all have a problem with wanting more. There is a prevailing spirit of discontent in our culture today. Far too many of us are adherents of what one writer calls “The Cult of the Next Thing” – the next weekend, the next vacation, the next purchase, the next experience. Bigger, newer, better – these are the attributes of the next thing. This cult’s central message proclaims, “Crave and spend, for the Kingdom of Stuff is at hand!”
      Richard Foster has written in his excellent book, Celebration of Discipline, "Because we lack a divine Center [in God] our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We must clearly understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society...has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy.  ...We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian [contentment]."
      Elsewhere in his writings, the apostle Paul said that he himself had learned the art of contentment (Phil. 4). However, he did not present himself as a stoic who just guts it out during tough times. Rather, he described himself as one who had known both joy and sorrow, and yet he was content. He said that he had lived in plenty and in want, and yet he was content. And he revealed that contentment is a state of mind and heart which is not dependent on outward circumstances. Are you that kind of person? Have you come to a place in your life where you can rest in the Lord’s provision and cast your financial burdens on Him?
      There was once a nightingale that traded its feathers to a peddler for worms. Just a single feather from it's wing was all the peddler asked in exchange for worms, and it seemed a painless daily transaction. This happened day after day, until one day the nightingale had traded so many feathers it could no longer fly. One day as the peddler made his rounds, he found the nightingale standing by the roadside bedraggled and exhausted. It seems the little bird had worked the whole night through digging enough worms to reverse the trade to get back her wings. When the peddler walked up, she made her offer, but the peddler threw back his head and laughed. "What do you think I'm in this for?" he said. "My business is worms for feathers, not feathers for worms!"[9]
      The way of the world is things for souls, and it will trade you anytime and anywhere you choose. But it is powerless to reverse the trade. The world's flea market leaves your hands full and your heart empty. Only Christ can reverse the trade. Only He can satisfy the longing of your heart. Only Jesus can give you contentment.
      Paul reminds Timothy of two things in his admonition regarding contentment. First, remember we brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out of it with us. There are no U-Haul trailers following a hearse. And second, God provides us with everything we really need – maybe not what we want, but what we need. If we have food and clothing and shelter, we should be grateful, for not everyone in this world has even that. My friends, by every measure you care to use, those of us in this room are rich in comparison to the people of the world. God has blessed us abundantly, and we should seek to be content and put to death our unhealthy desires for more.

III.  The Blessing of a Generous Life
      Paul concludes the passage with an encouragement regarding generosity. He said that those who are rich in this present world should not be arrogant or put their hope in wealth. Rather, they should put their hope in God. In addition, they should seek to be rich in good deeds, not just possessions, and they should be generous and willing to share with others. In so doing, they will lay up for themselves treasure in heaven. Open-handed generosity should be a mark of the Christian life. It helps us develop a loose grip on the things of this world.
      I have observed over the years that generosity is contagious. Last spring, at the Session retreat the outgoing class of elders offered words of advice to the other elders along the lines of “lessons I’ve learned from serving on Session the last three years.” Tom Geier was one of those elders. Part of the message he shared was the blessing of generosity. He gave each person present $3 with this charge, “See how you can invest it for the Kingdom.” Mary Stoops was one of the elders there, and she took her $3 and decided to give it to Kid’s Hope, our ministry for at risk kids at Columbine Elementary School. But before she gave the money away, she decided to try and multiply it. She took her request to the choir for a one-time collection, and she told them about what Tom had done and what she was going to do with her $3. But she wanted to know if anyone else wanted to share in the gift. That night, members of the choir gave $148 to Kid’s Hope. The $3 was multiplied by 49 times! Generosity is contagious.
      In an article entitled "What Good Is a Tree?," an author in Reader’s Digest explained that when the roots of trees in a forest touch, there is actually a substance created which makes it possible for all of the trees to survive together. A special fungus grows which helps link the roots of different trees—even of dissimilar species. A whole forest may be linked together in this way. If one tree has access to water, another to nutrients, and a third to sunlight, the trees have the means to share with one another. That is a picture of what we should be like as we experience our life together as believers here on earth — mutual support and sharing.
      However, there are many people today who have never learned the blessing of generosity. They are tight-fisted and cold-hearted. Hettie Green will probably always be remembered as America’s greatest miser. Her stingy ways almost defy description. When she died in 1916, it was discovered she was worth over $10 million, and yet she ate cold oatmeal because it cost too much money to heat it. Her son had to suffer the amputation of his leg because she delayed treatment for too long while looking for a clinic that would treat the leg for free. She was wealthy, but chose to live like a pauper. She died of apoplexy while in an intense argument about the price of milk. With unlimited capacity at her disposal, she buried it and didn’t help anyone.[10]
      Paul urged Timothy to teach his congregation about the blessing of a generous life. Generosity reduces stress, frees us from being owned by our possessions, and brings a joy and a satisfaction that money can’t buy.

Conclusion
      As we prepare to come next week and celebrate Reformation Sunday during this season of stewardship, when we will present out pledges to the Lord’s work in this place, how will you respond to the grace of the Lord Jesus in your life? Will you hoard the blessing of God for yourself and your family, or will you loosen your grip on things and increase your trust in God? Will you look at 2006 with fearful eyes and worry in your heart about your finances, or will you trust in Jesus who gave everything He had for your sins and mine? Will you solely rely on your ability to scratch out a living, and will you look to your heavenly Father to provide for your needs?  Please pray about these things in the coming week, and next week do whatever He tells you to do.
      I close with a story of how God taught me about generosity two years ago. David and I joined with 12 others from our church to go on a mission trip to Tanzania. We were there to study the work of Compassion International and to build friendships with the staff who work with the now over 600 kids we sponsor through our congregation. We were also there to meet the individual children that those of us on the trip sponsor. David and I got to meet Oscar Peter, the little boy our family supports.
      Before the trip, we asked if those of us going to Tanzania might be able to take some gifts to give to the child we sponsor along with the members of their family, and we received encouragement to do this, along with some guidelines of how to do it in a way that was culturally sensitive. Before we left, David and I went to Target and made several purchases. We bought a watch to give to Oscar’s older brother, Petal. We bought coloring books and markers for his little sisters, Linda and Lillian. We also purchased some towels and hand cream to give to Oscar’s mother. And we bought a soccer ball, a gym bag, some t-shirts and other items to give Oscar himself.
      When the day came for us to meet Oscar and his family, David and I were excited. We gathered up all our presents and loaded them up on the bus. After visiting the church which housed the Compassion project Oscar attended, we made the trip to his home. We walked through the slums of Arusha until finally we arrived at the one-room mud and stick building which was the apartment where Oscar and his whole family lived. It was one of four identical rooms along one row. We learned that Oscar’s mother paid $2 a month to rent the room, and she sold roasted corn on the side of the road to make a living to support her family. It broke our hearts to learn that she made about 25 cents a day selling the roasted corn. 
      After getting acquainted, David and I opened the gym bag and presented all the members of the family with the presents we had brought from America. Their eyes grew as big as saucers as we gave them their gifts, and they all seemed very pleased with our gifts. But then, as we were leaving, something happened I will never forget. Oscar’s mother reached behind a chair, and she presented David and me with a plastic bag which had three oranges in it. This was a gift she had purchased and planned to give to us. We were blown away. David and I smiled and accepted her gift with thanks and a hug, and we said goodbye to this dear family as we loaded back into the bus to take us to our hotel.
      Who do you think was the most generous that day? David and I with the many presents we brought from America, or Oscar’s mother who gave what she could out of her poverty? Who trusted in the Lord more that day? David and I who bought those presents out of our abundance, or Oscar’s mother who surely couldn’t afford to do what she did? I pray that God will never let me forget the smile on her face when she presented us the three oranges. It was an expression of one who had learned a life of generosity. Amen.