Sacred Generosity

Alright, we are in a series based in the New Testament book of James called "Every Day Sacred." If you've been with us for any length of time, you're familiar with this letter James wrote, the half-brother of Jesus. You know that James is all about how faith should lead to action. Because everyday choices, the things that we do and say, reveal what we truly believe.

And today, James has got a message for all the rich people out there. Do we have any rich people here today? Nobody raises their hands. One guy kind of went like this really quick. That was it. We just don't want to admit it because you're thinking, "Well come on, Mark. Rich is like, you know, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett or Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg. I mean that's rich. I'm not that guy. Okay, that's not me." It reminds me of one time over dinner, one of my kids asked me, "Daddy, are we rich?" I don't really know what prompted that question because it wasn't like the first course was caviar that night.

But I answered the way that every single middle-class dad answers when they hear that question. I said, "Well son, you know, I guess you could say we're comfortable. We have a roof over our head. Our bills are paid. We got food on the table, clothes on our back. So we're blessed." I don't know that I would call us rich. Hello? Reality check? That was such a lame answer. Because you know I did a little research this week. Turns out there's stuff on the internet and they can tell you how rich you are down to your zip code.

So for example, here in Santa Cruz County, California, if your annual household income is $250,000 or more, you are in the top 5%. You're rich. If your annual household income is at least $144,000, you're in the top 20%. How rich is that? Well, it's richer than the other 80%, right? If your household income is $70,000 a year, you're right in the middle. You're in the 50th percentile. So you are richer than every other person you see in Santa Cruz, right? And of course, these numbers are well above national levels as you would expect.

In fact, if you push out even further, do you know what the annual median income is globally? $9,700. So let me ask you again, are you rich? If you're not convinced, let me just give you one more statistic. You're gonna love this one because if you make at least $32,400 a year, that's gross, $32,400, congratulations because you are in very elite company. You are part of the richest 1% on planet Earth. Yeah, that's true. Most of us in this room over in venue, on Facebook, watching this online, you are the 1%. Those protests you see sometimes, they're about you. So brace yourself.

Now aren't you so glad that you're here today? I mean you're just gonna love this because James has got something to say. You can look this up in chapter 5 of James. We're gonna be looking at the first six verses. You may have already peeked at your notes and you have a sense of what's coming here. Starting at verse 1 he says, "Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you." Wow, how's that for a start? Not very sensitive, is it? I mean if I started a sermon like that, most of you, you'd never come back, right?

Now what in the world is going on here? Well, it turns out there is a very important question, a huge question about these six verses and the question is this: who is James talking to? Who's his audience? You're like, "Duh Mark, it's rich people." Okay, which rich people? Because most of the Bible commentaries that I read this past week, and I read a lot, I went all the way back to John Calvin to see what he has to say. They think, the vast majority of them think that James is actually calling out the rich who are not part of the church, who are not Christians. And why do they think this? Because they want to? Well, it's a little more detailed than that.

First of all, verses 1 through 6, James goes on this prophetic rant, kind of just utters this prophetic judgment. There's no call for repentance or anything, it's like, "You guys, you're toast, okay? Just want you to know that." But then, right in verse 7 and in verses 7, 9, 10, 12, he calls them brothers and sisters, even my beloved brothers and sisters, and he keeps saying, you know, in so many ways, be patient, God is just, God knows what's going on, and so the tone could not be more different.

Furthermore, the Old Testament prophets sometimes do the very same thing. For example, Isaiah, Ezekiel, they will be speaking to Israel, the household of faith, and then suddenly they'll pivot, they'll turn, and they'll speak directly to Israel's neighbors and almost every time they do, it's to profess prophetic judgment. In other words, it's like, God is not happy with the wicked things that you are doing and James seems to be doing the very same thing here. And again, they didn't have like little chapter breaks and little titles above sections to kind of lead into this, it was all just a stream of things and so you had to kind of follow what was going on.

And so this is why scholars think that James, he kind of puts on his Old Testament prophet and he speaks directly to wealthy, aristocratic unbelievers who are oppressing the poor, including Christian poor people. So, we can all relax because today's sermon doesn't apply to any of us. I mean, isn't that awesome? Aren't you glad? I mean, all this weeping and wailing stuff, man, that's not for you. Okay, not so fast. Let's just assume that the scholars are correct and for the record, I happen to agree. Wouldn't it still be good for us to know why James is calling this group out? I mean, like just in case there might be some connection to our own lives.

Now, we need to be very clear, for the record about this, the Bible never condemns wealth, not a single time. In fact, there are rich people in the Bible who are heroic figures: Abraham, Job, Solomon, and many others. Whatever faults they may have had, being rich was not one of them. And remember, it was a rich man who provided the tomb for Jesus and retrieved his body and cared for him so tenderly. So, what is the problem with these particular rich people in James 5? Well, verse 2, he says, "Your wealth has rotted and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded." So, first observation, these people have way more stuff and money than they could ever use.

I mean, why do moths eat their clothes? Because, you know, moths, they can't eat the clothes on your back. It's not the stuff that you wear all the time that the moths get to. It's the clothes that sit for so long that the moths have time to just kind of munch on them undisturbed. And I mean, think about it, do moths even have teeth? I don't think so. What kind of mouth is it? It's like a straw or something. And yet, you know, how long does it take for them to like gum a hole into a sweater? I mean, seriously. Bear in mind, a set of clothing in those days for many people was their most valuable possession. This is why the soldiers that crucified Jesus cast a lot for his clothing because clothes were super valuable.

But James says, "Man, these rich people, man, you have more clothes than you could ever wear. It just sits and rots in some box somewhere. I mean, even your gold and your silver are corroded." Now, you know how you, I guess, you have to kind of polish the silver, right, because the tarnish is, you know, so people need a butler, right, so they can polish the silver. And since their gold had, it wasn't really super pure, the impurities would oxidize and make it look tarnished as well. So it's like they're not even moving the money around to keep it shining, you know, as it kind of moves around in their pocket or their purse. It just sits in boxes.

And then watch this, verse 3. He says, "Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days." Again, man, aren't you glad this is about other rich people? Wow. Now, be clear about this. It wasn't that they had money. It was how they used their money. And I imagine at first, maybe for some of them, you know, they just wanted to be comfortable. They wanted to be financially secure. They wanted to set some stuff aside for a rainy day, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But eventually, they forgot to ask some very important questions like, "What is this all for? How much is enough? When do you cross that line between, you know, being fiscally wise and simply hoarding wealth and becoming greedy?" So James says to them, "You know, the day is coming when you will stand before God, and the things that—they brought you security in life, but they are going to be an embarrassment to you. God's gonna go, 'What is this?' Things that brought you comfort will be a source of pain, evidence that testifies against you and your selfish, greedy life. And in that moment, he's saying, 'You will have nothing to say. The case against you, it will just consume you like fire.'

So, wow, you could call this a problem, right? And if that's not enough, James continues, verse 4, "Look, the wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty." He's saying, "It wasn't enough that you hoarded all this wealth to yourselves. You did it on the backs of the people that were enriching you along the way, the people that were doing the work in your business. You ripped off those very same people." But he says, "The day's coming because God's been taking note. God has heard their cries, and there will be a reckoning someday."

Verse 5, "You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter." Now, in those days, the day of slaughter was a special day because, you know, most of the time, the meat you ate was salted and preserved. It was like, you know, what's for dinner tonight? You know, some more beef jerky. But in the day of slaughter, you got to eat the meat when it was fresh, right? There was no refrigeration. And so, you looked forward to that, and you ate as much of those fresh steaks or whatever as you could because you didn't get meat like that in those days.

In anticipation of these special moments, they would fatten up the calf. It was a big event. James is saying, "You're so gluttonous. You fatten yourselves as if every day was a feast day. I mean, there's just no end to it. And meanwhile," verse 6, "you have condemned and murdered innocent people who were not opposing you." Now, I don't know if James is saying, you know, you literally murdered them. I don't think so, but that's a possibility. I think he's saying, you know, these people that you're cheating, it's not like they have any recourse. They're not gonna take you to court. They can't afford that. They have no power.

They're not gonna oppose you. Nor do they have credit cards or government assistance. They depend on their daily wages for their daily bread. You hear Jesus talking about this in a parable where the workers are paid at the end of the day because, again, they didn't have some account. They just had to live day after day. So, if that doesn't happen, if that's interrupted and they have to sell themselves into slavery to survive, which some would do, or sell their bodies, or end up in debtors prison, I mean, yeah, you could say that's like killing them. It's taking away their life.

And are you getting a sense now of why James is so worked up over this? I mean, personally, I'm glad the Bible speaks out against this kind of oppression and evil. How could God ever say that he's loving and just if he just turns a blind eye and never does anything to right these wrongs? And I want you to think about this because as sobering as this is to this group, whoever they are, if God takes issue with what they're doing, with their wealth, is it any less of a problem if, heaven forbid, these same things were to exist within the church? I mean, does it really matter if the rich and selfish are like out there somewhere or in here?

And so before we flip the page and consider what the solution is that God gives us, let me just summarize what James has been saying here because I think there's a key point that runs through these six verses and it goes like this: "A greedy heart is never satisfied." It just never, it's insatiable. Christian heart, non-Christian heart, greed is greed and we are all susceptible because you know how this works. Your income goes up, what goes up with it? Your lifestyle. You make more, you spend more and left unchecked, it just never ends. It just, it just snowballs.

It's so baked into human nature, it's so baked into our American culture, we hardly even question it. You know, most of the time we just call it success, but I'm gonna encourage you to question it today in your life, to evaluate where you are in this process. You might be in an awesome place or maybe God will speak to you. Now I'm fully, fully aware that this is a very generous church. This is the most generous church that I've ever seen. I mean you consistently fund so many ministers in this church, in this community, around the world, it's incredible.

And you do this, so many of you do this because you realize everything you have has been given to you and yet you worked hard, you studied long in order to be equipped in the things that you specialize in, but you know God's the one who made it all possible. He gave you the opportunities, he gave you the energy, the wherewithal, and so you don't see yourself as an owner, you see yourself as a steward and there is a massive difference.

In 2015, Christianity Today was interviewing Melinda Gates. At the time of the interview, she and Bill had given away over $33 billion through their foundation which is dedicated to alleviating suffering and lifting people out of poverty. When they asked her what motivated them, she said this: for herself, "I'm living out my faith in action." Well that sounds like James in a nutshell, doesn't it? I'm living out my faith through my actions, through what we're doing.

Now I don't know everything about her faith or Bill's faith, but clearly they have a stewardship mentality. I mean they are doing a massive amount of good around the globe and as I was reading this article, I couldn't help thinking to myself, would I be as generous as they are if I had their resources? Am I being as generous as they are, relatively speaking? I don't know. I really ought to reflect on that.

This much I do know. If any of us are going to avoid the trap of endless consumption where it's just about, you know, me, mine, more, there are two very, very important questions we need to ask ourselves. And so flip your notes if you haven't already and let's get to them. Two questions to ask myself, two questions for you to ask yourself this morning. The first one goes like this: "Why does God give me more than I need?" Why does he do that? I mean we're very quick to run to him and ask him when we don't think he's given us what we need, right? "God, why not? Why is this? How come? Help me." But what about when it's the opposite? Which it is for so many of us so often. "He gives me more than I need." You know, why is that?

Well, let's just consider some of the possibilities, shall we? First of all, perhaps God gives me more than I need so that I will never have to worry again. Like I never have to worry about my next meal or filling my car with gas or my bills. God wants me to have complete trust in my bank account. That doesn't sound right, does it? Okay, let's just scratch that one. Alright, okay, maybe he gives me more than I need so that I can leave a truckload of money to my kids, right? Because we all know that just setting them up for life works so well, like never, okay?

So, okay, here it is. Okay, I got it, right. It's because God wants me to retire at 50. Okay, I missed that date, but now some of you are going, "Wait a good... easy, Mark. Don't get mad at me." Listen, I'm not saying it's wrong to retire early at all. In fact, hey man, you can retire at 30, more power to you. It's not about that. Here's the issue. Don't forget this. You can retire from your job. You can retire from your career, but you cannot retire from your purpose. You can't do it.

Some of you know this firsthand, don't you? Because you retired. Three, four, five, six months go by and then what happened? You started to feel what? Bored. Restless. Because, you know, hey, it's very easy to kind of shake the habit of answering the bell in the morning to get up for work or fight through the traffic. That stuff we can do, but you cannot be satisfied without purpose, without utilizing the gifts that God has given you. They don't just like, you know, time out on your last day of work. God has given you that throughout your life.

And I have friends, they've come to learn this and so, in fact, I'm thinking of some specific friends. God has just given them a gift when it comes to money. My college roommate was this way. He just always had ways to make a buck and he's good at it. And some people are good at making it. Some people are good at saving it. Most of the time it's a mixture of both. And if they could, I mean, they could bankroll a life of luxury, you know, like James is talking about in this passage. They actually could.

But instead, they see themselves as being entrusted by God to make a difference in the ways that He has uniquely enabled them to do through the gifts and the resources He's provided. So, again, why does God give me more than I need? Well, let me just illustrate it this way. And I got this from a pastor named Andy Stanley. You've probably heard of him. It's why I mention him at the end of the notes because I got some great ideas from him for this message.

But let's just pretend that you have a little boy named Johnny. Johnny has a friend named Billy and they're going to get together at the park and play. And so you pack a little sack lunch for Johnny. And Billy's mom and dad, they do the same thing. And when it's time to eat, they sit down and Johnny opens up his brown bag. He pulls out a sandwich. And then Billy does the same thing. He pulls a sandwich out of his brown bag. Johnny reaches, he pulls out a juice box. And Billy pulls out a juice box. Johnny pulls out a little baggie of baby carrots and drops them on the ground. Billy pulls out his carrots and drops them right next to him.

And then Johnny reaches in, pulls out a bag for chocolate chip cookies. Billy reaches in his bag and it's empty. There's nothing. And imagine you're taking all this in. You're just a short distance away. You're watching. I guarantee you what you're thinking, what you want to see happen in the next few minutes. What do you want to see Johnny do with his chocolate chip cookies? You want to see him share. I mean think about it. You're not gonna say, "Wow, what a shame, Billy. I mean your parents didn't plan so good, did they?" Well hey, you know, I wouldn't want to deprive you of the opportunity to learn a valuable life lesson. Best regards.

Or if Johnny, you know, reaches into that bag and he shares two of his cookies with Billy, are you gonna say, "Oh great! My kid is a socialist. I mean I can't believe this. He could have leveraged his position. I mean at least try to sell them or something. Come on." No, you're not gonna think that, most of you. If you do, you got to come back to the next service. Because if Billy, if Johnny shares with Billy, that is a proud moment that fills your heart with joy. And you know what? The same thing happens in the heart of our Heavenly Father.

Why does he, why is he so generous to so many of us? Because he wants us to be generous to others. It's that simple. And when we share it, it pleases him. It glorifies him and it testifies to the fact that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift like we learned in chapter 1. Now are you with me? Alright. Second question. Ask myself, ask yourself this: How do I avoid a greedy, a life of greed? How do I avoid a life of greed? Because it must be avoided intentionally. Few, if any of us, are born generous. It has to be cultivated in our lives and our hearts.

And it starts with a seed. That seed is called gratitude. When that seed sprouts in your heart because there's this awareness of God's goodness and grace, you're humble that God would be so good to you. That's what starts that plant of generosity to grow in our hearts. But there are ways that, in practical ways, we can develop it. And I want to give those to you. Write these three things down because they're all connected. This is how you develop generosity in your life: first of all, percentage giving, priority giving, and progressive giving. I didn't make these up. Somebody did. But progressive or percentage, priority, and progressive giving.

In the Old Testament, the percentage was 10%. And that's what it means. Tithe, it means literally a tenth. And I would just encourage you, if you've never picked a percentage to give to the Lord, I would encourage you to consider doing that. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "10%? There's no way I could ever do that, man. Things are just way too tight." Like, okay, start with 1%. Just start there. Do you think that God will be able to backfill that 1%? Think God could handle that? Yeah, I think you'll find that He can handle that quite easily.

In fact, along the way, you'll be reminded that He actually provides the other 99% too. So it's like, you know, whether it's one cookie out of 10 or half a cookie out of 10, just start with something. And when you do, it is so liberating. And whatever amount you choose to give, give it priority. What I mean by that is give it first because if you don't, you will find that over the course of the month, you'll find other ways to spend it. So just give it priority. That's part of trusting God.

And by the way, I want to make it very clear. This is not about, you know, God needs our money. God does not need our money. In fact, as a sidebar, this is why we took the offering, received the offering earlier today, because I don't want anyone ever to feel manipulated or pressured or guilty. This is something we do out of joy. This is for us. This is how God changes our hearts and keeps us from becoming like the people James is talking about. So I give a percentage. I give it priority. And finally, I give progressively, which means whatever amount that you may start with over the course of time as you do this, I promise you this much.

There'll come a point where you're going to want to go, "I think I want to raise the bar. This is fine. I want to give more than I have in the past," because as your faith grows in this area, so does your joy. I can tell you, I mean, very candidly from personal experiences, as Laura and I have grown in this way over the course of our marriage together, so has our joy and our fulfillment. I mean, when we first kicked off this 20/20 vision thing five years ago, I mean, you got to believe that as a leader in all of this, I mean, we felt like we really had to step out in faith.

I mean, how in the world could I ask or encourage you to do something that we weren't willing to do in our own lives? And I can tell you, five years later, five years into this, we don't even miss it. I mean, not at all. I mean, there's never been a time that our needs have not been met. Our kids, two of them so far, have been able to experience the joy of having braces in their mouths and in so many other things. And I'll tell you another thing, I never ever get tired of walking into that children's building where there are hundreds of kids every single day, their lives, their family lives.

I could spend a day, a week telling you the story of lives that have been touched and changed because of the love of Jesus that's being poured into them. And you know, I get the same thrill when I hear about the building that we funded over at Little Flock in India. And I mean, talk about a winning investment. I mean, someday, you know, that building there, the one here, all of these here, some that many, many years from now, because they're built like trucks, but they will wear out. But the treasury of changed lives, that's never going to spoil, that's never going to rust, that's never going to fade. Amen?

And so as we close here today, again, if you've been with us for any length of time, you know that we talk about God's grace a lot. Well, you know what? We're talking about God's grace today. This is a grace issue. God so loved the world that He what? He gave. And what did He give? He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. Man, you talk about a generous gift, a generous God. I mean, my goodness, it's overwhelming.

And that eternal life, you know, it doesn't just start, you know, in the sweet by and by. It happens the moment that that spark of faith is lit in our heart and we trust Jesus and He calls us into this new life, a life of love and joy and peace and, yes, generosity, sacred generosity, because that's how much it matters to Him. So, man, I encourage you today, don't miss out. Don't miss out. And again, I'm preaching to the choir, to so many instances here today, but I am so confident that when you, when I, we get to the end of our lives, that we are going to want to look back on a generous life.

I mean, can you imagine any better way to live? I mean, seriously, I'm not gonna, in the presence of God, go, "Yeah, I wish I would have kept a little more to myself. Yeah." No way. And again, if God is calling you, possibly God is calling you to make some changes, that's for you to discern and to judge as you evaluate that with your Lord. That's your business, you and God. But let me just say this, as someone who has, for whatever reasons, this season, this summer, I have rolled from basically one memorial service to another, to another.

And in most cases, they were not expected. So what I'm trying to say is, there's no time like today. We do not always have the luxury of saying, "Well, yeah, someday I'm gonna get to that. Someday I'm gonna make that a priority." There's no day like today. In fact, look what James says way back in the beginning of his letter, back in chapter 1, verses 10 and 11. This is without a doubt words he intends for the church, right here. It says starting at verse 10, "But the rich should take pride in their humiliation, since they will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant, its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away, even while they go about their business."

I got news for you. You're fading away. I am fading away. We're all fading away. So however you spend yourself, whether it's spending yourself through your time or your talent or, as we've seen today, through your treasure, man, spend wisely and spend generously. Amen? Amen.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness and your grace to us today. Lord, thank you for gathering us here together. That is a gift that we do not take for granted. And Lord, I pray for each of us. First of all, we've all come in here today with all sorts of things. Probably one of the things that most of us, you know, we're burdened by was, you know, what's going on in our retirement account or something like that.

But Lord, I thank you for your word that it covers the whole spectrum of our lives. And Lord Jesus, as you have said, you know, where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. And so Lord, I pray that you would just draw our hearts closer to you because ultimately, Lord, you are our treasure. You are our prize. And so we open ourselves up to you today asking that you would guide and inform and change us into the people that you want us to be for your glory and for your good. We pray this all in the matchless name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and all God's people said, amen. Amen.