Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

I'll Never See Life the Same Again: I'll Never See Money the Same

Pastor Phillips’ Sermon

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you’ve given to us. Ever since we celebrated the resurrection, we’ve been thinking about how to view things in a different perspective. We pray that you bless us today as we meditate on your word to see things the way you see them. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Today we focus on the idea of our finances and our money and those kinds of things and we ask how does the resurrection, the fact that Jesus has conquered sin, death and the devil and risen from the dead, how does that change the way we look at our money? How does our faith help us in response to all the financial concerns of our times? Prices are soaring at the gas pump. The stock market is falling. What can we do? How can we respond?

Well, many years ago, our nation went through something called the Great Depression. It was a terrible time. Many of you have heard stories about it and I know my dad has told me some of his experiences during that time. But I’m just going to recap history for awhile. In one moment, wealthy people became poverty-stricken and, in their despair, some of them even took their lives because they felt that without their money, their life was over. Huge numbers of men were out of work and they traveled around looking for work in the cities. There were long lines of men standing in their tattered clothes waiting in the soup line for a small meal just to get them through the day. One person told me, “It was no disgrace to be poor because everyone was poor.” My dad says of that time, “We considered a soda cracker with butter on it to be a treat.”

It’s hard for us to imagine those times, isn’t it? Because of how prosperous we are today. And those people who lived through that time are deeply impacted by it. You might even say they’ve been scarred by their experience. Oh, they know the value of a steady job and a roof over their head, clothes on their back and food on the table to eat. But they look at things differently because of their experience and they think back to that time when they were hungry and there wasn’t an abundance of food and they had to make do with whatever they had. It seems like that memory never leaves them and every time they sit down to a meal, they enjoy it like they haven’t eaten in a long time.

Other people reacted differently. They saved every little thing that might be of value down the road. Wire, old nails, tires, all kinds of odds and ends that nobody else would see any value in, they hang onto because there may be a time when they need it. My wife’s grandfather was one of those people and he accumulated all kinds of things that who knows what he was planning to do with it. You know what I mean, just piles of stuff and he kept them in their small garage. Then he was going to be gone for a few weeks and his wife saw the opportunity. She got her young son who was a big, strong football player-type guy and she said, “I want all that stuff out to the curb.” Well, just after he completed getting it all out there, Dad came home a few days early and demanded that he put it all back. I think we all know somebody like that, hangs onto everything, imagining at some point, it will be of value to them.

The point is the Depression changed the experiences of these people so their whole life was different. They looked at things differently. Things that didn’t have value before now took on great value. They learned also that they couldn’t trust in money, bank accounts or stock markets. But they also learned they could always trust in God.

The Epistle lesson we heard earlier from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians writes during a time of intense famine, not for the people in Corinth but the people of Jerusalem. Paul, the apostle, the great missionary, is writing to the Corinthians and saying, “Your brothers and sisters in Jerusalem are starving. They had no food because they didn’t get rain and their crops didn’t grow and there’s nothing to eat.” So all the Christians throughout the world were being encouraged to take up an offering and Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, takes up their cause and he writes, “Remember this. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things and in all times, having all you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written, he has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you could be generous on every occasion and, through us, your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.”

Paul is very persuasive in his writing. He writes some powerful things. He says, “Sow generously and you will reap generously.” And that is an experience we find in life, isn’t it? When we show generosity, it comes back to us over and over and over. He also writes that God loves a cheerful giver, not one who gives out of guilt or compulsion. Another thing he writes is just really powerful to me, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, to make you rich in every way so that you can be generous in every circumstance.”

How did Paul come to this point of view? How did he get to the place where he was so confident of God’s ability to provide? What happened in his life? Well, he had an Easter moment like Pastor Burcham talked about a month ago. He had that Easter moment when God grabbed hold of his heart and changed his life completely and instead of being consumed with his own zeal to persecute Christians and be powerful and accumulate wealth like everyone else, now he has a different perspective. He describes this in his letter to the Philippians Chapter 3, “But whatever was to my prophet I now consider lost for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ.” Can you see what’s happened? God has changed his heart to the point where all those things he used to brag about and think were wonderful, “I’m a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. I was trained by the great scholar, Gamaliel. I’m a Jew.” All these things that were important before to him, now he doesn’t consider important at all. In fact, the word he uses when he says, “I consider them rubbish,” is actually manure. Do you guys know what that is? Oh, that’s right, this is Iowa, we know what that is, right? He considers all those things and everyone else considered precious, manure. Hum.

And that’s why when he hears about his brothers and sisters in Jerusalem, his heart goes out to them and he wants to do something about it so he takes up their cause and he writes letters to the Corinthians and others to encourage them to be generous. As God has been generous to them, he calls them to be generous, too, to the people in need.

Paul’s whole viewpoint on life has changed and it kind of reminds me of that old hymn, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will go strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.” A transformation has taken place in Paul. What had been his primary goal of obtaining power and wealth now kind of fades into triviality. It just doesn’t seem that important anymore and it’s like he’s come to his senses. Now he sees what’s really precious, what’s really valuable and how very temporary all these material things are but what a great priceless value knowing Jesus is.

A friend of mine is an eye doctor and I first met him on one of our mission trips to Honduras. It was actually my first trip down there but he had been many times. And as I got to know this man, I marveled at the compassion and love he displayed as he was working with the people of Honduras. He was just so tender and loving and caring as he did eye examinations and fit them with glasses and spoke to them and smiled at them. It was amazing to me. And as I talked to him more, I learned that this wasn’t his first trip. It was one of many trips that he’d made and his whole life revolved around going on these trips. He would only go back to the States long enough to keep his practice running as an eye doctor and to earn enough money to go back, to go on the next trip. An amazing person. In time, he even sponsored Hondurans to come to the United States legally and he adopted a young boy. What had happened in his life? He had one of those Easter moments. He had that moment when he finally understood who Jesus was and how much He loved him and all that He’d done for him.

Recently, I heard a preacher talking about John Wesley. Now you know who John Wesley is, right? If you’re not real familiar with him, you have a memory of him somehow in the Christian history that he was influential, involved in music and things like that. Well, John Wesley is one of the greatest preachers, one of the most powerful and influential Christians of his time and he traveled the world preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, that sets men free for eternity. He preached to countless thousands. He was a very famous man. But when he died, his entire estate consisted of six 1-pound notes, he was British, and a handful of books. Six 1-pound notes. That’s all he left behind, one for each man who carried his casket, and a handful of books. Oh, there was that other thing he left behind. What was it? Oh, yeah, the Methodist Church. Can you imagine touching so many hearts through Christ that a church consisting of thousands and thousands and thousands of people is the legacy you leave? Wow.

I guess that doesn’t really apply for today. He lived a long time ago and, of course, Paul lived 2,000 years ago and the things they did and the things they felt, they’re just not what we’re dealing with today. The pressures we face financially are much greater. Today we’re changing jobs much more than our parents did. Today we watch these gas prices rise. It’s amazing they use stationary numbers at all because they change every day. You could practically put them up a penny every hour or something like that. They just seem to keep going up every day and we hear about record highs and oil prices and things like that. Think about how that’s impacting our farmers who have to work in their fields. Think about the impact of that on the trucking industry as they go to the truck stations to fill up their trucks. What a devastating impact that’s having. Today we wrestle with how are we going to pay for college or we watch the stock market and our retirement accounts deflate. Hum. Today is different. It’s not like those times when you could just trust in God and it would be okay. Or is it? Hum.

I think the most powerful thing we read from Paul earlier was, “God is able.” He’s able to provide for all of our needs. He’s able to provide for any debt that we might incur because He’s already paid an unpayable debt that we had, the debt of our sins. He’s able to put food on our tables and a roof over our heads and watch over our children when they go out the door. He’s able. God is able to do it all. How do we know this? Because He’s taken care of our greatest need when Jesus died on the cross. He took care of our greatest need, the debt of our sins, and now we possess eternal life. It’s ours now.

Now we come to a point of reflection on all of this. What should we do? We already possess the greatest treasure there is. What should we do with all these smaller treasures that we have within our disposal? Consider the possibility of leaving a legacy, to use the resources that God has entrusted to you to help others to have that Easter moment. Hum.

How tragic it is when we hear of a gifted athlete, full scholarship, doing great and throws it all away by making bad decisions? How tragic it is when we hear of a brilliant student who makes a poor choice and gets involved in drugs and throws away his life?

Our position in life presents us with an opportunity. We live in the wealthiest country in the world. But more importantly, we are citizens of heaven, members of God’s family. We have what everyone else needs and what, in the heart of hearts, they truly desire, Jesus.

When I was a student at seminary, I had a great aunt and uncle who lived just down the street. I love them. They’re still with us, now in a retirement center. But they never had children. They had lived a long time, worked hard, invested carefully and successfully. God blessed them. And I experienced that blessing when I was at seminary because they helped pay for my seminary. Now I’ve been in the ministry 19 years, partly because of what they did and how they used the things God entrusted to them. I have since found out they helped many pastors through seminary and they have established a fund at the seminary to support and finance Hispanic ministry. What a legacy.

A man named Aaron Feuerstein. He’s the CEO of Malden Mills. You probably don’t recognize that name. Polartec. The fabric, fleece, he invented it. And his textile plant burned to the ground in 1995 leaving 3,000 employees out of work. Well, he had a decision to make. He had millions of dollars and he was a third generation owner of this textile plant and he could have just walked away and said, “That’s good.” Take the insurance money or whatever and move on. But he thought to himself, “How much food do I need to eat? How much clothing do I need to wear? How many houses do I need to have? How many cars do I need to drive?” And then he thought about the 3,000 unemployed workers. He spent $25 million paying them as if they were still employed while they were rebuilding their factory. $25 million of his own money to make that happen. What a legacy.

And now the question is addressed to us. What will your legacy be? All those resources, opportunities and things God has placed within your disposal, what will your legacy be? Amen.