The Lord of everything we have

God is the Lord of everything we have

1Chronicles 29:10-14

Matthew 6:24-33

Would you please take your red service books, and turn to page 129.

Please join with me as we say together the words at paragraph 34.

Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power,

the glory, the splendour, and the majesty;

for everything in heaven and on earth is yours.

All things come from you,

and of your own do we give you.

...And may I speak in the name of God;

Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

They are words which we are used to saying, ...they easily roll of the tongue, ...and many of us say them every week. ...But do we really mean what we are saying:

"Lord, ...everything in heaven and on earth is yours

...and of your own do we give you."

Until I started to prepare this sermon, I didn't realise that these words were spoken by King David, ...did you recognise them in our Old Testament reading?

King David summoned together all the officials of Israel to assemble in Jerusalem. He then told them of his plans to build a temple, in which people could worship God. He said:

"My son, Solomon is the one whom God has chosen [to do this work.] ...The work to be done is tremendous, because this is not [just] a palace for men but a temple for the LORD God." (1Chron. 29.1 GNB)

"Now, who is willing to give a generous offering to the LORD?" (1Chron. 29.6 GNB)

And the response was absolutely fantastic. People gave more than 170 tonnes of gold, ...over 340 tonnes of silver, ...together with precious stones, ...and all sorts of building materials.

[this was a stewardship campaign of epic proportions!].

Now, as you can imagine, King David was extremely pleased with the response to his appeal. ...And it would have been ever so easy for him to have said to God:

"Look at all this that we have given to you, Lord,

...look how generous we've been,

...just look at how much gold and silver we've given."

But he didn't say that at all.

Instead, he thought about where these gifts had come from in the first place. ...And instead of feeling proud, he felt extremely humble. ...And he said to God,

"My people and I cannot really give you anything, ...because everything is a gift from you, and we have only given back what is yours already."

(Pause)

Imagine someone deciding to take his books back to the library, ...and when he gets there he says to the librarian,

"I've thought long and hard about this, ...and I have decided to be extremely generous to you. ...You will be pleased to hear that I have decided to give you no less than half of my library books."

It's an absurd situation. Library books don't belong to us, we just loan them for a while. ...And that's the point that King David was making about everything we have.

We can't really give God anything, ...because everything is a gift from him, and we have only given back what is his already. (Pause)

When we have a stewardship campaign, we can sometimes think of it in terms of us giving things to God. We might think about our time, abilities, and possessions; and the underlying assumption is that we give so much to God, and we keep the rest for ourselves. ...And for many of us, the difficulty comes in trying to decide how much to give, ...and how much to keep.

Now if you think that my aim in this sermon is to try to persuade you to give more to God, ...then you can relax!

How can we give God more, when the truth is that we've got nothing to give Him. Everything we've got belongs to God.

As David said last week, [and I'm talking about the vicar now, not the king!], ...that is what stewardship is all about. ...It's looking after someone else's possessions.

I want to move now from our Old Testament reading, to our Gospel reading.

You see, everything we have is a gift from God, ...but like all good things we can either use them wisely or we can abuse them.

It is said that fire is a great servant, but a terrifying master. And in a similar way, our money and possessions can either be useful a servant, or a terrible master.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned people about the dangers of storing up treasures on earth, instead of treasure in heaven. And he went on to say that:

"No one can be the slave of two masters;

he will hate one and love the other;

he will be loyal to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God ...and money."

(Mt. 6.24 GNB)

Jesus is saying here that it's all to do with our loyalty. Money and other material possessions are good gifts from God, ...but there is a danger that they become so important to us, that they take the place of God in our lives.

Unfortunately it's a vicious circle.

The circle probably starts with our own feelings of insecurity. ...and it seems that when we feel vulnerable, a human instinct is to gather things around us.

My parents tell me that as a child I wouldn't go anywhere without the comfort of my teddy bear.

And we see it in our own children. When Jennie goes to bed she surrounds herself with dozens of dolls and cuddly toys. And she feels quite insecure without them.

And it's an instinct that we adults are very familiar with too. Jan was telling me that when we moved here last June, she felt a lot more 'at home' when we had unpacked all her books. ...and I'm sure that we've all got things which we instinctively turn to when we feel insecure.

The problem is, although this instinct this may help us in the short term, ...it is very damaging in the long term.

You see, the more we need these things around us, the more we become aware of how easily we might loose them.

We feel insecure about retirement, and so we gather around us a collection of investment policies. ...But we know that if there's a stock market crash we might loose the lot.

And that leads to anxiety.

And anxiety leads to us feeling even more insecure, ...and so the vicious circle continues.

We feel more and more insecure, ...so we want to have more and more things, ...which leads to us feeling more and more anxious about loosing them.

And in the course of this process, money and possessions have begun to take the place of God.

Now in our Gospel reading, Jesus breaks into this vicious circle by addressing our anxiety. He says...

"I tell you not to be worried about the food and drink you need in order to stay alive, or about clothes for your body.

...Look at the birds: they do not sow seeds, gather a harvest and put it in barns; yet your Father in heaven takes care of them! Aren't you worth much more than birds?

...Your Father in heaven knows that you need these things."

(Mt. 6.25-26,32 GNB)

And then Jesus goes on to tackle the priorities we have in life.

"Seek first [God's] kingdom", he said, "...and all these things will be given to you as well."

(Mt. 6.32 NIV)

If God has the first place in our life, then God will give us everything else we need. ...so there is no place for anxiety about such things.

In his excellent book, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster writes a chapter about "The Discipline of Simplicity."

He drives home this link between anxiety and our attitude to possessions. ...And I want to finish by summarising some of the things he says. He writes:

"If what we have is received as a gift,

and what we have is to be cared for by God,

and if what we have is available to others,

then we will possess freedom from anxiety.

...However,

if what we have we believe we have [earned],

and if what we have we believe we must hold onto,

and if what we have is not available to others,

then we will live with anxiety."

(Celebration of Discipline, p77)

Here he briefly mentions three inner attitudes which we must take on board if we want to be free from anxiety.

First, we need to receive what we have as a gift from God.

We work, but we know that it's not our labour that gives us what we have. We are dependent upon God for the most basic things in life: air, water, sun. And similarly, it only takes a small accident, or an unexpected change of events to remind us how radically dependent we are upon God for everything.

Secondly, we need to know that it's God's business, and not ours, to care for what we have.

God is able to protect what we possess. We can trust him. ...Now, does that mean that we should leave our houses unlocked, and leave all our money on the kitchen table? Of course not! It's only right that we should take care of the things we have. And it's only common sense that we should take normal security precautions. But in the final analysis it is God, and not the lock on the door, which protects us.

Now I'm not saying that if we trust God, nothing will ever get lost, stolen or damaged. Consider, for example, the church keyboard. We live in a fallen world, and Christians are not immune to the consequences of that. ...But if we see the keyboard as a gift from God, which he loaned to us for a few weeks, (and hopefully in the near future he will loan us a similar one again), then we need not worry about it.

And thirdly, we need to have our goods available to others.

Martin Luther said, "If our goods are not available to the community they are stolen goods."

The reason why we find these words so difficult is our fear of the future. We cling to our possessions, rather than sharing them, because we are anxious about tomorrow. But when we come to see God as the Almighty Creator, and our loving Father, we can share because we know that He will care for us.

I just want to finish by saying that, although we have been focussing this morning on a Christian's attitude to money and possessions, everything I have said could be equally applied to other things that are important to us...

our friendships,

our time,

our reputation,

our jobs.

During this sermon series, David and I are printing a page of notes for you to take home with you. A useful exercise would be to think through these other things which are important to us in the light of what has been said.

For, in all things, we must start by remembering that everything belong to God, ...and that we are simply looking after it for Him.

And then, if we want to be free from anxiety, we must receive it as a gift ...trust God to look after it, ...and allow it to be available to others.

.

All things come from you,

and of your own do we give you.