I have a
question for you. How do you know when
you are investing and when you are wasting?
What’s the difference in the two?
To completely answer that question, we need to determine what the
purpose is of the investment. If we are
investing in the stock market, the purpose is obviously to invest money to make
more money. But that’s not always the
point of investing.
Maybe you
invest in a home security system. You
aren’t going to make money by doing that.
You spend money to give you and your family security. Nothing wrong with that. But what if you invest in a home security
system and you still get robbed every weekend?
That’s a waste of money. So, to
know if you are wasting or investing, you first need to determine the purpose
of the investment and then you need to see the result.
Charles Francis Adams, 19th century
political figure and diplomat, kept a diary. One day he entered: "Went
fishing with my son today--a day wasted." His son, Brook Adams, also kept
a diary, which is still in existence. On that same day, Brook Adams made this
entry: "Went fishing with my father--the most wonderful day of my life!"
The father thought he was wasting his time while fishing with his son, but his
son saw it as an investment of time.
(Silas Shotwell, Homemade, September, 1987)
We recently started a new sermon series
entitled, “Where To Invest”. This is not
a financial planner’s guide to making more money. If you want that, I can give you the number
to my friend Scott Parrish who can hook you up with some good places to do that
but we are looking at what the Bible says about where to invest for eternal
rewards. If you could spend a few bucks
and have it paid back to you every month for the rest of your life, you would
say that was a good investment, right?
But what if you could spend, not just
your money, but also your time or other resources and have that paid back to
you for the rest of eternity? None of us
are guaranteed another breath in this life and any of us may die before we ever
get to withdraw anything from our IRA’s or our savings accounts but eternity is
waiting for all of us and God tells us where we should invest to make the most
of our eternity.
Do you remember that old commercial
that said, “When E.F. Hutton talks…people listen”? Well, E.F. Hutton was a chump compared to the
author of this book (the Bible) and when He speaks we definitely need to
listen. Last time we learned we should
invest in widows and orphans and the helpless, according to the book of
James. This time let’s turn to the book
of Acts in the New Testament and let’s see that the next place we should invest
for eternal dividends is the church.
Acts 4:32-33. Acts is after the gospel of John and just
before Romans. It’s on page 773 of most
of the Bibles in the pews. Acts 4:32-33 says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one
claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything
they had. 33 With great power
the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And
God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all.”
Now, keep in
mind what I said earlier about how to know if you are wasting or investing
because I want you to test and see if the church is a good place to invest. I said you first need to determine the
purpose of the investment and then you need to see the result. Now, when I say that the church is a great
place to invest, what is your first thought?
“C’mon Ethel, let’s go. He’s gonna talk about money again. Money, money, money!” Right?
Honestly, money is a part of it and I could spend the next hour talking
about how you should tithe and how Jesus talked a lot about money but of all
the things this church needs, I concern myself least with money. I really do.
Do you know why? Because God is
loaded!
God Himself will invest in
this church and He may or may not use you.
That’s between you and Him and so that’s all I’m going to say right now
about money so you can just relax and take your hand off your wallet. I’m not coming for it. The first thing Dr. Luke points out in this
passage is the first part of the investment equation when it comes to the
church. Look again at the first part of verse 32.
“All the believers were one in heart and
mind.” They were unified. For a church to be
a good investment they first have to be unified and that unity is a God-given
gift. That is obvious in this case,
especially when you figure that there were anywhere between 5000-8000 people in
the church at that time. They still met
in each other’s homes. It wasn’t one big
church meeting in a building but that makes the unity that much more amazing.
So, what
does a church have to do to have that kind of unity? Well, I’ll tell you what we have to do to
have it and also what we have to do to lose it.
Did you know that Jesus prayed for our unity? He did.
In John 17, one of the
blockbuster, mega-chapters of the Bible, Jesus prays to the Father for Himself
and for His disciples and also for us and what He prayed was that we would be
unified. He prayed in verses 20-21 that we may be one just as
He and the Father are one.
So we too
are unified by prayer because it is ultimately a gift from God but just before
He prayed for unity He asked the Father in verse
17 to sanctify them, to set them apart, by the truth of His Word. We find unity in truth. There are any number of things to disagree
about and to squabble about if you want to.
I, for one, think we have way too many vegetables at this church when we
eat together but yet we can still be unified in the truth of God’s Word.
Because
what is the purpose of this church? Is
it to have great lunches and parties and fun times on movie night or is it to
preach truth to our community and around the world? There is unity in truth and I pray for truth
more than I pray for anything else because truth is enough! Truth was enough to unify the first church
and truth is enough to unify Christ Fellowship and Grace Fellowship and Bible
Fellowship and Cowboy Fellowship down the road.
But do you
know what the cause of disunity in a church is?
This may sound like a simple answer but the cause of disunity in a
church is always sin. When people in a
church start fussing and fighting and leaving the church because they got their
feelings hurt, you can always trace the problem back to sin if you go far
enough. It may be the sin of pride or
gossip or envy or any number of other things but the best way to lose our unity
is to let sin get a foot in the door.
I love and
appreciate the unity that God has given this church. You don’t have to visit too many other
churches to see that our church really is unified and do you know what happens
when a church is unified? You’ll
recognize this next aspect of investing in our church because this church is
very much this way. When a church is unified, it will be selfless. Look at Acts
4:32 again.
They were
unified and it says that “no one claimed
that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they
had.” That is selflessness. They shared everything they had. Most of you know I didn’t really want to go
to Nicaragua and I had several reasons why I didn’t. Mainly because I was selfish which is the
opposite of selfless but one good reason I had was my concern for my dogs and
my house. I knew that y’all would all
step up and take care of Sundays but who would take care of my dogs and my
stuff while I was gone? Also, how would
I get to the airport? These were real
problems that could have been excuses to keep me home. But enter Troy Pittman.
Troy took
me to the airport at 2:30 in the morning and picked me up when I got home. While I was gone, he fed and watered my dogs
and took them for walks every day. He
mowed and weedeated my yard. He took out
the trash, got my mail, swept the floor.
He did everything that needed to be done and because I knew he was doing
all that, I could relax and try to do the job I was supposed to be doing in
Nicaragua.
When Acts
says they shared everything they had, it includes time and talent, not just
money. Yes, money is a part of it but I
couldn’t pay somebody to do what Troy did like he did it. I know Troy cares about my dogs and he cares
about my house and yard and he cares about me.
So his investment of time and energy and resources was an investment,
not just in me and mine, but also in our church and in the lives of the people
in Nicaragua. It was an investment that
will benefit him for all eternity. He
might even get a steak dinner out of it pretty soon too.
David says
in Psalm 37 that the righteous are
always generous and lend freely and that their inheritance will endure forever. Let that sink in for a minute. The Creator of all the universe; the owner of
all the cattle on a thousand hills; the King of all kings wants to give you an
inheritance that will last for eternity.
That sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I don’t have to call my financial planner to
ask him. God said it. David believed it and Luke wrote about
it. I’m in!
Now let’s
go back to what Luke wrote in Acts 4:33
and see just what happens when the church is unified and selfless. Look at verse
33 again. “With
great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus.” This church is a well-oiled
machine. Every member is doing what they
can and what they are supposed to be doing and because the church is unified
and selfless, the leaders of the church don’t have to worry about
anything. They just do what they are
supposed to do – testifying to the resurrection of Jesus – and they do so with
great, God-given power.
That is a
church that knows its purpose. The
people were investing in themselves as a church and the church was investing in
doing God’s will and God was blessing the church with power to increase for the
sake of the Kingdom and that’s just fun!
Charles Kingsley said, “We act as though comfort and luxury were
the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy
is something to be enthusiastic about.”
Well I could get
enthusiastic about seeing a church live out its purpose and seeing the results
of that being people coming to have a life-changing relationship with Jesus
Christ. People ask all the time how our
church is doing and I usually tell them how much fun it is. It’s fun, not because we play games and watch
movies but because I see you investing in this church and I see God blessing
that investment and I see lives being changed and that’s just on this side of
Heaven.
I see a unified church that
has proven itself to be selfless in its giving; sharing what you own and giving
to others that you know will never be able to repay you. When you use the things and the gifts that
God has given you to do that it frees others up to use their gifts in other
ways. Romans 12 says, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.
If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith;
7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is
teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to
encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously.”
Now did you
catch that first sentence? “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” We have gifts according to His grace. Then that takes us right back to Acts 4 where at the very end it says “…and much grace was upon them all.” When the church is living out its purpose and
getting the results that God has ordained us to receive then all the people are
involved. All the people are giving
generously according to their gifts. The
church is unified in the truth of God’s Word and the Word is being taught,
preached, spoken and sung and through all of that the people are blessed, the
community is blessed, the world is blessed and God’s grace is the life-blood,
the oil in that well-oiled machine and that’s just fun!
One day
while we were in Nicaragua, Jody, the missionary, asked me to go with him to
the grocery store to get some water so I went with him. Everything about the market was different
than in the states. They sold different
things and sold it in different ways and in a different language. It smelled different. It looked different. Nothing was like I’m used to – until we got
to the counter to pay.
Do you know
how they ring things up in Nicaragua?
With a barcode scanner just like we use.
He dragged the product across the reader and it made the familiar beep
and I thought how strange it was to have everything be so different except that
one little thing.
I think
grace is sort of like that. We are all
so different. We look and act and smell
and talk different. We all have
different gifts. Some people even ride
Harleys instead of Hondas. It’s crazy
but were all different and yet we all need; we all have to have God’s amazing
grace.
G.W. Knight said, “When a person
works an eight-hour day and receives a fair day's pay for his time, that is a
wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his
performance, that is a prize. When a person receives appropriate recognition
for his long service or high achievements, that is an award. But when a person
is not capable of earning a wage, can win no prize, and deserves no award--yet
receives such a gift anyway--that is a good picture of God's unmerited favor.
This is what we mean when we talk about the grace of God.”
When the church is united,
it becomes selfless. When a church is
united and selfless, the people start to become powerful witnesses to the Lord
Jesus Christ and when that church is doing all that and hitting on all
cylinders, fulfilling its purpose, you start to see results because of God’s
grace. It says God’s grace was upon them
all. I need that. You need that. We all do because we can’t even do church like
we should without His grace, nor could the first church here in Acts.
I pray all the time, “Lord, we may not be doing everything right
or like we are supposed to and if that is so then please show us. But until then, Lord, we just need your
grace.” We need God’s grace in
everything we do. He told us that the
very best we can do is like filthy rags to Him. (Isaiah 64:6)
Romans 3:23
says we are all sinners. We have all
done things that displease God. Romans 6:23 then says that what we
deserve for that sin – the wages of it – is eternal death, meaning death in
Hell for all eternity. That’s bad news,
isn’t it? But the Good News is that John 3:16 says that God sent His only
Son to die on the cross to pay for our sins and all we have to do is believe it
and put our faith and trust in Him and we will have eternal life in Heaven. That’s grace!
We don’t deserve that. You can’t
be good enough. You can’t work hard
enough. It doesn’t matter a wit if your
good deeds outweigh your bad deeds or not.
It is by grace we are saved, through faith, so that no man can brag
about it. Have you done that? If not step out right now and come down here
and let’s talk about it some more. There
is nothing more important for us to do.
Thank you, Lord, for your grace.
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