This post is part 5 of a 5 part blog series called ‘Shaped By The Gospel’ on the subjects of race, politics, individualism, sexuality, and materialism. What does it look like to be shaped by the gospel on relevant issues shaping our culture?
Materialism has to do with living like the material world is all there is. If someone’s focus is on money and the things money can buy we would say that person is materialistic or in our day-and-age, typical.
In the early 1990s, researchers Marsha Richins and Scott Dawson developed the first scale to measure materialism rigorously. According to this scale, people are materialistic to the extent that they place acquiring possessions at the centre of their lives, judge success by the number and quality of one’s possessions, and see these possessions as vital to happiness. Here’s the kicker: For more than two decades, studies have consistently found that people who score high on the materialism scale score lower on just about every major scale that scientists use to measure happiness. One of the great challenges in our society today is that on the whole people feel more anxious, chronically lonely, and less happy. Materialism certainly has a role to play in that.
Chilliwack’s median household income of $67,800 places us in the wealthiest 1.2% of people in the world. While of all the G7 countries, Canadians have the highest percentage of consumer debt. We have extravagant wealth and extravagant debt. As followers of Jesus we have encountered the extravagant gospel. But has it resulted in extravagant generosity on your part?
Are you being shaped more by the gospel or the culture when it comes to materialism?
In the gospels, Jesus spoke more about money than heaven and hell combined, which is astounding because Jesus spoke a lot about heaven and hell. Here’s why. Because Jesus is after your heart and your heart has a propensity toward the idolatry of materialism.
So, the following is a brief theology of money and possessions and how the gospel should inform how we see and utilize them.
1. MATERIAL POSSESSIONS ARE A GOOD GIFT FROM GOD MEANT FOR HIS PEOPLE TO ENJOY
This is a crucial starting place. Material possession are not bad or ambiguous but good. Repeated after every major stage of creation for a total of seven times in Genesis 1 is the phrase, God saw that it was good. God saw everything that he had made and it was very good. Land, animals, resources, people. The blessing and abundance of the garden were created for humans to enjoy.
Christianity is unique in that we aren’t trying to reach some state of nirvana or dualism where the material is bad and we want to reach a disembodied state of bliss apart from it. Christianity has been said to be very earthy. God created the world around us and called it good and it is to be enjoyed — and our future is an embodied future, living forever in a real city with real roads, and real trees.
But here is what we must understand, they’re means, not ends. Yet our culture is addicted to them as ends. Your next vacation isn’t an end, that dream house isn’t an end, a certain dollar figure in your bank account isn’t an end. Rather, material possessions are good gifts from God meant to be enjoyed but as a means for enjoying God. Ironically, if we treat the means as ends we will find that we are very poor and missing the true riches of life.
2. TRUST IN MONEY AND POSSESSIONS IS A MEANS OF TURNING HUMAN HEARTS FROM GOD
Very few things steal our affections for Christ like the love of money.
This is a theme throughout the Bible that serves as a warning for us. Cain and Abel were the first sibling rivalry and it didn’t end well. Abel’s offering was generous, costly, the best-of what he possessed. Cain’s wasn’t and his response revealed his heart. The same is true of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. God provided manna but told them only to gather enough for the day, and yet many of them went on to hoard more than they needed only to find it infested with worms the next morning.
Job 31:24-28 warns us not to put our trust in gold for our security and yet how many of us trust our bank accounts, finding our security in money, not God. In Jeremiah 9:23-24, God instructs us not to boast in our riches and yet that’s precisely what our culture revels in today.
Nineteenth century English theologian J.C. Ryle hits us between the eyes with this convicting statement, “Many are ready to give up every thing for Christ’s sake, excepting one darling sin, and for the sake of that sin are lost for evermore…The love of money, secretly nourished in the heart, is enough to bring a man, in other respects moral and irreproachable, down to the pit of hell.” Is materialism your one darling sin?
Trust in money and possessions is a means of turning hearts from God. Look at what the Apostle Paul writes to Pastor Timothy in Ephesus, a wealthy city: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs (1 Timothy 6:10). 1 Timothy 6:17 goes on to summarize it this way: As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God. Money and possessions are fleeting things and these fleeting things dangerously lurk to steal your affections away from Christ.
The only prayer in Proverbs says, give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, 9lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God (Proverbs 30:8-9). Either way there is risk and temptation for our hearts with great wealth or poverty — it’s a prayer for needs met, not greeds met — its a prayer for daily bread. It’s a good prayer because our inordinate desire for wealth is actually a rival for our affections.
3. ENCOUNTERING THE GENEROSITY OF THE GOSPEL MAKES US GENEROUS
Money and possessions can’t fill our lives with the kinds of deep satisfactions that we’re after because they only reach their true fulfillment in Jesus. 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. Rich how? Receiving salvation and all its benefits.
And if we’ve been captured by the generosity of God in the gospel, the gospel will inevitably make us generous. Contrast the Rich Young Ruler with Zachheaus. Jesus wasn’t the Rich Young Ruler’s treasure, money was. Zaccheaus, on the other hand, encountered the generous gospel and so money was no longer his god, so he becomes generous with it. Or contrast Ananias and Sapphira with Barnabas. Ananias and Sapphira tried to fake it on the outside when it wasn’t really there on the inside. Barnabas, on the other hand, had really experienced the freedom of faith in Christ on the inside and that was demonstrated on the outside through his freedom from the love of things and instead a heart for the poor and needy.
When we truly encounter the generosity of the gospel, we become generous people.
4. CHRISTIANS ARE STEWARDS OF EVERYTHING ENTRUSTED TO US, NOT OWNERS
A gospel view of possessions begins with a right understanding of who everything belongs to: Everything belongs to God. Psalm 24:1 says, The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. And Psalm 50:10-11 puts it this way, For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.
Have you been shaped by the culture or the gospel when it comes to money & possessions? An investment banker invests other people’s money. That’s the clear objective. And that’s what God is doing with us. He entrusts us with His resources to be used for His glory. Everything belongs to God and yet He entrusts His servants with possessions. Do you see yourself as a steward or an owner?
John Piper put it this way: If you want to be a conduit for God’s grace, you don’t have to be lined with gold. Copper will do. We are conduits of God’s grace. We don’t have to keep up with the Joneses. The Joneses are wildly unhappy anyway. So the gospel makes us generous and invites us to be conduits of God’s grace.
5. GOSPEL-ORIENTED, SPIRIT-FILLED CHURCHES ARE MARKED BY GENEROUS GIVING
I. Voluntary
Barnabas brought the funds from his land by his own volition/as the Holy Spirit led him to. There isn’t a law around this. God loves a cheerful giver. Later in Acts 12 the church gather to worship in Mary’s house. Meaning, Mary didn’t sell her house. But they both generously and voluntarily used their resources for the glory of God and good of the church.
II. Local Church Based
Where does he give it: to the church. It’s local church based. Barnabas isn’t playing distributor, he lays it at the Apostles’ feet, he gives it to the church. Why? If the local church is the primary thing that God is doing in the world (and it is) then our giving ought to reflect God’s value. The church, the body of Christ, is God’s Plan A, and there is no Plan B. And the universal church of God practically fulfills it’s mission through the local church globally.
There are many good causes, para-church organizations, poverty relief agencies, and missions agencies worthy of your money—and we should support them too—but the local church ought to be the place where we give most.
III. Hands Open
Gospel-oriented, Spirit-filled churches are marked by generous giving is open-handed. I once heard it said that there is no such thing as a Christian Scrooge. It’s an oxymoron. How can we encounter the generous gospel and not be generous with our time and resources?
The early church showed no interest in gaining wealth but in meeting the needs of the family of faith. The Gospel opens our hands when we realize that Jesus’ open hands were nailed to a cross for our sins.
IV. Eyes Open
34. There was not a needy person among them…
The sharing among the early church was incredible. They saw being the church consisting of being a blessing to one another, being conduits of God’s grace. When they saw a need, they met the need.
6. BLESSING FROM GOD IS FOR THE PURPOSE OF GENEROUSLY BLESSING AND REACHING THE NATIONS WITH THE GOSPEL
Psalm 67 points to the purpose in our blessing: To bless the nations; To tell of Christ’s saving power; To bless others out of the blessings we’ve been entrusted with; To be used for the expansion and proclamation of the Kingdom.
We have been blessed to be a blessing to the nations. That mandate is reiterated in the Great Commission to Go and make disciples of all nations. To leverage all the resources we’ve been entrusted with in order to fulfill the commission we’ve been called to.
CONCLUSION
Living generously with the material blessings God’s entrusted to us simultaneously accomplishes 2 things:
1. Protects our hearts against idolatry (love of money)
2. Contributes to reaching the nations with the Gospel (our mission)
How can we grow in our generosity if we lack that?
1. Love the Gospel. Preach the Gospel to yourself daily. Rehearse what Christ has done for you and who you are in Christ.
2. Pray that the Holy Spirit would make you generous. Pray that the Spirit would do a work in your heart that totally reorients you around the gospel in a culture that promotes the opposite.
How do you sense the Holy Spirit calling you to respond when it comes to you time, talents, and possessions in grateful response to the generosity of the gospel?
PRAYER
May you turn from clinging to things to clinging to the Lord. May you turn from your possessions to your Redeemer, and from greed to generosity. May you be freed from the prison of materialism and greed, and find freedom in belonging to God. Know that whatever you hold too tightly will be lost forever, but that which you use freely to build the Kingdom has eternal importance. Go today, knowing that God has blessed you greatly, and equipped you to bless others in return.
Amen.
FURTHER STUDY
+ "Neither Poverty Nor Riches" Craig Blomberg
+ "The Treasure Principle" by Randy Alcorn
+ Deep Thoughts S04E06 "Strategic Compassion" (w/ Barry Slauenwhite)