Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson, and I am a partner here at Grace. Typically, when I say good morning, it's supposed to elicit a response, but I don't want to put too much pressure on you. Thank you. Hold on to your hats, because we are going to kick this morning off with a bang. We're going to play one round of Final Jeopardy for all the marbles, okay? And just to refresh, I will give you the answer, and you, our studio audience, is to find the question that best fits that answer. You got it? Okay, here we go. A, sitting at a dead stop on I-95. B, anesthesia-free root canal. C, listening to a celebrity athlete refer to himself exclusively in the third person. D, being waterboarded. E, death by meteor. And F, all of the above. Okay, now your job is to answer in the form of a question. Just shout it out. Someone asked, Nate asked if that was my wife. No, no. She was thinking it, but she's not that type to do that. No, no, that's very kind of you. I wish that you had made it a little less personal, a little less hurtful. What kind of sermon? I'm looking for what kind of sermon? Stewardship sermon, I guess. That's right, a sermon on giving. You know, it's a little sad and depressing for me that you found that so easy to answer. What really stings is that there are some of you out there who answered that question without any sense of irony, without any sense that it was meant to be a joke. I was watching a few of you, and you were actually sitting there trying to answer it seriously. Yeah, I think I'd rather die by a meteor than have to listen to Doug. But okay, well, too bad. I'm here. I'm going to go for it, and you just have to put up with it, okay? But first, let me open us in prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for all these people. Help me say what it is you want me to say and help it to be profitable for us. And it's your name we pray, amen. Okay, as we are kicking off our capital campaign, Grace is Going Home, I've been asked to speak on biblical stewardship, how we invest our resources, our energy, our passions, our time, and our finances. But what I have to say this morning really doesn't have anything to do with our campaign. It encompasses it. It's included in that. Rather, though, I want to share my understanding of what the Bible teaches about biblical stewardship, about giving, about the importance and practice of it. I also want to push back against some of the ways biblical teaching has been misrepresented and misunderstood. My hope is to adjust the lens through which we see giving in a way that reveals it to be the blessing and the privilege that God intended. Now, I've heard a bunch of stewardship sermons over the years, some better than others, and good or bad, compelling or not, they all kind of typically hit the same notes. You know, one being that, boy, the Bible talks a lot about giving, so it must be really important, and you better pay attention, that God is the owner and source of everything. So why do we even fuss? You know, and why do we even think that it's any of ours in the first place? How we should use our resources for God's glory. How giving expresses our thanks to God and is an outward expression of a confession, really, of the gospel. And how our giving can help people in important ways. And typically, your stewardship sermon ends, sort of seals the deal with an emotional and heart-rending story of how a certain gift made an enormous difference in someone's life. You're not going to hear any of that from me this morning. No bringing you to the emotional brink. No pulling at your heartstrings. No litany of all the great things grace can accomplish helped by your generosity. Another thing you're not going to hear from me is something that every stewardship sermon and stewardship campaign has either said outright or strongly implied, that God and His church need our money. They need our tithes and offerings to carry on their business. Now, I'm exaggerating just a little bit, but it sounded sometimes as if God is up in heaven, fingers crossed, anxiously waiting to see if Debbie and I come through with an appropriate tithe so that the work of the church can move forward. And that's only a part of it. If you're all familiar with the Bible standards for giving, you know that the bar is set pretty high. It is hard to do right. There are a lot of boxes to check. Not only are we supposed to give, but we're supposed to be generous about it. And being generous might not even be good enough because the Bible standard is sacrificial giving. And not only are we asked to give generously, perhaps even sacrificially, but we're supposed to give in a spirit that considers others' needs more important than our own. Not only are we asked to give generously and with the proper care and concern for others, but we're supposed to give freely, not out of obligation or compulsion. Finally, it's not enough to give generously, even sacrificially, thinking only of others, not at all about ourselves, freely, not out of obligation or compulsion. There's one added kicker. We're supposed to do it joyfully. We're supposed to be happy about it. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my, how do we do all that? Not surprisingly, my track record is pretty mixed in meeting all those expectations. I'm not at all convinced I'm doing it right, doing it well, or doing it enough, and I know I am not alone in thinking that. If you could see me when I open my checkbook, I'm not sure you would remark to yourself, well, would you look at that? Look how cheerful Doug is. More often, you would see someone who's trying to be a good soldier, who's giving out of his abundance, who's giving out of a sense of need, who's giving out of a sense of obligation, recognizing that the need's here and elsewhere. You know, of course, there have been times when a specific appeal, maybe a church or a cause or perhaps a mission trip, has really gotten a hold of me and touched me, where I became emotionally invested, you know, and I've really got fired up, kind of like a sugar high. But before too long, I always seem to settle back into the less emotional, more mundane and murky exercise of balancing what I need and want with what I think God needs and wants from me. What's the right amount? I don't want to be stingy, but do I really want to go overboard? What's enough? If I give everything away, is that better? Is that inherently more spiritual? How does that square with my responsibility to my family? There's a tension. It's as if I'm in a Turkish bazaar bargaining with God. My goal, more often than not, is to try to arrive at a number that allows me to feel good about myself and sufficiently faithful because I gave God his part without impinging too much on the things that I want, the things I'm used to doing and having, the things others in my life want and expect. Something's lost in this process. That simply can't be what the biblical writers are talking about. For some of us, that sense of obligation leads to a desire to seek God's approval, to do enough to please him, to check that box. For others, it can lead to a pervading sense that giving is a zero-sum game, that when we give, inevitably we forfeit something of equal or greater value. It can also leave open the door for spiritual pride, the thinking that, you know, we're really coming through for the church and for God, that we are one of his 18, you know, a sense of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction. Or the pendulum can easily swing in the other direction, where that sense of obligation leads to guilt or a sense that somehow we're disappointing God. For others, we might simply tune it all out and convince ourselves that we're at a stage of life where this really doesn't apply to us. If we have young kids, we're just starting out, my pace sucks at work, blah, blah, blah. We'll worry about that later. So I became increasingly dissatisfied with what I was hearing about giving. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing I had heard had equipped me to give as the Bible wanted me to, generously, joyfully, with a genuinely compassionate heart and caring heart, not out of obligation or compulsion. It's not that all those reasons for giving that I had heard were wrong. They're not. But something was missing, something big and vital to the understanding and practice of biblical giving. And because they didn't tell the whole story, those reasons simply weren't enough for me to experience giving as God intended. So what was missing? It's a $64 question. I'll tell you what was missing. I needed to be more selfish about my giving. That's what was missing. I needed to think about my giving in a much more self-interested light. I needed to understand better what was in it for me. Why? Because giving isn't for God. It's for you and me to benefit and help us. Now, the Bible does talk a ton about the importance of giving. No argument there. An enormous emphasis is placed on giving generosity in Scripture. But all those sermons and stewardship campaigns that I heard had it backwards. Giving's not important to God because he needs it. God wants us to give because we need it, because of the magnificent things the act of giving can do for our stubborn human hearts, how it can shape them, transform them, and move them to a better place. There's no question that our giving can help others, but what's too often missed is how profoundly our giving can help us. The idea that God and his church need our money creates a sense of obligation and duty that misleads and ties us in all kinds of knots. And it does the experience of giving a huge disservice. Now, this may come as a shocker, but God is perfectly capable of doing what he intends to do without your or my help. Scripture's pretty emphatic at that point. Listen to this passage from Psalm 50, written at a time when God's people, the nation of Israel, were seeming to be very faithful and obedient. They were giving lots of tithes and offerings. But they too had it backwards by thinking that their sacrifices and offerings were what were important to God, as if he needed them. This is God talking. I have no need of a bull from your stall or goats from your pens. For every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains and the creatures of the field are mine. If I was hungry, I would not tell you. I love that. I love that. You know, that seems pretty clear to me clear to me. God values our giving and graciously accepts and uses our gifts, but he does so for us, for our good, for what giving can do to our weak and frail and wandering human hearts. When I said I needed to view my giving more selfishly, when I needed to think about giving in a more selfish light, it's to embrace and lean into this truth that giving can be life-changing for the giver. And the sooner one grasps that truth, the sooner biblical stewardship seems less like an obligation and more like a gift, less like a duty and more like a privilege, less like eating your Brussels sprouts. And I'm referring to Brussels sprouts before you. All the new recipes the last 20 years where they throw in brown sugar. The kind of Brussels sprouts my mom made for us. She boiled them and maybe if she was in a really good charitable mood, she'd sprinkle a little salt, a little pinch of salt. They were horrible. So remember that when you're thinking that. Don't say, oh yeah, I like Brussels sprouts. So it'll be less like eating your Brussels sprouts and a lot more like a cream-filled donut. Not to overstate things, but how we think about giving is a game changer. When one thinks of it primarily as an obligation, the act of giving is robbed of much of its joy and its power to transform our lives. And it's very hard not to think of it as an obligation unless one sees that it is the giver who benefits from giving as much or more than anyone or anything else. Giving is a gift for the giver first and foremost because of its power to move and shape our hearts. My go-to passage in scripture is one many of you are probably familiar with. It's from Matthew chapter 6. I adore this verse. This is Jesus talking. It's one of the most straightforward passages in all of Scripture. And for God's purposes, for what he's trying to accomplish, one of the most useful. Wherever I place my time, my energies, my passions, my affections, my confidence, my joy, my hope, and yes, even my financial resources, that's where you'll find my heart. Now, you might have noticed when I came up here that I brought a rug with me, a very special rug. Way back in the late 1980s, Deb and I finally had a little bit of discretionary income. And I forget how now, but I developed an interest in Oriental rugs. I found them just exquisitely beautiful works of art, each one painstakingly hand-woven over very many months. And, you know, I was enthralled with them, and I went as far as to start buying a few and spending what, for Debbie and I, was a lot of money. Now, you have to bear with me, because I actually have to bend. This is Persian from the holy city of Gom in central Iran. It's woven out of silk with hundreds of knots per square inch. The signature of its master weaver, or Rami, is woven in Farsi here at the top. Needless to say, my rugs immediately became part of my treasure. One way you could tell they were my treasure is that when anyone was coming over to the house, I would scurry and roll it up and put it away for fear that it would be spilled on. Now some might say that defeats the purpose of having a rug if you put it away whenever it might be seen or walked on, but I didn't care. Another way you could tell that these rugs were part of my treasure is that for about, oh, roughly the first thousand times she ever vacuumed them, I couldn't help myself. I felt compelled to gently remind Debbie that she needed to be careful, very careful, and never, I mean never, suck up the fringe for fear that that's not as tightly woven and it unravels and falls apart. I have since stopped that practice, fearing that I might suffer an unusual and tragically fatal accident while sleeping in bed one night. Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to appreciate and enjoy beautiful things. It's simply to illustrate how easily they capture our affections, how easily they become part of our treasure. Far more than supporting a church or funding a ministry, giving away our resources can be a most powerful antidote for all those things in our lives that compete to be our treasure, a very practical and effective way to help us loosen our grip on our earthly treasure. When we give and invest in the things God cares most about, in things that can have an eternal impact, whether we know it or not, whether we can feel it or not, we are moving our heart's center of gravity. And we are adjusting the lens through which we view our lives, our world, and our futures. Cultivating a perspective that increasingly mirrors God's. God does not need or want our money. What God covets is our hearts. That's what he's fighting for. And the act of giving is one of his most effective tools to align our hearts with his. Now, I might have raised a few eyebrows earlier when I said that in order to experience giving as God intended, joyfully, generously, compassionately, and freely, I needed to understand giving in a much more self-interested light. Surely, someone must have been out there thinking to themselves, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Isn't Christianity all about being completely and utterly unselfish? Never thinking of yourself, but always considering others more important? Yes and no. It's certainly true that we are called to be unselfish in the sense of considering others' well-being before our own. But that's not the same as saying that it's not in our selfish best interest to do that. In Luke 9, Jesus explains it this way. Again, this is Jesus talking. So here's Jesus calling us to serve and to sacrifice and follow his example, but that we do this ultimately to benefit. And it may surprise some, but any notion that self-interest is somehow anti-Christian is not supported in Scripture. How we act in our own self-interest is where we've gone off the rails. That's been the problem since the Garden of Eden, not the self-interest itself. In fact, the Bible consistently encourages us to pursue a life of faith precisely because it's in our best interest to do that. Taking it one step further, placing your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is the single most self-interested thing one can ever possibly do. Okay, so what now? What am I suggesting each of us do? First is to simply acknowledge that where we lay up our treasure is where you'll find our hearts. It's as night follows day. It's really pretty straightforward. So if you care at all about the condition of your heart, you can't really avoid some introspection, some question about where you're laying up your treasure. Second, I want to encourage each of us to lean into the transformational power of giving by taking a step or two forward, whatever that step might be for you. Far more than an obligation, the ability to share our resources is an opportunity and a privilege that we should not let go to waste. Few things are as effective in helping us move our treasure to where moth and rust won't destroy. Few things have such potential to align the beat of our heart to the rhythm of God's own. However, please keep in mind that moving our treasure doesn't happen overnight. It's a process. I'm reminded of a time about 20 years ago when I started a Navy SEAL workout plan at home. I get it. Feel free to snicker. I'm not Navy SEAL material. Nevertheless, I kicked off what was supposed to be a 12-week program of two and a half strenuous hours each day, six days a week. Turns out, this is also a shocker, it was too much. It was too soon, and it was way too unpleasant. After six weeks, I had completely given up and was back upstairs in my office eating milk duds all afternoon, doing exactly zero hours of strenuous exercise each day. And that's how these things often work. And moving our treasure is no different. Far better to advance the ball, to take a step or two forward, wherever you are in your journey. Forward progress and movement are the keys. I've been at the stewardship thing a long time, and I've already shared some of my struggles, but my growing appreciation for how giving blesses me has made a difference. In all my years, I don't think I've ever given sacrificially in the sense of really giving up something I really, really wanted and needed. But over the last few weeks, as I've been thinking about my experience with giving, I've come to see that's not exactly how God works. I've always viewed sacrificial giving as coming through what I call the front door perspective, in which a battle of the will takes place right out in the open of my consciousness. A forceful bending of my will, giving up something I really need or want simply out of obedience and faith. I collapse. Exhausted and spent, but faithful and obedient, confident in God's smiling approval. You rock, Doug. Well done, good and faithful servant. Now the key is getting up. I didn't really practice that very good. But I no longer believe that's how giving sacrificially or otherwise actually works. Rather, much more quietly and far less dramatically, God enters through our back door and starts working on us, using our giving to slowly change what we think we need and what we think we want, what's important to us, and a priority. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that the people who actually do give sacrificially don't even necessarily know they're doing it, because at this point, what they view as valuable, what they treasure, has moved and evolved so much. Personally, I have a long way to go, But I can honestly say that over the years, God has used his gift of giving to slowly but surely move my treasure, and thus my heart, to a far better place. The things that I think I need and want have changed, and I've come to view the opportunity afforded by giving as much more of a privilege and much more of a joy than ever before, and I find that enormously encouraging and hopeful. In closing, it's more than okay to think about how giving benefits us. In fact, I think it's critical to understand if we truly seek the life that God has designed for us, life that is truly life. Listen to this lavish promise from 1 Timothy. Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. Back in the 1950s, a young missionary traveled deep into the jungle of Ecuador to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to people who hadn't heard it. He and his four colleagues were found murdered along a remote riverbank, murdered by the very tribespeople they had gone to find. A famous saying is attributed to that young missionary, and it's stuck with me over the years, and it really captures what I've tried to share this morning. He had written it in his personal journal six years before he died, and this is what he wrote. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. He this morning. Thank you for your magnificent plan of redemption that graciously includes us. And you do that because in your wisdom, that's how we change. That's how we grow. That's how we prepare for eternity. Thank you for giving, for not only what it does and the witness it provides, but also what it does to our human hearts. And we thank you for loving us, for pursuing us, and for the hope that you give us. And it's your name we pray. Amen.