John Ruskin once told this brief story: “In a shipwreck one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was afterward found at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking—had he the gold? Or had the gold him?”ⁱ Today I want to talk with you about your gold.

The past two Sundays, and again today, we have heard from three members of this church about why and how they financially give to the ministry of Christ through the life of this church. This is the season of the church year when traditionally we focus on this one vital aspect of what it means to be Christian and what it means to be a family of Christians who are continuing the work of Jesus Christ within the sphere of our influence here in our community and around the world. We make no apology for talking about the financial side of the Christian life, for the simple reason that material possessions are a fact of life and a topic about which Jesus was crystal clear in his teaching that there are spiritual implications. So that none of us sinks to the bottom and so that all of us learn how responsibly to use the material wealth God gives us, it is vital that we stay in touch with the deep and powerful dynamics both for good and for ill in our personal stewardship.

One good place to observe those dynamics is in the story of one of the first known instances of an offering that occurs in the Christian church. The church in Jerusalem was comprised primarily of people from the lower economic classes, and as he traveled among other congregations in other cities, the Apostle Paul felt led to collect an offering among these wealthier Christians in order to support the “mother church.” As he writes to the Christians in the Greek city of Corinth, Paul mentions this offering and encourages their participation in it, and in that conversation he reveals several important principles and realities about the spiritual side of material wealth.

One guiding principle for Paul came from Israel’s experience as it wandered in the wilderness after having escaped from Egyptian slavery. As the starving Hebrews confronted the challenge of living in a desert, God provided them with food, in the form of manna. In the historical account of this miraculous provision, we are told that all the people of Israel would gather the manna every morning, and some, due to their youth and strength, would gather more than others, but that then all would share what they had, so that, “the one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.” It is God’s desire that all of his children would have adequate resources to meet their physical needs, just as all parents would want for all of their children. But not all children are equally capable of producing those resources, and so God expects that we would share with each other so that at least the basic needs of all are met. In some sense, your “gold” is not just yours, but rather, God entrusts it to you in the hope and plan that, as the need arises, you will share it with others.

God is very realistic about sharing, of course. And he knows that you can only give from what you have. As Paul puts it, “the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have.” This is often called the principle of proportionate giving, and it applies in the realm of all kinds of giving and service, not just in the financial realm. For some, to give even a little can be too much, and for others, only to give as much as everyone else is simply not enough. There is no formula for how much you and I should give, at least, not a mathematical one. There is not a formula but a principle: give from love, give to meet need, give in order to achieve balance and adequacy for all. And give from what you have, with no guilt or fear about what you do not have and therefore cannot give.

As in all things, Paul looked to the example of Jesus for clues about how you and I should manage our resources. And Paul summarized Jesus’ approach in these words: “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” What Paul meant is that Jesus gave up his position and power and privilege as the Son of God residing in heavenly bliss and entered the pain and suffering of our world so that we might one day have what he had, in heaven. Our approach to material things, therefore, begins with an understanding of the spiritual reality of God giving himself to us in love. If God would give us his very self, then what does that say about what we are called to give back to God through our giving to others?

What we do with what we have thereby becomes a test of our love for God and for God’s people. As with all tests of love, the act of giving is about putting our feelings into action. To talk love is not enough: love is something we do or it is not love after all. “I am testing the genuineness of your love,” Paul writes to the Corinthians. And the test was more important to the Christians in Corinth than it was to Paul, or even to the Christians in Jerusalem, who might or might not benefit from the generosity of the Corinthians. You and I need to know the truth about ourselves, no matter how painful that truth may be, and one way we know the truth about our love for God is in the test of our giving. We can fool ourselves about our genuine spirituality as we believe certain things or mouth certain things, but it is only as we do certain things that we either prove or disprove the reality of what we believe and say.

Many of us believe, I suspect, that it is only after we achieve a certain level of material wealth that we can realistically be expected to become giving people. But Paul notes something about the Christians in Macedonia that has been observed frequently and still is true today, that it is often those who have the least who find it in their hearts to be the most generous. Paul said, “For during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.” You and I ask, “How can that be?” Is it not once you have become rich that you become generous? Quite the contrary is often true, and here is why. It is those who have little who know the suffering that causes, and so it is they who have a keenly developed sense of sympathy and empathy for the poverty of others. The most generous people I know are those who have known what it is to be in want, and one of the most dangerous things that can happen to us is that we can forget what it is to suffer genuine need. The Macedonian’s suffering—whatever it was—had taught them or at least reminded them of what it was like to suffer, and so they became all the more generous even from their own poverty.

The proper and healthy stewardship of all of our resources, financial and otherwise, must finally find its originating power and principle in a decision that you and I make. That decision has to do with to what or to whom you will give yourself. You and I cannot escape this essential decision in life, either to give ourselves to ourselves or to someone or something else. We can decide fundamentally to pursue our own goals, our own good, our own glory, our own gold, or we can devote ourselves to the good of others. Paul said of the Macedonian Christians that, “they gave themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us.” Serve God, or serve something else. If you serve God, then your plans and priorities will be determined from there, and God will lead you to become a giving person.

Just as Paul encouraged the Corinthian Christians to give financial resources to the ministry of Christ for the sake of the Jerusalem Christians, so I encourage you to give to the ministry of Christ as it is accomplished through the Village Church, for the sake of Christians here and around the world, and for the sake of those who are not yet Christian, who still need to meet their Savior. And, I encourage you to give for your own sake as well. As you and I learn to give, to give more and more generously and more and more joyfully, we learn to love and serve the God who gives us life, and not to love and serve the things of the material world, which lead only to death. May it never be asked about you or about me, “Had he the gold? Or had the gold him?”

Amen.

ⁱAs told in Os Guinness, Doing Well and Doing Good, NavPress, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2001, p. 79.