"It All Begins With Love
" Sermon Transcript for August 5, 2001 By Rev. Mike BeckScripture Reading: Luke 7:36-50
We’ve been focusing in the adult Sunday School hours this summer on the area of stewardship. And this morning I want to begin a three-part sermon series on that same theme. Now the minute I say that some of you I know are now thinking, "Oh, my gosh. Reverend Mike’s going to preach on money three Sundays in a row. It’s a good time for me to take vacation." Now, if my intent were to preach on money for the next three weeks, I want you to know I’d just be preaching like Jesus. And you do want me to preach like Jesus, don’t you? The reason I say that is John Maxwell in his video series we’re watching reminds us that in the 38 parables of Jesus that are recorded in the Gospel, 16 of those 38 parables Jesus talks about money or possessions. There are 500 verses in the Bible about prayer; there are a similar number on faith. Want to know how many there are devoted to the area of our money and possessions? 2000! But the bottom line is, during the next three weeks I’m not going to talk nearly as much about your money and possessions as I am about your relationship with God. And if your heart is open these three weeks can see more spiritual growth in your life than any other period this year.
Let’s begin with the definition of stewardship. Stewardship can be defined as the "wise management of the resources that God has entrusted to our care". And we’re reminded that we really don’t own anything. It’s all a gift of God and he’s entrusted us to use it faithfully. And during the summer series in Price Hall, we tried to look at stewardship from a very broad perspective because stewardship involves all of life, not just our possessions or our money. We’re called to be stewards of the gospel. We’ve been given as a church the good news. What’s it mean to guard that carefully? We’ve looked at what it means to be stewards of the world around us, of creation. To be stewards of our time. To be stewards of the spiritual gifts that God has given to each of us. And then only then did we move in to the area of stewardship of our possessions.
We had some rather new Christians along with Reverend Dan one Sunday talk about the relationship between stewardship and discipleship for they are intricately related. If we are growing in our discipleship, we should publically be growing in the area of stewardship. And then, two weeks ago, Beulah Shrader and Jane Hughey did a wonderful job of looking back at the blessings that God has poured out over the years on Grace Church and what it means for us today as we look to the future to be good stewards of those blessings.
But in this first message today I just want to hammer home one point. But it’s a point that is critically important. It is this simple point. It all begins with one. And I want to illustrate that in some personal ways. I have to admit when I got my driver’s license at 16 or 17 years old and I would pull in to the Burger Chef and buy my 50 cent hamburger and 10 cent coke and then drive on down the road. And when I’d finished the hamburger and finished the coke, most of the time I threw the wrappers out the window of the car. Then in between my freshman and sophomore year in college I took my cross country bike trip with Wandering Wheels. And I fell in love with the beauty of this land. And, friends, at 15 miles an hour and three feet off the ground, you see all the stuff that people like myself have been throwing by the roadsides. And I never have thrown a wrapper since that time. You know why? It wasn’t because somebody told me it’s what I ought to do. It’s because I’d fallen in love with the beauty of this land and I wanted to do my part to keep it beautiful.
Mickey and I have been married for 31 years. And I don’t mind saying that I love my wife today more than I did when I married her. And she’s a very unassuming woman. She doesn’t ask for much. But if she drops a hint of some place she’d like to go or something she needs, I do whatever I can do to try and meet those needs. And it’s not because I have to, it’s because I love her. And it brings me great joy to try to meet her needs.
We are looking forward in the Beck household to Saturday, October 6th. And before I go on to this point, if you haven’t congratulated the newlyweds, Leland and Hazel were here at 8:30 a.m. last week and here at 9:30 a.m. today. You may want to do that following the service. We’re very happy for both of them. But our youngest son, Adam, the one who said he’d never be married until age 30, at age 23 is going to walk down the aisle here with me to meet his bride. And they’ve been taking care of most of the expenses of the wedding themselves because Shana does not come from a wealthy family at all. And they have discovered that even if you try and keep the arrangements simple, a wedding’s terribly expensive. So back late last year, they were over at our house for dinner, we said, "Adam, Shana, we’re going to create a savings account and every time I get my check we’re going to put back this amount of money as our contribution to your wedding day." Now I think when it’s over I’m going to hand them a note and say the bank is closed. But here a few weeks ago we realized they had discovered that there are going to be an awful lot of people at this wedding because Dad and Mom know an awful lot of people. And they discovered that even if they tried to do something simple in the way of food at the reception, they didn’t think they could afford it. And when we realized that we said, "We can take care of the food for the reception." Now, friends, we’re getting a tremendous amount of joy in doing that. It’s not something we have to do. It involves a little sacrifice on our part, but we love those kids. We want that day to be all that they hope for it to be and it’s a joy to help them out.
I think it was K-Mart that I went in to a couple of years ago. You know they’ve got all that stuff to take your kids money in foolish ways at the doors. And there was this machine that said, "Passion meter." Have any of you seen that? I think you slip your hand or finger into it, you put in your quarter and it tells you how passionate you are. I just want to ask you this question, "What’s the temperature of your heart today in terms of your love for God?" Now notice, I did not say your knowledge of God, I did not say your service to God. I said, "What’s the temperature of your love for God?" I want you to memorize this quote, it’s so profoundly true. It goes like this, "We can give without loving, but we can not love without giving." Now take a moment for that to sink in. We can give without loving, but it is absolutely impossible to love without giving.
And that’s what the story from scripture that we read today is all about. This woman entering the home of Pharisees would have created a tremendous scandal for she was entering the home of people who meticulously sought to keep the law. And her life had been anything but holy. But what Jesus noticed was not her sin. What Jesus noted was her love. She brought an alabaster jar of expensive perfume and in a custom understood fully in the near East of that day she wet Jesus’ feet with her tears, she wiped them with her hair, she kissed his feet, she poured perfume on them. And then the verse I would lift up as our text for today, Jesus says in verse 47, "Her many sins have been forgiven for she loved much, and he who has been forgiven little, loves not." Now whenever we read the words of Jesus, it’s very helpful to be aware of the context and the audience who was hearing his words. Be careful with that last part, that "...he who has been forgiven little, loves little." Jesus was not really saying there’s any of us that have been forgiven little. But in this case, his audience hearing these words consisted of men who felt like they’d been forgiven little, who felt like they were righteous because of their strict adherence to keeping the law. But these religious leaders erroneously believed they had little need for forgiveness. And Jesus looked within their heart and realized this correspondingly because they erroneously think they’d been forgiven little, they actually, although they may be doing all the right things, they’ve got very little love for God.
It’s been fun recently to visit with several persons here at Grace who have come to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in the last year. It has been so refreshing to see their joy and their enthusiasm. To see their love of the Lord and of this church. And to see their desire to give of themselves in the way that all of us, you remember, promise we’d do by our prayers, by our presence, and by our service. They want to do that because they’ve had a fresh encounter with somebody who’s changed their life. And you see the problem is often that if we have been a Christian for many years, we’ve forgotten what it’s like not to know Him. We’ve also forgotten just how much we’ve been forgiven. And that attitude, if we’re not careful, will bleed over in to our giving. And if we’re not careful, the joyful spirit, the recognition of the awesome debt we owe to God because of what Jesus did for us, and the love response that God wants us to have slowly begins to fade.
So to close, if you place the finger of your heart in to God’s passion meter this morning, what would it reveal? Would it reveal a heart overflowing with love for God? For friends, in terms of our giving, it all begins...it all begins with love. I trust that our closing hymn is truly the attitude of your heart today. It’s number 453; we’re going to sing only the first verse--"More Love To Thee".
E-mail Comments to: Reverend Dan Sinkhorn