March 28, 2010
Dr. Ron Sumners
Will Our Lives Count For Much?
Luke 6:20-38
In the end, how long you lived is not
going to be nearly as important as how well you lived. It is not the duration
of life that matters, but the donation of life that really counts. What have
you done with the years that have been given to you?
Let me ask you a question. If you were
to die right now, what donation would you have made to life? Would you die
knowing that you have really not contributed much to this world? Have you been
a grabber or a giver? Many people live for many years and when they die all you
can see is that they died trying to hold on to their things. They never became
a giver in life. Others have died in their twenties and they were known as
givers. They gave, they donated, their hands were always open, and they may
have died with empty hands, but their treasures were invested on the other side
of death!
Jesus gives us some tremendous themes in
the passage we are looking at today. The core of the message is that “giving
has nothing to do with assets.” It has everything to do with attitude. When
Jesus thought about giving, He was not thinking about how many homes we own;
whether we rented or owned them, or the size of our bank account, or the kind
of car we drive. In fact, He was saying, some of the biggest givers, in the
world’s eye, have very few assets. Some of the greediest people in life have
everything to give and give little or nothing!
In our passage today, the people who are
blessed have no or very little financial blessing. They have very little food.
They have few friends. Despite this, the Lord says that they are blessed, happy
people. The world might see them as failures; God says they are blessed.
In verses 24-26, Luke goes from happy
and blessed to woe and wretched. “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already
received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men
speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.”
In verse 24 He talks about the people
who have money, in verse 25 He talks about people who have food, and in verse
26 He talks about people who have friends. He is dropping a series of
bombshells on the people.
He says, “You are blessed when you have
few finances, food, or friends.” And you may be in trouble even if you have
finances, food and friends. Is Jesus anti-rich and pro-poor? No, that has
nothing to do with this passage. He is saying that if you are a giver to life,
although you may have very little in the world’s view, you have things with
real value. If you have a lot and are not a giver, you will die with a fist
full of nothing! Jesus is not against what you have, He is against you not being
a giver of what you have.
If you basically collect, store and
save, and don’t pass on to others, Jesus is saying, “You are receiving all you
are going to get.” If you are not a giver, go ahead and eat the food, enjoy
your possessions and laugh with your friends, because that’s all you will ever
have.
Jesus is talking about priorities and
values. I’m sure you have heard the little platitude: “Only one life will soon
be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.” Do our lives indicate that we
will recognize the truth in these words?
In this whole process of making our
lives count before God, we have a choice to make. The choice is: am I going to
be a taker or a giver, am I going to be a consumer thinking of number one first
and foremost or am I going to turn outside from myself and give? Jesus wants us
to know that it has nothing to do with the amount of assets we have. People
will say, “If I had more to give, I would surely give it.” Statistics and human
experience prove that to be untrue. As the income level rises, the percentage
given to the church and charitable causes goes down! Quit using that lie as an
excuse. You have plenty to give no matter what your income level. The issue is
not how much you have to give but rather, whether you are a taker or a giver.
How many assets or how large of a bank
account do you need in order to love your enemies? How much money do you need
in your stock portfolio in order to return love for hate; to bless those who
curse you or to pray for those who mistreat you? Jesus understood that it has
nothing to do with assets. It has everything to do with your attitude. There
are people with very few assets who are tremendous givers in life because they
have made a choice to be givers and not takers.
When we look at the potential as
compared to the actual giving statistics of
A number of years ago, in
I want to give you some truths about giving
as taught by Jesus. First, Jesus indicated that givers live on a higher level
than most people. In other words, there are two roads that we can travel. You
can travel the high road or the low road. The high road is traveled by the
givers!
Those who take the high road are
positive activists in life. Show me a giver and I will show you a person who is
actively involved in life. They are constantly giving. Socrates said, “Know
thyself.”
Jesus described the giver. They pray for
those who abuse them, go the extra mile, and turn the other cheek. Givers don’t
live with a list of don’ts; they don’t live within the framework of legalism.
They take the high road by being actively involved in life.
The Pharisees had a lot of things that
they did not do. They lived in the framework of legalism. Jesus tells us that faith
is not only about what you don’t do. A lot of sinners don’t do the same things.
There are some things that we are not supposed to do. But Christianity is found
in what we actually do in the name and for the
The giver who travels the high road also
always does more than is expected. In Luke 6:32 Jesus says, “If you love those
who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend
to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even
sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be paid in full.”
The Lord is talking about an unnatural
way of living. He’s talking about us living in a place where we do more than is
expected. This is what testifies to the world of Jesus!
When the world sees Christians being
givers and going the second mile and turning the other cheek, and blessing
those who curse us, they stop and question what makes us behave in such an
unnatural way.
This is the high road. It is the road
that changes lives and society. It is the road where we actually become the
salt and light of the world.
Jesus also says that people who travel
the high road do good things without asking for anything in return. In Luke 6:35
Jesus tells us to love our enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without
expecting anything in return. He does not promise that you will get anything in
return! In fact, isn’t it interesting that He tells us as we give to expect
nothing in return, but in the next verse He says, “Then your reward will be
great.” Doesn’t that sound like a contradiction? He says that we should expect
nothing, but that our reward will be great. He is giving us the difference
between the good steward and the bad steward. The bad steward gives and expects
something in return. He isn’t really giving. He is trading. He is bartering in
order to get what he wants.
Jesus is saying that if you love only
those who love you, what is the credit to you? He is saying that if you lend
only to those who can pay you back with interest, what credit is that to you?
Jesus is telling us that givers give without expecting anything in return.
Did you ever know anyone who kept score
on their giving? You might do something nice for them, so they have to do
something nice for you. If they spend $100 on your birthday, they expect a $100
gift on their birthday. This is not giving, it is trading.
I think that there are three options in
life concerning giving. There is the person who goes through life giving
nothing. What they have is theirs and they intend to hang on to it. They are
committed to taking care of number one. This person almost always ends up
lonely and miserable. We are very content to let this person sit in the corner
and count their money. We don’t want to be around them. Few people attend their
funeral. Their lives don’t really count for much. There is the person who gives
but expects something in return. This person will live a life of frustration
and disappointment. People will always let them down. Life, for them, will
always be one inequity after another. The third person gives without keeping score,
without an account ledger. They know that God is their source and giving is not
an obligation, it is their joy!
A second point Jesus makes about givers
is that givers understand the principle of sowing and reaping.
The principle of sowing and reaping is
not: I give you something now, you give me something later. That is not giving,
that’s trading. The principle of sowing and reaping is doing good without
seeing or seeking reward. It’s simply giving. Jesus tells us that if we give
without expecting anything in return we will be rewarded. The reward will not
come from people but from God. Jesus is telling us that when giving becomes the
habit of our lives, God will give to us, “good measure, pressed down, shaken
together and running over.”
John D. Rockefeller Sr. was a
millionaire at age 23. At the age of 50, he was a billionaire. He was the
richest man in the world. But he was a miserable rich man. At age 53 he was
sick and dying. He was a grabber, not a giver. He was a greedy man and the sole
purpose of his life was to get more. Greed had him so consumed that his doctors
told him that he had only a year to live.
Here is a billionaire, the richest man
in the world and all his stomach could handle was milk and crackers because of
ulcers. He could have walked in and bought any restaurant in the world and had
the most delicious food available, but all he could eat was milk and crackers.
It was then that John D. Rockefeller
began to look at his life. He understood that all he had done all his life was
get and keep. He had never been a giver. He decided to be a giver. He gave to
churches, to hospitals, to foundations, and to medical research. Many of the
discoveries we’ve had in medicine have come from money provided by the
Rockefeller Foundation.
At 53 he was a greedy, dying old man. He
began to give and release all the stuff he had accumulated as well as the stuff
(tension and stress) that made him sick. He began to really live and he lived
to the age of 90.
People are killing themselves with
stress and ulcers because they want to get and keep the material things of the
world. That number includes some of you here today. Their lives are filled with
resentment and greed. They are stingy and miserable. They wonder why there is
no joy in all they possess. It is not how many years you live that counts; it’s
what you give to life that really counts.
This morning let’s pour out all our
bitterness, our lack of forgiveness, our anger, and jealousies so that we can
become givers. Jesus went to
Today we ask you to commit your
Spiritual Gifts from God to His service. Are you a giver? Will you enhance the
Will your life count for much in the
end? Only one life, so soon it will pass. Only what’s done for Christ will
last.