I got a copy of our church 2010 budget this morning. It is a great and comforting thing to know that even in a down economy we are giving more as a people to the mission of God in our community and are giving away more as a church than ever before. Those are important numbers for a church. But money is not the currency that matters in God’s economy.
In fact, counting money as the primary currency of our world leads either to the negative values of greed and waste, as Wendell Berry has warned…
The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves…This belief was always indefensible—the real names of global warming are Waste and Greed—and by now it is manifestly foolish. “Faustian Economics”
…or to the seemingly positive, but just as demonic values of personal peace and affluence, as Francis Schaeffer warned to many years ago…
Personal peace means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city. Affluence means an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity—a life made up of things and more things—a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance. “A Christian Manifesto”
In God’s economy, the currency is righteousness and it all belongs to Jesus. Jesus is the heir to all the currency of God. Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay and straw…it all belongs to Jesus. Life, death, things present and things to come…it all belongs to Jesus…and we belong to Jesus. That is the good news. We are co-heirs with Christ of all that is valuable in this life and in the life to come. The righteousness of Jesus is counted to our credit by grace alone through faith alone.
So, what do we count in God’s economy. We count the active passivity of faith in the finished work of Jesus. We count submission to the declaration of God that all is ours and we are Jesus’. We count the spending of the currency of God for the mission of God.
When we count those things alone, we will see the wealth accumulate. The wealth of conversion and baptism, the wealth of healed relationships and mended wounds, the wealth of generosity, the wealth of contentment and stewardship, the wealth of social justice…
What else? What does it look like to spend God’s money?

The Apostle Paul gives a fairly angry rant against making too much of men and their sermons in the first few chapters of 1 Corinthians. He insists that a fine delivery and clever presentation can at times hide the foolish glory of the cross of Christ. AND it is the simple truths that God died to take away our wrath, bear our guilt, break our addictions, defeat our enemies and wash away the filth of our sin which the Spirit of God uses to transform our hearts.
Some years ago, Princeton trained Seminary Professor Cornelius Van Til wrote an autobiographical essay entitled, “

The biblical call for parents, particularly fathers, to disciple their children raises some significant questions in the Evangelical church. This is so particularly because we hold so tightly onto the right of the child to make their own profession of faith and practice. To this I say, “Amen!” But I ask what will we be held accountable for with our children? Is the necessity of their personal profession absolve us of our parental and priestly responsibility to raise children who will walk with Jesus as adults and who will, in turn, raise children who walk with Jesus?


