Perspective

GENEROUS
PERSPECTIVE
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 6:19-33
OCTOBER 2, 2011

Walt Disney has an amusement park in Los Angeles called California Adventure. It is part of the Disneyland complex. If you go to the entrance to the California Adventure Park, you will find on the walls all the Disney characters portrayed. From Mickey Mouse to Minnie Mouse, from Donald Duck to Daisy Duck, they are all there. I went there this past summer with Barb and our kids and our grandkids. I did notice one thing. I noticed that as I examined the walls and all of the Disney characters that one was missing. There was one that was definitely not there. That was Scrooge McDuck, Uncle Scrooge. He was not portrayed anywhere. I know that because I had a particular affection for Uncle Scrooge. As a kid, when I got comic books, my favorite comic book was Uncle Scrooge, who had so many adventures and was always bathing in a swimming pool of cash.

I do know that the name Scrooge did not originate with Walt Disney. The name Scrooge originated with Charles Dickens with the Christmas Carol and with the character Ebenezer Scrooge. I also know that we live in a world where no one wants to be identified as a scrooge. I am pretty confident that there is nobody in this room that would want to be known as a scrooge. I know that Christ, I know that our Lord Jesus, wants his people to be known for their generosity. Here we begin this new series Generous. Today, we look at the life perspective that might make us more generous.

I have two teachings. The first teaching concerns worldview and the second teaching concerns heartbeat. How does your worldview affect your generosity? How does your heartbeat affect your generosity? We begin with worldview. Our Scripture today is from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew six. You just heard the words. In Matthew chapter six Jesus is really talking about our worldview when he says, “Do not lay-up treasures on earth where rust and moth can consume and where thieves break in and steal, but rather layup treasures in heaven where neither rust nor moth consumes and where no thieves break in and steal. Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” He is talking about worldview.

What do you view as most important? Do you view the physical, temporal things of earth as most important? Or do you view the purposes of heaven as most important? Do you view the cause of heaven as most important? Do you view heaven as most important? What is your worldview?

Then Jesus begins to talk about the eye. He says, “The eye is like the lamp of the body and if your eye is generous your whole body will be filled with light. But, if your eye is evil, if your eye is covetous, your whole body will be filled with darkness.” This passage has been debated. The Greek word for generous is “haplous,” and the Greek word for evil or covetous is “poneros.” These words are capable of diverse meanings. In some of your Bibles the word generous, “haplous,” is translated healthy or whole. If your eye is healthy or whole or if your eye is not healthy or not whole, that is how the Greek is rendered in some Bibles.

Understand the word “haplous” does mean generous. When you look at this passage contextually, and you should always look at every verse of the Bible in its context, it certainly is talking about generosity and also about the evil of covetousness. We know that we are near the mark, when we say that “haplous” here means generous. It is capable, contextually, of a different meaning. In fact, the primary meaning of “haplous” is single. So, that Jesus would be saying, “If your eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light but if your eye is covetous, your whole body will be filled with darkness.” That makes sense in the context because Jesus is saying that our eye, our worldview, needs to have a single focus. It needs to be the things of heaven, the purposes of heaven. It needs to be heaven itself. It can’t be the mundane temporal things of earth. Our treasure and our heart need to be focused on heaven.

Jesus, in the context, goes on to say that, “No one can serve two masters.” You have to have a single, “haplous,” master. You can’t have two masters. You can’t have both God and money as your master. “You will either love the one and hate the other, be devoted to one and despise the other, you cannot serve both God and money.” You must have a single eye. Then he goes on to say, “Do not be anxious.” If you have a single eye, you are not going to be anxious about your life, “What you shall eat, what you shall drink, what you shall wear.” If you have a single eye you are going to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. That is the single eye that allows your whole body to be flooded with light. It has to do with the worldview. Everything he says has to do with worldview.

The question this morning as we begin this series called Generous is: Is your eye single or is it characterized by the evil of covetousness? Is your eye single, is it focused on heaven, the things of heaven, the cause of heaven, the purposes of heaven? Are your treasures in heaven? Do you serve God or do you try to serve both God and money? Generosity is tied to this worldview.

In Ecclesiastes chapter three, verse eleven, we are told that God has put eternity in our minds. This reflects the Imago Dei. God, in the Bible, is called the Alpha and Omega. To help you understand that, this past Monday, Barb and I took a little trip up to Fort Collins. We went with my brother Greg and his wife Barb and with my brother Gary and his wife Anne. So, the six of us got into the car and we drove up to Fort Collins. We hadn’t been up there in years. We thought, “Let’s check it out and see what is happening there and try to have some fun.”

We went up to Horsetooth Reservoir and it is beautiful. It is huge. There is recreational boating, hiking, all kinds of activities. It is a cool area. We went to Colorado State University. We walked all around the campus, we went to the “oval,” which is the big grassy area surrounded by the older buildings and the original heart of the school. We walked around all of the campus and it is huge. You could stay in shape just going to class, if you went to class. It is a big, big campus. We went to Old Town Fort Collins. Old Town is really kind of a cool area with some neat restaurants and fun things to do. We went from College Boulevard, which runs right by the campus, over to Shields.

On Shields you see the fraternities and the sororities at Colorado State University. Our daughter, Heather, was a member of a sorority there at CSU. You see all the frat houses and sorority houses there on Shields. It is amazing the number of them. Greek letter societies are really popular in the world today and have been for some time. There are 120 different Greek letter societies with 33,000 chapters and 15,000,000 members. A lot of students are members of Greek letter societies. Have you noticed there is not a single Greek letter society called Alpha and Omega? Not a single one. There is Alpha Tao Omega, Alpha Psi Omega, Alpha Kai Omega, but no Alpha and Omega. The fraternity that we might call Alpha and Omega is really small, it just has three members: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. To be a part of the Alpha and Omega you have to be eternal.

You might think, “Well, the angels are eternal.” No, they are not. They may have an eternal future, but they do not have an eternal past. To be a member of the Alpha and Omega you have to have neither beginning of days nor end of life. Only God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has neither beginning of days nor end of life. The Alpha and Omega. Understand he has created us in his image, the Imago Dei. Therefore, we have this longing for eternity in our hearts. That is why you have Ecclesiastes 3:11. God has so crafted us in his image and likeness that we have this longing for that which is eternal. If your worldview is just absorbed by the mundane, transitory, physicality of this world then something is tragically wrong. If you are not caught up with a passion for things eternal and with the purposes and plans that relate to eternity, if you are not caught up with that you are living life at a lower level and you are not responding to the call of Christ, your worldview is wrong.

So we have Isaiah chapter 9, a passage often quoted at Christmas. And you know the passage. “Unto you a child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Might God, ‘El Gibbor,’ the Everlasting Father, ‘Abi Ad,’ and the Prince of Peace, ‘Sar Shalom.’ Of his kingdom and of his increase, there shall be no end.” This is the plan of God, that his Son would birth an earthly kingdom and that kingdom would never ever end. It would be an eternal kingdom. His Son would be the Wonderful Counselor of his people. By his Word he counsels us, and his counsel is wondrous. Your worldview should have his Word at the center because he is the Wonderful Counselor.

We know the Father through the Son. No man has ever seen the Father. The only Son who is in the bosom of the Father has made him known. He is El Gibbor, he is the Mighty God. We know God through his Son Jesus Christ. Christ is at the center of our worldview. He is Sar Shalom, he is the Prince of Peace and he has brought peace to our lives. It is the peace of forgiveness, it is the peace of knowing your sins are forgiven, it is the peace that knowing your soul is absolutely secure. Your ticket is punched for heaven and nobody can stop it. He is Sar Shalom.

Also we know he will bring peace to this earth. He will turn our swords and plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. He shall reign forever and ever. This is our worldview. This is God’s plan. If you have this worldview, you are going to live life a little differently or a lot differently. One of the effects is generosity. You are not going to want to lay up treasures on earth so much as you want to lay up treasures in heaven because you have this worldview.

Another favorite passage of mine is 1 Timothy chapter six. In 1 Timothy chapter six Paul, writing to Timothy, says, “As for the rich of this world, charge them, command them…” so this is not a suggestion. I hope you understand that we are the rich of the world. You might be thinking, “Wow, the world must be a sad place if we are the rich.” Understand the statistics do not lie. This is Douglas County and the data shows that this county is top ten in the United States in terms of household income. The average household in this county makes $115,000 dollars a year. In a God’s eye view, looking down on the planet, seeing all the nations, we are the rich of the world. If this county is not rich, what county is?

Paul says, “As for the rich of the world, command them, charge them, not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches, but on God, who richly furnishes us with all things to enjoy. Let them do good and be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous.” I want to take a moment there. Liberal and generous. This is his charge, his command, that we be liberal and generous. The word for liberal, it is not a political word; the word for liberal is “eumetadotous.” “Dotous” comes from “didomi,” which means to give, and “eu” is a prefix meaning good. “Meta,” in this context, means share. So, giving a good share. “As for the rich of this world, command them to give away a good share of their wealth.” This is the will of God, this is the command of God. That is the word translated liberal.

The word translated generous is the word “koinonikos.” “Koinonikos” comes from the Greek word koinonia. The word koinonia is a word that refers to the church and to the fellowship and communion of the church. This word “koinonikos” means to share everything you have with the people of Christ. This is talking to the Christian rich.

The Christian rich are to share their possessions with brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the charge, this is the command, given to the Christian rich, that we give a good share and that we make sure we share with our brothers and sisters and the church. It is the next phrase in 1 Timothy chapter six that says, “In order that these Christian rich might lay up a good foundation.” It literally says, “thesaurizo,” “might treasure up a good foundation for the future, that they may take hold of the life that is life indeed.” The word future in this verse is “mellon,” and it means the coming. “That they may treasure up a good foundation for the coming.” It refers to the coming age, which dawns with the coming Christ. “Treasure up a good foundation for the coming age and for the coming of Christ so that we might take hold of the life, which is life indeed, eternal life.” “Zoe,” life. It has to do with worldview. The generosity of 1 Timothy chapter six is all tied to worldview and whether or not we have that worldview that looks at the eternal and sees things in an eternal way.

I love “Amazing Grace.” I love to sing the song “Amazing Grace” by John Newton. I love the verse or the stanza that says, “When we have been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun we have no less days to sing his praise then when we first begun.” We live in a world where we like to quantify things. We like to develop numerical categories that kind of help us get our arms around things. We develop all these different numerical categories. One category would be one thousand, with three zeros after the one. We have one million, with six zeros after the one. We have a billion, with nine zeros after the one. We have a trillion, with twelve zeros after the one, and we have a quadrillion with fifteen zeros after the one. They have developed a googol, with one hundred zeros after the one and now a googolplex, with a billion billion zeros after the one.

Now, they claim that all the electrons in the world do not equal a googolplex. Wow, we have got our arms around everything. We have got it all figured out, we put a label to everything; we can put a numerical category to everything. But you see, it is meaningless. It is all finite. When you sing that verse: “When we have been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun, we have no less days to sing his praise then when we first begun,” you could put googolplex in there. “When we have been a googolplex years, a billion billions, we’ve still no less days to sing his praise then when we first begun.” The days never become less.

We have eternal life! God wants us to have this worldview where we so live our days here, in this classroom, in this time of preparation, in ways that please him, thinking about the purposes of heaven, the cause of heaven, and thinking about serving heaven. If this is true then you are going to be generous towards the cause of heaven and towards those things that are eternal. You are going to be generous. You are going to be generous to Colorado Christian University because it has behind it the cause of heaven and it has eternal purposes it is serving. It has a chance to be the greatest Christian institution of higher learning between Wheaton and Westmont if the body of Christ would get behind it. If you really have this worldview, you are going to want to help that.

You are going to want to help Valor because Valor is wanting to send out generations of young people who love Christ and who are ready to serve Christ and impact this world. It has to do with the cause of heaven and eternal purposes. You are going to want to be generous towards our three schools here called Cherry Hills Christian Schools—pre-school, elementary school and middle school—because we are seeking to raise up generations for Christ.

You are going to want to be generous to this church. You are going to want to be generous to the church of Christ universal. You are going to want to be generous to the parachurch. You are going to want to be generous to Young Life, Youth for Christ, Campus Crusade, Fellowship of Christian Athlete, World Vision, Project Cure, Global Impact. You are going to want to be generous to every cause that honors heaven and the eternal purposes.

You are going to want to be generous not just with your money; you are going to want to be generous with your time. You are going to want to go into the Sunday school class and you are going to want to teach, you are going to want to help kids and you are going to want to have an eternal impact on their soul. Food and football isn’t going to be enough to satisfy you. You are going to want to go into the inner city and you are going to want to tutor and mentor a kid because you want to have eternal significance in a life, in their life and the life of their soul.

I think of John 14 and the words of Jesus that he is going to prepare a place for us and that where he is, there we may be. I don’t know what you are doing today after the service. Maybe you are going out to lunch, maybe you have plans. But at some point today, I assume, you are going to go back to your house. I hope it is a home to you. I hope that you have joy there. I hope you feel blessed there. But understand, this world is not your home. The Bible says we are aliens and exiles on this earth. The Bible says we are strangers and sojourners on this earth. The Bible says this world is not our home. Jesus said he has gone to prepare a place for us. This is our worldview. It affects everything we do and how we do it.

There is a second thought this morning, and I know our time is short. The second thought has to do with our heartbeat. Generosity is not just impacted by our worldview, but it is impacted by our heartbeat. I know, at the physical level, all of you care about your heartbeat. I think you would like your heart to keep beating. I feel that way. I have noticed as I have gotten older that things start falling apart a bit. My heart is part of what starts falling apart.

A year and a half ago, I was preaching here on a Sunday morning. Before the chapel service, I always have a prayer time in my office at seven o’clock on Sunday morning. I have this prayer time and I notice that my heart starts racing. I check my pulse and it is 170 beats a minute, which is fine for a bird, but not real good for me. I am like, “Oh, man this is kind of scary.” I tell Barb and we pray together and ask the Lord to get us through the morning because the morning is just beginning. I was trying to focus but my heart continued to race all morning, through the chapel service and then we did the middle service and then we did this last service. After the services my heart was still racing.

We went home and we thought, “What could be causing this?” I had been on a diet that was very low-carb and I had read in a book that in this very low-carb diet can affect your potassium levels and I had also read that potassium has something to do with regulating heartbeat so I thought, “I will just take some potassium supplements.” It is nice when you can be your own doctor. I took some potassium and I got better. My heartbeat returned to normal. I thought, “The whole thing is solved. What a wonderful self-diagnosis.”

The days began to pass and then it happened again. Then at a General Assembly when I was making a two-and-a-half-hour report with a question-and-answer time because I had co-chaired this national committee on women, I was nervous before I got up there and I noticed it really happened with arrhythmia this time, an irregular heartbeat. All kinds of weird stuff and Barb and I thought, “We better go to the doctor.”

We went to the doctor and to the cardiologist and I was diagnosed with atrial flutter. Atrial flutter is a little like atrial fib. It is pretty common; millions of people have it. You can regulate it normally with medicine. Thank God, in my case, we are regulating it with medicine. You can’t just let it go. Atrial flutter and atrial fib and all forms of arrhythmia are dangerous. You can’t just say, “What’s for dinner?” You have got to take this seriously.

Heartbeat is important. I think on the spiritual side, in terms of our spiritual heartbeat, it is even more important. Does your heartbeat, spiritually, match the heartbeat of God? Does it reflect the heartbeat of Christ? Does your heart beat with the things he is passionate for? I really believe that generosity is oftentimes tied to our heart beat. When you look at a passage like Matthew 6:19- 21: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, lay-up treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Sometimes, I think, something is wrong with our heart. Something is wrong with the heart of people in the world and even in the church. We have got something wrong with our heartbeat.

If you have seen the movie Sense and Sensibility based on Jane Austen’s great novel, the movie won many awards and it is a beautiful love story. It is a great period piece and you certainly go back in time. But it is a time when inheritance is passed on from father to son and wives and daughters get nothing of the inheritance. By English law, in that period all the wealth was passed on from man to man. Women were at the mercy of man. The movie Sense and Sensibility begins with a father dying. The father is dying, and he has his son at his side and he is entrusting his wealth and his inheritance to his son but he is saying to his son, “Remember your stepmother and your step-sisters. They need you to be generous. Take care of my wife, your stepmother. Take care of my daughters, your half-sisters. Be generous with them. You have the money, but you must help them.”

Then you come to this scene and the son is with his wife and they are discussing what it means to be generous with these other family members … and something is wrong with their heartbeat. Something is wrong with his heartbeat and something is really wrong with his wife’s heartbeat. They are talking about how much should go to the other women go from 3,000 pounds a year to 1,500 to 500 to debating whether the inheritance should really even take the form of money. We have this problem in our hearts. It is worldwide but it is even in the church and in the body of Christ. It kills the eternal purposes of God and the cause of heaven itself. The question is: How do we change our heartbeat? How do we cure this?

I downloaded a deal on my computer this week at the advice of one of our elders, Tim Coan. It was a speech that Tim wanted me to hear by a guy named Sasha Dichter. Sasha Dichter is the director of development for the Acumen Fund. He was giving this talk to the Next Generation Charity conference. Hat he was proposing was a Generosity Experiment. He said, “Here is what I want you to do for one month.” He said this to the whole audience, “For one month I want you to say yes to every solicitation. You can determine the amount that you give but you have got to give something. No matter how little, you have got to give something. For one month you say yes to every solicitation, whether it comes in the mail or whether it comes through email or whether someone just comes up to you on the street. I want you to say yes to every plea for help.”

He said, “I know that you are going to enable some people. I know there is a problem with enabling. I know there are problems with accountability. I know that we all need to do triage and look at what is most important in terms of our giving and set priorities. There are certain things we just can’t do. I know that. For this one month, just learn to say yes. Give your heart a chance to establish a new pattern. Change your heartbeat. Take a month and try to say, ‘yes, yes, yes, yes’ and see if it doesn’t change your heartbeat.”

I thought, “Wow!” I think even out in the world there is the understanding that something is wrong with our heartbeat. Something is dreadfully, horribly wrong with our heartbeat. Our hearts pretty much beat for ourselves and they don’t beat for the things of Christ and for the needs of people and the cause of the eternal kingdom. There is something wrong with our heartbeat.

I love “Life Song.” I asked Randy to sing that today because it is, “Let my life be a song to you. Let me offer my body as a living sacrifice and as a song to you. Let everything I say and everything I do be a song to you. Let my wealth and my giving be a song to you. Let my life song sing for you.” Early in the service Judy Moore sang, “Where My Treasure Is, My Heart Will Be.” That was early in the service. I always feel bad for whoever does anything early in the service because 90 percent of you aren’t here, which is another problem. She sang that beautiful song. It fits what we are saying today. I know for me, my heartbeat changes through worship and through singing. Sometimes I will sit here and during our worship time as we are singing praises to God, I can feel my heart change. I am touched with an awareness and I get a sense of awe for him and a deeper love for him. I even start to love people more. There is this change in the heartbeat as we sing.

As we start this Generosity deal, remember it is tied to worldview and it is tied to heartbeat. We are going to be taking a look at how we can change these things. As we close here, I want to remind you we have these free books and I want to encourage you to go through here. The subject I dealt with today is in chapter three, Eternal Perspective. I want you take the book and let’s go through it together. Let’s take the next five weeks and go through it together and see if at the end of the day we don’t put a smile on the face of Christ.

I want to encourage you, as Steve said, to get in one of the small groups. We have these community groups that are being formed just for this. You could make a five-week commitment to a group and get into a group and discuss your worldview and discuss your heartbeat and all the things that relate to generosity. Let’s do it together. We are going to have our children in Sunday school go through this. We are focusing on this as a congregation. We want to give Christ a chance. This isn’t a fundraiser deal; we aren’t fundraising for anything. This has to do with our lives and whether we are living our lives as Christ would have us and with his heart and his mind. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.