Free for Good – October 4, 2026

Hello, my name is Eddie.

The Old Testament reading is found in Proverbs chapter thirty verses seven through nine.

Two things I ask of you.

Don't keep them from me before I die.

Fraud and lies.

Keep far from me.

Don't keep don't give me either poverty or wealth.

Give me just the food I need, or I'll be fool and deny you.

And say, Who is the Lord?

Or I'll be poor and steal.

And design.

The word of the Lord.

Good morning.

Thank you.

My name is Eric.

Thank you again.

The New Testament reading is from the book of First Timothy, chapter six.

Verses six through ten.

Actually, godliness is a great source of profit when it is combined with being happy with what you already have.

We didn't bring anything into the world, and so we can't take anything out of it.

We'll be happy with food and clothing.

But people who are trying to get rich fall into temptation.

They are trapped by many stupid and harmful passions that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Some have wandered away from the faith and have impaled themselves with a lot of pain because they made money their goal.

If you are able, please stand for the gospel reading found in Luke 3, 10 through 14.

The crowds asked him, What then should we do?

He answered, Whoever has two shirts must share with the one who has none, and whoever has food must do the same.

Even tax collectors came to be baptized.

They said to him, Teacher, what should we do?

He replied, Collect no more than you are authorized to collect.

Soldiers asked, What about us?

What should we do?

He answered, Don't cheat or harass anyone, and be satisfied with your pay.

The gospel of the Lord.

Please remain standing with me as we pray.

We're going to pray the Lord's Prayer again together today.

So if you're comfortable grabbing someone's hand next to you, if not, no worries.

Uh, but this is the family prayer that Jesus gave us.

So let's pray it together.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Good morning again.

I want to say hi to anybody who's watching online or watching the recording later, maybe serving kids or students this morning.

Thank you.

And thanks for watching the recording a little bit later on.

Hey, before we dive into today's message, I just want to remind you that this week, uh really Friday and Saturday, we're kicking off a whole month of vision meetings at the Commons.

And so you should have maybe seen an email or a post go out.

You can also find information on our website or on the QR code uh behind me that we're going to be hosting a number of these.

Uh, they're designed for about 49 people, each one of them.

So we'll do as many as we fill up uh along the way.

We'll add more if uh if we need to.

But these will be really different than our normal congregation meetings.

There are a lot of just kind of updating and one-directional sort of conversation.

These will be really interactive gatherings.

We'll be sharing a lot of stories and get a chance to share some things that we feel like God is leading us into, but then for you to speak into those things and to talk about what are you seeing, what are you hearing as we discern together as a congregation.

So my hope is that everyone would be able to attend one of those meetings.

And if you can, please register as soon as possible so that we can determine whether or not we need to eat uh add others and make all the plans for those.

So if you haven't registered already, uh, please take some time to do that uh either today or later on this week.

And for everybody who already has, thank you.

Look forward to having the first one on Friday.

Uh so today is the last day in our seven-week series on the common good.

We've been exploring just some of the ways that we join Jesus and his mission to restore the people and places of his world.

This is a deep part of the identity of any church and a deep part of our identity as the communion of saints.

That we say that we are a community of disciples who are formed in a common faith through a common life for the common good.

In other words, our formation is for the purpose of being a blessing to the world that begins actually inside of the church, uh, that we seek the common good, the flourishing of one another, and then it cascades out from the church into the city and beyond.

So in the first week of the series, we just talked about how do Christians define the common good?

Then we spent three weeks talking about vocational stewardship, how our paid and unpaid work can contribute to the flourishing of others.

And now we're spending three weeks talking about one aspect of financial stewardship, which is the Christian practice of giving, and how our giving contributes to the common good as well.

And we've recognized each one of these weeks that we're talking about this topic, that this can be really difficult.

Any conversations about money can be really hard conversations to have, especially if you're dealing with any kind of financial insecurity.

If you're out of work, you're trying to pay off debt, you just find yourself stretched thin by all of the rising costs.

Maybe you're recovering from a challenging season where, hey, things are going better, but there was a couple of really hard years there.

Um, or you just are healing from some past situations, maybe even past situations in church where the way that this topic was handled became uh really complicated in your own journey with Jesus.

So we want to name that while also at the same time saying, as the church, part of our task together is to lean into difficult conversations together, important conversations for disciples of Jesus.

That we are trying to practice as a community a holistic discipleship.

In other words, we want the way of Jesus and the words of Jesus to shape our whole lives for our whole lives, not just this part of our life.

Like, oh, Jesus, you can kind of speak here, but actually say, Jesus, how do we live your way in every way of our lives?

We want you to completely shape us.

And so we wanted to recognize those things.

We also, um, if you were here last week, recognize that the scriptures are actually really dynamic in the way that they approach this conversation.

Uh, that when you look throughout the scriptures, this is a really nuanced and dynamic conversation.

That the Bible does take into account people's current financial states.

That Jesus is someone who moves with compassion upon those who are facing all kinds of struggle.

If you think of the way that the scriptures talk about the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the immigrant, it leads us to go, oh, how does Jesus kind of see us when we're facing those extreme difficulties?

It's with a ton of compassion, though oftentimes what we end up experiencing is a ton of guilt or shame rather than the compassion and kindness of God.

So the scripture teachings take in our financial state.

They also take into serious consideration the state of our hearts.

What's really going on on the inside, not just what's happening outside with our checkbook or whatever that has a checkbook, I haven't used that word in a long time.

Uh, you know, whatever that some of you are like, I don't even know what that is.

Um just ask somebody who's older.

Um, but the the state of our heart, like what's going on internally, but then the scriptures also invite us to look beyond ourselves to the needs of our neighbors.

So those dynamics are all at play.

What is our current financial state?

What's the state of our heart, and what's the state of those that are around us?

So in this little mini-series, we're exploring the five reasons that Christians who are able to give do give.

And we've covered three of those so far.

The first one was this is that we give because we first received, that all financial discipleship and really stewardship of every kind begins with the awareness that everything that we have comes from God, that this is all gift, that everything we have comes from him.

It wasn't our own making, our own doing, but his gift to us.

Yes, we participated in real ways by working hard and studying hard and doing all of those kinds of things.

Yes, but even those things, those abilities, those opportunities are a gift from God.

The second thing is we recognize that Christians, we give as an act of worship.

We give in response to who God is and what God has done.

We give in gratitude.

Oh, yes, thank you.

And in trust.

Oh, you who've provided for me, we trust that you will continue to, and in joy of that gratitude springing up in that way.

The scriptures say that God loves a cheerful giver, that we're able to move beyond a sense of seeing giving as a duty to giving as a delight, that we get to worship God in this way.

And then the last thing we talked about last week was that we give to be formed into God's image.

One of the things the scriptures tell us is that our God is a generous God.

And so when we give, we participate in the Spirit's work of making us generous people.

That's the hope that we become more like our God.

And as we become more generous people, what do other people experience?

They experience the generosity of God in a real way that makes it tangible.

So we're gonna talk about the last two reasons that we give today.

And the first one is this is that we give to be set free.

We give particularly to be set free from greed and from worry.

A few moments ago, we read this.

Uh Eddie read for us this radical prayer from Proverbs 30.

Two things I ask of you, and don't keep them for me before I die.

Keep fraud and lies, keep those things far from me.

And we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amen.

And then he says, Don't give me either poverty or wealth.

Wait, can we scratch out one of those?

The proverb says, Don't give me either one.

And you're like, what is wrong with you?

And then they say something so profound.

Give me just the food that I need.

Because if I have more, then I may be tempted to deny you and to say, Who's my God?

I have everything that I need, it all came from my own hands.

Or if I don't have enough, I might be tempted to steal and then dishonor your name in that way.

Do not give me either poverty or wealth, just give me the food that I need.

Jesus actually quotes this prayer in his own teaching.

You and I have prayed this prayer a thousand times or more.

Give us today our daily bread.

This prayer gets embedded in the very prayer that we pray all the time.

Jesus is teaching us to pray that we would learn to be content and to be grateful in the simple things within life.

A few verses later, after Jesus teaches us that prayer to pray for our daily sourdough, he then goes on and provides some of the most poignant and pointed teachings on money.

Jesus says this in Matthew 6, verse 19, he says, Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them, and where thieves break in and steal them.

Matthew 6:19

Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven where moth and rust don't eat them, and where thieves don't break in and steal them, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Jesus then uses similar language in Matthew 19, is there's this uh man who comes to Jesus and he says to Jesus, Hey, what must I do to inherit, to have, to enter into eternal life?

And they have this conversation.

At the end of the conversation, Jesus is talking about the commandments and other things, and the guy's like, Yay, I've done all of those things.

And then Jesus says, if you want to be complete, if you want to be whole, if you want to be healed and made well and all of those things, then go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor.

Then you will have treasures.

There's that word again, and heaven.

And then come follow me.

And when the young man heard this, he went away sad because he had many possessions or many treasures.

And then Jesus turned to his disciples and said, Truly, I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

So this idea of treasure certainly includes our possessions, our stuff, whether that's our physical things or all of our digital currency or whatever it happens to be.

It includes our possessions, but we can see in Jesus' teachings it goes way beyond that.

Because it's talking not just so much about what's in our hands, but what's in our hearts.

That these things are intimately connected with one another.

So Jesus is really pushing beyond to our attachments, to our affections.

Scott McKnight in his commentary says the treasures he refer to the accumulation of things as a focus of joy.

Oh, this is where I'll find joy in life, is that I can just have all of these things.

If I could just get the new iPhone 18 Pro Max, whatever it happens to be, then my tech worries will all be gone and I will be happy.

But it's not just joy, that accumulation, that kind of living can be like, oh, this is when I have this much, then I'll have security.

Or when I have this much, then I feel like I will know who I am.

There'll be some identity that's gets connected to having things, or if I reach this economic status, then I will belong in this group, or if I can do these things, then I will have significance.

And all of a sudden, we start looking for security, identity, belonging, significance, meaning, hope in all of the wrong places.

When I was a little kid, my dad collected toy tractors, you know like those little like John Deere, Massey Ferguson, Case International tractors and combines, and in our family room where our TV was, there were just shelves all around and had all of these different tractors on display.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, there was a sign that said this it says, he who dies with the most toys wins.

I'm like, oh, I'm not sure what we win in that moment, but I wonder how many other ways we fill in that blank.

He or she who dies with the most net worth.

Is that winning?

He or she who dies with the most properties, the most experiences, the most travels, the most shoes, the most bikes, the most fantasy football points.

Like, what does winning look like to us?

When we think about what it means to win at life, when we think about what a good life might look like or a great life, and then what picture or what role do finances play in that?

I wonder how often when we imagine a good life, how much of it is attached to possessing, to owning, to achieving in some financial way.

Years after uh I moved out of the house, I saw another sign that said this he who dies with the most toys still dies.

This may be getting closer to Jesus' you cannot take anything out of this world.

But Jesus in his teaching is contrasting two treasures.

And he's really it's uh really contrasting two approaches to attachments or to acquisition and two relationships to possessions and things, two attachment styles, if you will.

One is entirely built on self-interest, it's focused on the near term, i.e., the years of our life here on earth.

It's focused on our personal benefit in this temporal, unpredictable world of moths and rust and thieves and gas prices and market changes and anything else that we might fill in the middle of that.

It says there's another way of living that's focused on the care of others, that's focused on the rewards not found here and now, but in the eternal promised kingdom of God.

And in this teaching, sometimes we can hear Jesus the wrong way.

Jesus is not warning us against saving, he's not warning us against investing, he's not warning us against planning for the future.

He's not, he's not saying those things.

What he is, though, he is warning us about the dangers of wealth.

Something that we just don't think about very often.

In his forthcoming book, Adam Pelser, I don't know if Adam is here, he's writing a book on uh textbook on Christian ethics, uh, and he quotes within uh his chapter on generosity another local author who says, it's this kind of way of living that has become the respectable sin within the Western worlds.

Oh, that's the kind of life that I want, is a life that's just marked by the acquisition of more.

What Jesus is worrying about is what happens in our hearts in the middle of that.

Paul puts it this way in the New Testament reading: he says, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

It's missed place affection, it's love of money that really is the other word for that is greed.

It's this sense of I need to excessively accumulate.

It is a disordered and insessatable desire for more than we need that causes something to happen inside of us that begins to inhibit our love toward others.

Aquinas referred to this as stinginess or ungenerosity.

The Bible uses the term tight-fisted.

I just need to hold on to everything and have more and more and more.

And there's at some point along that journey where our possessions begin to possess us, where we begin to be taken over by greed.

That we are no longer just sort of making wise and prudent decisions, but there is something else going on inside of us.

This may be most clearly depicted when we think about the character Shmig.

In the Lord of the Rings.

That his desire to possess the precious.

Precious.

I could only say that because Sarah's not here.

Like, if you want to terrify my wife, just bring out Schmeagel or Gollum in any way.

She's like, yeah, I'm done with this conversation.

She's going to be really mad at me now because she's volunteering in kids this morning, and you guys are all going to go and find her.

And then I'm going to hear about it this afternoon.

So thank you.

But his pursuit of the precious results in a loss of self.

Even his name changes.

He becomes known as Gollum.

He becomes known as a different creature altogether.

That something is so fundamentally taking hold of his heart that he loses himself.

This is what greed does to us.

Greed causes us to lose our humanity somewhere along the way.

And the image of God gets distorted inside of us.

And a similar thing actually happens with the other side with worry.

Worry can grip us in a very similar way.

In the same teaching where he's talking about stirring up treasures in heaven, Jesus goes on a few verses later and he says, Therefore I say to you, don't worry about your life.

Don't worry about what you'll eat or what you'll drink or about your body or what you'll wear.

Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothes?

Look at the birds in the sky.

They don't sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into the barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.

Aren't you worth much more than they are?

Who among you, by wording, can add a single moment to your life?

Now, a couple of things before we expound on that.

I think it's important to note here that Jesus is addressing people with means.

He's not telling the poor, the hungry, and the houseless, hey, don't worry about it.

It's not his direction.

He has different things to say when he's dealing with people who find themselves on the edges and margins of society.

He's talking to those who are tempted to seek their security in wealth and possessions.

And Jesus here is addressing the ordinary anxiety that we experience as people, the common anxiety to all of us that kind of comes and goes kind of throughout our lives, but generally doesn't disrupt us.

It's not benign, it can have a profound influence on how we live and how we interact with other people, but Jesus is not talking about the persistent, pervasive, intense anxiety disorders that disrupt our lives.

So if you experience that kind of anxiety, the kind of anxiety that really does deserve the attention of medical health professionals and maybe medicine and all of those kind of things, Jesus is not saying just stop it, okay?

That's not what he's talking about here.

There's tons of compassion and awareness that things happen in our brains physiologically that we just need different help for, just like if we have something going on in our stomach or somewhere else, that we need a different kind of treatment.

And so if that's you, I want to encourage you to keep seeking your uh mental health providers and professionals and all of those kind of things.

Or if you need help finding one, please come and talk to us.

Jesus is also not saying, hey, don't work and don't be wise.

He's not saying that.

What he's telling us is to not have a particular kind of worry that can have the same impact as greed, the kind of worry that causes us to just focus on the acquisition of things that we don't have enough of, or we don't have, or I want this, or I want that, or I need that, and I don't know who I am, or I don't know what will happen today, I don't know what happened tomorrow.

I don't know what will happen here, there if I don't have this, this, and it causes a kind of fretting or striving.

It's a fruitless search for security, identity, belonging, and significance in stuff.

That's what Jesus is talking about.

Where hearts get caught up in it again, and we find ourselves entrapped.

Our life becomes solely focused on acquiring or accumulating.

Jesus offers us a pathway toward freedom.

In his teaching in Matthew 6, he says, tells us to consider the creation, to look around at the birds and the lilies, and somehow in creation to be able to glimpse the father who clothes them and feeds them.

Sort of say, oh yes, we have a good father that we can trust.

And then he says this he says, So instead of that, instead of devoting your life to acquiring or accumulating, instead desire first and foremost the God's kingdom and God's righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

It's the same kind of intense language as to strive or devote serious effort, but to take all of that effort that we normally put into acquiring or accumulating, it says, hey, devote that to the kingdom.

Give it there.

Because the truth is that greed and worry are really quite costly.

They require a lot of time, a lot of energy.

They can even require a lot of our resources, and they certainly can cost us our relationships.

And they can become remarkably futile and even counterproductive.

They cannot add a moment to our lives or secure our future outside of the kingdom.

Instead, what greed and worry can do is they can actually shorten our lives and diminish them quite greatly.

So Jesus tells us to take all of that time and all of that energy and all of those resources and to reinvest them in the kingdom through the practices of simplicity and generosity.

Oh.

Learn to be content with whatever we have.

Look for places to invest in the kingdom of God by allowing what we've been entrusted with to be used for the impact of the common good, and then see how God begins to set our hearts free, to change us in the inside out.

And that brings us to the fifth thing is that when we do that, we're able to give to participate in God's kingdom.

To instead of putting all of that time and energy and resource into acquiring and accumulating, but to say, okay, how do I get to participate in the in-breaking kingdom of God?

Oh, I can learn contentment and simplicity that I might give with more generosity and then find myself fully embedded in the in-breaking kingdom of God.

The book of Acts describes the early church this way as the gospel got a hold of their hearts.

It says that periodically some of them would sell properties and they would said this about them.

There were no needy persons among them.

For those who own properties or houses, this is usually not their primary home.

It's like a second or third home.

Okay, so this is not a call to sell your house and then go like, oh, I have nowhere to live.

Okay, so this is people with multiple properties here.

Those who own properties and houses would sell them and bring the proceeds from the sales, and they place them in the care and under the authority of the apostles, and then it was distributed to anyone who was in need.

And then the outside world is sort of watching, they're looking at this new group of people who have no business belonging together, all coming together because of Jesus.

And now they're practicing these radical things in order to take care of one another in ways that weren't even common for families to do.

And they're looking, going, oh, wait, what is this?

And the church would say, Oh, that's the kingdom of God.

Because in the in-breaking kingdom of God, there are no needy persons among them.

When we think about the world to come, so when everyone, as the scriptures say, lives under their own vine and fig tree.

Some of you Hamilton fans get that reference as well, but it actually comes from the prophets.

But oh, our needs are met in Christ.

It was through giving that the early church and the historic church and the global church and the church today partners with God to make this world more like the world to come.

That in giving, we're participating in the arrival of God's kingdom.

That when we give, when we learn how to live with open hands and willingly and joyfully give our first and best into the kingdom, we find that we are set free from greed and worry.

We're transformed into God's image, and we're set free for the sake of others.

That we begin to see what happens on earth look like it's going to look like in heaven.

God's kingdom come, God's will be done.

And our giving becomes God's means for making this world look that way.

It becomes the means for making disciples, it becomes the means for meeting practical needs among us, it becomes the means for partnering with missionaries like Adam and Olivia for ministries around the city and around the world.

It becomes the means for planting churches, it becomes the means for all of that stuff.

Where's all of that fuel coming from?

Oh, it's coming from the people of God who are learning to embody the very character and nature of our generous God in the world.

So we give because we first received, we give as an act of worship, we give to be formed in his image, we give to be set free from greed and worry, ultimately, so that we can give to participate in the in-breaking kingdom of God.

And so throughout history, Christians have then said, okay, if that's true about how we're to manage our finances, then what do we do?

Like, how do we live that out?

And so throughout this series, we've been talking about what are the practical steps that we grow in our giving.

Just like in everything else that we do as followers of Jesus, we read the Bible.

How do you become like proficient at reading the Bible?

Well, you have to read it.

That's the start.

You read it once, right?

Like, okay, I made it through.

I opened, I pointed, I read, good.

And then it's like, well, well, no, like let's make it a habit.

Maybe once a week, maybe twice a week.

Maybe move to the point where we're reading it every day and saying, Oh, I don't live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And we begin to grow by doing it and then doing it regularly and seeing what happens from there.

And so giving is the exact same way as Bible reading and prayer and everything else, that the beginning point is just to give something.

Just to say, like, okay, maybe I'm living in a way that I'm I'm holding on really tight.

And I want to start just by giving something.

And then as you go along, it's just saying, okay, I've I've given something and I started there, and then it's okay, I survived that?

Like we made it through.

Okay, maybe I want to trust Jesus by giving it giving regularly, by making this a habit, by setting up recurring giving or giving every time I get paid, or whatever that happens to be, and to move from giving simply to giving regularly.

But there are additional sort of movements beyond that that once we begin to give regularly, the encouragement of the scriptures is to learn to give generously.

That once it becomes a habit, then the encouragement is to grow in generosity, to be the kind of people that prayerfully consider: are there ways to simplify my life?

To eat out less, to cancel a subscription, to reduce, to sell an extra car or house, to make a commitment to live on less.

Are there other things that I can do in order to then give more?

To grow in the practice of generosity and hopes that as I'm doing, I'm setting up before God as a prayer and asking him to set me free and to make me more like him.

And then ultimately the goal is to learn to be people who give sacrificially.

The goal of all spiritual formation, of all discipleship, is to become people of love.

That's the goal, is to become more like Jesus.

And so, for followers of Jesus, the love of God is most clearly revealed on the cross.

It is self-sacrificial, self-giving love.

And so people were called to become people who give sacrificially.

Now, that should always be paired with discernment.

It should always be done in prayerful conversation with God, with loved ones, with financial professionals, etc., all of those things.

But the ultimately the hope is that we become people who give sacrificially and find great joy and hope and peace in the middle of all of that.

And so toward that end, each week during this series, we've been praying some various prayers just to pray over our giving.

Uh, whether you're giving here, giving somewhere else, maybe you've given something, maybe you set up regular giving.

And oftentimes uh we set up regular giving and then we begin to forget why we're giving.

And so we've been praying these prayers together, and we're gonna do a longer one today.

This is coming from uh Church of the City in New York.

So some of you know Pastor John Tyson and uh the community that he leads there.

This is the prayer that they pray over um their giving, and I want us to pray it together today.

So maybe you can open up your hands and um if you're thinking about the gifts that you've already given or the ways that you give in some way, um, let's just pray over those things as a reminder of why we give as followers of Jesus.

So, Holy Father, there is nothing I have that you have not given me.

All I have and am belong to you, bought with the blood of Jesus.

To spend everything on myself and to give without sacrifice is the way of the world that you cannot abide.

But generosity is the way of those who call Christ their Lord, who love him with free hearts and serve him with renewed minds, who withstand the delusion of riches that chokes the word, whose hearts are in your kingdom and not in the systems of the world's.

I am determined to increase in generosity until it can be said that there is no needy person among us.

I am determined to be trustworthy with such a little thing as money that you may trust me with true riches.

Above all, I am determined to be generous because you, Father, are generous.

It is the delight of your daughters and sons to share your traits and to show what you are like to the world.

Amen.

That language, I am determined, I think is John's way of or his team's way of capturing Jesus' words, seek first the kingdom of God.

Desire, pursue, put all of our effort into that.

But what you sometimes can forget, even in those moments, is we can begin to start to think, like, oh, that transformation work is all happening by my own will.

And we come to the table this morning as the team come forward to remind yourself that's not actually how it is.

Paul has this beautiful statement.

I forgot to put it up on the screen, but it's in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul says, by God's grace I am what I am.

And then he says, and I worked harder than all of them.

That's like, oh, I experienced grace, and that grace was I began to begin to work, to desire, to seek, to thrust and throw myself into the kingdom of God.

And then he says this, and he says, Oh, but that wasn't me.

That was the grace of God at work within me.

So even as we come to the table, we're reminded that everything again begins with us receiving the grace of God.

Coming in with open hands and asking as we receive the elements this morning that Jesus would capture our hearts, that he would transform us into his image and likeness, that he would set us free for the sake of his inbreaking kingdom.

Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, for as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

Amen.