Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 19, 2010
Belonging to God
Luke 12:22-33
Everything Belongs to God
Let me tell you something you already know. Everything we are and everything we have belongs to God.
We say it in one of our most cherished hymns:
“We give thee but thine own, whate’re the gift may be; all that we have is thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from thee.”
And we said it at the time of the offering in our old green worship book:
“Merciful Father, we offer with joy and thanksgiving what you have first given us—ourselves, our time, and our possessions, signs of your gracious love.”
It is not possible to give to God anything that does not already belong to God. Stewardship is simply a matter of putting this faith to action.
That’s Good News!
The message that we belong to God is good news, even though it may not sound like it at first. Because God is very good at being in charge.
You are not in charge. Not of your own body, your time, your talents, your physical appearance, your personality or your money.
You are not in charge because they do not belong to you. You just got them on loan. That pretty face…on loan. That brilliant mind …on loan. That athletic physique…on loan. The hours and days that make up your schedule…on loan. And your money, your possessions, your house, your car, your checking account, your pension plan…all on loan.
The bible says we all are dust and to dust we shall return. We bring nothing into this world and we take nothing out. But we need not worry about it. Because we belong to God and this God to whom we belong only wants the best for us.
God Purchased and Redeemed Us
Why do we belong to God? Well, first of all, we belong to God because God made us. The bible says, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” We did not create ourselves. We have a creator to whom we belong. That is the first reason.
And the second reason that we belong to God is because God purchased us. God bought us so that we could be God’s people. Saint Paul tells us twice in the book of 1 Corinthians: You are not your own, because “you were bought with a price.” And that price, of course, was the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And now we are to live for the Christ who died for us.
Not a “Catch,” but a Gift
In the DVD that I am showing the Adult Bible Class today, the one that goes along with the book Giving To God, (the one we are asking all of you to read), Dr. Powell says that many of us think of this as “the Catch.”
We are glad Jesus died for us. We are glad for that. But now we “owe” him BIG TIME! We see living for Jesus as an obligation, not a privilege. We are now eternally in debt to Jesus. And since we can never do enough to repay Jesus, some preacher is always in our face asking us to do more, more, more. We always seem to need to do more.
But Dr. Powell invites us to look at it a different way. He invites us to see salvation is a gift. A totally free gift. And to see that we do not “owe” God anything for it.
Belonging to God and living for Christ is not a means by which we try to pay God back for salvation. It is salvation. Belonging to God is not a “response” to salvation. Belonging to God and following Christ is a way of describing what it means to be saved.
Wow! God Saved Me!
Dr. Powell says look at it this way. Think back to the time of the Exodus. God frees slaves from bondage in Egypt. God leads them out through water, through the Red Sea. And the very first thing God does is to say, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage. I am your God and you are my people.”
Now not a single one of those liberated slaves said, “Oh, shucks, now I owe God big time.” No, what they said was, “You have lifted me up like as on the wings of an eagle.”
And all that has led to what is probably one of the most popular and frequently requested songs in our Lutheran book of worship. The song On Eagle’s Wings. We sang it at Stan Green’s funeral, and we will sing it at the close of our worship today:
“And he will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hands.”
Does that sound to you like, “Oh, shucks, now we owe God big time”? No, of course it doesn’t! It is “Wow!” God saved me.
God Will Provide
If God spends so much time to create us and to redeem us, don’t you think that this same God will do everything in his power to protect and provide for us?
It is what we hear from the lips of Jesus in our gospel lesson for today:
“Do not worry about your life, what you shall eat,…or what shall you wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”
This the God that we want to put in charge of our money and in charge of our lives.
What Would Happen If…
And let me ask you this? What would happen if you did put this God in charge of your money? Would you have more of it? Or, would you have less of it?
There are many stories in the bible where God prospers generous people and increases their wealth. God does it for Abraham who let his nephew Lot have first dibs on the land of promise. And God did it for Ruth who left everything to care for her mother-in-law Naomi. God did it for the widow of Zaraphath, who gave the prophet Elijah the last bit of flour and the last bit of oil out of her little cruse.
And yet, there are also stories in the bible where God commands people to give everything away, like the rich young ruler and some of the disciples. And later in church history many monks and nuns heard the call to give everything away, including Saint Francis of Assisi and our own Martin Luther. I cannot say what God is telling you specifically. I cannot tell you what God’s perfect plan is for your life.
Not a Preview, but a Promise
But I can tell you this. That while God does not give to each of us the exact same pattern for living out our life in Christ, God does give us all the same promise.
God wants the “best life” available for us in this world and in the world to come. God wants us to have wonderful, blessed lives.
And if you put God in charge of your finances, if you use all of your money and possessions as a steward who belongs to God, your life will get better not worse. When we put God in charge of any area of our life our lives get better not worse.
Stewardship is about belonging to God. But not just any God. We belong to a God of grace of loves us and takes care of us. And who wants us to have wonderful, joyful lives. Think of it this way. If God shed the blood of his own son to redeems, don’t you think he will take pretty good care of us?
“Do not worry,” Jesus said. Why? Because… you belong to God. And that is good news for us.
Part of a sermon series based on Dr. Mark Allen Powell’s Giving to God (Eerdmans, 2006)

































