Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - Sermon

PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS
A Message on Genuine Love
based on 1 John 2:7 – 11

Introduction:

Have you ever heard the expression, “Put your money where your mouth is”? I am sure many have heard this expression before. It's an expression that strongly suggests that a person's claim should be backed up by their willingness to put their money there. If someone said he is willing to pledge a certain amount of money for a charitable cause, then he must back it up by giving the pledged amount and not just put up a grand show of boasting. If someone is interested in buying your house, he won't just say it out loud to you but he's going to give you what is known as “earnest” money, or money paid to confirm a contract.

But the expression is not just about being ready to hand out your money to back your claim, it is also about being true inside out. In other words, you are not a hypocrite who says one thing and does the contrary.

Let me share with you something that I read recently from the internet that clearly illustrates how some people can say one thing and yet act differently. See if you can guess who this person is. “He made free use of Christian vocabulary. He talked about the blessing of the Almighty and the Christian confessions which would become the pillars of the new government. He assumed the earnestness of a man weighed down by historic responsibility. He handed out pious stories to the press, especially to the church papers. He showed his tattered Bible and declared that he drew the strength for his great work from it as scores of pious people welcomed him as a man sent from God. Indeed, Adolf Hitler was a master of outward religiosity--with no inward reality!”

In today's passage, the apostle John was also addressing the problem of hypocrisy. Often, non-Christians call certain Christians as hypocrites because they don't live up to their profession of faith but John here was addressing the church, not as to how it should behave outside but it should behave within the four walls of the church. You see, before we can even effectively witness to the outside world, we need to first of all show our Christian faith in the way we relate to our fellow brothers and sisters, to those who belong to the family.

This morning, as we study our given passage, we will examine the four ways of treating our brothers and sisters improperly and three things that would surely happen when we don't truly love them. So, let's jump right into God's Word and I pray right now that we will be enlightened by the Word.

The Four Ways of Treating Our Brothers and Sisters Improperly

How do we hate our brothers and sisters? As I've mentioned, there are four ways of treating them improperly. Before I proceed, let me make a disclaimer first. I did not originate this list. In fact, I found it in a commentary written by William Barclay. However, Barclay did not deal with the subject matter in exhaustive detail, so I will take on the task of explaining each of the improper treatments that we give to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

(1) Apathy

Apathy is defined as the lack of interest, enthusiasm or concern for a person and his needs. It is expressed when we are confronted with a person's need and we react by saying, “I don't care”, or “I don't want to know.” It is an act of deliberate detachment, of removing one's self from whatever responsibilities he or she should have towards others.

In 1 John 3:17, John gave a particular example wherein a member of the church has a need. Instead of responding with compassion, a brother shows no sympathy whatsoever with the brother in need. This is apathy. We may not hate this brother but we close our eyes to his need. We are not interested in his welfare and because of this, we are unwilling to shell out anything to help.

Helping our brothers and sisters doesn't necessarily require that it has to be financial or material all the time. There are needs that are emotional as well as spiritual. Sometimes, what others may need may be for someone to listen to them and offer them encouragement, or for you to give your time in order to help them. What is important is that we do not act with apathy towards those in the family of God.

(2) Contempt/Discrimination

The second way in which we treat our brothers and sisters improperly is when we treat them with contempt or when we discriminate against them. It is to treat people as if they are beneath us, as if they have no value or right whatsoever to live. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are often guilty of treating people with contempt. We do this when we allow class or social status to become our standard for looking at people. We judge people according to the amount of wealth that they have or the depth of their educational experience. We rarely ask for the lower income people to help the church because we think they can't give much but we forget that what is more important is the heart than the amount. We ask for the opinion of the so-called Bible experts as if the people who haven't gone to seminary or Bible school or attended Precept training of BSF don't know what the Bible says or can't lead a Bible study. At times, we may even use race as a dividing line. Although this is a Chinese-Filipino church, there are Filipinos in our midst as well as people from other nationalities. It is a good thing that we have not acted contemptuously against each other in the area of race. Now, we can also act contemptuously against those who behave differently or do things differently than what we are used to. The person who is a bit lacking in table manners or who are short on the good etiquette scale is often looked down upon simply because they don't know how to use a salad fork or hold a goblet properly or they eat with their elbows on the table.

Please do not act contemptuously against the members of God's family. If God has accepted someone into his body in spite of his peculiarities, then shouldn't we also imitate God's model by accepting these people without discrimination?

(3) Nuisance

Then there are the people whom we consider as nuisances or people causing annoyance and inconvenience to us. They may make a lot of requests from us or they may ask for your assistance and help way too often such that you feel burdened by them and that your patience wears thin. There are such people even in the church and instead of helping them or hearing them out, we treat them as nuisances that should be ignored.

We need to consider that some whom we consider as nuisances are actually people who have legitimate needs. Some may really be unskilled in certain things such that they need your help or maybe they are in desperate times that they need your financial help even though they've worked so hard or maybe they just can't provide for themselves anymore because of sickness and age. Such people do not need us to despise them and treat them as nuisances but instead, they need for us to come to their aid. Don't treat them as needless interruptions but as opportunties to bring blessing to them.

(4) Enemy

Finally, there are probably some people in the church with whom you had an argument or fight with, and the issue was unresolved such that you became enemies. This means you become somewhat actively hostile against the other person who also behaves the same way towards you. The problem with this is that it spills over and eventually affects the whole church. Some of the church splits that have taken place in the Filipino-Chinese community have a lot to do with the unresolved issues between persons and parties.

I believe I do not need to elaborate too much on this as the Bible simply instructs us to love our enemies and to do good to them. We must also initiate reconciliation with them. This command applies especially to those who belong to God's household. We must not be at war with each other but we must exhibit love towards each other.

3 Things That Are Sure To Happen When We Don't Love Our Brothers and Sisters

Having discussed about the four ways of mistreating our brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to examine the likely consequences of our actions as listed by the apostle John. As I've mentioned at the start of our study, there are three things that are sure to happen when we fail to love our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

(1) We will still be in the dark (v. 9, 11)

When we don't truly love those within the family circle we are described as walking and living in the dark. I believe what John's statement means is that when we claim to be loving but we are in reality harboring anger and bitterness towards others, when we are not concerned about others' needs and we view people as either nuisances or as being beneath us, then we have been blinded by these things. We become under control of these things and thus, are unable to see people in light of God's love. When you have hatred and discrimination in your heart, when you treat people as nuisances or with apathy, then you have lost the ability to judge or see issues clearly and this affects not only your relationship with the other person but it affects the entire body of Christ.

Just imagine that you are a member of the board of elders and deacons of this church and you have this great disliking of me! You just hate me so much that the sight of me around the church makes you boil. It's the first Sunday of the month and we're having our board meeting. I then make a suggestion regarding an aspect of the church's ministry. Some people agree with my suggestion and they endorse my suggestion for voting. However, since you hate my guts so much, I am sure you are going to object to my suggestion and not only object but object violently! You'll probably even say things like, “That's a stupid idea!” and then you'll probably even voice out that its a stupid idea to waste money on hiring an incompetent pastor like me. Thankfully, no one has done that to me, however, the scenario that I have just depicted has happened and continues to happen in some churches, even Chinese congregations. One's anger against another will surely spill over to cloud his judgment on matters that shouldn't be personal and then it causes the body of Christ to take sides and eventually you have a church splitting up. Of course, our anger against others don't always end up causing church splits but it does cause a lot of heartaches and frustrations to us. We also find that we are always justifying ourselves as being right and the person we're angry with as always wrong.

Being in the dark doesn't just cloud our judgment but it also means that we are liars, hypocrites to be more precise. Once we have been labeled as liars or hypocrites, people will no longer trust us and they will have apprehensions about believing what we say. Also, we will no longer be able to truly discern right from wrong, good from evil, because of the blinding effect of hypocrisy.

(2) We Become Stumbling Blocks to Ourselves As Well As to Others (v. 10)

In connection with living in the darkness, we also end up becoming stumbling blocks not only to others but also to ourselves. In verse 10, we see the effect of living a life of love – he is living in the light and nothing will cause him or others to stumble.

I know that there are some people in our congregation who are physically blind and they could probably relate to what I'm going to say next. When one is blind, the tendency is for him or her to grope, trying to feel the environment to check if there are things in his or her way. I am sure that blind people have stumbled or fallen down quite a number of times in their lifetime. Why did they stumble? We might say it is because of that spill over the floor or a chair that was in the way but the real cause of stumbling has to do with the blindness itself, because if you had vision, then you could see where the spill was, where the chair was located, where that higher or lower step is located. Can we fault the people who are physically blind? Of course not! It is a physical condition that afflicts them and not caused by themselves. However, spiritual blindness is something that we afflict on ourselves.

When we refuse to love our brothers and sisters, we are in effect disobeying the command of God and this becomes the stumbling block that will continually cause us to fall down in our spiritual lives and may even keep us down on the ground. Not only that, we become stumbling blocks to others. When they see that we act as hypocrites, they may become disenchanted with following Christ and abandon the Lord altogether. Some, on the other hand, may imitate your poor example and become hypocrites themselves, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of lies and hypocrisy. Do you remember the incident in Paul's epistle to the Galatians where Paul confronted Peter? Peter was having fellowship with the Gentile Christians when he saw the delegation from James entering into the church. Peter immediately separated from the Gentile believers in a manner that reflected contempt or discrimination against them. He even caused Barnabas to do the same thing! That one unloving act caused Peter to stumble and it led Barnabas to stumble also.

Thus, we must be careful to really love, not just with our words but also with our deeds, so that we don't stumble as well as cause others to stumble.

(3) We Will Not Progress in Our Walk With God (v. 11)

Finally, when we refuse to love our brothers and sisters, not only will we be stumbling around and causing others to stumble, but we will also stop progressing in our walk with God.

Failure to truly love our brothers and sisters is a sin. You may not actively hate them but when you do not express love to them, then you have committed the sin of omission, by ignoring God's expressed command to actively love. Of course, we know that when we allow this sin to persist and we don't confess and turn away from it, then God would not hear our prayers (Psalm 66:18). He wouldn't accept our praise, our worship and our thanksgiving. He wouldn't even answer our prayers. Why? It is because our sins have become a hindrance that blocks our relationship with God. So, we will not find growth or progress whatsoever in our prayer life if we remain or persist in sin. When we continue in sin, we somehow do not yearn for God's Word. We don't want to hear God's voice. If we do pick up our Bibles, it is out of a sense of routine and responsibility rather than because of our relationship to God. That is the effect of sin on our walk with God. There will be little or no progress whatsoever. This truth applies to all sins, even the sin of failing to love our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Ray Steadman once told of counseling with a woman about a physical problem, which really had a spiritual basis in her experience. He discovered she hated another person and had hated her for years. 

She told him the circumstances, and, undoubtedly, she had been treated unjustly, but the thing had eaten like a canker (a fungal infection that damages the barks of trees) into in her heart for years and years. Hate had turned her bitter and rancid and had poisoned all her thoughts. 

He said to her, "You must find it in your heart to forgive this person, as God has forgiven you." She looked at him and said, "I can’t forgive her, I’ll never forgive her!" He said, "But God says you must." 

She said, "But I can’t." He said, "If you can’t, then you need to face the fact that you are not a Christian, because if you can’t forgive, then you’ve never been born again." She looked at him, and said, "I guess you’re right. 

I know I am a Christian, and I see I have just been deceiving myself. I need to forgive." And she did! There came a change in that woman’s life, which was like turning from night unto day.

 Her outlook became different and her relationship with God was restored.

Conclusion:

We've learned about the four ways in which we may have treated our brothers and sisters in an unloving manner. We've also learned about the three consequences of hating our brothers and sisters. Being armed with the knowledge of these things, I want you to evaluate your relationship with others in the body of Christ. Is there anyone that you find so difficult to love? Is there anyone that you actually hate? Please reconcile with them. If they have offended you, forgive. If you are the one who offended them, ask for their forgiveness. It's good not only for your relationship with the other person but it is also good for your testimony and ultimately, for your relationship with God. So, if you claim to love your brothers and sisters, then I want us all to prove it; let's put our money where our mouth is.