Financial Responsibility

Notes from Gordon's sermon on Sunday (these are my notes, not Gordon's, and I've added a few comments of my own):

There are many great collections of letters - Churchill, Darwin, Kipling - but the greatest letters of all time are in the New Testament.
At the end of many of his letters, Paul makes personal comments about particular people or events. We're tempted to ignore these, but they do contain important & relevant things for us today. For example, in vv1-4, Paul gives instructions for the Corinthians to give money for the Jerusalem church because they have a personal and financial responsibility for that church. The principles Paul outlines will help us have a proper attitude to money.
1 Tim 6:10 tells us, 'the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.' And Prov 30:8f says, 'give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say,`Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonour the name of my God.'
Money isn't in itself evil, but we must give great care & thought to its management, and this is where 1 Cor 16 helps us.
3 headings:
1. Acquisition of money: we need to be honest and careful about how we acquire our wealth & possessions.
2. Attitude to money: some people in the Bible are very wealthy, and are not condemned for this. Wealth in itself isn't wrong, but when we find our security in money then it has become our god. Ecclesiastes 5:10f reminds us, 'Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with
his income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them?'
3. Administration of money: With money comes responsibility. Jesus illustrated this in the parable of the 'talents' in Matt 25. Talents are to be used wisely, to build and serve the kingdom of God, and not selfishly to build and serve our own little kingdoms, as the parable of the rich man in Luke 12:13ff reminds us.
And in v48, Jesus reminds us that, 'From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.'
It's not just active misuse that's condemned by Jesus, but also our passive, lazy, selfish neglect. We will be judged on how we acquire money, on our attitudes to it and our administration of it.
Paul expemplifies this in his own ministry: he devotes his whole life to the Lord Jesus and the proclamation of his gospel. He was eager to use all he had for God. As he made his plans, he worked out how he could serve others.
Paul exemplified Jesus' teaching about money. How about us?