The reason we collected the offering, first is I wanted to get some other information after, and I didn’t want these to be connected necessarily. Did you all get a three-by-five card on the way in? Okay. Do me one favor. Write down, anonymously – write it anonymously – your annual household income, okay? If you’re a first-time visitor, I apologize. You came on the worst possible day.

I want you to write down your annual household income. If you’re with your spouse, one of you just write it down. If you’re a student, write down whatever it is you spend a year for school and books and whatever it is your general income is. And then if you could, just pass them this way, which means everybody on this side flip yours over so nobody knows how rich or poor you are, and I want everybody on this side to pass ‘em this way. Everybody in these rows just keep passing ’em over, and you guys against the wall pass them toward the center, and we’re gonna collect those. We’re gonna do a little math this morning. If you think it’ll be convicting, you’re on the right track.

The reason we’re doing this – and I’ll give an apology because I did a series on biblical masculinity, and we concluded that this last week, and then this week I was supposed to start a series on biblical femininity. That will be pushed off until January. I will get to it, but I’m having to wait on that, and I apologize. For the first time in the history of the church, I’m not going to do what I had planned to do. This last week was probably the most discouraging week I’ve had in the history of the church as being your pastor, and we need to talk about some things. Wish we didn’t have to. Wish I could just continue with what I had planned, but we can’t.

This last week, if we continue at the pace that we’ve simply been going, we will be the most dismal failure of a church in the history of the city, as far as I could tell. God has been incredibly kind to us, and we have been incredibly unfaithful. And you can pray for my tone today. I don’t think I’m as angry as I am just disappointed. I think that’s where I’m at. So I will pray, and then we’ll have a conversation.

Father God, thank you for an opportunity to get together. Lord God, thank you as well that you have been very, very kind to us, both individually and corporately. You’re very good to your children. Lord God, we thank you that we have a building to meet in this morning, a building that you have provided, a building that you’ve given to us for free. Lord God, I thank you that there are so many people that are here at such an early hour.

Lord God, I confess to you that this is probably the most awkward sermon I have ever had to give, and I’m not particularly looking forward to doing it. I pray that you give me words to speak and a tone to communicate that reflects your heart, and I pray that you give people ears to hear and to receive us, this in Christ’s name. Amen.

I’m gonna start today. I’ll tell you about Jesus. The reason I gotta tell you about Jesus is if you don’t understand Jesus, then nothing else I say will make any sense whatsoever. I think part of the reflection of the lack of health of the church as of late is indicative of a misunderstanding of God. I really believe that, and so we’ll talk about God this morning.

The first thing you find out about God is that there’s only one god according to the Bible and that you and I are not God, that God is holy and different and other, that God is not you, and God is not me, that God is someone completely else, and that God spoke and created everything that is, and therefore everything that is belongs to this God, this one God who rules as Father and Son and Spirit, and God created all things for his glory. What that means is that God created everything with an intrinsic sense of beauty and innate possibility and that everything that God made, you and I included, as well as all creation, is for the purpose of reflecting God’s glory and reflecting God’s beauty and being used for God’s purposes. And within that, there should be harmony and order and life and love, that everything should flow in that purpose and in that stream.

What we see, though, early on in the Bible is that God created us in his image and likeness, men and women, and God created us with a special and a profound dignity and also free will and a responsibility to take the life that he’s given us and the things that he’s given us and to steward them and invest them and to use them appropriately. And what the first man and the woman did, and what each one of us has done since, is we have continually, habitually chosen that we would not worship God; that instead we would worship ourselves. 

The biggest threat in the world is not that people will be Muslims or people will be atheists or people will – the biggest idolatry in the world is that we love ourselves and we hate our god and that we want all of the glory to come to us, which means we want the world to go the way we want it to go; we want our lives to go the way we want them to go. We believe that this is our body, that our money is our money, that our time is our time, that our days are our days, that our life is our life. And we believe that we are like God, knowing good and evil, that when things go a certain way, we assume that perhaps God has made a mistake or God is an absentee landlord or that God is uncapable and he is not as, possibly, gifted or skilled or wise as we are, and so we take life into our own hands, and that’s the essence of all sin.

The essence of all sin is pride, which is thinking of yourself more highly than you ought, rather than with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith that God has given you. And so we all – I stand condemned as well, as a fellow hypocrite. We all think too highly of ourselves and too lowly of God, and in so doing, what we create is a world whereby we want to have our own way. We want to have our own law. We want to define sin. We want to define righteousness. We want to define heaven and hell and God and who’s in and who’s out, and there’s a propensity within us all, this seed of rebellion, to continually wage war against God and make ourselves into our own god and rule over our own little kingdom.

The man and the woman did this in the Garden; we have each done it since in various ways. God gives his laws, and we break them, and every time we break one of God’s laws, the Scripture says that that is sin. 1 John tells us that lawbreaking is sin. That is sin. And that every time we sin, we have set ourselves up as an enemy of God, because God speaks order and wisdom and life, and then we continually wage war against that every time we sin.

And the stack of our sins has just reached heaven, and it is deplorable, and God in his justice has every right to just kill us. He told us that the wage for sin is death, and so God has in his infinite justice every right to just strike us dead and be done with us. We have no right to cry out to God for mercy or forgiveness. We have no right to cry out to God for a changed heart or a redeemed life, and even if we wanted to, we don’t even have the possibility of doing that because Scripture says we are blind to the truth. We don’t see God. We are dead to the truth. We don’t respond even if it were given to us, and we don’t have the love of God in our hearts, so we couldn’t even beg him for kindness if we wanted to, because it is not even within us potentially to request that.

And what God does for the man and the woman in Genesis 3 is, when the sin happens and death happens, they made this fatal decision. We have all made this fatal decision that we would not belong to God, that we would belong to Satan; that we would not glorify God, that we would glorify ourselves; that we would not do what God says. We would do what we want to do and what we believe is right in our own eyes, actually considering that we are wiser than God, even to the degree of arguing with what God has said so clearly in his Word.

And so we have been taken and brought into a brand-new family because of our sin. John 8 says that Satan is our father, that he lies to us, and that he seeks our destruction and our death, but that he is very cunning and very clever and very crafty, and he gets us to believe wrongly that this is a wonderful life, that it is exactly as we would’ve purposed, that everything is going according to plan. And so for a large number of people, they think that their life is phenomenal, but it is because they are self-deceived.

And what God does is he gives a promise that he will come and he will repair the situation that we have created, that you and I are cursed, that the whole earth is cursed, that everything is under a curse, that everything is not glorifying God but is declaring war against him. And so God makes a promise that he will involve himself in the situation, and that is nothing short of God’s ultimate mercy and his grace. If you did to me what we have done to God, I would not give you any love. You wouldn’t have earned it; you wouldn’t have deserved it, and I would’ve just given you justice, and you would’ve done the exact same thing.

Robbing God of his money, robbing God of his glory, robbing and stealing from God’s creation, even using the body that God has given us to steal from him with our lives. And God in his infinite mercy made a promise, and he has kept that promise that he would come to us, that we could not find God but that God could find us, that God was not lost but that we were, that we need not go searching for God but that God would come searching for us. And that is the great, great, great hope of the Gospel, that God is come – not only come, but he has come as one of us, which is the most humbling, if not humiliating, thing I can even think of, that God has made us to glorify him and to get us back from Satan, sin, and death. He had to humble himself and come down here with us.

We have made such a mess of our own lives and such a mess of our own world. To think that God would even enter into this, into the filth and into the sin and into the stench of death, that God would enter into that humbly. Philippians 2 says this is just the absolute humility of God, God emptying himself of all of his rights. You and are filled with pride. We love our rights. God empties himself of all of his rights, all that he deserves, all that he has coming to himself, and he comes to us in absolute, unparalleled humility, and he takes on human flesh as Jesus Christ, and God becomes a man.

And it says in Scripture that he was tempted in every way that we are, yet he was without sin, which means that every way that you and I have sinned, he has been tempted to do likewise, and he decided not to. He chose to obey the Father and honor the Father and glorify the Father, and he chose obedience rather then idolatry and self-worship and love of himself. It says that he didn’t even consider equality with God something to be grasped, but that he emptied himself and he took on this humble form of a servant for the glory of the Father.

Because of that, Scripture says, he has been exalted. We all want the exaltation without the humiliation. We all want an empty tomb without a cross. We always want victory without any blood spilled. But not Jesus. Jesus humbled himself to the place of death on our behalf, and if you think about it, I mean, I killed God. That’s what happened. I killed God. It was enough that God came and God was humble and God lived, and we killed him. And if God was angry with us before, his rage must be completely full now, and we killed God. And you killed God. That’s what you did.

You didn’t kill God against his will. Isaiah says it was the Lord’s will to crush him and to cause him to suffer. God laid down his life willingfully, but you killed him. You killed God. God should’ve killed you, but you killed God because of your sin. You say, “Oh, my sin isn’t that big.” Well, it’s big enough to kill God. If it doesn’t seem big, then that’s ultimate proof of deception.

And in the great plot twist of all history, the thing I don’t understand is that when Jesus died, Jesus died for my sin. When Jesus died, he allowed me to kill him so that he could die instead of me, and I could live instead of him. I’ll be honest with you. The fact that people die, that doesn’t bother me in the least. The fact that people go to hell, that doesn’t bother me in the least. The fact that people have their sins forgiven and receive eternal life, that makes no sense to me whatsoever. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand that at all. It makes no logical sense to me whatsoever.

That’s why the Bible says it’s grace. “By grace you have been saved,” the Scripture says. It’s a free gift, not of yourself, so that none of us can boast. You say, “Well, what did I do to merit –” Nothing. I killed God, that’s what I did. And God loved me, and God died for my sins, and God paid the penalty for my sin. The wage for sin is death, and the free gift of God is eternal life, and in exchange for my murder, he has given me pardon and forgiveness. That Jesus took upon himself all of my sins, and he was punished in my place.

2 Corinthians 5:21 says God made him who knew no sin to become sin, my sin, so that in him I might become the righteousness of God. Jesus dies for me, forgives me. He puts his perfection on me, and he takes my sin upon him. Why? I have no idea. Jesus is glorifying the Father. Apparently, that glorifies the Father. That’s the only reason I have.

What the Gospel is not, it is not God blessing you so that you can be glorified. You need to understand that. I have had a number of conversations recently with people who have been in church for a great number of years and are regularly attending at this church. I am convinced that a number of them are not Christians. They have been told another gospel. Paul talks in Galatians about another gospel. This gospel – I have asked one – asked somebody recently. I said, “What is the Gospel?” They said, “Jesus came so that I could fulfill my potential.” No. We have already fulfilled our potential, and we killed him. That’s the best we can do.

There is this incessant thinking among Christians that we exist and God exists, and God exists to bless us and to glorify us so that we could actualize our potential, and the Bible says that’s idolatry. That is self-worship. That’s why some people get angry with God. “God, I’m supposed to be healthy. I’m supposed to be married. I’m supposed to be rich. I’m supposed to have better sex than this. I’m supposed to make more money. God, what are you doing? Are you sinning against me? After all, I declare right and wrong. I declare good and evil. I determine my life. This is my body. This is my money. These are my days.” That’s not Christianity. It’s just not. That’s American individualism. That is idolatry. That is self-worship. That is not Christianity.

Paul says that we have been bought with a price; therefore, we should honor God with our bodies. What this means is when Jesus dies for my sin, I am a slave to sin, and now I’m a slave to him. And I was a slave to Satan, and now I’m a slave to him. And I was a slave to death, and now I’m a slave to life and to righteousness, and that God has taken me from belonging to Satan, sin, and death, and he has transferred me by his kindness and his love and his mercy and his grace to belong to him.

There is no third option where God has freed me so that I could be my own god, and then God exists to bless me and exalt me. Paul says this in Romans 1:6, he says, “And you are called among those to belong to Jesus Christ.” The heart of Christianity is belonging to Jesus. That’s it. You and I, if we are Christians, belong to Jesus. Jesus does not belong to us, but that we belong to Jesus, and as I understand that, what that then means is, my money is Jesus’ money. My time is Jesus’ time. My body is Jesus’ body. My days are Jesus’ days. That previously they belonged to Satan, sin, death, and me, all in conspiracy to dishonor God and declare war against him.

And now God has redeemed me and all that is under my dominion, and he has reconciled it to himself through Christ, and now all of that belongs to him and is at his disposal. And now it is supposed to do that which it was created for, and that is to honor him and glorify him, to be back in harmony with the reason for which we were created. And some people wrongly think, “Well, isn’t that awful, because God has just robbed us of all of our rights, and God has just robbed of all our possibilities.” Not at all. When God gets his glory, you and I receive our joy. You will never be as happy as when you see God get his glory. That’s the happiest moment you will ever have is when you see that you belong to God and that all that you have belongs to God, and it is no longer resisting God, but it is participating with him, in his work of the Gospel.

In 1 Chronicles 29:14, after the creation of the temple we are told, “But who am I,” Solomon says, “and who are my people that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.” See, everything belongs to God, and our lives are just simply an opportunity that God gives us to give it back to him: time, talent, treasure, prayer, devotion, friendship, finances, work, children, marriage, cars, homes. Just giving back to God what is his.

And this incessant idolatry thinks, “No, these are all my things. What right does God have to steal them and use them for his glory?” The Bible says, no, those all belong to him, and he has given them to you to be a good steward, to distribute them as is wise. It’s the same thing that he did with Abraham, our great father in the faith, where God blessed him so that he would be a blessing to all nations of the earth. God does not bless his children so that they will consume their blessing, but that they will distribute it. Like a little boy with his lunch, he takes his fishes and loaves, and he hands it to Jesus, trusting a miracle that many mouths will be fed, that many things will be done.

And this understanding is complete nonsense if you don’t know God. Paul says it’s utter foolishness. It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, the last will be first, and the weak will confound the strong, and the simple will overcome the wise. Well, yes, that’s exactly what the Scriptures teach, that nothing works the way that we think it does, because our minds have been deceived.

And Paul says about this Gospel in Romans 1 – Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for everyone who believes.” The Gospel has untold power within it. All the power that we need is within the Gospel, and we do not ever see or taste that unless we come to the Gospel with faith. We have to believe. We have to believe in our sin and our rebellion and our antagonism and opposition toward God and how utterly, utterly dark it is, and how we all want to be worshipped as our own god, and we want to rule over our own lives.

We have to believe our condition is as severe as it is, and we have to believe that God has come in Christ, and God has taken upon himself our sin, and God has died for our sin. Not only that; God has risen from death, and he has conquered Satan and sin and death and selfishness and idolatry, and he has conquered you and I, and he has given us a gift of life, and that it is all by God’s grace. Ephesians 29:10, we are saved by grace and faith through Christ so that none of us can boast and brag about how good we are.

He tells us the consequence of that, then, is so that we will do good works. God makes us new people so that we do new things, and the new things are just evidence that we are new people. Everything belongs to God, and everything has been given to his children, and everything has been given for the purpose of glorifying him.

In the same way, my birthday was a few months ago, about a month ago. I have a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, and they bought me a birthday present. I was very glad to get the birthday present, but whose money did they spend? They spent my money to buy me a present, and they said, “Daddy, look, we bought you a present.” And I said, “Thank you very much.” In that same way, everything that we do for God is really God’s, just giving it back to him. Even when my daughter draws me a card, which I love, she takes a piece of paper out of my drawer in my house. She writes on it with my pen. She puts it in my envelope, and she hands it to me as her gift.

That is your life. God is your father. Everything you have is just giving back to him what already belonged to him in the first place. And for some of us to put our hand into God’s drawer and say, “Well, this is my paper, and this is my pen, and that is my envelope, and what right does God have to get cards from me?” is not Gospel thinking.

I’ll tell you about the power of the Gospel. Here’s what’s happened at Mars Hill. We started as a church plant five years ago. We had a little Bible study in my living room in Wallingford. The first November – we’re in November now – we had one service with 100 people. The next year we had two services with 150 people; that’s a 50 percent growth. The next year we had two services with 240 people; that’s a 60 percent growth over the previous year. The next year we had 350 people with two services; that was a 45 percent growth. The following year we had 473 people on an average Sunday in November, at three services; that was a 35 percent growth. And then this last year, we have climbed up to 940-some-odd people in six services and, in 12 months, grown by 100 percent. Okay?

Paul says, “I’m not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God to the salvation of everyone who believes.” You see the power of the Gospel demonstrated. We’re in the least-churched city in the United States of America. The average age in this city – over half is between the ages of 20 and 44, and that God has in his kindness, in his absolute grace – nothing that we’ve merited, just like salvation – God has blessed us and caused our numbers to increase.

The average church in the country is about 70 to 80 people. In Seattle, that number is about the same, which means this morning as other churches are gathering in the Seattle area, if you average them all out, aggregate, you’d have maybe 80 people. Only two percent of churches in the United States of America are having over 800 people in attendance on Sunday. This is unusual.

In addition, we are seeing 3,000 MP3s a week downloaded off the website, sermons and music, going out to multiple nations, and the influence has just increased itself. As an average, since we’ve started this church, it has grown every year by an average of 58 percent. You think about that. If any of you own a business, you would love that. If you could get your business to grow by 58 percent a year, that’d be a great year, and if you could do that every year for a five-year run, that would be tremendous. We’ve seen our attendance grow by an average of 58 percent a year since the day we’ve opened the doors. I’m so glad to God, and I know it’s all the power of the Gospel.

If we continue at that rate, next year we’ll be a church of about 1,500 people; the following year we’ll be a church of about 2,300; the following year we’ll be a church of about 3,700; the following year, at our tenth anniversary in 2005, we’ll be a church of almost 6,000 people a week. That’s enormous. That’s enormous. That’s the biggest church in the state. Will we grow at 58 percent a year? I have no idea. The only thing that scares me more than failure is success. That just frightens me.

But can you see that if the Gospel is true and Jesus is not dead, that he is really alive and that he is reconciling the world to himself and that he is seeking worshippers, that that is possible? It is entirely possible.

I’ll tell you exactly where we’re at, though. In the past year we have seen our attendance go up [Audio gap] percent and our giving decrease. You say, “Oh, this is a sermon on money. I knew we were getting to this.” It’s not a sermon on money; it’s a sermon on the Gospel. And Solomon in Ecclesiastes, he says, “Food is good for the stomach, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.”

We live in a world where things cost money. I don’t know if you were aware of that. God has been amazingly faithful. This building you’re sitting in this morning, how much did we pay for it? Nothing. You know, we paid nothing for this building. The church that was here folded, and they gave us the building. We took out a small loan to do a renovation to get the electrical up and to get it just functional, because it was sort of underused for a long time. And then we needed about a quarter million dollars to finish the build-out, to get the whole thing nice so you could be here. Somebody – a foundation gave $200,000.00. So we got the building for free. We got the renovations for free. We got the chairs for free. We got the sound for free. We got everything given to us, which is God’s grace.

So you meet here for free, and the services at the 6 and the 8, they meet there for free. Now, in the city of Seattle, if you get free real estate, you are very fortunate. You are very lucky. You would all love to pick up a 7 or 8,000-square-foot house like this for nothing. You’d be very happy to pick up that piece of real estate. And so God has been tremendously kind to us. God has given us buildings. God has given us people. God has given us favor. God has been very kind to us.

I’ll tell you part of it too – we’re gonna do now a four-week series on not just money, but work and investment and life planning, because most of you are young, and I’m guessing that you don’t have any plan for what you’re doing with your dollars or your days or your vocation or your family. You probably don’t have a big idea of what in the world you’re here for, and if you don’t have that, your life is going to be wasted. You’re gonna waste a great opportunity.

Crunched some numbers this year. It says, assuming there are presently 550 families in the church – let’s say, if that’s single people or married couples, 550 units – and they’re making an average of $40,000.00 a year – the average income in the Puget Sound is about $50,000.00 a year, but some college students are with us, so we’ll drop that. And let’s say you assume a 3.5% cost-of-living income increase every year, which is actually low for the region, and some of you haven’t even gotten close to your peak earning potential yet. You’re not even close. And you work for the next 45 years. The 550 units currently going to Mars Hill will earn $2,350,000,000.00 over the next 45 years. $2,350,000,000.00. That’s how much money the people that are in the church right now, at a conservative estimate, will earn and spend in the next 45 years.

Put that in comparison. Safeco Field. Any of you go to a Mariners game? How much was Safeco Field? About 550 million. Compared to what we’re going to make, that is chump change. We could go out and buy a number of those. If we just tithed, we could actually probably go buy one in our lifetime and pay cash.

You start looking around the room and you say, “Well, who am I, and what difference do I make?” Well, you start getting 1,000 people swimming the same direction, you create quite a wave. We’re going to go through $2,350,000,000.00 in our lifetime, collectively. That wouldn’t be such a problem, except for Luke 12 says something: “The servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows.” The whole section here is about finances. “But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. For everyone – from everyone, rather, who has been given much, much will be demanded, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, more will be asked.” Jesus says, “If you’ve been given a lot, I’m expecting a lot.”

As a church, we have been given a lot. We have been given a lot. For a five-year-old church, we have six services in three locations. We have three daughter churches meeting throughout the region. We have 1,000 people a week, almost, roughly. We’ve grown by 58 percent a year, and if we sold everything we had, we’d be over a million dollars liquid right now, if you include this building. That’s our biggest asset.

I will tell you that that – to me, that’s a lot. Maybe some of you are really wealthy, and that doesn’t impress you. To me, it scares me to death. To me, that seems like a lot. That seems like a lot that God has given us, and it seems like a lot that God is expecting as a result. That if all of these things – our money and our time and these people and our abilities – all belong to God, and he’s expecting a good investment, then we have to have a plan for what we’re going to do.

What I’ve always told you every Sunday is that God initiates through the Scriptures and through the Gospel and through Jesus, that God initiates with us, and that then he calls us to respond and participate with him. And Proverbs 19:2 said, “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.” This last year was the most disappointing week I have ever had as your pastor. It was the most disappointing I’ve ever had. I preached five services with vertigo. I’ve had vertigo for six or seven weeks. I fell over buying a movie in a video store this week. I got done preaching the 5, and I came home, and I got the numbers, and it was great attendance, and no response whatsoever. If you looked in the rooms at Mars Hill when we preach, you would think that things were going very well. If you looked at the hard, cold numbers, you would see an entirely different picture.

Last week – here’s the 9 a.m. service – we had 187 people in this service last week. Sixteen of you gave something, anything, five bucks. One, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Basically, these guys right here. The rest of you came in, went out, like locusts going into a field. One, two, three rows of people, right here up against the wall. Everyone else, the other 200-plus that are here today, didn’t give anything. Cash, nothing. Not even guilt that the basket went by and put in $2.00. Nothing.

A hundred and seventy-one people then didn’t give. The people who did give gave $1,300.00. That’s an average of $7.00 a person. If we go out after church today and we watch a movie, how much is that movie? About $7.50, which means you couldn’t go to a movie as cheaply as you’re going to church, and none of ‘em would let you in for free, so 171 of you, you wouldn’t even get to see. The rest of you, you would pay for a good seat.

You say, “Well, I’m not a Christian.” Well, I understand. I’m not asking for your money. I’m asking, though, do you not see, if you are not a Christian, that your whole life is about you and that you are robbing God of your whole life and that you’re committing nothing but idolatry? Every dollar, every day, everything is just about you; it’s not about God, and that’s a problem. And if you’re a Christian, it’s an even bigger problem, because you belong to God.

Total at church last week, we had 875 adults. We also had children on top of that. We had 88 people give. We had 787 people who did not give. They gave a total of $9,000.00, or $10.00 a person. Do you see where my job is pretty much impossible right now? I told you in Proverbs 14, it talks about a big oxen, a barn, and a guy who has to shovel a lot. You guys have filled up my barn. I don’t have a shovel this big.

We have been judicious with our money. Our staff is lean. Our buildings are free. Our concerts supplement our income. Our rentals supplement – I mean, from a business perspective, we are doing everything we possibly can to keep a lean shop, but in an average Sunday, when you have 800 people who are getting things and 80 people that are paying for them, you do the math. It doesn’t take long. Try running a business where 90 percent of the customers take things off the shelf and don’t pay for them. Just try and run a business like that. You say, “Well, the church isn’t a business.” No, it should be far better than that because all of our life belongs to God. And immediately some of you are saying, “You know, this is none of your business,” and if you think that, I will tell you that you are thinking that it is your money and it is your life and it is your body and it is your lordship and that you’re God.

What I do not want at Mars Hill is necessarily a big church. What I want is a faithful church. If it’s big, great; if it’s small, great. I don’t care. I would like to see a church filled with people who love God and serve him, and people who don’t know him at all. That would be great. It’s the big, fat, in the middle, the people who do know God but don’t love him, or think they know God and maybe they don’t, that are the real trouble.

You say, “Why is he meddling in my affairs?” Hebrews 13:17, “Obey your leaders, and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy.” It has not been a joy, not a burden. It is becoming a burden, and that would be of no advantage to you.

Here’s the scary thing for me. I told you a few weeks ago that a father is the head of his household and that he has to give an account before God for his wife and his children. In the same way, God says the elders of the church must give an account for the household of God, which means I am supposed to, at the end of the age, stand before Jesus Christ and give an account for you.

Does anyone want my job? Do any of you really want my job? I don’t want my job. I don’t. I’m here because God called me. I’m here because God – I belong to God. Don’t think I – I would so much rather be a plumber where I stood before God and gave an account for toilets. That would be so much easier. “Yup, all the toilets are on the floor. I did my job.”

I have to give an account for you, which means you and I are gonna stand before Jesus. Jesus is gonna say, “What did you do?” And then he’ll say, “Hey, Mark, how come you let him do that?” And I’m gonna be standing there with the elders of the church. I’m gonna be like, “I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. What am I supposed to say? I didn’t say anything, Jesus, ‘cause I like people to like me, and if I say mean things or hard things, then they leave and then I don’t have any friends, and I was really worried about my image and my own glory, and I don’t know.”

The other thing Hebrews 13:7 says, “Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” What scared me the most when I started looking at the numbers, ’cause this time a year we do our annual financial review to see where we are, my first instinct was – my first thought was, “I better check and make sure that the leaders in this church are doing a good job of giving, serving, and participating with God and the Gospel, that their lives reflect the fact that they have been bought with a price and that they now belong to God.”

And so I went through and I looked at all the elders and the staff deacons, volunteer and paid, and I pulled up their giving, and we looked at it as elders, the men and I, and here’s what we discovered. Out of the elders, the elder candidates and the staff deacons – that’s 22 people, okay? They’re giving 20 percent of the total budget of the church. Okay? I didn’t find one elder, elder candidate, or staff deacon that was in sin at all. In fact, some people, I don’t know – one guy I think gave us as much as he made. I’m not – I gotta talk to him. I don’t even know how he did that, if he’s robbing banks on the side or what he’s doing. I don’t even know how he did it. I looked at that, I’m like, “What in the world? Should be a lot skinnier than you are in light of what you’re doing.” Which means that out of those people, they’re each giving 1 percent of the total budget, as an average.

The other roughly 1,600 people who call Mars Hill home – we get about 1,000 of ‘em on any given week – they carry 80 percent of the budget, meaning it takes 20 people to equal 1 elder or staff deacon. So I looked at the numbers, and I can promise you that all your leadership is above reproach. There is not a plank/speck issue at all. At all. There’s no sin in your leadership. Could people have been more faithful? Possibly. Is there anyone that’s in sin? Not at all.

And I wanted to deal with that before I dealt with you so that you wouldn’t ask things like, “Well, what about the leaders? Are they doing their job?” I can promise you, they’re doing their job amazingly, actually, and it’s an honor and a privilege to work with those people. They’re all here for the Gospel, and it shows. And what we found is that everyone who is serving is also giving. What that means is people are either faithful or unfaithful to the Gospel. You’re either faithful or you’re not. It’s not like people are good with their time or their money and not with some other things; it’s all or nothing.

And in addition, just to be above reproach, we as a church have always tithed. We give 10 percent of the monies that come into this church to other churches. This year we’re planting 13 churches in East India, and so not only do the leaders give sacrificially, but the church gives as well.

Here’s what scares me. Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” I spoke on the heart a few weeks ago. I’m talking this morning really about the heart of our church. Where is the heart of Mars Hill? In Matthew 6, Jesus talks about the heart. He says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

You say, “Okay, the Bible says to guard my heart. It’s the wellspring of life. How do I test and see where my heart is, according to Jesus? Where do I go to find out the condition of my heart?” Jesus says, “Well, you would go to your wallet, and your money follows your heart.” Your money goes to what you worship. It goes to what you love. Your money follows those things and people that are most important to you.

You say, “Well, isn’t that narrow?” Well, that’s Jesus. Jesus has the right to say these things. It’s true. If I told my wife and kids that I love them with all of my heart, and yet I spent all of the income that I made on myself and didn’t feed my kids and didn’t take my wife out, they would have a very good reason to question the sincerity of my heart. Jesus says, “Follow the money. You’ll see where your heart is.”

You say, “Well, why are you talking about money? People always talk about money. Pastors are just greedy.” Jesus spoke of money 25 percent of the time. That means if I was to speak on money as much as Jesus, the first Sunday of every month I would talk about money. You say, “Well, why did they kill Jesus?” Well, there’s a lot of reasons. One of them is probably because he kept talking about money. That’s probably why I don’t talk on it once a month. I’m a coward and I don’t want you to kill me.

The great idols in American culture are sexuality and money. “This is my body. That is my money.” But you’re a Christian; they belong to God. “No, they’re not. That’s my body, my money.” Jesus says, “Follow the money; you’ll see the heart.”

Let me tell you some statistics I pulled up. We’ll do more on this in the future weeks. The average American loses about $100.00 a year in spare change: pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters. They fall into your couch. They fall outta your pocket. Twenty-three percent of church members in the U.S. give less than that. Did you catch that? Church members. People who claim to be Christians and regularly attend their church, 23 percent give less than they lose in spare change every year.

Do you think it’s any different at Mars Hill? We make you go through six months of catechizing, a Gospel and Culture class. You have to be baptized. We have high expectations for members. They sign a covenant with us telling us that they will give sacrificially, cheerfully, and regularly, like 2 Corinthians 8:9 says. Do you think we’re any different? We are no different. About the same number percentage of people in this church give less than what they lose in spare change a year. You guys, think about it. If your couch is making more than your god, there’s a serious problem.

At Mars Hill, we did it Monday with the men. The average single man in Mars Hill gives considerably less than the average single mother. Been talking about the responsibility of men. The average man gives less than the average single mother. In fact I think, if memory serves me correct, it takes about ten single men to average the giving of one single mother in this church. I can’t think of anyone who has it harder than the single mom. And some of you will say, “Well, we had 80 people last week, but that was just one week. That means we have 320 people a month, right?” No. We have never in the history of the church had even 200 people give anything – cash, two bucks, anything. Which means in an average month we’ll see 1,600 to 1,800 different people, and we’ll see about 10 percent of those give anything – 160 to 180. Might have some seats for you next week. May not need to get here so early.

Here’s what’s possible, okay? You think – you look at what we’ve done, and you ask yourself, is Mars Hill built on the faithfulness of God’s people or on the faithfulness of their god? You can’t argue with the numbers. Obviously. Paul says in the New Testament, he says even when we’re faithless, God is what? Faithful. Is God faithful? God’s faithful.

Romans 2, “God’s kindness leads us to repentance.” God is so nice that he breaks our hearts so that we give up our idolatry. That’s God. Has God been nice? God’s been nice. Has God been patient? God’s been patient. Has God been faithful? God’s been faithful. I can’t shake a finger at God. God has never let us down, not at all.

Here are the plans that we have for the future as elders. Proverbs 16:9 says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” That we will set out plans, but how we get there, God determines, okay? Here are our plans, right now, immediate needs. We need a bigger place to meet. And it sounds weird: We need more room for more unfaithful people, but that’s what we need. At the 11:00 a few weeks ago, we had 360 people and 220 seats. I mean, we had – single men were not allowed to sit. We don’t have room for anybody. And the frustrating thing is, for me, is that I know we have had on Sundays where unfaithful Christians come in and get a seat and non-Christians are standing.

And so we need a bigger place to meet. You say, “Is this a building campaign?” No. We’re looking at leasing somewhere nearby, just on Sundays, to meet. We’ll keep offices here. We’ll keep classes here. We just can’t worship here anymore. We don’t have any more room for people. In the morning service, we have gone from 40 to over 500 in one year. I don’t even know how you got here. The only thing I can say is, God is faithful, and the Gospel has power. That’s about all I can figure.

So we need a bigger place to meet. Then we could put the morning services in a larger space so that more people could come. See, I get to see the flip side. I get to see the glory of it all. I get to see people come to Christ. I’ve seen people come to Christ basically every week for the last four or five months. I get to see people who are divorced get remarried. I get to see amazing transformation in people’s lives, and so I just wanna keep going, and the elders wanna keep running, but we can’t run by ourselves. We need a bigger place to meet so we can get people in the door.

To do that, it will take about $5,000.00 to $6,000.00 a month to get us into the space that seats about 750 people. It is not a done deal. I’m not guaranteeing that this will come through. Right now it’s the first viable option we’ve had in a long time. We put in our application. I would encourage you to pray. We’re waiting to hear back. We’ll hear back after Thanksgiving. They can say yes or no. Right now, I’m hoping and praying for a yes.

In addition, what we need to do is we need to make up for a deficit that we already have. Right now as a church, we’re $70,000.00 behind, which means at Christmas, if things don’t turn around, I start firing people. The last thing I wanna do is start firing pastors at Christmas. That’s not what I wanna do. Especially people who have given and served faithfully, and we fire the faithful ones because the unfaithful ones aren’t doing their job. I mean, that’s the worst.

Last thing I wanna do is sit down with somebody’s wife and kids and say, “That church that you tithe to, that church that you served at, that church that you got paid 40 hours a week and worked 80 hours a week for, we’re going to have to fire you from that because a bunch of other people don’t give a damn. But don’t take it personally, and kids, don’t get bitter. God’s a good guy.” I’m not looking forward to having to do that, and we’re right at that point.

We’re 70,000 behind for the year. To get into the new space will cost about $60,000.00 in chairs and materials just to be able to set up a room so we can sit down, which means we need $130,000.00 by year’s end, and that also means we need to make up the difference, so our giving needs to increase $6,000.00 month-end, beginning in January. Another portion of money, if we want to get a bigger building. And it’ll take us about an additional $21,000.00 a month over present giving levels to just continue to maintain things as they are in January and to grow.

One of the things we also wanna do is, right now I’m preaching the 9 a.m., the 11 a.m., the 5 p.m., the 6 p.m., and the 8 p.m. on Sundays. I don’t do that angrily or bitterly. I’m glad to preach, but I would love to bring one of our elders on.

That campus has gone to 2 services, and it’s running 250 to 300 people a week. An enormous number of them are non-Christians, and they need somebody there who can get to know them and figure out what in the heck is going on. If you’ve been there, it’s a great service, but it’s ultimate chaos. Hundreds of people, we don’t know who they are. Most of ‘em are not Christians. We have no idea what’s going on. I pull in at 6:27; I preach at 6:30, which means I’m not getting a lot of quality time with people. I don’t know who they are. We don’t know who they are.

You can pray for about $21,000.00 a month additional giving, above and beyond what is happening now. As of January, we can do everything. At that point, we can just continue to progress, and $130,000.00 cash to pay off our debt and our expenses for moving into the new location by the end of the year. And you look around the room; you say, “$130,000.00? How are we gonna do that?” I already told you. We have 1,000 people a week. That’s 130 bucks. It’s not that big of a deal. A hundred and thirty bucks is not that big of a deal for 1,000 people.

That’s about all I’ve got. God’s a good god; we’re not good children.

We’re not gonna take Communion this week. We usually take Communion. I lay out the Gospel. I tell you about how good God is and what he’s done for us and what he’s calling us to, and we’re not gonna take Communion this week. Communion is where we celebrate Jesus’ body and blood, and that is only available to people who repent. See, Christianity is not “I do whatever I want, and then God just forgives me.” God does forgive us, but he transforms us so we don’t do that anymore. That’s repentance.

Paul tells the Corinthians, “That’s what some of you were.” That means you’re not that way anymore. Paul says to them, he says, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord” – that’s communion – “in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and sick.” And a number of you have fallen asleep. You have died.

“But if we judged ourselves” – if we look at ourselves – “we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.” Paul says communion is this serious thing, and if you don’t investigate your heart and repent of your sin, then you’re drinking judgment and eating judgment upon yourself. You’re making yourself out to be God’s enemy. You’re coming to a holy god with dirty hands.

And so we can’t take Communion this week. We can’t do it. For those of you that have been faithful, I apologize because you are needing to give up some of your opportunity today so that those who have not stood with you can think about themselves and judge themselves. Am I saying you all have to tithe? I’m not. Am I saying, though, that, as Paul says, you all should judge yourself and figure out whether or not you can claim to have clean hands? You need to do that. I won’t condemn you. The church won’t condemn you. Your conscience should condemn you, and God will condemn you. It’s between you and him.

Here are some things I would ask you guys to pray and work for. It’s at the very end. There’s some things out of Proverbs. I read Proverbs a number of times this week, and these things just jumped out. Proverbs 15:22, “Plans fail for a lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.” I would ask you to pray for the leaders of the church, that there would be wise counsel and good planning for the future of the church.

Proverbs 20:15, “Gold there is, and rubies in abundance, but lips that speak knowledge are a rare jewel.” Some of you, your giving reflects your life. Your whole life is a mess. You’re disorganized. You don’t know what you’re doing. Pray that God would give us wisdom so that we would teach knowledge, that we would continue to teach in such a way that your lives would become reflective of your convictions and your first love, that we would dispose to you good knowledge.

Proverbs 12:18-19, “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.” You could pray for me that I wouldn’t have reckless words. For me, I get angry really quick. I’m very impatient. I can be a bit of a bully, and I have my own arrogance, and I wanna be careful that I don’t use reckless words to hurt you, but I wanna use truthful words to motivate you.

Proverbs 17:10, “A rebuke impresses a man of discernment more than a hundred lashes a fool.” I pray that out of this you guys would be wise. I pray you would pray for each other that God would give you discernment.

Proverbs 19:11, “A man’s wisdom gives him patience, and it is to his glory to overlook an offense.” Pray that God would cause us all to be patient with each other, not to the degree of tolerating sin, and that those who have been sinned against, that we would have them overlook our offenses if we’ve sinned against them.

I’ll tell you what is just heart-wrenching for me. People come into the church and they say things like, “Okay, what do you have for me?” or “I don’t feel connected,” or “I didn’t get my needs met.” What they’re doing is they’re complaining about 120 to 150 faithful people who are giving and serving, and they’re saying, “You know, those people aren’t doing a good enough job. They need to do more, and they need to serve more, and they need to give more. They need to worship me, because I don’t feel like I’ve been glorified.” Pray that those people would overlook that offense.

Proverbs 13:11, “Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” Pray that out of this would not come like the six weeks of deep guilt and obedience. What we’re looking for is rehabituated people. They have new habits. They live new lives. That little by little, you would take your time and your money and your life, and that you would begin to invest that wisely.

That’s where Jesus says, “He who is faithful with little, much will be given.” The context there is money, but it refers to everything. God’ll give you a little bit of time. He’ll give you a little bit of wisdom. He’ll give you a little bit of money. And if you do a good job with that, he’ll multiply it. And pray that that’s what we would become: people who, little by little, put it together.

Proverbs 14:17, “A quick-tempered man does foolish things, and a crafty man is hated.” Pray for our church that we would not resort to crafty things, trying to manipulate you for money. No big barometers on the wall. Right? No big plaques in the foyer. We don’t start naming rooms after you. Okay?

Proverbs 17:16, “Of what use is money in the hand of a fool since has no desire to get wisdom?” First thing to pray for is not that we all would get a lot of money, but that we’d all get a lot of wisdom. Solomon got a lot of wisdom; then he got a lot of money. If you get a lot of money and you don’t have a lot of wisdom, you’re still not going to be investing it wisely in your life. That’s where people have a lot of money, and they have nothing to show for it. There’s no wisdom. Pray for wisdom.

Proverbs 3:9-10, “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; and then your barns will be filled overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.” Pray that we would begin as a people to think of God first rather than last or not at all.

And lastly, Proverbs 16:3. These are our plans, so pray with us. “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.” Pray that we would not only have God’s plans; that we would have God’s blessing upon those plans.

For those of you that are men, tomorrow night here we’re gonna start some get-togethers for the guys on budgeting and finances and life organization. We’ll open it up to the rest of the church – this is a beta version – in a few weeks.

You got the totals for me? Can I borrow your pen for a second? Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay, this morning – some of you knew it was coming. This morning we had 275 adults with kids. That means we had about 300 people at the 9 a.m. service. Is that the biggest we’ve ever had? It’s the biggest service we’ve ever had at 9 a.m., 300 people in this room. In this area here, it seats about 200. That tells you the kinda problems we have going on.

Out of the 300 people that are here today, how many people gave anything, cash or money? Take a guess. Two hundred and seventy-five adults. How many people? Forty-five. Forty-five, which means – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 – almost this row, maybe two thirds of this row over here. The rest, nothing. This is the best morning we’ve ever had. I’m excited. If it keeps up like this, we’ll be fine.

The average was $18.00 a person. Out of this room here this morning, how much money are we going to make this year total? Take a guess. Five million dollars. This room. You look around, you say, “We all go to SPU.” I know. Five million dollars. Think about that. That’s an average of about $33,000.00 a person, and I know we have a lot of college students here this morning. You and I, this year, we’re gonna spend $5 million. And Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is.”

What I don’t want you to think is that it’s your money and I’m trying to take it from you. What I’m telling you is it’s God’s money and you’re robbing him, and God tells you to give first to him, and then he will take care of you, and that’s an issue of faith. That’s an issue of the Gospel. That’s an issue of trusting God. We’ll get into this in great detail in the next few weeks. I want you guys to think about that, though. In this room, $5 million. Does that surprise you? Five million dollars. What are we doing?

I’m gonna close with that. Church is over. I would encourage those of you that have been faithful to pray for those that are unfaithful; those that are unfaithful, to think about judging themselves. If you are not a Christian, I want you to know this: This is not about money; this is about God. Money is just an indicator of what your god is. You do have a god. You worship something. Your money, your time, your devotion goes to something, and it is right now either Jesus Christ or yourself.

I’m gonna pray. If some of you feel moved to stay and pray and group in clusters, you’re free. Church is over. I’ll let you go for the rest.

Father God, thank you for a chance to get together. Lord Jesus, I am very, very grateful that you are our god. Lord Jesus, I thank you so much that you’re patient with us and that you are generous and gracious, that you are kind to us, that you do not just mete out immediate justice for all of our sins and just strike us dead and cast us away. I thank you that in your infinite compassion and mercy that you came to us, that you humbled yourself, that you took on flesh, that you became one of us, that you walked around in this mess of a world that we have created, and that, Lord Jesus, you died, that we killed you, that you died for our sins. That, Lord Jesus, all the punishment that I deserve, you took upon yourself. All that I had coming, you took it for me.

Lord Jesus, I am so grateful that you are my god. I’m so grateful that you’ve forgiven my sins. I’m so grateful that you have caused me to be adopted into the family of God and that God is now my father and that I have brothers and sisters, and we have all of these wonderful opportunities to participate with you in this new life that you’ve given us.

Lord Jesus, I thank you that you rose from death, that you conquered Satan, sin, and death. I thank you that you are alive, and though we do not see you, you are here, and we are filled with the glorious, inexpressible joy that you are present in our midst. Lord Jesus, we are so grateful. I’m so grateful that you are our god.

Lord Jesus, forgive us for idolatries. Forgive us for our self-worship. Forgive us for our forgetfulness, with our whole lives. And Lord God, for those whom are here, I pray they would judge themselves, that they would just take a look at who their god really is and what their life really reflects, and that they would come to repentance, which is change, and that next week they would come and take communion because they have repented of their sin and they have seriously judged themselves and have ceased bringing judgment upon themselves.

Lord God, for those whom have been faithful and serving and giving and picking up the check for the rest of us, thank you for them. I pray you would encourage them. I pray, Lord God, that for some this sermon would not be convicting; it would just be encouraging. Lord Jesus, we love you. We pray for the city. We pray for our church, and Lord God, we pray for the other churches as well.

We pray for Grace Seattle, and Green Lake Presbyterian, and City Cavalry, and Ed Cook over at the Vineyard, and the E Free church and the Baptist church down the street, and Emmanuel Bible Church. Lord God, there are a lot of churches in our area. Pray that those people would be faithful as well, and pray that the Gospel will continue to move through our city, and pray that people would see Christ and that they would love him and repent of their sins and be made new and whole. Lord Jesus, thank you that you’re seeking worshippers and that you’ve been seeking us.

Amen. Thank you.