Investment

Doing nothing can feel safe, but it’s often the most dangerous investment we make. We open with Scripture from Ecclesiastes 11, Galatians 6, and 2 Corinthians 9 to show how the Bible talks about money, work, and spiritual growth through one steady image: sowing and reaping. If grain is capital, then every day we decide whether to consume it now, store it for security, or plant it with no guarantees. That same logic applies to our calendars, our habits, our giving, and the kind of people we are becoming.

We walk through three marks of wise investment: sacrifice, bold resilience, and patient endurance. From Paul’s call to be a cheerful giver to the warning in Ecclesiastes about waiting for perfect weather, we talk honestly about risk, uncertainty, and why faithful action beats endless analysis. We also explore diversification in a practical way: building skills, creating options, and refusing to let one fragile plan define your future.

Then we zoom out to the deeper question Galatians raises: what are you sowing into, the flesh or the Spirit? Sin and obedience both compound over time, which is why the short-term can be so misleading. We close by looking at Jesus as the ultimate investment, the grain of wheat that falls into the ground and bears much fruit, and we ask what it looks like for us to pull out of what is killing us and invest in life that lasts. If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. What’s one investment you want to make this week?

Transcript

Scripture Readings On Sowing

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For the rest of us, I want to invite us to stand for the reading of God's Word. This morning we have a selection from Ecclesiastes, from Galatians, and from Second Corinthians. Beginning with Ecclesiastes chapter 11 and verse 1, the Word of God reads this way Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth. And if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap. As you do not know the way the Spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. Galatians six, verse seven. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. The point is this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times you may abound in every good work. As it is written, He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures for ever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way, to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You may be seated and may God bless this reading and preaching of his word.

A Guitar Gig And Long Rewards

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Once a month I play live music at the Blind Lemon. It's one of my favorite local bars and indeed one of Cincinnati's most iconic establishments. The main reason that I do it, of course, is for the people. I do it because it's actually I just do it for me. I do it because it's fun. Um it allows me to continue to play music, uh, it allows me to meet new people, some of whom are sitting in this church today, and it allows me just to make a little bit of money, which um Julie, I can give to my wife to spend on getting her nails done, so that's that's a nice amenity. Um aside from the time spent doing it once a month, it takes me almost no effort. I don't have to practice, I don't really have to have anything prepared, I just show up and play. It's nearly effortless. So, how do you do it, Billy? How do you make it so effortless? Well, it's effortless now because I am reaping small rewards that came from years of hard work and investment earlier in my life. As a youth, I studied guitar for 10 years under an instructor. I wrote music, I played in bands, I gained experience playing in front of people for a long, long time. And at the time, all of that cost me money, and it cost me effort, and I paid into that, I sacrificed into that for years, and today it's paying off, even in small ways, and but Lord willing will continue to pay dividends for the remainder of my time on earth.

Investing Explained Through Farming

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We've been in a series on biblical economics, and today we come to the subject of investment. And when the Bible talks about investing, as we saw here in just a few passages, it uses agrarian terms, terms of sowing and reaping. And this gives us a nice metaphor to understand the concept of investing. Because for a farmer, grain is capital. It is a valuable resource that has multiple uses. When the farmer has grain, what can he do with it? He can eat it, it can be consumed for food, he can use it to feed his family. It can be sold for money, he can sell his excess grain, or it can be stored for future security, or he can do the riskiest thing of all with it, and it can be sown in the ground. Sowing is risky because it means foregoing its immediate use for the hope of uncertain future rewards. In sowing, the farmer opens himself up to many risks and many uncertainties. He does not know how the crop will yield. He cannot control the weather. He does not know what the price of grain will be at harvest time. If there's a bumper crop, the price will be will be very low. Um, if there's a famine, the price will be very high. He does not know what it will be. He doesn't know whether or not there will be a plague of locusts that might consume all that he has put on the line. Uh sewing may be the riskiest business of all, and yet so he must. This is a sermon about investing, but the message is not that you should invest. That's part of the message. But the truth is that all of us already are investing in some kind of future. And we see that in Galatians. With every little decision that we make, we are sowing either to the flesh or to the spirit, and whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. So the question is how can we make the right investments, and how can we take the right risks? And let's answer that question as we walk through this passage or these passages by looking at three things.

Three Marks Of Wise Investment

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Investment requires sacrifice, investment requires bold resilience, and investment requires patient endurance. Sacrifice, bold resilience, patient endurance.

Sacrifice That Grows Worship

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So, first, investment requires sacrifice. To have big returns, we must be willing to make big sacrifices. Uh, let's begin by looking at the passage in 2 Corinthians. In that passage, Paul is writing about the collection for the saints in Jerusalem. The church in Jerusalem, the first church, the original church, had fallen on unusually hard times by the time that Paul is writing this letter, and Paul was collecting support from the churches all around the world, from the Gentile churches, to send back to the church in Jerusalem. And Paul encourages the Corinthians to invest in God's kingdom by generous financial giving. This money, as he writes, is not to be exacted as a tax. I just paid my city income tax, and I did not pay it cheerfully. I paid it as an exaction, because if I don't, there are legal consequences that I wish to avoid. So that's why I paid the tax. This money, however, that Paul is encouraging them to give is to be a cheerful and generous gift. Verse 7 says, each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And gifts like this are regarded as a sacrifice and a fragrant offering to God. The giver gives not as an exaction, but because of his love for God and his love for God's kingdom. But it is a sacrifice because this is money that could have been put to many other uses. Many Christians do not give to God's kingdom as they ought to, because they don't think that they have enough money to give. But they're operating on a faulty assumption when we think this way. And the assumption is that we give to God's kingdom only if we have more than we think that we need. So we give out of an abundance. But the reality is that investing in God's kingdom always requires a sacrifice. Biblical generosity is not about abundance, but it is about making sacrifices for the sake of God's kingdom. So Paul is calling the Corinthians to financially invest in the kingdom of God, but what would be the promised return? Unlike conventional investments, it's not money. So the Corinthians do not give in the hope of one day receiving money back from the church in Jerusalem. The return is increased worship. If you look at verse 10, it says, He who supplies seed for the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increased the harvest of your righteousness. So Paul says they sow a financial seed, they make this investment, and the harvest is righteousness. And this doesn't mean that they earn anything with God because of their gift, but it means that as they make sacrifices for God's kingdom, that they come to know God better, that they come to resemble Him more, and that their lives are filled with the peaceful fruit of righteousness. And then if you look at 12 and 13, Paul says, For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ. So Paul says that they sow a financial seed in the harvest. The return on that is thanksgiving and worship all around the world. If we want to see God honored and worshipped around the world, if we want to see God's kingdom established in our city, and many people come to worship the living God, then we must make sacrifices to that end. If God's people sacrifice little, then the returns will be small. But if we sacrifice bountifully, the returns can be very great. If you look at verse six, Paul says, The point is this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. It's easy to lament the spiritual decline in our culture and in our city, but it's much harder to make sacrifices in order to invest in a better spiritual future. Of course, only God can bring about revival, which we pray that he would, and we look to him to do that. Only he can do that. But still, revival does not appear out of thin air. It always comes downriver of great sacrifice and investment, both spiritually and materially. My first ministry job out of college was working as a campus minister with the navigators, and this required raising my own support. So for many years, our family survived because I spent time asking people for money. I was asking them to invest in God's kingdom through me as a gospel worker. I asked people who seemed rich, and I asked people who seemed poor, and the results were always surprising. But here's one that I'll never forget. I asked a young married couple, uh friends of ours, if they would support our ministry, and they chose to support us at $50 per month. And that was that's a pretty typical gift to give to a young campus minister like I was. But the thing is that they didn't really have $50 per month in their budget. Their budget was already maxed out. So what did they do? Well, they cheerfully chose to cancel their home internet service, and this was back in like 2009, so home internet service was a little bit more of a luxury than it is today, but they chose to cancel their home internet service, um, which cost about the same amount. So if you so think about that. They made a sacrifice, they sacrificed convenience and they willingly reduced their lifestyle so that there could be more worship in the world. So that when these lost college students arrived at UC's campus, that there would be at least one person waiting for them trying to share the gospel with them. $50 a month is a modest amount. It was then, it is still today, but it was a legitimate sacrifice for them, and they invested in the gospel and they invested in me, and in ways they probably never imagined, their small sacrifice became part of a larger gospel harvest that continues today, even in this very congregation. How amazing is that! Because they for a year or two years they went without this convenience and how how much that has paid off. Make no mistake, Jesus will build his church. He says that he will. The Holy Spirit will bring revival, whether we sacrifice or not. But if it's not us, someone will sacrifice, and the kingdom will only come through sacrifice, and we have the privilege and the joy to be part of that. Our neighborhood, this neighborhood in which we stand right now, is full of the architecture of past spiritual investment. It's astounding to think about, but that in the 19th and the early 20th century, over the Rhine was one of the most church-dense urban neighborhoods in America, especially because of massive German and Irish immigration into our region at that time. St. Francis Seraph, which is over on Liberty just down the street from here, one of the largest and most prominent churches in the neighborhood, began construction in 1859, and it would become the ninth German Catholic church in the neighborhood. There were already eight others. And this doesn't even take into consideration the many Protestant and German Reformed churches. And today, most of those old buildings are now breweries or breweries that even have shut down since they've opened or retail locations or simply abandoned, waiting to be developed by 3CDC. And just a few months ago, St. Francis announced that it would be closing its doors and ceasing operations later this summer. This neighborhood used to be filled with church bells on Sunday morning. Could the worship of the living God be found here again? And the answer is a resounding yes, but it will require a significant investment. So what are we doing here at St. John? And I think we have to think of ourselves as early investors in a future kingdom. We're here in a hard place, and we're here in an expensive place, a place where the gospel is slow to take root and grow. Over the Rhine is a neighborhood that is spiritually contested. This is a neighborhood that is spiritually contested. And we are making a sacrifice because we are looking for a future city whose designer and builder is God. Big returns require big sacrifices, so let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So that is point one that investment requires sacrifice.

Bold Resilience In A Risky World

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But point two, investment requires bold resilience. Because investment always involves risk and uncertainty, it requires bold resilience. Investment is not a science, and just even talking about financial investment, it's not a science because it always entails risk and uncertainty. Risk and uncertainty are two different things. They're two distinct things, and investors have to deal with both of them. Risk is calculable. Forgive the crude uh example here, but if I am if I'm playing Russian roulette, I am putting my life at risk. But that risk is calculable. There's a one in six chance that I will lose. It's a calculable risk. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is not calculable. Uh later today, if I say something off color and if I make my wife upset, it is uncertain how she will react. I cannot calculate that. Risk and uncertainty. Investors face both of them, both risk and uncertainty. The farmer who sows his seed doesn't know what the price at harvest time will be. Furthermore, he cannot control or even influence the weather. He cannot control drought or famine. He cannot control natural disasters. Investment always entails risk because we do not know how things will turn out. Ecclesiastes recognizes that we live in a world of risk and uncertainty. Verse 2 says, For you know not what disaster may happen on earth. Verse 5 says, you do not know the work of God who makes everything. And verse 6 says, in the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold withhold not your hand, for you do not know, you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. With all investments, there are certain risks that we can calculate, but there are also many uncertainties which we can neither calculate nor even imagine. And yet, in order to have success in the future, we must invest, even though this means taking risks. And the biggest risk of all is to do nothing, because we're too scared to fail. If we're too scared to fail, and if we do nothing, this guarantees that we will have nothing for the future. This guarantees that we will fail. Solomon recognizes that we cannot control our environment. In verse 3, he says, If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth. And if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. Why does he say this? He's saying there's nothing you can do about it. If the clouds are full of rain, they're gonna rain. If the tree's gonna fall, it's gonna fall. These things are gonna happen. You do not have control over your environment. And so he warns against letting our environment dictate our investment decisions. Verse 4, he says, He who observes the wind will not sow, and as a consequence, he who regards the clouds will not reap. If you're always worried about your environment, then you're not gonna invest and you're not gonna make a return. What Solomon is saying is that you're if you're always studying the environment, waiting for the ideal circumstances before you act, then you will never act, because the circumstances will never seem ideal. One commentator put it like this few great enterprises have waited for ideal conditions. Solomon says in verse one, cast your bread upon the waters. And this is a reference, possibly, to bold maritime ventures that are both very profitable, or were, at least in his time, both very profitable, but also very risky. And he says in verse two, give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. So Solomon is saying that the way to handle risk is not to do nothing but to do many things. It's not to do nothing, but to invest in many ways and in many places. Solomon talks about a common terminology would be diversifying our investments, not putting all of our eggs in one basket, but giving a portion to seven or even to eight, is what Solomon says. This way, even though each endeavor is risky, the risk is spread out over many things, and one may fail, but that's not going to sink you because another one may succeed. So the overall risk is much lower. So, how do we invest well in a risky world? Solomon says we boldly act and we make investments. And we make many investments. The Industrial Revolution brought with it the concept of specialization and professionalism. And many of us have grown up in a world that has taught us that we need to devote our lives to one thing: that we need to go to college and get one degree that would set us up for one career and we would find a good job with one company and become a professional or a specialist at one thing. And for many decades, this worked. But historically, it's very unusual. And we may be moving into an economy, or maybe we've been there for a long time, where this model really no longer makes any sense. Consider Benjamin Franklin, for example, one of the most important founding fathers of the United States. What was Benjamin Franklin's job? What did he do to make money? Does anybody know? Well, he was a founding father. He got paid for founding our country. That's not what he did. As a young man, Franklin began working in his brother's print shop, but he went on to start his own printing business in Philadelphia and he was printing whoever would pay him to print, printing newspapers, government materials, commercial materials, and he became financially independent in his 40s. So he did well in printing. But he was also a famous writer. He wrote political commentary and satire that he printed and sold like hotcakes. He was also an inventor. He did early work in harnessing electricity, which made him internationally famous. He invented the bifocals, which some of you may even be wearing today, the Franklin Stove. He was civically involved. He helped Philadelphia start the first volunteer fire department. And he was an entrepreneur, forging partnerships to start printing presses in many American colonies, and he was a diplomat and a statesman. He went to France in the early days of the American Revolution and convinced the French to help support the revolution, and that's part of the reason that we won the revolution, and he helped to draft the Declaration of Independence. He was a man who had many diverse investments. He learned how to do many things. His money was tied up in many things, and as a consequence, he had a resilience. If one endeavor failed, another might succeed, and no one failure could sink him. That's the idea of diverse investments. Ecclesiastes does not call us to reckless gambling, but to resilient sewing. So what might that mean for us? It means that we need to create options. So you have been credentialed in a field. You got your degree, you got ordained, you passed the bar, whatever it is, you got credentialed in a field. Good. Don't stop. Don't rest on your laurels there. Don't stop learning and growing. Learn a new skill. Perhaps get credentialed in an adjacent field. Grow your options. Keep developing your knowledge base and your skill base. Invest in those things. So you've started a business, and so the business is profitable and you can survive from year to year. Good. Now, train your replacement. Invest in another person and make them able to do what you are currently doing so that you can then go start another business, so that you can open up another production line or continue to develop and grow the business that you've started. Create more options so that it all does not depend on you. So you had one profitable venture. Good. But don't just sit on that money or expect it to take care of you for the rest of your life, but reinvest it in other possibilities, create more options. You do not know, Solomon says, whether this or that will prosper. You do not know the work and the plans of God who creates everything. But since you must invest in something, you might as well invest in many things and attempt to create many options. So it requires a bold resilience. And then finally, investment requires patient endurance.

Patient Endurance And Life Habits

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Because investment takes time to pay off, investment requires patient endurance. Ecclesiastes again recognizes that the payoff takes time. Verse 1 says, cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it when? After many days, is what it says. You will find it after many days. Not immediately, but only after many days. It takes time to mature and to pay off. Paul also recognizes the need for patient endurance in Galatians 6, 8, and 9. He says, the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up, if we do not give up. So Paul says that we will reap in due season, at the right time, after time has passed, if we do not give up. It takes time for any investment to come to fruition, so it is important that we do not give up. But also notice that Paul here is talking not just about our finances, but he's talking about our whole life. He's talking about our whole spiritual life. With every decision that we make, we are sowing either to the flesh or to the spirit. We are investing either in our fallen nature or in the work that God is doing in our lives. And there's some profound wisdom here for us. What Paul is pointing us to is that the full consequences of sin never appear immediately. The full consequences of sin never appear immediately. This is one reason why sin is so deceptive. Because we can live in disobedience to the Lord, and nothing bad will happen immediately to us. Immediately it seems like everything is going fine, at least for a little while. The full consequences do not appear immediately. But the same is true for our obedience to God and our investment in God's Spirit. The full benefits of obedience also do not appear immediately. If you sit down and read the Bible and pray one time, the benefits of this are not immediately obvious. Only by a sustained investment over a period of years do we begin to see serious and permanent results. But the reality is that sin is easy and it offers immediate rewards, and that's why it's tempting. It's easy, it offers immediate rewards, immediate payoff, but in the long run, we know that when it's fully mature, it brings forth death. Conversely, obedience is difficult. It's hard to obey the Lord. And only after a long time does it bear the peaceful fruit of righteousness. So in the meantime, we must, as Paul says, patiently endure. In Galatians, we see more clearly that our whole life is an investment. With every decision that you make, with every habit that you develop, you are investing in some kind of future. You are investing either in your sinful fallen nature, which will only reward you with death and pain and breakdown of relationships and everything good, or we are investing in the work that God's Spirit is doing in our lives, which will lead to a life that overflows and that never ends. And we should not be deceived, Paul says, whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. This year I have significantly cut down on alcohol consumption. Over the course of about five months, I have lost 15 pounds just by just by cutting down on drinking. On top of this, I feel better, I sleep better, I think I look healthier, I think I look better. In reality, having one drink is not going to have any immediate negative health effects. I had a glass of wine last night, but I've significantly reduced, not completely eliminated it. But in reality, having one drink is not going to have any immediate negative health effects. You can do that now and again, but it can be deceptive because one drink and you're fine, but if you are drinking regularly for months and for years, that will have a profound negative health impact. That by the time these things emerge, they can be so serious that they cannot be quickly fixed. These things develop over time. Conversely, on the other hand, visiting the gym one time and having one difficult workout will not yield any immediate results except for the fact that you're going to be very sore. But all of us know that a consistent investment in exercise over time will produce very profound results that cannot easily be undone. So which is harder to do? Which of those two things is more difficult to do? It's obviously harder to take care of ourselves, to eat the right food, to get up and go to the gym. But which is the better investment? And all of us know that, all of us know the answer to that question. We all know this on the physical realm, but this is also true in our spiritual life. Disobedience to God is easy. We have a fallen nature, and we don't have to do anything special to disobey God. We just have to drift and we will do it naturally. It's easy and often does not have immediate negative effects in the short term. But over time, it places us at serious risk. And obedience to God is difficult. We have to resist our own fallen nature. It's difficult and it often does not have positive results in the short term immediately. But over time, it reveals itself to be the way of eternal life. So what kind of future are you investing in? It's time for all of us to invest in a heavenly

Jesus As The Ultimate Investment

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one. Our Lord Jesus made the ultimate sacrificial investment. If you look at his life, what did he spend his life on? What did he invest his life in? We know that he did not live for himself, he did not put safety first and seek to preserve his life on this earth. Rather, he spent his life building a church and not just creating an institution, but creating a new people of God by dying for our sins. And he taught his disciples in John 12. He said, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Jesus did not preserve his own life, but he invested it all. He laid down his life as a ransom for many. And in the fullness of time his investment will pay off. Isaiah 53 tells us out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Jesus' obedience was the most difficult of all, far more difficult than anything you or I will ever be called to do, because God's calling for him was to bear the sins of many, to bear my sins and to bear your sins. But because of his obedience, many will be accounted righteous. Jesus is very invested in your salvation. He is so invested. He's already died for you. How invested

Pull Out Of What Kills You

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is our Lord in our salvation? So with every decision that you make, you are investing in some kind of future. And it's time to stop. Let's just stop this morning. Let's pull out of our investments of the things that are killing us, and let us invest instead in the work of God's Spirit, not just with our finances, but with our whole life, with everything that we do. Our God, who is making all things new to this end, let us pray. Would you help us today to see more clearly the investments that we are making that are foolish? Help us to see the sin in our lives that is killing us, that it so easily lures us and tempts us. Help us, Lord, to turn from it this morning, to repudiate the works of the devil, to cut ties with them, because you have transferred us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of your beloved Son. Jesus, you have spent all of it. You have invested everything in this project, this project of our salvation, of the renewal of creation, of the building up of a new people of God, the church who will glorify your name. You've invested everything. You're not going to give up on it because you're all in. So we pray, Lord, that you would help us to reciprocate and to be all in with you as well and to invest in life that is truly life. Help us to do that with all of our being, but also help us to make sense of how to do that with our finances as well, so that we might both invest in your kingdom, but also grow in wealth and generosity and have something to share with those who are in need. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Let's stand in worship.