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The scripture reading of the morning is 2 Corinthians chapter 9. I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered 1. Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the offering for the Saints for I know your readiness of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia saying that a Ki has been

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ready since last year and your zeal has stirred up most of them but I am sending the brethren so that our boasting about you may not prove vain in this case so that you may be ready as I said you would be. Lest if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready we'd be humiliated to say nothing of you

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for being so confident. So I thought it necessary to urge the brethren to go on to you before me and arrange in advance for this gift you have promised so that it may be ready not as an exaction but as a willing gift. The point is this he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and he who sows bountifully

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will also reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver and God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work as it is

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written he scatters abroad he gives to the poor his righteousness endures forever and may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his work. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is reported that on one occasion Harry Truman asked his advisors to find him a one-armed economist and when they asked him why he wanted a one-armed economist he said it was because he was looking for an economist who couldn't

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say now on the one hand it may be this way but on the other hand well whenever you meet economists or whenever you fall into conversation about economists some people invariably poke fun at them. George Bernard Shaw said if you took all the economists in the world and laid them end to end they wouldn't reach a

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conclusion. Will Rogers said that in his experience the guess of a economist was likely to be as good as anybody else's guess. Robert Heilbron said that mathematics has given economics rigor unfortunately it's also given it mortis and one of our own members said to me this last week he asked me if I had

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heard about the economist who drowned while crossing a river the average depth of which he had computed to be six inches. You have to think about that for a while but it's worth the effort. So we make a lot of fun of economists but the economists that I know are basically very thoughtful and caring people and

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they're dealing with an extremely complex subject on which it is difficult to speak with pinpoint accuracy. They are giving approximate answers to what are very ambiguous questions. These questions of course touch our lives at many places but I I want this morning to publicly take off my hat to those who

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work at understanding the economic process. Two summers ago I attended a special conference held at Duquesne University which concerned the clergy and economics. Dr. Glenn Beeson who heads up the fine economics department at Duquesne University has this conference every two years and he and his staff

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together with invited guests look into economic questions from a Christian perspective. It was a very good experience and while I was there I learned a new word TINSTAFL. T-I-N-S-T-A-A-F-L. It is an acronym for a phrase most of you I'm sure are quite familiar with but I had never seen this acronym before and

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it's to this that I would like to address our attention this morning. TINSTAFL. There is no such thing as a free lunch. I suppose the most disgusting display of avarice which one sees in America today is on our television game shows. I mean the way people giggle and gurgle while they're jumping up and down

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and the way they get that zombie-like glaze in their eyes when they look at the prizes that they've won. I read an article two weeks ago which said that Let's Make a Deal had now given away over 31 million dollars in prizes. That's wrong of course. They haven't given away anything. All of those prizes are paid

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for. They're paid for by the advertising that is given when the prizes are presented on television and of course the cost of that advertising is paid for by you and me. When we buy products a significant part of the cost is the advertising. So the people on the game shows think that with a little luck they

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may be able to get something for nothing but nothing ever comes for nothing. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Now that's what Paul is saying to the Corinthians in the portion of his letter which I read to you just a few minutes ago. The church in Jerusalem was in rather bad shape and so Paul set out

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amongst younger churches to organize a collection for the benefit of the saints in Jerusalem. And he presents his argument, I read it in your hearing just a moment ago, and he climaxes his argument by saying this, "The point is this, he who sows sparingly reaps sparingly and he who sows bountifully

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reaps bountifully." Put in shorter form he says, "As you sow so shall you reap." Put in nothing and you will get nothing. Sow ten seeds and you'll get a very small harvest. Sow a great number of seeds and you'll get a much larger harvest. There has to be some kind of investment if there's going to be profit.

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There is no such thing as a free lunch. I remember when I was doing graduate study in Scotland that a group of communist students came to me one night and asked me if I'd go with them to a communist rally and I said yes. And we rode a train about 15 miles out of St. Andrews to a boxing arena where this

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rally was being held. The speakers stood in the ring and the students were all around the outside and the speeches that were given were the typical communist line, you're familiar with it. They did of course use a lot of illustrations and language which would appeal to university students. About halfway

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through the program they passed the hat to raise enough money to pay for the program that was being presented and while the hat was being passed they sang a song, I'll never forget it, "The Red Star Over All." Well when they looked at the offering it wasn't enough so they passed the hat again and they sang the song

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again and then they passed the hat a third time and they sang the song a third time. When the program was over I was astonished to discover that I was the only one in our group that had any money left to pay for the train ride back home. I of course had given nothing to the offering because I believe

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Marxism to be a lie, I believed it then, I believe it now, it has failure written all over it. So I had put in nothing but all of these students had put in literally everything that they had and they were going to have to walk back to the university 15 miles on a cold winter night. I walked with them so that I could

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argue with them all the way. But I must say that I was very much impressed with the fact that they were willing to put their mouth and their mind and their money together. That is they realized they were not going to get anywhere with this effort of theirs if

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they didn't really put out and so they did put out. You can't have a victory without some investment. There is no such thing as a free lunch and I might add that if materialism wins the world before we win it for Jesus Christ it is going to be precisely because the communists have been willing to invest

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more in the winning than we have been. Well now what are some of the ways in which people try to get a free lunch within the fellowship of the church? Well some try to get a free lunch by trying to get yesterday to pay their bills. Did you hear about the boy in college who sent a telegram home to his father it said, "Dear

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one, no mon, send some, your son." The father sent back a wire which read, "Dear lad, too bad, I'm sad, you're dead." Well going to parents, going to those who've come before to pick up the tab, going to our ancestors, that's trying to get yesterday to pay the bill. Now we have some well-meaning people in our church

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who argue that we should take the church endowment and that we should spend it. We shouldn't have a third century campaign, we should use that money to meet our needs or others would suggest that we should give that money to missions except perhaps for a small emergency fund which we would retain for that

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kind of purpose. I had one woman say to me, "Won't you be ashamed if Jesus comes and you're the pastor of a church with an endowment?" And I said to her, "No, when Jesus comes I am sure there are going to be many things of which I am ashamed." But that is not one of them. In the first place, a large portion of our endowment

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we can't spend because the people who gave it gave it for very specific purposes. We have even been to court to try to change some of those purposes without success, those purposes and needs having largely disappeared. But there's a lot of that money on which we couldn't put our hands even if we wanted to spend

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it. But more importantly than that, Jesus has told us that we are to be as wise as the children of this world. He uses another phrase that we are to be wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. And that means we are to be careful, we are to be frugal, we are to be cautious, we are to adopt the basic economic

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principles which are successful in life. And one of those things is you don't spend all of your seed corn. One of the reasons why we have to come to you for a capital campaign about the building as infrequently as every 25 or 30 years is because we have an endowment that picks up those expenses at other times.

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And one of the reasons the money that you give to this church goes immediately to program or to missions and is not spent on stone and wood is because we have that endowment fund. I had one man say to me we ought to spend the endowment fund except for an emergency fund and that we ought to do in order to

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see whether God wants us to continue to function as a church. If he wants us to be here he'll make what we need available to us and if he doesn't then he won't and we'll know we're not supposed to be here. I wonder how often you have to test God. I mean isn't it evident to us, isn't God blessing us

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sufficiently that by this time we realize that we are where we're supposed to be? Read our radio mail, get the responses that I'm getting to television, go to the Boys Club banquet, talk to the visitors who come to this church every Sunday, talk to the new members. One couple of the new members are

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traveling 60 miles every week to get here to church. That's 60 miles one way. Talk to all of the groups who meet here and who couldn't function downtown in this city if it were not us. How many different evidences of God's blessing do you have to have to be convinced that he in fact wants us to be here and carrying

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out his work? Now I don't think it'll work to say that we want to pay our bills by passing them off to yesterday. Other people say that we ought to pay our bills by passing them off to tomorrow. That is we take to ourselves great big mortgages and let our children pay for them sometime in the future. The

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most awful illustration of that of course today is our own national policy. We all know that you borrow money in order to be able to spend it now and pay it back later, but it must be paid back. Tinstaffle, there is no such thing as a free lunch, but as a nation we are spending the money of our children. The

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present administration has added more to the national debt than all previous administrations put together and there's something fundamentally unfair about that. For us to be enjoying the money that our kids are going to have to replace. This country is very much like Gulliver, held down by a thousand threads of

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self-interest. We have generals who receive more money after they're retired than they did while they were at work. We have a military intent on building a Maginot line which never worked in the past and is not going to work in the future. We have hospital administrators, not so much doctors, but hospital

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administrators who are permitting hospital costs to advance at two and a half times the national inflation rate. We have a tax system which has within it all kinds of inequities. We now have one attorney for every 400 citizens. 90% of the world's jury trials, with all the costs involved in that, takes place in

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this country. Our social security system is nothing but a chain letter to the future. It's an actuarial nightmare, but we go along spending this money and expecting someday for our kids to pay it back. I think there's something fundamentally wrong about that. We can't pass it on to tomorrow. And then

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there are people who try to get out of paying for their lunch by trying to get others today to pay the bill. They don't push it to yesterday and they don't shove it off till tomorrow. What they do is wait for their friends to give. They enjoy the benefits but give nothing themselves. Now these people can only be

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described as greedy. Unless of course the money which they do not give to one Christian cause, they give to another Christian cause. Now people are free in their own consciences to be led to give where they wish to give. I'm talking about those people now who will reject an effort like, for example, the third

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century campaign, but they won't give an equal sum somewhere else. Now that's fundamentally selfish. It's like in the Dark Ages. You know in the Dark Ages there were a lot of professional soldiers, mercenaries, who wanted to become Christians. But when they would go down into the water to be immersed,

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they'd keep their sword hand up out of the water. That was so after they'd been baptized, they could come out and take up their weapon and say, "I'll fight with this hand because this hand hasn't been baptized." Well there's some people that do that with their checkbooks and with their wallets. The wisdom of Solomon says

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in chapter 7 that there are those who give but don't want others to give. They're prideful. Then it says there are those who want others to give but want to give nothing themselves. They're greedy. Then the wisdom of Solomon says there are those who want to give themselves and want others to give also.

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They are saintly. And the aphorism concludes with this, "There are those who want no one to give. They are evil." The Bible says, "As you give, you will receive. If you give a great deal, you will receive a great deal. If you give little, you will receive a little." That's the principle very, very simply. There is no

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such thing as a free lunch. You just can't pass it off to yesterday or to tomorrow or to others. Now Paul is very specific about the blessings that these free lunch people miss. He points out first of all that they miss the chance to experience a growth in their faith. You probably noticed in this passage

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that Paul uses a lot of agricultural words. He talks about scattering seed, about sowing, about reaping, and he uses various references from the Old Testament in this regard. I'm sure that he must have thought while he was writing this of Ecclesiastes 11 chapter 1 where we had that verse that goes, "Cast

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your bread upon the waters and it will return to you sevenfold after many days." That's a very interesting verse. It comes out of Egypt. You know, there wouldn't be in Egypt if it weren't for the Nile River. Where the Nile is, the land is fertile and people can live. Where the Nile is not, well, Egypt is nothing but

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sand, a desert. Now one of the fascinating things is that it just in the springtime, when it comes time to sow your seed, that's the time when the Nile floods and inundates all the land. So what does the successful farmer have to do? He gets in his boat and he rows out onto the water and he throws his seed into the water. It

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looks like an act of absolute foolishness. He's casting his bread, his seed, onto the water. But what happens, you see, is the seed soaks up the water, it settles down, and as the water recedes following the flood, it is sucked down into the soil and within a few weeks the green growth appears. It looks like an

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essay in futility to throw your seed into the water. But you've got to be willing to take that risk if you're going to know the produce that is to come from it. Well, in just the same way, Paul is saying, if you don't throw your bread upon the water, if you don't give, if you don't throw it out even at some

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risk, you're never going to know what it is to have a full crop. The second thing he goes on to say is that people who don't give miss the joy of receiving the gratitude of others. Remember, Paul was taking this collection for the poor church at Jerusalem. Now, I'm sure you know enough about the New Testament to

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recall that the Christians who lived in Jerusalem were Jews before they were Christians. But the Christians who lived in many of these other churches were not Jews before they were Christians, they were Gentiles before they became Christians. And there was always a sort of a doubt amongst these Jerusalem

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Christians as to whether somebody could really be a Christian without becoming a Jew first. And what Paul is saying to the Corinthians, to the Gentiles who become Christians, is this, "Look, you say you're as good Christians as they are. They're not sure about that because you didn't become a Jew first, but here's how you

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can make sure that they will know the genuineness of your faith, by your giving, not your words, but by that which you bestow upon them as an act of love. Nobody can deny the validity of your faith when it shows forth in your generous giving. It's an unanswerable argument." Not too long ago, one of the

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ministers in our Pittsburgh Presbytery was riding a bus and two women in front of him were talking. He could hear their conversation. One of the women was explaining to the other how they'd been out of work for quite some time. There evidently was unemployment in both families and they were sharing their

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problems. And then one of the women turned to the other and said, "Well, I'll tell you this. If you really need help, go to the Presbyterians. They will do what they say they will do." I was thrilled when I was told that by the man who heard it, because that's the way I feel about our Presbyterian Church. We have

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guided little children in their steps toward faith. We've inspired our young people with the vision of Christ. We have warned those who are outside of Christ of the cost of sin. We have healed across the years countless hurt souls. We have befriended the lonely. We have put a star in the dark sky of some people's grief.

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We have helped people to know heaven. We have built hospitals and universities and homes of charity. We have cherished the elderly. We've given shelter to the troubled, to insurables, and to women who have been hurt, and to the deaf, and to the blind, and to the dumb, and to the crippled. We have entered into the arts

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and we have given example and support to music and drama and literature and sculpture. And sure, the world has copied us, but it didn't begin with the world and the world has never equaled us. And there are many people who always remember with gratitude the ministry of the church. And if you have one of those

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who have helped to make that ministry possible, then those who are grateful to the church are grateful to you. And if you are one of those who have not helped, then their gratitude is not for you. For it's only as you give that you receive. If you don't sow, you don't reap. And then Paul says that those who do not give miss

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the best blessings of God. I heard the other day about a fellow who was a book collector and he went to see one of his friends and this friend said, "Oh it's too bad you weren't here yesterday. I had an old Bible here but I threw it out. It was printed by somebody named Guten something or other." And his friend said,

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"Well you're crazy. That was a Gutenberg Bible, one of the first books ever printed. Why, one was just auctioned off a few weeks ago for $4,000, $400,000. And his friend said, "Oh I wouldn't have been able to get a dime for mine. Somebody named Martin Luther had written all over it." Well a lot of people miss

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out in valuing themselves and the reason they don't value themselves is because they don't have enough of God in them. They've only given a thimble of themselves to God and so they can only get a drop of God in return. What does Paul say? God loves cheerful givers. The Bible doesn't hesitate to talk about

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rewards. It lays them right out there. It says that those people who give with generous and joyful hearts, those people are loved. Those people have more friends. Those people have a stronger and a growing and developing faith. Those people help and they are in turn helped and they receive the best blessings of

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God. I have been in the ministry for 27 years and I have been a Christian for 40 years and I have never known that not to be true. So it's like that minister who was visiting in the Northwoods and he had his son with him one day and as they were walking along a man came over he said, "Sir we've heard you've been

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vacationing here. We have a little church over here in the woods, very small. Would you be willing to come and preach for us this Sunday?" He said, "I'd be glad to do that." So the next Sunday the minister and his son walked through the woods, through the church, very small church. When they went in there was a wooden box on the

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wall that had a slot in the top but the minister dropped a half dollar in it. Well they went in, there were only 14 people there for church and when the service was over the host said to the minister, "Now our people are very poor. They're so poor that we we don't take an offering. We just invite them to put

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whatever they wish into that box by the door and whatever is in there is yours." "That'll be fine," said the minister and they went out and turned over the box and out rolled a 50 cent piece and the little boy said, "Daddy!" and his father said, "Son, we'll talk in a few minutes." They said goodbye and as they were

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walking back through the woods the minister looked at his son and he said, "Now son, what were you going to say?" The boy said, "Daddy, all I was going to say was this. If you'd have put more into it you'd have gotten more out of it." And that my friends being translated is tenstaffle. There's no such thing as a

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free lunch, etc., etc., etc. Let us pray. Our Father God, we pray that thou will surround us with thy love, that thou will so much fill us with the grace of it that we will be led to be generous lovers of others. For it is as we sow that we shall reap that good harvest

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which thou art ready to bestow upon cheerful givers. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]