Money According To God Series

Money According to God

Your Money Is Your Life

Wildwind Community Church

David Flowers

November 15, 2009

TOP 10 SIGNS YOU ARE BROKE

10. American Express calls and says: "Leave home without it!"

9. You’re formulating a plan to rob the food bank.

8. Long distance companies don’t call you to switch.

7. You rob Peter...and then rob Paul.

6. You finally clean your house, hoping to find change.

5. You think of a lottery ticket as an investment.

4. Your bologna has no first name.

3. Sally Struthers sends you food.

2. McDonalds supplies you with all your kitchen condiments.

1. At communion you go back for seconds.

Everybody needs money. Even the famous George Mueller needed money. Mueller ran an orphanage, and would frequently sit down at the dinner table with his orphans, but no food on the table. He would bow his head and pray for food, and food would simply appear. Someone would suddenly ring the doorbell and deliver a bag of groceries, or drop off some cash, or people would provide in other ways. Here we could say that Mueller was a man who did not depend on money, but the truth is that he depended on it as much as the rest of us. It's simply that he often depended on the money of other people rather than on his own efforts.

None of us is exempt. None of us is above money. No one gets to go through life with the hippy notion that they don't need money. We'll either make our own money, or depend on the generosity of others who have made money. Today we start a new series, and this series is called your money is your life. As I have said in past weeks, it is money that allows us access to the things we need to survive and without money we simply could not survive for long.

But really we all know that money is life in many ways. We all have ideas and opinions about money. Some people tell me I should mention money more often on Wildwind's e-list because they want to stay up to date on Wildwind's finances and know what the church's needs are. Other people tell me they no longer subscribe to our e-list because they don't like it when I write about money. I'm not exactly sure how many people are here today, but I'm pretty sure it's nearly the exact same number as the number of opinions there are in this room about money.

But we're a church. Some of us even claim to be trying to order our lives according to God's priorities. So God's opinion counts for something, doesn't it? In fact, shouldn't God's view of money shape my view and your view? If I claim to be ordering my life according to God's priorities, can I have opinions about money that run contrary to God's? Is that a good idea? If it could be shown that God has some definite ideas about money, would we be both wise and obligated to come to understand those ideas and make them our own?

Well, God definitely has some ideas about money, for those who believe the Bible is God's Word. Do you know how much God talks about baptism? There are 40 verses in the Bible about baptism. Do you know how much God talks about prayer? There are 275 verses in the Bible about prayer. Do you know how much God talks about faith? There are 350 verses in the Bible about faith. What about love, how many verses do you think that topic gets? Huge theme in scripture, right? The Bible contains 650 verses about love. That's pretty good, right? I mean, we know how important love is. What about money? The Bible contains 2,350 verses about money and possessions. Now do we get to say that the Bible's 650 verses about love show what a big priority God places on love, but then say that the 2,350 verses in the Bible about money are coincidence and don't really mean anything? I don't think we get to say that.

So we are left realizing that this topic is absolutely huge to God. By the way, for those who say we shouldn't talk about money and that I shouldn't write about it, perhaps you can put some thought into how I could be remotely faithful to scripture without talking about it. In fact (and I'm not going to do this) but can you imagine how much more I'd have to talk about it if I made a commitment to talk about God's highest priorities on the same percentage basis that God does? That would mean for every sentence about love, I'd have to include 3.6 sentences about money. I wonder how that would sit.