Can I Trust God With My Money
Proverbs 3:5-10 1 Timothy 6:17-19 Glenville 1-8-12
We are in the middle of a series of Can I Trust God. Last week Pastor Kellie preached on “Can I Trust God With My Disappointments.”. Today we will look at “Can I Trust God With My Money.” Next week we will look at “Can I Trust God With My Future.”
Suppose for a moment I gave you a million dollars in a bank account. But there was one catch. The account could not be in your name, and you always had to ask the other person to give you some money, which they would do, and you could not take out more than $10,000 in a given month. Now since the account is in that person’s name, and they could take out your money at any time, who would you trust with your money in that account? What quality did you look for before making your decision?
Trust has nothing to do with how much feeling you can muster inside about something. For instance, if somebody gave you a chair with three very wobbly legs, you would not say, “I’m going to get the trust from deep inside me to believe this chair is going to hold me up.” If you do, you are going to hit the floor. Trust is based on the character or the nature of what you are putting your trust in. When God says, for us to trust Him, God is saying, “ check me out and examine me. See if I am worthy of trust. Look and see if I am a liar of if I am Faithful & True.” God would not tell us to put our trust in anything that was not trustworthy. The only place God says for us to put our trust and our confidence in is in Him.
What is it about money, that causes us to forget our commitment to trust God. Especially, when God is not anti-money. As a matter of fact, God says if you trust me with your money, I will see to it that you receive more money. It’s amazing that when others say something like this, we will believe them, but when God says it we think it can’t be true.
Let me show you something, if Chase Bank said deposit$ 1,000 in our savings account and we will give you$ 100 at the end of a year, but First Merit said deposit a $1000 in our savings account and we will give you $50 at the end of the year where would you put your $1000 if you could set it aside for a year. Why do you trust what Chase has said? Have you ever read it’s fine print, saying this offer can be changed by us at any time due to a change in circumstances at our discretion.
In our Old Testament reading, God said, “ if you trust me with the first part of your paycheck, your income, your birthday money, or your profits, I will make you wallet, your purse, or your bank account fatter than what you would have had.” There is no fine print saying, this offer will be rescinded based on external circumstances beyond God’s control. Is that good news or bad news?
It is amazing to me how we will trust others with our money, but not God. We will even act foolishly in believing that God will send us money to help us keep our trust in others. Why else would we get a summer job that lasts for 8 weeks and with our first pay check sign a 2 year phone contract with Verizon so that we could get a new free phone? Why do we trust that somehow we will get the money to keep Verizon from turning off the phone, when we tell God,” God I do not trust you with the first part of my money to make it grow.”
Well if you have had any problem trusting God with your money, I want you to know that you are not alone. There were a group of rich people in the bible that would not trust God. So some of you can sit back and relax, because this message today is geared toward the rich people we read about in the New Testament scripture. Some of you are thinking, finally a message about money that can’t possibly be for me.
In our New Testament reading it said, “1 Timothy 6:17-1917 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19 In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
Now when we look at this passage, it is pretty strong. First of all it says that rich people tend to get a little high minded and are tempted to talk about the money they have in the bank. I remember a song that came out a long time ago that said “People show act funny when they get a little money, yes they do Lawd.” Have you noticed that rich people have a little air about them and they expect to be treated a certain way.
They even have an affect upon us. Now some of you who never go out of your way to greet visitors would probably do it, if a guest stood up and said, “I’m glad to be here today. I am billionaire, and its good to be around people who love Jesus.” There’d be a line of people waiting to shake the person’s hand. The Bible says, don’t do that. Treat the rich the same as you do the poor.
Now the second thing the bible tells the pastor to do is “to remind rich people to put their hope in God, because it’s not their riches that provide their enjoyment, it is actually found in God.” You have something right now that’s worth more to you than a million dollars. If you had to choose between a million dollars, and great pain shooting through your body with every breath you take with no hope of a change in your condition, how many of you would keep what you have right now. Who is it that is keeping you from having that painful condition?
Now the third part of the verse is a command to the pastor, “to command the rich to do good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.” Do you know pastors will get fired if they tell the rich people, “God told me to command you to share your money and your possessions and to do it willingly.” Then the word says, this is the only way for rich people to get true treasure in heaven and the way for them to take hold of what is really truly life. As much as we may want to run after it, the life of the rich and the famous, is not necessarily the good life. Who gets to enjoy their new home more, the couple that paid $75,000 for their home or the couple that paid 7 million for theirs.
Now before I can do my job of commanding those of you who are rich to be generous and willing to share, I have to found out who out there in the congregation is rich. Now there are two ways that we try to determine if we are rich. The first way is to look at how much money we have. The second thing is to then look at how we feel as to whether or not we are rich.
It used to be that if we saw a millionaire, we knew that person was rich. A company by the name of Fidelity did a survey of 1,000 people who were millionaires and asked them “did they feel rich.” The people in the survey had an average financial worth of 3.5 million dollars. 40% of the people worth 3.5 million dollars did not feel rich. On average they said, if someone had 7 million dollars then they would feel rich.
Do you know why they probably did not feel rich? Because we think once you are rich, then you would be content. You would feel successful. You would feel secure. You would feel as though had enough. So if you don’t feel successful, if you don’t feel secure, and if you don’t feel as though you have enough then you must not be rich.
I can remember, growing up and living with my Aunt Helen and my cousins. I can remember the dinners we had. One night, we would have a big pot of rice with ground beef that had been cooked and spread throughout it. The next night we would have a big thing of noodles with some chicken wings cooked in it so the flavor was all through the noodles. The next night it would be a huge pot of rice with some neckbones cooked in the center of them.
The next night it would be a huge thing of spaghetti with some meatballs scattered throughout. Friday night would be rice and 25 cent pot pies. Saturday was usually hot dogs and French fries. Now Sunday was the bomb. There was rice, maconi and cheese, fried chicken, beans, collard greens, corn bread and a huge chocolate cake. There were 8 of us in that 3 bedroom apt.
I can remember if I stayed up late enough and it was only Aunt Helen and I watching one of her westerns , she’d go in the kitchen and bring out a coconut cream pie and just the two of us would eat it. I never expected there to not be a meal to eat. As a child, I thought we were rich.
But then I went to college and some college professor told me that I had grown up poor because my aunt was on welfare. Now all those years I had felt rich. Do you know how sad it was to discover I had been a poor disadvantage child? Do you know if I had the chance to do it all over again, I’d choose to be that poor disadvantage child who thought his family was rich, because we had more than enough food to eat, a warm place to live, clean clothes on our backs and a house filled with love. Aunt Helen may have been on welfare, but she was one of the most generous people I have ever known.
Some of you have come from families in the south, who did not have much, but they would tell you, now you take this plate or this basket down the street to Ms. So and so and don’t tell nobody. Some of us would receive food from neighbors down the street who knew we were struggling. My mom, my aunts and my uncles use to get an apple and an orange for Christmas, and you’d think they had won the lottery. And yet my grandmother would be trying to help somebody else who was even worse off.
We all establish our own identities and it’s usually done by comparing ourselves to others. When it comes to money if we are not feeling really good about our income, it’s because we are comparing it to those who are making more than we are making. So when it comes to being rich, those rich people are the ones that make a lot more than we do. Those are the rich people that the bible is calling to be generous and willing to share. I’m not rich, but those people over there are. Now what this belief does is tell us, “they are the ones who should be doing more than what they are doing. As a matter of fact, if we had what they had, we really would be generous.”
Well who is looking at us and claiming that we are the rich people. There are over a billion people in our world who live on a dollar a day or less. There are another couple of billion people that live on less than $2 a day. So that means over ½ of the world’s population cannot afford to eat from the dollar menu at McDonald’s. They could not get a Mcdouble, a fry and a drink because they would have no money left for housing, clothing, or medicine.
If you make $24,000 a year, you are included in the top 10% of the wealthiest people on the planet. If you make $80,000 you are in the top one percent of the wealthiest people in the world. All of us here are probably in the top 15% of the wealthiest people on the planet.
Did you notice when Jesus taught us to pray, it was a prayer based on us trusting God. We are to ask God for our daily bread. Most of the people that Jesus spoke to only had enough bread to last for one day. They struggled to get by from day to day. Do do you know how much you need to have in order for you to be rich according to the bible? If you have enough on hand for more than one day, you are considered to be rich?
Let’s see how many of us are rich. How many of us have food in the refrigerator and some of it will be there tomorrow? How many of us have food in the freezer? How many of us have enough clothes to not even have to wear the same thing for a week? How many of us have so many clothes somebody, could take some of them and we would never even know they were gone? How many of us have some money in a retirement account? How many of us are guaranteed some kind of a pension check or social security check into the future. How many of us have a cell phone and the bill is already paid for the coming month. How many of us have a car, a house, a computer, a game? Look at how many rich people are in our congregation.
This verse is actually talking to us when it says, do not put your hope in your riches and wealth. You say, “I would never do that.” Well if God asked you to give it up, would you let it go. This verse says be generous and willing to share. Why do we have storage bins with stuff we probably will not use again? Why do we have garages full of stuff that others could use, because heaven knows we are not going to. I feel guilty because I have some birthday gifts, that are sitting by my bed that I have never used. I have brand new shirts that have not been opened for months.
Since I got new clothes for Christmas, I went into my closet and forced myself to give away almost 2 for 1 with my suits, my shirts, and my shoes. Even though I had new stuff, I still did not want to let go of the old stuff. What was wrong with me? How had I let my possessions keep me from trusting God from providing for my needs. I had 8 Suits with 3 new ones on the way from the buy 1 get 2 free. I only wear suits on Sunday. Why did I need 11 of them? Why did I have this voice inside me saying, you never know when this might come in handy.
When I have this command from God saying, “those of you who are rich, are to be eager to do good works, and to be generous and share.” Why do I have more trust in those suits to make me look good, than in God who can keep me from falling apart? Why are we waiting for that one day to be liberated from things, when people can use what we have right now. You know, you are not going to get any reward for your stuff going to goodwill or the salvation army after you die. If you don’t give it away before you die, it will actually testify against your trust in God.
We can put our trust in money and it can slip out of our hands without us even knowing it. I can remember a few years ago, I wanted to do something special for one of our youth since it was her birthday. I reached in grabbed a bill and put it in her hand and said happy birthday. I went on about my business until her mother said, “Do you know what you gave her.” “ I said yes, “I gave her $10. She said no you didn’t you gave her a $100 bill. I said what. I forgot I had a $100 bill in my wallet and mistook it for $10. Now God sent that mistake to the right person, because some of you would have said, “child don’t say nothing about it, just keep it and hope he doesn’t notice.” She gave me back the money and I gave her the $10. She gained my trust in a way that if she needs something and I can help her to get it, I’m going to do so.
But money will leave us quicker than we think. Proverbs 23:5 (NIV) says 5 Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. There are 10 people on the website who won the lottery and either went broke or had somebody kill them to inherit their money. Is this why God tells us not to trust in our riches.
We all have a tolerance level for how disobedient we are to God and we learn to live there with that level. When it comes to money, we can set that level pretty high so that our giving is pretty low. But you know we rob ourselves of the joy that could be ours. God doesn’t want us to give out of guilt or out of fear that we’re about to get our fair share. God wants us to give, because God wants us to be like Him. How many of you have received for more from God than you deserved? Is there anyone here who deserved to be created? Anybody who deserved the intelligence level you were born with? Anybody deserved your health? No God just freely gave them to us.
I don’t know why God choose 10% as the amount of regular giving that He expected of each of us. I do know that 10% is a fair to us all because the amount never really increases. It’s just 10%. I would hope that our desire to be like God would push us to strive beyond just giving 10% because God gave more for us. I’d like to be free from holding on to things, or rather from things holding on to me. I am one of those people that the word of God was speaking to when he talked about the rich. You can deny it if you want to, but you also are among the rich. What has a hold on you, that you are trusting in that you bought with your money.
Why do you believe God was not telling the truth when He said, Give me the first part and I will bless you with more, so that you say back to God, “No, let me use what I have, and if some is left over, then I will give it to you.” Next week we will be receiving pledge sheets. Now some will say, I don’t make pledges because I don’t know what my income will be. Yet each month you make a pledge for a cell phone bill, you make a pledge for a car note, you make a pledge for an apartment, you make a pledge for a mortgage and you do not know what your income will be. You will even sign a piece of paper promising to pay extra if you are late with the payment. They expect you to pay the same, even if you loose your job. They will ruin your credit if you don’t pay.
Giving to Christ is the same pledging without the penalties. If your income goes down, so does your pledge. If you don’t give your credit rating stays the same. You can expect blessings from God even if you skip some payments. God would rather love you back into shape than discipline you back. But know God will use discipline. Can you trust God with your money? Only if you truly know that God loves you and you have been called to make a difference in the lives of others.
Can I Trust God With My Money
Proverbs 3:5-10 1 Timothy 6:17-19 Glenville 1-8-12
We are in the middle of a series of Can I Trust God. Last week Pastor Kellie preached on “Can I Trust God With My Disappointments.”. Today we will look at “Can I Trust God With My Money.” Next week we will look at “Can I Trust God With My Future.”
A. I Gave You A Million Dollars
1. Account In Someone Else’s Name, You Withdraw 10,000
2. They could Withdraw At Any Time
3. Who Would You Trust
4. What Quality Would You Look For
B. Trust Is Not A Matter Of Mustering Feeling
1. Trust In Wobbly Chair
2. Trust Based On Nature –Character Of The Object
3. God—Check Me Out & Examine—Faithful, Liar True or Not
4. Only Place To Put Our Trust In
C. Why Does Money Cause Us To Forget To Trust
1. God Not Anti-Money
2. Trust Me I Will Give You More
3. Trust Chase Bank & First Merit $100 & $50
4. Why Trust Chase With The Fine Print
D. In Our Old Testament God Makes A Promise
1. Give Me First Paycheck, Income, Birthday Profits
2. Will Make Them All Fatter—No Fine Print
3. Good News Bad News
4. Trust Others But Not God
5. Foolish Trusting—8 Week Job 2yr Verizon Contract
6. God I Do Not Trust You To Make My Money Grow
E. People Had A Problem Trusting God
1. Sermon Is For Rich People—You’re Off The Hook
In our New Testament reading it said, “1 Timothy 6:17-1917 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19 In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
2. Three Problems—Rich People Get High Minded
3. People Sho Act Funny When They Get A Little Money
4. Rich People Affect Us
5. The Visitor Who Is A Billionaire
6. Waiting To Shake Hands—God Don’t Be Like That
7. Second—Remind them Not To Put There Hope In Money
8. You Have Something Worth A Million Dollars & Don’t Know It
9. A Million Or Pain With Each Breath
10. Third-Command Them To Share, Be Generous Only Way To Get True Life
11. Life Of Rich & Famous—Not All That
12. Who’s Happier $75,000 Couple Home or 7 Million Couple Home
F. Who In The Congregation Is Rich
1. Fidelity Survey 1000 People Who Were Millionaires
2. Average Worth 3.5 Million 40% Did Not Feel Rich
3. 7 Million Dollars To Feel Rich
G. Why Did They Not Feel Rich
1. Content, Successful, Secure, Had Enough
2. Did Not Feel
H. I Remember My Aunt Helen & My Cousins
1. Dinners—Rice Ground Beef, Noodles Chicken Wings, Rice Neckbones
2. Spaghetti Meatballs, Rice & 25 Cents Pot Pies, Hot Dogs & Fries
3. Sunday The Bomb, Rice, Macoroni & Cheese, Fried Chicken Etc
4. Eight Of Us In Apartment
5. Late Night, Pie, Western
6. I Thought We Were Rich
7. My College Experience Told I Was Poor
8. Choose To Be Fooled All Over Again
9. She Was On Welfare, But Most Generous Person I Know
10. Some Of Us Come From Families In The South
11. Take This Food, These Groceries
H. We Establish Our Identities By Comparison
1. Feel Bad About Our Income Because We Compare UP
2. The Rich—Those People That Make More Money
3. Those Are The Ones That Should Be Generous, If We Had What They Had
4. Who Are The Rich
5. 1 Billion Less Than $1 a Day
6. 2 Billion Less Than $2 A Day
7. 3 Billion Can’t Afford The Dollar Menu
8. $24,000 Put You In Top 10%, $80,000 Top One Per Cent
9. All In The Top 15%
H. The Prayer Jesus Taught Us To Pray—Daily Bread
1. Jesus People Struggled From Day To Day
2. Biblical Rich—More Than Enough For today
3. How Man Rich Food In Refrigerator, Food In Freezer,
4. 7 Days Of Clothes, Would Not Know They Were God
5. Retirement Check, Pension, Social Security
6. Cell Phone, Computer, Game
7. Verse-Don’t Put Your Trust In These Things
I. Why Do We Put Our Trust In These Things
1. I Would Never Do That
2. This Verse Be Generous & Willing To Share
3. Storage Bins Full Of Stuff, Garages Full Of Stuff
4. I Feel Guilty With Birthday Gifts
5. I Got New Clothes—I Had To Give Away
6. 8 Suits, 3 New One coming, 1 On Sunday, Why Did I Need 11
7. Why Did My Voice Say This Might Come In Handy
8. God Says Those Who Are Rich, Be Willing To Share & Be Generous
9. Why Do We Not Want To Be Liberated From Things
10. No Reward For Giving Things To Salvation Army After Death
11. Only Rewarded For Giving What Costs You
J. Money Can Slip Away Without Us Knowing It
1. Wanting To Do Something Special For A Youth
2. Tried To Give Her A $10 But Made A Mistake With A $100
Proverbs 23:5 (NIV) says 5 Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.
3. 10 Lottery Winners Who Went Broke Or Were Killed
4. Is This Why God Tell’s Us Not Trust In Our Riches
5. We Have Tolerance Levels For Disobedience For Giving
6. God Does Not Want Guilt To Motivate Us
7. God Wants Us To Be Like Him—God Was Generous
8. God Gives Us More Than We Deserved
9. Who Has Earned, Creation, Intelligence, Health
K. Why Did God Choose 10%
1. Fair & Never Increases
2. God Wants Us To Go Beyond
3. Why Do We Not Want To Be Set Free
4. Do We Make Pledges Or Not
5. Car, Cell Phone, Apt., Mortgage
6. Their Rules But God’s Grace—No Penalties
7. You Can Trust God When You Know How Much He Loves You
I am indebted to Dr. John Ortberg for some of the ideas in this message in his message "What's Mine Is Mine" at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. You can find his church at mppc.org
