Money Matters
Matthew 6:24-31
As a seminary student part of my course study was in pastoral counseling. I remember one of my professors who told us this one day: he said one day you will be out there in a church doing marriage counseling and you are going to see couples who will come in primarily for one of three reasons. He said they are (1) sexual issues (2) financial matters and (3) who is in charge of decision making. Books have been written on this topic, Sex, money and power and in over 35 years of ministry I have found this statement to be right on target. Last week we set a guardrail down in sexual matters and we heard Paul tell us that our bodies are not our own, that a price has been paid for them. We belong to God so we are to honor God with our bodies.
Now today I want to address this important area of money. You may wonder what the Bible has to say about money. Is this really an issue a pastor should be dealing with? Well listen: One out of every ten verses in the Bible deals with money and possessions. Of the 38 parables Jesus taught, 16 deal with money. The Bible contains about 500 verses on the topic of prayer, 700 on the topic of faith and over 2000 on the subject of money. It is clear in the Bible that money matters.
Now here is why the Bible says so much about money. In fact OT, NT the whole thing comes back to one simple thing. The reason God has so much to say in the Bible about money actually has nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with devotion/commitment. And here is what God knows about you because it has been true of mankind from the very beginning: God’s primary competition for your heart and mine, for our devotion and our service….His primary competition is not Satan. The real competition He has is wrapped up in a decision that you and I are called to make every single day and here it is.
Will I trust God completely or will I continue to place my trust in money and material things? The Bible says some trust in chariots and horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. And it’s true all of us put some level of trust in money and things. In Matthew, Jesus put it this way: Matthew 6:24 (NIV) "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” There it is… you cannot serve God and money. Now I would just like to leave it at that but I know I can’t. Jesus us saying, let me help you recognize something. There is a great tension inside all of us when it comes to who is going to be the master of your life. You will either put your trust in money, wealth, security or you will place your trust in God. In fact it’s an interesting message that the one place we see the words IN GOD WE TRUST is on our money.
But God knows about this tension that exists and so he writes those words down for all of us to hear in a fresh way. You cannot serve (both) God and money. Now in talking about guardrails there are two ditches I want to describe. Two ditches on each side of the road when it comes to our money. One is consumption and the other is hoarding or stockpiling. Now we don’t mind being consumers but we don’t want to be stockpilers. Here is what this means. Consumtion means that everything that comes your way, you consume it. All the dollars you earn are going into your house or they go into your house or car. That’s consumption. The other side of the road there is another ditch. Hoarding or stockpiling. What if I get sick, what if I want to retire? What if the economy goes bad? So you stockpile and add more and more and more. So most of us are one or the other. Here’s the problem. These two ditches, consumption and hoarding both have some things in common.
(1) Both are very self-centered. They are both about me/us.
(2) Both leave us living as if there is no God. Because neither is about Him.
(3) Both ditches are supplied by the same resource. Greed.
Greed is one of those things that is very hard for us to grasp. For one thing we typically picture a greedy person as a wealthy person. But I know many people, many who are living close to poverty but they are very greedy. In fact that is one of the reasons they are living in poverty. I have sat in prayer circles hundreds of times and heard all kinds of requests.. pray for us, we’re traveling, pray for my cousin, he is having surgery, etc. but here is one request I have never heard ..pray for me, I’m greedy. Greed is very difficult to see when we look into the mirror.
So Jesus did us a favor here and in many of his teachings He talks about greed. And this is pretty much what Jesus teaches…greed is simply the assumption that it’s all for my consumption. You can be rich and greedy; you can poor and greedy. Greed it the thinking that if anything comes to me it is all for my consumption-either now or later. That makes us either a spender or a hoarder. And either way we are left living as if there is no God. Now that doesn’t mean you don’t believe in God. It means that when the pursuit of wealth is your main focus when it comes down to big decisions, the big question for us is this…. where is this going to leave me financially? And we are then fueled by greed.
I know this about all of us but I am going to make you admit it anyway. How many of you have ever, ever prayed in your life a prayer that has to do with money and you asked God to help you in some way financially? Raise your hand. How many of you have prayed that this week? See that tells me that all of us believe that there is some possibility or maybe even a probability that if we are struggling financially God will help us. Listen. Write this down. If God can get your checkbook he can get your heart. Where your treasure is there you heart will be also.
3 words here that are key. They need to be a way of life. Give. Save. Live. And here is how that works. When you first get paid, the first thing you do, the first check you write is to God. When we do that we are saying Lord I will not be ruled by stuff. I will not be owned by the things I own. The first portion goes to you. We usually do this just the opposite. Then God gets our leftovers. He is worth more than that. And where God is on our list tells us a lot about our priorities. The first portion goes to you. The Bible clearly says that amount is to be 10%. This is what my wife and I practice and what we taught all 4 of our children to do.
Now look again. Matthew 6:24. What Jesus is saying is simply this… we are either devoted to God or to money. Never both. One or the other. And here is how you can know which one it is. Do you own money or does it own you? Does your money serve you or do you serve your money? Matthew 6:24,
Later in this same message Jesus asks us this..Matthew 6:31 or as we might say…how will I get my kids through college? How will we afford a home? And Jesus says look I don’t want money to steal your peace. Our joy. I don’t want money to consume your thinking. So let’s look at some guardrails we need to put in place.
There are three words to remember here and live by. Give. Save. Live. These are like guardrails. They will protect you from having too much debt.
[GUARDRAIL 1]. Give. The Bible tells us to tithe. That is 10%. Malachi 3:10 (NIV) Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.
[GUARDRAIL 2] Save. It is a good idea to save 10%. If you do not have a savings account you should establish one immediately. Put something in every month/week.
[GUARDRAIL 3] Learn to act your wage. Too many of us make one wage but we spend as though we make a higher wage. That’s greed. Never spend more than you have available. Never, ever, ever use credit cards. If you have credit cards right now and you have credit card debt, this is what you need to do.
Bake them, cut them up or shred them.
[GUARDRAIL 4] LIVE on less than the rest. Practice contentment. Dave Ramsey says it this way… live like no one else so that later you can love like no one else. Stop worrying about what other people are doing and trying to keep up with their lifestyle. That lifestyle of spending will catch up with them.
I got my first job when I was about 12. I worked for the local mission. They helped families across our county with food, so forth and one of the primary things they did was house homeless men who were down and out. A man named Paul ran the place and his wife was a wonderful cook. I always looked forward to lunchtime because they fed all the workers. I remember that when he would pay us he would call all the workers together including the older men who actually lived there and he would do this…. how many days did you work? We would tell him and he would reach in his pocket and say well this is your pay.. this belongs to God and this belongs to you. Then he would put the portion back in his pocket that he said belonged to God. As a young boy I always wondered how in the world God ever got it out of his pocket. But I learned the longer I worked there that he loved the Lord, was very honest and he wanted us to learn a very important lesson. Of everything we have, God gets the offering, the tithe first.
Matthew 6:33. “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” “Luke 6:38 (NIV) Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." That’s a promise to all who will live by it. You give and God will take care of the rest.
