Today we come to the end of our September sermon series, “Hanging in the Balance: Antidotes for the Crazy Life.” Over the last few weeks, we’ve looked at God’s wisdom and Jesus’ teachings about how better to manage our time and the burdens that so often weigh us down. Now this morning, we are going to go in a slightly different direction as we take some time to think about the role of money in our lives. For many of us, money may cause more stress in our lives than work, or family, or lack of time, or even all of those things put together. In fact, a recent poll indicated that 75% of all Americans say that money is the number one stressor in their lives. This is a huge issue for so many of us, and it’s really been at the forefront since the economic meltdown of 2008.
Now, indeed, a lot of us are good money-managers who have inadvertently and not of our own choosing gotten caught up in the financial mess of the last few years, and that has caused us stress. But a lot of us also are in a constant state of stress about money because of a problem of over-consumption, which is really a problem of our society and culture in general. And not unlike getting caught up in the financial meltdown, we also easily get caught up in this very pervasive cultural ethos.
Sure, we can throw around all the usual buzzwords and talk about the problems of deregulation, bad lending practices by large banks, and greed on Wall Street. But I think most of us are smart enough to know that when you point the finger and something else, you’ve got three fingers pointing right back at you. Quite simply, we, too, contributed to the financial problems that now stress-out so many of us. But I think getting at the root causes of our struggles with money requires a different kind of language than “deregulation,” “mortgage,” and “stock-market crash.” To really identify our struggles with money requires spiritual language because in so many cases when it comes to money, the problem is that we’ve strayed from the right path; the word for that is sin, plain and simple.
It’s so easy for us to say that God is God in our lives, and yet most of us don’t live that way; we put other things first, and we become consumed with this insatiable desire for more, which we so often give into and end up over-indulging in one way or another that usually involves at least some expense. I think it’s probably fair to say that all of us have struggled with these temptations, if not downright given in and sinned. And what you end up with, as we now clearly know, is a big mess; houses that are too expensive to afford and worth less than we owe on them anyway, credit card debt in the tens of thousands of dollars. I could go on and on. All we have to do is fall into that temptation to buy stuff we really don’t need and live on tomorrow’s dollar today a few times and it becomes the habit of our lives. Then we become slaves to our money and the resulting worry, anxiety, and stress robs us of life; it consumes us!
Earlier, we heard a reading from Matthew’s gospel. Here, Jesus is in the midst of preaching what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. In this particular part of the sermon, Jesus is speaking about those things that consume our lives, and what he concludes is that if we make God the focus of our whole lives, then everything else will fall into place. When the desire of our hearts is not God, but something else, it can lead to destruction, that’s what we have seen very specifically across the country in the last few years, but I think we experience that kind of destruction in our own lives relatively regularly. The Apostle Paul was no idiot when he wrote in a letter to Timothy that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” It was true then, and it’s still true today. And so Jesus gives us another antidote to our over-burdened lives: Jesus is saying that if we seek God first, we will experience not destruction, but abundance and abundant life because everything else, everything else, will fall into place.
Yet it’s so easy to “tend” the other way, to make the “other stuff” the priority of our lives! One day a pastor was called to the house of a church member who was having financial difficulties. The pastor counseled him for a while and then stopped. “Let’s have a word of prayer and while I pray, you make a commitment to give one-tenth of your income to the Lord.” Thinking about his income, the man thought to himself, “That won’t be difficult. That’s only $1,800 a year—only about $35 a week.” They prayed, and the man promised to give back 10 percent to the Lord and to the Lord’s work.
Years passed and the man’s income had increased to over $200,000 a year. He called for the pastor again. “Pastor, I’d like to be released from that 10 percent I promised the Lord several years back. A tenth of my income is now over $20,000 a year, and I have some plans for spending that.”
“That’s no problem,” the pastor replied. “Let’s pray.”
As they bowed their heads, the pastor began to pray, “Lord, You know what a problem this bigger salary has been to my brother here. I’m asking you to reduce his income, perhaps to the original $18,000 a year, so he’ll be able to afford his tithe once again…”
How many times have we done the same thing? How many times have we set aside our commitment to God, then we go out and find something we want, and something else we “have to have,” and something else, and then we get to church and nothing is left?!? So how do we get there? How do we go from our naturally greedy and gluttonous lifestyles to lives that seek God first? Well, it begins by acknowledging that we’ve got a problem; that we’re on the wrong path. But more than that, we have to turn from that path, repent, it’s called. And then we have to be vigilant and always sure that the true desire of our heart is God, and not the stuff we have made, money first among them.
So when it comes to money, seeking God’s kingdom first means returning thanks to God by giving him a portion of our first fruits; we call it tithing, or a first fruits offering. Now, I’m not trying today to make you all give more money, but I do want to stress that this is crucial to our lives; eliminating the stress than money and finances can cause is critical if we wish to fully experience the wonderful, happy, abundant life that God plans for each of us. The deal is that the world tells us that money is one of the most important (if not the most important) things in our lives. So by bringing some of our money to God first, we are saying that God is most important in our lives. And where our money is, there our heart will be also. So when we give our money, our treasure, to God, our heart will follow. “Seek first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Tithing, or returning thanks to God through the giving of our offerings makes us put “first things first.” And it is, at its root, about our commitment to God; not the ministries of the church, or the pastor, or anything else. Giving is a spiritual discipline and it is 100% about the connection and relationship that each of us individually has with God. Now, it is indeed a discipline, and in order to give faithfully to God, that means we have to have all our finances in order. We have to know where the money is going, and we have to be able to work with what we have after we make our offering rather than giving God whatever happens to be left after we’ve splurged, and indulged, and “taken care” of the other expenses.
I want to share with you all my giving story, what giving has done in my life. When I was a little kid, before I earned an allowance, every Sunday my parents would give me two quarters; one to put in the offering plate in “big church,” and one to put in the Sunday School offering. I couldn’t take those two quarters and buy a soda from the Coke machine, or a couple of donuts from the Fellowship Hall. Those quarters were for the offering. Then, when I started earning an allowance, I would make an annual pledge to the church (just like my parents did), and every week, I would put 10% of my allowance into a special envelope with my name on it and put it in the offering plate. I have always given a tithe; I have always returned thanks to God by offering to him a tithe of my first fruits. It is so engrained in my brain, in the way I live, and the way I look at money that it’s like second nature. Whenever Ken and I have an unexpected expense like getting a car fixed and have to look at cutting our budget, our gifts to God are never even brought up for consideration. If we ever come to a point that we have to make spending cuts in our lives, we’ll eat out less, cut out TV, internet, and expensive cell phones, and cancel our gym membership before we even think about cutting back the amount we offer to God.
I’m not telling you as a way of bragging, but in order that I might say to you that by planning to give to God our first fruits, we also have to plan the way we use all the rest of our money. We know what we can afford and what we can’t. When there is a really expensive purchase we want to make, we plan and save for that before we buy. And every week, without fail, we put our tithe in the offering plate.
This summer, Mary Ellen started earning an allowance. She makes $2 a week, and every Sunday she takes two dimes to church, puts them in an envelope and drops them in the offering plate. She’s trying to save her allowance to buy an iPod touch, but putting that 20 cents into the offering plate doesn’t even faze her, and I pray that the tithe never will. Because giving first to God makes us happier, healthier people. Giving to God directs our hearts always toward God and helps us grow in our relationship with God in Christ Jesus. And when we give to God, it really is true that all that we need is given to us as well.
Jesus’ promise is that if we can put God first then the other stuff will fall into place; we’ll have what we need. We may go paycheck to paycheck, but we will never go without. Now don’t get me wrong, Jesus is not saying that there is some sort of direct correlation where if we give more money somehow we’ll make more, but he is saying that if you are faithful to God, God will be faithful with you. And I think it’s fair to say that the first way God will show his faithfulness to you, is that you will find that financial burden and stress lifted off your shoulders. Then, as you put God first in your life through giving, as Christ says, you will find your heart drawn to God. And when those two things happen, how can we help but live the wonderful, happy lives in relationship with the God who wants good things for us and who loves us beyond measure?
