Guardrails Part 4 Money--The Consumption Assumption
Proverbs 3:5-10 Luke 12:13-21
Is there anyone here who has ever bought something you wanted really badly and once you got it, you either said, “I wish I could get my money back” or you would have been glad to have sold it for ½ of what you paid for it and been happy. Today we are going to talk about guardrails with money. At some point we all have some regrets over how we spend our money.
We are in week four of series on Guardrails. We have seen that guardrails 1) Direct and Protect, 2) Helps Us With Friendships, 3) Keeps Us From Falling Into Sexual Immorality and today we will see how they help us with money priorities.
Remember: Guardrails are a system designed to keep vehicles from straying into dangerous or off limit areas. Guardrails are designed to cause a limited amount of damage now, to prevent major damage or loss of life later. The guardrails are always placed in the safety zone. A guardrail is a personal rule, or standard of behavior that becomes a matter of conscience. A guardrail is designed to light up our conscience before we hurt ourselves or others.
Have you ever wondered why we let other people determine how we spend our money? It takes a strong willed person to spend their money the way they really want to spend it. How many times has somebody else got something, and because we saw what they had, we felt we had to get one. It could have been a book bag, a pair of shoes, a purse, a fashion, a phone, a type of car, a house, or a neighborhood. Just seeing what they had caused an appetite in us, to get one for ourselves. They were determining how we spent our money.
How many of us have spent more money for an item, just so we could be the first one to get an item? We even let people know, I was one of the first ones to get one of these. How many of us would be able to save about $700 next year if Apple or Samsung did not come out with a new phone? What is it that causes us to feel, we just have to have the latest, and the latest is different things for us, but somehow the latest amounts to some kind of stuff? If I told you Pastor Toby and I bought a flipter and put it on our tv, so that it now sounds just like you are in the movies, some of you have a perfectly good sounding tv, but you want to know, where you can get one and how much did it cost. There is no such thing as a flipter.
There was a guy in the bible, who won the lottery big time. He was so excited about what he was going to do with all his money. He was making plans left and right. How many of you know if you won the lottery big time you would have a hard time sleeping that first night? That’s how this guy was doing in the bible. His mind was racing on how he was going to turn this money into even more money. Unknown to him, God was looking at the man and practically with tears in His eyes God says, “you fool, tonight you are going to die, and who is going to get what you have prepared for yourself.”
Last week we saw that God was not against sex. God created sex and gave us marriage as a guardrail to keep it positive and healthy. Today we are going to look at money or wealth. We are going to see that God is not against money or wealth. God simply has guardrails for it, because God wants positive things to happen in our lives.
Jesus teaches more about money, and uses more illustrations with money than he does anything else. He also show us how we can use money for our greatest benefit, once we get it in the right perspective. When we put ourselves in God’s hands, do we just put in ourselves or do we put in all that we have as well.
Let me ask you, if you got into trouble because of a money issue, for instance you got into too much debt, you lost your job, your kids got in trouble and you went into debt to bail them out, or somebody robbed you, how many of you would invite God into the situation to help you out? So why not invite God to show you how to use your money when things are stil going well so that you can avoid a disaster.
Let’s see what Jesus has to say about money. In Matthew 6:24, Matthew 6:24 (NIV2011) 24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Now the word master here does not mean boss. It means to be in the possession of or it means to be owned by. In other words, you cannot be owned by two different entities who have different plans for your life.
Now we know that God has one plan for our life, and Satan has another. So you would think Jesus would tell us, look you have to make up your mind or you going to put yourself und the authority of God or of Satan. You can’t love them both at the same time. But Jesus does not do say that. Instead Jesus says, “You cannot serve both God and Money.”
The word for money can also be translated as “wealth” or “stuff.” The competition for God in our lives as believers is going to be money or stuff. Who is going to control us? Who is going to have ownership over us, and Who is going to determine where our energy goes? Will it be our money and stuff or our God? Does our money possess us or do we posses it?
Money causes us to lean in one of two directions when we become believers and both of them lead to rejecting the authority of God over our lives.
Here is where guardrails are needed. We will either be tempted to drive down the road of consumption. I got to have it. I want it. Upgrade, Upgrade. Get that, get this, look at me. I have one and you don’t. Or we will be tempted to drive down the road of hoarding. Something might happen. You can never tell if something will go wrong. I might need this later. A fool and his money are soon parted.
Now at the root cause of both of these things is greed. Greed is the assumption that everything that comes to me is for my consumption. In other words if God puts it in my hands or under my control, it is for my benefit and my enjoyment. If I choose to give a little bit of it away, then God should reward me greatly for doing so. If we think what get is for us to consume now-we spend. If we think what we get is for us to consume later-we hoard.
If we spend our life either spending or hoarding, we are living as though there is no God who is at work in our lives. We are living as though there is nothing that’s going to happen once we die. What we do with our stuff is nobody’s business but our own. We will be no different than the guy whom God cried over the night he was going to die, because he wasn’t prepared to die. He was busy planning to live, but made little preparations to die. Isn’t that where many of us are today. Do we really want God to say on the night of our death, you fool?
Everything that God gives to us is not necessarily for us. Remember last week I said the most difficult verse in the Bible to obey is from Jesus. This is my commandment that you love one another, just as I have loved you. How do you think this relates to our stuff or to our money? Is there really anybody hear who wants us to read a note from you at your funeral in which you write “I made money my master and I’m proud of it. Look at how fine my coffin looks.”
How can you tell if money is your master? If money is your master, your spending priorities line up 1. Live 2. Save and 3. Give. In other words me first, me second, and everybody else including God. I live at my chosen lifestyle, I might save something in my 401k, and I will give if I have anything left over after taking care of all my needs, my wants, and my desires. This is a life mastered by money.
How can you tell if God is your master? Well Jesus comes along and flip this whole thing over. If God is your master, your spending priorities line up 1. Give, 2. Save and 3. Live. This is what it means to follow Jesus if you don’t want to be mastered by money or by stuff. I seek to show my love for God and for others, I live below my means to prepare for emergencies and to be a blessing to others, and I use the rest of my money to take care of my needs and desires.
You will never have enough money to feed all your desires because desires become appetites which can’t be satisfied. All of us can give ourselves a raise for the coming year, simply be being content with what we have or by choosing to let go of something that we don’t need. Most of us will choose however to stay addicted to things and stuff. Most of us are going to run out of time before we run out of stuff.
We fill our lives with stuff and money to keep us from being dependent on God, so we can’t use the stuff as God intended for us to use it. We go out and buy or rent storage shelters to keep holding on to our stuff. We go back and forth between being spenders and hoarders.
We say we love God, but we eagerly pay more for cable tv and our entertainment than we do our giving at church. Some of us will go our entire lives and never give a tithe of our earnings to the church. Yet we will faithfully, will give 15% to federal taxes, 7.5% to SS and Medicare, 2% to Ohio, and 2% to Cleveland and 2% to property tax for a total of 28.5% and rarely complain. But for God to get 10% is simply out of the question.
Some of us will die and never ever pay a tithe to the church, and we think God is well pleased with that. How can you say you love this church and what God is doing here for you, and not have given anything all year and now March is about half the way over? How could you not put up some guardrails to make sure you made an investment here for God first? Gaurdrails I can’t afford that because I will have to cut my giving to the church. I will keep this longer so I can increase my giving. I will drive this so I can go on vacations at the end of the year and give to.
God knows that you want to live and God wants you to live. But God wants you to know that He is your source and not your money. All that we have can be taken away in an instant through some misfortune over which we have no control.
Jesus wants us to live our lives as though God is real and God really does love us. He says in Matthew 6:31 (NIV2011) 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ The interesting thing here is that Jesus is talking to people who have so much less than we do. Isn’t it strange, that the more we have, the more we worry.
Ecclesiastes 5:12 (NIV2011) 12 The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep. Possessions cause us to worry.
When we start to worry, we hold on tighter to what we have and we start to close our hands to others.
Jesus goes on to say Matthew 6:32 (NIV2011) 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. The pagans were people who were chasing trying to get their needs met through bribing the gods. Pagans were people who believed that the gods were not involved in people’s lives so you had to bribe them to get to notice you through sacrifices and gifts to get their attention. Jesus says, look you’re not in the same boat as they are.
Your heavenly Father knows that you need food, drink and clothing. Don’t you believe that He cares about you? Don’t you believe God is working behind the scenes to provide for you.? Don’t you know He knows what tomorrow is going to bring? If he knows what you need, why are you worrying. Haven’t you been living with him as your owner?
Instead of worrying Jesus says, Matthew 6:33 (NIV2011) 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. God’s kingdom is a give first kingdom. How is it that we got into the kingdom. It is because God was a giver. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. To believe in means to put their hope, their trust, or their confidence in someone.
If our confidence is in Jesus rather than in our money and our stuff, then we have no problem doing with our stuff or money whatever Jesus tells us to do. How quickly have we forgotten the difference between a fan and a follower of Jesus?
Why is it that God asks us for a tithe? Does God really need our money that badly? No the truth is, God can provide for the needs of His church in a number of ways. God has provided for our church in the first five years in a way that none of us even knew about when the two former churches were thinking about merging.
God asks us to give because God is after people. The first person God is after is you. God does not want money to be your master, because if it is, God will never be able to show himself to you in the way He desires. If you don’t surrender your priorities with you stuff or your wealth, God will not be at the center of your life. You will not be content in life because you will always be wanting more.
God asks you to give to show that you are different as a child of God. You want to do your part in the body of Christ. Our society has become an entitlement society. We think the world owes us a living and should provide us what we want, when we want it. People show up at the church door demanding that we give them bus fare, clothing and food because that’s what the church is supposed to do.
That’s bad, but what’s even worse is the covenant partners who demand, heat, lights, coffee hour, snacks, programs, air conditioning, pastoral services, and equal treatment, but refuse to tithe and some even refuse to give anything because their standard of living and their personal choices come ahead of keeping their commitment as a covenant partner.
God asks you to give, because God loves people who do not yet know Him, but they can come to know Him through the outreach ministries of this church if the ministry is funded to do it. 90% of people who call themselves Christians will never talk to somebody about coming to know Christ. If you are among the 90%, can’t you at least help fund the ones who will do it. All of us should desire to take as many people to heaven with us as we possibly can. Can you imagine how our church would change, if we really replaced our desire for more stuff, with a desire to love Jesus and the lost people he loves, so that they could be saved. Isn’t it sad that we as a church are pulling out the school system when our kids are walking out because of gun violence, because we are not giving so we cut our staff responsible for school outreach. Isn’t it hypocritical for us to demand the government do something for our kids, when we ourselves are not.
I thank God that there were a group of people, who I do not even know, that used their stuff to start a church on the corner of Genesee and Church Street in Hornell NY because that’s where I started my walk with Jesus Christ. I am thankful for the people who across the street from that church at First Baptist Church who allowed us to use their church for healing services because that’s where God healed me of cracked vertebrae in my neck which allowed me to play football again. If those people had not been Give, Save, Live people, I may have never come to know Christ.
There are still 17 year old guys out there today, just like me who need a church to come to know Christ and to grow in him. But they won’t get to hear the message if we keep making the assumption that what God sends to me is for my consumption. Why not set up guardrails so that some of our wealth will fund the kingdom of God.
Many of the ideas in this message comes from Andy Stanley’s series “Guardrails” which our church did at our church.
