I discovered some fascinating statistics the other day. Did you know that out of 38 parables that Jesus told, 16 deal with money in some form or other? If you add up all the times that heaven and hell are mentioned, it comes to fewer times than money is mentioned. The New Testament says 5 times as much about money than it does about prayer. There are about 500 or so verses on prayer and faith combined, but there are 2000 verses dealing with money and possessions.
You can see from those figures that money must be an important issue for the Christian. But why is that? Is it because there’s something inherently wrong with money? No, the Bible never suggests that. In fact if you look at some of the Old Testament stories, wealth is often associated with God’s blessings. But what we do discover is that the love of money is the root of all evil. It’s when we elevate money to godlike status that it becomes a problem for us. As we read in our first reading, from 1 Tim 6, "those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction." Money becomes a trap, it captures us in a way that causes us to lose our perspective on life. In the end money becomes everything.
As you can see from those figures I just quoted this is no new phenomenon. Money has always been a danger to human beings. It’s a means of wielding power. It allows us to think we’re in control of our world. It frees us to spend our energies on ourselves. It can lead us to think that what we have is our right because we’ve achieved it. So the lure of money is a very subtle temptation.
But I can’t help but think that this temptation is even greater now than it was when those words were written. You see, of all the evils in the world, the love of money is perhaps the most promoted evil around. Other vices are looked down on. If you suffer from pride, someone is sure to cut you down to size. If you suffer from gluttony, there are plenty of organisations out there waiting to help you with your diet. If you have an alcohol problem, you’ll be reminded at regular intervals about the dangers of drink-driving, or of the effects on your family of alcohol abuse. Similarly if you have a gambling problem.
But no-one is going to help you if your problem is consumptive materialism or hedonism. You won’t find a "Greed Watchers" or a "Shopaholics Anonymous" being advertised on TV. On the contrary, what you’ll see is an encouragement to think about your need for money, to spend more than you really need to, to desire things that you don’t have, not because you need them, but for the status of owning. You’ll hear a subtle or even not so subtle message that money is the key to happiness and security, even to love and intimacy. So let’s think about how money tempts us and then we’ll spend some time thinking about how to combat that temptation.
First, lets think about 2 mirages that live in the modern mind, relating to money. You know what a mirage is don’t you? It’s something that looks substantial and real from a distance but just as you’re about to reach it, it vanishes
Money can make you happy?
The first mirage is the idea that money will make you happy. Now we all know that’s not true don’t we? Don’t we? So why do we envy those who have it? Isn’t it true that we’ve been sold this message that money is the key to our future security? Have you seen that long running ANZ ad? It’s in serial form, with the man who gives up his high pressure job to start a nursery, then his wife joins him with a coffee shop, then his son-in-law joins the business as well. And all because ANZ provided the money! And what’s the subtext of that ad campaign? Isn’t it that you’d be much happier if you had access to more money so you could follow your dream? That’s just one example, but there are countless others where the message is similar: Money will make you free and independent. Money will give you power over others and over your own life. Money brings you respect. People will treat you differently when you’ve got the big bucks. Money can solve all your problems. And people sit there in front of the box wondering whether the next contestant will become a millionaire, or who will be the one who’ll out-survive the others and walk away with the cash, all the time living vicariously on the fortunes or misfortunes of others. And that’s linked to the second mirage.
You can get rich quick?
There was a time in our history when otherwise sane men dropped everything to rush off to Ballarat or Bendigo to search for gold. But few of them actually made it. Many died, many others went home penniless. They were blinded by the hope of getting rich quick. But, you know, we see the same phenomenon today. Only the gold fever today is related to poker machines and blackjack tables, or lotteries like Tattslotto. All last week we were hearing how you could go home with $15 million from the Powerball jackpot on Thursday night. Well, one person might have, but all the rest simply blew their money. An American psychologist, B.F. Skinner, once did some behaviour modification experiments with chickens. He taught the chicken to peck at a disk, by rewarding it with a piece of corn. But he found that if he stopped giving it the corn it would stop pecking. So then he tried giving it a piece of corn at random intervals. With this intermittent reward in place the chickens would stand and peck at the disk relentlessly until they fell over from exhaustion. That’s the same psychology that’s applied to the pokie or to Tattslotto. They give out enough rewards that people will keep pecking forever, always hoping for the one big strike that will set them up for life.
Of course these aren’t the only ways we’re deceived into thinking we can get rich quick. There are plenty of schemes around being touted to gullible investors with the message that if you follow these schemes you’ll be rich in no time flat. There was a guy out here recently running seminars on how to get rich. Just come to his seminar, buy his book and you’d be rich. Well it was pretty obvious that he’d found the secret to riches. But it wasn’t anything in his book. It was finding enough gullible people who’d pay $20, or whatever it cost, for his book.
But let’s go back to the first mirage. If you were to get rich quickly, would it make you happy? I remember some years ago, being given what was for us a largish sum of money as a loan. It meant we could pay off our housing loan and all we had to do was pay it back over a number of years. Did it make me more happy? No. Just the opposite. It made me worry about how to look after it so it was there to be paid back when the time came. I was actually happier, I think, when I didn’t have it. The reality of money is that the more you have the more you worry about it. The more stress you feel about it.
The Emotional Pull of Money
Now you may not be like the majority. You may be quite happy to live on what you have, but that isn’t the case with many of us. For many of us money gets us at the point of who we are and how we’re perceived by others. It becomes the key to self-esteem. We may not be personally affected by the pressures of advertisers to consume more or to buy a Tatts ticket, but when we see our best friend roll up in the latest HSV Holden or BMW sports car, we get just a little bit envious. When we visit a friend and they’ve just renovated their kitchen or got new floor coverings, or perhaps put a beautiful extension on the back of their house, we begin to wish that we could afford that sort of thing. And when we see how people treat our wealthy friends differently, just because they have money, we start to wish we could get that sort of attention and acceptance ourselves. You see, money is never just money. Money affects how we see ourselves, and how others see us. If we have money we feel good about ourselves because of what we’ve achieved. We can look at others and fell sorry for them for not being as clever or as hardworking or as entrepreneurial as we are. That’s why when the stock market crashes people go crazy and even commit suicide. Because a significant financial loss translates into a substantial loss of self-esteem. Once they were somebody, now they’re nobody.
Money also gives us a sense of being in control of our lives. If we have a good super scheme, if we own our own home, if we’re debt free, we feel secure. Even as Christians we tend to think, subconsciously at least, "I trust God with my life, but I want to make sure I’ve got plenty of financial padding just in case." Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t plan ahead for retirement or use our money wisely, but we need to watch where we’re putting our trust for our future, and what we’re planning to use our money on.
Do you remember the parable that Jesus told about the farmer who had a bumper harvest? (Luke 12:16-21) In fact his harvest was so good that he brought in enough to last him for years, perhaps even for the rest of his life. So what did he do? He pulled down his barns and built bigger ones. Then he sat back, feeling very happy with himself and said "Take life easy, your future is secure. You’ll never have to work again." Well, he was right wasn’t he? Because that very night he died, and all his riches were of no use to him. You know if you ever go to a rich person’s funeral and someone asks how much did they leave, the answer is simple: "Everything!" The point of the parable is that money has nothing to do with true security. True security can only be found in God. That’s why Jesus exhorts us to store up treasures in heaven. Because that’s the only place we’ll find security. As we saw last week, God is like a loving father who delights to provide for his children. If we’re worried about the future we need to get a new perspective, to see that God is able to provide all we need, just as he provides for the flowers and the birds (Matt 6:25-34).
So how are we to get our perspective right in this area of money? Well, let me suggest three Biblical ideas that might help:
God made everything
It might seem simple, but I think we sometimes forget that otherwise obvious fact. Back in Deuteronomy 6 as the people of Israel were about to enter the promised land, they were given this warning: "When the LORD your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you -- a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, 11houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant -- and when you have eaten your fill, 12take care that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." (Deut 6:10-12 NRSV) James tells us that every good and perfect gift comes down from our heavenly father. But the temptation is to forget this, particularly in our technology driven world, where it seems that everything we use is manufactured. We think if we made it, or we earned it, if we own it, then it’s ours to enjoy as we wish. God placed us on earth to have dominion over the creation, but we pervert that call. We take what we have and use it for our pleasure, we spend it on our lusts. We forget the second important idea:
God retains ownership of everything he’s made
As the psalm on our news sheet says "All the beasts of the forest belong to me: and so do the cattle upon the mountains. I know all the birds of the air: the grasshoppers of the field are in my sight. If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the whole world is mine, and all that is in it." We fool ourselves if we think that what we have is ours to use as we please. No. It remains God’s. We’re simply the ones who are given responsibility to look after it. That’s because:
Christians are Stewards of God’s Creation
God gives us responsibility to look after his world. That means that we’re responsible to look after the things that he gives, the money and talents that we’re given. You may remember that Jesus told a parable about some people who were given responsibility for a vineyard. But they forgot whose vineyard it was, so when the king sent his servants to collect the rent they beat them up. Even when the king’s son was sent they ignored it and killed the son. We have to be careful that that story isn’t told about us in the way we use the resources that God has given us.
So how are we to be good stewards of our money?
The first area is
Giving.
Think back to that parable of the farmer with the bumper harvest. What was wrong with what he did? Wasn’t it just good business practice to build bigger barns? I think the point of what God says at the end of that parable, is that good business practice wasn’t the issue. The issue was his attitude to his wealth. What he should have done with his wealth was to share it with others. In the end it was others who got it anyway, God says. Far better if the farmer had taken the bounty that God had given him and shared it with those who had little. Now that’s an idea that comes out strongly in the New Testament. We haven’t got time to look at 1 Cor 8&9 today, but there, Paul talks about how the generosity of the Philippians was poured out even in the midst of poverty. Jesus praises the poor widow for giving a couple of cents to the Temple. The Bible calls for a counter-cultural attitude to money, where we solve the problems it brings us by being generous with it. Listen to what Proverbs 11:24-25 say: (Prov 11:24-25 NRSV) "Some give freely, yet grow all the richer; others withhold what is due, and only suffer want. 25A generous person will be enriched, and those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed." So how are we to change our attitude to money? Let me suggest one way.
Next time you’re thinking about how much of your income to give to God, I want you to do two things. First think about what resources you really need to live. What could you live on if you had to? What if you were living in India, or Africa?
Then take out a large piece of paper, put a line down the middle and write down on one side what you have that’s really yours, and what you have that’s really God’s. Now if you’re honest one side of that piece of paper will be empty. Then, look at what you have that belongs to God and think what you might do with it. It’s an interesting thing, but if you’re ever in the position of giving away someone else’s money, you’ll find it much easier than giving away your own. I remember a number of years ago being asked to bid for a friend at a house auction. It was much easier bidding for them than if it had been my own money I was spending. So go over your list, reminding yourself that these things, this money belongs to God, and then work out what you’re going to do with it.
I heard of one Christian businessman who lived on 10% of his income and gave 90% of it away, because he understood this principal. On the other hand, I heard of another wealthy man who went to see his pastor about the idea of tithing. He was very worried because he’d made $500,000 on a land deal and tithing would mean he’d have to give $50,000 to the Church. Well, the Pastor was sympathetic. He told the man he understood how difficult his position was, then he suggested they pray about it. Both men lowered their heads and the pastor prayed a simple prayer: "Lord, please reduce this man’s income until he can afford a tithe."
Finally 7 suggestions for regaining power over money:
Stay close to the bible and its teaching on money
Let God’s word keep your perspective right
Find ways to keep in touch with the poor
If the only people you mix with are wealthy you’ll find it very hard to keep a Godly perspective on money and wealth.
Pray about money and how to use it
Confess your greed and covetousness and ask for the Spirit’s help in setting right priorities for your life
Form accountable relationships
Talk about money with your close friends and family.
Develop a counter cultural attitude towards money
decide you’re not going to try to get rich quick. Give your money away. Don’t show favouritism to those with money. Show by your life that people are more important than things. Deny the power of money to diminish our values and depersonalise our relationships.
Develop the basic skills for money management
Learn how to set a budget that reflects your personal and Biblical priorities of life. Work out what you need to live. If you’re thinking about your retirement needs work out what you’ll need then and if you have that covered then stop worrying about it.
Work to develop attitudes that guard you in the area of money
Think about how you respond to advertising. Don’t be sucked in by the message that you need more or newer things to be happy. Resist the pressure to buy on impulse. Don’t flip through the junk mail whenever it arrives. Throw it in the bin. Emphasise quality rather than quantity in your lifestyle.
Finally, know yourself. Understand what particular temptations affect you most in this area of money and wealth and prepare yourself to fight them. And let God set your priorities, not the advertisers and retailers
For more sermons from this source go to www.sttheos.org.au
