Mark
8:34-37
Luke
12:13-15
Next week we begin a series of messages that will take us through
Easter. The messages all come from
the Gospel of Matthew and are based on stories from the final week of the life
of Jesus. The title of the series
is Walking
In the Way of Jesus, and in that series we’ll look at six topics across
seven messages. The first and last
messages have the same title, but different content – the first and last
messages are Life Over Death, and the other messages are Service
Over Power, Mercy Over Judgment, Love Over Law, and Deeds Over Words.
This morning we come to the end of our series The Harder I Go, the Behinder I
Get. Our final message is Catching
Up On Our Finances. I am
relieved to say that I have enough money to last me the rest of my life. Of course, if I live past Wednesday I
don’t know what I’ll do.
My disclaimer this week is that you probably don’t want to take
financial advice from me, as I’ve made about every financial mistake a person
can possibly make. To borrow a
phrase from Dave Ramsey, I’ve paid a lot of stupid
tax.
It’s hard to talk about money, isn’t it? Sometimes we are so stressed out about our finances that the
last thing we want is to come to church and hear someone asking us to think
about money. In fact, the stress
we experience from finances pressures, especially in recent years, is probably
our greatest source of stress, and it’s one area of life where we feel as
though we have very little control.
We can work on our health.
We can eat healthier and work out.
We can work on our relationships.
We can sit down and talk to others and work out the problems in our
relationships. We can work on our
time. We can cut something out of
our schedules. But money is
tougher, isn’t it? When it comes
to money we feel at the mercy of other forces. We can’t control the economy. We can’t control the cost of a gallon of gas. We can’t control the cost of
groceries. And sometimes we can’t
control whether or not we have a job.
So, all things considered, it’s often easier to simply ignore any talk
about finances.
But there are few things that impact our daily lives as much as
money, and, the Scriptures have a lot to say about money.
First, we are reminded that we are people who live in different
worlds. We live as the people of
God called to a particular way of living, with a particular way of relating to
God, to others, and to our finances.
But we also live in an economy that seeks to tell us how we should spend
our money and even to view our own value in relation to how much money we have.
The world of faith and the worlds of finance are often in great
conflict with one another. We live
in an economy that works best when we continually consume, when we continually
accumulate, and when we lay up treasure for ourselves and for our future. But we also live within the kingdom of
God, which reminds us to not lay up for yourselves treasures upon
earth (Matthew 6:20) and take no thought for your life (Matthew
6:25).
How do you reconcile those two perspectives?
We do so, I believe, in the following ways.
1. Remember That Everything Belongs to God.
As the Scriptures talk about money and economics they present the
economy of God as different from any kind of economic system we know. The Scriptures don’t present a
particular economic philosophy such as capitalism, socialism, or any ism. Scripture tells us the economic system of God is that of stewardship, and stewardship begins with
this affirmation – everything belongs to God. Everything.
Psalm 24:1 reminds us the earth is the Lord’s, and all it
contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.
What was the responsibility given to Adam in the Garden? To cultivate it and keep it,
according to Genesis 2:15. It was not
given as a possession, but as something for which to care. Creation, proclaimed as being very
good, is placed in the care of humanity to tend, not to do with as we
please, but to care for that which belongs to God. Jesus tells several parables dealing with the concept of
stewardship, and each one focuses on the idea of caring for that which belongs
to God – Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:11-27 tell the parable of the talents;
Luke 12:42-48 tells the parable of the faithful steward; and Luke 16:1-13 tells
the parable of the unrighteous steward.
So we are called, in God’s economy, to remember that what we have
really belongs to God, which will cause us to think far differently about what
we have in our possession.
2. Financial stresses are, I
would say, the number one relationship killer.
Of all the stresses that face couples it is finances, in my
experience, that is the number one source of stress and conflict. And it’s one of the areas of life that
couples often don’t talk about.
When couples ask me to officiate at their wedding I sometimes talk to them
about important matters they need to consider. I say sometimes
because here is the reality – they don’t really want to hear what I have to say
about anything, because they’ve already got it all figured out. I knew everything before I got
married. Didn’t you? It was not until after I got married
that I discovered how little I really knew.
In May, Tanya and I will celebrate our 29th anniversary. I’m very proud of that
accomplishment. Please don’t ask
Tanya if she is. After 29 years
you learn a few things. And what I
have learned is that people need to talk about their financial lives, and a lot
of people don’t.
As I said at the beginning of this message, it’s hard to talk about
money. But we better talk about it
in our relationships, or those relationships are going to face some real
challenges.
But it’s not just couples – it’s friends and family members as
well. If you want to find out just
how much money can affect relationships, ask someone for money. Can I borrow $500 from the choir this
morning? Don’t think about it,
just answer!
Here’s what I believe, and you can take this advice for whatever you
think it’s worth – don’t lend money.
Don’t lend money – give money.
Just make it a gift. When
you lend money it really complicates a relationship because it so often erects
a wall in the relationship. Now, I
know not everyone will agree with me about this, so I’ll add this piece of
advice – if you don’t make it a gift, make your agreement very clear. Specify the terms very clearly and make
the expectations very clear. And
when you do you’ll find it still makes the relationship awkward. Is a relationship worth the cost? If it’s a relationship that really
matters, just make it a gift. And
if someone makes such a gift to you, do the same for someone else sometime.
3. You are of far greater value
than the sum total of your personal bottom line.
Do not take your sense of worth from money. Advertisers certainly have learned how
to pick the money out of our pockets by playing to our sense of worth. In fact, you will never see or hear a
commercial on television or radio.
They are never called commercials.
What are they called? We’ll be back right after these – messages.
Advertisers are not selling us a
product as much as they are selling us a message. If we purchase their product we will become more popular,
better looking, healthier, or any number of other promises they make.
When Jesus talked about money, which he did quite often, one of the
reminders he offered was that our self-worth is not based on the size of our
bank accounts. Life does not, he
reminds us, consist in an abundance of
possessions. Living in a society
that so highly prizes an accumulation of money and possessions, it is easy to
be driven to try to gain more and more.
The drive to accumulate is often tied very closely to our sense of
self-worth. The more we have, the
more important or valuable we must be, at least in the eyes of society.
But the drive to gain more and more is never-ending. Though a purchase may provide a sense
of satisfaction and well-being, it is only temporary. Soon we need to buy something else to recapture that
feeling, and we begin a cycle of buying in an effort to feel better about
ourselves. The reality is, you can’t
buy enough stuff to make you feel better.
I’ve tried it. It doesn’t
work.
4. Be Generous.
In 2010 a 14-year-old by the name of Hannah Salwen convinced her
family to do something rather amazing.
She was riding in the family car with her father when they came to an
intersection. She noticed, on one
side, an expensive luxury car and on the other a man begging for food. She told her father if the man had a
less expensive car perhaps the man could have something to eat. Her father talked to her about the fact
that there are some inequities in the world. She couldn’t accept that. She continued to talk with her parents about the inequities
in the world, prompting her mother to finally ask, what do you want us to do?
Sell our house? They
actually did. They lived in quite
a beautiful home in Atlanta – a 6,500 square foot home that even included an
elevator to Hannah’s room.
They sold the home for quite a profit, gave half of the money to
charity, and purchased a smaller home with the remaining money.
Not everyone could do such a thing. In fact, not very many people could do such a thing. And doing such a thing will not take
care of all the inequities in the world.
And I’m not saying you should go out and sell your house.
But I am saying we need to think about how we can be generous. One of the things I don’t like when
people preach on money is the guilt that is often dumped on us. Let me put you at ease this morning –
I’m not going to tell you how to be generous; that’s up to you. All I’ll tell you is this – be
generous. If it’s just giving a
dollar, give a dollar.
What’s important about generosity is that it draws us out of our
tendency to focus upon our own lives to the exclusion of others. Even if it’s a dollar, we are thinking
about another life rather than just our own.
Be generous. Reflect
the generosity of God in your own life.
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