As most of you know about five times a year I teach a Sunday School Class that’s called RBC101. Basically it’s a five-session study designed to help new or prospective members understand who we are as a church. I really enjoy teaching this class because it gives me an opportunity right off the bat to get to know the wonderful people that God calls to be a part of this local body of believers. But, our time together is much more than fellowship. We discuss our church’s organizational structure…our history…our vision…I introduce them to our staff…and each week we have a Bible study focused around one of the essential beliefs that define us as a church…those non-negotiables from which we derive our health and unity.
If you are a member here then you should know that one of those essentials is our conviction that the Bible is unlike any other book that has been written in that it is God’s word and not the word of man. As it says in the 1963 edition of The Baptist Faith and Message, which is part of our church constitution and bylaws,
The Bible has God for its Author, salvation for its end and truth, without any mixture of error for its matter.
I tell each 101 class I teach that we highly esteem the Bible at this church. Its truth is the focus of everything we do…the songs we sing…the prayers we utter…the sermons we preach. In fact, we devote an entire hour each week to gather in small groups for the purpose of studying the wisdom that is found on its pages.
And, if you have ever studied the Bible then you know, that it truly IS an amazing book. Even though it was written by over 45 DIFFERENT authors who lived over a period of 1500 years in places from Babylon to Rome, it carries the SAME central theme. When properly understood no part of the Bible contradicts another. And, when you read it from beginning to end, you see that no book adds to previously written truth except to enlarge upon it or explain it. Now, this just could not be said about any other book for the simple reason that this is the ONLY book that has God as its Author.
Another thing that makes this book so unique is its content. Within its pages you can find the world’s greatest poetry as well as riveting historical accounts of the rise and fall of men and kingdoms-accounts that are filled with adventure and even romance. It amazes me that although it is an ancient book, whenever the Bible speaks on science it’s always absolutely correct. This book also contains prophecy that has proven to always be 100% accurate. But, one of the most beneficial aspects of this amazing book is that it contains all the guidance we need to live a truly abundant life. For this reason many of its readers have referred to the Bible as an INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR LIFE. And that is what it is, for it was written by our Creator and as such contains everything we need to know to live the life He has given us, including very clear teachings that explain how we can actually come to know God personally and enjoy His companionship throughout our lives.
The Bible also addresses practical matters such as how to have a life-long marriage that is fulfilling for both husband and wife. It includes guidance as to how to be a good parent as well as insights that will help the reader be successful in his or her profession….whatever it may be. There is information in here that will give us good health and a longer life if we will heed it.
And…interestingly enough, one of the topics to which it devotes the MOST space is all the information it gives on how MONEY should be handled. In fact let me pause now to read you just a sampling of the texts that concern this popular issue. First from Mark 6 -Jesus is speaking and He says,
Mark 6:19-24
19 – Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
20 – But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy,
and where thieves do not break in and steal.
21 – For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22 – 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.
I Timothy 6:9
9 – People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.
10 – For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
II Corinthians 8:7
7 – But just as you excel in everything-in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us-see that you also excel in this grace of giving.
8 – I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others.
9 – For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.
II Corinthians 9:7
7 – Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
8 – And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
Malachi 3:10
10 – 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.
Now, I could go on reading Scripture that concerns money all day because there is tons of it in this book that God has given us. As a matter of fact, there are 1,565 references to the proper use of money within these pages. In the Gospels alone one out of every ten verses speaks to this issue. One question that many people have asked is, Why would God devote so much space in His book to this particular subject? Why does money matter so much to God? I mean how could He justify devoting twice as many verses to money in the Bible as He does to those concerning faith and prayer combined? Why did the Savior of the world say more about how we are to view and handle money than any other single subject-including heaven and hell? Well, if you will pardon my intentional play on words, I think God focuses so much on MONEY matters because He knows that money MATTERS! And this morning I want us to seek His wisdom on this issue by searching His Word to see why it matters. I mean, since one of our essential beliefs around here is that this is God’s Word…and since it has so much to say about money…I think it would be essential for us to make sure we were familiar with What He has to say.
And one of the main things our Creator and Designer repeatedly says in His book is that money matters because…
1. …IT CAN HURT US.
Remember the warning we read a moment ago that God issued through the Apostle Paul? In I Timothy 6:9-10 he said, People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root to all kinds of evil.
Now, please note that Paul does not say MONEY is evil. He says the LOVE of it can be a root of all kinds of bad in our lives. You see, God knows that if we get too chummy with money and the things money can buy…If we walk around with a mental wish-list of things we’d purchase or things we’d do if we just had more money…If our favorite indoor sport is shopping…we may be headed for trouble. God knows that if we are not very careful, our love of money and the things money can buy will open the door to a landslide of other sins. So, it’s not wrong for us to have money…it’s wrong to let money have us, because when it does HAVE us it can cause us a great deal of pain.
Brian Harbour tells of the man who suffered from a severe low back ache which finally reached such an intensity that he had to go to the doctor. His condition was initially diagnosed as a probable herniated spinal disk. But, upon further investigation the doctor concluded that the man had a severe case of what he called, wallet sciatica. When the man requested an explanation in layman’s terms, the doctor asked him to take out his billfold and he pulled out a big, fat wallet full of credit cards. The doctor told him that the wallet was putting extreme pressure on the sciatic nerve and causing his symptoms. The prescription which led to an immediate cure was a wallectomy, that is a removal of the offending wallet.
Now like you I chuckled when I heard this but as we know there is nothing funny about the lance of sadness that money can drive into our lives. Because as Paul said, the love of money can lead to a great variety of sin…and sin always hurts. Stop and think about all the sinful behaviors and attitudes that could be related to money in your life. Do you ever LIE for the sake of money? Do you ever shade the truth on your income tax return or your expense report or in the information you give a customer in order to close a deal and get that commission?
Do you ever covet something that somebody else has? By the way don’t forget-coveting is one of God’s big ten. God lists coveting right up there with Thou shalt not murder and Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. He obviously takes coveting things very seriously. Well, what about it? Did you ever covet because of money?
Have you ever become angry or bitter or hateful with someone else because of money? A boss who didn’t give you what your feel you are worthy of…or a business partner who cheated you out of a deal…or a family member who got a more sizeable portion of the inheritance than you?
Have you ever spent your money on stuff like smutty magazines or a movie you shouldn’t have seen? Did you ever use your money to purchase something you got drunk with or high on? Did you ever work seven out of seven days to make more money, ignoring God’s clear command-another one of the BIG TEN-that you ought to set aside one of those days each week to focus on worshiping Him? Did you ever use your money to register your kids for so many extracurricular activities that there’s no time left in their schedules to pass on spiritual values to them? Did you ever ignore the Lord’s work or ignore the poor with that portion of your income that God says needs to be set aside for the purpose of being generous?
And, how about sins related to spending TOO MUCH money? Are you like most Americans who, due to their over-spending are deep in debt? If you are, you know how much THAT can hurt, because in over-spending we become enslaved. As Proverbs 22:7 says, The borrower is a servant to the lender. And those plastic lenders we all carry around can be cruel masters for they obligate us to earn more and more money, like the bumper sticker that says, I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go.
J. Rubin Clark puts it this way, Once you’re in debt, interest will be your companion every minute of the day or night, and it’s working against you. It has no love, no sympathy. It is as hard and soul-less as a granite cliff, and you cannot dismiss it. Whenever you get in its way or you cross its course or fail to meet its demand, it crushes you.
Many of us know this all too well. We have a lot of experience with this particular kind of pain that money can inflict. And, this leads to something else that the Bible says about the anguish money can cause. Note that in this text Paul says that the love of money can lead us to temptation and a TRAP. Now whenever Paul uses this word trap in the New Testament he is tipping us off that there is a spiritual enemy out there who is plotting our destruction, someone is out there who is setting these traps. You see, the love of money is not just a character flaw we need to work out. The love of money is also a strategy the evil one uses against us to ruin our lives and destroy our relationship with God.
Do you see how dangerous money can be-how much harm it can cause? I mean, if we are not careful, before we know it Satan can make money actually become a god to us. In my translation of the Bible when Jesus is speaking in Mark 6 and says, You cannot serve both God and Money, the word money is capitalized as if it were a person…not a thing. You see when we love money it DOES take on a life of its own. It becomes a financial entity, a being, that we worship and serve. In fact you could very accurately say that we live in a world ruled by an entity that we might call the god of more. Very smart people stay up at night trying to figure out ways to convince us that we are or ought to be discontent and that we would experience true SATISFACTION if we just had MORE. All day long we are bombarded by these prophets of MORE who say, Use me, buy me, drive me, wear me, try me, put me in your hair.
Why, the things we can obtain just for more hair SATISFACTION are staggering! You can wash it, blow-dry it, condition it, color it, straighten it if it’s too curly…curl it if it’s too straight, wax it if it grows where it shouldn’t or Rogaine it if it doesn’t grow where it should. Just a little more of someone’s product and you are sure to be happy about your hair. MORE is an insatiable desire and unfortunately not limited to something as trivial as hair. Most businesses flourish because of the simple fact that all of us very easily succumb to the power of the more god. And our Heavenly Father has used a lot of paper in His book to warn us of this fact that money will rule our lives if we are not careful. Do you remember when Zacchaeus said he would cut MORE’s hold on his life by giving back half his money to the poor and pay back four times over those he had cheated? When he did, Jesus didn’t say, Nice idea Zack! No, He pointedly stated, Today, salvation has come into this house. (Luke 9:9 ) Our Lord knew that Zacchaeus was sincere in giving his life to God because he cheerfully decided to renounce money’s claim on his life. Zacchaeus’ view of money was an idolatry that he had to be converted FROM before he could be converted TO Christianity. And, one reason God included Zacchaeus’ story in the Bible is because He wants us to understand that, our attitude toward money is an indicator of who controls our hearts. Like those sight glass tubes on the exterior of big coffee urns that show how much coffee is inside, our attitude toward money indicates how much control God has over our inner lives.
Money CAN hurt us….in so many ways…our desire for things can even cause us to push God off the throne of our lives if we are not careful. But that’s not all God says about money in the Bible….you see He knows that not only can it hurt us…
2. …MONEY CAN ALSO HELP US….
Money is a neutral thing. It’s our attitude about it that counts and in order for us to benefit from money we must embrace a very important Scriptural attitude. You see, the Bible God repeatedly says that He owns everything we have-including our money. In Job 41 God declares, Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine. To Moses, God said, All the earth is Mine. (Exodus 19:5-6 ). Psalm 24:1 proclaims, The earth is the Lord, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. John Wesley once said, When the Possessor of Heaven and earth brought you into being and placed you in this world, He placed you here not as an owner but as a steward. Well, to experience the blessing that money can be…we must come to see that Wesley was right. God is Lord over everything we are and have.
This means that our money is not ours to have as much as it is ours to give as God directs…
…and in His book God has a lot to say about our need to do just that. The Bible refers to this practice of giving our money to His purposes as TITHING. Now…even though we know TITHING is Biblical, we usually react negatively when pastors utter the T word from the pulpit, because it goes against our selfish nature to give our possessions away, even to God-even though the Bible clearly teaches that they are not our possessions in the first place. This reminds me of the story of the preacher who paid a visit to a farmer and asked, If you had 200 dollars would you give 100 dollars to the Lord? And the farmer said, Sure, I would. Then the pastor said, If you had four cows would you give two to the Lord? And the farmer again said, Sure, I would! Then the pastor said, If you had two pigs, would you give one to the Lord. And the farmer said, That’s not fair. You know I have two pigs.
Well, painful or not tithing is a Biblical concept. Leviticus 27:30 says we must give, …a tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil of fruit from the trees belongs to the Lord. It is holy to the Lord. The literal meaning of the word tithe is a tenth part — so we are to give a tenth of our income to God’s purposes. People tend to use this little word loosely today. They may speak of tithing ten dollars a week when their income is $50,000 a year. Now, the Israelites were not as mathematically challenged as many of us are. They were raised on the practice of tithing. To them it clearly meant giving ten percent, not two percent or four percent.
Now,why would GOD ask us to give to Him? I mean, He is God. He doesn’t really need our gifts. In fact, the Bible teaches this. In Psalm 50 God says, I am GOD…your GOD…I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. God does not need our gifts. No, giving is not for His benefit. IT IS FOR OURS! Giving is one way that money can be good for us. This is why Paul says we must, excel in the grace of giving. You see, our Creator and Redeemer knows how we work. He knows that giving is a very powerful tool for foiling money’s often painful grasp on our lives. This is what Gordon Crosby meant when he said, To give money away is to win a victory over the dark powers that oppress us.
Every time I tithe I remind myself that God is on the throne of my life. Not me. Not my money.
Every time I tithe, I reinforce that all I have is from Him. My tithe is not at tip for good service, as though God were some helper I could patronized. No, it reminds me that He is the Owner. I am the steward. Every time I tithe I am reminded, even as I calculate the amount of the check, of how much I’ve been given by God. I see again just how blest I am. It’s hard to write that check every payday…I see the pile of bills on one side and my offering envelopes on the other and I think that if I skipped my tithe I could pay more bills. So, every time I write that tithe check, I consciously decide to trust God, even when trusting doesn’t seem easy or natural. And I have found Him to ALWAYS be trustworthy. As we read in our scripture this morning, God asks me to tithe but He also promises to provide for my needs. And He has never failed to more than keep that promise. I have come to see my tithing not so much as a debt I owe, but as a seed I sow…a seed that has born great fruit over the years. You see, giving our money to God’s church enables us to link up with His supply line. As we faithfully participate in the work of His kingdom by giving money to the church, God responds by faithfully providing for our needs.
So, in this circular process we learn that we CAN TRUST God…we realize that His promises are true and that He does what He says He will do. So, we then decide to trust Him in bigger things. Giving therefore generates the by-product of growing us spiritually.
Do you see how money can be good for us? Randy Alcorn writes, My own growth in giving has closely paralleled my overall spiritual growth. In fact it has propelled it. I have learned more about faith, trust, grace, commitment, and God’s provision in this arena than in any other.
Please note that part of this process of giving involves our partnering with God to further His purposes. Malachi reminds us that we tithe so that there may be food in God’s house. In other words…so that ministry may be done here. You see churches cost money. Ministries are expensive. Proclaiming the eternal truth of the Gospel requires financial resources. And so giving our money is one way we can join with God…in providing curriculum for Sunday School and Discipleship tracks, for paying salaries and the mortgage and utilities, supporting seminaries, sending missionaries all over the world. In giving our tithes and offerings we join with God in doing his work. In his book, Master Your Money, Ron Blue says, Stewardship is the use of God-given resources for the accomplishment of God-given goals.
But you know one of the most wonderful things money can do is show God how much we love Him. In II Corinthians 8 Paul says our giving is a test of the sincerity of our love for God. Do you remember when Lazarus’ sister, Mary poured an entire jar of expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and Judas criticized her for her extravagant gift? Jesus rebuked him for his comments because He knew that her sacrificial gift was an act of love. You see ultimately good stewardship is not a matter of wise money management or even responsible giving. It is a matter of extravagant love.
Jesus can have our money and not our hearts but He cannot have our hearts without our money. For, if we truly love Him, we will show that love by giving to further His purposes. As we read earlier, the Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver but the reverse is true. A cheerful giver also loves God….and shows his or her love with the amount of their gift. The tax code shouldn’t be our guide or motivation in giving…our love of God should.
So, money can be good for us. When we remember that it actually belongs to God and yield to His ownership by giving back to Him, we not only join Him in His work, we destroy money’s control over our lives and give clear evidence of how much we love Him. I hope we all see now that God devoted so many verses in the Bible to money matters because He knows it does and He wanted us to understand that…it can cause us great pain….or it can bring us great joy.
You know God also devoted a great deal of space in His book to communicate the truth that the only path to TRUE joy and fulfillment in life is found in giving Him much more than our money…as important as that is. We must GIVE Him our lives as well. In the Bible it says that we are designed for relationship with Him. Without a personal walk with Him our lives are empty and purposeless.
We come now to the close of our service and you know in a very real sense the offering is not limited to what we do in the middle of the service each week. It is also what we do now…at the end of the service. We sing a closing hymn each week to give each of us an opportunity to offer our lives to God in some way. Today if you are not a Christian then I encourage you to GIVE your life to God and in so doing experience GOD’S gift of forgiveness and eternal, abundant life.
If you are a Christian then this time of offering may involve your joining this church…or rededicating some aspect of your life to Christ. It may involve a commitment to begin tithing or renounce some THING’s claim on your life. We invite you to share these decisions with us publically now as we stand and sing.