The Stuff We Spend Our Money On What’s important to you? I mean what’s REALLY important to you? If you were applying for an important job, and I was a background investigator interested in figuring out what kind of person you are, I might want the answer to that question. And I bet I could answer it quickly if I had just one piece of personal property from your house. All I would need would be your checkbook. Just give me a chance to see what you’ve been spending your money on, and I can tell you what you value and even what you worship! Money is so important to us, that when you simply examine what it is that we would be willing to trade our money for, you quickly figure out what we worship. God knows that we feel this way about money. That’s why there is so much commentary and instruction about money in the Old and New Testaments! The Bible has more references about money and what to do with money than any other topic, including love. Why would God spend so much time talking about money? Because money, in many ways, is perhaps the single greatest threat to our faith. We are willing to spend our money on any number of things that benefit us personally, but are we willing to give it to the causes of God? You might think so, but if you look at your checkbook, I bet the reality of your giving doesn’t actually match the words you might say. Money on the Television Now, we all now that we can look to our culture and see recognize evidence of our fascination with money. Nearly every highly rated show has something to do with the pursuit of money, people who have a lot of money, or the chance to win some money! And while we might like to think that it’s only our culture that is so possessed with financial success, we, as Christians, need to admit that the airwaves are also filled with examples of preachers and televangelists with a love for money. I’m willing to admit that when I was a kid, I used to get up early every morning and watch Jimmy Swaggart preach for half an hour on his daily TV program. I was fascinated with his ability to ask people for money. Every day, Jimmy would start his program with a clip from a service where he was preaching from the Bible. Then, at about 15 minutes into the message, Jimmy would masterfully transition from the Message to the Money. He would somehow find a way to weave a request for donations into the body of his message, and he would do it in such a way that you could hardly see it coming! It was masterful. I’m sure that every non-believing person out there in the TV audience was amazed as well, and probably convinced that Christianity was just another scheme to make a dollar. Total Truth from the Sermon on the Mount Jesus talked a lot about money. He warned us in any number of ways about the dangers of loving money as though it was God. In this next portion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses the money issue head on: Matthew 6:19-34 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! “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. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Money Can Distract You! There is a lot that Jesus is trying to tell us here in this passage from the Sermon on the Mount, and I want to make sure that we don’t miss anything He has to say about the nature and power of money. First and foremost, Jesus tells us that money can distract us from what’s really important! What might seem to be at first an EARTHLY ATTRACTION, can, in fact, be an UNGODLY DISTRACTION! Are you ever irritated when you are trying to talk to someone and they are distracted by a pretty girl or an attractive guy, or a nice car that happens to be going down the street? There is nothing worse than dealing with distracted people, and it’s just rude when someone fails to give you their full attention. Well, can you imagine how God must feel about the way that we are constantly distracted by the things in our world? Staying on the Right Path God wants our full attention. He would love for us to take a straight path to the foot of the cross every day, and not get distracted along the way! But let’s face it, we get distracted by the things in our world, and outside of relationships, most of what distracts us is related to money. Do you remember how much time and energy you used to spend just thinking about the toys you wanted as a young child? Aren’t you spending that same amount of time and energy thinking about what car you can drive, what new clothes you can buy or how you can get enough money to do the things you really want to do? We spend a ton of time consumed with the things that money can buy, and this is time that we could be spending with God. These things are distracting us, and they’re pulling us off the path that leads to God. They tug at our heart and we end up following the money trail as it leads us further and further from God. That’s why Jesus reminds us: “…For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also…” He’s trying to remind us that our pursuit of money will pull us off the path and leave us wandering away from God altogether: 1 Timothy 6:6-10 But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 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 of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. Money Can Control You! Many of us would like to think that having more money will allow us to have more control of our lives. You know, the more money we have the more power we are supposed to have to go where we want to go and do what we want to do, right? Well, the reality of money is sometimes just the opposite. It seems to be our human nature to live at whatever level we happen to earn. Those who make more money are often simply in more debt! And we are fooling ourselves if we think that more possessions will translate into more control. In fact, the word ‘possession’ is actually an interesting word. We sometimes think it is just used to describe the stuff that WE possess, but if we’re not careful, our possessions can possess US! The stuff that we thought would make us happy, and the money that we thought would allow us more freedom, can actually place us in a position of bondage as we try to pay for all the stuff we THINK we need. Nice Cars Aren’t Always So Nice You know, to this very day I fear valet parking. I never use it. It’s not that I can’t afford it, there are certainly times when I can. But truthfully, I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed about what I drive. Yeah, if I was driving the latest Mercedes, I probably wouldn’t feel that way. But when you’re driving a 1995 aqua blue Chevy Astro van, it’s a different matter altogether. My van is so old and beat up that I hate to be seen in it, let alone have a complete stranger park it for me. I would rather walk two blocks from the parking lot than subject some poor valet to the experience of sitting in that van. But you know what? My van is paid for. It still runs. It gets the job done. And I don’t have a huge car payment that holds me in bondage. If I had huge car payments, I know I would eventually find myself serving the cause of earning the payment rather tan serving the cause of God. That’s why Jesus told us that: “…You cannot serve both God and Money…” Now Jesus told us that he came to set us free, and certainly He did set us free from the sin that separates us from God. But beyond that, Jesus also frees us from the bondage of money and possessions as we learn to live a life for God, rather than a life that pursues the next car payment:
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:24:08 +0000
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