HEALTHY. WEALTHY. WISE.
“God’s Money”
November 2017
We are launching a month of messages about money—God’s money, Smart money, Happy money, Easy money. Some of you will choose to stay away until Christmas sermons start in a month. I won’t be surprised if a few of you get up and leave now. “All that pastors care about is my money.” I don’t care about your money; I care about your spiritual health and development. Your relationship with money shows a great deal about your spiritual health and development.
What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done with money? “I didn’t mean to, it just happened. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Turned out to be a disaster.”
In the last half of 1 Chronicles 29:14, King David says. “Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.”Psalm 24:1says, “The earth is theLord’s,and everything in it,the world, and all who live in it.”
It’s all the Lord’s. He made it. Established Adam and Eve as the first caretakers, stewards. As such, we all tend, care for, invest, manage, protect, and increase God’s holdings. We are the managers of money and resources that in reality belong to God. We have an immense responsibility in managing God's assets. We may believe and say that we own things, but God has rights to his property. He expects we will be responsible with what we have been given.
Here’s a quick pass-fail quiz: If you make $756.92 a week, how much belongs to God? Not $75.69. Not a tenth. God owns all $756.92. Everything is created by God. Everything belongs to God. Everything is distributed by God. Every cent, every stick of furniture, every article of clothing, every everything you “own,” actually belongs to God; He’s just letting you manage it for a while.
If everything belongs to God, then what am I doing with it?
Seriously, if it is His, what in the world is it doing in my hands? What would possess Him to hand it over to me?
Good father. Knows how to give good gifts. He gives what He knows to be good. As He created it all, wouldn’t He know better than anyone else the benefit and blessing and burden His gifts bring?
Providence. He provides for us all. He knows what we need.
If everything belongs to God, then what am I doing with it?
Seriously, if it is His, then how am I leveraging it for Him? What impact am I making with what He has placed in my hands? What am I actually doing with the blessings He provides?
In Matthew 25, we find a parable Jesus tells about a master, three servants, and fund-management.
14“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey,who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them.15To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag,[a]each according to his ability.Then he went on his journey.16The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more.17So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more.18But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them.20The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’
21“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.Come and share your master’s happiness!’
22“The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’
23“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.Come and share your master’s happiness!’
24“Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.25So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
26“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?27Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
I think we learn a couple of important lessons in this story.
FIRST, God has the right to do whatever He wants with what He owns.The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. We look at this parable and think, “well, it doesn’t seem fair that the servants get different amounts of responsibility. Shouldn’t he give to them all equally?” When it’s your money, you can do with it as you see fit. This master gives more or less as he deems it necessary, responsible, or beneficial.
SECOND, We have the responsibility to do something with what He owns.The master in the parable isn’t moving, he’s just going on a journey, a trip. People plan to come back from a journey unless they are packing up to move permanently. There is an expectation of return. As soon as the master was gone, at once, the three servants acted. Two put the money to work and one put it in a coffee can in the ground.
We could talk about why they did what they did—fear, respect, self-doubt—but I’m not sure that’s the point of the story. The servants knew their master, his interests, his expectations, his history. That knowledge prompted two of three to take responsibility for what had been entrusted to them and to do something positive and beneficial with it.
THIRD, (and this is free today only) this parable may be about money, but it’s really not about money. It’s about being prepared, about handling the resources and the life that God has given and managing it well. If God has given us everything (and He has), then what will we do with what’s been entrusted to us until we are called to give an account?
WGDWWG? – Whatchagonna do with whatcha got?
FROM ‘OUR DAILY BREAD’
I was 18 years old when I got my first fulltime job, and I learned an important lesson about the discipline of saving money. I worked and saved until I had enough money for a year of school. Then my mom had emergency surgery, and I realized I had the money in the bank to pay for her operation.
My love for my mother suddenly took precedence over my plans for the future. These words in the bookPassion and Purityby Elisabeth Elliot took on new meaning: “If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, ‘If God gave it to me,’ we say, ‘it's mine. I can do what I want with it.’ No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, . . . ours to let go of.”
Everything belongs to God.
I realized that the job I had received and the discipline of saving were gifts from God! I could give generously to my family because I was sure God was capable of seeing me through school another way, and He did.
Today, how might God want us to apply David's prayer from 1 Chronicles 29:14, “Everything we have has come from you, and we give you only what you first gave us”?
Lord, we know there is nothing that we have that we obtainedon our own. It’s all Yours. Help us to have open hands for Youto give and take as You please. Increase our faith.