Special: Money
Tom Shrader grounds a teaching on money in Romans 12:1–2, arguing that presenting our bodies to God means no area of life — including finances — can be withheld from His lordship. Drawing on Ecclesiastes 5, 2 Corinthians 9, and a clip from Andy Stanley, he explains that God is the owner of all things and believers are stewards accountable for how they handle time, talent, and treasure. He closes with four principles for giving — intentional, joyful, systematic, and generous — and challenges the congregation to examine the idols and cultural pressures that drive spending and debt.
“God has transferred all of this to you — your time, your energy, your effort, your money — everything you have is God's that He has transferred possession, but not ownership, to you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Standalone Teachings
Recorded: 2012 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 45 min
Themes: money, giving, stewardship, generosity, debt, idols, spending, contentment, struggling with debt, married couple fighting about money, unemployed, new believer, young adult, husband, feeling financially overwhelmed, navigating materialism
Scripture: Romans 12:1-2, 1 Chronicles 29:11, Deuteronomy 10:14, Psalm 24:1-2, Psalm 50, Haggai 2:8, 1 Corinthians 4:2, Ecclesiastes 5:10-11, Luke 12, Matthew 6, 2 Corinthians 9:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, 1 Timothy 6:18
Theological Themes: stewardship, lordship of christ, sanctification, Romans 12, total surrender, biblical giving, God as owner, spiritual transformation
Full Transcript
Introduction
If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand — we'll bring you one. When you get it, open to page 616. If you have your own Bible, it's Romans chapter 12.
We now teach in a preaching collective model. Last Wednesday, all of the guys who will be teaching next week met, along with other staff members, to plan out the big points, gospel points, and big idea points for next week, which will be the first ten verses of Galatians chapter one. Luke heads that up. He is the person we go to for documents, research, and sorting things out — a great thinker and great organizer.
As he put together this year's teaching calendar, we found that the timing falls together in a unique way. The study in Galatians will take us right up to Easter. At Easter — and we will spend a lot of time getting you on board with this — we will introduce a four-week series on who Jesus is, what is the matter with people, and how do we know. We get a lot of first-time visitors at Easter, so those four weeks will be an important tool for you to use.
Throughout the year there are probably three, four, or five moments where, to do it right, we need a one-off week or maybe two. What the team decided to do this year is to identify the things we hear about all the time but rarely get to address unless we happen to be in a relevant text. For example, on Mother's Day we will be talking about parenting, and on Father's Day the message will be on men and leading.
Why We're Talking About Money
Today we are going to talk about money. I want to be clear that this was planned months and months ago, before any recent numbers — there is no crisis driving this. We hear about money all the time. When people come in and their marriage is in trouble, money is often at the center of it. Right now there are people who are either unemployed or underemployed, and money is an issue. It impacts so many different areas of life. We have seen people's lives change as they take biblical principles and apply them to money.
So we are going to talk about money. I will share two or three thoughts that I find genuinely helpful, and then speak a little about giving — a topic that comes up for us over and over again.
Here is some important context to start with. The Bible speaks about money more often than heaven and hell combined. There are over 500 verses on prayer in the Bible and fewer than 500 on faith, but there are over 2,000 on money. 288 verses — one out of every ten verses in the Gospels — deals with money. Jesus, as He moved around and taught and told parables, told approximately 38 parables depending on how you count them, and 16 of those deal with money. The Bible is very concerned about how you earn, spend, and invest your money.
And yet, as the pastoral team sits and talks, it seems as though people recognize spiritual consequences in so many areas of life — but not necessarily that one.
Money as a Competitor with God
Howard Dayton, in his book *Your Money Map*, writes this:
> This may surprise you, but money is the primary competitor with God for our affection. Jesus tells us we will serve and love one or the other.
Dayton goes on to tell a historical illustration. When the Crusades were fought during the twelfth century, the Crusaders purchased the services of mercenaries to fight for them. Because it was a religious war, the Crusaders insisted that the mercenaries be baptized before fighting. As they were being baptized, the soldiers would hold their swords out of the water to symbolize that Christ was not in control of their sword — that they retained the freedom to use their weapons in any way they wished.
Dayton then comments:
> Many people today do a similar thing. They hold their wallet or purse out of the water with an attitude that says, "God, I will yield control of my entire life to You — except the area of money. I am perfectly capable of handling that myself." And without realizing it, this attitude hinders their relationship with God and harms their finances.
Romans 12 and the Lordship of Christ
The passage we are turning to is Romans 12, verses one and two. If you have been around for a while, you know we return to this passage frequently because it gives us a really important principle: if we say Jesus is Lord, it has to affect the way we live.
The English Standard Version begins this way: *"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."* The New American Standard is slightly different: *"Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your bodies."* Both are saying the same thing.
The word "therefore" connects this passage to the first eleven chapters of Romans. In those chapters, Paul lays out enormous theological truths about how God redeemed us — the fact that we were lost, that we were separated from God, that we were enemies of God, at war with Him. And yet while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Though the wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Paul establishes all of that first, and then the "therefore" draws the consequence for how we are to live.
Presenting Ourselves to God
In the first eleven chapters of Romans, Paul lays out the great doctrines of the faith. Then in chapter 12, it is like a pivot. He says that because God has changed your life, you should look like it. The way you run your business is different. The way you conduct yourself in a market or in a line is different. Your family is different. Your marriage is different. Every aspect of your life is different because the consequences of knowing Christ and believing this truth now permeate all the areas of our life. There is not any area, like the crusader with the sword, that we hold out and say, "No, not here, God."
So Paul says, "Present your bodies." The imagery there is to say, "Okay, God, here it is. The only reasonable response to the fact that You saved me is to say, here You go, this is Yours." Then Paul presents in verse two the challenge: "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." The Message paraphrases it this way: "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God and you'll be changed from the inside out."
If there was ever a perfect storm of our human desires and tendencies, the way we think, and the flesh — take that and marry it with the culture we live in, marry it with a free market, individual, capitalistic, go-get-whatever-you-can mindset, and then add to it a whole multimedia culture that feeds into that — if there is ever something we need to stand contrary to the world's thinking on, it is probably in the area of finance and stuff.
God Claims Ownership
Here is a basic principle, and when you grasp this, it changes everything. The principle is this: God claims ownership. This is macro, from the top down — over the universe, over the earth, over every living thing, over every asset, and ultimately over you.
God claims ownership over the universe. First Chronicles 29:11 says, "For everything in the heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is your kingdom. You are exalted as head over it." Deuteronomy 10:14 says, "To the Lord your God belongs the heavens, even the highest heavens." So if you get that Hubble telescope and look out and out and out, as the universe expands, God claims ownership over it all.
He also claims ownership over the earth. Psalm 24, verses one and two: "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it." We bought the property the church sits on out of an old RTC. If you were to run a title on it, it would show the RTC, and then something before that. But in theory, if you could really run the title all the way back, it ought to say what? God. He is the one who created it.
He has ownership over every living thing as well. Psalm 50 says, "For every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and creatures in the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, the world is mine and all that's in it." God is not suffering on the brink of bankruptcy — He owns everything. And over every asset, Haggai 2:8 declares, "The silver is mine, the gold is mine, declares the Lord."
So here is what God claims: God claims ownership over all of creation. Everything that is created is under God's ownership, and everything under Him, other than Him, is created.
You Are a Steward
Now here is the switch that changes everything. Because God is the owner, you are a steward, or a trustee. To be technically accurate, this is not my money — this is God's money. He has transferred possession to me, but not ownership.
Bernie Madoff went to jail for what he did with other people's money. The problem was not what he did with his own things. The problem was the fraud he committed with others. People came to him and transferred possession of an asset to him, but not ownership. They said, "You now have a fiduciary relationship. You are responsible for this. I want you to invest it." If he is a good financial advisor, he is going to want to understand his client's investment goals, and he then has to act consistent with what is best for that client.
God says something similar. He is transferring all of this to you. Your time, your energy, your effort, your money — everything you have is God's, transferred into your possession but not your ownership. So when Rush Limbaugh says, "Talent on loan from God," though he stumbled into it, he is exactly right.
It is way bigger than just money. God has given you a certain number of days. He has given some of you great intelligence and some less. He has given some gifts that are just extraordinary — the kind where you hear someone and think, I don't even know how they do that. And just like those who have taken a natural gift and developed it, everything we have has been given to us and entrusted to us by God.
God's Ownership, Our Stewardship
God has transferred possession to you, but not ownership. He determines the dimension of it. Some of you are very smart, some not as much. Some of you He gives lots of money, some not as much. Some of you He gives the gift of the ability to reach out to people — I know people that just walk through a day picking up strays, like Jake said about Tyler.
He has wired us all differently. What we need to understand is that there is a moment of accounting for this. First Corinthians chapter four, verse two: "It is required that the steward be faithful." Time, energy, effort, money, talent — any of this — God has transferred possession to you, but not ownership. One day you will be judged by how you stewarded that.
You do not have the freedom to walk through life and spend God's money any way you want. It is not yours; it is His. Susan and I had that same principle with our girls — we never viewed them as our kids, but as God's kids entrusted to us. So it was not about raising our kids our way, but making those kids the best we could — independent of us, but dependent upon God.
I would say to them: you might be able to fool me. If your behavior is driven only by what you can get away with in front of your mom or your dad, you will live one way. But when you understand that we do not own you — God does — that changes everything.
The Principle of Insatiable Appetite
When we get to money, the human psyche is pretty much predictable. Turn to the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter five. Ecclesiastes is Solomon — the man God granted anything in life you might think would make you happy, so that he could come back and tell you what he thinks about it. If it is wine, he had all of it. If it is art and literature, he had that. If it is sexual pleasure, he had around three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines — it was the original 700 Club. He had a thousand women whose purpose was to make him happy, and he could see three a day every day for a year and never see the same one twice.
So if you think happiness is found in any of those things, Solomon did everything you think would make you happy — and he said at the end of the day, you will not find happiness in any of them. Look at chapter five, verse ten. He gives us a principle we see played out over and over again: "Whoever loves money will never have enough money. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income." Verse eleven: "As goods increase, so do those who consume them."
A love of money means you will never be satisfied with the amount you have. You see people with hundreds of millions of dollars still doing deals, still risking. Why? Because if you love money, you will never have enough. The income is never enough, and as income increases, so do expenditures.
Your Own Experience Proves It
Every study shows this, but you do not need a study — just your own human experience. For a long time you got by on forty thousand dollars a year, and then you got that promotion and made fifty-five, and at the end of that year the fifty-five was gone just as fast as the forty was. Almost every one of you has had the experience of moving into a house and saying, "This is the perfect house — I could live here the rest of my life." And then three years later, you moved up.
They asked people making forty thousand a year what it would take to make them happy — they said fifty. The people making fifty said sixty. Sixty said seventy, seventy said eighty, and so on. The number always stays just out of reach.
Putting a Lid on Your Dreams
I will tell you this personally — since I began teaching, this has been one of my core messages, because I saw it in my own life and in the lives of people around me. There has to be a point at which you say enough is enough. There has to be a point where you put a lid on your dreams. It is almost un-American.
There was a Christmas, four or five years ago, when Radio Shack had a tagline that is one of my all-time favorites in advertising: "We have thousands of things you never knew you needed." That is exactly what Solomon is saying throughout Ecclesiastes — I did not even know I needed it. I was perfectly happy with what I had until I saw it.
Jesus on Greed and Abundance
In Luke chapter twelve, Jesus is dealing with a crowd and a man comes to Him and says, "Master, will you tell my brother to share my inheritance with me?" Jesus responds: "Be on guard against every form of greed. Not even when one has an abundance does life consist of possessions." Then He tells a story about a rich man who has a bumper crop. This is not a failure — this is a man who is on the
The Trap of "More for the sake of More"
This is the guy doing the seminars, the successful guy, and Jesus said, "You idiot — this very night your life will be demanded of you." Then He turns to the disciples and says, "Don't worry about your life." It is a counterpart cross-reference to Matthew 6, where He says don't worry about what you are going to eat, what you are going to wear, where you are going to live — consider the ravens. Then He teaches and says no one can serve two masters. You will love one and hate the other.
Here is what He says: when you think like that, you are thinking like somebody who has never had an encounter with Jesus and whose life has never been changed — someone who is totally conformed to the world and not transformed by the renewing of their mind. It is absolutely human nature, and my complaint with Christians is that when it gets to this area, very few have spent any time saying, "That is enough."
In his book *The O'Reilly Factor*, Bill O'Reilly writes: "Here's something that really surprises me — the more stuff I have, the more stuff I want. As I look around, I saw that everyone else was the same way. It was not until I had a few things that I noticed how it works. Material stuff is addicting." What you get into now is that we have these resources that God has transferred possession of to us — but not ownership — and we treat them like they are ours. All of a sudden we are driven by this whole idea of having more for the sake of more.
Four Reasons We Invest
This is one of those key ideas for me when it comes to investing. When I say investment, you think profit — buy this, make a profit. But I want to suggest that you invest for at least four reasons: profit, people, prestige, and pleasure.
With our girls, for example, I get all worked up when I hear some parent talk about how they are sacrificing for their kids. You are not sacrificing — you are investing in them. So we invested a lot for our kids. But we also invest in prestige and in pleasure. I want you to see this as you begin to think about how you spend your money.
The Watch Illustration
Here is a great example: a watch. As close as I can tell, the original intent of a watch was to tell time. You can go to Walgreens today and get a watch for ten dollars that will tell time — which was the original intent. But then all of a sudden we say, "Well, it's not just that." With every purchase I make, I am making an investment. So I buy a watch — is it for profit? Unlikely. Is it for people? No, it is my watch. Is it for prestige? Perhaps — so that when you say, "What time is it?" I can say, "Well, let me check my brand-new..." and show it off.
So let's say I spent $5,000 on a watch. If the idea of a watch is to tell time, I have now spent $4,990 on something other than telling time. I have to ask myself: why do I want that watch? Why do I want that shirt?
Every Purchase Is an Investment
As you are spending, you are actually investing. You can get a shirt for $20, or go somewhere and get one for $40, or $80, and then put a monogram on it for another $5. The original idea was to get a shirt. If I spent $80 when I could have gotten one for $20, I have made a $60 investment in something — maybe pleasure, maybe prestige.
I have an example of this in my own life. Someone gave me a gift certificate for a very expensive pair of jeans. I said I would never buy them myself — and in a way it seems absurd. But they are genuinely comfortable. It is not profit — I am not going to sell them. It is not for people — you do not care. Prestige? No, because the label is covered up and you do not even know what they are. It is total pleasure. So you see, I am making investments all the time, and I have to examine every expenditure in that light.
Debt: Pretending to Be Something You Are Not
Now I am in this thing called debt. What is debt? Debt is an instrument that allows you to pretend to be something you really are not. You can go out to our parking lot and pick two expensive cars sitting side by side. One is about to be repossessed; one was paid for in cash. You cannot tell the difference. You ascribe equal value and prestige to both of those people — but the reality underneath is entirely different.
Andy Stanley's Approach
Let me show you a clip from Andy Stanley. Andy Stanley is a little cynical here, but take a look. It is about six minutes, and then we will come back and close this loop.
We did some crazy things. We always gave first — give first, save second, live on the rest. We were all about that. We decided on no credit card debt, and we have never had credit card debt. We decided we would never borrow money for a car, and we have never borrowed money for a car. We had not yet moved into our first home, but we decided we were going to have a minimum of a 30% down payment. If we did not have 30%, we would not get what we wanted — we would just buy whatever we could afford with a 30% down payment. We went extreme. We were going to be the people who make interest, not pay interest, and we have done that since the very first.
The Approach We Chose
Since the very beginning of our marriage, we have handled money a certain way. That is a little unusual, and I want to be honest and tell you there are some problems with that approach to finances. I want to list them for you quickly.
The first problem is you cannot have everything you want. When you do it that way, you see things you want, and you cannot have them. You have to look in the mirror and say no, and sometimes your wife looks at you and says no, and sometimes you look at your wife and you have to say no — and it is hard to say no to your wife.
The second problem is you cannot even have everything you can afford. This was the hard one, because we knew people who made similar amounts of money — in some cases less than we did — and they had a bigger house because they put almost nothing down. They drove nicer cars because they leased them or borrowed money for them. Their lifestyle was ahead of our lifestyle, and we felt like we could not even get the things we actually could have afforded.
The third problem is you have to live on a budget. The fourth problem — and this is just so un-American — is that when the money runs out, you have to quit spending. I know. I am not even recommending this; I am just saying this is what we decided to do early on in our marriage, and we have always done it that way.
Reaching Into the Future
Now, the reason I do not recommend our approach, and the reason most people do not do this, is because you do not have to. In the United States of America, through credit cards and home equity lines of credit, you can actually reach into your own future. It is a little bit like Back to the Future — it is almost magical. You can reach into your own future, grab a fistful of money, pull it into the present, and spend it now.
You can have what you would not have been able to afford until later. You can have more, you can have better, you can have newer, and you can have it quicker. It is absolutely incredible.
So we looked at all of that and said no. We said we want to be the people who make interest, not the people who pay interest, even if it impacts our lifestyle. That is very un-American. We have rarely met people who have done what we did on any consistent basis, because we live in a culture that says go ahead and reach into the future, get a fistful of money, bring it to the present, spend it, and jack up your lifestyle now.
When the Credit Runs Out
That system works well, as many of you know — for a while. In our case, the money would run out. Eventually, in the other system, the credit runs out, does it not? The minimum payments on the credit cards grow large. Then there is a financial hiccup or a bump — somebody loses a job, a company gets downsized, or you simply max out your credit line. Meanwhile, your spending habits are so ingrained — and they are habits, not just spending, they are spending habits — that you suddenly bump up against the edge of your credit.
When that happens, here is what you find is true of that system. Number one, you cannot have everything you want. Number two, you cannot even have everything you once could afford. You have to go backwards. If you have ever had to go backwards financially or in lifestyle, it is like somebody ripping a scab off. It is so painful — it is stupid to feel that way, but having to go backwards financially is agonizing and depressing. It takes a shot at your ego if you are a man, and it is embarrassing to talk to your friends about. Third, you have to live on a budget. Fourth, when your money runs out, you have to quit spending.
Two Systems Compared
Now, there are some real differences between these two systems. In the first system, you tell yourself no. In the other system, somebody else tells you no. In the first system, the financial pressure is, "How can I make more money so I can get more stuff?" In the other system, the financial pressure is, "How do I get more money so I can pay for the stuff I already have that I wish I had never purchased?"
In the first system, you get to plan for the future. In the other, you have to clean up the past. In the first system, if you hit a bump, you can enter recovery mode and actually recover. In the other system, if you hit a bump, you are already in recovery mode, and it can become a disaster.
The Road Out of Debt
One of the things that has surprised me over the years is talking to people — because this has been a big part of our life for a long time — who will go to their Redemption Community, discuss these things in their small group, and be stunned by how many people there would say, "That is silly, just go ahead and borrow." So I am not trying to wade into the entire debt debate here. For some of you, getting out of debt looks like Mount Everest. I would suggest there is a way out, but it is going to take time and it is going to take discipline.
The Idol Behind the Spending
My question is, why do you need those things in the first place? What got you there to begin with? Why did you have to have that house, that car, that watch, that shirt, those jeans, whatever it is? Why did you have to spend to that level? What is driving you? What are the idols in your life? What is it that you're trying to find? Is it the ability to have people look at you and say, "Isn't that something? Look at him, look at her, look where they live"?
It can show up in college decisions too. I watch so many people spend thousands and thousands of dollars to send their kids to college, and I find myself asking, really? Going into debt — a hundred thousand dollars — to send your kids to a college nobody's ever heard of? I'm not jumping in and judging motives here. I'm just saying you need to judge your own motives. And then understand that those choices have huge ramifications — huge ramifications — to the kingdom.
The Immense Potential of Christian Giving
Someone estimated that in the year 2005, those who considered themselves Christian — meaning they attended church at least twice a month — had a combined income of two trillion dollars. That figure was higher than the gross domestic product of every nation except the United States, Japan, China, the UK, and France.
An author writes this: "The upside potential for good in the U.S. with Christians giving is immense, almost unimaginable. If American Christians would give from their income generously — not lavishly, mind you, generously — they could transform the world starting right now. Ordinary American Christians have within their power the capacity to foster massive and unprecedented spiritual, social, cultural, economic changes that closely reflect their values and their interests. In order to achieve such dramatic, world-transforming change, ordinary Christians simply need to do one thing: start giving reasonably."
Modeling It Corporately
These things are always a balance — I get that — but we have tried to live it out here. As I've mentioned, we would love to have a larger worship center, and I think we could justify it. We have the ground out there for it. But we decided years ago that we weren't going to build it.
The reason was wisdom. We didn't know where the economy was going, but it looked bad, and we were smart enough to look at the situation and say something can't keep going like this. We knew that whatever happened would affect you and would affect us. But equally important was the fact that we had things we wanted to do in the kingdom, and to spend that money on buildings at that time would not allow us to do those things.
What we've tried to do — individually, and corporately as elders and leaders and the people who make decisions in this church — is to model it here. We don't do it perfectly, I get that. But all I'm trying to do in this whole series on money is to help you first and foremost see that it is a spiritual issue.
Resources for Going Deeper
Rather than dissecting all the specifics, I'll let you get to those on your own and give you a few practical starting points. There is a new book called *Money, God or Gift* — I have not read it, but Neil and Aaron have, and they love it. They describe it as simple and full of great ideas, so it may be something for you to pick up in the bookstore. Neil will also be teaching a class on finances when we do the Redemption classes, probably in about a month.
But it all starts with a hard examination. It starts with you really looking at yourself and asking: How did I get here? Why am I in this situation? Why are these things so important to me? What is God saying about that? What is God saying about how you earn it, how you spend it, how you invest it?
Four Marks of God-Honoring Giving
I want to talk briefly about giving. If you'll turn to 2 Corinthians chapter nine — that's page 629 — I want to give you four points about giving and what God looks for. God wants us to be intentional, joyful, systematic, and generous.
The first mark is intentional. Verse seven says, "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart." One translation says "purposed in his heart." It is the only time that word appears in the New Testament. It describes a predetermined, premeditated plan of action. As Andy was saying earlier, we give first, before any of these other things. That is the way we should give.
I've told this story before and I'm embarrassed by it, but it happened to me just last year. Susan had handled all of our finances, and we were in the process of transitioning that over to me. I was talking to Neil one day about our giving, and he said he didn't think we were on track. I said, "Look it up." All of a sudden I realized there were three, four, maybe five months where we had not given. I can explain it — Susan had handled everything and she was sick — but that is not a good excuse.
So here is what I did. When I took control of our personal finances, the very first thing I did was put the church on autopay. I want to make sure that giving is what I am doing, not because I work here — if I didn't work here it would be the same thing — but because I understand that it is an expression of my heart. You need to be intentional. Giving is not about sitting down at the end of the month and giving God whatever is left over.
The second mark is joyful. The verse in front of you says, "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." The idea here is —
Giving Cheerfully — or Not at All?
Though it may be hard, when you sit down at the end of the year and see how much money you've given, you realize this is serious. I'll be honest — I spent all of last year catching up, and then came in that week right before the end of the year and wrote a check to make sure I had given what I felt was appropriate. The point is to come back and say, I want to do this — not because it's frivolous or necessarily fun, but because it's obedient, and obeying God always has a joy to it.
I heard this line and have repeated it: if you can't give cheerfully, don't give at all. Someone challenged me on that and said, "Don't you think giving is an obedience issue?" I said yes. He said, "Would you ever say to a husband, if you can't be faithful to your wife cheerfully, don't be faithful at all?" I said, well, maybe not. So I'll grant that point.
Ultimately, the joy is in the act of giving. But sometimes it may not always be this gleeful thing. Sometimes it may mean actually going without something in order to give something.
Giving Systematically
Give systematically. Turn to 1 Corinthians, chapter 16, verse 2: "On the first day of each week." There is a systematic approach to this. I don't think he is saying everyone must give weekly — I think he is saying if you get paid monthly, give monthly.
Some of you are in a commission business. I've been there and done that. I know how it is — that check comes in, and you don't know when the next one is coming, so you guard it carefully. But notice also in all these passages: "each one of you." If you are here today as a high school student working part-time at Starbucks, you should be giving to the church. It is an act of obedience for everyone.
And I'll make reference to 1 Timothy 6:18 as well — speaking to those who are rich, meaning those who have things — to be generous, to be giving, and to watch how God blesses.
A Story of Faithfulness and Freedom
Let me close with a story. I was talking to Luke the other day — he is teaching on this too. He did a message about a year ago on tithing, and his point was: yes, in the New Testament we are removed from the tithe as law, but we certainly get principles from it. The Old Testament tithe, as we have taught here, actually works out to about 23% — 10% for this purpose, 10% for another, 3% for another, all combined.
Luke issued a challenge to his congregation to give. There was someone in that church who was carrying massive credit card debt. They made some changes. Just this past week, they wrote their last payment. And the woman said — and this was the best line in the whole thing — "I quit the gym and lost 20 pounds." She said that all of a sudden they could see clearly: here are the things that were holding us back.
This Is Serious — and It Must Be Said
I am not trying to dump this on you, but I want to say clearly: this is really serious. It amazes me how encouraging you all are when I am dealing with tough sections of scripture — you tell me you love it, just lay it out. Well, this needs to be laid out too. This is not a topic we should avoid, and not because we need your money. That is not what this is about.
This is about the fact that if you say you love Jesus, then you present your body, you are not conformed to this world — which means thinking differently. It does not mean that just because you have money, you spend it. These are lifestyle issues that must be confronted.
And you have to think about what you are teaching your kids. What are you teaching them when they get whatever they want? The more you give them physically, almost always the less you give them relationally in love. Pretty soon that pair of shoes or that trip becomes the way you express love to your children, and that has huge effects.
The Personal Challenge
Here is my challenge. If you are here today and you are single, you need to pray about this and think about it. If you are a couple — and I will be honest, I have been in these discussions with Susan — you need to sit down and calculate these things and look at them honestly. Most of the time, the budget buster is the man. The woman might blow it on a dress, the man might blow it on a boat. But you have to work through these things, understand the consequences, and then simply see it for what it is.
Susan and I have not made a ton of money over however many years, and we have paid cash for all our cars. You can do this. But did you hear what that also means? You may not get the new car. And did you hear what was also being said — that what was really getting to one person was looking at what other people had? You cannot be doing that. God is not going to judge you by how they handled their lives. He is going to judge you by how you handled yours.
This is a giant spiritual issue. I want you to pray about it, think about it, and take it seriously.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank you that you give us stuff. God, we pray that you give us stuff to use and stuff that we steward, but that that stuff does not become our idol. God, for those who listen to something like this, and this is right where they live — God, give them comfort. Give us hope. Help us understand that even if we've blown it, you will give us grace and mercy. Give us resolve to be the men and women that you'd have us be. Father, we ask it in Christ's name. Amen.