"Faith, Family, and Friends"

Dear Friends in Christ,         

   I’d like to begin my sermon this morning with a very simple one-question quiz.  And here’s the question: What do people spend 50% of their waking time thinking about?  God?  Oh, how I wish!  Sex? Perhaps some people, but that’s not the answer I’m looking for.  Food?  Maybe, but that’s still not the correct answer.  Recently I read that people spend 50% of their waking time thinking about money – earning it, investing it, gambling it, managing it, spending it, stretching it.  What we do with our money has become a major source of anxiety in our society, especially with the economy faltering the way it’s been doing for the past several years.  According to a 10-year study by Dr. Aaron Beck, money is one of the top 15 reasons for suicidal tendencies.  And interestingly, that study revealed that those tendencies stem not so much from a lack of money, but from an abundance of money.  Some of you are thinking, “Well, I guess that means I’ll never be a candidate for suicide then.”  And others of you might be thinking, “Albert Pujols is sure in for a rough ride,” especially after signing that $240 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels a few months ago.  The doctor in that study states: “Risk increases with resources.”

   There’s no doubt about it.  Money stresses out families.  Maxed out credit cards.  Mortgage payment regrets.  Differences over what marriage partners consider needs and wants.  “You bought what???”  “How low is the balance in our checking account???”  Whenever I counsel couples before I marry them, I always ask them, “What do you think is the #1 area of conflict in marriages today?”  Almost without exception, just about every couple over the years has given me the same answer, and that answer is money.

   So money is a major issue in life.  But did you know that money is a major issue in Scripture?  Did you know, for example, that out of the 38 parables Jesus told, 16 deal with money or material possessions?  Did you know that the Bible says more about money than about heaven and hell combined?  Did you know that while the Scriptures contain about 500 references to prayer, those same Scriptures contain more than 2000 references to money. 

   Why is that?  Why does God spend so much time talking about money in his Word?  I think the answer can be found in that familiar verse that many people love to misquote.  We heard it before in our epistle lesson, I Tim. 6:10, which says: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  Note, money is not the root of all kinds of evil, as many people say.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with money.  But the love of money is what causes all the problems.  So this morning we want to spend some time talking about this important subject as we continue with my sermon series on how we can have “A Little Bit of Heaven in Our Homes.”

   Listen once again to the words of our text: “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’”  In this short verse, the writer to the Hebrews gives us the problem with money and then offers two solutions to the problem.  So let’s begin by taking a look first at what I’m going to call the peril of money.  And that peril can be summed up in one word: GREED.

   Author Max Lucado defines greed as the love God hates.  Greed pursues things at the expense of people.  Greed is not the presence of money.  Nor is it even the abundance of money.  Rather greed is simply the love and worship of money.  It’s a love that Jesus warns us to avoid.  In Luke 12:15 he says: “Watch out!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 

   Recently I came across a true story about a pastor named Bob Russell who serves a church in Louisville, KY.  He tells of the time that he and his family decided to spend the evening playing a rousing game of Monopoly.  And he was winning big!  He had Boardwalk and Park Place, all 4 railroads, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky Ave.  He was putting up houses and hotels all over the place.  And slowly but surely he was cleaning out everyone’s cash reserves until finally at 1:00 a.m. everyone was bankrupt.  He had won.  He was feeling pretty cocky by this time and was expecting some congratulations from his fellow players.  But instead they all got up and told him that his reward for winning was that he got to put the game away. So he writes these words:

“And there I sat alone.  All my hotels, all my dreams, all my money, and I realized it doesn’t amount to a thing.  And I had to put them all back in the box, close it up, and put it back on the shelf.  Then I went upstairs to a cold bed.  My wife did not say, ‘You know, I’m so proud of you.  You’re such an impressive investor.  We could never beat you.  You are Mr. Monopoly.’  She just gave me a perfunctory kiss and turned over.  And I lay there in the darkness comparing Monopoly to life.  How we work so hard to accumulate these things that don’t matter trying to impress people who don’t care.  And we go to meet God, leaving behind the deeds and hotels.  I thought of Ps. 49:16: ‘Don’t be impressed with those who get rich and pile up fame and fortune.  They can’t take it with them.  Fame and fortune all get left behind.  Just when folks think they’ve arrived and folks praise them because they’ve made good, they enter the family burial plot where they’ll never see sunshine again.’” 

   Greed forgets that.  Greed tries to squeeze life and fulfillment and satisfaction out of money.  And though it may attain some of those things momentarily, it cannot maintain them or sustain them.  In the end, it all has to go back in the box.

   For that reason, God warns us in our text for today: “Keep your lives free from the love of money.”  But how do we do that, especially in this very materialistic day and age?  Well, to answer that question we need to move on to the 2^nd point I want to make today.  We’ve looked at the peril of money which is greed.  Now we want to examine the prescription for the peril.  Our text goes on to say: “Be content with what you have.”  So in one word the prescription is contentment.  Do you think that’s possible?  And I’m talking about for you personally right now.  If your standard of living never increased more than what it is right now; if you never lived in anything nicer than what you’re living in right now; if you never had any fancier clothes than what you have right now; if you never drove a better vehicle than what you’re driving right now, could you honestly be content?  That’s a tough question, isn’t it?

   Think about the stuff you have right now – your car, your home, your jewelry, your bank accounts.  And let me remind you of 2 biblical principles about that stuff.  First of all, you don’t get to keep it.  Ask any coroner, any funeral director.  No one takes anything with them when they die.  Like I’ve said so many times, “You never see a hearse pulling a U-haul.” 

   When John D. Rockefeller  who was one of the wealthiest men in history died, his accountant was asked, “How much did John D. leave?”  To which the accountant correctly replied, “All of it.”  Eccles. 5:15 says: “Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb, and as he comes, so he departs.  He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand.” 

   Here’s an interesting exercise you might want to try sometime.  Take a bunch of post-it notes and stick them on all the things in your home that are going to burn up when Christ comes again – your TV, your furniture, your clothing, your jewelry, your car, bank statements, stocks, golf clubs, paintings.  Just kind of go crazy.  And when you’re finished stand back and take it all in.  Then ask yourself, “What’s left?”  Because whatever is left is what is most worthy of your time and attention.  And you know what’s left?  The intangibles of life: your faith, your God, your soul.  Perhaps that’s why Jesus so wisely said in Mark 8:36: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”  Think about it, my friends.  Is anything worth more than your soul, more than your eternal well-being?  Absolutely not!  Doesn’t it make sense then to invest in the things that matter most for eternity? 

   So all that stuff you have, you don’t get to keep it.  And then another thing, all that stuff you have, it really isn’t yours.  Ps. 24:1 says: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” My little granddaughter Brooklyn is well into the terrible two’s these days and has a favorite word she loves to use.  It’s the word “Mine!” But you know what?  That’s a lie.  It’s not hers and what you have in your possession is not yours. You and I are simply stewards, caretakers, managers of that which rightfully belongs to God.  “But wait a minute,” some of you may be thinking.  “I’m the one who gets up and goes to work each day.  I’m the one who earns that paycheck.  And so I should be able to spend it and use it as I please.”  Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not what the Bible says.  In Deut. 8:17-18 Moses tells the Israelites, who were feeling the very same way, “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’  But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” 

   Everything we have can be traced back to God, even something as simple as a loaf of bread.  Where do you get a loaf of bread from?  The store.  Where did they get it from?  The baker.  Where did he get the flour from to make the bread?  From the miller who processed the wheat?  Where did the wheat come from?  The farmer.  Where did the farmer get the wheat from?  The ground.  Where did the ground come from?  From God.

   So be content with what God has given you, recognizing that it’s not really yours to begin with and that you don’t get to keep it when you leave this world behind. 

   So thus far we’ve looked at the peril of money, which is greed.  We’ve looked at the prescription for the peril, which is contentment.  All of which takes us to the final part of this sermon, which is the provision for the prescription.  In other words, what is the source of our contentment?  According to our text, in one word, it is God.  Our text says: “Be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” 

   That’s where the Apostle Paul found his contentment in life.  We especially see this in his letter to the Philippians, also known as his Epistle of Joy.  Written from a Roman prison cell while Paul was chained to a Roman guard 24 hours a day, day in and day out, yet Paul was able to write these words: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do all things through him who gives me strength.”  There’s the secret, my friends.  And that secret is to find our contentment, our satisfaction, our fulfillment in Christ, the One who not only gives us strength, but also forgiveness, hope, peace, joy, salvation, and much, much more, the kinds of things that nothing else in this world can give.

   One more thing before I close.  It’s a principle for money that God lays down in Scripture and that many of you have discovered for yourself.  And that is you can’t out give God.  In Mal. 3 God says, “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 that doesn’t mean that if you tithe, God’s going to make you independently wealthy.  It just means he’ll bless you, perhaps with good health, a good job, a wonderful family, a caring church family, a happy marriage, or maybe with material possessions.  That’s all up to him.  But however he chooses to bless you, you can be sure that if you give to him cheerfully, generously, and willingly, in proportion to how he has given to you, you won’t be disappointed and you will have a little bit more of heaven in your home.

Amen