Word of Salvation – May 2018
Issues in Living: Money
By Rev. John Westendorp
Text: Proverbs 3:9,10,13-16
Theme: The place of money in the life of God’s children.
Introd: If you read the sermon title in the bulletin you may be a little curious.
A sermon on money – is that really necessary in this congregation?
Over the last decade or so things have gone well for us financially as a church.
Our congregation manages its financial affairs rather well.
Okay, occasionally we’re a few thousand dollars behind budget.
That’s happened often before and we’ve always manage to catch up.
In fact Reformed people generally know how to be generous.
A special crisis appeal – and we raise an extra $2000 on one Sunday. No problems.
That comes on top of a whole raft of causes that we faithfully support.
Various charities and mission organisations and our Christian Parent-Controlled School.
Generally we teach our children from infancy about the importance of giving.
We teach our teenagers to set aside a proportion of their wages for the Lord’s work.
So this would seem to be the last place where we need a sermon on money.
So Mr. Preacher, if you want to preach on Proverbs then please find another theme.
However, we can make two mistakes at this point.
First, that we think that money matters in Proverbs is about giving to the church.
But that’s really only a small part of it.
Second: there is the bigger issue that Jesus is the Lord of all of life.
And that includes my money… my wages… my pay packet.
That’s our main starting point this morning. Jesus is the Lord of the whole of my life.
My finances too. And we are told that God blesses us as we yield all of life to His control.
Or let’s put this in terms of Proverbs 3.
In vs.6 we have an important concept central to all of Biblical religion.
A favourite verse that Christians often quote.
“In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”
A lovely verse. It’s really saying: In all your ways submit to Jesus as Lord and He will bless you.
Proverbs 3 doesn’t leave it there. Because God’s people repeatedly fall into a trap.
The trap of keeping our religion for Sundays… for family devotions and Bible Study.
And we keep it out of our business and out of our finances.
We keep the Lord for certain areas of life that are His special concern.
Other areas of life are OUR department… OUR responsibility.
God has to do with worship and moral behaviour – so we acknowledge Him in those areas.
But when it comes to money and giving, our budget and wallet, well, we just use our common sense.
Sorry, but there’s nothing particularly Christian about that kind of thinking.
We call that a dualism… it’s compartmentalised thinking.
A] HONOURING THE LORD WITH OUR WEALTH.
- The book of Proverbs doesn’t want to let us fall into that kind of dualistic trap.
And to make sure that we don’t, it not only tells us to acknowledge God in ALL our ways…
but it goes right on to tell us that this applies to money as well:
“Honour the Lord with your wealth.”
IOW – acknowledge Him in all your ways… also in your financial and economic ways.
Submit to Him as Lord also in the way you handle your money.
That’s a reminder that the religion of the Bible is really quite a radical religion.
It does not allow us to break life up into compartments… into little pigeon holes.
Some compartments are sacred and are God’s responsibility.
Other pigeon holes are secular and are our department.
God does not want us to acknowledge Him only in SOME of our ways.
No – God makes total claims on us. Acknowledge Him in ALL… all your ways.
And then just to make sure we understand what that ALL implies
Proverbs goes right on to say: Honour Him also with your money.
Do you see how radical that is?
Proverbs singles out an area of life that we feel we can handle ourselves.
An area of life we feel doesn’t have anything to do with religion and salvation.
A department of life that we don’t think is particularly spiritual.
Our wealth… our money… our material treasures.
But the God of the covenant who saves His people also claims that part of life.
Or let’s put this in N.T. terms. We know this saving, covenant-keeping God in Jesus Christ.
In Jesus we know Him as the Lord of ALL of life. BUT… if He’s the Lord of all of life
then He also claims Lordship over your cheque-book and your Mastercard.
- Maybe you ask: Okay, so how do we honour God with our wealth and with our money?
Maybe the most obvious way is thru our gifts. And giving certainly does come into it.
So every Sunday we put something aside for God and His Kingdom.
We have made that a part of our Sunday worship.
Here is one way we honour God with our wealth – in every worship service.
It is important to see our giving that way. We don’t give first of all because the church has needs.
Nor just because the deacons must strive to help others in need.
Rather it is a way of honouring God with our wealth.
It is to honour Jesus who purchased us as His… with all that we have and are.
The second part of vs.9 specifically refers to that kind of honouring of God.
“Honour the Lord with your wealth… with the first-fruits of all your crops.”
For the Israelites that wasn’t just a matter of a few bucks in the collection plate.
Or sponsoring an orphan… or helping some sort of (city) mission project.
For the Israelites these first-fruits had a very specific purpose.
This was a portion brought to the temple to support the priests in their work.
God says: That is part and parcel of honouring me with your wealth.
But there is a second lesson in that last half of vs.9.
Israel were not called to just give to the Lord their left-overs.
Not even from the last of what they reaped from their crops. Rather it was the first-fruits.
In a way God was saying: Not only do I expect you to give for the work of my Kingdom
I even expect you to put that FIRST in your budgeting.
It may well be true then that the church manages okay when it comes to money.
The deacons get adequate support… and there’s enough money for missions.
But that doesn’t yet prove that our attitude to money is right.
In this verse God reminds us that it isn’t primarily WHAT we give but HOW we give.
God calls us to look at our attitude to our money… our finances.
He asks also for that area of our life to be yielded to Him.
And as a token of that He always asked of His people the FIRST-FRUITS.
We who enjoy the greater blessings of God in Jesus therefore need to ask some questions.
Where does the Lord and His work come when we budget our income?
Again, the issue is not how much you give – that may be quite irrelevant.
The issue is: WHERE does God come in your financial management?
1st… we work out what we need to make the repayments on the mortgage.
2nd… the housekeeping money is, of course, vital.
3rd… we have some hire-purchase obligations too.
4th… then the amount that’s left over determines how much we give to the church.
That’s not following the first-fruit principle. So here’s a good reminder for all of us.
How often don’t we just grab some loose dollars for Sunday’s collection?
No planning and little thought went into it.
There have been times when I have done it that way… and you have too.
But is that honouring God for the gift of His Son?
We Christians ought to repent of our thoughtless giving for the Lord’s work.
Of giving to Him the leftovers after we’ve sorted thru our own needs.
We need to seek Biblical ways of honouring God with our wealth.
We need to take seriously this Biblical idea of the FIRST fruits.
- However we must not stop here at this point of our giving for church work.
Our text does NOT say: Honour God with only SOME of your wealth.
It doesn’t say: Make sure that the first-fruits are given but then for the rest it doesn’t matter.
The text simply says: Honour God with your wealth… full stop!
IOW – all of it is to be used for honouring Him.
All of it – regardless of whether you have very much or very little.
So the Lord is telling us He is concerned about what we do with all our money.
How we spend it. What we save it up for. Are we saving or spending so as to honour Him?
That doesn’t mean that we can never spend money for enjoyment – far from it.
God is not a stingy God who begrudges us His riches.
God is an infinitely generous God who richly blesses His people… materially and economically.
But now He does ask that we do honour Him as the Giver with the gifts He gave.
He asks that we look at our money as a means of honouring Him.
He is, in effect saying: “Spend it wisely and unselfishly in a way that will glorify me”.
Today I can’t spell out exactly how you ought to do that. And you can’t tell me how I must go about it.
Each of us have to work that out in terms of our own financial situation.
To strive for it… to work at it… to honour Him with what we have.
- Solomon tells us that this is the way of blessing for God’s people.
In vs.10 he tells us that the result will be seen in further material blessings.
“Then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine.”
Earlier we were told:
Acknowledge Him in all your ways and He will make your path straight.
Now we see that those straight paths also include material blessings.
Barns filled to overflowing… but only as we honour Him with what He entrusts to us.
Many Christians have found this to be true again and again.
They discovered that when they put God first in their finances, all the rest somehow fell into place too.
While in those times when God wasn’t put first in the budget, things got messed up in other areas too.
I’m reminded of a well-to-do businessman who was extremely generous.
He supported his church, Christian school and many charities.
So much so that someone once asked how he managed it. His reply?
“The Lord shovels it in and I shovel it out, and the Lord’s got a bigger shovel than I have.”
God says: Those who honour me I will honour.
It’s true that vss.11 & 12 also speak of times when God disciplines us as He did Job.
Nevertheless – here is a general rule – He blesses us as we honour Him with our wealth.
B] THAT WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MONEY.
- One of the problems is that we’re not naturally inclined to have this kind of attitude.
We have that tendency to revert to dualistic thinking:
In spiritual things we’ll give the Lord His due. But my bank account is my affair.
Church and Bible study is sacred… by budget and finances are secular.
Except of course when I hit a financial crisis… then I will turn to God.
But we are not naturally inclined to yield totally to Jesus in this area of life.
In fact, is this not where the Devil tempts us when it comes to money?
That we do not honour God with our wealth. Instead wealth becomes the god we honour.
When we do not allow Jesus as Lord to control this part of life
then too often this part of life controls us.
Life begins to revolve around the business of making money.
We can so easily become like the rich fool.
Building bigger and bigger businesses… larger and larger homes.
All so that one day we’ll be able to sit back, take our ease and enjoy life.
One of the world’s wealthiest men was once asked: How much money is enough?
His reply? “Just a little bit more!”
That’s a problem Proverbs is well aware of. It condemns those who trust in wealth as their god (11:28).
But it also gives us something else that will help us honour God with our wealth.
- That ‘something else’ is spelled out in vss. 13 14. In fact, I want to make a comparison.
Vs. 9 and 10 DO say that God blesses those who honour Him. It is their barns which will be filled.
Verse 13 also pronounces a blessing on some people.
But there the blessing is not necessarily in terms of material gain. Let’s put those two verses together:
Vs 10 – God blesses materially those who honour Him with their wealth.
Vs 13 – Yet it is not necessarily those who have a lot who are called “blessed”.
Instead the blessing is now pronounced on those who find wisdom.
“Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding.”
So it isn’t surprising that vs. 14 tells us there is something more important than money.
“For she (wisdom) is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold.”
Here is another important point as we seek to develop a Biblical attitude to money.
We are to honour God with our wealth. We are to support the work of His Kingdom.
And we are to put Him first in our financial planning.
But now we are also called to recognize that money is not the most important thing.
Wisdom is far, far more important. And only in the way of wisdom will we really be blessed.
So if you could choose, which would you rather be: A rich fool… or less well-off and wise?
The answer is obvious – there is no future in being a rich fool.
Jesus showed us in the parable that wealth has its limitations.
Our treasures cannot save us – only God’s riches in Jesus can do that.
True: Solomon was both wise and rich – and verse 16 does connect wisdom and riches.
Wisdom is there pictured as a person in whose left hand are riches and honour.
But he wants us to see that wealth is not enough.
Wisdom is more important than money… though it generally brings wealth with it anyhow.
- Okay – but how does wisdom help us in developing a Christian attitude to wealth?
How does it help us honour the Lord with what we have? In two ways.
FIRST we only begin to develop a Christian attitude…
and we only really begin to honour God with our wealth
as we admit that wealth is not the most important thing in life.
All our striving for material success…
All our grasping for a bigger bite of the economic cherry…
will only fall into place as we put money in its proper perspective.
SECOND – and more important – wisdom here is not just human cleverness.
In Proverbs WISDOM is associated with God – who He is and what He does.
Repeatedly wisdom is associated with the activity of God.
In fact – reading Proverbs you soon make an important discovery.
Searching for true wisdom is much the same as searching for God.
And finding wisdom is really nothing else than discovering the ways of God.
Wisdom comes from God and centres on Him.
In fact, repeatedly wisdom is personified… she has hands… and things in her hands.
Ultimately wisdom is personified in Jesus. No one was ever wiser than He.
Jesus is greater even than that wise man Solomon, because Jesus is God.
That’s why in vs.18 wisdom is spoken of as a tree of life. Know Jesus and you know God’s plan for life.
- That brings us back once more to the parable Jesus told.
The problem with the rich fool was not that he had a lot of money.
His problem was not that he built bigger and better barns.
His problem was that he did not have wisdom to know God’s ways. So Jesus called him a fool.
Here was someone who lacked wisdom to see the limitations of money.
That all his possessions could not save his soul.
He never saw that a good bank account and wealth
never got anyone beyond their 70 or 80 years of life on planet earth.
Here is the problem with our society and the great Australian dream.
The goal of most people today is to have their own block of land
complete with the latest style of brick-vanilla house
and the latest model four-wheel drive in the garage.
But to many of them God will one day say: Fool, tonight your soul is required of you.
So will it be with all who do not realize that wisdom is more important than money.
Money is important. In our society it is almost impossible to do without it.
But blessing really comes only to those who find wisdom.
Wisdom to know God and to know His plan of salvation in Jesus.
In the way of wisdom we yield our lives to Jesus Christ.
And we do that with all that we have and all we are.
Including our wallets and our bank accounts.
Because Jesus is Lord of all of life.
Amen.