Money—"The Problem with Money,” 1 Timothy 6.17–19, Oct. ’18 Stewardship Emphasis

1. Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The message from God’s Word this morning we begin our Stewardship Emphasis, “Bringing out the Best,” is taken from 1 Timothy 6:17-19 (READ TEXT), it’s entitled, “The Problem with Money,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.  

2.  A wealthy Texan liked to give special gifts to his dad on Father’s Day. One year it was lessons on hang gliding. Another year, the father received the entire collection of Willy Nelson’s hits. But last spring the rich Texan felt he had topped all other years. He bought a rare kind of talking bird. Besides speaking five languages, this bird also could sing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” while standing on one foot. The talented bird cost $10,000, but the Texan felt it was worthy every penny. His dad would never forget this Father’s Day gift!  A week after Father’s Day he phoned his father. “Dad,” he asked, “how did you like the bird?” “Fine,” the father responded. “It was delicious!”

3. The problem you and I have with money is not with money itself. It is with what we do with that money. Like the rich Texan’s father with the bird, we fail to see all the possibilities to use money in God-pleasing ways. Instead, we see money as something to consume. When we learn what we have missed, we realize that the problem with money is not really with money, but with me.

4. C.S. Lewis once said, “The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” In today’s prosperous America, we’ve made hoarding just as easy, and the danger to our souls is just as real.  A new article in The Atlantic by Alana Semuels lays out the grim details. In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion on jewelry, watches, books, luggage, telephones, and related communication equipment—twice as much in inflation-adjusted dollars as in 2002. During the same time, the population grew only 13 percent. Spending on personal care products also doubled.  To hold all this stuff, we’re supersizing our houses and storage facilities. Last year, the average size of a single family home in the U.S. was 2,426 square feet—a 23 percent increase from 20 years ago. Meanwhile, two decades ago there were 26,000 self-storage units around the country. Today there are 52,000 of them!  All this acquiring of stuff, Semuels says, is because online retailers such as Amazon have made buying stuff so easy, and because the global economy has made stuff so cheap. I’m sure that’s partly true, but I think the cause is deeper.

5. Too many of us, and this includes Christians, have bought into the lie that the pursuit of happiness necessarily includes the pursuit of stuff. “We are all accumulating mountains of things,” says Mark A. Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. And what about the harm of all this sludge to our souls? I’m uncomfortably reminded of Jesus’ parable of the rich fool in Luke 12. This man had received an abundant harvest, and what did he do? He built bigger barns to store it all and said to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But what did God say to him? “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” The man couldn’t even enjoy all his earthly treasures.  And just so we wouldn’t miss the point, Jesus administered the sobering said: “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” The problem wasn’t that the man was rich—many of the Lord’s choicest saints have been abundantly blessed with the world’s goods. It wasn’t that he had stuff, but that his stuff had him, and that he wasn’t rich toward God.

6. In this time of material abundance, a lot of worthy churches and ministries face a chronic shortage of funds. Why is that? According to nonprofitsource.com, Christians today give only 2.5 percent of their income; during the Great Depression, it was 3.3 percent. The average giving by adults who attend Protestant churches in America is about $17 a week, and 37 percent of regular church attendees and evangelicals don’t give any money to church.

7. We are tempted to think that if only we had enough money, we could really live. In the words of Paul in the second half of v 19, we think that money will make us able to “take hold of the life that is truly life.” But we leave God out of the picture. We’re like the little girl who was given two dollars by her father. He told she could do anything she wanted with one dollar, so long as she gave the other dollar to God on Sunday at church.  She nodded happily and started skipping toward the candy store, holding the two bills tightly in her hand. But she tripped and fell. Then the wind blew one of the dollar bills into a storm drain at the curb. The little girl rose to her feet, looked at the dollar still in her hand, then at the storm drain and said, “Well, Lord, there goes your dollar.”  That little girl had the same attitude toward money that you and I often have. We see what money can buy for us, and it becomes more important than God. Usually our love for money isn’t as bold or brash as the little girl’s. But it’s there. We make money into a false god, a little idol, which becomes more important than God. That’s sin.

8. It’s also foolish. To depend on wealth is to hope in something uncertain. That’s why Paul writes in v 17: “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth.” Riches are uncertain for two reasons. First, what they buy may not bring happiness. Have you ever bought an expensive meal, a smartphone, or a TV that you thought would make you very happy . . . and it didn’t? I have. What money buys can disappoint us.

9. Second, wealth is uncertain because it doesn’t last. When the stock market crashed in 1929, the newspapers carried stories in following days of persons who committed suicide because they were wiped out financially. Money can be stolen or burned or taken away by a lawsuit. If we depend on wealth to provide hope for our future, we are foolish.

10.          Instead, Paul says in v 17 that we are to place our hope not on the uncertainty of wealth but on God, “who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” What does God give us? Everything . . . but everything starts with Jesus. Because God supplies all our needs, Jesus came to pay the debt we owe to God because of our sin. In Matthew’s Lord’s Prayer (Mt 6:12), Jesus uses the word debt—what we owe—to describe our sins. Those debts are like a big minus sign in our account at God’s First Bank of Heaven. But Jesus comes through and puts a big plus sign in that account by going to the cross. By putting his body and soul right in the middle of our negative, our minus sign, Jesus makes our relationship with God positive. Our sins are forgiven, wiped out, the debt paid off.

11.          When we acknowledge that in faith, we are empowered to use our resources to be rich in good deeds. You and I are called to be stewards, or managers, of wealth. “But wait,” you may be saying, “I’m not rich.” No? If you or I make more than $25,000 a year, we are in the top 1 percent of income in the world. In the eyes of billions of other people, we are rich.  That’s why Paul really is talking to us when he urges in v 18: “Command [those who are rich] to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.” That is God’s will. It also is the way to be really rich, to be really blessed.

12.          For people who are willing to share their wealth with others, money may become a foundation for the future. Paul writes in v 19: “In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” It is, of course, true that we cannot “buy our way” into heaven. But when we are cheerful, generous managers of what we like to call “our” money, then we are reflecting God’s great gifts of love toward us.

13.             Then, in the area of money and other financial resources, we are “bringing out the best,” which is our theme for this year’s stewardship emphasis. We rejoice that the heavenly Father has brought out the best by giving his Son, Jesus, as our Savior, and so we respond by “bringing out the best” in ourselves by the way we manage the money he has loaned us for this life. Thus, the money problem has been solved.  Amen.  Now the peace that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.