Over the past several years I have
talked to many people who say that they have attended churches where all they
talk about is money, mainly how much they need.
I have heard people use the term tithe
in a variety of ways that didn’t exactly fit the definition.
I have seen people who had money for a
big screen television from the rental place, the top of the line cell phone,
and no money to pay the water bill.
I have never had cause to help anyone
with money who was a tither.
As an elder and as a pastor, I have counseled
men and women for close to a decade now about many things, but I have never
come across anyone who sought my counsel who had a money problem. Think about that. I am going to discuss money from a godly
perspective and I have never counseled anyone with a money problem.
That said, let’s get started. A godly person, a good person, a wise
individual stores up an inheritance for his children’s children. Holy cow!
He’s already lost me. I can’t
even pay all my bills and have something left over for my own savings account.
Let’s stop right there. Why are you reading this?
Perhaps there is something to be
learned, a new approach, a wiser way to deal with money. If it’s somewhere in that ballpark and not
just to see how many new terms that Tom invents this week, then wouldn’t it be
nice to have an objective—a goal?
What exactly are we aiming at? The godly use of money might be one
answer. It is sort of general and a lot
of people can’t put actions or anything tangible with that big, broad target. But here is something tangible. Provide an inheritance to your children’s
children.
How much? There is a lot of maneuver room here. Part of that inheritance will be a saving
knowledge of life in Jesus Christ. Part
of it will be money, or not! So many are in the or not arena at the moment.
If you want to make improvement, you
have to set tangible goals. Something
else is required. It is something that
you don’t get in the direct language of a proverb but you find in one of the Parables
of Jesus.
Again, it will be like a man going on a
journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another
two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went
on his journey. The man who had received
five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags
more. So also, the one with two bags of
gold gained two more. But the man who
had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s
money.
There is much more to this parable,
but this part defines what we need. What
did the servants do when their master left?
The first two put their money to work.
In the money-person equation, the person was the master. The money was the servant. The money was put to work.
Do you remember Al
Haig?
He had a distinguish military career, was chief of staff for presidents
Nixon and Ford and was Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, but
what is he best know for?
His statement after Reagan had been
shot. “I am in control here.” Haig knew that the vice president was next in
the success of command for the presidency but since the president didn’t say he
was passing control to the VP, Haig presumed to be in command.
It is something to bring a smile to
most students of American government and history. Yes, Alexander Haig might have had a big ego,
but he also had the exact attitude that we must have in a relationship with
money.
I am in charge. There
is no discussion. There is no
leeway. I am in charge!
If you have a relationship with money,
you must be the master. Dave Ramsey put
it another way. You tell every dollar
where to go.
The typical response is, “But I don’t
have enough money to tell it where to go.
It’s all gobbled up in bills and rent and car payments.”
So who is the master in the equation
when you buy more house than you can afford?
That mortgage is going to be the master.
Who is in charge if
you spend more with the “Buy with One Click” button on Amazon than you budgeted?
To tell your money where to go, you
must also be the master of your decisions.
We are told to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness first. If we do that, then immediate gratification
seldom takes hold of our decision process.
We still have free will. We still make the choice but if we are
seeking God’s kingdom and his righteousness and his wisdom and his thoughts,
then we might just be on top of this money thing. We can be the master of our money.
We might live by different priorities.
I said early that I have never
counseled anyone with money problems.
That was only half the information.
I have counseled many with relationship problems and with prioritizing
problems that involved money. Money was
not the problem in these situations.
The problem was rooted in the fact
that in their relationship with money, money or the love of money or immediate
gratification with money had turned people’s life upside down.
I have $75 in cash because of a job I
did for the guy down the street. The
water bill is $65 but it is not due until the end of the week. So I can afford to eat out tonight, pick up a
couple packs of smokes, get some beef jerky, chips, and bean dip from the
convenience store to watch the game tonight.
When it is time to pay the bill, I
only have $35 left. I have a money problem. No! I
have a relationship problem or a priority problem, but money is not the
problem.
To be able to tell your money where to
go, you have to know what you want to accomplish. If you want God to bless your goals, they
should be objectives consistent with his will.
We must be wise.
In your relationships with money, you
must be in charge. In your relationship
with God, he is in charge. If you can
connect those 2 dots, then you are ready to put your money to work.
What gets in the way so much of the
time? Debt. In America, debt has become a part of life. The proverb tells us that the rich rule over
the poor. We see that in most
societies. Democratically based
governments try to spread the ruling authority over a broader base, but the
rich have much more influence than the poor.
That’s not the main point here and does not have to govern you.
The borrower is slave to the
lender. Ouch! Double ouch!
Debt robs you of being master in the you-money
equation. Debt—and we should take this
at the personal level—steals your authority.
I don’t know that we can make direct application of this proverb to
businesses and nations, but surely the principle governs. So long as there is debt, there sovereignty
is lessened.
The Bible does not prohibit borrowing
and lending but does have strong counsel for both borrowing and lending, but
the strongest is that the borrower is slave to the lender.
Have you noticed—I am sure you have if
you have followed my discussions on this matter over the past few years—that
the verse about bringing up a child in the way he should go immediately
precedes this?
Often, when we think of debt, we
fixate on our personal situation, but what are we teaching our kids about
money? What are we teaching them about
debt?
If you have significant personal debt,
what are you teaching your children? The
only debt that we should have is the debt to love one another.
Speaking of love, how can we serve the
one true God who is love and loves us so much if we have another master? If we love money so much that we go into debt
for it, how can we say Jesus is our Lord and Master?
Jesus said that you can’t do it. You cannot serve two masters. You will love
one and hate the other.
People say that they don’t love money
but need the stuff. It takes money to
buy the stuff or debt which is indenturing yourself to another so as to use
their money.
Let’s back up to the proverb. A wise—a godly person—leaves an inheritance
for their children’s children. How can
you do this if everything goes to supporting your immediate needs?
The answer is that you can’t. But I can barely afford everything that I own
or rent or have to pay for. Wisdom says,
then maybe you have too much that you have to pay for.
The world tells you that you don’t
have nearly enough. You need a bigger
car. You need a bigger house with a
pool. You need a boat or a golf cart or
a bigger television. Your kids need all
the new video games and how can you live without the I-Phone 9 or the Galaxy
28Z?
Remember the counsel of Romans
12. Don’t be conformed to the image or the patterns of the world any
more. The world got its hooks into us
but we must stop and turn around.
Many of us say that we will do this,
but when it comes to our money we make an exception. Maybe we should have a smaller house or less
expensive car or we didn’t really need that 4K television. When all the bills are paid, there should be
something—a fair amount left.
That’s for our children’s children,
right? Maybe part of it, but mostly it
is to bless others. Consider God’s blessing of Abraham.
Abraham was blessed so that he could be a blessing. In fact, the entire world would be blessed
through him. We know that blessing as
Jesus Christ but we forget the concept of being blessed so that we can be a
blessing to others.
So is this where the tithe comes out
of? Does the tithe come out of the left
overs? No, the tithe is completely different.
Tithe means tenth or a tenth part that is set apart for the
Lord. It comes first. In seeking God and his kingdom and his
righteousness, we must remember that God only finds first place
acceptable. He is jealous like that.
We see the tithe mentioned notably 3
times in the books of the law and in an encounter between Abraham and Melchizedek in Genesis 14. Generally, the tithe was paid in animals
and crops, but in Abraham’s case, it was with the spoils of war. Plunder or booty was the standard pay of
fighting men until only a few centuries ago.
The tithe is a tenth of whatever income we receive.
Now that’s after taxes, right? Does God ever take second place?
But that’s Old Testament stuff? Only those under the law were required to
give 10%, right? Actually, if you lived
under the law, you gave something just over 25% if you add up all the other
offerings that went with feasts and special occasions.
But we live in the church age and are
not under the law are we? Didn’t Jesus
fulfill the law? Aren’t we free to live
without fearing punishment because of the law to include the tithe?
Do we have to give 10% to God? No!
Where am I going to live if I give my
house to God? Most likely you will live
in the house that you gave to God, along with the body and mind and everything
else that you gave to God.
Let’s get back to just money. Do I have to give God a tenth of my income or
not? No, but why would you not want to
considering God’s promise? God said,
“Put me to test!”
Hold on! I know better than to put God to the
test. This is the one exception and God
is very bold about it. God is double dog
daring us to try to out-give him. God is
telling us that he has so much blessing for us if we will just trust him. We don’t’ see the word trust in this pericope
but it is very much about trust.
Will I give God a tenth of what I have
before I do anything else with my money?
Do I trust him enough—this God who created everything and even gave his
own Son as an atoning sacrifice to take away my sin and make me right with God
again—do I trust him enough to give him a tenth of my income?
For those of us who have done this, we
can say that God makes 90% go farther than 100%. We enjoy the blessings of the tithe. In being a living sacrifice, we acknowledge
that it’s all God’s anyway, but we totally let go of a tenth.
Some folks say that I give part of my
tithe to World Vision or the Children’s Home or the Family Care Center. That’s not accurate. The tithe today is ten percent given to the
church body where you worship without further individual designation. This is how we trust God with the tithe in
this century.
I hope that you also give to World
Vision, and the Family Care Center, or to the shoe project or to the special
fund raiser for fire victims, but those are offerings given beyond the tithe. The food that we bring in most weeks that the
children bring forward to be blessed are offerings beyond the tithe.
You might want to get your skin lotion
out before this next part, because it’s going to be a might prickly for many
Americans. Sometimes, we think that we
know what God wants us to do with the tithe and so we just do that with the
money that we would have given as the tithe.
Maybe we are helping someone who needs
help. Maybe we think that God wants us
to pay off our mortgage sooner. Maybe we
feel strongly about supporting a missionary somewhere. When we do those things, and call it a tithe
we are only fooling ourselves.
I call it a trick tithe. Understand, we can’t trick God. We are only fooling ourselves that we are
trusting God when we are trusting our own understanding.
Read Malachi. God’s people had once again strayed away from
God’s ways, especially in the tithe.
Instead of bringing God the best lamb, the owner would just cut out the
scrawny, defective animals and say, “That’s good enough.”
Malachi challenged God’s people by asking, “Do you think you could get
away with that with your governor?”
But why did God put this on my heart if he didn’t want me to take money out of my
tithe to give to this person or cause or whatever seems to be tugging at
me? Why?
Have you considered that God wants to
fulfill his promise of blessing to you so that you can bless others and do
those things that are tugging at your heart?
Have you trusted him to bless you to be a blessing? Have you trusted him with the first 10% of
what you have received?
So if you take money away from your
tithe to do other things, will God strike you down? No. He
has given his own Son for you. He loves
you. He will not hurt you.
Will he bless me as if I had
tithed? Don’t bank on it. The tithe is graduate level trust. It is a simple, two-part equation. I tithe and the Lord blesses me.
So should I tithe as a mandatory tax I
must pay to God? No! I say it again: No!
The Lord loves a cheerful giver. If you are going to tithe, then do so with
joy in your heart and thoroughly enjoy the blessings that God will pour out on
you.
If you tithe, joyful or not, God will
fulfill his promise. It’s a thing with
God that he does what he said he would do.
He is like that.
But why not enjoy it?
The muscles in my neck tighten and my
pulse increases when I hear other pastors and elders and church leaders say
that we need to bring in enough to keep the lights on. We have forgotten the other blessing of the
tithe.
God’s storehouse will be full. In today’s world, that means that the church
bodies will do most of the things that somehow people have come to look to the
government to accomplish. When God’s
storehouse is full, government programs of all sorts will be irrelevant.
But God’s storehouse is not full. I will say that we here in this body are
closer than many, but it is not filled to overflowing. I don’t see who gives what but I know that
for a small body of believers, we have a very generous spirit.
Many individuals are blessed because
they tithe, but the storehouse is not full.
This giving everything that we are and
we have as a living sacrifice to God is tough stuff, but totally letting go of
10% seems to be even tougher, until you have made a lifetime habit of it.
It seems too hard for some, especially
when we see people living the all about me life, raking in the dough, and
living high on the hog. That’s enough
mixed money metaphors for one sentence.
The proverb says that the wealth of
the wicked is stored up for the righteous.
To which many of us say, “Can we cash in on that now?”
God’s people are told not to be
fixated on earthly accumulation. If you
want to start a money market account, open it in heaven. The interest rates are out of this world.
Whatever we have in this world is
consumable. What we have in the next is
everlasting.
Let’s revisit the parable of the
talents again. The first 2 servants took
their master’s money and put it to work.
We got that part. They were the
master in that equation, but we should note that they put that money to work
immediately.
They understood that money was a
perishable commodity, especially if it is just buried in the ground. It is meant to be put to work.
Had the 3rd servant just
put the money into a certificate of deposit, it would have at least earned a
little interest. But the first 2
servants put the money to work right away.
They were not only the master in their relationship with money, they
were a wise master.
They had surely done similar things
with whatever their master had entrusted to them before. Remember, that the master gave to them in
accordance with their abilities. They
had surely taken what they had—it may have been very little—and put it to work
before.
How much or little we have has no
bearing on our relationship with money.
We must be the master. We must be
wise. We must take the initiative.
Money is neither good nor bad. It is to be our servant. Debt makes us the slave. The tithe is the litmus test of trusting God. Will we trust him enough to let go of that
first 10%?
God wants to bless us because he loves
us. He wants to pour out even more
blessing when we trust him with our money.
God wants us to have more than enough
so that we can not only be a blessing to our children, but to their children,
and to those whom his Spirit calls us to bless.
There is more counsel on money in the
Bible but we will wrap up here and I am going to shift to the first person.
Money will not be my God but I am
thankful when my God blesses me with money.
I have been blessed in my tithe,
cannot think of a situation where I would give up this most precious statement
of my trust in the Lord, and because of this unqualified trust, I have been
blessed to bless others beyond my tithe.
I will not serve two masters. I serve the Lord, seek his kingdom first, and
enjoy the fact that he blesses me with so many things that the godless world
chases after with futility.
If I have to choose between going without and going in debt, then I will go without; though as the Lord directs
my steps I have never found myself without everything that I needed.
I enjoy things of this world that it
takes money to buy as part of the abundant life that God has provided. He has not called me to be poor. In giving my entire life to him, he has made
me rich. In terms of money, sometimes
that means that I have enough money to eat the old people’s buffet at Sizzlin and sometimes it means that I
can go on a cruise. Sometimes it means
eating beans and cornbread, but I make some really good cornbread.
I don’t have gobs of money in the
bank, but I have more than enough to meet my needs and still have some to bless
others. If I am blessed with gobs of
money, I will put it to work at once.
As far as money goes, I have lived
according to the rules of the world and I have lived God’s way. I have known debt and struggled with the
tithe and purchased many things based on selfish impulse and not wisdom. There was no peace in my finances and that
robbed me of peace in my life.
Know this: God’s instructions on money are very
straightforward. His promises are true.
Things are so much better living God’s
way, and that includes my relationship with money.
I think that God wants us to have:
· Some money in our pockets.
· Some money in the bank.
· Some money set aside to bless our children’s
children.
· Some money to put to work and produce a good
return.
· Some money to bless others when led by his
Spirit.
God wants us to be the master in our
relationship with money.
God wants to bless us when we truly
trust him with our money.
God wants the only debt that we have
to be the one that we can never repay in full.
That we love him for his unbelievable mercy by loving others every day
of our lives.
Amen.
Supporting
Scriptures pertaining to money and giving.
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