1 Timothy 6.2b-10, Matthew 6.24-34

Preached Canberra Baptist Church 26^th July 2009

What is the problem of money? The heart of the problem is that money is both a wonderful gift, a necessary part of modern life, AND a temptation and a danger to a healthy spiritual life.

Money is a gift from God! Can you imagine what would life be like without money?

• You public servants – could you trade a helpful public policy for a kilo of sausages down at the butchers?
• You lawyers – how much legal advice would you offer for a bag of groceries?
• Imagine what you happen if you filled up the fuel tank – and offered a poem for your petrol?

Money is essential for a functioning world – and we have it so many helpful forms: paper money, plastic money (cards) and electronic money (internet).

But money is also a great temptation, a spiritual force in our lives. This is the problem of money:

• We need it, it’s a great gift, it’s a wonderful tool, life would be impossible without it, but also:-
• It is a spiritual power, it’s a great temptation, it can be very damaging.

Today I am preaching about money. I want to offer you:

• 2 caveats (or alerts)
• 2 broad affirmations about money
• 2 warnings about money from our Scripture readings

You need to think through whether what I say applies to you. We are a varied community:

• some people are on pensions, or have been impacted financially by the global financial crisis
• some are students: your task is to remember this sermon for the days when you have money
• but many of us are wealthy – we have homes, superannuation, good jobs.

You need to carefully assess whether this sermon really does apply to you. I am not trying to engender guilt! Today’s sermon should be a liberating message about freedom and money: if you feel any guilt please, please, please speak to me or one of the ministry team!

Money and wealth is something the Bible says a lot about:

• The American Christian leader Jim Wallace once went through the Bible cutting out the passages about money and wealth and poverty. By the end, he said, "I was left with just shreds of paper between two covers. I was left with a book in tatters. I was left with the Bible of the western church!"
• There is so much in Scripture about wealth and poverty I could preach for a year about this!
• We need to be a lot more honest about bringing our use of money under the authority of the Bible not only in our shared life but in our private devotions and Bible reading – we can also read the Bible for financial and management advice. We can develop a disciplined attention to what the Bible says about money.

We need to take this seriously in the life of the church. In some parts of the world today the church tearing itself apart over the issue of homosexuality - something about which the Bible has 6-8 passages, something about which Jesus says nothing at all! If only we brought such passion for the Scripture to the Bible’s extensive teaching about wealth!!

Our use of money is a vital area of first fruits living. That we should be ‘up front’ with God about our wealth and earnings goes without saying. I want to share two positive things about money that are not rocket science – they are very simple but important to help us frame our approach to living responsibly with money as Christians.

The Old Testament idea of offering is clear - that it is the first priority of our wealth and income, not the surplus, not the leftovers. It is not the lowest budget priority – it’s the first. Offering is also grounded in gratitude and thanksgiving, an awareness of the abundance we have been given.

The broad outline of the teaching of Jesus about wealth is clear – and often ignored! You don’t need degrees in Greek or Biblical exegesis to know what Jesus says about wealth:

• Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there will your heart be also… Mt 6.19-21
• (With a coin in his hand) Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s (this said to a people who confesses that God owned ALL things – Mt 22.21)
• Parables about a man building ever bigger barns (Lk 12.13ff) and people in business who missed out on the feast of the kingdom (Mt 22.1ff) …. and many others.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ answer about money and wealth-sharing in the New Testament:-

1. Jesus said to the disciples: leave it all behind and follow me (Mk 1.16ff)
2. Those who were wealthy "provided for them (Jesus and the disciples) out of their resources" (Luke 8.3)
3. The early Church in Acts practiced full communism of property (Acts 2.43ff, Chapters 4&5)
4. Paul provided for his own needs out of his own work (1 Cor 9). (These issues about money are also felt by those of us in ministry. I have a friend who is a Filipino pastor. When we first met and I explained about how we ‘do’ ministry in Australia he asked, "How can you preach the gospel to people who pay you?"
5. The offering to support the poor of the Church in Jerusalem – an international redistribution of wealth (1 Cor 16, 2 Cor 9).

Here we have five different financial approaches operating within the community of Jesus and his followers in the New Testament. While there are a variety of models of how to manage wealth and money each community must decide how it will deal with this challenge.

Finally –

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (1 Timothy 6:10)

This is often MISQUOTED in the form we hear Money is the root of all evil. But look at the text carefully. It refers to:-

• The love of money: we have already affirmed that money itself is a tool.
• … a root of all kinds of evil: Evil is also available to the poor. Lust is not just a problem for those with money. Laziness is the special prerogative of neither the poor nor the rich. Evil can find anyone – a simple equivalence of money and evil is naïve and untrue.

If you’re rich and feeling very relieved right now, be careful: the LOVE of money is very dangerous and in your eagerness to be rich you can "pierce yourself with many pains" – you can hurt yourself!

The Love of money: how can you tell whether you are in love with money? It’s like being in love with anyone/anything: you want to have the beloved with you. You like strolling with your beloved in the marketplace, or through the world. When you are separated you feel sad and disconsolate. You carry a photo or representation of the beloved in your wallet or purse… (preacher pulls out wallet and finds only credit cards – no photo of his wife!)

The text says that in their eagerness for riches they have pierced themselves with many pains:-

Money can be risky – it can be damaging and painful. Our culture sees only the possibility of money, not it’s risks! Money can distort our relationships. It can be a source of suffering, and something that leads us down false paths.

A really sad part of this is that it is reflexive: we do it to ourselves. Sometimes we only see it when we are looking back. It is so sad to sit with someone who in midlife, or later life, comes to realize they have sacrificed their family to work and the eagerness to be rich.

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Mt 6.24)

This text warns of two dimensions along which trying to serve two masters can stretch us. We can either:

• hate one and love the other – a emotional dimension of profound attachment, or
• be devoted to the one and despise the other – a dimension of trust, respect, and attention.

If we are not alert to these things wealth can enter into the soul and become the thing we serve, that which determines our priorities and sets our choices.

Perhaps we sense this best when we are young. The great German writer Rudolf Otto in his book The Holy characterised the encounter with holiness as mysterium tremendum et fascinans: an encounter with mystery that is both fascinating and tremendously awesome. One spiritual writer I know says that this experience of great joy and hope combined with threat and danger is experienced by most people when they are signing their first mortgage! The instinct that one is encountering ‘the holy’ is perhaps an insight into the spiritual power of money.

When I was young I had some serious misgivings and scruples about buying a home. I sought counsel from a university counselor in Melbourne who told me of academic from Adelaide who had recently joined the university. The academic was in mid-career and had in the bank the deposit for a new home in Melbourne, so he gave away his half-million dollar home outside Adelaide to a returned missionary family who had need of it. The counselor said to me – "It’s not whether you own a house – it’s whether the house owns you!"

When I started in ministry I had a wonderful deacon who was the heart and soul of the little church I pastored. He set up the pews each week and cleaned the church afterward. He wore old clothes with the elbows out of his cardigan. He was a simple man who drove a secondhand, 4 cylinder car. He had only learned to drive when he was about 50 years old – before that he rode a bicycle. He lived in a little timber cottage on a busy corner, the house that he and his wife had bought when they married.

I knew he worked for Telstra and he was such a humble man I thought he was a technician, or perhaps a telephone installer. One Sunday he said to me "Can you please make sure the church is set up next week? I’m away at a work conference". I thought perhaps he was going to a neighbouring town so I asked him where he was off to. When he replied "Katmandu!" I laughed, thinking he was being ironic. The pained look on his face made me realize he was indeed off to Katmandu. "What on earth for?" I asked, and was astounded to hear, "To deliver a paper on the latest developments in international telecommunications to representatives of the Chinese government".

When he came home I visited him in the city at his office. His secretaries (several of them) were surprised (even suspicious?) that someone like me could have any business with such an important man. When I went into what was the largest executive office I had ever seen to that point in my life I asked him what he actually did. It turned out he was in charge of all Telstra’s maintenance operations for eastern Australian and managed a staff of about 30,000 people!

This man had solved the problem of money. He had weighed the word of God and he had weighed his own wealth. It never hurt him. It never held him. He wanted for nothing and he was satisfied with everything. He lived with a simplicity and freedom that I have only ever found in 1 or 2 other people. I think he is the richest man I have ever known.

May God help us all to discover such abundance!