Breaking Free: Money as a Tool, NOT A TRAP (PART 3 “What Do You Have?”)

INTRO:

Today, can we talk about you?

Some of you are like …. I am out of here.

I want you to think about yourself, not today,

… but a decade in the future,

… 20 years in the future,

… 30 years, 40, maybe 50 years for some of you.

For some of us we will be dead in 50 years.

But if you're not going to be dead, I want you to think about what it would be like looking back on your life?

What will you want to be true of you of the time that you actually spent in your life?

Think of it like this …

I want you to think of somebody that you really admired.

Maybe this is somebody in your family.

Maybe it's somebody you know from work.

Maybe it's a neighbor.

Maybe it's somebody you knew as a kid growing up.

Whatever the case may be you look at him/her, and they're up there in years.

You say to yourself or maybe even share it with someone out-loud.

“That is a life well lived.”

And then start breaking that down and ask yourself the questions like,

…. what is actually true of that person?

And there will be a lot that's true about that person,

But chances are the person you're thinking of was ….

…. someone who was generous,

…. someone who is kind,

…. someone who's compassionate.

And when it comes to money

and that's what we're really focusing on today,

There's really two kinds of legacies you can leave behind.

There are two kinds of people when it comes to money:

People who accumulate things for themselves and

People who sacrifice for the sake of others.

And if you listen to the culture, guess what the culture is about?

Culture is almost 100% about Category #1 - accumulating things for yourself.

And there are things you're going to need, right?

Some of you are renting, you're like,

I don't know whether it's out of reach, but I'd love to own a home one day.

But you're like, well, I want the nice car, and I want vacations, and then I want furniture I actually chose, not that got handed down to me.

Or I want this for my kids, or I want to be able to pay for college education.

And basically, the culture is a nonstop onslaught of information and messages about accumulating things for yourself.

Buy this, finance that, do this.

Your life isn't good because you don't have X.

That's all marketing, all commercial advertisements.

Basically, that's at you 24/7 in our culture.

And by default, your life will become about accumulating things for yourself.

But if you really think about the life you want to live and you think about the people that you truly admire, there's an alternate path, a path less traveled, and that is people who sacrifice for the sake of others.

So, want to spend a little bit of time in each field.

So everybody, whether you have a house or not, whether you own a house or not, most of us have an idea of what a dream house would look like because you finally got into a house, maybe, but it's not quite the house you imagined, right?

You got to do some renovations.

You got to expand.

Hopefully a starter home.

Although starter homes today are like finished homes a generation ago.

I was doing some research for this week.

There was a house in Bel Air, California, just outside of Los Angeles, that was the most expensive house ever constructed.

So if you want to make your life about accumulating things for yourself, have this one as a goal.

This house actually has a name.

It's called “The One” in Bel Air, California.

It's a mansion, obviously.

You know how many square feet? 105,000 sqft.

It took 15 years to build, and last year it was listed for sale.

The guy who built it thought he could sell it for $500 million, and then he realized the market wouldn't bear it, so it went on sale for $295 million.

Isn't that an insane amount of money?

What's interesting, though.

I told you about a luxury condo in Toronto, in part two, they went bankrupt.

The guy who built this house went into receivership, foreclosure, and then bankruptcy.

And so it didn't sell for $500 million.

And that's what a life of accumulation is about.

It's like, I got the house, I got the cottage, I got the car, we're having the vacations, we're living the life, we're doing everything we dreamed of.

But the question you have to ask when it comes to money is, is that a life well lived?

There's a line between enough and too much, between decent and ostentatious, between nice and outrageous.

And eventually when you cross the line and the line's always invisible to you, you have to ask yourself, is that actually a life well lived?

I think a lot of us would probably go, well, it would be nice to have a cool house, but really? or is that better? (Show a picture of Mother Theresa!

I don't even have to tell you who that is because most of you know, and she died over 25 years ago.

But there's a woman who didn't have a lot.

Her feet were deformed. Why?

Because she wanted to make sure that the children had the best shoes, so she always wore the undersized ones.

And she just went about life by life, person by person, changing the world.

And I've been thinking about this over the years, and you know what I realized a number of years ago?

There are no inspiring stories of someone who accumulated so much stuff.

Only inspiring stories of sacrifice.

If you really think about the people that you admire, it's not greedy people.

Most of the stories you hear that really move you are stories of sacrifice, not stories of accumulation.

So the question then becomes, well, what kind of life do you want to live?

And what is your money going to do about it?

Now, here's the problem.

The problem is you can't see greed in the mirror.

You know who's greedy?

Other people.

That's who's greedy, right?

You know, your sister's greedy.

You maybe think, well, my dad's greedy.

Or you think, hey, my neighbor, he's greedy.

Or that guy at work is greedy.

Or someone you knew in high school, super greedy.

Or that person you read about in the paper, so greedy.

But it's so hard to see greed in the mirror.

None of you woke up this morning and went, you know what?

You looked in the mirror, and you went, I am so greedy.

I'm glad I'm going to church.

Nobody had that thought, right?

You didn't have that thought like, oh, I'm so greedy.

I better get myself to a church.

You didn't think about that, but you're thinking you know the person sitting behind you? You're like, well, they're greedy, right?

That's how we think.

You can't see greed in the mirror.

But I want to show you a surefire way to spot greed,

…. not in other people.

Well, you can do it in other people, too, but this will help you detect it in your life.

You can't see greed in the mirror.

But you can see it in your bank account.

Let that sink in.

You know how you tell by looking at your bank account?

What does your bank account do? Because the number, the math, doesn't lie.

If it is 100% about you, and 100% of those purchases are about me, and you're like, well, you don't understand we have kids, and we're really generous to our kids. Good. That's your family.

But if it's 100% about you and your family, guess what?

That tells you something about your life.

Now, I'm beating up on you right now.

So I'll stop, and I'll just tell you.

I wasn’t raised in a Christian home, but I started wrestling with this when I became a christian.

I realized early on in my walk, “you know what the problem is?”

I'm greedy.

And I'm greedy because I think about myself all the time.

I woke up, what was I thinking about?

I was thinking about me.

And you are probably saying, well, that kind of makes sense because I promise none of us were thinking about me.

If I don't think about me, who's going to think about me?

And you're like, well, reality is, most of us think about ourselves all the time.

And I've lived five decades looking through one set of eyes, my eyes.

I see the world through my filter.

And I had to realize early on, I'm greedy.

And as a young Christian, I realized If there's going to be a candidate to replace God in my life as my functional God, it's probably going to be money.

And early on, I kind of realized, okay, I'll never see greed in the mirror.

I'll confess it.

I'm greedy, I'm selfish, I'm self focused.

And that doesn't necessarily mean you're narcissistic.

Did you know, a lot of pride is based on insecurity.

It's just based on insecure.

If you're an insecure person, that means you're a self centered person. Why?

Because pain is selfish.

And you're always thinking about yourself.

So this is just natural to the human condition.

I can't see greed in the mirror, but you can see it in your bank account.

And if my bank account is 100% about me, guess what?

I, by default, am a greedy person.

It just happens no matter if you have $10 in your bank or a million dollars in your bank account.

How much of it is going to you and your life?

And what a lot of us think in our culture is rich people are greedy.

It's just the rich. It's the rich, it's the rich.

Rich people aren't greedy.

Self centered people are greedy.

So I have to figure out in my life, what am I going to do to combat my self centeredness?

So last week we shared with you, live with margin and live on mission.

If you get that, like, oh my goodness, your life's going to change.

It's going to get better.

You'll have financial margin.

We talked about the margin last time.

I want to talk about the mission this time because we saw the culture says, follow your heart, follow your heart.

And Jesus said, no, here's how your heart behaves.

Your heart follows your treasure.

But then the question is, and this is where we'll expand today, what about your treasure?

Where is your money going?

Because your heart's going to follow your money.

If you bought that really ostentatious house in Bel Air, guess where your heart is?

It's not here today.

It's in Bel Air because you're thinking about that house.

And no matter how old you are, if you're a student, early 20s,

if you're a teenager,

if you just graduated college,

or if you're just falling in love and you haven't had kids yet or that kind of thing, you know what?

It doesn't matter how old you are.

Your life is producing something.

My life is producing something.

And the question becomes, what is your life producing?

What is my life producing?

So I seriously want you to ask, if you're not a Christian, ask yourself this question “What is your life producing?”

It's a great one.

But If you are a Christian, you should ask yourself this question.

“What is your life to date actually producing?”

Because if you don't like what it's producing, extending that out over 80 years you're just going to have more of it.

So by the time you're 80, okay, you're going to have to shift.

And I had to shift in my life to make sure it was producing something that wasn't just more of me, me, me, me, me.

BODY:

So Jesus tells us this story.

He's coming to the end of his life, and he's preparing his disciples and preparing you and me for what's going to happen when he's not here anymore.

And he tells these stories.

So let's jump into one of the stories.

This is the Parable of the Talents, very famous parable.

So even if you haven't read the Bible, it probably sounds vaguely familiar.

We'll drill into it.

Matthew 25:14-

So Jesus is telling a story and he says “Again, the kingdom of heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip.”

So what is the kingdom of heaven?

That's not just what happens after you die.

Jesus ushered in a kingdom.

If you don't see it fully, if you read the headlines and follow social media, the world is a depressing place, and it is.

But there is something that, if we do our jobs as Christians, is breaking out in the world.

And it's a kingdom of love, it's a kingdom of hope, it's a kingdom of generosity, it's a kingdom of mercy, it's a kingdom of compassion, it's a kingdom of truth.

It's a kingdom of all of that.

The kingdom of heaven is breaking out.

Now, often in the church, we don't do a very good job of that, and often as Christians, we don't do a very good job of that.

But it's still here.

And Jesus says the more we yield to his message, the more that kingdom of heaven will be realized.

And then he says, I'm going to tell you a fable, a story about a man going on a long trip.

So this man, who kind of loosely stands in for Jesus/God, called together his servants and entrusted his money to them before he was gone.

So remember the money we're going to look at in this parable, not their money, not the servant's money, it's the master's money.

Hint: the money in your bank account isn't your money, it's God's.

Now, that's not just a message for Christians.

I think that's a message for all of us.

Because if God created all things, he even gave us, some of you are like, I'm self made.

I don't think there's self made people.

I mean, who made you?

Did you make yourself?

No, you didn't.

So I don't think there's self made people.

Anyway, God is saying, I gave you some money.

Pay attention.

So he entrusted his money to them.

“The servant who received the five bags of silver, he gave five bags of silver to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag to the last, dividing it in proportion to their abilities.

And then he left on a trip.”

So bags of silver.

The Greek word is talent.

And you're like, wait a minute.

Talent refers to your gifts and ability.

She's so talented musically or vocally.

The Greek word talent didn't actually mean skill or ability.

It meant money.

It was a unit of currency, a very expensive unit of currency.

But because this parable became so famous in English, we just took the Greek word and started calling it gifts and abilities.

So talent really means money.

So how much money is actually being told you're, like, five bags of silver?

How much is that?

So if you do the actual math, we can do the math from the first century when Jesus taught this. It’s actually, because of inflation, it's nice, easy math.

About $5 million today for one. $2 million today for the other one, $1 million for the last one.

Five, two, one.

Now, I don't know where you come from, but that's a lot of money, okay?

A million dollars is a lot of money.

Nobody got cheated in this story.

At least I hope if somebody gave you a million dollars, you wouldn't feel cheated.

So everybody gets money.

It's like the Oprah Show, “you get a million, and you get a million, and you get a million.”

So they all get millions.

And then …… “The servant who received the five bags of silver (5 million) began to invest the money and earn five more.”

So it's pretty clear from the beginning that Jesus said, okay, I'm going to give you some money, and I want you to put it to work.

What are you going to do with it?

So the servant who got five bags went ahead, invested it, produced five more.

Next part of the parable.

“The servant with 2 million also went to work and earned 2 million more.

But the servant who received one bag of silver dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.”

That's interesting.

Why would he do that?

Remember we talked about this last time?

That one of the reasons we don't want to trust God, primarily in two areas, one in sexuality and the other in finance, is because we don't believe God is good.

This servant had that viewpoint.

He's like, I'm just going to hide it.

“After a long time, their master returned from his trip and called them to give an account of how they had used his money.”

So he kind of hinted at this.

I'm going to ask you, and I really believe this is the case for me.

I believe God is going to say, first of all, two questions: what did you do about Jesus?

And the ‘what did you do about Jesus?’ question ultimately becomes the salvation question.

I believe whether you're a Christian or not, consider yourself a Christian or not, Jesus died for you on a cross because there had to be a way back to God and we couldn't find the way on our own.

So Jesus provided the way.

He is the way, the truth and the life.

And nobody comes to God except through Jesus.

The good news is it's a universal message.

Now, the second question is something along the lines of, ‘And what did you do with what I gave you?’

What did you do with the relationships?

What did you do with your skills and ability?

What did you do with the money I entrusted you with?

I think that question is going to come up too.

And after a long time, the Master called them to give an account of how they had used his money.

“The servant whom he had entrusted, five bags of silver (5 million) came forward with 5 (million) more.

It's like, impressive!

If you're the 2 million person, you're like, uh oh, I'm in trouble now, right?

“Master, you gave me five bags of silver to invest, and I have earned five more.”

The master, not surprisingly, was full of praise.

He's like, well done, my good and faithful servant.

You've been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities.

Let's celebrate together.

It's like, okay, wait a minute.

That's a big verse.

What do you mean you've been faithful in handling this small amount?

Is there anybody here who thinks $5 million is a small amount of money?

Don't put your hand up.

You'll get mugged on the way out.

And Jesus is saying, small amount, small amount, small amount.

It's like that's not a small amount.

He said, Compared to eternity, it's nothing.

And guess what?

In eternity, I'm going to give you more responsibility.

You thought heaven was about slacking from your responsibilities.

Now you don't want to go anymore.

No there's going to be work in heaven.

We're going to be entrusted with things.

Back to the servant ….. And he goes, You've been responsible.

Now, you get this principle.

Okay, we'll come back to that in a second.

Let me hang on to that thought.

Okay, “let's celebrate together.

The servant who had received the two bags of silver came forward,” probably a little nervously, I'm thinking, because the other guy produced 5 million in additional earnings.

How much have you got? 2 million.

It's like ‘eek hope I'm okay!”

“Master, you gave me two bags of silver. Here's two more.”

Two more million.

Look at what the master says.

The master says, “well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Now watch this parallel structure.

Exactly the same words in English and in Greek.

If you go back to the original Greek, exactly the same words that he gave the person who came back with 5 million.

Identical.

Same here. “You have been faithful in handling the small amount. So now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let's celebrate together.”

“Then the servant with one bag of silver came and said.”

Now, guess what we know already.

If this servant had come back and said, ‘You gave me a million, here's another million,’ what would have happened?

The master would have said, ‘well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful in this little amount. I'm going to entrust you with a whole lot more. Come and enter my joy.’

Except that didn't happen.

He said, “Master, I knew you were a harsh man.”

Remember we talked about not believing God is good?

He is saying, “I knew you were bad.”

“Harvesting crops you didn't plant, gathering crops you didn't cultivate.”

You made me do all the work.

Well, wait a minute.

Where did the money come from anyway?

“I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth.”

And look, here's your money back.

Here's a million.

But the master replied, “you wicked and lazy servant, if you knew I harvested crops I didn't plant and gathered crops I didn't cultivate, why didn't you deposit my money in the bank?”

You know it gets about 5% these days.

“At least I could have gotten some interest on it. And then he ordered, take the money from this servant and give it to the one with ten bags of silver” (with 10 million).

You're like that's not fair!

Well, hang on. A lot of you are parents, right?

So if you have more than one child, guess what?

You know there's one child you can give $10 to, and she comes back, and she hands you back $9.90.

It's like, I just spent a dime, dad.

The other one you give $10 to, they come back with $10,000 in credit card debt.

You're like, how did that happen? Right?

It's like what just happened.

And you're like two different people with two different worldviews and abilities.

If there was a financial advisor that you had, and let's say you invested $10,000, and the next year, it's like, well, the markets were bad, and there's only seven left, but I took $2000 as a fee.

Let's see how we do next year.

And every year, there's a depreciating balance.

Although you're putting more money in every year, guess what you do?

You fire the financial advisor. Why?

Because they're stealing from you.

You already exercise this principle, so don't get mad at God.

And he goes, “look, to those who use well, what they've been given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But to those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.”

And then it gets hard.

We can have a whole series on this.

We're just going to glance off it.

“Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Oh, God's just being mean.

Well, you know what?

Weeping and gnashing of teeth…you ever have something you've done in your life that you really regret?

You wake up the next day or for the next season, and you're like, If I could only get that time back.

If I could only get that decision back.

If I could only get that moment back, I blew it.

You're gnashing your teeth, you're weeping over it.

I think here he's talking about regret. Regret, I blew it.

Now, that's not the point of the story.

You know what the point of the story is? Here's the surprise.

The surprise is Jesus asked you to be generous with what you have, not with what you don't have.

Because here's what I think.

I think most of you, even if you're not a Christian, I'll bet, you want to be more generous than you are.

You want to have a more generous life.

But you're like, these bills and the credit card and this and the kids and everything's just so expensive, and groceries are so much, and cars are so expensive.

And Jesus is like, I know.

I don't want you to worry about what you don't have.

All I'm asking you to be faithful with …. is what you do have.

Same thing. 5 million, 2 million, 1 million ….. God doesn't care.

He's like, “Were you faithful with it?”

The 1 million? Were you faithful with it?

The $10, the $5, the $1. Were you faithful with it?

You know what the principle is? …… Start where you are.

Start where you are. And a lot of us play this game.

We keep thinking, “I'll start giving, Pastor, once I get this credit card paid off.

I'll start being generous with my life when I make a little more money, when I get the promotion, when my spouse goes back to work, and we have a better income, when we get this mortgage paid down a little bit more, once our kids get out of diapers.

Kids just get more expensive as they get older, by the way, anyway, so it's like ugh.

It's always, …. down the road, down the road, down the road, down the road, down the road.

I'm going to be more generous. And you know what?

It's not true.

I'm just not making that up.

You want to know why it's not true?

Here. Listen to these stats.

Percentage of income given to charity:

If you make less than $25,000 a year, the average person gives 7.7% to charity.

But you know what happens as you make more you giving declines.

You are making more money.

You make $50,000. You're only giving 4.6.

You get to 100,000. It's 2.6.

If you’re $200,000 right into the millions, on average, 2.8%.

You know what's really unfair about this?

Gas costs the same whether you make $25,000 or $250,000 a year.

Groceries are the same whether you're poor or whether you're loaded.

So you're like, well, one day when I make that, when I make six figures, when I finally get comfortable.

Well, the odds are against that unless you decide to live a radically different life.

And if you don't believe those numbers, I encourage you to talk to an accountant.

I've had this conversation with accountants over the years.

They can't divulge confidential information, but they'll say, yeah, once you make six figures, your generosity goes down, not up.

The poorest are the most generous.

Convicting, isn't it? Convicting?

And the point of the parable is “start where you are.”

Start where you are.

Start with what you have, not what you don't have.

Now, I got to say something.

Some of you are like, well, 10%, here we go.

I knew there was a catch to this series.

This is a preacher saying “you got to tithe, and you got to tithe to the local church.”

So if you're not a Christian, just listen and have fun at us christians, because I'm going to start a debate, okay.

Among the Christians, because Christians will come in and say, you know what, Pastor tithing is an old testament concept, and we're new testament Christians, and there's no 10% in the new testament.

And actually that's accurate. Accurate.

In the old testament it was a 10th of your crops, a 10th of everything you had, you brought to the temple, you brought to the religious leaders, and away you went.

So that isn't actually taught in the new testament.

You know what's taught instead?

When the church started in the months after the resurrection of Jesus, the early Christians were so moved by God's radical act of self giving that they went and they sold their property, and they sold their possessions, and they pulled them together, and they brought them together, and they gave to anybody as they had need.

The poorest church in the new testament was Macedonia.

They gave sacrificially to the church in Jerusalem.

It was a story of radical, life altering generosity in the new testament.

And guess what? They were poor.

You and I are some of the most affluent people who have ever walked the face of the earth, and maybe the new testament standard is radical generosity.

So what does it look like for 21st century people in an incredibly affluent global culture?

We're the affluent ones.

What does it look like to practice radical generosity in our lifetime?

Jesus says ‘that's okay, start with what you have, not what you don't have.’

My wife and I, when we got married and started tithing we just started with what we had.

So you give a little bit, and then you get more. You give more.

I realize there are no inspiring stories of accumulation, only inspiring stories of sacrifice.

I heard a story about a guy who did something really stupid financially.

Around the year 2000. It was a weird year.

We all thought our computers were going to die, and they didn't.

The guy tried to blame it on that.

Actually this guy is a car guy. You know the type?

His wife and him needed to get a new car.

Their kids were getting older, and they needed to get a new car, a different car.

She wanted to buy used.

He wanted to buy new.

He had his eye on this new car that he just fell in love with, and I went against his wife, and they were not united.

Big mistake as a couple.

Not united on this.

The husband went out and bought a brand new car, and he want to show you this car.

It was a 2000 Ford Taurus station wagon. Gold. Gold.

I don't know what he saw in that car, but, like, 25 years ago, he thought that was the cat's meow, and he wanted it.

He went in, $35,000 brand new.

And the car payment, because it was 0% financing, $583 a month.

And he went around going, ‘See, we can afford that.’

This is where I have come to believe God's always on your wife's side, …… on the way home from the dealership, the car starts to shake on the highway.

The husband is like, oh, my goodness.

But it's got a warranty and everything.

It's in the shop a month and a half, and they can't fix it.

The husband is like, it was one thing after another after another with that car.

He was seriously thinking “It was built by a drunk person on a Friday afternoon.”

It was an awful car, and four years later, it barely ran.

They traded it in.

You know what I got for that $35,000 car? $6,000.

You might as well just take a whole pile of money, tens of thousands of dollars, put it in your backyard, in your fire pit, get some gas, light a match, and burn it up.

But thats what that husband basically did with the money that God entrusted me him.

Is that an inspiring life story? Is it?

And you want that house.

You want the lake house, you want the cottage, you want the vacations?

I'm not saying you shouldn't get the better question might be, “what will your legacy be?”

What will your legacy be?

I'm not saying you can't have stuff, but if that's it, if it's 100% that.

Is that the life you want to live?

So this week here's what I want you to do.

Start putting what you have, not what you don't have, to work.

Start putting it to work.

It's amazing when you give, how God gives back and what he does, and it's like, do we miss the money?

No, we don't miss the money.

And when I look back on my life, I want to do more and more and more and more of that because I'm amazed at the stories God is writing.

So this week, put what you have to work, and don't worry about what you don't have.

Because Jesus expects you to be faithful with what you have, not with what you don't have.

So here's the question.

What do you have?

Because if you're waiting to be generous one day when you make $100,000, when you make a million dollars, when you have your own…you saw the stats.

It's not going to happen.

It starts now.

What do you have?

And if you don't want to give to our church, that's great.

Just live a generous life somewhere else.

What do you have?

Because that's what God works with.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, this is super challenging, but so rewarding. Give us the courage, even today to start with what we have. God, there are no inspiring stories of accumulation, so don't make our lives about accumulation. You teach us to be giving the things we want to do. Lord, show us where we can start today. I pray for those who are right on the bubble right now, financially. I pray for those who have a lot. And I pray for our church, God, that we would be known as some of the most generous people not even known, Lord, even in secret. But we make an impact that when we look back on our lives, you might say to us one day, “well done, good and faithful servant.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.