REVOLUTIONARY SIMPLICITY AND YOUR WALLET

REVOLUTIONARY SIMPLICITY AND YOUR WALLET Matthew 6:25-33; 1 Timothy 6:6-10 July 13, 2008 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Several years ago, Bobby McFerron released a hit single entitled Don’t Worry, Be Happy—a mindless, but engaging ditty, half of the lyrics for which are “Don’t worry, be happy!” You might think that advice a little simplistic and shallow, but it is amazing how closely it parallels the teaching of Jesus. Of course the key difference between the Word of God and the McFerron’s message is that God must be in the equation. A young boy was driving a big hay-rack down the country road when it turned over right in front of a farmer's house. The farmer came out and saw the boy crying. , "Son, don't worry about this, we can fix it. Right now dinner's ready. Why don't you come in and eat with us and I'll help you put the hay back on the rack." The boy said, "No, I can't. Man, is my father is going to be angry with me." The farmer said, "Now don't argue, just come in and have some lunch and you'll feel better." The boy said, "I'm just afraid my father is going to be very angry with me." The farmer insisted and he and the boy went inside and had dinner. Afterwards, they walked outside to the hayrack. The farmer said, "Well, don't you feel better now?" The boy said, "A little, but I’m so worried about how angry my father will be with me." The farmer said, "Nonsense. He loves you. Where is your father anyway?" The boy said, "He's under that pile of hay." Jesus taught that the key to eliminating worry is taking God "from under the pile of hay" where we sometimes try to keep him, and putting him back in first place. Worry is conquered by trusting God and doing His will. We can worry or we can worship. Oddly, busy people find it a lot easier to worry than to worship. In what area are we fallen humans most likely to be worriers? What do we worry about most often? Money, right. And that is exactly what Jesus speaks to in this morning’s text. The second in our series on Revolutionary Simplicity, this morning’s message addresses “Your Wallet.” Wouldn’t it be nice to be worry- free concerning all things financial and to be peaceful & content? (by the way, the wallet in the picture is a “dutch wallet” – did you notice it all duct-taped?) Matthew 6:25-33 Let’s read Matthew 6:25-33 – Having just finished teaching that a God-follower cannot also be a materialist, Jesus begins the next part of his Sermon on the Mount. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? On a mission against worry, Jesus says it’s useless to worry, it’s unnecessary to worry and worry is a declaration of one’s lack of faith in God. A businessman ran into a friend of his, a stockbroker who had always had problems with ulcers and high blood pressure. "How's your health?" he asked him. "Great. My ulcers are gone & I don't have a worry in the world!" "How did that happen?" He said, "It's easy. I hired a professional worrier. Whenever something comes along that I need to worry about, I tell him about it and he does all of my worrying for me." His friend couldn't believe it. "That's incredible. I'd be interested in something like that. How much does it cost?" "He charges $100,000 a year." The businessman said "How in the world can you afford to pay him $100,000 a year?" The stockbroker said, "I don't know, I let him worry about that!" God is no professional worrier, but He is decidedly the one we should give our worries over to. In fact, in 1 Peter 5:7 we are told Cast all you anxiety on him because he cares for you. And the familiar text of Philippians 4:6 – Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. You can trade in your worries and fears for peace and contentment in God! How do we do that? We’ll look into that in a moment. Back to Matthew 6:28 And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Give Jesus First Place There is only one place to begin in simplifying your life, uncomplicating your life and ridding yourself of worry and anxieties. And it isn’t “Don’t worry, be happy!” As Matthew 6:33 makes it clear, give God first place in your life. When Jesus speaks these words “Don’t worry” (which He emphatically iterates three times in these nine verses), He is speaking to people who already have a relationship with God—they’re people of faith. In verse 32, He contrasts those listening with “the pagans” who do the opposite of what He teaches. These are people with some measure of faith in Him. That’s where you must begin. If you haven’t yet submitted to the gospel, if you’re not yet saved, you are still without the resources to live up to Christ’s teaching. Jesus says, “Don’t worry,” but if you aren’t His disciple, He might as well be saying, “Don’t blink” or “Don’t breathe.” It is the very nature of people who are separated from God to worry and be anxious or fearful about things. It is also in the human nature of the Christian to worry and be anxious (we’re all sinners!), but the Christian has the resources to overcome. Once you are God-related through the grace of Jesus—which means you have agreed you’re a sinner, Jesus paid your death sentence with His crucifixion, and you acknowledge He has risen from death for your salvation—if you accept Jesus on these terms, you are given God’s Spirit. And it is the Spirit of God who alone enables people to obey His Word. And if you are a Christian, the word to you is make Jesus and His kingdom the top priority of your life. Believers have a habit of slipping back into worldly thinking and serving lesser gods. The most common pitfall is in the area of money and possessions. Instead of thinking biblically, agreeing that everything belongs to God, including myself, and everything I have and handle is simply on loan to me from God, I may start thinking I actually own my stuff. But that’s the devil’s lie. We are only stewards of what God has allowed us to handle. God still owns it and He’s very interested to see how we handle the little we have before He gives us more to steward. We have been given what we have as a test, a trust. It will be given back to God. And He will demand an accounting of it all as well. That’s why it is so important to remember always that God owns it all.Understanding that makes us good stewards. How we handle our money and possessions, then, becomes an evidence of whether or not we are seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, or seeking the kingdom of ourselves and our own selfish fulfillment. Jesus made it clear earlier in this chapter that you can’t do both. You will either serve the Lord (the kingdom mindset) OR you will serve worldly pursuits (the materialistic mindset). Trying to do both makes you spiritually schizophrenic, and it never works. Now, notice the consequences of these two mindsets. When we seek worldly pleasures/possessions/riches, the results are temporary comfort that never truly satisfies, worry, anxiety and alienation from God. The one who seeks the kingdom and the righteousness of God, though, gets peace instead of anxiety, riches in heaven that are eternal in place of earth-bound riches that are temporary, unreliable and unfulfilling, and instead of being alienated from God the one with kingdom priorities actually pleases God and is rewarded. Give the Kingdom first place Seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness means, first, recognizing God’s ownership of everything and His relinquishing of finances and possessions to us becomes for us a stewardship, a responsibility. As Rick Warren puts it in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, “Life on earth is a temporary assignment.” We serve as ambassadors here for God, stewards of His creation and of everything He gives us to use. Our purpose is simple: to glorify God with our lives. We do that in a number of ways, but one of the most crucial is in this area of how we handle God’s resources in our lives. We talked last week about how we use time as one of those resources given to us. But how we use our money is another. And the most central issue addressed in God’s Word is how generous we are with our finances or how selfish we are. Paul said that generosity is the expression of God’s grace at work in our lives. God is emphatic about the importance of giving on the part of His people. God gives, and He calls His faithful people to give. The Bible outlines two broad categories of giving: kingdom support and benevolence. It may be a little unfair to reduce financial stewardship under two categories, but you can make a good biblical case for it, and we are, after all, in a series on simplicity. The benevolence category is in essence what we do for other people: helping people in need, resourcing ministries that serve justice and mercy for people and generally being ready to assist in any venture the Spirit of God leads us into. You might think in terms of the “horizontal” plane of financial stewardship. The Bible’s teaching reminds us, though, that even this kind of financial stewardship serves the purposes of the kingdom. It’s not just kindness and sympathy that drives kingdom economics; it is also evangelism and the expansion of the church. Though the church corporate serves benevolence purposes, it falls to each of us to minister to others using the personal resources God has given us. When we are faithful in this service a number of benefits accrue: 1. God is glorified as people thank and praise Him   2. The Kingdom, the church, is made attractive to others   3. People, families and communities are served   4. We are blessed We invest in heavenly treasures (can take it with you) We are made better stewards as we handle the rest We reap the blessing of more resources (seed) The other category of generosity for God’s people is what I referred to as Kingdom Support. This, of course, is the financing of the church’s ministries of outreach and spiritual nurture. Some of that is the support of the church staff, maintenance of the physical properties and programs, from youth ministry to missions, nursery to Life Groups—basically, a lot of what you see reflected in the brief mid-year report in your bulletins this morning. As you probably know, that budget figure is just over $17,000 per month. From the strictly economic point of view, that needs to be underwritten by the faithful tithes and offerings of the members of the church. It can’t be done well unless we each and all do our part. From the spiritual viewpoint, this is how God wants it to work—each member of the body of Christ giving generously to the kingdom work. That happens best when those members are making it a priority to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. In fact, to not be generously supportive of the church is precisely to NOT seek the kingdom first. I want to urge you each to prayerfully and faithfully consider the working of God’s grace in your finances and giving. What do you honestly believe is God’s will in the area of your benevolent giving and kingdom support? We don’t receive any government assistance as a church; no other agencies feed resources into MECF; only the faithful support of those who are part of this body supports the ministry here and elsewhere through this church. Because God’s grace in our lives is constant and reliable, our giving should be constant and reliable. God doesn’t take vacations, but if He did, do you think He would skip two weeks or so providing for you because His Disney World trip was expensive? I called the Power Company last week to tell them that a good percentage of our members were gone on summer vacations, and the offerings were down, so we would probably only be paying 90% of our bill this month. I got no sympathy. I didn’t really do that. And we’re actually doing fine, as about 90% of our budget has been given. But that does mean that some things will have to be cut to make up that other 10%. We really ought to be going the other direction: 10% and more over budget in this second half of the year. I know we can and should. You know that I rarely address finances from this pulpit, though I do try to bring scripturally balanced teaching on financial stewardship regularly. And you know also that my reasons for doing so are never to try to strong-arm you or manipulate you through guilt or emotional pressure to give. I abhor and reject all such ungodly tactics. But neither do I avoid telling you the truth. It is God’s will that you give—and that, sacrificially, consistently and with kingdom motives, and you can count on me bringing you clear reminders periodically from the pages of scripture. I want this church to prosper in the Work of the Lord. I want you as stewards to prosper because of your faithfulness. You can’t out give God. When you give from the heart to His kingdom purposes, He promises to give back to you, pressed, down, shaken together and running over. Commensurate with the level with which you give, so will you receive from Him. And that’s the whole key to the promise of Matthew 6. Kingdom people have God’s sure Word that they will never lack anything they need if they are faithful to seek His Kingdom and His righteousness. Again, His promise is to replace worry with His peace, replace anxiety with godly contentment and to keep you continually resourced for every good work. That’s a promise to His faithful people. When you go to the doctor’s office and he pokes and prods your body and he hits a place where it hurts, that’s an indication there is a need in that area. If there is a feeling of conviction or maybe even resentment at a message that calls from you more careful financial stewardship, then chances are, you needed to hear it. Giving is really the acid test of our discipleship. If you’re willing to do anything else for God but give generously, that simply means you aren’t listening to His Word and His Spirit. God knows that our wallet is often the last part of us to become committed to Him. Giving is also the first step toward Godly contentment. Frankly, the promise of God’s generous supply to you in Matthew 6:33 belongs only to those who faithfully seek His Kingdom. And the promise of His peace and contentment comes to those who train themselves away from the love of worldly riches into an attitude of Kingdom generosity. I want to close with a quick look at 1 Timothy 6:6-10. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. By contrast, moving down the page to verse 17 and following: Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, with is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 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.     [Back to Top]