Money is not the Problem
Luke 12:13-23
January 14, 2007
Our Annual Conference presents the “P.B. Smith Preaching Prize” to one member of each year’s ordinand class. Some of you who have been members around here for a long time might remember P.B. when he was pastor over at the Waynedale church back in the 70’s. He was a great guy. I got to know him when he was my District Superintendent down in the Huntington District.
Anyway, he was known as a great preacher and following his death, our Board of Ordained Ministry began to give a prize of $500 to the outstanding preacher of each ordinand class. My wife won that award in 1993.
We came home from Annual Conference with the check burning a hole in our pockets, and immediately went out and bought a new television. Thirteen years later, we still have the television and it works fine. The problem is that it is in the basement. When we moved to this new parsonage, Toni decided that she didn’t want a television in the living room. The problem is that the family room is in the basement and it’s just not a great place to spend any time.
So I started hauling a little portable TV out into the living room whenever I wanted to watch something and then putting it away when the show was over. Then we got news that everybody is going to have to have a new high definition TV by 2009. So, armed with a promise from my wife that we could put a new flat panel screen in the living room, we went shopping…paid eight hundred bucks for a new set! It looks really cool, but gets terrible reception with the rabbit ears that were on the old set. In fact, the old portable TV gets better reception than this new thing. So we are going to have to break down and order cable.
The salesguy at Best buy who sold us this television, tried to dazzle us with all sorts of information about pixels and other stuff. Now I wouldn’t know a pixel if it rose up and gave me a big kiss on the cheek, but now I’ve got 1366 by 768 of them on my television screen. The widescreen feature promises to offer me a cinema-style entertainment experience in high definition. So now when I settle in to watch reruns of CSI, I will be able to see every blimp and pimple on the faces of the actors. But this is a guy’s TV. Every guy needs one…just because they are out there.
I “needed” this television the same way I need a new 2007 Corvette. I have wanted a Corvette since high school. One of the fellows in the church I served at Hobart had a cherry red 1963 ‘vette that he let me drive one day. I put the top down and breezed through the streets like I owned them. It was great!
Not too long ago, I was waiting for them to change my oil down at the Jiffy Lube. While I was waiting, I picked up a Car and Driver Magazine. There was an article comparing the Corvette with the finest European cars. The Corvette is truly a world-class sports car and can hold its own against Porsche, Maserati, and Lamborghini; and it comes at the bargain price of $60,000. Try finding a Lamborghini for that price. I really need one of those cars.
Have you ever heard the term “bling-bling?” I googgled it the other day and found this definition on Wikipedia.com. “Bling-bling” is usually shortened to “bling.” It is a slang term coming out of the hip-hop culture and refers to expensive jewelry or other accoutrements, and an entire lifestyle build around excess spending and ostentation. The article said that it refers to the exterior manifestation of one’s interior state of character. In other words, bling is the stuff we buy, not because we need it, but just because we want it.
My friend, Mark Fenstermacher has some really helpful thoughts that he put in a sermon last October. If you remember Mark from his work with our stewardship campaign a couple of years ago, you will remember that he grew up as a son of missionaries. He relates the story of a small village in the central Congo when he was just a small boy. The villagers had been going blind for generations upon generations. They thought that there were cursed for some reason or other. They would call in witch doctors and shamans, but no one could help. People just kept going blind by middle age.
Mark said that what they didn’t realize was that there was a parasite in the water that they were drinking every day. It was those parasites that were making them loose their eyesight. His father was a missionary doctor and was finally able to test the water and discover the parasite. Given the proper medicine, their blindness was halted.
He goes on to say that he believes that one of the parasites that is making citizens of western nations sick is the belief that what we own and what we spend are indicators of a good life. Mark notes that Americans spent more money last year than they earned, and more Americans filed for bankruptcy than graduated from college.
Before we go any farther, let me say that I can’t find any evidence in the Bible that God doesn’t want us to enjoy life. I really don’t think that God is bothered too much when we are able to enjoy a nice home, or a Florida vacation, or have the ability to eat out at nice restaurants.
The issue is not money, but greed. When getting more and more stuff just for the sake of getting stuff becomes our goal, we are headed for trouble. I Timothy 6:10 says, “Lust for money brings trouble and nothing but trouble. Going down that path, some lose their footing in the faith completely and live to regret it bitterly ever after.”
This always surprises some folks when I say it, but when you carefully study the gospels, you will discover that Jesus said more about money and possessions than about anything else except the Kingdom of God. In the entire New Testament, there are about 500 verses about prayer and about 500 verses about faith. There are around 1,000 verses in the New Testament that discuss possessions and money. Obviously the relationship we have with our money is an issue vitally important to our spiritual well-being.
I have people come to me all the time and tell me that all the church talks about is money. First of all, that’s not true, at least not in this church. Still, we won’t be afraid to talk about money in the church because it was important to Jesus. When we talk about money in the church, we are not always asking for it. Often we are asking you to consider your relationship to it and what that relationship says about your spiritual life. You have heard me say before that your checkbook says volumes about your spiritual life because it gives evidence of where your priorities lie. And you will never hear me apologize about being concerned about your spiritual priorities.
In the twelvth chapter of the gospel of Luke, there is a huge crowd around Jesus as he teaches. Someone in the crowd interrupted his teaching with a request. “Teacher, “ he said, “order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance” (12:12). Jesus looked at the fellow and asked him why it was any of his business to mediate the family inheritance.
Then he got right to the real issue. The real issue was not economic justice, but rather was greed. He then said, “Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”
In other words, life is more than our possessions. Life is more than a rolex on your wrist or a Corvette in the driveway. Life is more than the new television in the family room or the new motorcycle in the garage. Life is not about stuff. Life is more than the suff we own.
Watch out for greed in your life. Toni and I fell into that trap. We wracked up a huge credit card debt which took us years to get under control. We have finally have solved the problem, but not without paying the banks a ton of money in interest. We just got sucked into the materialistic way of life. We saw things that we really couldn’t afford, but what the heck, we had plastic.
Greed is a monster lurking just around the corner or on the other side of the door. Unlike the monsters that we thought lived under our beds when we were kids, the monster of greed is real and just waiting to catch you and take your focus and energy off of the really important things of life.
There was this fellow who had literally pulled himself up by his bootstraps. He waited tables and drove a taxi to pay his way through college. He got an entry level position at a major company upon graduation and slowly worked his way up the corporate ladder. He got married and together with his new wife, moved into a modest starter home. Next came children and all of the struggles that come along with that.
Finally, the kids were in college, he was finally making really good money, they had moved into a really nice 5,000 square foot home, and his investment portfolio was growing nicely. His fifteen hour days were paying off. Pretty soon they would be able to take that around the world cruise that they had been dreaming about for so long.
He sat at the kitchen table one night, calculating the income from his stocks and bonds, when the pain hit. The last thing he heard as he clutched his chest was his wife singing in the shower.
That night, the man appeared before God and God said, “You fool! You really missed the boat. You thought that all of your stuff was important. You thought that your new house, your lake cottage, and your new Ski Nautique ski boat were important. You dreamed about luxurious food and exotic shore destinations on your cruise. But now what? You’re dead. All of that suff is left behind. The things that were really important, like a relationship with me, were all put on the back burner…until it was too late.”
Hear this: we are of infinite value to God, not because of the stuff we gather and the greed we indulge. We are of infinite value to God because he loves us and because Christ died for us.
My wife and I had our first date on January 28, 1971. I was a senior in high school and she was a sophomore. So we have been together now for 35 years, 31 of those as a married couple. We are at that point in our relationship when we finish each other’s sentences. We know what each other likes to eat and what each other’s favorite color is. We pretty much can guage each other’s reactions to situations that arise. I tell her stories about IU and Purdue athletic games, and keep her up to date on the latest developments in the Denver Broncos training camp. She could care less about that stuff, but she knows that they are important to me, and so she listens.
I don’t care all that much about the antiques she likes. When we go somewhere together where there is a gift shop or something, I know that she will look at every bauble and trinket in the store, even when my back starts to hurt and I start to get grumpy. But I go along with her because I know that those things are important to her.
I know when I have gone over the line in being grumpy and she knows when she has pushed my buttons far enough. We know those things about each other because we have loved each other long enough that we have spent the time to get to know the other person all the way down deep.
The important thing about our relationship is the relationship itself and the commitment to each other. That is what is sought by God. God desires that we know him all the way down deep.
How is your relationship with God? Is it an intimate one? Is it one which is not clouded by your quest for more stuff or by your greed to obtain more and more material things? God doesn’t care a bit about our stuff. He loves us whether we are rich or whether we are poor. He simply wants us to love him back.
The issue in life is not the money; how much we have or how much we don’t have. The issue is the relationship. There will come a day when we will all stand before God to give an accounting. I don’t say this to scare you, simply to encourage you to put your priorities in order so that the things of the Kingdom take priority over your stuff. God knows what we are worth. God knows that we are of infinite value simply because he created us. I hope that we can come to learn that as well.