A Christian and His Money

Comedian Jack Benny was known for being tight with his money. He used to perform a skit in which he’s walking along a street. Suddenly an armed robber jumps out of the shadows and cries “Your money or your life!” There’s a long pause while Jack just stands there. Finally, the robber says “Well?” Jack replies in his inimitable way, “Don’t rush me. I’m thinking about it.”

Money is a subject that is very important to us. Have you ever noticed how people are willing to reveal almost everything about themselves except their financial affairs? People will talk about their weight, their age, their health, their family problems, even their sex life - but they’ll seldom talk about their money.

Maybe that’s because money is so close to the center of who we are that we’re afraid to talk about it for fear of revealing too much about ourselves. But our money does our talking for us.

Money talks. And when it does, it tells me about my heart.

Nothing reveals the condition of a man or a woman’s heart more clearly than what they do with their money. You can tell a lot about a person just by looking at his checkbook. You can tell about his priorities, his values, the things he considers important in life. You can even tell about his spiritual condition.

Jesus knew that money is the number one spiritual barometer in all of life. That’s why he spent so much time talking about it. Of the 38 parables that Jesus gave us in the NT, 16 have something to do with money or possessions.

We come today in the Sermon on the Mount to a section where Jesus deals with money. In this passage, which is found in Matthew 6:19–25, Jesus lays out three sets of alternatives for us in this matter of how we handle our material possessions. He tells us that there are:

1. Two places we can store up our treasure

2. Two ways we can look at life

3. Two masters we can serve

1. There are two places we can store up our treasure

Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

We will soon be celebrating the 50th anniversary of VE Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. In the final days of WW2, the American, British, and Canadian armies were moving across Germany from the West, while the Russian army was closing in from the East.

When those two spearheads finally met, in the middle of Germany, some very interesting things began to happen. A black market economy sprang up overnight.

Enterprising U.S. troops began selling cartons of American cigarettes to Russian soldiers for fifty dollars apiece. One G.I. actually sold a U.S. government-issue truck to a Russian general for the equivalent of $100,000!

How could they get such exorbitant prices for such commonplace things? Because the Russian troops had not been paid in four years. And when their payday finally came at the end of the war, their cynical government in Moscow paid them in German currency that they had captured—paper money that was utterly worthless in Russia.

So before they left Germany, the Russian soldiers had to scramble to convert their worthless Nazi currency into something of real value that they could take home to Russia with them. All their financial decisions were made with an eye on going home.

And that’s the point that Jesus is making. You can lay up treasure here on earth. And the idea is to hoard it, to accumulate it, to put all your energies into putting together a nice little nest egg. But if you do, it will have no value at all in eternity. You’ve never seen a tombstone with a dollar sign on it, have you?

Once upon a time, a man found a magic bottle on a beach. When he rubbed the bottle, a genie appeared and said that he would grant the man just one wish. The man said “I wish to know the future”. So the genie said “Just a moment, I’ll be right back” and he went back into the bottle.

In a moment, he came out again, and he handed the man a newspaper that was dated exactly one year in the future. As the man looked through it, he read of news events that hadn’t happened yet, and stories that had not yet been told. He turned to the sports page and read the results of games that had not yet been played and champions who had not yet been crowned.

He turned to the financial section, and saw that some of the stocks had gone up, and others had gone down. And he began to realize, with mounting excitement, what this newspaper could do for him. Why he could make a fortune! A few good investments here, and a sports bet on the right team there, and he would be rich!

But then he turned a page and saw himself looking at his own picture. It was the obituary page. All of this world’s wealth means nothing in light of eternity.

And what’s more, treasure that we lay up for ourselves here on earth is perishable. Jesus says “If you lay up treasure for yourself here on earth, you’re operating in a realm of thieves, and moths, and rust.” Inflation can eat away at your investment. Changing circumstances can cause your carefully laid financial plans to go awry. And it can all happen in the blink of an eye.

How much better to lay up treasure in heaven! Just as a Russian soldier at the end of WW2 would have been a fool to have gone home to his father’s house with a box full of worthless German currency, so we need to invest our resources in that which has real value in the eyes of our Heavenly Father. But how do you do that?

In Luke 16, Jesus told a story about a manager whose boss became displeased with him. In fact, the man realized that he was about to be fired. Just before that fateful day arrived, however, he decided to use his remaining authority as manager to discount the debts of several of his boss’s clients.

He called each of them in and said “How much do you owe my boss? Okay, as of today, I’m going to give you a 20% discount, or a 50% discount on what you owe.”

And he wrote it down in his boss’s ledger book The manager reckoned that by giving those clients a break at his boss’s expense, at least they would be his friends when he was out of a job.

Well, the disciples probably had a good laugh about that story. But then Jesus gave them the application in Luke 16:9: “Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”

Spend your money here on earth in such a way that you will have friends “over there”—in heaven, in eternity. Invest your resources in helping others to get to heaven. If you do, you’ll be converting your present, perishable assets into non-perishable treasure.

And when you arrive in heaven, there will be a grateful reception committee waiting there to welcome you.

1 Timothy 6:17-19 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which 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.

Jesus said something very significant in Matthew 6:21. He said that your heart follows your money. Now we have the idea that our money follows our heart; that we’ll put our money where our heart already is. But Jesus said, “No, it’s actually the other way around. Your heart follows your money.

So if you want to find out where your heart really is, find out where your money is.

- if you have a lot of money tied up in your house, that’s where your heart will be

- if you have a lot of money tied up in your car, that’s where your heart will be

- if you have a lot of money tied up in the stock market, that’s where your heart will be

Because your heart follows your money.

So if you want your heart to be in heaven, then you’ve got to start putting your money there. Start giving regularly and generously to God’s kingdom, and see if your heart won’t follow your money.

Now there’s a second set of alternatives that Jesus presents us with here in this passage. He says that there are…

2. Two ways we can look at life

Matthew 6:22-23 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Jesus is using a metaphor here. He is talking about your eye as though it were a source of light—a kind of window into your life. If the window is clear, then your life will be full of light, but if the window is cloudy, your life will be dark. And if you think that that darkness is actually light, then you’re really in the dark!

Now what makes the window cloudy? A focus on material things.

Money has the power to seize your focus, and when it does, it clouds your perspective— it plunges you into spiritual darkness just as certainly as if you taped a twenty dollar bill over your eyes. You become preoccupied with material things, and you lose track of what life is really all about.

1Timothy 6:9–10 = 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.

There is a Jewish legend about an old man who was very rich. But he was a miserly tightwad with his money. One day he went to see a rabbi. The rabbi took him to a window. “Look out there” the rabbi said. “What do you see?”

“I see men, women, and children” said the rich man. Then the rabbi took the man by the hand and led him to a mirror. “Now what do you see?”

“Now I see myself” said the rich man. The rabbi said “Listen to me. In the window there is glass, and in the mirror there is glass. But the glass in the mirror is covered with a coating of silver. As soon as you add the silver, you stop seeing others and you see only yourself.”

The love of money obscures your vision. When money is your focus, you think you’re seeing things as they really are, but in truth, you are blind. Your eye becomes bad.

The word “good” in v. 22 literally means “single”. The word “bad” in v.23 literally means “double”.

Just a few years ago, NASA launched a billion-dollar satellite to study the stars. They called it the Hubble Space Telescope. But there was a problem with the optics of that telescope. They couldn’t get it to focus right. Hubble rhymes with double, and that spelled trouble. They had to send the Shuttle up there to put corrective lenses on the telescope.

When you have your heart focused on money, you can’t see straight.

That is why God instituted the biblical discipline of giving. It’s not because he needs our money. It’s because He knows that we need to practice regular giving in order to keep from being consumed by the love of money.

If you are not giving regularly and generously to the Lord’s work, you may have all sorts of reasons and excuses why you are not. But it really comes down to just one thing—you love your money. That’s why you just can’t bring yourself to give it away.

There’s another Jewish legend about two brothers. They both owned a threshing floor on a hill in Judah. One of the brothers was married and had ten children. The other brother was single. Every day, they would thresh the grain that was brought to them by the other farmers, and take their payment home in sacks.

One night, after a particularly good day of business, the single brother was lying awake thinking. He thought to himself “It isn’t right that each day my brother and I divide our grain equally. After all, he has twelve mouths to feed, and here I am, just one.” So he got up in the darkness and he put some of his grain into a sack and he crept over to his brother’s house to dump the sack into his brother’s granary.

But that same night, his brother woke up and began thinking to himself. “You know, it isn’t right that each day my brother and I divide our grain equally. After all, when we grow old, I will have all these children to take care of me, but he won’t have anyone.” So he got up in the darkness and he put some of his grain into a sack and he crept over to his brother’s house to dump the sack into his brother’s granary.

But in the middle of the night, in the darkness, while each was on his special errand, they literally ran into each other.

When they recovered from their surprise, they looked at each other and the sack of grain they each held in their hands and they fell into each other’s arms and wept with joy.

And God looked down from heaven at the two brothers embracing there on the threshing floor and said “That’s where I’m going to build my Temple.”

Giving helps us to keep our money and our possessions in their proper perspective. It prevents them from becoming the focal point of our lives.

Jesus gives us one more set of alternatives here in this passage. He says that there are…

3. Two masters we can serve, but we can’t serve them both at once.

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

You will either serve God and use money, or you will use God and serve money.

And if you choose to serve money, be aware that money is a harsh master. Listen to what some people who knew a lot about money said about it:

• John D. Rockefeller: I have made many millions but they have brought me no happiness.

• William H. Vanderbilt: The care of 200 million dollars is too great a load for any brain or back to bear. It is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it.

• John Jacob Astor: I am the most miserable man on earth.

• Henry Ford: I was happier when doing a mechanic’s job.

• Andrew Carnegie: Millionaires seldom smile.

Who are you serving today? Are you serving God and using your money to bring glory to Him, or are you serving your money and your possessions?

And don’t think that just because you are a Christian, you have made that choice once and for all. The choice is before you every day. A Christian can become captivated by material things just as easily as a non-Christian.

Financial counselor Larry Burkett says that, in his experience, Christians are some of the most gullible, greedy people in the world when it comes to get-rich-quick schemes.

So be careful! You can’t serve two masters.

The story is told of a wealthy Christian woman who owned a magnificent mansion on a great estate. In her mansion she had a beautiful art collection and several prized pieces of antique furniture. The grounds of her estate were superbly landscaped.

One day, the gardener who worked on this estate died suddenly in a tragic accident. Just a few days after his funeral, the woman herself died of a sudden illness.

When she arrived in heaven, the angels showed her to the place where she would live. It was a very tiny, plain one-room cottage. There were no curtains on the windows, and no carpets on the bare earthen floors.

The woman had been used to living in luxury, and she was quite put out by these accommodations. She complained to the angels, and pointed to a lovely new home on a hillside in the distance. “Who lives in that wonderful mansion over there, she asked?”

“Oh that belongs to your gardener” one of the angels replied.

“How is it that he has a house so much better than mine?” the lady complained.

The angel explained: “The houses here in heaven are prepared from the materials that are sent up ahead of you. We do not choose the materials. You do — by the way you serve God while you’re on earth.”

We have learned that there are…

1. Two places where we can store up our treasure—here on earth, or in heaven.

2. Two ways that we can look at life—with our eyes focused on the accumulation of material things, or our eyes focused on God and spiritual things.

3. Two masters that we can serve—God or money. We can serve one or the other, but we can’t serve both.

Money talks. And when it does, it tells me about my heart. What does your money say about you?