“Money Matters”
Text:
Matthew 6:24-34
© May 18, 2008 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton
United Presbyterian Church.
It
seems that there was a very wealthy man who desperately wanted to figure out a
way to take his money with him when he died.
So the man came up with this plan.
He gathered together all his money and put it in a box up in the attic
of his house. That way, he figured, when
he died and his soul started to rise up toward heaven, he could grab hold of
the box and take it along.
Well,
finally, one day that rich man died. But
when his wife later on went up into the attic, she found that the box of money
was still there. So she said, “That
fool! I kept telling him that he should
have put it down in the basement.”
Many
people might not want to admit it, but many people live for money. Many people spend their whole lives working
and toiling away so that they can get as much money for themselves as they
can. And quite often the thought never
even occurs to them, that when they die they can’t take that money with
them. Because as far as they’re
concerned, they figure: Hey, it’s my
money, and I’m going to keep it!
What’s
the focus in your life? What in your
life is of supreme importance? Is it
money, or is it God? A lot of people, I
think, would answer that question by saying, “Both are important. I can’t pick one or the other. God matters to me, but money matters to me as
well.”
But
did you hear what Jesus said in this passage that we listened to today from the
Gospel of Matthew? Jesus said, “No one
can serve two masters….You cannot serve God and
wealth” (
I
imagine that most people gathered here today would say that at least to some
degree God matters to them. Wouldn’t you
agree? After all, we’re here in church. But if we had to come up with some way of
measuring that, if we had to come up with some way of measuring how much God
matters to someone, what could we use as a kind of spiritual thermometer?
Some
people might suggest that we look at people’s worship attendance. Some people might suggest that we look at how
many Sundays during the year a person is in worship, and use that as a guide to
how much God matters to them. And that’s
certainly a possibility.
Others
might suggest that we look at how much a person prays,
figuring that the more time a person spends praying each week, the more that God
must matter to them. Or still others
might suggest that we look at how much a person reads the Bible, figuring that
the more time a person spends studying the Scriptures, that
would be an indication of how important God is in their life.
But
while worship attendance and prayer and Bible reading are all certainly good
and worthwhile things, I believe that when it comes to measuring how much God
truly matters to someone, there’s an even better and more accurate spiritual
thermometer that we can use. And that
is: How much does that person give to
the work of God? Or more specifically,
what percentage of their income are they willing to give to the church so that
God’s work can be done here on earth?
What
percentage of your income are you giving to the work of God in this
church? If someone is giving close to
nothing, or less than one or two pennies out of every dollar that they make, I
think it would be safe that that level of giving is saying that God isn’t
important to that person. They might be curious
about God, and interested in finding out what God is all about. But if someone is giving close to nothing, or
less than one or two pennies out of every dollar they make, I think it would be
safe to say that that person is probably not much more than a spiritual
spectator. When it comes to God, they’re
on the sidelines; they’re not really in the game.
On
the other hand, if someone is giving maybe three, four, or five percent of
their income, that probably means that they’re
sticking their toe in the water. That
level of giving, I would suggest, probably means that that person is beginning
to sense that God should be playing a larger role in their life and they’re
starting to try and figure out what exactly that means for them. If someone is giving three, four, or five
percent of their income, that probably means that the
person is spiritually seeking. They’re
on their way to exploring what it means to make God the center of their lives.
And
I would suggest to you that as people get to the point where they’re giving ten
percent – what the Bible calls a tithe – or more of their income, and are doing
so cheerfully, that is probably an indication that those people are coming to
an understanding of what it means to make God the center of their lives. As people get to the point where they’re
giving ten percent or more of their income, and are doing so cheerfully, that
is probably an indication that those are people who are coming to a point in
their lives where they truly believe that God matters and by how they’re using
their money, they’re trying to show that God matters to them.
Unfortunately,
though, when it comes to giving, many people take the attitude: “OK, I know that I should be giving
something. So tell me, what’s the least
that I can give and still be a good Christian?”
But taking that attitude would be like if a child went up to his mother
in early May and said, “Mom, I know that Mother’s Day is coming up, and I
should be giving you a gift. But to help
me out – could you please tell me what’s the least I can spend on your present
and still have a good relationship with you?”
I don’t think too many of us would even consider taking that attitude
with our mothers. But quite often we
don’t seem to have any problem at all doing that when it comes to God. Quite often when it comes to money, we don’t
think of our giving to God as being our highest priority. Instead, when it comes to money, we tend to
think of ourselves and what we want to buy as being our highest priority.
It’s
like one Sunday morning when a little girl was getting ready to head off to
church. Before she left home, her mother
handed her two quarters and said, “The one quarter is for you to give to God,
and the other quarter is for you to spend any way you want.” But as the girl made her way to church, she
started playing with the coins and tossing them into the air. Well, eventually one of the quarters slipped
out of her hand and rolled right down a sewer grate. So the little girl went over to the grate and
looked down sadly and said, “Well, there goes God’s quarter.”
I
imagine that by this point in the sermon, some people are thinking to
themselves, “I didn’t come to church today to hear about money. I came to hear about spiritual things.” But
whether we realize it or not, what we do with our money is a spiritual
matter. What we do with our money
matters to God. After all, if you read
through the Gospels, you find that Jesus spent more time talking about money
and possessions than he spent talking about prayer. Jesus spent more time talking about money and
possessions than he spent stressing the importance of worship. Jesus spent more time talking about money and
possessions than he spent encouraging people to read the Bible. And so if what we do with our money and
possessions mattered to Jesus, I think it would be safe to say that what we do
with our money and possessions is a spiritual matter. What we do with our money and possessions
matters to God, because what we do with our money and possessions says a whole
lot about where God stands in our lives.
Simply
put, our giving is a spiritual matter because it takes money to be able to
carry out the mission that God has for our church. It takes money to have the staff and to operate
the facility so that we can offer programs and ministries to address the needs
of older adults in our community, to reach out to unchurched
kids in the area, to provide for the needs of the hungry, to assist people when
they’re going through times of crisis, to care for the sick and the homebound,
and to carry out the many other good works that God wants us to be doing.
But
the reality is that at present, giving from our members is less than what we
need to carry out that mission. As you
may or may not be aware, some of the most important ministries we have have been made possible because of donations and grants
made by people and organizations outside the membership of this church. For instance, if we hadn’t received those
donations and grants from people and organizations outside the membership of
the church, we wouldn’t be able to have Tricia Sanders as our Outreach
Coordinator, we wouldn’t have the CAMP senior citizen program, we wouldn’t have
the church van, we wouldn’t have a Coordinator of Youth, Family, and Young
Adult Ministry, we wouldn’t have Youth Club, we wouldn’t have Adventure Group,
we wouldn’t have mission trips, we wouldn’t have weekly Sunday lunches. If we operated our church based only on what
church members currently give, many of the most important and meaningful things
that we do would have to immediately come to an end.
One
Sunday a minister got up and told his congregation that he had some bad news,
some good news, and some bad news. The
first bad news, he said, was that there were a lot of things that needed to be
done at the church, and it was going to cost some real money. The good news, though, the minister said, was
that he knew exactly where they could find the money the church needed. But the other bad news, he said, was that
that money was sitting in the congregation members’ pockets. Guess what?
I have that very same bad news, good news, and bad news for you.
Does
God matter to you? Is God the highest
priority in your life? If so, then give
like God matters. Because what we do
with our money does matter. What we do
with our money matters to God.