Preaching on Money, Part 3
Money, a Liability?
When you calculate assets and liabilities, money in your pocket always belongs in the “asset” column, right? According to an accountant friend of mine, this is actually not always the case. The technical term for money that is a liability is “unearned asset.” When a person or business receives payment for services that they have not yet rendered, those funds must be counted as a liability.
A “big story” sermon series first asks the question, “What is God’s purpose?” The next question is, “How has sin mucked it up?” God has given us money as an asset. Sin has made it a liability.
As we have seen, material things provide a realm in which to pursue our purpose as God’s image-bearers by exercising dominion in the world. They give us a physical sphere in which to bear witness to God, to acknowledge and trust God, and to worship God. Our relationship to God is intimately linked to our relationship with money.
Our money becomes a liability when it has not fulfill the purposes for which God has given it. At the root of the problem is the sinful lie that our material and spiritual lives can be kept in two separate compartments.
Sometimes this lie comes out in the form of hedonism, seeking as much pleasure as possible with no regard for spiritual consequences. A well-intentioned but equally errant reaction is asceticism, or trying to live a more “spiritual” life by treating all material pleasures as evil. Both are sinful, because both miss God’s purpose for the material things in our lives.
When you preach on money, you will need to address the ways sin distorts God’s purpose. Here are four sermon seeds to address sin’s lies about money with answers from the Scriptures.
Lie #1: “Money, and the things money can buy, make you happy.”
This message surrounds us, bombards us, and seduces us every day of our lives. An entire industry exists to convince us that true happiness is just one purchase away. Who among us at one time or another has not experienced “consumer fever”? All you can think about is the car, the house, the shoes, the golf club, or the tropical vacation — and the satisfaction it will bring. We have also experienced the “consumer crash” when the acquisition loses its luster.
Ecclesiastes 5:10-6:7 is a great text to talk about the truth that we all intuitively know. If you expect wealth to satisfy, you will always be hungry. Phrase by phrase, verse by verse, the wise preacher explores the vanity of loving money and the things it can buy.
But sin’s lies do not end with the false promise of possessions. Sin also offers false solutions when contentment eludes us. Perhaps it’s best just to be poor. Or we could look for satisfaction in simplicity. The truth is, not all wealthy people are preoccupied with their “stuff,” and many poor people think of nothing else. And “simplifying your life” can be just another way to rearrange your material obsession. The reality show “Tiny House, Big Living” is really just about people who want to trade one kind of “stuff” for another in their pursuit of the ideal life.
The writer of Ecclesiastes teaches us that “materialism” is neither poverty nor wealth, extravagance nor simplicity. It is trying to answer our deep longings for God with something other than God. And it is always a disappointment. He teaches us that all that really matters is to love God and enjoy what He provides. Joy is something God gives, not something we can buy.
Lie #2: “You are what you own.”
Our culture also circulates the message that material things not only satisfy us, but they define us. The clothes we wear, the car we drive, the house and neighbourhood in which we live, our job, our salary – these are more than possessions. They are identity.
Why did Jesus ask the young man in Mark 10:17-22 to give away his possessions, and why did he go away sad? Was it just that he was afraid to be poor? Maybe, but probably not only that. I suspect he couldn’t imagine himself without his wealth. It defined him. We know him as “the Rich Young Ruler.” Without his wealth, he would be neither rich, nor a ruler — just young and poor.
Jesus concluded the matter with a haunting pronouncement. “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom….” Why? Perhaps it’s because a wealthy man has his identity wrapped up in his wealth, and you can only follow Jesus if you are willing to get your identity from him alone.
We were created to live with purpose — to exercise dominion as God’s image bearers. Godly dominion means that we demonstrate our identity not in material things, but in how we manage them. In fact, they do not give significance to us at all. We give significance to them.
What you own says nothing about who you are. What you give away says everything.
Lie #3: “Security is money in the bank.”
This may be the most powerful lie of all, because it appeals neither to our appetites nor to our existential angst, but to our fears. We can deal with a nagging discontentment or a flagging sense of self, but our fear of the future is a visceral, soul-consuming fire. If we have enough money, the terror wanes, and we feel we can handle whatever comes.
Jesus turns such false security on its head with the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13-21. The rich man’s money gave him the illusion of control, but only that. He imagined a future in which the surplus in his barns could keep him safe. But in the future he actually experienced, his wealth was less than useless.
The truth is, money in the bank doesn’t even guarantee the sensation of security. In fact, some of the most stressed people in the world are those who have the greatest possessions. The poor may worry about their next meal. The rich worry that they may lose it all, and someday have to worry about their next meal.
If money is your source of security, then what you have, whether you have a lot or a little, is not security, but stress. You can have both peace and wealth, but you can’t get peace from wealth.
The Heart of the Matter
Each of these texts deals with an aspect of how sin has distorted our proper relationship with material things. Here’s one more text that could tie these all together.
In Matthew 6:22-24, Jesus tells us that we cannot serve two masters. Specifically, we cannot serve both God and money. Actually, the word he uses for “money” is not the typical word, but a different one chosen to pack an important punch. “Mammon” represents money/material things as the all-in-all of life. It pictures a point where material things have become our focus.
When we look to money for contentment, identity, or security, we are dealing with the same problem in each case: idolatry. Whatever or whoever we look to for contentment, identity, or security is what/who we worship.
Here is the essence of our brokenness when it comes to money: Sin makes an idol of that which God has provided as a gift.
In the garden, the first humans found contentment in God, and so they were able to enjoy God’s gifts. Once we declared independence from God, we began to seek contentment in God’s gifts instead of God himself, and joy was lost.
Their identity was to be God’s image bearers, exercising Godly dominion over the material world. Once we rejected our role as vice-regents by trying to be gods ourselves, we began to look to the material world for our identity. So, our relationship with “stuff” was reversed. Instead of being rulers of the material world, the material world began to rule us.
Adam & Eve’s security was in God, so they were at peace. Once we separated ourselves from God’s care, we began to seek security in a world that we cannot control, and we have no peace.
Money is a great gift, but a terrible god.
Preaching on Sin and Money
This kind of big-story perspective on how sin has mucked up our relationship to the material world is a key step in a big-story approach to preaching on money. We can help our hearers to see that the solution to our money problems is not to become rich, so that we want for nothing. Neither is it to become poor, renouncing material things. The solution is not to change our attitude towards money, but to change our attitude towards God. If the issue is idolatry (worshipping a false god), the solution is to worship the true God.
But in our brokenness, even this is beyond our reach. That’s why the next step on our series must be to show how Jesus has redeems even our money.
