Good with Money

What’s the good way to handle our money?  

Last week, in our reading through James, we came to the meditation in James 5: 1-6 where James is strongly rebuking some rich folks for their bad handling of wealth.  He fires four shots at them: 

1. They’re making ultimate investments in what wears out.
2. They’re not paying their workers.
3. They have a decadent lifestyle.
4. They’re killing the righteous person.

Last week I skipped over much of the last point, so let me quickly review just that.  When James says that the wealthy are killing the righteous person – singular – this sets us to thinking.  Could this be THE righteous person – Jesus himself?  As I said, I think we could start there.  The murderous wealthy of Jerusalem had eliminated the One who didn’t resist them…who opened not his mouth/ like a lamb that is led to the slaughter/ and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent/ so he opened not his mouth.  

We said that wealth is dangerous, and one of the reasons that wealth is dangerous is that it drives you to want to get more wealth – that could be ok, as far as it goes – yet going after more wealth could make you willing to eliminate all obstacles to increasing wealth.  Even THE Righteous Person.  

There’s an energy around wealth that could easily take you into darkness.  While dealing with wealth the darkness is calling you.  

Then let’s make some big statements: Where does one really plant the flag of his ultimate loyalties?  In how he handles wealth.

That’s such an important point I’ll say that again: handling money reveals your ultimate loyalties.  Jesus said, You cannot serve both God and mammon.  You must choose which master.  In handling mammon – wealth – you are choosing masters, you are pledging ultimate allegiance.  

Mammon can be translated to wealth, but calling it mammon – wealth personified and given a proper name – suggests that behind wealth there are Powers.  Supernatural forces.  And yes, Jesus confirms: mammon…wealth… can become a rival god… unless you deliberately choose to serve God while handling money.  

In other words, there is no neutrality in handing money.  Ever.  In handling money, you are either serving God or some dark power.  In setting your budget, saving and spending your money, you are either aligning yourself with the God of Jesus Christ or some rival of his.  And if it’s with some rival of God’s, you can trace that supernal power back to God’s ancient enemy whom we first encounter in Genesis 3.  The Serpent shows up when you take out your credit card.  Man, this world is thick with meaning!    

James says to the wealthy: You have killed the Righteous Person.  There is this ancient antagonism between the seed of the Serpent and the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ.  The serpent is a liar and a murderer, and he and his seed have ever been willing or on the way to being willing to simply eliminating the Righteous One and those whom he’s made righteous by their union with him.  

And to reiterate: as you spend and invest and save you are planting your flag with God or with the Ancient Murderer.  Whoa!  

Ok, from last week’s sermon we’ll call that sufficient warning in wrong ways of handling wealth.  So, how do we use wealth for good?  

Here’s the thesis: To use wealth well, invest into humans for the long term unto the glory of God.  

Invest into humans for the long term unto the glory of God.  

That thesis comes out of the following passages: 

• Matthew 25:14-30, the parable of the talents – In preparing his followers for the time between when the Son of Man is given the kingdom and the end of the age – the exact time we’re in now! – Jesus stresses that his followers must be productive.  Productive.  Not merely preserve the status quo but invest their resources so that God’s creation and redeeming project is moved forward.  

You will give an account for your life, this passage says.  An account.  Is there more because of how you invested your resources?  More.  Not, did you not lose anything… but did you move things forward?  Did you invest and invest well?  

The old Christians understood the reality of this final accouting better than we.  In his most famous sonnet, “On His Blindness,” the poet John Milton is wrestling with his blindness.  But not, why did God let me go blind and I’m so mad at him.  But rather, will God the Owner expect just as much from me being blind as he did when I wasn’t blind?  How can I be efficient with my resources now?  

Don’t dilly dally, grow!  Don’t tread water, invest!

• Please turn to Luke 12:13ff. 

¹³ Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” ¹⁴ But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” ¹⁵ And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” ¹⁶ And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷ and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ ¹⁸ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ ²⁰ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

We must read this story carefully so that we don’t hear it as a general critique against being rich or building more barns.  No.  

But where exactly did this fellow go wrong in his thinking?  Two ways of saying the same thing:  

1) He didn’t have a plan for his wealth beyond his death.  His thinking about his riches terminated in his experience with it.  Another way of saying that: 2) He was not rich toward God.  

Being rich toward God means that you have considered your wealth with God in mind.  You have invested into his project.  You have been a steward furthering his purposes.  Instead of thinking selfishly about the wealth under your charge, you handle your resources deliberately for the glory of God.  

Don’t grow your wealth selfishly but invest for the glory of God! 

• 1 Timothy 6: 17-19, Noah already read, but go ahead and turn there as a reminder.  

From this passage we’ll grab two important points: 1) that investing into God’s work for the glory of God will often (almost always?) take the form of being generous and ready to share with people.  When handling your wealth have people in view.  

And 2) good investing has the future in view.  When you invest well you are building a foundation for what will last into the future, even up to laying up for yourselves treasures in heaven.  Smart investments build a future… all the way into the age to come.  This is good, this is smart investing.  

Good investing has the future in view.  You’re investing into your future.  And extending this thought: when you are generous with people and share what you have with them, helping people will eventually involve directing them to themselves take hold of that which is truly life, themselves investing into the future.  So, your good investments and eventually the good investments of those that you help always have the future in mind.  You are not, as the foolish barn-builder, thinking short-term, this life only or even this age only.  

So, taking all these passages together: Handling wealth well involves investing into humans for the long term unto the glory of God.  

The following is a simple, almost silly example:  Someone is sick and you have ingredients for a soup.  

Here are some options:

• You could think ‘none of my business, I got my own stuff to worry about’ – if this apathy and selfishness become the posture of your life you’ll be violating the Matthew 25 passage.
• You could keep those ingredients for yourself… and get more of those ingredients so that supplies will never run out, at least for as long as you live!  In other words, you could focus on barn building without the kind of long-range thinking that makes you rich toward God.
• You could make the soup and bring it over.  Good job on having addressed an immediate need but then how have you extolled God?  And where was the long term investment?  
• You make the soup in prayer and bring by a soup with a prayer.  Also ,you bring along extra ingredients for your sick friend to make another soup.  If your sick friend has a child, you show him/her how to throw the ingredients together and make the soup himself.  

In all your investments, tiny to momentous, constantly be thinking of helping people, extoling God, and the long term.  

In the past week someone asked me: if I had a lot of wealth, where would I invest?  I immediately said: Christian middle and high schools.  I’ve seen this: if a couple comes to God or comes back to God as adults, even after becoming a Christian they’re normally still walking around with a lot of wrong assumptions about reality and the formation of human beings: notions that seeped into them from a young age during literature class, history class etc.  It’ll take years for them to shed those ideas they learned as a kid, and during those years they’re rearing their own children with the same bad ideas.  How important to get kids when they’re young rooted in Christ, truth!  Providing a Christian education – a truly Christian education – is one of the best ways of faithfully stewarding our wealth.  It lays the foundation of a structure that will continue into the age to come.  

Exalting God.  Helping people.  For the long term.  This is the way.  Grandpa, you buy a remote-controlled airplane and take your grandson into a wide-open field to fly with him.  But beforehand, you’ve also devoted to memory a few poetic lines, and while you’re out in the field craning your neck up you drop those lines: 

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of… 

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. -Magee

You also tell your grandson of your recurring dream of flying and wonder out loud if the body that Christ will give you at his coming might have an anti-gravity component.  Now fast forward 30 years from that afternoon, and that boy is now outside in a meadow with his boy, and they’re staring into the sky…and you realize that you’ve invested into humans for the long term unto the glory of God.  

Money + Unselfishness + Exalting God + Thinking Long Term = strategic investments to the glory of God.  

Many decisions, big and small, in handling your wealth.  In planting a flag for or against God.  How much square feet should your house have?  As much as you can afford?  Or, limited to 1500?  Let us not be children in our thinking and demand a certain look to investing in humans for the glory of God.  

Parents could have an idea for an awesome library filled with great books that will feed their children’s imagination so as to equip them to engaging the world with creativity and purpose and wonder to the glory of God.  That library filled with great books is going to cost a pretty penny – but it’s not to feed their ego.  They have a long range, even multi-generational notion…and it extends unto the glory of God.  Build the library!  

Or, consider the household of Stephanas that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 16:15 –he says that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints.  A couple/family could have the Spirit’s calling to serve Christ almost entirely by being great hosts.  And so, they have outfitted their home with toys and a huge dining room and beautiful backyard, and they are regularly using it all not to the end of self-indulgence but to invite over singles and the elderly and couples with small kids and families and their own extended family and refresh people in the Lord.  After people have visited their home, these guests are renewed in energy and purpose. So, this couple/family has a vision, and God is at the center of it, and they’re investing in people in ways that will make a difference into the days to come.  Buy the four-wheelers!  

There are so many varieties in handling wealth by investing in humans for the long term unto the glory of God.  And the great thing is that you don’t have to wait to do this.  You can start exactly where you are. 

If you are tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, paying $200 month in fees, you can today start investing in people for the long term unto the glory of God.  That investing today will almost certainly involve paying down your debt, eliminating those interest payments so down the road you can invest that money positively for the long run.  But if you have the big picture in mind and you have God’s project in mind while paying down debt, blessed are you.  You’ve started.   God works with you right where you are.  

Can you vacation in London under the rule of investing in humans for the long term unto the glory of God?  I warn you against bristling at that question, thinking it’s my life, stay out of it.  No, you are God’s steward and he’ll demand an account from you.  I’m getting you ready!

Back to the question of London.  First thought: as I said last week, we should think of vacation/ holidays as the word originally denoted: holy days.  Vacations should be days designated for God, intended to grow up into Christ, celebrating what God has done in the gospel, being refreshed in his presence.  You, the investor into the long term, go with God on vacation under the heading of “he leads me beside still waters.”  (Even if those still waters involve a diversion like bungee jumping.)  

So, with holy days/ refreshment in God in mind, you travel to London as a way of refreshment.  You visit London and the English countryside and you’re taking a break from the typical work, you’re relaxing your mind and your body, you’re having fun, hey, you’re also exposing yourself to scenes and ideas that will bear fruit in the long run…but what’s motivating all of this is not something that terminates in yourself…but something that terminates in God.  You are preparing yourself for another round, and hopefully a better round of investing into humans for the long term unto the glory of God.  

What I’m saying is that the thoughts that you’re thinking make all the difference.  That’s why in Jesus’ story of the barn builder we are allowed to overhear his thinking.  What is striking is what is not there.  

When deciding the specifics of how and where to invest in humans for the long term unto the glory of God, we’re not left to our own imagination.  God gives us plenty of instruction.  For instance, he gives us an order of investing:

• Family: First, he tells us to invest into making a family (be fruitful and multiply).  This is one of the first ways we turn away from individualistic barn building and toward others.  And then he says that investing into our family for the long run unto the glory of God is our first financial priority.  If we do not provide for our household we’ve failed very badly.
• Local church, both the processes and the people – We are to provide for ministers (and by extension all that keeps the organization going) and for the needy persons within the local body to whom we’re joined.  See Paul’s instructions about widows in 1 Timothy.  
• Christians generally – Do good unto all people, especially those who are of the household of faith.  
• Neighbors – Love your neighbors as yourself.
• Emergencies – Like the Good Samaritan we’ll come across searing needs that might temporarily explode our plans and priorities.  For the time being, we stop what we’re doing, our long-term investing shrinks to this man in this moment and we go all in with this need.  

I had a minor epiphany this week, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to relay it well.  2 Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.  Paul wrote those words in a section wherein he’s encouraging the Corinthians to be financially generous.  To invest their wealth liberally into people for the long term unto the glory of God. 

Here was the flash of insight from Paul’s speaking of Jesus’ sacrifice in this context: Jesus’ becoming poor so that we might become rich – his investment that entailed the poverty of crucifixion – was on the same continuum upon which we save and spend and invest our money.  Thus, Jesus’ total investment into our long-term success should be echoed in our saving, spending, and investing.  The complete sacrifice of Jesus’ embodied life – which came down to simply his body – should be reflected in our embodied life – which includes our house and mowers and vacation plans.  

I’m coming to see that instead of the church avoiding the topic of money and stewardship, this should be the application at the end of many Christian sermons.

His life was given; all that he had a sacrifice unto the glory of God.  Jesus gave it all, left nothing behind.  

May the Spirit bring us to the same so that none of our saving or spending or investing terminates in ourselves, but every cent of ours is a long-term investment into others for the glory of God.