I feel like it’s a little bit of a soap opera because I have a little bit of to be continued this week from last week. I don’t know if you remember anything about last week or if you’ve blanked it out of your mind, but we talked about fitness and being fit before God physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And I mentioned last week how I was so tired on my sermon prep day in the day before that I picked the wrong week.
So I planned this week’s sermon last week. So I remember thinking, man, this is going to be a breeze this week. I don’t even have to prepare a sermon.
I’m good to go. I get up on Tuesday and start thinking, okay, here, I’m going to work ahead, do all this stuff. And I realized, oh, yeah, I’m going to be out of town all week on spring break.
So I had to prepare for next Sunday last week. So, you know, it’s kind of like God knew what was going on, even though I didn’t know what was going on at the time. That that freedom came about to prepare for next Sunday.
And that’s where this morning I was thinking about the hymns for next week. But I do have the sermon for this week. So that is the soap opera that continues.
And it reminds me, I always had a church member that used to say, it’s better to be lucky than good. And I felt that this week. But I felt more that it’s better to have God than it is to go it on your own.
Because God was there when my brain was not at full capacity. And that is a great way to go. And I think, you know, there were a lot of pastors, and especially in seminary, they try to work this into you, that some pastors get up and they want it to be extemporaneous because they say, I’m just going to let the Holy Spirit work.
And for some reason, when that happens, the Holy Spirit repeats himself a lot. But, you know, I always think God is there during the sermon planning. And I was reminded of that this week.
So, I mean, I think it seems reasonable to think the Holy Spirit can lead in sermon planning and not just while the pastor is standing up here. Doesn’t that make sense? Well, there’s a lot of things we plan in our life. And one thing you might argue with me the least about is that we need to make some financial plans in our life.
We need to have a financial foundation. When I was young in my ministry years, I was still a recovering CPA. And I went to a Holy Spirit convention and I met a guy and we were talking.
He was really just a few years younger than me. And he said, I live by the Spirit. I don’t worry about if I have money because I know God sends me money no matter what.
It always just seems to work out like that. And the accountant in me was going, what in the world is this guy talking about? How can that be the case? But there is an extent where we live our lives by faith. But faith can come in our planning as well.
Even more important probably than planning out sermons in advance, I guess, is planning financially. What is your financial foundation? And what does that have to do at all with us talking about holiness? I mean, pastors get in trouble, or they put it on themselves too, where people say, why would you talk about money? This is church. Don’t do that.
We’re here to talk about our souls, our spirituality, money. That’s like you start talking about that. And, you know, you can sit up here and say you need to stop sinning and repent.
But as soon as you bring up money, people are going, hey, you’re getting personal here. Jesus, believe it or not, has a lot to say about money. Matthew 25, 14 through 30 is the parable of the tenants, which you’re probably familiar with.
But Jesus puts so much in here for us to learn. Will you stand for the gospel as you are able? For it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.
Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them. And he who made five talents and he made five talents more.
So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now, after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them.
He who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, Master, you delivered me five talents. Here, I have made five talents more. His master said to him, well done, good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.
And he said he also who had two talents came forward saying, Master, you delivered me two talents. Here, I have made two more. His master said, well done, good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.
He also who had received one talent came forward saying, Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. So I was afraid and I went and hid your talents in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.
But his master answered him, you wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers.
And at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has ten talents. For to everyone who has more will be given, and he will have an abundance.
But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The word of God. For the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Amen. You may be seated. I’m going to start off with a really easy question that you can just pop off the answer.
Are you ready? What is your view of God? Yes. That’s good. What is your view of God? Now, believe it or not, financially, you can tell a lot about your view of God.
And we’re going to get into more and more of how the holiness aspect of finances is so important in our Christian walk. It’s not a separate thing. It’s not just whatever we want whenever we want it.
It’s all about God. You see, what we learn about our view of God comes when in a lot of times what we focus on when we look at the parable of talents, some people will read that and they go, oh, well, those are talents. Those are your gifts and your graces.
You know, if God gives you gifts, then you’re supposed to use them and not hide them. That’s true. But talents are a form of money.
In fact, they are a lot of money. I mean, we’re talking with the man who had ten talents, that’s probably a lifetime for the regular labor of work. You know, let’s just put it this way.
What if God, don’t change your prayer request after this, but what if God gave you a million bucks? Would you take it and hide it or would you use it to make the world a better place for the kingdom of God? What would you do with that? That’s what Jesus is saying. And, of course, it’s tied to the fact that when the master goes away and he’s gone for a long time and he leaves the servants there to take care of things for him, who’s the master? Who’s coming back again? Jesus is coming back again and he’s left something with each one of us. Each one of us has been blessed with something and what are we to do with that? We focus on that.
How many of you would love to hear the words when you enter those gates? Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will give you much.
Welcome into the joy of your master. Oh, I want to hear those words so bad. I want to hear them.
Oh, my ears almost burn thinking about that. Now there’s a verse in here that is so key to understanding our view of God that we usually don’t focus on and it is actually Matthew 25, verse 24 and 25a. The servant said, Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed.
Read this with me. So I was afraid and I went and hid your talent. This man came before his master.
And when he says you reap where you didn’t sow, you gather where you didn’t scatter. That’s saying as a farmer, you’ve just stolen from your neighbors. This man had no trust for the master.
Now if we take what we want and we hide it from God, we hide it and we don’t use it for kingdom purposes, we’re saying the same thing. It is our natural response as human beings. It’s just the way it is.
If you go to the garden and you think of Adam and Eve, and they ate the fruit they weren’t supposed to eat. They were supposed to eat their vegetables and they skipped them. And then what did they do when they heard God coming? They hid.
They hid. They were afraid and they hid. Now if we live our lives out of fear of God, that means we don’t know God.
1 John 4, 17 says there is no fear in love because perfect love drives out fear. Those who fear do not know God. Do we know God as fearful? I mean we should fear God because God is big and powerful.
But we should love God more. When we love God, we love serving God. You can just tell when the servant came and said, Master, you gave me 10 but look, here’s 10 more plus yours.
He was so excited to present that to God to show him how he had worked for kingdom purposes. And the last guy came trembling in fear going, I’ll give you back what you gave me but that’s all you’re going to get because I don’t trust you. Now obviously in our hearts and with our voices we’re not going to pray and say, God, I don’t trust you so I’m going to take care of my money myself.
But every financial planning book I’ve read says the same thing. That, you know, some of this is old. Some of this dates how long I’ve been in the ministry.
But it says all you’ve got to do to know where you put your trust in is to open your checkbook. Now with the two checks I might write every month or two, I don’t know if that’s going to show it. But just your bank account, your credit card, whatever it might be.
That shows where you are in your faith. You know, someone might not even have to say, so how is your soul? They might say, let me audit your bank account. Oh man, that’s too personal.
But that shows where we are and what we want to spend most of our money on and how we want to work through that shows our view of God. Now let’s just walk through this. What can be done with money? There are four things that I thought of.
Oh wait, back up. Oh no, it’s too late. Go ahead.
I was going to have them call them out. Receive, spend, give, save. Receive, that’s any way you receive money.
That’s how you earn money. That’s if you’re gifted money. That’s the reception of money.
Spending is what we think of most with money, and that’s what we do with that money. Giving is, I’m thinking mostly of giving it back to God. There’s other gifts we might make within our family and with other people, but giving back to God.
And then saving. Is there anything else you can do with money that I didn’t put on here? That’s saving. Well, there was a man named John.
Not this John. And he was struggling, and he said, God, you’ve got to help me. I need so much more.
I’ve got to pay off all this stuff. And he said, help me win the lottery. And that he prayed, and he prayed, and he prayed, and he did not win the lottery.
He went back to God and said, God, you didn’t help me win the lottery. I’m about ready to lose my family. Please help me.
If I do this, I can make it happen. And he prayed, and he prayed, and he prayed, and he didn’t win the lottery. Are you surprised about that? And then, finally, he lost everything.
And he went to God, and he said, I prayed, and I prayed that you would help me win the lottery, but you did not do that. Why wouldn’t you do that for me? And God said, you didn’t even buy a lottery ticket. Now, there’s a lot of theological implications I could share with you about the lottery and why God wouldn’t encourage someone to buy a lottery ticket anyway.
Not the least of which is going into Quick Trip or someplace and seeing so many people buying those tickets and knowing that is their investment plan. That is their savings plan. That is their retirement plan.
It feeds off the poor. So how you invest, how you save, that shows where your heart is if you care about who God is. Each of these ways, how do they glorify God? How you receive it, how you earn it, how you spend it, how you save it, and how you give it.
Now, what has money to do with holiness? What has money to do with holiness? All motivation and action regarding money is for kingdom purposes. The question is, whose kingdom? Heaven or hell? Heaven or earth? Heaven or our fleshly purposes? There’s a kingdom there. Which kingdom is it? How do we show our faith and which kingdom do we prop up? Now, thinking of what it has to do with holiness, get.tithe.ly has some stats that show us a lot about how handling money is at the core of the holiness of life.
Bible verses on money and possessions. 16 out of 38 of Jesus’ parables deal with money and possessions. Jesus knew how important money was to everybody.
So he talked about money and possessions. Nearly 25% of Jesus’ words in the New Testament deal with biblical stewardship. One out of 10 verses in the Gospels deal with money.
One out of 10, 10%. And there are more than 2,000 scriptures on tithing in the Bible. Money, possessions, which is twice as much as verses on faith and prayer combined.
So you can spin all those and say, well, you know, they meant this or they’re just trying to do this so people understand it. But if you don’t spin it and just take Jesus at his words, what we do with what we have, how we earn it, it’s all so important in our lives. But here’s the game changer.
Stewardship versus ownership. Psalm 24, 1, the earth is the Lord’s. And let’s read this together because I just love this verse.
The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all those who dwell in it. The earth is the Lord’s, the fullness thereof. That means everything in heaven and on earth belongs to.
What technically belongs to us? Nothing. And all who dwell within it. What about the person you care about most in the world? Whose are they? They’re the Lord’s too.
The earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof. Stewardship, how we look at our finances, we can build a foundation that is for the kingdom of God. When we start looking at as we are stewards in the parable, Jesus had, they called him servants, but they were stewards.
They knew they were taking care of their master’s money. We need to know that what we do is take care of our master’s money. How are we using it to glorify God? Holiness of life, regarding our financial foundation, faithful stewards make plans to receive, give, spend, and save, exercising integrity.
Integrity is almost as bad of a word as capital T Truth in the world today. Integrity says how we earn that money. What was the term they used to use? Ill-gotten gain.
Don’t want no ill-gotten gain in your life. How are you earning it? Now, there are several verses in the Bible, especially in Ephesians and Colossians, where Paul is talking about the family unit, and then he’s talking about servants, which in our day, just think of them like employees, that say don’t just serve for eye candy. So when your master can see you working, when your boss sees you working, you’re working hard.
And then they turn away, and it’s solitaire time. I think that one talent servant played too much solitaire when the master went away. How do you exercise integrity? If you know what you are doing, how can you make what you are doing for the purposes of God and not for the purposes of even what Paul talks about, being someone who you have a boss that is a pain.
Has anybody ever had a boss that was difficult? Call out names. No, don’t do that. Dave, Dave, you have any? Dana’s Dave’s boss.
Dave always gives a thumbs up for Dana. You have a boss who is mean and who is arrogant, and they might be distrustful, but how do you work for God’s glory even in that situation, even in a miserable situation? How do you say, okay, I’m not doing it for them. I’m doing it for God.
What I do is for God. Now, you look at me and you go, well, that’s easy for you because you work for the church and all this, but how with a secular job do you do it for God? How do you bless others? I mean, if you are in some sort of a helping field, if you help people with health or with something else, it’s easy to say I’m doing that for God. But what about every job? What about business? What about a business that needs profit? How do I do my job for God and how do I do everything I do so the others around me not only know I’m earning my money with integrity, but I am doing it because of my faith in Jesus Christ.
Some are tougher. Some expressing your faith can get you in a lot of trouble, but we can all act with integrity. Glorifying God versus me, the world, the flesh, Satan.
Some of this is how we earn. Some of it is how we save. Are we conscious of what we’re investing in and what those companies are and what they do? The Global Methodist Church, in part of their being conscious of it, decided that the pension plan is going to be changing in July for the Global Methodist Church away from what we used in the United Methodist Church.
Part of the reason was to use investments that more align with a biblical theology. The other part is just having more trust and working through that. So how do we do that with our investments and how do we act faithfully with our calling and purpose? How we earn it, how we spend it, how we give it, how we save it.
Now, what we need to think about with giving is the Bible calls us to give our… The Bible says if there’s anything left at the end of the month after you spent all your money, then you can write a check for God. Wait, no, wait. The American society says that.
The Bible says firstfruits. How do we give of our firstfruits? If we’re stewards, then we’re excited to give of our firstfruits. If we are stewards of God, kingdom builders, then we put that first.
If we even do a budget, it comes first. It’s the first check we write. It’s the first thing that goes out.
It’s the first debit of the month. How we help the church, how we help people who are in need, how we bless others. Our financial foundation is a very key component to living a holy life, to trusting in God, to stepping out in faith, to giving God what is God’s, and to building a foundation that will last and bring us more joy than if we just live for ourselves.
Let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you so much for Jesus Christ. Thank you for the teaching of Jesus that teaches us to be wise stewards.
Thank you for the teaching of the Bible that reminds us that ownership is for you, and we are your stewards. Whatever we have, whatever we do, however we earn, it’s for your glory. It’s for kingdom purposes.
We just ask that what we build on our foundation would be solid, and that we would have a financial foundation that glorifies you in everything we do. How we earn it, how we spend it, how we give it, how we save it, it’s all yours. Help us not to react with so much fear financially, but react with faith, and act like we love you and we trust in you, because you are so amazing.