Allen Jackson - Work and Money - Part 1
I wanna continue a study we’ve been working on for two or three sessions under this general theme of «God’s Plan and God’s Promises and God’s People,» and I believe they’re very related. I believe God has a plan not only for his kingdom in the earth, for his church in the earth, but I believe he has a plan for his people. That the goal in our lives isn’t just to be born again, experience a new birth or conversion so we can have a different kind of eternity. I think the purpose of that new birth into the kingdom is that we can be effective ambassadors for God in our journey through time. Which means he has a plan and a purpose for our lives beyond just eternity.
I think we can imagine that more clearly with the Jewish people with the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, there’s a significant focus on that that God intended to give them a particular piece of property, a promised land right at the end of the Mediterranean. Today we know it as the modern nation of Israel, but he promised it to Abraham and his descendants forever way back in the book of Genesis. And he’s still watching over that promise. And that’s still the inheritance of the Jewish people, but for the larger community of faith, he hasn’t promised us a piece of territory. He didn’t give the Jewish people the land of Israel and those of us with my accent, the southeastern parts of the United States. For the non-Jewish people in the kingdom of God, we have been given the land denoted by his promises.
And Peter, he says it so eloquently that our inheritance is the promises of God. And so God’s provisions for you and me are in his promises. But every promise has to be appropriated. It doesn’t just fall on you. And I think we struggle with this mightily. You know, we adopt a lot of language in Christianity that I think is not helpful and I don’t think we typically do it with an intent of being destructive, but we’ve kind of adopted some platitudes and we missed the point that God has given us a choice. One of the great gifts he’s given to humanity is the ability to choose. He gave you a free will. It distinguishes you from the rest of creation. You’re not an insect that’s driven or an animal that’s just driven by instinct in the same way that the salmon know which river to swim back up when it’s time for them to spawn and die.
God has given us a free will. And the opportunity of that free will is to choose God. And we are amazingly resistant to that proposition. We’re reading through the book of Judges now and when you’re reading about those generations of people, you think, my goodness, they were stubborn people. And then I think, oh, it couldn’t be us. But we are amazingly resistant to choosing God. But in order to appropriate the promises, we have to choose God. In multiple ways, along multiple decision points, on multiple fronts, our entrance into the kingdom of God requires that God has made a complete provision for our participation in his kingdom.
Jesus on the cross won a complete, total, irreversible victory over Satan and his entire kingdom which is very good news, but for it to benefit you or me or any other person, we have to choose. We have to choose Jesus as Lord of our lives. It’s not enough to believe that he existed or that he was a miracle worker or a healer or a religious figure or whatever else. You can believe all of those things and still miss the kingdom of God. You have to choose Jesus as Lord of your life. Well, the same is true with forgiveness. Jesus on the cross provided forgiveness for you and me from all of our sin. But in order for that to accumulate for it to become a part of our experience, we first of all have to forgive those who sin against us. And then we have to repent, which means we have to say, «I was thinking wrong and I behaved wrong».
And if you don’t forgive others and you don’t repent of your sins, Jesus’s atoning work does not bring forgiveness to you. We together so far? So we have to believe the promises, we have to appropriate them in order for the benefit to accrue to us. And Christians, so often we say, «You know, I just want everything God has for me». Well, that’s an incomplete statement. That’d be much like me saying, «You know, I just want everything the gym has for me. I drive by it every day. I just feel healthier. In fact, you know, I not only drive by the gym, now I go and drive, I drove around the health food store three times. Well, actually, I did that while I was eating the doughnuts I bought at the drive-through at the donut shop».
And we have this kind of laissez-faire attitude towards our faith, that God should track us down and shake us and the Bible says that God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. I’m not trying to raise the bar. I’m not trying to get you to run faster and jump higher. What I wanna invite you towards is an imagination that your relationship with God involves your choice and not just the choice you made historically, but the choices you made today. Did you choose to honor the Lord today? How did you give expression to that? How did you communicate that? How did you invest time and energy and focus and all the things that described your day? Or do we relegate God to an occasional interaction or some point in our journey where we think we got most of our God business done?
So we’ve been looking at several different promises and how we might take some steps to appropriate them. We looked at fear and anxiety and worry. And we began on Sunday with something that I wanna continue for another session, looking at the general theme of money, which usually takes the air out of the room, but we’re not distributing commitment cards or launching a campaign. It isn’t really about trying to separate you from your money. I want to invite you to the notion that God has given us some counsel on how to deal with possessions. And that if we will heed his counsel, it will go better for us. God doesn’t need anything I have. The earth and everything in it belongs to him.
I’m on a very temporary assignment here and God entrusted me some small portion of his overall asset base, but I’m not taking it with me beyond time. Somebody else is gonna take my baton in time and take it a bit further and they’re gonna be entrusted with some assets, but what we do with our assets for that little brief period of time has a significant impact on our opportunities in eternity. I know, who knew? But it’s biblical Jesus, there’s more biblical discussion around money than there is about prayer. But it’s just one of those things that we don’t talk about a lot. So in this session we’re gonna talk about work and money, two just very exciting topics. Thank you for your enthusiastic response.
I’ll start in 2 Corinthians 9 because that really is our promise. Says, «Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will reap generously. Each man should give what he’s decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver». And so far it’s just kind of a background. That what you harvest is a reflection of what you sow. If you’re gonna harvest, it’s summertime in Tennessee. If you want vegetables and green beans and new potatoes and tomatoes, you won’t get those if what you planted was alfalfa. There’s a connection between what you plant and what you harvest. And Paul’s writing to the Corinthians and he said, «Remember this, if you sow sparingly, you’re gonna have a small harvest». And the culmination of that is he said, «God loves someone who’s generous, a cheerful giver».
So there’s a baseline here what we wanna cultivate when we think about our time, our attention, our energy, and our possessions is the spirit of generosity. Not natural, not normal. It’s like sharing. Sharing is not normal. We’re selfish by nature and being a generous person is not natural. It would reflect your cooperation with the Spirit of God. But then there’s a promise made to us in verse 8: «God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work».
Wow, that is an amazing promise. If you ask me for one verse that reflects the biblical definition of abundance in your life or mine, that would be the best single verse I know: that God has caused grace to abound to us, all grace. Grace is unearned, unmerited, undeserved. Grace is the favor of God, unhooked from anything that we earned. So because of the God’s grace, he says it’s possible that in all things at all times, we can have all that we need. That’s a blessing.
I wanna just read you three or four verses and then I’m gonna come back and offer you some comments. There’s a theme in all of these verses. You don’t have to be particularly attentive even to identify it. Ecclesiastes 5:10 says, «Whoever loves money never has money enough; and whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income». In Luke chapter 16, Jesus is teaching. And Jesus said, «No servant can serve two masters. Either he’ll hate the one and love the other, or he’ll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money». That’s an absolute statement that Jesus made. Remember, Jesus is the one teaching at this point. He said, «You cannot serve God and money. You’ll serve one or the other. The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus».
Does that strike you as interesting as it does me? The Pharisees, the religious leaders, the most religious amongst them, while Jesus is teaching, they’re sneering at him. Heckling, mocking, openly showing their derision for him. Their lack of respect. They’re not even pretending that they’re going to practice what he’s saying. You understand there’s still people who sneer at Jesus, religious people, influential people, powerful people? And one of the mistakes we make oftentimes is because we want the approval of the wrong group of people when they sneer at Jesus, we will distance ourselves from him. And I wanna encourage you to understand who the Lord of your life is and step as closely to him as you can no matter who sneers. Not easy.
So Jesus said to them, to the Pharisees, «You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight». That’s another statement of fact that you need to build into your little portfolio about what the Scripture tells us about our possessions. Jesus said, what is highly valued amongst men is detestable in God’s sight. Not tolerated, it’s detested. So that we have a valuation system that God looks at and he goes, you know, that’s just foolish. Well, that should have our attention. Because the messaging, all of the things that come to us to orient our lives in a very similar way to people who have little or no knowledge of the kingdom of God, who have little or no interest in pleasing Jesus.
If we are building our lives, if we’re building our asset bases, if we’re imagining our security is aligned identically with people who could care less about the kingdom of God, that I think we are on the wrong path. Look at 1 Timothy 6. Paul’s writing this to a young man he’s mentoring, he said, «We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we’ll be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction». Doesn’t say that wealth is bad. The Bible never says that.
People often misquote this next sentence and they say, «Well, the Bible says that money is the root of all evil». No, it doesn’t say that at all. Look at the next verse. It says, «The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. And some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs».
So there’s a cautionary note and it’s reflected in many perspectives and more than we’ll take up in this session certainly that your attitude towards money has the potential to bring the blessings of God to your life or it can bring tremendous pain to your life. And it’s in our best interests to know the difference. And not having money doesn’t eliminate you from that arena. It isn’t the presence of things or the absence of things that makes you godly or less godly. You can be poor and wicked or rich and wicked. Poor does not make you holy. Amen, Pastor.
Hebrews 13. «Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'» There’s one phrase repeated in each of those four passages. Did you pick it up? In each case it talks about the love of money. Whoever loves money never has enough. The Pharisees, because they loved money, sneered at Jesus’s counsel. They liked their economic plan better than the one Jesus was giving them. Paul wrote to Timothy and he said, «Be careful, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil».
Well, if you understand the root of all kinds of evil, you would want to do everything in your life to eliminate that root. And finally, the author of Hebrews said just to keep your lives free from the love of money. And the antidote is suggested there is contentment. I’ll give you one more verse, then I want to just offer some comments from those passages. James 3 says, «Where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder in every evil practice». You know what envy is, right? You want what somebody else has. You think you have a right to what somebody else has. «Well, I should have that».
Do you understand the degree to which that message is thundered across our culture these days? All the people who don’t pay their fair share what you have a right to? So I just brought you some observations from those passages. The love of money is a problem. Biblically, it’s a problem. You can’t love money and love God. You don’t have to hate money. The Bible doesn’t tell us to do that. But the love of money is a problem. So you wanna guard your heart, you wanna give the Spirit of God permission to help you do a personal inventory. There’s all kinds of evidence. You know, professional athletes sign these crazy contracts. I gave you some of the numbers.
I’m happy for them to make that money, but how many parents start with their children when they’re this tall trying to teach them to hit a ball or to play whatever the sport is, to do whatever is, and as you listen, they say, «Well, you know, one day you’re gonna get that contract». The real question is that the lifestyle you are really, is that the ambition you have for your child? Is that really the highest ambition you have for them? Is that what you wanna plant in their hearts? Strive for this. Rearrange your life, your social calendar, everything you do to succeed… I like sports. I played them a lot once upon a time. I know it’s hard to believe, but we had peach baskets, dinosaurs and all those things, but I didn’t imagine that they held my future.
Our ambition, I hear the parents, you know, «We can sign one of those $100 million», or «You can get a scholarship». The ambition is to put together a skill set and a character that will bring the blessings of God to your life. We have to guard our hearts. The messaging is so profound, so immense, so unrelenting. Secondly, you don’t have to have money to have the love of money. You can have money and be broke. You can. If we got really honest, most of us have been there. You know, we typically think, «Well, the people who love me, you know, people have a money problem, people have lots of it. They got yachts and all this stuff and they love money, but I», no, no, no, no, no. If it wasn’t an active trigger, the politicians wouldn’t use it all the time, telling you, you deserve some of somebody else’s money. We need the help of the Holy Spirit.
Thirdly, I wanna submit to you that you shouldn’t resent people who have more money than you. You shouldn’t. See, I think, for some reason it flourishes, we think, well, they’ve done something inappropriate or they wouldn’t have that much. You know, I don’t know what they did. I’ve never heard it, but it had to be something. 'Cause I worked hard and I did good and I honored God and I went to church six times a week and they get more than I did. I know they’re ungodly. I don’t know how, but I’m gonna keep watching. It’s phenomenal how that grows within us. You know what happens when you hold that kind of resentment and bitterness and hatred? It keeps the blessings of God from your life.
In the same way, unforgiveness will. Celebrate with other people, be grateful for 'em. Tell them you’re thankful. I’ll give you an example that might be easier to help you unpack. How many of you ever heard somebody or somebody said to you that big churches are a problem? I don’t wanna go to a… how many of you said I don’t wanna go to a big church? We’re not gonna throw you out. Come on, more than you, more than that, said it. Two-thirds of the people I meet here for the first time, «I never said, 'I’d never come to a big church.'» And the journals are filled with pastors and professional Christians to tell you why, you know, and big churches are bad.
Let me add with that fact, let me ask you a follow-up question. What do you think the chances are of a pastor who frequently says big churches are bad, what are the chances he has of leading his congregation to grow? Be like slim and none. Because what he’s feeling, the attitude he’s holding would prevent the blessing God might bring a fruitfulness to his life. Does that make sense? Well, if it’s true in a ministry setting, do you think it might be true if you have the wrong attitude about possessions, if you resent people who have some? Or if you love it, you see, if you love money, God can’t bring it to you. He loves you too much to give you something that would destroy you.
So our attitude, we gotta listen to what God has said. You know, it’s like we hide our wallet in the car and we come to church 'cause we think somebody wants it. God doesn’t need what we have. Folks, when we give at church, it’s for our benefit. I mean, I know that’s a little, this is an easier message to do if it’s not in a community that I have served or I’m serving in, but the principles are true. It’s just I’m a little more removed from the equation in those settings. When we give at church, we give because of our need to honor God with the possessions that we have. And there’s a benefit that comes to the community where we live. I’m not denying that or arguing that, but the real benefit is what happens in our heart. Our attitudes towards our stuff has an enormous impact on the promise and the fulfillment of it in our lives.
Number four, envy, covetousness, greed, and discontentment are not the problems of the rich. Like most people I’ve met that have a whole lot of stuff, they’re not really envious. It’s those of us looking at their lives going, «I don’t know what they did, but I should have more of that». You can’t afford it. And most of us aren’t comparing our lives to Jeff Bezos. We just look at our neighbors and they got a bigger television than we’ve got. And it’s summertime and they got a lawn mower and it’s got a bigger deck than the one I’ve got. And it bugs us. Or their kids have labels in their clothes that our kids don’t have in their clothes. Or they’re going to a school and ours aren’t or whatever it may be that happens to be their golf clubs are better than yours or the gun they hunt with is better than the one you hunt with or whatever. And it leaves you envious and covetous and discontented and disoriented and frustrated. And it blocks the blessings of God.
I’ve offered a solution before. It isn’t overly clever, but if you recognize that’s been a battle, I have a solution. Just stand in your front yard and face each of your neighbors, do it individually and say, «I declare you the winner. You have the best snow blower, you have the best lawn mower. Your television is superior to mine. Your kitchen is outfitted with better appliances than mine is outfitted with and your house is more tastefully done. Martha Stewart may be your cousin. I declare you the winner. I’m opting out. I’m gonna be content». That will open your life to the good things from the Lord beyond what you could imagine. Number five, cultivate contentment. It is of great value. It’s biblical. Not complacency. I’m not asking you to be complacent. I’m asking you to be content. There’s a difference.