Transformed. Transforming How I See and Use Money. March 12-13, 2016 *********

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1 Transformed Transforming How I See and Use Money March 12-13, 2016 ********* I always heard growing up that it was rude to talk about money. I still feel uncomfortable talking about money sometimes. Many of us in this room right now are starting to feel our anxiety meter go up because you can sense he s going to talk about money. Talking money brings anxiety whether you are thinking about how little you have or even if you are thinking about how much you have. As humans living in the 21 st Ccntury it s hard not to have money on our minds all of the time. Recently, the $1.5 billion Powerball mania swept our country into a frenzy. Someone even spent so much money on the Powerball that they started a Go Fund Me account afterwards to try to recoup all the money they d spent on non-winning tickets. One of the couples who won a third of the 1.5 billion dollar prize kept it a secret for close to a month before they revealed it to any of their family and friends. At the press conference, David alluded to the stress he and his wife had been under since learning they held one of the winning Powerball tickets for January 13 th. They had been experiencing sleepless nights since winning. David lost 10lbs. from the stress of it all. Money causes stress in our lives whether we owe a whole lot or whether we have more than we can ever spend in a lifetime. It may surprise you that Jesus actually talked more about money than he did about heaven or hell. In fact, half of all of the parables that Jesus told were about money. Half of them. In fact, in the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke one out of every six verses is about money and money management. Why? Because money can dominate our lives and money influences our lives either for good or bad. It can be used for great things. It can be used for bad things. Either way, we spend much of our time thinking about it, working for it, earning it, studying it, saving it and investing it all of these different things. If you don t learn to manage your money, it will manage you. This weekend we re going to look at the most misunderstood story of Jesus in the entire Bible. It s a doozy! Let s all turn to Luke 16. The reason why this is a confusing passage is because it appears that Jesus is approving dishonesty. He s not. He just uses a clever crook as the hero of the story. And he s using it for shock value. Let me read you the story. I ll make a couple comments on it and then we ll look at it in depth. Here s the Parable of the Dishonest or Shrewd Manager. Luke 16 Jesus told his disciples, There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer. 3 The manager said to himself, What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I m not strong enough to dig, and I m ashamed to beg 4 I know what I ll do so that when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses. 1

2 5 So he called in each one of his master s debtors. He asked the first, How much do you owe my master? 6 Nine hundred gallons [a] of olive oil, he replied. The manager told him, Here s what I want you to do. Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty. This is going to be between me and you. We re not going to tell this to the boss. Then he asked the second, And how much do you owe? A thousand bushels [b] of wheat, he replied. He told him, Take your bill and make it eight hundred. [He s doing this under the table obviously without permission.] The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. That s a strange story! In the next several verses Jesus gives us a little insight into the meaning of it. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves. What? Am I supposed to buy friends? This is getting even weirder! Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. [He s talking about heaven.] Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, [If you re not taking care of the money I ve given you,] who will trust you with true riches? [Spiritual riches; the real riches of life.] 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else s property, who will give you property of your own? 13 No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. He doesn t say you should not. He says you can t. It s impossible. You cannot serve God and money. As we think about that it s important to note a couple of things. Jesus is not praising the guy s dishonesty. He s praising shrewdness, and we ll get back to that in just a minute. You can learn from anybody if you know the right questions. You don t have to agree with everything a person believes or does to learn from them. Jesus is saying we can learn from all kinds of people. For instance if I have a brain tumor and I m looking for a neurosurgeon, my first question is not, Did your read your Bible this morning? My first question to this brain surgeon is not, Did you go to church last week? My first question is not even, Are you a Christian? Do you believe in God? My question is, Have you ever done this before? Because the guy might be an atheist but if he s a brain surgeon, he s a brain surgeon. That make sense? So it s nonsensical to say that you have to agree with everybody in order to learn from them. This manager in the story is dishonest. You don t want to learn that part from him. But there are some things that he did right, that you need to do with your money. In this series on transformation we ve been talking about the verse in the Bible that says, Don t conform to the world s pattern, [Don t fall into their standard of culture.] But be transformed by the way you think. 2

3 Today we are going to look at a whole new way to think about money. It is counter culture. What God says about money is the exact opposite of everything we ve been taught about money. Jesus has some things to say to all of us about money. The message today is not about giving. It s not a message about tithing. This is a message about how to manage your money well and how to think about money the way God does. Money is one of the greatest sources of worry. It s the number one cause of divorce. It s till debt do us part. Jesus doesn t praise the guy s dishonesty but he does praise his shrewdness. What is shrewdness? To be shrewd means you re smart, you re sharp, you re strategic, and you re resourceful. When you re shrewd you see a problem clearly. You know what needs to be done. Then you figure out how to do it. God wants you to learn how to be biblically shrewd with your money for the rest of your life. God tells us in the Bible that there are three things not to do with our money. 1. DON T WASTE IT. The Bible says don t waste the money that God allows you to have. Luke 16:2 The manager was accused of wasting his master s possessions. If I walk around saying it s my money, and if I want to waste it, then who cares? Then I view money as my possession. Have you ever had a discussion with someone about the government s wasteful spending? People can get pretty riled up. I can t believe that the government would spend my hard earned money on this! Can you believe they spent such and such money on a toilet out in space?! We can get pretty frustrated if we think someone else is wasting our money. Have you ever wondered if God is in heaven saying 40 pairs of shoes really 40 pairs Jesus, the last time I checked we created man and woman with 2 feet right? Octopuses 8 tentacles, spiders have 8 legs, most of the farm animals have 4 legs but the last I checked humans had two feet right? Hmmm! We sometimes forget that our money is given to us by God who supplies our needs. Our money is God s money. When we view money properly then we don t want to waste God s money. There s a big difference. Don t waste it. 2. DON T LOVE IT. The Bible says we are not to love money. Don t love it or live for it. That s what he says in verse 13 No servant can serve two masters. He ll either hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. It s impossible to live with divided allegiance. Have you ever tried to work for two bosses? How did that work out? The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart and God wants your heart. Jesus lays that out in black and white. You ve got to chose what s going to be number one in your life. You can t have two number one things in your life. You can t say my number one goal in life is to make a lot of money. And my number one goal is to love God. You re going to have to decide what s going to be number one. Is God going to be number one in your life or is making a lot of money your number one goal in life? You cannot serve them both. 3. DON T TRUST IT. Don t waste it, don t love it and don t trust money for security. I don t care how much money you ve got, you can lose it. I remember in my early 20 s bragging to my mentor that I had $10,000 in my savings account. His response? Whoopdy do. I knew he could be cranky, but I just thought that was mean. He said, 3

4 James, that money can be gone tomorrow, take it from me, (he was in his 70 s) that money can be gone tomorrow. I walked away from our mentoring session kind of frustrated with him. A couple years later the recession hit, I had to move and couldn t sell my house. He was pretty accurate, it can be gone in a flash. Trust me, you can t put your trust in money. The manager learned this pretty quick in verse 3 he says What am I going to do? I m losing my job. Many of you know what it feels like to lose your job, to be out of work. And all of a sudden you ve got no source of security any more. We need to remember to never put our security in anything that can be taken from us. If you put your security in your appearance, how you look, I hate to tell you this but you re not always going to be as good looking as you are right now. Those looks are going to fade. If you put your security in your health, you can lose your health. If you put your security in your job, you can lose your job. If you put your security in your marriage, you could lose your marriage. If you put your security in a loved one, you can lose a loved one. If you put your security in your bank account, there are a thousand ways to lose your money. If you want to really be secure, the center of your life has to be built around something that can never, never be taken from you. And there s only one thing that you can never lose. That is God s love for you. You can t make God stop loving you. You can try but you will fail, because God s love is unconditional. It s not based on who you are. It s based on who He is. So build your life on God s love for you and that relationship. Don t waste it, don t love it, don t trust in it because you can lose it. Proverbs 23:5 Your money can be gone in a flash, as if it had grown wings and flown away like an eagle. Fly like an eagle! Just fly away like an eagle! People say money talks! It does not! It just walks away quietly. And you have no idea where it went. The United States government is so helpful that they put an eagle on every dollar to remind us that money can fly away like an eagle. So every time you look at a dollar think; I m not keeping this one very long. It s going to be gone like the wind. So, what are some Truths we need to embrace today? 1. Your self worth has no connection to your net worth. Your valuables do not determine your value. So don t think I have a lot so I m worth a lot. No, you re not. You re worth a lot simply because Jesus died for you. God made you, Jesus died for you, the Spirit wants to live in you. That s how much you matter to God. 2. Money shows what I love most. How I spend my money reveals to God and everybody else what I love most. Whatever you love most is what you re going to give the most time to and you re going to give your most money to. If you really want to know what you love most, look at your calendar and look at your 4

5 credit card statement. Because the way you spend your time and your money tells what you love the most. 3. THE BEST USE OF MONEY IS TO USE IT TO HELP GET PEOPLE INTO HEAVEN. The best use of my money is to use it getting people into heaven. This is the problem verse most people don t understand, verse 9 Jesus says I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves [talking about building relationships] so that when it is gone they will welcome you into your eternal dwelling. (He s talking about heaven.) He says just like this dishonest guy made friends that he can count on later, he says you need to use some of your money to make spiritual friends, eternal friends, friends you re going to have forever in heaven who will welcome you when you get to heaven. Does that shock you? What is he not saying here? He s not saying you can buy your way into heaven because you can t. The price has already been paid by Jesus on the cross. He s not saying you can purchase your salvation because you can t. You can t purchase your eternal salvation. It s free. It s a gift. It s by grace. What he s saying is use your money to build relationships that are going to go on and on for eternity as spiritual friendships. Use your affluence for good influence. Jesus says when I use my money to help other people meet Jesus I make friends for eternity and I gain rewards for eternity. Circle the phrase then they will welcome you. Welcome you into eternal dwellings. He s talking about heaven there. One day you re going to die. You ll get to heaven and there s a hundred people there standing at the entrance to heaven clapping and cheering saying, We ve been waiting for you. We re so glad you re here! We re here because you spent some money to tell us the good news. We re your friends for life no, eternity. Because we re in debt to you. If it weren t for the way you used your money we wouldn t have heard how to get to heaven. Are you using any of your money for that kind of thing? Is anybody going to be in heaven because of you and the way you used your money? To sum up the story of the shrewd manager Jesus is simply saying that we need to use our money with the future in view. The manager used his resources to make sure he had another job. Jesus is saying for us to use our resources to invest in eternal things. Jesus understood that money was not eternal, and wanted his followers to have the same view. Jesus wants us to be wise investors. And the shrewdest investment that we can make is for the kingdom that knows no end. Action steps for today. 1. Be strategic with my money I would encourage you to take our Financial Peace University class. Please indicate on your communicator card if you are interested in taking this. This class will transform your financial future significantly. 2. Invest in God s Kingdom Make your money count eternally 5

6 Thousands of people have drawn near to Christ through communion in the 25 years of Crossroads History. You might not know this, but 1 family has donated most of our communion bread for many years. Many of us have experienced significant moments of healing, felt the embrace of God s love and forgiveness while we take communion. This moment that we are about to experience in communion really brings this message today about money full circle. We get to connect with Christ, while partaking in an element that someone has donated in hopes of people drawing near to Christ. Their investment has an eternal return. Let us all walk away this weekend deciding to use our money to invest in the eternal. 6