Mastering Money

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, August 27, 2011

This week I heard an interview on NPR with Michael Wardian about his participation in this year's Badwater Ultramarathon. This race begins at Badwater in Death Valley, 282 feet below sea level. It crosses several mountain ranges gaining a cumulative 13,000 feet of elevation. It ends at Whitney Portal, the trailhead for Mt. Whitney. Michael completed the course in 26:22:01.

This year the race was easier than some years. The high temperature was only 115 degrees. Some years it's been as high as 125 degrees.

It's an amazing race. These guys and gals run nonstop for more than 24 hours. How do they do that?

I pass a skate park on my way to church. Sometimes if I hit a red light, I get a minute to watch the kids do the most amazing stuff. Flying in the air, flipping their boards. How do they do that?

I used to work for Voice of Prophecy. The founder of the Voice of Prophecy was HMS Richards Sr. He was an amazing preacher. A truly wise man, deeply revered across the entire church. He was famous for his deep knowledge of the Bible. He read it completely through more than once every year. His knowledge was so thorough, he had basically memorized it. You could read him any verse in the Bible and he could repeat the preceding or succeeding verse. How did he do that?

In every case, the answer is practice.

Of course, it takes more than practice. Runners have to have two legs and working lungs. Skaters also require some basic physical capabilities. Memorizing the Bible requires a working brain.

But millions of people possess the gifts of lungs and legs and brains and still do not develop the ability to run 135 miles across Death Valley or do flips at the skate park or memorize the entire Bible. Doing those things, developing that kind of mastery requires practice.

It's the same in every area of life. Mastery comes from practice. Today, I want to talk about mastering money.

This week Warren Buffet single-handedly reversed a dramatic slide in the value of the stock of Bank of America. The Bank of America has over 2 trillion dollars in assets. It is the largest bank in the United States. And one man, Warren Buffet, was able to change the value of BoA stock. How did he do that? Practice. Mr. Buffet did not start out as a billionaire. He worked and worked, carefully, you could almost say, ploddingly, to build his financial empire. And now, at age 80, he's able to make decisions that affect trillion dollar businesses.

That's the power of practice.

God wants us to master money. Money is a wonderful tool.

We can use money to buy groceries for a Friday night feast.

To purchase lingerie to inspire our husbands.

To support ministers in the Philippines or Bangladesh. (Adopt a Minister supports full time ministers in the Philippines for 135 dollars a month. Check out their web site at http://a-a-m.org/Index.html. Gospel Outreach supports local people in ministry in Bangladesh and other Asian countries. For about 150 dollars a month you can fund a full-time evangelist. Their web site: http://goaim.org)

Money allows us to send help to starving people in Somalia and Ethiopia.

Money is what enables us to cooperate as a congregation in enjoying this building. Together we pay the mortgage and the utility bills. Together we support our schools, Buena Vista Adventist School and Auburn Adventist Academy.

Money is wonderful stuff – when we master it.

Money can also be a severe and oppressive tyrant.

Rent and mortgage payments are due every month. Many of us have credit cards. Some of us are getting phone calls. “Hello, this is ABC collection company. We need you to make a payment.”

Don't you hate calls like that?

If you are already experiencing the blessing of money as a joy maker, I'm happy for you. Keep it up. But if you experience money as a task master, as a tyrant, as a source of pain and fear, then listen up.

When Israel was fresh out of Egypt, God gave them a bunch of rules. Now at first glance this might appear puzzling. They were slaves in Egypt. God rescued them. Gave them freedom and then gave them a bunch of rules. Wasn't just like putting them back in bondage?

You might especially wonder about this when you read the rules about money.

Well, the rules were not exactly about money. They didn't have debit cards or credit cards. They didn't have paper bills. They did have gold and silver coins. Mostly, though, they had cows and sheep. Figs and olives and pomegranates.

God gave them some pretty challenging rules for managing their money.

“A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain form the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord. It is Holy to the Lord.” Leviticus 27:30.

Another rule about money was that the FIRST bit of income belonged to God. “Bring the best of the first fruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.” Exodus 23:19

Isn't this just another form of bondage?

I suppose you could think of it that way, but the actual effect of doing these things was escape from bondage.

First, giving tithe or first fruit was an affirmation that their wealth—the fruit of their fields and orchards and vineyards and groves—was a gift. God had given them the land. They had not created it themselves. They could not have conquered it themselves. It was a gift. Everything received as a gift is sweeter than it is if we think of it as merely what we have earned.

Second, the act of giving the first fruits and tithe was a celebration of wealth. We are so rich we can afford to give ten percent off the top. If you have so much that you can afford to give some away, right off the top, you are obviously rich.

Think of the reverse. If your wages are garnished, what does that say? It says you're poor. You are so poor, the masters of the world don't trust you to be able to pay your bills. It feels terrible. It feels awful.

Tithing affirms my wealth. It helps me feel rich. It helps me act rich.

One of the principal marks of being rich is that I make decisions about how to spend my money.

Tithing is the ultimate mark of wealth. It is a statement to myself that I have enough, I don't have to be careful. I can just give away ten percent without even really thinking about it.

Tithing is not just a “sign of wealth,” it is also a habit that leads to wealth. Tithing is a deliberate decision. No one sends you a bill. You're not going to a phone call from the church treasurer, “Hey, where is your tithe payment?”

The only way tithe happens is you sit down and decide to do it. This is the first great step toward wealth – sitting down and deciding what you are going to do with your money. Paying bills is not a sign of wealth. Paying bills is better than not paying bills – if you have them. But how much better not to have bills!!!! How much better to sit with your money and decide freely how to use it, than to sit with your bills wrestling with the question of how much of which bill you are going to pay!!!!

Did you know that Jesus managed money?

If you're like me you probably think that Jesus didn't have to worry about managing money. He just lived from day to day on miracles and faith. Jesus did ask his disciples to do an experiment of living that way. (See Matthew 10.) But Jesus did not live that way. He and his disciples actually set up a treasury. They kept money on hand to handle their financial needs and to be able to help others. Apparently they kept a large amount of money on hand. When Jesus told the disciples to feed the five thousand, they said, “It would take eight months of wages to feed this crowd. Do you want us to go and spend that much money buying food?” Mark 6:37. When he asked them to feed the four thousand again the disciples discuss the logistics of buying food. They do not protest that they don't have enough money to feed the crowd. The problem is there is no Safeway in the neighborhood where their money could be used to procure food.

Then there is the infamous story of the last supper. Judas gets up from the table and leaves to go betray Jesus. John tells us the rest of the disciples figured Jesus had sent him to buy something for their feast or to go help some poor person. The reason the disciples thought this was that Judas was the treasurer of the group and carried the money bag.

When you have a treasury, you have to manage it. You have to decide how much to spend, how much to keep in the bag. You have to decide who you are going to help. You have to decide what you're going to buy and what you're going to leave in the market.

Jesus did not spend all his money. Jesus saved – not in the religious sense, in the plain, old, boring economic sense. Jesus and his disciples took in more money than they gave away or spent. They kept gold in their bag.

God want us to do the same.

For decades the Adventist Church has taught its members to tithe – to devote ten percent—the FIRST ten percent—of their income to God. We can quote multiple Bible verses in support of this doctrine. Some people, in modern times, have protested. That's an Old Testament rule, they say. We are New Testament Christians, we can give whatever the Spirit moves us to give.

Of course, people are free to give whatever the Spirit moves them to give. But if they look to the explicit teachings of Jesus about giving, the only amount he ever mentioned was 100 percent! So ten percent is hardly a severe standard.

Over the decades the church has experimented with tithing, we have found with almost no exceptions, that people who tithe come out ahead financially. We usually attribute this to the supernatural blessing of God. I don't discount that blessing, but I suspect there is an additional reason why people who practice tithing seem to enjoy their money more than people who do not tithe. I think it has to do with making prior decisions about using money. When we deliberately manage our money, money becomes an instrument of righteousness. It becomes a tool of joy. That's what God wants for us.

Money is a gift. God has given it to us to enrich our lives and to give us a way to enrich the lives of people we love and even the lives of strangers far away. When we manage money wisely, we are acting like God. We are making free decisions about the allocation of resources for the enrichment of the world, for the enhancement of life. We are partnering with God in caring for people and the world.

Going back to my opening illustration. With one possible exception, no one here today could hope to run from Badwater to the Whitney portal this coming November when the temperatures are cooler never mind trying now in the heat of summer. But we could take a step toward increasing our physical prowess. Most of us, if we wanted, could go for a walk this afternoon. We could begin training and next summer we could complete the Tacoma marathon. It would be difficult. It would be a great challenge. We might have to walk it instead of running, but it is something we could. IF we started today, to take a few steps in the right direction.

None of us can imagine single-handedly affecting the value of Bank of America stock with our savings. But all of us could do something this week to begin moving in the direction of mastering our money. We can do something this week that moves us in the direction of becoming masters of our money instead of slaves of our bills. God wants us to be free. Let's do something this week, tomorrow, to experience the freedom and joy that comes from managing our money in cooperation with God.