Managing Your Money

SERMON: 2016-05-29--lk1616--managing-your-money SOURCE DURATION: 00:50:30.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The material begins by setting up a Scripture reading (Luke 16) and continues through detailed theological exposition, pastoral application, and concluding challenges, all of which constitute the main sermon content. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- we're going to read together the first 13 verses of Luke chapter 16 and then talk about how that relates to your life and my life so here's the word of the Lord Jesus told his disciples there was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions so we 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 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 I know what I will do so that when I lose my job here people will welcome me into their house us so we called in each one of his masters debtors he asked the first how much did do you owe my master 800 gallons of olive oil he replied the manager told him take your bill sit down quickly and make it 400 then he asked the second and how much do you owe a thousand bushels of wheat he replied he told him take your bill and make it 800 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 I tell you use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it is gone you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings however can be trusted with very little could also be trusted with much and however is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much so if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth who will trust you with true riches and if you have not been trustworthy with somebody else's property who will give you property of your own no servant can serve two masters either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other you cannot serve both God and money notice how money is capitalized there it's a personification because it has a power for good or for ill depending on how it's managed or how it's used well at first glance this story of the shrewd manager that we have just read together seems like an odd story to be coming from the lips of Jesus wouldn't you agree because the story makes it sound as if Jesus is giving credit for deceit and for dishonesty and that of course can never be the case reading the story that way is missing the major point the Jesus is making in this parable because his major point is this worldly people are often much wiser than God's people in making sure that their future is looked after that's what Jesus means listen again to verses 8 & 9 the master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly for the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light I tell you use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it is gone you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings that's a difficult verse I'll talk about that in just a moment but what Jesus is really saying here is that just as worldly people shrewd manager is planning for the future because he has lost his job he doesn't want to go doing manual labor he's too weak for that and he doesn't want to go begging because he's too proud for that he's looking ahead and he is saying how will I safeguard my future then he has a brilliant thought he said I'm gonna go to all my masters debtors and have them reduce their bill so that when I lose my job I can go live with them brilliant idea I thought and Jesus commends him not because he is deceitful or dishonest but he is using it as an example that worldly people are sometimes smarter than God's people in terms of preparing for the future and what Jesus is telling us to do is to use the treasures of the here and now to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven I believe that's what he means in verse nine I tell you use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it is gone you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings I believe that means you take the goods of this earth you spend them in doing good to others and in obeying God and in doing so you are laying up treasures in heaven where you will receive an eternal reward and just to show you that I believe that that's the correct interpretation that's precisely what Paul does towards the end of his life when he is writing these words to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 16 the verse is 17 18 and 19 Paul says these words commend those or command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope and wealth which is so uncertain but to put their hope in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment command them to do good to be rich in good deeds and to be generous and willing to share now listen to verse 19 in this way they will lay up treasures for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life indeed see what's at stake here is God's future plan for his people for all eternity if I were to ask you this morning what is it that God is after in your life that in my life what would you say well that's a lot of answers to that obviously but the bottom line is this God is preparing you and me to steward his eternal glory in a new heaven and a new earth forever and ever and ever even as Adam and Eve were created originally to steward the earth and all of its riches on behalf of God so you and I are destined in Christ to reign with him in a new creation we're going to sit on thrones whatever that looks like we're going to exercise God's authority over an eternal creation it's going to last forever can't even begin to get our heads around what that looks like and the writers of the Bible had difficulty communicating that Paul was caught up into heaven got a glimpse of that said he wasn't allowed to speak about it and whenever the Bible talks about the new creation it talks in terms of the present creation pushed to its ultimate limit streets that are paved with gold foundations of the city that are adorned with precious stones in the book of Revelation the gates are made of pearl and whatever the full meaning of that may be what God is trying to communicate is that which eye has not yet seen ear has not yet heard and the heart of man has not yet begun to imagine what God has prepared for those who love him but here's the key how much we can be entrusted with of eternal riches in the new creation is determined by how faithful you and I have proven to be to the treasures to the gifts of time talent and particularly treasure that God has entrusted to us in the here and now and that's why Jesus goes on in this parable to draw this conclusion here's what he says whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much and however is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much so if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth who will trust you with true riches and if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property who will give you property of your own makes good sense does it not those of you that run businesses how many of you would knowingly hire somebody that you know is not trustworthy sticks his or her hand in your till and takes advantage of your wealth mismanages it on your on their own behalf you'd be an absolute fool because a manager is expected to be trustworthy of the riches that have been entrusted to that person the biblical principle is that God thinks the same way eternal riches which are beyond our comprehension in this present world because it takes revelation to even get a glimpse of it God is not going to entrusted to you and to me in glory if we have not been found faithful in the here and now being found faithful means that we steward the resources that God gives us so that we put his interests ahead of our own that is a major theme that runs throughout scripture he that is faithful or she over little can be trusted with much and so that in mind want to focus in a little bit more specifically this morning with you in how we manage particularly our finances last week we sort of took you know the bird's-eye global view of time talent and treasure this morning I want to focus more specifically on our treasures money with a capital M is incredibly powerful it's the means of exchange of commerce in this present world and used properly it can be a tremendous blessing and a great credit to God used improperly it can be an infinite source of greed be the motivation for any amount of evil and do an incredible amount of damage the love of money the Bible says not money the love of money is the root of all evil and there isn't a one of us here if we are truly truthful with ourselves who haven't struggled in the tension of how can I manage my money and how can I do it responsibly before God and still have enough to meet my own needs and a lot of us will sway back and forth we'll have moments of great generosity and then we will have moments of great selfishness moments of great pride and moments perhaps of great humility so what I want to do in the time that remains is give you a simple plan for managing money that is advocated probably by most Christian money managers and for many of you here this will be old hat you know all of this you have to a large degree practiced it God has blessed you in it and with it and you've reaped the harvest of security and safety that has come from it but I also know that increasingly there are generations of people who have not been raised knowing how to manage finances we have multitudes of people in North American society today who live on the edge of financial ruin every day and for whom the lack of finances or the way that it's being or not being used in their family causes an incredible amount of daily tension between husbands and wives parents and children and all the way around so let's talk a little bit then about how we can manage a money responsibly in the diagram that I'm going to use for this in the course of this message is this if we can put that up and we will begin just by looking at the center of this circle earnings now earnings are obviously the money in most cases so sometimes goods depending on the bartering that you may or may not do that you bring home and generally speaking the Bible requires that every able-bodied man and or woman in as much as emotionally and other ways they are capable is to provide their own living the Bible says if you don't work you don't eat that doesn't mean that there aren't the poor that need to be looked after but God expects us to take care of ourselves and those who are entrusted to us now our income really can only come from two or three different places sometimes it comes as in this story because we're working for somebody else and we receive pay some of us work for ourselves we are independent contractors let's say and we run our own business and that becomes the source of our wealth still another source of wealth is what's given to us perhaps by way of inheritance if you're lucky enough to have had rich forebears increasingly harder to come by or government subsidy or support regardless of where your wealth comes from there are three very important things that we need to remember if we're going to be good stewards of that which God has entrusted to us and the first is that we need to have a budget if we can put that back up a budget is simply a plan that determines where your money is coming from and where your money is going most people in North America have never budgeted their money so for that reason they don't know where it's coming from and they surely don't know where it's going and one of the advantage of budgeting even if you do it just for a short season you keep track of what your income is and you keep track of where your money goes and it is amazing sometimes where your money goes and you have no clue I know somebody who went in his younger years I got his first-time job made three thousand dollars that summer at the end of the summer it was all gone nothing to show for it so a budget is simply trying to get on top of what that looks like if we look at this picture for a moment here's sort of a sample from the credit counseling society of what budgeting guidelines could look like for the cost of living you have housing transportation food debt repayment and all of that sort of stuff and if you've never budgeted you can go if you'd like to my money coach dot CA write that down my money coach dot CA for some very sophisticated software that will enable you to keep track of your money I'm not saying that you got to do this all the time but it is a very eye-opening experience if you have never done it to see where the money is actually going and and we have people here who can help you in this journey our deacons our benevolence team would be more than happy to sit down with you and talk with you about your financial situation now here's the second thing we ought to take note of and that is watch your emotional spending interestingly enough there was a little piece of the paper just this past Tuesday that I clipped out and it says it's time to face facts if you're an emotional spender and this is a little story about a woman by the name of Ashley Ashley spends when she's stressed when she's exhausted when she's suffering a little dip in her self-esteem she spends when she's happy and she spends what she when she's blue Ashley is an emotional spender are you too if you should dollars when you're in an emotional trough it's time to figure out what's triggering your spending everyone enjoys the buzz of a new acquisition but if you're letting that buzz drive you to do things that will hurt you in the long run you're the dog being wagged by your tail Jesus talks about the fact that you will always have the poor with you if you're driven by emotional spending it doesn't matter what anybody teaches you it'll get out of hand because as Dave Ram David Ramsey who is as many of you know runs financial peace University which is one of the most recognized financial courses in North America today he likes to make the observation that getting tracking your money is 20% knowledge but it's 80% discipline so budget emotional spending and accountability most of us will not have what it takes to get on top of this by ourselves I was surprised to hear that a guy like Bill Hybels at Willow Creek Church certainly top-notch financial manager meets with a personal financial manager every seven days not because he's so rich but because he is so determined to be a good steward of what God has provided for him so all right it starts with our earnings you know what the average Canadian earning according to stats can is I couldn't believe it eighty thousand dollars I said to myself where are these people where are these people but that's what it says now this area is not as economically advantaged as other areas of the country and it's more like in the neighborhood of sixty nine thousand dollars but still a lot of money and a huge responsibility that all of us have whether it's five thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand that we are responsible of before the Lord so alright let's put up the next chart here regardless of what your earnings are I've learned a long time ago doesn't matter how much money you make it's how much you spend there's a lot of people that make a lot more money than you and I some of the deepest indebted people in this country make wages that go through the roof and I know lots of people whose income is very modest and they're able not only to control their finances but they stay on top of that why because they've learned how to manage it now what most people do and this is this is what comes naturally and this is why what scripture has to say is so counterintuitive what most of us do is we take the earnings that we have and we take off our living expenses and we go through this cycle counterclockwise so we begin with living expenses we see what's left over for savings or investments we may put away a little bit and an emergency fund and God gets the rest isn't that true that's how most people live and that's how most churchgoers live you and I both know what the problem is with that don't we by the time you get around to God he gets nothing you've heard the story have you know what about the man who was raising two calves one for God and one for himself and then one calf died and his wife said oh that is too bad we've we've lost a significant source of our income and he said no it's God's calf that died not ours you know that's how it goes right so it's very important to understand that if we want to live by biblical wisdom instead of human nature human nature says I earn my money I work for it it's mine to do with it whatever I want and if you talk about it too long I'm gonna get really irritated with you that's wrong thinking because who gives you a job who gives you the strength to get up in the morning and go to your job and who enables you to bring home the bacon but the breath of God within you who sustains here so what God wants us to do is begin oh let me just back up for a minute here this is really interesting chart tonight don't want to take a lot of time to explain this but this is the household debt to income ratio in the g7 countries this is how much people are indebted over against their income this is in the g7 countries notice not to our credit Canada is on the bottom as of this past year our indebtedness and this would include mortgages and consumer spending is a dollar seventy five for every dollar we earn you get that a dollar seventy five we owe for every dollar we make more than any other g7 country does not bode well for us and as recently as 1990 it was 90 cents that we owed over against the dollar that we made go back a few decades earlier and it's 60 cents per dollar so you can see where as a country we're heading giving the fiscal the way that we handle finances both as a society and I might add as a country but I won't get into the politics of that so the tendency is to start with living expenses scripture says we ought to be starting with God God does not want your leftovers he doesn't want my leftovers it's an insult to him to be given the leftovers he wants us to begin by placing him first with the first fruits Dave talked about that last week shared a little bit of his own journey with you in that regard and scripture is so very plain in regards to that Proverbs 3 9 & 10 if we can put that up honor the Lord with your wealth with the first fruits of all your crops then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will bring over with new wine it's the one promise in scripture and I'll read you that verse in just a moment where God invites us to put him to the test by putting him first now why is God so insistent on the first fruits Dave talked last week about getting his paycheck the first thing that he does is he writes a check for the church as his return to God for what God has enabled him to earn that's the first fruits and the reason this matters to God is two reasons I believe number one it demonstrates faith in God the recognition that everything that we have comes from God he's the one who enables me to make wealth as they told Israel back in the book of Deuteronomy and secondly because it enables God's purposes to carry on in the world God is building a kingdom he is building as we have seen in the past a temple a dwelling place he wants to bring people to himself he wants to grow people up in Christ he wants to equip us to live in an eternal inheritance and he wants us to be co-workers with him because we share with him in that joy the Bible says more about money than it does about hell it says more in the teachings of Jesus it says just about as much in the Gospels about money as it does about faith which ought to tell you how important the handling of our resources is before the face of God and if you're interested in taking a look at a good overview of scripture passages as it relates to finances if you go to our church website you will see this banner and if you go to marinathichurch.com we have put a link up to a document that says what does scripture say about money it's a PDF you can download it it looks like this it's got seven or eight pages and it just lists Bible verse after Bible verse after Bible verse giving us a really good overview about what the Bible says about finances the biblical norm is the tithe which is ten percent not everybody can muster that certainly not for starters but we can all grow in the grace and in the knowledge of what we entrust to God here is Malachi chapter 3 verse 10 a verse that we all need to memorize bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house test me in this as the Lord Almighty and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it the only place that I know of in all of the Bible where we are invited to actually test God and so if your faith is like really really tiny that God will replenish your reserves if you give them away for God and for his kingdom then make a little bargain with him and say okay Lord this is what I've got faith for it's not very much I only make five dollars a week and and I'm gonna give you fifty cents of that because see the tendency is to think well this matters to people who have a lot of money but it doesn't matter because my money isn't very much and it's not gonna make much difference anyway in the overall view of things that's not the point the point is God is wanting to teach us faith he is wanting to teach us generosity remember from last week the guy that buried his talent got into a lot of trouble precisely with that kind of reasoning God does not make allowances for the fact that you only have the one talent even the one talent has to be stewarded with his interests in mind does that make sense just because you're poor as a church mouse doesn't give you the right to be selfish with what you do with your resources any more than the millionaire who can't can't just go spending any which wild old way that he wants to because we're all accountable to God so it starts with God then and this comes as a surprise to a lot of people if you go back to the chart the way to follow this is clockwise the next thing to worry about is to establish what's known as an emergency fund an emergency fund is what you can fall back on for those unexpected expenses the air conditioner if you have one that blows up on you the car that needs repairs the hole in the roof that needs to be patched up David Ramsey I mentioned him earlier he recommends that as soon as you have placed your tithe before the Lord you start working towards saving up for an emergency fund and he says that emergency fund should reach at least a thousand dollars so that you're not caught scrambling most people in North America are within two hundred dollars of a financial crisis did you know that that means if they need $300 car repairs they don't have the money for it they have to go scurrying around to try to get it eventually he says the smart thing to do is to try to build up an emergency fund that will cover three to six months of your expenses but that can take a lot of time to get there and that's not a big issue whatever you do he says start by putting something aside to build up an emergency fund once you have established your emergency fund then he says you go and work on your debt you know the average consumer debt in Canada is today apart from mortgage $27,000 that's a lot of moolah and if you've ever been in debt then you know that getting out of debt is easier said than done and the Bible says that the debtor is a slave to the lender and most people that know a lot more about finances than I do will tell you to do everything you can to avoid personal consumer debt now this is different from buying a house this is different from using debt to leverage your business there are you know legitimate ways of expanding our influence but consumer debt things that we're buying that we cannot really afford our weight around our necks and will keep us scurrying Ramsey solution is to pay off the lowest debt first when you've paid off the lowest debt you take the money that went to that lowest debt and you add it on to your next debt payment and you snowball that way until you're out of debt in as much as that is possible wise words of counsel not easily done takes as I said earlier 20% of knowledge but 80% of discipline beyond that then we can start talking about savings the average Canadian manages to save some words in the neighborhood of three percent annually that's better than not saving anything at all because most people in fact do not 26 percent of North Americans feel they're paying off their debt is their highest financial priority most of them will not make it in their lifetime savings a money that you lay aside for a rainy day and to allow you to make wise choices and to give you financial flexibility as the years go by now I have to tell you that for many years of my own life I had a very ambivalent attitude towards saving money we've always tried to save money but I've always felt more than it's Ted guilty about saving money partly because what am I doing sitting and money when it can be used for the purposes of God's kingdom and what about living by faith and what about trusting God to provide us give us our daily bread says Jesus in the Lord's Prayer and then I've begun to discover that while we can save money for all the wrong reasons to provide security and comfort and and you know all the kinds of things that keep us from having to depend on God in faith it can also give us a flexibility and a security so that when it's yielded to God we have the resources that are necessary to do what needs to be done and I have found this verse in the book of Proverbs a very helpful in this regard ants are creatures of little strength yet they store up their food in the summer answer creatures of little strength yet they store up their food in the summer not the first time in the book of Proverbs that we are commanded to consult the end maybe you remember the other verse go to the end thou sluggard consider her ways and be wise you know and it goes on that way so part of the built-in wisdom of nature is that wildlife stores up food for a difficult season you see that also in the story of Joseph in Egypt where they have you know the seven rich years followed by the seven lean years and as we are yielded to the spirit and pay attention to what he is calling us to it is legitimate to take of our resources and lay them up for such a rainy day as may be coming in the future now most financial managers will encourage you to start saving in your 20s and the recommendation is that in your 20s you'll want to be aiming for 10% savings in your 30s you'll want to be aiming for 20% savings and in your 40s you want to be aiming for 30% savings now that may be way out of our league and for many of us that will be and we don't need to be living in bondage to other people's suggestions but it helps to know what the recommended guidelines are what really matters is that we squirrel away some of the resources that God is entrusted to us so that we can have a measure of safety in the future that's not to say it takes the place of faith it takes the place of its wisdom to try to be responsible with what God gives us as long as we're following the sequence of going around the circle all right we come back then to living expenses because we got to make our living and if you look at what the Canadians folks spend their $80,000 at you discover that they spend all of that and more annually and you can go to statscan you can look it all up and it'll tell you exactly how much money is being spent by Canadians by province by household by individuals in all of that sort of stuff that's why we've had these big conversations in the government about the long senses versus the short senses if you have followed that process in the news it's amazing how much data people squirrel away about the way that you and I live we all know that when it's there it gets spent to control spending takes great discipline did you know that people who use credit cards and most of us do on average even if they pay the credit card off every month which is what we do at our house if we can tend to spend more than people who do not have credit cards simply because it is there why do you think banks are so anxious to give you credit cards or banks are so anxious to give you loans it's often been said a bank will give you an umbrella when the sun is shining and then when it starts to rain they take it away and if you've ever been there you know exactly what that means because when you most need them they most want your loan back so managing living expenses is an art and there are many many ways to save money did you know that the average Canadian household will spend five thousand between five thousand and eight thousand dollars a year on grocery groceries and they will spend about twenty three hundred in addition to that on going out to eat in restaurants adds up as do many things anyway not to belabor that if you go back again to our website there's another document posted there 331 ways to save you money and you would be amazed that the engine ingenuity of a lot of people in terms of saving money my wife is a great coupon clipper she goes to stores I have to tell you this story they actually have paid her they have paid her on one occasion I think it was to buy orange juice and you can ask her how that went it had to do with senior discounts and coupons and whatever else but they paid her and I thought now that is brilliant money management and if you need help knowing how to keep your grocery bills down you just talked to my wife because I don't think there's anybody in this congregation who can do it better and I say that to her credit when I end with this at the end of the day there are four mindsets that people have towards money and how to steward it and there's summarized in this chart there is the self-absorbed owner he says or she I have full authority over my stuff it's all mine I can do with it what I want and don't you dare critique me criticize me or challenge me because my money is my private business second class is the obligated owner he also says a hundred percent is mine I feel I have full authority over my stuff but I feel obligated to give something this is typically your secular person you'll hear them talk about returning to society what society has first given them and so they they will make donations to charity because they recognize we're all part of community together and we have an obligation one to another but the decision is mine to make it's my money and you better put up a plaque for me in your organization when I have donated to you because if you don't recognize me I may not give to you in the future that's a little cynical but not far from the truth all right then you have the obedient owner and the obedient owner takes seriously what God's Word says about tithing he says 90% is mine God gets 10% and I will obey what God says I should do with my stuff and so I'm giving back to God the 10% that he wants from me but the rest is still mine to do with as I please then there is the love inspired Stuart he or she is the one who recognizes everything that I have is a gift from God everything that I have I am responsible to steward it and I'm going to be accountable to God on the day of judgment think of this if we're going to be held accountable Jesus says for every idle word we have spoken in the course of our lives can you imagine what it's like to be held accountable for the way that we have squandered or used our resources and so this person says I have given God total authority over his stuff and when I make my tithe or when I give to the kingdom the work of the kingdom when I put money into my emergency fund or when I make my investments or my savings how I do my living I do it all under the authority of Scripture being led by the Spirit of God and I want to be a good steward of that which has been entrusted to me because in that final day I want to hear the words well done good and faithful servant you have been faithful over little I will put you over much do you see how critical this whole issue is in terms of walking out our lives before God and here's my challenge to each one of us this morning and that includes me as well as you if we can put that chart up just one more time please first of all try to identify which of those four quadrants represents your life are you a self-absorbed owner are you an obligated owner are you an obedient owner are you a love inspired steward can you identify where you are in those quadrants and chances are you'll be more than one on different occasions but basically can you try to figure out where you find yourself then secondly would you ask yourself the question and would you ask the Lord the question how can I move from here to here to here with a view of becoming more and more like this how can I grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus where I end up sharing the generosity of God and knowing that all I am and all that has been given to me is God's gift to me so that he can be glorified by having conformed me to the [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:50:21.600; remove through 00:50:30.000] image of Jesus [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:50:30.000; resume after this marked segment]