Flip the Script

Matthew 6:25-34

November 6, 2022 • Mount Pleasant UMC

So let’s come back to the money quiz that you took a couple of weeks ago about what kind of relationship you have with your money. That’s what our friend “Money” was referring to at the end of this morning’s video. Hopefully you remember that, at the end of that quiz, there were four “relationship statuses.” Some of you are “living the dream,” which means you have your finances under control. You are living comfortably and able to save for the future. Another group of you are “going steady,” where you are doing all right but there are still some questions you have about finances. You give some, but you’re not where you want to be. For others, your status is “It’s Complicated,” which means money is a source of stress and conflict for you. You’ve tried to stick to a spending plan, but it seems boring and you often get off course. And finally, some folks are “on the rocks,” which means you spend a lot of time stressed out about money, and you generally have unhealthy, unwise ideas about spending. So when you hear Jesus’ instructions today, you can’t imagine how it’s possible to live life without worry (cf. Stanley, If Money Talked, pgs. 18-21). For each of these statuses, different challenges affect our spending in different ways. There is one question, though, that tests everyone’s relationship with money. Who is the money for? What is its purpose? What should we be using it for?

This morning, we’re going to tackle that question as we continue our series on “If Money Talked.” What do you do with the money you have? Essentially there are five things you do to answer that question. You can spend money, buying things you may or may not need. You can repay debt, with the goal of eventually not owing anyone anything. You can pay taxes, which is a good idea if you want to stay out of jail. You can save money, putting it away for the proverbial “rainy day.” And, finally, you can give it away (Stanley 43). Studies say that most of us do those five things in that order: spend, pay off debt, pay taxes, save a little, and then if there’s anything leftover, we give to a charity or some organization that we like. In other words, we engage in what Andy Stanley calls “me-first living with some leftover giving” (43). Most people in our culture, including most of us, take care of our own wants and needs first, and then if there’s anything leftover, we will give to what we think of as “worthy causes.” It has been said you can tell the state of someone’s heart by examining their checkbook register, though since most of us probably don’t have those anymore, we probably should say you can tell someone’s values by looking at their credit card statement. So if money talked, it would say to us, “My direction reveals your ultimate affection.”

That’s not a new thing. It’s the way we human beings have been wired since the beginning, since we first sinned. The whole essence of the story in the Garden of Eden is humanity making a choice to be me-centered, to do what “I” want to do rather than what is best for me, because always and forever “I” know best. Or I think I do. And into that world, our world, steps a carpenter-turned-religious teacher from Nazareth who has other ideas, a teacher who says things like, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (6:21). And things like, “You cannot serve God and money” (6:24). Jesus came to a people who largely didn’t have a whole lot in terms of material possessions, and he still flipped the script on them. Instead of being me-centered, Jesus called them to become God-centered in every area of their lives, including their financial lives. He said this: “Seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (6:33). Jesus calls his people to God-centered affections, which looks like this: give first, save second, and live on the rest.

We had been married three months when we packed up everything we owned and moved to Wilmore, Kentucky to attend Asbury Seminary, and when I say “everything we owned,” it wasn’t much. It all fit in a small trailer that my dad pulled behind his truck, and it was not too much for our small, two-room apartment in Wilmore. At that point, I was going to school and working very part-time in the Seminary Post Office, while Cathy was working full-time first at an office in Lexington and eventually at Asbury College. We did not have a lot of money coming in, and without even talking about it, somehow we got the idea that we had to take care of ourselves first. In other words, we were living according to the first model, the “me-first” or “me-centered” model. I remember the Sunday our pastor preached on giving, on tithing, and I had a whole lot of reasons why we couldn’t, at this point in our lives, give anything. There were all these “what ifs” going through my mind. What if we needed that money one day? What if my expenses at seminary were more than we planned on? What if we can’t make ends meet? Besides, I told myself, I’m already giving my life to ministry. And that money belongs to me, I worked hard for it. I will just give later, when we’re making more and when all our debts are paid off. And so began the conversation with God—a conversation, that in many ways, continues still today because for all of us it’s an ongoing process to decide what our priorities will be. What belongs to “me” and what belongs to God? Is there a distinction?

It’s ongoing and it’s hard because worry inevitably sneaks in there, and worry is very powerful for us. None of my worries were illegitimate. I made a perfectly good case to myself. And yet, into that conversation came a word from Jesus, the word we read this morning: “Do not worry about your life” (6:25).

Older translations often worded Jesus’ command something like this: “Take no thought for your life,” which is not really what he says. “Take no thought” sounds like you’re making no plans, and that’s not at all what Jesus is forbidding here. He is focused on worrying. For his followers he is banning the sort of anxiety that keeps us up night, turning a problem over and over and over again. It’s the parent who wears out the carpet pacing back and forth, the broker who is constantly checking his portfolio and his balance in case it might have changed in the last five seconds. It’s the person paralyzed by choices to the point that they do nothing. The word Jesus uses has implications of being so distracted by something that you can’t see what is right in front of you. Another teacher in Jesus’ time had described it as a person who has a loaf of bread in his basket and is more concerned about what he will eat tomorrow. That person, the teacher said, is “a man [or woman] of little faith” (cf. Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume One, pgs. 255-256).

So what is it Jesus tells us not to pace the floor about? Throughout this passage, he comes back to three things over and over again. Don’t worry about what you will eat. Don’t worry about what you will drink. Don’t worry about what you will wear. Those are all basic necessities, aren’t they? Food, drink, clothing. Those are things every human being needs. Why does Jesus drill down on these? I think it’s because he knows if we can learn to trust God for the most basic provisions, if we can learn to trust God for the things we have to have, we can learn to trust him for anything. And why shouldn’t we? After all, God gave us life. And if he can give us life, can’t he be trusted for what one scholar calls “lesser things” (Barclay 256)? Jesus uses examples from nature all around him to make his point. God takes care of the birds and the flowers. You don’t see a bird pacing back and forth wondering where his food is going to come from tomorrow because “your heavenly Father feeds them” (6:26). And you are more valuable than the birds. And the flowers? He’s probably pointing to the beautiful flowers that are all over the hillsides in that part of the world—which some of you will get to see when we go there in January (and yes, there’s still time to join me if you would like to—shameless plug). The flowers are beautiful, but they don’t bloom for very long. And in Jesus’ day, when a home needed a little extra heat, they did not have a thermostat to turn up a bit. They had a clay oven and they would go out, grab some dead stalks of flowers and grasses, and burn that in the small oven. Yet even those flowers, Jesus says, which are really not all that useful and aren’t around all that long, are given a beauty by their creator (cf. Barclay 257; 6:30). If God takes care of these things, if he provides for these things, why do we think he won’t take care of the part of creation he called “very good” (Genesis 1:31)—you and me? Worry about anything—including our finances—is essentially distrust of the one who created it all in the first place (cf. Barclay 258), and besides that, it does no good. Jesus puts it this way: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (6:27). Or, we might put it this way: can we, by worrying, add another penny to our bank account?

Now, you need to know that I am preaching to myself here. Maybe no one else needs to hear this, but I do because I am a first-class worrier. If there were academic degrees in worrying, I would have a doctorate. Maybe two. I don’t necessarily pace the carpet; being an introvert, I’m very good at internalizing my worrying. You know, working over conversations in my head, either conversations that haven’t happened yet (what will be said) or conversations that didn’t go well (what I wish I had said). Like, for instance, when you call and tell me you “want to talk about something,” my worry goes into high gear. So when I tell you that in those early days of our marriage, there were “what if” questions floating around in my heart and mind after our pastor’s sermon, they were big, imposing questions. Wake you up in the middle of the night questions. Turning over in my head over and over again questions. Questions I couldn’t answer with a simple balance sheet or an outline on paper. Questions I simply couldn’t answer.

So after nights and days of mentally pacing the floor, and after a lot of prayer, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t escape the Biblical truth our pastor had shared. We only find freedom when we flip the script, when we give to God first, save second, and live on the rest. So that’s what we did. Now, we had very little income, and I doubt that the life of our church was dependent all that much on our ten percent, our tithe. But the real and bigger issue was that I needed to give. I needed to honor God by giving back some of what he had given to me. The next fall, we were (for some reason) asked to speak to new seminary couples about managing your finances while in seminary. I sort of laugh now looking back at that. Why in the world would anyone have asked us? And I honestly don’t remember what I said to those who gathered there that evening, except for one thing. I encouraged or challenged them to give to God first, and I said it will never make sense on paper. But we have learned, even all these years later, when we put God first, when we flip the script, everything else falls into place.

There is a big movement in the church these days and in our culture that if you’re a “true believer,” if you have “real faith,” you will have all these material things. You’ll get lots of stuff. God will give you everything you want if you just believe hard enough. The problem with that theology, those ideas, is that it’s not promised in Scripture. Jesus doesn’t promise that. In fact, he indicates that it’s not his followers who “run after all these things,” it’s pagans. It’s those who don’t believe (6:32). It’s those who have their priorities out of whack. Elsewhere Jesus says we will have trouble (cf. John 16:33) but he also says “your heavenly Father” knows what you need. I’m also pretty sure (though Jesus doesn’t directly say it) God knows what we want, above our needs. He knows all that. And we are told in the psalms that the righteous will not be forsaken (Psalm 37:25), but that’s not a promise of health, wealth and always good things. It’s a promise that God will take care of us, that he will never leave us (cf. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, pg. 167). I’ve experienced that, but our pursuit is not supposed to be of things, stuff, money. Jesus says this: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (6:33). And right after that, he finishes up with these words: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (6:34). When we put God’s kingdom first, the rest falls into place (cf. Keener, Matthew [IVPNTC], pg. 154).

If money talked, it would say to us, “My direction reveals your ultimate affection.” So let’s talk about a plan, a pattern of financial stewardship that works, no matter what your income level is. First, let’s remember the inverted priorities: God first, save second, live on the rest. With those priorities, then, the goal is what is called 10-10-80 stewardship. That means we give ten percent to God, ten percent to savings, and have eighty percent to live on. Biblically, we know that a tithe to God and God’s kingdom is a standard, but some people will say to me, “Well, that was an Old Testament standard. We don’t have to live by that.” And it is true that the tithe, or giving ten percent back to God, is something mandated in the Old Testament, but when Paul (in the New Testament) talks about giving, he assumes the tithe is a starting point. He assumes ten percent is where any good believer would begin. Jesus and Paul were both “good Jews” and would have assumed the tithe as a giving standard, and as I sometimes say, if it was good enough for Jesus, isn’t that where we want to be as well? So then the next objection I hear is that giving to God doesn’t necessarily mean giving to the church, and I suppose you can make that argument on some level, but I’m reminded of a passage from the prophet Malachi, at the end of the Old Testament, where God makes a charge against his people. The charge is this: you are robbing God. And the people ask, “How are we robbing God?” And God responds, “In tithes and offerings…Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse…” (Malachi 3:6-10). They lived, of course, in a purely agricultural economy; you tithed what you harvested. The storehouse was the house of God. Today, we live in a money economy; we tithe what we earn and, from my understanding, we’re still called to bring the whole tithe into the “storehouse,” God’s house. And then God says this: “Test me in this…and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it” (Malachi 3:10). God gives us permission to test him in “this,” in our giving, and that’s the only place in the Bible we’re told we can put God to the test. So that’s a big deal. For our family, we give our tithe, ten percent, to our church, and we give our offerings to other ministries and missionaries above our tithe.

In our family, that choice, especially the choice to do give to God first, sets the direction for the rest of our spending. In fact, honestly, that sets the tone for everything, which is the message this morning. Money would say, “My direction reveals your ultimate affection.” So here’s your homework for this week. Don’t you love getting homework at church every week? Here’s your homework: now that you’ve had a chance to understand your relationship with money, and then to “spy” on your money over the past week, you’re ready to look over your entire financial life and determine what your priorities are. Are they in line with what you really want your financial priorities to be? Next Sunday, money will have one more thing to tell us, and then we will give everyone a chance to make a promise, a pledge, to God through this church for the coming year. We’ll be sharing more about the church’s financial situation and our dreams for the coming year. But I’m telling you this now so that in your prayers this week, you can ask God what your part in the ministry and mission of the church is to be for 2023. That’s your homework—survey your finances and prayerfully consider how what priorities God is calling you to this next year.

God calls us to be givers because that is his heart. That’s who he is. Our God is a giving God. First he gave us life, and then he gave us the hope of eternal life. He gave us his son, Jesus, who came and then gave himself away so we could be in a restored relationship with God. We remember, rehearse and celebrate that every time we gather around the Lord’s table, as we’re going to do in a few moments. In the bread and in the cup we recall how “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” (John 3:16). God so loved…that he gave. And Jesus then gave us the bread and the cup so we would have tangible evidence of his love for us. As we come to the table, may God begin to give you a vision of the direction of his affection toward you, of the way he gives so that we may live. Will you pray with me as we approach the table this morning?