A significant portion of your life will be spent earning, saving, giving, and spending money.
Money can provide tremendous opportunities and create incredible stress. For something so important, our society has deemed money a topic one should keep to one’s self. It’s impolite to talk about money.
Apparently God disagrees.
Surprisingly, the Bible includes over 2,000 scriptures that refer to money! More than half of Jesus’ parables deal with money or possessions. Frankly put, God is aware that money is an ever-present reality in our lives. And God wants us to have a good relationship with money so that money can become a tool in our lives, not the ruler of our lives.
For the next couple of weeks, we will explore what the Bible teaches us about money. Let’s begin by studying Jesus’ words:
“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.”
-Luke 16:13
The word for money in Greek is mammon. In this time period there was actually a god of money called Mammon. Jesus saw people in his time period that made money into the very god they worshipped. Mammon laid claim on individual’s lives that only God can rightfully make.
Jesus says we have only one master and it is God.
Too often we allow ourselves to be ruled by another master— money.
Notice that Jesus talks about this in the context of service— we cannot servetwo masters.
We were made to serve God.
Conversely, money exists to serve our needs— i.e. we use money to buy what we need.
We get into trouble when we switch this around.
Does it ever feel like you are serving money, instead of the other way around?
Money is inherently neutral—it is not good or bad. Rather, it is one’s relationship to money that can be good or bad. Jesus wants us to have a healthy relationship to money. A healthy relationship recognizes that we do not live for money, but instead we get to use money in this life that we live for God.
By recognizing that we can serve God with our money, then money becomes a tool that can be used for God.
To encourage a healthy relationship with money, begin to imagine how you can use money as a tool for God’s purposes. Here are some examples—
—money as a tool to care for one’s family
—money as a tool to care for the needy and less fortunate
—money as a way to bring joy into your life and the lives of others
—money as an avenue to donate to organizations that do work you deeply treasure
This week we’ve explored the many ways we can use money as a tool for God’s purposes. Next week we will study how much is enough, and what the scriptures teach us about being content.
See you on Sunday!
-Pastor David
