This morning we are continuing our series about the challenge of how God would want us to use our resources called "Money Matters." Last week Ruth Treadway, one of our interpreters for the hearing impaired, asked me about my title for the series. She asked, "Do you mean money is an issue or ‘money is significant?’" I said, "Both!" to which she said, "Thanks a lot!" The truth is money is an issue in our life because it is so significant or important. So as we begin today we begin with the truth that money is an issue that takes a significant portion of our life’s focus and energy. Many of us in this room right now who live in comfortable homes, and who drive nice cars, and who eat in good restaurants, and who sometimes wear designer clothes, are not doing as well financially as we may appear to be on the outside. All of us want to give the impression to everybody else that we’re financial whizzes; that we’re number crunchers; that we’ve got it all figured out when it comes to our finances; and yet, who of us hasn’t sat down at a table with our checkbook, spread sheet, pencils, calculator and a cup of coffee and started looking at our financial picture and instead of feeling like we’re crunching numbers, we feel like the numbers are crunching us?

We live in the richest country in the history of the world and, yet, financial freedom seems to be this elusive carrot that just dangles out in front of us and many of us never seem to reach it. So why is it, in the richest country in the history of the world, so few of us ever experience what we would consider to be financial freedom? I believe that one of the reasons we fail to experience financial freedom is because we have believed what I am calling "Money Myths." A money myth is something that is clearly not true yet we believe it as if it were. There are three that we are going to talk about today. The first myth is: "All I need is just a little bit more!" The second is: "It will all work out somehow!" The third myth is: "I’ve got plenty of time." I’m sure there are others but those are the ones we want to address today.

To help us get a biblical response to these myths we’re going to look at what Jesus had to say about our management and responsibility to use our resources in a God honoring manner. The verses read earlier come at the end of one of the most unusual of Jesus parables. It’s called the parable of the unjust or corrupt manager, which teaches that the resources God gives us are to be used wisely and generously. Jesus follows this story with some clear words of instruction about our stewardship of our resources.

When I use the word "stewardship," what comes to your mind? Essentially, it implies being responsible for something we have been given. What you may not understand is that the Bible teaches and Jesus especially teaches us that when it comes to our lives and particularly our resources that God is the owner of it all and we are the managers or stewards of what He gives us. If that is true, then the implications of this truth are that, one, He can take whatever he wants whenever he wants it; two, every spending decision is a spiritual decision and, three, we can’t fake our stewardship because all we have to do is look at our checkbook to prove if we are using God’s resources wisely.

So what is stewardship? Stewardship, then, is the use of God-given resources for the accomplishment of God-given goals. That is the principle that underlies what Jesus teaches in this passage and if we don’t get this, we will continue to believe the myths about money and never find financial freedom. Let’s take a look then at the myths about money and compare them with the truths about stewardship that Jesus taught.

The first myth I want us to talk about is "All I need is just a little bit more!" (Luke 16, 10, Hebrews 13:5). There are very few of us who have never said that. We have all come to a place in our lives where we have run out of money before we have run out of month and we say, "If I only had more money then I wouldn’t have these problems." Yet the truth that Jesus teaches in verse 10 is that if I am not content with what I already have, then more will not satisfy me either!

Jesus is teaching in this verse that faithfulness, whether it is money or whatever, isn’t an accident. Faithfulness comes out of who we really are so how we manage small things will be reflected in our management of large things. So if there is a dysfunctional pattern with something small then there will as well be a dysfunctional pattern with something big. Therefore, if I haven’t been faithful with the resources God has already given me, why do I think I will be better off with more? Yet we foolishly believe the myth that if we have more money then we can solve our financial problems. Yet God is saying, "I’ve given you more than enough already and you have been unfaithful with that. Why should I give you more?"

What happens when we believe the myth that having more money solves our problems? Most of the time what happens is instead of finding a way to actually have more money; we go into consumer debt, trying to have more things. The way we get into trouble with consumer debt is primarily through credit cards. Did you know that Visa never sent me a bill for a credit card payment until I had one? I remember the day I received our first credit card. I opened that envelope and held that little plastic card and had that feeling of "I have arrived!" Instead, I should have realized I had just opened the door to the financial black hole for far too many of my generation.

My generation has used credit cards as a shortcut to solve the problem of not being content with what we have. Hebrews 13:5 says, "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." God’s word instructs us over and over that we are to be content with what he gives us. The truth is that if we fail to be content, more money won’t make a difference. That’s why you can pay off your credit card debt as many times as you want but if you don’t deal with the contentment issue you will get right back where you were, if not worse! Every spending decision is a spiritual decision because it is our testimony, either positively or negatively, as to our trust that what God gives us is enough! Our spending verifies our ability or inability to be content! So the first money myth is: All I need is a little bit more!" We have to ask ourselves: "If I am not content with what I already have, how will more solve my problems?"

The second myth about money is: "It will all work out somehow!" (Luke 16:11-2, Proverbs 21:5). The Bible teaches just the opposite. The Bible teaches you will never just drift into financial freedom. You will never just wake up one morning and say, "Goodness gracious, all my bills are paid. All my debt is gone. I have savings in the bank. I’m socking money away for the future. I’m generously giving to causes that are important to the heart of God. Everything is fine on the financial front!" You will never just drift into that. It will never "just work out." The truth that Jesus teaches in verses 11-12 to counter this myth is "If I am not managing what I have, God can’t give me what I really need."

In verses 11-12, Jesus reveals more to us about what it means to be a steward of God’s resources. In verse 11 he implies that trustworthiness or faithfulness, or we might say accountability, is a key factor in being a steward. In other words, "Can I be trusted to use responsibly what I have been given?" Then in verse 12 he stresses that what we have is not ours to start with; it belongs to someone else and that someone else is ultimately God. What he is teaching is that part of being trustworthy or accountable is the wise management of our resources God gives to us. Why is wise management important? Because our ability or inability to be wise in the management of resources allows or prevents God from giving us what Jesus calls "the true riches of heaven."

I know it is hard for us to understand but God has wealth waiting for us that will never be tabulated on a net worth statement! That wealth—that spiritual wealth—in this life and the next is released to us based on our accountability in our management of our material resources. That’s why we say again: Every spending decision is a spiritual decision! Every time I run my debit card through the scanner I am saying something to God about my management ability.

If I am struggling with my management ability, then I need a plan because when it comes to money it will not all work out somehow. A good plan is what is called the 10-10-80 Plan. The Bible says, "

Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty." (Prov.21:5) The 10-10-80 Plan is very simple in its strategy but takes time and energy to accomplish. The first 10 in the plan is to make an advance decision to honor God with the first 10% of your income. I believe that this means the 10% of my gross income. Someone will say, "My income is pretty gross," but I mean 10% of whatever your check says before stuff comes out of it. I’ll talk more about this next week, but Kathy and I do this because we believe this is honors God, is what the Bible teaches and is the reason for God’s consistent provision for our life. We have made plenty of financial mistakes in our life but tithing 10% of our income has been a constant principle in our life.

The next part of the 10-10-80 Plan is after you have honored God with the first 10% of your income, you take the next 10% and put it into a freedom fund or savings account. Ideally, you put it where you are not so tempted to use it. Did you know that Americans have the lowest national savings rate since the Great Depression? We are spending all we make and more than we make. Do you realize that 78 million Americans are turning 60 this year and that less than 2% of those will be financially independent when they turn 65! 2%!

So how can you save 10%? Well, again it comes with an advanced decision. One of the best tools that technology gives us is the ability to have a set amount withdrawn from our checking account each month. If you have someone else to do this for you, you are not as tempted to use the money. You say, "That won’t work!" Then I ask you, "Is your plan working to get you in better financial shape?" Try it and you will be amazed at what will happen over time.

The last part of the 10-10-80 Plan is the 80% After you have made the advance decision to honor God with 10%, save 10% then you chose to pay everybody else with the 80% that’s left—your taxes, debts, mortgage, food, clothes, utilities. You learn to live on 80%. Some of you are saying right now that you can’t do this, yet I know you can. There are two reasons I know you can. First of all, there was a time where 80% of your income right now was 100% of your income. That dollar amount was 100% of your income and you still had a roof over your head, you still had food to eat, and you still had clothes to wear. I know you can do it because you’ve lived on this amount of money before, most of you. Secondly, I’m confident you can do it because God promise that you can. You see, the real test of advanced decision-making comes down to whether or not we really trust God.

Do we really trust him that he will honor this plan of advanced decision-making, if we follow it? Will you abandon the old "it will all work out somehow" myth and say I’m going to make the advanced decision to follow the 10-10-80 Plan? You say, "Well, if I gave that a shot, what could I expect? Let me give you a fairly conservative example. Let’s say you have a total household income right now of around $60,000. That’s fairly average these days, according to USA Today, and for the next 20years you never got any pay raises at all. You just made $60,000 for the next 20 years. What could happen at the end of 20 years if you were practicing the 10-10-80 Plan? At the end of 20 years you would have given $120,000 to causes that are close to the heart of God and at the end of 20 years you would have developed a little freedom fund of $343,000. That is the power of making advanced decisions regarding your resources! When will you stop believing, "It will all work out"? God wants to give you what you really need but it is up to you to make the advance decision to manage your resources wisely.

Now here is the last money myth I want us to talk about today: "I’ve got plenty of time!" (Luke 16:13, Eccl. 6:12). So many times we just put off the things we need to do financially and we think, "I’ve got all the time in the world to get my financial picture together." You don’t have all the time in the world. The reality is, as Ecclesiastes 6:12 says, "In the few days of our empty lives, who knows how our days can best be spent? And who can tell what will happen in the future after we are gone?" The answer is, of course, only God knows! So if we don’t know what is coming for us in the future, then the challenge is that I need to make decisions now in order to be a good steward of my resources. The truth that counters the myth is: "If I am not serving God with what I already have, then what am I waiting for?"

In verse 13 Jesus states a very basic conclusion about who really has control of our life: God or money. He says that a slave couldn’t serve two masters. Now it was common for a slave to be owned by two masters. Jesus’ point was that a slave will never be able to be fully faithful or devoted to either one. The application for the disciples, and for us, is that because we can’t have a dual allegiance equally to both God and money, we have to decide who has our ultimate allegiance. It is either God or our resources and it can’t be both. If this is true, and if there is a struggle going on inside of you, then know you don’t have all the time in the world to make the decision!

If there is one thing I would want to tell those of you who are in your early twenties and thirties, it is this: You don’t have plenty of time, all the time in the world, to make wise decisions about your resources. I can’t say this to you strongly enough to start now making the choice and decision to serve God with what you have. Most people, though, don’t make this decision early in life because they imagine they have all the time in the world. Do you know that 80% of people will work 20, 30, 40 years and retire with less than $250 in savings? The reason we need to plan for the time when we may choose to no longer work are to protect against the unexpected that may come, put myself in a position so I don’t depend on Social Security and to put away what I can if my life plans change. None of those things will happen if you don’t make a decision now because you don’t have all the time in the world.

Walter Woodrick gives this excellent illustration: "My flight instructor, Joe Romack, trained me to be a private pilot. He said time and time again, ‘The runway behind you and the air above you won’t do you any good.’ He said this because when you’re in trouble in an airplane, you want to see a lot of runway in front of you so that you can slow down and you want a lot of altitude below you so that you can have time to glide to a safe landing spot. Once you give up the runway or altitude, you’ll never get it back if your engine is failing. Similarly, the years behind you in which you could have saved for retirement but didn’t (for whatever reason) will do you no good. Subsequently, your lifestyle in retirement will reflect that shortfall in such a way that everyone will be able to see it." (Finances, Family…and Faith, p. 49) The only way you can prevent regret over your resources is to make the decision now to honor God with them because you don’t have plenty of time to get it right. Every day you delay you put off financial freedom just a little bit longer and sooner or later you run out of runway!

Friends, sooner or later you have to make some defining decisions about your financial future. Nobody ever just drifts into this stuff. You have to make a decision that recognizes: I don’t need just a little bit more, I need to be a better manager of what which God has already entrusted. You need to make a decision that says, "I can’t just throw up my hands and say it’s all going to work out somehow." I’ve got to make some advanced decisions that follow the wisdom of God’s word. A plan like the 10-10-80 Plan that makes some advanced decisions that lead to financial freedom. And I’ve got to make a decision that acknowledges I don’t have plenty of time. My days are numbered and I have to start right now. I have to make a defining decision to reach financial freedom.

That moment can be today. It’s the day you stopped believing the myths and you believed the truth and begin the journey into truly being free by honoring God with your resources. We know that money matters and what we do with it matters to God!

(Portions of this message were adapted from "Money Myths" by Gene Appel and are used with permission.)

Sunday, February 5, 2006

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org