How our need for daily bread can transform us spiritually.
It’s all God’s money. Many Christians would nod their head in agreement with that statement, but when it’s time to open the wallet, it’s as if we have completely forgotten. Suddenly it’s our money and we try desperately to get or keep as much as possible.
My passion for this series of studies is to transform the way we think about money as Christians. Money is the currency of life that can disproportionately control our minds and distract us from God. But the answer is not to somehow stop thinking about money. We don’t need to feel guilty when money comes to mind, as if such thoughts are to be avoided like lust or hate or vanity. We don’t need to think about money less; we need to think about money differently.
We need to think about money the way God thinks about money. An adjusted view of money and material possessions is part of the renewing of the mind that God intends for us as we grow spiritually (Romans 12:2). Financial decisions can actually be one of the most effective means of drawing close to God and glorifying Him. What other means is there that so effectively requires that we become dependent on God and evaluate our motives than our finances?
Jesus’ model prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) seems to include all of the core elements of our relationship to our heavenly Father. His prayer did not only consist of lofty issues like worship, a coming kingdom and God’s will. Jesus urged us to relate to our heavenly Father by becoming reliant on Him for daily bread. Just as earthly children naturally stay close to their parents because they need food, we can also draw close to God as our Father by acknowledging that we are financially dependent on Him.
The bottom line is that we are not owners of anything material; we are stewards. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can be released from the tyrannies of both money worries and money ambitions. God’s desire for us financially is that we relax in the reality of His ownership.
This series is not about getting more, saving more or even giving more money. It’s about a different way to think about money. If we absorb and adopt God’s view we are in for a major adjustment of our mindset – and a major relief. God’s message to us about money is (drum roll please)…that it’s not our money; it’s His!
Part 1 – Biblical Financial Stewardship
Financial advice comes from everywhere. At the bookstore in the mall we can find plenty of books telling us how to earn more or how to invest or save better. We also get abundant advice from those who tell us how to spend our money. It’s called advertising. Or the pressure to spend comes from what our peers have. And if we are involved in the religious world of churches and ministry organizations we also hear a plethora of voices telling us where we should give our money.
But the most persuasive financial advice we get is the voice in our own head. Somewhere in the process of growing up we develop our own private financial philosophy. Our personal values are shaped by parents perhaps, but also learned by experience. Our financial mistakes made life unpleasant or maybe we experienced financial windfalls or had doting benefactors. But each experience marked our thinking. Altogether that brought us to what we now believe and value about money and material possessions.
Unfortunately there’s a universal flaw usually lurking in our well tuned and often defended ideas. The flaw is that our ideas about money usually boil down to “what I think is best for me.” Selfishness hides in every financial decision we make. I take a certain job because I think it’s the best for me in my situation. I buy what I buy because I want to enjoy it. I refrain from buying other things because it leaves me more money to do what I value more or gives me more security later. Even the money I give away is usually selfishly motivated. Giving either makes me either feel good or look good or a combination of both plus a tax benefit.
Could it be that our view of money is all about me? If there is another way to live, it will mean another way to think.
Before Larry Burkett became a leading voice in the Christian world on the subject of money and material things, he was a Christian businessman who happened to lead a Bible study. One night he stated at the study that he had found over 100 verses about money. Someone responded by arguing that God was not that interested in the subject of our money. So Larry dug into the Bible and came back armed with over 700 verses highlighted about money in the Bible and started to organize them. Crown Financial Ministries now says that there are actually about 2,350 verses on finances and possessions in the Bible. That is more verses – more material – than all 13 letters in the New Testament that Paul wrote! God obviously cares about our view of possessions to instruct us that much about it.
Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). He is saying that what we do with our money and our possessions reveals our real priorities. It’s that simple. So what we study in these pages is not secular or non-spiritual. God is talking to us about a spiritual thermometer – a way to measure what is really going on in our heart with God.
A good place to begin a study of the subject of money and material things is Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." We learn here as the Bible opens that God owns everything because He created everything
David wrote, (Psalms 24:1-2) “The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; {2} for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters." If God made it, He owns it.
A few years ago I made a decorative mailbox for our house using leftover cedar siding from our house renovation. I owned the materials. Then I designed it with a lower box for the newspaper and a sloped roof and walls enclosing the metal mailbox. It even has a hook at the back for a hanging plant (OK, I’m proud of it!). I designed it, built it and placed it on my property. I obviously own it, because creation establishes ownership.
God made the whole earth so it’s all his. He then put man in it and gave Adam the first job – to rule over the animals and to tend the garden. As their salary Adam and Eve could eat of anything in the garden – except one tree of course.
Like Adam and Eve, we were also created by God. We have been given food by God. We have been given a place to live by God. We belong to God along with everything we think is ours. It’s all God’s stuff!
It was a great garden residence that God gave Adam and Eve. The garden even had gold and other valuables (Genesis 2:10-12). But anything they “had” really must not have been theirs. We know that because when they sinned, they were driven from the garden and didn’t take anything with them (Genesis 3:24).
They lived in God’s garden and enjoyed God’s food gifts and everything else, but it was all God’s. Because of sin, they lost access to it all.
If we have ever lost our job, gone bankrupt, watched our portfolio shrink, had something repossessed, or ever been forced to down-size or sell off, we should have learned that everything belongs to God. He creates wealth and anything else He gives us to use, but none of it is really our possession. If it can be taken away, it’s not ours.
If we don’t learn it by life experiences, there is something we should learn from every funeral. We don’t “own” anything because we don’t take it with us.
Solomon, the wisest man ever, said, "Naked a man comes from his mother's womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand." (Ecclesiastes 5:15). The apostle Paul concurred, "For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it." (1 Timothy 6:7). Job, at his lowest point worshipfully agreed, saying, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." (Job 1:21)
God didn’t stutter about how temporary material things are. We only have them for a little while.
If you have ever gone into a Neiman Marcus department store, you quickly notice you are in upscale territory. My wife and I have ambled through their stores in Dallas and Chicago. It was free entertainment because we didn’t buy the $27,000 alligator handbag.
Let’s say that someone was given a one-hour shopping spree at Neiman Marcus. They can have everything they can carry from the store into their car in one hour. Sounds like fun, right? But now consider this disturbing thought. What if in the exertion and excitement of running frantically for an hour the person suffered a heart attack and died with their car filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise? They “owned” it alright – but for only a few moments. It was in their car, but when they died, they left it.
That is basically a fast forward metaphor of real life. That’s God’s perspective on finances. No matter what we gain materially, it is short lived. Whether it’s a $27,000 handbag from Neiman Marcus or if it’s the 15 year old car we drive to work, it’s all staying here. It’s all borrowed.
The heart attack or some form of death is coming. That means I need to emotionally pry my fingers off what I thought I owned. And with that in view, we must conclude that we are not owners. We are stewards.
Stewardship is the most basic of all biblical concepts about material things. So what is a steward? Very simply, stewards manage the property of others.
Joseph is a prime example of a steward as Genesis records. “Potiphar put him [Joseph] in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. {5} From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned…So he left in Joseph's care everything he had; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate…” (Genesis 39:4-6a.)
Joseph didn’t own anything in Egypt at this point. He was a slave of Potiphar. But that didn’t keep Potiphar from entrusting to him all that he owned. Joseph probably bought all the food for the household of this important man. He probably managed his fields and work crews. He made sure the house was repaired. He seemingly even did the books, because a few verses later (Genesis 39:9) it is clear that he was in charge of everything except Potiphar’s wife.
As a manager, surely Joseph was able to eat the finest foods and wear the best clothes himself. Stewards often can enjoy the things they manage. It’s a perk, like the free luxury box seats some employees can use to entertain corporate customers.
Joseph gives us a model of what it means financially to be a steward of God’s things materially. We manage what belongs to others. Stewards are much like bank tellers or portfolio managers. They handle or control a lot of money, but they better not start thinking of it as their own.
God has clear instructions for stewards. "Now it is required that those who have been given a trust (literally, stewards) must prove faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). The Greek term “steward” here includes a form of the word, house. It describes a household manager in the ancient Greek world who handled the finances for the owner. Managers are accountable to owners for how they use their finances or material possessions.
In 1989 a family in West Palm Beach Florida gave permission to the film crew of the TV show B. L. Stryker to use their front lawn as a set for a dramatic car crash scene. But while their front yard was being blown up, the owner of the house called from New York demanding to know what was going on. It turns out the family who gave permission were renters, not owners. And now the owner was very upset and was holding everyone accountable for what they did to His property.
Owners will hold managers accountable! And God will hold us accountable for anything He has entrusted to us. There is seriousness to having things!
Now back to Joseph. We know that Joseph was falsely accused and was thrown into jail unfairly. That doesn’t sound fair for someone who was a faithful steward does it. However, at the end of the story, where is Joseph? He is a steward again – in a big way! Joseph became the prime minister of Egypt, in charge of the palace, in charge of everything and everyone except Pharaoh himself. And Joseph evidently could even use Pharaoh’s signet ring any way he chose (Genesis 41:40-42)!
Why did this happen? God made it happen because Joseph was a faithful steward.
So we learn two principles from Joseph about the way God views stewardship. 1) Stewards manage the property of others. 2) Stewards who are faithful receive greater privileges.
Managing a little leads to managing a lot. Do you agree? Look at what Jesus said: (Luke 16:10) "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much."
What is Jesus talking about? Was He promising to make us richer financially if we are faithful stewards of our money, as some in the prosperity movement teach? No He isn’t. Although I imagine that the apostle Paul was faithful with any money he handled, he certainly wasn’t wealthy. In fact, he was often in complete poverty – and content with that, in fact (Philippians 4:10-11).
So if the promise of financial wealth is not what Jesus is teaching, what is He teaching? He is teaching the surprising truth that God uses our stewardship financially to determine how much He can trust us with spiritually.
Look at how Jesus explains it. "So if we have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth [money, material things], who will trust we with true riches? [spiritual things] {12} And if we have not been trustworthy with someone else's property [money], who will give we property of our own?” (Luke 16:11-12)
What did Jesus mean by “property of our own?” It’s eternal things! Jesus is saying that God is testing our financial stewardship to determine who He can trust us with spiritual and ministry privileges that last forever. Our management of money affects the eternal impact we will have. That is the “property” we can keep. It’s eternal!
Jesus never promised us worldly wealth here on earth, but He does say that the way we manage whatever amount of money or worldly possessions we have is really a spiritual test. And God is grading that test. How much we have is not an indication of our spirituality; how we manage what we have is an indication of our spirituality.
Some believers will be tested on their stewardship with a six-figure income. It’s a test one which God may give them a grade of A, B C, D or F. Other believers will be tested with subsistence level living and receive the same variety of grades.
Stewardship testing starts early and lasts throughout life. Grade school children are tested when they get an allowance. High school students with a part-time job are being tested. Our management of money continues through our working life and retirement. God is looking for people he can trust with real eternal things – and He uses our management of entrusted money and possessions in that evaluation.
So every financial decision is a spiritual decision. Stewardship means a whole different way of thinking.
What does God want me to do with this paycheck? That’s the real question, because it’s really God’s paycheck. Our budget is His budget. How does God want me to allocate what He has given me? How does God want me to use this house? It’s his house. How should I use extra money? How much should I save, invest, spend or give away? It’s all His. How should I use it? Should I buy this car, this piece of furniture or even this book or candy bar? The size of the purchase isn’t the issue. What matters is that it’s all God’s money and I must decide how He wants me to use it.
The point is that stewards think different than owners. Here are four specific areas about which stewards think differently than those who think they own possessions. The remaining chapters will explore these key areas of stewardship.
I can be content with what I have if I accept that God picked it out for me (Philippians 4:12, 18). If I resent what others have, or demean what I have, I’m not a faithful steward.
Sometimes we complain about our material things by calling them “junk.” But if God owns everything, then what we call “junk” is actually His junk. He gave it to us. Can God trust us to appreciate our 15-year old car, generic food and second hand clothing? It’s really the same issue for the poor as the very wealthy. Gratitude is an attitude stewardship issue. There is always an upgrade. (Remember Neiman Marcus.)
Stewardship means we are peace with the fact that I’m not someone else. I’m me and God lovingly has given me the skills and the job and the money I need for right now. God assigns everything in life. It’s really submission to God when we are content with our job, our income and all our material things.
Understanding that we just manage what God chooses to give us also sets the foundation of another key financial issue for a Christian:
God asks for a “tithe” so we can express that He owns it all and that we trust Him to provide our needs (Malachi 3:10-11). Only when we come to grips with the fact that we are stewards, not owners, does giving come willingly.
I know of companies with Christian owners who tithe from their profits. If you or I worked in the business office of that company and were asked to write the tithing checks for the owner, it really wouldn’t bother us to do it. After all, it’s not our money. We are just doing what the boss asked us to do. Plus, it really doesn’t affect my paycheck anyhow. I know that the boss is also going to pay me.
If I really believe that God is the owner and I am a steward of my money, then that’s how I should feel about my giving also. He determines my flow of income and what I should be “paid.” I only have to be faithful to allocate it the way He wants. And if He wants a 10th or any other percentage, that’s not a problem. He’s the owner.
Giving God a percentage is the foundational way we express that we accept the fact that we stewards and He’s the owner. While we sacrifice emotionally – letting go of ownership – at the same time we enter a new emotional freedom called trust. We can rest knowing that God will supply the rest that we need.
Thinking like managers instead of owners also enables us to really enjoy what God gives us materially.
God allows stewards to have many good things to enjoy. I don’t have to “bless” myself. Paul told wealthy Christians to not “put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” (1 Timothy 6:17).
Frankly, almost everyone reading this is rich in this present world by global standards and by the standards of living Paul was acquainted with as he wrote. And it’s good to know that it is not wrong to enjoy what we have if we live as true stewards.
Sometimes we might think that if we do God’s will we are taking a vow of poverty. While living very frugally might be God’s will for some, God also gives each person different kinds of material blessings. Sometimes when my wife and I have been the tightest financially, God has blessed us with high quality bargains that upgraded something in our house or gave us a special vacation at almost no cost.
Thinking like stewards does not mean we give up good things. It means that we give up control. And a stewardship mindset does not mean that we don’t enjoy good things. It actually means that we enjoy things more.
Enjoyment does not have a price tag. Many who are more wealthy find it hard to enjoy what they have, because true enjoyment comes only from God (Ecclesiastes 2:24,25; 4:8). If we earn our money selfishly, we will spend it selfishly, and selfish people don’t enjoy much. Selfish people complain the most – whether they are digging ditches or staying at a posh resort. On the other hand, as we think and live as God’s stewards, and then God gives us extra blessings – extra money or possessions after being faithful and generous – we really can enjoy them!
Stewards can truly enjoy God’s blessings because they know that God owns it all and controls it all. I simply get to enjoy it as I learn to manage it.
Stewards realize that God enables us to earn any money we have. We didn’t make ourselves so smart or good at what we do. Because we work so hard, it’s pretty natural to think that the money we earn is really ours. We know the training we went through, the hours we go in early, the little techniques we have developed to do a good job and be successful at what we do. We are probably very good at something we do in our jobs.
So when our paycheck is in our hand we don’t go away feeling guilty. We earned it! We put up with a lot and got the job done right. Thank me very much!
So it’s a little hard to swallow the thought that it all belongs to God! This self-righteous thought was anticipated by God in Deuteronomy 8:17-18. “You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." {18} But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today."
Stewardship means really seeing our job as God’s gift. If we have the ability to run a punch press, run a corporation, write ad copy or greet customers at Walmart, it’s all possible only because God enabled us to do it.
Evangelist and pastor Greg Laurie tells the story about an older lady who was determined to be prepared if someday she felt threatened. Then one day she finished shopping and returned to her car. She found four men inside the car. She dropped her shopping bags, drew her handgun, and screamed, "I have a gun, and I know how to use it! Get out of the car." The men got out and ran like crazy.
Somewhat shaken, she loaded her bags and got in the car. But she could not get her key into the ignition. Then it dawned on her: her similar car was parked four or five spaces away! So she did what she had to do. She loaded her bags into her own car and drove to the police station to turn herself in. The desk sergeant nearly fell off his chair laughing. He pointed to the other end of the counter, where four men were reporting a carjacking by an old woman with thick glasses and curly white hair, less than five feet tall, and carrying a large handgun. No charges were filed.
You see, she thought it was her car, but it really belonged to someone else.
Sometimes we get all bent out of shape trying to keep and defend what we think is ours. People ruin their lives over financial rights, inheritance squabbles, and suing people they think cheated them. But God is calling us to think different – to be stewards – to just faithfully manage what God gives us.
Part 2 – Biblical Financial Stewardship
One warm Saturday morning, our men’s ministry speaker drove up to the church building in a beautiful late model Honda Gold Wing trike with a trailer. It was an amazing machine. And I thought, Wow, that’s an amazing machine! And it never even occurred to me how old my motorcycle was or what it would be like to have a new Gold WingJ. And if you believe that, then you think I am far more qualified to address contentment than I am.
Is contentment possible? Is it realistic that we can watch someone pass us on the freeway driving our dream car – and be grateful for our own? Is it possible to be at peace with the fact that less qualified people have better jobs and bigger incomes than we do? Can we stop looking at the nicer homes, better furniture and more fashionable clothes of others without envy gripping our heart? Is it possible to win the war over jealousy and just enjoy what we have with a contented heart?
The answer is yes, it’s a winnable war, but it’s a war. And the answer is found in God’s stewardship principle. The key to contentment is the fact that it’s not our stuff. We are not owners. The money or possessions we use are God’s property and God’s business. We are stewards given the task of managing something God owns.
Stewards think different than owners. During high school I worked one summer at a new car dealer and sometimes did errands for my boss in a brand new Ford pickup – complete with the new car smell. It was fun to drive, but when work was over, I got back into my own well-used car and drove home. I wasn’t really attached to that pickup since it obviously didn’t belong to me. I just drove it for the boss.
A few years later during college I worked for a trucking company repair shop where I drove an older model Ford pickup with considerable rattles, blemishes and dings. (I admit I was responsible for one of those dings.) As I drove around the city picking up truck parts for the shop, it never really bothered me that the pickup wasn’t much to look at. I wasn’t really attached to it any more than the new pickup I drove at my high school job. This truck also wasn’t mine. I was quite content to drive it as long as it had a heater, air conditioning and got me back to the shop.
You see, both trucks belonged to my boss; I was just a steward of them while I was on the clock. When we begin to think like God’s stewards about the money and possessions we have, we will learn contentment. Whether the stuff we “use” is old or new, shiny or not, really doesn’t matter because it all belongs to God.
Our goal in this set of studies is to begin to think like stewards. How much we have and how nice it is really is not our business. Thinking like stewards instead of owners is the key to contentment. And likewise, our contentment level is maybe the crucial measuring stick of whether God considers us good and faithful stewards.
If we are looking for a bad example to learn from, it’s nice when we can pick on someone who is really evil and has been dead for about 3000 years. That’s King Ahab of Israel. In 1 Kings 21 Ahab embarrasses himself for posterity by his bad example of greed and discontentment.
Ahab became king of Israel in 874 BC, 55 years after Solomon died. Ahab was actually the 8th of 19 bad kings in a row to rule the northern 10 tribes of Israel after the kingdom of Israel divided. We are introduced to Ahab in 1 Kings 16:30. “Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him.” What a wonderful way to be known! We have a clear picture of what God thought about this man, and Ahab’s greed was Exhibit A in making the case for God’s condemnation.
Biblical history informs us that Ahab built a palace inlaid with ivory (1 Kings 22:39). Of course all kings had nice places to live, but this was Ahab’s 2nd palace. He had one palace in Jezreel but also this one in Samaria. Archaeologists have excavated the likely ruins of Ahab’s palace in Samaria and have recovered over 200 ivory figures, plaques and panels in just one storeroom. How much more ivory was looted over the years we don’t know, but Ahab certainly had a taste for imported ivory.
Most people are drawn to certain personal luxuries. If we can’t “have it all,” we often insist on a luxury item or two that we just must have. For one person it’s the right clothes. For another it’s steak or other fine foods. Still others insist on driving the best cars. At just about any income level we find ways to afford some personal luxury. Because we don’t think of ourselves as “rich” we never even consider that we might be struggling with an issue of greed or discontent.
Ahab probably could have afforded to have most anything, but he seemed to have established ivory-laden palaces as his special luxury. His biblical legacy – besides being very evil – is that he built really nice places to live. Isn’t that what we want people to say about us when we are gone? He had really, really nice stuff. That was Ahab’s legacy
What drove Ahab’s greed – which we will now see full blown in the story of Naboth? Why do we become so discontent? Why do we crave to constantly upgrade certain material things? Is it just our natural interest? Is it simply the abundance of our prosperous culture? Maybe the origin of our discontent is deeper than that.
In the early 90’s Mattel came out with Teen Talk Barbie. One of the phrases it said was, Math is hard, let’s go shopping. Under pressure, Mattel deleted the phrase because it supposedly perpetuated the stereotype that girls aren’t as good at math. But maybe what we should have been concerned about is the concept that shopping can soothe our emotions. For too many shopping is a drug that somehow distracts them from something difficult.
Possessions seemed to have been Ahab’s drug of choice. And it wasn’t just ivory.
In 1 Kings 20:43 we find Ahab angry. Instead of destroying the Aramean king Ben-Hadad, one of Israel’s enemies, Ahab had made a treaty with him and let him go free. Then when God’s prophet rebuked him, Ahab was sullen and angry (20:35-43). He lost face. He evidently felt disrespected as a man and as a king.
So Ahab was brooding in his Samaria palace when he saw Naboth tending a beautiful vineyard. Maybe Naboth was whistling to himself, and Ahab wanted to be happy too. When we see someone with something we don’t have and they seem happy, we often assume that what they have is the reason for their joy.
And since Ahab didn’t resolve his emotional state by repentance, he went shopping (1 Kings 21:1-4)! Ahab decided to give himself an emotional boost by trying to buy Naboth’s vineyard. No doubt it had worked before. Because Ahab was rich he could generally buy what he wanted and that made him feel good for while.
But Naboth wouldn’t sell him his vineyard, so Ahab was even more depressed! So in his frustration over not being able to buy something he wants, Ahab makes a really mature decision. He says, I won’t eat (21:4).
It’s almost funny, but we have to come to grips with the emotional aspect of our discontentment, envy and greed. It’s all the same thing really. We over-shop, overspend, over-save, obsess or hoard possessions very often because of unresolved emotional and spiritual issues.
Emotions fuel our greed. We have to admit our attachment to and our quest for material things quickly becomes an emotional dependency. Possessions can distract or appease us. We unwittingly feel that buying stuff is something we can control because there are other things we can’t.
We maybe grew up watching out parents do this. Maybe they even made the tragic parental error that when we were unhappy or mad about something, they gave us candy or ice cream to get our mind off of our anger and to give them some peace. There is no better way to turn material things into an emotional drug (or to train greedy kids) than to try to coax them out of unhappiness with a treat or a toy at Walmart. This not only rewards them for their anger but teaches them to soothe emotions with something material – instead of repentance.
So maybe that bug is in our genes too. But if we are honest we know that we sometimes make financial decisions to try to soothe emotional issues.
Enter Jezebel.
Emotional issues are totally unresolved for Ahab. The only thing that could make it worse would be a wife like Jezebel. Ahab had married an equally dysfunctional and even more evil wife – Jezebel. She was not from Israel, but was rather a Sidonian Baal-worshiper. She certainly didn’t embrace or even understand the contentment and trust that the true God of Israel could provide. 1 Kings 21 records the horrific story of Jezebel taking situation into her hands and executing Naboth based on bribed false testimony, so that Ahab could have the vineyard. She killed an innocent, godly Israelite who wanted to honor God’s law by keeping his family inheritance (Leviticus 25:23).
What’s may be surprising to us about God’s judgment is that although it was Jezebel’s plot and murder, Ahab was held responsible by God for her actions! The prophet Elijah told Ahab, “This is what the LORD says: Have you not murdered a man and seized his property? This is what the LORD says: In the place where dogs licked up Naboth's blood, dogs will lick up your blood—yes, yours!” (1 Kings 21:17-19)!
Being the leader of the family means that husbands are held responsible for their own financial mistakes as well as their wife’s! The principle is found in the New Testament as well in the qualifications of deacons: "A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and his household well." (1 Timothy 3:12) Household leadership in this cultural context was not just about parenting; it was about managing the money.
God holds husbands responsible for the financial stewardship of their homes. Husbands are accountable to God for the family checkbook, savings and investments. Being the head of the home does not mean that husbands can buy the new shotgun, but their wife better not buy shoes! Leadership in a marriage means that husbands lead the team to best manage the money God allots them. As team leader husbands must respect that God will speak to both man and wife, but as leaders, husbands must take final responsibility for the financial stewardship of the home.
Money reveals much about the state of a marriage. It reveals if we are unified in our view of financial stewardship and contentment. Have we discussed stewardship as couples? Do we agree that it’s not yours and mine? It’s really God’s money. If we agree, then there is hope for any financial situation we are in.
God can use finances and stewardship to actually unite and transform marriages. It’s not about one spouse always giving in to the other. Dominance is not that answer. Stewardship means that both spouses must give in to God about financial stewardship.
Ahab and Jezebel seemed to have had the wealth and the power to sustain their greed. But then God stepped in. Yes, Ahab got his vegetable garden – for little while. And Jezebel got her way – for a little while. But what we gain by greed never brings lasting happiness. And in fact leads to death.
Ahab soon met his end – being shot by an arrow in battle even though he traveled in disguise (1 Kings 22:35). And Jezebel was eventually thrown down to her death from a window by her servants and the dogs ate her (2 Kings 9:33-36).
Greed has terrible endings, doesn’t it? All the wealth of the kingdom couldn’t resolve the emotional feelings of Ahab. And all the power of royalty could not protect Ahab and Jezebel from God’s judgment. It’s a terrible warning to us all about the end of greed and discontent.
Greed and discontent lead to destructive chaos in our emotions, in our marriage and of course in our finances. Discontent even leads to spiritual error and death.
Ahab seems to an example of the principle addressed by James: “But each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:14,15)
Even as Christians we are likewise warned by Paul: “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. {10} For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:9-10)
This doesn’t say that wealth is the problem; it’s wanting wealth that is the problem! Those who have very little money can have just as much problem with greed as the wealthy do. Greed is not about the amount.
Someone is probably saying, Now there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be rich if I wouldn’t cheat to do it. Well, if we think that, it’s our word against God’s. God says that wanting to get rich is wrong because we have violated the stewardship principle of contentment. And the consequence is that we indeed fall into other temptations.
We need to address our greed at its core. Our desires are the problem. It’s our desire for nicer and newer cars, clothes and furniture. Our sin must be acknowledged when we long for better vacations and long to be better off financially than our brother, our dad or our competitor. We want to feel like a winner in the world. We don’t have to worry about money anymore. We must realize that we easily fall prey to the worldly idea that more money somehow proves we are smarter and better.
That kind of thinking will lead to family and marriage disasters first of all, because in the process of trying to win the money game, someone in the family pays the price. Playing this game also leads to ethical disasters. As we think of ways of improving our bottom line, we find ways to be lazy, to shave off quality and get the same pay, to get paid for more time than we actually put in. As those things take place, the spiritual trap has already been sprung. If there are things that we don’t want the boss to know about financially, or things we hope the government doesn’t find out, then we’ve already started the plunge into ruin – all because of discontent.
Or the personal “ruin” of 1 Timothy 6:9 might simply take the form of suffering the slow thirst of finding life empty. We can discover after a couple decades of climbing the ladder of financial success that it’s against the wrong building.
It’s not the money we have or don’t’ have; it’s the love of money.
Why are we discontent or greedy? We may tell ourselves that it’s because we didn’t have much growing up. Or we may excuse ourselves because we say the nature of business or the corporate or sales world demands greed. Maybe we think we need things to keep up with other people so we don’t look weird. But if we are honest, we have to admit that our sinful nature is the reason for our greed. The issue is spiritual, not circumstantial.
(James 4:1-4) "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? {2} You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. {3} When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
We will never know the joy of contentment unless we fight the battle on the level of our own sinful desires. The lust for more is not an innocent past time. Browsing through catalogs might not be the right thing for us to do. Maybe the commercials are getting to us. Maybe we need to pray before and during a visit to a friend’s house because we know that whenever we see their material possessions, we grow discontent, greedy and envious.
We have to admit that from Ahab king of Israel all the way down to little old you and me, we don’t have an upgrade problem; we have a sin problem.
Do we want contentment? Do we want to be released from the pressure to upgrade our life? The word of God suggests several concrete changes in mindset we must make once we’ve admitted that it really is a sin problem.
Paul exhorts us to lower our expectations to the essentials. (1 Timothy 6:8) "But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Paul wasn’t talking about gourmet food and designer clothing; he meant that we have to lower our expectations to appreciate that God has given us – His stewards – the essentials.
This passage is actually just one of three times this particular Greek word for “content” is used in New Testament about finances. It simply means “enough.” God’s stewards agree with God that the essentials are enough. It is possible to be content with only food! Maybe God will even allow us a time in our life when we just have the essentials of food and clothing.
John the Baptist once addressed the issue of discontent when he was questioned by some soldiers about what repentance would mean for them. (Luke 3:14) "Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely--be content with your pay.”
Contentment with our pay is not the American way. We have come to believe that abundance and getting ahead in life financially is our birthright – and our employer is generally the culprit in our way! All of us have felt or are feeling financial pressures. And when our needs seem larger than our income, we assume the answer is more money.
Do you suppose that any of the Roman soldiers talking to John the Baptist had financial concerns? Of course they did. Rome was not concerned with making sure its soldiers were well-paid. In the culture, the Roman government probably expected soldiers to use their position and weapons to extort money – as commonly as waitresses are expected to receive tips. According to John’s words here, evidently one way extortion was carried out was by threatening to accuse wealthy citizens of some crime against Rome – unless they paid up.
John said, Stop extorting money. Now they were supposed to make it on pay alone. God’s word is telling us to be content with our pay, our income. More money is not the answer. That’s a hard one to swallow.
Thinking about others who have more simply makes us more miserable. Envy, greed and discontent never brought anyone happiness. On the other hand contentment does.
"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.” (Hebrews 13:5)
Contentment can bring joy no matter how much we have, because contentment is based in our relationship with God! If our wages don’t seem sufficient for our needs, we really can fall back on God who promised that He wouldn’t leave us.
The real issue is not whether our money is enough, but whether God’s promises are enough for us. Did we ever realize that our financial needs and desires are really meant to drive us to God? Let’s not waste the opportunity.
Ahab and Jezebel let greed rule and ruin their lives because they were actually running from God! What if Ahab had confessed and dealt with his greed when He saw Naboth’s vineyard? What a different story it would have been!
What if we would confess our discontentment as it occurred? What if we would begin to thank God instead – not just for our stuff, but for His presence? He’s right there with us. He has promised to never forsake us. What if we began to realize that those feelings of discontent are actually invitations by God to find our satisfaction in Him? Those urges we have to upgrade are normal, but what if we learned to turn them over to Christ?
There’s a old story of a humble Christian who sat down at a meal of only bread and water and prayed in gratitude, All this and Jesus too.
We will never be content until we are content with Christ. We will never be content unless we value our relationship with Christ more than possessing anything else we naturally desire. This is the only answer to greed and discontent – contentment with Christ.
Is that possible? It is, but it means letting God pry our determined fingers off of whatever it is we want to keep or to attain.
Paul described the experience of having Christ’s strength even when he was hungry – lacking even the essentials (Philippians 4:12b, 13) "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength."
In reality, we can’t be content in our own strength! We need Christ’s strength – miraculously!
Paul uses a different Greek term for content here than he used in 1 Timothy 6:8. This term is similar, but it’s a “food” word. It means “satisfied” – as in having a full feeling after Thanksgiving Dinner at Grandma’s. As we lay on the sofa after a big meal, we may doze off into restful oblivion with the buzz of conversation and a football game in the room. We aren’t hungry anymore. We aren’t passionate about food at all anymore. We are satisfied.
This is the term Paul used to say that he was “full” even when he was hungry – because Christ gave him the strength to be “full” even when his pockets and stomach were empty. That’s miraculous contentment!
Contentment is first of all a test of our stewardship because it reveals if we consider ourselves owners or managers. But contentment is even more. Our financial needs and even our temptations to greed are actually a perfect God-ordained opportunity to develop spiritual intimacy with Him. Financial contentment really is not about the money; it’s about the eternally possibility of drawing close to the God who promised to give us what we need and to trust Him with what we think we lack.
A new wide-screen TV can’t bring you peace. And a new Honda Gold Wing wouldn’t really make me happy. But learning to live without either of them might just be the key to enjoying the riches of true contentment in our relationship with God.
Part 3 – Biblical Financial Stewardship
Two men were marooned on a tiny island. One man paced back and forth worried and dreadfully frightened, while the other man sat back, whistling and sunning himself. The first man said, "Aren’t you afraid we’re going to die here?" "Nope," said the second man. “How can you be so sure?” the first man asked. “Well, you…” said the second man, “I make $100,000 a month and I tithe faithfully to my church… My Pastor will find meJ."
This humorous story identifies one of the key reasons why many pastors and churches avoid saying very much about financial giving. There is a perception (and a reality in many cases) that pastors are motivated to preach on giving only because of their own selfish concern about the budget or a building program. For many years as a pastor myself, I ventured into the area of financial stewardship and especially giving quite rarely. As I would preach expositionally through a book of the Bible, I wouldn’t avoid the subject of giving, but I hesitated to approach the subject extensively as a topic, lest I appear to be focused too much on the bottom line of the church rather than spiritual discipleship. I assumed – and it was partly true – that if people are growing spiritually, they will learn to give.
However, there is no other area of spiritual growth where we make the assumption that believers will grow without reminder and exhortation. I have come to realize that we are not mature disciples if we have not embraced the reality that materially we are stewards instead of owners.
If churches and pastors they have communicated somehow that “stewardship” messages are primarily about fund-raising, then they are responsible to change that attitude internally. Stewardship is not fund-raising; it’s basic discipleship. But in a similar sense, each believer must come to understand that giving is not just about “doing their duty.” Giving is actually a deeply personal indicator of our spiritual maturity as well as our love for God. If we understand Jesus’ words that our “treasure” is an indication of our “heart,” how can churches and pastors avoid teaching on the important issue of giving?
Giving is a spiritual issue and in fact, a relational issue with God. In order to truly yield to God’s ownership of our possessions, we must evaluate carefully what may be the most telling evidence of our stewardship – the part we give. Just as we decide on what we spend on an appliance or how much we will put in a savings or retirement account, we must also have to decide how much money we will give. Even to give nothing is a decision. Stewards are accountable in each decision to please the owner.
Many see the responsibility of giving as a burden. How sad that is in light of Paul’s reminder that God loves a cheerful giver. Giving is actually a relational decision. In the process of making giving decisions we really establish our agreement with God about stewardship. As we continually decide to give, we constantly affirm how much we value our relationship to God as His children. And as God’s stewards, giving decisions are simply a matter of thinking through how He wants us to allocate His money.
An amazing benefit of giving as stewards is that it releases us from the real burden of our own financial needs. As we learn to trust God through giving, we can live confidently on what is left because we know that God is taking care of that. Giving is a freeing experience as it connects us more closely to God relationally. The ultimate outcome is that those who give as stewards experience a sense of intimacy with God that all followers of Christ long for. Giving becomes worship. Giving becomes a way of saying thanks to God for His grace and promised provision. Giving becomes a deep part of our personal connection to God.
This passage tells us the story of God providing for a widow in a small town northwest of Galilee along the Mediterranean Coast. After a 3 ½ year drought, God sent Elijah to this widow living in financial fears. There had been a terrible ominous fear growing in her heart for several years. There was no rain in the land. She could not grow anything. There was no welfare – especially in pagan Sidon. This wasn’t Israel where people at least knew they were supposed to care for the widow and the poor. As far as she knew, the starvation process would begin after this meal. There was nothing to eat anywhere.
And then the prophet Elijah showed up. First he wanted a drink. His brook had dried up and he was thirsty. She must have had some source of water, so in spite of her own desperate plight, she does the proper oriental thing and aided the traveler. But his next request stopped her in her tracks. Bring me bread, he asked.
Right. Kick me when I’m down, she must have thought. I have no bread. I’m about to die with my son, and you want me to bring you bread. But Elijah does not back down on his request. He sets in place a test of this woman’s heart. He says, Don’t be afraid. Go make bread like you said, but make mine first (1 Kings 17:13).
This sounds rather selfish of Elijah, but Elijah represents the God of Israel. And the God of Israel and heaven and earth is sovereign – and to be obeyed. And as God’s representative, Elijah promises her a miracle – but she has to make his cake of bread first.
Now the woman has a decision to make. Do I divide my very last meal? This means that I and my son will not even have the hunger pains subside today – in the scant hope that something might be found tomorrow. It means the hunger starts today, not tomorrow.
Shall I do it, she had to wonder. This is a man of God, representing the living and true God. He has promised to provide miraculously for me. But do I really believe it? Do I believe it enough to give this man bread that leaves me hungry today?
She decides to trust God, but perhaps not without a large degree of doubt. Maybe she even had a “What do I have to lose?” attitude. So she made the bread – dividing the little she had and giving to Elijah first.
How does it work out for this widow? 1 Kings 17:15-16 tells, us, "She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. {16} For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah."
God did the miracle! Perhaps it was the next morning after feeding Elijah that the miracle occurred. Did she wake up hungry and inch toward the empty vessels she left on her simple table the night before? What am I doing by thinking and hoping that there is something in here? But in the morning light she grasps the flour jar to pick it up. It seems to be stuck to the table. Is it possible…? I emptied it. No! It’s not stuck. It’s full! She grabs the oil jug. It’s full too. Maybe she screams in delight. Maybe she wakes up Elijah and her son.
And maybe Elijah had a sleepy, “I told you so,” look on his face. The questions come stumbling out: Where did… How did you…?
But for this woman of faith who gave first there was bread for today. God gave her and her son their daily bread.
We don’t know how God did it. Maybe there was an angel on special assignment each day – just to fill this widow’s jug and jar. (It must be a great job – being an angel!) But in some way God created extra oil and ground flour continuously for this one widow and her son and God’s servant Elijah until the rains came again.
God spoke the seed-bearing plants into existence on day six of creation, so He just carried it through a little further this day. God went into the flour-making business and oil-pressing business for a brief time because this special woman loved, trusted and obeyed Him.
I imagine that life was never quite the same for this woman spiritually. The God whom she only knew at a distance was now her Divine Provider. He cared personally for her.
Does God still do that? Certainly. That’s the way God is. He cares about us personally and reaches out to us relationally when we are devoted to Him. “For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” (2 Chronicles 16:9) It should be no surprise to us that God uses the area of financial giving to test our heart and then to draw us close as we trust and obey Him.
Let’s just make a few observations about this widow that might fit our situation:
Let’s fast forward to another widow about AD 30.
Jesus and His disciples were at the temple in Jerusalem sitting where people put in offerings for the temple treasury. It was Passover time and the town was extra full. At feast times like this, people who came to the temple would often give extra gifts. This wasn’t the tithe. It was not obligation. These were special gifts that were supposed to be given as personal worship.
But of course worship is not proven by a gift or anything external. Worship is what goes on in the heart. And that is what we learn by the Bible’s account of what took place next.
"Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. {42} But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. {43} Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. {44} They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:41-44)
Jesus doesn’t say anything against the wealthy people who gave at the temple this day. He doesn’t say that the wealthy were wrongly motivated. But Jesus noticed a particular widow whose heart was genuinely committed to giving as worship. And Jesus makes the divine observation that this woman gave MORE than the wealthy!
She gave the smallest of all imaginable gifts. It was two tiny coins. These coins – lepta – were little bronze pieces weighing less than a gram each. (A penny weighs about 3 grams.) Together these two coins equaled 1/16th of a denarius. We know that a laborer could earn a denarius per day (Mathew 20:9-10), so for comparison, the amount she gave was about what a laborer today would earn in a half hour (a half hour of minimum wage).
So on one hand what made her gift remarkable was how small it was. But ironically, what made her gift remarkable to Jesus was how large it was! What make this gift so large was that it was all the money she had.
Perhaps this woman had some simple housekeeping job or something where she earned this amount each day. We aren’t told if she had any source of possible income. But we do know that she emptied her bank account that day. She had every reason not to give. But she wanted to worship and thus, in the eyes of Jesus, she gave more than those who gave large amounts out of their wealth. The gifts given by others were expendable income. It didn’t affect them really in any way. Her gift was essential income.
This is how God views giving today. God always sees the sacrifice of giving. That’s where the worship of giving really happens. It costs. King David once said, I will not sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing (1 Chronicles 21:24 ).
Jesus didn’t make any promise here of God’s future provision for her. In fact, we don’t even know that Jesus spoke to her at all. It doesn’t say. But what do we think about this woman’s future? Do we think she had what she needed in the days to come? Do we think Jesus used her this day for an illustration and then abandoned her – and she starved? Certainly not. God’s not like that. God certainly cared for this needy woman.
Jesus pointed her out because He recognized the sincerity of her heart. This woman has stood through the ages as a model for giving, not simply because her giving ratio exceeded the gifts of others, but because the sacrifice indicated her deep love for God. Love for God is the goal. Sacrificial giving is a means of establishing and expressing that closeness with Him.
Again, let’s learn some basic lessons from this incident:
Here is one more true story of a widow who gave.
This story took place in modern times. It’s told in Ron Blue’s book, Generous Living (published in 1997). It’s the story of Christian woman named Ruby.
Ruby’s husband, Bob, was dying of cancer. Fifteen years earlier he had started a company that manufactured water treatment chemicals. Now in his waning days, his adult daughter had quit her teaching job to help with the business along with Bob’s wife Ruby. Ruby knew business was slow, but she was shocked to find out from her daughter that the company was actually on the verge of bankruptcy. Some bills were 36 months overdue. Bob had kept the problems secret to avoid burdening her, but now the truth was out.
As she began to pray about the desperate condition of the business, God impressed upon her something that she had previously learned from God’s Word about giving. She sensed from God that she was supposed to start giving from the business account.
She asked her husband’s permission and he agreed they had nothing to lose. Ruby went to the company secretary and told her to write a $1000 check to their church. The long-time secretary protested that there was really no money in the account and there were many bills that should be paid first if they had the money. But Ruby insisted and the check went out.
The next week Bob died. It wasn’t until a month later that Ruby went back to the company she now owned. She asked the secretary what happened to the check that was written to the church. She replied, Ruby, you won’t believe this, but there was somehow enough money in the account to cover it.
Write another one, Ruby said. Never, the secretary said. But Ruby prevailed as the owner. And for a whole year they contributed $1000 a month – the checks just barely clearing each month. The following year the business began to flourish and in that next year all the past due bills got paid. Ruby increased the company giving to the point where at the time of the writing of Ron Blue’s book they were giving $20,000 a month to ministry purposes.
Actual results may vary – like all the disclaimers say. This is just one person’s story. The giving principle, as we will see in future study, is not about getting rich. Don’t misunderstand the point. The widow who fed Elijah and the widow in the temple probably just got by financially throughout the rest of their lives. Ruby may have become wealthy. God is still sovereign in how much He provides. The amount is not the issue, but it is encouraging to learn that God miraculously provides. God honors those who have trusted him not only in 800 BC or 30 AD; His provision continues for givers today.
Ruby is one of a long line of people who in their need have reached out to the God who provides. That reach toward God is expressed through financially giving that we tests our trust, but then rewards us with a closer connection to God.
These stories are not just about God’s reward for giving. They pull back the curtain on God’s desire to connect relationally with us. The widow who fed Elijah believed God’s promise and got to know and enjoy God because she trusted Him. The widow at the temple already was a worshipper. She didn’t come to the temple that day the way we often come to church – asking, What will I get out of it? She came to give as worship. And Ruby in those months of grieving while learning to manage a business certainly drew closer to God as the One who would now provide for her as she trusted Him through giving.
Giving was the crucial element that connected each of them to God as they stretched out to Him in personal trust. Giving connects us relationally with God. Giving is not about us; giving is about our relationship to God. Giving connects us to God relationally in a several significant ways.
What does the IRS call the money that we can deduct from our income because we gave it away? It’s called “charitable giving.” How is charitable giving defined by our world? It’s giving some of what we have to help out people who are needy or suffering. That’s a good thing to be sure, but in the world’s way of thinking, we are benefactors if we give. Those to whom we give are recipients. There is a certain superiority in that concept. Benefactors are put on the pedestal because they gave something away. Recipients feel small because they are in need of someone else’s generosity.
If that’s what giving is to us, it is not biblical giving. Giving does not make one superior at all. God of course is not in need of my gift. Giving is about me expressing to God that He is my superior. Giving is about me putting myself into a rightful humble relationship with God because He is the Owner and I am the steward. I am simply giving something to Him to express that I understand His ownership.
Deuteronomy 26:8-10 describes how giving expresses humble dependence, "So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. {9} He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; {10} and now I bring the Firstfruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me." Place the basket before the LORD your God and bow down before him."
The steward who gives to God is not superior at all. He is to bow before God the recipient! Giving here is how Israel expressed their humble gratitude to God for what He let them enjoy. You gave it to me, Lord. You are really the owner, the benefactor. Biblical givers are not superior because they are stewards. Obviously owners are superior to stewards.
On a human level, giving doesn’t elevate us over others either. In fact giving is not a people thing at all; it’s always a “God and me” thing. That’s where the world’s view and the biblical view of giving are going in totally different directions. When we give we are recognizing our relationship to God as a manager of his money. It places us in our proper position under God.
If we give financially to other people with a smug attitude of superiority and condescension, we have tipped our hand that we are not really a steward of God at all. Or if we give to have our name in print or placed on a bronze plaque, we better enjoy it, because that’s all that we will ever get. Jesus said of people like that, They have their reward in full (Matthew 6:2).
What Moses was saying in Deuteronomy 26:8-10 is that God gave them their land and God gave them their blessings. His point is that our gifts are really just recognition of who God is. By giving, the Israelites were saying back to God, You have placed me in charge temporarily of this little bit of real estate. I am bringing my gift to you not because I’m big or wonderful, but because you are. That’s the attitude God is seeking in us.
The computer program, Google Earth, allows you to zoom down from a picture of the globe to the level your house – via satellite photo. When I zoom down to a picture of our church property, I can see my car parked out front on the day the satellite took the picture. When I zoomed down to my house, I could even see my grill on the patio. But what strikes me as the computer is zooming down is how very, very, very tiny my place is – in the perspective of the earth. Even if I owned 10 square miles of land and houses, or owned the Taj Mahal, I would still own very little.
But God owns the earth (Ps. 24:1)! So what posture should a person have as they bring their gift? Bow down. Bow down! God is great. The Israelite had in his hand a tiny portion of a single crop, but it served to acknowledge the greatness of the God who made all the crops throughout the world in all ages. Our gift might be big to us because it’s a sacrifice, but to God it’s big only because it acknowledges His infinite ownership. This little bit I call “giving” is actually just my way of saying, You own it all.
The tiny cake of bread for Elijah, two lepta for the temple, a measly 1000 bucks from Ruby, or our check to support the church is big in God’s grand scheme only if the gift acknowledges and worships the real giver, the real Owner.
Giving is literally worship. Proverbs 3:9 says, “Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops."
The Hebrew word “honor” means to “glorify” or to acknowledge the importance of something. Its root meaning is that something is heavy or weighty and thus significant or important. When applied to God, honoring Him means that we ascribe to Him the significance that He deserves as God.
When we bring our “first fruits” – our gift to some ministry from our income – we should write that check to express how important God is. He is the “heavyweight” – the priority – in my life. The needs I meet are secondary. My primary need is to worship.
And when we give to acknowledge that God is the owner, and when we give to express our worship and honor, there will arise within us an expectation and confidence that God is so powerful and faithful that He will not only use our gifts for His larger eternal purposes, but also that God will meet our needs as well.
You see, financial giving trains our heart in another crucial part of our relationship with God. Do we really trust God – about everything?
Do we trust what God is doing in our human relationships, our careers, and our health? Do we really trust God? How do we develop trust in God? Financial giving is actually one of God’s key training grounds to produce a trust connection between us and Him.
Giving is test. (Malachi 3:10) “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says 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.”
We will talk more about the issue of God blessing our trust in giving later, but for now, just notice the test. God was probing and correcting the issue of their trust in Him.
Giving really is about trusting God. Because, like the widows we studied, giving means that we have less. It’s simple math. 10-1=9. I have less if I tithe.
There is nothing more relational than trust. If we trust our wife or our husband it means that we don’t have to check on them. If we trust your teammate, we know they’ll be there where we need them to be. If we trust our friend, we know they’ll keep their promise.
Trust is always based on a relationship. Once we have gotten to know someone’s character we can predict much of what they will do. But even in the times when we don’t know for sure what they will do, we don’t sweat it, because we know their character well enough to trust them to do what is in our best interest.
Do we know and trust God? Do we know His character? God wants us to know and trust Him so that even when we can’t see for sure what He is doing, we don’t doubt Him. Financial concerns seem to be an area that tests the trust of all people no matter what economic level they are. God wants to use this constant tangible area of life to draw us closer to Him. As we give back to God in sacrificial worship, we are telling God that we really do trust Him. As a result He is honored and we are come to know the peace of trusting God with our financial situation.
Over the 30 years of our marriage, God has used financial giving and His provision to teach us that God is really individually active in our life. In 1977 Priscilla and I were just married and trying to pay my college tuition and all other living expenses on Priscilla’s small salary working at the Bible College and my part time work. We were financially tight, plus we knew we had seven years of school and tuition ahead of us before I would be through seminary – and get a real job. Our church hosted at seminar one weekend with a speaker who taught us what the Bible said about being stewards, not owners, and about giving a regular, sacrificial percentage of our income back to God to express our worship, as well as our trust in Him about our finances.
So we began to tithe – giving back to God 10% of our income. In one way it seemed terribly much because it left us even less to pay our bills. In another way it seemed ridiculously small, compared to the budget of the church we were attending and the needs of the first missionary we began to support. But based on what we saw in God’s word, we had a husband-wife talk where we made that commitment.
That starting point in our giving was the best financial decision we ever made, but also a crucial relational decision with God. We’ve not only had the privilege of giving seeing how God used our gifts, we’ve had the opportunity to experience the testing and proving of God’s faithfulness in our lives – through finances. We will never forget a couple of substantial gifts that came to us from the most unlikely sources – but at a critical time of financial need.
Over the years since, like everyone else, we have experienced many other difficulties that tested our faith – children, health and ministry issues. But as different issues have arisen, one of the reasons we know that God will be faithful to us is because of what He has taught us about Himself through finances. The biggest benefit of giving has not been simply that our needs have been met; the biggest benefit is the first hand knowledge that the God of heaven personally knows and cares for us.
Part 4 – Biblical Financial Stewardship
There’s an old story about a dad who gave his son two quarters as he heads for Sunday School. He told the boy that he should give one quarter in the offering and he could keep the other to get an ice cream cone. (I guess that price for an ice cream cone proves how old the story is). As the boy walked down the street he accidentally dropped one of the quarters which then rolled into a storm drain and disappeared. The boy looked for a moment down the drain and then slowly looked toward the sky, sighed and said, Well God, there goes your quarter.
The very idea of giving sets off an internal war in us. Whose money is it? In the last several studies, we have been seeking to understand financial stewardship from the Bible. It’s a very personal subject. And the biblical concept of stewardship is that God own everything – both quarters.
Stewardship means that as believers we are each assigned different amounts of material things to manage for God. And that really is a test from God. But because material things do have our name on them, it creates a tension. Who really determines where our money goes? Will I really use my financial and material things exactly how God wants me to?
What we see in this study and the next about giving won’t make any sense unless we understand that we are stewards managing God’s money. This study will focus on what the Bible often calls our “heart.” The heart, in Bible usage, is often a metaphor of our will. It’s where we make up our mind if we will do what God wants. We can only understand what God says about financial giving if we align our heart with his.
We want to contrast today a wealthy man in Jerusalem with a selfish heart in 1000 BC and some believers with a willing heart in 100 AD who lived in Macedonia (modern Greece).
Our attitude toward material things is a window to the condition of our heart.
It’s pretty obvious that King Solomon of Israel was incredibly wealthy. (1 Kings 10:14-16) "The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents, {15} not including the revenues from merchants and traders and from all the Arabian kings and the governors of the land. {16} King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold; six hundred bekas of gold went into each shield."
In case you are curious, 666 talents of gold = about 800,000 ounces. At today’s price of about $800/oz, that’s $640 million (about $ 2/3 billion). That was just yearly revenue in gold, not counting taxes and tariffs from all kinds of people and governments
Solomon also had a nice place to sit. (1 Kings 10:18-20) "Then the king made a great throne inlaid with ivory and overlaid with fine gold. {19} The throne had six steps, and its back had a rounded top. On both sides of the seat were armrests, with a lion standing beside each of them. {20} Twelve lions stood on the six steps, one at either end of each step. Nothing like it had ever been made for any other kingdom."
God had blessed Solomon due to his priorities and godly prayer request in the early days of his kingdom asking for wisdom instead of riches. So God promised him, "Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for--both riches and honor--so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.” (1 Kings 3:13) As a result, "King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth." (1 Kings 10:23). Solomon’s riches clearly came from God. Solomon wasn’t an owner either. He was a steward like you and me.
But there was something about material possessions that were never enough for Solomon. (1 Kings 10:22-27) "The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons. {23} King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. {24} The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. {25} Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift--articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons and spices, and horses and mules. {26} Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. {27} The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills."
What could Solomon had been thinking when he sent his ships to Egypt for more horses? Yes, I know I have 10,000 horses and 1000 chariots. That was my old goal. Go get another 2,000 horses and 200 chariots. That’s my new goal. Yes, get more gold, more apes and baboons. Build more cages. I love my zoo. Yes, Yes, Yes.
It’s like Solomon had little buttons inside his heart. One was labeled “Enough.” The other was called, “More.” Solomon seems to have set a golden brick on the “More” button and just let it run. Ka-ching, Ka-ching, Ka-ching.
But money and horses are not all Solomon was accumulating during what seemed to be his “glory days.” He also accumulated 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:1-4). We can’t even try to understand the idea of 1000 women in his life. He married for many political and personal selfish reasons, but the result was that in his effort to please many of them, he built them places of pagan worship and they indeed turned his heart away from the Lord.
It was exactly what God had warned about in the law, a copy of which must have lain somewhere in the great temple Solomon had built earlier in his reign. "The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." {17} He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. (Deuteronomy 17:16-19)
Solomon blew it on each detail of God’s warning. And thus he “followed after other gods.” It was an awful downward spiral. Why? His heart was turned. His heart not fully devoted to God.
Now God had promised early on to bless Solomon with wealth, so it wasn’t necessarily wrong that Solomon was wealthy, but somewhere he crossed the line that God warned about here of “accumulating” large amounts of it. That was a heart issue!
But Solomon simply did what most people and many Christians would do if we had the capability. Solomon just bought everything his heart desired that he could afford. It’s just that he could just afford more than we can. But the warning is that what we can afford can actually turn our hearts astray from being devoted to the Lord.
In contrast to Solomon, Jesus told us to store up treasures in heaven as an expression of a devoted heart. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. {20} But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. {21} For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21)
Jesus was greatly concerned about our heart. Our heart will naturally attach to physical things that moths destroy – speaking of valued cloth and clothes – or things that rust destroys or corrodes or anything valuable that thieves take.
As if to prove Jesus’ point about the temporary nature of material things, we can think back to realize that most of Solomon’s vast treasury of wealth disappeared just 5 years after his son Rehoboam ascended his throne (1 Kings 14:25). The king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem and carried off the treasures of the temple and the palace. Rehoboam had to replace those gold shields with bronze shields. And what treasures remained was stolen over the coming generations by more invaders or used as tribute buy off attacking kingdoms.
Money sure gets away easily, doesn’t it? (Proverbs 23:5) "Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.” In contrast, Jesus urges us to store up treasures in heaven. Jesus is calling us to think differently about treasure. Attach your heart to things that last forever, Jesus says.
We’ve all heard the expressions, You can’t take it with you, or, You don’t see a hearse pulling a U-haul. But Jesus is saying something different in Matthew 6: 20. He is saying that you can’t take treasures with you, but you can, however, send treasures on ahead! If we invest our lives in things that are eternal instead of material and financial, then treasures will be waiting for us in some sense when we get to heaven.
Treasure in heaven is permanent and yet it is personal! Jesus said to lay up treasures for yourselves. There is some kind of real and personal way in which our investment in eternal things is really “ours!” They will have our name on them somehow. There is some kind of eternal reward or enjoyment by which, when we get to heaven, we will arrive and receive our treasure! We can keep them eternally!
The real issue is that where our treasure is, our heart is. Period. This passage is not specifically talking about giving money to God or ministry, but it is teaching us something crucial about a decision we must make prior to any giving. Where is our heart? Which do we value – financial or eternal treasure?
Giving or tithing is going to be meaningless at best if we think like some who teach that giving is a way to have financial success, or a way to impress God, or impress people, or a way to feel good about ourselves. Then our goal – our heart – is still on ourselves and not on eternity.
Jesus’ main point was to ask us which we want. Which one do we value – earth’s treasure or heaven’s? We might pretend that we want a diversified portfolio – earthly and heavenly treasure. I want it all, we might say. But we can’t. Jesus makes sure we understand that.
In the next two verses (Matthew 6:22-23) Jesus tells a little parable about how our eyes are either blind or seeing on this subject. Some people are blind to heavenly treasure. How great is that darkness, Jesus says.
Some people – some Christians even – won’t get it. They will never switch from material goals to eternal goals. And Jesus makes it clear we must choose. "No one 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.” (Matthew 6:24)
We can serve God or money, but not both! We can only have one heart, one devotion. Some areas of life must be single-minded. Can we be devoted to more than one woman as a husband? Don’t even think about it. And Jesus is simply telling us that we can’t be devoted to both God and money. We all will have some money. As stewards we will be given different amounts. But is money or the hope of having more of it our “devotion” – our treasure?
Is God perhaps working in our hearts in some way – maybe though some financial struggle – to turn and focus our heart’s goals on eternity? If we are believers, we know that the Holy Spirit tugs us to live in a new way with new goals. We feel his pull to please Him and worship Him. We feel the desire to serve and help people hear the gospel and grow in their faith. And we will feel him pull hard on our financial thoughts.
God wants our whole life, not just our money, but God uses our money – particularly our giving – as a key indicator and even a method by which to transform our heart.
A generous heart can develop in us if we have been saved by God’s grace. In fact, generosity develops in us as we align our hearts with God’s and imitate His grace.
2 Corinthians 8 tells us about a remarkable group of believers – in fact whole churches in the first century – who got it. The light turned on and they had eternal treasure on their minds. Their generous new way of thinking was so amazing that Paul called it God’s gift (grace) to them.
"And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. {2} Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. {3} For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, {4} they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints." (2 Corinthians 8:1-4)
These people are not normal, are they – pleading with Paul for the privilege of giving even though they were poor? This is not the American way.
You see, Paul was raising funds to send from the new churches planted all around the Roman Empire to take back to the founding Jerusalem church. A famine there, as well as spiritual persecution, had left families jobless with empty flour bins and hungry stomachs.
But things evidently weren’t much better up in Macedonia the church Paul describes 500 miles NW of Jerusalem – which included the churches of Philippi and Thessalonica. These Christians were undergoing severe trial. We don’t know all they went through, but the Greek term Paul uses (severe trial) suggests that it lasted a long time.
Many reading this have probably had a financial trial that lasted a long time as well. But remarkably, in these exceptionally hard circumstances, the Macedonian believers had overflowing joy in their giving during that time of trial! “Overflowing joy” in financial trials is not possible unless we have adopted an “eternal treasure” mindset that God uses trials to produce something more valuable to me eternally.
Paul uses two pairs of words in verse two that are essentially an oxymoron. “Their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.” It’s like Paul is saying that you really can squeeze blood out of turnips. They gave in spite of their poverty. This is much like the widow we studied previously who gave her two tiny copper coins – all she had. But it wasn’t an emotional televangelist who manipulated these impoverished believers into giving; it was the Holy Spirit working within them.
Notice the phrases used to describe the work of God in their hearts about giving. They gave “even beyond their ability… entirely on their own… urgently pleaded…pleaded with us for the privilege.” How do you give more than you are able? How do we wrap our minds around that?
Something had happened in their hearts, hadn’t it? And whatever it was, that’s what God wants to happen in us. How do we get this deep down desire to give? Is it just a spiritual gift that they uniquely possessed? No. We see in verse 5 that they first gave themselves to God – and then to a financial need in Jerusalem.
The order is significant. Giving is just a meaningless duty or a guilt trip until we first give ourselves to God. When we give ourselves to God, it means that we begin to care about the same things God cares about. To give ourselves to God means to begin thinking like God. And that’s how we get a heart much like God’s.
How do we know if we have that? How do we know if we care about what God cares about? How do we know if we are generous like God is?
Giving money was just one of the results, I think, of the Macedonian churches first giving themselves to God. Generosity must be a complete lifestyle and a ministry attitude, not a financial principle to benefit ourselves. Here is a test that I think the Macedonian churches would have passed because they gave themselves to God first.
The way we find out if we have a giving heart is to check areas of our life that require giving but that may have nothing to do with money. Are you ready for a difficult heart evaluation? Here we go:
1. Do we offer to help our spouse, or try to stay busy so we don’t need to?
2. Do we gladly let someone else in the family use the bath /shower /sink first when we both wanted it at the same time?
3. Do we willingly give up the last piece of the dessert?
4. Do we give up watching our show for someone else to watch what they want? Do we try to get the best seat in the room to watch TV?
5. Will we skip a lunch break to help a co-worker finish a project?
6. Do we clean up after others in the breakroom at work, offer to do dishes at home, or help clean up or put away chairs after a church potluck?
7. Do we seek out younger women or men in the church to mentor or encourage?
8. Do we try to say yes if we are needed in the nursery, to help someone move, do a car repair or give someone a ride to the doctor?
9. Do we look for opportunities to have people over for a meal?
10. Do we willingly loan our vehicles or other valuable things to others?
11. Do we take interest in children?
12. Do we offer help to someone older or disabled – when no one sees.
13. Do we ask questions and listen attentively in conversation, or do we impatiently wish they’d quit talking so we could make our comment or tell our story?
No money is transacted in any of these acts. You see, stewardship of money comes from that same heart that is a steward of time and ability and plain old kindness – putting others first.
If we sense true guilt about some of these questions, then we have to start at the bottom and first recommit to giving ourselves daily to the Lord. And then God will teach us generosity on the heart level. Now how does God do that? Admonition, exhortation and trying harder, right? Guilt always does the trick, right! Wrong. We will “become poor” for the benefit of others only if we are motivated by the grace of Jesus Christ who “became poor for us so that we might be rich [spiritually]” (2 Corinthians 8:9-19).
Biblical giving is driven by grace, not guilt. A giving heart only starts as we contemplate and comprehend how Jesus could trade heaven and its glorious perfection for this earth and a human existence and the pain of a crucifixion. Only as I appreciate God’s grace to me, will my heart be changed into a giving heart. Grace motivates giving that pleases God. God is honored by giving when we are imitating Him – the One who gave his only Son to die for us.
We have all heard pleas for money that were based on guilt. What kind of Christian are you if you don’t give to this need? We may have heard exhortations to give trying to motivate us based on our own greed. God will make you wealthy if you give. We may have been urged personally by someone to give until we felt awkwardly obligated. Please give to this desperate need. Or we may have been motivated to give by recognition. You will be on the “gold list” of donors.
2 Corinthians 9:7 talks about compulsory motivations like this. Giving under compulsion is not a biblical motive. Neither is pride. Jesus spoke in Matthew 6:1-4 about hypocrites who gave to be seen and praised by men. Jesus said we should give privately.
In contrast to all those motives, biblical giving is grace-motivated giving. It starts in the heart because it began in God’s heart who by grace gave us the sacrifice of His Son. That’s why biblical giving is sometimes called grace-giving.
When the Macedonians Christians heard about a need, their thinking was so saturated by the thought of Christ becoming poor for them that the idea of becoming a little bit poorer by a financial gift was not a foreign idea at all. They wanted to give! In fact they desperately pleaded for the privilege.
That’s the difference grace makes. Yes, they were abnormal compared to their society, but they were not abnormal compared to Christ. It just seemed normal to give because they had a heart like Christ, transformed by Christ.
But Paul is not writing this to the churches of Macedonia, like Philippi and Macedonia; he was writing to Corinth. They were maybe more like many of us. They needed to rethink the whole issue of giving – as part of the Christian walk.
Paul recognized that even the Corinthians wanted to give (“your eager willingness to do it” – 2 Corinthians 8:11). Yes, it was a stretch for them at this point in their spiritual maturity, but he urges them to respond to the desire that God already implanted in them.
God has implanted in every believer a desire to give. Some respond and some don’t. We may be afraid to – afraid we won’t have enough, afraid we’ll have to give up something we enjoy. But God did implant that desire. If we’ve been saved by the grace of Jesus Christ, we are already spiritually equipped to give the way God wants. We know about grace because of God’s grace given to us. It’s just a matter of responding and carrying through with what God is doing in our life.
It shouldn’t be remarkable or rare, but sometimes it is.
Eddie Ogan is a grandmother from Colville, Washington. She wrote in a denominational newsletter about an experience when she was 14 years old as she and two sisters were living with their widowed mom in 1946:
A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially. When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering.
Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric bill. [My sister] Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved…Every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering. The day before Easter, [my sister] Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. …We could hardly wait to get to church!
On Sunday morning… I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us girls put in a $20. As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes!
Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 bill and seventeen $1 bills. Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling [poor].
…All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor.
…[That Sunday] At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they need money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?"
We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering. When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church." Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100." We were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been poor again…
You see, like Christ and like these Macedonian Christians, and like Eddie’s family in the 1940’s, our wealth is not measured by our keeping, but by our giving – not by our treasure on earth, but by our treasure in heaven.
"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9)
Part 5 – Biblical Financial Stewardship
Everyone knows that rewards work. If you are going to train a dog to do tricks, you better have some doggie biscuits in your pocket. If you are trying to potty train a toddler, rewards are pretty handy also. The credit card industry has also gotten the hint and they compete for our credit business by offering rewards to use for free flights, discounts, cash back or some other form of return. And we as consumers figure that since we have to buy stuff anyhow, we might as well get something back. It’s our human nature to look for rewards or return.
As we have studied financial giving in God’s word, we hopefully felt the need to evaluate our giving. And we probably have wondered what would happen if we did begin to give what we think God wants us to give. Would anything change for me? Would I be better off financially? Would I simply be better off spiritually? What would happen?
Hebrews 11:6 says that God “rewards those who earnestly seek him." God rewards. It’s just the way God is. God is not in anyone’s debt.
The rewards we discuss in this study are not a deal we can make with God. He is sovereign and we can’t make Him do anything. Our motive must remain rooted in simple thankfulness for His grace. But we can know that when the books of earth are closed someday in eternity, no one will ever say that they give more to God than He gave to them.
Around 850 BC, a wealthy woman in Shunem, about 5 miles south of Nazareth, one day asked Elisha the traveling prophet to eat at her home (2 Kings 4:8-10). He did so and her house soon became a regular stop whenever Elisha came through the area.
Helping Elisha must have somehow been rewarding to the woman, because she began to think of ways that she might be able to bless him even more. She told her husband that she wanted to build a small addition onto the home to give Elisha his own furnished room when he came. Then he would be able to come and relax there. What a blessing! And that’s exactly what they did.
This Shunamite woman was much like several families I have known in our church and elsewhere who have space in their homes that they developed largely to offer it to house missionaries while they are at home in the United States. They have generously spent their money and give their hospitality in the spirit of this Shunamite woman.
Now this woman didn’t do this to “get” anything. She didn’t make a deal with God that if she built this room for Elisha, she expected certain things back from God. She seemingly just gave as God led her. But what happened? Elisha wondered aloud if there was a way that He could bless her and his servant Gehazi mentioned that she didn’t have a son (2 Kings 4:11-13). Evidently it was a real desire of her heart that so far had not been fulfilled. So Elisha the prophet promised her a son. And God came through as Elisha promised! This woman who had been childless had a bouncing baby boy! God is certainly a rewarder! The blessing of a child was a far greater blessing to her than she had even been to Elisha.
Now the story doesn’t end here. This child grew and as a boy one day working with his dad in the fields, he suddenly died. Of course the woman was heart broken – and even angry at God and Elisha. She laid the body of her only son on Elisha’s bed in his room and went to find Elisha. In her bitter grief she said, "Did I ask you for a son, my lord?" she said. "Didn't I tell you, 'Don't raise my hopes" (2 Kings 4:28)?
So Elisha went to her house, prayed and laid himself over the body of the boy and God gave her son life again. God gave her a son to begin with and the God raised him from the dead, giving him to her again.
God is a giver. But we learn that when we give to God, there is no guarantee that life will suddenly be wonderful and without pain. When we give, we will still be tested.
There was yet another time when this Shunamite woman was tested – this time financially (2 Kings 8:1-6). Elisha told this woman to leave the land of Israel because God had revealed to him that a seven year famine was coming.
Evidently the Shunamite woman’s husband who was older had died by then because now she was a widow. So she left the country of Israel to avoid the famine. But what evidently happened in those days is that if you left the country for an extended time, your abandoned land would become either the property of the king or perhaps of a relative. But whoever had it, evidently it was no sure thing that you would get it back.
So when the Shunamite woman came back to the land, she went before the king to beg to get her land back. This is where God’s rewarding character is again obvious. When this woman comes to King Joram, Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, just happened to be talking to the king. Imagine that! And the king has just at that moment had asked Gehazi to tell him about his master Elisha’s miracles.
(2 Kings 8:5-6) "Just as Gehazi was telling the king how Elisha had restored the dead to life, the woman whose son Elisha had brought back to life came to beg the king for her house and land. Gehazi said, "This is the woman, my lord the king, and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life." {6} The king asked the woman about it, and she told him. Then he assigned an official to her case and said to him, "Give back everything that belonged to her, including all the income from her land from the day she left the country until now.”
So how did this woman’s generosity work out in the long run? Her gifts to God were initially just meals for Elijah and then she built and furnished a small room for him. God’s gifts to her included the birth of a son, the resurrection of her son, advance warning of a 7-year famine and then God made sure she received her land back – plus seven years income!
God is an incredible rewarder to those who give to Him out of a grateful heart. But along with the principle we find in Old Testament scriptures the principle that those who refuse to give miss out on God’s blessings.
In the time of Malachi the prophet (about 400 BC), there were serious spiritual problems in Israel. The book of Malachi addresses several of them. The Israelites were bringing God sacrifices consisting of their maimed animals (1:7-8). The priests had stopped teaching the word of God accurately (2:1-9). Furthermore, the Israelites had married unbelievers (2:11-16) and were divorcing their wives (2:13-16). They were even saying that evil people were good (2:17). Included in God’s rebuke through the prophet Malachi was proof that they had turned from God as shown by the fact that they stopped giving their tithes and offerings (Malachi 3:7-9).
At first they denied that they had turned from God (Malachi 3:7). They seems to have protested that they had done nothing wrong, What do you mean, return to God? I’m doing fine with God. I don’t need to change anything.
And then interestingly Malachi uses as their failure to give financially as evidence of their spiritual state. He tells them, You’ve robbed God. Now they are really sputtering. How do we rob God?
(Malachi 3:8-9) "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. "But you ask, 'How do we rob you?' "In tithes and offerings. {9} You are under a curse--the whole nation of you--because you are robbing me.” The failure to bring their tithes and offerings is called robbing God.
Tithes are a largely misunderstood part of Bible teaching about giving. “Tithe” is a Bible term that means 1/10th. Tithing was an obligation under the covenant of the Old Testament law. The first 10% of their crops went to God. The following chart describe the basic tithing requirements under the Law.
Giving Forms in the Old Testament
1. Regular Tithes = 10% of crops (income) given each year to the Lord (Leviticus 27:30) OBLIGATION
a. Provided regular income for Levites and Priests serving at the temple in Jerusalem (Numbers 18:21-26)
b. Provided means for having three special feasts in Jerusalem each year (or if they lived too far away, they could bring money – Deuteronomy 14:22-26)
2. 2nd Tithe every 3rd year = 3.33% OBLIGATION
c. Used to support the local Levites and the needy (Deut. 14:27-29)
3. Personal Offerings – Any other gifts (2 Kings 12:4; Mark 12:41 – voluntary vows, gifts). VOLUNTARY
There is some scholarly discussion and disagreement on the details of the tithing laws. It is possible that the feasting tithe (1/a above) was actually a 2nd separate tithe and thus it would mean an additional 10% tithe was required. This would actually make the annual “tithe” a total of 23.3% of one’s yearly income. But we’ll assume for now that it was part of the 1st tithe. Even then, the basic Israelite farmer would be giving an average of 13.3% per year as an obligation. Then they could and should give offerings above the tithe as thanks or praise.
These additional personal offerings were personal worship decisions. An example of this would be the widow at temple we studied who gave her two small copper coins while the wealthy threw in large amounts (Mark 12:41). These gifts were over and above tithing. When Josiah collected money to restore the temple, that was all above the tithes (2 Kings 12:4). And these financial offerings still did not account for many of the sin offerings and other offerings that involved animals or produce of the field.
So under the giving system of the Law, an obedient Israelite would be giving 13% (or maybe 23%) that was their obligation, plus whatever God led them to give above that in personal offerings.
Malachi rebuked the Israelites of his day who for the most part were not giving their tithes and offerings. He said that they had thus robbed God. As it turns out, they were actually robbing themselves of God’s blessings. Notice the promise of God to the Israelites if they were to repent of their failure to give.
(Malachi 3:10-12) "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says 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. {11} I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. {12} "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty."
God is promising Israel financial success as a reward for tithing. Now before we start planning on building a new home and buying that yacht because we are going to give, we need to remember several things. 1) God’s purpose in rewarding us is not so that we can become selfishly wealthy. 2) We do not have the promise about tithing repeated today in the New Testament. We live under the new covenant and we actually don’t have a tithing law in the New Testament. No one can tell you that you must give 10% or 13% plus other voluntary offerings. That was the Old Covenant.
But it would seem a bit strange that we would make it our goal in this age of grace to do less than what was required under the law. In His teaching Jesus often challenged people to live by a higher standard now under grace than what Moses had required under the law (e.g. Matthew 5:27, 28).
So although the law of tithing and the financial promises of tithing are not in force today, we find from the words of Jesus and from the epistles of the New Testament that the general principle of God’s promises to givers are still true.
Jesus taught the basic principle that God rewards those who are generous not only financially, but generous in spirit. Listen to the words of Christ.
"But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. What kind of reward? It doesn’t say – perhaps here, perhaps heaven. {36} Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. {37} "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:35-37)
People who do good to others generally find themselves blessed with the same kind of graciousness with which they treat others. God makes sure that happens somehow. Jesus says next that God gives back even more than a generous merchant.
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (Luke 6:38)"
A “good measure” meant that when you bought grain in the market, the merchant didn’t do to you what the potato chip people do to us. When we open the potato chip bag we often find it half empty when we think it’s going to be full. But a generous merchant would fill his measure to the brim and then press it down and shake it so it settles so he could get a little more in before giving it to you as the costumer.
Jesus says God is like that generous merchant – only more so! God will reward us in such abundance of blessings that they will be overflowing our basket and filling the robe in our lap. God is just that way! He will not be out-given.
What kind of giving is Jesus talking about? He could mean money, but He could also be referring to anything of ours that we give away – time, concern for others, encouragement, money or other material things. And what kind of return or blessing is Jesus promising? God may give back to us in many ways. In His miraculous way He can choose to bless us financially through finding us good deals, preventing high expenses or by providing raises or more hours and overtime. But it could be also be that God bless our “giving” by rewarding us with unexpected time to relax even though we had given away time to serve others. It could be that God miraculously bless our marriage, restores relationships or health or any number of good things.
At our church we need to replace our entire roof one fall. We hired a contractor who was willing to work with our volunteers. Many guys gave up their time in the evenings and Saturday to help on the project and the total cost was far below the estimate of having a contractor do it all. How did God reward those who volunteered to help? I don’t know all the ways, but I am confident that they were rewarded with joy, fellowship and even God’s provision of time that they needed for their own family and personal projects.
Those who give time regularly to serving others in their church, family and community are not shortchanged in the long run. Providentially, God takes care of the time needs of those who gave time, the financial needs of those who give financially and the encouragement needs of those who give encouragement.
From what we’ve seen from the Shunemmite woman and from the tithing promises of Malachi and Jesus’ words to us here, we can be sure that God will reward our financial giving. We may not get wealthy, but no one will get to heaven and think, Boy, I got the raw end of that giving stuff.
In the New Testament God’s promises to givers include a great variety of both spiritual and financial blessings. In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 Paul urges the church at Corinth to give to an offering he is collecting for famine relief for believers in Jerusalem. At the end of his exhortation he lists some of the blessings they will experience if they do.
If God is working in our heart to produce a new attitude of giving based on stewardship, contentment, trust and worship, then what God wants us to know very clearly from the following passages is that we will never regret it.
The general principle is exactly what Jesus taught: God blesses givers; “Whoever sows generously will also reap generously.” (2 Corinthians 9:6-14). Here are other blessings Paul describes that will come just from participating in this offering for needy believers in Jerusalem.
1. We will have enough to live on (8). “…having all that you need.”
2. Our ministry will multiply (8,11). “You will abound in every good work… [God] will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.
3. We will have enough to give more (10-11). “[God] will also supply and increase your store of seed … {11} You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion”
4. People will thank for supplying their needs (12) “… your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God … supplying the needs of God's people…”
5. People will praise God for your obedience to God and generosity (13)… “Men will praise God for the obedience … and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.”
6. People will pray for you (14) “And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you."
If we are privileged to live the kind of life described above, our life will be richly blessed indeed! As I look over this list of God’s rewards, I find that all six of these blessing describe God’s reward on the lives of my wife and I. It certainly does not mean that there are not many other struggles or trials in our lives, but as we have given to God financially as He has directed us concerning our local church and other ministries, He really has given us these rewards.
To appreciate God’s rewards, we have to adjust our expectations. Those who teach that it’s God’s will that Christians should be wealthy appeal to the selfishness of our hearts. They suppose that “godliness is a means to financial gain” (1 Timothy 6:5). The problem with that thinking is first of all that God never promises that in the New Testament and secondly, that if we give in order to live selfishly, we forfeit the real rewards God promised here.
If we struggle with a constant desire to be better off financially, we must note in the passage above what Paul promised the Corinthians. The reason why God will bless them financially is not so that they can spend it on upgrading their lifestyle, but so that they could give more. “[God] will also supply and increase your store of seed … {11} You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion” (2 Corinthians 9:10-11).
The principle is not that we should “Give to Get.” God’s word is saying that we should “Give to Get, to Give more.” God rewards that kind of an unselfish heart.
Paul’s letter to the Philippians reveals his own financial struggle and how he learned to be content through Christ even when he was hungry (Philippians 4:11-13). But in this section Paul stresses that he really did appreciate the financial gift that the church in Philippi sent him. Paul had received a gift from them for his support, just as a church budget pays salaries for pastors and missionaries,.
Philippi is one of those Macedonian churches we studied previously who gave to the offering for Jerusalem out of their poverty (2 Corinthians 8:1-5). Since this letter to the Philippians was written about seven years later, we realize that they didn’t quit giving with that single offering. Philippians 4:10-20 is really Paul’s thank you note for that gift. And in his note, Paul includes additional promises of rewards from God for giving.
1. Eternal Rewards are placed on our account (Philippians 4:17-19) “Not that I am looking for a gift, but I am looking for what may be credited to your account. Where are these rewards? These are rewards awaiting us in heaven!
2. We have the Privilege of Pleasing God (4:19) “I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.”
3. All our needs including money will be supplied by God {19} And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus."
All means all. God is promising not only material blessings. This is a much better promise than even the Old Testament promise of material blessings. This is a promise of incredible blessing throughout our life.
Will life still be hard at time for givers? Yes. Will it actually be hard to give at times? Yes? Will there be doubts and fears about giving? Yes. But God will bless. We can just leave that part up to God.
Should we give to get? No. We should give out of gratitude for what God did for us through Christ. But God wanted us to know that He will not ignore our gift or be out-given. God rewards those who give.
Now, if giving is new to us, or if God is working in our heart in some new way, we need to make some practical decisions about where to give and how much.
The New Testament describes three crucial parts of a giving plan.
Two key passages from Paul to the Corinthians make the point that God expects our giving to reflect our income in some proportionate sense. Our giving should be a reflection of the income God has given to us. Paul called it giving “according to your means.” (2 Corinthians 8:11).
Even clearer are his instructions when the offering for the Jerusalem church was first announced. (1 Corinthians 16:2) "On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made."
A George Barna poll in 1999 revealed that, “Evangelicals are the most generous givers, but fewer than 10% of born again Christians gave 10% or more to their church.” (George Barna. News release by Barna Research Group, April 5, 2000.) Also according to Barna, in 2000 14% of evangelicals said that they tithed. In 2001, 12% claimed to tithe. After 911, in 2002, the polls showed that it fell to 6%. However accurate the polls may be, it’s nonetheless obvious that only a small number of those who claim to be believers and to acknowledge the Bible as God’s word are giving even at the most minimal Old Testament standard.
Paul would not say that we must tithe, but tithing can serve us as a basic principle for proportionate giving. For some who are beginning, it might be a target to plan toward. For some it might just be a starting point.
We as believers today give with a full understanding of God’s grace and of God’s promises. So while the tithe should not obligate us, it also should not limit us!
What Paul seems to say in 1 Corinthians 16:2 is that we should simply decide on a percentage of our income to give regularly. Then it’s just a simple pre-spending decision that that comes off the top of every paycheck or other source if income. In one sense it is a simple as taxes – just a lot more fun. Beyond what we decide to give proportionately, there may be many other occasions when God shows us a need to which He prompts us to give.
If we make financial decisions alone, we can simply pray and decide what percent we should begin with or move toward. If we are married we should pray for and with our spouse that we to be able to come to an agreement of what to give jointly. It’s a spiritual exercise that can affect not only our finances but our marriage. If the discussion of what to give becomes an argument about spending and whose fault the money problems are, then a couple knows that they need to explore the whole concept of being God’s stewards. The need to give is part of a the whole issue of living as stewards.
Some of us might think that we can’t afford to give up to 10% when we can’t seem to afford to live on what we have now. Indeed it can seem impossibly out of reach, but as we think like stewards and worshippers, God begins to make it possible. That’s where trust begins and God’s promises kick in.
In coming chapters as we learn what God says about practical areas like spending and debt, we will realize that God wants to free and enable us financially so that we can give. Generous proportional giving can be a reality for every one who follows Christ.
So tithing is not a rule, but proportionate giving is God’s plan. The second principle we find in Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians is that proportionate giving needs to be regular.
Paul taught the Corinthians to give regularly. (1 Corinthians 16:2) "On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money…."
Paul was telling them to get ready for the offering by setting aside a regular amount each week when they came together to worship. This does not establish a rule that everyone must give every week, but it does establish the principle that regularity is key to proportionate giving. Just giving when we feel like it will probably lead to less and less commitment.
Consistent giving is possible even though we may get paid at very different intervals. Those in business or who receive commissions obviously have a bigger challenge at giving consistently. One suggestion for Christians who work on commissions is that they should establish a consistent budget of both spending and giving that is based on a conservative estimate of their income. Not only does that avoid the volatility of a feast and famine approach to expenses, it also enables giving to be consistent.
It’s pretty easy for me to give consistently because I have a regular salary. My dad, however, was a farmer and had two main harvests a year. One crop was harvested in early summer and one in the fall. This meant that Dad had just two main paychecks each year. But my memory is that he wrote a check every week to the church. He somehow had averaged out what he intended to give. But I also remember that at harvest time he and mom would also write out a lot of extra checks to different ministries – because that’s when the income was finally determined and more money was available to give.
We have complete freedom in how much we give and how often, but as in all areas of life, we need a plan that has some consistency. Regularity holds us accountable and it also enables the ministries that we support to be able to count on the gifts they need.
As God moves in our hearts to be faithful givers as His stewards, probably the most important decision we make is about our attitude.
Paul states it directly, "Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." (2 Corinthians 9:7)
We should give personally. No other person can tell you how much exactly to give. But as we seek God in prayer, God will direct us. If we have a sincere desire to be a steward, and if we are giving out of worship, gratitude and trust, we need to simply decide on a percentage to begin at for now.
If giving is an issue between me and God, then it is also crucial that we give willingly. At times we will need to pray for a willing and eager spirit, just as we need to do about any ministry or area of commitment in our life.
Part of giving willingly as worship to God is that fact that God is some very personal sense loves a cheerful giver. Give cheerfully to God.
There’s an old story about a father who gave his son a dime and a quarter. He told his son that he should give one of them in the Sunday School offering and then he could keep the other coin. But the father reminded him, Remember, God loves a cheerful giver. Later, the dad asked which coin the child had given. He replied, Well, Dad, you said that God loves a cheerful giver, and I decided that I’d be more cheerful if I kept the quarter.
We naturally think we would indeed be more cheerful keeping or spending as much as possible on ourselves. But if we have already lived that way – keeping and spending and hoarding – how cheerful has it really made us?
Paul’s word cheerful here is the Greek word hilaros which is where we get our English word hilarious. The Greek term does not quite have the connotation of hilarity, but the general idea is that when we give in gratitude for God’s grace to us, it should be a happy occasion.
And why shouldn’t it be? Giving is really somewhat of a legal form of insider trading. We have just seen the list of what God does when we give motivated by His grace. God’s blessings to givers are abundant. We as believers have an insider’s knowledge of all God’s dividends for givers. Giving should be joyful when we are guaranteed such returns.
We have seen that the Old Testament tithe went to support the worship and ministry of Israel at the temple. It was essentially the Old Testament equivalent of the local church. The local church would seem to be the biblical place to start giving proportionately. The epistles of the New Testament describe the need to support elders/pastors who teach the word (1 Timothy 5:17-18; Galatians 6:6). The point was that when we receive our regular spiritual “food” and encouragement from those who teach and lead us in the local church, they should be supported financially.
Along with such teachers are the financial support needs of others who preach the gospel such as Paul – who was financially supported much like missionaries today (1 Corinthians 9:4-14). Most missionary support today goes through the local church as well today. Finally, benevolence gifts are frequently channeled through local churches as well.
So the local church would seem to be the primary place to give financially based on the worship precedent of the Old Testament as well as the support principles of the New Testament. The necessity to have places to meet and to provide other ministry materials in our modern culture also points to the church as being the primary focus of biblical giving today.
In addition there are of course many other worthy ministries who support and supplement the ministry of the local church. One of the most exciting means of giving is to personally connect to missionary families and other ministry needs through regular giving. Our children learned the joy of giving their “tithe money” to missionary families that knew personally.
If we ask God to lead us to personal needs and ministries, He will be very creative in matching our hearts with His purposes.
Cash will probably be the normal currency of giving for most today, but giving has always taken various forms. In Bible times all the way to early America, support for pastors often came through providing food. Later it became norm to provide a parsonage as a home.
Going back to Old Testament times, people gave material, valuables and other items needed to build, assemble and furnish the tabernacle (Exodus 35:22-29). Today a person might give items that they know a missionary or someone else needs. IRS laws in the US allow tax deductions for “gifts in kind” just as it does for direct cash gifts.
When the church started in Jerusalem people sold items of value and gave it to support people in the church (Acts 2:44-45). Acts 4 tells about people who sold some of their assets of land to make significant gifts to the new church at Jerusalem and gave it to the apostles to distribute to those in need (Acts 4:34-37).
Christians today can give creatively and substantially to ministry needs to which God directs them by selling items of value, donating stocks, or including a church or ministry in their estate plan.
God prompts and provides ways for us to give that uniquely part of his plan and fit us perfectly. Then God rewards and blesses our giving in many ways.
Dr. Gene Getz (Real Prosperity, Moody Press. 1990 pp.47-48) reports a story from Lyle Eggleston, a missionary church planter in Chile in the late 80’s. Lyle desired to continue to plant churches, but it was crucial for the church where he was working to first of all become self-supporting. Unfortunately, the offerings at the church were averaging only about six dollars a week and the idea of Lyle leaving to start another church was not promising.
Then God began to work in this church through one rather poor couple who asked Lyle to teach them about financial giving. They had been reading on their own about tithing and ask Lyle to teach them more about it. Manuel was an out-of-work carpenter and their only income was selling the eggs from 20 Rhode Island Red hens. Lyle almost reluctantly began to teach them about regular and systematic giving from 1 Corinthians 16 and 2 Corinthians 8 & 9.
The next Sunday Manual handed Lyle an envelope containing his “tithe.” Inside were bills that amounted to 19 cents.
Later that week Lyle was bicycling past their house when Manuel flagged him down. He told Lyle that on Tuesday, after they had set aside their tithe for the next week, they were out of food. They thought at first it would be OK to use their tithe money for food, but then decided they shouldn’t do it.
When they went out to the chicken shed that day, they noticed that there were a lot of eggs already at 6:30 in the morning when normally there wasn’t much to gather until noon. So they had some to eat and sold the rest for bread for the day.
Later that day, a man came by in a push cart and asked them if they had any manure to sell. They hadn’t cleaned their chicken shed for a while and so they sold 20 sackfuls of manure and had enough for groceries and feed for the hens and some money left over.
Manuel’s wife needed shoes so she went to the neighboring town to buy some. There she ran into her nephew who she hadn’t seen for 5 years and he told her that he had a shoe store. She picked some out that she could afford, but her nephew insisted on giving them to her as a gift. So she went back home with new shoes and the money she had brought.
The next week Manuel found work on a project that would last two years. Their income increased and they continued to tithe and soon this couple was providing about half of the church’s income. Others began to hear about their “tithing experiment” and wanted to be involved as well. So they began to tithe also.
The congregation grew and the income grew. A surplus was available every month. Lyle suggested supporting one of the mission’s national pastors who was working among nearby Indians. So they began to support him at $20 a month. Before long they were ready to hire a pastor themselves. They hired the national pastor they had been supporting. They also bought the building the missionary had been renting for them and the land around it, remodeled it and built Sunday School rooms and an auditorium seating 200 people.
Lyle and his wife were therefore able to move on to plant another church.
No one got rich, but God’s blessing was obvious upon the first tithing gift of 19 cents and the faith it represented.
God rewards giving and builds His church through the faithful financial worship of His people.
Part 6 – Biblical Financial Stewardship
If you received a 10% on a paper you turned into your teacher as a student, you wouldn’t feel real good about it obviously. You would have seriously failed the assignment to miss 90% of the material somehow. Yet it is possible to get that grade on God’s financial stewardship test – even if we gave a tithe from every paycheck! How can that be? Well, that is how far off we can actually be from living as God’s stewards if we think that we can do whatever we want with whatever is left after we give.
The previous studies have taught us that we are only stewards, not owners, of our money and possessions. If God owns everything, then we declare our agreement with God that we are stewards by giving back to God a regular sacrificial percentage. But what about that part that is left? Isn’t that God’s as well? It really is, if we are stewards. We get to choose how to use it, but it still belongs to God.
God’s word claims that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). Although human beings claims ownership of livestock, God is saying that He has a prior ownership claim. People simply manage God’s cattle whether they acknowledge it or not.
We have only grasped stewardship if we realize that all our money must be under God’s control. And that is actually the path to financial freedom. You see, if I consider all of my money to be under God’s control, then I can seek and find God’s help in every decision about material things. What a relief! God is not only the owner of my possessions; He’s my advisor about how to manage it all!
This study addresses all those other places our money goes – spending, saving, investing, debt repayment. Not all the principles and ideas we discuss in this study are for everyone. You might not have any debt. Good for you. Likewise we are not all supposed to spend the same or have identical financial priorities. For example, today I’ll make some specific suggestions for living cheaply. God might be leading one person to buy generic and stop spending money on entertainment. The next person might be God’s will to buy name brands and get season tickets to the Milwaukee Brewers – and share them with meJ.
We can’t judge each other, but there are some principles about stewardship wisdom that we must apply and cannot ignore. Our challenge today is to put all our money on the table before God and seek His wisdom.
Let’s get some financial wisdom from a woman. Guys, can we handle that? Actually it’s written by a guy about a woman who’s good with money. Our wives should be our closest financial advisors anyhow. And these verses tell us guys that if we find a wife like this, we are really, really lucky. In fact, a woman like this will do a lot more towards having a good marriage than a pretty faceJ.
This woman seemed to be a wise steward of her financial resources – all of them. She teaches us that stewardship is far more than giving money. Stewardship touches our work ethic and all the ways that we spend and invest.
(Proverbs 31:10-12) “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. {11} Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. {12} She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.”
Two basic traits mark this excellent woman which are crucial to every Christian who wants to be a good steward financially. She works hard and she spends wisely. Note those two themes in the following description of this woman.
(Proverbs 31:13-21) "She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands. SHE WORKS HARD {14} She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar. SHE SPENDS WISELY {15} She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls. SHE WORKS HARD {16} She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. SHE SPENDS WISELY {17} She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks. SHE WORKS HARD {18} She sees that her trading is profitable SHE SPENDS WISELY, and her lamp does not go out at night. SHE WORKS HARD {19} In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers. SHE WORKS HARD
And as a result of her hard work and wise spending, she is truly a wise steward in two additional ways: (Proverbs 31:20) She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. SHE GIVES FREELY {21} When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet." SHE PLANS AHEADS
A good cash flow depends on hard work first of all. We won’t have any money or stuff or even food of which to be a steward unless we work hard. By working hard in fact, this woman minimized her expenses, making some things herself that she wouldn’t have to buy in the market. She was also wise about spending and investing. Money doesn’t grow on trees – unless you buy an orchard. This woman looked for ways to make her money grow.
And finally we learn from her example that when you work hard and spend wisely and plan ahead there is money left to give generously. Quite frankly the reason why we often feel we can’t give is because we have not been faithful stewards by working hard and spending wisely.
So if God is speaking to us in these days about financial stewardship, we will need to ask Him which of these areas to address.
How many of us would like to have a list published showing every expense we have made in the last year? Probably not. There are some purchases I’m sure that we’d like to take back. So maybe we need God’s help on this. The first step to becoming a wise steward of our spending is to set a lifestyle limit financially.
The writer of Proverbs 30:8-9, Agur, declares, “Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. {9} Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”
Really he was praying for the ideal financial condition. He prays that God would not give him too much or too little. Is this a prayer that God would answer? Agur asks just for “daily bread.” Interestingly, this is exactly the financial prayer Jesus taught us, "Give us today our daily bread." (Matthew 6:11)
Maybe we are praying or at least desiring the wrong things. It is highly possible that we would become self-sufficient and superior-feeling if we had an extra million dollars in the bank. On the other hand, would we be tempted to be dishonest if we became impoverished?
Agur clearly is teaching that there is a “just right” place to be financially. It’s kind of a Goldilocks thing – not too hot, not too cold. If God owns everything and has determined how much we should have, then there really is a sweet spot for us financially. The world says that the sweet spot is always to have more. God’s word says no.
God’s will for how much money we should have is the amount we have right now. But even when we accept that, we have a significant challenge. What does God want us to do with what we have? What lifestyle does God want us to live at spending-wise? Do we assume that if we can afford a certain lifestyle, then it’s God’s will that we live at that level? Have we ever considered that God might want us to set a lifestyle limit below our income level?
This might mean a radical change of direction in our thinking – but I’m convinced it’s what God wants us to think about. Stewardship means that we need to seek out from God what lifestyle level we should live financially.
We really have three lifestyle choices financially, regardless of our income level.
1. Living above our means. This lifestyle will mean increasing debt and stress to be sure.
2. Living within our means. This is what we all assume is the right way to live. It will result in a steady, balanced cash flow and will give a person freedom from the bondage of debt and significant financial worries.
3. Living below our means. This is the lifestyle many Christians have never considered, but need to. It will also result in a steady, balanced cash flow and freedom, but it also accomplishes more. Living below our means really prepares us to experience some additional blessings.
Why should we consider living below our means? First of all, it’s the key to contentment – because we constantly realize there are things we choose not to buy. I learn daily what I can live without because I actually have the ability to get them, but I don’t.
Secondly, when we spend less than we earn, we are free to give more than we even planned. When I spend less than I have, I discover that God has allowed me more money which He wants me to manage. Then when opportunities arise, I am free to give as God leads me.
Thirdly, when I spend less than I earn, my stewardship has a good chance of outlasting my own life. For one thing, if I’m a parent, I can be an example to my children. Many young adults and families struggle financially in their early years because they are used to the lifestyle of their parents. But our adult children may or may not be able to live at the level we live. Maybe the larger problem often is that children follow the philosophy of their parents that they should spend all the money they get. But if we as parents consistently demonstrate contentment by limiting our lifestyle, that’s the principle they can learn. And we are doing them and our grandchildren a huge favor.
The other way that our stewardship can outlast the years we have on earth is by leaving money to ministries. Indeed leaving an inheritance to children is a good thing (Proverbs 13:22), but leaving some of it to serve God’s kingdom purposes might be even better. The only way to gather an inheritance is to spend consistently less than we earn.
Let’s assume that God is challenging you and me to either live within or below your means. Is that a pretty safe assumption – that God is not trying to teach us how to live beyond our means? If we want to be stewards living within or below our means, we have to handle the spending issue.
So what do we do when we want things we can’t afford? When that want or desire comes, we assume that the solution is to either increase our income or to increase our debt. Right? If we want something we can’t afford right now, we think about how we can get more money either from more income or more borrowing.
But the Proverbs tell us two simple truths that can change our entire financial situation. I’m warning you, the Bible uses a strong term to describe us if we think this way. Ready? (Proverbs 17:16) "Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom?" If we only want money, not wisdom, God calls us a fool.
So more money is not the solution. The Proverbs further tell us that it’s foolish to have what we can’t afford (Proverbs 19:10) “It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury…"
We might think that luxury is driving a new Mercedes or buying clothes at some elite store, but luxury is simply something we want, but can’t afford. The luxury may be taking the family to MacDonald’s as often as we do. There’s nothing “wrong” with that of itself. Others do it. But it’s not my “right” if I can’ afford it.
If it takes away from a necessity or adds to a credit card balance we can’t pay off, those expenses are luxuries beyond my means. They create sleepless nights, overwork and trouble in our marriages when we begin to play blaming games.
The answer is found in seriously making spending a stewardship issue under God’s control. Besides the 10 commandments, God might be personally commanding us to not buy many things we assume are our right. But God wants to give us the freedom of living within or below our means.
We might think that there’s nothing we can change in our spending. There is nothing more I can cut out. I just need more money. I have to go into further debt or get more income!
Let me suggest 24 ideas for how to live within or below your means without adding to your income or debt. You can add to your own list. Take a deep breath and decide not to be defensive, OK? Every idea on here may not be God speaking to you, but we need to realize that there are choices we can make.
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24 Ways to Live Below Your Means |
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1. Doing without |
1. Accepting less convenience |
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2. Older technology and styles |
13. Budgeting, and keeping it |
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3. Used instead of New |
14. Waiting & shopping longer |
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4. Sales, Coupons, Rebates |
15. Planning ahead |
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5. Keeping the old one |
16. Buying quantity |
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6. Giving up things that are fun to do/have |
17. Giving up what tastes best |
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7. Buying lesser/generic brands |
18. Making instead of buying |
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8. Fixing instead of replacing |
19. Renting instead of Owning |
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9. Less instead of More |
20. Smaller instead of Bigger |
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10. Combine trips |
21. Less entertainment |
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11. Shorter showers, and other utilities |
22. Value instead of vanity |
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12. Selling off what I don’t need |
23. Don’t use the credit card |
Isn’t this list above an exciting and wonderful way to live? I’m only partly joking about that because it really can be! It can free us financially. As we spend less by adopting a different, more frugal lifestyle, there will be more money left to take the pain out of the unexpected car repair or medical bill. The old adage is true that a penny saved really is a penny earned.
Take a pencil or pen and check what you could do better at or add to the above list. If we have habitually thought that that the only answer is more income or more debt we need to make an adjustment to our mindset and lifestyle. It can help our stress, our marriage and even our children and grandchildren. Or we could just keep increasing our misery in all those areas.
We can learn these skills – if we have the humility. If you are interested in learning them there are people around you in the church who are masters at these who can probably help.
When we feel forced to cut back on some area of spending we tend at first to resent it. Priscilla and I have decided that when that happens God is doing us a great favor. Not only is He teaching us self-control, wisdom and trust, but also our kids might catch some of it.
So are we learning that it is God’s will that we never spend more than we absolutely need? I never said that and neither did God. He gives us all things richly to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17). God delights to reward us with special blessings. Some might be gifts. Some we can indeed splurge on with freedom at times as God’s blessings. But the tendency of our society is to consider splurges to be rights and soon splurging becomes our routine. And it’s an enslaving lifestyle that we often cannot afford. We need to consider if a certain splurge really is God’s blessing or not. Proverbs 10:22 tells us that, "The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it." If our so-called blessing is bringing us financial debt and family stress, it’s probably not God’s blessing at all.
It is crucial that we distinguish between our needs, our wants and our desires. We need a vehicle for transportation. We probably want to upgrade to something newer and nicer. We might desire the new red sports car that just passed us on the highway.
Sometimes God leads and enables us to enjoy our wants and desires. But often He doesn’t. Instead he wants to teach us wisdom, contentment and frugality in some way to enable us to have the financial freedom of living below our means.
That leads us to the important stewardship issue of savings.
As we begin to live within or below our means, there is a very good possibility that we will be able to save up money for future needs. Proverbs 6:6-8 tell us that ants have enough sense just by instinct to work hard when the weather is good so that they have enough in the winter. Proverbs 21:5 tells us, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty."
You see, no matter how much money we bring in we can still live in poverty if we spend it all and can’t meet the bills. If we don’t restrain our spending so we have enough money to do what we need to do, that’s poverty. So planning means some kind budgeting or plan unless there is a shared and accepted standard of thrift in the family.
Particularly if we are in trouble financially, it will take an actual budget to get us out and help us stay out. Crown Financial ministries (www.crown.org) has self-guided materials to help or it might be wise to seek out a financial counselor to help us. A budget allows us to know if we really can afford something. Have we done the math?
Maybe you aren’t at a stage in life where saving and investing is high priority. You might be living paycheck to paycheck. But saving is part of planning. Proverbs 21:20 tells us, "In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.” Saving is part of living within or below our means. We simply can’t use up all the money we have now if we are going to have it when we need it.
Why do they take out taxes from every paycheck at most jobs? And why do they require the self-employed to pay quarterly? Because the government doesn’t trust us to take it out and pay it at the end of the year, right?
Pastors are considered self-employed tax-wise (a unique category) and we pay quarterly. I’ve found that the best thing for me is to set up an automatic transfer every paycheck into a savings account because for so many years I struggled to get that quarterly payment together. Now I feel the pinch of that money being taken out every paycheck, but I’m not worried about quarterly taxes anymore.
For most people there will sometimes be needs that we could never have anticipated and for which we must trust God. That’s normal Christian living even when we are good stewards. But there are so many regular expenses like taxes and other bills that require us to save. Beyond that there is a likelihood that cars must be repaired or replace and appliances give out etc. A wise steward will seek to set aside some portion as savings in anticipation of those needs.
Businesses require investment. The wise woman of Proverbs 31:16 considered and bought a field and then she planted a vineyard. Every farmer knows that you have to have fields to farm. And you have to have tractors and buy fertilizer. Every businessman invests. That’s what this woman did. Many people start their own business of some kind. To do so requires some kind of investment, even if it’s just gas to put in dad’s mower when a teen mows lawns for the neighbors.
For many today investing means putting some money someplace where it can grow for retirement. It’s not that everyone can or must do this at every point in their life. But the earlier a person starts, the more the investment grows. We should plan for a time later in life when we won’t be able to earn what we did earlier in life.
Finally a part of wise investing leads to the opportunity to leave an inheritance (Proverbs 13:22) "A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children.) He was good because he wasn’t just thinking about himself. He was thinking about the future. And if he saved and invested well, there was something to help his children when he was gone.
One warning on investments is that being stewards of God’s money always means that wisdom is found in balance. There is such a thing as excessive saving and investing. The rich man in Luke 12:16-21 built bigger barns and said, There, I have plenty laid up for years. Eat, Drink and be merry. But then the guy died. Jesus said that his problem was that he was not rich toward God. His investing was all selfish and excluded God.
We need to make sure that our saving and investing is not really part of a paranoia we have about the future. Saving excessively for retirement can indicate a failure to trust God or it can reveal that our real goal is to live lavishly throughout life. Does our saving and investing reflect that we are “rich toward God?”
Now we come to what is probably the most difficult stewardship issue – debt.
Probably more than a few of us have sensed God speaking to us about stewardship. We really want to give God true ownership of our finances. But many people feel powerless to change because they are in a mess because of debt.
There are two basic kinds of debt. Some debt might be acceptable. A home mortgage, for example, provides us with a necessity that we might reasonably expect to appreciate in value. Other investments in business might also involve reasonable debt with minimal risk after factoring in our investment of hard work. In either case however, wisdom still demands that we get good advice to see if we have over-borrowed on what is otherwise a reasonable area of debt.
The subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 is an example of so-called “good debt” going bad. Many home buyers borrowed more than they could afford and then when interest rates escalated on their adjustable rate mortgages, they defaulted.
The real culprit of most debt problems is consumer debt – paying finance charges on credit cards or any loan that we really can’t afford buying things that depreciate in value.
According to MSN Money (Liz Pulliam Weston, The Truth about Credit Card Debt, www.moneycentral.msn.com/content/banking, 11-15- 2007) a little more than ¼ of households don’t use credit cards at all. Another ¼ pay them off each month. That’s the good news. But that leaves about ½ with outstanding balances that are increasing at 10-20% interest. In 2005 the average balance was almost $5000! This is the reason why many Christian families are in financial and sometimes marital crisis. It’s also why some feel that can’t even begin to give to God’s kingdom purposes financially.
Someone recently sent me their personal list called, Ways to Know if you’re in too much debt. Included were these statements.
1. You are paying for necessities with credit cards.
2. You are transferring balances between credit cards.
3. You think by taking a consolidation loan to pay off the credit cards everything will work out, but you don’t get rid of the credit cards.
4. You think because you have a high credit limit, you can afford it.
5. You get an uneasy feeling when you are doing monthly bills.
6. You get nervous every time the phone rings.
7. When someone else says “they can’t afford something” you think they need to manage their money better – when it’s really you that needs to.
What does the Bible say about debt? It says that debt is slavery and obligation. (Proverbs 22:7) "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender." The term, servant is really, slave. Debt is bondage. The Bible doesn’t say that it’s always wrong to borrow; it just tells us that debt is bondage. How much bondage do we want – because debt is an obligation to repay?
Debt is also a major cause of conflict. Jeremiah 15:10 complains, "Alas… I have neither lent nor borrowed, yet everyone curses me.” This makes the interesting observation that 2500 years ago debt was already causing conflict.
People often borrow money from relatives who then can’t or don’t pay it back. So they avoid each other and whole families suffer. Husbands or wives hide debt on credit cards, but some day it all comes out and the trust in the marriage is seriously damaged. Unpaid bills due to pressure from debt bring letters from creditors and collection agencies and eventually lawsuits. Businessmen overextend on debt and then the business goes bankrupt. The creditors who go unpaid may be family-owned businesses who need to be paid to make their own payroll and pay their bills. And people who used to be friends live out their lives in conflict because of money.
If we are sensing God working in our lives about stewardship, what do we do about our debt problems? There is hope, but it starts with spiritual decisions to realign our finances with God’s principles. It starts with making significant changes in our mindset and financial management. It starts with deciding to put God in the drive’s seat where He has belonged all the time.
So if you have troubling debt, don’t despair. Hang on. But like an EMT at an accident scene, the first thing that must be done is to identify the bleeding and stop it. There is a Turkish Proverb that says, No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back. The key to overcoming debt problems is to stop borrowing more, start living on less and begin paying back what we owe.
How are we actually going to get out of debt? Crown Financial Ministries (www.crown.org, 11-15-2007) tells the encouraging testimony of a man who at age 26 had debts of $135,000 – including his house, two car payments and 8 credit cards. The strain led to a divorce. He had creditors calling and his stomach was in knots every time the phone rang.
He began to act on the biblical advice of Crown Ministries. First he sold his house. It only netted $2700 after paying off his mortgage, but that enabled him to move into a one-bedroom apartment. He stopped all his subscriptions, cancelled his cable TV and discontinued all entertainment that he had to pay for. He then spent the extra time running or biking or at the library reading – much about financial wisdom.
With every purchase he asked, Do I really need it or do I just want it? Am I paying too much? He greatly reduced his grocery bill and made water his beverage of choice for most meals.
He earned $400 a week, but by making these changes he freed up $400 a month which he then applied towards his debts. He first paid off the credit card with the smallest balance. When that was paid off, he applied the same amount plus what he now didn’t have to pay on the previous card and paid off the next. In 4 years he became debt-free. Then he began saving money at the same rate he had been paying off debts.
He writes, Life-style changes are the most difficult changes you can make… but until the changes are ingrained in your soul, there's always that temptation to fall back to your old ways. My financial problems didn't disappear when I became debt-free. There are still financial decisions to make and goals to meet. The difference for me now is that…my finances…no longer control me.
There are many books and resources to help you. Please ask someone in the leadership of the church to steer you if you need help. But if we are in financial bondage – at any level of the issues we talked about today, the solution boils down to a series of decisions.
1. Do I want to be a steward and acknowledge God’s full control?
2. Will I confess my mismanagement and pray for God’s help?
3. Will I seek godly advice? Will I consult with my spouse and other Christians and Christian resources that can help me?
4. Will I make the lifestyle and other changes needed?
If we humble ourselves and commit ourselves to stewardship and getting wisdom from others, God goes to work. There is hope.
So is the money we give more holy than the money we spend or save? If our “tithe” could talk to the rest of our money could it claim to be “holier than thou?” Actually, No, not at all. If indeed God owns all that we have, then the way that we spend, save and invest is just as much a spiritual matter as any money we give to the Lord. If He is lord of all, then we must be stewards of all the money or other possessions God entrusts to us.
Part 7 – Biblical Financial Stewardship
Our daughter Charlotte was involved in the local middle school production of Fiddler on the Roof. The musical has that familiar song sung by Tevya. If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum. All day long I'd biddy biddy bum. If I were a wealthy man. I wouldn't have to work hard…
Tevya dreams about not having to work hard. We’ve all been there. What might it be like to be independently wealthy and just do what we wanted? If we feel overworked we dream of having truly free time to pursue hobbies or vacationing. So Is Tevya right that we would be happier if we didn’t have to work hard? Is work the villain who steals our time?
Then there’s the bumper sticker that parodies the eager seven dwarfs heading off to work in the diamond mines. I owe, I owe, So off to work I go. Is that all there is to work – paying off principle and interest? Is work just a necessary evil to pay off our loans?
What is the purpose of work in the mind of God? Is it just money production? Many Christians have perhaps never considered whether their work had value beyond the money they earn – or maybe witnessing to someone at work. Obviously God does want to provide for us through our jobs and He wants to use us spiritually where we work, but what about the work itself? Doe it have value intrinsically? It would seem a terrible waste of 40 – 60 hours a week if there was no real value to our work itself.
The first step toward meaningful work is to realize that God was the first worker. He “worked” for six days creating the world until He chose to cease – thus establishing the Sabbath in which He appreciated what He had accomplished. If work is something God does, it must have some intrinsic value. He wouldn’t model a mundane drudgery and certainly not a necessary evil. God example honors work.
Adam was the next worker. God finished His work and assigned the upkeep of his handiwork to Adam. Genesis 2:15 states, "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." So work itself is actually a “spiritual” stewardship, not a “secular” necessity.
So there was human work to do even before there was sin. God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and told them to work it and care for it. We might wonder what there was to do in a garden that had no weeds or thorns, but there was evidently some kind of picking and preparing food. Maybe there was some creating rearranging of plants like my wife Priscilla does in her flower bed all summer. The curse of thorns and thistles came later with sin, but work really came before that.
The term “work” (or keep or cultivate) is actually the Hebrew word for serving. In fact the priest’s service in the tabernacle and temple was called “work” with the same term as used of Adam’s work. The worship-work of priests and the garden-work of Adam are not distinguished in the Bible the way we tend to distinguish between secular and spiritual work in our modern Christian mindset.
Whom did Adam and Eve serve by work and tending the garden? Was their work just a matter of meeting their own needs? No, they were serving God. After all, it was God’s garden. And since we have learned that God owns everything, Adam’s work in the garden and our work today all takes place in God’s world. God owns the trees, the land, and the buildings we work in that are place on God’s land and constructed out of His trees. He owns and provided the copper wires carrying electricity through our walls and machine where we work. He created the materials forming the cement parking lot outside our office building or plant. It’s all God’s stuff.
Work we do serves His purposes and fits into His plans for the universe. If all forms of work in Bible times shared in common that they were really designed to serve God, there is no reason to view work differently today. Work is the process of us partnering with God to do what God wants done.
God wants to put food on the tables of the world, so if you are in the food industry, you are God’s partner. God wants to supply all the stuff at Walmart that you need to live, so if you manufacture or pack or truck or ship or repair or stock or sell or manage money or whatever you do, it’s serving God. God wants to clean people’s teeth and have kids learn math. He even wants us to have computers to create and communicate information. So God equipped you to help Him. Work is a divine assignment – regardless of the often selfish and sometimes evil intentions of those who perform work on earth.
The point is that work is not only valuable as a way to earn money. Our work is partnering with God – unless we work intentionally at something designed to hurt mankind. The “sin industries” such as the production of pornography or other vices come to mind. It is legitimate to consider if what we do for work is primarily devoted to sin or goodness, but we can’t control the effect or perversions of what sinful people do with what we create. For example, if we build computers, it is well known that computers have both harmful as well as helpful effects. A recent study of internet websites ironically revealed that pornography claims the top number of websites, while religious websites numbered the second most. (James Twitchell, Shopping for God, Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 13).
The bottom line is that although the company for which we work might not realize it, they are just stewards too. They may be ungodly or selfish or even dishonest, but nonetheless they are being used by God to take care of His world. So what we call “secular” work is really a sacred responsibility.
As followers of Christ, it is our job to fulfill God’s intention for work so that He is glorified. We are the chosen few who really can do our work with inner motivation because we know that we are really serving Him (Colossians 3:23-24). To please God at our job means that first we must realize it’s a stewardship – whether we are stocking shelves, designing building, making widgets, volunteering to help someone in need, caring for babies at home or working as a full-time pastor or missionary.
Paul urged the Corinthians that "Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31). If we thought that glorifying God was something that happened only within the walls of a church or in the confines of a ministry job, that idea is dispelled. God is just as interested in being glorified on a weekday afternoon as we try to be productive in the sleepy slump after lunch as He is during the crescendo of a worship anthem on Sunday morning. Everything task we “work” at is a stewardship from God whether we are paid for it or not. As we consciously and deliberately serve God in our regular responsibilities, we glorify Him.
As we work we are maintaining God’s world. What a wasted opportunity if we write off all those hours a week to just pay bills or debts. We dare not degrade our work when God commands and honors it. In fact we are responsible to thank Him for our work.
You probably sit at an abundantly full table at Thanksgiving Dinner. Did you only thank God for the food you ate and the people around you or did you thank God for the work that He gave you to do before you got time off for the Thanksgiving weekend? God is the One who enables us to succeed at work and we must thank God even for the ability to work and earn.
Listen to these words from Moses: (Deuteronomy 8:17-18) You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." {18} But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” The better we are at what we do and the more successful and wealthy we become, the more we might tend to take personal credit for it. But if we are learning to live as stewards, then success will actually bring more glory to God, not to me.
Gratitude for our work means we understand with humility that we are “receivers” even when we work. And if we are actually receivers, then we are accountable for both the money we earn and the way we work.
So our work is a stewardship from God. And if we have learned anything from our study of financial stewardship it’s that God is a rewarder. But how does God reward us for approaching our work as a faithful steward?
Notice an obscure but noteworthy verse in Proverbs that illustrates an obvious reward of working hard. “Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty [clean], but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest.” (Proverbs 14:4)
The proverb explains that a person who enjoys eating the yield of a farmer’s harvest needs to remember that such bounty requires messy, difficult work to produce. A farmer could enjoy looking at a clean manger, but if his manger is clean, that means he doesn’t have any animals. Without messy animals there will be no harvest. Food on the table is a basic reward of hard work.
In addition to producing grain on the Kansas farm where I was raised, my dad also custom raised chickens for many years. Twice a year, 15,000 newly hatched baby chicks arrived at our farm. When the chickens were mature, the hatchery who owned them would come and take them away to become laying hens elsewhere. So guess what had to happen every 6 months? We had to shovel several inches of manure from 5 barns into manure spreaders to be spread out on our fields. Then in a couple weeks, 15,000 more chicks would arrive and began to mess it all up and start the cycle of work all over again.
Empty barns are nice, but that’s not going to pay the bills – let alone feed eggs to the world. Your work is hard too. But God is taking care of you and the world through your work! And there’s even more to work than just supplying the world’s needs.
Solomon, the wisest man ever, said, "Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him--for this is his lot.” (Ecclesiastes 5:18) He wasn’t being pessimistic; he saw a true redeeming value to work. We should pursuit finding personal satisfaction in our job.
When Solomon said that it was our “lot” to work, it might sound like a bad thing, as if it’s something we are stuck with. But that’s not the tone of Solomon’s thought at all. The term, “lot” can be translated “portion.” Our work is our piece of God’s pie in a good sense. Our work is actually our chosen for us by God as His blessing or reward.
We should eagerly pursue enjoyment in our job. We should seek satisfaction in doing it well. We can probably do some part of it better than anyone else. Christians who understand work as a stewardship from God will pursue excellence. Whether we are making cabinets or hamburgers or sermons we should do our best and then enjoy the satisfaction of doing it to God’s glory.
Promotion is bonus blessing for doing a job well. God has ordained advancement. Solomon wrote, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men." (Proverbs 22:29) Advancement requires our unique skills blended with hard work so that we can do something significantly better than others. Many people quit jobs too soon and too often and then wonder why they don’t advance in their careers. Maybe one of the reasons is that they don’t stay in one place long enough to develop the skills that would make them truly valuable to their employer.
Many people complain that they don’t get the credit they deserve or the promotion or pay they think they deserve. Somehow in God’s world, however, it usually pays off to do a job well and faithfully for a long time.
If my work is a stewardship from God, then diligence is essential. God’s word tells us that if we don’t work, we shouldn’t eat (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11). The Proverbs are filled with warnings to the sluggard (the lazy). Laziness is a major headache of workplace mangers in every culture, and more importantly, it displeases God, our real employer.
1. Laziness is irritating to others (Proverbs 10:26) “As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is a sluggard to those who send him.”
Hardly anything is more irritating to those who care about quality and productivity than the laziness of those who don’t. Almost every workplace has employees who try to get out of work. Laziness takes the form of long breaks, leaving things for the next shift or frittering away productive time with chit-chat, internet browsing, personal calls or just lack of initiative.
2. Lazy people are usually frustrated (Proverbs 13:4) “The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied."
Laziness doesn’t change cravings. Lazy people usually try to live the same economic lifestyle or higher than those who are industrious and faithful. It ends in frustration however because they can’t afford it. Because of lack of effort or diligence they don’t have the ability to finance their desires. The prevailing culture of credit card debt allows a lazy person to dig their financial hole even deeper.
3. Laziness leads to poverty. (Proverbs 6:10-11) "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest-- {11} and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man." (Proverbs 20:13) “Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare.”
It’s a simple observation. If a farmer stays in bed instead of working his fields, it will show at harvest time. If we show up to work late, try to leave early, punch in late because we turned off the alarm, eventually it will affect our paycheck.
4. Laziness is a form of theft. Proverbs 18:9 warns that, "One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.” When we are not being productive for the hours we are paid, we’re really stealing. For example, if you are a carpenter and you should have built another hour’s worth of wall by working faithfully, then it’s the same result as if you torn down the wall that some another carpenter built for an hour. Of course most workers would be fired for destroying someone else’s work, but it’s really the same thing when we are negligently unproductive.
A steward understands that he or she is accountable to God for effort and diligence. Time is a stewardship just as much as money. We owe our employers and the Lord an honest day’s work.
While working hard and developing our skills are biblical values, there is an opposite problem. It’s possible to be so focused on perfecting or accomplishing our work that our health and our families suffer. We call it workaholism because the rewards of work have an addictive element. When we perform our job well and praise and promotion come, we are drawn to work even harder. We crave the pleasure it brings us in the short term, but ignore damaging consequences in the longer view. Many families have struggled because at least one parent made work, promotion and money an almost exclusive priority.
The solution to the work addiction is not just cutting down on hours. That simply creates a more frustrated workaholic. What needs to change is our thinking about work. That only comes as we adopt a stewardship mindset about work. God is the owner of all who has appointed us to work for Him. If we begin to live to please God in our work, instead of trying to meet all the demands of others or endlessly trying to prove ourselves, we will find balance. God expects us to work hard and even put in extra effort. As we seek to please God, most human bosses will be pleased as well. But working for God means that we also address our need for rest, health and time invested in relationships.
Psalms 127:2 declares, "In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat-- for he grants sleep to those he loves.” (New International Version) This seems to teach us how dependent on God we are to bless our work efforts. If we trust God, we can be at rest about success and sleep.
But this verse may be saying even more than that. The New American Standard Version reflects an alternate way of understanding the Hebrew expression at the end of the verse. It could be translated, "It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.” (Psalms 127:2 - NASB)
This would be saying that it is foolish to overwork because God ultimately controls our success. Every farmer knows that plants grow while you sleep based mostly upon conditions like rain and sunshine – factors you can’t control! You still have to work hard, but success ultimately depends on God’s power over the weather – not only on how hard we work.
It is obviously a complex challenge for every person to learn to balance work and home as well as other responsibilities such as church ministry and taking care of one’s one health and well-being. There is no formula, but there are some important questions we should ask ourselves. 1) Am I working so hard or long because I derive most of my significance from what I do? 2) Am I working so hard trying to please or impress some people at the expense of my family? 3) Is my pursuit of money or promotion by excessive hours fueled by a failure to trust in God to supply for me while keeping reasonable priorities? 4) Have I ignored the pleas of my spouse or the warnings of other mature advisors in my life about my work commitments?
How will find that balance? We have to pray and utilize wisdom and advice from God’s word, from friends and spouses.
The goal of work for a Christian is to be a good steward of time, just as we are called to be a good steward of money. Time really is money in that we are accountable to God for both. That’s what is wrong with “get rich quick” schemes. They are bad stewardship of our time. God’s word reminds us, "He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty.” (Proverbs 28:19). Easy money is a fantasy. As the saying goes, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
People tend to believe what they want to believe when it comes to money – which is why scams work. I get some great offers from Nigeria and other countries very regularly in my email telling me that someone has died and left a fortune. It’s amazing how they all want to send it to me!
Hopefully, no thinking person would fall for that kind of scam, but many are susceptible to pyramid schemes or some kind of multi-level marketing business. A pyramid scheme promises huge return for investing money and/or enrolling others in the program to do the same – without ever delivering any goods or services. 90% of those who get involved in pyramid schemes will not recoup their initial investment. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme) A chart in the Wikipedia article shows furthermore that the 11th level a pyramid scheme would require every person in the US to be involved, which of course is unsustainable.
Many multi-level marketing businesses are perhaps legal efforts but exist in a grey area which is similar to a pyramid scheme. It’s a business model of selling products directly to consumers through relationships. The promise of significant income however comes from gaining commissions from other dealers whom you recruit to work under you. That’s where the so-called easy money comes.
One ethical problem with these businesses is that a person basically needs to exploit friendships to sign people up. I remember when one of my wife’s co-workers invited us to dinner when we lived in Dallas. They made it sound like they wanted to get together to talk about spiritual things. That caught our interest. But as I talked to them on the phone about the dinner invitation, I became suspicious and probed until I found out that the real nature of our coming visit was that they actually wanted us to be “dealers” under them in a business.
Gambling is promoted as a harmless game of chance. The problems with gambling however are many. The odds of course make it a terrible investment and the addictive nature of gambling carries with it the consequences of family strife and financial ruin. But in our effort to honor God financially we must conclude that what’s really wrong with gambling for a Christian is that it’s unfaithful stewardship of God’s money in several ways:
First of all, gambling wastes money that God has entrusted to me as a steward. Did God really lead me to buy lottery tickets with the money He gave me? Secondly, gambling is based on the greedy hope that I can take other people’s wasted money for myself. Furthermore gambling violates the stewardship of work in that it is based on getting something for nothing. It’s based on a wish for many that they would no longer have to work. Therefore it undermines and wastes the abilities God entrusted to me – maybe the rest of my life. Finally, gambling is based on luck of course, which is completely contrary to a sense of trust in God.
So gambling is wrong not based on whether or not it is legal; gambling is wrong because it violates all stewardship issues. I’m trying to bypass God’s will. The bottom line is that if we expect to get rich without work, we are violating the basic issue of stewardship. I’m not being a steward of the time, strength or energy God gave me to expect to not have to work for it.
If we understand the issue of the stewardship of work, we understand that the job we have right now is the job God wants us to have right now – with the time it requires and the pay I receive.
God is certainly able to bless us with more money if He desires through promotion or the success of our business of the appreciation of our legitimate investments. God may even bless someone occasionally with a windfall through inheritance or other means. The greed that underlies gambling is not however what brings God glory or teaches us to trust Him.
If I see myself biblically as a steward then God is my real boss. He is the One sitting behind the desk in the corner office. And ultimately it is God whom I must obey by working faithfully, honestly and obediently. We need to adopt the mindset that the person who signs our check or who oversees my work is not my real boss; God is.
(Colossians 3:22-24) "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. {23} Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, {24} since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."
We are accountable to God! It doesn’t matter if our human boss knows what we are doing or not. God does! If we just work hard when our supervisor watches, we have essentially become Christian atheists. We believe that God exists, but we are living as if He doesn’t.
Many employees essentially spend their days trying to “win the favor” of the boss. They laugh at the boss’s jokes, do him or her special favors, feed his or her ego and basically pretend to like them, hoping to get special treatment. But we can escape those games if we adopt the concept of biblical stewardship – working for God. And then we don’t have to worry about the good things that boss didn’t notice or about the mistakes he did notice.
God is our rewarder when we think like stewards. We can trust God to reward us eventually in due time (verse 24 above). A good test of our stewardship is how much we do things for the boss to notice. If God as our real boss, then we don’t need to push ourselves and our accomplishments.
Ephesians 6:5 describes our relationship to our boss in a similar way with the words, saying that we should obey our earthly masters … “just as you would obey Christ." It doesn’t get any simpler than this. If our boss tells us to do something, and we don’t feel like doing it, we can just take a deep breath and visualize that Jesus Christ is standing there asking us to do it. Unless it’s something sinful, it’s as important as Christ telling you. 1 Peter 2:18 adds that Christians should submit themselves to their masters/bosses – even if the boss is harsh and unfair – as many slave owners in that day were.
If God is our real boss, then it’s a natural conclusion that we should be completely honest as an employee. A 2003 study of retail theft by accounting company Ernst and Young estimated that $46 billion was lost in a single year in retail theft and over 40% of that was due to employee theft. (Only one in 10 thefts is an employee, but they take 7 times as much as the average shoplifter.) And that’s just evaluating retail theft. That doesn’t include other kinds of corporate or business theft such as padding expense accounts, having someone else clock in or out for us or using the company car or credit card for personal uses.
Do we justify anything that God – our real boss – would call theft? If we work for God, then there is no reason to think that we’ll really gain by dishonesty. And there is every reason to be completely honest even if means that we do not take advantage of loopholes that others do. Through His blessing on us God can certainly overcome any disadvantage we may think we have by being honest.
Integrity is just as important for bosses as for employees because God is the boss’s boss also. "Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.” (Colossians 4:1) Christian employers or owners are not really their own bosses. Just as a Christian employee obeys Christ, the boss must obey Christ in every decision. Here are some examples that God’s word specifically addresses:
1. Fair Wages. "Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty." (James 5:4) Christian employers will need God’s help to figure out what is right and fair. If we are the boss, we have to realize that our natural inclination will be to pay the least we can to make the greatest profit and still keep our good employees. Maybe that’s appropriate, but the only question the Christian boss really has to settle is whether that amount is what God wants us to pay. After all, we are accountable to Him alone as true stewards.
2. Treating employees with kindness (Ephesians 6:9) "Do not threaten them [employees], since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.” Every Christian boss has a boss who holds them accountable to be kind to their employees. Matthew 18:23-35 tells Jesus’ parable about the servant who was forgiven his debts by his master, but then was ruthless in demanding payment of debt by a fellow-servant. It is not hard to imagine that the God who holds all power and authority does not take it lightly when we abuse the authority that we have over others.
3. Honest business practices (Proverbs 16:11) "Honest scales and balances are from the LORD; all the weights in the bag are of his making.” In ancient near eastern markets, merchants had a scale and a bag of weights. They were of course supposed to be standard weights – talents, shekels, bekas. In the absence of modern technology or a state agency to check the honesty of the weights like they check the calibration of gas pumps today, the customer was dependant on the integrity of the merchant. This proverb is saying that a godly businessman gets his scales and weights from God! It’s a clear statement of stewardship in business. The Christian businessperson is really a business partner of God. The Christian businessperson can only make deals that he or she is convinced God would make.
4. Paying taxes honestly ((Romans 13:2) "Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted… (13:6-7) This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. {7} Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes...”
Taxes can be so irritating and seem so unfair. And we indeed might not agree with how they are spent. I had a Christian friend once who got on a kick that income tax was constitutionally illegal. So he didn’t pay them. I don’t know how that turned out for him because I moved out of the area, but I no for sure that God was not cheering in heaven, regardless of how constitutionally correct he felt he was. And of course the world that watches a Christian try to get out of taxes everyone else pays is going to be unimpressed by our faith.
God’s word is telling us that when we obey tax laws, we are obeying God. As a steward of God’s money, when I send my tax return in, I don’t have the luxury or resenting government waste or complaining what I think are unfair laws. God allowed this government and this law – just as He allowed evil Nero’s taxes in Rome which Paul and even Jesus paid (Mark 12:14-17). God commissions me to pay the exact tax I owe, whether it’s assessed by Nero or Republicans or Democrats.
In the final analysis, giving someone a fair deal and paying taxes are just as much obedience to God as giving the tithe – because it’s all God’s money.
Integrity is required of consumers as well. Have you ever been tempted to cheat on a sale item or misuse a coupon? It’s just as dishonest as shoplifting or switching price tags. Sometimes we get so caught up in the hunt for bargains that we actually lie or cheat. But we don’t have to be desperate to save money when we realize our money is God’s money and that He will supply what we need.
It might not be illegal or even strictly unethical, but another way that frugal Christians sometimes violate their stewardship before God is by excessive bargaining. Basic haggling is expected at rummage sales or when buying used items from a private party such as a car or appliances, but one of the temptations of the thrifty is to cross the line ethically from being “a deal” to “a steal.” The Proverbs addresses that mentality: “It's no good, it's no good!" says the buyer; then off he goes and boasts about his purchase." (Proverbs 20:14). I wonder if sometimes we as Christians lose both our sense of stewardship before God as well as our testimony before people by our proud pursuit of bargains.
God doesn’t give us a exact guidelines about where to stop haggling and just pay a fair price, but maybe that’s the point. He wants us to think through the issue of stewardship. Is my attitude simply to use God’s money wisely by being content with a used item, or am I trying to prove how shrewd I am by taking advantage of someone? To what degree am I willing to pay the owner a fair price for a used item without taking advantage of their need to sell? It’s good to feel the tension those questions raise. It tests our heart. Is this an issue of gratitude or greed – or even an issue of arrogance? Or is the real issue even deeper. How much do I trust God?
Larry Burkett used to say, Do we trust God or do we just say that we do? Every stewardship issue really is a matter of trusting God. Every integrity issue amounts to trusting God. Because what is there to gain by cheating the government, the boss, the customer, or the lady running the rummage sale – if we really believe that God ultimately determines what we have? Do we expect Him to reward us or do we think that we can bypass His control by fudging here or there – to kind of “reward ourselves?” Who do we think we are? Who do we think He is? Is God really the boss, the owner, the sovereign caring Provider of all that we have? Our giving says we trust God. Our spending can say that we trust God. Our hard work and our integrity all reveal if we really trust Him.
It’s true, if I were a rich man, I wouldn’t have to work hard. But then I also wouldn’t have the opportunity to grow in my stewardship by trusting and seeking to please my Master in heaven by the way I conduct myself at my work or in the marketplace.
Part 8 – Biblical Financial Stewardship
There’s a story about an old man who was retiring as the president of the local bank and the board gave the job to a much younger vice-president of the bank. The young man went to the older man’s office before his last day and asked very sincerely, What is the key to success in leading a bank? The old man thought and finally replied, Good decisions. OK, said the young man, How do you make good decisions? The older man thoughtfully but simply replied, Experience. The young man was still not satisfied, so he probed once more. And how do you get experience? The old man answered frankly, Bad decisions.
As we come to the end of this series on financial stewardship, we all realize that there have been times that we have made financial decisions. We remember because we know the consequences we experienced from those decisions. Some of those consequences mark our situations right now.
On one hand, we almost feel guilty talking about financial hard times because most of us have never known the experience of starving refugees or the homeless people I recently saw in downtown Chicago. I can’t fathom those kinds of needs. Some of us know the stories of living through the Great Depression here on our soil. Compared to that time in our nation’s history, we don’t really have a lot to complain about.
But virtually everyone does know the reality of financial pressure. Even those who have significant wealth know the stress of trying to manage or keep or grow it. And most others have experienced the racing thoughts of the mind or even the tightness of the chest that financial pressure brings. Maybe you are juggling bills or you have lost your job. Maybe you just fear you will. Maybe you are seriously in debt and see no way out. Many fear that they won’t have enough money put away for retirement.
The question for us in this study is first of all how we should face hard times as those who really are learning to consider all of “our” money to be God’s money. When we have committed ourselves to being managers instead of owners, how does that change the way we face hard times?
True stewardship is a radically different way of thinking, isn’t it? One of the key ways God changes our thinking is through hard financial times. I know that sounds like bad news, but the good news is that along with the hard times of learning stewardship also comes true financial peace. Only stewards can really rest in the realization that God lovingly cares and provides for us.
2 Kings 4 tells the story of a woman in Israel about 850 BC who went through terribly hard financial hard times. She was a godly woman married to one of the prophets led by Elisha. It’s even possible base on the term that used to describe her husband (“sons of the prophets”) that he wasn’t yet a full-fledged prophet, just a man studying and preparing to be one. So this is perhaps the story of a poor seminary family.
Tragedy strikes this family. The husband dies leaving a wife and two sons. To compound this woman’s grief, they are also in debt to a certain man. How the family got into debt we don’t know. Maybe they had struggled financially all along and lived on a line of credit. But now there was no one to support this family and Jewish law allowed the creditor to enslave the children of those who owed them money. And that is exactly what their creditor intended to do. He was about to take this woman’s two young sons – perhaps teens – and use them as servants/slaves as payment for the money they could not repay.
I can’t imagine trying to sleep at night with those issues on my mind. You have not only lost your husband and your income; you are now about to lose your sons to slavery – or at least some form of indentured servitude. In her desperation, she cried out to Elisha.
(2 Kings 4:1-4) "The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the LORD. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves." {2} Elisha replied to her, "How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?" "Your servant has nothing there at all," she said, "except a little oil." {3} Elisha said, "Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few. {4} Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side.”
There is a basic violation of a law of physics in Elisha’s instructions, it seems. She has a “little oil,” in a flask maybe. And Elisha asks her to use it to fill as many whole jars as she is able to borrow from her neighbors. And the obvious question is, What will be the source of this oil? Where is the hose supplying the oil, Elisha?
Now God could have just created 100 jars as this woman walked back to her house. There they would be when she arrived, filled to the brim. Or God could have caused her to walk into her house and find a pile of gold coins. But God chooses to use the little oil this woman had and require her to invest time, effort and most importantly, her faith.
God wanted to use what she already had. God generally uses us in His process of meeting our needs. God does more than just supply; God is always teaching us and growing us. On a regular basis God supplies for us as we supply labor and time working for an employer. We get a roof over our heads and food and clothing and transportation. And it’s really a miracle, a provision of God even though we must supply the work and the time.
Now notice that not only did God use what she had, but she had to follow Elisha’s advice exactly – as crazy as it sounded. She had to go borrow vessels.
Imagine the scene, Hi Martha. Certainly you can borrow my jars. What do you need them for? What did the woman say to explain? Did she try to explain? We don’t know.
What do you say to people when you trust God in a profound way. It can sound arrogant to claim that you expect God to supply miraculously, but indeed she did expect God to supply, because she obediently gathered the jars.
Having gathered all the jars, the moment of truth and trust had come. The room was shut for privacy as Elisha had instructed. This was God’s personal miracle. Now it’s just her and her sons. Did she explain to her sons how God would supply? Did she express her faith to them? This moment of faith would mark their lives. Our children are watching our faith when it comes to money. We are always teaching.
(2 Kings 4:5-7) "She left him and afterward shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. {6} When all the jars were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one." But he replied, "There is not a jar left." Then the oil stopped flowing. {7} She went and told the man of God, and he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left.”
She acted on her faith in a seemingly ridiculous situation. She held a small table top flask containing only a little oil. But she was poured that little oil into a larger empty jar. It made no sense. But as she poured God did a miracle! She kept pouring and the oil kept coming. God kept the divine spigot open as long as there were vessels to fill. Only then it stopped.
She had been in debt. Now she was in the oil business! She paid her debts, plus she had enough oil to evidently sell and live on comfortably for the rest of her life.
We obviously learn something about faith. This woman trusted God and God’s word through Elisha. If we really are stewards – if we really believe that we are managing God’s money, not our own – then there will be times in which we must act in faith. We will face a choice whether or not we believe what God has said even though it doesn’t seem reasonable on paper.
But we learn not only about our need to trust God; more importantly we learn something about God Himself. He is trustworthy. God loves to be trusted in hard times. If there is anything that we hopefully gain by this series of studies, it is a bedrock trust in God through the money issues we face. God is in the miracle-working business when we trust and obey.
God has perhaps already worked in your life in some miraculous way. You may have experienced accidents, disabilities, the loss of your job, the loss of benefits, economic downturn or a business that failed. And yet God has supplied for you. Or the miracle may have been when there was no extra money, yet somehow God provided for unexpected car repairs, cracked house foundations, replacing broken appliances or paying medical bills. God shows His faithfulness continually to those who trust Him.
This widow found that God was faithful and supplied their needs. But there’s a question we sometimes have. What if we are responsible for the mess were in? What if we have violated the stewardship principles we have studied, borrowed to the hilt, lived too high, didn’t plan, or didn’t work hard enough? What if there is nagging guilt in addition to the financial mess were in? Does God care about us then? Does God help us then?
The Bible describes various examples of self-inflicted financial problems – several of them just in Proverbs 6. Maybe we will see ourselves in some of these situations.
1. Unwisely formed partnerships (Proverbs 6:1-3) “My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, if you have struck hands in pledge for another, {2} if you have been trapped by what you said, ensnared by the words of your mouth, {3} then do this, my son, to free yourself, since you have fallen into your neighbor's hands: Go and humble yourself; press your plea with your neighbor!"
The issue of surety was basically that a person had co-signed an unwise, high-interest loan. He just became a partner to a losing proposition. It was a mistake. Get out of it if at all possible, Solomon warns.
2. Lack of planning (Proverbs 6:6-8) “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! {7} It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, {8} yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.”
Ants are smart enough by instinct to know winter is coming and put grain aside. And the simple reality is that many of our financial problems come from just not looking ahead. We may have signed on some dotted line to buy something. We talked ourselves into without really doing the math.
3. Laziness (Proverbs 6:10-11) "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest-- {11} and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.”
Employers are often frustrated when a newer employee gets some money in their pocket and then they don’t show up to work. And laziness is not just a young employee’s problem. Some adults simply are not willing to work hard and keep a job. Some quit jobs they should keep. Sometimes we lose our jobs because we didn’t put enough effort into it all along. Laziness creates some poverty, some of our difficult financial situations.
4. Dishonesty/Theft (Proverbs 6:30-31) “Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving. {31} Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold, though it costs him all the wealth of his house.”
If we are dishonest, we will probably get caught and have to pay the consequences. Unfortunately, family members also pay the price of dishonesty through the shame and even incarceration of someone who is caught in financial deceit.
5. Presumption (James 4:13-14) "Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." {14} Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
Many business ventures fail because of presumption. We didn’t have a sound business plan or the capital to risk. Some job searches fail because we presumptuously expect too high of a salary, too little work or a job that is beyond our capability. Most presumption can be avoided just be getting good counsel. But a presumptuous person doesn’t seek or listen to advice.
A similar mistake is just plain greed.
6. Greed (1 Timothy 6:9-10) “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. {10} For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
Money of course is not the problem, nor does it cause problems by itself. The problem is wanting to get rich and loving money. It’s often hard to even diagnose ourselves on this issue. The love of money is an internal condition that is not revealed by the size of a bank account or by what kind of car someone drives. A wealthy Christian who understands and lives by stewardship principles is not doomed to “ruin and destruction.” And a Christian living on minimum wage can actually be the one who loves money in this verse. Loving money is a heart condition that is found in all economic levels. And that greedy desire leads to risky investments, debt problems, personal conflict, excessive hours causing family strife, gambling, crime and almost always a spiritual decline for believers – wandering from the faith.
So we may recognize ourselves in the list above. We may have made some of these mistakes, but the real question is whether it’s possible to recover. How do we become a steward when we haven’t been one? How do we crawl out of the hole of the financial trouble we created?
The good news is that financial mistakes can be overcome. That’s not to say that we will not face the consequences for a long time, but we can become a steward of God’s money even when we haven’t been. James 1:5 might be the most encouraging promise in the Bible about financial hardships. It addresses the first step to overcoming our financial mistakes.
Here is what James 1:5 tells us. "If any of you lacks wisdom [about coping with trials – James 1:2-4], he should ask God, who gives [wisdom] generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him."
Quite simply we are urged by James to pray for wisdom to recover from and learn from trials. The context of James 1:1-4 is the many kinds of trials we face. Financial trials are obviously included. These trials are meant to mature us. How will that happen? James 1:5 gives the answer: If we pray for wisdom to learn from trials – even those we bring on ourselves – God is so gracious that He will help us have the wisdom for which we ask.
God gives wisdom “without finding fault/reproach.” God doesn’t just give wisdom to people who did everything right! Aren’t we glad for that? When we pray humbly for wisdom God gives it without accusing us. He of course knows already what we did. And when we acknowledge our mistakes as well, He is eager to help. We must realize that God wants to help us even if we got ourselves into the mess! Isn’t He gracious?
But there are steps we need to take. Here’s the next one.
Just before Paul warned those who want to get rich (1 Timothy 6:9-10), he told Timothy the antidote for the problem of loving money. It’s contentment. "For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. {8} But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” (1 Timothy 6:7-8)
It will mean a whole new focus in our thinking. Someone who is going to become physically fit has to think differently about food and exercise. Someone who wants to become a steward has to address the internal greed issue. He or she must think differently about buying things and about giving and saving.
We will need to set on a different God-focused course as Paul explains in the same context. The love of money must be replaced with the love of God.
"But you, man of God, flee from all this, [the love of money – v. 10] and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love…” (1 Timothy 6:11). Like a person coming off of an addiction, there has to be a plan to replace the substance or activity to which they are addicted. When money and possessions have gripped our lives, we need to replace that with a new focus on God and godliness. God must be my new desire. Time with God must be scheduled by a recovering poor steward. Accountability to God, learning to live by the Spirit’s power and fellowship with God’s people must all begin. Becoming a steward of money is actually part of establishing an authentic relationship with God!
"God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. {11} …it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:10-11)
We might wish that by confessing our financial mistakes we have taken care of the problems we have created, but life rarely works like that. There will be consequences. We must accept the pain of the discipline. It won’t go away in a day or a year even. But we know that God disciplines us for our good.
I know some of thrilling stories of people who have become stewards. You need to know that there are people around you that have turned the ship around, are crawling out of debt, are learning to give and are finding contentment! They are learning to think and live like stewards!
A final crucial part of that process of overcoming poor stewardship is the step of listening to and heeding advice.
“The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice." (Proverbs 12:15).
A fool always blames other people or bad circumstances, but never looks in the mirror. The most serious financial problem we can have is to insist that we are doing the right thing. The most important financial step you will ever take may be to listen to advice. A wise person asks another wise person to be his or her mirror by giving advice.
There is hope, regardless of whether your financial hardship is because of circumstances beyond your control or the result of financial mistakes. And the amazing thing is that if we begin to submit to God’s ownership as a steward, our hard times could be the greatest blessing we ever experience.
Tom Brokaw published a book in 1998 called, The Greatest Generation. He refers to the generation that fought WWII on the battlefield and on the home front. His contention is that those hard times made those individuals and America great. Not coincidently, that is the same generation which went through the Great Depression as teenagers and young adults. The Great Depression of course was a financial crisis. It was brought on partly by bad decisions and increasing debt across the nation, but was also exacerbated by the natural disaster of the Dust Bowl.
When the stock market collapsed in 1929, some people committed suicide – revealing how tied to money people can be. Life savings were lost as over 9000 banks failed during the 1930’s. Unemployment skyrocketed. The Dust Bowl hit in 1933 and farmers lost farms and people went hungry. But the many that persevered became Tom Brokaw’s “greatest generation.”
My dad talks about how his family put away their tractors and went back to farming with horses because they couldn’t afford gas. They weren’t able to use their new electric lights or radio because there was no money for gas to run generators or buy batteries. But they learned to get by and do without.
Through the terrible poverty of that crisis, a whole generation of people developed with amazing financial values that prosperity cannot produce. They learned financial wisdom through hardship. And they created the prosperity that we may well squander because we perhaps have inherited their wealth without acquiring their wisdom.
But let’s not just feel guilty. Let’s learn from God’s word and from the financial struggles that we experience.
God uses financial hard times for our good. They are indeed the proverbial blessing in disguise. Our challenge is to accept and take advantage of those financial struggles in some of the ways that God intended.
The writer to the Hebrews exhorts us to be content because God has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Paul was actually content without food because He was strengthened by Christ (Philippians 4:13)! Can you imagine being content when you are hungry for a prolonged period? When we have real financial needs, dependence on Christ becomes a reality that only an impossible situation can create.
When the impoverished believers in Jerusalem received the offering of gifts that Paul had collected from other churches, they praised God. It became an occasion to worship that would not have happened without such a trial.
God has sometimes provided for Priscilla and me in an unexpected and powerful way when we had some financial need that our paycheck could not provide. We knew those were holy moments. The God of the universe had millions of things to do, but He saw our financial need and supplied something specific for us. The personal nature of those miracles overwhelms me. Who am I to receive such personalized attention from the eternal God? It is reason to worship.
What is harder than forced humility? It’s a lot easier on our ego to give than to receive. In fact much “charitable giving” really is motivated by pride and the recognition that comes with it. Receiving can be the much greater challenge to our character.
Paul knew the feeling of being a “receiver” that many poor as well as many in ministry who depend on the gifts of others experience. There is something about receiving that goes against our ego. But those times can be greatly used by God to actually confirm in our hearts that we are dependent on God. When we are forced to receive, we realize that we are not as capable or shrewd financially as we would like to think we are.
Going through financial hard times and seeing God work to correct and teach us is worth sharing with others who are going through similar struggles. Let’s not waste the hard things or the good things God has done for us financially. Let’s use what we are learning about stewardship through our experiences to teach and encourage others. Our stewardship growth can become a significant personal ministry.
Very simply, we can learn from our mistakes. We should not be the same after God takes us through the process of making and correction financial mistakes. If we think more like stewards managing God’s money, we have also grown spiritually.
Maybe the biggest blessing that parents can gain from financial struggle and learning stewardship will be seen in their children. We are responsible to teach financial stewardship to the next generation. And the best way to teach something is when we have had first hand experience.
Proverbs 22:6 tells us, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Certainly that applies to teaching our children about money.
Money is not neutral in the battle for our kid’s hearts. Materialism – wanting more stuff – is one of the most deceptive tools of Satan. Even if we can keep our kids off drugs and keep them pure morally we could still lose them to the god of this world financially.
I recently had the opportunity to read a book about the Vanderbilt family in early America. The Vanderbilt family was the wealthiest family in America in their day. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the patriarch of that wealth, is considered the 3rd wealthiest person in history when wealth is measured as a proportion of the Gross Domestic Product ("Richest Americans in History", Forbes, 1998. Retrieved on 2007-06-21).
Cornelius Vanderbilt was one of 9 children in a Dutch family that immigrated to the US. He worked on a ferry as a youngster starting at age 11 and then bought a boat at age 16 by borrowing money from his mother. He provided effective ferry service and soon expanded to buy more and bigger ferries. Eventually he owned about 100 ferries that served in and around New York City.
Cornelius then moved into the steamship business – eventually opening up transportation from the east coast to the west coast for gold rush passengers through Nicaragua. When he sold out that enterprise for millions he invested in railroads and eventually cornered the railroad market on the east coast.
He died in 1877 leaving an estate worth $100 million – which in today’s dollars would be worth many billions. He left about 1% ($1 million) to charities. He gave $95 million of the $100 million to one son William, nothing to his other son, and then gave “only” $500,000 to each of his 8 daughters and his wife. You can be sure that was not a happy post-funeral family. Vicious family battles followed.
Son William was indeed a shrewd businessman like his dad and in the 8 years he lived after his father’s death increased that wealth to almost $200 million – becoming the richest man in the world including all foreign royalty. When he died his descendants became lavish spenders and socialites. They built mansions and museums in what is now called America’s Gilded Age (1870’s – 1900).
However the most telling part of the story is that the Vanderbilt’s have been marked by a string of divorces and bitter family fights that continued for generations. The point is not that wealth is bad, but that wealth without stewardship is dangerous to our families – just as 1 Timothy 6:9-10 warns us.
How can we pursue a better family financial legacy? We may not be mega-wealthy, but we are surrounded by prosperity. One of the reasons it’s really hard to teach stewardship to kids is because so many people around us may at least seem to be able to afford most of their wants and desires. Added to that dynamic is the fact that many of us as parents who grew up without certain material things would like our kids to have them.
But giving all those things to children who are not stewards comes with a price – as the Vanderbilt’s illustrate.
Money is a key tool for teaching children to know God and trust God personally. On one hand we should welcome any financial hardships, because they can easily be an asset in teaching stewardship. Priscilla and I have concluded that financial pressures have been one of the best “mixed blessings” in our task of parenting. If we need to learn to live without something or pray about it, or save up and buy it wisely later, isn’t that exactly what we want them to learn?
But whether you and I as parents are feeling blessed financially right now or very tight financially, we can teach stewardship. That is our most important task financially as parents.
We need to first of all teach and model contentment, hard work, integrity (Proverbs 1:1-9).Proverbs 1 begins by urging us to teach wisdom and discipline, knowledge and discretion – to the young! Solomon repeatedly addresses his “son.” The many financial principles found in Proverbs are really the teachings of a parent to a child.
We as parents are also the key models of trusting God and giving generously (2 Kings 4:1-36). Both of the widows that we studied in 2 Kings 4 had children. Two sons helped gather the vessels for oil and saw Mom trust God to supply. They saw the miracle. It was their personal miracle because they would not be sold as slaves. Our children have the opportunity to experience the blessings of God’s provision when we give generously and trust God.
I often heard my parents pray for rain in the summer on the farm as they scoured the western sky looking for clouds to bring rain to young crops in dry soil. I’m glad for that opportunity now. I was able to watch them pray and trust God and then praise him if it rained – and still love Him if it didn’t.
But regardless of our level of prosperity, perhaps the most universal task is to teach our children stewardship by requiring financial discipline of each child. It’s part of the discipline that God expects every parent to teach (Hebrews 12:9).
Our first foundational task in teaching stewardship to our children is to teach work and the financial responsibility of money and possessions. There are some practical ways that we do that.
Obedience enforces the simple value of work. Everyone in a family has to help because we all take the responsibility God gave us to meet our own needs and that of others. Doing chores is a financial principle. To not have chores teaches entitlement without responsibility.
It’s not obedience if it’s not done well or if it’s half done. And it’s bad stewardship because you have wasted someone else’s time if they have to check up on you or finish what you started.
One of the most disturbing violations of stewardship is when young children are allowed to bang on toys or bang on other things with their toys. If they are harming something, they are wasting something that costs money. That’s not stewardship. But even if they are not harming something, they are treating something with contempt that has value. That’s not stewardship either.
This might be controversial, but it seems biblically that possessions are either needs, or gifts or else they must be earned. If children need something, we provide it as parents – like God does. If there are special things we want them to have, they are gifts – like God gives us gifts. Otherwise, if there is something they need that they can earn, we should let them earn it – in some age appropriate way. Even then we need to give guidance about what they can buy.
It seems that the traditional “allowance” is teaching the exact opposite of stewardship. We are essentially saying, here’s some money for you to go blow on whatever you want. What is that teaching? It’s teaching that money is mine and that it exists to create pleasure for me. And how do children get over that idea when they are teens and young adults? Stewardship starts young.
Can we “treat” our kids? Absolutely. God gives us special gifts at times to enjoy as well. But if we want to model what God does, He doesn’t toss out money to waste; He asks us to be stewards. So to imitate God, it would seem we should 1) Supply what they need. 2) Give them gifts at times to show our love. 3) Require them to work and earn other things. God does all those things, and we are attempting to prepare our children to function as mature stewards in God’s world.
Getting a job requires a young person to begin budgeting both their money and their time. Although we need to make sure they don’t work too many hours that it jeopardizes school work or church, a job will require a young person to use time more wisely. It also gives them an opportunity to learn about work in another setting – where we can still help guide them because they live at home. I sometimes smile when one of my children’s boss gets to be the bad guy instead of me for a change. The hard knocks of the workplace can reinforce in a young person the principles that we may have struggled to communicate at home.
The key seems to be that we should let our children learn the same things about money that we do as adults by paying for some of their actual needs. Money is not just for enjoying. And the more we spend unwisely, the less we have to pay for more important necessities.
This isn’t an absolute. There may be times when it’s appropriate to give a substantial gift to help out an adult child. But then it’s a gift. The problem comes when an unhealthy dependence develops so that parents trap adult children in perpetual childhood – always expecting mom and dad to bail them out. Too many parents subconsciously bail out their adult children financially in an attempt to control or manipulate them. Hopefully we’ll leave that for the movies and soap operas.
What else can we do to help our children learn stewardship?
When our kids are young we have them use three envelopes or jars labeled, Give, Spend and Save. We require them to give at least 10% to the God and then divide the rest into spending and saving. The giving envelope has been one of the most fun to watch. As teens especially begin to earn money, it’s amazing how much they accumulate in their “tithe money” to give to some missionary, to the church or to some other ministry need.
Along with teaching them, we of course need to model that as parents. We should show and tell our children how we Give, Save and Spend as much as possible. We talk quite freely about money at home – how much we give and to where and which missionaries we support. It’s not for publication outside the home, but where else will our children see our own commitment to give? Where else where they experience how a Christian adult spends and saves money and trusts God for financial things.
We started out with the premise that we are stewards of God’s money. It’s not ours. If that’s true, then one of the most important aspects of stewardship would seem to be using money to teach our children the same principles we have learned. And that way there can be multiple generations of families impacted by what God has taught us. We will someday be praising God in heaven, but back here on earth, there can be a growing number of people who are using earthly treasure as a tool to pursue eternal treasure – because that really is where their heart is.