Today we are going to continue to talk about an issue that I think is very relevant to every one of us: money. Today we are continuing on in our series called “Money Matters.” It is hard to not have money be relevant to us. I think it impacts our lives in a whole variety of ways every single day. This is why we are spending a season of time and a number of weeks just talking about money and the issues related to it and what the bible has to say about it.
Last week we stepped into this series and we looked at a very foundational piece by looking at the issue of the attitude of ownership. In other words, who owns it all? We looked 1 Chronicles 29 where David was reflecting before the people of Israel and he was pointing them to this reality and this truth that God is the owner of all things. God owns everything. Any money that we have, any resources that we have, any material possessions that we have, they all belong to God. This is a pretty challenging thought especially in our North American world as we think about these things and we are challenged with this question: Do we really see God in that way? Do we see God as the owner of everything that we possess and do we see ourselves as merely managers of what God has entrusted us with? This is such a foundational piece and such an important piece in how we view money and how we handle our money. First and foremost we need to understand that God is the owner of all things.
Last week we also touched on the issue of where our heart is and how our heart is being drawn in following our treasures. Jesus said in Matthew 6:21,
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
And a few verses later Jesus said in verse 24,
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
We can’t serve both God and money. It’s not just a bad idea. We cannot do it! They are competing realties and we need to decide who it is we are going to serve. If we are really honest in our assessment, it’s a challenging thought to ask ourselves if are we just pursuing after the things of this world OR are we truly pursuing after the Kingdom of God and the things that He desires for us?
A good way to find out where our heart is to start tracking our money. Because our check books, our bank account and our credit card statement will reveal more of our heart than anything else. We can carry a bible and come to church for decades but if we look at the Scriptures there is nothing that reveals our heart more than where our check book is. So Jesus is pointing us to that truth and to that reality in Matthew 6.
Today we want to shift gears a bit and we are going to talk about bondage and slavery and the wrong paths that we can take in our lives that can be very dangerous and can get us stuck. Sometimes these paths can lead us to debt and a burden of debt and we don’t know how to get out of it. We just feel that we are bogged down and we are stuck and we are in this debt and we are not exactly sure how we got there but it can have devastating consequences in our lives. And that’s what we want to talk about today: the bondage of debt.
You may remember this tragic story from last year about Albert and Rita Chretian who were driving from Penticton to Las Vegas. They got lost in the mountains of Nevada and their van got stuck in the mud. Then Albert went for help and Rita stayed behind. If you know the story, then you know that Rita ended up surviving for 7 weeks in the back of her van with just a little bit of water and a little bit of food and Albert was never found.
I don’t know about you but if you were anything like me when you heard this story, one of the questions that you probably asked was “How in the world did they get there? How did they end up in this place?” If you read the reports then you heard that what got this couple lost was ironically their GPS. They trusted the GPS. They were following it and they thought it was taking them on some short cuts and some detours. It was just one decision after another, one turn after another and they kept going down the road they were on. They decided not to turn around and go back but to keep going down the same road trusting their GPS. Then suddenly they ended up in a place where they were stuck and they could not move and they were in trouble.
When I think of this story I think it relates so much to this topic that we are talking about here today. Debt happens incrementally. It’s the result of incremental choices and decisions that we make in life in relation to our money and our finances. We start down a path and we make certain decisions and rather than turning around and going back the other way we just think: “Let’s keep going!” So we continue down this path and we take certain turns and we make certain decisions and it leads us to a place where we get stuck. And we end up saying “How in the world did we end up here?” Well, it’s because of small decisions – decisions of not turning around and going the other way and decisions to continue down paths that are not healthy or helpful.
There are over 2000 verses in the New Testament that talk about money in contrast to about 215 verses that talk specifically about salvation. This speaks to the truth that money was as relevant in Jesus’ time as it is in our day. There are many Scriptures that speak to the snares and traps and unhelpful and even dangerous detours that we can go on in regards to the decisions we make with our money. Turn in your bibles to 1 John chapter 2 verses 15 to 17. Let me read these verses from the New Living Translation and then I will make some comments about them.
15 Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. 16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. 17 And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.
You know what’s interesting about this passage? This was written by one of Jesus’ disciples named John. If you go back to Matthew chapter 6 where Jesus was teaching that you cannot love both God and money and He is saying that where your treasure is there your heart will follow, John was one in the midst listening to Jesus.
Picture John for a moment kind of leaning in and listening to Jesus teaching and now here he is writing a letter to the churches that he is pastoring and he is teaching them about Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount. John has taken what he has heard and he is starting to apply it and he makes it his own. In this letter, this teaching becomes his own sermon to the churches about what he understood of Matthew 6. John is saying that we can’t love both the world and God because if we have the love of the world in us, we can’t have the love of the Father in us. And so in essence he is saying the same thing that Jesus said, you can’t love them both – it is one of the other. It is not possible!
And then John lists a number of snares, traps and detours that this world offers as he talks about cravings. He says the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure. What does that look like? It looks something like this: we want immediate gratification and immediate satisfaction so instead of waiting until we have the money for a vacation we just put it on credit and we say let’s go now and we will pay for it later.
Then John says the world offers a craving for everything we see. Doesn’t that relate to our world today and what goes on in the heart? Sometimes we just see things and we just start to crave them. It is speaking to this truth about our human nature and how we seem to be wired so that we crave these things that we see. John is saying that this is the way of the world – the GPS of the world.
Then he says the world also offers a craving for pride in our achievements and in our possessions. This is another one of these snares, these detours, these things that kind of bog us down. We have a pride in our achievements and in our possessions. We typically are more concerned by the things that we have accomplished for this world than the things of God. Maybe our possessions have gained a higher standing in our lives than they should. And so John is challenging us and he is saying: Are these the things you are pressing after? Is it the things of this world or is it the Kingdom of God and having the love of the Father within you that you are seeking after?
So we have this tendency to crave these things. The value system of the world tells us that we not only need these things but we deserve them and this leads us to this topic of debt. You know what debt is? Debt is just buying something with someone else’s money. When we go into debt we are buying something with someone else’s money and we have this idea that we will pay it back later. But unfortunately later never comes and we end up in a whole lot of trouble. Sometimes we do this to keep up with others. Sometimes we do this to impress others. Sometimes we do this because we are just consumed with ourselves and the things that we see in this world that John is talking about in 1 John 2.
When we look what the bible says about debt it doesn’t say that debt in itself is a sin and debt in itself is wrong. But it definitely warns about debt all over the place and it says that it dangerous. It says we need to be very careful of debt. It says we need to get out of debt as soon as we can. It says that debt needs to be avoided at all costs.
The reality is that we know there are things that we need to go in debt for. Most people would not be able to buy a house if they didn’t go into some kind of debt. And business people know that if they don’t take on some kind of debt they wouldn’t be able to start a business. So there is a type of thing that some would call “good debt”. This may include an investment in your education and career future. Or maybe it’s an investment in an asset that will hopefully appreciate in value whether it’s a home or a business or other things like that.
But debt when it comes to these cravings after the physical things of this world can become very dangerous. Especially when we come to a place of consumer debt that has enslaved us and our credit cards have enslaved us in one way or another. I did a little research in terms of consumer debt this week. According to the Globe and Mail, at the end of 2011, the average consumer’s debt load climbed to a record high $25,960. This is debt that does NOT include mortgages. This number is staggering!
Obviously we are moving in the direction to what John is talking about in 1 John 2 in terms of how it is we understand the things of the world and it is a challenge for every one of us. I really believe we need to look at these things and we need to address these things. I hope and pray that we would ask the Spirit of God what He would say to us about this topic here today.
Turn in your bibles to Roman 13. In this text the apostle Paul is talking about people in authority and respecting those people in authority. Then in verse 8 he says:
“Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbour, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law.”
So here Paul is saying “owe nothing to anyone.” Don’t go into debt! Flip over to Proverbs 22 verse 7. This verse says:
“Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender.”
So both of these texts are talking about this truth that we should avoid debt at all costs. It is a dangerous place to go because it can lead us to a place where we find ourselves stuck and enslaved as seek better, nicer and bigger things.
We know that credit cards make it easier for us to go into debt but credit cards in of themselves are not the evil thing. They can actually be a benefit if we pay them off every month. There are reasons to have them but for some people the credit card becomes master rather than servant. They can become this thing that makes it so easy to put our purchases “out of sight out of mind” and we think we will deal with them later. Suddenly though when later comes it becomes difficult to deal with because it all adds up. Again it comes back to the question of our heart and where our heart is taking us. What treasure is our heart leading us toward?
There are many reasons why we want to avoid debt. One of them is: Debt makes us a slave to someone else. It limits our freedom. So I want to talk about slavery for a minute. That might feel like a little bit of a stark image when you think of the topic of debt but think about it for a moment. When we have this huge amount of credit card debt or we owe a whole bunch of money on a vehicle or something like that, suddenly it’s the bank or the credit card company or the car dealership who owns a part of us. They start to dictate how we will spend our money. They start to limit the amount of freedom that we have in life and especially in finances.
In biblical times debt was a little bit different than it is today. If you owed somebody money and you couldn’t pay, you either went to prison or you became their slave. Today it doesn’t happen this way. But in a way it does ensnare us, doesn’t it? It does enslave us in one way or another. We feel our freedom slipping away. We lose the margin in our lives. We lose the ability to live generous lives. We see Scripture over and over again pleading with us and encouraging us not to live like this but to regain our freedom and not to be in slavery in that way.
I want to conclude with a few practical steps that I would like to leave with us to discern and pray about as we go from here today. The first step is to pray. The first step is to pray and to step out and to pray in confession and come before God and confess that we have been irresponsible with our money. We should come to God with humility and confession. We need to ask God to help us restore self-control in our lives. This first step of prayer is so critically important because we need to ask God to give us the strength to regain self control and to see our situation accurately.
The second step is: Stop it! There is a Bob Newhart skit where he is a counsellor and a woman comes into his office and she starts to divulge her deep problems and he says he has a simple solution that works and takes less than 5 minutes. His solution is: Stop it! So everything she comes with he just says: Stop it! This is important advice to heed as we talk about this subject. If we find ourselves mired in debt and we are in a place that we don’t know how we got there and we don’t know how to get out, one of the first things that we can do is stop it. Stop adding to it! And for some of us it might mean actually cutting up some of our credit cards so we don’t do any further harm in these areas.
Thirdly, get outside help and accountability. For some of us it is very hard for us to look at this objectively and we might be in to it so deep that we kind of go: I don’t know where to go or where to turn? We need some outside help and accountability.
Fourthly, develop a plan. What are the steps that you need to take? The reality is that we drift into debt but we’ve go to dig our way out. We drift into debt one turn at time, one small decision at a time, one purchase at time and the reality is that we have to have a plan of intentionality, determination and hard work in order to find our way out of it. Because the way we got into it – incrementally one step at a time – is also the way that we get out of it, incrementally one step at a time. One day at a time. Address the issue and work the plan.
Finally, practice contentment. We need to learn to be content where ever we find ourselves in life. In Philippians 4 the apostle Paul talks about this and he says to the church:
“I have learned to be content with whatever I have” (vs. 11).
Sometimes it’s the people who have the most who are the most discontent. It is not only those who have little who are discontent. It is not about the dollar amount. We can be equally discontent with much or little. It is a choice to be content where we are. Be content with what God has blessed you with. How much is enough? We have normalized debt in our society in way that is really unhealthy. How do we step back from that and ask ourselves how much is enough no matter where we are at in this stage of our life.
In closing, in a moment I am going to ask us to have some time in silence and prayer and allow the Spirit of God to speak into our life about what we have discussed this morning. Then I am going to lead us in a time of corporate prayer. As we do this I would also ask you to avoid this tendency toward comparison. One of the ways that the enemy uses to really keep us from ever letting any of this ever sink in and affect us personally is that we compare ourselves with others. We sort of look at others and we say, “They have more of an issue with this than I do.” This comparison thing really neutralizes us from having the Spirit of God work in our lives and challenge us. As we spend some quiet moments in prayer I would ask you to allow the Spirit of God to speak to your heart about these areas that we have been discussing this morning. Would you pray with me?
