Money, Possessions & Eternity (i)

 

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit … They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

                       (Acts 2:4 & 45)

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.”

(Heb.13:5)

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money … lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God - having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. …

(…taken from II Tim.3:1-5)

 

The Church’s relationship with money and possessions has always been a key issue in discipleship.  As we read through the ancient Law of God there is so much that is designed to keep that relationship boundaried so that money remains our servant, rather than becoming our master (Matt.6:24). The structures of Jubilee; Sabbath; laws relativizing ownership, and against interest and even covetousness; taxes; tithes; offerings; laws concerning inheritance, property, generosity and justice for the poor, honesty in business dealings; promises of blessing and curse…  all these and more are bound up with the questions of worship.  We cannot disentangle the question of our having possessions from the question of our being a possession: ‘For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession’ (Deut.7:6).  We will see how many of these Laws find their fulfilment and expression in the ministry of Christ and in the experience of the NT Church as we go through this series.

Before the people of God have even entered the Promised Land (which is abundant with natural resources, and therefore with the potential for wealth creation) the Lord is addressing the dangers of our relationship with money, and its potential for good and evil.  There are marked contrasts with the economic structures of the kingdoms and nations around them.  And those contrasts are rooted in a fundamental distinctive about how the Church is to view the financial and material resources at its disposal: Everything we possess is first the possession of God and comes to us as a gift from Him, to be used in accordance with His purposes and priorities. 

Money, and the ‘power’ it brings in its wake, is not about us fulfilling our dreams and desires, our plans and purposes.  It, like all of life, is about God’s dreams and desires, His plans and purposes.  All our interaction with money starts here.  Or at least it should do.  Tragically, we tend to idolatry.  That could result in our turning money from a tool into an idol, from a servant to a master.  When that happens, we begin to use money, or rather to abuse and misuse money, to do for us what only God can do.  We seek our purpose and satisfaction, or dignity and status, our identity and our security in it.  And when we turn money into an idol, we end up serving it, or rather becoming enslaved by it.  And don’t make the mistake of thinking that only the rich are idolising money.  Those who are poor, (and those who think of themselves as ‘poor’, or at least as not having enough), and who resent it, or who believe that if they had ‘more’ they would be happy, or fulfilled, are every bit as idolatrous as those who have learned they wouldn’t be.

But another way – perhaps more insidiously common – is that we turn ourselves into an idol.  That is when we seek to make money serve us.  We assume this money is ‘ours’; and that its purpose is to satisfy my cravings, and to enable me to realise my own ambitions.  Ironically, when we try and make money serve us like this, we also end up serving it – for now we need it, or we risk remaining unfulfilled.  And again, this irrespective of how much we have. 

But when we seek first the Kingdom of God, and when we bring our resources – financial and otherwise to the service of this great and glorious agenda, we find a freedom in our dealing with money and a contentment in our relationship with ‘stuff’, that liberates us from the insatiable craving for more. 

We cannot consider the question of money without putting it in the context of our wider question of our discipleship, and worship.  This isn’t simply a question of considering the Lord and His purposes as more important than our own.  It is a question of using our resources as He has commanded.  That is what we pray the Holy Spirit may achieve in us through this series. 

Questions

How does the prospect of spending the next few weeks studying the issue of money and possessions make you feel?  Are you excited?  …fearful?  …curious?  …anxious?  Can you explain your answer(s)?

 

How much time have you previously given to considering your relationship with money and with what you ‘own’?   Do you think of your finances as a ‘spiritual’ issue, as something connected with your faith?

 

Why do you think we are so defensive about our attitude to, and relationship with, money?   What does our use of money reveal about us?

 

Is this a series we should be engaging with as the ‘Cost of Living’ crisis deepens?  …or would it be better to wait until we are in economically more stable times?

 

Read Deut.8:1-20

Why does prosperity lead to pride?  Why does enjoying God’s blessing risk our forgetting the God who has blessed us?

 

How does God in this passage seek to protect the Church against such pride?  How would this work for us today?

 

Why does God give us the ability to produce wealth (v.18) when it has the potential to be so spiritually dangerous?   Would it not be easier for Christians to be systemically ‘poor’?

 

How does a passage such as this (and later in passages such as Deut.28:1-14) not lead us into some version of the ‘prosperity Gospel’, where God’s blessing is understood in ‘health and wealth’ terms?   Does God want Christians to be rich?

 

How does living in a secular, materialistic culture challenge our ability to heed the warnings of this chapter?  How can we support each other as a Church to ‘remember the Lord your God’ in our financial dealings?

Memory Passage:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.  With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

Acts 4:32-35

  

Going Deeper:

We may be expecting a series on money to start with a terrifying list of statistics and studies outlining the realities of personal debt.  These are easily found: The average household debt (excl. mortgages) in the East of England is currently £18,952.00 (as of Summer 2022), and this region has the highest level of debt, per household, surveyed in England.  48% of these debts relate to ‘Priority Debts’ - rent, council tax and utilities.  The average peak repayment terms in years has been calculated as 28 years.  Nationwide research revealed that 47% of those in debt sacrificed meals; 46% couldn't afford basic food; 45% went without heating; 24% couldn't afford to light their home; 46% couldn't afford toiletries and 61% couldn't afford weather appropriate clothing for themselves or their family.  36% said they had considered or attempted suicide as a way out of debt.

 

And yet, dare we believe that the most serious financial problem we face is that of worship.  ‘The first step in money sanity is surrendering to the glory of one greater than you’ (Tripp, 15).  Our problem is not budgeting, though we may need help to understand financial skills, and to change habits of spending.  Our problem is that we have forgotten who we are, and indeed, who God is.  Chaotic, uncontrolled spending; impulse buying; comfort shopping; and debt are the symptoms of this deeper spiritual illness. Only in the Gospel and in the Community of the Gospel (the Church) will we find the restoration we need.  And that is not some ‘spiritualising away’ of the problems.  It is to recognise that our financial problems are spiritual problems.  There is no divide between sacred and secular – either in the problem, or in its solution.