Hamilton Elim Church

4 August 2024 - Heart Of The Matter: Money Trouble

Heart of the Matter is a series about guarding our heart. Today, Ps Ants shares about a subject that pretty much what most people are thinking about most of the time, money. Money lures us. It promises us nice things. It holds out the promise of power and prestige. But before you know it, you don't just have money. Your money has you. It owns you. What if we could be free from the power of wealth?

Duration:: 28m
Broadcast on:: 05 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Okay, today we are starting a brand new series, The Heart of the Matter, Heart of the Matter. What's the matter, yeah? I don't know what's the matter with you, but anyway, Heart of the Matter, it's a bit of a Lion King anyway. The series is all about what's going on in your heart, what's been going on in your heart and I'm excited. I'm actually launching this because we've got some guns in our church that are actually going to be leading this and I'm kickstarting it, whatever's on their heart, they're going to be sharing. Let me ask you this question. Do you ever find yourself dreaming that you've won Lotto? Anybody? Lotto? See the ads coming? Hey, you know, there's the biggest Lotto ever, right? Like, I don't know how much, how much can you win a Lotto these days? I don't know. 40 mil. I'm getting out of here, my ticket right now. Okay, you know, we 40 mil, really? That's crazy. Oh my goodness. I've been missing out now, just kidding. No, no, no, no. We dream about winning Lotto. Why do we dream about winning Lotto? So we can have financial security, right? Like, all my worries will go away. If I had money, all my issues will go away, right? That's what we kind of think because I've had more money. I'll be free. I'll be free. Do you guys know anybody who's actually won Lotto? You have? I do as well. And let me tell you what, man, when they won Lotto, I was like, you name it. And just in a short few years, they will back to where they were. It's amazing what happens. And it's, and, and, yeah, there's, there's money, bring us happiness. And it turns out their financial security through the form of wealth and money is pretty much what everyone, most people in the world think about all the time, not just here in New Zealand, but pretty much around the world. We, we think about that all the time. It's the heart of the matter. In fact, in fact, today's message is called money trouble. Money trouble. When we got a money trouble? Money trouble. See, money, money has, has power. It has power. It lures us. It promises us nice things like pleasure and peace and, and a new phone and a new, whatever, new car and you knew what it promises all these things and, it, it promises power and prestige. But before you know it, you don't just have money, but money has you, money has you. It owns you. But what if we can be free of the power of wealth? What if we can be free of the worry of money? What if we can be free about, about paying, worrying about paying our bills? I don't have much money. But what if I can be free of all that worry? I still have to pay my bills, but what if I can be free of all that, of all that worry? In fact, this is what Jesus talks about quite a lot in his gospels. In fact, he means it many times. And so today we're going to be looking at one of, one such moment where he talks about, it talks about the heart of the matter. It's money. Matthew chapter 6 verse 19. This is what he says. It's quite a well-known scripture. It says, "Don't store up treasure here on earth. When moths eat them and rust destroy them, where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven. When moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. Where's your treasure? What do you treasure the most? Because it's really interesting. What you spend with your finances, actually kind of determines what you value. What you value. And what's really important is that Jesus is not saying, "Don't worry about this life and just get ready for the next." Don't worry about not just store your treasures up in heaven. So when the day comes, you're going to get in there and all these treasures are waiting for you. That's not what Jesus is actually talking about, right? Because he's talking about where God is right now. And where God is right now, God in heaven, Yahweh in heaven. That's what God is now. And here's the thing, we learn to love and serve God, not God, for all those miracles, other. Thank you, God. Thank you, God, for what you're going to get there. I've got a friend of mine here. That's how you phrase. He goes, "Father, God, we just thank you for your blessing." So anyway, get back. My wife is just saying, just keep going. My wife always tells you whatever it is in your head, you don't have to say. Just keep going. Just keep going. Go ahead. So if we learn to love and serve God right now, then we can have treasures in the present time, not just in the future. We can experience God's treasures right here on earth in the present when we begin to serve and love. We don't have to wait for some future time. I don't have to worry about today. I'll just wait until I get to heaven and all that. It's about understanding where your priorities are right now. Are they the things that won't last? Or are they in God? What do we put our priorities on? Right? Because I can tell you what you value by where you spend all your money and your time. Wherever you spend all your money and your time, that's what you value. That's what you prioritize. What do you prioritize? And that's what Jesus is saying. What do you prioritize? You put your priorities and things that don't last or in God. And it continues verse 22. Your eyes, your eye is like a lamp that provides a light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is full of darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is? Jesus is saying is that if your eyes are not on God, but on the things that lead you to what you want. If it's not on God but it's on things that you fancy, what's it doing? It moves your priorities on these other things. And Jesus quite often talks about what's the light? Is there a light actually in there inside of you? Because quite often says it's not what you eat that makes you unclean. It's what comes out of your heart. Out of these things, quite often we blame other people for the way that we behave. We blame other people or circumstances for the way I am. But really, Jesus actually comes from over here. If we are honest for ourselves, the decisions we make is it's not because of something beginning of the later D. Well, it is really. It's not the devil. It's actually my dumb decisions. That's why I find myself in these situations. And what we need is we need a new heart. We need a heart transplant. We need God to come in and to fill us with his light. Because if we're full of darkness, then all we see is that because we're not with leaders. What is our priorities right now? What is our eyes fixed on God? The author perfect of my story? Or was it fixed on all these things that I'm chasing after? So Jesus says, "Hey, fix your priorities. Fix your priorities on God." Verse 24. And he goes, "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other. You'll be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. Now, here's the thing. When Matthew wrote this, he didn't write in English. He didn't write in English. He wrote in ancient Greek. This is what he wrote. And so he's writing all these things. And God is Theos. He's writing Theos. You cannot serve Theos. And when it comes to and being enslaved to money, he doesn't write money in Greek. What he does is he actually inserts a Semitic word, a Semitic word that "memon." He doesn't transliterate it to money. He keeps the Semitic word. So when you've got the Greek writing, then you've got the Semitic word "memon." And it's really interesting. It's kind of like, why? Why don't you transliterate that word? Why is it "memon?" And some people started to wonder, "Is this a name of an actual being, like some deity or some God? Is this some demonic name, "memon?" The God-memon? Is this what it is? Because when you read it, basically, when he wrote this, you cannot serve God and "memon." As if it's like he's putting "memon" on the same level as God. You can choose some kind of thing. But when we look into this word "memon," according to biblical scholars, the word "memon" is most likely a noun form of a Semitic word "meme." Or we'll know it as "armen." Or "emen." Can I get an "emen?" "armen," "emen." And basically what the word "meme" means is that I is basically saying "true" that. This is true. That statement is true. We are firming this statement that is being said is true. So when we pray, we end with "armen." I affirm what has been said is true. In other words, "true" that. So we end our prayer, the name of Jesus, "true" that. That's another way of saying it, "true" that. And so "memen" is the noun version of this. So therefore, "memen" means the thing in which you put your trust in. That's what "memen" is. The thing that you put your trust in. In a way, it's a great description of what money is. Do we put our trust in money? Money will provide my care. All my troubles will go away because I put my trust in money. I will have happiness when I have money, when I put my trust in money. I will give more when I have more money. Right? "memen." This is what this is. I put my trust in. It's almost though it was a God, which is precisely the point of Jesus. It bosses you around. And if you have your priorities right, there is only one boss, and that is God himself. And there's one other time in the Bible where "memen," the word "memen" is used again. And that's one of part of Jesus' parables in the Gospel of Luke. Luke chapter 16 verse 1. And so "memen" is used again. Let's see how "memen" is used in this parable. So Jesus told the story to his disciples. There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day, a report came that the manager was wasting his employer's money. So the employer caught him in and said, "What's this I hear about you? Get your report on order because you are going to be fired." Great meeting with your boss. All right? Verse 3. "The manager thought to himself, "Now what? My boss has fired me. I don't have the strength to dig ditches, and I'm too proud to beg." Verse 4. Ah, I know how to ensure that I have plenty of friends and it will give me a home when I'm fired. So he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, "How much do you owe him?" The man replied, "I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil." So the manager told him, "Take the bill, quickly change it to 400 gallons." "How much do you owe my employee?" he asked the next man, "I owe him 1,000 bushels a week." Was the reply? "Here," the manager said, "Take the bill and change it to 800 bushels." Now, you would expect the rich man to be angry at this employer, right? If you, if this is what you owe, if you owe this rich man and your employers were doing this, here we go. What? This is not how you make a profit, right? But these are twisting this story because it's the parable. Let's keep reading. Verse 8. The rich man, the rich man had to admire that this honest rascal for being so shrewd. He praises the guy and it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd and dealing with the world around them than the children of the line. Here's the lesson. Okay, so now Jesus, okay, this is what I want you to learn from this parable. Okay, where is that? Listen, I must, I must need glasses myself. Here we go. Here's the lesson. "Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends." And here's the thing. In Greek, it's the word unrighteous mammon. These are word again. Unrighteous mammon. So what's the true value here? The true value is to benefit others and build relationships. That's true values. It's not money itself. But it's the, what's, what's our value is to benefit others and build relationships. That's what's valuable to God. It's the relationship that we make with one another. It's a relationship that we, that we form. What am I doing to benefit people around me? What am I doing? And it carries on, verse 10. "One who is faithful and very little is also faithful and much. One who is dishonest and very little is also dishonest and much. If then you're being faithful with the unrighteous wealth," this is their word mammon again, unrighteous mammon, who were inter, who were inter, who will entrust to you the true riches. Unrighteous mammon. Now, so what does righteous mean? Righteous, and the biblical speaking, righteous means to do right by people. See, the word righteous or righteousness is a relational word. I cannot be righteous on my own. I have to be in relationship with someone. And the show that I am a righteous person, I do right by this person. And when I do right by this person, that means I am righteous. If I don't do right by them, then I am unrighteous. Right? That's what this word righteous does mean. So unrighteous mammon is that I'm not doing right with this wealth. Verse 12. And if you're being faithful, if you're with that, if you're not being faithful with that, which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? And listen to this. No servant can serve two masters old. There's that teaching again for Matthew. It's repeated here in Luke. No servant can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Right? It's a, it's a somatic word that's been inserted here. It's not transliterated as money. We translate it. We translate it to money. But it's actually mammon again. It's this word, this word again, mammon. What do you put your trust in? Do you put your trust in God or is money what you put your trust in? You cannot serve two masters. You can't put your trust in both. Right? So while it's unlikely that a rich man would praise the management of doing what he did, but this is exactly what God would do. He would praise his servants for being so generous with what he owns. Because it's not the manager's money, but it's the rich man's money. So this is, so the rich man represents God and the manager's us. And what God wants us to do what he has given it to us is to build a relationship to benefit others. It's not to treat wealth as an ultimate end, but to treat it as an instrument to benefit and build relationships. Now people who really get this, they understand that money is not about money. It's not, it's never been about money. So what does this mean for us? It means that you can only have one ultimate allegiance. It's either to God or to mammon. God or mammon? There's only one. Who do you put your trust in? See, trusting in money can lead us to redefine what's good and bad in our own eyes. This want for money that all of a sudden it causes us to make decisions that we don't usually make. But here's the thing, when I act generously, we experience freedom. Honestly, when I'm so generous, I experience freedom. And I realize that our bank account doesn't own us. It doesn't own us. So when we realize that the resources that we have aren't really animals but God, it changes our perspective. Imagine all that you have. Every asset, every finance, everything you have, when you realize it all belongs to God anyway, it changes our perspective. If these resources are God's, what does he want us to do with them? See, the parable tells us that God wants us to be aggressively generous with his money, aggressively generous. See, the true owner of everything desires us to be generous. God calls us to be extravagantly generous with what he gives us and he's challenging us to decide what to keep and what to give away. I'm going to read that again. God calls us to be, calls us to be extravagantly generous with what he gives us, challenging us to decide what to keep and what to give away. If everything belongs to God, then I have to decide what do I keep and what do I give away? That's the decision I've got to make. Right? And if we're honest, that's where we struggle. We struggle with that. Let me tell you something. God misses me up. Every time I go to Countdown or Woolworths, whatever it's called these days, Woolworths, Countdown, I go walk in there and there's someone outside sitting down with the sign. Right? And what do I do? Do I just ignore them? They don't exist. And I walk on by. He messes me up. Because this is what happens. We tend to justify the reason why I don't give. You know, the reason I'm not going to give to this person is because man, this person is lazy. Obviously, they're lazy. Obviously, maybe if they just apply themselves a bit more, why do I have to now and supply their need when they can, their able body, they can do it. We try to justify why I shouldn't give. Right? Well, maybe the point is, maybe the point is, is that it's not my job to judge them motive. Maybe the point is, is that I've got to judge my motives. And maybe I need to ask, am I generous enough to give, give to this person anyway, regardless of their motives, regardless of their motives, maybe that's the point. Do I trust God enough? Because let me tell you something, I'm walking in the counter and I've just got enough. This is why we need to do some, um, and learn to manage. We run cap courses here, do cap course, help manage your money. Maybe I need to do that because something's running in. I'm seeing someone there and I'm thinking, brother, I need this myself. I'm hungry myself. Or do I trust God enough to give? Does money have me? Do I have money or do money? Does money have me? If everything ultimately, if everything ultimately belongs to him, then money is a tool we can use to be extravagantly generous, extravagantly generous to benefit others and build relationships. Money is not my master. God calls us to be extravagantly generous with what he gives us, challenging us to decide what to keep and what to give away. You know, I'm gonna ask the team if they can begin to hand out the emblems and this communion Sunday. Communions Sunday. Communions, it's a time where we just think about what Jesus did for us on the cross. But as they, as the team hands out the emblems, you know, serve two masters. What's master do you serve? Who do you put your trust in? It's it's actually not about how much money you actually have. Do you know, the most generous people that I know don't have a lot of money. The most generous people I know, they don't have much, but they give anyway. They give anyway. They're extravagantly generous. Blows my mind. Puts me to shame. It challenges me. It's not about how much you have or don't have. It's about it's about does money have you or do you have money? It's about how much do you trust God? You know, 20 years ago, 20 years ago, we walked into this church and we were a broken family. I was crying too when I, when I walked in here as well. And here we, we, we, we dedicated our lives to God. We committed our lives to God here in this church. And let me tell you something. We weren't living honestly. We're fact, we're living dishonesty. Porter was on the solo parent benefit and we're still living together. I kind of said, look, I technically live in Auckland, but I visit regularly every single day. I just stay. I just have a sleepover every day by living Auckland. And this, so we justified it, right? I was struggling in my own debt, let alone trying to raise the family. So we need this solo parent benefit to survive. And it was all because of my own dumb decision. This is why we need to do courses like cap course, help with our finance. We need people to help us to get better at this. But after coming to God, we decided to do things right, to be righteous, to live a righteous life, to do things right by God and do right by the government. Then all of a sudden, by doing what was right, what we thought was right, all of a sudden we hit rock bottom, financially, really hard. All of a sudden, we didn't have anything. And we're drowning. And I was thinking, God, I'll put my life right. And I thought, okay, God, we're going to do this. We're going to do right by you. And now we're drowning in debt. And then God reminded me saying, this is my fault. And I said, that's right. It was my own dumb decisions. There are no reason I'm on this because my own dumb decisions. We saw a financial advisor because we had to. And the only way we could get out of the situation, there was only one way we could do this, is that I had to separate from portal so she can legally get the solo parent benefit. What's this kind of interest in the way our system is geared up is to separate families, not keep them together. We made the decision that's not going to happen. So we ended up being declared bankrupt. Nothing. Lost everything. Have you ever had your car repo before? Your car has just taken away. It's not a nice feeling. And I remember writing my daughter's bicycle to work, because I said I could get to work putting on her helmet, couldn't fit on my head. I'm glad I worked. The night shifted when anyone see me riding this little bike, trying to get to work. But the silver lining of this was now, although we had nothing, no vehicle, no nothing. Now we hit all this, I had all the wages and I said, wow, we can fill our cupboard groceries. We have food. We actually, this week we're going to have steak. That's what we're going to do. We lived it up, enjoying eating all this food, all so happy. To top it off, I was offered a promotion and work. I was becoming a team leader, which meant more money. And I was like, finally, it seemed that God was answering my prayers. What was the answer to my prayers? More money. We can save it for a car, maybe a deposit for the house. Finally, but literally after a month, I've endured the spoils of my of my toil, passed the Bob Lawson, knocks on our door, who was the senior pastor back then. And he asked me and put off we could become interns, basically to give up my job and become a student. It was like God was asking me. They say, look, I've given you all that you wanted, but now will you give it up? Will you give it up? Will you give it up and will you trust me? And that's what we did. I said, can we just enjoy one more month before I give it up? We gave it up because it wasn't ours anyway. We gave it up and we trusted God. You know, on the day I started my internship that week, we found out their portal was pregnant with our seventh child that week. I said, we're family of nine, but we just got to trust God. We gave it up for God. And during that time, God acted extravagantly more generous that I could ask or imagine. You know, he took our family to destinations that we could, we could only dream about. He provided in the ways that blow my mind. Today, we are homeowners and we own a car now. I'm no longer riding a bicycle. Maybe, but maybe I should be. But in the end, it's about who we give our allegiance to. To God or to Mammon. But God calls us to be extravagantly generous with what he gives us, challenging us to decide what to keep and what to give away. You know, when I, when I walk, when I see the guy, now, this is what I do now. I see them. I hope when I got to count down the bullies, I just please let there be no one at the door because if they are, it rocks my boat. I go in there and God talks to me the whole time and then count down. Is anybody, is that the same for you? He's just constantly telling me, talking to me, I'm arguing with them and justifying why I shouldn't. And so what I do now, I buy a tin of corn beef and I give them a tin of corn beef because tin of corn beef, it's my favorite food, love tin corn beef. It's nutritious, full of protein, good fats, sodium, keep them hydrated and I give it to them. And then they say to me, I haven't got a can opener. It's not my problem. No, I didn't do that. It's the one you can peel off. That's what I do and I'll just give it. And it's been, it's been, it's been a challenge and a journey for me. But as we take communion, as we take communion, eating and drinking the memory of what Jesus did for us on the cross, that God loved you so much. He loved you so much that he steps into his creation, binds himself in flesh and in the fullness of Jesus, he died on the cross for your sins, for your greatest regrets, for your greatest mistake, for all your mistakes. He died to set you free so you can live a life free of shame, free of regrets. It's not a journey that it's not like some magic wand where all your problems are gone, not at all. In fact, the Bible tells us, promises us that suffering will come. But here's the good news, you are not alone. You're not on this journey alone, just like when we're going through that hardship with finances, God was with us. And he will surprise you of how extravagantly generous he is.