Getting Past Your Past Money Mistakes
Sycamore Creek Church
May 18/19, 2014
Tom Arthur 

Peace friends!

Pull out a dollar bill from your wallet.  What has this dollar bill bought?

1. Food?
2. Housing?
3. A vacation?
4. Gambled?
5. Sex?
6. Drugs?
7. Was it stolen?
8. Was it killed for?

Money can buy all those things.  It’s an interesting thing to note that it can do good or it can do bad.  That makes me wonder: what exactly is money?  Money is a tool that simplifies the exchange of goods.  It is a widely recognized IOU.  Money is neither good nor bad, although I will admit that at times it feels like it can have a significantly negative power, or lust, associated with it.  But generally speaking, money can be used in good or bad ways.  Many of us have made a lot of mistakes when it comes to money.  Today I’d like to look at three mistakes we make with money and how to correct them as we begin to use money the way that God wants us to use it.

Materialism
The real problem with money is when we tend to pursue it or what I can buy and neglect the more important things in life.  This is called materialism.  Google defines materialism as “a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.”  Too often we are slaves to material possessions and physical comfort.  This can go both ways.  If you find yourself saying, “There’s no money so I can’t do ____________”, then you’re still serving money, not God.

This problem of materialism might suggest that the answer would be to get rid of everything you have and live in voluntary poverty or asceticism.  Is this the answer?  The Bible tends to take a kind of middle route when it comes to money.  Hear the wisdom of the proverbs:

Give me neither poverty nor riches!
    Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.
For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?”
    And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.
~Proverbs 30:8-9 NLT

The wise thing is to make enough but not too much.  Even if you make just enough to squeak by, say $25,000/year, do you realize how much that ads up to over a lifetime? If you make $25,000 from 25-65 then you will have made and probably spent $1,000,000.  Most of us will in our lifetimes manage a fortune.

To prepare today’s message I’ve found Randy Alcorn’s book, Money, Possessions and Eternity very helpful.  He says:

The key to a right use of money and possessions is a right perspective—an eternal perspective…The everyday choices I make regarding money and possessions are of eternal consequences… The key question is not, “Should a Christian own this or that?” but, “Does God want me to own this or that in light of the drain on my resources it will create?”  Will owning this thing keep me from doing other things God wants me to do?

Let’s take another look at what the Bible teaches about money.  In the book of Ecclesiastes, probably best referred to with its Hebrew name, Koheleth, which means “teacher”, we find this passage about money.  (I’ve included Randy Alcorn’s comments in parentheses after each verse.)

Ecclesiastes 5:10-15 NLT
Those who love money will never have enough.
(The more you have, the more you want.)
How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!
(The more you have, the less you’re satisfied.)
The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it.
(The more you have, the more people come after it, including the tax man!)
So what good is wealth—except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers!
(The more you have, the more you realize it doesn’t meet your real needs.)
People who work hard sleep well, whether they eat little or much. But the rich seldom get a good night’s sleep.
(The more you have, the more you have to worry about.)
There is another serious problem I have seen under the sun. Hoarding riches harms the saver.
(The more you have, the more you can hurt yourself by holding on to it.)
Money is put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost. In the end, there is nothing left to pass on to one’s children.
(The more you have, the more you have to lose.)
We all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We can’t take our riches with us.
(The more you have, the more you’ll leave behind.)

Thinking about the eternal consequences of the way that we use money is the opposite of materialism and it’s the first step toward getting past your past money mistakes.

Giving
The second mistake we have made in our past when it comes to money is to neglect giving a portion of our money back to God.  We tend to think that our money is, well, ours.  But it’s not.  Everything belongs to God.

The prophet Malachi speaks to the Israelites saying:

Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, “How are we robbing you?” In your tithes and offerings!
~Malachi 3:8 NRSV

Wow!  Rob God!?  I certainly don’t want to be guilty of robbing God.  I suspect none of us want that.  But this is what Malachi says is happening when you don’t give back to God a tithe of 10% and an offering which is above the tithe.  Please don’t shoot the messenger.

We can get some basic sense of how we tend to approach giving money away by our taxes.  “The IRS calculates that the average filer spends ten times more paying off interest on debts than he gives to charitable causes” (Randy Alcorn, MPE, 305).  Yikes!  Ten times more on debt than charity!

Today we’re introducing two new ways that make giving back to God by supporting the mission of SycamoreCreekChurch even easier.  Now you can give online:  http://www.sycamorecreekchurch.org/p/index.php/ministries/107-give-online.  It’s really simple.  You can give a one-time or recurring gift using your debit card, or you can set up electronic fund transfer and have your giving electronically transferred from your bank account.  If you’re already using EFT, you can even get online and see your past giving and change it at any time.

A second way we’re trying to make giving easier is through a new offering envelope.  This offering envelope has several features.  First, you can give just as you always have.  Put a check or cash in the envelope and drop it in the offering bucket.  Second, you can take the envelope home and mail it to the church.  Third, you can now give with a debit card right on the offering envelope.  Lastly, you can sign up for EFT right on the offering envelope.  It’s all right there in one place.

Correct your past money mistake of ignoring giving back to God by choosing to tithe from this point forward.  Don’t rob God any longer.

Debt
The most obvious money mistake that most of us have made in our past is through spending habits that accumulate debt.  The Bible doesn’t categorically prohibit borrowing money.  For example, Jesus teaches:

Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow.
~Matthew 5:42 NLT

But the Bible does voice serious reservations about debt.  Consider these verses:

Just as the rich rule the poor,
    so the borrower is servant to the lender.
~Proverbs 22:7 NLT

Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another.
~Romans 13:8 NLT

Debt makes three basic assumptions that may not turn out to be true.  Debt assumes that:

1. You’ll retain your current income (but you might get a pay cut or lose your job),
2. You’ll remain in good health (but you might become disabled in some way),
3. Other better or more missional opportunities won’t arise (but you might spend your money today and tomorrow find that you are unable to give to a great mission opportunity at church).

Not all debt is created equal.  Let’s take a look at several different kinds of debt.  There’s secured and unsecured debt.  This means that the debt is secured with something tangible that you’re buying.  Then there’s debt that you take on to buy an asset or a liability.  An asset is something that tends to grow in value and a liability is something that decreases in value.  Here is a chart with examples of each of four kinds of debt.

	Secured	Unsecured
Asset	Mortgage (Low-Med %)	Education (Low %)
Liability	Car (Med %)	Credit Card (High %)

 

1. Secured Asset: A Mortgage

The least risky kind of debt tends to be a secured asset.  A mortgage is secured because generally you can sell the house and pay off the loan, and it is an asset because it tends to increase in value.  But given what has happened in the last decade when it comes to housing values and how many people are now underwater with their mortgage, it’s  important to remember that debt, even a secured asset, is always a risk.  Perhaps we need to remember that buying a house is not a right.  Sometimes it is better to rent.  You get what you pay for, housing, and you don’t have to worry about upkeep and things breaking down.  It is worth asking, “Would renting free up your time and attention to focus on mission and calling?”

1. Secured Liability: A Car

An auto loan is secured because you can sell the car and pay off the loan.  But while it is secured it is also a liability.  The moment you drive it off the lot, it decreases in value.

1. Unsecured Asset: An Education

Student loans are unsecured because you can’t sell the education to pay off the loan, but a college degree does tend to increase your value in the marketplace and thus it can be understood as an asset.  But many of us don’t need quite as much education as we’ve gone into debt for.  It might be smart to go to a community college first, and then another school second later.  When I was in undergrad I, or more truthfully, my parents paid for $400/credit hour ($1600/course) at a private Christian liberal arts college, WheatonCollege.  One summer I came home and took a course at the local community college, Indiana University Purdue University of Indianapolis or IUPUI.  That course cost my parents $90/credit hour ($360/course).

1. Unsecured Liability: Credit Card

Now that you’re getting a better sense of how debt works, let’s look at the worst kind of debt: an unsecured liability.  Credit Card debt is generally the worst kind of debt because the kind of stuff you put on a credit card can’t be sold off to pay off the loan.  Once you’ve bought the $5 latte and drank it and peed it out into the toilet, you can’t sell the latte to pay off the credit card!  You have nothing that secures the debt and the latte decreases significantly in value the moment it goes in your mouth.  In fact, you have to pay your sewer bill to have the utility company get rid of the waste!  You may say to me, “But Tom, we pay off our credit card every month.”  This may be true but studies have shown that we tend to spend 26% more on our credit card than when we pay for the same things with cash.  So be very careful how you use a credit card. Most of us probably need to do some plastic surgery: we need to cut the credit card up.

So here are three spiritual questions that Randy Alcorn suggests you consider before you take on any debt:

1. Is not having enough resources to pay cash for what I want God’s way of telling me it isn’t his will for me to buy it?
2. Is it possible that this thing may have been God’s will but I don’t have the resources to buy it because of past unwise decisions?
3. If a lack of wisdom has put me in a position where I can’t afford to buy something, wouldn’t I do better to learn God’s lesson by forgoing it until—by his provision and my diligence—I save enough money?”

Small Groups
The other day I came across this news article in Psychology Today that shed a lot of light on why we spend money the way we do:

Feeling down?  Buy yourself a new pair of shoes.  Or get a new gadget.  That should boost your mood—right? 

Not necessarily.  According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, seeing possessions as a ticket to happiness and success increases feelings of isolation.  But the reverse is even stronger: Loneliness fuels materialism, creating a sometimes vicious cycle.  While fixation on ‘stuff’—especially around the holiday season—is usually blamed on an overly consumerist culture, the study suggests that it’s often a symptom (and a cause) of individual alienation, not cultural shallowness.

“Lonely people have a tendency to become more materialistic over time,” say study author Rik Pieteres, a professor of marketing at Tilburg University.  Some, he notes, may use shopping as a coping mechanism that is driven by the fear of rejection: “A friend might say no, but an iPad never does.”
“The Insatiable Shopper” by Agat Blaszczak-Boxe, Psychology Today

During the month of May you have the opportunity to help get past your past money mistakes by correcting the loneliness that is driving you to spend money in ungodly ways.  May is our GroupLINK month and you can sign up for one of twenty-one summer groups.  Groups are a great way to make friends that will help with the modern disease of loneliness and will have the added benefit of keeping your loneliness from causing you to make more money mistakes in the future.  Not only that, but groups provide you a place where you can build friendships that will help you discern the answers to the tough questions listed above.  Those friendships can help you begin to make wise money choices.  You can learn more and signup online here.

You may have gotten into a pit of debt in the past, but with God’s help you can begin to make wise money choices heading into the future:

1. Reject materialism,
2. Give back to God,
3. Avoid debt.

Prayer
God, give us new eyes to see how our money choices have eternal consequences.  Give us courage to trust that if we give back to you 10% or more of what we make that we will have enough.  And give us the perseverance to avoid debt in a culture that is addicted to buying what it wants right now.  In the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.