The Great Divide: Finances & Your Heart Condition

What we want to take a look at, the first week we looked at principles, the second week we looked at three myths. I want to take a look here at what I've titled the Great Divide. The first point, if you were to summarize it when we looked the first week, is the Lord is going to use money in our lives to conform us to the image of Christ. The second thing is, there's a caution there, and that's the world selling these myths to you. That's the first caution. This is the second caution. And let me summarize the caution this way.

It is possible for you to go out there and just get a bunch of books or you go to some classes or listen to some tapes or something of that sort. And you find, okay, Christian way to handle money. So I'm just going to read that and I'm just going to go off and I'm going to handle money the Christian way. And it's very possible in doing so that we just do it all in the flesh. It's very possible to say, okay, I've done the stuff the Christian way. And the flesh likes to be religious, right? And one of the ways the flesh likes to be religious is to handle money in a Christian way. Flesh doesn't mind that at all. The flesh loves to say, I can do it, I can do it, right?

And so that's what I think we want to take a look at here. We want to be careful about an approach, and frankly I've been through training and books on it. We want to be careful about an approach that says, okay flesh, get out there and do it. Get out there and handle this money.

And as if the Lord just sort of laid out these principles, and now we're going to handle our money the Christian way, and that that's going to be fine. Because the first issue is, where's my dependence? The first issue comes back to that principle we started off with. God's using money to conform us to the image of his Son. And if we look at handling our money in just sort of a, alright, here's the Christian way to do things, then we'll be missing the point. So let's take a look at it. We've got the great divide here.

The first point is that when the apostles, particularly Paul, write to Christians, we find that they will often concentrate first on who we are in Christ, only then providing practical indicators of what it looks like or doesn't look like. The book of Ephesians is a sterling example of this pattern.

What he does is he starts off saying, here's who you are. Now, based on who you are, now that I've told you that, then I'm going to tell you stop stealing and do this. Then he's going to offer the practical terms. We're going to do that same thing here. I don't come instantly and tell you, okay, set up your budget this way and give this percentage and now that you're going to handle your money the Christian way, we'll see you later.

The first thing we do is like we've been doing. What are the spiritual issues here? Let's get those down first. Make sense? So we're going to do as Paul did in Ephesians where the first few chapters, he just tells them who they are. Then he talks about what are the practical aspects of it. So that's precisely what we're going to do here.

We have to be careful about, just as sort of a nuts and bolts, here's how you do it, cookbook. Suppose I gave you a cookbook approach to being a Christian. Here's how you do it. How would you describe? What would you put on the list of things to do if you want to just sort of give somebody a cookbook approach to being a Christian? What do you do?

Go to church. All right. She's on it. Go to church. All right. What's that? Pray on your knees. By golly, that's the place to do it. All right. You're on to it now. We got it. What else do we need to put in this cookbook? Put your money in offering. How much? 10% all right, he's got the right number. See? Pretty soon we could put this cookbook together in a hurry, right? Now, would that person go to heaven?

It doesn't work, as the analogy we've used before. Just going into a garage doesn't turn you into a car, okay? And the same situation here, just going through the steps and handling your money the Christian way doesn't mean that you're you're handling the money in a way that's done in dependence upon the Lord. That's where we want to take a look there. We don't want to end up with a cookbook approach and we don't want to just say, here's all the rules, now flesh, go out and do it.

The flesh is happy to be religious, including being religious about money. God is not pleased. It is not at all what God has in mind. Notice here, here's Galatians 5.17. Paul explains to the church at Galatia there, he says, For the flesh sets its desire against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. Let's give an example. We talked about the debt problem. Could you balance your budget in the flesh? Sure, you could do it. People do it all the time. Okay?

What reward is there in heaven for that? Zippo. Nada. Nothing. Okay? So just doing it the Christian way is not the answer. Okay? Now, let's look at it. These are in opposition to one another, so you may not do the things that you please. The Roman 7 scenario? Oh, I know what's the right thing to do, but I can't get there. Okay? We can also set ourselves up for some real frustration. Now, let's take a look here. There's a truth that Paul lays out to the Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 3, 1-3, And brethren, and I, brethren, could not speak to you as spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able. For you are still fleshly, for since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? It's easy to look at what, hey God, what do you want me to do? And then just say, I can do it.

So we could do that, but just like we started here real quickly popping out things that would be on this cookbook list, he's saying, now wait a minute, the problem when you get at the root of it is, where's your dependence? And that's what he puts the finger on here with the Corinthians. Their dependence was on the flesh. And we don't want to go there. Let's turn to page 15, the next page there.

What we have there is a table of kind of contrasts between the way that could be a perspective of a fleshly Christian, before we talk about what does the world do, the perspective of a fleshly Christian, the mind of the flesh, and the perspective of the mind of Christ. And so we have kind of four areas of contrast there.

Let me read through the first one. God helps me and blesses me materially as I seek to satisfy my aspirations and fulfill my goals in life. I pray to that end that I might be blessed in this way. Sound familiar? It is the pattern that is easy for Christians to fall into. Lord, I want to be blessed materially and I want to get all this stuff and so I'm just going to be praying that you'll satisfy all my needs and wants and requirements.

So that's the goal. And in contrast to that, the paragraph right across from it, God has already blessed me spiritually 100%. He will provide for me as He sees fit to accomplish His goal of conforming me to the image of His Son. Now, on the first column, what's the goal? What's that person's goal?

What's that? Itself, okay. It's material. Give me all the stuff. I want to decrease my hassle level. In order to have that, I know I've got to get the stuff. Notice the phrase, my goals. What's happening for this person is they see ultimately, all right, I've got my goals in life, and God's got some goals, but who knows what those are. And I'm going to pursue mine, and God's in there somewhere, but he's there to help me. That's what God's for. Let's look at the second one. I give God an amount of, that's some percentage, right?

Amount of my time, money, etc., and that hopefully satisfies him and allows me to get on with my life as I see fit. I've got an eye problem. Yes, that's a good way to put it. Okay? Notice the idea is I'm going to give God a certain amount and I'm going to kind of buy God off.

Really, the bottom line is I'd really rather just get on with my life. But I know God's there and if I don't do things right, He'll hassle me. So what's the right amount that I can use to buy Him off? Because if I buy Him off with the right percentage, and I've got to figure out what that is, but if I buy Him off with the right percentage, I know He'll just leave me alone and I can go on with what I had in mind anyway.

This is kind of the perspective of the flesh. This is the guy who wants to make a deal with God. In contrast to that, all of my time and money is his because I have been completely purchased by the blood of his son. You see, the problem with the person in the first category is they're in a position of really having a kind of a split Commitment aren't they a split, you know understanding of life.

All right. I'll keep God happy and I am a Christian and that's fine But on the other hand, you know, I got my own life And so I'm kind of playing tug-of-war with God and and how much I give and how much I take, you know It's sort of a game I play to try to figure out how much do I give God in order that he's happy And I can go on with the way I like to live see that and that's a perspective that unfortunately a great many Christians live by and I mean, isn't that really a lot of Christians?

They're wanting God to give them something. They don't want to get hassled, and they know that God can really hassle them if he wants, and so they just want to know how much does it take to buy them off. And so, of course, the magic numbers that fall out is if I give 10%, that's the right amount. That'll buy them off.

If I go to church and spend a couple hours a week, and maybe go to another Bible study or something like that, then that's probably about the right amount of time, and he'll be happy, and I can just go on with the rest of my life. Alright, let's look at the third paragraph. I want to know the things that God wants me to do with my time and my money so that I can do them and know that God is happy with what I'm doing. I am naturally who God made me to be.

What do you notice about that perspective? It's all the flesh. It includes God, doesn't it? So does this person think they have a relationship with God? They believe in God, don't they? They believe in God. They believe in His existence. But the idea is they're still doing this tradesy thing.

I'll swap this much and then you'll leave me alone, right? How about the part, I am naturally who God made me to be. Are they right? What's wrong with that? Or what's right with it? You hear people use expressions like, I can't help myself, I can't help it, or that's who I am, or things like that. What's that?

That's right, it's the old nature. This is what I like doing, I'd be hypocritical to do anything else. This is the flesh talking. And the flesh really wants this, taking it in the material sense, the flesh really wants this thing. The flesh needs this thing, whatever it is. How about the contrast there?

I want to know who I am in Christ and to have the spiritual facts so that I might believe them and beholding Christ be growing from glory to glory. Christ's life in me will please God. One says what's the stuff I can do to make God happy so that he'll leave me alone The other is I don't want God to leave me alone. I want my life to be His life expressed through me and then he will be pleased but that means I can't go and reserve some percentage for myself I'll put the truth this way to the Corinthians.

He says, you know, we have this treasure in earthen vessels and But it's recognizing what's treasure and what's vessel. And the guy on the left-hand column, he doesn't realize that the earthen vessel isn't all that fancy. He's saying, leave a lot of room for me with this earthen vessel, because I've got things I've got to put in it. And the Lord says, oh no. Let's look at the fourth one there.

I hope to be in harmony with God in my life so that he is satisfied with what I've done, since my ultimate goal is happiness in this life. More than anything else, God wants me to be happy, of course. What about happiness? Let's talk about that, because this is a real important American issue, isn't it? What do we say, you know, our early fathers, our country's founders, what did they write? The pursuit of happiness. Okay, so that's important. Now, is that God's goal? Is that what God wants first? How do we know? And what's that going to take? Yeah, how about that?

The one guy is wanting to say, okay, what does it take to buy God off so that I'll be relatively free from those extreme trials and tribulations? I don't want those. Those are painful and difficult and they just really get in my way. All they are is a rock in the road. And so one person is looking at it, how much can I go and buy God off?

The other person is realizing, no, what God is in the process of doing is conforming me to the image of his son. And various things will happen in our lives to do that. And that's why the word James uses, various trials. That word various in the Greek is where we get our word polka, like polka dots. Little ones, big ones, hey? And so there are going to be various trials, and some of those are going to be monetary trials. Okay? But various trials, and those are all things that the Lord is going to use. Now, how about happiness? Is there a difference between happiness and joy? Ever have a time when you're joyous but not happy? Ever have one of those? What's the difference? What's the difference between happiness and joy? What's that?

A contentment, all right? We can be content with where things are at, even though in terms of, you know, have we got all the stuff we want? No. Something else, the fruit of the Spirit includes joy, right? Does the Spirit come and go? No. There is a constancy in joy as we depend upon the Lord. But happiness about different things can come and go, can't it? So there's a distinction there we need to make. Let's take a look at it. Joy looks at what is the eternal value and riches and importance that God has brought about. Happiness tends to look on circumstances and what's here on planet earth.

And there will be things that we may not be happy with, And yet, because the Holy Spirit is still present, because He is always there to depend upon, we may be joyous in the midst of it. And it's not just happiness. It's not just joy. They're the other fruit of the Spirit.

I'll give you a first instance. A couple of years ago, I was on a business trip. I was flying between San Francisco and Palm Springs on a conference. It was down in Palm Springs. And we were on a flight. It was a smaller plane, a prop-driven thing. And the plane was just going like this and bouncing and just going bananas. And people in the plane were starting to scream and throw hands up and grabbing the barf bags and they were just really having a tough time with this thing. It was getting bad.

And all of a sudden the gal sitting to my right turns to me and she says, how come you aren't screaming? And the thing is, was I happy about all this banter? No. No, I mean, I can't say that was really delightful. But the thing was, all the fears that were coming up in them I didn't have to deal with that, even though I didn't like all this crazy bouncing. It was rather uncomfortable. But the fact was, I could have a dependence on somebody that they apparently didn't know.

And so there was a peace in the midst of a situation that wasn't peaceful. And the same with this happiness and joy issue. There's a distinction there. The world looks at peace and they want good circumstances. This instead looks at peace that's dependent upon the Lord instead of the circumstances. I'd like us to skip down to the second paragraph there on page 16.

This is basically to get an understanding of the difference between the way the Lord works and the way, basically, pagan religions work. In pagan religions, the way it works is there's a bunch of gods out there. Typically, a lot of them are polytheistic, right? And the pagan religions, I'm talking about the ones that the Romans had and the Greeks had and the Babylonians and the Egyptians, the Canaanites, they had this pantheon of gods. One god was in charge of lightning, another was in charge of the crops, another was in charge of fertility, another was in charge of water, and so they had different gods for different things.

You didn't want anything real bad to happen, right? So what you want to do, the problem is that all the gods are mad. They're all mad at you. Just figure, they're mad. So what you have to do is appease them. What do I have to do to appease these gods, was the pagan mindset.

Well, they must want, and so, you know, like we have the discussion in the New Testament, meat offered to idols. Well, they must want some meat. So they put meat on this altar, right? Or they say, ah, it takes, it takes, we've got to sacrifice a virgin. So they grab some young girl and sacrifice her, okay? Or we've got to put some grain on this altar.

In other words, the idea, the idea is I've got to do something, and again, it's I've got to do something, okay? I've got to do something to appease God so that that God will let me go and I'll get on with my life. That's the pagan idea. And it's not that these people were all that devoted to the God necessarily. They just wanted the God to leave them alone. Just don't wreck my crops. Don't ruin me. Don't bring a flood.

Now, what happens is here we come into Christianity And what do people do? They transfer that same concept of God into Christianity, which knows nothing of that. And the idea, well, God's mad, and I've just got to appease him, so what does it take? How much money? How much time? What's going to make him happy so he'll leave me alone? All they've done is they've taken the pagan concept of God and carried it over into Christian faith. And scripture knows nothing of it. You think about it. Has God been appeased? Is God mad? What appeased God? Yeah, Jesus was God's sacrifice, not mine. Jesus was God's sacrifice And his wrath was appeased because of what he did, the sacrifice he gave.

And I don't have a part in it. All I can do is believe it. And God says, that's what I wanted. That's what I wanted. And so that's one thing as we look at these kind of contrasts between the mind of the flesh and the mind of the spirit. The mind of the flesh is always bringing this pagan concept of God in. And trying to say, how do I appease God? What do I have to do so that God will leave me alone? So I can get on with my life. And it's not biblical Christianity.

So, it's key as we look at this, as we look at this subject of money, we need to look at it in the same light. We're not going to try to figure out what's the right percentage and what's the right way to do it so that God's not going to squash me. God's entire intent with money is to conform you to the image of the Son. And there's no appeasing Him with the right percentage. There's no appeasing Him with doing it the right way.

As we go through these principles of how do I deal with money, because soon we're going to be shifting into doing the nuts and bolts kind of stuff, critical to keep in mind, we're not doing this to do it the right way so that God will leave us alone.

The last thing I want to do is have God to leave me alone. I desperately need, I want what God is doing with everything, including with money. Including with money. I don't want God to leave me alone. I don't want to know the right percentage, the right amount of time, whatever it is it takes to buy him off. I want God to be involved in my life. I want him to be my life. A real different perspective. I'd like to shift gears a little bit.

It might be some here to which this doesn't directly apply, but marriage and money. One of the things that we brought out previously, and I think Wayne Anderson was with us at the time, and brought out that marriage is just one of the big issues when it comes to money.

A rough rule of thumb, about half the marriages end up in divorce. The American Bar Association says of those people who come forward for divorce, about 89% of them are saying money is a primary, if not the primary issue in the marriage coming apart. Now, so what we might think is, well, I know in order to get that problem solved, what we'll do is we'll deal with the money issue. We'll deal with the money issue in the marriage and that'll solve a whole bunch of marriages problems, right? Here's the surprise. We come to the main passages on marriage in scripture and guess what? Money is mentioned zip or very little. How about that? Money is Biblically, not the real issue.

And it's one of those cases where I bring this up because the world has a tendency to say, oh, I know the answer. And the Lord says, uh-uh. I'm revealing this to you because you don't know the answer. The problem with these folks that are presenting and saying, okay, I went through this divorce because money was a big issue.

The problem isn't money. As we brought up two weeks ago, money doesn't have a problem. Okay? The problem is elsewhere related to money because so many things in life have to do with money. The key thing, and we're going to go into this a little bit more later and touch on it, the key thing is you look at money and marriage. The key thing is to deal with the spiritual principles that are there. That will address the money issues. and not attack the money issue directly, because the money issue is not the problem. It's not the problem. It's one of those things where the symptom is real prominent, but that's not the cause.

We'll be addressing these spiritual matters further as we get into some of the nuts and bolts, and next quarter we'll be going into an elective on marriage where we'll talk about that directly. But I want to bring that point up because Nancy and I will later on have a chance to share a little more intensively in our own case, but the money issues can be significant. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that they aren't significant. For some couples, it ends up being a major tug-of-war over the money issues. But the bottom line is that money is really not the root cause issue.

And that's important to recognize, otherwise we'll constantly be trying to deal with something that is symptom instead of the root and real problem. Now, looking ahead here, and this is just kind of turning to the front index there, so we'll see where we're at.

We've been through these five principles. We've been through kind of the three myths and dealing with that. Today we're looking at the great divide which is dealing with the issue of, kind of a warning to Christians about relying upon the flesh and fleshly approaches that even sound Christian in order to deal with the money issues. Just relying on nuts and bolts.

The next couple of weeks I want to kind of give a brief focus. We'll be looking at Basically giving what does God have in mind if some magic percentage isn't what's going to keep God happy? What does God have in mind about giving what what biblical principles apply, so we'll be taking a look at that And how about this tax issue? Dealing with taxes what should be a Christian's approach to taxes, so we'll be taking a look at that one and then the next one is living within our means I'm looking forward to interviewing Nancy and She's laughing. I'm glad she's laughing. That's a good sign. Okay. The reason I want Nancy to come up and I'm going to interview her is because I mentioned marriage earlier.

We went through a period of time where money issues were really big. We were living down the Silicon Valley. It cost like crazy to live there. We were living down the Silicon Valley. I had a high-paying job that wasn't enough because it cost so much to live there.

And we were basically going behind every month, getting deeper and deeper. We were not living high on the hog, but still we were getting behind and just going into a hole. And what we found ourselves doing was, you know, because Nancy and I like to get along with each other. We just don't talk about it. And so things just kind of got backed up and backed up. Anyway, I don't want to lift the curtain too much. We'll talk about that when we get there. But I'm looking forward to it because we finally came to a point about 13 years ago where the Lord made some big breakthroughs with us. I'm excited for us to be able to share that with you.

Okay? Any questions? I'm sure I've told you all kinds of puzzling things, right? Any questions? Anything you'd like to share? I've either answered all your questions or you're completely baffled. Okay, let's pray. Lord, as we look at this issue of money, certainly it's a big one. There isn't a one of us in this room that doesn't deal with it, and yet you've underscored what are the real key points, what really matters. We continue to look to you and just ask that you would draw our hearts and minds to the truths of your word and that we might be especially focused on beholding you through your word. We just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.