Main Idea: It takes courage to say no to the control of money.

Introduction: I read recently a story in Newsweek about bears in North Carolina. The article was titled "Bears: Just Say No to Sugar" (Newsweek, Nov. 3, 2003, p. 11). It seems that hunters in North Carolina have been using in recent years a very effective form of bait to tempt and then kill bears. The bait is huge half-ton blocks of candy and the bears have gradually become junkies to the candy—especially blocks of Hershey’s chocolate! One bear was described as being so looped on the sugar that he was just walking around in circles and two lying near a candy block just "moaned and woofed" at an agent with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. The bears have lost their fur, gotten cavities and are just lazy. Needless to say the use of blocks of candy to bait bears has now been outlawed because the bears just can’t say "No!"

When it comes to money, we are a lot like those bears—we just can’t say "no" to the control money had in our lives. A recent PBS program called "Affluenza" said that "materialism is our own modern day plague." The program claims:

• The average American shops six hours a week while spending 40 minutes playing with his children.
• By age 20, we’ve seen one million commercials.
• Recently, more Americans declared bankruptcy than graduated from college.
• In 90% of divorce cases, arguments about money play a prominent role. (Source: "The Treasure Principle," by Randy Alcorn, Lifechange, p. 50)

The evidence that money controls us is obvious but like those bears, we keep coming back over and over again!

This morning we begin a three-message series called "The Courage to be Content." Writer Suze Orman has a book called The Courage to Be Rich, advising us that it takes courageous action to give yourself permission to have not just enough but more than you can count. Most people I know, especially for us as Christians, don’t need permission to want more. They need courage to stand against their desires and the pull of our culture to say, "I will be content with enough!" To be able to say, "I will be content with enough," begins by having the courage to first say "No!" to the control of money in my life.

During this series we’re going to hear the words of someone whose life became controlled by money and learned too late that money can’t give you satisfaction. The person’s name was Solomon. Solomon became the king of Israel after David his father died. God told Solomon when he first became king that he would give him anything he asked (I Kings 3:5). Solomon asked for wisdom rather than anything else (I Kings 3:6-9). Because Solomon didn’t ask for wealth but wisdom God gave him wisdom and wealth beyond the human ability to describe it. Yet Solomon’s fortune began to control him and toward the end of his life the Bible says, "The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord…" (I Kings 11:9). His wealth as well as other things controlled him and he died with a fortune materially but in disobedience to God.

Sometime before Solomon dies he writes the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is a book of Solomon’s reflections on the things he wasted his life on and one of those was money. One of the phrases that Solomon will use to describe how wasteful his pursuits were is the phrase, "Vanity, vanity". We would translate this, "meaningless, meaningless". Solomon sees that everything he thought would give him pleasure and contentment was empty and meaningless. One of those meaningless pursuits was money. He said in the verse we are using as our stewardship theme, "… it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life—that is indeed a gift from God."(Eccles. 5:19,NLT) Solomon’s words remind us that all we have is a gift from God and there is no greater pursuit in life than to just enjoy what God has given us. But we can’t enjoy the gifts of God unless we are content with what God has given us.

The key obstacle to our being content is our relationship to money-either it controls me or I control it. Those are our only two choices! Jesus said it so plainly, "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." (Matthew 6:24, NLT) Paul said, "Yet true religion with contentment is great wealth. After all, we didn't bring anything with us when we came into the world, and we certainly cannot carry anything with us when we die. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content. But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows." (1 Tim. 6:6-10, NLT) Money controls us or we control it!

How do I break the grip of the control money has on my life? I break the hold of money on my life by having the courage to say "no!" In the verses that were read earlier there are three things that I want us to hear that are the results when we have the courage to say "No" to the control of money. Saying "No" to the control of money brings freedom to me and to others, it helps me confront the reality about money and it will inspire me to be content with what God has given me.

Solomon states something that he says is obvious to everybody in verses 8-9. He says that we should not be shocked or surprised that rich people or power people control and intimidate poor people. He simply is stating what was true then and is true now: People of wealth and power run the show! Where there is poverty, Solomon is saying, you are going to find the exploitation of the poor, justice and fairness. He also adds that bureaucracy grows at the same rate and that even leaders will be at the core of the injustice.

Your response is, "So…." So what does that have to do with me and my money? It’s this, and I know some of you are not going to like this: Our pursuit and consumption of our resources, whether in money or material, has an effect on the quality of life of other people. One quarter of the world’s population lives above the equator and controls four-fifths of the world’s wealth. The reverse is that three-fourths of the world’s population lives below the equator but only has at its disposal one-fifth of the world’s wealth. (Source: "Is the world’s wealth unequally distributed?" from Coursework. Info) You know and I know that many of those nations are victimized by their own corrupt leaders but that doesn’t make their poverty any less real! Am I to simply say, "So what?" During the Great Depression, Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge said about the poor in his own state, "Let 'em starve," rather than allow federal aid to come to come to his state. (Ava’s Man, Rick Bragg, Vintage Books 2001, p. 90)

When we make conscious choices to be content with the gifts of God to our lives it can have an effect on someone other than ourselves. Just because a system may be unjust or unfair and we are only one person or family doesn’t remove us from the accountability before God to do, act or respond obediently. There’s a cartoon that has two turtles talking to each other. One says." Sometimes I’d like to ask God why he allows poverty, famine, and injustice when he could do something about it." The other turtle says, "I’m afraid God might ask me the same question."

Where do you start? You start by making a decision to give your resources, your money, where it can act in your behalf. The best way to do that is through your giving ten percent of your gross income to your local church. For every dollar you give here at FBC virtually 10% goes to touch lives in missions and ministries that are away from our church. There are many other uses of your dollars that are planned in our budget but your money will first of all go where you can’t! Your resources will enable, for example, an agricultural missionary to go to a country that’s starving and help them raise food that will feed them. That missionary may not have any impact on the leadership of that nation but they are touching one life. That life may be living under a corrupt system but you by your giving are setting them free!

By your making a choice, a decision, to say "no" to the control of money, you find yourself experiencing freedom! That freedom not only touches you but it also touches others. You alone can’t change the realities of the chains of bureaucracy that can keep the poor poor or injustice continuing, but you can effectively and immediately begin unlocking those chains by saying "no" to the control of money in your own life!

In verse 10 Solomon attacks those who love money or are controlled by money not necessarily those who have money. He is saying that loving money creates a never-ending thirst for more. When a person loves money their love for money grows in proportion to what their desires feed on. Solomon says plainly that the more you have, the more you want! Then he says that money will not buy contentment. The more you have the less you are satisfied.

There are three realities about the control of money that this verse confronts. First, money will control me if I let it. We may say we are not controlled by money but we are denying a biblical reality that money has an almost innate power to it. A second reality is that being controlled by money only reduces my satisfaction or contentment level. We think exactly the opposite but that is the reality. The third reality is that being controlled by money will reduce my joy in life. Again we think that if we have more we will be happier emotionally but the reality is that’s a lie. I’m sure you read or saw the story of the fifteen school cooks in Minnesota who won the $95 million Powerball Lottery. Since 1990 the women put in a quarter every paycheck for four Powerball tickets. They each will receive $2.1 million each after taxes. (AP, 10/27/2003). They were on all the morning news shows and in the papers and look so plain, simple and happy.

You and I think, "Wow, that would be unbelievable! For pocket change they got $2.1 million each!" That would make my life perfect! That’s exactly what Linda Nichols thought when she signed a deal in 2000 for the movie rights to her novel Handyman. When she signed she received $1 million. She said she and her husband felt just like people who had won the lottery!

Then she said, "The moment I deposited that check, my life started to fall apart. Soon my marriage was strained and my writing career stalled." The life they had soon became a place where money was bringing them more confusion than happiness. She said, "I remember going to the mall knowing I could buy anything I wanted. My heart felt empty." It wasn’t until she rediscovered her faith in Christ that she had abandoned that life began to change. (Readers Digest Select Editions, 2003, p. 433). Linda Nichols faced the reality that being controlled by money reduces my contentment and steals my joy!

John D. Rockefeller said, "I have made many millions but they have brought me no happiness." That’s the reality that we refuse to believe! Yet when we make decisions and choices to not be controlled by money we are confronting the realities we might not face any other way. Every time, though, that we give we are saying "no" to the control of money. There is a basic principle of physics that says, "The greater the mass, the greater the hold that mass exerts." In the same way, the more money controls us, the more we have and own – "the greater their total mass—the more they grip us, setting us in orbit around them. Finally, like a black hole, they suck us in." (The Treasure Principle, p. 33) Giving, though, changes that! It "breaks me from the gravitational hold of money and possessions." (Ibid p. 57). Saying "no" to the control of money confronts reality!

In verses 11-12, Solomon tells us some very basic, obvious things about money and material things—with an increase in money and possessions come more people and worries to exhaust you. He tells us that when things increase the more there are who consume them. More money brings more people, more worries and more anxiety. His point in verse 12 is that a person who works hard is physically exhausted by nightfall and sleeps because he is tired. On the other hand, the person who is rich doesn’t work hard enough to exhaust himself so he can’t sleep.

The more we pursue what we think can satisfy us the more it destroys our life. Frank Sinatra’s daughter, Tina Sinatra, recalls her father’s unceasing drive to succeed and make money, even when his health was at risk: "His health was in tatters and his life mired in financial wrangles, but my father refused to stop giving concerts. ‘I’ve just got to earn more money,’ he said. His performances, sad to say, were becoming more and more uneven. Uncertain of his memory, he became dependant on tele-prompters. When I saw him at Desert Inn in Las Vegas, he struggled through the show and felt so sick at the end that he needed oxygen from a tank that he kept on hand. At another show he forgot the lyrics to ‘Second Time Around,’ a ballad he had sung a thousand times. His adoring audience finished it for him.

"I couldn’t bear to see Dad struggle. I remembered all the times he repeated the old boxing maxim ‘You gotta get out before you hit the mat.’ He wanted to retire at the top of his game, and I always thought he would know when his time came, but pushing 80 he lost track of when to quit. After seeing one too many of these fiascos, I told him, ‘Pop, you can stop now; you don’t have to stay on the road.’ With a stricken expression he said, ‘No, I’ve got to earn more money. I have to make sure everyone is taken care of.’ Since his death there have been constant family wrangles over his fortune."(Tina Sinatra with Jeff Coplan, My Father’s Daughter, Simon and Schuster, 2000.) The Message Bible says, "The more loot you get, the more looters show up" (Eccl. 5:11).

How does saying "no" to the control of money inspire my ability to be content? Well, by looking at the reverse of what these two verses are saying. First, because I’ve said "no," my life is simplified. If I don’t have a bunch of stuff to take care of, then I don’t have a lot of things to worry about. Acquiring any possession may push me into redefining my priorities, which can complicate my life not simplify it. Second, because I’ve said "no" my work is more meaningful. If I am working only to keep or maintain a certain lifestyle then I have become a slave to my work. That is often one of the dangers of two income families. It’s not that both are seeking to use their God-given gifts to honor him and provide for your family, but that the income is now necessary to maintain a lifestyle that now you can’t live without. Or, on the other hand, if we have said "no" to money’s control, then our work is our tool toward our fulfillment and meaning in life. Third, because I’ve said "no" my health is better. In other words, if my life is more simple because I don’t have as much stuff to stress over and if my work is more meaningful because my job is fulfilling me instead of me fulfilling it then the result is I’m healthier! Why? Because I’m not stressed in a negative way!

Saying "no" to the control of money inspires and creates contentment. The first step in saying "no" is by our giving. "As long as I still have something, I believe I own it. But when I give it away, I relinquish control, power and prestige. At that moment of release the light turns on. The magic spell is broken. My mind clears. I recognize God as the owner, myself as the servant, and others as intended beneficiaries of what God has entrusted to me." (The Treasure Principle p. 57) Once we say "no," and begin to give, money loosens its control and contentment fills the void!

Conclusion: The courage to be content begins with the courage to say "no" to the control of money. The first way to break the control of money is to give. It all belongs to God. You and I are wasting our time and life if we pretend otherwise. Saying "no" to the control of money, through my giving brings me freedom, causes me to face reality I couldn’t see and inspires me to be content with a simple life, meaningful work and just being alive!

Do you have the courage to say "no" to the control of money? You may say, "Bruce, I’m not controlled by money! I’m not a very materialistic person. I don’t have a lot of stuff. I live a pretty simple life. I work hard. I’m a faithful church member. I give to the church and even special offerings. So, I’m going to say that money doesn’t control me." Then let me ask you, "Does your giving start with your giving a true tithe of your income as a member of this church?" How close you are in your response to that question is an indication of the control money has in your life and mine.

Do you have the courage to be content? Then have the courage to say "no" to the control of money!

Sunday, November 9, 2003

Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

[email protected]