Direction Determines Your Destination
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · May 12, 2024 · If Money Talked series
Jeremy MacDonald looks at Jesus' words about treasure and the heart, and Moses' choice in Hebrews 11. He offers two practical steps for stewarding God's money: decide a direction and count every dollar, so your money tells the story God intends.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The If Money Talked series
Topics: Faith, Money & Generosity, Discipleship
Transcript
[1:18] What would your money say? If your money could talk, if we could gather up all of the money that you've ever made, all the money that you've ever spent, and get it together and be like, oh, lemme just hear some of the stories about so and so, what would that story actually be? Or maybe to put it a little bit more clear, what if I could pull every transaction that you've ever had, every incoming amount of money, every kind of outcoming kind of money, everything you bought with cash, everything you bought on a card. And if you could package it all together into one package, what story would that package tell? And who would you actually let look at it?
[2:04] Like, would you actually let it? Honestly, would you let the person sitting next to you take a look at that story? And if you took all of those kinds of transactions and then you thought about what was to come over the next number of months and years and the things that you'll make and the things that you'll buy, what kind of person would you let speak into the journey and the story of your money? If your money could talk, if your money could talk, what would it say about you? This is the principle, this is the idea. This is the question that we wanna wrestle with. And it's highly personal. And so you come into a place like this, like a church, and you're like, the pastor's gonna tell me about my money. Like, hey, that's not gonna happen. Like guards are up and rightly so, right? Because what gives me the right to say anything about something as personal as your finances?
[2:54] And yet this series that we're trying to kind of walk through, this is the second week of it. Last week, Pat Steeves kind of opened us up. We've got a couple more to go. The reason that we would take four weeks in a place like this in a church of all spots, and a pastor would get up and tell you anything about something as personal as your money. The reason we would do that is not because I've got opinions on your money, but actually because Jesus has opinions on your money. And when we gather in a place like this, there's a lot of us that gather here with the hope of our lives being aligned with the way that Jesus would have us live our lives. That's the role of Christians. We are little Christs. We want to become like Him. And so we take His words really seriously. Lots of you, that's not your journey, that's not your story.
[3:40] You haven't committed to that and that's totally fine. But when we wade into this topic, you should know this verse, these words of Jesus I'm about to share with you. They speak to something really deep inside of you. And so even if you don't believe that the Bible is true, even if you have no sense that Jesus is who He said He was, you should take these words seriously because they tell a story about you. So Jesus in the New Testament, talks about money all the time. He brings it up in stories. He talks about it specifically in the way that we're gonna reference today. He talks to you and how you think about resources and money, but then He uses it as a proxy, as a means of telling a story about how you have priorities in your life, how you make decisions in your life, how you plan out your life, what your ultimate authority in your life is.
[4:29] He uses money because He knows something really important that each of us, whether or not we believe it doesn't change the fact that it's true. And that's this. He says, wherever your treasure is, wherever your treasure is, treasure being, all of those things, your money, your resources, the things that you've bought, the things that you have, the things that you hold onto, the things that when we go back to your place are your things, your treasures, all of those kinds of things. The experiences that you buy, the trips that you've got planned, your treasure, wherever your treasure is, Jesus says, wherever it's encompassed, wherever it's living, wherever it is, is included the story that comes from it. Wherever your treasure is, He says there, the desires of your heart will also be.
[5:22] If we could take the story of your money, it would tell the story of you. And that is a scary assumption for some of us. And if you've not thought about this before, to realize that if you could encapsulate your entire story of resources, that it would tell something, not just about how you have made and spent resources, but it would tell a story about who you are as a person. And this isn't a new idea, and it's not even just unique to Jesus. In fact, the early church would take this idea the way that we think about resources and they would expand upon it and articulate it. It was something that was actually born out of a really interesting principle that the writer of Hebrews kind of highlights for us.
[6:09] So if you jump ahead, as the church is expanding across the Mediterranean rim and as the Christians, after watching Jesus be resurrected, try to understand what does it mean to follow Jesus? They start to articulate faith in really specific and practical kind of ways. And they tell this story, the writer of Hebrews trying to bring in all the stories from the Old Testament and reference them in light of the fact of this new reality of Jesus. And they tell the story of Moses like this, and specifically about your treasure and about my treasure and about our money in our lives. It says this: by faith Moses, when he had grown up, Moses being that guy on Netflix lately, if you've seen that, new special, interesting, but obviously much older, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. This is Moses' story. If you haven't read it, it's fascinating. He is raised in the midst of opulence, of money, of resources.
[7:00] Pharaoh's home, he's got everything. But at some point, he has this pivotal moment where he decides to disconnect from it. He refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. Because for him in that moment, God had given him clarity on who he was meant to be and what he was meant to do. And in light of that clarity, it formed this decision point for Moses. And this is what ended up happening. Now interestingly, the writer kind of inserts a bit of context from the New Testament. Moses, I don't know if he would've had an understanding of who Jesus would be, but the writer of Hebrews gets a chance to kind of speak that into us. He says, "He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures" Same word as what Jesus says: the money of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
[7:57] It's this interesting idea that for Christians, for those of us that again, are following after Jesus, we have our sight set on this person of Jesus that He would influence and impact every decision in our life, including our finances. But we do it not just for the sake of austerity or not just the sake of self-denial. Our faith is one of self-denial. And yet there's a reason for that self-denial. The reason is there's something better for us. This goes against maybe some of the Eastern philosophies of turning away from yourself for the sake of just turning away from yourself. But Jesus actually is inviting us in. God has invited us in. His story is to turn away from our own desires for the sake of His desires. And that's actually better, that we become more human, that there's this future reward when it comes to prioritizing Him over the treasures of Egypt or the treasures of Moncton, whatever those might be.
[8:52] Okay? But this isn't a new idea. This is something that for all the years, from all of history, people have wrestled with money. So the idea that this would be something new today is, almost laughable because people have written about these verses and wrestled through what this means for us and our culture. For example, all the way back in the 1500s, theologian John Calvin says that if honor is rated, speaking about these verses, he says, if honor is rated the highest good, then ambition must take complete charge of a man. If money, then forthwith greed takes over the kingdom, and if pleasure, then men will certainly degenerate into sheer self-indulgence, in the 1500s. Or you go back even further, in the time of Jesus, either before or maybe a little bit afterwards, in this pseudo work, to try to say that three times.
[9:40] Fast Testament of Judah says this again, thousands of years ago, love of money leads to idolatry because once they're led astray by money, they designate as gods those who are not gods. It makes anyone who has it go out of his mind. And here's the fascinating part of it: this isn't a concept. This is a personal story from the writer, from the author of this Testament of Judah, on account of money, I utterly lost my children. And the reality is, in a room like this that is potentially a part of your story of money, maybe it's for you personally, you have lost greatly because of the things you have done with your money.
[10:31] Or maybe you've been the recipient of some great loss because of somebody else's decisions around money. It has had great impact on you. You've lost because of their understanding. And it's because your money tells a story. And the great news here today, friends, no matter where you're at in your journey, no matter what has happened up until this point, you have the power to pick that story. And that's what we started in terms of conversation last week. But the challenge is when we talk about finances is that things get in the way. If you were to pick an ideal story of your financial reality, if you were to paint me a picture of what that would look like, you would realize at some point, and if we had coffee and had conversation about what your hopes and dreams are, is that there's still all of the challenges that come along with the reality of life.
[11:31] So it's one thing for me to say, like, "Hey, let's set our sights high." It's another thing to walk through the trenches day to day and realize, and things get in the way even if we had the best of intentions with our finances of wanting to prioritize the things of God. And so what gets in the way? What gets in the way for you? What gets in the way? The list is, I mean, it's, there's, probably a lot more to this list, but here's some ideas. Debt gets in the way, right? You've got expenses around your debt and you have to pay them or somebody comes chasing you down. This reality of what you're wrestling with is just the part of life. You've got the student loan, you've got the car payment, you've got the personal loan, you've got the payday loan, whatever the thing is. And what happens with debt without you realizing it is the truth of the proverb that says the borrower is a slave to the lender.
[12:24] And so you become enslaved to your debt. You have to find a way to service it. The other thing that gets in the way is your income or the lack thereof, you know, the dream was it would be a lot different than what it really is for so many of us, for so many of you. And so it gets in the way, of course, if I could just make an extra 20%, I mean, then everything would be different. If I could just get that raise, then everything would be different. I could prioritize my faith in my finances. If, and that's the story. The other thing: expenses get in the way. Just the nature of the fact that things are expensive. You gotta eat, you gotta buy eggs, or you gotta buy meat or you gotta buy vegetables.
[13:10] Maybe you should buy more vegetables. But the point is that you have expenses, it doesn't change. And you can have all the dreams in the world, but you still have to make your way through life. And those expenses are a part of the reality. And so who would I be to say like, "Hey, this is what you should do with your money." And then you say, "But listen, there's this reality of day-to-day life that I've gotta make through." And then the other one is just other people for me. The other people are really small and they have a lot of wants and needs. They eat a lot of Bear Paws, which could be an issue. But the point is that others, other people that depend on you, and they get in the way, not in like a bad way, but in a way it's the call that God has placed on your life to maybe care for some people, to look after some people.
[13:56] And so in the midst of this, I remember when I was on staff here at this church and I'd gotten engaged to my now wife, Chantel. And I remember as we were beginning the conversation about finances, that I was wading into it without any understanding of what should be. And we went on our honeymoon. And when we came back, I started reading this book, thinking that, oh, I probably should figure this out a little bit more. Because for the years living as a single guy, I really hadn't made any type of progress. In fact, I had kind of taken a lot of steps back financially. I remember in these conversations that truthfully for me, and this was, you know, part of my story, but because of my decisions, I was living kind of paycheck to paycheck.
[14:42] I had these loans and these personal loans and this car loan, and I had gone out and made a bad decision in an investment. And there was this big thing hanging over me, and there was all this stuff weighing on me. And I was realizing as we began to look at life together, that I had brought financial dysfunction into this relationship. And so as I started reading, thinking that this had to change or something had to adjust, I came to verses like this where Jesus says again to His disciples specifically about the idea of money. He says this, He says, "If you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?" This is a heavy, weighty kind of verse.
[15:30] And the commentators, when you try to unpack What is Jesus really inviting us into? It's actually really on the nose. In fact, John Nolan is specifically writing about this verse. He says, "Those who do not handle their material wealth as God's faithful stewards will never know what it is like to have charge of something that is really valuable." That's harsh. And so last week when we started this idea of, hey, the resources that you have been given are a gift from God. They're not yours, as Pat said, but you're meant to steward them. You're meant to be responsible for them. The question then becomes, what does good stewardship look like of the resources that God has entrusted to me? And to you. It's a question that it took me a couple of decades to really wrestle with.
[16:20] What does it mean to be a good steward of the resources, the money that God has entrusted to me? If it's not for all my own consumption, what am I meant to do with it? So I wanna suggest to you that for the next three weeks, we're gonna really unpack three ideas. I'm gonna cover the first two, and then we're actually gonna take the next two weeks to deal with the last one that I think to be trustworthy with worldly wealth, to do the things with money that make sure that it's disconnected from our heart, that we can separate ourselves and actually focus on the things that God has for us. It doesn't become something that enslaves us and traps us, requires us to make three critical decisions.
[17:09] And so these first two that I wanna share with you are these very simple. Number one, decide a direction. And number two, count every dollar. And then the third thing, the next two weeks, and here's a flag if you want to get real nervous about things, is that I think Jesus calls us to be incredibly generous. And we're gonna talk about what generosity means for a couple of weeks, because I think that's one of the most critical, important ways to disconnect our heart from our money so that it doesn't control and enslave us. And so we're not out to get your money, but your money is out to get you, and it will wreck you and your story and your life if you let it control your life. And so to not let it control you means you have to at some point decide a direction.
[17:58] What direction are you taking with your finances? This is just hyper practical in light of what Jesus says, in light of the invitation from Scripture. What kind of direction will you take with your finances? I'm gonna just give you one. And this is just the one that I've chosen for us personally as a sample, but it doesn't have to be the one that you take. The principle behind all of this is that direction, not intention, will determine your destination. And for those of you that have lived a few extra decades, you've realized that you wake up at some point and you're like, oh, I'm in a different place than I had hoped to be. And if you could go back and share with yourself 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, you would readjust the direction that you were moving.
[18:44] And intentional direction is absolutely critical in all areas that you want to end up in a specific destination: you want to be married 40 years from now, then set a direction that leads to that destination. And so the direction that you take with your finances has to be decided ahead of time in order for you to actually see it happen. So what we did, right after our honeymoon, where we put a little bit too much on our credit cards, is then we read a book by Dave Ramsey, which, again, if we did read that before the honeymoon, would've been different. And so that's a little bit of an internal struggle in my mind. I'm grateful for how it all ended up. But the one that we did is Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps. Now, if you've never met Dave Ramsey, he's a Christian, he's a character, but he's a Christian, out of the States.
[19:32] And there's lots of things that he'll tell you about finances. And I think at least the seven steps that he explains are wise steps based outta the truth from him reading Scripture, are worthwhile wrestling with. Again, you don't have to do these. I'm not saying this is what it means to be a Christian to do these seven things, but you should decide what your steps are and what your direction is at some point, and then you should teach other people about it. So this is the seven steps that we chose. Step number one is that you would save a thousand dollars. And this is practical. This is meant to be hyper practical. It's the idea that if something goes wrong in your life, you don't wanna be caught by it and thrown into a mess where you have to now think for days on end, what am I gonna do because the fridge broke or the dryer broke, or we need new tires, or whatever it might be, because God's gonna invite you to be a part of other things.
[20:25] And being struggling through life with any little bump in the road is not productive and helpful. And so you start off by building up this idea of having an emergency fund, a small one that you can roll with the punches if something comes through life. I never heard this before, just set aside some resources for a bump in the road. And then the second thing that you do, and this is what we did, is you go after all your debt except for the house. And this again was such a new idea for me, the idea that your debt is actually not helpful, that those credit cards that you're paying high interest on, that those, and it's so weird, right? So I'm in the bank yesterday, we're opening an account for our youngest, or yeah, our youngest son. And rightly so, the person we met with was wanting to sell us other products.
[21:14] And so, oh, like, what if we could gather all your high-interest loans altogether, and I could give you like a better rate on them. And it's always this funny conversation where we can say, well, actually we don't have any. And it's always like, wait, what? Like, that's weird because reality that you've been sold is that this is how people are meant to live their lives. But if we're gonna be trustworthy and able to respond to what God invites us into, we have to free ourselves from the slavery of our debts, the things that tie us up. And so the idea is, would you actually start working through and paying off and relieving yourself from those debts? Okay? Number three, you move on to saving a bigger expense, a bigger savings, an emergency fund that actually will help you roll again with the punches of life.
[22:04] This is a spiritual thing. It really is. Because what happens if God tells you to go and to do something and it requires you to disengage from your current work? Are you able to? What if He calls you to be generous in a way that is gonna hurt? Are you able to? And so the concept here is could we build a plan that provides us with the openness and the freedom to respond to what God will invite us into? And then if you're not a Christian, It's just good financial advice. Step four, he would say, invest 15% of your income. Step five is to prepare and save for your children's post-secondary. And step six, pay off your home early. And step seven is to build wealth and to give. Now Christians, and again, if you read Dave Ramsey, Christians, in through all of these things, are still listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit and still giving throughout each of these steps.
[22:52] That doesn't change, and we'll talk about that for the next couple of weeks. But the idea is, could you have a goal and could you work towards it? And would you know where you are each step of the way? Just an idea. And the point of this, the point of this is, when you think about your resources, you are just a manager of money. These things, if you build up a savings account, it's not so you have a big savings account. It's not your money. Remember, we talked about this last week, your money isn't yours and you are accountable for what you do with all of it. That's what Jesus invites us into, is this freedom from it, that it doesn't actually belong to us, but we manage it as if it belongs to our Heavenly Father.
[23:41] Okay? The second thing that you would do, again, just a practical idea. Who am I? Maybe you'll do this. Maybe you won't. Count every dollar, every single dollar that comes in and that goes out. Why? So that every dollar actually counts. For so much of my life, and my life hasn't been that long, for so much of my life, I have no idea what happened to it. How often does this happen to you? It's like, I don't know where it went. Like Pat talked about this last week, the idea that over the course of your lifetime, you will likely bring in more than a million dollars. Where does it all go? I don't know. So what would it mean to actually tell a story about your finances? What if you could actually articulate what it is?
[24:27] And so all I'm suggesting is that you actually do the hard work. And this is what, I think, it means to be trustworthy with God's resources, that you would do the hard work in the same way that if you're in a business and you own and run a business, you know where the money goes. You get reports and you gotta track it. And if you're putting in expenses, like, there's a receipt for it. There's not just, like, handing out money willy-nilly. And if there is, I think that becomes illegal at some point, but I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. But the point is, if you're gonna run a business, you're gonna know where the money goes. If God owns your money, shouldn't you know where His money's going? So this is what it looks like: manually track every transaction. Sounds complicated.
[25:15] Yeah, it kind of is. There's tools to do it. Here's four of them you can take a look at. I use this top one. This one is actually by Dave Ramsey. This is the one that I used to use. And you can just use a spreadsheet. I just counted up in April of this month. Last month our family had 150 transactions, about five a day. And every couple of days I go in and all I wanna know is, what did we spend money on? And what kind of category is that? And the reason is that budgeting is really hard. I would say don't budget, because it's impossible. Like, you can't predict what life is gonna be like. It's so difficult. But you can track where your money has gone. And over time you can actually discover what you spend money on, and you might discover, if you're watching and paying attention really carefully, you might understand and know the story that your money tells about how much you enjoy Ronald McDonald House.
[26:20] It might tell you a story about how much that Tim Horton's coffee really matters to you. It might tell you the story of things that you had no idea you were spending money on. And the point of the exercise is so that you would know and then be intentional about choosing the story that your money tells. And so what happens is, after you track and just know, just know. That's all I'm saying, is that after that, you come back around and you adjust each month to reflect reality. Know how much you are spending on golf. Woo, didn't know that one was coming, but it's Mother's Day. So gentlemen, I'm just saying, I'm looking out for the moms here, right? But you should know how much it costs your hobby.
[27:07] You should know. And the point is so that you can make your money count for what you want it to count for. And then last one, this is just again, just like a little practical thing. It's an idea. It's not, Jesus doesn't say this, this is just Jeremy says it, which means you don't have to pay attention to it. But if you could live on last month's income, it gives you the ability, and this might take you a while to get to. It gives you the ability to actually live on what you're making. And so the dream is that you take all of the money that came into your accounts in April and you say, this is how much we have to spend in May. There's no more timing of the inflows and outflows. There's no more nervousness. Is it gonna be there when they cash that check or when that e-transfer goes through? You're not nervous about it because you've planned for it.
[27:56] And I honestly think there's something that happens when you're enslaved to all of the nitty-gritty transactions that makes it difficult to live into the truth of what Jesus has invited us into. You have to find a way to separate yourself from always having to think about your money and your resources and the timing of it. And something like this can help with it. Okay? So the practical ideas, if you want more practical ideas, you take a look at this QR code, you can scan it, you can head to this link. There's actually a free course. Pete Benson, a friend of our denomination, has put together a free course on finances, reviews, that kind of stuff. Gives you some extra ideas. And certainly if you would like to teach yourself or maybe somebody you care about, this is a great place to go. And the point of this, the point of all of this, is what Jesus has invited us into.
[28:43] He says this, He says, you cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. You're trying to disconnect your attachment to your finances in such a way that what is most important to you actually becomes most important. That when you daydream, you don't have to daydream about winning the lottery. You can daydream about God using you for profound things for His kingdom, that you can think about the kinds of things that He might invite you to be a part of instead of thinking about how you're gonna make it through in this next season. This is, there's so much to this, there's so many complications And there's so much to your story, and I get that. And so we would love to chat more with you about this, if that would be helpful. And then you can always, there are my emails on the church website. You can send a note, it comes into me. But the point is, could we act practically like money managers?
[29:34] 'Cause this is the deal. This is us. This is who we are. This is what we're called to as Christians. If you're a Christian, you're a money manager, and you feel responsible and accountable for how much, for all of it. All of it is what you are managing, and it's not yours. And this is the hard truth that we have to wrestle with: until Jesus is first in your finances, He isn't first. Until Jesus is first in your finances, He's not first until the story of your money tells the story of what God wants to do through you.
[30:19] You're missing something absolutely critical, because Jesus cared so deeply, not because He cares about the resources themselves. He cares about your heart. And your heart is tied up in wherever your treasure is. That's the point. And so to prioritize and to look to Him is to release yourself from being enslaved to the money that so easily grips us all and changes who we are and changes how we relate to people, and how we think about work and how we think about life. And Jesus is like, man, I want to disconnect that because I've got a better way for you. And so if you're here and you're not a Jesus follower, you should follow Jesus for all sorts of important reasons.
[31:07] But one of those reasons is because He knows how valuable your heart is, and He wants to set it free so that you can be free indeed. And so in light of all of this, I wanna pray for us. And here's the thing, as I know the, there's a range in the room. And because of that, what I wanna pray for us and for you is that the practical ideas here, sure, could be helpful for some of us. But ultimately, I pray that the Spirit of God would challenge each of our hearts, that our hearts would be aligned with Jesus. Ultimately, that's what I hope for. And that the Spirit of God will give you the next steps, the people to talk to, or the resources to seek out, or the questions to wrestle with, or the conversations you have to have so that your treasure can be in the things of God, in the heavenly ways, so that your heart can be free and following after Jesus.
[32:09] Heavenly Father, we pray that in a room like this and in a time like this, that, and there's so many different things that we become stumbling blocks to these kinds of messages. And I get that. And this is part of the idea of being maybe a little bit more practical. And yet in the midst of it, there's, you know, easily the devil will draw into our attention, "Wow, that doesn't make sense for this reason or that reason." You know, there's some of us where it's like, "Yeah, but the reality of my income or the reality of this situation, like nothing will ever change." And in the midst of all that, God, I know ultimately what You care about is our hearts. And so I just pray that our hearts would turn to You and that You would give us wisdom to know what to do when that happens. Would You put us in the right place with the right people? Would You put the right wisdom around our situation?
[32:54] Would You spark us to have the right conversations? And then God, for those that have served and followed Jesus all of the days of their life, and yet this has been a struggle, I pray that they would recognize that You truly are enough, even when they look to You and it feels like there's so much missing maybe, that You can whisper in their ear and say, "Hey, Moses walked away from it all because that wasn't what was important. There were more important riches to be had." And if we end this life with nothing in our pocketbooks, if we end this life with nothing left, but we've had You all along, that that would be enough, and that we trust You to give us the wisdom to know how to live in such a way that You are our number one priority.
[33:46] You are the one guiding us. You are enough for us, and we commit to that in Jesus' name. Amen.