"MONEY – How to Get it and Save
It"
2nd in 3-part Series
January 18, 2004
Dr. Jerry Nelson
Today I want to talk again about money.
But today I want to talk about
how to get it and how to save it.
2 Thessalonians 3:6-12 “In the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from
every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you
received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example.
We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without
paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling
so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do
not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you
to follow. For even when we were with
you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not
eat." We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are
busybodies. Such people we command and
urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.”
In those verses God teaches us quite plainly how
we are to get money.
There are few things in life to which we give
more time and energy than the getting of money.
In a couple of minutes we will come back to the
issue of how God says we ARE to get money; but first of all a contrast with how
not to get money might be
helpful.
1. We must not STEAL money.
Most of us are familiar with some of
the words of the Ten Commandments, in this context most particularly: You shall
not steal.
We wouldn't think of robbing a 7-ll or
stealing a car from our neighbor’s garage.
But in our
getting of money have we compromised the 8th command in a
thousand little
ways?
·
Do we use postage
stamps or meter at work for personal mail?
·
Do we steal time
from our employer?
·
Do we take office
supplies from work?
·
Do we call in sick
when we're not?
·
Do we inflate our
deductions at tax time?
·
Have you been
undercharged for something you purchased and you kept the money justifying it
as either their dumb mistake or to make up for the times you had probably been
overcharged?
I remember stopping one time with a busload of students at a gas station. One of the students found out that the pop machine was malfunctioning and would give him pop without inserting money. By the time I found out about it 40 students had "free" pop.
Stealing to get money is clearly forbidden by God.
2. Another wrong way to get money is to just
expect it.
Paul told the Thessalonian Christians,
"If a man will not work, he shall not eat."
Presumptuous sponges are not what God has in mind for his children.
Presumption of support can be an occupational hazard for missionaries and pastors.
Sitting around expecting God or others to hand it to us is not a right way to get money.
Dependence
on God does not mean slothful inactivity.
Just expecting it is a wrong way to
get money.
3. Another wrong way to get money is to extort it
from someone.
When we think of extortion we might
first think of the protectionist rackets of the mafia.
BUT
Extortion is not only overt through the threat of force but can be
subtle
through the taking advantage of someone.
·
It is offering much
less for a house than it is worth because you know the seller has to sell.
·
It is charging too
much for something because you know the buyer
·
desperately needs
it.
·
It’s taking
advantage of someone’s ignorance or desperation to get just a little more.
That's not
"shrewd" - that's extortion.
I remember a
sales organization I got into when I was in college.
The idea was to
find the poorer homes in the small town and convince
them to purchase
a set of encyclopedias because surely they didn't
want their
children to grow up with the same disadvantages they had.
I think that was a form of extortion.
Extortion is tantamount to stealing.
4. Yet another wrong way to get money is to
GAMBLE for it.
When I say gambling I mean not only
Las Vegas style high-stakes gambling but also lotteries, bingo games, golf
bets, office pools, and every form of gambling.
Gambling violates many principles of godliness:
Gambling violates the very biblical
work ethic I will describe in a minute because it nurtures a "something
for nothing" attitude.
Gambling violates biblical stewardship
because it takes money that belongs to God, as all of our money does, and it
puts it at unnecessary and unreasonable risk.
Gambling violates biblical charity
because it fosters greed, which is the fundamental motivation behind all
gambling.
And most important of all gambling
violates biblical justice because the only way someone wins is for others to
lose.
In
fact gambling is most evil not when you lose but when you win.
Because, as
Christians, we are responsible for not taking
advantage of
others even in their ignorance or their sin.
Gambling is the wrong way to get
money.
5. A FIFTH way not to get money is to borrow it.
I remember years ago Bob Knapp saved
the credit card offers that came to him in the mail.
that he had
received over two year period of time.
He had been pre-approved for hundreds
of thousands of dollars of borrowing.
Today it is far worse – Paul Edwards told me last
week that credit card companies in 2002 sent out 66 billion pieces of direct
mail.
Doesn’t it seem that you got half of those?!
Everyone is begging us to borrow money.
In Proverbs 22:7 God says be careful; a borrower
becomes a slave to the lender.
The Bible does not forbid all borrowing but it does forbid foolish borrowing that puts both the borrower and the lender at risk.
Borrowing to get what we want now because we don't dare ask
God if it is something he thinks we should have now or borrowing because we won't trust God to provide us
with the money before we buy, is probably wrong.
Borrowing is not usually a God-honoring way to get money.
So how does God say we are to get money?
2 Thessalonians 3:7-10 “For you yourselves
know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with
you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we
worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to
any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but
in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a
man will not work, he shall not eat."
Honest work is
God's primary way for us to get money.
Since creation God intended that people would
work and it seems clears from what the Bible says about life on the new earth
that work will be a part of it as well.
Work is not a result of the curse at the fall, but
one of the blessings of God for humanity
The way we get money is to use the resources God
has given us to earn it!
But today I don’t want to just talk about getting money; I want to talk also about “saving money”
There were three accountants and three lawyers
taking a train trip:
The accountants purchased three tickets but the
three lawyers purchase only one ticket for the three of them.
The lawyers then crammed into one of the small
train lavatories.
When the conductor knocked asking for the ticket, one arm reached out with one ticket satisfying the conductor.
On the return trip the three accountants thought
they would try what the lawyers had done.
But unknown to accountants the lawyers didn’t
purchase any tickets at all.
When they all boarded the train the three lawyers
got into a lavatory again and the 3 accountants did the same.
But before the conductor came, one lawyer sneaked out of their bathroom and knocked on the accountants’ bathroom door and in a disguised voice said, “Ticket please.”
That is one way to save money but it is not what
I have in mind today.
I’m also not talking about coming home and
announcing to your wife how much you saved on a new set of golf clubs you
purchased on sale.
When I talk about “saving money” today, I’m
talking about money put aside for later use.
Christian financial Counselor Ron Blue wrote that
85% of Americans have less than $250 saved by age 65.
I can't vouch for that statistic but
it does seem that many people don't save sufficient money to see them through
the tough times.
How many of us
live from paycheck to paycheck.
And if our
paychecks stopped how long would we last.
God has something to say about saving money.
Another financial authority, George Fooshee,
shared that he gave to his young children three little boxes.
On one box was written the word: Give
and on the third box the word: Save.
Each week as they received money from whatever
source they were taught to put 1/3 of the money in each box.
As they got older the percentage changed but all three boxes were to get money.
Those words represent the three subjects I am addressing in this three-part series on "MONEY".
How to spend it,
how to save it.
and
how to give it.
I've already dealt with the first of those and
next week I wish to address the subject of giving, but today I want to talk
about "Money-How to save it."
I’m not qualified to talk about where you save your money – in stocks, bonds, real estate, etc, but I can remind you of the biblical principle that affects the issue of saving.
I wish to start our look at saving money by
thinking of a foundational principle and its corollary.
The
principle is one of OWNERSHIP.
Last week I spent time establishing
this principle.
Every
dime we have ever earned or ever will earn belongs to God.
Listen to Deut 8:18 “Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who
gives you the ability to produce wealth.”
The problem
is that we begin to think that most
of the money belongs
to us.
But according to the Bible, every cent we earn belongs to God and we are the managers of it.
The principle is:
God is the owner of all
we possess.
That brings me to the corollary- The owner has
the right to determine how his money is used.
I also made that
point last week when we looked at spending
money but it is
necessary to point it out again in the context of
saving money.
With some
exceptions there are two large groups of Christians when it
comes to saving
money:
Those who don't save enough, and those
who save too much.
Both groups have the same problem:
They don't trust God.
Those who save too much certainly have greater
discipline than those who don't save enough but both have the same master
controlling the use of their money - themselves.
The Biblical principle is that God is the owner and he has the right to determine
how His money is used.
In Matthew 25 Jesus tells the parable of the man
who gave differing amounts of his money to three of his servants.
The important point was that the servants were judged on how they used the owner’s money.
Because God has the right to determine how his money is spent - we must make certain that when we save money we are saving it to accomplish God's purposes for the money.
Someone might think: "I know where this is
leading. We're going to be told to save or invest our money in the church and
we will collect the interest in heaven!"
No, that is not
the direction of my remarks.
There is a phrase floating around these days that
I think demonstrates the problem we have with who truly owns what we have.
The phrase is "Financial independence".
“Financial independence" seems to connote,
to many people, the idea of having sufficient money so as to no longer need to work -
But that definition I thinks violates the Bible's
commands for us to work.
Others think of
financial independence as financial security - no longer
needing to worry about money.
wealth rather than in God.
Still others
may think of "Financial
independence" as having sufficient
money to do what I want to do .
But that
violates the Bible's teaching about God being the
owner of it
all and him being the one who should
determine how the
money
entrusted to us is used.
When we think we have to watch out for ourselves
we strive for "Financial independence".
But God didn't create us to make us miserable but to give us life - full and satisfying life.
God doesn't want us to be financially independent (even if there truly was such a thing).
God wants us to be dependent on him and for us is to have enough to accomplish his purposes
Now, as I
pointed out last week, I can have less
money than God desires
me to have
by spending it in unbiblical ways
OR, I
can have exactly what God wants me to have to accomplish his
purposes.
And last week we saw that the two purposes are:
to
meet our needs
to
meet the needs of others
We looked then at God's instructions on how to spend money for those purposes
and now today we look at God's instructions on how to save money for those purposes.
First,
we are to build a proper contingency fund.
We
already know that God expects us to spend some of His money to meet
our needs.
We spent
time last week thinking about the difference between a
need and
greed but it is God's
intention that we spend some of His
money,
entrusted to our care, to meet our needs.
And the Bible teaches that we are put some of
that money away, save it, to meet those needs in the future.
Proverbs 6:6-11 Even the ant
understands the need to plan ahead and make provision!
Proverbs
21:20 "In the house of the wise
are stores of choice
food and oil, but
a foolish man devours all he has.”
How many in our midst never would have dreamed
two years ago that today they would be unemployed?
The Bible makes it clear that God expects us to
put some money away to provide for our needs in case of an unexpected time of
no income.
I well remember the young man in our church who
several years ago lost his job and much to my surprise was able to continue
meeting his needs because he had saved money for just such an emergency.
He lived for many months on what he had
saved.
I was impressed.
No one other than
God can tell you how much of God’s money you should
put aside as a
contingency fund because every family's NEEDS are
different.
The counsel I read from financial
planners is 3-6 months worth of money put away to meet our actual needs in case
of an emergency.
It seems reasonable to me that since God also
desires us to meet the needs of others, our contingency fund should also have
some money in it to respond to at least some of the unexpected needs of others.
How great it is to be able to draw
from resources you have saved when you hear of the special need of some family
or some ministry.
God has a second purpose for us saving some of His money.
I think it is supported by the same reasoning as
the "contingency fund".
That
second purpose is saving for “short-term spending”.
In Genesis
41 we are told that when Joseph learned of the 7 years of famine
that were
coming in Egypt he also learned of the 7 years of plenty that would
precede the
famine.
He therefore
saved.
He knew of a need that was coming and he planned
to meet it.
Because there are
needs you know you must meet in the near
future such
as
transportation, education, maybe housing etc, it seems proper to plan to
meet these needs
by putting some of God's money into a "short-term
spending
account".
The “Short-term Spending Account” is the money you save knowing you will spend it in the near future.
A third purpose for saving some of the money God entrusts to us is what I call a “Long-term spending account”.
Ron Blue in his
book Master Your Money wrote that “only 2% of
Americans reach
age 65 (with sufficient funds to meet their needs).
And 11 out of 12
women will become widows, and the average
Age of widows…is
52”
Listen to Proverbs
27:23-27 “Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention
to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for
all generations. When the hay is removed and new growth appears and the grass
from the hills is gathered in, the lambs will provide you with clothing, and
the goats with the price of a field. You will have plenty…”
The wise writer is telling us to plan for the
future.
Some might want
to call this a retirement fund but I think there are
some
distinctions.
Retirement, as Americans usually think of it,
doesn’t seem to fit the Bible’s teaching on work.
All of Scripture seems to indicate that God’s
people will stay as productive as they can for as long as they can.
But
when we are unable to meet our own needs with our current income or
when we choose to
work in ways that don't yield an income we will need
money to meet our
needs and to continue to meet the needs of others - that
is a long-term
spending account.
But that
seems quite different from what many people strive for today with
retirement
funds.
The
purpose of too many retirement funds is to finally be able to spend
lavishly
on ourselves in ways we couldn't or didn't when younger.
When I
listen to many people talk about their retirement plans it
sounds like
delayed materialism.
Some people
discipline their spending now only planning to be
undisciplined
later.
But a
"long-range spending account" operates under the same Biblical
spending
guidelines as our spending today should.
We are
responsible to save some of God's money to meet our needs in the
future.
A fourth purpose for saving some of God's money should be to establish a "long-term giving" account.
Some people call this leaving an
estate or an inheritance but again I want you to note the differences.
Sometimes God allows us to have more of his money
than we can rightly use in meeting our or our family's immediate needs or even
the immediate needs of others.
And sometimes God allows us to have more of his
money than we should rightly put away as a contingency fund, or a short-term or
long-term spending fund.
What we have left, beyond what we give away now,
maybe we should put into a "long-term giving account".
Maybe it is proper for us to leave an
estate to our children.
But as I look at the Scriptures and at examples down through the centuries it appears that leaving children too much money is far more damaging to them than leaving them too little.
In Proverbs 30:8-9 we read, “…Give me neither poverty nor
riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and
disown you and say, `Who is the LORD?'
Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”
In past
centuries, for the most part, an inheritance was land or some other
means of
earning a living.
Today, in too many cases, an inheritance may allow children to never work or just to spend more lavishly on themselves.
Remember this is
a long-term giving account
not a hoarding account.
We don't want our children to hold money for the sake of holding it.
In keeping with why God entrusts His money to us,
it seems that a "long-term giving" account should be used primarily
for two things:
To give to family members who can't
meet their own needs and/or to give to meet the needs of others.
In other words even our "long-term giving" account should be used to meet God's purposes not just our selfish purposes or even our children’s' selfish purposes.
If any man or woman has an estate, assets greater
than their needs, it seems that they should give it away according to God's
purposes or else make certain they have children who will give it away for
those purposes.
How sad for a man
or a woman to discipline themselves all their lives, earn,
spend, give and
save according to God's purposes and then have an estate,
maybe larger than
all the money they previously gave away, go to a child or
children who
either spend it wrongly or hoard it.
If you leave an estate for your children are you
certain they will use it as God intended?
Based on Scriptural instruction that teaches us
to use some of God's money to meet our needs and the needs of others I have
suggested there are four proper purposes for saving:
1. A contingency fund to meet unexpected needs of
our own and others.
2. A short-term spending account for our needs
and the needs of others that we know are coming.
3. A long-term spending account for when we are
unable to earn enough to meet our own needs.
4. A long-term giving account to give to our
children if we should die before they can meet their own needs, or to give to
meet the needs of others.
It all belongs to
God and he has the right to determine how we use his
money.
There are hundreds with no adequate contingency,
spending or giving accounts.
There are
hundreds of families in debt, and hundreds of families
with little or no
savings.
To be faithful to
use God’s money for God’s purposes,
some of us need
to change the way we handle money.
I highly recommend the “Crown Ministries” courses
we offer here at SGC.
I also recommend Dr. Richard Swenson’s book, Margin.