I don’t think there’s a single person on this planet whose not affected by money. Or at least what money represents – value and wealth. Most of the time it seems we don’t have enough of it. Some, in fact, many of the people listening to this program today around the world simply don’t have enough money to feed their families or provide the most basic needs – safe home, education, health services.

Whereas in the affluent west where we have so much money compared to most in the world there’s so much middle class debt that it’s become a pandemic. People are drowning in personal debt. Credit cards are maxed out. The cry of a whole generation is ‘we don’t have enough’.

And yet by any objective measure we have more than enough. Even governments are caught in the deception providing middle class welfare for ordinary working families as they call them. They love that term ‘ordinary working families’. And sure economies fluctuate, interest rates go up, they go down, inflation hits, unemployment, housing prices.

All those things affect people’s disposable income but why is money such a big issue and why do so many people who have enough feel as though they don’t? This is a huge issue and it’s one we’re going to explore from a whole different bunch of perspectives on the program. Not just today but over the next few weeks and there’s a very good reason for that.

We all, to a greater or lesser degree, are products of our environment. Our circumstances, our culture and wealth in most cultures are big things. Not in all but in most. It goes with position, with power, status, recognition, comfort. Hey let’s face it all those are pretty seductive. Who doesn’t want to live in a nice house? Who doesn’t want to drive a nice car? Who doesn’t want to wear nice clothes?

They’re all pretty much universal desires even though they work themselves out a bit differently in different cultures and countries. But there’s this basic premise, it’s a central thesis around which our societies and our cultures tend to operate. It goes like this.

If my needs and wants would all be met then I’ll at the very least be 9/10ths of the way to being happy and contented and satisfied. This is the central tenet of advertising. It makes the economy go round. If people in the west didn’t want expensive clothes, shoes and handbags then a lot of people in the developing countries wouldn’t have jobs.

All that leads to trade and commerce and that’s a good thing, it’s true. We need trade and commerce otherwise there’d be a whole bunch of people unemployed around the place and that’s not good. But this central tenet of happiness, me being able to have everything I want and do anything I want also brings a lot of trouble into this world.

It’s why people argue and fight and have conflict. It’s why countries fight wars often. It’s why people rob banks. Well okay maybe you and I don’t rob banks so much. It’s why people tell little white lies on their income tax returns. That brings it a bit closer to home doesn’t it?

It’s in fact why we need governments, laws, police forces, court houses and jails. It’s why we need armies and air forces and navies. Because ultimately we can’t all have what we want so there has to be mechanisms for dealing with that conflict between the individual wants and needs of six and a half billion people on this planet and the broader social good.

That’s what all those institutions are all about – balancing out selfishness in the context of society. We can’t all have what we want but it doesn’t stop us trying of course. I want, I want to win and so because money and wealth are powerful, powerful components of winning. All of a sudden it’s as though we’ve become enslaved to them.

Why is it that a family of four needs a house so big that they can live in the place and almost never see one another? Why do we need four plasma TV’s in this house? Why do we need a hundred thousand dollar car when a twenty five thousand dollar would admirably and safely get us from A to B?

Well because we covet wealth and what goes with it, comfort and recognition, we want to win. Now winning is fine until it becomes an obsession; until people are working so hard to keep up appearances, to conform to what appears to be the social norm in their people group.

Whether that’s incredibly wealthy or middle class or incredibly poor it’s actually a lot the same, that instead of money being our servant it becomes a tyrant which is something we’re going to look at later in this week.

God has a lot to say about money, an awful lot in the Bible. More than I ever expected in fact, because it seems that our wallets are closely linked to our hearts. Jesus said this, Luke chapter 12, verse 34.

“For where your treasure is there your heart will also be.”

Again something we’ll explore a lot more.

Now per say there is nothing particularly wrong with money. God doesn’t have a problem with it. In fact He has a whole bunch of really good advice about what we do with our money. He has no problem with people working and earning money and enjoying the fruits of their labour. In fact one of the wisest men of all time, King Solomon, the Wisdom of Solomon in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes has this to say, Ecclesiastes chapter 5 and verse 19:

“And to all whom God gives wealth and possessions and whom He enables to enjoy them and to accept their lot and find enjoyment in their lot, this is the gift of God.”

So does God have a problem with money? No, not at all. The problem, the problem lies in our attitudes towards money. Have a listen to this, 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 10 from the New Testament. Paul writes:

“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”

You see there’s the problem, not money, the love of money. And over these coming weeks we’re going to explore not just the problem so we truly understand it, so we can really identify it in our own hearts ’cause I’ve got to tell you its pretty insidious. Chances are it’s there in each one of us.

We want to also look at God’s solution, God’s answers, God’s way of setting us free from the tyranny of the love of money in our lives – the plague of the love of money – and turning money back into what it was always meant to be. Not some brutal tyrant but into a good server. But I have to warn you; don’t say I never warned you, that Gods solution, as it often is, flies completely and absolutely in the face of the wisdom of this world.

It lies in the completely upside down, completely counterintuitive principle of sacrifice. Luke chapter 9, verse 24:

“For those who want to save their lives will lose them but those who lose their lives for my sake (said Jesus) will save them.”

It’s a principle about the whole of our lives including our money. The more we hoard money, the more that we love money. That takes root in our hearts. And the more that the love of money runs deeper and deeper in our hearts then the more we’re going to bear the fruit that comes from that root. And the fruit that comes from the root of the love of money, as Paul writes to his young protégé Timothy, is all kinds of evil.

It causes us to wander away from our faith in God because of our eagerness to be rich and as a result we experience pain, lots of it. We end up piercing ourselves, as Paul writes, with many pains. Debt, fear, financial insecurity, a maxed out credit card and then long, long hours of work to pay for this financial madness. Many pains.

It’s why Gods treatment for this malady is so radical, so upside down, so counter to anything that you or I, who have the propensity to love money, would have ever come up with.

“Those who want to save their lives will lose them and those who lose their lives for my sake (said Jesus) will save them.”

That is something we’re going to explore over the coming weeks on the program and I know it’s radical and I know some people might not want to hear it but hey, it comes from Gods word. That’s why we’re going to be talking about this over these coming weeks.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever had this experience but over the years, a couple of times, I’ve worked for the odd incredibly difficult boss. Not many mind you, just one or two. You go to work at a place and you always go there filled with hope and anticipation, at least I do.

You go in there and you want to do your best and you want for it to work out and for the employment to provide you a reasonable recompense for your labours. But all of a sudden you discover a fly in the ointment. What looked like a rosy opportunity when you read the job ad, you know the classic dynamic company looking for highly motivated individuals to do whatever.

What looked even rosier during the job interview, what caused you to celebrate when they rang you to tell you that you’ve been successful in securing the position, it all collapses around your ears. Why? Because your boss is a mean, unreasonable and bad tempered so and so and that one individual is completely ruining your life.

So you persist, the pay’s good, the company’s good perhaps it’s even close to home but little by little this despot grinds you into the ground. Have you ever had that wonderful experience?

We’re talking together over the coming few weeks about the whole subject of money. So many people have so many problems with money. Whether they’re rich or they’re poor. Money causes so many problems. Many people are in debt up to their eyeballs. Many people are struggling incredibly with their finances and fear and uncertainty.

The economy takes a plunge or interest rates go up or there are too many credit cards to pay or whatever it is. Or perhaps you have a share portfolio, that’s your savings for your retirement, you’ve been enjoying watching it rise like a cake in the oven. Only to see it collapse as something completely outside your control spooks the share market.

There seems to me a couple of things tied up in all of this. First, we imagine somehow that our wellbeing depends absolutely on the house that we have, the lifestyle we’ve been accustomed to, the car that we drive. In other words if we didn’t have those things, if we lost those things, oh man life just wouldn’t be worth living.

And secondly because we love money – or at the very least we’re prone to loving money and the things that we can buy with it – we’re afraid of letting it go. When you love something or someone you don’t want to let it go.

You see, that’s why parents who’ve invested so much in their children cry when this young adult grows up and decides to move to another town to study or to work. I mean they love their kids, they’ve invested a lot in them, they don’t want to let him or her go even though the time has come.

Let me share a Scripture with you. 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 10:

“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”

I want to tell you how much I relate to that. Money was always so much more than money to me before I met Jesus. Money wasn’t just money, it was wealth. It had a life of its own, it was a symbol of success and ability. It was something to show off so all the other people that knew me would be able to look at me and go, ‘Wow, he’s a clever little fellow isn’t he?’

And so here’s what I did. I worked myself absolutely into the ground. I ruined relationships. I worked so hard that it made me sick. Not just physically sick from time to time but emotionally sick and spiritually sick and in fact, socially sick. I was driven to succeed and the tangible symbol of that success was money.

See money was more than money, it was wealth, it was a symbol, it was a god. Now I know another business man who took the sales of a well known retail chain’s computer division from a few million to over half a billion in just a few years. Now he was the retail guru in the country. Everyone looked at him as the personification of success.

He was earning, not surprisingly, big dollars. Now I’ve heard him share his testimony a few times, he told me how when the whole world wanted a piece of him, when he was the golden haired boy not just with his company but in retailing across the country, he was vomiting up blood in the toilet, hardly sleeping, his marriage was falling apart and he hardly knew his kids.

Let’s just listen to those words of wisdom from the Apostle Paul again and let them sink in. 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 10:

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil and the eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”

Do you see how true that is? I wonder if you were just to stop for a moment and think of your life and how you treat money. Let me ask you, to what extent has this servant, money, become your master? What are the things that you’re doing to serve this master of wealth that are bearing evil fruit in your life?

Remember it’s not money that’s the root of all kinds of evil it’s the love of money. What are the pains that you’re suffering right now because perhaps you have a bit of an unhealthy attitude to and relationship with this thing called money? You just have to have that job that’s, I don’t know, an hour and a half commute each way, morning and night.

You know why? Because it pay’s ten percent or maybe fifteen percent more than the other job you could have had much closer to home. So, as a result you don’t see the kids, you get up really early, you go to bed really late, you’re exhausted, your marriage starts falling apart, that’s at risk and your children barely know you and you have no idea what’s going on in their lives.

All for what? Ten or fifteen percent more? Is it worth it? ‘Oh but if I didn’t earn that extra money I wouldn’t be able to pay for my mortgage’. Okay, so buy a smaller house. Is the world going to come to an end? ‘Oh yes it will’. Because you know somehow we’ve all convinced ourselves that it will if we can’t maintain our current lifestyle. Each one of us, come on, get it, it’s a sham, it’s a lie, it’s a deception.

And yet we sacrifice our lives on the altar of this deception. We sacrifice our lives on the altar of wealth. Come on, hello. Friend, listen to me, money’s a great servant but it is a brutal tyrant. Money’s a brutal master and if we choose to serve this master it is going to tear us apart. By choosing to serve that master we are piercing ourselves with many, many, many pains.

Now maybe you’ve mastered money in your life but most people haven’t. The great majority are slaves to it and is it any wonder that as a slave to a brutal master their lives aren’t what they’re promised to be. Money isn’t bringing them happiness either because we’re working so hard or our expectations are so high that we can’t even meet them or we’re so far in debt and there are storm clouds rolling in on the economic horizon.

Jesus put it this way, Matthew chapter 6, verse 24:

“No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate the one or love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

That mammon means the false god of wealth and greed. And the thing with that false god is this, no matter how attractive, how enticing it may first appear, it is a brutal, brutal master to any slave.

Friend I know this teaching challenges the norms. It challenges the things we hold dear. It challenges our attitudes towards money. Truly as someone who lived the first 36 years of his life as a slave to wealth I can tell you it is worth going through the challenge, it is worth digesting Gods truth, it is worth taking His medicine.

Because when we’re finally free of this thing it is such a wonderful freedom.

This week on the program we’re talking about money. Why? Because money matters. It’s no surprise we all need money to buy things we need and we all want money to buy things we want. And yet this whole money thing, well not so much money but our love of money takes us down some very painful paths in life.

Taking risks that we’re never going to pay off because we’re chasing this elusive symbol of success called wealth. When does money become wealth? When our attitude towards it changes – when we desire it.

Jesus talked about mammon, it wasn’t money but it was the false god of wealth that He was talking about and He said:

“We can’t serve God and mammon.”

We can’t serve God and our greed for wealth. We can only serve one or the other.

And we’ve seen over the program I guess so far this week what a brutal master wealth can be. So many people working so long, so hard to pay the mortgage, to pay the debt, the things that the world told them they should have but that didn’t really need that are now sending them broke and ruining their families and marriages and lives.

Money, as we saw yesterday, is a brutal master. That’s what the Apostle Paul writes, it pierces us with many pains if we allow it to. It’s not money so much it’s our love of money, the love of money is the root of all evil. We chase after this elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but when we sacrifice our lives to it what we discover is pain and loss.

So what do we do about it?

Well here’s the thing, it’s a question of deciding who’s the boss. Who’s serving whom? I spent much of my life serving the false god of mammon. Let’s go back to what Jesus said about this false god. Matthew chapter 6, verse 24:

“No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Now I want to unpack this word ‘mammon’ a bit more. It means, well here’s the Webster dictionary definition:

“The false god of riches and avarice. Riches regarded as an object of worship and greedy pursuit. Wealth as an evil, more or less personified so it’s like a god not just some inanimate object.”

The Oxford dictionary says:

“It’s a god of wealth regarded as evil or immoral. Those who worship mammon are equivalent to greedy people who value money too highly.”

So please let’s not get the idea here that Jesus was somehow saying that money in and of itself is bad. That somehow none of us should have any of it. No, He’s saying that for some of us we have an unhealthy attitude, we desire it too much and it becomes our god ahead of the true God in heaven. That’s what He’s saying.

So the decision, the very clear decision that we need to make is which one of these two gods are we going to serve? Because Jesus is quite right, we can only serve one or the other. So if my heart is after God the Father, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit, the one true living God then as we’re going to see a little later in this series, this week or next, that’s not a course that always leads us to great earthly riches.

In fact it can mean, not always, but it can be quite the opposite. Or we serve the god of this world, the god of wealth, mammon and we throw all our energies into building up treasures here on earth and the reason we can’t serve them both is that wherever we invest our energies and our heart, wherever we store up our treasures, either at the feet of mammon or at the feet of God, that’s where our heart’s are going to be – one or the other, not both.

Let me take you back to the very first of the Ten Commandments. Exodus chapter 20, verses 2 and 3:

“God says, ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me.”

God is the God who sent His Son to die for you and me, and He will not have any other god that comes ahead of Him in our hearts so it’s one or the other. Who will be my master? Who will be your master? The god of wealth or the God who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them and sent His Son to die for you and me?

Ever asked yourself that question? See money is a battle ground for our hearts. Our allegiance will either be to self and wealth on the one hand or to the God of heaven and earth on the other. That’s why I said on Monday that Gods solution to this is really simple but for many it’s not very palatable. Luke chapter 9, verse 24:

“For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who want to lose their life for my sake will save it.”

Now that applies to all of our lives and it applies especially to our money. The more I try and build up my treasures here on earth, the more I’m going to lose the life that God had planned for me because I’ll head off to go and serve mammon. But the more I’m prepared to give it away, not always all of it but often a pretty fair chunk of it, the more I’ll be serving God and I’ll discover my life. Something I could never discover by hanging on to my wealth.

Now I know, I know so many people don’t want to hear this. What we’re going to be talking a lot about this, God’s radical solution to the slavery that so many of us are under in allegiance to wealth and perhaps a whole bunch of people are going to say, ‘Well, you know, I don’t need this stuff, I don’t want to hear this’.

Well good, don’t. But what will happen is that you’ll continue to be pierced by the many pains that come through the evil that inevitably grows out of the love of money – the root of all kinds of evil. Many, many, many people live their whole lives in those pains and it’s a choice that God gives each one of us.

But the alternative, whilst it requires an iron resolve in the short term, is what delivers life, real life, abundant life in the medium and the longer terms. Jesus again said this, Matthew chapter 6 beginning at verse 19:

“Don’t store up yourself treasures here on earth where moth and rust can consume them. Where thieves break in and steal it. Instead store up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust can consume them, where thieves can’t break in and steal.”

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. The eyes are the lamp of the body so if your eye is healthy your whole body will be full of light but if your eye is unhealthy your body will be full of darkness and if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?”

“No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can’t serve God and mammon.”

So there it is, it’s the decision that confronts us. We can delude ourselves, we can say ‘I get this’ but actually be filled with darkness. A dog simply cannot have two masters. But it’s not that in serving God you and I can’t have any money either, that’s not what He’s saying. It’s about who gets our allegiance, God or the false god of wealth, mammon.

See if I give my allegiance to the god of mammon then I’ll be prepared to give up the things of God for the mammon that I serve. If, on the other hand, I choose to give my allegiance to the true God then I’ll be prepared to give up the things of mammon for the living God whom I serve.

And the reasons so many people want to have a foot in both camps is they don’t want to give up the things of mammon. Giving money away – ouch – I mean significant money, more than just the loose change in our pockets and handbags. But we can’t have a foot in both camps. You just can’t because these two masters make different and conflicting demands of us. That’s why.

Now next week we’re going to meet a man who had to make this terrible decision. We’re going to see the choice that Jesus gave him between God and money and the path that he chose. But let me bring the question back to us right now, which one are we serving? God or mammon? And which one of those two do we actually really, really, really want to be serving?

I used to wonder a lot why it is that God, in His Book, in His story, His love letter to us, this thing that we now call the Bible, I used to wonder why is it that God has such a thing about money. Why does He talk so much about money so directly and so painfully sometimes?

To tell you the truth I used to be very sceptical of Christian ministries like the one in which I now serve who would put their hands out, that’s how I saw it, for money. Hang on, hang on, hang on this smells just a bit fishy. And so the picture that I had in my head was quite simply this.

This thing called the Bible is just a book written by a bunch of self serving religious people who want to get their hands on my hard earned cash. That’s obviously how I saw it. Now I don’t have that view anymore although I am a bit sceptical of telly evangelists who ask me for money to buy a jet or who drive a Rolls Royce I have to say.

I believe in being a wise steward of what Gods given me and I see a whole bunch of more pressing needs in this world than those. And so what I want to do today is to share with you the profound teaching from Gods Word that changed my mind about this. The thing that helped me to let go of my tight reign on my purse strings and open my heart and my wallet to the desperate needs of people, physical, emotional and spiritual across this world.

Every now and then we receive a letter or an email here at Christianityworks asking a simple question about ministry and money. Generally the question goes something like this. Okay, if you guys are really a faith ministry like you say you are, if you really do believe that God will provide all your needs why is it that you just sent me a letter asking me for money? Why don’t you just rely on God?

Now that is not an unreasonable question. In fact it’s quite a good one. And the assumption that seems to underpin it is that having faith in God for His provision and involving God’s people in supporting His work are somehow mutually exclusive. The assumption is this, if you guys had faith God would just provide for you. So don’t send letters or emails asking for money.

Now I want to look at that by taking you and me, for that matter, to the Bible, directly to Gods Word. It was at a time when God was commanding Moses to build the very first Tabernacle, the tent of the meeting, the mobile forerunner if you will to the Temple that was ultimately built in Jerusalem many years later by King Solomon.

This is what it says, Exodus chapter 25:

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘tell the Israelites to take for me an offering from all those whose hearts prompt them to give. You shall receive the offering for me. This is the offering that you shall receive from them, gold, silver and bronze, blue, purple and crimson yarns and fine linen, goats hair, tanned rams skins.

“Fine leather, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for fragrant incense onyx stones and gems to be set in the ephod and in the breast plate and have them make me a sanctuary so that I may dwell among them.”

All the things in that list were incredibly valuable things. But please, please note with me here God’s approach. God commanded Moses to go to His people and ask them to give. Not to cajole them, not to twist their arms, not to shame them into giving, not to give them false promises of wealth if they give but to go to all those “whose hearts prompted them to give”.

It was those whose hearts had been moved to give from whom Moses was to receive this precious offering unto the Lord. So here, in the Bible, God commands the first fundraiser. God commands Moses to go and ask people for money. So it seems that faith on the one hand and engaging Gods people in giving on the other simply aren’t mutually exclusive in Gods eyes. As it turns out exactly the opposite is true, they are intimately connected.

So does God really need my money? Again not a bad question. The last time I checked God was the creator of the whole universe, He owns it all. Everything that’s in it was made for His glory and His pleasure. He owns the cattle, the Bible tells us, on a thousand hills.

So no, my hunch is that God is not sweating on my donation or yours. God is not anxious or concerned about how He will fund His mighty deeds on this earth. And nor should any ministry or minister in Gods service be so concerned. To the contrary, Jesus clearly taught us that God knows every need and when we first seek His kingdom and His righteousness all we need to meet our needs will follow along behind.

As I look throughout my Bible from Moses, whom we just discussed, through to the Apostle Paul who did a whole bunch of fundraising for the Christians in Jerusalem who were suffering in a famine, what I see is that the way that God usually works, not always but usually, is that He involves His people in funding His work.

Let me say that again, Gods normal practice in the Bible is to involve His people in funding His works. So if He actually doesn’t need our money why does He do that? The reason is not so much our money but He wants our hearts. Remember what He said to Moses, who was to give?

“… those whose hearts are prompted to give.”

And God knows that our hearts are attached to our wallets. I’m sorry to be that direct but it’s true. It’s exactly what Jesus said. Now this comes from a wonderful passage of teaching about not worrying all the time as to how our physical needs are to be met. This is what Jesus said:

“Don’t store up for yourselves treasures here on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. Instead store up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes, where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will also be.” Matthew chapter 6.

You’d think it would be the other way around wouldn’t you? You’d think it would be where your heart is that’s where your treasure will be but it’s not. Where your treasure is that’s where your heart will be. In other words, if we hoard all our wealth up for ourselves then that’s where our heart ultimately will be, wrapped up in ourselves.

That’s why. If we hang on to our money we end up serving the false god of mammon, wealth. And as Jesus clearly points out, in doing that we’re misplacing our faith, we’re putting our faith in something that won’t deliver. More about that another time.

If, on the other hand, we invest it in the kingdom of God as He calls us to do, as He moves our hearts in this direction or that, towards this need or that one, then our hearts will rest firmly in God. Our trust will end up in Him for all His provision rather than in our temporal wealth.

We can only serve God or mammon, one or the other, we can’t serve them both. That’s precisely what Jesus said; either we’ll be a slave to the one or to the other. God knows that, that’s why He involves us financially in supporting His work. God wants to give us the opportunity to have our hearts changed and that always costs us something.

Friend, let me say this again, God doesn’t need our money rather He wants our hearts. He wants all of us and He knows that involving us in sacrificial giving, not just the loose change in our pockets, in giving that really costs us something, that’s exactly what He’ll get – our hearts. It’s a God thing.

What an individual gives, which kingdom work or ministry he or she supports, how much they give and when they give, those things are entirely between that person and God. In your giving it’s between you and God. The point simply is this, God wants our hearts and He knows how bound up our hearts can be in our wallets.
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Have you ever been on a sporting team where there’s an argument or a disagreement or a dissension within the team? In Australia where I live sometimes you see it in political parties. There’s back biting and arguing and instead of playing on the one team against the other team, which is how our system of government works, they end up playing against one another.

And here’s what happens. Any team that’s fighting amongst itself simply isn’t going to win, whether it’s a football game on the sporting field or an election to take government. Division, dissension, argument, disagreement – all that horrible, terrible stuff – tears a team apart.

And when it’s torn apart everyone has to focus on that division, first winning then, as so often happens, bayoneting the wounded as we used to say in the army and then hopefully healing. The longer the dissension, the division goes on the worse it gets.

Now imagine if, instead of that happening amongst a team of people, that division is happening within you and me, in our hearts. Imagine our hearts are torn between one thing and another. Between doing this and doing that. Between believing this and believing that.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had that happen to you but as a Christian I know that whenever I’m tempted, that’s what’s going on, I want to do one thing, I want to honour God but like the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 7, I’m torn following after my desires against Gods will. And that simply can’t go on.

Now we’ve been chatting so far this week about the whole issue of God and money. Why? Because a lot of people are drowning in debt. A lot of people haven’t learned to use money as a servant rather than allowing their desire for wealth to master them and control them and enslave them.

Remember it’s not money itself that’s at fault here but our love of money. The Apostle Paul writes to Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 10. Paul writes:

“The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”

I know so many people who are living with a divided heart on this matter of money. It may well be that they’re giving towards Gods work, to their Church, to the poor and the needy, to this or that. Perhaps they’re even tithing, giving 10% of their income to Gods work and yet they have a heart that remains divided.

On the one hand they want to serve God but even with what they’re giving they know that they still have more than enough to meet every whim, every desire, to build their wealth, to produce more wealth so they can live in a bigger house. Once you have money it actually becomes a whole bunch easier to make more money.

Or some people, some people have managed to get themselves into so much debt that they can’t afford to support Gods work, to give money to the poor, to support their local Church or other things they feel God calling them to be involved in.

As someone involved in this ministry, Christianityworks that produces these radio programs, something we can only do with the support of faithful people who pray with us and give financially, I see this quite frequently. This is a common thing. ‘I’d love to support you but my business isn’t going well’ or ‘I’m unemployed or I don’t have a lot of cash at the moment’.

I had one man tell me that, and then promptly take his rather large family off on an expensive overseas holiday. Now please don’t get me wrong. The last thing I’m doing here is getting all bitter and twisted about this phenomenon. My faith is in God and even through some of the most dire financial situations over the years He has always provided for His ministrie’s needs, invariably through His people.

What concerns me here though is the deception. ‘Oh, I don’t have enough money so I can’t support Gods work’. In my experience it is almost never about not having enough money and it is almost always about the priorities that we have which, if we examine those priorities would tell us a lot about the divided nature of our hearts.

I want to take you to meet a man called Cornelius. We meet him in Acts chapter 10. He is the man whom God chooses first to reveal the good news of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. Remember up until this point everyone thought that God, therefore His Son, was the God of the Jews. God had a much, much bigger plan than that and the lynch pin in all of this was Cornelius.

Question is, why did God pick Cornelius not someone else? Acts chapter 10 beginning at verse 1:

“In Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian cohort as it was called. He was a devout man who feared God with all his household. He gave alms generously to the people and prayed continuously to God. One afternoon, about 3 o’clock he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God come in and saying to him, ‘Cornelius.”

“He stared at the angel in terror and said, ‘what is it Lord?’ And He answered, ‘your prayers and your alms has ascended as a memorial before God.”

Why did God choose Cornelius? Because he was a pray-er and he was a giver and both of those things told God that this man’s heart was right. He was a man who God could trust to be the entry point for the good news about Jesus Christ into the Gentile world.

What we do with our time and money tells us a lot about what’s going on in our hearts. Cornelius’s heart was sold out to God, completely and utterly and that ascended as a memorial before God. In other words it got Gods attention. God noticed what was going on here.

Remember this guy’s not a Jew, he’s not one of God’s chosen people. He is one of the occupying Roman force in Israel. See this is an alternative to a divided heart. Have a listen to what Jesus had to say, Matthew chapter 12, verse 25:

“He knew what they were thinking and said to them, ‘every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste and no city or house divided against itself can stand.”

Now Jesus said that in a totally different context. Some people were accusing Him of being powered by the devil instead of God when He cast a demon out and those words were His response. But the principle of what He’s saying, a kingdom, a city, a house and let’s follow it right down to the micro, a heart divided against itself simply cannot stand.

Why are so many Christians struggling in their lives? Because their heart is divided against itself. They’re flip-flopping between God and mammon. Jesus said over and over again, ‘You can’t do that, you can only serve the one or the other, you can’t serve both’.

The only way I learned how to do that, and on reflection the only way that I think any of us can learn that, is to make decisions to be involved in supporting the various kingdom works that God calls us to support. To the level that He calls us to support them in the way that He moves our hearts.

And then to go and do that even if it costs us a holiday, even if it costs us something else that we really, really, really want. To give not the loose change in our pockets but to give sacrificially.

Next week we’re going to meet someone who did precisely that, someone who gave all she had. Friend, a house and a heart divided against itself cannot stand. As God challenges us about where we put our treasure, into His kingdom or into our store houses, what He’s doing is He’s asking for our hearts.

And the thing that happens is that when He has our hearts we discover that they find a rest and a peace and a safety and a security that we never thought possible. Does that mean storms will never hit our lives? No it doesn’t. Does that mean the stock market will never crash? No it doesn’t.

What it means is that by giving our resources which after all are Gods resources, into His kingdom we learn to live by faith in Him. That, my friend, is the place of financial security.
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