Part 5 - Lies of the Devil - The Point just wants your money

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, welcome to God’s living room,

Today we are wrapping up our series 5 Lies of the devil. As we do so, be sure to keep in mind that Satan has a lot more than just five lies up his sleeve. He will always be lying and twisting the truth. Here are the four lies that we have looked at so far: 1. God won’t give you anymore than you can handle. 2. Follow your heart. 3. It’s just sex. 4. Faith is a private issue. Today we are going to look at this lie: The church, you can fill in the blank, The Point or your home church, just wants your money. So today we are going to talk about money. Money, money, money. But not really, because at the core of the issue isn’t money but it is your heart and mine.

Because you see the church doesn’t need your money or mine. Furthermore, God doesn’t need our money. He is not out on the corner of Oakland and Locust looking for a couple of bucks to ride the bus. He is not coming into my office and hitting us up for $20 until payday, promising that he will give $25 back. God’s church and his ministry at The Point isn’t for sell. God is still God. Jesus is still Lord. And people are still going to hell. And people still need to hear the gospel. If God shuts us down, that is his deal and his will and it shall be so, but in the meantime we still need to reach college students and it’s still going to cost money.

I have four questions for us to consider today. First one is this: Am I out of control financially? To help us answer our questions we are going to look at 2 Kings 4. The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the LORD. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves." The woman comes to Elisha and wants God to fix her financial problem. And she has one. Keep in mind that back in her day if you carried a debt up to a certain date your children could literally be taken from you, forced into slavery until an equitable amount of service had paid off the debt. So she comes to God. Looking for help. So often we do the same. God fix my financial problems. But God didn’t tell us to run up our credit cards debt, to buy the care, the house. We always want to take our financial problems to God but if we would have listened to him in the first place we wouldn’t be in this situation.

Contextually, the man in 2 Kings died without life insurance and left his family stranded. We don’t know why. We don’t know what happened in his life. Was he out of control? But the better question is: Are you of control? Am I out of control? How can we know? Here are some indicators: 1. We have a credit card balance with no plan to pay it off. Keep in mind the minimum payment of your balance is not a plan to pay it off. Or have you fallen into this trap. I will get a credit card in case of an ___________ (emergency). How many emergencies do we have? We go to mall check out the clothes and say, “Wow, that is a nice emergency.” Or, “I’ve been wanting to exercise on an emergency like that.” I’m told that 25% of shoppers know what they are going to buy, the other 75% are just looking for emergencies. Think about it. Or how about this, you fill in the blank, I had to buy it because it was on ________ (sale). Some, check this out, actually believe they have saved more money than they have spent by buying things we “need.” One retailer in town will even circle that savings number in red for you. I will be honest. I have made bad financial decisions. Raise your hand if you have too.

Indicator 2 that our financial situation is out of control. You are spending more than you make. Or, we don’t know if we are spending more than we make. # 3. If we make more than 50K a feel significant financial pressure we are out of control. By making 50K we are in the top 1% of money makers in the world. # 4. We make financial decisions that we hope our spouse doesn’t(or parents don’t) find out about. # 5. We transfer balances to from 1 cc to another.

Question 2. Am I discontent with what I have? Elisha replied to her, "How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?" "Your servant has nothing there at all," she said, "except a little oil." Are we content? Are we satisfied with what we already have or do we want more? What we already have is key. The key is not in getting more stuff or more money but in managing what God has already given us. Elisha asks, “What do you have in your home?” “Nothing, but a little oil.” A little oil. I have worked hard for it, my neighbor has more. And the guy around the block has his own oil platform, and it is not the one that is leaking. We need to get some clarity here: Pretty much, it’s only in the US where we go to our closets that are packed full of clothes and lament, “I have nothing to wear.” We go our disorganized and full frig’s and cry out, “There is nothing to eat in this house.” For a lot of us, our cars get to sleep inside. I’m told that as a country we spend 12 billion a year on storage. 40 billion on pets. So we don’t have anything because we are comparing ourselves to people who have more. I’m fine with my car, until I see an Escalade or a Lexus. I’m fine with my furniture until I see the ad on tv. Speaking of tv’s, I could go for one of those big screen, high def deals. Oh, and if you give me the high def tv deal God, I will worship you with it. I will watch like Time of Grace. This is what we do with God isn’t it? “I have some stuff but if you give me more stuff, I will worship you with it. And Jesus is no fool and he says, “You are full of it.” Jesus says in Luke 16:10-12 10"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? The key is not in more, but in managing what you have.

Question 3 Am I willing to have Jesus Lord of my life? Not just Lord of my one hour a week of worship. Not just my prayer time. Not just my relationship at home when it is going the way I want it. Am I willing to give Am I willing to give God my dating life? My major? My church? God my wallet? Some of us may be surprised to know that Jesus talked about money a lot. And I mean a lot. Jesus says in Matthew 6:24, No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. So when we are talking Lord of our life, we are talking about Lord of our billfold, our purse, our benjamins, our paychecks. 2 Kings 4:3-4 Elisha said, "Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few. 4 Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side." Do you see it. The woman already had the solution. The solution isn’t more. It’s management. So Elisha tells her: go to your neighbors and ask for jars and then when you take that step of faith and do what may seem ridiculous, God will get supernaturally involved. This is why you and I have to start worshipping God with what we already have because God can do we may more with our little then we can ever do with a lot more than what we already have.

2 Kings 4:5,6 She left him and afterward shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. 6 When all the jars were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one." But he replied, "There is not a jar left." Then the oil stopped flowing. She trusted Elisha. And she poured and poured and poured. Until the jars ran out she poured. God blessed her more than she could imagine. She trusted God with her finances. Check out what God says in Malachi 3:10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. We can do a lot if we quit paying Visa, American Excess. It is amazing what we can Discover if we put God first and you don’t owe people.

Last question: Are we part time or full time? I don’t know about you but I don’t always want to follow Jesus. I whine and complain. And I bet if you are honest, you are the same unless you are the Holy Spirit. That’s being part time. 2 Kings 4:7 She went and told the man of God, and he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left. She tells Elisha about what happened and asks what should I do. Go and sell it. Pay your debts and take care of your family. And she did it. Can God trust us with blessings? He isn’t going to trust us with more if he can’t trust us with what we already have.

Did you ever notice that God gave an offering? He didn’t feel guilty about it. It wasn’t his leftovers. It was his best. His first fruit. He gave his Son. His one and only Son. And Jesus paid our spiritual debts in full. Through Jesus we are made right with God. Since he is not only our Savior but our Lord we are to give God our best too. Following Jesus means he is to get everything. For some of us this message wasn’t about our money, it was about our job, our career, our mind, our mouth, our dating life. For all of us, this message was really all about our heart and who we are going to worship.

Let’s pray - Thank you Jesus that you gave your all . . .