Made to Flourish #4 - Money (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund explores Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6:19-24 about money's spiritual power, revealing how our treasure leads our heart rather than the reverse. Discover how to avoid the seven spiritual dangers of money and unlock God's blessing through faithful stewardship that creates opportunity rather than bondage.

Message Summary and Transcript - https://www.orchardhillchurch.com/blog-post/2025/6/23/made-to-flourish-4-money

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Transcript

Let's pray together. God, as we're gathered today and as we've gathered around Pittsburgh this weekend online, I ask that you would speak in this moment. God, if I've prepared things that don't reflect your heart, your truth, I pray you'd prompt me away from those. And God, if there are things in this moment that I haven't prepared that would be beneficial, I pray you would prompt me as well, and I'd follow that prompting even in this moment. And God, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

We began a series a few weeks ago that we've called Made to Flourish, and what we've been doing is we've been looking at some themes that emerge in Genesis one, Genesis two, and then looking at those themes through another part of scripture to try to understand what it looks like to live and flourish as God intended for us to live and flourish. And so we looked one week at work and how our work is actually an offering of worship to God when properly understood. We have looked at romance and love and how we are created for relationship. We looked at the idea of a family and how a family can flourish and thrive.

And today I want to return to a word that appears in Genesis one a couple of times, the word dominion, and then there's a word, subdue. And and the idea some people have said is this is the creation mandate that we are to take the earth and subdue it, to rule over it and and it has a lot of different implications, but certainly in our day and age, in order to flourish or to extend any, kind of sway over the world in which we live, money is a necessary part of that engine. And so I want to spend some time today looking at the issue of money. And what we'll do is I'm going to read a passage from Matthew six, which is where Jesus was teaching in what's called the Sermon on the Mount, and then we'll learn some things that Jesus says about money and how to flourish in the area of money. But I want to say right up front as we begin to talk about it, because anytime you talk about money at church, there's a little bit of a suspicion, and that is what does the church need?

Are they gonna have me sign anything? Is there like an agenda here? So no one's gonna be asked to sign anything, give anything. The church does not have any unique needs. I mean, there's always needs, but like like like we're okay.

Okay? So this is not us looking to get something from you. We want something for you, not something from you. So here's what Jesus says. This is Matthew 6:19 and following.

He says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moss and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourself treasures in heaven where moss and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."

And so Jesus, in teaching about life and spiritual life, talks about money, and he says very simply that our money is something you can store up. You can send it ahead. You can take it with you, and that it has a spiritual power because how you relate to money and everybody relates to money impacts us. And so I want to just talk about three things that money creates. The first thing is that money creates allegiance, and we see this because in verse 24 says no one can serve both God and money.

You'll hate the one and love the other, despise the one and serve the other is basically what he says. And you might say, well, that doesn't say that it creates allegiance, it just simply says it reveals our allegiance, and that is true. That verse teaches that you will either have a heart that says I serve the God of the universe or a heart that says I serve money, and what that means is money is, at a minimum, a rival God for all of us. But in verse 21, what we see is that money is actually something that creates allegiance. And notice what verse 21 says.

It says, where your heart is, there your treasure will be. It actually doesn't say that, right? What does it say? It says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be." And why is that important?

Because we tend to think that our treasure follows our heart, and there's an element in which that's true. You spend money on the things that you value, but what Jesus is saying is actually the opposite. He's saying that where you spend your money, your heart will go. Your treasure actually leads your heart, and so you can make decisions about your heart that will be driven by the decision that you make ahead of time with your resources and with your stuff and with your treasure. Let me put it like this.

If you are ever given, let's say a bag of clothes, let's say somebody who's your size, your taste in clothes, your style, everything, bought a bunch of clothes and they can't use them and they say, here, take these and you try them on and they're great. They fit perfectly. Do you know what you'd probably do? You'd be like, "This is great. This is awesome."

Windfall of new clothes. But if you went out and spent money on those clothes, you would treasure them differently. Here's how you know this. Because if you don't spend money and you get a shirt, somebody gives you a shirt, and it's a nice shirt, and you spill on it, you're like, I spilled on it. Oh, well.

If you spend a lot of money on that shirt, you're like, I need to get the stain out right now. This thing is valuable. Do you know how that works? Because spending or your treasure, your money, leads your heart. And Jesus wants us to understand that.

And that leads us to a second thing that he teaches here, and that is that money creates spiritual danger. And we see this in this little analogy that almost seems not to fit here in verses 22 and 23.

He says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.

Now, why does he say this, and why does he say it when he's talking about treasure and money? Because what he's saying is when you see things correctly, then everything is healthy. But when you don't, then he says you're full of darkness. In fact, it says your eyes are unhealthy. Some versions say if it's evil or if it's bad, if your eye isn't seeing correctly, then he says all of your life will be full of darkness. And so he's talking here about spiritual danger, and if money is a rival God and it creates our affection, then it makes sense that money has a spiritual power.

And so I'd like to just give you seven dangers of money. Seven spiritual dangers of money. The first is this, and that is money can be a danger when we count on it too much. Here's what Jesus said in Matthew 19:24. He said, again I tell you, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for someone who's rich to enter the Kingdom of God.

Now I know that many of us hear this and we say, well, okay, that's good because I'm not rich, other people are rich. People who have more than me; they're rich. But if you've been around here for a while, you know because I've said this that if you live in America in this era in which we live, you are among the wealthiest people who have ever lived in the history of civilization, which means you're rich whether you want to be or not. Now again, you may not be as rich as somebody else, but you qualify for rich here. And what Jesus is ultimately saying, I believe, is that when you have material well-being, it's easy not to trust God, not to look to God, but to rely on your wealth to think it's my money that secures my future.

I don't need a God, I don't need a savior. I'll be able to navigate things that are hard in my future, the way I've always navigated everything by myself with my resources. And so sometimes it's hard when we have resources to acknowledge our need for Jesus Christ as the savior and to have Jesus as our savior, because we don't think we need a savior. And so it's a spiritual danger, but there's another danger here, and that is sometimes money can create a spiritual danger because we'll work too much. Proverbs chapter 23 verse four says don't wear yourself out to get rich.

Do not trust in your own cleverness. Sometimes, what happens is we just work and work and work. Not just because we enjoy the work, but because we like what the money does. Because it gives us security, it gives us options, it gives us the ability to buy, and so we just work, and we wear ourselves out. Now certainly, we can say, hey, I'm just setting the stage, I'm getting ahead, but we can miss out on part of our lives that we could live if we didn't have a spiritual bondage almost to money and production.

A third danger is sometimes money can be a spiritual danger because we spend too little or we spend too much. Now, here I stated it both ways because both can be a danger. Spending too much is obvious because you just spend because of what it does, and you make your life harder. It says this in Proverbs 16:8, "Better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice."

And what that's saying is that it's better to have a little than it is to have the ability to spend a lot and not take care of things that are more important, like justice in your life.

Meaning, you just spend, and because you're able to spend it feels good, and spending too little, we see this in Ecclesiastes six two. God gives some people wealth, possessions, and honor so that they lack nothing their hearts desire. But God does not grant them the ability to enjoy them, and strangers enjoy them instead. And so spending too little simply means that you're always saving, always kind of trying to take care of things, and you never enjoy what God has given you to enjoy. One of the reasons that God gives us the ability to earn and to produce and to have is to enjoy, and sometimes we don't even enjoy things because we're seeing money as being more than simply a means to something.

Another danger can be that we borrow too much. Proverbs 22:7 says the rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is the slave to the lender. And notice the language here, the borrower is the slave to the lender, speaking about when you borrow money and you put earning pressure on yourself in the future, that what you're doing is you are really making yourself a slave to your future. Earning potential. And so there's a spiritual danger in that.

Financial advisors for years have said that the wisest thing to do is to only borrow for things that appreciate, not for things that depreciate. Obviously, sometimes maybe a car is tough, but it means borrow for a house, borrow for education, starting a business, expanding a business, so like those things maybe, but, but the, the things that depreciate like a vacation or clothes or things like that, if you're in a credit trap that, that, that there's a spiritual danger that comes sometimes because money can be exposed or the spiritual danger of money because we cut corners too easily. This is Proverbs eleven one. It says, the Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him. Dishonest money dwindles away.

Proverbs 13:11 says, "But whoever grants money little by little or gathers money little by little makes it grow." And one of the ways that you know that money is a rival God is if you're willing to cut corners to gain a financial advantage. If you're willing to be dishonest to gain a financial advantage. And that's a spiritual danger. There's another spiritual danger, and that is when we save too little, or again, I'm going to say too much.

Proverbs 21, this is similar to spending, but it's slightly different. Proverbs twenty one twenty says, the wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down. Meaning that wise people are willing to save and plan, but sometimes it's foolish just to simply save and save and save. But then Jesus says something, and this is that they save too much. He tells a story in Luke 12 verse 13 and following about a rich man who had so much stuff that he didn't know what to do with it all, so he built barns, and then he built bigger barns to gather more of his stuff.

Maybe this is equivalent to storage units today, I don't know. But but but but he just had stuff full of barns, or barns full of stuff. And as he had that, he thought, now I've got good life ahead of me. And the way that Jesus tells the story is he says, you fool. This is Jesus' words, not mine.

He says, you fool, this very night your life will be required of you. And who will get to enjoy all the stuff you've accumulated? And what some people have done is they've just assumed that if I can save and keep accumulating, then I can enjoy life. But Jesus says, understand that your life doesn't go on and on. And there's coming a day when that stuff won't mean much.

And so that's a spiritual danger. And then there's a spiritual danger of what I'm going to say is giving too sparingly. Proverbs 3:9-10 says, "Honor the lord with your wealth with the first fruits of all your crops. Then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine." And so he says, honor God with the beginning of your wealth, and when you do, he says, then your barns will be overflowing.

And I talk about these dangers today because money and your relationship to money has spiritual power in your life. This is Jesus, Jesus' point here in talking about the eye that can see and brings health to the whole body, and the eye that's unhealthy and, and creates darkness for the whole body. And your money and how you relate to money reveals much about what is happening inside of your heart and soul. And so it's important to understand that money creates a spiritual danger. But then there's one more thing that we see here, and that is that money creates an opportunity.

When I say this because of Jesus' words in verse nineteen and twenty where again he's he's talking about storing up treasure for yourself and he says don't store up treasure for yourself here on earth where things break in and steal it and it's it's destroyed, it decays and he says, but instead store up treasure for yourself in heaven where where there's no decay. There's no threat of it being taken away from you. He says, this is what is wise when it comes to money. And Jesus, in Proverbs, says this again, I read it earlier, but Proverbs 3:9-10, honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruit of your crops. This was a time when the culture and the economy was primarily agricultural.

So he says, bring part of the first fruits of your crops into the storehouse or into the barn, and your barns will be overflowing and your vats will be filled with new wine. And so I want to just talk about how money creates an opportunity for us, an opportunity to store up treasure ahead, but it also creates an opportunity for God's blessing in the present. And so I want to give you an illustration if you're wondering what these tables are, and this is not original to me, I'm borrowing this from a former pastor named David Ashcraft. I saw him do this a few years ago and it stuck with me and, I heard an old pastor once say this, he said, when I started out preaching, I decided I'd be original or nothing, and I soon found out I was both, so I'm gonna borrow liberally from, this guy today. So so the culture was agricultural, and so God's idea standard was to say, look, you harvest, you get things, you have nine to do with whatever you deem necessary, and I'd like you to give me one.

This was the idea of a tithe. Now, some people will argue about the tithe and its legitimacy today, and I certainly understand that because you can make arguments about whether or not that was the standard, if it was the New Testament standard, all of those things, but it was certainly the practice in the Old Testament. It was the expected practice in the New Testament that people would bring a tenth and say God, here it is and they would bring it to the storehouse or to the temple, to the church. The idea was that God said just bring me this first portion of whatever you get And so as they would bring their portion to the temple, which is represented over here, they would have a portion here to do with what they wanted. And the idea was that the idea in Proverbs 3 was that if you do this, if you bring the first fruits, then you'll see your barns overflow.

You'll have more than you even can imagine. In other words, I'll do more with 90% than you'll do with a 100%. But the question is, will you trust God in this? Because he says, if you do, I'll I'll bless you. In fact, there were a group of people who, when they heard this, they said, well, that's a good idea, but it seems like a lot.

And here, they're addressed in Malachi 3:8-10. Here's what it says. "Will a mere mortal rob God, yet you rob me? He asked, How are we robbing you? He says In tithes and offerings, you are under a curse, the whole nation, because you're robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house."

Then he says this, "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 there will not be room enough to store it."

And so what he says is if you'll trust me by bringing a portion to me, then see if I won't bless you. You already have all this. Give me this and I will bless you.

It's not hard to understand, but the truth is it's hard to do because it's hard to conceptualize how that won't work out. In fact, some of us are are probably here and we're saying, look I'm I'm young, I'm in high school, I'm in college, I'm a young adult, I I just don't have enough But there is no better time in your life to start the practice of obeying God, trusting God than when you're young and saying I'll take whatever I have and I will steward part of it by saying God here is part of it. Because when I say that money creates an opportunity, what it creates an opportunity to do is to say God, I'll obey you, I'll trust you, and I'll open the door for you to bless, bless me. As I said, this is the only time that I'm aware of in the Bible that God says test me in this, try me. He says try this, see if it doesn't work.

But a lot of us will say, I just I can't. And I know how this goes. When my wife and I were first married, I was going to seminary grad school, which is kind of what you do if you want to, at least it was then, if you want to be a pastor. And we did our budget, our initial budget, and I remember when we got to the end of the budget, we were about 10% short. And so the easy solution would have been to say, well, we just will tithe later.

That's when we'll do that. And I wasn't making very much, I was working in a little church. If I remember correctly, I think my salary was a $150 a week. That was what I made. So it was a $15 kinda kinda idea of a tithe.

And it was a big deal because that was part of the grocery money, it was part of everything. But I remember my wife and I having the conversation saying, if we do this, we're gonna trust God, and how this will work. My wife was working. And what I can tell you is God showed up time and time again to provide. And I know you might say, well okay, that was, you know, a young seminary student, like, like, okay, God does stuff for seminary students, but not for, like, people like me.

And I have talked to people over the years who have tried this and said I would never go back to not tithing because I've seen God do so much, because when I've trusted God, then God has shown up in so many ways. But here's how this works for some of us. And that is, some of us kinda hear this and we say, well, okay, you know, someday I'll I'll get there. But right now, I'm not earning much. And, you know, I need to eat.

And have you seen the prices of groceries lately? You know, and I gotta go out to eat once in a while, so I'm sure God won't mind if, you know, once in a while I just take a little bit from His pile and put it back over here. And then we say, well, you know, I need a car and cars are expensive and I have a payment and maybe when the car is paid off, I'll be able to do a little more. But at least right now, I don't think God will mind if I take my car out of this kind of portion, that might be God's part of this. Or we'll say, you know what?

I have a car repair, and the car repair was pretty big. I'm sure God won't mind if I just take that little bit and put it over here, and then we say, well, you know I I have I have some other things, like I'd like to maybe go on a vacation, and so God won't mind if we go on a vacation this year and and we'll just put this back over here. And then we say, well, you know it's good to give to God, but I give my time to God. And so since I give my time, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I just take this little bit and put this back over here and and you know we're gonna send our kids to the Christian school and it's kind of like Christian ministry giving, and so that's hard to to to do. Maybe when we're done with the school, we'll be able to give to God, but I'm sure he won't mind if we just take this little bit and put it back over here.

And then we say well, you know what, I have a mortgage and that's big and so I'm gonna put this over here too and I'm sure God won't mind if I if I just put this over here because after all I have to live and and you know the kids need to go to college someday so I'm gonna save a little bit for that because that's a big number and then we need to retire. And someday we just need money to be able to not be dependent on our kids or somebody else, and so we just need to go ahead and do that. I'm sure God won't mind, and you know, there's some house projects, some other things that need to be done. I'm sure God won't mind. And you see where we end up, where what we have left for God is just kind of the leftovers, almost a tip.

And then we wonder sometimes why God doesn't seem to show up in our finances. Sometimes it's that we want to direct our giving, we want credit for our giving, and so we we we give where we want to give as opposed to maybe to a church that we're part of that it seems like it just kinda goes and we don't always know all that happens with it. And certainly, I know that there are questions like, do we tithe on the gross or the net? Is it 10%, is it different, can we give it to other places, and I think ultimately those aren't helpful questions. I think if we take what God gives us and say I want to steward what you've given me, and most of it being to the local church that you're part of, that there's a God honoring impact in that, and that we flourish.

Now, I'm guessing, as we've talked about this today, that there's some different reactions. Some of you are sitting here, and you're saying, this is why I hate church. Always talking about money. Especially if you're newer today, this is one of your first times, this is like the first time we've done this in a long time, this illustration especially. But let me just say this again, money's a big part of your life, and it's a rival God, and be careful, be careful that you're not the rich person who's missing the kingdom of God because you're so caught up in your own money.

Money is something that creates an opportunity. And ultimately, you may be here and you may be saying, well, I haven't done this very well. But what that does is it points us to the need for Jesus Christ because probably most of us, even if we've practiced this for a long time, have had times where we've taken from God's table and put it on our table and it's a reminder of the grace of Jesus Christ that He wants something for us not from us, that Jesus came on our behalf in order to give us eternal life. Some of us are here and we're saying you know what, I haven't practiced tithing but I've done just fine so I don't know that I need to do this but what you don't know is how much better you could have done if you had given your resources in proportion over the years, or how much you would have sent ahead versus what you didn't. Some of us are in a place of just saying I can't.

That there's just no way, the numbers don't work. Maybe for you it's just taking a step and saying, God, I'm gonna trust you with at least a little. I'm gonna test you in this and see. Because again, what this is teaching is not so much God needs your money, the church needs your money, as much as saying, when you test God, he says, test me, see if I won't open up the floodgates, if I won't do more with 90% of what what I've told you to keep than if you had all 100%. And some of us are here and we're saying, you know, I just came today hoping to get a word of encouragement and, you know, I'm money, it's not really my thing right now.

I'm just kinda struggling. But you know, as you honor God in one area, it bleeds to the next. Because every time you say God, I'm gonna trust you, it's not that God guarantees that everything will go your way. It's not that you'll never have an unexpected bill or you'll never have something that doesn't work out, but, but what you'll begin to see is that there's a wealth and a, and a beauty that comes into your life and saying I'm not totally dependent on me and my ingenuity. In fact, Jesus at one point was telling a story, or had an experience, and he used an experience to relay something.

It's in Mark 12, it's known as the widow's mite. And what happened was Jesus was with his disciples, and they were sitting across from the treasury, and all the people were coming and putting money in. And some of them, it says, put in large sums of money. And as they did that, you can just imagine the disciples being like, wow, look at that. And then the widow comes up, and she puts in two small coins.

The text says two, and it says two probably to emphasize the fact that she didn't even keep one, even though it would have made sense. Because it's all she had to live on. And you know what Jesus said? He said, this woman put in more than all the other people. And what Jesus was doing was he was saying, she gets it.

And it doesn't mean that that that woman went home and all of a sudden she had bread or she all of a sudden had something but she was saying that the kingdom of God is bigger and and I trust God more than I trust myself, even just taking what I have and saying God, I'll trust you and and Jesus commends it in such a way that it lives on for you and for me. And so the opportunity today is just to say, will I trust God with my wealth ultimately? And Jesus is ultimately one who, as I've said, wants something for us, not from us. And here's where we see this. This is 2 Corinthians 8:9. It says, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich."

Now that doesn't mean, again, that by today's wealth standards you'll have an overabundance, but what it's saying is Jesus, God, had all deity at his disposal, and as God became man and was poor, literally poor, and through his poverty made it so that you could be rich, rich in all things spiritual. And what that means is that Jesus is really the place that we come to say because of what Jesus has done out of out of gratitude, out of trust, I can trust Him with all things because He's given me wealth beyond anything this world can give me. And when that's where you and I live, then we have true wealth. And so we're going to partake of communion this morning as a way just to to, to worship.

And so there are communion tables here at the front to the outside, in the balcony, and in the lobby as well. And you can come and take communion and dunk the bread in the wine and just say God, thank you that Jesus became poor so I could be ultimately rich. That he died for me, and that he is the one who's covered for any place that I have failed, including places where I financially haven't followed you. And maybe today is a day just to say, and God, I'll try to change some things in this area if I need to. And I know there are some of us who are here, and you say, you know, I've made this my basic practice in life.

And if you have, you've probably been able to say, I don't know if I've seen all of the return because you don't always know, but you have seen and sensed the pleasure of God. And so as you come, it's just a celebration of what God has done, maybe in your life as well.

God, we thank you for just what Jesus has done, becoming poor so we could be rich. And God, I ask today that you would help each of us to live in a place where we can say, God, I know that because of Jesus, I can be rich in all things. And that will be a joy to us and lead us to be generous with our stuff and avoid the spiritual danger of stinginess, and we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

This transcript was automatically generated. Please excuse any errors.