INTRODUCTION:

In one of the psalms written by Asaph, the Lord reminds people what all belongs to him.  Maybe you’ve heard these words before:  I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.  I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine.  If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.

We don’t have too much problem understanding or accepting that all the livestock in the world belong to the Lord.  The birds and the deer are marvelous creations of God and he owns them all.  Things get a little dicey, though, when we have to remember that we belong to the Lord.  It’s not just the animals that are his.  We are his.  Body and soul we belong to him.  That starts to cause some issues, doesn’t it!   My choices?  My rights?  My way?  I can do with my body and my life as I choose or as I please?   No, I’m his.  I depend on him for life and I exist for him, for his purposes, not mine.

Let’s go one step further.  How about this ($20 bill or a bunch of cash)?  The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.  The giraffes and the bears and the mountains and the streams are the Lord’s, fine.  But he gets all the cold hard cash, too?  I earned it!  I won it.

I inherited it... I invested it... I saved it... I worked for it.  IT’S…

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.  Is it...

My Money??

Even beyond the obvious answer, “Yes, it’s God’s, because he says so,” is the simple truth found in the question, “Who gets to keep it?”  When I die, I don’t get to keep it (because it’s not mine).  I can pass it along to someone else, but ultimately they don’t get to keep it, either (because it’s not theirs).  Whether it’s a wheelbarrow full of big bills or a couple of pennies, it’s really not my money.  It’s his.

We don’t often fancy ourselves to be gross violators of the First Commandment, idolaters of the worst kind.  Typically, we’re accustomed to considering money under the First Commandment and we’re instructed and reminded that when we set our hearts on it or love it or trust it or fall to pieces when we don’t have enough of it, it has become our god.  But there’s a different idol that we forget about, because it is I.  We idolize ourselves, we tell God to move over and we set ourselves on his throne when we think or act as if the money is ours. 

Do we need a moment of silence to reflect on how wicked that is and how long it’s been since we confessed that sin to God?

An interesting thing – money.  People have connived and killed for it.  They have literally worked themselves to death for it.  But you could take the roof off this building, set up a conveyor belt from the ground outside up over the wall, run it 24 hours a day for a week and have it drop $10,000 bricks of cash into this room till this whole room was filled with it, and all that money couldn’t do a thing to reduce your debt with God by a single penny.

It’s one of the simplest biblical principles that you could talk about.  The one who makes it owns it.  The Lord made everything and he owns it all.  He could stand at the mint where the sheets of currency are run off and rightly say, “More for me!”  It’s all his.  And yet the comparison hasn’t yet been invented – the one that can make us understand how much more precious was the offering up of his Son than all the money in the world. 

By adding to all our other sins the sin of elevating ourselves above God by acting like the money is ours and ours alone, we broke away from God and burned all the bridges behind us.  So the Father told his Son, “You’ll be the bridge to bring them back to me.  Buy them back.  Pay the only price that can make them mine again – not gold or silver or cash or currency, but your precious blood, the costliest price ever paid for anything.”  On a dark Friday afternoon, in the writhing agony of God-forsakenness, Jesus paid that price for you.  The best thing in life doesn’t cost money.  It cost Jesus his life, and he was glad to pay it.

Do we need a moment of silence again, to give thanks to the Lord for how good he is, that Jesus should have paid such a price for us?

Then what does he do but take the very price that he paid for us and place it into our mouths so that we will not doubt at all that we are completely paid for.  One drop of his forgiving blood is worth more than all the money in the world.

For however long it is that the Lord will give you on this earth, there is a way to express your thanks to him beyond just saying it.  He’s changed you from unbeliever to believer, from enemy to friend, from hell-bound to heaven-bound.  He’s changed how you look at things and why you do what you do.  You thank him when you look at money differently now.  My money??  No!  It’s his.  He lends it to me.

This (cash) belongs to Jesus.  It’s not evil.  It would be evil to love it, but money itself is not evil.  It’s a blessing from God to be managed for God.  If we were studying the catechism we would talk about five general uses of money that honor God: 1) returning a part to him through our offerings; 2) covering personal needs for ourselves/our families; 3) payment of taxes; 4) helping those who are in need; 5) and personal enjoyment.  Those are God-pleasing uses of money when we remember the words of the 24th Psalm.

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.  The birds, deer, giraffes and the bears belong to God, but so do I.  Jesus bought me at a huge price.  I am the Lord’s, body and soul.  Thank God I am the Lord’s.  And… my money is the Lord’s.  He lends it to me.  That means I want to take care of it and honor him with every use of it, whether it’s helping Katrina victims or buying a hotdog at a Braves game, whether it’s giving a glad offering to God or sending off the electric bill.  Jesus paid for me.  All I have is on loan from him.  I want to be careful to honor him with money and he will help me do that. 

Won’t it be neat, when he returns, to gladly recognize and shout out loud that it was all his in the first place?  “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.”

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