Money, Money, Money

Today we have in the Church a crisis of Values. As believers we realize that we are not to have the world's values but Yahweh's instead. What we seem to be ignorant of is that the Church has embraced the world's values and consider them to be God's values. The list is long; theological education instead of God's breaking and anointing, the social humanistic gospel instead of repent from your sins and believe and live a Holy life, pastors in the spotlight instead of Yeshua in the spotlight, knowledge about God instead of knowing God, living by the law instead of living by grace, praying publicly for our needs instead secretly in our closet, letting Sunday school train our children instead of their father. All of these worldly values can be traced back to a few evil values. The primary values problem is the love of money (1 Tim 6:10) and the serving of mammon (Mat 6:24-25) instead of the love and serving of Yahweh. Mammon is the material world. Money is the main tool for attaining the material things of this world.

The real issue here is the focus on things material as opposed to spiritual. We are more concerned about the building than the hell bound people outside the building. We are more concerned about paying the pastor's salary, building expenses and utilities than giving to brethren, the poor and needy. We are more concerned that we are clean and pretty on the outside than righteous and whole in the spirit. We want to impress people more than we want to impress God. It is a focus problem, a heart problem. We focus on that which has NO eternal value, that which will be consumed by judgment, not the imperishable, such as humility, love, joy, peace, faith, patience, kindness, long suffering, goodness, gentleness, meekness, justice, service, righteousness, spiritual power, Godly authority... These cannot be bought or bartered for. There is nothing on this earth that can be used to attain these qualities. Hard work, popularity, wealth will not do it. These are only granted by Yahweh when we've met His criteria. We, as the Church, are meant to be a depository of these qualities, a shining example of Godliness, every one of us, in increasing measure as we walk with Yeshua. True faith in Yeshua is focused on Yeshua, not mammon, money or man. We see this focus in Yeshua as He walked the earth. He focused on Father, Yahweh. He was constantly talking about His Father and His Kingdom. Material things including money were of little importance to Him. He had the clothes on His back and a pair of sandals, no home, did not know where He was going to sleep next or where His next meal was going to come from. In fact He commanded us to “take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” (MAT 6:25) Yet we as Christians spend hours in shopping malls pouring over what to eat or wear or decorate our house with. How many of us never even thought about what clothes to wear on Easter Sunday? Yeshua said do not even think about what we should eat, drink or wear, even our life. I haven’t heard any sermons on this one, wonder why? Yeshua also sent His disciples out without money, a Bible, or food, just the clothes on their back. (MAR 6:8 And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse:). Now that’s FAITH. That’s Yeshua’s normal approach to missions. When’s the last time you saw a “missionary” leave with just the clothes on their back?

He gave what little bit of money they had to Judas to hold (since Judas loved money). Is this not the way of the Lord, He gives you what you love! You love clothes, sure you can have clothes, you love visibility, sure your can have visibility. It is easy to find what people love, just listen to their conversation, for out of the mouth the heart speaks. Just listen to the casual conversations of the Christians around you. Are they any different than those of the non-believers? Do they consistently discuss Yeshua, or are they talking about their latest evangelistic outreach program, or the building program, or the latest news, or ball game, or their job, or their house or their neighbor? If they LOVE Yeshua then you will hear their conversations centered on Him.

This is a good measure of others how about yourself? Here we look at our thought life. How many hours a day do you talk to Yeshua, or think about Him, one, two, three...? Or do you spend your thoughts on material things; how much money you earn, how many bills you have, the clothes you are wearing or someone else is wearing, where you are going next, what someone thinks of you, or says of you, the price of gasoline, what movies you are going to rent, what's for dinner? Have you ever sat and thought about (or asked) what Yeshua thinks of you and your behavior and your values? Have you ever asked Him to show you and remove your worldly values and replace them with His values? Have we ever sat before the Lord and cried out to Him for more faith, more love, more righteousness, more humility, until we got it? Yahweh has granted us one invaluable commodity, time, our allotted time on earth. He has decided how much time we have to spend. How are we spending it? Are we spending it to purchase eternal treasures, or are we whiling it away on that which has no eternal value, the things of this world, trash? Are we so earthly minded that we are no Heavenly good?

I'm always amazed by "Christians" who long for heaven but seemingly have no heavenly values. Do they actually believe that they will be "at home" in a place where ONLY Yeshua is worshiped and human humility, meekness and weakness are highly valued, where longsuffering will be a badge of courage, where trust in Yeshua's care is the ultimate currency and those who had much money on earth will be hard to find? What do they think heaven is, a place where they can have anything they want when they want it, where their heavenly butler will be at their service? No its the place where Yeshua rewards those who trusted Him to provide for their salvation, their existence, their love, their very life while on earth, to the point that they did not concern themselves with attaining these thing themselves but were consumed by trying to please Yeshua and carry out His will and advancing His kingdom on earth at the expense of the things they had, including their very lives. They did not hesitate to use their time, money and resources to carry out His desires always at their own loss. These will be at home in Heaven, and have treasure there as well.

Store not up treasure on earth but treasure in Heaven. We all know how to store up treasures on earth. How do we store up treasure in Heaven? How do we buy something from the Lord such as eye suave as in Revelations? Every time that we do something on earth that the Lord directs us to do that we DO NOT RECEIVE an earthly benefit from, we will receive a heavenly one, a heavenly currency or saving if you will. However, if we accept an earthly benefit we forfeit the heavenly payment (Luke 6:24). This is why David poured out the cup of water that was brought to him at great risk, because he wanted to honor the Lord with it and receive no earthly reward for it. In fact he probably upset the men who went to get the water. So how does your heavenly bank account look? (Think of it as an eternal retirement plan.)

So can you use earthly money to buy heavenly reward, since you spent your time attaining it? I guess in a way you can since we have the example of the rich young ruler who asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. Yeshua's answer was to take EVERYTHING he had and the give it to the poor and follow Yeshua (Luke 18:21). In other words, no earthly reward, just obedience and then faith that the Lord would provide for Him. He would become another disciple, no home, not knowing where the next meal would come from the where he would sleep next, BUT LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD! WHAT A GREAT REWARD! What would you give to LIVE IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD? Or would you like the rich young ruler turn away, back to your money, your self sufficiency, your strength, and die slowly until you've spent all of your allotted time on trash, having spent you life as an evil doer. Yahweh does not want your money He wants you, not your body but your LIFE.

What is money to Him? Nothing (Luke 12:21,16:11). He created everything, except money which was man's creation. Man takes pieces of metal or paper, stamps numbers and (graven) images on it and assigns value to it and demands that we use it to buy stuff and services. Of course the use of money allows for usury and taxes, the real reason there is money. The barter system which was used for millennia, all through Old Testament times, cannot be easily taxed and cannot be charged interest. The barter system has built into it a measure of faith. The Deuteronomy blessing and curses clearly apply to the produce and flocks of the people. The Old Covenant tithe was on the first fruits of the people not the money of the people. In fact nowhere was money used to support the priesthood in the Old Testament that I know of. It wasn't until around Yeshua time that money was used in the temple to buy sacrifices to fulfill the covenant. We all know what Yeshua did to the money changers at the Temple. HE said that they had turned the "house of prayer to a den of thieves". The love of money had usurped the Love of Yahweh. Evil had replaced the sacrifice of the first fruits and Yeshua made a whip and drove it from the Temple. There is something profane about buying your first fruits, your best and most valuable, and trying to sacrifice it to the Yahweh, as if He would not notice.

The world says that with money you can buy anything, but Yeshua says; may you perish along with your money (see Simon the sorcerer Acts 8:13-20). Simon was a new believer but thought that he could buy the gifts of God with money. Peter responded with a death wish, “may you perish along with your money”. Funny I’ve never heard a pastor do that when someone offered a tithe or offering to gain some benefit. Another place to see Yeshua's attitude toward money is to look at the time someone asked Him about tributes (Mat 22:17-22). His response was "who image was on the coin", the response; “Caesars” brought His answer; "then give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God's". Since Caesar created the coins and his image was on them they were a graven image and belonged to Caesar. The rest of the world was created by God and man was created in His image, thus belonging to God. So money belongs to the evil world and man belongs to Yahweh. We see that when the tax collectors came to see if Yeshua paid taxes and Peter answered yes without consulting Yeshua, that Yeshua gave Peter a lesson in tax paying. Yeshua was exempt but since Peter said that He did pay taxes that He would pay them that time from a fishes mouth but not from the purse. Yeshua had Peter handle the money, Yeshua would not even touch it (Mat 17:24-27).

We are left with who are we going to serve, Yahweh by faith or Caesar (who also claimed to be god) and his money? Another way to measure who we serve is to determine who we are dependant upon. If we are serving Yahweh and He leaves then we will have a catastrophe, likewise with money, if we serve money and it goes away then we have a catastrophe. So which is it? If Yahweh did not show up for Church (or at our house) for a couple of months would we have a catastrophe. How about if there was no money (or available savings) for a couple of months, would the Church (or our household) be any different? (The true Church would be no different because they rely on Yeshua, just ask the Russian or Chinese believers). There is another little test that we can apply here. We as humans will defend what we love. If we love money then we will defend having it. We cannot imagine living with out it. If we love Yeshua we will defend living with Him and we cannot imagine living without Him. We cannot have it both ways either we Love Him or money (we cannot serve two masters). The more we love Him the less we love money. If we Love Him with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our strength then we will recognize money as belonging to the world, and the love of money as a curse and hate it.