“Earn. Save. Give: We Don’t Need More Money” Proverbs 3:13-14

If you could ask God for anything, absolutely anything, and know that you would receive it, what would you ask for? King Solomon had just such an opportunity and asked God for wisdom. In other words instead of asking for more of what he already had, he instead asked for the ability to know how to manage and use what we gather and have. Wisdom can also be translated to mean an understanding heart. 

I have to wonder how many of us, if in King Solomon’s place today, would ask for the same thing. My guess is that most folks wouldn’t ask for wisdom or an understanding heart. Instead they would ask for money, comfort, and fame or the ability to succeed. In the current culture it seems like this is seen as the trifecta which leads to happiness.

But look around. How many folks actually seem happy? I know a lot of folks who are working multiple jobs. Or working more hours. Or putting in overtime. All in the hopes that the money pay out will make them happy, when more often than not it simply leaves them exhausted. Brothers and sisters, exhaustion is not a sign of happiness.

We are now entering into a four week sermon series about money based on Pastor James Harnish’s book Earn. Save. Give: Wesley’s Simple Rules for Money. All too often we like to bury our heads in the sand and plug our ears when the pastor talks about money. We dread when stewardship season comes around, but honestly I believe that is because we don’t talk about money enough as a church. And I’m not talking about the call for folks to dig deeper and give money to the church, though tithing is surely Biblical. We just don’t talk enough about some of the practical wisdom that God has in scripture for us around the topic of money. So for the next four weeks we are going to dig through the wisdom scriptures, Proverbs, to see what it says about money and how we can apply that to our daily lives. Starting with the topic this week - We don’t need more money, what we need is more wisdom. 

Let me predicate what I’m going to say with some very important things. One, I truly believe that there are people in the world that do not have enough, including some folks in the United States. I believe that as we have got caught up in the hustle of getting ahead for our own family, sometimes we do injustices to other families. And that is why we need groups like the United Nations to draw our attention away from ourselves and into the bigger picture with their seventeen sustainable development goals which calls for things like no poverty, zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, and decent work and economic growth to name a few.

Two, I believe that people should be fairly compensated for what they work. While the cost of living has skyrocketed in the United States in recent years around things like utility costs and groceries and gas, the minimum wage has not reflected that change. In this country we have substituted a minimum wage for a living wage, but they are not the same thing.

However, for better or worse, most folks in United Methodist Churches around this country today would firmly declare themselves to be in the middle class somewhere. We have a pretty broad range of what that means. For some folks that means making $35,000 for others it means making more than $100,000 and I recently heard at a training I attended that some folks making as much as $450,000 describe themselves as being in the middle class. So in that wide range most folks who are United Methodist find themselves. Keeping in mind I still believe folks deserve to be paid a living, fair, and just wage for what they do, most people don’t need more money, they need to be wiser with the money they already have. 

Peter Storey once said that John Wesley had a, “Gospel-shaped behavior towards money and riche that was predicated by his commitment to the poor.” John Wesley, like the book of Proverbs, had a really practical approach to money where folks were taken care of and also given the tools to be good stewards of what they have. We need to reclaim some of those tools today that he first presented in his sermon “The Use of Money.”

We don’t look at the book of Proverbs very often in worship, but I want to turn there today and hear what it has to say for us about wisdom and wealth. Happy are those who have wisdom because that income is better than silver and has a return better than God. 

I can hear it now - that’s all well and good Pastor Michelle but what does that look like today? What meaning does that have in my life? Friends, the Bible teaches us that how we relate to money reflects where our heart is at with God. Where is your heart at today? Because for a whole lot of us our hearts are filled with worry about tomorrow and we keep trying to get more in order to dig ourselves out of the whole that we are in. And that does not reflect what Proverbs is trying to tell us. 

Wisdom, as it relates to finances, speaks about how we manage and use what we have. That’s a pretty mundane, every day thing, brothers and sisters, but that is exactly the type of thing that the book of Proverbs speaks to. Its about ordinary life experiences and how we can use wisdom to live our lives in a powerful way. So what does wisdom around money look like?

First, it is wise to use our talents to earn an incomes. I was sharing at a Bible Study at Ohio a few months ago that God gave Adam and Eve work before sin entered the picture. All too often we think that work is punishment for sin, and yes, Adam was told that he would have to toil by his hand as part of the fall. But after his creation out of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, Adam was given work to tend to the garden and name the animal and to be a steward of all that he sees. Work can give our lives meaning. However, too many folks today are working simply for a paycheck and not at what they are passionate about. If you aren’t passionate about what you do as a job is there a place you can pour yourself into as a volunteer in order to use your gifts and talents for the honor of God’s Kingdom?

Second, it is wise to live within our means. Part of the story of the prodigal son that we don’t dwell on very often is how he squandered everything he had been given. Here he had made this outrageous demand to be given his part of the estate while his father was alive and turned it into money, which he quickly spent on everything that you could imagine. And then it was gone. He lived outside of his means to the point where he had to go and work on a pig farm just to get some money for food. Friends, all too often we live outside of our means as well, mostly by going into debt. Massive debt. Debt with high interest rates that can make us feel like we are drowning. Living within our means means spending less than what we make. But in a society that has trained us to believe we can have whatever we want, when we want it, that message doesn’t sink in very far.

Third, it is wise to manage our money to be debt free. As I write this sermon I carry some debt. A car loan. Student loans. And some credit card debt. However, I also have a plan to work towards being debt free. In Proverbs we find the statement that whoever borrows money will be burned, and that is certainly the age that we are living in right now. More debt that we can even think of paying off, making minimum payments and watching interest rates soar. Debt isn’t necessarily bad, but when we take on debt we need a plan to get out of it. 

Brothers and sisters, Proverbs shows us that wisdom isn’t something we just receive in most instances, other than King Solomon, its something we learn and live into daily. What does wisdom around finances look like for you and how is God calling you to be able to manage ands your money in a faithful way? Amen.