Seeing Green Living Blue

[Pages:14]Transcript October 1 and 2, 2016

Seeing Green Living Blue | Seeing Green Living Blue

Aaron Brockett | Luke 12:13-21

Man we had a great weekend. We had nearly 1,500 guys here on the campus and the most important number is that we had about 31 baptisms, guys who just spontaneously jumped in on that. It was awesome. Man, I just want to thank all of our volunteers, people who served behind the scenes to pull that off. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. So could we just let them know how much we appreciate them? Without so many of our volunteers serving that wouldn't happen. They're the real rock stars so I just want to thank them for that.

I just want to remind our church why we do weekends like that--why we do men's and women's conferences. It's because we just really believe that if we can get women together and men together for about 18 hours or so here on the weekends that God will meet them in unique ways in that time. And we really want to help them to take about three spiritual steps forward in their walk with Jesus knowing that they've got to go back to their jobs and families and they might take two spiritual steps backwards but they're still a step ahead. That's really the whole idea behind all of that. We're not trying to compete between the two conferences to see who can one-up the other.

There are men and women who are pouring time, energy, effort and prayer into those conferences so that God can meet us in unique ways. We're just seeing that pay off. I was able to one-up my entrance from last year. I came in on a Harley last year. This year I came in riding in an Indy car and my mom was immediately texting me, very worried. She told me I was crazy and that I might be ...

Really it was awesome to do that but I'm really kind of worried about where this is going. The trajectory of this I didn't fully think through. So I don't know what I can do to top that that won't violate my life insurance policy. I'm trying to figure that one out. It was a great, great weekend and I'm glad that you could be a part of it. If you have a Bible or a device with a Bible on it, go ahead and fire that up to Luke, chapter 12.

I want to greet you if this is the very first time for you to be with us or maybe if you're still getting familiar with this place and those who are tuning in online as well. I want to greet our North campus. Could we just send them some love? We love you guys. They are tuning in via live streaming right now. We love you guys so, so much.

I want to encourage you, if you are beginning to feel at home here, to stop by this place out in the lobby of both of our campuses called Connection Central. There are some very friendly people there who would love to meet you, answer any questions you might have, and most importantly help you take your next steps in getting involved around here because we want to make this big church feel a lot smaller. There are two ways that that happens. It's when you can find your way into a group and when you can find yourself in a serving opportunity. When you serve you're doing more than just completing a task, you're building relationships and it's what allows this big church to feel a lot smaller. So Connection Central is the place where all of that happens.

Today we're beginning a brand new series. I'm going to tell you what that is here in just a minute. To kind of set this up our family has enjoyed, over the last few years, taking a few vacations to Disney. How

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Seeing Green Living Blue | Seeing Green Living Blue

October 1 and 2, 2016

many of you are Disney fans? I know we've got some people who are very, very excited about that. You have a tendency to either be a Disney fan or you're a Disney hater. I'm not a Disney hater. I enjoy spending a fortune to wait in really, really long lines with the best of them. But actually I enjoy Disney, probably more than I let on, mostly because I've got three little girls who love it. When they go, just to see the looks on their faces is totally worth it to me.

But I've got to be honest. Anytime we've gone to Disney, we're having a blast, you know we're doing the fast pass thing, Space Mountain, we're meeting the characters. But as we're having a really, really good time as a family there is this storm brewing in the back of my mind. My wife can usually sense it. And she'll just snap her fingers like, "Hey, you need to come back to reality," because I'm side-tracked. There's this anxiety over finances.

Some of you guys are going, "I'm with you brother. I feel your pain." What's happening is that as my girls are having a good time, they're riding rides and doing all of this stuff, I'm thinking about, "Okay, how much do we have on the credit card? How much is that going to cost? How many more days are we here?" And, "Are Mickey ears really that expensive now?" And, "Is it really necessary for us to take out a second mortgage on our house so that my daughters can have breakfast with the princesses?" The answer to that as I'm told is, "Yes! Yes it is worth it." I have to admit that it is worth it when I see the looks on my girls' faces but that doesn't change the fact that there is this sense of anxiety, this uneasiness that's going on in the back of my mind.

Now, if I'm going to be really honest I'm going to say that that happens more than just when we are at Disney. That happens more than just when we are on vacation. That can be an everyday occurrence in my life and maybe in some of yours. So today we're beginning a three-week series called Seeing Green Living Blue. Seeing Green Living Blue.

Now here's what that means. The big idea behind this is that green is oftentimes the color that represents envy. Maybe you've heard the phrase green with envy. It can also represent fear. When my son gets on a roller coaster his face usually turns three or four different shades of green. And green can also, at times, be a color that is associated with sickness. If you're not feeling very well, your face can turn green.

So it's this idea of seeing green--the lens with which we see things. So if you've ever found yourself in a moment of financial fear, maybe financially you're not doing very well, the root of it is envy. You ran after some stuff that you couldn't afford and you justified the expense. Here's the thing. There isn't a single person listening to this right now who has to be taught to be envious. We just come hard-wired with that built in. I've had to teach my kids a number of things. I've never had to have a lesson with them on envy. They just get that naturally. They are like Samurai warriors when it comes to envy.

This can get us into some serious, serious trouble. In fact, the Bible mentions this in Proverbs chapter 22, verse 7 when it says, "The borrower is the slave of the lender." Now, this is a picture of seeing green. This is a picture of envy, which can lead to fear, which can lead to sickness in our financial life.

Now the Bible is not prohibiting all debt. Don't read that and say that it is a sin to have debt. The Bible never says that. In fact the Bible says in other places that we should pay off our debts--that we should pay our debtors. So if it was a sin to have debt the Bible would say, "Don't ever go into debt." But it doesn't say that. It does say this. Whenever you are over leveraged, whenever you have so much debt

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that it becomes a strangle hold on you--then whomever lent you that money can become your owner and that's no way to live. You're living green.

Blue, on the other hand, is the color that represents freedom or a color that can represent health. I love the color of blue. I was hoping today that I would wake up and see a big, blue sky because, honestly, it's a lot more fun to preach when there's a big, blue sky outside because you guys are more chipper. I don't know if you knew that or not but if it's blue outside when you guys come in there's a skip in your step, and you're like saying, "Amen," and shaking your heads and you're laughing at all of my jokes instead of pitying me. It's an amazing experience. But when it's overcast outside I'm like, "Oh, no," because blue is this color that kind of opens things up.

Blue is the color that represents freedom and health. And when the Bible addresses the subject of personal finances it is encouraging us to live blue. This is what the wisdom of Scripture is instructing us on. And it says this: when we get our financial world in order then every other area of our lives gets healthy as a result.

When it comes to personal health--if I were to take a stab at looking at the four major areas of our personal health I'd say that personal health is made up of the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, and the financial. So these are like the needles on the dashboard to kind of see how you are doing. And all of these things are inter-connected.

For example, if you're not doing very well physically--if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not feeling well, if you haven't exercised in a while I guarantee you it's going to affect your emotions. See, these are all inter-connected. If one is doing well the others are going to be a reflection of that, especially the last two [the spiritual and the financial]. We can say that more so than any of the others the spiritual and the financial are inter-connected with one another.

We could say it this way: when I'm struggling financially then it won't be long until I feel that struggle spiritually. And we don't often make that connection automatically. We often assume that our personal faith in God is one thing and our personal finances are another thing and never the two shall meet because money doesn't sound very spiritual. But as it turns out, the way that we view and handle money has big spiritual implications in our lives. It's the reason why Jesus talked about it so much.

This might be brand new information to some of you or maybe this is just a good, timely reminder but Jesus had more to say about the issue of personal finances and the way we interact with money than He did on any other subject including love and forgiveness, which might be a shock. Now, I didn't say that Jesus talked about giving more than love and forgiveness--that wouldn't be true. But Jesus talked about personal finances and the issue of money more than any other subject. About 25 percent of His teaching in the gospels was devoted to that subject.

When the Bible talks about money and personal possessions there are over 800 verses that deal with them and the Bible has a lot more to say than just: give it. Sometimes we kind of reduce it to that but the Bible actually provides us with a framework that helps us to understand how to interact with money, including planning, budgeting, saving, and investing.

In other words, money is a tool. Money is a great servant. It's a horrible master. And God says, "Money is a tool that should be used to provide for your family, and to provide for your future, and to expand the kingdom of God. And then the Bible provides us this framework for how to use it well.

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So here's kind of the big idea for this three-week series. It's right here: Getting our financial world in order is a big part of what it means to be a disciple. Now that word disciple some of you might know what that means, others of you maybe if you've been attending for a while have heard it but you're not quite sure what it really is. Disciple simply means somebody who has come to trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and is now going to grow. They are going to grow in their relationship with Him.

This is actually the mission of our church. The mission of our church is not to grow a big church. The mission of our church is not to attract crowds of people. The mission of our church isn't even to get a whole bunch of people wet in the baptistery. It's not to just make converts. This is the mission: discipleship--that you would grow and mature in your relationship with Jesus.

And getting our financial world in order is a big, big part of that. Oftentimes this is the thing that can actually hold us back. Oftentimes it's the last thing that holds us back from fully trusting and following after Jesus. This is the point of a very direct and almost shocking conversation that Jesus has with a man in Luke, chapter 12. I hope I've given you enough time to get there.

In Luke 12, we're going to pick this up in verse 13, but prior to this Jesus has been teaching and preaching and He attracted thousands of people around Him as He often did. And Jesus has essentially been teaching the importance of being authentic. He was saying, "You guys need to be real." That's the gist of what He is saying. So then it prompts somebody from the crowd to interrupt Jesus in the middle of His sermon with an issue--a family feud over personal finances. So this guy has the nerve to actually raise his hand, interrupt Jesus in the middle of a sermon to talk about a family argument over finances.

Listen to what is says in verse 13, "Then someone called from the crowd, `Teacher, please tell my brother to divide our father's estate with me.'" See oftentimes what would happen in the first century is that when a father passed away the son who was to get his estate was the oldest son. There was no precedent that it was split 50/50 between him and all the siblings. It was that he got everything. If he wanted to gift it to the other siblings he could but there was no mandate, no law for it. But here's this younger brother saying, "Hey, listen. Teacher, tell my brother to give me my share of my father's estate."

You've got to ask yourself what his motivation is right here. Is this just fairness? Or has he gotten himself into an unhealthy position financially and he needs a bail out? You've got to ask that question as you look at the passage.

Verse 14: "Jesus replied," I love this, "`Friend,'" and I don't know if Jesus meant that or not because the guy just interrupted his sermon. And Jesus is getting going here and ... This is the first century to bless your little heart. I think the original language just says, "You moron." I don't know. I don't know that Jesus meant this. Maybe He's trying to talk Himself into being friendly with the guy but look at this, "`Friend, who made Me a judge over you to decide such things as that?" In other words, Jesus is greatly annoyed. He's saying, "Why are you pulling Me into your family feud over finances?" And He can see the issue underneath the issue. He can see what's going on. He can see that this guy is seeing green.

Verse 15, "Then He said, `Beware!'" another word for that is watch out, Hey watch out, "`Guard against'" now notice this "`every kind of greed.'" So Jesus is indicating here that greed comes in a whole bunch of different forms. Green doesn't just come to us in one way, greed wears different masks. He

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says, "`Life is not measured'" that's another word for quality or importance or purpose. He says your life is not important by how much money you have, "`by how much you own."

Notice that Jesus doesn't ask any specifics of the situation. He doesn't say, "Hey, tell me about it. What's going on?" Jesus understands that there is a significant issue here that is just beyond fairness. So this motivates Jesus to launch into His favorite way to teach. And His favorite way to teach was by telling a story. It says in verse 16, "Then He told them a story:" And the stories that Jesus would tell were oftentimes called parables and parables are earthly stories with heavenly meanings.

And the reason why I think Jesus launched into a story is because He can tell that this guy is so worked up emotionally that he is not in a position to hear objective truth. Even if Jesus were to look at him and to give him all of the right answers this guy wouldn't hear it because, honestly, this guy isn't looking for the wisdom of Jesus, he's looking for the affirmation of Jesus. And I can do that too. Oftentimes I can go to God and say, "God, I'm not really interested in being corrected. I just want to be agreed with."

And this guy is using Jesus as a pawn to get what he wants and Jesus won't have it. So Jesus launches into this story because He recognizes, "He isn't going to listen to a word that I say so let me tell him a story." And He's going to come in the side and He's going to quietly slice his throat. That's what He's going to do, alright? So he jumps into a story.

This is the parable right here, "A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops." This was an agrarian society. In the first century most people were farmers of some kind, which would mean that there was a high level of competition and this guy is actually winning. He's doing really well. He's made a lot of money. He's got a lot of crops.

So, verse 17, "He said to himself, `What should I do? I don't have room for all my crops.'" And our heart just really goes out to him, doesn't it? It's like, "Man this guy has a really bad problem. We feel for this guy." No we don't! We're like, "Actually, that's the kind of problem I'd like to have. I'd like to have more than I know what to do with." So he's trying to figure it out.

Verse 18: "Then he said, `I know! I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.'" There's a word for that. It's called upgrade. That's what he did, "I'm going to upgrade. I'm going to get a bigger space."

"`Then I'll have room enough,'" this is a key word here, enough "`to store all my wheat and other goods.'" I want to stop there at the end of verse 18 because that right there, there's nothing wrong with what he's said up to this particular point. I don't know that he's crossed over into any kind of sin. I don't know that he's messed up in any kind of way.

But verse 19 is what gets him into trouble and verse 19 is Jesus' point. "`And I'll sit back and say to myself, "My friend," and that just got a little weird. Think about that. He just called himself his own friend. That's just weird. It's like Stewart Smalley, alright? I am good enough, and smart enough, and dog gone it people like me. That's kind of what's going on here. I don't know. Maybe there's a little bit of insecurity and he's like, "My friend, you have," here's that word again, "enough stored away for years to come." This is where he goes off of the rails, "Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!"'

And there might be some of us listening to this and we're like, "Man, I don't really see what the deal is. I mean isn't that the American Dream? That's why I meet with my financial advisor, right? To figure out how I can do that. I'm trying to save enough so that I'm not dependent upon anybody else for finances. I

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mean, what's wrong with this? This kind of actually looks like my life goal what this guy has accomplished here."

And what Jesus says next may come as a bit of a shock. Verse 20, buckle up. This is hard to hear. It says, "But God said to him, `You,'" what's the word there? Say it out loud, "`fool!'" Isn't that fun to say of other people? You fool! You might be like, "Whoa, man. That's a little harsh." But understand this. This is not condemnation, this is admonishment. There's a difference. God's not condemning him, He's admonishing him. Why? Because He loves him. He's like, "You're being foolish. I love you enough to actually tell you the truth because nobody else will say this to your face."

"`You fool! You will die this very night.'" Whoa! We just went nuclear real fast. I want you to hold onto that just for a minute because I want to clarify this. I'm going to come back to this because that sounds extreme, "`Then who will get everything you worked for?' Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth," so right there Jesus makes a distinction, there is such a thing as earthly wealth, which means that there can be eternal wealth, "but not have a rich relationship with God."

That is a dynamite packed passage right here. Now let me try to explain some things because we can easily misinterpret it. I want to say three things about this. The first thing is simply this: God didn't kill him for being rich. I've actually heard it taught that way. I've heard people say, "If you're rich, watch out. God will kill you."

No, no. That's not what he is saying. Jesus is telling a parable and He's using hyperbole here to make a point. It's exaggeration to make a point. Jesus' point is simply this. You're going to die sooner than you think. That's what He is saying.

See, we have a tendency to think that we've got a long time to figure stuff out and get stuff ironed out but whether you're a young person and you feel like you've got 60 or 70 years left to live or whether you think that you'll die six days from now or six minutes from now, it doesn't really matter. When you are on your deathbed you're going to go, "Wow. That came on faster than I thought." I don't know very many people who on their deathbed were going, "Man, I wish that I would have worried about money more." That's what Jesus is saying. Your life is shorter than you think so don't get wrapped up in it.

Here's the second thing: God isn't condemning savings accounts and retirement plans. I've heard it taught that way too. That's not what He is saying and really the key to this is verse 21: "Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth," now that next word is the hinge point here, "but not have a rich relationship with God." In other words Jesus is saying there's an either or kind of a thing here. The emphasis is on the last part of that sentence.

There's nothing wrong with a savings account. There's nothing wrong with a 401K or a retirement plan. In fact, the Bible instructs in Proverbs, chapter 13 and verse 22 that a good person will leave an inheritance to their children's children. We can't do that if we don't have a financial plan, if we're not responsible. Where we go wrong though ... Jesus isn't saying that it's foolish to have a plan. Jesus is saying it's foolish to put all of your trust in that plan and that's different.

Here's the third thing: God isn't discouraging us from enjoying the fruits of our labor. I've heard it especially taught that way. So it's like you should feel bad about taking your family to Disney, you shouldn't drive that car, you shouldn't wear those clothes--whatever. Maybe you should. Maybe you

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shouldn't. You've got to discern that in your heart. But the Bible is certainly not condemning you for enjoying the fruits of your hard labor. In fact in Psalm, chapter 128, verse 2 it encourages us to do so.

So what's the point of this particular passage? Jesus is saying that every dollar that we have saved and all that we have acquired will eventually end up in the hands of someone else anyway. So I don't care how old you are right now, in 100 years everything that you've managed to save, buy, earn, or build-- someone else will own it. That's a humbling thought. Jesus says, "How about this? Why don't you hold it loosely? Life is not the sum of what you make, earn, or acquire." And somehow these brothers had lost sight of this. And you know what? I do too.

It's so easy to lose sight of this. Notice that Jesus never really responds to this guy's request. He did not give the man what he was really looking for. Instead, Jesus jumps into a story and I think it was because He could see the issue underneath the issue and He could see that this young man was seeing green, and he was fearful, and he was not doing well spiritually, and it all was traced back to this thing called envy.

See, I don't think that this guy was a bad guy. He could be any one of us listening to this right now. I don't think that he was necessarily overwhelmed with greed because Jesus says that greed comes in a bunch of different forms. I don't think that this guy was trying to cheat his brother out of anything that his brother deserved. I think that what was motivating him to interrupt Jesus' sermon, the thing that motivated him to make this a big, big issue--maybe a bigger issue than it should have been--is the same thing that drives you and me to make financial issues a bigger deal than what they really are.

It's simply this: good old-fashioned fear. Fear is what drives and motivates us to do ungodly things with money. He was struggling spiritually and it manifested itself financially. And here's the tricky thing about this particular area of our lives: Financial sin is usually camouflaged as something else.

As I was studying this last week, the term financial sin just kind of came out as I was writing and I sat back for a minute and thought, "I don't know that I've ever even seen those two words together." Sexual sin, yeah. There are other areas of our lives that we would call sin. And maybe we talk about greed, and envy, and all of those kinds of things but when was there a time that you heard this? Financial sin.

I think the reason why is because we don't necessarily see it as sin. And it's really easy to let this area of our life erode underneath because personal finances are personal. Nobody else should know your business. They really shouldn't. So because of that there's nobody really keeping you accountable. There might be somebody keeping you accountable about your thought life, keeping you accountable about your actions and your words, but who's keeping you accountable for that? Probably nobody, maybe your spouse but that's usually what leads to arguments because one of you is a spender and one of you is a saver, right? Hypothetically.

So this is what ends up happening. Financial sin camouflages itself. It's a sin and we don't even know it. Here's why. It's not greed. It's an investment, right? It's not hording. It's long-term planning. It's not worry. It's just being frugal. I think this is one of the reasons why Jesus addresses the subject of personal finances as often as He does. It's the reason why, in verse 15, Jesus would say, "Watch out!"

When do you say, "Watch out!" to somebody? Right before he's getting ready to smack into a wall and he doesn't see it, and you say, "Watch out!" because he needs to look up and see the wall in front of

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him. And Jesus says the same thing about financial sin. He says, "Watch out!" and He doesn't say that about other sins in our lives.

You don't ever hear Jesus say, "Hey, watch out! You might lose your temper." No, if I lose my temper I know it and everybody within a mile radius knows it. That's not hidden from me. I know it as soon as it happens. "Hey, watch out! You might tell a lie." No, even in the middle of a lie it's like, "Ooh, I feel that prick in my conscience and I'm like, `Yeah, I know. I know I'm doing this.'" He doesn't say, "Watch out! You might be committing adultery." That's pretty obvious, right. You never go, "Whoa, you're not my wife." You don't do that. It's very clear. You see that. You don't need to have anybody tell you that.

But Jesus says, "Hey, watch out! You might fall into financial sin." Why? Because we're blinded to it. Financial sin is tricky because it camouflages itself and usually we are the last ones to know about it. It blinds us in ways that other sins simply do not. That's why the Bible devotes 800 verses to it. That's why Jesus teaches on it 25 percent of the time. Not because God wants our money but because He knows that this is an area of our lives that we will fall into and it will hinder us from being a disciple. And we won't even know it because it's easy to pin the blame on other people.

Listen to these words from this older pastor to a younger pastor in 1 Timothy, chapter 6. He says this, "But people who long to be rich," in other words this is their motivation and this is their desire, this is honestly where they put their trust, those who long to be rich, they," this is an interesting word, fall, "fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction." Verse 10, "For the love of money," not money itself but the love of it, "is the root of all kinds of evil." In other words it will manifest itself in a bunch of different ways, "And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows."

So if you're sitting back and you're listening to this right now and you're saying, "Well, I'm really glad that I don't have a problem with this," that's a bad sign. If you're saying, "Man, I really wish that my spouse ... I hope that my spouse is listening right now." Maybe they need to but that's a bad sign. If you say, "This is surely not true of me," then maybe you need to rethink that again, not because you're trying to be dishonest but because you can be blind to it.

And you know what, all it will take is just one little example of somebody else's perceived extravagance to let you off the hook of this conviction. Right now, if any of you are beginning to feel sort of convicted about this passage and what Jesus is saying, you'll let yourself off of the hook and likely it will happen between the time you exit your seat and the time you get into your car because you'll walk through the parking lot filled with cars and you'll walk by and you'll go, "I hope they listened to the sermon." Right?

You'll walk by and you'll be like, "My, my goodness a Mercedes? Wow. I'm not even sure if I'm going to make it home in my beat up Lexus. I don't know." So then, all of a sudden, the conviction is lifted because you found somebody ... You think, "God clearly grades on a curve. So as long as I stay over here, or stay somewhere in the middle then I'm okay." And Jesus says, "No, no, no. It really doesn't matter what you drive or how much you have or don't have." You can be poor and not have any money and still love it and still be guilty of the same sin.

I've never had a pastoral counseling session with anybody who said, "I want to set up an appointment and meet with you." I've never had anybody come into my office and say, "My problem is financial sin." I've never had anybody say that.

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