A tension and frustration that can arise when it comes to money, possessions, and treasure...

At the church where I serve we are in the midst of a sermon series entitled treasure. During this series, we are spending our time together talking about, in a real and practical way, the subject of money and finances. As we go through this series, our hope and our prayer is that God would move in our heads and our hearts in a way that results in us embracing some timeless truths and principles that will enable us to live our day to day lives in a way that reveals and reflects Jesus head and heart when it came to the issue of money and finances.

This week, I would like for us to spend our time together addressing a tension and frustration that can arise when it comes to money, possessions, and treasure. To understand the nature of this tension and frustration, however, we first need to understand how prevalent money is in our day to day lives. You see, virtually everything that we do on a day to day basis involves the use of money. It isn’t that much of our life involves the use of money; much of our life revolves around the use of money.

If you do not think that is the case, just take a minute and consider this question: What do you do in your day to day life that does not involve money? Is there anything that you do on a day to day basis that does not involve money? Where and how you live, what you do and don’t do, what you wear, what you eat, how you travel, all involve money.

And because virtually everything that we do involves and revolves around money, we are continually making decisions when it comes to how we handle money, finances and treasure. We have roles and responsibilities when it comes to money and finances. The tension and frustration, however, that we can experience when it comes to our roles and responsibilities, usually surface in one of two areas. The first area that we can experience this tension and frustration is when we fail to recognize and fulfill the responsibilities that we have when it comes to money and treasure. 

The second area that we can experience tension and frustration is when we fail to understand what responsibilities are ours and what responsibilities are God’s when it comes to money, possessions, and treasure. You see, God has certain roles and responsibilities that He retains when it comes to money, possessions, and treasure, and there are roles and responsibilities that God has delegated to us. Where we get off track, frustrated, and in trouble when it comes to finances is when we try to fulfill roles and responsibilities that belong to God, or ignore or fail to fulfill responsibilities that belong to us.

So this week, I would like for us to spend our time together discovering and unpacking what responsibilities are God’s and what responsibilities are ours when it comes to money, possessions, and treasure. And to do that, I would like for us to look at a section of a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of Psalms.

The book of Psalms is a series of prayers and worship songs that were used in worship in the temple that were written down, recorded and preserved for us by God. The Psalm that we are going to look at this morning was written by a man named Asaph. Now Asaph was the Chris Tomlin of the Old Testament. Asaph was an outstanding musician during the reign of King David who was appointed to be the worship pastor at the temple.

In Psalm 50, we see Asaph, moved by the Holy Spirit, write a song that confronted the Jewish people for the selfishness and rebellion that was beginning to surface in their lives. In verses 1-6, Asaph begins by painting a courtroom scene in which God was summoning the Jewish people to hear the charges against them. Asaph explains that God is the Creator and Judge of the universe who is ever present and ever aware of His creation.

And as Creator and Judge, God was summoning the Heavens and the earth as witnesses to testify as to what they have seen from the Jewish people when it came to their rebellion. After summoning the Jewish people and the witnesses to the courtroom, Asaph reveals the charges against the Jewish people that God would be judging. Charges that are recorded for us in Psalm 50:7-8:

"Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you; I am God, your God. "I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, And your burnt offerings are continually before Me.

Asaph begins by telling the Jewish people what they were not guilty of. As the One who had entered into a covenant relationship with the Jewish people, God was not reproving them because of a lack of worship activity. When Asaph refers to sacrifices and burned offerings, he is referring to the sacrificial offerings that the Jewish people were required to complete two times a day.

In the Jewish sacrificial system, there were two times every day that sacrifices were made to God for the sins of the people, one early in the morning and one in the in the late afternoon at 3 p.m. The sacrificial offerings involved animals who were offered as a substitute to pay the penalty for acts of selfishness and rebellion that had been committed against God. The burnt offerings were expression of worship and thanksgiving to God.

You see, the Jewish people did not need to be corrected because they were failing to show up for church. The Jewish people did not need to be set straight when it came to their worship activity for God. Now a natural question then is "Well, if that was the case, what was the problem?" We see Asaph reveal the problem in verse 9-11:

"I shall take no young bull out of your house Nor male goats out of your folds.”For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. "I know every bird of the mountains, And everything that moves in the field is Mine.

In other words, God is basically saying to the Jewish people “My issue with you is not your acts of worship. My issue with you is the motivation that is driving your worship. You are not offering your sacrifices and offerings to Me because you recognize that your selfishness and rebellion requires a sacrifice that atones or provides a covering for your sin and rebellion. You are not offering your offerings out of thanksgiving to Me because of who I am and what I have done in your life. Instead you are offering these acts of worship because you think that I am needy and dependant on you to provide something for Me. But, here’s the deal. I do not need to take any of your animals for my sake, because I own everything. You do not need to give Me anything, because I am the One who has given you everything you have”.

You see, what the Jewish people were guilty of was thinking that God was dependent upon them.  The Jewish people were offering worship to God as though He needed animals to be provided for Him and they were afraid that they would experience God’s judgment if they did not provide for Him. The Jewish people failed to recognize that the purpose of these acts of worship was to fulfill their responsibility that flowed from their selfishness and rebellion against God.

The Jewish people made a fundamental mistake that we can make today, which is that the Jewish people thought that they were the owners and that they needed to fulfill the responsibility provide for God in order to meet His needs. And God wanted the Jewish people to clearly understand that they needed to be set straight. The Jewish people needed to have a correction in their perception when it came to their role and responsibilities. God then proceeds to set them straight in and correct their misperception in verse 12-13:

"If I were hungry I would not tell you, For the world is Mine, and all it contains. "Shall I eat the flesh of bulls Or drink the blood of male goats?

Here we see God, through the Psalmist, set the Jewish people straight when it came to their roles and responsibilities through a statement and a rhetorical question. First, God makes a bold and blunt statement: “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, For the world is mine and all it contains”. In other words, God is saying, if I was hungry, I would not need to tell you so that you could go down to the store to buy Me some food to eat. I am not dependant on you to provide for Me, because I own it all. If I was hungry, I am quite capable of providing for Myself.”

God then asks the Jewish people a rhetorical question designed to reveal the ridiculous nature of the motivation that was driving their worship of God. "Shall I eat the flesh of bulls Or drink the blood of male goats?” In other words, God is saying, “Do you even know who I am? I am a Spiritual Being; I do not eat food and I do not need to eat food in order to survive. I have existed for all eternity, before the universe even existed, and I was able to survive without you”.

You see, God wanted the Jewish people to clearly understand that He owned everything. God was not dependant on the Jewish people and their acts of worship in order to survive. Instead, the Jewish people needed to come back to the reality that they were totally dependent on God for their survival. The Psalmist then closed this section of this psalm by revealing the motivation that should be driving the Jewish people and their acts of worship.

Friday, we will discover that timeless motivation together…