What Does The Bible Say About Money and Work?

James Sloan: So money and work. Two fairly small topics that we've been asked to talk about today. We thought we'd do it together as a couple partly because it's great to have two voices, sharing on it, but also because it's something we've had to work out together. It's not a decision that I make or a decision that Hannah makes. We wrestle with them and work out how as a couple, and as a family, we want to steward our money and how we want to manage our work.

First of all, we are talking about this in light of the fact that we have made a decision to follow Jesus. Therefore, everything that we do falls in line with that being our highest priority. And so we're talking about this as believers, as Christians and as people who want to steward what we've got well. Regardless of whether you follow Jesus or not, there are some great principles in Scripture. So if all you take away from this is what the Bible says about money and work, then that's great. If you're still thinking about making that choice to live for Jesus, then this is what we believe God calls us into as His people and how we manage our money and our work.

What Does The Bible Say About Money?

Let me start with this key scripture which is found in the book of Matthew. Matthew 6 comes as part of a series of the teachings of Jesus. They're called the Sermon on the Mount aka. the Beatitudes, where he outlines how we are to live as His people. Part of that has to do with money. Matthew 6:24 says,

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

-- Matthew 6:24

Ouch!

Putting money in its rightful place

Hannah Sloan: Yeah, that's a really difficult one. It's really challenging for everybody because money is a currency that we use to live our lives. We use it for everything, for our home, for our food etc. It's a real challenge for us to put God at the centre of our lives, and for him to be our authority on that, for Him to be our Jehovah Jireh. Ultimately, He is our provider and gives us what we need. You cannot serve both God and money, and actually, if money is your highest priority, and you are striving for riches and wealth then it's very difficult to be equally striving for godliness and holiness and a close relationship with Jesus.

James: In the verses just before that, Jesus says, "Don't store treasures for yourself on Earth where moth and rust destroy, but instead, build treasures in heaven", as in have an eternal perspective on the way that you invest your money. The question is, how do you use it in a godly way, in the years that you have on this earth? That's the real challenge. Because we are surrounded by money, our whole culture is oriented around consumerism. We've just finished Halloween and almost the next day it's Christmas. The shelves are full of Christmas stuff. Retail really drives us into spending money on the next thing. I think we have to be so careful not to be drawn into that world of just throwing our money at the next thing that the world tells us to, but actually having an eternal perspective. Think about, where can we invest? Who can we bless? Who can we be generous towards with the money we've got, as we steward what God has given us?

Is it wrong to have money?

The next passage is from Luke 18. This passage talks about how we use what we've got, and steward what we've got well. It's called the rich young ruler.

“When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.””

-- Luke 18:20-25

We want to be clear and say, there is nothing wrong with having money. There's nothing wrong with being successful, growing your own business, or having a good wage as an employee doing your job. But actually, pursuit of wealth can be really dangerous, and going after more and more and more. It feeds into a sense of greed. I think that's really what this teaching is saying. This wealthy man was so concerned with what he had, and Jesus is saying, "you can't take it with you".

Should you give your money away?

Hannah: The model the early church demonstrates in Acts is a useful place to look to examine this further. So in Acts 2, it says,

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

-- Acts 2:44,45

That doesn't mean that there weren't wealthy believers though. There were extremely wealthy believers, but they sold their property and possession to anyone that was in need. That contrast of giving and generosity and tithing is a blessing from God to help us not get in the situation where money becomes an idol. The instruction to "bless others", is given to be a blessing to ourselves too. If we are generous with others, help others, give to anyone who has need, and if we surrender our money, then God can use that whatever He chooses to. What we've got is God-given then anyway, so we need to be open-handed and generous with what He's entrusted us with.

James: I love the way those who had money in the early church just brought it in and put it into a pot. That would be very hard to live in that way today, but some of the principles are the same. Through the church, we see people giving gifts, whether that's a one off or a monthly amount into the church to further the work of the church. As a church, we have run something called [Imagine If] which is a charity that I manage and we're really trying to outwork that generosity from the church. We do that by making sure that people have homes, roofs over their heads, that they have food when they're hungry, or clothes to wear.

Become a trusted steward of your money

Basically trying to steward the wealth and the generosity of the church to give to those who are without. It's a call throughout Scripture to God's people to look after the poor, the orphan, the widow, the stranger in the land (what we'd call a refugee asylum seeker today). We have a biblical mandate to look after those people. If we believe that wealth is our own, we're missing out on what God's calling us to do by helping those people who are really on His heart. That contrast of the Acts church and the wealthy rich man is a really good one.

Hannah: That's a really good point about stewarding, but it's not about how much you have at all. You may have millions, or you may have 50 pounds in the bank. It's about how we steward what we've got, and that can go far beyond money can't it? It can apply to our home, with regards to our car, with regards to our possessions, with regards to our children. How we steward our children is relevant because they are a God-given gift. In general, how do we steward our lives and how do we steward the things that God has blessed us with? Are we stewarding that in a holy way and in a way that glorifies God and shows His goodness. That's a challenge, isn't it?

What Does The Bible Say About Work?

James: So that's money, but what about work? There's nothing wrong with working really hard, right?

Hannah: Course not.

James: We can work every hour of the day, and give ourselves fully to our work because the Bible doesn't say anything particular about work. Or does it?

Time to rest

Hannah: So it says work for six days and rest the seventh, so your ox and donkey may rest and your servant and migrant workers may have time to get their needed rest. And that's in Exodus 23. So God doesn't just advocate rest, He commands it. And you know, he shows us that He rested on the seventh day, that actually, rest isn't something that we just can opt in and out of, that actually, our body and our minds. They need rest. Rest is, is important. And it's important that we partake in rest, that actually, it's an active choice to rest and not to do, especially in this culture in this society.

James: Yeah, it's interesting. We do a lot of work in the Congo. And they don't have the same sense of wages and salaries that we do. Many people in the UK are paid a salary to do a certain amount of hours, so actually that sense of rest is a little bit different. I think when you go to a lot of developing nations, you see people having to work every hour that they can, often from daybreak until sunset. They are trying to do as much as they can, work and toil, to get some income to cover their their needs. And in those countries, to choose to come to church on a Sunday, is an active choice not to work. They're choosing to rest, to Sabbath, as it is called in the Old Testament, and therefore trusting God that He will provide for them. It's a bit of a different concept to us because often we get paid a set wage regardless of how many hours we work. I find it really interesting seeing how few men in the Congo come to church compared to women because they're the ones out earning, and the ones that do come are the ones who are actively choosing to say, "God, I trust you. You're gonna provide for me and my family because I'm giving you this time. I'm making space in my week to come to church and to serve and to rest and to replenish". So that's a really interesting cultural difference that we don't often see here.

Hannah: There's a big link between choosing rest, and choosing to trust that God is ultimately our provider. It's more evident in certain countries over the UK perhaps.

James: The Bible really advocates work. For example, we're called to work, to use what we've been gifted, both to help the economy work and flourish, but also to use the gifts God has given us to the best of our ability. So, you see both work and money can become idols.

Recently, there's been a big shift towards rest in western businesses. I think Goldman Sachs were recently caught asking their employees to work 80 hour weeks. That's crazy! An 80 hour week. As work and money can so easily become such big idols, the call from Scripture is to be generous with our money, and to create Sabbath in our work, both allowing for well-being, but also to allow for a point of trust and faith that God will provide. And He always does. That's been our experience in both our money and our work.

A Sabbath routine

James: Do you want to share about our Sabbath routine that we're trying to work on?

Hannah: Yeah, God is not a strict angry God who is prescriptive about how we do Sabbath, or prescriptive about how generous we are or to who we may be generous to. So, we have been exploring how Sabbath rest might look within our family.

Over the last month or two, we have been a little bit more intentional about lighting our candles from a Saturday night to a Sunday evening to show that we are talking more about Jesus in our general conversations, and how we are cultivating a spirit of thankfulness in that time, allowing ourselves to rest which will look different for different people.

For me, it's maybe resting from social media, looking at my phone, checking my emails, and physical housework as well, apart from the essential stuff that you need to do when you've got three kids running around. On a Saturday, I'll be more intentional about getting the laundry done and put away so that from Saturday night to Sunday evening we can enjoy rest that is specific to us.

As extroverts, rest for us is being with people, it's going to church, worshipping God and it's experiencing actually probably a relatively busy household. But that, for us, is a blessing. It's how we rest. So rest looks different, and Sabbath will look different to different people and different families. It's been a real blessing to explore how we, as a family, get that rest. It's brilliant that God allows us to do that.

Work-life balance?

James: Often we talk about "work-life balance". I think it's actually more important to talk about a " work-rest balance ". For me, rest doesn't look like sitting on the couch with my feet up. I actually find more rest in mowing the lawn. I really like putting stripes on the lawn. It gives me something peaceful and joyous within. I like doing DIY tasks, like hoovering and cleaning the car. I feel rested when those little jobs are done. I can sit and enjoy them. So rest looks different for everyone. Having a "work-rest balance" is really important.

For you and your significant others, or your family, it's important to find out what that rest looks like. Our kids are seven, six and two. So trying to have a peaceful Sunday is just not going to happen. We've had to find a way to do rest with them, which means watching a family film and eating lunch with other people. That is restful for us because it's a break in the normal routine. It's good to discern and work out what that looks like for you.

You don’t need lot’s of money to be generous

It's easy to think that generosity is for those who have. If you've got lots of money, it's easy to be generous. However I'm only earning a small amount and all the bills are going up, I can't possibly give anything away. But I think we've seen in the moments where our earning has gone down and bills have gone up, that when we've chosen to trust God, through crazy ways we've received tenfold back.

For example, because Hannah's self-employed, during lockdown she had to apply for the self-employed support schemes which she didn't qualify for. So, for quite a while we were having to get by on whatever we could. Luckily, we spent a lot less, and weren't going out as much, but our income dropped significantly for quite a long time. Then, as we came out of lockdown, an insurance we'd been paying into said we'd been paying too much, and gave us a full rebate back of a few thousand pounds that more than covered what we hadn't been earning. It's amazing how God continues to provide for us. We kept giving throughout that season, even though our income dropped, because we felt it was right to keep giving and sowing into the things that we're passionate about, even though, it cost us much more.

The myth that generosity can only happen when you've got money is not true at all. God sees and rewards the faithfulness of your giving in regards to your situation.

Give to God your work, rest and money

Hannah: So, as we give to God our work, our rest, and give to Him the money that we have, He can do immeasurably more than we could ask or even imagine. Being intentional about surrendering those things to Him is really important. It might be that you do that daily, or just the occasional thing, but when it comes to mind, just saying, "God, this is what I've got in my bank now. It's all yours. How do you want us to use it?" Or "as I go into work today, the talents that you have given me, or the skills that you've given me, they are yours, God. Please show me how you want me to use those things today". Actively surrendering yourself to Jesus.

James: We're also called to be set apart. It might sound like a weird thing, but we are people who've chosen to live a lifestyle that is surrendered to Jesus and wanting to see his kingdom come in every aspect of our lives. That means letting money and work come second, third, fourth in our lives, rather than being the top thing. So choosing to tithe, to give away our money, and choosing to create Sabbath, and create rest are ways of stopping those from becoming idols in our life. We don't want any other idol. We only want to look to Jesus in our lives. That's a decision that we've made.

Hannah: And we don't always get it, right,

James: We don't. Far from it.

Hannah: We are all learning together, and we are all allowing ourselves to ask God to give us the mind of Christ. Sometimes, we don't listen well enough and in hindsight can think, gosh, I wish I'd listened to you Holy Spirit better at that moment, or I'd done something different in that moment. None of us are going to get that all right, but it's a journey with Jesus isn't it? It's a journey of learning how to listen, and how to love Him more. It's learning how to allow him to love us and live in that place of surrender. It's a journey that all of us are on.

James: If that all sounds too much then think about, where can you start? If this all sounds a bit overwhelming, what's the next thing that you could do? Who could you chat to? Get in touch with the CROWD church team. We'd love to talk to you more about it. What's the next step? What's the next conversation that might help move this forward? We hope that's been interesting. We've covered a little bit of what the Bible says, but also how we've outworked that as a couple. We'll see you again soon.