Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This is the time of year when a young man’s fancy turns to…football. A time when people paint their faces, don goofy costumes, and pack stadiums to act like idiots while watching a bunch of grown men running around trying to knock each other’s teeth out. Isn’t it great?

I don’t know who coined this phrase, but here in Cincinnati, people love to say, “In Marvin We Trust.” Obviously a reference to head coach Marvin Lewis. It’s an interesting phrase, because it communicates that we pin all our football hopes and dreams on him. We trust him to deliver what we want: wins. We don’t know how he’s going to do it, nor do we care. We have put our trust in him because he wants what we want: a winning football team; and he has proven that he can deliver.

Today we’re starting a new series called “In God We Trust?” If we were to take a poll here this morning, almost all of us would say that we trust God. And in many areas, we definitely do. We trust God with our forgiveness, our salvation, our eternity. We trust God in all these intangible areas. I can’t see forgiveness. I can’t reach out and touch salvation. They are not physical things. They’re intangibles. And because of that, we’re a lot more apt to trust God in these areas because we realize that it’s impossible for us to help ourselves.

But what about the tangibles? What about the things that I can see and touch? When it’s something that is tangible, it can be more difficult to trust God. After all, God himself is an intangible, so how can we trust him with tangible things…things like our money?

We all know that the phrase “In God We Trust” is printed on our money. That’s interesting, because money is usually one of the areas where we often exhibit the least amount of trust in God. Money is a tangible thing. I can see it. I can touch it. I can earn it. I can save it. I can spend it. Money affects my life and the life of family in incredible ways everyday. It just seems like such an important tangible thing that it’s really hard to entrust it to God. After all, God is an intangible. How can I entrust my money, something that I can see and touch, to a God that I can’t see or touch?

In this series, we’re going on a journey of trust. Specifically in this area of money. Today we begin with this idea of trusting God with the tangibles.

Our theme Scripture for this series comes from Proverbs 3. Pick it up in verse 5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Skip to verse 9. “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim with new wine.” (Proverbs 3:5-6, 9-10, NIV)

When you break down these verses, you find out that they are all-encompassing. This is a call to trust God with everything. In verse 5, we’re called to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” This is an appeal to our heart, and to our mind. It’s a call to trust God with all that you are.

Verse 6 says, “in all your ways acknowledge him.” All your ways. In other words, trust God in all that you do.

And then in verse 9: “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops.” It’s a call to honor God with our wealth. Simply put, to trust God with all that you have.

This Scripture, and this entire series, can be summed up in one sentence: Trust God with all that you are, in all that you do, with all that you have.

When I was in Jr. High, it was always my job to start dinner after school. My mom would fix it up the night before and then it was my job to put it on the stove or in the oven. Not too hard, right? Well one day, I found meatloaf all prepped and ready to bake. My mom had left instructions: “Turn on oven, put meatloaf in oven, cook in oven.” Not too hard, right? So I put it in the oven and then went and did my Jr. High thing, whatever that was. Probably playing Contra or some such Nintendo game. A little bit later, I began to notice that something might be wrong. It smelled like something was burning. I opened up the oven, and sure enough, the meatloaf pan was a little too full and grease had dripped out of the pan and fallen to the bottom of the oven. So I had a nice little fire going when I opened the oven door. Being the cool customer that I was, I immediately did what anyone would do at the sight of a grease fire: I threw water on it. Not a real good idea. It didn’t exactly put it out. And then I remembered, “Oh, that’s right. You don’t throw water on a grease fire. You throw flour on it.” Now keep in mind, a little handful of flour would have probably done the trick. It wasn’t exactly a blazing inferno. But in my great desire to put the fire out and save our house from the impending disaster, I picked up our flour container, which was absolutely full, and threw the entire contents of that container into the oven. I succeeded in putting out the fire. I also succeeded in ruining my dad’s evening because the flour went down into every hole, every crack, and every crevice of the oven. It would have been less painful to just buy a new one because he had to take the entire range apart to clean it. He wanted to be mad at me, but I kept reminding him that I didn’t let the house burn down.

For the Christ-follower, trust needs to be scattered throughout our lives like I scattered flour in our oven. There is no option not to trust God in a certain area of life. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and understanding.” “In all your ways acknowledge him.” “Honor the Lord with the firstfruits of all your crops.” You get the feeling that God is trying to make a point here in Proverbs? This trust in God must permeate our lives. It has to ooze into every crevice and crack of our lives. You peel off one layer of trust in our lives, you find another one. And this trust in God has to spill over from intangible to tangible things in our lives.

Throughout this series, we’re going to listen to God’s instructions about the money and resources in our lives. However, this is where we have to start. None of what we say in the rest of this series will matter if we miss this first step. My doctor’s instructions about my health won’t matter if I don’t trust my doctor with my health. Same deal with God. God’s instructions about our money won’t matter if we don’t trust God with our money.

In the Old Testament book of Judges, we meet a man named Gideon. Gideon lived in the time of the Midianite invasion of the people of Israel. Remember that the Israelites were God’s chosen people in the Old Testament. The Midianites had invaded and conquered the people of God, and they were extremely oppressive in their rule of the Israelites. They trampled Israel’s crops, killed their livestock, and impoverished the people. The oppression was so great that a lot of Israelites went into hiding. That’s exactly where we find Gideon.

In Judges 6, Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress. That is not the normal thing to do. Wheat is normally threshed in big, open areas so the wind could blow the dust away. A winepress is a small, confined area used to squeezing grapes. But because Gideon is so afraid of the Midianites, he didn’t want to thresh his wheat out in the open where he might be seen. So instead he goes into a small, concealed winepress. And even though the dust of the wheat threshing is choking him, he knows he is safe for the moment.

While he is hiding out in the winepress, the angel of the Lord appears to him and tells Gideon, “Go with the strength you have and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!”

“But Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!”

The Lord said to him, “I will be with you. And you will destroy the Midianites as if you were fighting against one man.” (Judges 6:14-16, NLT)

God told Gideon what was going to happen: you’re going to defeat the Midianites. But the Midianite army was massive and powerful. Gideon starts making excuses about why there is just no way he can do this. But what it all boils down to is trust. Gideon was not willing to trust an intangible God with a tangible problem. I can see the Midianite army. And there’s a bunch of them. I’m down here in this winepress because of them. How can I trust an intangible God to help me defeat this tangible army?

If you know the story, you know that Gideon balked, him-hawed around, tested God several times, he did everything he could to not do this. No matter how much he wanted to, he just could not trust God with this real, physical, tangible problem. And then to make matters worse, when Gideon was finally ready to trust God and attack the Midianites, God said, “Wait a minute. You’ve got too many troops.”

Too many troops? Are you kidding? The Midianite army was too numerous to count and God is saying you’re taking too many soldiers to attack them? I’m sure at this point Gideon has got to be thinking this is some sort of wacky dream. This can’t actually be happening.

But it was happening. God took Gideon’s fighting force of 32,000 and trimmed it down to 300. 300, that’s it.

And once he had trimmed the army to 300 soldiers, then God said, “Get up, go down against the camp, because I am going to give it into your hands. If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp…and listen to what they are saying. Afterward, you will be encouraged to attack.” (Judges 7:9-10, NIV)

I love these verses. God had just told Gideon, “It’s time. Go and attack the Midianites.” But he sees that Gideon is still struggling with this idea. In fact, he’s scared out of his mind. All Gideon can see are tangible things: I’ve got 300 soldiers. Midian has a lot more than that. I can’t do this.

But God understands that it is tough to trust an intangible God with tangible things. So he’s patient with Gideon. He says, “Look, I know you’re having a hard time trusting me here. Sneak down to the Midianite camp and listen to what they’re saying. That will encourage you.”

So Gideon goes down to the camp and he overhears the Midianites trembling in fear over the imminent attack of the Israelites. This was the final push that he needed, and he did lead the Israelites in their attack and the Lord gave him the victory that he had promised.

We have to remember that God’s people have always been called to trust God with tangible as well as intangible things. It is not enough to simply trust God to save your soul. We are called to trust him with our families, and our jobs, and our cars, and our food, and our clothes…and our money. God is not God in our lives if we can trust him with our salvation but not our salary. He is not God in our lives if we trust him with our forgiveness but not our 401k.

This can be scary territory…and God knows that. He knew that Gideon struggled to trust him with the tangible. And he didn’t strike him with lightning. He had compassion and patience with Gideon, but he did eventually require Gideon to make a trust decision.

God shows us this same patience in our lives, but we cannot escape the fact that a trust decision is required of us. Will you trust God only with religious things? Salvation, eternity, those things are God territory. But my resources, my financial plan, my income, my investments, my retirement…my territory.

Or, will you let God out of the box and place your trust in Him totally and completely. Remember, God is calling us to trust him with all that you are, in all that you do, with all that you have.

Again, this can be scary place to be. God actually told Gideon exactly what he was going to do, and Gideon still didn’t trust him! We don’t have that luxury.

We don’t always know what God is going to do. That’s what makes tangible trust so difficult. It would be a lot easier to trust God with my resources and my finances if I always knew what he was going to do ahead of time. But the fact is that most of the time I don’t know what God will do.

Nicki and I are dealing with a situation concerning our finances right now. It’s something that we’ve prayed about for a long time and God just hasn’t moved in the way we have prayed for. And to be honest, I’ve lost my patience with him more than once. More than once I’ve climbed up into God’s lap and just beat on his chest. And to this day I still do not understand what he is doing. And I definitely don’t know what is going to happen.

It’s in situations like this where our trust decision comes to the forefront. When you look throughout the Bible, you find out that God didn’t always tell people exactly how things were going to turn out. Sometimes he did, but a lot of times he didn’t. But even when the people of God didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, they did know one thing. God was with them.

God’s most frequent promise in the Bible is, “I will be with you.” It’s not, “I forgive you.” It’s not, “I love you.” His most frequent promise in Scripture is, “I will be with you.”

When it comes to trusting God with tangible things like our money, we enter into that trust decision not knowing specifics. I don’t know what the status of my job is going to be, I don’t know what will happen with my pension, I don’t know how high gas prices will go, I don’t know what is going to happen. But one thing I do know: God has promised that he will be with me. And that promise is enough for me to trust him.

God has a lot to teach us about our money and our resources. And through this series we’re going to explore these teachings. This message is just a table setter for what is coming. But we had to start here. Before we get into God’s specific financial teaching, we have to decide if we trust him with our finances.

God is intangible. He’s not physical. He’s spirit. He’s not visible. He’s unseen. But faith in God requires trust in God. And that trust extends from the spiritual to the physical, from the hidden to the seen, from the intangible to the tangible.

If you haven’t yet come to faith, God is inviting you to trust him. To trust him with your forgiveness and your salvation. The cross of Jesus Christ tells you that God gave his all so that your sins could be forgiven. God also invites you to trust him in every other part of your life. He has promised to always be with you, to never leave you. If you’ve never accepted him as your Lord and Savior, we invite you to come and trust him today.

Mike Edmisten