Introduction: Why Jesus Talked About Money

Most of us would rather talk about almost anything than money. We will tell a friend about our health, our marriage, even our doubts about God, long before we tell them what we earn, what we owe or what we give. Money is the last private room in the house. We keep the door shut.

Jesus kept opening it.

He told a story about a farmer who built bigger barns and died the same night. He watched a widow drop two small coins into the temple box and said she had given more than everyone else. He looked at a rich young man, loved him, and told him to sell everything. He said it was easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom. He talked about lost coins, hidden treasure, unpaid debts, day wages, talents of silver, taxes and tithes. Read through the Gospels with a pencil and mark every place money or possessions come up. You will wear the pencil down.

Why? Jesus was not short of funds and He was not running a building campaign. He had nowhere to lay His head. He talked about money because He knew where it leads. In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount He said it in one line:

“Your heart will always be where your treasure is.” (Matthew 6:21)

Notice the order. We usually think it works the other way round: first we care about something, then we put our money there. Jesus says the money leads and the heart follows. Where we put our treasure, our hearts go after it. Money doesn’t just reveal what we love. It trains what we love.

That is why money is not a side issue in the Christian life. It is one of the main places where discipleship happens, or doesn’t. You can sing on Sunday that Jesus is Lord of all, and on Monday treat your bank account as the one corner of your life where He has no say. Most of us have done exactly that. This book is an invitation to open that door and let Him in.

What this book is not

It is not a promise that God will make you rich. Some preachers teach that if you give enough, or believe enough, God is bound to repay you in cash, with interest. The Bible does say God blesses generosity, and you will see that many times in these pages. But Jesus was poor. Paul knew hunger. The heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 “roamed about wearing the skins of sheep and goats, lacking everything” (Hebrews 11:37). Any gospel that would embarrass the apostles is not the gospel.

Nor is it a book that shames you for having money. Abraham was wealthy. So were Job, Joseph of Arimathea and Lydia, the businesswoman who opened her home in Philippi to Paul and the first believers there. The Bible never says money is evil. It says “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). The problem is not in your wallet. It is in the heart that holds it.

And it is not a technical finance manual. You will find practical wisdom here about budgets, debt, saving and work, because the Bible has a great deal to say about all of them. But there are better places to learn how a pension works. This book is about the heart behind the numbers.

What this book is

It is a short guide to money for people who want to follow Jesus with all of their life, including the part that pays the bills. It walks through the whole Bible, from the garden of Eden to the day we give an account, and it gathers what God says about money around thirty key verses.

It has five parts:

• Whose Is It? lays the foundation. God owns everything, and we are His managers.
• The Heart Behind the Wallet looks at what money does inside us: covetousness, worry, contentment and the danger of riches.
• Wisdom for Everyday Money covers honest work, planning, saving, debt and providing for a family.
• Generous Like God is about firstfruits, cheerful giving, the poor, and giving all we can.
• Treasure That Lasts looks ahead: faithfulness in little things, money and the mission of God, teaching our children, and the day we hear “Well done.”

Voices from the past

You will not walk this road alone. Along the way you will meet men and women who wrestled with money long before we did, and whose books you can read in full in the Ochorus library. John Wesley, who preached “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” and lived it. George Müller, who cared for thousands of orphans in Bristol without ever asking anyone for money. Charles Spurgeon, whose plain-spoken ploughman sayings are as sharp today as when he wrote them. Hudson Taylor and his last half-crown. A. W. Tozer on what he called “the tyranny of things.” Thomas Watson, the Puritan who could take covetousness apart like a watchmaker. Their words are quoted exactly as they wrote them, so some of the English is old. It is worth the effort.

How each chapter works

There are twenty chapters, and each one takes about ten minutes to read. Every chapter has the same shape:

• A story to open it, from the Bible, from history or from everyday life.
• A key verse, one of the thirty.
• The teaching, usually two or three clear points.
• A voice from the past, a short quotation from one of the classic writers.
• Practice this week, one small, concrete thing to do.
• For groups, a few questions to talk through with others.

You can read the book alone, but it was written with small groups in mind. Two chapters a week will carry a group through it in ten weeks. At the back you will find a thirty-day reading plan built on the thirty key verses, a one-page money plan, and a guide for group leaders.

Before you begin

Take an honest look at where you are. You might be buried in debt and ashamed of it. You might be comfortable and quietly afraid that Jesus would ask you to give something up. You might be generous already and wondering how to be wise about it. You might be poor, and tired of being told what to do with money you do not have.

Wherever you are, the first word of this book is not a rule. It is grace. Before the Bible tells us anything about our money, it tells us about God’s riches toward us:

“After all, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: rich as He was, He became poor for your sake, so that His poverty might make you rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9)

Everything else in these pages grows out of that. We do not give to earn God’s love. We give because we have already been given more than we could ever repay. We do not manage money well to impress God. We manage it well because it is His, and He has trusted us with it.

Jesus said, “Someone who is faithful in the smallest matter is faithful in large matters too” (Luke 16:10). Money is one of the smallest matters. It will all be gone one day. But how we handle it shapes who we become, and who we become lasts forever.

So let’s open the door.