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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Well, welcome to the weekend here
at Christ Community Chapel.
Welcome to you
if you're watching this in East Hall
or in the gym.
So glad you are here
as part of our weekend.
Listen, we're in week
two of the Summer of More,
which is what we're calling
this kind of historic season
we're in as a church.
Our sanctuary is being renovated,
we're displaced, we're all over the place.
I told my wife last weekend,
it was like running the circus.
There was something happening
everywhere, there was a lot going on.
But we're not focused on what we've lost.
We're focused on what God's going to do
during our displacement.
We're excited to see all that he does.
We're also continuing our sermon series
through Proverbs, as we're calling it
More Wisdom, More Life.
You know, we our theme for the year
in 2026 is More Life.
That's because Jesus said in the Gospel
of John chapter ten, verse ten,
that he came so that we might have life
and life more abundantly.
He wants more life for us.
Of course we want that.
So we're leaning into Jesus and saying,
hey, if you have more life for us,
how do we get it?
And what we're learning in part
is this when Jesus says he's come
so that we might have more life,
he's saying a couple of things implicitly.
One is that we are currently living
less life.
Right.
You don't need more life if you're already
living life to the maximum.
Jesus is looking at our world and saying,
you're not living the life
you were designed to live.
There's more out there for you.
The second thing he's saying
is that only he can get us there.
That's why he says, I've come
so that you might have more life.
The implication is, if I hadn't come,
you wouldn't have gotten it.
Jesus is saying,
I know how to get you there.
I guess I say that because it follows then
that if we want more life,
we're going to have to listen to Jesus.
That's what this series is about looking
at Proverbs, God's wisdom for more life.
But we're also going to have to expect
that he will want to talk about things
that we don't want to talk about,
and that he'll talk about them in a way
that will feel foreign to us,
that he'll push us to think differently
about all kinds of things
so that we can go from less life
to more life.
I just want you to keep that in mind
because this week's sermon is on money.
So of course, Jesus is going
to want to talk about things
we don't want to talk about,
and he's going to think about them
in a different way.
If you have a Bible,
I'm going to be reading in
just a second from Proverbs
chapter 22 verse seven.
Let me read it to you, and then I'll use
an outline to guide our time together.
Here's what the writer of Proverbs says in
Proverbs 22 seven to be on the screen
behind me,
he says, the rich rules over the poor,
and the borrower is
the slave of the lender.
The rich rules over the poor,
and the borrower is slave to the lender.
All right, three points
I want to use to guide our time together.
Their questions, they just go like this.
Are you trapped?
Are you leaking?
And are you ready to get out?
Are you trapped?
Are you leaking?
And are you ready to get out?
Let's start with the first one.
Are you trapped?
The writer says the borrower
is slave to the lender.
Of course he's talking about debt.
He's talking in particular,
I think probably about consumer debt,
about going into debt
in order to buy the things we want.
And he says, really,
what debt is, is slavery.
Now here's the problem.
Debt is a huge part of American culture.
Our parents went into debt.
We have gone into debt.
We will teach our kids
that car payments are normal,
that if you can't pay for something,
you let visa or Mastercard
or American Express pay for it
and you figure it out later.
We've learned to live with debt,
but the writer says it's slavery.
So here's what I know.
We probably don't agree.
So when I ask, are you trapped?
I want to kind of tease out,
what does he mean
that the borrower is slave to the lender?
I think he's saying two things.
One is logical and one is existential.
Let's start with the logical thing.
You know, before,
let me give you a little econ 101.
Hopefully there are no econ professors
here in the room.
Before there was money,
we had a barter system.
Right? Like if I made shoes for a living.
I would make shoes.
And then let's say you grew apples
and I would show up at your house
and I would say, hey,
how about I give you a pair of shoes
and you give me a bushel of apples?
And everybody, one like
you didn't have to walk around barefoot,
and I didn't starve to death.
It was a good 1 to 1 trade.
There's a problem with
that system, though, and that is next week
when I show up and I'm like,
how about a different color pair of shoes?
You're less interested,
but I'm still hungry.
So we can't we can't make a 1 to 1 trade.
So eventually someone said, well,
what we'll do,
we'll create a system of currency.
And then and then Zach, you can sell
your shoes to anybody who wants them.
It doesn't matter if you want
what they make, they'll give you money.
And then you can take that money
and you can buy apples,
even if the person who makes apples
doesn't want your shoes.
So instead of turning shoes into apples,
I turn shoes into money, into apples.
I mean, you with me so far,
pretty simple, right?
Then someone came along though,
and they said, listen, Zach,
you're not young, but you're not old.
You might say, you're in your prime.
You're going to make.
I was expecting more from that.
I am, I am in my prime.
You you have a lot of shoemaking
ahead of you.
So I'll tell you what.
Instead of waiting for the next 20 years
for all the money
you're going to make incrementally
from making shoes, how about we do this?
I will advance you
the money you would make.
And you can buy all the apples you want.
You can make apple pie, apple fritters,
Apple like, you can do whatever you want.
And then you'll go to work and make shoes.
And I will get your future work
and your future earnings.
You get money now, I get money later.
And the concept of debt was introduced.
But I want you to follow the logic.
The minute I take that deal,
I now work for you.
I go to work the next day to make shoes.
I'm not going to work to make shoes
because I love making shoes.
I'll say this
and I'll say more about this in a minute.
I'm not going to work
because I'm passionate about shoes.
I'm going to work because I have to,
because I need to make money to pay you
back.
I'm working not for my own profit,
but for your profit.
What do you call someone who goes to work?
Not to benefit themselves,
but to benefit the person who owns them?
A slave.
You see,
the borrower is slave to the lender.
That's just logic.
You go to work to make the shoes
because you have to your future
work, your future
earnings belong to someone else.
But it's not just a logical point
he's making.
It's an existential one.
In other words, it's our lived in reality
look.
Most of us are a part
of a generational wave of debt.
We saw our parents do it. We're doing it.
We'll pass it down to our kids.
It's never occurred to us
to think critically about that.
That's why I can tell you
that the average American monthly
spends $1,392 on debt.
Consumer debt, 11% of the average
Americans income after taxes.
That's a different sermon.
After taxes give 11.5%
of their income after tax to debt.
So they haven't even paid
the light bill yet.
The gas bill, the food bill,
they haven't done anything fun.
They've done nothing like that.
They've just Uncle
Sam gets his American Express
chase visa, whoever they get theirs.
You see, the reality is we
bought, we are
owned, we are working for someone else.
Our future work, our future earnings
belong to other people.
In fact, when I read this passage
and he says the rich rules over the poor,
it made me think that there are companies
out there right now meeting and I guess
midtown Manhattan and their meetings
are about how to convince you and I
we need more of the products
they sell or how to convince you and I
that even if we don't have the money,
that's okay.
We can just make payments.
A little bit of interest, no big deal,
so that they can get not just our money
now, but our future work in our future
earnings.
They are in meetings right now
trying to figure out how to own us,
how to enslave us.
That's their business.
And so
the writer says the borrower is slave
to the lender.
That's just logic.
That's just our lived in reality.
Let me ask you a question.
Are you trapped?
Do you belong to someone else?
Your future work? Your future earnings?
Are they already the property
of someone else?
Well, if they are,
then I have a second question for you.
And that is.
Are you leaking?
I'm a man,
so I don't like to talk about my feelings.
Okay.
When I get home and my wife says,
how was your day?
I say, it was, I see, you know, some men.
Yeah, it was fine.
It was fine.
And here's what I believe as a man,
if I don't talk about my feelings,
no one will know I have feelings.
Okay, so I can have had a bad day.
Someone could have hurt my feelings.
I could be feeling insecure.
But if I don't talk about it,
no one knows. I like to think of myself.
It's like the Clint Eastwood of my dinner
table, right?
I just squint and play it tough
and no one knows what's going on.
And my wife says, Zach,
you're not tough. You're an idiot
because she says, and I
think people work with me would say this.
Everyone knows you're upset.
Like we feel it.
We feel your frustration.
We feel your disappointment.
We just don't know who you're mad at
or how to fix it.
She'll say, Zach, you think you're
holding it in, but you are leaking.
Let me ask you a question.
Is it not true that right now, more
than any other time in American history,
we are pretty bad at relationships,
pretty bad at mental, emotional,
social health?
I've never heard in my whole lifetime
of as many families
broken as I have heard of now.
And I'm not just talking about divorce,
I'm talking about parents
who don't speak to adult children,
adult siblings
who don't speak to each other.
Where's that coming from?
Well, I think the answer is we're leaking.
Because, you see, when you are enslaved,
it changes you.
Let me give you three ways
that financial slavery will change you.
And then I want to show you
how maybe it leaks out of you.
The first is it robs you of your purpose.
Remember, I told you, the minute
I agree that I'll take your money now
and you can have my future shoe making.
I'm no longer in the shoe business
because I love it.
I'm no longer in the shoe business
because I'm passionate about it.
I'm in the shoe business because if I
don't show up to work, you'll take my car.
You see, my point
is, if we don't work out of passion,
we don't work out of purpose.
Some of us are in careers we hate.
And if I say to you,
why don't you get out of it?
Why don't you do something else?
What will you say?
I can't, I have bills to pay.
And we mean in large part debt. It's.
Why would you ask a kid
what they want to be when they grow up?
They always say something cool, right?
Like I want to be a firefighter
or God help them.
They'll say,
I want to play for the Browns.
You're like, you're right. Right.
They'll say those kinds of things because
here's how a kid thinks about work.
They think about something
they think would be awesome.
And I'll do that, right?
They think of purpose.
They think of meaning.
You don't ever see a kid drive
by a building and go, dad, what's that?
I said, that's a factory, son.
They make things.
And he goes, I can't wait to to
work there and turn a widget.
We end up in the jobs we end
up in because we have to add,
we have to become.
We've already promised our future work
in our future earnings.
We live lives of no purpose.
Well, here's the other thing.
We also.
It also robs us of our peace.
You see, if you're spending $1,392
a month on consumer debt,
then here's what I already know.
You're worried about the next financial
thing that's coming down the road,
and it crippling you
because you can't pay for it.
If you're living life like this,
you are always on the edge of your seat
for your kid to come home with.
One more thing we have to purchase
parents, school administrators.
You're robbing us.
Just kidding. But you are really.
School's expensive, right?
Or you're waiting for something
to break in the house
or to get in the car.
You hold your breath hoping
it doesn't make a funny noise
because, you know,
if it does, you just might be ruined.
You don't think that hanging
over your head
changes you as a person.
You don't think that anxiety
and that fear comes through?
Sure it does.
In fact, it robs us of our purpose.
It robs us of our peace.
And I think here's the third thing
it robs us of our patience.
I think that's why we're so angry.
At least it's a reason
why we're so bitter.
It's why we're lashing out.
We're not yelling at our kids
because they're the problem. Their kids.
We're yelling at them
because we spent the whole drive home
trying to figure out
how we're going to pay for stuff.
We're not yelling at our spouse
because they're the problem.
We're yelling at them
because we're embarrassed.
We can't get control of our spending.
You see, we're leaking, we're leaking,
we're financially enslaved.
And the consequence is it's destroying us.
So it's not just, are you trapped?
It's do you understand?
Your leaking?
It's coming out for the people you love
and the places
where you want to matter, in the places
where you want to make an impact.
That's what it does.
You know, when I read this passage,
I couldn't help but think about a story
that I read when I was a kid, a book
I had to read in school.
It was called where the Red Fern grows.
I don't know, maybe you read it.
It was a different time. It was.
It was about a little boy whose dream in
life is owning two raccoon hunting dogs.
I guess they didn't have TV, I don't know.
And so he wants these dogs.
Finally gets the dogs.
Mission accomplished.
And his grandfather
says, okay, now you need a raccoon skin
to teach those dogs how to hunt,
which is a little bit of a chicken
and egg problem,
because how do you get the raccoon?
And the grandpa says, no, no, you don't
need the dogs to get your first raccoon.
Here's how you do it.
And they go out into the woods and
and the grandfather
drills a hole in the log,
and then he takes a quarter
and he polishes
it really shiny,
and he puts it in a hole in the log,
and he tells his grandson,
he says raccoons are terribly curious.
A raccoon is going to walk through, he's
going to see the quarter sparkle
and he's going to want it.
And I drilled that hole just big enough
that if a raccoon flattens his hand,
he can get down in there
and grab the quarter.
But I drilled it just small enough
that the raccoon can't get his hand out.
If unless he lets go of the quarter
and the grandfather says to
the grandson that raccoon will stay there
all night, he won't leave.
He'll hold on to the coin
and we'll get him in the morning.
And sure enough, that's what happens.
Like the grandfather
shows up the next morning.
There's a raccoon there hissing at him,
but he refuses to let go.
The grandfather walks up
with a baseball bat and kills him.
It was a different time.
We read these kinds of books in school.
I don't know what to tell you.
And I remember even as a kid
reading that thinking, this is crazy.
It's crazy for two reasons.
Number one, what is a raccoon
going to do with a quarter?
Like?
Is that raccoon
going to get the quarter out,
go to a convenience store, flip it on
the counter and be like, gum, please.
And I got news for him.
Inflation gums.
Not a quarter anymore anyways, right?
So a raccoon can't use a quarter.
Even as a kid. I'm like,
what a dumb raccoon.
What's he going to do?
But here's the second thing.
The only thing that trapped
the raccoon was the raccoon.
All he's got to do is let go.
He's literally not in a trap.
He's in a trap of his own making,
and he can hiss all he wants
and get mad all he wants, all the way
until the baseball
bat connecting with his forehead.
But he's the problem, friends,
this is what the writer is saying.
And you already know
what I'm going to say.
We are the raccoon.
We want the quarter.
We put our hand in the trap
and we can hiss and we can moan
and we can complain
all the way until it kills us.
But American Express is not the problem.
Visa is not the problem.
Chase is not the problem.
All of them,
you name them, they're not the problem.
I'm the problem.
All they do is polish the quarter.
So are you trapped?
Are you leaking?
Here's my third question.
Are you ready to get out?
Are you ready to get out?
Does it say, well, how do I get out?
Well, how's the raccoon? Get out.
I guess it starts like this.
This is just a quarter.
This is just a quarter.
You know, I was walking around my house
the other day.
In my house is a monument to all
the things my kids said they wanted.
Like, I'm walking through my basement.
There's a bat cave down there
and all these Batman action figures.
And so I say to my nine year old son,
Graham, do you still play with Batman?
He's like, dad, please.
Right?
And I'm like, man, I remember.
I remember how much that cost.
I remember giving it to you on Christmas.
I remember being the coolest dad ever.
And you don't care about it anymore.
And what Graham now knows that
as a nine year old that he didn't know
as a six year old
is that's just a quarter.
But we're not any different.
Instead of bat caves, we get cars,
set of Barbies, we buy clothes,
still lay, goes.
We go on vacations that we can't afford.
That in the end, don't really matter.
So the raccoons got to realize it's
just a court.
Our friends, you and I have got to realize
our lives are full of backs.
So what?
The second thing
the raccoon has got to realize, you know,
this is a
quarter is not worth his freedom.
Even if you love
your car, even if you love your clothes,
is it worth
not being able to sleep at night?
Is it worth losing your temper over
your kids?
Is it worth eating away at your marriage?
Is it worth going to a job
every day that you hate?
No, no it's not.
And the third thing the raccoon has to
decide is he'd rather live.
He'd rather
live you to run into the woods.
So you see, until you and I own the fact
that we're in a trap of our own making,
that the things we want are just quarters.
That quarters are not as good as freedom.
We can't be set free.
But the minute
we begin to think that way, we can be.
Of course.
Then that begs the question. Okay.
All right, I'm there.
Now what will the answer is
you need someone to lead you to freedom.
And that's someone is Jesus.
Do you know Jesus understands you in a way
you couldn't
possibly understand yourself?
Of course he made you.
That's an advantage.
2000 years ago, before there was
an America, before there was a visa.
Before there was an American Express,
before you own the car,
wore the clothes, went on the trip
before any of that.
Jesus saw into your heart.
In Matthew chapter six,
I want you to see how he understands us.
I'm just going to read it to you, Lacy.
First, here's what he says
about all the quarters that we buy.
Here's what he says in Matthew chapter
six, verses 19 through 21.
He said to be on the screen, he says,
do not lay up for yourselves treasures
on earth,
where
moth and rust destroy and we're thieves.
Break in and steal,
but lay up for yourselves.
Treasures in heaven
were neither moth nor rust destroys.
And where thieves do not break in
and steal.
Listen for where your treasure is,
there will be your heart also.
You know what Jesus is saying
is, don't give your life to bat caves.
Because the car is awesome
the first day you buy it,
and then the kids fill it with French
fries.
Don't do it. You'll regret it.
That's what he's saying. Don't
you see how he sees us?
He's going to listen to the clothes.
The Carthage's back caves.
They're just quarters.
They won't make you happy.
You'll fill your heart with those things.
And then what do you end up with?
A heart full of rust.
A heart full of disillusionment.
A heart full of disappointment.
Jesus says the next consequence of that is
you'll be anxious.
Listen to what he says again.
2000 years ago, he says this Matthew 625
and then 34 he says, therefore I tell you,
do not be anxious about your life,
what you'll eat, or what you will drink,
or about your body.
What you'll put on is not life more
than food and the body more than clothing?
Verse 34 therefore
do not be anxious about tomorrow, for
tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
You see what he's saying?
He's saying, listen, if you
if you go down the road of materialism,
you will cram into today not just today's
problems, but tomorrow's problems too.
That's how many of
us are living today's problems
and the fifteenths problems,
today's problems, and the 30th
or the first of the month.
Their problems, today's problems,
and next year's debt coming due problems.
And finally, Jesus told us the way out.
Matthew 633. This is what he says.
But seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness,
and all these things will be out of you.
Jesus says, would you just trust me?
Follow me, listen to me,
would you let me tell you
what's really valuable?
Would you let me tell you
how to handle your money in a wise way?
Will you set your goals in alignment
with my kingdom?
Will you build your budget in alignment
with your kingdom?
He says, if you will.
This is what he says, a promise,
if you will.
I'll take care of you.
I'll take care of you.
Friends, I understand
we watched our parents live this way.
That doesn't mean we have to.
And I got to tell you, it definitely means
we do not have to teach our children
to live this way.
You were not built for slavery.
You were built for more life.
Let me pray for you.
Father God,
thank you so much for this passage for
speaking about issues like money and debt.
They're painful, but it's where we live.
Thank you for seeing us and knowing us.
I pray that you would begin
for many of us, to sparkle
a little more than the quarter
that we've been chasing,
that we might let go of it and chase
after you to freedom.
The Jesus name we pray. Amen.