Why Am I Always Stressed About Money?

Jesus does not say where your heart is, there your treasure will follow. He flips it. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Whatever you are spending on, pouring into, saving for — that is the thing your heart is moving toward. Show me someone's bank statement and I will show you what they actually value. Not what they say they value. Jesus is not against money. He is against putting your security, your identity, and your future hope into something that can be destroyed, stolen, or lost. The word He uses for store up is thēsaurizō — it means to heap up treasure, to hoard. Jesus is saying do not build your sense of security and self around something that was never designed to hold that weight. The grip on money is usually not greed. It is fear. Fear of not having enough. You cannot be a person of wisdom and hold your money with a closed fist. A closed fist cannot receive anything new.

This sermon is not about convincing you to tithe. It is about giving the word of God on discipleship. Malachi is writing around 430 BC. The people of Israel had come back from exile. They were exhausted and going through the motions. They were giving enough to feel like they were obeying while holding back what they thought they needed. And God calls them out directly: You are robbing Me. There were actually three tithes under the Mosaic law totaling about 23 percent annually. So when Malachi says bring the whole tithe, he is calling people back to give and trust God. And that invitation — test me in this — is the only place in the Bible where God invites you to test Him. Not with your doubts. With your obedience. The tithe is not about the money. It is about the posture. Every time you give, you are declaring: God, You are first. Not my bills, not my savings account, not my comfort. The heart issue is giving leftovers versus giving first. The Greek word for cheerful in 2 Corinthians 9:7 is hilaros — God loves a hilarious giver.

Jesus sat across from the temple treasury and watched how people gave. The rich gave large sums. Then a widow dropped in two lepta — the smallest coins in circulation, worth about six minutes of a day's labor. She had two and she gave two. She could have kept one. Nobody would have known. But she gave everything she had to live on. And Jesus stopped everything to say: that woman just gave more than everyone else combined. It revealed where her trust was. She was giving out of faith — saying God, I trust You with everything I have, even when everything I have is almost nothing. That is not a financial transaction. That is worship. Proverbs 11:24 says one gives freely, yet grows all the richer. The Hebrew word for gives freely is literally scatters — like a farmer throwing seed broadly. It looks wasteful from the outside, but the farmer knows what looks like scattering is actually planting. And planting always comes before harvest.