Dodgy or Devoted? Honouring God with Your Money

Alissa Kok | 19.10.2025

Part of a series on money. 

© Bentley Baptist Church Inc.
www.bentleybaptist.org

Transcript

It was 2 years and 3 days ago. I don't know how the 3 days ago works, but when I looked at the date, um, that's when I was up here last talking about money, and we're here again today, capping off a series on finances and this aspect of our life as a Christian, and I debated whether I talk about the practical finances again and go over and, you know, rehash those things, um, or whether I kind of lean into something a bit different. Um, and I decided to lean into something a bit different.

So the sermon on practical finances is online. So if you jump on the Baptist, Bentley Baptist Church website, Under sermons, I assume. Listen, you will find there a whole bunch of sermons that are worth going back and revisiting, but that one's sitting there about 2 years ago. And that really goes into Living with margin, it goes into budgeting, generosity, and just some tools. Yeah, helpful tools that are available.

Last week, Alex spoke about finances being part of discipleship. And he highlighted that the giving of money to God through tithes and offerings does not secure our salvation. And I really liked that point. It doesn't secure our salvation. But as we seek to bring our lives into alignment with the model of Jesus after we are saved, then we simply can't ignore this aspect of our lives.

First and foremost, I stand before you today as someone who's figuring this out. As a teenager, with no church background, I was figuring out tithing. What does that look like? How do I do it? As I entered full-time work for the 1st time and I started earning an income. I was making decisions concerning my career that meant making a little bit less money to pursue ministry. Then I eventually left full-time paid employment to walk the road of being a self-funded missionary. And I did that for about 4 years.

Today, I'm still figuring out out money alongside a whole other person in marriage. And now I'm starting to think about how we model and teach this to our kids. There's new things to learn about finances and using money as a Christian in every season of life.

In this season in my paid employment. I work part time. I work as part of a team that do bookkeeping for churches, Baptist business services. Our church's bookkeeping is with them, um, It can be a real eye opener when we 1st on board a church. I've never come across a church intentionally doing the wrong thing. But I will say that sometimes there is lots of room for improvement. Most of the time, it's a case of they don't know what they don't know.

We live and we operate in a very highly regulated country with lots of rules that they just need to be followed. Now, they can plead ignorance if the regulators come knocking. But there's ramifications for not following the law of the land. The church could lose its charity status and all the concessions that go along with that. They could be fined and they might need to pay lots of money. And in worst case scenario, the church might have to shut its doors and might have to close down. And that's not to mention the witness that it's giving to the community about what it means to be a follower of Christ.

I would say that even churches that are doing a pretty good job still have room to improve. So in my job, I come alongside the church. I educate where needed about the rules, and then I help them set up systems to be compliant. Now, it's quite a sensitive path to tread. People are often embarrassed about the state of things, especially if they know that they're doing the wrong thing. And it's hard. It's hard to establish a new normal where people are used to doing things the easy way. Complying with the rules, unfortunately, often means more work. There's more steps, more checks and balances and things just take longer. I think we can all agree that.

Though a church has a responsibility to God, it's members and even the wider community. Like, the church just has that responsibility. A church has a responsibility for how it uses the money in its possession. So how about us? Were the individuals that make up the church? Is it simply the church's responsibility to follow the rules and be a good witness to the world? Can we kind of exist a little bit differently? No, of course not. Every day, we interact with the world as a Christian with our money. Whether you have heaps of it, or whether you're struggling to get by, how you use your money can honour God, or it can dishonour God.

Some of us might genuinely be able to say that we're doing everything that we know to do in complying with the rules. We educated ourselves. We kind of have a good understanding. Others of us, we might actually be doing the wrong thing and we might be living with a mild or not so mild stress or fear of being found out. So today I want us to take an honest look at how we use our money.

As I mentioned, there's that practical finance sermon online. So if you need to, go back and listen to that. Um, The cost of living has been increasing. I think we are all feeling that. We all know that. So perhaps more than ever we need to go back and look at our finances and see, see if there's anything we can practically be doing. And if you are not coping financially. If you are in financial distress, please chat to me or Alex after the service. We want you to have information, we want you to have resources. We want you to know that you're not alone. That there is help available.

So as a Christian, with money, in whatever amount, interacting with our world, what is our guide? What's the framework that we're operating in? We do have some very simple slides for those that are more visual. Oh, the big button. The big button. Cool. We have Christian principles, as we find them in the Bible, and then we have the law of the land.

So I'm going to focus on our particular context here in Australia. You may have experiences or know about other countries and laws that apply elsewhere. Um, I'm not going to address those today. I'm going to focus on the Australian tax office. The ATO, the banking regulations, and all of the other regulations that businesses comply with here in Australia. We have high regulation in our country. comparatively. And I'm not up here this morning to debate whether we should have regulation. At this moment, at this point in time, the regulations exist and you have a decision, whether you're going to comply with them or not.

By and large, our systems are not corrupt. I'm saying, I'm not saying that there is no corruption. There probably is. What is probably more pervasive is the feeling that the system is corrupt or a perception or even an experience of the system being unjust. And again, I'm not denying there is no injustice in the system. There's no perfect system. There probably is injustice. But the very way we react and interact within the law of the land says something about our heart and our discipleship as Christians, and it impacts our witness to the world.

One Peter 4 versus 12 to 16 says, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed by the spirit of God, by the spirit of glory and of God, of God rests upon you. But let no one, let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or as a meddler, yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.

This letter was written to Christians who were facing injustices. They were marginalised in society and mistreated by their neighbours. This letter as a whole is dealing with how Christians can live in society, live in a society that is actively hostile towards them. And even in this context, Peter is urging his audience to obey the law of the land. So long as it does not conflict with their Christian beliefs. Don't commit murder, don't steal, don't do evil, don't meddle. But also don't participate in religious festivals to other gods or offer sacrifices to the emperor. They should not suffer for doing the wrong things or for disobeying the law of the land, but they should not be surprised at suffering for their faith or right living.

We are not persecuted in the same way as Christians in the 1st century were persecuted. So we can acknowledge that. But following the rules can sometimes feel like suffering. You may have to do the hard thing, or the long thing, or the costly thing. You may have to pay more taxes. We should not be surprised at suffering and we should endure, knowing that God will ultimately take care of us.

So what if you feel like taxes aren't fair or you don't agree with how the tax money is being used? Did you know that Jesus felt the same way about at least one of the taxes of his day? Matthew 17 versus 24 to 27? When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the 2 drachma attacks, that was a temple tax, went up to Peter. This is the same Peter from the previous passage. And he said and said, does your teacher not pay the tax? He said, yes. And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him 1st saying, what do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of earth, of the earth take toll or tax from their sons or from others? And when he said from others, Jesus said to him, then the sons are free. However, not to give offence to them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the 1st fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.

In this instance, Jesus was actually questioning the tax. It was a temple tax, and Jesus was the son of God. It definitely doesn't sound right, that he should have paid that tax. But so as not to give offence, Jesus paid it. From what money? It actually seems like Jesus doesn't have that money. He didn't just say go and grab it from over in the corner. He told them to go out and get it from the mouth of a fish. The most unlikely of all places. This was supernatural provision for the payment of taxes. Now, I'm not suggesting that we all go take up fishing to pay our taxes. But I will suggest that if we are doing the right thing, obeying the law, even if it feels unjust, God will take care of our needs, even in the most unlikely of ways.

So I want to explore a little more what it looks like to obey the law of the land. I'm not going to do a deep dive into tax law. Don't worry. I think that would put most of you to sleep. And I'm not actually a tax accountant. So we're going to keep it simple. Don't do dodgy things with your money. Don't engage with people doing dodgy things with money and know the concessions or benefits available to you and use them.

We throw the term, we throw around the term dodgy here in Australia, and I just wanted to make sure it was the right term that I should be using. So naturally, I turn to Google. And there I found the AI overview quite helpful. If something is dodgy, it means that it's unreliable, suspicious, or poor quality.

Now, clearly, if you're engaging in tax evasion, tax evasion is the fraudulent or deceptive conduct to avoid tax obligations, then you're doing the wrong thing. You're not even being dodgy, you're just doing the wrong thing. You know you're doing the wrong thing. There's deliberate decisions that you're making. to be evading taxes. You also probably live with a little bit of stress or fear of maintaining the deception, of keeping things just so in order for people not to find out. You may even feel totally justified in the actions you are taking. But you're breaking the law. You are not walking in the ways of Jesus. And if discipleship is important to you at all, then you need to deal with this. It's black and white.

There's a very much bigger space, probably a bigger number of people operating in much more of a gray zone. This is where things can be well, dodgy. Unreliable, maybe a bit suspicious. Operating in this zone can come from a number of things, and I wanted to unpack this a little bit. Lack of experience. You might be a young adult just starting to earn income, you might be new to Australia, or you might be starting a business for the 1st time. You are not expected to know everything up front. And you might make some mistakes along the way. That's okay. learn from them. Make corrections where needed. This isn't so much dodgy as just learning.

But then there's head in the sand. This might be you if you're more of a mature adult. You've got friends or colleagues, and you kind of talk about certain things, certain aspects of the law or doing business. You might have read an article, and you know that you need to do some more research. You've kind of got that, ooh, am I doing the right thing? You might have a feeling that the way you're currently doing things isn't quite right, that you should go and learn some more about how to operate. But you don't take any steps to find out what you should be doing. You kind of bury your head in the sand. It might not necessarily be your intent. Maybe there's lack of time, you're just way too busy to sit down. Um, But it's starting to be a little bit dodgy.

Then there's loopholes. So I guess on the other hand, you might be very well versed in the laws and regulations so much so that you've identified a legitimate way around it. It's not the intent of the law to let you do this little thing. But maybe there's nothing stopping it. You might not call it a gray zone, but others might. It's dodgy.

So what might this actually look like in practice? I just wanted to cover some practical examples, not a comprehensive list. I'm sure there's many creative ways out there. But these couple of examples come from my own life, whether it's a personal issue that I faced, or whether I've encountered it in working with churches.

Claiming tax deductions for expenses that you did not incur. When I was at uni, I did a brief stint as a maths tutor, um, very, very brief. I actually wasn't great at it, I don't think. Um, I went to a budget, like a budget tax chain. I won't name the chain, but you know those places where you can go to get your taxes done. They're really quick, they're really cheap. They take all your information and then they draft up a return for you to sign. I do find it interesting that you go to an expert to do your taxes, but you still have to understand everything that's in your return and how they calculated it. Um, you're signing on the dotted line. Like you're taking responsibility for that return.

In this particular return, the expert had used their knowledge of tax rules and figured out that it wouldn't be questioned and that there was no need to maintain documents. It was just a little bit dodgy. I think I actually signed it without questioning it. But it has stayed with me ever since. With the ability to do our taxes online these days, we really need to make sure, we know, the deductions we're entitled to claim, um, that we're claiming things we actually are allowed to claim and that you know the documentation you need to maintain. And if you're getting someone else to do a tax return. Make sure you know and agree with everything that they've included.

Cash jobs. If you own your own business, where you are receiving cash, are you recording all of that cash and including it in your reporting to the ATO? I would say this is a huge issue in Aussie culture and one that people can feel really justified in doing. And I'm sure there's all sorts of scenarios or situations that you can throw at me, to kind of counter my argument, that as Christians, we just should not be doing cash jobs. And when I say cash jobs, I mean the ones that don't get recorded, that are kind of swept under the rug. You should be treating cash just like any other money deposited into your account. Offer discounts for upfront payment. That's great, but record it.

In the churches that we do the bookkeeping for, we won, don't deal in cash. We really, really discourage it. And two, we require tax invoices for everything.

Another example. Regular activities that you were paid for. If you are being paid regular amounts, either in cash or bank deposits, or maybe even in vouchers, um, for something that you are doing, Consider that maybe you're in business, and that you need to register for an ABN, or that the people paying you should employ you. Now, there's guidelines around what hobbies are and some other reasons why you might not be in business, um, but otherwise, congratulations, you're in business. And again, each and every time one of our client churches makes a payment to someone who doesn't have an ABN, an ABN is an Australian business number, anyone who operates, a business needs to register for one. It's actually free and really easy to do online. So it's not a hard process. So anyway, if we're making a payment to someone who doesn't have an ABN, we're really considering the right way to pay the person to protect the church and to protect the individual so that no one gets in trouble.

Final example for this one, business purchases that are for personal use. This is another gray one and one that you can feel really justified in your position or your stance on it. Whether it's a business that you own or whether you're an employee using the assets owned by the business, um, personal use changes the deductions and the taxes that the business should be factoring in. So just make sure that personal use is known by the appropriate people. And if you're the one with the business, make sure your tax accountant knows.

All right. Letting other people do dodgy things. If we're desiring to honour God with our finances, we won't give money to people who we know or have a really strong suspicion, are doing, are being dodgy. The same way that you wouldn't put money into an investment that you are ethically or morally opposed to, you shouldn't be giving money to people who you know are doing the wrong thing. People who are cheating the system, people that may not be paying their employees fairly, or people who at the very biggest extreme are doing bad things with money with the money you're giving them.

Now, I'm not saying that Christians should only give to Christians. Not at all. I think as Christians interacting with the world, We can definitely engage with our community through the use of finances. But our money is powerful and does have the ability to influence and shape our society. Shopping ethically or shopping locally comes to mind, being more conscious about where things, the things you're buying come from. What are the conditions of the person making those goods? Were they paid fairly? What was the impact on the environment from carbon emissions or dies entering the waterways? How far were the good shipped? All things that as Christians stewarding our world and caring for others, that we should be mindful of.

There are resources that we can use to find more ethical brands, Baptist World Aid actually produce an ethical fashion guide. There's a shop ethical. That's another um, comprehensive guide to making better choices. It can be overwhelming to think about. Um, and who, it takes time. But start small. Start with one area of your spending and make some changes. It might not seem like much, but the more people that start making choices to avoid certain brands or certain stores, it all adds up.

We're just attracted to cheat things, aren't we? I'm not talking about the quality, but the actual price tag. Cheap clothing, cheap furniture, cheap meals, cheap massages, cheap holidays. But the adage too good to be true, really does apply. Someone pays the cost. I'm not suggesting that expensive things are any better. Someone could still be pocketing the money and ripping others off, but we should be more conscious of spending our money and what we are supporting when we use it.

The Australian charities and not-for-profit commission actually puts the onus on charities to know exactly what their money is supporting when they send it overseas. There's standards in place, such that a charity can lose its registration and all of the benefits that they have from being registered, unless they take reasonable steps to manage overseas activities, keep records, prevent fraud, and protect vulnerable, vulnerable people. It doesn't matter, the size of the charity. They all have to ensure that they know where their money is going and what it is doing. That's the expectation of the church as a whole. And I'd suggest we too have a responsibility to know where our money is going.

Bringing it closer to home and kind of circling back to the cash job culture in Australia. As Christians seeking to honour God with our finances, we should be wary about using tradespeople or suppliers who will only accept cash. Um, some people record all of their cash correctly and it's all above board. I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about people that might not be recording all of their cash. Um, the ones that are kind of, you know, being more selective about what gets reported. Cash jobs may be easier. If you're finding someone who is willing to do something for you, um, for cash, it's, it's, they make it easy, it's cheaper, um, but that's because someone somewhere down the line is paying the price. It could be the employees, it could be the tax office. Yes, missing out on tax revenue, but also that means the nation at large that misses out.

If someone's willing to skip the rules as they relate to reporting income, It kind of begs the question, what are the rules are they skipping? Are they paying employees a fair wage? Are they taking out compulsory workers' comp insurance to make sure they protect their employees if they get injured at work? Are they actually registered for their trade? Or are they trying to fly under the radar? And who will they actually do a good job?

Now this is really the extreme end that I'm talking at. You may also have a hard-working soul trader who's following all of the rules, doing all of the right things, but does a job for a mate or just want some extra cash for Christmas. I have some of those tradies in my own family. But they are not followers of Jesus. As followers of Jesus, we will butt heads with culture from time to time. We should be the ones insisting that we pay the fair amount in the right way.

So if you know me or my husband, Mike, you'll know that we're not the most handy of people. We don't own a drill. And neither of us have family here, which is a bit of a shame because I actually do have handy tradespeople in my family. So I've been on the hunt for a handyman. Someone who we can get to come in, do a bunch of jobs from time to time. I just saw someone advertise on a, like, local community group in Facebook, and I called him. He actually answered, which was step one. Um, and then he came and he had a look around to give us a quote.

I thought we had found the solution to our dilemma. He was semi-retired, he was able to do a bunch of different things, like he knew his stuff. And he seemed really reasonably priced as well. Then came the conversation about payment. He could accept bank deposits, but he preferred cash. Now, I can't quite remember what I said, but whatever I said, he then proceeded to very openly tell me that he did not report all of his income to the government. He had spent his whole working career paying taxes, and now he felt that it was his time to be paid and to not have to be giving so much away. He said he had an accountant who told him just the right amount to report without raising any red flags, and he was unapologetic. He said that I could choose to use his services or I could choose not to, and he wouldn't be offended.

I was actually impressed at his honesty. But it was very clear to me that I couldn't in good faith continue to use this guy. I was very disappointing. I spend my work days saying to churches, they need a valid tax invoice to pay someone, and I am the church. The church is made up of people. You are the church.

So, up on the slide, I've got some red flags to watch out for. How do you know if someone that you're getting to do some work? Could be a little bit dodgy. Only accepting cash. That's pretty obvious. But as I said, some people do report all of our all of their cash. So in and of itself, it's not a deal breaker.

Offering discounts for cash. again, it could be legit. There's FPOS, when you pay by FPOS. It costs the business. So often they will offer you a discount to use cash. Um, but if direct deposit is an option and they're still asking for a discount. Um, asking you, giving you a discount for cash. Direct deposit's free. So the incentive for cash could have an ulterior motive. I actually had another trade, a painter, tell me that it was 10% less for cash. Like, we're not going to charge you the GST if you pay me cash and I was like, oh. interesting.

Another red flag, not providing things in writing. No, like especially with no tax invoice. If there's not a paper trail, they could be trying to avoid reporting things. Another one is not providing an AVN. If you do get a tax invoice and it doesn't have an ABN, an Australian business number on it, ask them to reissue it with the ADN. Some new businesses, some small businesses may forget and not realise. So ask nicely. If they don't provide an ABN, then this is a red flag, a big red flag.

And then finally, check the details of the ABN. There's a website called ABN Lookup, where you can search the Australian Business Register and double check the registration details. Do they exist? Does the name look right? If they are registered for GST? Have they included that on the invoice? It's actually a good one if you're, um, got an invoice with GST on it and you look up the ABN and they're not registered? Because that's an automatic 10% discount you should be asking for. But just to say, we should be checking their ABN and making sure that it all looks good and ask questions, if anything, looks dodgy. And it may be that you have to decline their services, decline their quote.

Um, A little side note, if you are receiving invoices via email and it has bank details on it for payment, make sure you call them and confirm the bank details. Don't call the number on the invoice, go back to Google if you need to, search their number or find the one that you saved in your phone. Hackers these days are actually hacking into the builder or the painter or whoever's email and they're changing the details on the invoice so that you actually send your money to the wrong place and it can be very hard to get that back. We've had this happen a couple of times in my work. One of them was a $6000 invoice. The most recent one was a $60,000 payment. And a colleague, as we are required to do in our work, we will call every new supplier and confirm their bank details. This one had said, please be advised with our new bank details. She called them. The builder said, oh, we haven't changed our bank account in 30 years. So, um, yeah, stopped a $60,000 payment going out.

Finally. Oops. Know the concessions and benefits and use them. So we're not being dodgy with money, and we're not giving our money to dodgy people. I want to finish by saying that we should know the concessions or the benefits that are available to us and use them. As followers of Jesus, we want to do the right thing even when it costs us. But also we don't want to be suffering or in hardship by refusing help or not using the concessions that we are entitled to.

Again, I'm not diving into the politics or pretending we have a perfect system. But we do have some great benefits. Centrelink has a variety of income support for the unemployed, students, carers, families, and those with disabilities. And we can we can legitimately claim tax deductions for a raft of things related to our income. We can claim tax deductions for certain charitable giving. So we can legitimately reduce the amount of tax we pay.

But at the end of the day, if we're honouring God with our money, we can trust him to provide for our needs. If we're paying taxes, even if we feel like we should not, we can trust for provision. We might not be going to the mouths of fish to find the physical coins, but provision can come in the most unlikely of ways.

Let's pray. Father God. We come before you this morning and yeah, we want to lift up our finances to you. Father, as we've gone through scripture and we've gone through practical things, I just pray that you would highlight, um, in each of our hearts, if there's anything that you want to want to talk to us about. There's any aspect of this, that we need to address with you. I pray that you would just highlight it to us in this silence.

And Jesus as followers of you, yeah, we long to honour you in all that we do. I pray that you would help us to implement the practical things that we need to do, to wrestle with our heart attitudes and, um, I guess, any challenges that we might come up with, um, in dealing with people around these things. Help us to be bold, help us to be courageous, help us to be a witness to our community through the way that we use our finances. And we look to you for provision. Um, as we Hand it all back to you, God. We ask for you to come and meet our needs, particularly as it relates to paying our taxes, as it relates to doing the right thing. We trust in you. We trust in you for this area of our life as we do for many other areas of our life. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.