Good morning! Today we continue our series based on the book of Proverbs and focus on Biblical precepts for wise finances. There is so much to discuss in this area that we will spend two weeks on this topic. Next week we will have our monthly time of communion and sharing together what the Lord is teaching us, so we will finish this topic in two weeks.
I want to start with some foundational verses in Proverbs Chapter 3. The first of these I am sure you all know; we have talked of these before. They are not specifically tied to finances but deal with all of life. But all of life certainly includes finances, and without a proper foundation, details aren’t going to help you much. And so, let’s look at Proverbs 3:5-6.
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. – Prov. 3:5-6
I think when we hear these verses we say, “Yes, this is right!” – It gives us joy to think that this is true – I need to trust in Him, and He will direct my steps. This is a relief; more than this, it means that God is not distant, uninterested, uninvolved with our lives; He cares, and as we trust in Him, He will lead us in our specific situations we go through in life.
Note that it says, “in all your ways acknowledge Him.” All your ways. This includes decision making that pertains to your finances. What does it mean to acknowledge Him? The word in Hebrew is yada, which means to know. In regards to your finances, know what He says is wise and what is foolish. In regards to your finances, take the Bible’s wisdom seriously and apply it to your own situations. In regards to your finances, involve Him personally. I believe many believers do not do this! Why? We are guilty of compartmentalizing our lives. One compartment is “work” or “school.” Another is “family.” Another is “finances.” Another is “church.” Do you ever think like this?
Don’t! Yes, there are spheres, or areas of our life, but we should intimately involve God in all of them. In all your ways acknowledge Him. Not just church. Not just quiet times.
When you are thinking about buying that sports car, or that super powerful computer, or big screen TV, or house, or whatever it is, pray to Him first. When you are trying to choose between jobs offered, or are thinking of changing careers, or quitting your job, pray to Him first. When you are thinking about investing in something a friend told you about, or something you heard on TV, or joining some multilevel marketing or other home-based business, or even playing the lottery, pray to Him first. When you are thinking about borrowing money for a car, or education, or an appliance, or you are thinking of getting a car title loan, or a second mortgage, or any other decision related to debt, pray to Him first. Pray for wisdom. Pray for insight. Pray for help.
Generally speaking, when you don’t acknowledge Him, you don’t come to Him in prayer, seeking wisdom, you will be relying on your own wisdom, on your own fortunes, on your own discernment, and on your own dumb luck.
One of the greatest mistakes I think we all make as Christians is that we read verses and think about them only on a high, conceptual level. We tend to think verses don’t have practical application. I have just given you a ton of applications of this verse, just in the area of finances, the area of life that we are talking about today. The statement “in all your ways acknowledge Him,” in all your ways seek to know what He knows, in all your ways seek to know Him so that you can follow Him, is immensely practical. If you are taking notes, the first point I would write is to pray and seek God in all significant financial decisions.
Now I want to keep going in Proverbs 3 to the very next verses. I think all of these verses provide an excellent foundation for understanding how we should as Christians think and operate with regards to financial decisions.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. – Prov. 3:7-8
And so the second point I would give is to humble yourself. One aspect of this is to remember that the Lord is watching. We would give in to far less sin, far less temptation, if we would remember that the Lord is watching. When you are tempted to use a little “creative accounting” on your taxes (you might say everyone does this particular thing so it’s OK), or to partake in a little insider trading (you might say it’s not insider trading if a “little guy” does it), or to not pay back something you owe (you might say it’s different when you owe a person or a corporation, or you might say they forgot about you when you moved so it’s OK now), or even to steal something (you might say it was an accident, or you might say it is only a small thing), in all these and countless other situations, remember that the Lord sees. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. The Lord sees, and if you are a Christian believer, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will remind you when you are about to do something wrong, but you have to follow His leading. It is entirely possible to ignore Him. Even as a believer you can harden your heart to Him.
Most of you have heard me tell this story before, but I will tell it again because it so fits with what we are talking about. A number of years ago, I stole Jesus. Yes, that is what I did. You see, it was a little before Christmas and I was shopping at one of the big box stores in Anderson, and while shopping I put a number of things into my shopping cart including a nativity set (on sale) and a large imitation pine greenery. Well, as I checked out and paid for my merchandise, I did not take out the greenery because it was so unwieldy but just held out the tag so they could scan that. The nativity set was underneath, completely hidden by all the green stuff. And so I left the store without paying for the nativity set. I made it all the way to my car, and saw it there as I was putting things in the trunk. At that moment part of me said, “You’re stealing.” But another part said, “It’s an accident, so it’s OK. I’m in a hurry, so I need to get going. It would be embarrassing to go back to the store. Who knows, they might even arrest me!” What did I do? I threw box containing the baby Jesus (along with the angels and wise men and donkeys and sheep and Mary and Joseph) into trunk and drove off. I made it about a block, and then I remembered (no doubt thanks to the unusually loud voice of the Holy Spirit) that the Lord sees. “What are you doing?” I thought. “You are stealing Jesus! You are going to put this on your mantle for the church Christmas party so all can see it, and it will be stolen merchandise! You are stealing Jesus!” As quickly as I could I turned around and drove back to the store, brining the nativity set, and went to the return desk explaining that I had not paid for this item even though I had left the building. I am sure I was sweating, and that my voice sounded a little wild with emotion, because the checkout person instinctively tried to reassure me, saying it was no problem, that I could pay for it right there. And I did. The Lord sees.
Another aspect of this humility thing when it comes to finances is to seek counsel. Proverbs 15:22 says:
Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. – Prov. 15:22
And Proverbs 27:9 says
Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of one’s friend springs from his earnest counsel. – Prov. 27:9
Do you have a friend like this, someone who can tell you like it is? Hearing hard things is never pleasant at the time, but this verse rightly says that this ultimately is a wonderful thing; you will look on such friendships as a source of joy. I encourage you to build such friendships; it takes two to build them. I also think of the Proverb, a little later in this passage:
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. – Prov. 27:17
We could have additional entire teachings on friendship, but my point here is humility. It take humility to seek the counsel of others, especially in the area of finances. We all tend to be so secretive when it comes to financial matters. I don’t mean us here, specifically, but I mean us as Americans. It takes humility to open up on finances, to admit your past mistakes, and to let someone comment on your current ones. It takes humility to seek counsel, and it takes even more humility to heed what they are saying.
A few quick points about seeking counsel: First, make sure you choose wise counselors. In the area of finances, choose people who are obviously showing signs of success with how they handle money. And second, don’t misuse that many advisers verse so as to keep getting second and third and fourth opinions until you find someone who agrees with what you wanted to do originally. That’s not the point of the verse!
Now good counsel can come from your friends who are good with money, and it can also come from a number of Christian ministries. I personally can recommend both the Dave Ramsey materials (daveramsey.com) and Crown Financial Ministries (crown.org). Dave Ramsey is especially well-geared to those trying to turn around debt problems and other financial bad habits; Crown really seems to excel in general financial education including saving and investing. Both are Biblically based, although Crown incorporates Scripture much more directly into their teachings than Dave Ramsey does. But both are quite good, in my opinion.
And so we have #1, seek the Lord in your financial decisions and #2, humble yourself with the sub-points the Lord sees and seek godly counsel. Well, let’s continue with Proverbs 3. Here are the very next verses:
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 over with new wine. – Prov. 3:9-10
Giving to God is first and foremost about worship. Now, there are a lot of depressing things in the book of Judges, but one of the most depressing things for me in Judges is a situation in Chapter 17, where a Levite agrees to live with a man named Micah to serve as his personal priest for pay. This man Micah had idols and was hardly living in accordance with the Law handed down through Moses. But the depressing thing for me is the fact that the entire financial system established by God for the Israelites had broken down. The Levites, if you remember, had no inheritance, no land to call their own. They were completely dependent on the offerings of the Israelites. Now God had prescribed specific tithes and offerings for the Israelites that would ensure that the Levites and priests would be properly taken care of, but the spiritual climate in Judges was so degraded that this had entirely fallen apart. As a result, many Levites and priests, maybe all of them, no longer did what they were supposed to do. In this case, a Levite agreed to hire himself out as a professional clergy to someone who didn’t even worship God! It is a tragic snapshot of a people who had forsaken their God. They no longer worshiped Him; they no longer honored Him with their wealth.
Well, for us as well, we can honor God, worship Him with our money. If you don’t worship God with your money, you may well be worshiping your money, or to say it another way, all that your money represents and symbolizes. The bottom line today is that we either worship God or we worship self, and money, as it was in the time of Judges, is today an indicator of people’s hearts. I love what David says in I Chronicles 29:14:
But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. – I Chron. 29:14
For someone who struggles with giving, as I once did, the problem may be that they don’t really believe this. Sometimes it helps to see what the opposite belief really is: It is to say that it’s my stuff. Mine. I worked for it, and He has no right to it. Do you see how this is about worship? Many people who reject Christ reject the idea that we owe God our worship. They say their life is their own, and they can live it as they choose. Do you see how these are not all that different?
Now, as I and Fred and I believe John have mentioned before, Proverbs are not meant to be viewed as promises, but as principles. We need to be careful here not fall into the false teachings that promise that giving will translate into your own personal wealth. You want a nice car? Give more to your church. You want a bigger house? Just give more to your church, and you wait and see, God will make miraculously make you swimming in money.
If you are tempted to read this proverb as a promise, just look at the counterexamples in the Bible itself. What about Job? What about the apostle Paul? What about the early Christians in Jerusalem, mentioned in Acts and in Paul’s letters as desperately poor, persecuted, and suffering? And what about the entire history of martyrs in two thousand years of Christ building His church? We are talking about principles, not promises.
And as for the flip side, there are plenty of people who do not honor God in any way shape or form who are unimaginably rich. So let us not understand this passage. But at the same time, sometimes when you give, this is exactly what happens. I believe I have shared this story before as well, so bear with me, but when I became a believer in graduate school at the University of Illinois, I was very reluctant for some time to give at all to church. I viewed it as “my” money, and I had not very much of it, since I didn’t make much at all as a graduate student. But after a period of internal battles that lasted months, I finally did give a percentage of my modest income, and this is no exaggeration: the very next week, I was offered out of the blue a teaching assistant position grading homeworks on top of my regular pay. I had been a graduate student for several years and had not even heard of anyone getting both. But this was my offer, and I accepted it. The result was that I made significantly more after committing to give regularly to the church than I had made before I began. And I am not the only one who can tell you such stories. I have heard them again and again. Now, this is not a promise! But for those of us who can testify to this, we simply say, “Hey, this is what happened to me.” There is no question that when God does do this, it tremendously builds up people’s faith. It certainly did mine.
But it is a principle. How do the two relate? I believe it is because of the fact that giving is worship. To give requires that you earn money. To give requires that you keep your spending under control. To give requires that you are not overwhelmed with debt. To give requires that you love God more than your money. In short, giving is a sign of Christian maturity. People like this are people God can use. From one of Jesus’ parables:
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? – Luke 16:10-12
And of course your giving should not only be to the church, but it should be part of an overall lifestyle of generosity. And this generosity should not only be with regards to money, but with regards to possessions, to your time, to everything.
There are additional proverbs related to giving:
One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. – Prov. 11:24
The sluggard’s craving will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work. All day long he craves for more, but the righteous give without sparing. – Prov. 21:25-26
This contrasts the lifestyle of one who does not want to work but still craves for the best things to the lifestyle of the righteous, who are generous givers. The righteous person, the one who gives, is implied to be one who works willingly, who does not live by his cravings. Again, you see here how giving is tied into overall spiritual maturity.
There are other verses that speak specifically of giving to the poor. Here is one:
He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses. – Prov. 28:27
Again, this is a principle, not a promise. Now this word for poor is not one of the words that means a fool, or a sluggard, or any other words like this. We are not called to give to sluggards. We are called to give to those who, through genuine hardship, are willing but unable to fully provide for themselves. I think it is important to understand this distinction. We are not violating this verse if we choose not to give to someone who asks for a handout on the street. We simply don’t know the situation in such a case, and there is a very high chance that this person is not all that they tell us. But one reason we do our regular outreaches to the more humble parts of our community is that we are looking for those like the word in this verse, in Hebrew, the roosh. These are people who would be willing to join with us, people who are willing to let us address all of their needs, both physical and spiritual. This is why we go into nursing homes, because there are people there who are lonely, who are poor in hope, poor in companionship, poor in love, and we seek to be God’s hands and feet to them. The mature believer understands that giving is an act of worship, not just giving money, but giving everything, especially our love.
And so, to summarize up to this point, we have #1, seek the Lord in your financial decisions and #2, humble yourself with the sub-points the Lord sees and seek godly counsel, and #3, worship the Lord through your finances.
I have one more point on money I want to share today, one that I think speaks so powerfully against a key driving force in our culture. Before I share it, I want to first get you to look at this aspect of our culture for a moment with eyes that our not in our culture. This is hard to do; it helps when you can spend some extended time in another culture. I cannot do this for you today, but let me try it another way.
One of the saddest books I have ever read is called Henry and the Great Society by H. L. Roush. Written in 1969, it describes the changing life of the title character. The book starts by describing the quiet, simple, rural life that Henry and his wife and children enjoyed. He lived off a 160-acre farm, the same farm that his father and grandfather had lived off of. He didn’t have electricity, let alone the conveniences of 1969. His children helped with chores, played outside, and read good books when they were not doing school. Henry was close to his neighbors, and there were plenty of fellowship opportunities with his church, a women’s club, and many gatherings of neighbors, family, and friends. When illness or death came to someone in their community, there was more fellowship, combined with tender care and a house filled with food from all around.
The story proceeds to describe what happened when progress came to their community. It began with a new road bringing in more traffic, and then neighbors selling parts of their farms so as to be broken into smaller lots for housing developments, houses that had electricity. Out of a desire to simply provide the “good things in life,” Henry first went into debt so as to pay to wire his house, as did most of his neighbors. He and they went on to get electric time-saving appliances, things like refrigerators, washers and dryers, electric ranges, and so on, again, all via debt. Soon he also got a TV.
I cannot do justice to how this book describes all the changes in Henry’s life, but in fact, the biggest changes were not the stuff, but the quality of his and his family’s life. He worried about making enough on his crops to keep up with payments. His family dynamic changed completely due to his own bad temper as well as that TV. Meanwhile all their friends and friends’ children were also changing, becoming one with their culture. The strong community that they had once had was also changed. People didn’t come out to see one another anymore. The church greatly reduced its social calendar because people didn’t come like they used to; indeed, many people stopped going to church altogether. There were now frequent arguments between Henry and his children, who became worldly and self-centered. And then there was more stuff he was pressured to get by his children and friends, like a telephone line, and in addition, stuff started breaking and he had to fix it or get it fixed. Then there was a car – it was no longer safe to take a buggy on the road – and more costs and debt. Henry tried to work much harder, but his increasing worries were affecting his health. Finally Henry tried to work at a factory to make more money and keep up with his bills. I will spare you the rest, as it is just too depressing.
One key thing the book impresses is that there were key moments in Henry’s life, moments where he was making decisions about this or that convenience, but he had no idea of the costs associated with each decision; he had no idea how important these decisions each were, how they would radically affect his life and the life of his family. And I think this is a potent warning to us.
What is shocking to think about is that if this book describes life in 1969, what would someone like Henry think of life today, 42 years later? With the Internet, social media, cell phones, laptops, and all the rest?
Now, I am not saying that technology is evil. What I am saying, and what the author of this book was saying, is that it comes with a price, a price that is easy not to notice. Here is a quote from near the end of his book:
We are told by the super salesmen of this instant insanity called the “Great Society” that our great advances have lengthened the life span of man by 25 or 30 years. A noteworthy achievement, I am sure, but would it be out of reason to inquire as to what our lives have been saved for? We are told by the hawkers of this master delusion that “we never had it so good.” Good for what, I might ask of them? They tell us we never had so much leisure time. To be spent on what? We live out of our medicine cabinets on vitamins, tranquilizers, and pep pills to get us through the day and then, when we fall into bed exhausted, we lie there wound up like a dollar watch. We dare not sleep too soundly; for at any moment our night may turn to day in a brilliant flood of electric light, or the phone by our bed might call us to further mental and emotional complexities for which we have no capacity…
For most in our culture today, the idea that one parent could choose to not work, for the sake of giving more time to the children, is an antiquated notion completely out of touch of reality. And due to the costs of modern living, it is certainly difficult for many families. As a society we have “progressed” heedless to the costs that have come with the modern life.
I know we cannot turn back the clock, nor am I even saying necessarily that I would wish to. But we as individuals do have choices to make. We each have our Henry moments, and I would simply entreat you to count the costs. When you are faced with a option that might help you make more money but would make you spend more time away from your family or would come with greater stress, count the cost. When you are tempted to buy a new this or that but will increase financial stress, count the cost. When you want a new electronic gizmo but realize that it will take your time away from other things like friends, family, or church, count the cost. Prayerfully count the cost.
The authors of the following proverbs understood that there were costs with riches. Being richer materially can make you poorer spiritually. These first ones speak of the lack of security, the false promise of riches:
Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. – Prov. 23:5
Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf. – Prov. 11:28
The next verse speaks of the very real danger riches have of making you wander from your faith.
Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God. – Prov. 30:8b-9
And these last three verses speak as much to money as to the stuff that money buys. These are speaking not just of wealth, but of the complexities of a life filled with possessions. These are the bottom line for me.
The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep. – Eccl. 5:12
A man’s riches may ransom his life, but a poor man hears no threat. – Prov. 13:8
Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. – Prov. 23:4
And so, #1, seek the Lord in your financial decisions, #2, humble yourself; remember that the Lord sees and seek godly counsel, #3, worship the Lord through your finances, and #4, count the true costs of pursuing wealth and buying possessions.
No comments:
Post a Comment