“God’s
Plan for Prosperity”
Matt 6:19-7:1
I. Introduction
The largest church in America attracts some 30,000 people each Sunday
to hear a false gospel of positive confession and guaranteed prosperity
from the prosperity gospel’s “Coverboy.” Almost
any given time of the day you can turn on TBN and hear popular
preachers getting prosperous off their prosperity gospel by conning
naive sheep out of thousands of dollars. Americans are drawn to a
gospel that affirms our materialism!
I wonder how many of you when you read the sermon title for today said
in your heart either, “O no, Pastor Chris is slipping into the
prosperity heresy.” Or did any of you think, “well,
it’s about time Pastor Chris stopped all this high theology stuff
of being missional and got down to telling us how to get the blessings
of God!”
Well, this sermon is about getting God’s blessings, but
God’s plan for prosperity is radically different from the one
you’ll find in some book called “Your Best Life
Now.” God’s plan is found in a book called the Bible
where you discover promises like, “In this world you will have
tribulation,” and principles like, “it is through many
trials that we inherit the kingdom of God.”
This morning’s sermon will be the first of a three-sermon series
on this passage about God’s kingdom principles for eternal
prosperity.
Let us pray…
Scripture Reading…
II.Exposition
These words of Jesus are part of a larger collection of Christ’s
teachings that we find recorded in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7 that we
usually call the “Sermon on the Mount.” This
“Sermon on the Mount” is often called the “manifesto
of the kingdom,” in that in it Christ describes for us what life
in the kingdom of God should look like for each of us right now.
So, if you want to know how to live an authentic Christian life, that
appropriates all God’s blessings, just follow all that Christ
says in this “Sermon!”
Now of the many riches of truth we can mine from the passage we are
exploring this morning, and in the next two sermons, we are going to
examine in this sermon series three laws of living in God’s
kingdom, or three kingdom principles of appropriating God’s
prosperity.
This morning, the kingdom principle that we will explore is:
The Kingdom
Principle of Investing for Eternity
The Bible has a lot to say about this, in fact, 16 out of 38 of
Christ's parables, deal with money. More is said in the New
Testament about money then about Heaven and Hell combined. Five
times more is said about money than about prayer. On the subject
of prayer and faith there are 500 plus verses, on the subject of money
and possessions there are 2,000 verses.
Why does Christ address money so often? Because your attitudes
and beliefs toward material wealth reveals your attitudes and beliefs
toward the spiritual.
This passage reveals that we cannot have it both ways. We cannot
live for material comfort and live for eternal blessings at the same
time. Such pursuits are mutually exclusive, one cancels out the
other!
In this passage, Christ was confronting and correcting a popular,
heretical, and dangerous teaching in His day espoused by the Pharisees
that righteous, obedient living to God always resulted in material
prosperity. The Pharisees were the original prosperity gospel
preachers!
Christ was and is revealing the true financial laws of the kingdom that
declare if you want to be rich, eternally rich, than “Sell your
possessions and give to charity; make yourselves money belts which do
not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes
near nor moth destroys.” (As our study passage reads in
Luke’s version).
Christ reveals elsewhere in Matthew 19 that it is hard for a rich
person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Why, because the more
material wealth you have the more it becomes your idol, the more
complex your life becomes, usually the more decadent your life becomes,
and most of all one becomes less and less dependent on God. Look
at lifestyles of the rich and famous in America, even those that claim
to be Christian!
This isn’t always the case, there are the very rare exceptions of
rich men and women who remain very faithful and godly, but their secret
for doing so is always the same, they invest the majority of their
wealth in kingdom work.
Almost eighty years ago, in 1923 at the
Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, eight of the most powerful
and wealthy men gathered for a meeting. It was said that these
eight men were so wealthy that when you combined their wealth that they
controlled more money than the US treasury.
In that group there were men such as Charles Schwab, he was the
president of a steel company. Richard Whitney was the president
of the New York Stock Exchange. Arthur Cutten was a wheat
speculator. Albert Fall was a presidential cabinet member, but in
his own right a very wealthy man. Jesse Livermore was the
greatest bear on Wall Street of his generation. Leon Frasier was
the president of the International Bank of Settlements and Ivan Kruger
headed the largest monopoly. He might have been like the Bill
Gates of his day.
Well let's look at what happens only a few decades later. Charles
Schwab died penniless. Richard Whitney spent the rest of his life
serving a sentence in prison. Arthur Cutten, the great wheat
speculator became insolvent. Albert Fall was pardoned from
Federal prison so that he might die at home. Leon Frasier, Jesse
Livermore and Ivan Kruger all took their own lives.
What mistake did they make? They forgot godliness. Thinking
that what they had and what they controlled belonged to them.
If one takes into account all the teaching in the Bible about wealth, I
believe that the central principle we discover is that whenever
God’s people are blessed with material wealth it is for the
purpose of being a blessing to others. This is what is meant by
investing for eternality.
I will go so far as to say that it is sinful for any Christian to
accumulate more wealth that what is needed to live at the standard of
living that God has called that person to live in. It’s not
for me and anyone else to determine what that standard is. I
don’t believe every Christian is called to a vow of
poverty. We need “missionaries” at every strata of
living (of course we all want to be called to be a missionary to the
rich!)
So how does one know what standard of living God is calling them
to? You ask God! You continually submit all of your
possessions, all that God has given you stewardship over, back to the
Lordship of Christ, and ask God, “How do you want to use what you
have blessed me with? How much should I keep and how much should
I invest for eternity by giving it to kingdom ministry?”
Now you may be saying, “Pastor, you can’t call me rich, I
barely make it paycheck to paycheck.” Well, let me redefine
“rich,” for you.
Consider these statistics that I took from Randy Alcorn who writes
extensively on this topic and who I highly recommend. “If
you have enough food, decent clothes, live in a home that shields you
from the weather and own some kind of reliable transportation, you are
in the top 15 percent of the world's wealthy. Add some savings, a
hobby like hunting or fishing that requires equipment, two cars (in any
condition), a variety of clothing and your own house, and you have
reached the top five percent. To get a better handle on reality,
consider that more than 1.1 billion people in the world live on less
than the equivalent of one U.S. dollar per day. (Taken from www.epm.org)
We Americans we simply want to have it all. We don’t want
just an adequate house, we want a nice, big house. We don’t
want just a car for transportation, we want to ride in style and
comfort. When we go out eat, even if it’s just for ice
cream, we want lots and lots of choices. Even though it is the
abundance of choices in virtually every area of life that case so much
of our stress and anxiety!
George Carlin does an hilarious skit on “stuff” that is
also a convicting commentary on the greedy American lifestyle.
“….That's all I
want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya
know?.. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff…. A
house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see
that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you
see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles
of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it
up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your
stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother
with that junk you're saving. All they want is the shiny
stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff
while you go out and get...more stuff! Sometimes you gotta move,
gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff
anymore…..”
Now let’s compare this reality with these sobering realities.
“Five hundred million people are
hungry and another 500 million are so poor they don't get enough food
to be fully productive. Though the proportion of the world's hungry is
slowly declining, population increases mean the number of hungry
persons is the highest in history. Every day nearly 75,000
people, most of them children, die because of dirty drinking water,
disease or malnutrition. Two billion children live in
extreme poverty or high-risk situations. By 2020, the number of
street children is expected to skyrocket from today's 100 million to
800 million.”
Now I am not advocating some socialistic redistribution of wealth
imposed on us by the government. But I do believe there needs to
be a better redistribution of wealth within the Church of Jesus Christ
worldwide.
Consider some more statistics. “Ninety-five percent of
Western missions money and resources go to areas of the world where
there is already an established or emerging church. Only five
percent help areas where there is no church. Ninety-five percent
of these unreached groups live in an area from West Africa to China
known as the 10/40 Window. Of these 3.1 billion people,
two-thirds have never heard of Jesus, at least not as Savior.
(Eighty-five percent of the world's poorest also live in this
region).”
Now, what can you do to do your part in addressing these realities and
in investing for eternity with how you use your time, talents, &
treasures”
Investing for Eternity
• Increase the
amount of time and money you give to the work of the kingdom both
connected to your home church but also within the larger Body of
Christ. The goal being give until it hurts until giving become
cheerful. There is no better cure for materialism or greed that
generous giving. (One possible godly goal would be to increase
the amount of time you give to kingdom work—not counting being a
“missionary” in your career, home, or school—to at
least 3-5% which would be 5-8 hours a week)
• In addition to tithing at least a full 10% of
your gross income to a local church, give regular offerings to
missionary organizations that specifically proclaim the gospel to the
unreached areas of the world (such offerings are separate from your
tithe, and one godly goal in this area would be an additional 2% or
higher)
• Take the word “consumer” out of
your life! Live simply and modestly. Live below the
standard of living you could afford in order to free up more money for
giving (one godly goal would be to live 2/3rds below what you could
afford as to a house and other standard of living expenses).
• Reclaim how you live out your career, your
life as a student, or home manager, your retirement activities, or your
recreation endeavors to do these activities in a more missional manner
of being a missionary wherever God has planted you.
• Use you vacation time to do a short-term
mission trip
• Get some Biblical financial advice through a
book, advisor, or seminar and restructure your budget according to
Kingdom principles and priorities (this would include having a will
that includes giving money to kingdom-advancing organizations)
• Don’t bury your
“talents.” Whatever gifts and skills God has given
you on loan, use them to their maximum to glorify God and advance
God’s kingdom!
• The only thing you can take with you when you
die is your relationships! Invest all that is required to keep
your close relationships strong! J. H. Jowelet was right when he
said, "The real measure of our wealth is how much we would be worth if
we lost all of our money."
It is said that:
Money can buy medicine, but not health.
It can buy a house but not a home
It can buy a companionship, but not friendship
It can buy a entertainment, but not a happiness
It can buy a food, but not an appetite
It can buy a bed, but not sleep
It can buy a crucifix, but not a savior
It can buy a good life, but not eternal life
What kind of spiritual house are you building with the time, talents,
and treasures that God has entrusted to you?