Sermon Transcript

Intro

A lot of the advice we’ve gotten from our parents, both solicited and unsolicited, has to do with money. Some of it has to do with how to make money – we get advice from our parents, by word or by example, on what careers to go into, how to invest, and how to use credit cards. And some of the other advice we get about money is about its value. A valuable lesson I learned from my parents was that it’s important to work hard to make enough money to provide food, clothing, and shelter to your loved ones, and it’s even more important to spend time with those loved ones. There are things that are much more important than money.

We’ve seen throughout the book of Proverbs the image of a father passing along wisdom to a son. So it’s no surprise that in Proverbs, your heavenly Father wants to talk to you about money. It’s a plain fact that it takes money to live in this world, so your earthly parents and your heavenly Father both want you know know about it. This is what I believe your heavenly Father wants you to know about money: wealth is useful, but righteousness is better. We’ll look at why it’s useful, how to get it, and why righteousness is better.

Wealth is useful

First, the book of Proverbs points out some reasons why we would want to have wealth. You might be thinking, I didn’t need to come to church this morning to hear that. And Proverbs agrees with you! Yay, money.

Proverbs 15:6 reads, “In the house of the righteous there is much treasure, but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.” We’ll talk about this proverb a little more later, but for now I just want you to see that in general, the book of Proverbs, which commends righteousness throughout, acknowledges that wealth is a good thing to have and even that it often comes with righteousness. Some of you in the room today have worldly wealth – this is a blessing from God, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. There are dangers associated with wealth, and there are wrong ways to go about getting it, but wealth isn’t only found in the houses of the wicked. When I sit down to do my taxes, or assess my giving, or make a budget (which I put off doing for as long as possible), it often just feels icky for me to think about money. I think many of us here could actually benefit from being thankful for the measure of wealth that God has assigned us, and using that as a starting point to consider how we can have to love God and our neighbors.

And, we’ve got to be able to acknowledge that when someone doesn’t have enough money to provide for their basic needs, that’s not a good thing. Not thinking about money is a luxury of being rich. If you don’t have enough money for your next meal, it’s pretty much impossible not to think about money. A lot of what Proverbs says about why money is useful is a simple acknowledgement that being poor is a real hardship.

It’s hard to be poor

Proverbs notes two specific challenges of poverty: it creates relational and obedience challenges. Keep in mind also that Proverbs is often more descriptive than prescriptive – when Proverbs observes that wealth brings friends, it’s not telling you to buy friends, it’s observing how things tend to work.

Relational Challenges

First, being poor often comes with relational challenges. Consider Proverbs 14:20 – “The poor is disliked even by his neighbor, but the rich has many friends.” Again, Proverbs is not saying that this is the way things should be, but I think we all can see that it is the way they are. If you’ve spent time with people who are poor in this world, you’ll often find that they don’t just lack money, but relationships. People sometimes refer to this kind of wealth as “social capital”. Do you have a friend who can help you fix your car? How about a friend who is a doctor and can help you figure out if you need to go to the hospital? A friend who can help you make a website for a business you want to start? Or even just a friend who’s easy to get along with grew up with two parents in the house and had healthy relationships modeled for them? These “useful” relationships certainly aren’t the only kind of friendship we want to have, but it’s really hard not to have those transactional relationships. If you do have these kinds of friends, think about where you met them – if you met them in college, consider that it costs money to go to college. If you grew up in the same neighborhood, consider how much it cost for your parents to live in that neighborhood. Wealth can “buy us in” to useful relationships. 

However, I’m hoping that some of you have also noticed that you’ve met these friends in a church, possibly even our church! Because of the unifying power of the gospel, Paul can say that in Christ there is no rich or poor. The church represents a real possibility for the poor in this world not just to benefit from soup kitchens and food banks run by churches, but actually to gain real friends and rich relationships. The church offers the hope of a friend who will stick closer than a brother, even when they’re disliked by a neighbor.

And the church is a group of people who recognize that we are poor in spirit and need a great savior. So we can be gracious to each other when we see other reasons why it can be hard for the poor to have friends. Frankly, if you don’t have a place to live and can’t take a shower, it’s harder to make friends. It’s harder to make friends if you have a mental illness that inclines you to act erratically or not communicate well. It can be hard to make friends if you grew up without seeing healthy friendships modeled – with parents who fought, in a tough school, in a violent neighborhood. But since God moved towards us in our spiritual and material poverty, we can move towards others in their spiritual and material poverty. 

Proverbs reminds us that in this world, it’s hard for the poor to make friends – if you’re rich in this world, ask yourself how you can be moving towards the poor in friendship, especially those in the church. Perhaps you can go to the Philly House shelter a few blocks from here, serve a meal, and talk to some of the guests there and invite them to our church. Maybe you can have someone who’s poor in this world over for lunch and ask how you can be praying for them. 

Obedience Challenges

In addition to relational challenges, Proverbs also suggests that poverty creates some unique challenges to being obedient to God’s word. Look at the wise prayer of a man named Agur in Proverbs 30:7-9 – “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” I want you to see that there are real ways in which being poor creates a temptation to steal. If you are short on your rent for the month, it’s tempting not to report some of your cash income to get a better tax refund. If you are worried about food, it’s tempting to justify stealing from a grocery store because you figure the store won’t miss it. Make no mistake – if you’re in that situation, God still says, “Thou shalt not steal”, and it profanes the name of God to steal. The writer here is zealous not to profane the name of God by stealing, in the same way that Jesus teaches us to pray, “hallowed be thy name” and, “lead us not into temptation”. 

So, rather than justify stealing, Agur prays that God would give him the food he needs. This is a prayer God loves to answer! In fact, Jesus tells us that your heavenly Father already knows that you need food and clothing. So if you are facing the temptation to steal to make ends meet, please know that God has many ways to answer those who pray “for the food that is needful” for them. He’s even provided our church with a benevolence fund to help with urgent needs. If you’re ever in that situation, I or one of our church’s pastors want to talk to you about how we can help you to remove yourself from the temptation to get what you need in ways that don’t profane the name of God.

Poverty can also lead us into other temptations. If you’re out of work and trying to make ends meet, it’s easy to doubt your heavenly Father knows what you need, and hard to obey Jesus’ teaching not to worry about tomorrow. Being poor often means being hungry, tired, cold, lonely, and frustrated, and all those things make it easy to sin against God and our neighbor. it’s right to pray for yourself and your neighbors to be removed from those opportunities to be tempted.

You should also see that Proverbs 30:7-9 that having too much wealth is a dangerous thing. If we’re full, we can deny that we need God at all. It’s wise to aim for a “sweet spot” amount of wealth so that we can remove ourselves from the temptation to steal and the temptation to forget God. 

The Right Amount of Wealth

So what is that “right amount” of wealth? It’s not having 3 mansions, or being an ascetic and having nothing at all. Listen to Proverbs 12:9: “Better to be lowly and have a servant than to play the great man and lack bread”. Proverbs actually laughs at the type of person who pretends to be a great man by buying the stuff we associate with wealth: expensive clothes, cars, and houses that they can’t afford. Today, we might call those people “posers”, and nobody likes them. Playing a great man by showing off is actually a great way to lose any wealth you do have by becoming a slave to luxury. It’s enough to have “bread”.

Notice the words the proverb does use to describe a good amount of wealth: “bread” and “servant”. It’s having enough to feed yourself (bread), and enough to pay someone a fair amount to feed themselves (a servant). It’s pretty modest. It’s usually a sign of ostentatious wealth today to have a servant, like a butler or footman on Downton Abbey, but when Proverbs was written the it was much more common to have servants. Rather than having servants, today we have a “service industry”. Whereas someone in Proverbs might have one servant who helps them at work, cooks, cleans, and helps them raise their kids, we’re more likely today to pay a separate employee, restaurant, janitor, and daycare to do that stuff. You might hire a contractor or an employee, or give money to your church so they can hire a pastor and pastoral assistant. But whether it’s a servant or someone in the service industry, it’s good to pay enough so that they can also put bread on their table.

We can even do this in a distinctive way in the church. It can be a beautiful thing to be able to provide for each other in a community. Recently, my wife and I hired a realtor and a handyman who go to Liberti Fairmount, another gospel-preaching church in Philadelphia, and I enjoy the thought that they tithed some of the money we paid to their church to help proclaim the gospel in our city. Parents, can you hire a high school or college student as a babysitter? If you need a car repair, or a website built, or an odd job done around the house, can you ask around at church to see if there’s anyone you could hire? By doing so, you’re not only partnering with God to help someone practice diligence and put bread on their table, you’re also building a relationship, and that’s a beautiful thing.

How to get money

So it’s good to have a measure of wealth that lets us avoid the challenges of poverty, and to care for ourselves and others. But how can we gain wealth? This is the type of question we can ask our dad! God is generous to give us advice on how we can gain wealth. Proverbs commends diligence, prudence, generosity, and righteousness when building wealth.

Diligence

First, Proverbs commends diligence in building wealth. Diligent work, and adding little by little, is wealth that is likely to last. Proverbs 13:11 teaches this: Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. The way to get wealth for the original readers of Proverbs was generally by working the land the Lord had assigned them. Farming is not a “get rich quick” kind of deal. Diligent farming means ploughing a row one day, then ploughing another row the next, and another, planting, praying for the Lord to send the right amount of rain in the right season, harvesting, and doing it all again the next year.

It seems like today, with wealth generally more available, that the temptation to try to get rich quick is more prevalent than ever. Maybe if you buy the next Apple stock, you can retire at 30. Sports betting seems to offer the chance to make easy money while sitting on your couch watching football. We’re always watching videos about passive income, and how to get rich without really trying. Maybe your goal is even to marry someone who’s rich, or who has a job that is likely to make them rich. But Proverbs 20:21 says An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end. Think about all the tragic stories about people who win the lottery, which is the ultimate “inheritance gained hastily”. Often, the wealth is squandered on luxuries or the winners are taken advantage of by family or friends (probably the same “friends” that we talked about earlier who won’t be around when the person is poor). A similar thing can happen to professional athletes who make millions before they’re 35 and are broke by the time they’re 40. Examples abound of the rich kids of billionaires who throw away their wealth. By the way, Proverbs 21:17 points out that if you are the type of person who wants to make a bunch of money so that you can live in luxury, you’re not likely to keep your wealth for very long. Proverbs 21:17 – “Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.” If you love the things money can buy, it’s surprisingly easy to blow all your cash on a house that’s too big, a car that’s nicer than what you need, and, just like when Proverbs was written, wine, expensive food, and designer clothes. An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end, and whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man. 

But, when you’re out there ploughing your field day after day rather than dreaming about how you could be making more money, God is doing something in you. Pastor Ray Ortlund points out that by diligent work, God isn’t building your wealth so much as he’s building you. He’s building you into the type of person that knows how to work hard, be smart with money, and most of all, trust God to provide for your needs through your diligent work today, tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.

If you’re younger and deciding on a career path, or you’re looking for work for any reason, Proverbs commends choosing work that you can be diligent in. Strive to do work within your abilities that allows you to work hard, make enough money to live on and give something to the church, and have enough time left in your day to rest. Remember that God is more interested in building you than he is in building your bank account.

Prudence

In addition to commending diligence, our heavenly Father also gives a few pieces of good old fashioned “street smart” advice. These proverbs might fall into the category of “prudence” – God is the original “Prudential” financial advisor. They just make good sense. It’s the kind of advice a father might give to their children. And in a spiritual sense, that’s what’s happening! Your heavenly father cares for you and wants to help you make good decisions with your money. 

Your heavenly father gives this street smart advice: in transactional relationships involving money, the other party is not your friend. Proverbs 20:14 – “‘Bad, bad,’ says the buyer, but when he goes away, then he boasts.” If you’ve ever tried to sell or buy something online, like Facebook marketplace, you know it’s a dog eat dog world out there. Often, people will try to scam you, to convince you that the item you’re selling is worthless, or to sell you a worthless item at a high price. 

Another piece of fatherly advice we receive in Proverbs is to be careful around debt. Proverbs 22:26-27 says “Be not one of those who give pledges, who put up security for debts. If you have nothing with which to pay, why should your bed be taken from under you?” “Security” might be more commonly called collateral today. It’s the idea that if you take out a loan, you offer something of value to the creditor to make sure they will get their money back. In this case, the proverb refers to the extreme case where you put up your own bed as a pledge for a loan. If you don’t pay, don’t expect mercy from the creditor, you’re going to be sleeping on the floor!

In general, it’s a wise idea to be careful when you take out a loan. I’m not saying never do it – in fact, it’s impossible for many or most of us to assemble enough cash at once to buy a car, house, or college degree – but in general, you want to think not just about what you’re getting now, but the “bed” that could be taken from you. If you’re considering a student loan, think about the type of job and income you’ll likely have when you graduate, and the payments that you’ll have to make on that loan. Think about what it would look like to be paying your mortgage or car loan in 2, 5, or 10 years from now. And our Father knows that many of us are too hasty to take on debt, so he tells us to slow down.

It’s also foolish to put up security for others so that they can get a loan: Proverbs 11:15 – “Whoever puts up security for a stranger will surely suffer harm, but he who hates striking hands in pledge is secure.” It might seem like a merciful thing to do in the moment, but the less you know about a person, the higher chance they’re not going to pay back the creditor, and that you’ll be on the hook for it!

God gives prudent advice to his children – pay attention to it!

Generosity

On the other hand, God also commends generosity. We shouldn’t put the Lord God our provider to the test by taking on foolish debt, but we should also remember that it’s our Father’s world, and he is generous to those who use their wealth to be generous. 

Proverbs 19:17 says “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed.” Rather than putting up security for a poor neighbor, God gives us the confidence to be generous and give to that person. Jesus even teaches his followers to lend and not expect to be paid back. And who will repay us? The LORD! It’s as if when we are generous to those in need, the LORD puts up security for us. And it’s not foolish for him to do so, because he’s never going to be in the situation in which he cannot pay! No one is going to take the LORD’s bed out from under Him. Pastor Mike will say a lot more about generosity in an upcoming sermon, but as regards today, I’ll say this: be generous to those in need, and trust that the Lord will repay you, whether in this age or the age to come.

Righteousness

The Lord repaying those who are generous, and this points to who really has the final say over the money that we have, and how we get it. Remember that ultimately, the president, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the big banks don’t run the economy – God does! You can remind yourself every time you open your wallet: “In God we trust”! In the time that Proverbs was written, there was even a more explicit connection between following the law and gaining material wealth. Under the old covenant – God’s people lived in a land of material prosperity that had been promised to them, and the law of the land was actually God’s law, rewarding the righteous and punishing evildoers. 

So it makes perfect sense that the number one piece of advice that Proverbs gives to accumulate money is actually to be righteous! Proverbs 15:6 – “In the house of the righteous there is much treasure, but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.” Again, think less about the super-rich here – super rich obviously does not mean super righteous! – but more about the ordinary people you know who have enough. I bet you know a lot of people who work hard Monday – Friday, pay their taxes, don’t steal, don’t spend all their money on fine wine and lottery tickets, and put food on the table with enough to give to the church. And we still expect the end result of stealing, selling drugs, and scamming to be imprisonment, and for trouble to befall their income! We still live and work in God’s economy, though it is twisted in this age by sin. Calvin reminds us that under the new covenant, God still brings enough of his justice into the world to remind us that justice is real. But he doesn’t bring his justice completely, so that we don’t forget to long for the better world that he has promised.

Maybe you are doing your best to make money in the way that Proverbs commends, and it just doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe you’re applying for jobs and not hearing back. Maybe you’re working diligently at the job the Lord has assigned you, but every dollar you earn seems to go towards paying rent that seems too high, fixing your car that keeps breaking, or towards your church giving that you’re wondering if you should keep giving. I want you to be encouraged to stay the course! Keep pursuing righteousness first. In this life, the general pattern is that, in the house of the righteous there is much treasure, but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.

And remember that Jesus has inaugurated a new covenant. In heaven, those who have lived righteous lives in Christ will have treasure in heaven that neither moth nor rust destroys, and where no thief steals, and where the wealth of the unrighteous rich will all be rotted and corroded. Proverbs 11:18 says, “The wicked earns deceptive wages, but one who sows righteousness gets a sure reward.” So whether you are rewarded in this life or the next, laboring righteously and for righteousness brings true wealth.

Righteousness is Better

Proverbs commends righteousness as the way we should accumulate wealth, but our Father gives us an even more important advice  – it’s actually better to have righteousness than riches. Proverbs 16:8 – “Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice.” We’ve looked at some reasons that money is good – now I want you to see that righteousness is better. We’ll look at two reasons – wealth doesn’t provide lasting security, but righteousness saves from death.

It provides lasting security

First, righteousness provides lasting security, and wealth doesn’t. Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. – 23:4-5. Here’s something wealth can’t do, whether it’s gained righteously or unrighteously, it won’t last. The proverb here uses the word “toil”, which refers to an extreme form of work. Toiling is working 80 hours a week to make as much money as you can. 

And Proverbs says it’s not wise to toil, because wealth is not going to last. Imagine someone who works long hours a week at a bank or law firm. They make enough money to retire early, and enjoy a few nice years traveling around the world. But all that toiling for wealth costs something too. The person who toils misses time with their kids and their spouse. The stress can even lead us to develop heart disease, cutting short the years the toiler was saving up to enjoy. Even if retirement is awesome, everyone dies, and there goes your wealth, flying away like an eagle towards heaven. If you are tempted to toil for wealth, consider what it costs to do so – be discerning enough to desist.

Don’t be deceived by the imaginary security wealth provides. A rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and like a high wall in his imagination. – 18:11. The rich are tempted to imagine that they have all the security that they need. But it’s an illusion. 

Jesus tells a parable about a man who toils and acquires so much grain that he has to build a new storehouse for it. He says, “look, I have enough grain stored up for many years. Time to put my feet up and relax”. But the man dies that very night, and what did all his wealth benefit him? The security that wealth provided was all in his imagination.

Do you have enough money laid up in your bank for many years? Does your job promise many years of steady income? Do not trust them. What if this very night, your life is required of you? Don’t invest in the imaginary security that money provides.

It will save you from death

Our earthly riches have an expiration date when we die. Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death. – 11:4. I find it really sad that the very wealthiest people seem to invest so much in things meant to prolong life – the best organic food and nutritional supplements, personal trainers, even extreme things like cryo chambers. Those who spend their money that way reveal that their best hope is to live as long in this world as possible. But God is still the one who ordains the very second that we die. There is a real day of God’s wrath that is coming, and you can’t buy your way out of it. 

Here’s the vision of that day of wrath that John seens in Revelation 6: “14 The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains,16 calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?””

Neither the rich, nor kings, not great ones, nor generals, can stand before the wrath of God that will be poured out on unrighteousness on that day. What we need to deliver us from death is the righteousness Proverbs 11:4 speaks about. Our only hope is to be in right standing with God who judges between good and evil.

But if we look at our lives, we fall so short righteousness. We’ve ignored our heavenly Father’s wise teaching. We have trusted that having enough money will bring us a satisfied and fulfilled life. We have been the friend of the poor person who has gone far from him in his hour of need. We have been the buyer who has said, “bad, bad”, and then boasted about the great deal we got by defrauding someone. We’ve either stolen and profaned the name of God, or been full of riches and forgotten him. The way we use and abuse our money reveals that none of us are righteous to be delivered from death on the day of God’s wrath.

But there is good news for poor, greedy, unrighteous, sinners: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich.” Jesus was not rich in this world, but he was rich in righteousness. He never stole to satisfy his hunger nor denied his heavenly Father for the sake of worldly comforts. In his poverty, when he had not eaten for forty days, he refused unrighteous bread from the devil because he lived on every word that proceeded from the mouth of God. And though he was so rich in relationships and authority that he could have called on 10 legions of angels to bring him down from the cross, he stayed so that he could complete the work the Father set before him. Yet his righteousness did not deliver him from death. On the cross, he died the death that we deserved on the day of wrath, and he offers us in exchange the riches of his righteousness. Because he died in place of unrighteous sinners, you can become rich in his righteousness and be saved from the day of wrath. Do not trust in your wealth or your own righteousness, but believe that Christ’s righteousness is sufficient for you, turn from your love of money and the things of this world, and you will be saved.

Can you see the new and better way to think about money that the gospel provides? You can recognize that money is useful in this world, and work diligently and righteously to gather enough to put food on the table and have enough to give to others. But if you have Christ, you don’t have to trust in the imaginary security that money provides and spend your effort toiling for it. You can rejoice that because you have Christ, you are rich in the righteousness that lasts and saves from death. You can be grateful for what your heavenly Father has given you, whether much or little, because Jesus Christ has made you rich in his righteousness. Charles Spurgeon tells the story of a poor old widow who sits down to a humble meal of bread and water, and blesses God for it, saying, “What, all this, and Christ too?” Or, in the words of an old hymn, “All things are mine, for I am his”.