Clough Manhood Series Lesson 39

Wealth-Part I: Purpose and Principle

Tonight we are going to move to another section in the doctrine of the Christian man; we have dealt so far with example after example after example to the point that I think we’ve pretty well shown certain trends that at least you can show from reading the various areas of Scripture lessons on your own by simply studying the biographies of some of the great men of Scripture. We have learned, basically, and should be now without argument that the man is cast deliberately from one end of the Scripture to the other as the leader. Never is the woman given the leadership responsibility, in every case we can find. We find this by the way the Word of God comes; it is always instructed to men. When Moses teaches the Law he doesn’t teach it to women, he teaches it to men. How do we know this? By the simply phrases, do this for your wives and your children, but you never find the phrase do this for your husbands which would be the phrase you would expect had the law been addressed to the women. It was addressed to the men.

We find this in the very sign of the ground covenant of all the Old Testament, the Abrahamic Covenant. And what was the sign of that covenant? Circumcision; so once again we find the Scriptures insistent on the male’s responsibility in leadership. The New Testament continues that Old Testament tradition, and we can just say at this point that this is one of the fundamental collision points that we may find if the ERA amendment goes into affect and the churches are asked to ordain women and put women in a (quote) “equal role.” In that case we’re going to be like the Christians in Uganda; we’re going to have to be in a position where overt or covert means we disobey the government decree; that is a violation of real rights.

We also found in these many examples that the twin characteristics of toughness or tenacity under God’s sovereignty is married to the characteristic of tenderness in form by God’s grace; so those two twin characteristics are some that recur again and again. We found several examples of men who were out of it spiritually and they taught us some things. Remember Cain; Cain characterized by his wandering, the wandering male who’s cut loose from the standards of Scripture, never can seem to get his feet on the ground. And so he takes after Cain, and like Cain searches for a place of rest and builds his own autonomous kingdom in his city. We find Lamech a man who finally, in the last throws of his rebellion goes to sex and violence. We find Samson, the little boy in a big man’s body. We find Saul, the stubborn proud man who winds up in a state which we would now call mentally ill. We find Ahab, who tried to solve all of his country’s problem in his own country’s apostate human viewpoint traditions.

Then we found in contrast to that, we find men who were with it spiritually; we found Noah, a man who led his family, one family against the entire world, and won. We find Abraham, a man that was asked to begin a wholly new thing and by faith, not knowing even the land to which he was called, stepped out as a pioneer. We find Joseph, the young boy, who was doing his task as unto the Lord, and found an interesting discovery, that when a man does this responsibilities flow in his direction. We found Joshua, that tough general also with the attitude of grace in undergoing capital punishment toward Achan in Joshua 7. We found David, the man of patient training who did not let his sin get him down but kept on. And then we found Elijah, the lone warrior against an entire state and nation, and carried the battle on to vigorous heights.

Now we’re going to conclude the manhood series with two sub series; you’ve heard the expression “for love and for money,” well, those are the two areas we are going to conclude with but in reverse order, for money and love. And so for the next few Sundays we’re going to deal with the biblical doctrine of money, cash, wealth. This is an area of central occupation and if this doesn’t interest men then we always have sex with the Song of Songs and the book of Ruth. So after we’ve covered money and sex I don’t know what else there is left on the usual man’s mind. If you wish to hand in a feedback card I might oblige.

Tonight, then, we move to the first of the sub series on money. And therefore we’re going to work with the concept of wealth and we turn first to Matthew 6:19. We want to build up our understanding of just the general idea of wealth in the Bible. We’re going to this by a series of references, a series of propositions and then when we’re all done we’re going to try to have some practical applications where you can go home and work some problem. And we’ll try to do this as we go along through the money situation.

Matthew 6:19, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, [20] But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. [21] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Many, many principles could be derived from this passage, tonight we’re interested in only one; that is not a major principle at all of this passage but it’s a basic one for our purposes, and that is that physical wealth in time is the symbol of eternal wealth; that Jesus obviously is using physical wealth here to teach something about eternal wealth.

Now it ought to occur to us as we read these kinds of passages that there must be some correspondence between physical wealth here and now and eternal wealth forever. Those two things aren’t compared just simply because God felt like comparing them, rather they’re compared because he designed the creation that way. So there is a correspondence between wealth in time and wealth in eternity. The point of verses 19-21 is not the wealth, but notice in verse 19 the collection of the wealth; and notice in verse 20 the protection, the eternal stability of the wealth. So we have the big key contrast here is a contrast between mortal history, temporal history, that we were talking about this morning in which wealth simply vaporizes. It’s not enduring. That’s the point the Scriptures are making and that’s the difference between eternal wealth and temporal wealth. One simply is eternal and the other simply is temporal, but they’re both forms of wealth, and they both are very similar. And we’re going to see how later on, in these various Scriptures, they are similar in this: they give us a chance to glorify our character, the things of wealth, give a man freedom to glory his character; It gives a man this kind of freedom because wealth amounts to a tangible evidence that we subdue the earth.

So wealth by itself is not evil. Now I’m going to show some pretty rough passages tonight against wealth so that’s why I’m starting out right away with the admonition—the Bible is not saying wealth per se is evil because if it did Jesus would not be picking temporal wealth to illustrate eternal truth. Now there’s one little footnote here while we’re on this first point, that temporal wealth and eternal wealth are similar; one of the point is that notice all wealth in the Scripture is owned by private individuals, not the state. Now there strictly is no such thing as any society without capital; you can’t function, you always have to have capital assets somewhere. The great debate among men on the face of the earth is who owns the capital? Does the state own the capital or do individuals own the capital. If you believe that the state owns the capital we would have to question you further. Maybe you’re a Nazi; maybe you’re a communist; maybe you’re a socialist. Maybe you’re one of those kind of people, but those are the kinds of people that believe that the state should own capital, beyond the usual means of enforcing law and order. Amassing capital in the state is not Scriptural; it simply is not a function of the fourth divine institution.

Now this ought not to be hard to see when we think of this principle that wealth is similar to eternal wealth; eternal wealth includes salvation. A simple question, who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and is saved? States or individuals? Well obviously societies don’t corporately believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, individuals believe and are saved; it’s individuals who receive eternal wealth. All right, that’s why states don’t own anything; states are not redeemable, only individuals are redeemable. And so we insist that the concept of wealth is primarily private and not public. Public wealth simply is a misnomer. If you want to doubt that go down and take your brick out of the post office and see how far you get with it. All right, so the Bible insists on private wealth. Why? Corollary to the fact that temporal physical wealth is similar to eternal wealth and eternal wealth is individual.

Now the second thing, we have to see this from Deuteronomy 8, one of the most famous passages on wealth. In fact, in this passage in Deuteronomy 8 you have summarized very neatly in one chapter all the basic principles that have to do with wealth. True, this passage doesn’t go into many of the details that we’d like to talk about and we will talk about, but all the principles are here in this passage. At this point in the argument of the book of Deuteronomy we come across the second point of our evening presentation that wealth is very often a sign of blessing. Not only is wealth similar to eternal wealth, but very often it’s treated in Scripture as a sign of blessing, it’s a sign of grace. We have to understand, however, in what way is it a sign of grace and blessing.

So at this point in the argument of Deuteronomy we’re developing, if we were to exegete the passage, and we can’t, we just can refer to some elements in it. If we were working through the book of Deuteronomy tonight we would start off with the first and great commandment: “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul.” And we would say that Deuteronomy 6, 7, 8, 9, part of chapter 10 are all chapters that expand the first and great commandment, “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart,” that is, your mental attitude. And so these chapters, everyone of them, chapter 6, 7, 8, 9, deal with something to do with the first and great commandment. Now chapter 8 deals with the first and great commandment with regard to wealth. So let’s work through this on a verse by verse basis and watch what it says about wealth.

Deuteronomy 8:1, “All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to your fathers.” Now notice that the whole chapter on wealth begins with living and multiplying and subduing the land. This a context of wealth; wealth is seen as a visual, physical tangible sign that somebody with some wisdom has to do something. [2] “And thou shalt remember,” this is after they gain their wealth, “Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led these forty yeas in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to test thee, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. [3] And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which you knew not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make you to know that man does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD does man live. [4] Thy raiment grew not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years. [5] Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chastens his son, to the LORD thy God chastens thee. [6] Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, to walk in His ways, and to fear Him.”

[7] “For the LORD thy God brings thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; [8] A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil, and honey; [9] A land wherein thou shalt not eat bread without scarceness; thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass,” or really bronze. [10] “When you have eaten and are full, then you shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which He has given thee.”

So in the first ten verses we have a warning to remember the lesson of the wilderness wanderings. For forty years God tested them; He tested them at the fundamental point of all sanctification. What is that fundamental point? Loyalty. Notice how it’s expressed; after you get your wealth remember… remember that He taught and He humbled you in verse 2. He led us in the forty years, Moses says, to humble us, and the word “humble us” means to get us grace oriented, to get us tuned to looking at life from God’s viewpoint and remembering that what we have we have by grace. To prove to you, that is “to test you,” to bring to the surface by heat, “to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments, or not.” The point of verse 2, and it’s a vital point to remember about all wealth, wealth is not related to your efforts. The Scriptures, this is a particular doctrine that is taught again and again in the Scriptures, that wealth is not related exactly to your work. You’ve seen this on these (quote) “chance” deals that oftentimes a man says, we had a breakthrough in our company, or we made a sale; whew, I’m glad we did that. “We” did that? And if you analyze all the market factors the factors were all beyond their control. They did some things, they were diligent to perform a good sales presentation; they were diligent to have a good product to sell, but in the end it was other factors that operated to generate wealth.

And so God says the first thing I want you to know is that wealth does not come to you on a strict one to one basis. In other places a man may exert tremendous amounts of work and labor and the wealth will be far less than what he would think he would get. So the Bible recognizes that one’s wealth acquisition is not in one to one linkage with one’s efforts. That’s to remind us—grace orientation, “to humble you,” to make you… notice the strong force of the words in verse 3, because what verse 3 is describing is the opposite of wealth, poverty, and it was in poverty that Israel learned her orientation to grace. “He humbled you, and He allowed you to hunger, and He fed you with manna,” and the whole point of the manna feasting, if we ever think of it this way is He’s deliberately interrupting normal cause/effect. You see, the problem, there’s something neat about cause/effect and then there’s something spiritually dulling about cause/effect. It’s nice to know that we live in the middle of order, and that given this cause we can produce this result. That’s nice to know the creation works that way. But every once in a while God interrupts cause/effect to say hey, hold it, who do you think is behind the cause/effect? Would you look up just once in a while. So this is why we have these fierce and miraculous interruptions.

So in verse 3 God interrupts normal food. This manna is something that no one yet has figured out what it is. In fact, the word “manna” as you know from the Deuteronomy series means “what is it?” It’s the Hebrew word “what,” they didn’t know what it was so they named it “what,” what is it? Would you get a quart of “what is it” out of the refrigerator, please. And that’s from which we get the word “manna.” Now why did they do that? Because what Israel was doing is they were put in a position where there could be no cause on their part and yet the effect came. So God interrupted the cause/effect to show that the effect isn’t only explainable by creature causation. The creature can’t explain his wealth just on the basis of creature energy, but he’s got to become alive to the fact that his wealth is also Creator energy.

And notice what he says, “that He might make you to know,” that’s force, He made you to learn that man does not live and cannot live on bread only. Notice it says “only.” Obviously God says you need bread, but what He says is that on the normal system of cause/effect that we have, that you put X units of work and you get Y production, be careful of that; Y cannot be explained only on the basis of X, it has to also be explained on the basis of the Word. Therefore he says, “I made you know” that your food, and your primary wealth for food is primary wealth, food is the basic primary wealth, that, at the most critical point is not due and is not the primary thing which causes you to subsist. “…but by My Word that proceeds out of My mouth,” God says, and I want you to learn that, I’m going to make you learn that.

And to demonstrate this, verse 4 God interrupted cause/effect in the area of clothing, another source of primary, what we call primary wealth: food and clothing. Isn’t it remarkable that at those two critical points God interrupted cause/effect. And in the clothing, have you ever seen a situation like this. This is not fairy stories, don’t buy the liberal argument this never happened; it very clearly happened. Your clothing didn’t get old for forty years. Now if you could invent a process by which your expensive suits and clothes and dresses never got old for forty years, you’d be a wealthy individual. Of course in these days they didn’t have some Paris designer changing things every two months.

[5] “Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD is chastening you.” In other words, underneath wealth is a higher goal, sanctification and chastening. So, wealth is fine but it’s got to be looked upon underneath God’s sovereign chastening. Verses 7-10 list other sources of wealth, and you could go on and see that this is real wealth for an agricultural economy. Look at this, look at the land described in verses 7-8; a highly productive land, millions of dollars worth of fertilizer in that land; water in that land, no irrigation needed. That’s wealth, and God says I’m giving it to you and I expect when you get that wealth, verse 10, I expect an attitude. And I expect that you will bless Me; I expect that you will understand that this wealth did not come by sheer mechanical cause/effect.

Now Deuteronomy 8:11-18 amplify what happens if verse 10 isn’t followed. “Beware that you don’t forget the LORD thy God, in not keeping His commandments, and His ordinance, and His statutes, which I command thee this day,] [12] Lest, when you have eaten and are full, and you have built wealthy homes, and you dwell therein, [13] And when your herds and your flocks multiply,” there’s your assets, your capital, “and your silver and your gold are multiplied,” bank deposits and your money, “and all that you have is multiplied,” wealth period; [14] “That thine heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD thy God, who brought you forth [out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage],” who saved you we would say, [15] “Who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, [wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint]; [16] Who fed you in the wilderness [with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that He might humble thee, and that He might test thee, to do thee good at the latter end].”

Verse 17, what is the heresy? Then when you are wealthy “you say in your heart, My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.” Cause/effect; God says don’t forget, X does not produce Y. It looks that way in most situations but don’t you ever forget that there is not a one to one relationship. [18] “You will remember [the LORD thy God]; for it is He that gives you power,” or capacity “to get wealth.” Notice verse 18, one of the primary principles, it is God that gives the person the power to get wealth. It is not the person themselves. It is a spiritual battle going on between the individual and his God. Then the punishment, verses 19-20, “And it shall be, if you do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, [and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that “ye shall surely perish. [20] As the nations which the LORD destroys before your face, so you shall perish, because [ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God.]” Because you weren’t obedient. That’s a sign of God’s love. Remember we said, as a father chastens his son, so I chasten you. It’s very simple, because God loves us He is not going to permit wealth to come between us and Him.

And so the second point of the evening, besides wealth being a mirror or a similarity to eternal wealth, is the fact that wealth can be a sign of blessing, and always ought to be looked upon as derivative of God. Never just a sheer product of my efforts and my works.

Let’s go on to another biblical concept of wealth; let’s go on to the idea of what wealth conveys to someone. For this we have to turn to a series of Proverbs. Turn to Proverbs 10. Proverbs has much to say about wealth. Proverbs is realistic, and in these verses you will see that wealth has a godly function. What is the purpose of wealth? It is a means for exercising volition. You can say well, I’ve got volition, but how do you exercise it if you don’t have some property. How do you, for example, give to someone, if you don’t anything to give them? Charity is always individual and charity presupposes private ownership. When we have welfare today and a government type system, don’t ever call that charity. It isn’t! It is simply the government taxing by force wealth and confiscating it and then redistributing it. Welfare today is forcible redistribution of wealth; it has nothing to do with charity. Charity is when an individual person gives out of his own pocket of individual assets to someone else. Don’t be snowed, therefore, when some politician says oh, don’t you have a heart for the poor? Don’t you want to give to the poor? Sure, we have charities to do that. It’s a non sequitur for a politician to say exercise your spirit of charity, where is it, vote for my confiscation program. See, this is where you and I are being manipulated by political shenanigans. The Christian conscience becomes an interesting tool for politicians to use, make everybody feel guilty so they’ll vote for confiscatory programs. But don’t ever yield on that point; no government form of redistribution of wealth by force is to be confused with an act of charity.

Proverbs 10:15, there’s a series of these verses that show the real function of wealth. They’re very common sense, very easy to see. “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their poverty.” And the gist of the proverb is that the rich man has a haven for many of the adversities of life. He has a definite advantage in living, and therefore he has the freedom to exercise his volition as a poor man doesn’t. And the poor man, it simply says, his destruction; that is, he’s reduced in his freedom; he’s reduced because he can’t exercise his freedom over a large area because he hasn’t got any wealth to do it with. One always needs private capital to express charity. There has never been in history freedom of religion without private capital. Don’t you ever buy any other song and dance. There’s only one way freedom occurs—private ownership.

Proverbs 18:11, another little comment from the Scriptures on wealth, but this one with a warning. This bounds the wealth. “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city,” once again the same picture. Why the strong city? Well, in the ancient times the ancient city was a source of protection; the strong city was a place where, because it was strong what could you do there? You could carry on your business and live there. You could raise your children there without fear the Assyrians would come take them away. You could be happy and relaxed in your family, not always wondering whether they were going to be assassinated by somebody by a squad of goons. The good and the strong city was the place where you could go to market with your products and not worry about getting ripped off by a bunch of thieves in the market place. So the strong city was the protected city; the place where freedom lived.

And so that’s why, again, this is illustrated, “The rich man’s wealth” causes his freedom, it’s “his strong city,” but, “as an high wall in his own conceit.” That’s the limitation; the warning of this proverb is yes, the wealth teaches freedom but not autonomy. You can’t build a high, high, high wall and have total insurance against everything. That’s man’s quest, isn’t it? Think of how a lot of men you know organize their lives; think of the person who wants total insurance against every adversity. You can see this, you saw it in the paper the other day, the steel workers, a good illustration, this happens again and again in the history of American economic fallout; the problem of tariffs, whether it’s the farmer, whether it’s the steel worker, whether it’s somebody else, it’s interesting that when we’re producing here, we’re in the United States of America, and over here is country X and over in country X we have people who, for some reason, are able to more cheaply produce a volume of some quality, Q, than some people in the United States. What do we want to do? We want to impose tyranny by creating trade barriers, to (quote) “protect the domestic industry,” but does God like this? In every passage relative to this in the Scriptures I find free trade to be biblical. What would free trade do? It would make us more efficient in the production of Q to meet our competition, or we’d simply drop our production of Q and start producing something else, P, X, V, Y. But men always want protection; protection for their foolishness. Because I can’t produce the quality as cheap as he can, well then I want protection against that man’s efficiency. And so I create trade barriers.

Or take some forms of unionism; because here is a non-union worker who would like to work 60 hours a week instead of 48 hours and do a better job, I’ve got to be protected against that man; why, he’s efficient, he produces; I want a law—compulsory labor, closed shop. It’s the same spirit. It’s a spirit for the high wall that demands protection for my inefficiency; demands protection for my incompetence, and demands protection for my unwanted product. So we see this operate in the men’s world a lot; the spirit of autonomy sneaks in the door through the tiny cracks; even Christian men think this way. And it’s an apostate way of thought.

Let’s look at another one, Proverbs 18:23, “The poor uses entreaties,” or literally, “he speaks entreaties,” the word entreaty means request for grace, request for aid, “The poor speaks with request for aid, but the rich man answers roughly,” or harshly. Now this isn’t an indictment of a rich man in the context of the proverb at this point and I explained this in the Proverbs series. This proverb in 18:23 is simply saying that the rich man doesn’t have to cow-tow to people. He has a greater freedom to tell somebody to go cram it; that’s what it means to answer someone harshly. And the wealth gives him the power to do this, and it gives him freedom from this kind of social pressure. And so wealth is looked upon as good; not that the man would take advantage of this, with deliberate harsh applies to everybody, but he isn’t liable to these subtle and maybe not so subtle pressures. So there’s more of the freedom of wealth.

Proverbs 19:4, “Wealth makes many friends, but the poor is separated from his neighbor.” Once again this is not saying something against the wealth, it’s not insincere friends that are meant here in verse 4, it’s simply saying that the rich have a better social life; that’s the way we’d translate it today. They have a better social life, better developed social life. And there again is one of the benefits of wealth. The Bible is not blind t the benefits of wealth. I show you all this because of other passages that are negative.

Proverbs 22:7, one that we will come back to later. Here is the primary picture of freedom and wealth. “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” Very simple; over and over again in Scripture slavery, and I would defy anyone to show any passage in the Bible at any point where slavery is phrased in other than economic terms. Now we think, because of the Civil War experience, of slavery as some sort of a political bondage type thing. And that’s because we’ve misread the Civil War anyway, but as Americans we have trouble with this. But in the Scriptures, and in the ancient world slavery wasn’t a political thing; it was an economic thing. One sold ones self into slavery to pay off a debt. And therefore slavery means economic servitude, and there in Proverbs 22:7 you have the basic biblical view of indebtedness—slavery.

Let’s turn to the New Testament, we’re through with Proverbs, we’ve seen the third point of the evening, that wealth is a need for exercising responsibility. Now the verse that everybody quotes any time you talk about money; so now with all that preparation, we come to the New Testament, 1 Timothy 6:9. This is a very hardnosed verse, a very serious verse, and that’s why tonight on our series on money we start with this section.

1 Tim 6:9-10. We’ll start with verse 8 because this gives us a fundamental option on the verse, orientation. And having food and clothing let us therewith be content. [9] But they that wish to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. [10] For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

Now we can’t brush this over; there’s some serious accusations here. First, verse 9 and verse 10 are parallel; notice they start out, both those verses the same way. First in verse 9, it’s a verb of volition, “they who constantly wish to be rich,” and then verse 10, “the love of money,” so we have a certain attitude here, a certain lusting because in verse 8 it’s obviously expressing the opposite of covetousness, it’s expressing contentment. So we have a covetous spirit in verse 9 and 10. And this covetous spirit, according to verse 9, results in drowning. Do you see the value of learning biblical symbols. All this morning what did we say about Genesis 1:2? That God has a certain chaos built into the system that can threaten to undo us, take us over, drown us and smash us. In verses like this you see this almost subliminal power come back up through the verse, and if you catch onto this with your spiritual eyes, and you begin to see these themes in the Scripture, it gives tremendous guts to your reading of the Bible verse by verse. Here’s one of those cases where that motif of chaos, sort of like the water boiling in the pot, it’s still there, and will be there until the eternal state; and those above it, who don’t buy the Word of God draw upon the powers of chaos and the powers of chaos takes them down to oblivion; they will drown in destruction and perdition. The creation is built this way, to destroy itself when evil reigns. And so men are trapped in the chaos.

And then verse 10 goes on to say that “the love of money is the root of every kind of evil.” Now that is probably one of the strongest verses you will ever see about the comprehensiveness of sin in the Scriptures. Now there are various sins in the Scripture and all have the common characteristic of rebellion against God. But some sins has results that span the whole spectrum of life, and that’s what this verse is saying. The particular sin of covetousness of wealth brings forth every category of evil; all other evils can be traced to the mental attitude of covetousness of power of wealth. It’s an extremely serious thing.

And because we don’t have a reference like this for any other kind of sin, we ask the question—why is the sin of coveting wealth apparently so much more profound in its effects than other kinds of sin? Well, it says, “which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith.” “…they have erred from the faith,” that means there’s been a religious shift in their allegiance. Apparently, then, the area of coveting wealth is related to negative volition more than any other overt or mental attitude sin pattern, that this one, in some way, is linked, like a hand in a glove, to rebellion against God. Said another way, wherever you have a pattern of rebellion against God, somewhere, if you look hard enough, you will find covetousness of wealth, I want! And that is the source of the sin.

Now let’s watch how this is carried out throughout the Scriptures, the seriousness of mismanagement of wealth. Well, you know the 10^th commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” but let’s turn all the way back to the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 19:23. Said another way, in more modern terms, coveting wealth and the warnings that have to do with that are like a high voltage sign, it says “Danger.” High voltage is great, we need it, we wouldn’t have lights in this building today if there weren’t high voltage lines up and down 34^th street, even though I can’t stand that concrete jungle that was planted there. But we do have to meet the high voltage, but it’s bad news if you touch it the wrong way, and that’s the play of wealth. There is an awesome power that can crush you spiritually. And this is why in Matthew 19:23, “Then said Jesus unto His disciples, Truly I say unto you, that a rich man can hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Now let’s not gloss it over, not just spiritualize that; that’s a statement of fact.

What Jesus is saying is that if you divided the population up by economic strata, statistically you had the poor down here, the rich up here, we have the upper middle class here, your lower middle class here, that the rich people have the lowest chance to be saved. Now that’s a pretty serious accusation. It leads you to suspect then, we’d better watch out what is going on here with wealth. Why is it that wealth has an anti-salvation affect on a whole statistical portion of the population? Verse 24, “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. [25] And when His disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed,” the reason being that some of them were wealthy. Don’t think of the disciples as some sort of pan handlers that walked up and down Galilee. These men were at least upper middle class; John and James had a wealthy fishing business in the Sea of Galilee; Peter was too. They weren’t stupid and they weren’t poor. Matthew was a tax collector and you know he must have made a mint on bribes before he came into the [can’t understand word]. So these men knew wealth and they were afraid, verse 25 shows you the effect of men who heard something and wished they didn’t hear it. These men know exactly what he said, that statistically wealthy people have a harder time being saved than poorer people. And they said, [25] “Well, who then can be saved?” And that’s when Jesus said, [26] “…with God all things are possible.” That’s not too encouraging.

So we have to look at other passages of Scripture. Let’s look at Luke 1:46 and go through, this is a little after the passage that the women read in our service in communion; next Sunday evening we will have communion and we will have a woman of our congregation read a passage on Mary, but here is the famous Magnificat of Mary, and look at it, verse 46, here’s Mary, and she’s rejoicing in God; look at the fierceness of this young girl’s faith. “And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, [47] And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. [48] For He has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden; for, behold, fro henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. [49] But he that is mighty has done unto me great things; holy is his name. [50] And His mercy is no them that fear him from generation to generation. [51] He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. [52] He has put down the mighty from their seats, [and exalted them of low degree].” Verse 53, “He has filled the hungry with good things; and the rich He has sent empty away.” Now those are pretty stern words. “He has filled the hungry with good things; but the rich He sent empty away.” And she rejoices in God. You see that fiery spirit against wealth.

Let’s look at it some more; let’s turn to James; James was Jesus’ half-brother, so we’re getting right in the family now. We’ve seen what Jesus’ mother thought about wealth and now we’re going to see what one of Jesus’ brothers thought about wealth. By the way, this shows you that the whole family was imbued with this mental attitude. James 1:10, “But the rich rejoice in the fact that he is made low, because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. [11] For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withers the grass, and its flower falls, and the grace of the fashion of it perishes; so also shall the rich man fade way in his ways.” James 2:5, “Hearken, my beloved brethren, Has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He has promised to them that love him? [6] But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats? [7] Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by which you are called?”

James 5:1, remember, this is the half-brother of Jesus speaking. “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. [2] Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. [3] Your gold and silver are rusted, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. You have heaped treasure together for the last days.”

Now those are a series of verses that obviously don’t speak too highly of wealth. Now how do we reconcile this? Has the New Testament suddenly shifted gears from the Old Testament, in the Old Testament where there’s wealth and in the New Testament it downgrades it? No. The point is we have made so far that wealth is a means to exercising responsibility, but it also therefore is what? It’s a means by which we glorify our inner character and express it. And a person who is wealthy, the upper class, has the means available to thoroughly express and at the same time harden his soul into his negative volition; he has all the means there to exercise whatever rebellion he wishes to express. And so he hardens himself in his own rebellion. And so wealth becomes a vehicle of damnation to those who are in rejection of the Word of God.

Now let’s look at some examples in our present day to just back off this a moment and see what the Bible is getting at. Let’s consider some examples. Why is it that we have campus evangelism on major university campus having to be run by Campus Crusade, Intervarsity, Navigators, all the student groups he locally or the Friday night tape class, why is it that the students are the vanguard of evangelism on the campus? Where are the faculty? Where are the Christian faculty members? Is it against the law for a Christian faculty member to express himself on campus? No, the loud mouth atheist faculty members do it all the time. Where are the Christian faculty members? I’ll tell you where they are; they are worried by one word called “tenure.” That means job security. I don’t want to talk out loud, get involved in a controversy on campus, that threatens my job. And so the students bear the brunt of campus evangelism when a hundred years ago at Yale, Timothy Dwight got up on the campus and he challenged every atheist faculty member to a public debate in the Yale auditorium. And there were men that challenged him, one after another, and Dwight put them down in front of the whole student body. Now there was a man who wasn’t afraid of his tenure, afraid of his job, and afraid of something else, his shadow probably. So you have these twerpy Christian faculty members hiding behind their desks and their faculty offices while the students bear the brunt, and bear the shock, and bear the ridicule, and so on of witnessing for Jesus Christ.

Let’s go into an area of the court; we have an organization called the Christian Legal Society; they’ve been in existence for years, and what has it done? Well, they’ve had lots of fellowships together, held hands, told how good Jesus is. But while we were losing legal battles across the country where were all the Christian lawyers? Oh, they don’t want to get their practice upset, don’t get involved in these hot potato cases; of course, the atheists lawyers, they do a very good job, they have their organizations and somehow they weren’t feeling intimidated going to court for their cases. But where are the Christian lawyers? Same place Christian faculty members are.

What about Christian men in the community; school controversies, textbook controversies, always Mrs. so and so and Mrs. this and Mrs. that? Where are the men? Some of, true, is due to time and the job but not all of it… not all of it. You notice and look around the non-Christian men, when they want to push a point and you go watch the city council, for example, and you watch the movie ordinance thing that came in here about four or five years ago; I saw a lot of liberal men down there testifying. And then we were looking around for the Christians, and where were they; oh, we had some nice ladies from First Baptist Church showed up. Where are the Christian men? I’ll tell you where they were? They’re afraid, they’re chicken to get involved because it might hurt their business. Well, now it’s a strange thing the non-Christian never thinks of that; it’s always the Christian men that are worried about getting their business hurt by getting involved.

You see, wealth and its damnable effect it has on the cutting edge of spirituality. You can see it back in the Bible in the days of Israel; Israel was told to conquer the land, kill all the inhabitants of the land. So what did the Israelites do? Taxed them, there’s a nice thing, just rip them off every once in a while, it’s good, you know, we enjoy the taxes. God didn’t say tax them; He said destroy them. Oh, you can’t do that, God, it would be destroying bigger taxes. And so all during the Judges period they wanted to tax the Canaanites instead of exterminating the Canaanites.

Wealth and the love of money, the root of all kinds of evil. We’ve already expressed how this gets down to… everybody has this we want to protect our inefficiency thing. We see it in bureaucracy, we carve our department out and we’re going to defend it against all reforms; you got to the other guy’s department, but don’t make me get more efficient, don’t tax my powers of creativity. And we find this, whether it’s in bureaucracy, whether it’s in businessmen, whether it’s farmers that are growing their crops that nobody wants, but they want 100% parity to grow useless junk. This again is the fact that we have situation where the free market, if allowed to travel would solve the problem. Adam Smith’s invisible hand but nobody wants to trust the invisible hand. Let the other guy trust it but I’m not.

But finally where you see the wealth raised to an art is in American advertising. No country on earth has perfected advertising the way we have. And advertising is good, obviously you’ve got to advertise to communicate. But in the process of generating advertising, most of what goes for advertising today is planned covetousness. Advertising incorporates experts in stimulating your coveting sin nature. Watch ads and watch to what they appeal? Madison Avenue has generated more covetousness than any other source. I’m not blaming them, more power if they can do it, we’re so stupid we let them do it, that’s the problem. I’m not against advertising, let them advertise it but just have it as kind of a chess game—try to make me covet! See, that’s the attitude you ought to have. Advertising exerts a pressure and many times it’s almost a subliminal pressure, constantly using all sorts of devices including guilt to make you covet.

So we live in that kind of a situation. That’s why the New Testament has these hardnosed verses. It simply a warning not against wealth as such, but against those who wish and crave and lust for it. It’s the break that attitude where. as in Deuteronomy 8, Israel forgot her Father, and she thought that X produces Y, she thought the normal cause/effect operating, it wasn’t, God cause/effect. Well, it’s nice to say that but does the Bible give us any help in handling our covetousness of wealth and yet at the same time not killing the desire to produce? I don’t want to stop tonight and say hey, all wealth is wrong, because then I’d violate the original mandate which was to go out and subdue the earth and get wealthy. So we can, however we handle wealth, say wealth is wrong, you ought not to strive for wealth. And yet we’ve got to avoid coveting. Well, here are some verses that we can go to where these problems are dealt with.

Turn to Phil 4, we’ll look at the Scriptural principles and then we’ll conclude by some practical applications. Later on we’ll be talking about indebtedness, particularly young couples that go into marriage, they get into debt and then that kind of just takes the joy out of their first four or five years of marriage because they’re busy under the pile, paying all this debt, this kind of stuff. Well, the one way that’s going to have to be handled with a young couple particularly is learning these principles of controlling wealth rather than wealth controlling you and it starts with contentment.

Philippians 4:11, notice at the end of that verse Paul says, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” Notice he had to learn it; it didn’t come to him just because he had the spiritual gift of apostleship. Now God didn’t, Paul, you’re saved, you’re saved, you’ve got all the riches in Christ—boing, you’re content. No, Paul had to learn case after case after case like you have to learn, like I have to learn, it’s a learning experience. So, be encouraged, it’s something we have to learn. But it’s something you ought to pray about in our Christian life, Lord, teach me to be content. And that goes, gentlemen, for some of your wives who are putting the pressure on you to earn more money so they can have more things. They need to learn to be content.

Phil 4:19, “But my God shall supply all of your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Notice it does not say “My God shall supply your desires according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” There’s a difference between need and desires, and God, at least, knows the difference. We have to learn the difference.

Let’s turn to another passage, Hebrews 13:5-6, here’s a verse that tells us what to do and gives us a promise on how to do it. So did Philippians for that matter; Philippians 4:19 is your promise verse. But here in Hebrews 13:5, “Let your behavior pattern be without love of money,” literally, “and be content with such things as you have; for He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. [6] So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do to me.” So the principle in verse 5 again is contentment; simple little lesson. So once again, “be content with such things as you have.”

Now, the problem is that we don’t want to trust that God’s going to supply the need. So now if you stop and boil it all down, look what we’ve done. We’ve come back to the most fundamental two plus two lesson of Christianity. Remember, in the divine viewpoint framework the way we’ve organized it. What was the primary thing that was taught in the Old Testament, with Abraham? Faith. Taught before all these other things, Exodus, Mount Sinai, all the details, here is the kindergarten lesson: faith, trust that God will provide. All right, that’s the lesson that’s needed in contentment. You can’t be content if you haven’t learned the lesson of trusting the Lord in this area.

So that’s one thing on how to handle wealth, you become content by trusting the Lord. But how do you balance that without becoming a non-productive person. Surely the Bible wants us to produce. The answer is found in which comes first. God said to Israel back in the Deuteronomy 8 passage that we read tonight, “If you will keep My commandments,” then what would happen? All these other things will be added to you. So how do we maintain aggressive attitudes, without turning into some sort of a passive little pansy type—well, I’m content, ho-hum; sure, so is the person that’s sleeping content too, but they’re not producing much.

Well, the way you take out your aggressiveness and your desire is to conquer with the Word of God, whether it’s your profession, learning the skills of that profession, the skills of the structure of creation or what but let that be the object of your aggressiveness. Aggressively subdue and gain the skill, not where you’re always looking, well, that’s going to make me a pile here and that’s going to make me a pile here; don’t look behind, look ahead and become as skilled as you can in your field, and do as good a job as you can in your field, and trust the Lord to bless in back of you as you plow the ground. That’s the attitude. So the aggressive attitude isn’t killed by those verses I gave you; those verses I gave you simply reorient your eyesight and move you over to where it is that you apply your aggressiveness.

Let’s see how this works out in particular examples before we conclude tonight. How did you gain the riches of Christ? Do you gain it by sleeping? No, you gained it by believing the gospel; so there was something on your part. You responded to the gospel message as a result, you became rich. But did you believe the gospel and when you believed the gospel you know all about the position in Christ, you knew the 34-35 or 36 things that you get at the point of salvation? Did you know all about the riches of the Trinity? You didn’t know that; you simply responded to the claims of the Word of God in your life and lo and behold, after you responded, look at what came with it—blessing upon blessing upon blessing! Now there’s the proper cause/effect. If we respond to the Word in back of us as we plow, in back of us, God drops in the riches, and if He doesn’t, that’s up to Him.

Israel, Deuteronomy 8, gained riches by obeying the Word, not by deliberately becoming rich. The advantage of this all is, is that after… if we follow this attitude, I will be obeying the Word and letting the Lord drop the riches in behind, the advantage of this is when He does drop the riches we are ready to handle and manage them.

Our concluding verse tonight will be Genesis 18:18. Said another way, character has to be developed before wealth. In Genesis 18:18 God spoke to Abraham, this is one of those places where He’s going to entrust Abraham with certain covenant blessings, including wealth. Now look what he says. “Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him,” he’s going to do something in verse 17 for Abraham; and in verse 18, when it says Abraham shall “become a great and mighty nation,” doesn’t that at least connote he’s going to become a wealth man. And his progeny are going to become wealthy? Yes, and Jewish people still basically are wealthy as a society goes. So we’ve had that blessing go on for centuries, but what was the basis of it. Verse 19, “For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken.” Character must precede wealth. If God trusts us, the wealth can come. But if He can’t it’s an act of love to keep the wealth from us.

Now let’s practical exercise as we go through this to make it kind of interesting, particularly if you want to chase some things down. Here’s some practical things to do. Get a piece of paper and start listing what you think your assets are right now, at this point in time. Ask yourself what your assets were five years ago. After you generate those two figures, don’t worry, we’re not handing them in, keep them to yourself but just think through the exercise, generate those two figures. Now ask yourself, in the last five years what have I learned about management of wealth? Things I’ve done wrong, things that I’ve done right. What have I learned? Then, in addition to that, do this; make a list of the things of the last five years that you personally have bought that you don’t need, that after you bought, nah, I don’t need that, throw it out, garage sale it, do something with it. List the things that you’ve bought that basically you really didn’t need, that you bought on the spur of the moment, at that time you thought boy, the world is going to end if I don’t have that. The world didn’t end and you’ve got it; maybe now you wish the world did end because you have it. All right.

And then finally, toss in this: where have you had the most problem; try to pinpoint for yourself, don’t hand this in, I’ve got my own problems. Find out if you can pinpoint the areas where you have the greatest problem with covetousness; after you make that list of all the items that you’ve bought in the last five years that you don’t use, that you really didn’t need, then conclude, where are my areas of covetousness, and start to pinpoint it, so we’re not talking abstractions, we’re talking about real areas that we have. I’ve already seen husbands nudging wives, wives nudging husbands and so on. It’s going to be a very interesting assignment.

Next week we’re going to go further in the area of money. We’ll conclude with this doctrine of money tonight: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, then all these things shall be added unto you.”