Handling Finances Wisely

Hey, I want to welcome everybody who is here in the auditorium at Twin Lakes. My name is René, one of the pastors here. Also, everybody watching on video over in the venue service. We always have people join us during the 10:45 service who watch the sermon on video. There's live music over there led by Ryan and Lily Jones. And then there's people. We get more and more emails every single week from people who are joining us online and watching us via the internet too. So put your hands together. Let's welcome all those people that are joining us. Wonderful to have them with us.

So I have a question for you. Can money buy happiness? Shout it out. What do you think? Can money buy happiness? I hear a few yeses. I hear some nos. Let's look at some of the evidence of Johnny Depp. He's got a lot of money, right? What does he say? While being interviewed for Vanity Fair magazine, he put it rather bluntly. He said money doesn't buy you happiness. And then he said, but it does buy you a yacht so you can sail up right next to it. That's a good answer.

Can money buy happiness? Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Massachusetts looked at a sample of 22 major lottery winners. And here's their conclusion. Lottery winners were not happier than non-winners and in fact took significantly less pleasure from regular life events like sunsets or a cup of coffee. Isn't that interesting? You won the lottery and these normal things bring you less happiness.

So can money buy happiness? Well, Forbes magazine had an interesting article recently online headline. Now it's a fact. Money doesn't buy happiness. The article said surveys have found virtually the same level of happiness between the very rich individuals on the Forbes 400 and Maasai herdsmen of East Africa. Isn't that interesting?

So can money buy happiness? Well, you might be saying, well, I understand all these quotes and stats, but not so fast, René, because some rich people do seem very happy for their whole lives. And so it does seem like money is related to happiness to some extent. How does that work out? Well, that's a great question. And my conclusion is that it's because some people have discovered the keys to living a rich life, whether you have money or not. And these are keys that are right there in the book of Proverbs for you and me to see and apply.

But most people, judging from the way most people live, never see and understand these keys. So I want you to grab your message notes. The art of living well is the name of our message series in the book of Proverbs, which is a book of the Bible. And I have to point out something kind of ironic in an amazing coincidence. This is today's Wall Street Journal Weekend magazine and the cover story. Can you see it? There is called the art of living well. Isn't that interesting? But this article is about how the art of living well involves buying expensive furniture. That's not what the sermon series is about because, as it turns out, you do not need furniture to live well. What you do need, though, is wisdom.

We've been talking in the series all about wisdom, and wisdom is different than commandments. See, there is this misconception even among Christians that all you need to know are the rules. And if it's not forbidden by a command in the Bible and if it's not illegal, well, that's okay for me to do. But that ignores the question. What is the wise thing to do? Because the great majority of situations in life are actually not covered by the moral rules. And so you have to ask, what is wise? What's the wise thing to say here? The wise thing to do here? The wise way to approach this situation?

And one of the areas of life where you will mess up your life royally if you only follow the rules and don't follow wisdom is in the area of money. And so let's talk about handling money wisely this morning. Now a couple of things right off the top. I am well aware that I am talking about money and giving just a week before the world's biggest garage sale. And this would be a great time to actually put some of these principles about using your possessions and your wealth to help the poor because all the proceeds go to the food bank at the garage sale. What comes up this coming Saturday, but I'm going to resist the temptation to mention this a lot to make you feel guilty about that. Just saying that is a great way to apply this, but I'm not going to bring this up anymore.

And I also want to say a great thanks to a long-distance role model of mine, Tim Keller. He's the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan for inspiring this outline. He just has such a great take on the biblical perspective on money. But the book of Proverbs says first, I need to understand, you need to understand the power of money. Money has spiritual power. Now this may surprise you when you answer the question, can money buy happiness? Your gut response in church might be, well, of course not. The Bible says money is wrong and bad. Actually, the first thing the Proverbs says about money is how good it is. Does that surprise you?

In fact, there are so many of these verses that I can't even list them all that show that money actually has the power to bless, to bless, to bless hard work. For example, Proverbs 10:4, lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. Over and over again, the book of Proverbs connects self-control, discipline, diligence with prospering. How about Proverbs 10:22? The blessing of the Lord brings wealth. Wealth in the Bible is not intrinsically evil. The Bible has a lot of positive things to say about wealth creation.

Why isn't wealth intrinsically evil? Well, because the Bible says that God created the whole world and when he created it, he said it was good, and then he made us partly to steward these good things he created, to take care of them. And so, seeing from the biblical perspective, when God blesses you with care of possessions, when he blesses you with means, with wealth, he's really giving you the means to take care of part of his good world. And if you see your wealth and your possessions from this biblical perspective, it's so humanizing. It's empowering because you feel like God has given me all of this to bless the world, to enrich the world. So money can be a huge blessing.

Proverbs has a lot of good things actually to say about money. But Proverbs also says there are dangers associated with money. Money also has the power to corrupt, the power to corrupt your integrity. Look at Proverbs 11:1, "The Lord of whores dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight." This word "of whores" is one of the strongest possible words used in the Bible for something that God dislikes. This word is only used in the Bible for idolatry, for very immoral sexual behavior that is disgusting to God, that's associated with idolatry, and for this.

And so what's this verse about? In those days in the market, if you wanted to buy a pound of, say, flour, you'd use something like this to buy it, an old-fashioned scale. And the guy at the marketplace stall would put the flour you wanted to buy, say a pound of flour, in a sack on one side of the scale. And on the other side of the scale was a weight that said one pound. But if the seller falsely labeled the weights, it was really a two-thirds of a pound weight, but he labeled it a pound, it was a way of getting you to unknowingly pay for more flour than you wanted to buy. And there's a lot of verses in Proverbs that have similar situations.

The point being, when you are indulging in business practices that hide from your customers or hide from your investors, information that they would want to have to make a wise purchase, you have been corrupted by the power of money. And money has the power to magnify self-absorption. Isn't that the truth? Look at Proverbs 11:26, "People curse the man who hoards grain, but they pray God's blessing on the one who is willing to sell." Now, what's this about? This man has grain, but he's holding on to it in order to sell it later so he can make a bigger profit even though the people are going hungry because there's a drought.

It's much like having a garage full of junk, perhaps, and not donating it to a garage sale for the hungry. Now, what's the problem with this guy? What he's doing here is not illegal. It's not illegal to have a silo full of grain when people are going hungry. It's not illegal. It's not against the rules. The problem is he only has one bottom line, and that's personal profit. And he will be cursed, the Bible says, because he doesn't have an equally important bottom line in the eyes of God, and that's the good of the community.

The next verse along the same lines, fascinating. "The wages of the righteous bring life, but the income of the wicked brings them sin and death." To me, this is the most fascinating verse in this entire—in all the verses that I find about wealth in Proverbs. Because this says, "The same money when earned by a righteous person brings life, and the same exact wages when earned by a quote-unquote wicked person brings death." Isn't that fascinating? Righteous people are the kind of people who when they make money, the more money they make, it brings them life because they're so grateful for it, and it brings the people around them life because they spread life with their wages.

But when the wicked make money, the same wages bring death to them and to people around them because they're only looking for personal profit, and money can bring life and money can bring death. I saw one example. A lot of you know I was in Senegal, West Africa, for about two weeks or so, right after Easter speaking there in a few venues, and one of the most thought-provoking sites we saw was in this building. It's called the House of Slaves. It's on an island just off the coast of West Africa. It's the westernmost point of Africa. It's called Gore Island.

And this was a warehouse where Europeans kept the slaves they were exporting. And these African slaves would walk through this door. They called this the Door of No Return. And the slaves walked through this onto a gangplank that led to slave ships, and they never saw Africa again. This was in use for parts of four centuries, and they estimate that about 10 million African slaves walked through the Door of No Return. That's a sad place. And what was the one motive for doing this? The motive wasn't hatred of these people. What was the one motive for doing this? Profit! The bottom line!

But one day a movement started. Some British people thought, "This is wrong. We really need to stop this." A lot of countries were involved with this: Brazil, America, Portugal, Spain, Britain. And the abolition movement started up in Britain. They said, "We can't do this. We need to stop this." And as this movement grew, some of the merchants and the slave ship owners started arguing against abolition. They said, "We cannot stop the slavery trade." Now, you ask yourself, what was the argument for slavery? Seriously, what could the argument for slavery have possibly been? Well, you know what it was? It was economic.

Here's what they said, "We cannot stop slavery because coffee, tea, and sugar would cost too much if we stopped it." We can't afford to stop it because it would threaten our lifestyle and our economy. And in fact, when the British were the first major economy to abolish slavery, all those predictions came true. And it crippled their economy for about a generation because the cost of all their staples tripled. But the British remained committed to abolishing slavery in their empire. Why? They acted against their own personal profit in abolishing slavery because they had another bottom line, a bottom line besides profits.

You see, the abolition movement began in a Christian revival called the Great Awakening, which taught them, "Use wealth which you've been blessed with by God to bring life, not death." And they looked at those slave ships and said, "That is death, and so it is wrong." And so what I'm saying is, just like this verse says, it's possible to use economics to bring life or to bring death. And that is a lot of power that money has. And money has the power to distract from what's important. Look at this verse. "Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath," which is judgment day.

This verse is posing a judgment day question. You know what a judgment day question is? Questions like, "What is my life really amounting to?" "What contribution am I really making? What difference am I making?" And wealth can blind you to judgment day questions because wealth makes you feel self-sufficient if you have enough, and it makes you frantic and busy if you don't have enough, and it can blind you, distract you from what's really important in the end.

And finally, wealth has the power to make me proud in the bad sense of the term pride. Look at this verse, Proverbs 30:8 and 9. "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal and so dishonor the name of the Lord my God." Now that phrase, "Who is the Lord?" is exactly what Pharaoh said to Moses. "Who's the Lord? I don't need God. I am the Lord. I'm rich." And there's nothing like money and status to make you feel overconfident, right?

Abraham Lincoln had this critique of our country, of America. He said, "We have grown in wealth and power, but intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us." Great quote. And that can be true of a nation, and it can be true of a person. See, the more successful you are, the more you think you got it because you were so smart, because you were so disciplined, and so you become overconfident in your own instincts, overconfident in your own judgment. You don't listen to other people.

One ancient Christian writer, a monk named Bernard of Clairvaux, said, "To see a man humble under prosperity is the greatest rarity in the world." Now, before I leave page one in this first point, I hope you notice something here. Proverbs is very nuanced when it comes to the reasons for poverty and wealth. Look, for example, at Proverbs 13:21. Poverty pursues the sinner. Prosperity pursues the righteous. Now, that sounds like it's saying, "If you're poor, it's your fault, because you're lazy. If you're rich, well, then that must mean you're righteous." And a lot of people have misinterpreted the message of the Bible to mean exactly this.

But you've got to see the whole picture because, look, just two verses later, in Proverbs 13:23, it says, "A poor man's field produces abundant food, but then injustice sweeps it away." And now, that sounds like it's saying the opposite. Poor people are oppressed. That's why they're poor. And the rich are unjust. That's why they're rich. These two verses are sort of the stereotypical conservative and liberal views, right? Well, Proverbs talks about both because they're both true at times. At any given time in the world, you'll find both of these true. Real life has nuances, and that's part of wisdom. Don't look at the world exclusively through either one of these lenses because they're both in the Bible.

Now, remember, money has a spiritual power to bless and a spiritual power to corrupt. So what are the reasons for the power of money? Why does it have all this power, the ability to bless and to destroy and distract and to corrupt? Look at Proverbs 10:15. This is the reason right here. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. Now, there's a picture being painted here that we can miss in our 21st-century perspective. So I want you to imagine this. Go back a few centuries and imagine the cities of the ancient times on a hill surrounded by walls, these, for example, of the ruins of ancient Megiddo in Israel.

Megiddo was a city there overlooking a fertile valley, very typical of ancient cities and Bible times, up on a hill surrounded by huge thick walls. Cities were the ultimate place of security. Here's a model that we saw when we visited this site on our Church Israel trip about a year ago. In cities up on a hill surrounded by walls, you were protected from wild animals, protected from invaders, protected from vigilantes, protected from windstorms and sandstorms. Cities were the most secure possible place to live in the ancient world. And as a result, cities were the most valued places to live.

The poor couldn't afford to live in a valuable real estate up in the city. The rich lived in the city. The people with status, the poor had to live down in the valleys where they were vulnerable to invaders and vigilantes and windstorms and burglars. So not only was the city a place of security, if you lived in the city, that meant you were significant. The city was the source in the ancient world of security and significance. But notice, it doesn't just say the rich live in the city. It says the wealth of the rich is their city. And so what does this mean?

Well, the meaning is brought out a little bit later in Proverbs in this verse. "The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it and are safe. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city. They imagine it an unscalable wall. Their wealth is their significance and security instead of God. Even today, wealth can be seen as a source of first significance. You feel important because of the place you live, because of the clothes you wear, because of the people you know. You feel more important. And you make this subtle leap. You don't just look at other people who are less well off than you and think, "Oh, they're below me economically," which would be accurate. You don't just think, "They're below me economically." You think, "They're below me."

This is a subtle shift that happens. Or when you move to a new house or a new neighborhood, you don't just feel like, "I've got a better house." You feel like, "I'm better." You feel better than other people. You feel superior. Why do you feel that way? It's the power of money. Very subtle. Now don't get me wrong. It's not that nice things are the problem. Remember, the Bible says that wealth can be a blessing from the Lord. And on the other hand, you could live in poverty and have the same messed up attitude thinking that poverty makes you more significant. But wealth can be tied into this feeling of, "That makes me significant."

Now some of you are different. Some of you would never look to money for significance. In fact, you think that's kind of stupid. And you are the kind of person who is rarely tempted to spend too much on nice clothes or a new car or whatever. You actually do not struggle with this. You struggle with looking to money for your security. In that way, it is your fortified city. Because deep in your heart you think, "If I only had more money, I'd be safe. I'd have control. With money, I'd overcome my fear of the future." Some of you have money and you think, "Shoo, I got money in the bank and I got a plan, so I'm safe."

Of course, the problem is, can money stop disease from ever touching your family? Can money stop family problems from ever touching your family? Can money stop insecurity from ever touching your family? No. And why can't money do those things? Because it's not God. And it doesn't make you into God. Only God is a source of these two things. But that's one of the reasons for the power of money. And this is very tough to overcome. But let's be honest, money and possessions, if you're looking to them for satisfaction, they do not satisfy for long. Because no matter what you own, there will be something better out there tomorrow.

Now, I will never forget when I learned this as a small boy. It was Christmas time. And I had a great haul. One of the favorite things that I got at Christmas was this. I don't know if you remember these. These were GI Joes back when GI Joes were awesome. Because they were the full-sized GI Joes, not the little kind of like dinky action figures that they have right now. In my day, we had real GI Joes that were giant like this. And I remember it was on my wish list and then I got it. We have black and white pictures of me holding my GI Joe up like this. Because it was not just a GI Joe, it was a GI Joe with lifelike hair.

Now, how pathetic is it that in my day when I was a kid, what we were really excited about was getting an action figure with lifelike hair, right? But I had one, this little fuzz on top of his head, so I was like, "Yes, this is the best Christmas ever! Now that I have my GI Joe with lifelike hair, I will never be unhappy again!" You know? And I'll never forget, I was about 10 years old going out into the street, that Christmas afternoon with my best friend, and we were standing there ready to play with our action figures that we'd gotten, and then I heard it. This thunderous noise. I'd never heard anything like it before in my life.

And I looked down the street, "What is happening?" And I saw something like it was like the heavens parted and the angels sang, because for the first time in my life, I saw a big wheel. Do you remember when those first came out? And these little like five and six year olds were like racing all over the street, spinning out on their big wheels, and I already knew I was too big a 10 year old to ride a big wheel, and I looked at my friend and I said, "Man, kids these days don't know how good they've got it!" You know? In my day, we had to ride a metal tricycle that busted your teeth out if you hit the curb, and they've got big wheels, and I looked at my GI Joe with lifelike hair and it turned to ashes in my hand. You know? And I'm hoping to sell it at the world's biggest garage sale, but that's another point.

My point being, things, no matter how awesome they are, just do not satisfy for long. You know why? Because things don't change and you do. And so we really need to learn, how do I break the power of money over me? How do I break and use money instead of money using me? So first, I just need to assume I'm in denial to some degree. Just assume that to some degree you're in denial about the influence of money over you. You know, Jesus was constantly running around saying things like, "Watch out for greed. Watch out for all kinds of greed. Watch out for all kinds of materialism." He says that at least three times on three different occasions in the Gospels. He warns about it, warns about it, warns about it.

Now He does not say, "Watch out for all kinds of murder." Even though murder is wrong. He doesn't say, "Watch out for all kinds of, you know, adultery." Even though adultery is wrong, why not? You know why? Because things like adultery are obvious. If you're committing adultery, you never go, "You're not my wife! What's happening here?" You know? You know exactly what you're doing. That's why Jesus doesn't have to say, "Watch out for adultery." But He does have to say, "Watch out for greed." Why? Because nobody who's greedy thinks they're greedy. Nobody. As John Orpurg says, as long as there's somebody like a Bernie Madoff out there, we all go, "Yeah, look at that greedy son of a gun, you know. Good thing I'm not that greedy, you know?" So it's just safe to assume that you're in denial. It is so insidious, the power of money. So insidious, we're so blind to it. So you have to start here or you're not open to change.

And then I need to grasp the scattering principle. What's the scattering principle? Well, it's all through the Bible, like in Proverbs 11:24. There is one who scatters yet increases more. And there is one who withholds more than what is right, and it leads to poverty. What is this about? This is a paradox. But this idea is all through Proverbs and the rest of the Bible. "He who scatters gathers, and he who gathers loses it." Now, that seems to make no sense. But it does make sense in agriculture, right? In agriculture, the more you scatter, the more you gather, right? You scatter seed and you get crops like these delicious Watsonville strawberries. And the more you scatter seed, the more you gather crops.

If you always hold on to all the seeds of any crop, then you're holding on to what the seeds could potentially do. But if you scatter, you gather and in a better form. Like if you plant apple seeds, you get these Corralitis apple trees, right? So here's what the book of Proverbs is saying. Look at each dollar bill and each possession as a seed. They're full of potential. But if you hoard all your money, you're just hoarding seeds. You're addicted to seeds. For seeds to sprout, they have to be scattered. And if that makes no sense to you, you're an addict.

Now, we started with the question, "Does money make you happy?" The Boston Globe recent headline, "Money makes you happy if you spend it on others." "They say money can't buy you happiness, but new research suggests that it can if you spend it on someone else." And the whole article is about what researchers are calling the benevolence effect. You're happier and healthier when you give. As it turns out, it's actually quantifiable. It's measurable. All kinds of research projects about this. Now, I'll leave it to you to figure out how you could possibly apply this. Garage sale.

But he who scatters, gathers. Now, I got to hit a misconception here before we move on called the prosperity gospel, right? Because some people will say, "Okay, I get it. Those who scatter increase, okay, so the more I give my money away, the richer I get." That's kind of a spiritual formula, like God's got a pyramid scheme going here. "I'm going to give, so I'm going to grow rich." You haven't broken the power of money at all. That's not scattering. That's still gathering. Because you don't understand the right motive. And this is so important because it's not really about money at all, is it?

Remember, Proverbs says it can bring life, it can bring death. It can be a blessing, it can be a curse. It's not about money. It's about your heart. And this is huge. Back to my GI Joe days. I was thinking about this when I was a little kid. My mom had a friend, we grew up over on the Lascatus border of San Jose there, and there were Santa Cruz mountain types that went to the same church and were in the same circles as us. And she had this friend, her name was Ursula Niederauer. Never forget her name. She was kind of a Birkenstock wearing, tie-dyed wearing dreadlocks before dreadlocks were cool, kind of a fascinating, kind of a hippie, yet with a German attitude because she was from Germany. Ursula Niederauer.

Now I'm sure Ursula was a great person, but I was so intimidated by Ursula Niederauer. And it probably started because Ursula had a French poodle named René. That's right. Now I didn't know this at first, but the first time she ever babysat me and my sister for half the day when she would shout things like, "René, obseitsen!" I'd sit down like, "Okay. René, louse!" I'd run outside, all right, until I realized it was her dog, but that kind of got us off on the wrong foot. True. And one day Ursula Niederauer comes over and she had gotten it into her head that we should all be giving more to the poor, which is true.

But Ursula was on this, the role that only a new convert to an idea can be on. And I remember she was in the kitchen telling my mom all about how, "This should be giving! This should be giving, giving, giving!" And I was listening to Ursula talk in her German accent about this. I was fascinated. I was about 10, the GI Joe stage. And then she looks at me and Ursula goes, "And you! You think you have nothing to give, nothing! But you have many things to give! Come, come!" And Ursula marches me back to my room. And she starts pointing to my stuff. She goes, "You could give this to the poor children! That's a rescue mission! Or this! Or this!"

And then she points to my GI Joe space capsule. Now the deal is with these full-size GI Joes, what was awesome about them, and probably part of the reason that Hasbro changed the size of these things, is all their accessories had to be like massive because they were pretty big dolls. The trucks and the Jeeps and stuff like that were just huge. And I had the best GI Joe accessory ever. Somebody had given us a GI Joe space capsule. And it was like this big and he sat inside of it, it was like a Mercury or a Gemini space capsule, and I loved this thing. And so when Ursula points to this and she says, "Oh, this!" She sees in my eyes, "No!" And she captures that and she jumps all over me, "Ah, I see! This is an idol!"

"An idol? Idol? Idol?" And she grabs it and she pulls it away and I'm hanging on to it and there's this tug of war. And she wins and she marches down the hallway of our house and she says, "You would feel so good giving this to some poor boy who has nothing!" And I come after her, "No, no, come back!" "Oh, and I sit!" And I sat down and she took it away and gave it to the rescue mission. And you know what? For that day, I was sad. But you know what happened to my heart? The next day, I was even more sad and I was so ticked at Ursula. And now I was ticked at all the poor children too!

And you're asking, "But didn't you ever get Joy out of that?" "No, never, never!" In fact, I still want my G.I. Joe space capsule back. I'm going to look for one at the world's biggest garage sale next Saturday. Why? I was forced. I didn't give willingly. I gave reluctantly and under compulsion and under guilt. That was wrong, wrong, wrong! In 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is trying to motivate a church to give to the poor. He doesn't go after their guilt. "You better give so God doesn't punish you." He doesn't go after their emotions. "Oh, these poor people are so poor, you better give." He goes after something else.

And this is what he says, "I want you to give why. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor. So that through his poverty you might become rich." You know what he's saying? Paul's saying the cross is your ultimate source of significance and security. Because when you look at what God did for you on the cross, you know you're loved. And that's a security that money can never give you. And when you look at what happened on the cross, that's a significance that money can never give you. Why? Because why would Jesus Christ have given up all his riches to come down to earth to be made completely poor and humiliated like this because you were more valuable to him than the riches of heaven. You are that significant. You matter that much to God.

And until you are melted by that, until that becomes your reference point, until you own that in your soul, you won't be free from the power of money. But if you do own it, what happens is you're motivated to do far more. I think I would have been motivated even at 10 to do far more than kick a used toy over toward the poor kids. I would have been like, "I want to go mow lawns in the neighborhood. I want to be like little Travis Busey here who sold paper kites door to door for second harvest last summer. I want to do something great and be a great person because of what Jesus Christ did for me."

Or put it this way, if you treasure anything else other than Jesus as your ultimate treasure, it will demand of you, it will drive you to the point where you will die for it. But Jesus is the only treasure who died for you. And when you get that, when you own it, when you worship Him for it, you have broken the power of money and you found the secret to being grateful for it and using it instead of it using you. And you use it to spread life just like Jesus did. To the degree that you see that, you will want to scatter. You will want to bring life and you'll be free from the power of money.

Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? Thank you, God, for showing us how to be wise in regard to money. And now help us go and be motivated by Jesus to be like Jesus, He who became poor, that we might become fabulously rich in Him. And we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.