Passage: Matthew 6:19-21
Preacher: Rev. Joel Beyer
Series: Seven Rules Every Christian Should Break
Keywords: prosperity , preachers of la , wealth , health , success
Summary:
Today we’re talking about the Rule of Prosperity, or the belief that God wants you to be happy NOW, TODAY! Maybe you’ve heard this line – “You can have your best life NOW!” In other words, this “Christian” sounding rule claims that you can experience God’s love through success, wealth, good health, and comfort in this world.
Detail:
I’m amazed at the amount of toys my son has. I don’t know even where they all came from. We have boxes of trains, cars, trucks, stuffed animals, plastic animals, puzzles, and balls. I think Grandma has something to do with all of it, but I’m not sure. And he’s obsessed with them! Every hour of everyday there is this chorus, of “Come play trains with me, Daddy, come play cars! Come play zoo.” He loves to play, and he loves his toys. And he loves getting NEW toys. And as I was watching him this week with hundreds of blocks scattered across the floor, I thought to myself, “I’m glad we grow out of this stage of being obsessed with toys and wanting more.” But do we really? My toys aren’t strewn across the room, but I have toys. And I love them. My favorite toys would have to be tech gadgets. I’m a sucker for anything electronic that promises to make my life a little more convenient or exciting. There’s this new bottle coming out that can recognize anything that you put into it and tell you exactly the nutritional contents of it. I don’t know why I wouldn’t already know what I put in my water bottle, but hey, it sounds fun, right? I have to have it! I also love my Apple products. I have an Apple computer, an Apple iPad, and an Apple iPhone. I sometimes get really nerdy and go on tech blogs and read about all the new stuff Apple is dreaming up, like the iWatch set to come out later this year. And even though I stood in line like a dummy to get the new iPhone two years ago, its old news, and now I want the new one. The best one. That will make me truly happy.
We can all relate, right? Maybe a little bit. We want the best. Maybe for you, it isn’t tech gadgets or toys. Maybe it’s having an immaculate house, or a newer car, a better job, a more toned and beautiful physique. And what’s the problem? It never lasts. New turns to old very quickly. Clean becomes dirty again. Exciting becomes boring and mundane, sometimes in a matter of days. Healthy bodies get frail and more fail over time. And so we do anything we can to try to cover it up and put off the inevitable. We get new ones and toss the old. We drudge through our week, and we live for entertainment of the weekend. We pull the weeds and plant new plants. We get Botox and face lifts. We spend hard earned time and money so that we can be as comfortable and happy as we can possibly be for as long as we can possibly be, and well, that day is coming when we’re actually not going to be able to make it any better. Well, we’ll just cross that bridge when we get there.
We’re in a series called Broken where we’ve been taking a look at various “Christian”sounding rules that aren’t actually that Christian at all. Last week we talked about the “rule” that Christianity is a rational religion and thus should agree with the philosophy and worldview of our culture today because we’re highly rational people. But we learned that a God who takes on flesh to reveal his love for a bunch of rebellious and selfish people by dying in their place is not that rational at all. But it is the most beautiful truth that we cling to. Today we’re talking about the Rule of Prosperity, or the belief that God wants you to be happy NOW, TODAY! Maybe you’ve heard this line – “You can have your best life NOW!” In other words, this “Christian”sounding rule claims that you can experience God’s love through success, wealth, good health, and comfort in this world.
Sounds good, right? We often talk about the blessings that we have. Blessings of healing after surgery, or blessings of house and neighborhood, or the blessing of a new job, or simply for living the American dream and all that comes with it! And all those things are not evil- not even close! In fact, all MATERIAL BLESSINGS are gifts from God! Everything we have to support our body and lives. The food we eat, the cars we drive, the houses we live in - they are blessings from God. We can and SHOULD be thankful for them! Being rich is not a sin, and those of you in this room compared with some parts of the world, are incredibly rich. We don’t have to feel guilty for that. Everything that we have is a gift from God. He gives us the ability to work and use our minds and creativity to build successful things. He created this world and the things in it to be used and to enjoy! Yesterday, the men’s group came over to my house for a beer brewing day. We combined strange ingredients - yeast, hops, malted barley -if you tried to eat any one of them on their own and you’d think it was disgusting, but hopefully, combined, they are going to turn out to be something phenomenal! Success, health, the means to live comfortably, prosperity - they are all a good things, and God gives us this earth and everything in it to enjoy and give him thanks and praise for it.
But it can also break our faith in God if we listen to the lie that the WAY we know God is with us and loves us is through our material blessings. That the measure of His love for us is our material blessings. You will find plenty of “Christian”teachers out there who will tell you that you can find God in your material blessings. That the main reason you know God is good is because He comes through for you in the things of this world that you want. Kristen and I were watching this outlandish show the other day called Preachers of L.A. and their entire ministry is based on living extravagant lives to show God’ s blessing on them. Behind the scenes, some of their lives are in shambles, but hey, God gave them a new Bentley and a mansion. Now that seems kind of crazy, and pretty superficial, but we often believe the same things to a lesser and more humble degree. We’re tempted to believe if God loves us he’ll take away all our illnesses and diseases and give us good health if we just trust him. We often believe that He’ll deliver that perfect job or promotion to you that we’ve been waiting for if we just ask Him for it. We believe that God wants to bless us and if he isn’t there’s something wrong.
But let me ask you this, what if those blessings don ’ t happen? What does that mean then? Is God punishing us? Does he not love us? What if you lose your house to foreclosure? What if you are laid off from your job for no fault of your own? What if you get hit with the big C word - cancer as one of my pastor friends did at 41 years old, and there is no cure? What if a miracle doesn’t come? What if a family emergency drains your savings and retirement accounts, and there’s nothing left to rely on? Is God still there? Does he still love you? What if it is your fault? The answer is simple: Of course he does! A worldly prosperity Gospel is counterfeit Christianity. The blessings or lack thereof in your life, believe it or not, are not the measure of how much God loves you. Jesus Himself tells us in Matthew 5 —The rain falls on the just and the unjust in this world - both good and evil befall all people no matter if you belong to Him or not. When you believe that God is blessing you or withholding blessing from you because he is somehow either happy with you or unhappy with you based on something You do, then your faith in Christianity can and WILL be shattered. Why? Because this world is full of sin and evil, and things go wrong, and everything breaks down, gets old, and dies.
You might be thinking, but what about all those strong Bible passages about prosperity? You know the ones hanging up at my house? From Philippians 4: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”? Paul was in PRISON when he wrote that. What about that passage in Jeremiah 29 where God says, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and give you a hope and a future?” God spoke those words to the Israelites as they were enslaved in Babylon and it wasn’t until 70 years later before they were allowed to return home. What about that phrase: “God helps those who help themselves”? Guess what —NOT IN THE BIBLE!
What about God’s beloved child, Job? Do you remember Job? Job had everything! He had land, livestock, servants, fine meals. Job was living the high life. In the book of Job we find Satan coming to God and saying, that Israelite Job, he only trusts in You because He’s got a good life, take it all away and he’ll curse you. So God allows it. His livestock vanish. His servants, gone, He’s even afflicted with all sorts of disease. But he doesn’t curse God, even though all his friends and family said he should. His response is very telling of His faith:
Job 1:21 – And he said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Job realized that comfort and pleasure and prosperity are not something that we’re entitled to in this life, nor is it something that God promises us. Sometimes we have them other times we don’t and to different degrees. But the one thing you can take to the bank is that eventually we ’re leaving this earth the same way we entered it. With NOTHING. You see, The decay and death in this world is evidence of the deeper problem that curses everything - sin. There is no escaping it. Sometimes it’s our fault, and sometimes it’s not.
One of the first hospital visits I ever went on as a Vicar was to a woman who was dying of emphysema in the hospital. And I remember walking into her room and there’s oxygen on full blast, and there are about 400 drips and bubblers going into her and she’s fighting for every single breath as she sadly mutters out to me “How did this happen?!”How did this happen? Let me tell you…you smoked cigarettes for 50 years! That’s how this happened. But I didn’t tell her that, but what I did tell her is that there is profound hope even for her, and it’s not in getting better, it’s in eternal life. I shared with her the reality that nothing- no sin or illness or tragedy, not even death can separate us from the love of God. It’s constant for us each day. And the promise that we have is that even though our bodies are getting closer to death everyday, for those who belong to Jesus, death isn’t the end, but the beginning of a new life without the problems of this world.
Jesus hates death to be sure. He even wept over the tragedy of death in his own friends Lazarus’death on this earth even though He knew he was going to walk into the room and raise him from the dead. God hates death so much that he sacrificed his own Son on a cross so that sin and the power of sin which is death could be destroyed by His rising from the dead. Our hope is not in this life, but in the life to come, where there is no more sickness, no more crying, no more tears, no more pain, no more decaying and fading and failing. Jesus said he would rise from the dead and he did. He defeated death, and He promised that He is coming back again to make all things new. So whether or not we enjoy a flawless existence on this earth for 70, 80, 90 years (I don’t think any of us do) we put our trust and faith not in prosperity but in Jesus and His love for us.
And so in the meantime, Jesus tells his disciples and he tells you and me:
Matthew 6:19-21 — “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Hoping and living for Prosperity in this world is not a bad thing, but it doesn’t last. Jesus word’s and His promises last forever. And so he calls us to acknowledge that reality and live for His Kingdom, which is not of this world. And in treasuring the things that God treasures in this world - humility, service, peace, love, and sacrifice, we witness the unsurprising love of God through Jesus Christ for all people EVEN in the midst of suffering, in the midst of poverty, in the midst of weakness, in the midst of evil. Whether we have a little or a lot, God loves us the same. Whether God is blessing us materially or maybe we can’t see the way he’s blessing us, we have His ultimate blessing that never changes, the gift of eternal life.
Nowhere better can you see this reality than at a wedding, especially if the bride and groom choose to keep the traditional wedding vows. Now weddings these days are really lavish parties meant to treat the bride, groom, and guests like rich guests at a royal ball, but in the wedding ceremony itself we hear some pretty powerful and humble words being said. In Ephesians, Paul paints marriage between a man and a woman as a symbol for the relationship that Jesus has with his church, a love that is so strong that He laid down his life for her, flaws and failures and all. And that’s the love that husband and wife are to have for each other too. You don’t hear - I promise to love you as long as I feel like it, as long as we’ve both got solid jobs, as long as your personality doesn’t bug me, or I don’t have to go out of my way to take care of you someday. No you hear - for BETTER and WORSE, RICHER and POORER, in SICKNESS and in HEALTH. And that’s a beautiful picture of God’s promise and love to us. His love doesn’t go away even through the trials of this life.
The beautiful thing about that is we don’t have to join in with the lie of this world: Eat Drink and Be Merry for tomorrow we DIE. We don’t have to live to get as many toys, or have the best job, or be able to travel the world in retirement, or have the best time on earth that we can because this life is all we have. But instead we can “embrace our PLACE”, whatever it is at any given time, whether it’s in abundance or in very little, whether it feels secure or whether it’s up in the air, whether it’s full of energy and excitement for life or its awaiting departure from this earth, we can embrace where God has us and who God has put us with whatever and whoever it is for tomorrow we DINE IN PARADISE.
I don’t know if you have all the toys you want. I know my son doesn’t and I know I don’t. I don’t know if your health is exactly the way you want it. I know mine isn’t. I don’t know if you are as successful as you had hoped you would be. I know I’m not. But we have the greatest blessing that anyone can ever have: a faith in our Lord Jesus who died and rose from the dead and is coming back one day to make all things new. May you rest in that truth, and cherish where God has brought you in your life, and in turn, help others to see God’s love for them too. Amen.
*Series based on the book Broken: 7 ''Christian'' Rules That Every Christian Ought to Break as Often as Possible by Jonathan Fisk
