Build Wealth Righteously

Sermon Transcript

God, gross, or gift. Those are our options when it comes to how we think about money. Our three options when it comes to the way that we will relate to money are: Is money your God, is it  gross, or is it a gift. Here is how the Lord Jesus Christ said it, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). God, gross, or gift. Even a genuine Christian who confesses Jesus Christ as Lord can easily slip into treating money like a god or like it’s gross, rather than as a gift. There are tell-tale signs that money is beginning to intrude into God’s rightful place in your heart. When we buy things we can’t afford, when growing and tracking our wealth rather than growing in wisdom becomes our highest priority, when we pretend to be wealthier than we are, when we aren’t generous, or when the state of our finances, whether positive or negative, determines our hope, happiness, significance or security, we know that money has taken a place in our hearts where only Jesus Christ should should reside. Since money is one of God’s most powerful gifts, it’s also one of the most tempting gifts to turn into your god. However, some of us are more tempted to treat money like it’s gross. And by gross, I mean we fear money and, therefore, avoid going beyond the bare minimum. The idea of making a budget, wisely investing, establishing a long and short-term plan, and creating a giving plan that is sacrificial and stores up treasures in heaven is so overwhelming that you stick your head in the sand and hope everything will work out. That’s treating money like it’s gross and, if you think about it, on the heart-level it’s actually very similar to giving money God status in your heart. The alternative to treating money and wealth like a god or like they’re gross, is treating them like a gift from God. If you take what the whole Bible teaches about money, you’ll conclude that money is neither god nor gross, but a gift to be earned, enjoyed, and stewarded by God’s grace and for His glory. Ecclesiastes 5:19 summarizes the matter well: Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. Though the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, we cannot escape the biblical truth that God created wealth, gave us the ability to build it for his glory, and called it good before anything went bad in his world. This is the broad perspective of the whole Bible. Then Proverbs comes along and shows us one thing we will seek to do and one thing we will seek to not do since money isn’t our god or gross, but is a gift. Those two things are spelled out most clearly in Proverbs 11:8 and 11:28. Proverbs 11:18 – The wicked earns deceptive wages, but one who sows righteousness gets a sure reward. Proverbs 11:28 – Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf. These two verses highlight the big idea of Proverbs on money: Build wealth righteously, but don’t trust in it. Build wealth righteously, but don’t trust in it. Nearly every Proverb about money can fit under one side of that big idea or the other. Therefore, we’re going to take that big idea in two parts as our two points this morning: 1. Build wealth righteously 2. Don’t trust in it.

 

BUILD WEALTH RIGHTEOUSLY

 

How do we build wealth righteously? The most frequent answer to that question from Proverbs is: maintain your integrity as you build your wealth. Both sides of that matter. As God enables, and for the sake of his glory, build your wealth. Proverbs 10:22 says, “The blessing of the LORD makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.” Commenting on this verse, Old Testament scholar Ray Ortlund Jr., writes, “Like it or not, the basic attitude of Proverbs toward money is positive…When you make money by the blessing of the Lord, you do not have to bend the rules, you can keep your promises, you do no have to overwork yourself, your conscience can stay clear, and you make enough money to share with others, which is joyful. There is no sorrow in that.” Build wealth. Go for it, by God’s grace and for his glory, but maintain your integrity as you build. Listen to what Proverbs says about maintaining your integrity as you build. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. – 10:2 The wage of the righteous leads to life, the gain of the wicked to sin. – 10:16 The wicked earns deceptive wages, but one who sows righteousness gets a sure reward. – 11:18 Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. – 16:8 Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool. – 19:1 Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel. – 20:17 The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a snare of death. – 21:6 Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor. – 28:8 The message is clear: build wealth righteously by maintaining your integrity as you build. Two questions. First: Are you, as God enables, seeking to build wealth? Are you building? Question two: Are you maintaining your integrity as you go? Is your work moral or is it wrong in and of itself and you need to get out? Are your strategies deceptive or full of straightforward honesty? Are you above reproach or are there a few things about how you make your money that make you blush? crooked or is there nothing about your business that makes you blush? Do you owe people money that you’re not repaying? Are you getting paid off the books? Are you treating the cash from your side hustle like tax-free income (it’s not)? Are you overbilling or getting paid for work that you’re not actually doing? Friends, wealth is a gift from God and it’s there for the taking. Go get it! Build it with integrity. So, we build wealth righteously by doing it God’s way, with integrity, because wealth is ultimately God’s blessing and when it’s God’s blessing, there is no sorrow in it. 

 

Now, though it’s 100% true that the blessing of the Lord makes rich and, according to Proverbs, God’s blessing of wealth flows to us through three primary practices: Diligence, delayed gratification, and generosity. The blessing of righteous wealth tends to come to those who diligently work hard, plodding in the same direction over time. Proverbs 10:4b – the hand of the diligent makes rich. Proverbs 21:5 – The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. The blessing of wealth built righteously flows to us through our diligent planning and working over a long period of time. Are you working and planning diligently in the same direction over a long period of time? That’s typically how the blessing comes. Similarly, the blessing of wealth built righteously also flows to us through delayed gratification. Proverbs 13:22 – A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous. Typically, you put yourself in the path of being blessed with righteous wealth by delaying gratification and storing up an inheritance for your grandchildren. Does your financial plan include your grandchildren? Proverbs says that if you’re a good man, it will, because you delay gratification. Finally, and perhaps counterintuitively, righteous wealth tends to flow to those who are generous. Generosity is a helpful check that keeps us from going too far with delayed gratification, building, as Jesus says, bigger barns of savings for ourselves, and then falsely calling it leaving an inheritance to our children’s children. Let me make it plain: You cannot build righteous wealth without being sacrificially generous along the way. If you forego generosity now so that you can build wealth in order to be more generous later, then you’re building your wealth in a way that dishonors God. If you’re doing that, you are robbing God now to pay him back later. Such hubris flows from a pathetically low view of God. He doesn’t bless that. But he does bless generosity. Proverbs 19:17 – Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed. Proverbs 28:22 – A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon him. How does the Lord repay generous people? He enriches them, not for their own sake (prosperity gospel), but for the greater pleasure of generosity. These verses reminds me of a couple referenced in the amazing book God And Money that made $85k, but God enabled them to give away over $1M over their lifetime! The New Testament puts it this way. 2 Corinthians 9:11 – You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. In light of this verse, the best biblical advice I can give you for building wealth righteously is to give sacrificially as you go. So, what’s your giving plan? Obviously, you know I am going to tell you to honor the tithe principle and give 10% of your pre-tax income to support your church’s work and church’s workers. But that’s not heroic giving. If you’re not giving 10% of your pre-tax income to support your church’s work and workers, start there, but that’s just he basics. What’s your plan for growing beyond the starting blocks of giving a tenth of your income to church work and workers so that you can put yourself in the path of being enriched to be even more generous? Build wealth righteously by not compromising your integrity as you. The gift of increasing wealth comes to you from God through your diligence, delayed gratification, and generosity. If you build wealth that way, by God’s grace and for His glory, there is no sorrow in it. That brings us to the second part of the big idea of Proverbs on money and wealth:

 

BUT DON’T TRUST IN IT

 

Sorrow doesn’t come from building wealth righteously. It comes when you build wealth and then trust in it rather than the God who gave it to you as a gift to be enjoyed and stewarded for His glory. Proverbs 11:28 – Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf. The New Testament repeats the theme. 1 Timothy 6:17-19 – As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. [18] They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, [19] thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. How can we tell if we are veering toward trusting in our wealth? You can’t tell by looking at your bank account. You can be rich and hope in your riches or nowhere near rich and still trust in the wealth that you do have, or hope to have. How can we tell if we are trusting in our riches? Proverbs provides a few tell tale signs. Receive these with humility and honestly ask the Father, “please help me to see myself rightly so that I can repent thoroughly and get busy building wealth righteously.” The first tell tale sign that you trust in your wealth is that you’re a financial pretender. One way to be a financial pretender is to dress, eat, travel wealthier than you are. There are multiple Proverbs that repeat the principle found in Proverbs 12:9 – Better to be lowly and have a servant than to play the great man and lack bread. The world lives above its means to garner the approval of people. Christians live below their means so that they can be generous for the sake of reaching people with the gospel. Are you eating, drinking, vacationing, dressing, or housing beyond your means? That’s financial pretending. Another way to be a financial pretender is to live on bad credit, to support over-desires that you can’t afford. Proverbs 22:7 – The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. Proverbs 22:26-27 – Be not one of those who give pledges, who put up security for debts. If you have nothing with which to pay, why should your bed be taken from under you? Being a financial pretender by living above your means and racking up bad debt, rather than ruthlessly paying down bad debt, is not merely bad financial management, it’s a sign that you trust in wealth. The second tell tale sign that you’re trusting in wealth is that you take unnecessary risks. Proverbs 27:13 – Take a man’s garment when he has put up security for a stranger, and hold it in pledge when he puts up security for an adulteress. When you’re doing business, even with Christian brothers, get it in writing, make the contracts legitimate, collect the necessary deposit, and don’t invest money you’re not able to lose, because sometimes that’s how investments go. If you’re tempted to put yourself in unnecessary financial risk, it’s not just a bad idea, it’s actually a sign that you trust in wealth. If you’re in an overly risky situation, have the humility to admit it and get out of it. A third tell-tale sign that you trust in wealth, whether you have a lot or a little, is that you work so much that you can’t give God-honoring attention to your other priorities. Who of us hasn’t been there? Proverbs 23:4-5 – Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. Since Proverbs 10:22 says the blessing of the Lord makes rich, you don’t have to have to dishonor the Lord to build wealth. Look, hard work pleases the Lord. I work a lot of hours. If you work 45-50 hours a week and can’t find the time to disciple your kids, love your spouse, go to Citygroup, and serve your brothers and sisters in Christ, you probably have a time management problem more than an over-working problem. However, if you consistently work 70 hours a week such that you don’t have some family dinners, go to CG, and gather for worship each week, it isn’t a sign that you’re a hard worker, it’s a sign that you’re trusting in wealth. A fourth tell-tale sign that you’re trusting in your wealth is that you’re wise in your own eyes. Proverbs 28:11 – A rich man is wise in his own eyes, but a poor man who has understanding will find him out. There is something incredibly sad that often happens to us when we become abnormally wealthy, and, in my experience, the same sad thing often happens when we garner abnormal expertise in a particular area. And the sad thing that happens is that we figure that since we have acquired abnormal wealth or achieved abnormal expertise in one area, then we know a lot about everything. You medical professionals have surely experienced this. You’ve treated that incredibly intelligent, wealthy businessperson who assumes that since they’re really smart and successful in one area that they probably know as much about gastroenterology as you do. It’s madness. Why did they make the appointment?  Now, the businessperson may be right in this case, but humility and teachability go a long way. But if you lack that humility and are wise in your own eyes, it’s not just a sign that you’re arrogant, it’s a sign that you may trust in your wealth and what it says about you. A final telltale sign that you trust in your wealth is that you have a false sense of security. Proverbs 11:4 – Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death. Wealth is good and wealth helps surround your life with genuine security, but wealth doesn’t provide ultimate or eternal security. You see, there is a day of wrath that is coming. One day the Lord Jesus Christ will return to judge the world with perfect justice. And as frightening as it may sound, it’s true that the Lord Jesus Christ will pour out his perfect wrath on every sinner who has not received and rested in Him alone for forgiveness of sins and eternal life. And on that day, no one will be able to pay him off. What would you give him that he doesn’t already own? Don’t let your wealth give you a false sense of security. Don’t let anything but true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ give you any sense of security for the day of wrath. However, if you will repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then when the day of wrath comes you will be safe and secure in Him, forever. 

 

And not only will Jesus Christ save you from the day of wrath, He is also the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price. When you have Him as your Savior and your treasure, then you’ll be free to build wealth righteously because He will be your true treasure through the financial ups and downs. When you have him as your treasure, he empowers you to build wealth without compromising your integrity through diligence, delayed gratification, and generosity. He empowers you to enjoy wealth and steward it for God’s glory without looking to it for hope, happiness, significance, or security. The Lord Jesus Christ, turning to him, is the answer to all of it. Wealth is good, but Jesus is better.