Better #5 - Financial Acumen
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks at wise understandings and approaches to money contained in the book of Proverbs.
Message Transcript
There's a saying that you've probably heard and it is this and that is money doesn't buy happiness. Do you agree with that, as you think about it? My guess is most of us would say, "Well, that's probably kind of true, but I wouldn't mind trying to figure it out," or, "Maybe it doesn't buy happiness," but as somebody told me after last night's service, there's a country song that says, "But it does buy a boat and a truck that would tow the boat and a Yeti full of Silver Bullets that I can enjoy on my boat." The reality is that as we think about money, most of us would say, "I know that it has limits, but I wouldn't mind trying to manage a whole lot of it."
The Bible says a lot about money, probably more about money than many subjects that you would think would rank much higher. Proverbs specifically says a lot about money. I think the reason the Bible says so much about money is because money is a big deal in our lives. No matter who you are, no matter how much you have, how little you have, what age you are, money has a significant role in our lives. What we're going to do this morning as we've been working our way through the book of Proverbs, through the themes that the book of Proverbs talks about, is we're going to look at money and talk about having financial acumen and how it's better than having a romanticized view of money in our lives.
My hope is that as we've been working our way through this series with the different things that are better in the book of Proverbs, that we've been doing this here in the Wexford campus, we've been doing the Chapel in the Strip District, Butler County, that all of us would not just simply say, "Oh, this is better. I'm going to try hard to have this be true in my life," but that we would come to an understanding of God as the creator, the one who initiates things in this world, that he has set up things that can work if we follow them, but when we see where we come short, we would also see his grace and his goodness.
The way we're going to look at this today is that we're going to simply look at it under two categories, first, a wise understanding of money, what Proverbs says about understanding or thinking about money, and then secondly, a wise approach to money. Here's the wise understanding of money. In order to understand this, it's probably significant to understand what the Bible says, or specifically Proverbs says, money can't do in our lives. Here are just a few of the things.
First of all, money doesn't eliminate trouble. Proverbs 15:6, "The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings ruin," or brings trouble. In other words, you can have money, but money can't hedge you against the difficulties or the hardships of life. Sometimes there's a tendency to think, "If I earn enough, if I save enough, if I manage my money well enough, I can eliminate all of the hardships of my life," but money can't do that. What we know sometimes is that even the hardships that we experience, as painful as they are, we can say, "Well, if money can't eliminate that and God doesn't always stop it, then what's the use of God or money in my life?" But the truth is that a lot of times those hardships are the things that open us up to see life in an eternal perspective, to understand things beyond just our current temporal state of affairs.
Here's the second thing money can't do. In Proverbs 16:8 we learn that money can't and doesn't erase injustice. Proverbs 16:8, "Better is a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice." In other words, if you and I gain our resources by taking advantage of other people, money and the result of that money won't be something that will erase those poor acts. Here's how The Message translates it. It says, "For it's better to be right and poor than wrong and rich."
Money won't ensure good relationships. Proverbs 17:1 says, "Better is a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting with strife." What this simply means is that you can have money, but money doesn't ensure that you will be in harmonious, good relationships with people all around you, and that it would actually be better in life to have less and to have good relationships than to have more and have hard relationships.
Then Proverbs tells us this, and that is money doesn't equate to honor or wisdom. Proverbs chapter 19 says this. Proverbs chapter 19 verse 1 says, "Better the poor whose walk is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse." In other words, having money doesn't make it so that you are a person who is always a person of honor in the way that you handle things. Then Proverbs chapter 28 verse 11 tells us that money doesn't even ensure that you're wise. See, there's a tendency sometimes, especially if you've made a lot of money, to think, "Because I've made money and I've been good at that, therefore I'm smart about everything," and to overestimate your own significance or wisdom in the rest of life.
Here's what we're told, "The rich are wise in their own eyes. One who is poor and discerning sees how deluded they are." What that is really pointing to is this idea that sometimes people who have made a lot will think, "Because I've made a lot, therefore I'm wise about everything," and will not be teachable or discerning about things that matter in their lives beyond that. You know that this is true because you've seen people who maybe have a lot and aren't honorable in the way that they act.
I was in a restaurant a while ago and there was a person who was really amped up about the lack of quality services they sought. The person was just kind of being rude to the people who were there to serve. I remember just having a moment thinking, "You're probably just ... " Maybe I sized the person up by the way they looked, but kind of thinking, "You appear to have a lot of money, and to think because you have money, that you can treat people who wait on you in a restaurant poorly." I guarantee you, almost everybody in that restaurant who observed that went away thinking, "I'd prefer the person who's serving and doesn't appear to have as much as the person who appears to have a lot and treats people poorly." Money does not equate to honor or to wisdom.
Here's what we learn in the New Testament. Jesus once was approached by a man who said, "Teacher, tell my brother to split the inheritance that we have evenly." This is in Luke 12. Jesus says, "Beware, be on your guard, because even when you have an abundance of possessions, your life does not consist of these things." Then he tells this story about a man who had a lot, in fact, he had so much that he had to tear down his barns and build bigger barns. At the end of the story that Jesus tells, he says, "You fool, this very night your life will be required of you." Then he says, "This is how it will be with anyone who is not rich toward God."
What Jesus was doing was he was saying, "You can have all the stuff of this world, but money does not ensure anything beyond this life." You, in a sense, if this is your biggest priority, if this is what you live for, then one day that will be the end of the story. That's what Jesus was saying. You know this is true because a nation may grieve when a celebrity's helicopter crashes into the side of a hill and say, "This is so tragic," but I think part of the reason why people think it's tragic isn't just because they feel some connection with a superstar, but because they think that a superstar at age 41 with lots of money, lots of fame, should be able to hedge their life against tragedy, but it's almost as if we see and we realize that no matter how much we have, we can't hedge our life against some of the difficulty.
Proverbs just wants us to understand that money has limits, but that's not the only thing we need to understand about money. We need to understand what it can do, because it would be easy at this point to simply say, "Well, money isn't positive." Derek Kidner, who wrote a great little commentary on Proverbs, said, "Don't embrace poverty out of laziness or romanticism." It was his way of saying when you take the teaching of Proverbs, you could easily start to think, "Well, money is so negative that I shouldn't pursue it," but Proverbs also tells us these things about money, and that is that money does produce some security.
In the verses that you heard read just before we began the teaching, this is what it says, Proverbs chapter 10 verse 15, "The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor." To say that it's a fortified city is hard in our day and age to fully understand that analogy, because our cities aren't set up the way ancient cities were, but ancient cities had walls and were fortified. A strong city meant that you were secure. What the proverb says is if you have money, there's some security that comes with it, if you have the ability to manage money, that it can be a very good thing in your life.
Then Proverbs also tells us that money produces some options in our life. Here's what Proverbs 22 verse 7 says, "The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is the slave to the lender." The slave wording here is meant to say that you don't have options, you don't have choices. In other words, if you don't take care of your resources in a way that allows you to have freedom, what you're doing is you're putting yourself in a place where you limit your options. Money's positive is that it produces some security, though not ultimate security, but some security in this life, and simultaneously it gives us options.
A healthy perspective when it comes to money is to be able to say there's some great things that money can do in my life, but to understand that money has limits, and that ultimately what matters most is not how much money or security I think I have or how many options I think I have in this world, but that I've come to be rightly related to God because one day, someday all of us will come to an end. If we aren't rich toward God, what it will mean is that we'll end our lives and say, "I had a whole lot and now it just goes to somebody else."
Then here's the second thing that we want to look at, and that is, what is a wise approach to money? I believe that Proverbs gives us five fairly clear principles about this, first is just to earn money ethically. Proverbs 16:8 says this, "Better is a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice." Proverbs chapter 11 verse 1 says this, it says, "The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him." Proverbs 13:11 puts it this way, it says, "Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gains money little by little makes it grow." Then Proverbs 28:6 says this, "Better the poor whose walk is blameless than the rich whose way is perverse."
What all of those are pointing to is this simple idea that if we earn our money in any way that is shady, dishonest, unethical, that then that money is not worth earning, not worth having. That's what that's saying, that it would be better to leave some money on the table than to be thought to have kind of cut corners and hurt somebody else in order to gain more for ourselves. You see, sometimes it may not be technically dishonest or unethical, but what we can do is we can say, "I'm going to drive a hard bargain or I'm going to not give somebody what's fair even though I think I'm getting what's fair for me." It can be a means of saying, "I'm prioritizing money over any kind of fairness or justice."
What the Proverbs say is that that's money that is generally not worth having, not just generally, isn't worth having. The practical question, just in our day and age, is are you willing to misrepresent reality in order to have a little more? Are you giving an honest amount of effort at the place that you work for what you're compensated for? Sometimes that can come just in the raw shape of hours. Sometimes it can come in the way that you invest the hours. Sometimes you can be at work and spend a lot of time dealing with personal stuff or surfing the internet or doing things that are inane rather than saying, "I'm giving my best effort to this today." In Proverbs, that would be gaining money unethically.
But don't miss something here, and that is, I do believe that Proverbs does talk about earning money ethically and that earning is good again, because it would be easy, once again here, to look at this and to say, "Well, okay, so Proverbs' whole exhortation is to be careful not to be unethical," but earning in the book of Proverbs, in the Bible, is seen as a good thing, a worthwhile thing, a worthwhile pursuit. In Proverbs chapter 14 verse 4 it says that you'll have a clean stable without an ox, but an ox is needed to produce a good crop. What that's really saying is that some of us will go through life trying to avoid difficulty, hardship, messes in life, and we'll miss the opportunity to have something that's productive or good or an asset that brings something into our lives. It can be fear of the mess that can keep us from earning. Proverbs is fairly consistent in lifting this idea of saying that if you earn, that's a good thing.
This is why Derek Kidner's comment about don't embrace poverty out of romanticism or laziness is important, because some of us can go through our lives almost apologizing for some of the skills or gifts or abilities that God has given us to earn and to produce because we've so bought into this idea that says, "I don't want to appear to be materialistic." Earn it ethically.
Here's the second thing that I think we see in Proverbs, and that is to spend it wisely. In Proverbs chapter 24 verse 27 we see this ... I'm sorry, in Proverbs chapter, yeah, 24 verse 27 we read this, "Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready and after that build your house." We talked about this a couple weeks ago, but again, this is the idea of saying don't spend your money on something that is not going to help you long term. Now a house, in our culture, is generally considered to be an appreciating asset if you buy well and is something that's necessary in the way that we live. In that culture, to say put your fields in order before you buy your house, before you spend on your house, what was being communicated was this idea of saying don't spend money on a luxury until you have taken care of something that brings income.
Most people probably don't have an earning problem. They have a spending problem, when we think about it, meaning there's generally enough income to live and to do things, but we end up thinking that we need more things than we really need, things that would be considered, in many ways, extras, in order to have a good life and because of that, what we do is we spend more than we make and it creates pressure.
Here's the third thing, and that is I think Proverbs encourages us, tells us to save our money, save it consistently. Proverbs 21 verse 20 says it this way, Proverbs 21:20 says, "The wise store of choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down." In other words, they don't save for the future. What Proverbs and the Bible encourage is this idea of taking some of what we have today and putting it aside so that we are not in a place where we have lots of earning pressure in the future. If you're here and you're young, especially if you're in your 20s, I just want to encourage you to learn about the power of investing and compounding money, because setting aside money now will make a huge difference in terms of your security, some security in the future, and your options in the future. It's even a biblical idea to say, "Save, don't spend everything that you get."
There's another concept here, and I read the verse earlier, Proverbs 13:11, that says that if you earn little by little it will amass. I just want to speak just for a moment to those of you who maybe have lots of resource, in fact so much resource that you can set up your kids, the next generation. I'm not talking about just helping them out a little bit, but where you can set them up so they don't need to work. That is, I think, that Proverbs would indicate in Proverbs 13:11 and some other places, that that may not be the healthiest thing for the next generation, because what happens then is if somebody isn't in a place where they have to work, if somebody is in a place where they haven't had to gain, haven't had to budget and navigate and produce a reasonable skill, is then their lives can become very purposeless.
In fact, you see this often in second generational wealth, people who have had a lot of money and were able to just give to the next generation so that they were set up and didn't have to do anything, what you often hear about is second generation kind of people of those types of means end up often with greater problems than the generation that earned it. I think it goes back to Proverbs and this idea of learning to save, learning to budget, learning to live within your means. If somebody doesn't have any means and has never had the process of learning that, you actually can do somebody a disservice rather than a service by giving them a lot.
I think Proverbs tells us this as well, and that is to borrow it sparingly. We read Proverbs 22:7 about the borrower being the servant of the lender. Generally what we know is that it is good debt to borrow for something that will appreciate, but it's bad debt to borrow for something that depreciates, meaning that if you borrow for a house, in our culture, and buy it right, it generally appreciates. If you borrow for some education, if it's not excessive education for what your earning potential is, that's generally appreciating asset. If you borrow for a business or to start a business, that's generally good debt, but bad debt are consumable things, vacations, furniture, clothes, cars even. Now there's probably some time where maybe borrowing for a car makes sense, but the idea is when you borrow, you put pressure on yourself because now you have to earn. If you can live in a place where you have less debt or almost no debt, especially not debt that is depreciating in its way, that it will actually help, again, produce this freedom in your future.
I think it was Will Rogers who once said, "We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like." That's often what drives our debt. That leads just to one last principle that we see here about how we approach money in Proverbs, and I'm just going to say that this is to give it generously. Proverbs chapter 3 verse 9 and 10 says this, "Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops. Then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine." Proverbs 11:24 puts it this way, it says, "One person gives freely yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly yet comes to poverty." Then Proverbs 19:17 says this, it says, "Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and he will reward them for what they have done."
What this points to is this idea of being able to say that when I have resources, to give it generously is part of being a good steward of what I have. This is something that people have discovered, whether they're people of faith or not people of faith, this is why so many institutions now will have a place where they say, "We do this to help people who are less fortunate," because what they're discovering is what Proverbs teaches here, and that is when you give generously, what did the three proverbs say? That your barns will be overflowing, you're lending to the Lord, he will reward. One person gives and gets even more and another person doesn't give and they come to poverty.
Now, you've probably heard that taught maybe on a TV somewhere, a TV preacher saying, "Give money to our ministry and you'll be blessed," and as a result, rightly you say, "I don't think that works that way and I don't want to be part of that," but don't miss what the text actually says here, which is when you're faithful with what God has given you, and to have this idea of saying, "I'm going to bring the first fruits," means I'm going to bring the first portion of what I get and give it to the Lord, what happens is then God works in your finances in ways you can't completely understand.
I've been a pastor now for a long time. I've seen people start the journey of tithing, this idea of giving the first 10%, the first fruits of their money to the church or to God's work in some form. What happens is they always start with fear, almost always, like, "If we give that much, do you know how much that is? That would be a crazy amount for ... How could we live if we did that?" Here's what I've heard on the backside, over and over again, and that is, "I wouldn't dream of not doing it because God has done more since we started giving in our finances than we ever saw before." Here's what Christian financial planners often say, they say that budgeting would be very easy if people would simply say 10, 10, 80, 10% to God, 10% to savings, live on 80%, because if we did that, then we would control our spending, we would save for the future, and we would honor God with our wealth.
What we see, again just in Proverbs here, is this idea of God resupplying, God taking what we give and saying, "I'm going to work in your life." Sometimes for people, they'll look at this and they'll say, "Okay, 10%, that's a high bar." It seems like maybe unreasonable, but yet if you look at everything and you say, "If God's the owner, the originator, and I give a little bit back to God, is it that crazy?" If I give one of my sons a $100 bill and say, "Can I have 10 back?" that's not crazy, but somehow when we work in our own arena, we feel like that's just so much. Anything we give matters. It really combats the attitude of consumerism in our own lives.
Now money, I realize, is an emotional issue. It's a spiritual issue. It's a practical issue. What's true, even just to think about this, and I would imagine as some of us sit here and we say, "Well, okay, does the church need money?" We're okay, okay? I mean, this is not about the church. This is about you being in a place where you say, "I'm honoring God with what I have and I'm putting myself in the best possible place to have freedom."
Here's something that Faith and I saw early in our married lives together. When we first got married, we made a budget. I was trying to go to grad school in theology, seminary, do the master of divinity, the Greek, the Hebrew, everything that I thought I would need to be a pastor, and then Faith was going to go for psychology. She wanted to work in counseling. We had a budget for how we were going to do this, and the numbers simply didn't add up. We didn't have enough money, enough income from the jobs we had to pay the bills to go to grad school. Here was the difference when we did our budget, literally. The difference between having enough money and not having enough money was taking 10% of our money and giving it away.
Here's what happened for me in that moment is I looked at it and I thought, "Well, I'm planning to be a pastor and serve the church. Maybe it's okay if I don't give 10% right now because one day my whole life will be about this and all of that." We prayed about it, talked about it, looked at the scriptures. We couldn't find that loophole anywhere. We decided at that time to go ahead and do the tithe, which was huge because it meant that we probably would not be able to go to school each semester that we had planned and our little life plan wasn't going to work because of the tithe. That was the reality for us.
We decided to do it. When we decided to do it, it was like God just opened up, some of what Proverbs talks about. Now it wasn't like God just brought a Brinks truck to our house, but I had a guy who was in the church who needed some help with his carpet cleaning business a couple days a week when I wasn't in school so I ended up getting an extra job cleaning carpets. I got a bunch of opportunities to officiate basketball all over Chicago, and I ended up having some money there, and then some unique gifts came in. All of a sudden we look back on that period, and we went through four years, both getting through grad school with no additional debt, getting a new car, getting ourselves on our feet. We look back and say we believe that at least part of that was a decision to say, "God, we're going to trust you when it comes to our money."
Here's my point, really for all of us, and that is money does matter. The Bible gives us principles. If you follow them, what you will hear over and over again from people who've trusted and done what it says, is that they look back and say, "We're so glad that we trusted God in this area," but here's probably the bigger point. That is most of us as we sit here would probably say, "I haven't done that perfectly."
What Proverbs is is it's wisdom. It's not Old Testament law, but what it shows us is the places that we don't always live up to God's ideal. Being rich toward God does not mean that we always keep every ideal. What it means is that we understand that in the places that we come short, that there is a God, who in Jesus Christ came and did for me what I can't do, and in entering into a relationship with him, in coming to know him as my savior, as my substitute, that what I'm doing in essence is I'm saying, "In all the places that I don't live these principles, that I've over prioritized money, that I've under prioritized money, that I've missed on something, that I've either overvalued, undervalued this, that I still have a God who works for my ultimate good."
There's a chance some of us are sitting here and we're saying, "I'm not in my 20s and I wish I had done things differently in my 20s." We look at our financial situation and we say, "I've made a mess of it." Do you know what the good news is? One day, whatever has happened in your money, either to the positive or to the negative, that that money will not matter. What will matter is the relationship you've had with God through Jesus Christ, and that that money is just a means to something much greater. I mean, think about it this way. If a friend of yours took you to an amusement park and they said, "Here's a bunch of money for today to enjoy as any way you want, but you can also take some of that money and you can kick it out of today and you can can use it for your future if you put it into this fund or this resource."
Now, chances are you would probably enjoy some of the money during the day, but chances are you'd also say, "Well, how much can I send ahead?" This life is like that trip to an amusement park. You want to have enough for the day. You want to spend it wisely. You don't want to borrow. You want to share generously. There are things you want to do, but we want to keep it in perspective. My hope is that just as you interact with this today, that you would say, "Yeah, money can be a good thing. Yes, it can be the root of all evil, not money itself, but the love of money can be, but money can be good in my life, can be used for some security, for some options, but it's not ultimate, and something that can help me be rich toward God."
Father, we thank you just for this time. Lord, I know that money is a big deal in all of our lives, whether we have a lot, don't have a lot. Help us not to overvalue its importance or to undervalue its importance, but instead to be people who see what it can be and what it can't be, and arrange our lives accordingly. God, even more than that, help us not to equate our material well being here with our ultimate well being, but to realize that being rich towards you is what will matter ultimately and most in our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
