Wisdom for Wealth and Work | Proverbs 6:13–15

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Amen. Maybe seated. Well, good morning and uh happy Father's Day. We love you, fathers. Thank you for being here and leading. Uh, we uh trust uh that you will be honored and uh and loved today and appreciated, and uh I trust that uh you um are here to grow uh continually as a father uh in your responsibility. We are in a series through the book of Proverbs, so I'm gonna ask you to find Proverbs, Proverbs chapter 9. Now we're gonna start there, uh, but I want you to be aware of the fact that we're gonna we're gonna jump all over the place just a little bit today. Proverbs is a book that lends itself uh topically, so we understand that. It's it's a genre of scripture that does that. It has uh nuggets of wisdom uh scattered throughout, and and a lot of times coming back to similar topics again and again and again throughout. So, really, from from chapter one through uh all the way through chapter 31 of Proverbs, there are uh truths that come up again and again and again. So we're gonna look at that again today and just kind of get an understanding of the different things that we need to apply wisdom to in our lives. Wisdom. That's what we're after. So we started a couple weeks ago understanding this and unpacking the first part of chapter one, chapter one, one through seven, and we called that where to begin. And uh we talked about how wisdom is not just information, uh, nor is it just reserved for the gandoffs of uh our world. It's it's actually the skill in the art of godly living. Wisdom is the ability to take things and form them into things of excellence and beauty, and wisdom that is godly for life is taking the normal things of life and forming it into something that is God honoring. So wisdom begins, we know in chapter 7, chapter 1, verse 7, with the fear of the Lord. That's where it starts and extends into every area of our life, into our decisions, into our relationships, into the words we use, into our ambitions, into our resources. Proverbs dismantles the idea that faith belongs to Sunday, while finances or other areas of life belong to Monday. We understand that wisdom is a whole life orientation that brings every aspect of life under God's rule. And that's what we discovered a few weeks ago. Then last week we talked about the portrait of a fool. So, chapter one, or the first part, we talked about what wisdom is, and then we talked about what a fool is, and a fool is not somebody who's primarily ignorant. There are a lot of really smart fools out there. The fool is someone who is resistant. He hears God's wisdom, but he refuses it. He rejects God's invitation, he resists God's wise correction, and eventually he experiences the consequences of his choices. We talked about that last week, the portrait of a fool. And the fool's problem, again, it's not lack of revelation, it's a rejection of revelation. So over the last several weeks, Proverbs has been teaching us that wisdom is is uh what wisdom is and then what foolishness looks like. And we learned that wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. We we talked about that. In fact, that's that's Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10. In fact, I want you to read that with me. It's on the screen. If you have it open in front of you, I want you to see it. And here's what he says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. So we've got to understand where wisdom begins. Wisdom is not just the uh self-help or self-improvement program, it's not just getting smarter, it's understanding God's plan, God's ideas, and God's uh purpose for things in life, and then organizing them according to God's plan, skillfully, according to God's plan in a in a way, and it happens, begins with the fear of God. And so what we're doing is we're taking that wisdom that begins with the fear of God, and we're starting to apply it over the summer into different areas of life. And today I wanted to consider the idea of what wisdom is regarding work and wealth. So, wisdom for work and wealth. We're gonna talk about that because Proverbs has a ton to say on this. Now, we understand that money says something, money talks. Whether we are anxious about it, ambitious for it, ashamed of it, addicted to it, wealth has a way of exposing what we truly believe and what we truly love. The financial decisions we make are not, according to Proverbs, merely economic. They are profoundly theological. How we make decisions regarding wealth and work reveals our functional God, how we see the world and what we truly trust in. So Proverbs speaks with just incredible directness about money and work and taking those elements and forming them into a life that honors God. And what Proverbs doesn't do is it doesn't hand us a financial investment strategy, it shapes the heart of the one who's handling money well. Remember, again, that wisdom of Proverbs is the skill in the art of godly living. That's the wisdom. It's the skill in the art of godly living. In fact, Derek Kidner, a writer on Old Testament writings, said the Proverbs or wisdom literature is the application of revealed truth to the whole life. So wisdom is not just understanding what revealed truth is, but it is the right application of revelation to all of life, so that all of our life is influenced by the wisdom revealed. And again, that starts with the fear of the Lord, not self-improvement programs, not financial literacy. Wisdom begins with a posture of the whole person before the living God, a reverential awe. That's what the fear of the Lord is. A trembling delight. That's not a those aren't oxymorons. That is a trembling but delight in who he is and a worshipful dependence on him. That's what the fear of the Lord is. Now you strip away the fear of the Lord, and you are not left with wisdom. You might be left with shrewdness or some cleverness, but you're not left with true wisdom. And Proverbs actually regards that kind of shrewdness as kind of a foolishness of its own kind. So everything Proverbs says about wealth and work is downstream from this conviction of the fear of the Lord and a heart posture. So with this foundation in place, I want to ask a couple of uh, or answer a couple of questions that might arise. And so, on top of all of this passage, this text that we're gonna see these passages gathering together from Proverbs sits this big idea. What does Proverbs teach us about work and wealth? And here's what it is wisdom teaches us to handle work and wealth in ways that honor God. Now, I think we would all agree with that statement, but sometimes I think we miss or we get distracted or we are lured into handling our work and our resources in ways that do not honor God. And Proverbs speaks a ton to that. So, what does wisdom teach us about wealth and work? What ways can we honor God with how we work and how we use the resources of our lives? So let's talk about that, okay? Let's see what Proverbs has to say to us about it, okay? We good? Six of them. There's six of them. Six interconnected, dependent instructions about work and wealth. And I want this to form a worldview and a theology on how to consider Monday workday and how to consider bank accounts and 401ks and IRAs and all of that. We need to consider that. We need to let the Bible come to speak on those things. That is not a topic that we say, that's not your area, Bible. I got that. You tell me what else. It speaks to all of that, and the wisdom of God helps us take those things and form them into a properly lived life for the honor of God. And we need to understand how can I honor God with my work and wealth. Okay? There's six of them. I want you to jot these down, they'll be up on the screen. Here's how we'll do it. Wisdom teaches me. Wisdom teaches me to do these six things, instructs me to towards these three six things. Number one, wisdom teaches me to prioritize my wealth rightly. So the first and most foundational thing that Proverbs teaches us is that we must place wealth and work in its proper rank among our priorities. Proverbs is abundantly clear on this point. Wealth, for all of its usefulness, usefulness is not the supreme good. It's not even top tier. In fact, he speaks to this multiple times. And if you're interested in jumping to these, we're just gonna be in the book of Proverbs only. Some verses will be on the screen, but most you're just gonna have to jot down or follow. But in Proverbs chapter 16, so you can look there, it says this in verse 16 how much better to get wisdom than gold. To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. And then again, we're gonna move to them quick, so if you jot them down, but Proverbs 8 and it kind of speaks to the same thing, verses 10 and 11. He says, Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. So you see the better then better wisdom than gold. Uh, wisdom is better than jewels. Now on the screen, I want you to see Proverbs 3. Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain of her is better than the gain from silver, and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. The comparison here is obvious and it's intentional. Solomon, who had more gold than any king of his era, was uniquely qualified to make this judgment because he had lived with both. And his conclusion is not some romanticized idealism of someone who has never had money, right? Like, yeah, right. Easy for you to say, right? It is it is not that. It is the hard-won assessment. It is the life-experienced assessment of a man who had it all and understood that wealth without wisdom is a form of poverty. Bruce Walkey wrote a two-volume commentary on Proverbs, and he said this: that Proverbs wisdom ethics subverts the dominant cultural assumption that material prosperity is the highest good. It is pushing back on that. It's countercultural in ancient Israel as well as it is today. So notice what Proverbs sets above wealth. We just read three passages that he sets wisdom above wealth. In other passages, he says righteousness is more precious than wealth. Or a good name is better than riches, or the fear of God is better than, and several of them are pretty clear. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. Proverbs 22.1. In fact, Proverbs 20 16, 8 says, better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. Proverbs 15, better is little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith. Those three Proverbs, Proverbs 22, 1, Proverbs 16, 8, and Proverbs 15, 16 and 17 offer a better than comparison. Each time what is held up as superior to wealth is something that money cannot purchase. Character, integrity, the fear of God, peace of conscience. Now listen, he is not giving us just this abstract value system or an appraisal. He's not literally saying those things have more money value than riches or gold. No. What he's doing is he's giving us a governing principle over every economic decision we make. It doesn't mean that Proverbs despises wealth. We're gonna talk about that in a minute, but Proverbs insists this: that wealth must find its proper place in the hierarchy of value in our lives. It is subordinate, it is less precious, less valuable than wisdom and righteousness and a relationship with God. Now, many people in our world and in our church are anxious about money because they have made it their functional ultimate. When wealth becomes my highest good, the fear of losing it becomes a kind of death. And that's a horrible place to live. Proverbs offers liberation from that mindset. When you have something more valuable than gold, the loss of gold does not destroy you. Charles Bridges said it this way: the man who has God as his portion can never be truly poor. But the man who has only gold as his portion can never be truly rich. Think about Jim Elliott. We know the story. Such a great classic story of a missionary who was killed in Ecuador by the tribes in 1956. Before his death, he wrote those famous words He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Elliot understood the Proverbs value system, and he prioritized God's kingdom above personal wealth, above comfort, above safety, above earthly success. And the world looked at his death and saw loss, but heaven saw wisdom. So wisdom teaches us to prioritize rightly and in doing so frees us from both despair of poverty and the tyranny of wealth. When I prioritize my wealth rightly, I will see it as a means to bring honor to the Lord. That's Proverbs 3, 9 and 10. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce. The wise person sees wealth as a gift from God, values God above wealth, and uses wealth to honor God. Now here's the problem. The problem is that we are prone to seek in wealth the security and the satisfaction and the significance that can only be found in God. We often make money a functional savior by looking to it for what only God can provide. And remember, Christ perfectly treasured his Father above all earthly riches. He refused every temptation to place wealth above God. And through the gospel, he frees us from the worship of wealth and teaches us to treasure God above all else. That's the gospel influence here. That's number one, okay? Got it? Number one is that we would prioritize my wealth rightly. Wisdom teaches me that. Number two, wisdom teaches me to earn my wealth diligently. Proverbs is thoroughly practical about how wealth is to be obtained. The clear teaching of Proverbs is that the path to legitimate prosperity runs through hard work. Few themes appear more frequently in Proverbs than the contrast between the diligent and the sluggard. I love saying that word when I read Proverbs. The sluggard. I don't know why. That just sounds cool when it rolls off my tongue. And this is not a minor pattern. This isn't just like a one-off. He regularly comes back to the sluggard. It's this detailed drawn-out portrait of the person who is too comfortable, too clever, and too cautious to actually do any work. The sluggard is treated with this kind of rebuke and even some gentle mockery throughout Proverbs. And really it should make us all a little uncomfortable. In fact, Proverbs 13:4, you can jot that reference down. 13.4 says, the soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. Proverbs 24, 30 through 34, he talks about how he walked by the field of the sluggard, the property line of the sluggard, and it was all overgrown and it was neglected. It didn't seem like a big deal, but he was in the house sleeping while his house and his farm was overgrown and neglected, and it eventually led to, he said, poverty. Proverbs 10, 4 through 5 speaks of a slack hand or a lazy hand, and he says it causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. Let's get an illustration from Proverbs, can we? It's a good one. I have a bunch of them crawling around my house. It's Proverbs chapter 6, 6 through 11. Go to the ant, O sluggard. The smallest little creature that you have wandering around your house all over the place. They're still discovering species of ants in forests and rainforests. And they're everywhere, and they teach us one of the biggest lessons of life. Consider her ways and be wise. Remember, wise is screaming out in the streets everywhere we go for us to learn. Here, all we have to do is look down and see ants, and we great gain wisdom. And here's what he teaches us without having any chief officer or ruler, she, the ant, prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. Then the hoppers come and take it all, if you know the. Sorry. My son is obsessed with cartoons like that, but anyways, how long will you lie there, O sluggard? Sluggard, look to the ant. When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man. Figure of wisdom, the ant, remarkable self-motivation, discipline. No one stands over the ant demanding productivity. I have never once, out of the thousands of ant hills in my backyard, I have never once saw a drill sergeant ant standing there cracking a whip. Never. Why? Because there's self-motivation and there's discipline. It acts from an internalized understanding of how the created order works. Summer doesn't last forever. Harvest is a window, not a permanent condition. The wise person reads the moment, applies himself, and acts with diligent urgency. That's what he's talking about. So Proverbs does not treat work in a way that makes it mere duty. Work in the wisdom tradition is not a curse. Though it has been made harder by the fall, work is part of the original creation design. Before sin entered the world, Adam was set in the garden to work and keep it. This is before sin. Adam was called to work. Proverbs is written with the theological frame. Diligent labor, hard work is a form of covenant faithfulness, a way of inhabiting the world as God intended mankind to inhabit the world. Notice what also Proverbs commends. It is not reckless ambition or workaholism, but it is disciplined, consistent, unhurried effort that produces. You could jot these references down. I think it's worth the study. Proverbs 12, 11. Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense. Focusing on responsible work rather than fantasies of easy success. Proverbs 13, 11, wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. He's talking about get rich quick schemes. Pyramid schemes. I don't know if that's what he's talking about, but but those you're gonna get rich super quick. Just do this, and you're gonna do this, this, and this, and I'm gonna teach you how to make thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Listen, Proverbs teaches us if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And these are these quickly gaining pro gaining wealth. Proverbs 14, 23. In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. Stop talking about work and get to work. That's what the wisdom of Proverbs says. Proverbs 21:5, the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance. But everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. Little by little, steady faithfulness, not sudden schemes. Proverbs deeply suspicious of wealth that arrives too quickly, too easily, or through a mechanism that bypass honest hard work. Because that's how we were created to live. So the person who chases fantasies, who seeks the windfalls and the quick get rich quick schemes, is heading toward poverty, not prosperity, he says. Proverbs 28, 19. Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty. Here's the point he's making. And this might be something that we need to learn, but we also might need to teach to the next generation. It's okay to work hard. It is okay to get your hands dirty, to clock in and clock out. It is okay to go ahead and just do the Little by little, even if it starts at minimum wage and it increases over time, that is an okay way of living. In fact, that is a God-honoring way of living. In fact, Derek Kidner called this the theology of the ordinary. The conviction that God's blessing typically flows through the ordinary channels of faithful, consistent effort rather than through exceptional or spectacular shortcuts. That's what Proverbs is teaching us. This is an extremely liberating vision for the Christian worker, by the way, who feels unimportant in their daily job. Your faithfulness daily at the desk, in the field, on the factory floor, in the classroom, in the kitchen, is not beneath God's notice. It is in fact wisdom in action. We would all note that this is what he's called us to. But notice diligence is not this uh uh uh pursuit of work just to acquire wealth. In fact, show on the screen Proverbs 23. Do not toil to acquire wealth, but to be discerning enough to desist. So work isn't just I'm gonna work harder so I can get more. Work is I'm gonna work hard because that's what God's called me to, and I'm going to get enough to provide for my family and do the thing that God's called me to do. He says, when you do that, when your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like as it an eagle toward heaven. Have a couple teenagers, and that verse becomes extremely relevant. Amen? Right? I mean, am I right or am I wrong? The verse contains a corrective error, a corrective word about work right next to a commending hard work. Work as a faithful steward of God, giving uh a steward of God given capacity for his honor. Work that way. But don't don't work as this frantic attempt to secure one's wealth in self-sufficiency. There's a ditch on both sides of the road. Now the problem is this. The problem is that sinners are tempted either toward laziness that avoids responsibility or toward ambition that makes work an idol. Both are foolish. And we often want the rewards of labor without the discipline of labor or the glory of success without dependence on God. Christ faithfully completed though an example for us when he worked the work of his father that he gave him to do and never shrink back from his calling. He forgives our failures and work, he enables us to labor faithfully for God's glory rather than our own. Okay? That's number two. So, first, wisdom teaches me to prioritize my wealth rightly. Wisdom teaches me to earn my wealth diligently. And number three, I want you to see this laid out for us. Wisdom teaches me to hold my wealth carefully. Proverbs is one of the most realistic books in the Bible when it comes to the fragility of wealth. He taught us to earn it diligently and then immediately cautions us against holding it too tightly. Wealth is real, but remember, wealth is not reliable. Wealth is useful, but wealth is not secure. In fact, look with me at Proverbs 11, verse 28 on the screen. Whoever trusts in his riches will fall. But the righteous will flourish like a green leaf. The word trust here is the Hebrew word that's used throughout the Psalms for the soul's confident reliance on God. So you see what's going on here? He's taking the same word that would describe trust in God, and he's saying that it can be misplaced faith by trusting in riches. It is a misallocation of ultimate trust. The person who trusts in riches is not just making a financial mistake, they are making a theological error. They have put the weight of their hope on something that cannot bear it. Proverbs is brutally honest about what wealth cannot do. It cannot purchase immunity from trouble, it cannot secure your soul. It is not a good substitute for character. It cannot function as a reliable foundation for human relationships. In fact, think about what Proverbs 19:4 says. Wealth brings many new friends. You know that to be true, right? You got a little bit of money, all of a sudden someone's like, damn, what's up? Right? But a poor man is deserted by his friend. Proverbs 14, 20. The poor is disliked even by his neighbor, but the rich has many friends. Notice what Proverbs is doing. It is not endorsing this social dynamic. It's not telling us this is what it should be. It is just telling us this is the way it is. It is describing with this clear realism something that should make us weary of relationships primarily built on the platform of wealth. The friends that wealth attracts are often friends of the wealth, not friends of the person. And Proverbs is helping us see clearly that so that we are not deceived. It's also the simple instability of riches that he tells us about. Fortunes are built and lost. Markets rise and fall. Crop failures, theft, fire, fraud, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz destroys it all, right? Quickly. It's gone. The ancient world had its own forms of financial devastation, and Proverbs does not pretend that we don't. The wise person holds the material goods with open hands. Remember, if our ultimate life goal is wealth, then when we lose that wealth, we are shattered and we are we are frustrated to it to it to the point of death. But when the wise person holds the material goods with open hands, it is different. In fact, Proverbs 21:6 tells us the getting of treasure by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a sneer of death. Vapors, substantial, temporary, unable to be grasped. The wealthy who build their empires through dishonesty discover in the end that what they have accumulated is something that cannot be held. But that's not just something that you get when you talk about dishonest gain. In Proverbs 23, he says, we already looked at it, he said, listen, it grows wings and flies away even when you get it honestly, right? So it just has this way of becoming dust again. Remember when I was a kid going to the beach, we would diligently build sandcastles. Those were the days, weren't they? Just ignorantly building sandcastles. Just gonna build it as nice. Man, we would build the camp the castles as big and as strong and as beautiful as we could. And we would I would remember digging moats around the castle, right? So that when the wave comes, the water would divert around the castle. And like the hard work I put into that, and I just figured this is a castle like no other castle. This thing is going to rival the castles of Scotland. The ruins of it are gonna last hundreds of years. And you all know what happened. High tide came, and the next day, as I came out to revisit my amazing castle, I realized that I didn't even know where I built it last because it had been disintegrated back down into a flat shoreline. That is exactly what it's like to build castles and wealth and uh resources here on this earth. It is but dust. It returns back to flat shoreline. Our life is full of sand castles, and yet we, in our foolishness, live and worry over things like they are going to last forever. Proverbs points us to something more durable. In fact, one writer in the New International Commentary on this says that Proverbs affirms that wealth can be a blessing from God while simultaneously insisting that it is a dangerous good that must be held with loosened grip. The practical wisdom here is this: hold your wealth with the hands of a steward, not the fists of an owner. We learned that in 1 Corinthians. Everything you have is unloan from God. You are a manager, not a proprietor. When wealth is held this way, it is inevitable loss. And when it is lost, it will not destroy you because you never built your identity or your security on something God never intended to bear that weight. In fact, Proverbs 18, 11 says it this way: a rich man's wealth is his strong city. And like a high wall in his imagination. The word imagine is significant. It's an illusion, it's a fantasy, it's it's a wall that's not as high as he thinks it is. It's a security that is not as solid as they feel. And Proverbs invites us to see through the illusion, through the imagination, before circumstances forces us to. I think the wise perspective on wealth is expressed pretty vividly in Proverbs chapter 30. In fact, let me throw this up there. Here's the prayer of Proverbs in Proverbs 30. Two things I ask of you deny them not to me before I die. Remove far from me falsehood and lying, give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. I don't want to be rich or poor, Lord. I just want you to give me the food that I need. Give us this day our daily bread. That's what we're praying. That's the prayer of the wise. So we work hard, we hold it loosely, we hold it carefully, we put it in its right prop proper place in our priority lists. But then let me show you, let me show you number four. Wisdom teaches me this to acquire my wealth righteously. So, so again, this is not the same as point two, but it's gonna come right alongside of it because Proverbs doesn't care that we work hard, it cares about how we work. Righteous acquisition is not optional for the person who fears God. It is the only kind of acquisition that wisdom permits. It's this interesting thing that he repeats over and over again. Just think about this for a second. He tells us in Proverbs 16, 11, a just balance and scales are the Lord's, and all the weights in the bag are his work. And then in Proverbs 11:1, he warns us a false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. He says it multiple other places. Proverbs 20, he says it twice. Unequal weights and unequal measures are an abomination to the Lord. And Proverbs 20, 23 says, unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good. The scales were a commercial metaphor for integrity in transactions. In the ancient marketplace, merchants controlled their own weights and measures. And dishonest merchants would have two sets of weights: heavier weights for buying so they would receive more, and lighter ones for selling so that they could give less. They were dishonest. The weights were established by the Lord, and yet they tweaked them for personal gain. And what they are doing is they are unrighteously achieving wealth. It's a false balance. It's an attempt to give it gain an advantage through dishonesty, deception, manipulation, or unfairness. It was a prominent form of economic fraud. And Proverbs declares undeniably that God detests it. In fact, he uses the word it is an abomination, or he detests it. It's the same word that he uses to describe how he feels about idolatry. Economic dishonesty is placed in the same moral category as the worship of false gods. This should not surprise us. Dishonest gain is at its root a form of theft or a taking of what belongs to another. I think your mind is sharp enough to know where this manifests itself in our modern-day culture, because I'm not sure any of you have scales or weights in your bag right now. But it could be overbilling a customer for work that wasn't completed, charging for more labor hours than were actually worked, advertising a low price with hidden fees, misrepresenting the condition of a home, a vehicle, or a product, using deceptive marketing claims to exaggerate benefits or results, bait and switch sales tactics, clocking in before beginning work, claiming hours you didn't actually work, extended breaks while remaining on the clock, producing significantly less work than you are being paid to perform, submitting inaccurate expense reports, underpaying employees for the work they perform, withholding wages or delaying payment unfairly, making promises about compensation or benefits that are never delivered, lying on a loan application, misrepresenting income or assets to secure financing, inflating insurance claims. Listen, the list could go on and on and on and on. I just threw out a couple that I can think of. What are these manifesting in our lives? Are a revelation of a heart that is not in the fear of the Lord, and it is gaining or acquiring wealth in an unrighteous way. Proverbs understands that covenantal community cannot survive when economic relationships are poisoned by deception. In fact, look at Proverbs 20, verse 17. Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel. I love that picture, only because it's vivid. I don't eat gravel. I hope not to ever eat gravel, but I can imagine what it's like to try to chomp down on a bunch of rocks in my mouth thinking it was bread. I liken it to Rocky Road ice cream. Am I right? Like Rocky Road, like who does that? Ice cream is creamy and buttery and sweet, and then you bite in, and all of a sudden there's a nut that breaks a tooth. Anyways, a little side gig there for me, but it's way worse than that, by the way. It's way worse than that. It's gravel, it's rocks. The image of gravel in the mouth captures this dishonest gain, brings a kind of satisfaction that then turns to grit. It's short-lurved lived pleasure with long-term bitterness. The fraud who eats this unrighteously obtained meal may enjoy the taste in the moment, but the mouth is full of gravel later is coming. I like to think of in the 1990s, some of you may be more familiar with it than others, but the company called Enron. Right? One of the most impressive companies, or so it thought. Business magazine praised it. Investors rushed to buy its stock. Executives were celebrated as visionaries. Enron was valued at its peak at over $60 billion. Many believed it represented the future of American businesses. But behind the scenes, Enron was manipulating financial statements, hiding debt, inflating profits, and creating this illusion of success. It was built on deception. It was gained by deception, and the executives got richer and richer and richer. It received awards and recognition, but the truth surfaced in 2001. Enron collapsed almost overnight. Thousands of employees lost their jobs. Many lost their retirement savings. Investors lost billions of dollars, and executives went to prison. I just looked up where some of them are today. Quite interesting. Listen, what looked like one of the greatest business successes stories in America became one of the greatest corporate scandals in history. And you know what? A lot of these guys who are part of that are chewing on rocks right now. They got gravel in their mouth, according to Proverbs. See the wisdom? The wisdom is here. You can receive it, you can be corrected by it, or you can suffer the same consequences as people who refuse to listen to it. Proverbs 22, 22, and 23 say it another way to help us understand this. Do not rob the poor because he is poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate, for the Lord will plead their cause and rob of life those who rob them. That's crazy. The Lord is an advocate to the poor, and that's a sobering image for any who imagine their economic choices don't have a witness. God is a witness. God is not indifferent to how the powerful treat the vulnerable, he's aware. And the person who builds wealth by exploiting the poor has God as an adversary, according to Proverbs 22. Proverbs understands, according to Watkie's uh words, he says, Proverbs understands economic righteousness as a part of the fabric of shalom, he says. Shalom is the way of describing the flourishing of a community that characterizes life ordered according to God's wisdom. And when the wealthy oppress the poor, they tear the social fabric that God intends. When the diligent earn honestly and deal fairly, they participate in the reconstruction of that fabric. In order for a people to live the way God intended for them to live, they cannot gain their wealth at the expense of the poor or in dishonest, unrighteous ways. So the margin you earn matters less than the method by which you earn it. The contract you win is worth less if it was won through deception. And Scripture has a lot to say about this. Proverbs 28.6, Proverbs 28.20, Proverbs 28.22. We could go on and on and on. And here's the reality: Sinners, we are tempted to pursue profit at the expense of righteousness and often justify unethical behavior when it benefits us. Our hearts naturally drift towards greed and deception and self-interest. But we need to represent Christ here, and Christ lived a life of perfect integrity, never deceived, never exploited, never wronged another person, and through faith in him we receive his righteousness and are transformed to reflect that kind of character. That's number four. Number five and number six are quick. Let me give them to you. Wisdom teaches me, number five, to enjoy my wealth gratefully. Here we arrive at a dimension of Proverbs wisdom that is sometimes overlooked in evangelical discussions of money. Maybe it's because we are more comfortable with warnings about wealth than with permissions to enjoy it. But Proverbs and other wisdom books do not regard material enjoyment with suspicion. In fact, it connects legitimate enjoyment to its proper source, the gracious provision of God. And so Proverbs and other wisdom literature tells us listen, when God blesses, enjoy it. Proverbs 10 22 says it this way the blessing of the Lord makes rich and he adds no sorrow with it. So when God honors your honesty and honors your diligence and honors your stewardship and blesses you with more, he gives you more and he doesn't add sorrow with it, he adds blessing with it to be enjoyed. This verse is sometimes misread as a promise that the righteous will inevitably prosper. That is not true. That's the seed of prosperity gospel thinking that is a heresy. But read in context within Proverbs as a whole, it is making a different and more important point. Genuine wealth, wealth that truly satisfies and does not carry the bitter uh aftertaste of gravel comes as a gift from God. Painful toil, it mentions in verse 10, in verse 22, uh, or the sorrow uh is not physical labor. It's not saying he gives you riches without hard work. It is the anxiety, God excluding striving that tries to secure one's future apart from divine provision. It's separating you from uh or delivering you from anxious wealth, it's giving you peace in the midst of his blessings. Man, this is such a cool truth that we could pull out longer and longer, but we don't have time to. I just want you to know that when God creates and when God provides us with this beautiful world and all of the blessings of it, he does not call us to necessarily forsake it. He calls us not to put our security and trust in it, but so long as it is from him, he calls us to enjoy it for the honor and glory of God. And I think that's a wisdom truth. In fact, one guy wrote on this, he said that the world is God's gift. Human beings are made to inhabit it with joy, and the disciplines of wisdom are in service of that habitation, not a denial of it. To enjoy a good meal, a productive harvest, the beauty of a well-built home, the satisfaction of honest work well done, these are not spiritual indulgences, they are participations in the goodness God built into the created order. So wisdom teaches us, and there's several places we can see that, that when God blesses, when we are honest and hardworking, we are to enjoy it to the honor and glory of God. Amen. Like, don't feel guilty about wealth. You're like, well, I don't have to, I'm not that. And this message hasn't included me one bit because I'm poor. And to that I say, Amen. But if you have $200 and a place to call home, you're richer than uh the top 10% of the world's wealth. So everybody in this room right now, probably including some of you teenagers, are in the top 10% of wealth in our world. And we need to understand that we should enjoy that, not embrace that guilty, but put it in its proper place. Be sure to Work hard for it and hold it carefully because it has a way of growing wings and flying away. Okay, last thing. Last thing we're done. Number six, wisdom teaches me to use my wealth generously. If Proverb permits enjoyment, it does not permit hoarding. American view, right? Get all you can, can all you get, sit on the can, just build and hoard and keep it together. And the final word in the wisdom tradition about money is not enjoy it, but give it. Generosity is not the optional final step of advanced discipleship. In Proverbs, it is a defining mark of the wise and righteous person. Proverbs 327 tells us this: do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it. Proverbs 19, 17, whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed. Again and again and again. He says, one gives freely yet grows richer. Another withholds what he should give and only suffers want. Proverbs 11, 24. This is an economy thing that doesn't even make sense in our uh additional, in our spreadsheets and in our calculators. In fact, Proverbs 28, 27, whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse. See the wisdom again and again and again is the reality that those who have are called to live with open hands in generosity, to live willing to use what they have been given for the good of the poor and the needy and others when it is in their power to do that. Listen, we we as wealthy do not exist independently of the poor. We exist in relationship with them, and that relationship carries some moral weight, one man said. Generosity is the expression of that moral weight, the recognition that accumulated resources carry a proportionate responsibility towards the community, especially those of the Brotherhood. So there's a way for us to look at it. Randy Alckhorn said it well when he said this God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving. That's what Proverbs teaches us. That's the wisdom of Proverbs. It is not very deep to jump into all of the verses that speak to that, but it informs the way we think. Wisdom is the skill of building a life, the art of living and building a life that honors God. When it comes to our wealth and our work, there is a way to build it that honors God. It's not about, it's not about wealth, it's more about wisdom and worship and the posture of our hearts. So wisdom teaches us to prioritize wealth rightly, to earn wealth diligently, to hold wealth carefully, to acquire wealth righteously, to enjoy wealth gratefully, and to use wealth generously. And if we're honest, even one of these points exposes us. Amen? Who among us has always prioritized God above wealth? Who among us has never trusted money more than the Lord? Who among us has never been anxious about finances, greedy for more, envious of what others have, or selfish with what God has entrusted to us? Proverbs does not merely teach us how to manage money, Proverbs reveals the condition of our heart concerning wealth. Now let me give you one last verse that has to inform a lot of things. This is the conclusion now, but Proverbs 11:4. Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death. There is coming a day when God will return, Christ will return to judge the world. And in that day, that is the day of wrath, there is nothing riches will do to save you or secure your place in heaven. Righteousness, though, delivers from death. And at the end of life, your home will not save you, your 401k will not save you, your investments will not save you, your business will not save you, your boat will not save you, your truck will not save you, your success will not save you. The only question of what will save you is do you possess the righteousness that delivers from death? And the bad news of the gospel is that you don't. I can answer it for you. No, none of us does. But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus does. Jesus is the truly wise son. He treasured his father above earthly gain. He worked faithfully and perfectly. He never trusted in riches. He never pursued dishonest gain. He enjoyed God's gifts rightly. He gave himself generously, and then he went to the cross to pay for fools like us who have mishandled God's gifts and misplaced our trust. He died for our sins. And the righteousness that Proverbs speaks of that delivers from death is not found in our performance. It is found in faith in Jesus Christ. Amen? And when Christ becomes your greatest treasure, everything else finds its proper place. So stop trusting in your riches. And for that matter, stop trusting in your religion, stop trusting in your works, stop trusting in your set of good deeds. Because God doesn't work in a scale like that. Start trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Because the person who has Christ may not have everything money can buy, but he possesses something money could never buy. And that is eternal life, the favor of God. Amen? Alright, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna jump to a time of communion. We're gonna take a moment to do so because here's what we're doing. We're gonna remember where true riches are found. So I'm gonna pray and then I want to introduce what we're doing when it comes to taking of the Lord's Supper. Listen, we take of the Lord's Supper the third Sunday of every month to remind ourselves of what Christ did for us, who though he was rich, became poor so that we who were poor could become rich in his righteousness. And we're gonna look again to the cross. But help us now, Father, as we turn our attention from this text to what Christ did on the cross for us in remembrance through communion. We want to worship you properly and rightly. We want to recognize what Christ did for us in the denial of himself. And so I pray that as we call to mind again the reality of his death and his shed blood, that we uh would worship you, that we would be helped, our faith would be strengthened, that the purpose of the means of grace as we talk about it, that this is would be felt and experienced by your people. Help us now. Thank you for your word. Thank you for what it says to us about how to properly work and deal with wealth and riches. And I pray that we'd have a proper perspective on these things. Be honored in it, please. We love you in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're gonna take a second. We're gonna take of the bread in the cup. So let me let me help you think about something real quick. When we do this, there is there is a remembrance of what Christ did for us. There is a theology that talks about the fact that the benefit of communion is in the act, and and and it and it has this way of righteously uh making you righteous. And I just want you to say, biblically, that that's not true any more than you being here and hearing a sermon makes you righteous. It is rather the faith of the receiver, it is the calling to mind by faith again what Christ did for us. And so, in taking of communion, it is a means of grace in that, not that it saves, but in that it reminds us, bolsters our faith in what Christ did for us. It's a means of grace in that it reminds us of why Christ died for us, because of our sin and our brokenness. It's a means of grace in that it reminds us and calls to mind the reality that though he died and though he was buried, he rose again, ascended, and is coming back back again. So God blesses the church when we gather together to take of the communion cup and the bread together, not to experience some kind of supernatural thing, but to experience the bolstering of our faith and the reminding of our minds to look again to the cross where Jesus died and shed his blood for our sin and upon which our faith rests so that the future is secure. So this is something he gave to followers of Christ who trusted Jesus Christ as their savior, who've placed their faith in Jesus Christ. And so listen, we love you if you're if you're not there, if you've never done that, if if you're like, I'm not sure that I've placed faith in Christ, I just want to ask you in a few minutes the plate's gonna pass in front of you. Just let it pass by. This is something he gave to the church and to the followers of Jesus Christ specifically, who've placed their faith in Christ and have been born again. That's what this is. So we're taking of this to remember. If there's a need to repent and confess, we do that now. We repent and confess where that is needed because it is on the grounds of what Christ did for us that we confess our sin, knowing that he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin. And then we rejoice. So we're gonna do this because we want to honor the Lord through this act and remember what he did for us on the cross. And so, fellows are gonna go ahead and come. Go ahead, guys, come to the front. They're gonna make their way on back. They're gonna hand out the trays down each row. Grab, grab both cups. They're stacked on top of each other. The top one's the juice, the bottom one's the bread. Hold on to that for a second. And while you're holding on to that, would you pray? Would you confess, please? Just do some work. Just think, Lord, where is it that I'm not taking this in the right manner in the right way? And I'm gonna pray and confess while the band sings over us, we're just gonna look to the Lord. We're not gonna sing, let them sing. You pray, you do business with the Lord as we sit here in this moment of confession and repentance. This is a key part of this. So let me pray and let me thank God. Father, thank you for giving us these elements that we might remember what Christ did for us, that we might call to mind again the reality of his sacrifice on the cross. Thank you for what it does for our faith. Thank you for what it does for our hope as we look again to what Jesus did for us. We love you. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.