The Deceitfulness of Wealth

Do you think of yourself as wealthy or rich?

If you are like me, chances are you have answered the above question with a resounding "NO".  I mean, if I were wealthy, then I should have 7 digits in my bank account, right?  I would even settle for 7 digits, if two of those digits represented cents and not dollars (meaning I had $10k in the bank, instead of $1M).  Most of us probably think the same way when it comes to the idea of being rich.

This idea of what it means to be wealthy is further complicated by all the talk in our country about the rich and how 99% of us do not fall into that category.  Repeat an accusation enough and we begin to believe in its definition rather than what the Word of God says.  I think it is safe to say that all of us have fallen for the bait enough to hinder a biblical understanding of wealth and it has had devastating effects on our lives, as believers.

Worse yet, we have passed down this erroneous view to our children.  How many times have your children complained about what they didn't have?  For most of us parents, it drives us nuts.  But if we are honest, how many times have we said the same thing?

I must admit, I can be the worst complainer.  I find myself complaining that I don't have enough:  Not enough money, not enough time, not enough vacation, not enough of what I want.  So I have to admit that at least some of what I hear from my children concerning their dissatisfaction of what they have comes from what they hear from me.  They also get it from their fallen human nature, but that just shows that they came by it honestly.

In the Parable of the Sower (Mat. 13:1-23), Jesus identifies the deceitfulness of wealth as being the seed sown among the thorns.  It is unfruitful and represents one of three sets of seeds that are not saved.  That is a scary consequence and definitely not something I wish to pass down to my children.

I know that we don't like to look at ourselves as rich.  Some of us are living paycheck-to-paycheck.  For some, paycheck-to-paycheck is all we've ever known.  But does that make us poor?

In 1 Timothy 6:6-11, Paul defines for us what provision that we are to be satisfied with:  Food and clothes...that's it.  That's a very low bar.  I mean, shelter didn't even make his list.  And we are told that we are to be content with that.  In other words, if we have those two things, we are rich.  Maybe not in the world's definition, but according to God, we are.

In Deuteronomy 8, the people of Israel are getting ready to enter the land of Promise.  For the last 40 years, they have wandered in the desert where God has taken care of these two things (food and clothes).  They were given manna so that everyone had something to eat (v. 3).  And they were also given provision of clothes as their clothing didn't wear out during these 40 years in the desert (v. 4).

They were about to move from a place of needy dependence to one of abundance with the temptation of independence.  I say, temptation of independence, because that is exactly what God says.  His warning to the people of Israel repeatedly was that the wealth of the land will tempt them to forget the Lord (v. 11, 14, 19).  They would move from a place of acknowledgement that God was the One who provided everything for them, to a place where they believed that all the wealth they acquired was by the work of their own hands (v. 17).  Yet, even in this new land of opportunity for the Israelites, it is God who still gives them the ability to produce wealth (v. 18).

The only way to combat such temptations was to be grounded in the Word of God so much that we see it as our daily bread (v. 3).  When our daily bread is the Word of God, we will adopt His perspectives on those things that are truly important, as well as, His definition on what it means to be rich.

But in the land of the rich, distractions are plentiful.  There is always something to do or something to watch or something to occupy our time because we have so many choices.  I mean, we have so many choices, that we are discontent over the choices we don't have (how crazy is that).  But Satan is using the blessing of the land of abundance to take us away from the only thing that provides sustenance to our very souls, the Word of God.

It is the Word of God that keeps us thankful for our riches in the midst of an ungrateful culture.  It is the Word of God that leads us to a place of salvation by revealing Jesus in all His glory (2 Tim. 3:14-17).  And it is through the Word of God whereby we produce a harvest of 30, 60 or 100 fold  (Mat. 13:23). 

Since these are the very things that we wish to pass down to our children, we have to make the Word of God a priority in their lives by making it a priority in ours.  We need to treasure our time communing with God through knowledge of the Word and through prayer.  We need our worldview to be shaped by His Word, so that it isn't shaped by the 30 second commercials or 30 minute TV shows that constantly tell us, amidst our riches, how poor and disadvantaged we really are.

Only Jesus revealed through the Word of God is the solution to our human condition.  Let us not deprive that to our children, no matter how much abundance they (and we) have to choose from.