Not for Polite Conversation (Part 4): Materialism

Well, we are in the end of the series that we've called Not for Polite Conversation.

And today we're going to talk about materialism.

And what we've done over these weeks is we've used John chapter 4, where Jesus had a conversation with a woman at the well, and in the conversation, he addressed kind of her lack of faith or her faith, agnosticism.

John 4 · chapter mention

He he broke through the cultural barrier that is sometimes seen as sexism or gender kind of exclusion.

He broke through a racial barrier.

And today we're going to talk about money.

But the reason that I see this as being not for polite conversation.

In many ways, even more so than the other topics, is other topics you'll at least talk around the edges of this with, but chances are money is intensely private for you.

And what I mean by that is even with your best friends, you probably only talk about money kind of at a distance.

I've been in a group with some men here, a life group for several years now, and we've talked about some really significant, deep things, but there's one thing that we've never really done, and that is we've never talked about our personal handling of money.

We've talked about it out here, but never personally.

Because it's such a private conversation.

It's such a conversation that you don't just say, hey, what did you do with that?

Or how much do you make?

Or something like that.

You just don't do that.

And in John chapter 4, Jesus gives us a principle.

John 4 · chapter mention

And what we'll see first is this principle, and then we'll go from maybe what is kind of taught here, but is explained more explicitly in other places.

And so we'll look more at other passages today.

But in John 4, Jesus was talking to this woman, and he says in verse 13, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to life eternal or to eternal life.

And most likely Jesus was referencing a known spring that was probably about a two-hour walk from where they were, that was not close enough to go to every day, but that would have come to her mind that Jesus was saying, Listen, if you have what I give you, you'll have ultimate satisfaction.

It'll be more significant than the water that you get here, meeting your everyday needs or getting the world's goods into your life.

And so Jesus kind of gives us the idea that true satisfaction is found in him, not in the stuff of this world.

And it would be easy on this topic today to teach it in a way that really produces some guilt.

And here's what I mean.

I could tell you stories about people who don't have the world's goods, and about how those of us probably in this room, those watching online, just by virtue of being in this room or having access to a computer or being able to watch online, means that you're rich.

In fact, I could show you a video, I had one, but I decided not to show it, that shows how we, if you live in America at this time, how much money you have relative to the global economic reality.

Because our tendency with this issue is to say, well, I have some money, but not like other people.

There's other people that have a lot more than me.

And what happens when we come to see the amount of resources that you have just by virtue of where you live, then you come to see that you're rich.

And here's what John chapter, 1 John chapter 3 says in verse 17.

1 John 3 · chapter mention

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need and has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?

See, that would be easy to talk about that and to kind of leave us today with a sense of saying, so now you have, people don't, if you don't use it for them, then somehow we're not great.

But I think that the Bible's teaching on money is much bigger than that.

And here's what I mean: the Bible has more to say about money than just about any other topic.

It can be debated by scholars who try to count these things, but certainly the Bible addresses the issue of money as much as any other topic.

And what that means is that the Bible has a lot to say about our resources.

So let me just give you a few verses, and what I'm going to say is that I think the Bible's overall tenor to you and me when it comes to resources, to materialism, to money, is more a word of warning than it is a word of guilt.

Here's what I mean.

This is Mark chapter 10, verse 24 and 25.

Mark 10:24

Jesus was speaking, he said, Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.

It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who's rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus here just says, if you have a lot of stuff, it's going to be hard for you to apprehend and to enter the kingdom.

Then in 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 10 and 11, we're told this for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

1 Timothy 6:10

Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

But you, man of God, flee from all this and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

He says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

And that a lot of people have wandered from the faith because of their attachment to things.

And then we read this in James chapter 5, verses 1 through 3.

James 5:1–3

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that's coming on you.

Um, this is not encouraging, by the way.

Your wealth has rotted, and moss have eaten your clothes, your gold and silver are corroded, their corrosion will testify against you, and eat your flesh like fire.

You have hoarded wealth in the last days.

So here Jesus is warning just that keeping a lot can again blind you to the realities in this world.

And then one more, this is from James chapter 1, verse 9 and through 12.

James 1:9

It says, This believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position.

But the rich should take pride in their humiliation, since they will pass away like a wild flower.

For the sun rises with its scorching heat, withers the plant, its blossoms fail, and its beauty is destroyed.

In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

So Jesus here is, or James here is warning.

He's saying, If you have a lot, know that just like the flowers of the field will fade away in the sun, so will all of your glory from your wealth.

Then it says this, verse 12, Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, having stood that test.

That person will receive the crown of life the Lord has promised to those who love him.

And the word in verse 12 for test is the same Greek word that appears in verse 2 of James 1 for trial.

So in James chapter 1, verse 2, it says, Count it all joy or consider it all joy, my brothers and my sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.

James 1:2

And it's the same Greek word that he uses for tests down here in verse 12.

And here's what I believe is happening is that he's saying that this trial or this testing are in essence the same thing, and that adversity and prosperity are both tests.

Because he says, if you're in a low position, consider the high position.

If you're in a high position, be aware.

And here's the reality for a lot of us, and that is when we go through adversity, hardship, we may have a moment where we question God.

We may have a season where we question God, but often it turns us back to saying, you know what, I do need God.

But what adverse or what prosperity does is it often makes us forget that we need God because when things go well, when opportunities are abounding, when we have a lot in our control, we can believe the idea that we don't really need God.

And as a result, adversity often is an easier test or trial for us to endure than prosperity.

So with that, uh, well, here's what John Bloom says.

This is in the article that was in our uh reading.

He says this abundance easily obscures our vulnerabilities, giving us a misleading sense of security and a false sense of independence.

The danger is precisely in the fact that it doesn't feel dangerous.

We love the sense of autonomy and indulgent opportunities that wealth affords.

We love not feeling needy, and we consider it normal.

So here's what I'd like to do.

I'd like to show us one more passage that Jesus addresses this very directly.

It's in Luke chapter 12, verses 13 through 21.

Luke 12:13–21

And the occasion is that this brother has come up to Jesus and said, Jesus, tell my brother to divide the estate with me.

And then Jesus answers.

And Jesus says this in Luke chapter 12, verse 13.

Luke 12:13

He says, Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?

And then he said to them, Watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of greed.

Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.

So here's what Jesus does: He says, I want you to watch out, I want you to be on your guard, I want you to be especially careful about greed.

So I did a word study on greed in the original language.

You might want to write this down.

Here's what greed means: a desire for more and more.

That's it.

That's what that word means.

So here's what Jesus does.

Jesus says, I want you to watch out, I want you to be careful that you don't just constantly have a desire for more with the belief that more will somehow be enough.

And then he tells the story.

And from what he does in verse 15 in this story, I think we see what greed does to us and why it's such a dangerous thing to us spiritually, why Jesus warns us, why the Bible warns us about materialism, about money, about the love of money.

First thing is this, and that is money or materialism can cause us to overvalue stuff.

This is what was happening in verse 15 where Jesus says, watch out, be on your guard against every form of greed.

Because even when you have an abundance of possessions, your life doesn't consist of that.

You see, what a lot of us will do is we'll go through life believing that if we can just get the next thing, if we can get the next pay raise, if we can pay off the debt, if we can get the next house or upsize to the next car, then we'll feel satisfied.

But the Bible is filled with some characters who had stuff and didn't find it satisfying.

One of the most notable of these is Solomon, who had incredible wealth, probably more wealth in his day than any person in our day has.

In other words, more than the founder of Facebook or Amazon or Microsoft or Apple.

He had incredible wealth, and he wrote a whole book in the Old Testament.

It was basically devoted to this, Ecclesiastes.

And his conclusion was, you know what, I had everything that money could buy, and it didn't make me happy.

This was, by the way, Johnny Cash's conclusion toward the end of his life when he did one of the last songs that he did called Hurt, and he said, You can take my empire of dirt, you can have it all.

In other words, everything I've amassed, it's an empire of dirt, you can have it, as he looked back.

Now I know.

Some of you will say, Well, wait a second.

I've heard this whole thing that money can't buy happiness, but I've also heard people say things like this.

I know money can't buy me happiness, but money can buy me a boat.

And when I'm on my boat, I'm happy.

Therefore, isn't that pretty close?

And the truth is money can buy you a boat.

And if a boat makes you happy, that's not a bad thing.

This is not saying that that acquiring things is bad, but what Jesus is doing here is he's saying, I want you to see that that the abundance of stuff is not going to ultimately give you what you think it will.

You know, we can see this play out sometimes with kids.

Any of you take kids to a McDonald's and watch them get a happy meal?

Now, I'm not sure why you'd want to go to McDonald's, but but look, just work with me.

You go to McDonald's, you have a child with you, and what happens?

The kid wants a happy meal, right?

And we could do a whole nother talk, not for polite conversation on happy meals and kids and how to discipline, but that's for another series.

And and what happens when a kid comes and they say, I want a happy meal, and if you get them a happy meal once, then they want a happy meal every time.

They have a little meltdown if they don't get the happy meal.

I mean, isn't that brilliantly named?

Who doesn't want a happy meal?

Who doesn't want to be happy when they get a meal?

I mean, I want a happy meal.

And so you you get a kid a happy meal, and what happens?

They're happy for a little bit, and then the little plastic toy that they get breaks.

And about 30 minutes later, they're not happy anymore.

And the next time that they go to McDonald's, they need another happy meal or they're not happy.

And what happens as we get older is our happy meals just get more sophisticated and more expensive.

Because what we do is we keep believing, well, maybe it is the boat, maybe it is the raise, maybe it is the next thing, and if I could just get that, then I would feel like I had enough.

And Jesus says, I want you to watch out, I want you to be on your guard.

Because wanting more and more stuff is not the is not the essence of your life.

The abundance of stuff is not the essence of your life.

And what he does is he shows us why it isn't.

And and the first thing is this, and that is in verse 13, we see the conflict that existed over money between the two brothers.

It says, Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

Have any of you lived through an inheritance squabble with family members?

And watched family members turn against each other in order to see who could get the stuff?

Or any of you have friendships that broke apart over a money dispute?

What Jesus is doing here is he's saying, You see, some of you will have such a love of stuff that you'll watch good relationships break apart because of it.

But not only that, what he's doing here in verse 15 when he says, Life does not consist of the abundance of possessions, is he's warning against the idea that when we have stuff, that it somehow gives us a good score in life.

Because here's what happens for some of us, and that is we look at our stuff and how we've done, maybe not relative to somebody who founded Amazon, but relative to people in the field that we've chosen, and we say, this is a referendum on how well I'm doing, how important I am.

And Jesus says, I want you to watch out, I want you to know that this isn't the case.

Sometimes an extreme example can help us see this.

And you see this sometimes with professional athletes.

Have you ever seen or heard a story about a professional athlete who was making$18 million a year, signed a contract, was really happy about$18 million a year, and then about a year or two later somebody at the same position signs for$20 million a year, and all of a sudden the person's really unhappy about$18 million a year?

No, what's happening?

Is it harder to live on$18 million a year than$20 million a year?

I mean, maybe.

I'd like to find out, but but but I don't know.

But but here's what's happening is all of a sudden it's not about the money, it's about the feeling of being disrespected because that person is not better than me.

I'm better than that person, and I deserve more money.

Now, lest you just think, oh yeah, those professional athletes, they have issues.

This is why most offices, most companies, don't just publish a list of salaries, because if you do, what will happen in any business, no matter how much somebody makes, is they'll go, you pay that person that much?

I'm worth more than they are.

Are you kidding me?

And what is it?

We're getting our worth from how much we make relative to people around us.

We're making it a scorecard on our life rather than saying, My life is about so much more than this.

And Jesus says, Watch out, be on your guard, understand that stuff doesn't define your life.

But that isn't all Jesus tells us that we can overvalue here.

He shows us that we can overvalue someday.

And I say this because this little story that he tells paints the picture.

Verse 16 and following, it says this, and he told them a parable.

The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.

And he thought to himself, What shall I do?

I have no place to store my crops.

Then he said, This is what I'll do.

I'll tear down my barns and I'll build bigger ones, and there I'll store my surplus grain.

And I'll say to myself, You have plenty of grain laid up for many years.

Take life easy, eat, drink, and be merry.

So here's his plan.

He says, I have so much stuff.

As soon as I build my bigger barn and get all my stuff put away, then I'll be able to store it and I'll be able to sit around and take it easy.

Verse 20, but God said to him, You fool, this very night your life will be demanded from you.

Then who will get what you've prepared for yourself?

It's a little bit like this if we were to bring it into our day.

This is like a couple that gets married young.

And at first they feel like whatever they do, they'll always be together, but they want to make a life for themselves, and so they both set out to work hard.

They make some trade-offs, they have some kids, they move up, they get a starter house, then a bigger house.

And they keep working because even the bigger house isn't quite enough, and they want the dream house, and they want the best vacations, the best schools for their kids, and they just keep pushing and pushing and pushing until one day they come to a point where they realize that the life that they're living isn't the life that they thought they were going to live.

They don't really like each other a lot because it's more of a business arrangement.

Their kids feel detached from them, and even though they live in great spaces and have great things, they say, This is not the life that I want.

And they believe that just a little bit more will secure them for the future and that someday they'll be able to get the life back that they always wanted.

And what does the text say, you fool, this very night your life is required from you?

It'd be like this couple having the moment where they say, Okay, just a little while longer, and then we can cash out, and then we can live the life that we've always dreamed of.

But they both die before they get there.

See what Jesus is doing here is he's saying, You're going to overvalue the idea if you overvalue stuff that someday you'll get the life that you want instead of living the life that you want today.

Mark Buchanan writes about this in his book, Things Unseen.

He says this.

He says, We drink too much, sleep too much, work too long, take too many vacations, or too few.

All in the faint hope that this will satisfy us.

And so silence the hunger within.

We go from relationship to relationship, from job to job, house to house, church to church, convinced that this one is the right one.

And it's not.

It won't ever be.

And it's better to figure that out now that this world is booby-trapped, that it's rigged for disappointment.

On earth, everything falls short of some hoped-for ideal.

Everything good down here has a tragic brevity and a funny aftertaste to it.

It all falls short and shortly falls apart.

None of it possesses any ultimacy.

In response, we can become so cynical that we poison ourselves, or so indulgent that we devour ourselves, or so despairing that we collapse into ourselves.

In fact, self-pity and self-indulgence, boredom and despair, envy and greed, such are the yearnings gone sour.

They're just a greasy residue that remains after yearning has gone unfulfilled too many times.

A sadness like ash settles on our doings and our desires.

We find trinkets to fiddle with and trivia to distract us.

A once burning zeal dwindles to a dry itch, and everything becomes a frantic attempt to get the Passion back, or a plotting resignation of its death.

And then he writes about our consumeristic, materialistic culture and living for the next thing, and he says we live for the next thing, for the next purchase, the next weekend, the next job, the next adventure.

And this becomes so obsessive that we lose the capacity to enjoy and to be thankful for this thing that we have right now, that we got yesterday.

Consumerism teaches us not to value things too much, but to value them too little.

We forget how to treasure and how to savor, and the pressure of constant wanting dissipates all gratitude.

And here's what he's saying: He's saying that what materialism will do is it will cause us to say, someday I can get the life that I want, but we can't be satisfied with what we have here and now.

And as a result, we don't live in the present.

We don't enjoy what God has given us today.

And that's one of the great spiritual dangers of materialism.

When my wife and I were first married, we established a budget to live on.

And one of the things that was really good about that for us was that I was very much wanting to save and to not spend any money.

And my wife would come back and say, Well, this is in the budget when she wanted to spend some money and say, We've already allocated, it's right here, we're gonna spend it, we're gonna have some fun with this money.

And it was so good for me to be able to say, Oh yeah, we've addressed kind of at that point what we thought were our long-range concerns.

And here we can enjoy.

And what budgeting can do is it can let you not just say, I save for the future and for security, but but I can enjoy what God has given me now.

We have a new class starting this week called Financial Peace University, which is a great opportunity to put some handles around money in your life.

You see, this message is not meant to say, don't worry about money.

Money matters.

What it's meant to do is say don't overvalue it and make mistakes with it, but instead choose what you want it to be.

And what financial peace can do if you're interested in it is help you get the right categories and the right way of thinking about it.

But there's one more thing that this story tells us, and that is that not only can we overvalue stuff, not only can we overvalue our sense of someday, but we can overvalue security.

Verse 20 again says this, but God said to him, You fool, this very night your life will be demanded from you.

Then who will get what you've prepared for yourself?

Verse 21, this is how it will be.

With whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not rich toward God.

I don't know about you, but when I see God call someone a fool, I think the wise thing for me to do is to stop and say, Do I fit into that category?

Because it doesn't happen very often.

But here, God, through this inspired story, says, here's a foolish person.

It's a foolish person who puts all of their security in the here and now.

Now, again, this isn't saying don't save, don't secure your future, but it's saying understand that if you overvalue that security, what you will do is you will not be rich toward God because what you'll spend all of your life doing is saying, I have to make sure that I have enough for every eventuality.

And the point that Jesus makes here is it's foolish because you can't control every eventuality.

You can't control when you die, you can't control when somebody gets sick, you can't control outside factors, and your only real security will be in God Himself, not in how much you put aside.

And so what he's doing is he's saying, I want you to see this.

I was thinking about this, and and I was remembering when I was a kid in the house that I grew up in, we had some small woods that kind of went around the house on a couple sides.

And during the summer, the the leaves would grow up in such a way that you couldn't see into the neighbor's property at all.

And so there was a little space in there, and one of my friends and I got a large cardboard box one day, and we went into these woods and we took shovels and we dug down to try to uh carve out a space and put this box down into a little swath of dirt so that we would have a fort where we could go and do guy things, I guess.

I'm not sure what we were going to do in the fort.

I think we ended up sitting in there once and reading comic books.

But we built this fort.

We spent uh hours over a couple of days digging and getting it all just the way we wanted it.

And then do you know what happened?

It rained.

Do you know what rain does to cardboard?

It makes cardboard useless.

So our fort that we spent time with ended up in the trash, just like that.

And here's what I think Jesus is teaching.

He's saying if you make your whole life about your own security, it's like building a cardboard fort in your yard as a kid.

You can do it, it's fine, but understand it isn't real security.

And what he's doing here is he's saying, but real security is being rich toward God.

In other words, having a relationship with the living God that's real for you, where you're engaged in spiritual community, where you are giving of yourself, your time, your energy, your resources to something bigger than yourself.

He's saying, saying, if you're rich toward God, then you are basically living for something greater than the security that this world offers.

You see what material things do is they cause us to overvalue stuff, overvalue someday, and overvalue our sense of security.

But here's the real issue: it causes us to undervalue what's most important.

Because we think if I have that, then I'll have what I need.

But here's what we see in the verses that follow this story from Jesus.

And that is that as much as we have material resources, that there's something greater that's promised.

Verse 22, this is right after this story.

Jesus said to his disciples, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.

For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes.

And then just a little while later, verse 32 do not be afraid, little flock, for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.

Sell your possessions and give to the poor.

Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And then just a couple chapters later in Luke chapter 14, verse 15, he tells a story about a great banquet.

Luke 14:15

And it's a banquet that pictures the consummation of time, where people are invited in who don't deserve to sit at the banquet.

And everything is provided, and the feast is beautiful, and the sense of fellowship and community is rich.

And what is happening here is Jesus in the flow of the narrative is saying, listen, you can try to be rich now, but but you're being foolish unless you live for that banquet ultimately.

Because here is what what we know, and that is there will come a day when God's satisfaction will be offered to people and it will be complete and total and everything that you want.

And here's what this means for you and me today.

And that is when your life is not adding up, and you say, I don't have what I think I should have, I don't have the stuff, I don't have the relationships, things just aren't as they should be.

That you can say there's coming a day when those who have come to be rich toward God, to know Jesus as their Savior and have made Him their priority, will experience all the blessings of that kingdom.

And when things on this earth are as you want them to be, you experience beauty, you experience community, you experience those moments that you're able to say, This is a taste of what we'll be.

Have you ever gone on vacation and been at just the the perfect kind of space, place, and just said to yourself, I wish this would never end.

I wish we could just stay here.

You see, even your best things now have a have a brevity to them.

Because you know that you can't keep them forever, that even if you have the perfect perfect place, that someday somebody else will live there.

But the assurance, the hope of the kingdom is that there will come a day when those who don't deserve it, you and me, will be invited to share in something that's been provided by what Jesus Christ has done on our behalf.

And that sense of worship, that sense of wonder is what gives us the ability to live with stuff in this world and say, this stuff is just stuff.

It's nice, it's good, but it's not ultimate, it doesn't define me, it doesn't measure me, it doesn't secure my future.

My future is with something much greater than anything that death can't, or anything that death can take away, or that money can can somehow buy.

And that gives us real security.

If you're here today and you're thinking, you know, I don't know about all this God or Jesus stuff, but maybe today as we've talked, you said, you know, I know that that stuff and all of that doesn't really make me or give me everything that that it seems like it could.

And even though advertisers will spend millions or billions of dollars to convince us that we need the next thing, you know intuitively that it isn't.

Can I just invite you to say that coming to Jesus is not just saying I've sinned and transgressed your law, it is that, but but sin is really building an alternate life.

It's saying, my life, my way is what I want most.

And the invitation to Jesus is to say, I come and I trust that Jesus has done for me what I could never do, and therefore I can share in what I could never earn.

And you can do that today just by acknowledging that you've been building a life apart from God and that you want Jesus to be your Savior.

And if you've already acknowledged Jesus as Savior, we're going to partake of communion.

Uh we'll have communion here at the front and the back as well, and in the balcony.

Uh, prayer rails, there'll be some gluten-free stations.

The prayer rails will be open, and as you come, you can just take it, dunk it in the wine, and say, God, thank you for the feast that you've prepared, that this bread, this wine represents of a feast that one day I'll eat in the kingdom, in which all of my desires, all of my longings, all of my deepest heart wants will be met.

And use it as a moment of worship.

Father God, we pray today that you would help us to see stuff for what it is, not to make it something worse than it is, but not to make it more than it is, not to overvalue it, but to be rich towards you.

And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.