Pride, Poverty, Gratitude

I teach how to handle money according to what the Bible says as best I can figure out.

I've done that for approaching 30 years now.

I've studied the scriptures, I've had all the arguments, I've had all the criticisms, I have all the people in academia who don't understand, I have all the people that have a different doctrine that don't understand, and I get all of that, but at the end of the day, most of us that love Jesus and understand that the Bible is his word, we get that God wrote us a love letter on how to live our lives.

And when we handle money this way, the weirdest thing happens, it works.

When you get out of debt, live on a budget, live on less than you make, when you save money, you end up with money.

It's the weirdest thing.

But we've got a problem that's developed in our culture.

And the problem is that the people that I've taught to handle money well, when they handled money well, it worked, and they ended up with some, then they're being criticized.

And even some of the people that I didn't help with money, and other people who've helped them with money, have won with money, and they're being criticized.

It's an interesting series of spirits floating around in our culture today.

And it's a bit of a problem.

Because here's the problem: if wealthy people are evil, you're all in trouble.

If you make$34,000 a year, you're in the top 1% of the world.

You're a 1%er.

If you make$11,000 a year, which puts you substantially below the federal measure for poverty, you're in the top 10% of the world.

If you have a computer, a cell phone, a television, and a car, you're wealthy.

And so if wealth is evil, you got a problem.

And yet there's this spirit flowing through the land right now that's twisting a biblical view of wealth and saying that somehow because you have had some level of success, whether it's 34,000 or 340,000, you've done something wrong.

Open up your uh your iPads, your iPhones, or maybe a Bible to um, I'm gonna read a couple of scriptures to you.

Luke uh 10.38 and John 12.1, if you want to pull them up, you can, or I'll just read them, either one.

You'll you'll for those of you that have been Christians since you were in Hehado or a grasshopper, you'll know these stories.

I didn't grow up in church, so these stories are all still, I I mean, 30 years I've studied them and they're still fresh to me.

So now it happened, Luke 10.38, as they went, that he entered a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.

And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word.

But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sisters left me alone to serve?

Therefore tell her to help me.

And Jesus answered her and said, Martha, Martha, you're worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.

Apparently, and we can argue about it in the commentaries, apparently, because we do always, but probably the same two women in this next story.

They were sisters, by the way.

There's several Marys in Scripture.

Then, six days before Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was who had been dead, whom he had raised from the dead.

There they made him a supper, and Martha served.

There she is again.

But Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him.

Then Mary, there she is again, took a pound of very costly oil and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of oil.

Then one of his disciples, Judas, Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray him, said, Why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 deneri and given to the poor?

This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief.

And he had the money box, and he used to take what was put in it.

But Jesus said to him, Let her alone.

She's kept this for the day of my burial.

I was reading a friend of mine's book.

Robert Morris has a wonderful book out called The Blessed Life.

And he he did a drive-by on a subject that really got me to praying, thinking, and studying.

Because I'm seeing movement in the marketplace and in our culture, in the mainstream and in the church, that needs to be discussed here.

It's a wonderful book, by the way.

If you haven't read it, it's probably one of the premier books on generosity and giving out there.

Robert's a wonderful teacher on that.

But he did a drive-by, and I'm going to steal his drive-by and turn it into a talk.

In other words, I'm going to finish what he started.

He said that there are three spirits around the subject of wealth.

There are three people in these stories I just read you that I think represent these three spirits.

The first is a spirit of pride.

Now, if I'm going to be guilty of one of the negative ones, this is the one I'm going to be guilty of.

I grew up in a household where work was a verb.

Work is something you do.

I believe in hard work.

I believe in cause and effect.

I believe if I work hard, I should reap the rewards.

I don't, I'm not one of these people that doesn't plant anything and then stands back and says, I sure hope the government planted some corn.

I'm not one of those guys.

Okay.

And so if I'm gonna if I'm gonna fall in one of these traps, this is probably the one that I'm gonna fall in, although I have fallen in both of them.

The spirit of pride, where wealth is concerned, is out there.

The spirit of pride says, wealth comes from hard work.

We're gonna let Martha represent that.

Because Jesus was in Martha's house, and you know what Martha was doing?

She's vacuuming.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is sitting in her home and she's doing the dishes.

Are we a little performance-based, Martha?

Are we a little worried about getting our checklist done, Martha?

Been guilty of that myself.

Walk right by the good stuff to get the checklist done.

Gotta do the honeydews.

I'm performance-based.

If I do these three things, Jesus is gonna love me.

If I do these three things, my wife is gonna love me.

If I do these six things, my kids are gonna love me.

I can be performance-based.

I need to read Max Licato a lot and learn grace.

Y'all with me here, okay?

So if I'm gonna fall into this, work comes from hard work, I'm a hard working guy.

Wealth comes from hard work, Martha, that's me.

That's a spirit of pride.

It's a spirit of pride.

Because there's never been a farmer that knows what he's doing that planted corn and put out the fertilizer and put out the herbicide and everything else, and then stood back and said, Okay, son.

No, he stands back and prays and says, Lord, send the sun and the rain.

Farmers aren't confused that it's not all up to them.

But a spirit of pride is it's me, it's cause-effect.

And those of us that have a spirit of pride, when we fall into that, we we say things like, Those that don't work shouldn't eat.

We quote those scriptures.

And we quote those scriptures and we say, the diligent prosper, and those that manage a small thing well are given more to manage.

We like those scriptures.

And we know how to use them.

Just right?

I'm good at it.

I can do it.

I can wear you out with that stuff.

And I do believe all of that.

There is a cause and effect, there is a sowing and reaping.

And when you do manage a small amount well, you are given more to manage.

And I taught my teenagers, those that don't work, don't eat.

These are good things.

They are the truth, but if you stay over in that corner, you can develop a spirit of pride.

Sometimes, those of us that are in that corner, we might be libertarians or republicans.

We might watch more Fox News than CNN.

Sometimes that could happen.

It could happen.

The second spirit, Judas represents.

And it's the spirit of poverty.

Spirit of poverty says, wealth comes from the devil, and wealth is evil.

And that spirit is loose in the land too, isn't it?

And I felt that.

I went broke several years ago and I thought, well, maybe I did something wrong because I was a baby Christian.

Maybe God took it all away from me to protect me from me.

Maybe I was doing something wrong when I built the wealth.

And then when I started handling money God's ways, the wealth started coming back, and I started feeling weird, like I had done something wrong.

Like I'm not driving a hoopty anymore.

I'm not driving a car that the predominant color is bondo.

I start to get a nice car and I start to feel like, oh, wealth is bad.

A good Christian doesn't have a nice car.

Have you heard those?

Have you heard those voices in your head?

It's a spirit, it's an evil spirit, it's a spirit of poverty.

And people that say, that speak out of a spirit of poverty, they say things like Judas did.

They say, oh, a Christian wouldn't have a car that nice because there's you could have sold that car and given that money to the poor.

How many wells could be drilled in Haiti for what you spent on that house?

And these are Christians.

Or you can go on Twitter and atheists will tweet you scripture.

You can.

I'm proof.

It's amazing.

Because they take it out of context and they don't know the word.

And they use a slice and a dice to make a point that is not the point of that scripture.

Because they're biblically illiterate.

And some Christians are that too.

Spirit of poverty.

Spirit of poverty comes from this.

In the first century after Christ's death, there were a group of well-intended Christians, which is what we all end up being.

We start well-intended and then we become Pharisees.

The Pharisees, by the way, loved God.

They just got off track and started worshiping performance and rules instead of God.

They weren't like the devil.

They were kind of on our side, y'all.

You know?

But their spirit went bad.

And this group, the same thing happened with them.

It was a group of Christians called the Gnostic Christians, and eventually they became the Gnostics.

And Gnosticism became heresy.

They became heretics.

And the core belief in Gnosticism, there's a lot of Gnostic things that are heretical, and you can read and study the Gnostics.

They're kind of an interesting bunch.

But the core belief of Gnosticism is that anything that is physical is evil.

Anything, if it for it to be holy, it has to be in the spirit only.

And so your clothing is evil.

Your body is evil.

Your plants that you eat, the animals that you eat are evil.

Your kids are evil.

We knew this.

But anything that you can touch, you get the idea, is evil.

That's Gnosticism.

And that is heresy.

Because God made the physical.

And every time he did in the account of Genesis, he said, and that is good.

And then when he made man and woman, he said, that is very good.

He made my hands, my nervous system, my red and my white blood cells.

They're created by him.

They're not evil because they're physical.

They are to be submitted to his lordship.

He made my mind and your mind and your ability to make things like an automobile to drive instead of walking.

Automobiles aren't evil.

They're inanimate.

Well, they should, they're not inanimate.

They move, but they're basically inanimate objects until we touch them and make them move.

They don't have a soul, they don't have life.

They're not evil.

They're not good.

They don't have morals.

It's a car.

But Gnosticism falls into that spirit of poverty, and it has moved and fast forward now into our culture.

And that's where this wealth is evil spirit has come from.

It's a spirit of poverty.

That's what Judas said.

And we hear that money is the root of all evil, and the Bible does not say that.

The Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil.

Money's not evil.

Therefore, rich people aren't evil.

And poor people aren't holy by the fact that they're poor or the fact that they're rich.

That's not what makes you holy.

Or good or evil.

There's jerks that are both.

Right?

So there's evidence right in front of our eyes, and yet we hear this spirit that it emanates and it goes into politics and it goes into the news media and it comes out into the subject.

And then we Christianize it.

And when I fall into these areas, and my good friends that fall into this area, if they happen to fall in here, they might vote for Democrats.

And they might watch CNN.

And they might not like capitalism as much.

And there becomes this polarization in the marketplace between what are two non-biblical spirits.

A spirit of pride is not the biblical spirit.

It's not a biblical view of wealth.

And a spirit of poverty is not a biblical view of wealth.

And you know, the spirit of poverty has two little sisters, envy and jealousy.

I used to think they were the same thing, and then I got to start studying it.

I studied the seven deadly sins according to the Catholics.

And the Catholics say one of the deadly sins is envy.

Envy and jealousy aren't the same thing.

Jealousy is I want what you have.

Envy is I don't think I can get it, so I don't want you to have it.

Are those spirits loose in the land?

They're loose in the land.

So, you know, we've got a problem because there's a whole bunch of us and them that are out there saying you shouldn't have a car that nice.

So we did detail research to establish the level of car you can drive and still be saved.

Because I wanted to know.

I didn't want too nice.

You kind of got to hit that happy median, right?

Just where you're okay and you can still love Jesus, but it you can still get to work, right?

So we looked into it in detail.

I'll help you with it.

It's a 93 Camry.

Okay?

Isn't this ridiculous?

This is ridiculous, you guys.

And this is how people talk out there.

Let me tell you how car how nice a car is too nice.

Any car that's nicer than you if you're functioning in envy and jealousy.

Let me tell you how big a house is too big a house.

Any house that's bigger than yours if you're envious and jealous.

Well, no one needs a light bill.

How do you know?

Here's an idea.

Mind your own business.

I've got a good friend who loves Jesus as much or more than anybody in this place right now.

He's worth three billion dollars.

That's a thousand million, that's what a billion is.

I sat with him and a group of Christian philanthropists, all of which had in excess of a hundred million dollars, and all of which give away tens of millions of dollars each in a room.

And I wasn't supposed to be in this room.

I was a wiener in a steakhouse, you guys, okay?

But but I got to listen to these men's heart, and I got to watch my friend, he's a grandpa with his grandbaby sitting in his lap and him loving on him.

And I got to watch the tears run down his eyes as he read scripture to this meeting of men and women that were leaders in giving.

Three billion dollars.

Last year he gave away three hundred and seventy million dollars, one hundred percent of it, for ministry.

You will never know who he is because he doesn't care what you think.

He didn't do it for you.

He didn't put his name on a building anywhere.

He bought Bibles and put them in places we can't even talk about.

They are doing things with this money that will blow your mind for the kingdom.

And you will never hear about it or never know about it.

370.

Most of us will never see that if all of us got together and piled it all up.

Right?

And he gave that away last year.

Does this blow your mind?

It did mine.

Because it's inconsistent with the spirit of poverty.

Because I've got a very wealthy, heavy giver that loves Jesus.

That's so inconsistent with what we're told.

Well, the rich young ruler can't get through.

Camel can't get through the eye of the needle.

Wicked and perverse generation.

It's unbelievable.

And so this man who is obviously accomplished, obviously mature in his faith, obviously a fabulous philanthropist in the name of Christ.

We get up and we're walking to his car to go to dinner at his home, and he stopped.

He said, Dave, would you ride with me?

And I said, I would be honored, sir.

And he said, I gotta apologize though for my car before we go out.

He said, Why are you apologizing for your car?

Do you drive a hoopty?

Are we gonna make it to the house?

Are you one of those?

Is it a 9E3 Camry?

And he started laughing and he said, No, he said, I I'm I've always had a decent car, but he said I splurged.

And I bought myself a nice car the other day.

He said, It's the nicest car I've ever bought in my life.

He's worth three billion dollars.

He's 72 years old.

We walk out there, it's a nice car.

It's a hundred and thirty thousand dollar Mercedes.

I know because I liked it and I went and looked at them when I got home.

Um, and so it was a nice car.

And I said, What in the world?

Why would you apologize for this car?

He said, The day I bought the car, Dave, I had three pastors that sent me hate mail saying that I had lost my salvation and lost my way.

And he said, and the next within the next week, our company received emails and posts all over the internet that I had bought this car and that that apparently I wasn't following Jesus because a Christian would never drive a car like this.

Now let me help you with the ratios, okay?

Three billion dollars.

Okay?

Gave away three hundred and seventy million dollars.

$130,000 on a car.

Okay?

Him buying this car is like you and me buying a biscuit.

You see, here's the problem.

My pastor Michael Easley says, Don't let the world teach you theology.

Learn your view of wealth from the Bible.

Because Jesus did redistribute wealth.

In the parable of the talents, he took it from the guy that had the least and gave it to the guy with the most, but it didn't have to do with the least or the most.

It had to do with who was managing well.

And that was Jesus that did that.

He did like reverse wealth distribution.

That's weird.

See, that just messes with people's theology, doesn't it?

Because we want everything to be fair.

Everything's supposed to be fair.

It's not fair.

Tiger Woods plays golf better than me.

It's not fair.

Michael Jordan shoots a basketball better than me, it's not fair.

Brad Paisley plays a guitar better than me.

It's just not fair.

Most of you got better hair than I got.

It's just not fair.

So they make more money because they have a talent that's what's known as world class.

Guess what?

That's fair.

Fair is not equal.

My kids are not the same.

The Bible does not say raise up your children fair.

It says raise a child in the way he is bent.

And when he's old, he'll not depart from it.

Raise him according to his characteristics.

You've got one that's an artist, you've got one that's a mathematician.

Don't make the mathematician an artist, and don't make the artist a mathematician.

God help us, they might run for Congress.

Right?

It's not fair.

It is fair, but it's not equal.

You see what the spirit of poverty is doing to our culture?

It's not biblical, you guys.

And Judas represents this bunch.

The last one is a spirit of gratitude.

The spirit of gratitude is represented by Mary.

In this case, Mary, the sister of Martha, not Mother Mary.

And the spirit of gratitude says wealth is God's, it's not ours.

And wealth comes from God.

Wealth comes from God and it is God's.

And I'm grateful.

And I spend my life, and the way I act in my life, is an act of saying thank you.

It's an act of worship.

My friend Robert Morris says this, he says, it's not how much we have that matters.

It's whose it is that matters.

An act of gratitude says that how I handle my life in stewardship, how I handle money in stewardship, if I'm functioning in the spirit of gratitude, everything I'm doing is an act of worship as returning unto my Lord.

I'm saying thank you, Jesus, for what you did at the cross.

Thank you, Jesus, for having died for me.

And because you're that, because you're my God and you provide for me and my family, and you allow me to do things in the gifts that you gave me, everything in my life is going to be an act of gratitude.

Gratitude breaks open very expensive oil, fragrant oil, worth 300 deneri.

Now let me help you with this because I'm the math guy.

300 denari is approximately in that time, a year's wages.

The average household income in America today is$50,000.

This woman just dumped$50,000 worth of perfume on Jesus' feet.

Now, that's a lot.

I don't care who you are.

I'm standing back and going, well, could you just like save half of it, really?

I mean, don't you think that I mean$50,000?

Now, I'm an old boy that's kind of red in the hillbilly, so I don't know much about perfume.

But I am married to a woman who knows a lot about it.

And I have come to understand that the cheap stuff is not real potent.

You buy the cheap stuff, it's kind of like gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.

Hope you smell it, right?

The more expensive it is, the more it lights up your nostrils.

The more powerful the aroma is.

The really, really expensive stuff.

You just take the lid off of it, the whole room.

You ever been around that stuff?

Couple times I stopped by a place we shouldn't have stopped by.

And Sharon smelled that stuff, my wife.

She said, That smelled good.

And I said, Yeah.

Let's leave.

It's expensive, y'all.

You know what I'm talking about?

So this is not the cheap stuff.

This is fifty thousand dollars worth of review.

So when you open it, the room filled.

When she poured it on his feet, the house filled.

By the time she bent over and began to worship him by wiping his feet with her hair, the whole neighborhood smelled like perfume.

And Jesus said, leave her alone, for she has done this from a burial.

This dinner happened right before Passover.

Four days later, this Mary walked into that tomb that the stone had been rubbed away from.

Her Lord was gone, but the smell of her perfume was there.

That's an act of gratitude.

She anointed the Son of God for his burial with fifty thousand dollars.

Wow.

Spirit of Pride would say that's irresponsible.

Spirit of poverty did say you should have sold that and given it to the poor.

You shouldn't build a big, nice church.

All that money could have been used to help poor people.

Oh, you mean like the ones that come to that church and get their lives changed?

If you listen, you'll start hearing these messages now that I've awakened you to it.

They're all over the place.

And you need to run them out of your life, and you need to vote them out of office.

Now I don't care if they're an R or a D, I don't care if it's pride or poverty, we got to get back to understanding God's view of these things.

And when we do, we're gonna see revival break out like never before.

This is real.

100% of the time that I'm grateful, I immediately say, What can I do to help?

100% of the time that I'm grateful, I say, Lord, thank you for this money that you gave me to feed my family.

How do you want me to handle it?

And he says, Oh, there's a couple things in here.

Get out of debt, live on a budget, live on less than you make, always be giving a tenth to your local church.

There's a couple things in here that are clearly outlined.

Don't co-sign.

It's all in here.

He tells you how he wants his money handled.

You have to study that.

That's an act of gratitude on your part.

It's your way of saying thank you, Jesus, for the blessings that are pouring in my life.

Because of my gratitude, I'm gonna be excellent.

You see, I think if you're gonna put a fish on the back of it, you ought to drive it, right?

And that's your life.

That's your life.

You see, my friend Rabbi Lappin, who's an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, he's a good friend of mine.

He says, Dave, everybody needs a rabbi, even you Christians.

He says, When you do well in the marketplace, people say thank you.

They give you certificates of appreciation with presidents' faces on them.

It's an act of gratitude to be a giver.

You always leave a nice tip when someone waits a table well.

Generosity is a natural outflow of the spirit of gratitude.

Excellence is a natural outflow of the spirit of gratitude.

When I'm thankful, I act like it.

And it changes my life.

So I got a choice.

I get to be Mary, I get to be Martha, I get to be Judas.

I confess to you, I've been all of them at times.

Lord Jesus, help me to be Mary more often.

And not to be prideful about what you've allowed me to accomplish, what you've accomplished through me.

Lord, help me not to judge things I don't have any idea what I'm talking about.

Help me to not look that foolish and that inept and that ignorant.

Lord, help me to worship at your feet and pour out everything I've got there.

My life look like it's a reflection of a spirit of gratitude.

God, we thank you.

We thank you for the people here in this place.

We just ask that you pour prosperity on them and that you protect them from evil spirits regarding money.

And that you give each one of us an increased measure of gratitude.

And out of that comes some excellence.

And out of that comes extraordinary levels of generosity.

Father, we just stand back in awe of you and we say thank you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.