The Campaign Against Your Finances
Satan was defeated at the cross. But being a liar, he doesn’t want you to know about it. And being a thief, he wants (through this deception) to steal what belongs to you.
His campaign against health and wealth, widely believed in the church, has been quite remarkable from his point of view, and most upsetting from God’s point of view.
At great cost, God gained wonderful benefits for you! But if you don’t know about them, you won’t get them.
People with too much month at the end of the money will struggle and struggle, when it never had to be that way.
Satan smiles; they lose.
These heresy hunters, bearing false witness about the prosperity message, bear much responsibility for that.
Same with sickness; don’t trust what they have to say about that, either.
You must understand that what the Lord gained at the cross doesn’t become yours automatically. It becomes yours the same way salvation became yours: first you had to hear God’s truth, believe God’s truth, then you had to claim that truth by faith.
This point is illustrated in the Old Testament. When the children of Israel went to the Promised Land, they had to extend faith and take what God promised. The fact God promised it didn’t mean they automatically got it. Remember, of the two million plus who started on the journey, only two got in.
What kept them out? Was the journey too long?
It didn’t have to be. Following Sinai, they could have gotten there in eleven days!
The forty-years-wilderness wandering resulted because of those in their midst who kept challenging what God said. In the end, the people believed them and not God—and they lost out big time!
Same thing is happening today. If you won’t believe what Jesus both said and did to reverse the curse, you won’t extend faith, and therefore you won’t claim what rightfully belongs to you.
Ignorance and unbelief will lead you to think that life as you now know it is just the way it is—when it isn’t!
I don’t know how the wilderness-bound Jews responded to those leaders who told them the wrong thing before they all died out like a bunch of flies on a hot summer day. Those misleading leaders had a big part in this!
I can imagine there were some sour looks exchanged before those who believed these leaders had their bones bleached in the sand.
Sure, there are doctrines where theologians disagree. There had better not be too many of them, though, because ten times the Bible tells us we are to have the same mind.
The finer points of eschatology may not line up the same way for all of us. I got that. But when it comes to such basic things as health and wealth, being wrong on these teachings carries a high price. Other people get hurt if our leaders don’t get this right.
If we were to zoom out and just reflect on God a little bit, what picture better corresponds with his nature—the rich God who owns everything wanting to give to you, his child? Or a God who, though fabulously wealthy, doesn’t get involved too much in your finances? You're mostly on your own.
Reflecting further on God, we might ask: What’s his Heaven like—a modest place where poverty still exists? Or a stunning scene of resplendent wealth?
Hmm, come to think of it, isn’t there some line in that prayer Jesus taught about God’s will being done on earth “as it is in Heaven”?
If the “health and wealth” doctrine is to be rejected, does that then mean that we are to believe in—what shall we call it? —a gospel of “poverty and sickness”? The mere incongruity of these words immediately triggers the question: What kind of gospel is that?
God may want you sick, God may want you poor… and I guess we should add all the evils listed in Psalm 91, too: terror, destruction, pestilence, various plagues, the vexing problems of day, the surprise attacks at night. Why, according to many mainline churches, the believer today is vulnerable to all these things! And this represents good news?
False teachers have long been a problem! You recall the four hundred prophets in the Old Testament who said one thing, constituting a strong consensus among the people of God, and the four hundred and first prophet who said another—but it was that man who was right!
The four hundred mocked that man, just as those who reject health and wealth mock those who teach it.
They’ve gone too far! In their supposedly righteous indignation, they’re throwing overboard much that should be retained. There is no sense of calibration with these people, no sense of a balance that attempts to sort out the bad from the good. Instead they stigmatize anyone who opposes their view on prosperity, substituting pejorative labels for studied thought.
Yes, I know, there have been prosperity preachers who did present a steeped-in-selfishness message; and, yes, disgust toward their message is completely understandable. Not at all understandable, though, is this lack of awareness of God’s promises promoting prosperity.
Charles Spurgeon offered balanced commentary, saying:
Riches are no curse when blessed of the Lord. When men have more than they require for their immediate need and begin to lay up in store-houses, the dry rot of covetousness or the blight of hard-heartedness is apt to follow the accumulation; but with God’s original blessings it is not so. Prudence arranges the saving, liberality directs the spending, gratitude maintains consecration, and praise sweetens enjoyment.1
Instead of being out of the will of God, the wealth blessed of God actually fits the purposes of God in several respects not previously mentioned. For example, Proverbs 13:22 says, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.” But can this be done by poor people?
Some argue that the inheritance envisioned here is of a different kind: one of valued lessons taught and good memories provided. Nice try, but this verse is talking about finances. In fact, it concludes by saying the “wealth of the wicked is laid up for the just.” The wealth of the wicked, of course, can’t possibly refer to their wisdom subsequently transferred to God’s people. That would make no sense.
The Bible also says we are to owe no man anything (Romans 13:8), an outcome not likely achieved by those in financial lack. Jessie Penn-Lewis commented on these words, saying:
God does not change, and his word through Paul the apostle, “Owe no man anything,” stand as the revelation of his mind on this matter.
If we desire God to manifest his presence in our midst, we must obey him in the least of his commands. If he said, “Owe no man anything,” can we expect him to work among us and set his seal upon us if we do? Will he smile upon anything contrary to his will?2
What will gain this smile is a renewed mind that now wants what God wants, and is willing to come up to new levels of obedience in this area.
Scripture tells us we are to lend and not borrow (Deuteronomy 28:12). But wouldn’t this assignment require a strong financial standing? The ones able to lend with generosity are those who have an overflow of financial blessing.
The good Samaritan paid for all the victim’s medical care; could a poor person do that?
Deuteronomy 28 even envisions the accumulated treasures necessary for loaning to the nations. But, again, a barely-getting-by lifestyle could never accomplish this. Accordingly, G.D. Watson wrote:
… God designed that his people be rich, and in his law he says that when you get in the land of Canaan, you shall lend, and you shall not borrow. That is God’s idea. “You shall lend, but you shall not borrow. You shall give, but you shall not beg; you shall be the head, not the tail.” Everywhere you find that they were to be the aristocracy of the earth, and out of their treasures were to flow benefactions to the world.3
Does this mean that all godly people wanting to please God will have fancy cars and bundles of cash falling out of their pockets? It does not. There will be those who will wisely steward their money to support the purposes of God. And there will be those who do as Jesus did and lay aside what is theirs to live among the poor, to witness in places of more modest means. But it’s the rich who will send them there and keep them there.
As for stock portfolios and high-ticket items, that’s just not my world. Going to wine-and-dine at expensive restaurant has zero appeal to me. This isn’t a virtue of mine; it’s just that for some reason, I’m uncomfortable with that and therefore have no desire for that.
But on the other hand I’m not instantly critical of those who do. The excellence of the best has a place in God’s world. David, Solomon, and Hezekiah fit in here somewhere.
Oh, but you can count on it—there will be those who will quickly rise to their feet to remind us of God’s call for suffering! They sanction suffering as the biblical way to live, and will unload many verses to prove it. Are they right?
Well, yes and no. There’s a lot of confusion here. There’s a suffering God does want and a suffering he doesn’t want.
The suffering God wants includes the suffering of dying to self (and that’s more epoch than episode), the suffering of agonizing in in intercessory prayer for others, the suffering of serving an unappreciative people (as Paul put it, the more I love you, the less I be loved), the suffering in committed evangelism (such as was true of Paul when he had scalding tears streaming down his face, and even had this willingness to go to hell if only his Jewish brethren got saved). There’s that kind of suffering.
But the Bible’s call to suffering doesn’t mean God wants you sick and God wants you poor. The Bible never says that. We have interchanged one category of suffering with another.
True, the Bible says the poor will always be among you, but so will sin; and God doesn’t sanction either one. Our goal is to give to the poor, not to be poor.
The big picture is: We suffer in the ways God doesn’t want, but don’t suffer in the ways he does want. Those rising to their feet should sit down.
It is so regrettable that the Lord’s will in these matters is being constantly confused and contested today.
Satan’s agenda is to keep God’s people ignorant of what he has provided for them, and what they can have if they’ll claim it by faith. Due to this ignorance, they are not getting what God already paid for!
Remember James’ words, “You have not, because you ask not”?
To be clear, there should be no Esaus among us who lightly regard their birthright!
Esau... do you remember that guy? He cared more for his stomach than he did for his spirit; and therefore traded away his birthright for a bowl of stew!
There was immense blessing in that birthright! But Esau didn’t value it, so he didn’t get it.
Oh, that we would turn our faces in another direction and think as A.B. Simpson did when he was compelled to acknowledge: “There is much unoccupied territory in the Word of God. There are promises that we have not yet made our own.”4
Pressing the issue past the theoretical and toward the personal, Simpson declared, “How sorry you would be if you found, after spending a lifetime of poverty and toil, a will had been left by a friend providing you with affluence and wealth, and you had simply neglected to prove it and claim it?”5
Please, don’t let this campaign against your finances prevail. Believe God.
Notes:
1. Charles Spurgeon, Faith’s Checkbook, (South Plainfield, NJ, Bridge Publishing Inc., 1987), p.333.
2. Jessie Penn-Lewis, Communion with God, (Fort Washington, PA., CLC Publications, 1996), p.80.
3. G.D. Watson, Types of the Holy Spirit, (Salem, Ohio, Schmul Publishing Company, 1994), p.19.
4. A.B. Simpson, The Christ in the Bible Commentary, Volume Two, ((Camp Hill, PA., WingSpread Publishers, 2009), p.55.
5. Ibid., p.97.
