The Perils of Prosperity
Perhaps the biggest reason the prosperity message is feared is its threat to dulling the heart to the truths of God, while at the same time exciting the heart to a carnality that reeks with worldliness.
This fear is legitimate.
Who can deny that the piled-up splendors of ostentatious wealth can make a complete mockery of the kingdom, and at the same time can pierce the soul of such money-grubbers with many sorrows (I Timothy 6:10)?
Even if the prosperity message is true, it can still be wrong if it is accorded too much emphasis. The healthy church will say more about the crucified life than it does about prosperity. The symbol at the center of our faith is a cross, not a dollar sign.
Regretfully, churches on both sides of the prosperity issue have paid little attention to the crucified life.
The crucified life needs to be explained: why it is needed, how it transacts, the multiple strategies for staying on the cross, the multiple ways one can come down from the cross, understanding both the counterfeits of the cross and the benefits of the cross. Most Christians don’t know these truths.
Pastors are to blame because they haven’t taught them, most likely because they don’t know them either.
I wonder how many in our churches could say, “I am a crucified man,” or “I am a crucified woman”? Probably not many. My counsel: Don’t be giving major emphasis to prosperity until far greater progress has been made with the crucified life. To do so destroys biblical balance.
John said, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers” (III John 2). But if your soul isn’t prospering, if it isn’t on the cross, if your flesh is still running things, riches will mess you up.
Caution must always accompany God’s vision of financial well-being—not to reduce it, but to safeguard it. What the Bible calls “the deceitfulness of riches” (Matthew 13:22) is a reality we must steadfastly avoid; for the utilitarian Christ who meets all our financial needs can soon become an idol.
Oswald Chambers’ statement— “Health and happiness is what is wanted today and Jesus Christ is simply exploited.”1 There is something perverse in our love for material possessions, and that shows up during infancy. G.D. Watson observed:1
… when a toy is placed in an infant’s hands he at once has the idea of ownership, and with that thought springs up an attachment to the treasure, manifested by his cries and loud expostulations on having it taken from him. His reason could not explain it but he feels it as distinctly as a millionaire.2
Of course, the spell money casts on many moderns is such that disinterest in Jesus often results. Addressing this preference for mammon over the Master, Vance Havner wrote:
We think to make ourselves secure for the future by barricading with stocks and bonds and early wealth … How foolish that a man will insure life, home, car, everything except his soul, the only thing he will have a few years from now! 3
This preference for shallow happiness rather than deeper holiness is too prominent to ignore. It was this phenomenon that prompted Martyn Lloyd-Jones to ask:
Have you seen the change, the subtle change, that tends to take place in men’s lives as they succeed and prosper in this world? It does not happen to those who are truly spiritual men; but if they are not, it invariably happens.
If flesh is in control, a rival god soon comes to the throne, despite the religious verbiage used to mask what is going on. Illustrating this dynamic, Martyn Lloyd-Jones told the following story:
It is the story of a farmer who one day went happily and with great joy in his heart to report to his wife and family that their best cow had given birth to twin calves, one red and one white. And he said, “You know I have suddenly had a feeling and impulse that we must dedicate one of these calves to the Lord. We will bring them up together, and when the time comes we will sell one and keep the proceeds, and we will sell the other and give the proceeds to the Lord’s work.”
His wife asked him which he was going to dedicate to the Lord. “There is no need to bother about that now,” he replied, “we will treat them both in the same way, and when the time comes we will do as I say.” And off he went.
In a few months the man entered his kitchen looking very miserable and unhappy. When his wife asked him what was troubling him, he answered, “I have bad news to give you. The Lord’s calf is dead.” “But,” she said, “you had not decided which was to be the Lord’s calf.” “Oh yes,” he said; “I had always decided it was to be the white one, and it is the white one that has died. The Lord’s calf is dead.”
We may laugh at that story, but God forbid that we should be laughing at ourselves. It is always the Lord’s calf that dies.4
Acknowledging the deleterious effect money can have, G.D. Watson wrote, “It is harder to get rich Christians to give their money to God than it is to reclaim drunkards, or to convert the heathen, or to work any other moral miracle in the world.” 5
The total takeover of the inner life by money-lovers must be taken seriously, which is why A.J. Gordon wrote, “He who begins by halving his heart between God and mammon will end by being wholehearted for the world and fainthearted for Christ.”6
That the balance would radically shift in this way, and that the cause of Christ would in time be eclipsed, was frankly acknowledged by Thomas Watson who wrote, “Many are afraid lest they should lose some of their worldly profits, but not lest they should lose the presence of God.”7 Eyes turned toward money often fail to see God.
Even secular writers cautioned against the dangers of materialism. H.G. Wells warned, “Beware of things! Before you know where you are, you are waiting on them and minding them. They’ll eat your life up. Eat up your hours and your blood and your energy.”8
By not heeding this warning, those addicted to high-class living, and not to the higher life, will travel the fast lane without God.
While Paul could say, “For me to live is Christ,” others seem to say, “for me to live is money,” or “for me to live is pleasure,” or “for me to live is prestige.”
Adopting the wrong goal in life drew this caution from Alexander Maclaren: “Whatsoever we make necessary for our contentment, we make lord of our happiness.”9 And what lousy lords these shallow goals are!
Zacchaeus traveled that broad road, and yet John Henry Jowett’s conclusion about where it led him was exactly right: “Zacchaeus often went home with a full purse and a very empty and impoverished heart.”10
John Ruskin, the leading art critic of the Victorian era, said those in Athens, Greece who cared only about their own business, their own material gain, were called idiotes, the Greek word from which we get our word idiot.11
Finding agreement with this assessment, even Jesus called that materialist who tore down his barn to build bigger barns a fool.
Money will become a loss unless first there is the cross.
Notes:
1. Oswald Chambers, Bringing Sons unto Glory, (Grand Rapids, Discovery House Publishers, 1990), p.37.
2. G.D. Watson, The Secret of Spiritual Power, Nicholasville, KY, Schmul Publishing Company, 2009), p.114.
3. Vance Havner, Reflections on the Gospels, (Ft. Washington, PA., CLC Publications, 2004), p.165.
4. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ sermon, “God or Mammon” found on the website sermonindex.com under Sermon Texts
5. G.D. Watson, Bridehood Saints, (Hampton, IN., Harvey and Tait Publishers, 1988), p.102.
6. A.J. Gordon, Fifty Eight A. J. Gordon Quotations. P.50.
7. Thomas Watson, The Lord’s Prayer, Kindle locations: 157-158.
8. The Speaker’s Bible, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Edward Hastings, ed., (Aberdeen, Scotland, Turnbull and Spears, 1933), p.119.
9. John Henry Jowett, Silver Lining: Messages of Hope and Cheer, Kindle Edition, 2010; Kindle location: 65.
10. Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Psalms, Kindle locations:2947-2948.
11. The Speaker’s Bible, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Edward Hastings, ed., p.141.
