Balancing the Bottom Line Proverbs 30:7-9 Sermon 3 February 5th, 2012   Just in case you haven’t heard, Comedy Central’s. Stephen Colbert, has now dropped out of the Presidential race. That’s sad because his campaign was probably the most entertaining one. Some of you may recall some years back when Pat Paulsen ran for President. Supposedly Roseanne Barr was going to run for President. At least she announced that she was on the Jay Leno show.   A comedian using an election for laughs isn’t new. In 1994, shock jock, Howard Stern, was going to run for the governor of New York. Stern known for his obnoxious, vulgar, and crude antics on his radio and television show, who at last count, has been fined some $2.5 million in FCC violations from his show. Yet when Howard Stern found out that running for the governor of New York would require that he issue a public financial disclosure statement, he withdrew his candidacy. His reasoning – a financial disclosure statement was far too personal an issue to be made public. Here's a guy who regularly describes his sex life in vulgar detail over the airways, yet feels that money is such a personal issue that it's not appropriate to discuss in public. What's wrong with this picture?   In the book of Proverbs we have an unusual passage, Proverbs 30:7-9 (p. 551). No matter how many times you read the Bible, you still come across some unusual passages. There are always surprises.   What we have here is a very strange prayer. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard anyone pray a prayer like this. Essentially he says, "O God, I beg two favors from you before I die. First, help me never to tell a lie." That's pretty good. I’m with him on that. It's noble to ask God for help in being completely truthful. Then he gives his second wish. "Second, give me neither poverty..." - okay, I'm tracking, this is good - "nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs." Wait a minute. This isn't what I’d ask for. He continues in verse 9: "For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?' And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God's holy name."   Have you ever prayed a prayer like this? "Lord, please don't let them give me a raise!” Have you ever seen a group of workers on strike demanding lower wages? Most of us feel overwhelmed financially. We feel as if we're barely getting by as it is. We think, "If only I had a little bit more." We wouldn't dream of asking God to only give us what we need and no more.   Periodically, you’ll see some drawing where they're giving away a chunk of change, like $10,000, to some lucky winner. That's a nice amount. It's not enough to change your life, to quit your job or buy a new house, but it's enough to have some fun. There's probably nobody here who’d have a problem thinking of ways to spend an extra $10,000.   We don't think this way, yet Scripture teaches that there’s a danger in having more money than we need. When we have more than we need, there's a danger that we'll say, "Who is the LORD?" This is just the way we think...who needs God when you have money? Riches lead us away from a dependence on God. That's not a pleasant thought. It's not what we want to believe about ourselves, but it's true.   As we continue our series, life apps, we’re talking about money. We’re talking about Balancing the Bottom Line. Most of us aren't all that different from Howard Stern in our discomfort in talking about money. We want to keep our income, our spending, our giving and our assets a private matter.   Some years back I was asked to speak to a Social Studies class at BHS about "What a pastor does?" One student asked the inevitable question, "How much does it pay?" The teacher turned three shades of red…I gulped. I have to be honest, I didn't want to answer him; it just seemed inappropriate. I couldn't put my finger on why I was so reluctant to answer him. But I realize now that privacy about money is part of our culture today.   Let's face it. Money is even hard to talk about with people you know and trust. How many marriage conflicts are about money? I've certainly had my share of arguments with Jane about money. Most marriages have one partner who's more of a spender and one partner who's more of a saver. And if money is hard to talk about with those closest to us, it's off limits in most conversations with those we know casually.   Sociologist Robert Wuthnow found that 95% of church goers never discuss personal finances with other church members. It's a topic that's off limits. Yet the Bible has a lot to say about our money. Check out a Bible concordance and you'll see how much Scripture says about money. Prayer is mentioned some 270 times in the Bible, loving people is mentioned 371 times…yet our money and possessions are mentioned over 2,000 times.   Most of us need to wise up when it comes to money. John Wesley, summed up his attitude toward money with this slogan: "Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can." That's a pretty good summary of what Proverbs says about how to be wise with our personal finances. Let's work through Four Insights from the book of Proverbs about money.   1. Balancing your bottom line demands hard work, Proverbs 10:4; 14:23. Proverbs 10:4 says, "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth." While this verse doesn’t say that laziness is the cause of all poverty, it does say that laziness is one cause of poverty. Remember that Proverbs are general observations about life. These aren’t absolute laws or promises. This proverb isn't saying that every wealthy person gets rich through hard work. Certainly there are rich people who've gotten wealthy by inheritance or by dishonesty. What this proverb is telling us is that in general laziness will lead to poverty and diligent labor will lead to wealth.   Proverbs 14:24 says, "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk only leads to poverty." Once again, we find an emphasis on diligent labor, or working hard. The Hebrew word for "hard work" refers to labor that's toilsome, even painful at times. This is work that makes you drip with sweat and concentration that makes your head hurt. "Mere talk" would be things like get rich quick schemes, playing the Lotto, or business plans that never turn to action.   These two proverbs about diligence provide us with the first insight about being wise about money. We are wise about money when we work hard to reach our earning potential.   As we talked about last time, many mistakenly believe that work is a curse. The Bible doesn't teach that. It teaches instead that work is an essential part of God's original plan for the human race. Before sin entered into the world, God commanded Adam to work the garden. Work is not a consequence of sin. The entrance of sin frustrated our work, making it more difficult, but work has always been part of God's plan for the human race. And when we work, we demonstrate that we're created in God's image. Our labor demonstrates God's command to subdue the earth. We share in God's creative power as we use our resources to create, organize, produce, and help people. Whether it's building a home or writing a loan, whether it's selling cars, waiting on tables, or teaching kindergarten, we were made to labor.   God’s Word consistently links hard work with success and wealth. Not that every hardworking person will be successful, but it's a general principle that hard work brings financial affluence.   John Wesley noticed this during his ministry in 18th century England. Most of the people he led to faith in Christ came from the poorest of the poor in England, yet Wesley noticed that after they came to Christ they started developing a biblical work ethic. This ethic that valued hard work led the early Wesleyans to advance socially and become more successful financially.   One of the speakers at the Desiring God Conference this past week was an Egyptian, Ramez Atallah, who serves as General Secretary of the Bible Society of Egypt. It was a thrilling testimony. He shared the there’s a city known as Garbage Town. These people go through the streets and then return and they recycle everything…and the Gospel went there. And Garbage Town went from a place of filth and poverty to cleanliness and now has a church. They still go through the garbage and recycle everything but the gospel has radically changed that community.   In their book, Why America Doesn't Work, Charles Colson and Jack Eckerd argue that it was this biblical work ethic that many of our founding fathers embraced that led to economic prosperity in early America. Viewing our jobs as a calling from God, and our work as something that glorifies God produces a strong worth ethic. Colson and Eckerd worry that a loss of this idea of a biblical work ethic is at the heart of much of the unemployment and poverty in our culture today, and I think that most of us would agree.   Now we know a lot of people who work really hard at their job but who don't care at all about God. I know lots of business owners who put in endless hours trying to make their business successful. I know executives who give their all to their job. But in many cases, these people are driven to work hard because they're ambitious and want to get wealthy. That’s not what these proverbs are talking about. A Christ-follower works from a different motivation. If a believer is going to be wise about money, he/she needs to work hard as an act of devotion to Jesus Christ. We don't work for our boss or for our check, Christians work for Jesus Christ.   Working hard is a spiritual discipline, like praying hard, worshiping consistently, studying the Bible, or serving in ministry cheerfully. Having a spiritual motive for hard work is what prevents a biblical work ethic from degenerating into work-aholism. When we’re on the job, we act wisely about money by working hard to reach our earning potential.   2. Balancing your bottom line means avoiding debt, Proverbs 22:7. "...the borrower is the servant of the lender." Here’s our second insight. We behave wisely about money when we avoid incurring foolish debt. Some wrongly misinterpret this proverb as commanding us to never borrow money. There's a small circle of Christians who believe it's always sinful for a Christian to buy with credit. That’s not that's what this verse is saying. Here's why. Throughout the Old Testament, the ability to loan someone money was thought of as a blessing from God. If you were financially well off enough to loan another person money, you were blessed.  For instance, in Deut. 15:6, God promises that when Israel is walking in obedience with God, Israel will lend money to others, but would not need to borrow from anyone. It’s unlikely that when God blesses us, we are to then use that blessing to help another person “sin.” If borrowing is always sinful, that's what this passage would mean, that the lender is helping the borrower to sin.   Clearly borrowing isn't always the best idea, and most of what the Bible says about borrowing is negative, yet Scripture does not forbid buying on credit. What It does teach is to repay what we owe. Psalm 37:21 puts it this way: "The wicked borrow and do not repay." Romans 13:7 reiterates this principle: "Give to everyone what you owe him."   Proverbs 22:7 tells us that when we borrow money, we put ourselves in a position of servitude under the lender. In ancient Israel this was often literally true. If a person couldn't pay back a loan that person literally became a slave of the lender until he or she could work off the debt. Borrowing is risky, especially when we borrow based on no more than a promise to repay.   We get in trouble because we tend to overextend ourselves with credit. The average household carries nearly $16,000 in credit card debt each month. Compare that with just twenty years ago, when the average household carried $2,985 in credit card debt. Today the average undergraduate college student carries a $3,100 credit card balance. In just one year Americans charged 1.3 trillion dollars on their credit cards. Making the minimum payment on a credit card will usually take 20 years to pay off the balance. As a general rule, if you're spending more than 10% of your monthly income on consumer debt, you're overextended. It's better yet to pay off your credit card bill each month, allowing you to invest your money in sound investments and in ministry. We are financially wise when we avoid incurring foolish debt.   3. Balancing your bottom line means living modestly, Proverbs 23:4-5. "Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle." The picture here is of someone whose mission in life is to get as much money as possible. This person works hard, but they’re driven by greed. It’s the individual who exhausts himself to get as much stuff as possible. It’s Jerry McGuire, “Show me the money!” Or the 20 year old employee of a web hosting company who summed up his philosophy of life with, “It's all about the money." We're to avoid exhausting ourselves to get rich because riches are unreliable. Jesus warned us, treasures on this earth are a bad investment long term because life is unpredictable.   Buddy Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lottery…$16.2 million. Since his windfall, he’s been convicted of assault, divorced from his sixth wife, his brother was convicted of trying to kill him, and his landlady successfully sued him for one-third of his winnings. Post attempted to auction off seventeen future installments of his winnings in order to pay off overdue taxes, legal fees and a number of failed business ventures. Buddy Post's riches sprouted wings and flew away.    Instead of exhausting ourselves to get rich, we're urged to show restraint. The Hebrew word used here means, "Know when to stop." In other words, have a level in mind of how much money you really need.   The same idea is repeated in our text in 30:8-9. To be honest, these are some of my favorite verses in the book of Proverbs. All of the proverbs in chapter 30 were written by a guy named Agur who asks God to protect him from the extremes of riches and poverty. He knows that being wealthy is filled with temptations. When people get rich they build an illusion of self-sufficiency around them. They fail to acknowledge God's work in their lives because they're lulled into a sense of independence.   This is why Jesus said it's so hard for wealthy people to see their need for salvation, harder in fact than stringing a live camel through the eye of a needle. Even though Agur is a godly person, completely committed to God, he knows that given enough money, he'd be tempted to forget God.   That’s something that frustrated John Wesley to no end. John Wesley would reach people for Christ from the slums and soon they'd start getting better off financially because of their biblical work ethic. But no sooner did they advance economically, than their zeal and passion for Jesus began to fade. Wesley lost lots of sleep over this pattern.   Yet Agur also knows that poverty has its own temptations. He sees that being in a desperate situation he might be tempted to do things that he'd otherwise never consider doing. When your stomach is growling and your children are shivering with cold, you find yourself contemplating things you'd never consider doing otherwise. From these two proverbs we find our third insight, we’re wise when we seek moderation in our lifestyle.   Juliet Shor, a sociologist from Harvard, in her book, The Overspent American, studied the spending habits of Americans. She noted that in the 1950s, people compared their standard of living to their neighbors. We called it, "Keeping up with the Joneses." But according to Shor, we don't do that today because we really don't know our neighbors. Instead we compare ourselves to people we see on TV, people with incomes three, four or even five times larger than our own income. The majority of Americans are trying to emulate the spending habits of the richest of the rich in our culture. Shor calls this "the new consumerism." No wonder so many people carry such a high credit card debt.   If there was ever a time to rediscover moderation, it's now. We seek moderation when we decide ahead of time what income level we'd be comfortable with. By deciding ahead of time, we're less likely to keep climbing and climbing, for no other reason than to climb higher. There comes a time to say "No", a time to pass by that promotion.   It's exciting to see believers who having reached a certain level in their careers, retire and enter the ministry. Rather than doing what most retirees do, finding a new career or just drawing on their retirement and living for themselves, instead these folk head for the mission field, take a position on a church staff, or work at an inner city ministry. Sometimes all that they need is medical insurance. They've decided to live with less and re-invest their lives. That's embracing this principle of moderation.   Friend, have you defined the line of moderation in your life? If you don't decide ahead of time, you'll keep going for more and more, raising the standard higher and higher.   4. Balancing your bottom line means trusting God and sharing generously, Proverbs 3:9. "Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops.” Our money says, “In God we trust” but is that true for most of us? God demands that His people demonstrate their faith.   What are firstfruits? Remember, that this was written to an agrarian culture. When the first harvest came in, that was the seed for the future crops. God told the Israelites to give to Him, to worship with the seed of the future harvest and that He would provide their needs. For us, it would be that when we get paid, before we pay for our housing or for groceries, we first give back to God, trusting that He’ll take care of us. We don’t give after everything else is paid if there’s something leftover. There’s no faith there.   And God is an amazing provider. Christians have testified to this fact throughout history. Many famous hymns and contemporary choruses celebrate the goodness of God in providing what we need. Sometimes, though, we sing of God’s faithfulness and then live as if we are relying on ourselves. Instead of using our gifts to serve God first, we often use our gifts to provide for ourselves and then give what’s left over to Him. Such attitudes and actions violate the firstfruits principle. And God calls us to a deeper faith. He asks us, like the Israelites, to recognize Him as the giver of every good thing. He challenges us to demonstrate our faith by giving the first fruits of what we’ve been given—money, time, and talents—to Him.   If we faithfully give God our first fruits, the world around us will see the power and provision of God, not ourselves. As we fight the ungodly values of our culture, we must trust Him, not only for the big victories, but for the day-to-day provisions as well. So will you trust God to provide for you in the battles ahead—will you give him your first fruits?   Then, Proverbs 11:24-25 says, "One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed." This observation about life defies human logic yet we can see the truth of this saying still today. God honors people who give, He blesses them. Often that blessing is financial, more often it’s other kinds of blessings, eternal blessings. This proverb is not guaranteeing financial gain if you give; it's observing that in general, giving people prosper. In contrast, stingy people tend to lose what they have. Stingy people hold on to what they have so tightly, that it slips through their fingers. Stingy people withhold unduly from those in need.   Here's our final insight. We are demonstrating wisdom about money when we share our resources generously with those in need.   We apply this last insight in two primary ways. The first way is by giving consistently in worship in a local church. There's simply no way around this principle in the Bible, that following Jesus Christ means investing large portions of our money into His Church.    The fact is that most of us don't just have enough; we have more than we need. We’re rich. Almost all of us are there. We live in luxury, compared to history, compared to most of the world. We make way more than we really deserve or need. We may not think so, because we compare it to others we know, or what's on TV. Even the poorest of us though has resources that many can only dream of. What we have is more than enough. 98% of us have more than we need just to get by.   And there's a danger in having more than enough though this is the goal of nearly everyone in North America. Maybe you didn't know that there's such a danger in having so much. The greatest indication of that is that we don't know how much we have. Because despite our riches, most of us feel financially strapped. We're making more money that ever before, but we don't know it. A good definition of greed is: wanting more of what I already have enough of. Most American Christians are living a life of greed without even being aware of it.   Our excess is entrusted to us by God for us to share. When I get a 3% raise, I don't have to spend the 3% on myself. I can share some of it. I can use the extra beyond what I really need to get by to enrich the Kingdom, to minister in the lives of others.   The average American Christian gives just 3% of their income to charity. If every American Christian started tithing, gave 10%, not only could all ministries be supported and pay their budgets, but there would also be enough to end world hunger. Did you get that? Every American Christian could keep 90% for themselves, and there would still be enough money left over to end world hunger. Imagine what could happen if we really began to use our excess - the amount beyond what we really need - to help others.   There are really only two choices. One is to pray to God, like Agur, "Lord, I don't need any more. Please, no more raises. In fact, cut my income back to only what I need to get by." You could pray that prayer. It's pretty radical, but it's really not such a bad prayer to offer.   If you can't bring yourself to pray that, the only real alternative is to say, "Lord, give me more, but help me to give it away." The only other choice that honors Him is to accept more than you need, but then commit to using it to help others. While God's not calling us all to live in tents; He is calling us to live modestly and generously, enjoying what He's given us, but also enjoying giving it away in worship and to help others.   We also apply this insight by sharing what we have with people around us. It means being responsive to God's prompting when a neighbor needs a ride to work, a tool to work on their car, or whatever. It means responding to a friend who's taking a missions trip, even buying lunch for that homeless person you see each day on the way to work.   The Bible emphasizes the virtue of generosity because our God is a generous God. God is a giver, not a taker. And God challenges us as His children to live as givers in the world, not takers. Sometimes we'll be taken advantage of when we do that. But when we live as givers, we reflect the nature of our Heavenly Father.   Conclusion: Our culture is hung on money. We don't like to talk about it, we fight about it behind closed doors with our spouses. We're sometimes embarrassed by our spending habits or our debts, or our lack of generosity. We need to wise up about money. We need to Balance the Bottom Line. We do that when we embrace hard work, avoid foolish debt, seek moderation, and share our resources generously.   As we end today, let me encourage you to do an honest appraisal of your finances. Go back over the last several months of your check book. Do your expenditures reflect a balanced life? Are you working hard? Are you saving wisely? Are you giving generously? Do your finances demonstrate balance or imbalance? Too much (or not enough on yourself)? How about God's part? Is the way that you use your money an indication that you live from a Biblical worldview and Jesus Christ is Lord of your finances?   If there's a problem or if this is a struggle, set aside some time this week, maybe an hour or so, to get alone with the Lord and turn the details of your life over to Him, including your finances. John Wesley was right: "Earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can."   Money and the things of this world will never satisfy. God’s Word clearly teaches that Jesus is all that I need. Do we believe that? But you will never know if Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.   You see, if you’re facing a crisis you quickly discover that money won’t buy happiness or a longer life or health or much of anything else. If money is all you have, then you really have nothing but if Jesus is all you have, then you have everything.   So what are you ultimately trusting? What are you banking on? I hope it’s Jesus because He’s the only sure thing both in and out of this world! When Jesus is all you have, then you discover that Jesus is all you need.