Money and Wealth: Wisdom from the Book of Proverbs
Today we are continuing our series on the book of Proverbs and we will study the topic of money and wealth.
As many of you know, the book of Proverbs is a little different from other books. There is not always a logical sequence of ideas developed in a section. It is more like isolated verses, like small nuggets of wisdom.
So this is what I did to prepare for this message. I read the book of Proverbs and highlighted the verses that talk about riches and poverty. Then I categorized them in groups that speak of a similar theme. So for this message, we will just walk through these groups and talk about the theme in each.
Now, we are not covering all that the Bible has to say about money. For instance, in general, the book of Proverbs speaks of the Lord blessing the good guys with riches and there is a general positive presentation of wealth.
However, in the NT we have a more negative view of the rich. Jesus said that it is very difficult for them to enter the Kingdom of God. And the NT epistles offer significant warnings for those who trust in riches.
But, the book of Proverbs is part of the Word of God, and therefore it has valuable matter-of-fact wisdom that we can learn from in relation to wealth and possessions.
So let’s pray and dive into it!
The Lord blesses those who honor him
Proverbs 3:9-10
9 Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; 10 then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.
This is a great place to start! No matter how much you have, little or much, we are called to honor the Lord with our wealth, with the things he has provided for us.
The picture here is in the context of an ancient agricultural society, where wealth is having enough for yourself and to give to others. People work the ground and as soon as they get their first fruits, they seek to honor the Lord with them. It is assumed here that the firstfruits are offered, given to the Lord. It is a way to acknowledge that it is the Lord who gave growth to the seed and allowed the fruits to come out. It is him who ultimately provided for the needs. He sends the rain, waters the soil, makes the seed grow and sprout, and he provides bread to the sower.
I imagine that most of us do not plant and then eat what we planted, except for Steve Wyzga who has his own vegetable garden (there may be a few others who do the same). But we have jobs. I am a software developer, and push buttons all day long, like my kids say. You may be a teacher, or an accountant, a constructor, or a doctor. And, yet, at the end of the day, God is the one who has given you specific skills, and has allowed you to get a job. Whether you work in an office, or cultivate a garden, work with cars, with rockets or people. God is the one who provides for your needs, and here we are told to honor him with the first fruits of what he allowed to be produced for our good.
Do that, says Proverbs, honor the Lord with your wealth and your barns will be filled with plenty, your vats will be bursting with wine. They will be overflowing, you will have plenty. Honor God with your wealth and he will bless you with much.
Oh, I know so many stories in our church of people who at some point had a hard time with finances, and yet they were faithful in honoring God with what they had, and now they enjoy plenty, they are overflowing!
But the reward for humility and fear of the Lord is much more than financial prosperity. Read what it says in
Proverbs 22:4
The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.
So if you humble yourself before the Lord and fear him as God, he will reward you with riches and honor and life! You will be able to enjoy your riches as you live a full life, with joy and no sorrows, like also Proverbs 10:22 says
Proverbs 10:22
The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.
So let us seek to honor God with our wealth!
Wisdom is better than riches, although often riches follow wisdom
Proverbs 8:11, 18-19
11 for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.
[Wisdom speaking]:
18 Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and righteousness. 19 My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver.
So imagine for a moment that you can win the lottery, or get all the money that you want. What would you do with it? Would you buy gold and jewels, a ring with a big diamond, a nice car, or a mansion? Would you take a cruise, a nice vacation?
Wisdom is better than all of them! Proverbs says. If you have wisdom you are richer than Jeff Bezos! That is super rich!
Not only that, but if you have wisdom, you will also have a wealth and a righteousness that last and endure, they do not fade away.
Oh wow! Let us pursue true, enduring wealth by working hard for Wisdom! And how do you get Wisdom? One way is to read and memorize Proverbs, it has big nuggets of gold!
The wages for the righteous and the wicked
Here Proverbs talks about the long term wages, for the ones who are righteous and for the wicked. They both may earn gains, but at the end of life, their profit is different. How? Read with me
Proverbs 10:2, 16
2 Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. 16 The wage of the righteous leads to life, the gain of the wicked to sin.
No matter how much the wicked can accumulate in life, at the end what he earns will not profit. Wealth will not deliver him from death.
In contrast, what the righteous accumulate, what he is paid for his toil will lead him to life.
The wicked works for material, earthly riches that are temporary, and cannot save. The righteous works primarily for true wealth that leads to life!
Proverbs 11:7
7 When the wicked dies, his hope will perish, and the expectation of wealth perishes too.
The wicked cannot take any of his wealth with him when he dies. He is a fool! He is thinking how to enlarge his barns to hold more and more possessions, and he does not know that soon he will die, and his wealth will perish with him!
The great dividends of generosity
Let’s now talk about being generous with your wealth
Proverbs 11:24
24 One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.
You may think that keeping your wealth for yourself will make you rich, and giving it away to others will make you have less. That is simple math, right? If you have $100 and you give away $50 you are left with only $50. But somehow the Bible math is different, if you give freely you will grow richer.
How can that be? Proverbs calls us to be generous in particular with the poor.
Proverbs 22:9
9 Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.
Proverbs 19:17
17 Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.
You see, being generous with the poor is like lending to the Lord himself, and he will repay you with the greatest return of investment. He is the one who blessed you and prospered, so you can give to others. That way you honor him by giving away his riches, just as a bridge, one who receives provision to distribute it to others, and others praise God for his provision through you. He gets all the glory in each case!
Give generously and you will be richer! Not only financially, but you will also be more happy!
Do not show off what you do not have
When I first came to the US, one thing that surprised me was that most people seem to have nice cars and clothes. I thought that everyone had a lot of money. But with time I realized that actually some people wanted to pretend that they had more than what they really had. They bought nice cars and homes they could not afford. And it was not a small group. The group was so large that it made the housing bubble burst big time!
Why pretend to be better off than what you really are? Like Proverbs 12:9 says
Proverbs 12:9
Better to be lowly and have a servant than to play the great man and lack bread.
Proverbs 13:7
Some who are poor pretend to be rich; others who are rich pretend to be poor.
Better for people to think you have less than the other way around.
Also, when you borrow a lot of money, whether you like it or not, you become a slave of your lender.
Proverbs 22:7
The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.
Instead of pretending to have what you don’t…
Build your wealth slowly
Sometimes we dream about getting tons of money very quickly and effortlessly. I know some people that used to buy a lottery ticket regularly, maybe every week, hoping that at some point they will get the great prize!
Some people gamble with the hope that they will be the lucky ones that will get a mountain of coins by investing a few dollars. Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching! Almost inevitably they leave with less than what they had.
I am in the technology sector and I find that there is now so much more information about the stock market than ever before. Recently, I had the delusion that I could outsmart experienced investors by buying stock that I thought could do well rapidly. I bought partial stock shares of GameStop when the news said its value was rising like crazy. Then as soon as it went up it started coming down, and the website of my stock broker would not let me sell them. So I lost part of my little investment. As you may imagine, that was the end of my short career as an apprentice, padawan investor. I am much better off pushing buttons all day long.
So I wrote a poem about this
Winning the lottery, Or gambling with stock Money came easy But surely it will go
My poem is of little value but what Proverbs has to say is golden advice
Proverbs 13:11
Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.
Proverbs 20:21
An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end.
So don’t try to build wealth hastily, but faithfully gather coins one at a time.
El diablito no sabe para quién trabaja
That is the name of a card game that I used to play when I was a kid. The literal translation is something like “The devil does not know whom he is working for”. So the winner is the one who has more cards at the end, so you try to accumulate as many cards as you can. The problem is, that under certain conditions one of the opponents can get all your cards. So you may think you will win the game because you have more cards than anybody else, just to see in the last round how your cards end up with somebody else who wins at the end.
That is what happens with the wealth of the wicked. They work hard, they accumulate wealth, and at the end their wealth ends up somewhere else.
Proverbs 13:22
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.
Proverbs 28:8
Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor.
So you better find out what side you are on, lest you are accumulating wealth for the other team
Better is …
Here’s a set of proverbs that compare two extremes in relation to wealth
Proverbs 15:16
Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it.
This is like this game my kids play: would you rather have little money and be with the Lord, or a great treasure with tons of trouble with it?
I hope the choice is easy for you
Here’s another one
Proverbs 28:6
Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.
An honest poor man is so much better than a rich man that made his fortune in crooked ways.
And one last one
Proverbs 16:19
19 It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.
How many of you have experienced proud wealthy people? Those who think they can do whatever they want just because they have money? It is better to be of lowly spirit with the poor.
Be careful how you treat the poor
You know when you are a kid at school, the big kids tend to bully the little ones: “Hey loser, I will crush you if you don’t do what I want”. That works fine until the little one brings his gigantic older brother, so the bully just wets his pants when he sees him.
If you have money, do not oppress or mistreat the little poor, lest you have to face his omnipotent defender.
Proverbs 14:31
31 Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.
Proverbs 22:22-23
22 Do not rob the poor, because he is poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate, 23 for the Lord will plead their cause and rob of life those who rob them.
As you see, it may even cost you your life!
Besides, the Lord is Maker of both rich and poor, so before his eyes you are no different.
Proverbs 22:2
The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the Maker of them all.
Next topic
Those who party all the time will be poor
I was watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Tokyo, last Friday. One thing that is common to most athletes in those games is that they work really hard to get there. They are super disciplined and have strict schedules. As they prepare for the prequalification events they spend much more than 8 hours a day to get at their best and compete against the rest and win a place in the team. It is no joke. If they slack or are not disciplined they may lose their chance. (Now once they are in the competition, sometimes they do foolish things, but that is another story)
In general, if you work hard, you have more chances to reach your goals. If you party and waste your time, well, you will not get the grades you want, the job you want or the promotion you dream about. The same with finances, you will not become rich if you are indulging in pleasures, you will be poor according to Proverbs
Proverbs 21:17
17 Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.
Proverbs 23:20-21a
20 Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, 21 for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty,
But if you are diligent, then
Proverbs 28:19
Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.
If you want your refrigerator with plenty of food then work hard, otherwise, what you will have is plenty of poverty.
The perfect balance
This is the one-before-last topic and is based on one of my favorite passages in the book of Proverbs that speaks of poverty and riches. What is the perfect balance? Should I pursue to have a lot of riches, or should I choose the path of utter poverty. Should I pray for more? Or should I spend my time and energy on something else and have less? Should I work hard and accumulate wealth? What should I ask the Lord?
See what Proverbs 30 says:
Proverbs 30:8b-9
8 … give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, 9 lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.
If I have too much, I may become proud, I may trust too much in my money, I may become less dependent on the Lord, I may even get to the point of denying him: “Who is the Lord?” I have no need of God! I have plenty of everything, I trust in my wealth! It is really dangerous to have too much. There are probably just a few people who can handle tons of money in a godly way, honoring God. For most of us, that may be a trap too hard to avoid, so we plead: “Lord, please do not give me too much!”
What if I am too poor, and I am always in need, what if I get to the point that I am tempted to steal so my family can eat and survive. What if I need to avoid taxes and break the law because it looks like I do not have enough. I do not want to do that! I do not want to dishonor my God and do not want to profane his name. So I plead with Proverbs: “Lord, provide for my needs, give me enough, just enough to know that you care for me, and so I will have a grateful and joyful heart knowing that you are my provider.”
Riches are temporary, do not put your trust in them
Finally, do not forget that riches are volatile, they are just like the wind, they are not eternal and they will not last. Get some truth from
Proverbs 27:24
for riches do not last forever; and does a crown endure to all generations?
Sooner or later, the earthly possessions will disappear, and if you have put your trust in them, well then you will be disappointed.
Proverbs 11:28
Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.
Do not put all your eggs in the basket of riches. If you trust in money, you will eventually stumble and fall, but if you invest in eternal wealth, you will flourish and prosper, you will bloom, in this life and the one to come!