Join us tonight as Pastor Tim looks at verses in Proverbs that speak about wealth and considers misunderstandings of what the Bible is telling us.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor uses the metaphor of “hamburger bagels” to illustrate missing the point about God’s blessings. What does he mean by this analogy, and how does it apply to our relationship with God and material prosperity?
The sermon describes treating God like a “miracle machine”—inserting good works to receive blessings. How can we distinguish between this transactional mindset and receiving God’s blessings as part of a genuine, loving relationship with Him?
The Book of Job challenges the idea that faithfulness always leads to material prosperity. What does Job’s response to his suffering—seeking relationship with God rather than just answers—teach us about how we should approach our own hardships and unanswered questions?
The sermon compares worldly pursuits to cheap batteries that corrode a device from the inside. How might pursuing wealth, comfort, or security as a substitute for God gradually damage our spiritual lives and our relationship with Him?
When following God’s ways doesn’t result in the material blessings we hoped for, how should a Christian respond? What does the sermon suggest should be our true measure of God’s love and care for us?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast on this Memorial Day. It is so good to be with you, to dig into God’s Word with you. Thanks for tuning in. We’re not going to spend a whole lot of time on Memorial Day tonight. I did talk about it in a brief meditation last night, and so if you haven’t seen that and you’d like something for the holiday, I’d encourage you to go back onto our Facebook page or our YouTube page and check that out.
Tonight though, we’re going to continue our series, Proverbially Speaking, in which we’re going to look at some of the proverbs that have been probably the most misused. Those proverbs that promise, it seems, wealth for faithfulness. And we’ve seen so many people over time wrestle with those proverbs and try to suggest that if we’re just good enough, if we’re pleasing enough to God, that we’ll be wealthy, we’ll be healthy. And then we wonder what happens when things don’t actually go that way. So let’s go ahead and dig into these proverbs and then we’ll understand what God has to tell us in them.
If you want to, go ahead and flip to Proverbs chapter 12, starting with verse 11 to begin. We’re going to look at three proverbs to begin. Verse 11, we read, “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.”
Let’s jump over to Proverbs 22, verse 4, where we read, “The reward for humility and the fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.”
Back to Proverbs chapter 10, we read these words, “The blessing of the Lord makes rich and he adds no sorrow with it.”
Well, as we try to understand these proverbs, let’s go ahead and open in prayer and ask for God’s guidance. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you for your goodness and your love. We thank you for the promises of your blessings. As we contemplate these proverbs, would you help us to understand them better? Would you help us to understand your love better for us? Would you help us to look only to you and not to the things of this world? We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, when you think about these proverbs, each of them in their own way is talking about receiving God’s blessings. And sometimes those blessings really are what we think of as worldly concerns. God’s ways often do lead to what we might term prosperity. After all, God knows what’s best for us and what’s best for our lives. He’s created us and he’s given us his word to instruct us, so it should come as no surprise that as we do the things that he’s called us to do, that things often work well.
Normally, it will go better if we are honest and we work hard and we follow God’s laws, if we love God. These are the things that are essential to a good life, and so it doesn’t surprise us necessarily when we see those things go hand-in-hand with someone doing well.
The problem is, and this is where these proverbs have often been misused, it starts to turn God into what we might call a miracle machine. Instead of being a loving heavenly father who cares about us, we see him as someone who we insert a certain number of good works coins into, and when we do, he outputs blessings. Whether it’s a nice house or a car or a good job or good health, we start to associate these things together in a way that’s mechanical.
And so when they don’t work the way we think they should, we say one of two things. Maybe God isn’t really there, or he doesn’t care about me, or two, maybe I’m not faithful enough. And so we start to interrogate ourselves and think, if I can just please God enough, then I’ll have money and then I’ll have everything I want. But in that, we’re missing the point.
And I just missed the point on something recently, and I thought I’d share it. You can see here my attempt to make homemade hamburger buns. I talked a few weeks ago about my fascination with the idea of sourdough starter. I didn’t realize it was going to become a phenomena over the quarantine period of the last few months, but here we are that everyone seems to be playing with sourdough starter. And I wanted to try to make hamburger buns for Mother’s Day.
And so I put all the ingredients together, and they’re supposed to sit overnight, they’re supposed to have several opportunities to rise and to be folded and to do all these things, and then finally to rise one more time and to be baked. And they look okay. I was rather excited about them when they came out. And yet, if you look at them, they don’t look exactly like hamburger buns, and they tasted and had a texture that was even less like hamburger buns. They were, if anything, like a really dense bagel.
And so all this hard work, hours of hard work, to create these hamburger buns, and they weren’t what I thought I was supposed to get. But I’d missed the part of the point. I hadn’t followed all the instructions, and so they didn’t rise. I misread, I misunderstood what the goal was of working with the starter to prepare it for this. And so I had perhaps the world’s first hamburger bagels.
Maybe that’s how you feel like your life is. You follow God’s word, or you’ve been watching people that follow God’s word, and they’re trying hard to make wonderful, fluffy hamburger buns out of their lives, and it feels like all you see are hamburger bagels. You don’t want a hamburger bagel. It feels like, why then should I follow God’s word? What am I doing wrong?
One of the important principles we need to understand, first and foremost, as we come to God’s word and what it calls us to do, is it’s not about that miracle machine where we insert some good works and we get some blessings. The first thing that we need to know is that God’s way that he calls us to is a way that is good for us in vastly more wonderful ways than we can imagine when we’re looking for whatever blessing we think we need at this time. It’s good for us because he’s the creator. He knows what we need.
In a way, when we find what we think are paths to blessings or paths to success, so often when we’re not following God’s way, they’re like buying really cheap batteries for a device. Maybe you’ve done that for your remote control or your camera or who knows what, maybe for your presentation remote if you give presentations at work or school. You stick those batteries in. They seem to work for a while. They work a lot better than no batteries at all and you think, wow, I’m being successful. This is good.
And then you take the cover off, which I’m not going to do just now, but I take the little cover off and what I find, I find all kinds of corrosion inside and I see how it’s been eating away at what I put the batteries in. And so often what we think of as ways to achieve success and ways that often appear at first to be really successful, what’s actually happening is it’s corroding our spiritual life because we’re not doing the things that God has intended for our good. And most of all, we’re losing our relationship with him. We’re going after other things instead.
And so our ways are actually eating away at the eternal joy that God intends for us. We put our trust in the wrong things. That’s what we see in Proverbs chapter 18, starting with verse 10. There we read, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous man runs into it and is safe. A rich man’s wealth is his strong city and like a high wall in his imagination.”
That’s really critical. It goes on, it says, “Before destruction, a man’s heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.” You see, when we’re seeking righteousness, when we’re following God’s way, we’re seeking to fear him and to love him. And it may not always seem like what we want, but we’re resting in a true strong tower.
But it says the rich man, the person who’s looking to prosperity instead and looking for what the world says are forms of security and peace, what is he finding instead? He’s going to find that it’s all in his imagination and it will fall. Sort of like how I was trusting in the order of ingredients I was putting in those hamburger buns and I was just getting hamburger bagels. I was trusting in my ingenuity and making sure I could follow a recipe and it didn’t work.
But we often misunderstand what we’re doing. And that’s what, as I said, I was doing with those hamburger buns. And see, my problem was I didn’t have what you might call the right relationship with my sourdough. The starter that you use to make these buns, you grow it over the course of days or weeks and you have to feed it. And I wasn’t feeding it the proper proportions of things. I wasn’t actually doing what was good for it over time.
And so even though it looked good on the surface, it was active. And even though I put all the other ingredients in right, what happened? I got hamburger bagels. See, I needed to relate to that sourdough in a proper way over time, building a relationship with it, you might say, with all those little yeast that are growing in it.
And if you think about if that’s important on little yeast in a mix of flour and water to grow them properly and to feed them properly on the right schedule and in the right proportions, how much more important is it that when we relate to the creator of the universe, we relate to him as he’s called us to? That we actually care about a relationship with him before we care about other things.
And that’s where we see there’s so much more to this story that is important before we start worrying about whether we become rich or prosperous or healthy. See, God’s ways are meant to help us focus on true prosperity, on true blessing, and the first and greatest blessing that we receive from God is an actual relationship with him, with his forgiveness and his grace and his love for us.
Worldly ways keep us from peace with God, and that’s what we see in Proverbs chapter 28. It says, starting with verse 13, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.”
You see, so often we get so focused on how can I be successful, what things does scripture require me to do so I can get the blessings I want, we forget about the basics of simply coming to our God, recognizing our own sin, seeking to repent of it and to ask God to transform us so that we’re not getting a worldly blessing for this moment, but we’re seeing true eternal change in our lives as the Holy Spirit makes us more like Jesus.
He does all that not because of the great works we do, we’re not inserting coins into that miracle machine, we’re simply coming to our Heavenly Father and being his children, relating to him, praying to him, hearing what he tells us in his word. And as we do that, we start to get a much healthier balance and understanding of how all these pieces come together.
You might think, well, maybe this is an issue for our time, we live in a very material world, and so maybe we think, well, I guess that’s just part of our current culture that we’re so tempted by these blessings, and maybe it’d be easier at a different time, but we see as we go back in scripture that it wasn’t. We could go back to the book of Job, and when we do, we find the very same problems were occurring back then.
If you’re not familiar with the story of Job, just in brief, he’s a very well-off man, but a man who first and foremost loves God and does what is righteous, and yet calamity falls upon him. Everything goes wrong. It goes in the exact opposite order of how things should go if we’re looking in terms of, I do good things, and then God gives me all kinds of good stuff.
And Job has friends, they seem to care about him, but they decide to straighten him out, and so they come to him and they say, Job, you need to confess these horrible things you’ve clearly done, because no one would be in the situation that you’re in right now unless he just really, really messed up.
Job responds to them that he has sought to be righteous before God, and as he says that, I believe he’s saying that with the confidence that a Christian can say today, not because he thought he was truly, absolutely perfect, but because he knew that he trusted in his Redeemer.
And so because of that, he could rest in the righteousness of his God. He looked to God first, not to worldly blessings, and so he doesn’t understand either why this is all happening to him, and he demands answers from God, but he doesn’t just give up on his integrity and say, okay, I guess I did something that I didn’t really do. He doesn’t make a false confession. He just wants to know. He wants to relate to God, because he knows that he should have a relationship with God.
And so God appears to him, and we see Job’s response to God’s appearance in Job chapter 42. God appears to him as a whirlwind and brings forth all kinds of wonderful questions that go beyond what we can understand in our heads.
And after Job has experienced this, Job says, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
Job’s response is one of relationship. You see, Job said, I want to know why everything has gone wrong. And God doesn’t give him the answer. He doesn’t give us the answer either. Not really. But he cares, and that’s what he shows Job. That he is God, the God who is in control of the entire universe, and the God who actually cares about Job when he asks questions. Cares about us when we ask questions, too.
And sometimes he doesn’t give us the exact answer, even though we’d like it, even though it would help us in so many ways, but what does he do? He shows us in relationship that he is our father whom we can trust. That’s what Job knows. That he can trust in God even if he doesn’t understand.
And so it is that it wasn’t Job who was really missing what was going on. It was his friends who were thinking in terms of how we misuse these proverbs. It was his friends who were saying, Job, you should just be rolling in money and livestock and property. You should have everything going your way, unless you’ve just not inserted enough good works into that miracle machine. And Job says, that can’t be the case. And in fact, it isn’t.
And God says, you know, I’m not upset with you, Job, but for wanting to relate to me and wanting to understand what was going on. I’m upset at your friends for thinking I’m just a machine up in the sky that dispenses blessings, rather than truly wanting to relate with me, wanting to connect to me as their father.
And so the very starting point we find in Proverbs is that God’s wisdom is the greatest wealth. When we hear about promises of wealth, we should start with Proverbs chapter 8, verses 10 through 11. It says, “Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.”
You see, God’s wisdom, who is personified there speaking to the person, is far better. It’s so real, just the wisdom of God that he imparts to us actually speaks of that wisdom as a person.
And while we’re seeking after all the things the world says are great, we’re told the starting point is something far greater, the wisdom of God that he gives us because he loves us.
The Bible turns us towards that true prosperity of God’s wisdom and God’s love that he’s poured out for us. And that’s what we see throughout all of scripture, is God faithfully again and again, when the people aren’t just failing to put in enough good works to get blessings, but aren’t putting in enough good works to merit any care at all from the God of the universe, what does he do? He rescues them. And he rescues us. That’s what we see at the cross, as Jesus gave his life for us.
Does God bless us materially? Do these proverbs speak to that at all? Yes. Yes. Yes, they do. But they’re not the starting point. It’s not mechanical. It’s part of a relationship that God gives us what we need over time. And yes, in the normal course of things, as we do what is good and righteous, we may see material blessings, but that’s not the point. At times they aren’t what’s good for us, and they’re not what’s good for God’s glory, and he doesn’t provide them for reasons that, just like for Job, aren’t explained.
And when we make that the priority and the measure of our relationship to God, when we make it what we’re reaching for, as I want this stuff and I need that stuff to know if God loves me or not, we’re going to be terribly disappointed.
But when we read how there’s something far greater than that, that God gives to every one of his children, not because they’ve earned it, but because he loves them, and that’s his love and his wisdom, then all that other stuff becomes secondary. It’s not that we don’t need it. It’s not that we don’t need a way to buy food and to have a shelter in life, and all those things, but it sets it in the right priority so that, like Job, our first desire is to want to relate to God, to understand how he’s working in our lives. And if he blesses us, then so be it how wonderful it is, for everything that we have is a blessing from God.
You might be saying, well, that’s easy to say, but I don’t have any material blessings. But if you think about it, if you’re here, you’ve had food to eat. If you’re listening to this, God’s provided us with the miracles, as it were, of technology that we’re using to be able to communicate as we’re social distancing.
If you think about just a place to live or the people who care around you, if you think about the church that he provides, there’s all kinds of things that he’s provided all of us to get us to this point in life that we are this very Monday night.
And yet, inevitably, we want more. It reminds me a little bit of if you have a cat, and you go buy that cat, the best cat toy ever. You saw it at the pet store, you went on Amazon, you bought the one that has five stars, and it has everything your cat loves. It has bells, and it has balls to bat around, and it has a little track with balls that you can bat. It has cardboard to scratch. It’s wonderful.
And you unpack it out of the box, and if you have a cat, you know exactly where the cat goes. The cat ignores all that wonderful stuff that has everything you know your cat loves and goes into the box. Now, the cat is pretty happy in that box. But if you’ve ever been in that moment, you want to say, but look at all this neat stuff. I know you love to scratch cardboard. I know you love to hit balls. I know you love bells and things to chew on. Why are you just in that box? I could have gotten a box, and you would have had all that other wonderful stuff.
How much more is it for God? As he gives us the gift of his wisdom and his love, we go and look for the box, the trimmings of material blessing. Not that they’re nothing. That box is not nothing, to use a double negative. It’s something, but it’s so much less than the fullness. And in the scope of a cat toy, it’s not that much different, but in the scope of eternity and God’s wisdom and his love, it’s everything.
And so, when we look at these Proverbs, you’ll notice if you go through the book of Proverbs, there are far more that talk about the blessing of following God and having his wisdom than there are about how we can become prosperous, and that’s because we have to have things in the right order.
And when we do, God uses us, and God blesses us in a way that lasts for eternity, and that is the most wonderful thing we could ask for.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, we thank you for your love. We thank you that even when we’re going and playing with a box, when you’ve given us everything we could truly need to thrive throughout eternity, that you still have patience with us. Lord, I think all of us, I know I can do that throughout life, repeatedly, even though I know it isn’t where I should be seeking, and I think many of us, maybe most of us, struggle with that at times.
We thank you for your patience, and we pray that you would continue to direct our hearts not to the things that will fail and go away, but to the things that are eternal, and allow the true prosperity, the true blessing of experiencing your love and rejoicing in it.
Lord, would you give us hearts that are focused on what is good and true? Would you help us to rest in the true strong power, which is you? We pray these things in Jesus’ name, amen.
That’s my prayer for all of us tonight, and if you haven’t yet ever trusted in the true strength of the universe, and the true one who will give you a foundation better than the best house you could buy if you had all the money in the world, who could give you life more truly than the best food you could ever buy, who could give you more true joy than all the stuff in the world, and I pray that tonight you would consider that maybe this is the night that Jesus is calling you to trust in him. And if that’s the case, I would love to pray with you. You can send me a message or an email, and I would love to do that, because this is the true worth, the true prosperity we should be seeking, and I hope that you have that tonight.
Well, I really thank you once again for joining me for Steadfast, and this next week we are going to resume our series. We’re going to continue it at 7 p.m. next Monday, and we’re going to look at proverbs that I alluded to tonight, which are proverbs that talk about the fear of the Lord. And maybe you’ve come across that phrase and think, Tim, you’ve been talking about how God loves me, how he’s done all this out of love, that’s what we just talked about tonight, and yet I read over and over again about the fear of the Lord, and what does that mean? And we’re going to think about what true fear of the Lord means, and how we can benefit from really thinking about that, whether we’ve been fearing the Lord all of our lives or we’re not really sure what it means. So I hope you’ll join me at 7 p.m. next week for that.
Also we have Men’s Bible Study. We’re going into Isaiah chapter 54 this week on Thursday at 7 p.m., and I would love to have you take part in that. It’s been such a wonderful time, and as we can’t be together as well in groups around the churches, we’ve had men from a bunch of different churches taking part in that together, and it’s been a real blessing, and I hope that you would consider joining us on Thursday night for that.
Well, once again, if there’s a way I can be praying for you this week, please shoot me an email, leave a message down below, or send me a direct message. I am happy, I’m delighted to hear from you and to pray for you. And if you give me permission, I’ll share it with the rest of the Little Hills team, and we’ll all be praying for you. It’s such a wonderful thing. This is one of those blessings that God gives us that we overlook. It’s just the joy of how God works through prayer and how he blesses us just by allowing us to pray for each other.
And so, if there’s some way I can be praying for you this week, please don’t hesitate to write. Also, you can like us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. What we’re talking about here is so much more important than virtually anything else that we could share on social media, unless you’re sharing other things about Jesus. And so, when you think about, how can I be a blessing to my friends? How can I help them prosper? We see all these things. Share this, and you’ll help your friends get a gift certificate or a reward, or they can become wealthy by joining this program. And we think, well, maybe that would be a blessing, but it never really seems to work out.
But do you know how you can really bless your friends? It’s by sharing the good news of the gospel. And one of the ways you can help us do that is by sharing some of the things that we post throughout the week that include scriptural encouragement and gospel reminders. And so, if you want to be a part of that social media team, all you need to do is like our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and then go ahead and share some of those things with your friends who need hope and encouragement, even tonight.
Once again, I hope you’ve had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, and I’m so glad that you’ve been willing to share a part of that with me. I look forward to seeing you again next week. I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week.