Proverbs No.5 It's a rich mans world

We bow and crown the King's good soul, Steadfast and sure for the good of all. Fasten to the rock which cannot move, Rally proudly with the Saviour's love. O children of ages, spread upon the rising tide, You can never tell what your anchor holds within the gate.

We bow and crown the King's good soul, Steadfast and sure for the good of all. Fasten to the rock which cannot move, Rally proudly with the Saviour's love. When your eyes behold Him in the morning light, The seed of gold and the love of Christ, You'll thank the Saint by the heavenly shore When your souls are crossed for evermore.

We bow and crown the King's good soul, Steadfast and sure for the good of all. Fasten to the rock which cannot move, Rally proudly with the Saviour's love. Luke 16, verse 19.

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen, and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores, longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

The time came when the beggar died. The angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried.

In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.

But Abraham replied, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. He answered, Then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers.

Let him warn them, so that they will not come to this place of torment. Abraham replied, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.

No, Father Abraham, he said, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. And perhaps this is the saddest comment that Jesus ever made in his ministry. He said to him, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced, even if someone rises from the dead.

And let me ask you to have your books, Bibles open at Proverbs. One sense not the easiest sort of book to tackle on a Sunday night for the reason that, well, the Jewish way of teaching was very much different from the way in which the Greeks would teach and the way in which you and I have been accustomed to receive instruction. The rabbis had what was basically a sort of pearls on a string approach to teaching.

I mean by that, they didn't develop necessarily one argument. They would slot a number of subjects, one after another, after another, after another on a string. And sometimes they would come back to those subjects and sometimes they wouldn't.

You take the epistle to James, for example. That's a classic illustration of rabbinical teaching. There's not any one particular course of argument.

There are several interlocking strands, many, many subjects. Well, it's the same here with Proverbs. Occasionally you get an exception, as in that story that I was privileged to preach on some Sundays ago about that young reckless man, you remember, who goes off to a woman who is selling herself on the streets and we looked at the whole area of sexual morality and so forth.

Well, this evening it's not quite so plain. It's not quite so easy because we're looking at the Proverbs teaching on riches. It's teaching on wealth and you'll have to go all over the book in order to bring together the various pearls, so to speak, that are threaded throughout this marvelous collection of wise sayings.

It's a rich man's world? Well, I guess Solomon perhaps could have said that. Solomon traditionally is the author of Proverbs. He didn't write the whole book, but he wrote many of them.

He had penned another two books in the Bible, at least largely responsible for the contents. The Song of Solomon, where you find a love letter to one woman. Solomon later on had many wives and many concubines, but he only wrote one letter, which is recorded in the Bible, because God only recognized one wife.

God only recognizes one wife. He also wrote Ecclesiastes, which seems to me to be the sort of book which if Malcolm Muggeridge had been around in the Old Testament times, he might have written because it's got a sort of pessimistic approach. I mean, you can imagine Solomon at the end of his life penning this together.

He's, to quote one of the people who was a pop idol in my younger years, he had tasted all the forbidden fruit and it had become sickly sour in his mouth. And when he wrote Ecclesiastes, a parallel book to Proverbs, you remember he uses the expression, authorized version, vanity of vanities, NIV, emptiness of emptinesses. He'd run the whole gamut of experience.

He'd taken leave of the moorings his anchor didn't hold of those earlier years in his life when he behaved much more like his father had in the best examples that David gave. And when he comes to the end of sowing his wild oats, when he gets towards eventide, he looks back upon his life and he tells you that riches and influence and fame, the whole ragbag of what this world calls success, it really amounts to a big zero as far as Solomon is concerned. So he has a right to give some sort of teaching on this subject matter.

Whether it's a rich man's world, or is it? You know, I set off for India tomorrow. You would think that India, being one of the poorer countries in the world, was one of the least materialistic. Actually, it's not.

India is probably in advance of the United States of America in terms of materialism. Because if you haven't got it, then you want it even more than those who have got it. They've sort of had the shine taken off their desires to some degree.

And when you get out of Bombay airport, simply because you're European, it seems as though the porters conceive that rupees drop from your nose and out of your ears as they try to grab your luggage without you giving them an invitation at all. And if you're gullible as I was years ago on my first entry, you let them take it feeling that they're doing you a service and then they have you over a barrel as they try and get the rupees out of you. A very materialistic society.

To the extent that I once remember one Indian telling me that in his understanding of Hinduism and reincarnation, which is a sort of recycling process, spiritually speaking, if you really do well in India, in that cycle in which you find yourself, that level of caste, when you come back, if you're really blessed, you'll come back as an American. I have even been in Hindu temples where there are pictures or depictions of the Hindu gods and I thought, what's JF Kennedy doing there? India, a poor country, is also a materialistic country. Says John Steinbeck, if you want to destroy a nation, give it too much.

Make it greedy, miserable, and sick. And I think that to some degree that describes the United Kingdom. You know what I wanted William to do this evening, but he chickened out of it, was because we were singing about, at least we've got songs on this particular theme of dedication and devotion to the Lord, I wanted him to sing, because he's got a good voice, from Fiddler on the Roof.

If I were a rich man. Remember? This little bit of Jewish melody that comes out in that remarkable musical. If you were a rich man, well, Solomon had been a rich man.

And there are some people in the Bible who were rich and did not come under condemnation for their riches. Joseph of Arimathea. You remember Nicodemus? The man who embalmed our Lord having taken his blood-stained body from the cross.

You remember that little group of women folk who seemed to sponsor the ministry of our Lord Jesus. You remember, too, Ananias and Sapphira who were very much behind the ministry of our Savior? You recall Ananias and Sapphira? I put the wrong ones, haven't I? I'm trying to get the couple who opened their home. Aquila and Priscilla, thank you.

That's just an anticipation of jet lag tomorrow. Aquila and Priscilla who opened their home to our blessed Lord. You get a number of folk in the Old and in the New Testament who obviously had a standing in their day which was above that of the average person.

So, with these thoughts in mind, let's come specifically to the book of Proverbs. Let's listen to what I've called the citadel mentality. Proverbs 10 and verse 15.

Will you find that, please? Let's hear it read out. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city. There's another statement in Proverbs which seems to endorse that.

Go across to chapter 18 and verse 11. There you read the wealth of the rich is their fortified city as Cheryl has just reminded us from the earlier reading. They imagine it an unscalable war.

If I were a rich man, then I would be impregnable. Certain things that would not cause me problems at all. I don't need to be too worried about the National Health Service spiraling downwards to some degree.

I don't need to be over-concerned about the housing problem or the job situation because, well, I've got sufficient property. I've got sufficient reserves in my finance to make me completely invulnerable to these sort of things. The citadel mentality.

They imagine it an unscalable war. Let's go to the other book that Solomon was largely responsible for, at least one of the other two, Ecclesiastes, in chapter 10 and verse 19. What do you discover there? Well, he says, a feast is made for laughter, wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.

Now you'd think that he was writing in the 20th century, wouldn't you? Money is the answer for everything. This citadel mentality, this idea that if you were a rich man, you'd be able to control your own circumstances. Do you know something? Solomon proved the bankruptcy of that conviction.

And what is more, if you were to read the biographies of so-called successful people today, you'd find ample evidence that the citadel mentality is actually the philosophy of the ostrich. Robert Maxwell. He's not a man who exactly inspires you when you think of making an impression on life today, is he? It was Douglas Heard who said, I think I quoted this before, our foreign secretary, a luckless comment, when first he heard of Maxwell's death, he said, his death will be a great loss to many people.

Well, not only was a foreign secretary, he was also a prophet. You read Maxwell's life story, not the one that he authorized. Read the one that actually analyzes his life.

Or you take another very fascinating character in modern history, Aristotle Onassis' daughter. He was one of the most wealthy people in the world, and all his wealth was diverted to his daughter, who he loved. She died prematurely, in her forties.

And if you read the biography authored by Nigel Dempster, you will read one of the saddest tales that there is on record in these days. A lady who hid behind the citadel mentality, if I were a rich woman, there was nobody, well hardly anyone, more rich than Christina Onassis. And yet she died at many levels, a pauper, spiritually.

May God pity a nation, says one commentator, whose factory chimneys rise higher than her church steeples. We are living in a day when the message of Christianity is so blotted out in our nation, it's like doing what I did the other day in London, looking down on London, and you see not so much the chimneys, but the high rise blocks, the flats, the offices, and the little churches that used to hold prominence architecturally in London, have been eclipsed. Now I'm not too concerned about the architectural difficulty, I'll allow Prince Charles to work that one out, what I am concerned about is the way that the message of the church has been eclipsed.

In our citadel of security in these days, we're saying, if we were rich men, or as many are, then we can cope with our own circumstances and control our own fate. But there are certain things, as you will discover, that a rich person is unable to cope with. More of that in a moment.

So, let's look at what I've called the common denominator. That is the common denominator between the rich and the poor. Let's listen to someone read out for me please that 22nd chapter and 2nd verse of Proverbs.

So, if you're a rich man, or if you're a poor man, at birth, you are equal. What is more, if you're a rich man, or you're a poor man, at death, you will be equal. What is more, if you're a rich man, or a poor man, you are still prone to the same diseases, the same frailties in the human body, even though being rich might give you the resources of medical help that the poor will not have.

But there is a sense in which equality is still there as a common denominator between the rich and the poor. They come into life the same way. They go out of life the same way.

They have the same body functions. They have the same susceptibility to disease. The rich man may have some advantages.

The poor may have some gross disadvantages. But there are many common denominators which cause us to realize this, that the rich and the poor are actually judged before God as of equal standing. The Bible will tell you in the New Testament God is no respecter of persons.

He will deal with the rich in the same way as He deals with the poor. He does not have one law for the rich and another for the poor. He does not have one law for the Jew and another for the Gentile.

Ultimately, He will test every man on the basis of his understanding of the moral law of God. And the only way that your breaking of God's law can be resolved, whether you be Jew or Gentile, is by coming to the foot of the cross. Because Jesus says that unless a man dies and takes up his cross and follows Him, dies spiritually, there is no way he can get into the kingdom.

Nicodemus can't get in on an easier basis than a poor man like Bartimaeus. As far as our Lord Jesus is concerned, there is this great common denominator between the rich and the poor. They both represent spiritual paupery.

They are both in need of salvation. There is a common denominator. We used to have an elder here by the name of Jim Skinner.

Some of you will have memories of him. Jim had a number of jokes. They were always the same.

And he would say of our church offerings that the offerings were always tainted. The money, well, it taint yours and it taint mine. There is, however, at the literal level, the application of that word taint in terms of the rich man and the poor man.

They are tainted with sinfulness. They both need the way that God provides out of their dilemma through the sending of our beloved Saviour into our world. Though your riches increase, Psalm 62 and verse 10, do not set your heart on them.

Let the rich man not boast in his riches. Let the wise man not boast in his wisdom. Jeremiah 9, 23.

But let him who boasts boast in this, that he knows the Lord. Bartimaeus knew Jesus. Zacchaeus knew Jesus.

He brings together the rich and the poor. He brings together the Gentile and the Jew. There is this common denominator.

And here, embedded in the Old Testament book of Proverbs, as Solomon works it out, is this principle that though there is a citadel mentality that the rich hide behind, actually they have more in common with the poor than meets their thinking at a superficial level. When they go deeper into reflection on the subject, they recognize their indebtedness. Let's move on.

Because reference is made in the book of Proverbs and elsewhere in the Bible, to the disagreeable methods of making a quick shekel or two. Chapter 13 and verse 11. Let's hear that one read out.

Dishonest money dwindles away. The Bible does not speak about money in substance as having any intrinsic evil quality. How can it have? It's the root of evil when money wrongly obtained or money rightly obtained which becomes your God that the Bible brings its criticisms upon.

Let's look at chapter 22 and verse 16. For a similar sort of comment. He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he presumably in an obsequious fashion who gives gifts to the rich both come to poverty.

You see the man who is guilty of malpractice who squeezes someone else who exploits them as is often the case with landlords controlling property particularly in India but alas also here in Europe. That sort of practice brings the disapproval of God. Those sort of riches will bring a man down and under the judgment of the Lord.

The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians speaks in the 6th chapter in the 19th verse and the 20th verse of the first letter about a man recognizing that actually his body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and how he controls himself and what he engages in in his life. Well he is answerable to the Lord for. So this is another problem you see for the rich.

If they abuse their ability in making money they will come under the judgment of God for that crime as well as for any other sin and there is no way that they can use their money to get them out of the dilemma of having to face God. Go to the 11th chapter in the 4th verse and you'll see there quite clearly a succinct comment to that effect. Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath.

And when you go across to Revelation and chapter 6 you will discover there right at the end of the chapter rich people cringing on the day of judgment. For what reason? Well, when God condemns them there is no way of getting out of the target of God's wrath because of the way in which they have lived their lives and dealt so badly. So let's move on.

Not just the citadel mentality not just the common denominator between the rich and poor not just the malpractice of making money wrongly but, says the writer of Proverbs one of the difficulties about wealth is that it can so obsess you it actually takes far more time than one should ever legitimately give to the pursuit of getting the means just to sustain life at a reasonable level. Let's listen to Proverbs 23 and verse 4 being read out, please. You see how timely that word can be.

For the person who eats drinks, thinks and sleeps his work his work becoming his God and now I speak with compassion because I realize that in the economic climate in which we find ourselves in this country there is tremendous pressure more pressure than ever being brought to bear by the employer on employees and sometimes it seems almost in the language of Davy Crockett that you have sold your soul to the company store but I want to tell you that the company store cannot offer you sufficient compensation for you to devote the whole of your life to your job without having any reference at all to the greater responsibilities of ensuring that you are walking where God wants you to walk the abuse of time do not wear yourself out to get rich put aside, says the anonymous writer of the Hebrew epistle chapter 12 and verse 1 put aside that which entangles in order to win the heavenly race there are some prices that are too high to pay if in the pursuit of so called secular professional activity you push God right out of your life because your job cannot last for more than 30 or 40 years at the most but eternity by definition goes on forever says the apostle in a different context but sustaining the same principle there are those who hold on to this life this temporary material life with a grim and a tragic grip as though there is nothing else to hold on to but he says no that is wrong the things that are material are temporary the things that are spiritual are eternal I'll put it in the language of our Lord Jesus seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you the Greek philosopher by the name of Seneca said this listen carefully or else you'll miss it money has never made anyone rich money has never made anyone rich to die rich in spirit to die like this poor man whose story was in the parable that I read whose life was such that at the point of death he's ushered into the immediate presence of God by the angels is to die rich but think of the reverse as our Lord put that parable together so brilliantly think of this man who had lived for riches who seemed to be obsessed with all that he was engaged in in this world secularly forgetting that one day he would have to give an account of himself building bigger barns and engaging in expansive enterprises when he finds himself in eternity he is outside of the presence of God and he cannot even summon up sufficient finance to buy some water to ameliorate, to quench the thirst in his mouth now our Lord doubtless is speaking metaphorically and yet he is harnessing a truth he is demonstrating this as Proverbs does that the man, the woman who gives himself, herself only to the pursuit of the material who's concerned only about the temporary when the point comes in life, when they move from this world into what lies beyond they are destitute, they are bankrupt they are more poor than Bartimaeus was as he pleaded for money in Bethany as Jesus went by let's come to the last aspect of the teaching at least for us this evening getting the balance how do you get the balance? well, let's listen to chapter 10 and verse 22 being read out for us please the blessing of the Lord brings wealth to know that my life is being lived just in alignment to the will of God David the Psalmist, he said you remember towards the end of his life that he had never seen the righteous forsaken nor God's seed begging bread he believed that a man who knew the blessing of the Lord would have adequate and that there would be no sorrow there would be no price to pay as a result of squandering or exploitation or handling handling material things wrongly whatsoever let's get another balance on that let's get the 30th chapter and the 8th and 9th verses read out please give falsehood and lies far from me give me neither poverty nor riches but give me only my daily bread otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say do it the Lord or I may become cruel and steel and so dishonor the name of my God you can see the wisdom in that prayer can't you both extremes have their own particular danger unlicensed wealth incredible poverty the man who writes these proverbs his name is Eger you'll see that from the beginning of the 30th chapter he says Lord I'm of such a disposition that I don't really think I can cope with either extreme Lord could it possibly be your will for me to be there in the middle without either extreme wealth nor indeed extreme poverty let's try to bring what I've tried to share this evening together to some form of conclusion here is a man Solomon who as I indicated right at the beginning of my address he'd known opulence he'd known wealth in a most remarkable fashion hard to exaggerate what he had benefited by and yet when he got to the end of his life he discovered that all this was utterly meaningless for him Solomon will start to tell you in the Old Testament what our Lord Jesus will make clear in the New Testament that there are riches that make the beggar or that make the Christian poor in the back streets of Karachi better off than the affluent unbeliever here in the West the Bible also makes it very clear that it is possible for God to have blessed with the gift of affluence and for you to use that in his service as a mobilizing force whereby as a result of the finance that you control Christian projects relief work here and in various parts of the world can be promoted the Bible you see is absolutely balanced in the way that it presents its teaching on wealth and it will bring every category of society as I indicated a little while ago back to the foot of Jesus' cross and it will say for the rich man and for the poor man to the Hindu and to the European if you want to be ensured that the riches of God through Christ Jesus are made available to you those spiritual riches if you want to know that on death you will move into the presence of God as a saved individual then you have to confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and as your Redeemer your sin his life so pure so holy he is prepared to take upon himself all the wrong that you have ever done and exchange his righteousness and credit that to your account and the richest man the richest woman the richest category of people in our world are those who have been enriched by Jesus bejeweled by the precious gems of the gospel those who die rich in their grave ready to meet the Lord Jesus Christ are you in this category? are you living your life as a result of being in that category? in such a way that you're handling your finance correctly do you just let the offering bag go by and think I'm just a youngster, I'm just a teenager giving well, that's for older people, it's not for the likes of me I tell you something I was brought up as a little boy to give one tenth of the six penny piece pocket money that I used to get way back in the 1940s and it's been a practice that's stayed with me all my life to handle what God gives you in an honorable fashion so that materialism never becomes your God, you submit your home you submit your car you submit all that you have in the service of the Lord and recognize that you own nothing you are the steward of everything that's what Solomon was beginning to discover and that's the truth that is made plain in the New Testament a rich man's world, not secularly speaking it's the world of those who have been rich in Christ Jesus who wait for the King to come back to reestablish his government, they are indeed the truly blessed let us pray Father we've tried to cope with a subject that's necessary for each one of us to look at from one of the harder books in the Old Testament dealing with it because the references are so scattered but as we threaded them on a piece of string so to speak this evening we just ask that something of the truths of Scripture may abide with us we pray that all that we have and all that we are and all that we ever will have and all that we ever will be may be brought to the foot of the cross and enable us to live our lives and to connect our affairs as those who certainly are spiritually rich in Christ and help us to control our material wealth in a way that brings honor and glory to him and the people of God said Amen let's stand to be take my moments and my days let them go in ceaseless praise take my hands and let them move at the apex of thy love take my dreams and let them be spread thy future upon glory take my voice take my lips and let them be filled with messages from thee take my silver and my gold take my intellect and use every power as thou shouldst take my will and make it thine this shall be the law of life take my heart to this my home this shall be the law of love take my love my love my home at thy feet this precious home . .