Article I, part 2

Posted on 11/19/2012 by Jason Ministries

It is said that art imitates life, and I certainly believe that statement is true, thus my constant reference to various songs, TV shows, and movies. So as we continue this further look into the dangers we face when we drink from the chalice of wealth, instead of drinking from the cup of Christ, let’s consider the story from a popular American movie from the year 1987. It was released by 20th Century Fox, and was about monetary wealth, and all that encompasses it, both good and bad. The film was entitled Wall Street.

This dramatic film, starring Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, and Daryl Hannah, was intended by the director, Oliver Stone, to be a tribute to his father, Lou Stone, who had been a stockbroker back in the time of the Great Depression. The plot centers on Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen, a young stockbroker desperate to succeed on Wall Street. Mr. Fox becomes entangled with his hero, one Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, a wealthy, unscrupulous corporate raider. Bud, who was taught by his father (Carl Fox, played by Charlie’s real life father, Martin Sheen) that success was achieved through work and providing something of value, begins to embrace Mr. Gekko’s mantra that success is accomplished by speculating on the goods and services of others.

Throughout this movie, Bud gets deeper and deeper into the corporate greed that Mr. Gekko has exposed him to. Mr. Fox comes to enjoy all the perks that Gordon Gekko promised him, including one beautiful, blonde, trophy-girlfriend named Darien Taylor, played by Daryl Hannah, but as he begins his ascent up the corporate ladder his activities are noticed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s was created in 1934 by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt to regulate the stock market and prevent corporate abuses relating to the offering and sale of securities and corporate reporting. The SEC, as it became known as, was given the power to license and regulate stock exchanges, the companies whose securities traded on them, and the brokers and dealers who conducted the trading).

The plot comes to climax when Bud is deceived by Gordon, concerning a deal to buy and expand his father’s company, Bluestar Airlines. It is Mr. Gekko’s real intent, to sell Carl Fox’s company off piece-by-piece, but Bud work’s out an alternate plan of his own — his plan will drive up the stock on Bluestar Airlines and force Gordon Gekko to lose interest in the company. Mr. Fox’s plan works, but shortly after succeeding he is arrested by the SEC for insider trading and loses everything, including Darien, his trophy-girlfriend.

Bud realizes all too late what his greed had done to him; what it had cost him. Choosing to strike a deal with the SEC for a lesser sentence, Mr. Fox becomes an informer in a trap the SEC is setting for Mr. Gekko. The trap is successful and Gordon Gekko is severely sentenced, while Bud Fox accepts, with a clear conscience, his lesser sentence; ready to make right his wrongs and start over.

This story is a powerful picture of what can happen when monetary wealth is given full control of our lives. It paints a dark and vulgar image of just how really destructive money can be, when it is worshiped as an all-mighty god, either knowingly or unknowingly. This position of leadership, this place of sovereignty over our lives, was never meant to be occupied by anyone, or anything, other than our Creator — the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Scripture, money is one of the most talked about subjects there is. In fact, the subject of monetary wealth is discussed more times in the Bible than the subjects of faith, prayer, and Hell. Money is important. If Scripture makes approximately 2,350 mentions of it, and if fifteen percent of Jesus’ recorded words deal with this topic, then there is something very crucial about monetary wealth. What is so very important about it? Our finances are crucial because we can easily replace our true security in God with its false sense of security.

As we stated earlier, in Article One, part one, money can buy us the three main things we need to survive in this physically hostile world: 1) clothing, 2) food, and 3) shelter. All the things God promised He would provide us (Phillippians 4:19). Money also gains us access to companionship, pleasure, and power. But if God promises to meet our needs, will He not also give us friends and helpers along the way (Genesis 2:18)? Will our Creator not grant us real joy (Psalm 16:11)? Will God not fill us with His omniscient power (Psalm 68:35)? Monetary wealth is the one weapon the Devil can easily detonate upon the entire human race. It touches every one of us in a similar way, and can result in removing our worship from God to it. That is what the Devil wants — to remove God from our focus and refocus us to something else.

Wealth can refocus humanity in countless ways (ex.: career, cars, clothing, drugs, food, sex, shelter, etc.), but by ultimately replacing God it can bring to surface many perverse and vile obsessions burning in the soul of mankind. As the character Gordon Gekko stated in Wall Street, “[Monetary] Greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” In other words we become godless; obsessed with the survival-of-the-fittest lifestyle. We begin to embrace the whole kill-or-be-killed ideals of the humanists — we become self-serving.

Country Music artist and Australian native Keith Urban sang a very poignant lyric, back in 2002. The song was entitled You’re Not My God, and the first verse, and chorus, are as follows:

It’s just a piece of paper, it says, “In God We Trust.”
And a little sure felt good, but a lot was not enough.
And everybody loved me when I was on a roll,
And I thought I had everything when I held the gold.

But you’re not my God, and you’re not my friend;
You’re not the one that I will walk with in the end.
You’re not the truth; you’re a temporary shot,
And you ruin people’s lives, and you don’t give a second thought.
You’re not my God.

Selah (Pause/Reflect).

So poignant, this thought — so powerful, this statement!

As we conclude this article, let’s look at a few more verses of Scripture from God’s holy Word. The first comes from the book of Psalms, the hundred-and-nineteenth chapter, verse 36, and states:

Turn my heart toward your [God’s] statutes and not toward selfish gain.

Our second verse comes from the book of Proverbs, and is the very first stanza of the eighteenth chapter, which reads:

An unfriendly man pursues selfish ends; he defies all sound judgment.

And our third verse comes from the book of Luke, chapter 16, line 13. It is a variation of Matthew 6:24, quoted earlier in Article One, part one, and says:

No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Now read, once more, those three verses. Consider, again, the lyric of the song You’re Not My God, by Keith Urban. Ponder the story of the rich-young-ruler, that I shared at the beginning of Article One, part one. Do you see why monetary wealth can be so very dangerous? How such wealth can so easily deceive and blind us from our Creator? A love of money doesn’t, and never will, lead to a spirit of generosity — No! Humanity’s obsession over money will always create an over inflated sense of self-worth. We cannot serve both God and monetary wealth, because we cannot elevate our selves higher than almighty God. We must become less, and remain humble, so that He [God] can become even greater in our lives (John 3:30-36). This truth is also why the “Prosperity Gospel” is so dangerous.

You see, the “Prosperity Gospel” or a prosperity theology (sometimes, also, referred to as the “Health and Wealth Gospel”) is a false doctrine which states that financial blessing is always the will of God for His people. This teaching claims that our faith, accompanied by our positive speech, and donations to various Christian ministries, will always cause an increase to our monetary wealth. This false doctrine views the Bible as a type of contract between God and mankind; stressing the idea that if people exhibit enough faith in God, then He will deliver His promises of security and prosperity. Don’t believe this lie — ever!

God has promised to meet our needs, and no contract is needed. God cares for us because He created us (Luke 12:22-32). God does not place conditions on His promise to provide our every need. No strings are ever attached. Besides, it’s not your physical health and well-being that God is excessively concerned with — it’s your immortal soul He is so very attentive to. Why do you think God the Father sent His only begotten Son to live a perfect life, and take our sins with Him to the cross? Jesus didn’t come to die, and conquer death, so that we could have abundant monetary wealth; Christ did this so that we could have an abundant life with God the Father, in Heaven, for all eternity.

I leave you with this one last verse to consider. It’s from the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, and it reads:

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Truth or Dare by J. Scott Harden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.jasonmin.wordpress.com.

The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

If you want to use these lyrics, please contact the authors, artists or labs.

If your church or organization would like to talk with J. Scott Harden about a speaking engagement, or a writing project, please get in touch with Mr. Harden through Jason Ministries‘ Twitter account or Facebook page.

Article I, part 1

Posted on 11/05/2012 by Jason Ministries

Imagine you are young and highly successful in your work. Successful beyond your twenty-something years of living, much like Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and cofounder, Dustin Moskovitz. Now picture your successes, your economic conquests, your prestige, your billions of dollars, and consider what happens to them when you die. You can’t take them with you, but maybe you can use them to ensure yourself a place in heaven.

You wish to be sure this is possible. You want to know all of your efforts are not in vain, so you seek out a very popular preacher or prophet you’ve heard about. This is what happened with a very rich, young man back in Jesus’ day. His story can be found in Matthew 19:16-23:

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.” “Which ones?” the man inquired. Jesus replied, “‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.'” “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?” Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Wealth. No matter how great or small, our financial well-being is of great importance to us. So much so that even our soul’s eternal fate can be jeopardized for the physical comforts of today.

Humanity longs for wealth. Why is that, you ask? Mankind lives in a hostile world. Our bodies struggle against earth’s atmospheric temperatures, and disease, to maintain a constant 98.6 °F (37.0 °C). Our bodies crave vitamins, minerals, and moisture for health and wellness. Other creatures, and people, seek to do us harm for a variety of reasons. Wealth helps to ensure our three most natural, and essential, needs are met on a regular basis — clothing, food, and shelter. When these needs are met people tend to thrive, people can be content, people experience happiness.

When these “creature comforts,” as they are sometimes called, are not met regularly, then happiness flees. Stress enters our lives and we lose our contentment. As we cease to thrive, our minds and bodies react in a variety of ways. Sometimes such struggles cause illness and disease to enter into our bodies. As our physical bodies are mortal, we fight to avoid anything that would lead to our untimely demise. Wealth, in many of our minds, is the one thing that can practically prevent such dangers from entering our lives.

Our financial strength also comes close to guaranteeing a few of our other desires, such as companionship, pleasure, and power. People tend to not want to be alone, and all of humanity longs to experience the pleasures of this physical life. Some of our physical pleasure comes from being acknowledged by others; to know that we are somehow special and to ultimately use those special gifts to rule over the others that appear to not be as gifted. Wealth can be a means to acquiring such desires as these, but the one longing that our wealth can never buy us is a place in heaven. Eternal security is not achieved by monetary means. Heaven can only be achieved through a relationship with God’s only begotten Son — Jesus Christ.

That was what Jesus was trying to teach both the wealthy young man, and His disciples. Jesus, by asking the rich young man to sell all that he had, was making the statement that physical wealth really doesn’t matter as much as following the ways of God. If the monetarily blessed young man had done as he was asked, then he would have enjoyed spiritual and possibly even physical riches beyond his wildest expectations, but because his existing physical wealth was really the object of his worship, and not the ways of God, he failed Christ’s test and in the end lost everything — foolishness!

Christ teaches us very plainly that, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Matthew 6:24) This is not to say that monetary wealth is bad, but it is very clearly stating that to serve money, to worship this type of wealth, is wrong — even deadly wrong. Note what the apostle Paul wrote in chapter 6, verse 10, of his letter to Timothy:

For the love [worship] of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

When you love something so much that you abandon your faith in God for it, then you are exchanging the worship of the author and giver of life for the worship of the destroyer and taker of life. Death becomes your true object of affection.

When we meet next, Article 1, part two, will take us further into the dangers we face when we drink from the chalice of wealth, instead of drinking from the cup of Christ. We will read a contemporary story depicting these truths we have just revealed. So please return, and join us, as we continue this study of abundant faith and deadly fiction.

Jason Ministries ®

Teaching the Church its Purpose – True Worship

Category Archives: money

Article I, part 2

Article I, part 1