Flyaway Riches 2022 02 13
Proverbs 23:1 – 5
When my former business partner launched one of the latest and greatest of his company’s fine aluminum luxury yachts, he and his foreman took me for a tour of the boat. It’s a gorgeous 65-foot boat that will cruise at close to 30 knots for 500 miles between fuelings, which means if you left Gibsons this morning, you could very easily and comfortably get to Prince Rupert, today. If you wanted a nap, you would find the full width master ensuite with marble floors, walls and ceilings and in-floor radiant heat a very comfortable place to relax. In fact, everything about this multimillion-dollar toy is virtually bathed in luxury. While on board, I also stopped to chat to a top Kellog’s executive, who was interested in buying one. Kellog’s executives have a base salary of about three quarters of a million dollars, and with stocks, about 5 million dollars a year.
As I toured the beautiful boat and enjoyed chatting with Hans, I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that these boats are not necessities of life, but toys. They take years of total dedication to the career, often at the expense of relationships with spouses and children, to afford. To date, I do not know of one owner who is saved. What is going to happen to all they have worked so hard for when they die?
Proverbs 23:1 – 5
Some cynical so-and-so once said, “Money won’t buy happiness, but it makes misery a lot easier to bear.”
When he was an old man, King Solomon, the Preacher wrote, “Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity. Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.” Ecclesiates 2:18 – 20. Indeed, Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, very soon after inheriting his father’s great kingdom, lost most of it out of folly. All of Solomon’s hard work and riches quickly flew away.
- A Knife to the Throat
- “Put a knife to thy throat,” our passage advises, if you are subject to gluttony. That’s how serious it is!
- If you allow your appetite to drive you, you are allowing yourself to be deceived. You’re letting the flesh rule the spirit, rather than the other way around. You’re letting the old man, the old you, rule. God gives even stronger warning against gluttony in the New Testament. “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;” Ephesians 4:17 – 23
II Don’t Work for Wealth
- “Labour not to be rich”
- There is nothing wrong with hard work. In the beginning, God created us to work (Genesis 2:15). It was a blessing, not a curse. It was only after the fall that we began to find work wearying (Genesis 3:17 – 19).
- Work is something we do as a necessity of life. It is part of life, but it isn’t life. We work to live, but we do not live to work.
- (One who lives to work is often called a “workaholic.”)
- God commands us in very clear language not to work to get rich. Life is not about wealth, or what you can buy with it. Life is about living, about your relationships, especially your relationship with God. “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:6 – 10
- “Cease from thine own wisdom”
- It is because of sin and the curse, that was partly lifted after the flood, that humans naturally seem to dislike work. God created work for man; because it is God’s way for humans to work, the devil has deceived us into thinking work is a bad thing. Our own fallen minds deceive us into thinking work is bad. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9
- Human wisdom will tell you that you need to do all you can to gain wealth, and that only by doing so can you have health, security, and happiness. That is a lie.
III Fly Away Riches
- It is because of the lie that wealth is the answer to all our woes that the lottery business and gambling of all kinds does so well. Yet the statistics show that almost all people who win big in lotteries are worse off in a few years than before they won.
- Many who work very hard to gain wealth die before they ever begin to enjoy it. In fact, when acquiring wealth becomes the goal, itself, it often seems that it can never be reached, no matter how great the material riches become. The deception of wealth just keeps moving the goalposts.
- “for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” There is no guarantee that you will be able to keep your wealth, even if you gain it. There is nothing wrong with money, itself – it is a tool – but trusting in it is folly
- In 1929, men were jumping out of windows when the stock market crashed and all their wealth with it. They went from great wealth to great poverty in a moment. They simply couldn’t live with that! All the wealth they had worked so hard for flew away in a few moments, and for them, life was no longer worth living. What a tragedy!
- In the 1930s and 40s, very wealthy and secure people lost everything they owned and many their very lives as a world war raged on, only a few years after the “War to End All Wars” ending in 1918.
- Many people lost fortunes and retirement savings when what has been called “The Great Recession,” or, “The Second Great Depression” hit in 2009. Banks collapsed, fortunes were lost, even entire countries teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, only surviving on bailouts from money created in other countries. This is very likely to happen again and could be much worse.
- Paper money could become worthless, even as the German Marks were at the end of World War II, when it took a wheelbarrow full of them, once worth a staggering fortune, to buy one loaf of bread. Revelation 6:6 speaks of a day coming when it will take an entire day’s wages to buy enough of the most inexpensive food there is for one meal.
- Trusting in wealth that can fly away in a moment, just when you are not expecting it, is foolish. How many people do you know who are working and planning and scrabbling away to save for retirement? “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” 1 Thessalonians 5:3
- While people are generally living longer than they used to, and while the wealthy tend to live longer than the poor, many people only live mere months after retirement. What good has it done them if that was their only goal?
IV Conclusion
- Don’t trust in flyaway riches. Ultimately, they will not get you into heaven and wealth won’t help you anywhere after you die. The only way to enter the kingdom of heaven is by being born again, and the only way to be born again is to repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ who has paid for all your sins.
- Worldly wealth won’t help you. Your heavenly Father will. God, the creator of everything and the one who ultimately controls all wealth, has promised to look after those who have been born again into his family. “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19
- Don’t trust in flyaway riches. Trust in God, our loving and most merciful Creator. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and every beast of the forest is his. He will give you everlasting life and an inheritance beyond anything this world can dream of!