The Money God

THE MONEY GOD

 

A man robs a bank and makes off with 10 million dollars. He is never caught and his family invests the money and generations of his family become wealthy. They call it God’s blessings.

Tens of millions of slaves are transported to America. They play a significant part in America’s growing economy. Later, many white people who benefited from that slave labor directly and indirectly proclaim God’s blessing on their finances.

I’m not seeing much difference. In America, “God’s blessings” are almost always measured in dollars. Donald Trump and Hugh Hefner must be God’s favorites. Somewhere along the line we have made God a divine rich uncle. But God desires to fill our hearts, not our wallets.

Eph.1: Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:

² Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
⁴ According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
⁵ Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
⁶ To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

The church of Jesus Christ was never meant to acquiesce, much less embrace, the dictates and mores of the culture in which God planted it. But so often the church at large and individual believers as well have lifted up their eyes and seen how the heathen lived and what satisfied them. And after gazing longingly at their lost neighbors they began to acquire a lust for the things that enamored the kingdom of darkness. And instead of fulfilling such needs with the spiritual blessings given to us in Christ the church found their lusts could easily be satisfied by money and material things.

And after a while the word “blessings” always had something to do with money or material things. And when you cement an attachment to God’s blessings with money then you will easily fall into a deep trap. Without even realizing it you can become prosperous by leveraging the fallen culture and call it God’s blessings. That is exactly what has happened to the evangelical community in the west. Anything that positively affects your financial situation must always be God and anything that negatively affects your finances is a cause for prayer asking God to turn it around.

Jude ¹¹ Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.

¹² These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;
¹³ Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

These are very serious and even dire warnings. Could it be possible that millions of professing believers have believed in God’s hand and not on God’s Son? The church has brought God the sacrifices of Cain which are the fruit of our hands. Larger buildings and larger numbers and more activities are what the evangelical church believes God will accept. We have great organizations and well orchestrated events and even our gatherings have been well thought out from parking to taking offerings. Our churches are corporations and are constructed to mirror the world in most things.

And we measure the church’s spirituality by numbers and offerings. The larger the church gets, and the greater the offerings, the preacher’s salary gets larger and the requirements for a new pastor can now be elevated. When a church reaches a certain numerical level they usually require any candidate for pastor to have a “Dr.” precede his name. It is run and evaluated just like a secular corporation.

And when the structure and practice is designed according to worldly principles then it isn’t long before the Spirit no longer works within the structure. Even though there may be much activity, a growing congregation, and a wonderful building complex, and in general a thriving ecclesiastical unit, in spiritual terms it is a place of compromise and even death. And let us just take two practices and see if they are according to the Spirit or if they have been adjusted to conform to the habits of a western culture.

The church does not observe any days or feasts. We live in the Spirit and not in the “beggarly elements” of the law. But there are two and only two observances taught in the New Testament. They are communion and baptism. Baptism should occur when a sinner believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and is born again. He then is commanded to be baptized in order to make public his profession of faith. In some cultures that may cost you dearly, however in our culture it is so meaningless that even a fallen culture accepts it as a religious event that is mostly a talisman. It occurs conveniently at the end of a service or at the night service, but somewhere where it does not significantly interfere with the overall timetable.

Pictures can be taken, and many families enjoy a get together of cold cuts and a general atmosphere of celebration. Every person baptized gets a certificate which is proof of that event, and that baptism also is a necessary component to being a “church member” which is another element of being like a secular club. Being an official church member has been gleaned from the culture and is primarily so a person can vote in church business meetings. Voting and church business meetings are also another way that the church has been constructed according to the culture. And baptism is the door to it all. Some churches have even spent much money to have a wonderful place to baptize which looks like a lovely pond surrounded by green foliage and is accommodating for pictures.

Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, was instituted by our Lord at the last Passover observance. It is spiritually important and is a time for repentance and remembrance. In fact Paul deals extensively with the Corinthian church over how they were observing communion. It seems they were conveniently incorporating it into their church picnics. Yes, the early church ate together regularly. But in Corinth they would get hungry and so instead of waiting for everyone to arrive they would begin eating and consider that communion as well. Even back then they began to treat the gathering in terms of convenience and without the sacred aspect it deserved. How much more today?

 

Communion has been shoehorned into a tight schedule and observed with the utmost efficiency and with a breathtaking redundancy. Rarely, if ever, does it consume an entire gathering. And it is served to the entire mixed multitude without question, and after a person is baptized he is allowed to participate, which usually requires little more than eating and drinking when a prayer ends and everyone else does it. And it is an incredible show of compartmentalization to see how quickly the mood and direction can change after the communion is over. We even have a table for the event. And if done correctly it does not extend the service significantly and all is well with the world.

Rev.2: ² I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:

³ And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.
⁴ Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.

This admonition was not written to an apostate church. It was written to a church which could not abide heretics in their midst. This was a church that would have rejected Rob Bell or Rick Warren or Joel Osteen. They did labor for Christ; they did have a missions program; they did see people saved; they did observe communion and baptism; they did believe God’s Word. But the Spirit said they had left their first love. Wow, what an indictment from God.

You would have thought that since they did serve God in those areas that the Lord would have cut them some slack. But God is not interested in redundant ecclesiastical constructs even though they might serve God in some ways. God seeks our hearts, and too often local churches have an organization which serves the people well but they have lost the passion and deep spiritual love for Jesus. And money, personal success, and the material world in general have become lynchpins for how we love and praise Christ.

But the Laodicean church in Revelation chapter three were lukewarm toward God but very focused about the material world. They claimed to be “blessed” and all their needs were met, however they were poor toward God. The American evangelical church uses the word “blessed” as well. “We have been so blessed here in America” is a well word mantra in the church. And what is meant by that can be defined it terms of money and material goods. When people say America is the “greatest country in the world” they mean materially and militarily. And yet God said the Laodicean church was poor and wretched and blind, even in the midst of their prosperity. They had earthly gold, but nor the gold of knowing and serving Christ.

I do wonder, though, since we have become so entrenched and so integrated within a dark and fallen culture, only a mighty move of God could ever break our spiritual inertia.