The Lion's Share
Part 3: False Promise of the Prosperity Gospel
Pastor Rick Henderson January 18-19, 2025
[RESPONSE TO MLK VIDEO]
It’s good that our country pauses to reflect and celebrate his impact, and the pursuit of justice, healing, and unity. Because we know Jesus, because we know the heart and mind of God because we know the word of God, we share a vision that is even broader, higher, and deeper than the vision our nation has.
In Revelation 7 we read that a great multitude of people from every people group, tribe, and language gathers around the throne, worshipping Jesus. Somehow, our cultural and ethnic distinctives continue heaven. Heaven is the ultimate uniting of all cultures in Jesus. We want our church to be a glimpse, a preview of what heaven will be like. So, it’s our vision to be a church of cultures. That’s not a new direction for our church. We just want to keep moving forward.
Welcome to week 3 of our series, the Lion’s Share. We’re asking a big question: What or who gets the lion share of you. The rumors are true. We are talking about money in this series. But I think it’s becoming clear that we’re really talking about so much more than that.
My ultimate goal for all of you is to be financially free and wise. Money makes a wonderful servant but a horrible master. And I absolutely love how you’ve responded. I going to tell you all something and I want you to join me in celebrating some people. Are you ready? At last count, about 40 of you have signed up for Financial Peace University. That is awesome! You are being intentional. You are being wise. I am happy for you and I’m proud of you. Way to go!
Some years ago, when I lived in Utah, I was invited to have lunch with a Mormon bishop. We met at his home, which was in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the Salt Lake Valley. If you didn’t live there, you had to be on a list to enter the neighborhood. Otherwise, you couldn’t get passed security. It was posh. It was beautiful. That bit of context is going to be important for this story. While sitting in his kitchen, he asked me this question.
QUESTION: Why do you obey God?
He went on to explain that he obeys God because, in his religious belief, there is an eternal law that God must follow. He said, “If I am obedient and faithful, God has to bless me.” That viewpoint he expressed is part of something known as the Prosperity Gospel. It also includes something known as Word of Faith. In that view faith is a force. And when you unleash the power of faith with your words, God has to act. Today, I want to primarily use the term, Prosperity Gospel.
PROSPERITY GOSPEL: The view that if you are faithful and obedient enough, God will bless you in tangible ways. That can include financial blessings and health.
That is a belief that has subtly crept its way into many churches.
This man was very devout, very faithful. And if you looked at his life, it would look like his deeply held belief was true. After all, his prosperity was undeniable. My question to you is this. How would you answer that question? I will tell you what I told him, but that will come later. For now, let’s start here.
1 TIMOTHY 6
You’ll find this in the second half of the Bible, the New Testament. This was a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a young pastor. There’s much in the broader context we don’t have time to discuss. We studied this book last year. You can find that message series on our website. Timothy was pastoring a church that had problems. People were fighting over false teachings. There was confusion about social issues, like caring for widows and navigating the reality of slavery. And there were greedy people who were trying to use Christianity to get rich. It’s that last one that we’re going to focus on.
1 TIMOTHY 6:2-10 These are the things you are to teach and insist on. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing.
The expectation is that we take this seriously. This is not a subject where we should agree to disagree. We should all bend to this truth.
They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.
Do any of these descriptions sound pleasant to you? Let’s take note that those descriptors are used for folks who attach godliness to getting more money.
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love 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.
Does this have our attention? What should our response be to the fictional belief that faith and obedience can result in financial gain and blessings?
But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,
Let’s make some quick observations.
- Flee! Don’t casually walk away or distance yourself. RUN from that lie!
- The faith that we have, we received it in community. The faith is the same for all of us. We don’t get to come up with our own unique versions of the faith.
- The faith we have we received is from God.
- Paul then connects Jesus to standing trial, before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.
- This connects the crucifixion of Jesus to verifiable moment in history.
- And as he’s talking about greed and trying to get rich, he reminds us that Jesus—the most faithful one ever, he suffered crucifixion. The prosperity gospel is absurd when you look at Jesus.
I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,
We don’t know when, but Jesus is going to return. Keep the faith without spot or blame. The implication is that we are vulnerable to handling this faith poorly and irresponsibly. May that not be true of us.
which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.
Does this passage talk about money? Yes. But it’s so much bigger than that. It’s about our view of who God is and the kind of people we are becoming. That’s why we keep repeating in this series.
When we talk about MONEY, we’re talking about our HEARTS.
This is about who we are. Two categories of people spread the lies of the Prosperity Gospel. There are people intentionally deceiving others. They are doing it so that they can financially exploit people. That’s category one. Category two are the folks who are deceived. My heart breaks for the people who have been deceived by the false promises of the Prosperity Gospel. And it’s possible that some of us have been taken in by it.
Some years ago, in another state, a woman asked me what I thought about the Prosperity Gospel. What I learned was that she and her husband came to faith in a church that taught it. It wasn’t in your face, the kind of stuff you see on TV. It was much more subtle than that. But she and her husband sincerely believed God responded to faith and obedience with financial blessings and health. That’s what their pastor taught them.
- That belief was tested when she had her first miscarriage. They decided that they probably weren’t serving enough—so they started serving more.
- Then she had a second miscarriage. They decided that maybe they weren’t giving enough financially to the church—so they started giving more.
- Then there was a third miscarriage. And in addition to that the husband had a fluke reaction to a vaccine that left his hand permanently paralyzed.
They experienced multiple lifetimes worth of pain. From the depths of that hurt, they went from breaking their backs, trying to serve enough at their church, and breaking their budget by giving more than they could afford to their church, to having a faith left in tatters. She was barely hanging on. For a long time he rejected his faith. Her husband and I became friends. But he was never able to attend a church again. They were ravaged by the false promises of the Prosperity Gospel.
And I don’t want that to happen to anyone I care about. I don’t want that to happen to you. The Prosperity Gospel is a pyramid scheme. It works for a small handful of people at the top. But works over everyone else on the bottom. And when it doesn’t work—people conclude that either they weren’t good enough or that God is not good. Those wounds run deep and for some they never heal.
I hate the Prosperity Gospel. We’re talking about it today because we all have some measure of vulnerability to mishandling the faith we’ve been given. We may not be equally vulnerable. And yet, all of us have a vulnerability quotient to serious error when it comes to our relationships with God and with money. I have something that may help us score what our vulnerability quotient is.
VULNERABILITY QUOTIENT
There are three settings to pay attention to: Contentment, Ease, and Knowledge. Think of each one as having a slider switch that can go high or low. Depending on where these settings are for you, that will give you some insight into what your vulnerability might be.
- Contentment
If we’re low on contentment, we’re vulnerable to someone who promises that we can have more and that we are entitled to more.
- Ease
This is the ease of life. If we’re low on ease, we might need more and that can make us vulnerable. But you know what, if we’ve grown accustomed to ease and comfort—it’s easy to assume that it’s because God wants us to have more. It’s so easy to slip into thinking that God sprinkled some extra blessings on us because of our faith and obedience.
Do you know what this means? Both the people who score high and who score low are equally vulnerable. I think that’s why Agur prayed what he prayed in Proverbs 30. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go back to weeks 1 and 2 of this series. Money may be morally neutral, but it’s not neutral.
- Knowledge
If we’re low on Biblical knowledge, we are ripe for the picking, we are vulnerable to someone who would manipulate and twist scripture. And it happens all the time. One of the big reasons that church people, I’m talking about good hearted and smart people, one of the big reasons they get duped by the Prosperity Gospel is that they don’t understand covenants in the Bible.
OLD TESTAMENT COVENANTS
A covenant is a clearly defined relationship with clearly defined expectations and promises. Marriage is a covenant. God loves covenants. There are five Biblical covenants that we need to understand.
- Noahic: Genesis 9
- Abrahamic: Genesis 12-17
- Mosaic: Deuteronomy
- Davidic: 2 Samuel 7
The first is a covenant God made with Noah, his family and all living creatures. God’s expectation was that people would keep making more people. And God promised that he would never punish our sin with a flood again. What is the sign of that covenant? Rainbow.
The second covenant is one that God made with Abraham. God promised to give Abraham land, grow his family and give him financial prosperity. God promised that through Abraham’s family the whole world would be blessed. And in Genesis 15, God makes clear that if Abraham ever fails to hold up his end, God himself would pay the consequences of Abraham’s faithlessness.
I’m going to skip this one and come back to it.
The fourth is a covenant God made with David. God promised him peace with his enemies, that he would bless his son Solomon as king, and, ultimately, that one would come from his line would establish the throne forever.
Now let’s look at the one I skipped. It’s a different color because this one is quite different. This is the Mosaic covenant that God made with the nation of Israel. Their job was to represent God to all the nations. If they obeyed the law—God would unload all kinds of physical blessings, including prosperity and peace. If they disobeyed the law—God would bring curses, punishment, even exile. This was an IF/THEN covenant. If you obey then you will be blessed. If you disobey then you will be punished. It was not a personal covenant, but a national covenant.
Fast forward to Jesus. We are in a New Covenant, by faith in him. He fulfilled and completed all the other covenants.
- Instead of God responding to sin with a flood, Jesus paid the price of sin on the cross. He is our rest.
- Jesus is the blessing to all the world, who came from the line of Abraham. And you know what, Abraham did not keep his end of the deal. He did some monumentally stupid and faithless things. Jesus paid the price of that on the cross.
- Jesus is a descendant of David. He is the true and eternal king. Can you see how all of these covenants are fulfilled and completed in Jesus?
- Jesus marks the end of the Mosaic covenant. It was always intended to be temporary, pointing people to Jesus. Because of what he did on the cross and his resurrection, that covenant expired.
Believe it or not, that was the expectation all along. That’s precisely what the Old Testament prophets said would happen.
JEREMIAH 31:31-32 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
The intent all along was for it to be temporary. Let’s jump back to the New Testament. After quoting this passage, this is what the writer of Hebrews said.
HEBREWS 8:13 By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.
This may not make sense yet; please hang with me. Everything about the Mosaic covenant is obsolete and outdated. Now let’s look at what Jesus said during the last supper, right before he was arrested and then crucified.
LUKE 22:20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
On the night he was arrested, while having his last meal, he held up a cup and said the old covenant is done and the new covenant starts now. We celebrate that every time we have communion.
This is where it’s going to start to make sense. To lower your vulnerability to the lies of the Prosperity Gospel, you’ve got to know what covenant you are in. Have you ever had a DTR? That’s define the relationship. I remember when Heather and I had the DTR. I could take you to spot on the road where we were driving when we declared to each other that we were exclusive. Then we had another DTR when got engaged. That’s a covenant. Then we got married. Wedding vows are the ultimate DTR.
Wouldn’t you say that I’m foolish if I related to my wife as though we were just dating? Wouldn’t you say that I’m foolish if I related to my wife as though we were engaged? It makes no sense. So, wouldn’t we be foolish if we related to Jesus from the wrong covenant?
We are not in an IF/THEN covenant. We are in a SINCE/THEN covenant.
The Mosaic covenant was IF/THEN. If you obey then you’ll be blessed. If you disobey then you’ll be punished. We are in the New Covenant that Jesus accomplished by the cross and resurrection. It’s a SINCE/THEN covenant.
Since Jesus has given us everything and fully loved us and forgiven us, since we are fully blessed in him, then we respond to him out of love, gratitude, and joy. We don’t obey and have faith so that we will be blessed. We obey and have faith because we are already fully blessed in him.
EPHESIANS 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Now we are ready for the payoff. Prosperity Gospel hucksters and conmen love to quote Old Testament verses that are from the context of the Mosaic covenant, treating them as though they are promises for you and me. But that covenant is what? Obsolete. Outdated. But we are in the New Covenant, fully blessed in Jesus Christ. If our Biblical knowledge is low, we will be vulnerable to their deceit and the false promises of the Prosperity Gospel.
Can I give you an example?
OLD COVENANT PROMISE
I changed the color because I want to signal to you that this is a promise from an obsolete, outdated covenant.
MALACHI 3:10-12 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse,
Tithing is giving 10% of income to God. If you want to know what our church teaches about tithing—we’ll cover that next week.
that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.
This was a promise made by God to the nation of Israel, in the context of the Mosaic covenant. And if we read it, it’s obvious it was for the nation of Israel. It is not for the church today. It is not for individual Christians today. And if you were to ever hear anyone, including me, quote this or any other Old Testament passage with the promise that you will be blessed for giving—RUN! The Apostle Paul told Timothy to flee from it.
The promise of financial blessings for obedience or tithing is OBSOLETE and OUTDATED. That promise was not to us and is not for us.
My son is 18. We are in the final days of an adult-to-not-quite-adult relationship. We will graduate to an adult-to-adult relationship in a handful of months. Part of the relationship we are in right now is that I have him on retainer. I pay him a set amount of money each month. His job is to snow blow and mow. No matter how much it snows or doesn’t, no matter how much the grass grows or doesn’t—that’s our arrangement.
Imagine it’s 15 years from now, and I’m in my early 60s. He calls me from his own home to tell me that he just snow-blew his driveway and would like to receive payment from me. Wouldn’t you say that he doesn’t understand the new relationship? Imagine it’s 15 years from now, and he comes to visit. Maybe it snows and he goes out and snow blows my driveway for me. If I then tried to pay him for services rendered, wouldn’t you say that I don’t understand the relationship?
We are already fully blessed in Christ. There is no formula to follow to get more. There is no promise that God will bless us for our faith, obedience, or generosity.
I had a college professor who told the story of a man who asked an old pastor, “If I give more to the church, will God bless me?” The pastor said, “No! But you can try.”
Does God bless people? Yes. But it’s grace. And grace is undeserved kindness. By definition, it’s not something we can earn, merit, deserve, or be entitled to because we were generous or obedient, or faithful enough. We all have more blessings than we know. But none of us have a single blessing that we earned.
Does God bless generous people with more? SOMETIMES. Maybe many times. If he does, and when he does it’s probably because he trusts them to be generous with it, not hoarders of it. We are not in an IF/THEN covenant. We are in a SINCE/THEN covenant.
Since there is nothing that you can do to earn, merit, or deserve blessing from God—since you are already 100% fully blessed in Jesus, what do you want to do now?
QUESTION: Why do you obey God?
This was my answer to the bishop who asked, “why do I obey God?” Because I love him, and I’m grateful for all that he has done for me.
I don’t obey to get more from God. I obey to get more of God.
Every one of his commands are an expression of love. They show me how to stay inside of his way. And it’s inside of his way that I experience the full, thriving, abundant life that Jesus promised. That’s why I obey. What more could he give? He’s already given me everything.
Would you allow me to be on the nose, with the intent to be as clear as I know how to be?
BOTTOM LINE: If Jesus isn’t ENOUGH, there’s nothing God could give that would be ENOUGH.
If you give financially because somebody convinced you that you will be blessed financially in return, I have something that I want you to do. Rip up that check. Cancel your online giving. If you give financially to Autumn Ridge from the belief that God now owes you in return, please stop giving.
Instead of giving, I want you to get to know Jesus. I want you to discover how much he loves you. I want you to discover that even though we are far more guilty and sinful and morally messed up than we dare admit, we are far more loved, accepted, forgiven, and delighted than we could ever dare admit. There is a full, abundant, thriving life for all who would humbly repent and turn to him in faith.
Then, once you know him, give because you love him and are full of grateful joy. But before any of that, I want you to know Jesus.
Today, we get celebrate baptism. When someone gets baptized they are telling us that they have given their allegiance to Jesus. Going down under the water identifies with dying to an old way of life. Coming out of the water identifies with new life and his resurrection. Let’s celebrate together.