Does God Want Us To Be Wealthy?

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Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. What do you thankful for? Joe's going to start off this hour. Joe's in Albany, New York. Joe, what are you thankful for? Hey, Dave, I am thankful for God first and my 10-year-old daughter. Awesome. What's her name? My daughter's name is Aubrey. Very cool. Very cool. How can we help you today, sir?

Um, so I guess my question is kind of centered around God. So, um, main question is does God want me or us to be wealthy? Um, I kind of wanted to ask you that because I feel like you have a pretty big business and you have ties to people who are in church. So maybe you could offer some biblical insight. Um, that way my finances and my spiritual life can be aligned a little bit more. Yeah. Okay.

Well, there's two ends of the spectrum in the Christian world, both of which create an inaccurate teaching of Scripture. One end of the spectrum, we call the prosperity gospel that God wants you to be rich, and if you're not rich, you must not be right with God and all this kind of stuff. And that's not biblical. You can't back that up scripturally.

uh... the other end of the spectrum is is that god says you have to be poor in order to be holy and that's actually not scriptural either that's a form of heresy called nosticism

So what actually happens is, it's not really a spectrum between those two, but it's maybe a third point on a triangle, off in a different direction, is I was on a TV show with a pastor one time, and he asked me what he thought was an underhand pitch question. He said, okay, for Christians to be wealthy, kind of what you said. And I said, no, we have to all be poor. And it kind of freaked him out, because he thought I was gonna say, yes, it's okay to be wealthy.

But my point, and then I went on and expanded. So here's the true idea. God doesn't care if you're wealthy or if you're poor. He doesn't care one way or the other. All he wants is your heart. All he wants is your worship. And if poverty gets in the way of your worship, that's a problem.

If wealth gets in the way of your worship, that's a problem. And that's stated by Paul in the New Testament, as a matter of fact. I've been well rich and I've been poor. And you know, Lord, keep me from having one or the other if it gets in the way.

If you remember reading that scripture, Joe, you probably have heard that. And so the point is that those of us that are people of faith, that are people of the book believe that we don't own anything. We are merely managing it for God. He's the owner. We're the steward.

is the old English word that has been Christianized because it was in the King James Version of Scripture. So we're merely a manager, so we don't own anything, we're managing it. And managing wealth is a privilege, it is a responsibility, and it's to be managed for the good of God and for His Kingdom. The first thing He says to do is to take care of your own household, feed that daughter,

or you're worse than an unbeliever. It says a godly man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. And that's not necessarily just an inheritance of character. It's also an inheritance of money because Solomon built the temple, but he built the temple of God in Jerusalem with his father, David's money.

David was prohibited from building the temple because of Bathsheba and his order of the murder of Uriah, but Solomon used David's inheritance to build the temple with. So a godly man lives in inheritance to his children's children is fine. And of course, you don't want to leave an inheritance to your kids if they're misbehaving because you're just going to fund their misbehavior. But that's what we're talking about here.

You know, we've taught our kids that we're managing this money for the good of our family to eat, the good of our family to enjoy some of it, to be generous with. God loves a cheerful giver.

says in Scripture, so this continuous generosity, there's an indication all throughout New Testament and Old Testament to tie the tenth of your income as your baseline for your generosity, offerings above that. So we've got these, we kind of got a, we got a job when you get money and your job is to manage money and then God gives you the directions on how to do that, how to hit manage his money. You take care of your own household, you're generous to

You leave an inheritance, you stay out of debt, you build wealth. But this idea that I'm getting rich for me to be a snotty rich person, no. But are all rich people going to hell? No, that's heresy.

because anything that teaches that the blood of Jesus is not powerful enough to cover any sin is heresy. And so we're suggesting that a prostitute that comes to Jesus, a murderer that comes to Jesus can go to heaven, but a wealthy person that comes to Jesus can't. And that's what the Gnostics taught, and that's what some of these people who teach theology on Twitter think.

And it ends up you get this mixed message like you are spiritually inferior if you become successful. And yet you're not because the Bible says the diligent prosper. What is diligence? It's excellence in the ordinary. You're good at your job. Do your work as unto the Lord.

Corinthians 3, or Colossians 3, 23 says. And how would you do your work? You would do it wide open. Like I'm working for Jesus. I'm gonna go crazy, man. I'm gonna give it, I'm gonna leave it all on the field, you know? And so, and if you're faithful with the little things, you're gonna be given more to manage. If God was against wealth, why would He give you more to manage? And that's out of Jesus' own mouth. So there's all this biblical evidence that

we're not supposed to worship wealth and that wealth can be dangerous because it can become an idol, but if we can maintain the distance from it as a manager instead of an owner,

If you don't say, my, my, my, my, instead you go, I'm holding this with an open hand. What do you want me to do with it? It's yours. And then you're managing it. If you're faithful with the little things, you'll be given more to manage. And so then you don't have to live under this ridiculous communist left wing guilt trip for success for people. And then they try to put a Bible spin on it, which is really hilarious. But on the other hand, you're not, you're not better.

than someone else. I know some, some of the highest character, smartest people who are not wealthy and that does, you know, you're not better than them. If you're managing more money than they're managing, you just have more responsibility. Does that make any sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I don't realize that there was two, I guess, crazy sides of each spectrum.

And just knowing that God really doesn't care, it just matters who my heart is, that's told me a lot. Yeah, I mean, he wants you, that's what he wants. I mean, like, I always tell people, it's like, you know, people get so torqued out about this or that, listen, you know, I'm giving money to my church. Well, listen, if God wanted your money, he would just take it and there'd be a greasy spot where you were sitting. I mean, you know, it's like, he's not worried about the money.

You know, this is God. So, you know, it's almost, you know, you got to think sometimes he's sitting up there, Ken, with Gabriel, just laughing at us. Absolutely. And I feel like after that sermon, there's only one thing to do and I should take an offering right now. That was really good. Three points. We should have a little batch on music. It was almost a Baptist thing. I could do an altar call and a love offering at the same time. It's a rare talent, but some of us have it.

because of the amount of hours I've logged. Since you're kind of growing your hair out, you know, that would probably fit. You know, you could probably. Uh oh. Are you worried that I'm heading over to the health and wealth crowd with the longer lungs? I'm no, no. You keep slicking that on back there. I'm telling you. Well, it's the new toupee. I'm trying to get it figured out.

The glue, the glues, it's obnoxious. You got to really work it out. But yeah, I think it's a good word, Dave. And I love that he locked on to really, I think, the simple thing. If anybody's grasped me this for the first time, I think what you said in one line really captures the whole thing. And that is.

it's about your heart so whether you have a little money or you have a lot of money it's about how you view the money and uh... that's just really good theology and it just it cannot be by the way that's not debatable it's it's about managing the money there's too much scripture uh... that just lays it out that we're stewards of everything gives us and so that's just a beautiful answer that question so uh... no guilt no overthinking just uh...

Locking on what Dave said there because that's about as strong a teaching on that as you'll get. The 1% are all going to hell. Let me scare you about that one. Uh-oh. If you make $38,000 a year, you're in the top 1% of income earners in the world. Whoops. You're not going to make it. If you believe that toxic, Gnostic heresy.