Mastering Mammon

I hope you will look at the title of my sermon today, and it is called, Mastering Memen. Mastering Memen. I have in my hand here a card that defines one of the definitions of the word mammon that you find in the Bible. I'm going to hand this card to Chris Rivera to hold that card, and I have in my pocket a hundred-dollar bill that I will give to the person when you raise your hand if you can give me the definition that matches what I have down there for mammon. Anybody care to raise their hand? I have someone in the back. Mr. Taylor, it's a hundred dollars. Nope. Maman. Riches. No. You're right. That's not it. You don't want the hundred dollars. Anybody else care to guess? Nope. No? No? Possessions? That's the exact word. Come up here and get your hundred dollars. Since you're not from Jamaica, it is a hundred dollars in Jamaican money. I appreciate that. And I donate this back. Thank you. I wouldn't try to write that off taxes. My wife had the answer, not me. Oh. Anybody want to tell me what this hundred dollars is worth in Jamaica? Yeah, it's about 80-85 cents now. Was 130, where was it Jeff? 135 this, this, 35. So isn't that something? You may think you understand money, but really do it. Too many times, money in this country mirrors success. We think it does, right? But many times, money can lead to failure. Having too much, getting too much too quickly, can sometimes create a problem. All you have to do is look up people who have lost millions on Google when they inherited millions and even billions. And it destroyed their lives. I'd like you to go with me. Go to Ecclesiastes. I'll read from the New Living Translation here. New Living Translation, Ecclesiastes 5, verse 10 and 11. Ecclesiastes 5, verse 10 and 11. 10 says, those who love money will never have enough. Wow! What is enough to you?

How much? 3 or 4 million. Right? I thought about this and thought, well, I'd like to have a million dollars. But then I started thinking about, wait a minute, then I've got to invest it somewhere, then I've got to get, if I have a million dollars, I've got to get an umbrella insurance policy because I could do something and then they would take all that money. Yeah, and next thing you know, you're thinking where you're going to go. So, anybody else? Because I thought, while I'm thinking about it, what about 5 to 10 million? When is enough? Anybody? Bigger dreamer than that? Now, 5 million is good enough. Okay. Caesar and I think alike. It says here, how meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness. The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. How many relatives would you have call you? How many old buddies that you might have loaned $20 to 30 years ago? That might want the money and interest. Right? So, what good is wealth except, perhaps, to watch it slip through your fingers? This is Solomon, the richest and wisest man, perhaps, to have ever lived. He writes down in verse 19, And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God. Boy, you bet it is. And the good health to enjoy it. Yeah, so many people, by the time they amass wealth, they don't have the health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your life, this is indeed a gift from God.

Money, I think the song said. So they say, is the root of all evil today? Took it from the Scripture. That's not really Scripture, because the Scripture says that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. So, is there something wrong with having this, having more of this? Could you make it? You need a whole lot of this. Jesus Christ, in the 16th chapter of Luke, said that we, talking to us, cannot serve two masters. And he said that you cannot serve God and Mammon. Mammon has many definitions. It's translated somewhere, some places money, possessions, worldly goods. A lot of things, because even back at the time Jesus was talking to them, part of their wealth were the clothes that they would wear. Remember the guy that got beat up? That's for dead. They took his clothes. It's part of your possessions. Can we master Mammon? Do we have control of it? Or does it have control of us as we turn around and look? Is there something bad with money? No. God prospered many, many of his leaders, the patriarchs, and they were very wealthy. Turn with me, if you will, to Proverbs 22. Proverbs 22. This is one chapter in 22 that talks about money, wealth, possessions, as much as any chapter in Proverbs. And it has a couple of things to say to us. In chapter 22, verse 2, it says, the rich and poor have this in common, reading from the New Living Translation. The Lord made them both. What does that mean? Well, God made them both. He gives life, but is it referencing that He made them both poor and rich? Think about that. Is that what it means? Well, let's go on and go down to another scripture in verse 6, same chapter. Verse 7, excuse me, verse 7. Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender. Another translation said, a slave. The borrower is slave to the lender.

Because if you owe someone money, they're going to want it. They're going to want it. They're going to want interest. People borrow money from banks, borrow money from credit unions, borrow money from friends, and some are even dumb enough to borrow it from the mob. It's an indicator. Just as the rich rule the poor, does the rich rule the poor in this country?

Pretty much. Yep. You ask the money, makes the rules, as the old saying goes. Let's look over in verse 9. God's word says, blessed are those who are generous because they feed the poor. Sounds like an admonition, does it not? I wonder about us. I'd like to go to Deuteronomy 8, a very powerful scripture that's given to us. Deuteronomy 8, I read from the New King James here. Deuteronomy 8. Deuteronomy 8. My mouth isn't working today.

Deuteronomy 8 and verse 18. Eris says, And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth. He's the one that gives you the power to get wealth. Now, some have said, well, yeah, but because he gives life and we're able to walk and talk and breathe and do these things. But is that all he's saying? No. You have to finish the rest of the verse there in verse 18. Why does he do this? That he may establish his covenant which he swore to you, to your fathers, as it is to this day. So why does God give wealth? It confirms his covenant. His covenant with his people. It is about recognizing God's sovereignty, his power. He says, I want you to know when you get it, it's because of me. It's because of me.

That it's only through him that we get wealth, retain it. Now, you may say, well, what about all these people who are rich and they're godless people? Okay. Fair question, huh?

They're not being judged at this time for what they know or what they don't know. They can go and they have their gods, and a lot of times it's money. We know who our God is, and it's not money, or it shouldn't be money. Right?

I heard a man say just the other day, a motivational speaker, and he said that if you want to be successful, all you have to do is make that first in your life success. And you make everything else second, and you will be successful. Is that scriptural? It's the opposite. Yet people do. I remember when Jimmy Johnson was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys. He first coached here in Miami with the Hurricanes, and then he became the coach of the Cowboys. And they asked him because he divorced his wife on his great run, and when he'd won one or two, and he'd been with her for years or something, and they interviewed him. And he said, because I spent all my time with the team, she gave me the ultimatum, the team of her. And he said, it's my job.

And he didn't regret it. Isn't that sad?

But he wanted the fame! Well, he has it. He has it at the cost of other things, more important.

See, we only rent wealth. We only rent mammon, don't we? You're possessions. You only rent. I only rent my house, even though I'm making payments on it. Okay? But I'm only going to live here, maybe 75 years. I'll be dead.

I can't carry those. I don't think Mary's going to bury me with my wallet in my casket.

Right? I mean, no matter what we have, it's only temporary because we're only temporary. Like what Jeff talked about. We're dust waiting to happen. Worm food. That's what someone said. So this wealth, these possessions we have, God says anyone's given, but would God want you to have what you can't handle?

How many parents go out and just give money to their kids? They're like, oh, here's $5,000 a week. Go spend it. There's people who actually do that. They're mega-rich. They think they are. Mega-rich of money. They say they're rich in everything else. But most of them end up, it ends up pretty tragic for the sons and daughters, or even grandchildren, doesn't it? It ends up pretty tragically.

I forget which of the Kennedy's daughters or granddaughters. She just died of an overdose a couple months ago. I don't know if you saw that. Was it Robert's daughter? I don't remember which one. Beautiful girl. Had it all. But she was miserable. P.O.D. Overdose. Sad. But she had everything. Maman does not make you happy. It can be of a benefit. Matter of fact, God wants us to have maman and be able to enjoy it. He wants us to have possessions, but not to the point that it will destroy us, ruin us, or take us out of the kingdom of God. Now, what? Matthew 6, 33? Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness? I mean, that's what's most important to God. But God also, not only does He want us to understand that He controls everything, but He also wants to see what we're going to do with what He gives us. How good of managers are we? How do we use the wealth that He gives us? Had a man. He used to go to church here. No longer does. He told me one time, we were writing, that boy, he had a gambling problem at one time. And he won a lot of money, and he was able to pay his parents' house off. And, you know, that's a good thing. But then he found out later, he got in debt again because of gambling, and lost the whole house again. But he told me, he said, I know, I pray to God that He would help me win that lottery. Because then I will give half of it away. You think He would? I don't know. What? I don't know, you don't know, but I know who does know. Gun. Gun.

I'm not a wealthy man. I've worked hard, but I'm not wealthy. I am compared to Haiti, and compared to somebody in Jamaica, but I'm not wealthy in this country. I've worked hard, but God knows what I can handle and what I can't. And He knows the same thing about us. So God wants to see what we will do with it, what He gives us. Will we accumulate? Will we hoard? Or will we use it? He gets to see what we do with it now. It's Hannah who was praying to God back in 1 Samuel. She prayed to God, and she says that, Lord, You make the poor and the rich. She understood that. She understood wherever she was. She wanted a son. She was miserable. And so she was going to the source of all possessions, as we have the same opportunity to go to the source. That's what this Bible is all about. The source. Do you imagine, because we all have, I don't care who we are, we all have different ideas or visions of God? Don't we? What He might look like, what He's like, we can study the Bible, we think we understand, and then sometimes we wonder. But do we imagine a benevolent God? I see some heads. Do you really believe in a benevolent God? One who is kind, tender-hearted, gracious, charitable, compassionate? That's not a fairy tale. Because God is benevolent, isn't He? God is benevolent. So as I am finishing this series on success and leadership, ask the question, does God desire a benevolent leader? Does God desire for you to be benevolent? Tender-hearted compassion? Very, very type of person that Joseph was, that Job was. Abraham, Solomon, David, leaders. But were they benevolent enough?

Will we ever be benevolent enough?

I'm looking at that on a scale compared to God. No. Does He want us to be? Absolutely.

But we need what? We need wisdom. We need wisdom to help us. When He gives us, and then we prove, you can do this, you remember the parable Jesus gave. He gave one five one three one one, and He said, go and invest. The one just went borrowed. What did He do to the one who didn't invest well? He took it away from Him and gave it to the one who had more, which defies logic to a lot of people. But God is like that with our gifts. He wants to see what we'll do. And if He gives us incredible gifts, do we just kind of... They're mine. They're mine. Are we willing to share those gifts? With God, righteousness is success. With God, righteousness is wealth. With God, our righteousness makes us rich. Because then we begin to be more like Him, and we will begin to give and give. And we won't worry about, well, is there enough for me? Now, you might remember it's been a year or two ago, we had an interactive Bible study, and I brought this subject up. And when do you give and when not to give? And how do we determine? Wow, we have so much and other people don't have any. What do we do? Sell everything, give it to a homeless guy? And one man stood up in the back. As a matter of fact, there's a couple of you that brought it to his attention as he said that, Well, I said, when do you give? And he said, every time you ask. Remember that? Anybody remember that? And he said, if anybody asks you, I said, so anybody on the street, yes, you're to give every time. And I think somebody here said, well, you're going to give him, if he's a drunk, you're going to give him a beer? You know, if a guy comes up and he's got a needle hanging out of his arm, and he says, I need $50. You want to give it to him? Would God? No. No. So, we get a chance to practice our righteousness, practice being benevolent with wisdom that God does. See, God, you know, we saw that grid up here. Yeah, God desires for everyone to be in his kingdom. Does he desire for everybody to be rich?

He'd like to, but most can't handle it. Most people cannot handle being rich. Handling wealth. As a matter of fact, Market Watch did a survey, and they brought a survey of those who inherited money. And one-third of all people who inherited wealth, a great deal of wealth, over a million dollars, was in debt within two years. And they wrote that 70% of people who inherited any type of money more than what they were worth, spent it all within the first three years.

Was this God's intention? And when they did the survey, he found out they asked this young lady because her aunt left her $168,000 when she died. And so she got it all once. Her dad came and said, hey, take $5,000 for yourself, go and buy some, and put the rest in a CD. Which what? She did. Over an 18-month period of time, she went through every single penny of the $168,000, and they asked her what she spent most of it on.

What she spent most of it on. Can you take care of that? I don't know. Find out what it is. I don't know what it is. All right. Go ahead. It may be your stockbroker telling you you've made all this money in your stocks. See if she can stop that. But at $168,000, she went through it all, and they asked her, what did you spend the majority on? And she says, well, I have a car, and I had a bunch of clothes, and I took a lot of trips, and I just had a lot of friends who I wanted to share it with. Okay, that's just one example of that.

But you see, would her aunt have wanted her to do that? No. It was a setup so that she could have a house. You know, down the road, she could see all this money in there, and she was only 24 years old.

She said, wow, if you saved for 10 years and let this... You can have your house. Well, now she didn't have anything other than a car and some nice clothes, which was worth what? Very little. See, God's the same way with us. He wants to see... He would love to give us, but He doesn't want it to ruin us.

And He doesn't want to give us wealth to give to someone else to ruin their lives. So, what is this whole wealth thing? It's about being like God and being wise enough to manage mammon, what we have, because other people can also look at things. See, giving can be righteous, can it? Being a giving person can be righteous, but it also cannot be.

Just think about it. Look at the examples. We'd love to feed the poor and the hungry, right? And that's good. And we try to help and assist, like giving the guy a fishing pole instead of the fish. We want to help, and Mary and I try to do that with different people. We try to give a hand up and try to do this without just laying it out there, because we know what it can do to certain people's lives.

And God knows what it can do to us. But there's examples where having money and giving it away is to promote your own self, is to have status, is to project yourself up, because just like donating to a political party, you donate money, what's it going to say? Now you owe me. Right? Now you owe me. I donated money to you now when I need something. And I can confess, I did that about 15 years ago. I donated money to the state senator. He got in office and I knew him just a little bit, but then he became higher up in the state senate.

And so he was running for reelection and I made a donation, the largest donation, of $500. Good? Well, all of a sudden he did know me well. And we were invited to something he had and spend this time. And I had trouble with the government at the time. They would audit my workman's comp. And they would audit your workman's comp, one every seven or ten years. They audited mine three years in a row. I couldn't figure out why. First time they found out it was a $34 mistake, the guy spent two days for $34.

And the second time was like $18. And I'm going, wait a minute, this is a waste of our money. Well, but I couldn't stop it. So I called my senator and said, I need you to make me an appointment with the head over the revenue in Tennessee, which was just under the, two steps under the governor.

He made me an appointment. I went up that day. Talked to the guy. We had a nice conversation. He wiped out that and we were never hit again. Okay. I did it for that reason. But there's a reason that people do that. Right or wrong?

But see, we should not give so that we can get something. I was wrong in that because I used it to my benefit, even though it wasn't right. People give so they can have hospital wings named after them, don't they? They give so they can have a bridge named after them. Is this what God wants? What is the intent, the motivation? With wealth, with the mammon?

Brethren, it's about us. It's about becoming more righteous. And one of the hardest things to do is to manage mammon, manage money. Saw a guy the other day on television. He had accumulated when he sold his company and he went out and bought five sports cars. Lamborghinis, all these stuff. He can only drive one at a time, can he? But yet, you want to look at that. Brethren, is it time for us to pray before we give anything away? Is it time? Let's go to the last verse. Proverbs 19. Proverbs 19. Proverbs 19, verse 17 from the New King James. He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord. He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord. And he will pay back what he has given. God takes care of us, no matter how little or how much we have. He is the one. Do we recognize that? And do we have pity? Are we tender-hearted? Do we look at things and realize, I can help this person? Or do we look at it and go, the only thing I can do is probably not help this person? Because it's not going to change. We have to look at that. God has to decide who he's going to call in this life, doesn't he? Would you want that job? Absolutely not. Christ said, where to invest? He said on the Sermon on the Mount, treasures in heaven. You got a nice account up there? He told a man who was very wealthy to sell all your possessions and follow me. And what did the guy do? He went away sad. Because mammon can affect you. Mammon can get to where it's who you are.

It says, store up treasures in heaven where moths cannot eat. Rust does not destroy. Well, what was he talking about? Moths? It was about clothes. Moths eat clothes. So that was part of these possessions that we have. So we must use wisdom. God gives it to us. We must pray for it because He's the one that gives us wealth. Found it interesting. On one report that I read on the website, there are five things that millionaires do not invest in. We know what they are. Lottery tickets, savings bonds, depreciating assets, timeshares, and impulse buying. It's like, oh, I see that. I've got to go get it today. They don't do that.

The financial guru, Dave Ramsey, has just four pieces of advice. Stay out of debt. Pay off your bills, smallest to largest.

Attack debt with a passion. And invest 10% with God. And invest 10% for yourself. As a lifetime savings. Because a portion of all you make is yours to keep. And you're asking God to bless you. So money, possessions, wealth, mammon, they can be your master. Or you can master them. Godly success and Godly leadership will lead us to a Godly inheritance. Inheritance whether or not it's out of this world. That is part of God's possessions. And he owns the entire universe. And he says, I want my children to share it with me. Are we mastering the mammon he has given us?