Rick Warren - A Faith That Doesn't Need to Hoard
Hi, everybody. I'm Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, author of "The Purpose-Driven Life," and the speaker on the Daily Hope broadcast, and I want to welcome you to this broadcast, where we're looking in the book of James. We've been going through it now for a long time on "A Faith That Works When Life Doesn't: Principles for Living Through a Pandemic". Now in a previous message, I listed five factors that are causing stress all around the world, these days, during the COVID-19 global pandemic. We're facing a viral infirmity, that's the virus, we're facing social instability, we're facing financial insecurity, we're facing racial inequality, and we're facing political incivility.
Now, as we continue through our study of this book of James, I want us to use two messages to focus on this third issue, financial insecurity, because right now, hundreds of millions of people around the world are out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic, and millions of businesses around the world have been closed for most of 2020. This has created a great economic hardship on many, many families with single parents and poor families being hit even the hardest. Now, you remember that I said at the start of this pandemic, that we're all in the same storm, but we're not all in the same boat.
Some people are sailing through this storm in a yacht, and they don't really see what the big deal is with this pandemic. They have the kind of job where they can work from home, and in many ways they're doing just fine, and they may have saved enough money to support themselves for a long time. But other people, particularly those in service or transportation and hospitality businesses, have little or no income these days, and they're battling this storm in a rowboat, not a yacht. And then there are even others who are homeless, and so in this storm, they're just kind of holding onto a piece of driftwood. So we're going to look at some passages in the book of James this week and next week that have to do with facing financial insecurity and managing money.
Now, in my next message, we're going to look at a faith that handles wealth wisely, a faith and handles wealth wisely, and we're gonna look at the specifics of what God has to say about making money and using money and investing money. And I hope you don't miss that message. But today, I want us to look at a faith that doesn't need to hoard, a faith that doesn't need to hoard. Now, I'm sure you remember, in the early days of this pandemic, there was a run on grocery stores with panic buying. Everybody remember that? You can remember the famous shortage on toilet paper and hand sanitizer and pretty much everything else, and when that first lockdown occurred, people panicked and they began hoarding everything. They weren't doing this as a statement of faith, but they were doing it as evidence of fear. They were hoarding out of anxiety, and out of worry, and of apprehension about their economic future.
But as we'll see in just a minute, there are other motivations for hoarding, too, besides fear. So when I say a faith that doesn't need to hoard, what is hoarding? Well, if you look up the definition in a dictionary, it defines hoarding as the excessive accumulation of anything, particularly money or possessions. The excessive accumulation of anything, particularly money or possessions. Now, remember I told you that James wrote this letter to the Christians in the very first church, which was in Jerusalem, who, because of intense persecution, they weren't allowed to meet together for public worship in Jerusalem. Does that sound familiar? They weren't allowed to meet together for public worship. Instead, they were forced to scatter and flee all over the Roman empire.
So James writes this letter that we've been looking at now for a long time to encourage discouraged believers in a time of intense stress, and it has sure encouraged us in a time of intense stress, too. But in those days, because of what was going on in the persecution of the new Christians, many had lost their jobs, they had lost their homes, and most important, they had lost a contact with each other during this time. Sound familiar? So he wrote to encourage them. But you know, in the text that we're gonna look at today, James actually confronts and he calls out the wealthy Christians in the church for hoarding their wealth in a time when fellow brothers and sisters in the family of God desperately needed help.
You know, as I've studied this book now for many months, in many ways, the first century AD, after Jesus rose from the grave, the first century is what's like happening in the 21st century AD. Today, in the 21st century, we are witnessing, one of the things is the demise of the middle class. What do I mean by that? Well, in the last 20, 30 years, the rich are getting richer, while the middle class has been dropping further and further behind for 30 years. And there's more greater income inequality today than at any other time in the history of the world, since the first century. It's true. People are very, very rich and people are very poor and there's less in the middle.
In the New Testament, there was essentially no middle-class. You were either rich or you were poor, and in the Roman Empire, the rich used the poor workers to get richer, and there were no pension plans, there were no health benefits, there were no social programs, so the poor were stuck in poverty. If you weren't rich, you were poor. Now, James doesn't pull any punches in this text we're gonna look at today. He is upset. He's upset about the selfish attitudes and the self-centeredness of wealthy Christians who don't seem to care about the economic inequality or the financial distress that the poor members of the church were going through during that crisis. So, you know what happens? James just lays it on the line to those who didn't seem to care about anything but themselves during this crisis, and they're continually hoarding their wealth that they could be using, actually, to help other people. Now, here's how he starts. James chapter four, verse 17. Let me read it to you, and the following verses.
James 4:17. "Remember, my brothers and sisters, that when you know the good thing you ought to do, but you don't do it, then you sin". Now, let me pause here before we go any further, to point out a couple of things. First, James is talking to people who know the Lord. He's talking to Christians. He's talking to believers. They know the right thing to do. They know the right thing to do with their time, with their money, with their energy. These are not people in the dark who don't know right from wrong. These are believers he's writing to in the family of God. Second, there are two kinds of sins. There are sins of commission and there are sins of omission, commission and omission. Now, when you do something that you know is wrong to do, that's called a sin, a sin of commission. You know it's wrong to do, and you do it anyway. That's a sin of commission. But the opposite is also a sin. When you fail to do the right thing, you fail to do the right thing, that you know you ought to do.
When you don't do the right thing, he says, that's a sin of omission, omission. I should have done it. And he says, "When I hoard any wealth that God has blessed me with, instead of using it to help other people, when I see a need," he said, "that's a sin of omission". Okay, let's read the whole passage. James chapter four, verse verse 17, all right? Here's what he says. And it goes to chapter five, verse eight. "Remember, my brothers and sisters that when you know the good thing you ought to do, but you don't do it, then you sin. So then you who are rich should grieve and lament because of the impending trouble that's headed your way. Your wealth is rotting and the moths will eat your fine clothes, and your gold and silver will be worthless, but it will be a witness testifying against you that you have hoarded and piled up wealth in these last days".
Now, as I read that, can you feel the righteous indignation welling up inside of James, as he wrote these words, knowing that there were wealthy members in his church, the church in Jerusalem, that he was the leader of, wealthy members who couldn't care less about the poor members who were barely surviving during the crisis of that day. Okay? He said, "You don't even care about..." Now, we're gonna examine these verses phrase by phrase, but first I want you to write this down. Would you write this down? Okay, get out a pen, and write this down. God doesn't oppose wealth. He opposes greed. Write that down. God doesn't oppose wealth. He opposes greed.
Now, if you were to turn on your television to one of those religious channels and you were to watch several different TV preachers, you would likely be confused by conflicting messages about money, because there are some teachers out there who teach that God wants everybody to be rich and everybody to be wealthy and everybody to be perfectly healthy. And if you are poor, they say, you just don't have enough faith. That's what they say. And they're called prosperity preachers or health and wealth teachers, and they're on one extreme. And then at the other extreme are the priests and pastors out there who tell you that to truly be holy, you have to take a vow to live in poverty the rest of your life. And they say it's a sin to be wealthy, and they misquote 1 Timothy 6:10. And I've heard this misquoted all my life.
1 Timothy 6:10. They say, doesn't it say in the Bible that money is the root of all evil? And the answer is no, it doesn't. The Bible does not say money is the root of all evil. It never has said it. The correct verse actually says "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil". Money is not an evil. It says the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Now those two extremes, God wants you to be a millionaire and God wants you to take a vow of poverty. Jesus never taught either of those extremes. Both of them are wrong. Both of them are not supported in the Bible. So God is not opposed to wealth.
In fact, if you read this book, most of the godly people in the Bible that are talked about are quite wealthy. Abraham was probably a millionaire, multi-millionaire in our terms. Job was the wealthiest man on earth in his time. Joseph became very wealthy as the second in command for Pharaoh. David and Solomon were both the wealthiest men of their time. And in the New Testament, people like Barnabas. We know he was wealthy because he was able to give large amounts to the church. And Joseph of Arimathea. That's the guy who gave Jesus his tomb after Jesus was crucified. He was extremely wealthy. So God is not against wealth, okay? Let's just clear that up right off the bat. He is against greed, but he's not against wealth.
Proverbs 10:22 in a contemporary English version says this. "When the Lord blesses you with riches, you have nothing to regret. When the Lord blesses you with riches," you didn't get them in a dishonest way. "When the Lord blesses you with riches, you have nothing to regret". So what I'm saying is that if God has graciously allowed you to have some measure of wealth, you don't need to feel ashamed about that, but you might need to feel ashamed that you haven't used it correctly, because God is very much opposed to the abuse of wealth, to the misuse of wealth, to the hoarding of wealth, regardless of the amount we have. Now, that's why James points out in verse three of chapter five. He says, "You have hoarded and piled up wealth in these last days".
Now I want you to write down this second truth, okay? Write this down. Money is a tool to be used, not a thing to be hoarded. All right? That's what the Bible teaches. Money is a tool to be used, not a thing to be hoarded. God says that money is not to be stockpiled where it doesn't do any good or just stored up just for the sake of storing it up and having it and counting it. God says, "I want all that money in circulation". It's a tool to be used. And by the way, we are to use money and love people. When you get that in reverse, you get a problem, because if you start loving money, you're gonna to use people. No, no people are to be loved. Money is to be used. Don't get that in reverse, Money's simply a tool. Now he says, "I don't want you hoarding. I don't want you're piling up wealth".
Now you're probably thinking, but Rick, doesn't the Bible teach the principle and the habit of saving? I mean, aren't we told in scripture that it's wise to save money? Yes, yes we are. Of course the Bible teaches the principle of both saving, and also the principle of investing. In fact, Jesus told a parable about a guy, a couple guys who doubled their money by investing it wisely. And then he says, "You've made the most of what you've been given and you made it count and you did good and you're good and faithful servant". But there's a big difference. Listen, there's a big difference between saving money and hoarding money. Okay? So what's the difference? Well, we said the definition of hoarding is an accelerated or extreme accumulation of something, particularly money or possessions.
So what's the difference between saving, which the Bible commends, and hoarding, which the Bible condemns? Well, for one thing, there's no TV shows about smart saving on TV, but there are shows about hoarders on TV. There are plenty of shows about hoarding. The difference between saving and spending or saving and hoarding your money is in your purpose and in your motivation, okay? Now listen closely. People usually hoard their money for one of two reasons. One, out of fear for their security. Out of fear for their security is one reason people hoard money, because they're afraid, or number two, out of pride, out of pride for their status. Out of fear for security or out of pride for status.
And let me just talk to you about these for a second. Some people hoard what they own and everything they make out of anxiety. You know, every once in a while, you'll hear a story about some poor elderly person who died in abject, obvious poverty, but when they went in to clear out her or his little apartment and the mattress on the bed was moved, they would find hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet they were living in poverty. Why did they hoard what they had? Because money had become an idol. It became an end in itself. Holding on to money had become the goal of life. Listen, they were so afraid to lose their money, that they would not even use their money. It represented security.
Now we all know that's an extreme, but many people, even those who are Christians and love the Lord, don't realize that they're doing the exact same thing with their bank account. They're putting their security not in the Lord. They're putting their security in their bank account and in their investments, instead of God. And no matter how much they always have and how much they accumulate, and how much they hoard, and how much they store and stockpile, they always have these questions in the back of their mind. Do I have enough? Am I gonna run out? Will I need more? How much is enough? And because they really trust their security to what they've accumulated, you know, hoarding more than they really need, than they trust God's promises. They're trusting their bank account more than they're trusting God's promises. They're always hesitant to give any of it away, either in tithing or in being generous with others. Why? Because, who knows? I might need that money in an emergency, and what would I do without it? And what would I rely on?
See, hoarding is based on a scarcity mentality, okay? I won't have enough. Hoarding is based on a scarcity mentality. Savings is based on a stewardship mentality. I'm saving, but I'm not looking to my savings for my security. Scarcity mentality. I'm scared to death I won't have enough, so I'm gonna hoard, hoard, and I don't want to give it away. I don't want to give it away to my friends, neighbors, anybody else. I want to hold onto it, 'cause I might need it. If you live with a scarcity mentality, you're always afraid that God's not gonna keep his promises to take care of you, then you're gonna lack the faith to be generous with what God has given you, generous with other people who are in need, and because you might be afraid, he might not give you any more.
Now that's the exact opposite of what God's promises in his Word say and teach us. God has promised almost a hundred times in scripture that if I give generously, it will be given back to me even more generously. You cannot out-give God. I've tried that for 40 years and I have failed for 40 years. Now, you probably know that one of the most popular and one of the most comforting verses in the Bible, I mean, you're gonna know this verse as soon as I say it, that gives us encouragement all over and over and over is Hebrews 13:5. Hebrews 13:5 is where God says, "I will never leave you and I will never abandon you". Hebrews 13:5. "I will never leave you and I will never abandon you".
That's comforting. It's comforting in COVID-19. It's comforting when you're facing economic instability, when you're facing all these other things that are causing pressures in your life, to hear God say, "I will never leave you and I will never abandon you". That's comforting to know, that no matter what I go through in life, God's gonna be there with me to help me, okay? In fact, people take that verse, Hebrews 13:5, and they put it on posters to hang in their home. But you know what I've discovered? They always leave off the first half of that verse. Okay, the first half of that verse where he says, "I'll never leave you and I'll never abandon you". The first half of that verse, do you know what it's about? Don't don't hoard money. Don't hoard money. It is the acid test of how much you trust the promise that God says, "I'll be with you and I'll never abandon you and I'll never leave you".
It's the whole... Let me read what the whole promise says. Here it is. It's there on your outline, Hebrews 13:5. "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with whatever you have, because God has said, I will never leave you and I will never abandon you". You see what I just read? The context of God's promise, I'll never leave you and never abandon you, is about your financial future, that financial instability. Am I gonna have a job? Am I gonna be able to work? Am I ever gonna go back after COVID? And God's promise to you about your financial future is saying, "Don't hoard, don't love money. Be content with what you have. Why? Because I will never leave you and I will never abandon you".
So based on that verse, let me be really frank with you. In what are you trusting for your future financial security? Okay? What are you trusting for your future financial security? Are you trusting in your possessions, or are you trusting in God's presence? Your possessions are giving you security or God's presence? He says, "Don't worry about those things. I will never leave you, and I will never abandon you". If you have a hard time letting go of money, if you have a hard time being generous with it, you don't like to give, you don't like to tithe, you don't like keeping money in circulation, what you're revealing is a lack of faith. You don't really believe God will keep his many promises to take care of you. You don't really believe that it'll always be with you, that he'll never abandon you. You're living with a scarcity mentality.
You know, I once had lunch with a Christian couple who were multi-millionaires, and as I asked this businessman over lunch in a restaurant, I asked him just frankly, "How much more do you feel you need to make in order to feel secure"? In other words, how much is enough? And he replied, he thought about it a second, and then he replied, he said, "Probably, to feel secure, about $10 million more". $10 million more. And I thought to myself, because of your scarcity mentality, you will never think you have enough. You will always feel the need to stockpile more, stuff you can't possibly use. You can't possibly use that all. Now, so the first reason people hoard and stockpile is insecurity, okay?
So it's, I'm afraid that I'm not gonna have enough, so I want to hold on to it. The other reason people hoard their money and keep stockpiling it is because they use their money to keep score. It's the way they validate their value. It's the way they prove their status. It's the way they show off their success. My bling. It's a pride issue. You know, for years, Forbes magazine has posted an annual list of the 400 wealthiest people in the world. And that list for many, many years, kept wealthy people from giving any of their money away. Why? Because if they gave any of it away, they go down on the list, and they didn't want to go down on the list. There was a, you know, reward for being on the list.
But then a few years back, Forbes started another list called the most generous people in the world. I think they were brilliant for doing this. The most generous people in the world. And it was not who had the most, who'd stockpiled the most, who'd hoarded the most, but who had given the most away. And all of a sudden, there was another way to keep score, and many of the wealthiest people in the world, like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, they all switched to the top of the other list, because they didn't care about really who's in the wealthiest, but who was giving away the most, and they made a pledge to give all they had away. So what is the difference between hoarding and saving? One's good. One's bad. As I said earlier, it's a difference in motivation. It's a difference in purpose. Biblical savings is not primarily for security. Why? Because God's your security, and it certainly isn't storing up for status so you can show off how much wealth you've got. No, no, no. Then why should I save? Not hoard, but save.
There are three other reasons, three other motivations for saving money. These are all biblical. You might write these down. Number one, you save to practice self-control. It's a spiritual discipline. I save to practice self-control. Whenever you discipline yourself to live on less than you make, okay, you don't spend everything you make, but you live on less than you make in order to tithe and in order to save, you're practicing self-control. You're strengthening your character. You're building wisdom. Savings is a spiritual discipline against self-indulgence. At one time, John D Rockefeller was the wealthiest man in the world and he was often asked, what's the key to your wealth? He said the 80-10-10, 80-20 principle. 80-10-10, what's that? He said, "I tithe the first 10%, I save the second 10%, and I live on the rest. I live on the 80%". And he said, "By doing that, I'm turning things around". Proverbs 21, verse 20, says this, Living Bible. "The wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends whatever he gets". So the first reason a Christian saves is because of the spiritual discipline of learning to live on less than I make. I learn to not be self-indulgent, okay?
The second reason for saving in the Bible is this, to get money working for me. You say, what do you mean by that? Well, either you work for your money or your money works for you. So, which is true of you? Do you work for your money, or do you make your money work for you? See, any money that you save and then invest is making money for you while you're sleeping. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. Nobody becomes wealthy working for money. You become wealthy when you discipline yourself to make your money work for you. And you have to do that through saving and investing. That's a biblical principle. Ecclesiastes 11, verse one, says this. "Invest what you have, because after a while, you'll get a return". You'll get a return. Remember I mentioned earlier, the Parable of the Talents, where Jesus praised two men, in Matthew 25, who invested the money they were entrusted with, and then they doubled their money and he commended them, saying, "You're good and faithful servants".
So why do we save? We save because it's a spiritual discipline, shows self-control. We save because we want the money to work for us, rather than us work for money. And the third biblical reason is to be able to give to others, to be able to give to others. If I have not learned how to live on less than I make so I can set aside some of my earnings and for saving, and if I'm living from paycheck to paycheck and I'm spending everything I get, as soon as I get it, there's no way that I can tithe or be generous with others. Ephesians 4:28 says, if you've been stealing from others, stop it. Make an honest living, work hard, so that, here's the so that, you'll have something to give to people in need. Okay? Something to give to people in need. If you save in order to share it with others, that's what I do. I save in order to share it with others.
2 Corinthians 8:14 will be true of you. It says this. Right now, you have plenty and you can help others. Then at some other time, they can share with you when you need it. In this way, everyone's need will be met. So these are the difference between hoarding and saving. Hoarding is selfish stockpiling. Savings is strategic stewardship. Now, in the New Testament times, when James was writing these words, they certainly didn't have catalogs with gizmos and gadgets that you could spend all kinds of money on. So in the New Testament times, when James was writing this letter, there were only three ways that you could hoard your wealth. Only three ways you could show off your wealth, and here were the three. You could stockpile food. You'd have more food than everybody else did. You could build a wardrobe of fancy clothes, or you could collect gold and silver. Those were the only three ways. There weren't yachts. There weren't widescreen TVs. There weren't cruises.
You know, those were the three. Food, clothing, or precious metals. These were the three ways wealthy people showed off their wealth in the New Testament time. Food, clothing, precious metals. That's why James says what he says in the verse we started with, James 5:2 and 3. He says, "Your wealth is rotting". How does wealth rot? 'Cause it's food. Your moths will eat your fine clothes, and your gold and silver will be worthless. He says stockpiled food eventually spoils and decays, clothes get old and moth-eaten, and the value of your precious metals fluctuates, so you can't depend on that. James says your food, your wealth is rotting.
Let me ask you a question. What food goes rotten? The food you eat every day? No, not the food you eat every day. It's the stuff at the back of your refrigerator that's been there for three months. It is hoarded and it's unused, and that's where the food goes rotten, when it's been back there in the back of your refrigerator for months. You know, at our home, we've often created new life forms in our refrigerator. And you probably have, too, because you didn't, you just, you didn't throw it out. You kept it, you kept it. Then James says your clothes, they get moth-eaten. Which of your clothes get moth-eaten? The ones you wear all the time? No, not the ones you actually use. It's the ones you keep stockpiled in the back of your closet and you never wear. You're just hoarding them.
Here's the point. Write this down. Whatever I accumulate deteriorates. Whatever I accumulate will deteriorate. Okay? Now I want to end this message by reading a story about, that Jesus told in Luke chapter 12, with the same theme. Jesus said this, Luke chapter 12. "Watch out. Always be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Real life is never defined by or measured by how much you own". Then Jesus told them a story. He said a rich man owned a very productive and profitable farm, and he thought to himself, "What should I do with all this surplus? I have no room to store it all". Then he said to himself, "I know! I'll just tear it down, tear down my barns, and I'll build myself bigger barns. Then I can keep all my grains and all my other goods myself. Then I can say to myself, I'm set. I'm stored up more than I need for many years. I'll take it easy, eating, drinking, enjoying myself". But God said to him, "You are a fool. This very night, this very night, you'll die, and then who will get what you hoarded for yourself"?
This is Jesus talking. This is how it will be for those who pile up for themselves, stuff for themselves, instead of building a rich relationship with God. Wow. So what is God trying to say to us in this passage? Well, he's saying don't put your hope in your possessions, because you can lose all those. You have to put your hope in something that can never be taken away from you. If you put your hope in your job, it can be taken away from you. If you put your security in your back account, there's a lot of ways to lose that. If you put yourself your hope in your health, you can lose your health. If you put your hope in a relationship, you could lose that. If you're gonna have solid security in your life, you have to base your security on something that can never be taken from you, and everything on this planet can be taken from you, except one thing, your relationship to God, your relationship to Jesus Christ.
Do you know Jesus Christ? If you don't, I want to introduce you to him in just a minute, because this is the key to stability and the key to security in your life. I'm gonna close with a couple verses. Proverbs 11, verse seven, says this. "When a wicked person dies, his hope dies, too, because the hope he placed in his riches comes to nothing". Comes to nothing. I heard about a lady who, when she died and she was a very wealthy woman and somebody said she had taken her life, and they said she had so much to live for. And they said, no, no. She had much to live on. She had nothing to live for, all right? Nothing to live for. So do you have somebody to live for? Do you have a security that outlasts your own life? That relationship to Jesus Christ?
1 Timothy chapter six, verse 18 and 19, says this. "Tell people to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works, rich in good works, and should be happy to give to those in need, give happily to those in need, always ready to share with others what God has given them. By doing this, they're storing up real treasure for themselves in heaven". It's the only safe investment for eternity, and they'll be living a fruitful Christian life down here as well. We looked at that verse last week, but I wanted to share it with you again, because it's the absolute anti-hoarding verse. Finally, Proverbs 11 says this in verse four. "Your riches won't help you on judgment day. Only righteousness will count then".
You know, as we think about the future, and we think about the financial insecurity that many people are facing right now, the tendency is to hold onto what we've got, to hoard, to hold back, to be less generous, to be less giving of others, to stop tithing, to stop trusting that God's gonna care for my need, to do all these different things. And James had this same issue with the first Christians in the first church, in their day of crisis. And he said, "Guys, you're missing the point. You've got to trust in God, not in your possessions. You've got to be God-centered, not materialistic. You got to be safe, but do it for the right reasons".
If you've never opened your life to Jesus Christ, you don't have the security of that relationship with God that you need in order to handle uncertain times like the ones we're in right now. It would be my honor to lead you in a prayer right now. So why don't we just bow our heads together? And if you've never opened your life to Jesus Christ and you say, I admit I'm an insecure person, and I feel insecure about the future. I don't know what's gonna happen. Well, you don't need to know what's gonna happen. You don't need to know what the future holds. You need to know who holds the future. And if you have a relationship with him, you're gonna have the security you need. So let's pray. Just say this in your heart. Say:
Dear God, I want my security to be in something that cannot be taken from me. I want my security to be in my relationship to you, that you have promised you will never leave me. You will never abandon me. And I want to claim that promise today, as much as I know how I opened my life to you, Jesus Christ. And I ask you to come in, change my priorities, my values, my purpose, my direction. Make me the man or the woman you want me to be. And I humbly ask you to do this in your name. Amen.