Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Introducing Wisdom (#3): Business Savvy...Wealth Wisdom, Planning, Wise Words (Ken Wilson)
Introducing Wisdom (#3): Business Savvy...Wealth Wisdom, Planning, Wise Words (Ken Wilson) :: August 19-20, 2006
First we're going to say a prayer for Susie. So if we can get like the love squad gathered around Susie, let's like we're going to lay hands on and pray over Susie, we're going to send her out. The apostolic blessing is going to be happening here, could someone, maybe Don, you could get some oil and anointed with oil, oil is a sign in the church of the Holy Spirit of a person belonging to God being set apart for his purposes. And so Lord we just as Susie's church, which we will remain, we just want to bless you for her. Thank you for the service that she has rendered to us as an act of love, we've received that love is coming straight from you, it's been excellent in every respect. And so we just thank you for the love that you've shown us and all of our children and all the ways that Susie has served us on the business side and the children's side, all the hard work that goes so unappreciated because it's out of sight, but it's not out of your sight Lord. And so we pray that you would just pour out blessings now on Susie. I know it can't be an easy transition, how could it be easy, leaving us, our staff, but we know that you have a good place prepared for her at Shalom. And we pray that you'd go before her now and that you'd make a place for her. And that the favor that's been on her would be on there, only it would be doubled. And we just ask you to take care of all her needs and all of Meghan's needs. We thank you for what a great opportunity it is for her and just how as a good father you've been caring for her and caring for Meghan. So we send her off Lord with our blessing in the name of Jesus, amen. Amen. Okay. And I'm going to pray for the offering. Thank you for providing us with all that we need and now we want to worship you with the first fruits. We want to give you this tithe, this offering in the name of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. All right. We're in a series on wisdom, four weeks on wisdom, we're in the third of our series on wisdom. And you know, when you, we're looking primarily at the book of Proverbs, one of the wisdom writings in the Hebrew Scriptures, you think of wisdom, you think, oh, ho-hum, you know, pithy, sayings, whatever, but the picture of wisdom in Proverbs is actually quite exotic. The picture of wisdom in Proverbs is of wisdom dancing before God at creation and present with the human race from the dawn of human history. It's not without reason, in other words, that we're called homo sapiens. We are literally man the wise part of our being made in the image and likeness of God is our unprecedented access to wisdom. Wisdom, who in Proverbs 8 is God's delight and who delights in us. Wisdom delights in us from the beginning of human history. Our race has been faced with a choice to dance with Lady Wisdom as she's portrayed in Proverbs or to get down with Dame Folly. Life or death, joy, or misery, ultimately the stark choice for every human being. Now, it's important for us to understand the nature of wisdom. Wisdom is different than law or even principle or command. Instead of direct command, for example, the Proverbs don't say thou shalt be generous as if it were law, but wisdom says, you know, the generous person will be enriched and he who waters will himself be watered. Wisdom likes to show the connections between things and the consequences of actions. We bow before the law of God, but we dance with wisdom. Because wisdom is, we dance with wisdom because wisdom is tied, in a sense, very much to circumstance. The Proverbs you'll note when you read them may actually contradict each other like there are a lot of Proverbs about the value of overlooking an offense, ignoring an insult, but there are other Proverbs about the importance of going to someone who's offended you and dealing with it very directly, each is meant for a different moment. The Proverbs are not like an instructional manual that are meant to be applied woodenly. Wisdom rather is a divine and personal presence who guides us through the complexities of life as we find life. We gain wisdom through experience. Jesus himself had said, grew in wisdom and in stature. The law came first on tablets of stone, but wisdom has always been personified. Now today we'll be looking at what I'm calling business savvy wisdom, wisdom in the management of wealth or resource, planning, wisdom and wise words. Now let's you tune out because you're not into business savvy wisdom, you're into the arts or something like that. Savvy wisdom for business is actually something we all need no matter our vocation or our interest or our station in life. We're all about the business of living and living is a business. There are resources to be managed in life. There are plans to be made. There are networks of relationships that need to be tended with our words. So first we look at wisdom in the management of wealth, Michael Makado and the wisdom of words points out three strands or three layers of wisdom in the dimension of wealth. There's the practical layer, the moral layer and the spiritual layer, first the practical. The rich man's wealth is a strong city. The ruination of the lowly is their poverty. It's better to have money than not to have money is what the proverbs is saying. Money confers real advantage, poverty is a real pain. Even by his neighbor the poor man is hated, but the friends of the rich are many. This is not the way it's supposed to be, this is the way it is. The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave of the lender. They call it master card because they want you to think that by taking their card you will have more mastery over life, but the real reason it's called master card is because when you pay them interest they're the master and they like it like that. They really like it like that. Bad bad says the buyer, but once he's gone his way he boasts. That's the way it was 2,500 years ago. That's the way of commerce today if you're a realtor you know that for sure. Him who monopolizes grain the people curse. This is Bill Gates and the heyday of his Microsoft era. Nobody liked Bill Gates but blessings upon the head of him who distributes it. Now you say Bill Gates and everyone says what a great guy. He's just living out that very proverb, wealth quickly gotten dwindles away. That's the proverb for the 1990s, the dot com bubble proverb, but amassed little by little it grows. Did you know if you set aside $50 a month starting at age 15 and if you just take the average interest rate over a 40 year period at retirement age you'll have amassed $400,000 for your retirement by putting $50 a month away. If you put $25 a month away you amassed $200,000 by retirement age. Darn why didn't I put $25 a month away starting at age 15. It says a lot about God and a lot about wisdom that a major dimension of sacred wisdom is knowing and respecting how it is the world actually works. But there's more to divine wisdom in the wealth area, it's more than just being worldly wise. There's a moral layer, it'll gotten gained profits nothing but virtue saves from death. So how you get your wealth really does make a difference for its profitability, better a little with virtue than a large income with injustice. Here's a good one, varying weights, varying measures are both an abomination to the Lord. That's the Enron Prover. Cook the books, twist the profit margins, tip the scales, just spin it a little here, spin it a little there. All seems very civilized, all takes place in board rooms with nice furniture and white collars what harm can come, we're just playing with the numbers, but it's an abomination to the Lord. That's moral wisdom. He who makes a fortune by a lying tongue is chasing a bubble over deadly snares, the great word picture that is. And then there's a spiritual layer to wealth wisdom, goes even deeper, honor the Lord with your wealth with first fruits of all your produce, then will your barns be filled with grain? That's not practical, that's not moral, that's spiritual, it takes spiritual understanding. Madonna is more than a material girl, the world is more than a material world. There are other dimensions in play in the world, we're foolish to ignore the spiritual dimension, it's in our best interest to honor God with our money, to give to God because we are God's and we give the first fruits to God. That's spiritual wisdom. We don't give what's left over, I mean you think of your monthly income as just a big stack, a pile, you don't try to take it out of the bottom, you try to take it out of the bottom and those bricks are going to pinch yourself, you just take it off the top if it's God, it's first fruits, that's spiritual wisdom. And just give the first fruits to God and everything else that Proverb is saying takes care of itself. Wealth is useless, here's another spiritual wisdom for wealth, it's useless on the day of wrath. That virtue says from death, I saw a movie that is better than I expected Scoop with Woody Allen back to the old Woody Allen, he was actually funny in Scoop and the movie opens with this scene, there's a wooden boat going down the river and it's misty and it's kind of interesting, there's a bunch of people on the boat and there's a guy, he turns out to be a journalist on the boat and he walks up to the front of the boat and there's the grim reaper and now we know what this is depicting. These are all the people who've just died and the journalist doesn't like the direction the boat's going and so he takes out his wallet and he tries to give money to the grim reaper. Hey, could you turn this boat around, he's throwing money, grim reapers ignoring him, could care less about the cash, his cash floats to the deck of the boat. Wealth is useless on the day of wrath. He who has compassion on the poor, this is spiritual wisdom, Lord and he will repay him, the Lord will for his good deeds every time we give to the poor, we're lending to the Lord it turns out, who repays us with interest. You don't have to be good to be compassionate. In fact, if it's a choice between good and being wise you're going to be more compassionate the smarter you are, the wiser you are. Jesus actually spanned this whole spectrum of wealth wisdom and his teaching had things like, you know, if you've not been trustworthy with worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? I mean, he was saying in effect, I'm looking for some practically minded people to invest my kingdom in and so look, why don't you pay attention to the worldly wealth, why don't you pay attention to your daily, the small things if you want the big things of my kingdom, they're not disconnected, they're integrated. But he's also got deeply spiritual wisdom given, it will be given to you, pressed down, shaken together, overflowing on your lap, content settled because of moving, so to speak. Giving is not as it appears to be practically a net loss, but it's actually a net gain fancy death, planning is the other dimension of business savvy, important word in the proverbs in the Hebrew, masaba, to think, devise, plot, thought, imagination, intention, purpose, plan. Used to denote artistic work and cunning inventions, so it covers the artists and the engineers both. What this is saying is that, you know, think about it, our capacity to plan, which is to imagine a future and take steps in the present in order to affect the future. Wow, we can do that, wow, that is just, that's at the center of what it means to be human, isn't it? I mean, that's right near what it means to be in the image and the likeness of God. In Genesis 1, one of the main themes is time, God introduces us to time in Genesis 1. And in Genesis 1, time is sanctified, it's good. The rest of creation exists in time, but we're the only themes of creation who are aware of time, who reflect on time, and especially we're the ones who can imagine our way beyond the present, into a future that we can actually affect. Planning is a profoundly spiritual capacity of the human being, don't leave home without it. How strange, how strange, how bizarre, that planning is sometimes poo-pooed as unspiritual by so-called spiritual people. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He who plans a thing will be successful, happy as He who trusts in the Lord. In other words, planning and trust in God are not at odds with each other. The plans to adjust are legitimate. The designs of the wicked are deceitful, or another good one. Given our limitations, it makes sense to do our planning with a large grain of humility. There's a difference between visualizing world peace and world peace itself. There's a difference between those two. Just because we're visualizing it doesn't bring it into being, we need to have a little humility about our planning capacities. In his mind, a man plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps. Hello, our plans are less potent than our God's plan. Change your works to the Lord, and your plans will succeed. Planning without trusting is just another form of folly. I like this, man may make plans in his heart, but what the tongue utters is from the Lord. The tongue utters is from the Lord. I take that to mean that simply daydreaming, without ever putting it into words to discern it. That's kind of empty. Maybe you're like me. Do you ever give yourself credit? I do this all the time. I give myself credit all the time for the nice things I imagine saying or doing for people. I do that with my wife all the time. I imagine buying her flowers. I think about saying this or that. I've maybe been thinking all those thoughts all day long, and I don't actually execute any of those things, but I come home thinking, "What a fabulous husband I've been." Then, of course, you give yourself the credit for the things that you just think about doing, but that you don't actually, but you hold her to the standard of what she does, only what she does. You wonder why we get into these jams, sometimes a little lack of wisdom there. Man may make plans in his heart, but what the tongue utters is from the Lord. Our evil plans are often hidden plans, not spoken to a soul, just nurtured inwardly. We're using our God-given capacity to imagine the future, but we're doing it apart from God, and one of the signs we're doing it apart from God is we don't want to disclose our plan to any other human being. When we do our planning in the dark, the inner world is a place you can go to escape from God, or it's a place you can go to meet with God, and you determine which it will be for you. That's made after advice, succeed, so with wise guidance, wage your war, for it is by wise guidance that you wage your war, and the victory is due to a wealth of counselors. We came to Ann Arbor, the church did, back in 2001, and the pastor of the church, one of my responsibilities is to articulate vision. I had definitely an internal beacon, an intuition that the Ann Arbor vineyard was to be a church that really treasured the gospel and treasured the power of the Holy Spirit, and made that gospel and that power of the Holy Spirit really accessible to what I think of as the heart of Ann Arbor, and by the heart of Ann Arbor I mean left, leaning, environmentally friendly, full of ourselves aren't we great Ann Arbor? I'm an Ann Arborite, I can speak like that because there weren't many churches like that that were really oriented to reach the heart of Ann Arbor, not just to collect people who were kind of already into the born again thing and all that kind of stuff, but really go after the heart of Ann Arbor. I just knew it in my gut, that's what we were for, but it wasn't until actually putting it into words, coming up with a vision statement, you know, that what's our vision statement, our mission statement, we are called to humbly bear the transforming presence of Jesus into the heart of Ann Arbor through Jesus' brand spirituality, compassion, and community and works of compassion and to steadily reproduce reproducing churches in southeast Michigan and beyond, it wasn't until we put it into words, it wasn't until we talked about that explicitly as a staff and talked about that as a board and together we said yes, that is the Lord, when that happened then some reality came into it, some real blessing from God came into the situation. It's not of tomorrow for you know not what any day may bring forth because you can affect but you can't control the future, a little humility is called for in our planning. Now we move on to what has got to be the most important theme in all of the Proverbs, wisdom in speech, the power of the tongue is a major theme in Proverbs. Life and death in fact says wisdom are in life and death are in the power of the tongue, this picture this Proverb, like a crazed archer scattering fire brands and deadly arrows. Who is that guy? Is the man who deceives his neighbor and says I was only joking? I think I'm now disqualified from saying anything else on that guy, you know, geez sorry honey. I've done more sinning with the tongue than with any other body part except the brain. I mean most of my apologies, I wrote a book on apologies, I still don't like it. Most of my apologies, who I still don't enjoy, though they're great for the soul, have had to do with my words. I just apologized last week to a young man the week before who had offered me some critical input after one of the services and I just realized afterwards, you know, I just responded, you know, politely but defensively, fundamentally. I didn't ask him like to clarify, I didn't try to get into the, you know, into sympathetically what his concern was, I just said well here's, you know, I gave him the, yeah. And so I looked for him the next week and I apologized and I felt better and he apologized and we had a love fest and it was great. You know, skills and know-how are so important in the modern, you know, hierarchy of values but really so much of our effectiveness is tied to wisdom and speech which is tied to what's in our hearts and that's the rub. So, given that our hearts are a mixed bag, wisdom, who's a smart broad, wisdom, counsel's verbal restraint, the first thing you work on in the verbal, is just work on the verbal restraint given the state of your heart which is such a mixed bag where words our many sin is not wanting but he who restrains his lips does well. I love this, it was from my fourth grade class was the teacher headed on the wall, wonder why, even a fool if he keeps silent is considered wise. Fourth grade was the year I didn't bring my, what do you call it, card, your report card home. My mom said Kenny, where isn't it report card time and I said I don't think so. I don't think they gave him out. And out I've gotten a D in citizenship because I was talking too much. Why was I talking too much? Well this proverb from the fruit of his mouth a man has his fill. With the yield of his lips he sates himself. We love to hear ourselves talk, we talk too much because we love to hear ourselves talk. He who answers before he hears, his is the folly and the shame. You can't even learn how to listen without restraining your speech. Marriage might benefit from this one, you know the start of strife is like the opening of a dam, therefore check a quarrel before it begins. You know what a great counterpoint to like the 1970s pop psychology which said what you know if it's inside get it out, vent vent vent vent vent and then they actually studied and determined that it actually doesn't help to vent much. You know you have to be laser guided and you're dealing with your anger and actually use your anger to actually help the problem and wisely you know take some step motivated by the anger to talk to the person or whatever but just the venting thing and the hitting pillows thing it actually makes it worse. Then helps they kind of put that out as conventional wisdom but forgot to do the studies first but we've got we've thankfully got the proverbs who you know the start of strife is like the opening of a dam dude therefore check the quarrel before it begins. Man, Nancy and I opened a lot of dams in our early days of marriage. Man we opened a lot of dams one verbal broadside from either one of us we would just let loose a flood you know until we got tired eventually we got tired calling in service master to suck the the flood waters out of the carpet every week I'm speaking metaphorically here. A mild answer calms wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger but and this is a big one the willingness to address a problem directly and verbally is equally important in the realm of wisdom he who winks at a fault causes trouble but he who frankly reproves promotes peace to frankly reprove even though it's a little awkward it troubles the water actually it promotes peace you can't be a good supervisor you can't be a good manager you can't be a good leader without wisdom restraint in your speech not jumping to conclusions listening to others but also directly and candidly correcting something that's not right you can't have a healthy small group unless there's a leader willing to talk to the person who is for example offering unsolicited advice every time someone shares a struggle one of our ground rules in our small groups here in the church is no unsolicited advice giving if you're in a small group and there's someone who just thinks they're Dr. Lauren is constantly responding to your you know you know starting to unload your burdens a little bit well here's what you need to do blah blah well there's got to be someone in the group who pulls that person inside and says you know actually we have a ground rule no unsolicited advice giving and unless you're willing to do that you're not going to have a healthy group the leader the boss the supervisor the manager has to be the one to clean up the messes to go to the person needs going to and say you know this really needs some some attention now those are those three areas of business savvy wisdom what's the thread running through all these wealth wisdom planning wise words in fact what's the thread that runs through all of the wisdom in the Proverbs all wisdom hinges on our leaning into the future unless we lean into the future we cannot follow the path of wisdom see folly is about ignoring the future do what feels good now and forget the consequences but wisdom more than anything wisdom cares about the future wisdom takes the future consequences into account and wealth management and planning and wise words and all of wisdom how do we then at the core level in the realm of the inner world in our inner deep ease how do we embrace the future because if we fear the future if we dread the future we will not lean into wisdom we will fall back into the arms of Dame folly we have to get our future thing internally working better who helps us with that the risen Lord Jesus in whom are hit all the treasures of wisdom he man he is all over that the risen Lord Jesus is the one who gives us a foretaste of the future let's just say well okay that this is what the future is going to be he actually gives us a foretaste of the future that's the Holy Spirit the first fruits the foretaste of the coming kingdom we get a hope for the future from Jesus that's substantial not ephemeral the only one who comes from the future into the present bearing as it says in Hebrews the powers of the age to come is Jesus to care deeply for him is to lean into the future that he occupies you know 40 days after resurrection here's the story Jesus came he taught he did some wonders he got a lot of attention too much attention he was crucified he was killed he died he was buried on the third day he rose from the debt the dead in other words the general resurrection which was supposed to happen way out in the future he got started now by being raised from the dead and then he appeared he appeared to disciples in his risen state for a period of time over 40 days now you see him now you don't walking through walls eating fish it's just an interesting time and then 40 days after the resurrection what happened he ascended this is an acts chapter one he ascended what does it mean well he slipped beyond the horizon of space time from whence he sent the spirit into space time back into space time as our lifeline to him where did he go when he ascended did he go up well not really not essentially up was like a sign of something more than just up he went beyond he went beyond space time he entered the heavenly city beyond our current ones and which is to come the heavenly city Hebrews says here we have no lasting city but we seek the city which is to come our destination is not really above as in up there it's above as in beyond beyond our space time dimension which is why perhaps the angels said to the disciples who were gawking up into the sky after the ascension the angels said why do you stand there looking up at the sky if I'm one of those guys I'm like well duh I mean did you see that why did I I mean I got it I got get um car crashes going down ninety four and if Jesus is going I'm giving a break here mr angel why do you stand there looking up at the sky this same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back the same way you have seen him go into heaven now if he's coming back the way he went why not look up because it's not about up it's about beyond he slipped beyond space and time into the age to come which means from our time bound perspective the future so what did they do they went back to live their lives and how did they live their lives that first Jesus movement generation they lived their lives with a passionate longing for the future it was a longing that empowered them in the present to be fully present to be fully courageous in the present and then their cry became not oh give me that old time religion but marinatha come lord jesus they lean forward with that cry it's not a backward glance now there is a conservative dimension to faith in jesus because jesus conserves all that is truly good and if it's good it will be preserved it will be conserved but fundamentally the gospel is not a backward glance it's a forward lean the future is nothing to fear nothing to dread because the risen lord has gone ahead of us to occupy the land of the future it's a future more real than ever before it's a future more present than ever before it's a future more near more imminent than ever before because he's there already the future isn't empty the future is occupied and by a friend of ours your future is occupied by a friend of yours by a brother of ours is the future occupied by a bridegroom making ready for us hot dog for the future and see that that's what is the key to wisdom the key to wisdom isn't just memorizing the proverbs that's a great aid but the key is to slip into what jesus is all about and to let yourself lean into the future which he occupies now if the band can come back up because I'm very nearly done I'm a little overdone as a matter of fact you know as as we heard the voice of wisdom and the proverbs I noticed this especially on Saturday night I saw some people wilting some deflation was going on and I totally get that you know you hear the wisdom about wealth or about planning or about wise words and you know if you if you got any kind of attention span you're going oh man I have blown it I'm an unwise debt up to my ears my tongue is constantly getting me into trouble you're saying to yourself or you know I wink at faults all the time that I should be addressing but I'm scared and we see the gap between wisdom and what we do and we just feel stupid you know just it's a it's a terrible feeling to feel like you're just stupid but here's the good news wisdom is different than intelligence very different you know intelligence is is kind of native I mean you kind of genetically loaded from birth with at least your intelligence ceiling you know and then your job is to live up to that intelligence load that you were given at birth whatever it might be and and got as pleased with our just you know living up to what we've been given in that particular department but wisdom is different wisdom is not loaded at birth wisdom is acquired it's acquired and it just so happens that wisdom delights in us and wants to give herself to us and and wisdom loves the simple wisdom loves the children of men who are simple who lack wisdom I mean that we lack wisdom man that is a given that says that's okay that's your wise to know that you lack wisdom the question is do you want to dance do you want to dance into the moonlight baby all through the night because wisdom is there always always inviting us to dance with her now here's the thing about wisdom wisdom wisdom isn't just a great dancer I mean if a really good dancer came up to me and said what do you want to dance can I'm like no because I don't want to feel stupid but wisdom isn't just a great dancer wisdom is a great dancer and a great instructor of the uncoordinated and if you just have the gumption to go dance with wisdom you're going to find yourself just you make a little you do your little two-step shuffle and then you're tangling because there's something about wisdom that just a great instructor really knows how to teach you know people how to dance and and you find yourself dancing in a way you never thought you could dance before that's the way it works with wisdom and so let's stand and celebrate the Lord's Supper and as we come forward for communion this morning if you'd like to stop off for some prayer off on the wings you'd be that that area over there and over there you'd be more than welcome to you know maybe you're you're dealing with needing to face up to debt in your life you've got some unmanageable debt and it's just you're full of anxiety about it and you just need help from God to just face up to it and get help from God to get out from under that debt load maybe you realize a need for courage to you know take a long term view on peacemaking and and have that tough conversation with someone that you really don't want to have but in the end it leads to peace but you're struggling right now you have any of those kind of wisdom particular wisdom needs please feel free to get some prayer for that if you have need for healing or dealing with some kind of a new diagnosis that doesn't look too good or any of that please come and stop off for healing after you've received communion for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me likewise after supper he took the cup saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes so Lord Jesus we just stand around this table that you have set for us and the presence of our enemies and we thank you that somehow mysteriously this table this banquet is connected to the banquet feast which is to come which we have a place at that table reserved in our name and for that we just thank you and we worship you and we praise you and and we want to come to the table this morning this afternoon with real humility we want to thank you for just covering our back side with the power of your blood so that all that's taken place in the past has the power of redemption even at now flooding backward to our past so that we are free to take our eyes off the past and look forward into the future where you are we long for that day we long for that banquet feast that is to come and we receive now the foretaste of that banquet meal the sure sign of what's coming for your children we offer you praise worship and thanksgiving amen. Two lines down the center aisle and then please receive whatever. [BLANK_AUDIO]