Jesus Wants You to Have That Mercedes!

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
August 3, 2008

Jesus Wants You to Have That Mercedes!
Deuteronomy 8:11-20
Luke 8:4-8

Jesus wants you to have a Mercedes.
Yes, that’s right:
Jesus wants you to have a Mercedes.
Jesus wants you to have money in the bank:
money in your checking account,
money in your savings account;
money in your pocket,
plenty of money --
enough so you can do all the things you want to do,
enough so you can buy all the things you want to buy.

Jesus wants you to be prosperous,
More than that: Jesus wants you to be wealthy!

This is what’s being preached from many pulpits these days.
It has a name: “the prosperity gospel”,
and it is VERY popular!
Pews full, attentive listeners,
with pencils and notebooks at the ready,
eager to learn the secrets of how
their faith can lead them to greater wealth and success.

One of the many preachers who is known
for his fondness for sharing the prosperity gospel
will help you find the riches Jesus wants you to have
and you don’t even have to set foot in his church.
Just go to his website,
as I did a few years ago,
and request a small bottle
of his “miracle water”.
There was no charge for this miraculous water,
but there was a suggestion for a “love offering”,
which seemed more than fair
in return for having the preacher unlock the door
to what Jesus had in store for me.

Now I knew there had to be something to the miracle water:
the preacher himself was testimony to its power:
he drove a Porsche, lived in a large house,
and drew a high six-figure salary from his church.
So I got a bottle of miracle water,
and I read the instructions
and followed them precisely.
And I waited, confident that prosperity
would soon be knocking at my door.

Nothing happened.
My bank account retained its emaciated look,
my pension gave me no hope of
of an early retirement, and
my five-year old Mazda kept needing repairs.

I checked back on the website,
and I learned that there was nothing wrong at all
with my miracle water -- It was indeed miraculous --
after all, the preacher said so!
The problem lay with my own faith,
which clearly must have been very weak,
otherwise, the miracle water would have turned into
a shower of riches.
Financial security done in by weak faith.

Now we all chase after money;
we all want more,
we want greater success,
we want security, comfort,
even prosperity and wealth.
The reality is that Jesus makes no promise
that following him
will lead to comfort and economic security,
even if we have “miracle water”.

Read through the gospels and you’ll find that
Jesus devoted a great deal of his ministry
to talking about money.
About half his teachings touch somehow on money.
He never said money was bad,
nor did he say success was bad.
What he did say again and again,
was that money has the potential to trip us up,
to lead us down the wrong path,
to cause us to lose our focus
and have the wrong priorities.

The parable of the sower teaches this lesson so simply
and so elegantly
We all want to think that we are the good soil
that Jesus speaks of,
but if we are honest with ourselves,
most of us, including ministers,
would have to admit that
the thornpatch is where we spend most of our lives,
that place where Jesus reminds us
the “cares and riches
and pleasures of life
….choke off the word of the Lord”
(Luke 8:14)

“The cares and riches and pleasures of life”:
the things that occupy most of our day.
Jesus was simply building on Moses’ warning
to the children of Israel
from more than a thousand years earlier:
“when you have eaten your fill
and have built fine houses
and live in them,
[and you grow prosperous,
you are far more likely to forget the Lord God]
(Deuteronomy 8:12)

Moses was warning the children of Israel
of the dangers of the thornpatch,
and Jesus reinforced that warning
time and time again.

Too much time in the thornpatch
can lead to a dangerous disease,
one that most of us suffer from,
the disease of “affluenza”.
Affluenza: an obsession with consumption
and affluence.

We have become a ferociously consumer culture
over the past 40 years.
We measure ourselves and one another
by what we buy,
what we drive,
where we live,
what we wear,
and what we have.
We all suffer from “affluenza” in some way.
Americans make up about 5% of the world’s population,
yet we consume about a third,
that’s one-third!
of all the world’s resources.

In our never-ending chase to consume things,
to buy things, to have things,
we end up setting God aside,
overlook Jesus,
and turn away from the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
We get caught in the thornpatch.
We ignore Moses’ warnings.

Here’s the irony, though.
We can achieve financial independence
by following Jesus Christ.
Yes, we can achieve financial independence.
All we have to do is change our definition
of what we mean
by the term “financial independence”.
If we think of the term as having enough money
to be able to live the way we want to live,
buy the things we want to buy
and do what we want to do,
then we should turn to Suze Orman.

The financial independence Jesus offers us is different:
it provides us with freedom from “affluenza”,
from obsession with money and things,
from worrying about whether we’ve got enough.

When we achieve financial independence
through Jesus we understand
what the writer of the Proverb meant
when he realized that he could have a full stomach
and still feel hungry.
“Don’t give me riches, Lord”,
the writer of the proverb says,
but “feed me with the food I need.”
Proverbs 30:8

Jesus is right when he teaches us that
we cannot serve God and mammon;
one ends up first, the other second.
The question for each of us is,
which is first,
really first,
in our lives, your life?
It is easy to say God is first,
but how do you live your life?
Focused more on mammon or
focused more on God?

We do not have give up everything;
we simply have to look to Jesus
to cure us of our “affluenza”,
Then we can be financially independent,
our lives overflowing with the riches of
peace,
mercy,
righteousness, goodness,
hope and love.

So come to this table as the first step out of the thornpatch,
the first step to being healed of affluenza.
Come to this table to
renew your commitment to serving the Lord God,
rather than the god of mammon,
the god of consumption,
the god of mastercard and visa.

Come to this table to be nurtured and fed
in a way that even a meal
in the finest, most expensive restaurant cannot.

Come to this table and then go out,
filled with the currency of Christ himself
and then you will know what it means,
perhaps for the first time,
to live a truly rich life.
AMEN