You're listening to Tim Bulkeley's
5 minute Bible What about the prosperity gospel
part 2 Love In the first
part I claimed that the preachers of the so-called prosperity gospel
deny the sovereignty of the grace of God
in part 2 I want to claim the criterion of love also
fails I want to begin though
with money, because one of the striking features of at least the TV presentations of
the
prosperity gospel are that its about money the pitch
always ends with make your donation
or if it's not at the end it's at a suitable high point in the middle
now any preacher worth his or her salt knows that when you have to defend being paid to
preach
or asking for donations, then you turn to 1 Corinthians
chapter 9 and verse 9ff.: "For it is written in the law of Moses
'Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.'
Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this
for us doesn't he? Yes, this was written for us, because
when the ploughman ploughs and the thresher threshes they ought to do so in the hope of sharing
in the harvest
if we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much
if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support
from you
shouldn't we have it all the more? But we did not use this right
on the contrary we put up with anything
rather that hinder the gospel of Christ"
You see it's fine if you stop a bit about oxen,
but if you read on Paul's whole point is that
although it's right somebody should be paid for what they do
and that a preacher needs to live he actually hasn't exercised that right
and it looks a bit similar
when you consider Jesus It's is a great principle
that the worker is worthy of his hire
But Jesus never asked for support from his hearers
oh there were a number of women who supported him, supported his ministry
out of their own means. But he never asked
and
on another occasion, for example: "As they were walking down the road a man sad to him
'I will follow you wherever you go' Jesus replied
foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the son of man has nowhere to lay
his head
little support from either Jesus or Paul for
asking for money for your ministry. But let's consider the circumstances too
very different. Back in time of Jesus and Paul
if you gathered a crowd of a few hundred you had your lungs off
to make yourself heard nowadays with all our modern technology
we have auditoriums big enough to seat thousands and still be heard
and we broadcast our message
over the TV and we reach at least thousands more
and we stick the video on YouTube
and if we're a popular preacher we reach thousands more, now if each of those thousands
donated $1 the preacher would be rich as Croesus
and thenthere's the phenomena of celebrity preaching
most of those who are known
for the so-called prosperity gospel
are celebrity preachers, celebrity preachers,
you can recognize them, they have New York Times bestsellers
even if like Mark Driscoll they've had
to buy that status and
they have 'product' for sale books DVD's and all the rest
and sometimes you wonder whether what they are giving away
is the gospel or whether they are selling their 'product'
and ask yourself what they're sayng not just with their words but
with the whole presentation
Are they saying: Be like Jesus?
Or are they saying: You can be like me!
Rich, famous... Or are they actually saying
"Gimme! I want!" what's the real message?
Okay what's love got to do with it? You've talked a lot about economics
CS Lewis distinguished 4 kinds of love in the Bible
but for our purposes we are only interested in 2
the big difference between love as giving
and love as desire or taking. You see
if the prosperity gospel denies the sovereignty of the grace of God
I think it also fails to show love
in all sorts of ways, not the least of which
is its claim that the poor
are faithless
for if wealth
and all sorts of other good things, posterity
comes from God to the faithful
the implication is if you don't have those things you are faithless
and that my friends
is a lie!