How We Guard It

HOARDED WEALTH IS DECEITFUL

Guarded wealth promises joy but does not deliver. When we begin to make money a god, it ceases to bless us and begins to be a curse. It seems that the more money we have, the more we want, thinking that money will ultimately bring happiness. But that is a lie.

Jesus was hitting hard at this point with His parable of the rich fool. It is the perfect illustration of the deceitfulness of guarded, hoarded wealth:

The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, “What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?” So he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.’ ” But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?” (Luke 12:16–20).

Jesus then said, “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21). Hoarded wealth is deceitful: it gives us the illusion of security for the future. Suddenly this rich man had no future on this earth.

So money will not bring happiness, nor does it guarantee a long future. Yet money plays the good role in our life of enabling us to have things we need. It is far better, though, to have in life the things money cannot buy.

I have a small diamond stickpin I once wore on my ties. The diamond wasn’t always on a stickpin. It was first in the wedding ring I gave my wife in 1970. We were students in those days, and all I could afford was a ring with one small diamond. In fact, if you examine the diamond closely, you can easily see a large carbon chip in the middle of it. I would be ashamed to tell you how little I paid for that ring. However, symbolized by that ring was a world of love and the confidence that God had brought us together and had a plan for our lives. Around the same time a college friend gave his fiancée one of the largest and most beautiful diamond rings I had ever seen. It was worth several thousands of dollars. Sadly, their marriage did not last two years.

Money may buy million-dollar houses, but it can’t transform them into homes. Sometimes the most miserable people in the world live behind those big iron gates and carved mahogany doors. What really matters most in life is not what your money can buy, but what it can’t buy. Wealth that is simply “heaped up” is deceitful: it will not satisfy.

HOARDED WEALTH IS DECADENT

Money can also be decadent when hoarded. It decays. If we don’t use it, we ultimately lose it. At best, the money we earn and spend and save is temporal. Only the riches we deposit in the bank of heaven have eternal value. That’s why Jesus warned, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19–20).

With these words of our Lord in mind, James said, “Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded.” James was so certain of the temporary and decaying nature of riches that he described the decay as if it had already happened. In the first-century world, there were no banks, no certificates of deposit, no mutual funds, no stocks or bonds or other investment vehicles. A man’s wealth was measured in grain, garments, or gold. Remember, the rich fool in Jesus’ story built more barns to store his grain harvests. But grain “corrupts” or “rots” (as some translations say) when it sits there rather than being used.

Garments in the ancient world were also symbols of wealth. Joseph blessed his brothers with garments as gifts when they were reunited in Egypt (Genesis 45:22). It was the desire for an expensive Babylonian robe that led to Achan’s downfall after Jericho’s fall (Joshua 7:10–26). Naaman brought Elisha garments as gifts (2 Kings 5:23). James said that hoarded garments, used as ancient savings accounts, would eventually become “moth-eaten.”

Unfortunately, I have had my own personal experience with moths. I once had a nice winter coat in the back of my closet that they destroyed. A moth is subtle and silent, lurking behind the scenes. It is not like other insects. A roach will badger and taunt you, eating away at cabinets and leaving droppings on drain boards. Crickets will bug you (no pun intended). They make noise but can’t be found. A mosquito will bite you. A fly will bother you. But a moth? It will beguile you. It keeps to itself. It will not bug you, or bite you, or bother you. It is quiet as it hangs out in the back of your closet and does its work in secret. Garments, like grain, become ruined when they aren’t used.

And then there is gold. Lack of use causes metals to decay and corrode. A hinge on a gate that hasn’t been opened in months will rust and corrode. However, as most of us know, real gold will not rust. James was indicating that our wealth is really just fool’s gold: it has no eternal value. It is quite a shock to find out that what we thought would bring us happiness doesn’t deliver. James’s point is that hoarded wealth that isn’t used is both deceitful and decaying.

HOARDED WEALTH IS DECEPTIVE

As we mentioned earlier, wealth brings with it a false sense of security about the future. The stock market, for instance, is up one day, down the next. Riches are uncertain. James’s contemporaries experienced the deceptiveness of wealth firsthand. Within a few years of writing this letter, Jerusalem was completely destroyed by the Romans, and all the accumulated wealth of the Jews—their security blanket for the future—was taken from them.

It’s deceptive to think our security is found in hoarded wealth. In fact, James warned that it will one day “witness against you.” When you stand before the judgment seat of Christ, the question will not be, “How much did you make?” More likely the question will be, “What did you do with what you had?” Your money will speak that day: it will either witness for you or against you.

What a tragedy to come to the end of life and have treasure laid up for this world only. We came into this world naked, without anything. We will leave it the same way. We can’t take a single material thing with us. We tend to forget this truth, but we don’t even own our possessions. Everything belongs to God. We are only stewards. We are simply passing through.

Hoarded wealth is deceitful. It is decaying. And it is, above all things, deceptive.