Sermon from April 10, 2005

A pastoral colleague of mine and his wife unwittingly invested their retirement nest egg with a scam artist. They lost everything. He had promised them large returns. He was not a fly-by-night stranger. He had worshiped with them in the same congregation. He went to jail, protesting his innocence, but my friends never saw their money again.

Christianity Today reported this past January that “between 1998 and 2001 at least 80,000 people lost $2 billion in religious scams” (Christianity Today, “The Fraud Buster,” January 2005, 30). Barry Minkow of San Diego, who went to jail for swindling the investment community out of $26 million, has become something of a consultant to help people in Christian organizations avoid these scams.

He says, “‘The average person doesn’t have six figures to invest. However, when the housing market goes up, they can tap equity, and now the average person becomes a mark” for scam artists (ibid).

A favorite scam is what is called a Ponzi scheme. Here is how it works. Suppose I am a scam artist. I come to you and say, “I have a great investment in breeding race horses. It is paying a 36% annual return on investment. Dividends are paid monthly.” That sounds like a good deal. You invest $100 dollars with me, and each month I pay you a $3.00 dividend.

Of course, there is no stud farm. It’s all on paper. So, how do I pay you? Well, I sign up someone else, who also gives me $100. Now, I can pay you your first year’s dividends with money left over – for me of course. As long as I can get enough investors, I can keep “paying dividends” for a long time. If I’m really good, I get institutions, like Christian colleges and denominations and local churches, to invest. And people aren’t investing $100. They are investing in the tens of thousands.

Ponzi schemes fail for a number of reasons. The person running the scheme can’t get new investors, and as a result, earlier investors stop receiving their monthly payments and begin asking questions. Or investors may ask to visit the stud farm where their money is invested. Or investors may check with their state’s regulator, to see if the business they have invested in is registered in that state.

It seems too obvious, doesn’t it? It couldn’t happen here, could it? The $2 billion between 1998 and 2001 suggest that scams succeed in taking money out of the pockets of people, who otherwise seem to be level-headed business people. In today’s Ministry News we have included a section called “Stop Fraud Before It Starts.” It will provide you with steps you can take to protect yourself from scam artists. (See attachment at the end of this sermon.)

The Enemy Within
For the next few minutes I’d like us to consider this fraudulence from an eternal perspective. The scriptures give us a place to stand in gaining this perspective. Look with me at one particularly pointed passage from Jesus’ words.

Mark 7:21-23 says this: “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’”

Let’s focus for a few minutes on three of those words: theft, greed, and deceit. Scamming people is theft. The scam artist takes something that doesn’t belong to him. The fact that he does it with a smile and not with a gun doesn’t change the character of his act. It is theft. The fact that he does it with a smile, a very persuasive smile, highlights his act as an act of deceit. The fact that he himself may believe what he is saying only means that he has deceived himself. Lies have power, not only over the victims of fraud, but also over those who perpetrate the fraud.

The third word in Jesus’ list is greed. We may define greed as the heat of having. It is easy to see greed at work in the soul of the scam artist. He wants to acquire money and lots of it. So far, so good.

But now, we need to inquire further about the victims of fraud. To what extent was greed at work in them? Investing money in stocks and bonds and real estate is an acceptable act. Its legality tells us exactly nothing about what is going on inside the investor’s soul, which may be as pure as the driven snow or compromised with greed.

However, the greater and quicker the promised rewards of investing, the greater the temptation to greed. A 36% annual return on investment is unusual in mutual funds. Scams sometimes promise upwards of an 80% return annually on investment. 80,000 people, losing $2 billion dollars suggest that the heat of having can outweigh prudence and due diligence. The blunt name for that lust to have is greed.

1 Timothy 6:9-10 reminds us of what we are eager to forget. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Do you remember the Seven Deadly Sins? Three of them are hot-blooded sins, like anger or lust. They show on your face. They raise your blood pressure. They can lead to crimes of passion. The other four sins are cold-blooded sins, like pride and greed. They tend to be less visible, more calculating.

The hot-blooded sins make favorite topics for movies, novels, and sermons. The cold-blooded sins require more skill to render in art. But they are just as deadly, some say they are more deadly to the human soul. They cause people to get hurt.

Fighting the Enemy Within
The scale of scams in the Christian sub-culture seems to point to greed as an unrecognized, unconfessed, and unrepented sin. Now, it is notoriously difficult to discern the motives for another person’s action, even for your own. How might we know what is going on in our own heart? There is a good test: what can you do without and still be content?

It tells us a lot about ourselves to see how we respond when we have lost a job and the discretionary money dries up quickly. How content we can be with less speaks volumes about how we handle the temptation to be greedy. If it is not losing a job, then, how much we give away will offer evidence for the motives of our hearts.

Someone once asked John D. Rockefeller how much money was enough. His classic reply was, “Just a little more.” If we were to ask how much money is enough to measure contentment, the answer would be, “Just a little less.”

With all this as background, I’d like for us to consider one of the strangest parables Jesus ever told. It contributes to our theme, because it suggests a powerful motive for being generous with our wealth. It addresses this profound question: Can we think of giving as getting? We can locate the parable in Luke 16:1-9.

A Strange Parable
Let me read it. Hearing the whole parable will makes its strangeness felt. Then, we can talk about the difficulty it raises and about its application to our experience.

Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer. A pink slip is never welcome.

 “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg – I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

 “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

 “‘Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.’

 “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”

That story makes us feel uncomfortable, because Jesus seems to glorify a dishonest act. It was certainly a dishonest move on the manager’s part. The end of verse eight seems to me to explain part of the reason why Jesus told this unlikely parable. “The people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.”

Being Shrewd in the Kingdom of God
Among the people of the world, dishonesty is to be expected, and the fired manager used it to cushion the hard days that lay ahead for him. He made money work for him by using money to influence other people. Yes, it was dishonest, but it was shrewd. Why can’t people of the light be honest and shrewd with money?

Verse nine gives the real punch line of the parable. “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Sooner or later, our worldly wealth will be gone. Our peak earning years come to an end. Organizational restructuring eliminates our position. Our health fails. That’s just life.

Jesus’ point is: while you have it, be shrewd with money for the sake of the kingdom of God. Here are a few observations on how that might work.

The pastoral Center of Gavity
First, we don’t want to miss something important in Jesus’ punch line: use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves. You know what He meant. Haven’t you had someone say to you, “I’ve got a couple of extra tickets for an Eagles’ game. Would you like to go?” “My wife and I are going to catch dinner and a show on Times Square. Why don’t you and your wife be our guests for the evening?” That wins friends. It also gives someone else a chance to know you and what makes you tick. Somewhere in that new friendship, they are going to learn what your faith in Christ means to you. That sort of thing has been a spiritual turning point in a lot of people’s lives. It illustrates powerfully the idea that giving is a form of getting.

Second, the same kind of thing is happening but on a larger scale, when Bill Gates sets up a $50 million trust to provide educational scholarships. There are many Christian philanthropists, who use their wealth to further Christian causes. In the late ‘80s at a Christian Leadership conference, I met a representative of the Day Foundation that had been set up the owner of Day’s Inn motels to fund Christian causes.

Nearly every Christian college and every major interdenominational Christian organization in this country benefits from large donors, who believe in the mission or that school or organization. Again, it illustrates powerfully the idea that giving is a form of getting.

A few of us here may become or have become donors of this second kind. Most of us can use our worldly wealth to win a friend with a ticket to a football game or a cup of coffee.

In between these two uses of wealth are local churches like BVBC. Churches seldom have endowments, and yet their needs go beyond what it costs to show an act of kindness to someone. So, how can people of the light be shrewd with money, when it comes to the ministry of a local church?

First, you have to be persuaded that this church has an impact and the potential to impact its community with the gospel of Jesus Christ. You reach that persuasion first by asking how it has impacted your own life. Then, you count heads to see if there is evidence that it is impacting the lives of others. Your giving increases that impact.

Second, if you are persuaded that this church has such an impact, then use worldly wealth by giving generously to this ministry, so that when your wealth is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Give generously to this ministry.

If you give nothing to this ministry, would you start giving? Each month give an amount whose number ends in zero. Give $10 a month, $100 a month, $500 a month, $1000 a month.

If you already give something, make it your goal to give a tithe of your money, 10%. It will stretch you, and it will bless you. If you already tithe, ask God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills to increase your tribe.

(Show Power Point presentation of missions.)

As you give, you make this possible. You may never know in this world those your giving has touched for Christ. But as Christ promised, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings. Giving is a grand way of getting that has nothing to do with greed and everything to do with Christ. Don’t miss the action. Be a giver to the ministries of BVBC.

Stop Fraud Before It Starts
By Rob Moll | posted 12/17/2004 12:01 a.m.

What's a typical return for the industry?
If an invenstment claims to offer a high return, find out if companies in that industry "normally and regularly" earn that same high return. Do people in the horse-breeding industry earn 30 percent to 80 percent annually?

What do independent experts say?
Who is an expert in the industry who has no vested interest in my potential investment? What does he or she say about this investment?

Is there evidence of an actual business?
If an investment deal claims to engage in a certain business, then there should be clear evidence: contracts, liens on equipment, property debts. Minkow's ZZZZ Best fraud claimed they were restoring office buildings damaged by fire, but he could never show proof because the restorations never existed. When people begin asking, the Ponzi was over.

Is everything registered with the state?
Anytime someone takes your money to invest it in something else, he is selling a security. Both the investment advisers and the securities must be registered in every state where they operate, and regulators have information on all legal securities. Go to www.nasaa.org, and under "Quick Links," click on "Contact Your Regulator" for the Web address, e-mail addresss, phone number, and mailing address of your state's regulator.

"This article first appeared in the January, 2005, issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188."