Fresh Perspectives on Financial Prosperity
Tom Shrader examines Solomon's reflections on money and material possessions from Ecclesiastes 5, part of his series 'Reflection from the Top of the Heap.' He demonstrates how the pursuit of wealth leads to endless dissatisfaction, as those who love money are never content with what they have. Shrader challenges listeners to distinguish between needs and lifestyle choices, advocating for contentment and generosity as antidotes to materialism while finding ultimate satisfaction in their relationship with God.
“If you love money you're never gonna have enough of it, you're always gonna want a little bit more.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Reflections From the Top of the Heap (2007)
Recorded: May 31, 2007
Duration: 37 min
Themes: money, contentment, materialism, generosity, wisdom, satisfaction, greed, stewardship, struggling with materialism, wealthy person, business owner, retirement age, middle aged, financial stress, seeking purpose, empty nest
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 5:10-20, 1 Kings 3:5-9, Matthew 6:19-21, 1 Timothy 6
Theological Themes: ecclesiastes, solomon, vanity, meaninglessness, providence, gods sovereignty, biblical wisdom, old testament
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles with you, would you open them to the book of Ecclesiastes. I am so excited to do this series. I was telling Sandy last night we were talking and she said how's PL going and I said we're in just a great book. So it's going really well and the response has been really well and the reason I think is because the book just resonates especially when you look around the room and with a couple of exceptions we're in the back nine of life. We're on the 18th hole of life. We're back there and it really resonates when you look at it in your head.
Yesterday was a weird PL day. We didn't have enough seats so we had to turn people away. All day all I saw were these little smiles and head bobs because what you're going to hear is that it's an affirmation of your experience. Now we want to be really careful. We don't use our experience to affirm the scripture. The scripture is true and it's affirmed in our mind or connected oftentimes by our experience.
The Perspective from the Top
So you have the outline in front of you and the title of the series up in the right-hand corner is reflection from the top of the heap. It's Solomon looking back over his life and He writes as a guy who's an absolute winner by the world standards.
Let's take a little bit of a side trip. First Kings chapter 3 verse 5. In Gideon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night and God said what do you wish me to give you? So think about that setting. It's not a genie in a bottle. It's not make-believe. It's the Creator God of the universe that can do anything and He says Solomon what do you want?
Solomon then recalls God's faithfulness. Verse 6: You've shown your loving-kindness to your servant David my father. He said now verse 7: Oh Lord you have made your servant king in the place of my father David and yet I'm but a little child. I don't know how to go out, how to come in. Your servant is in the midst of your people which you have chosen a great people who are too many to be numbered or counted. So give your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, to discern good and evil for who's able to judge this great people of yours.
Solomon's Request for Wisdom
So you stop for a moment, get the setting. God says Solomon what do you want and Solomon says give me discernment, give me wisdom, give me that ability to have a theological understanding and incorporate it into my world. I like the idea of wisdom or discernment as saying it's the ability to see the forest and the trees. It's the ability to connect the dots and God says because you ask for this you're going to get that and because you didn't ask for money or a long life or me to defeat your enemies I'm going to give you all of that. I'm going to give you more than anybody that's come before you or anybody that'll come after you.
So that's been the premise of the series is Solomon is this guy unique in all mankind who has whatever you think would make you happy if I just had that. We're on that perpetual search for something other than the one true God. If I had that, if I had that, if I had that. There was an article that I saw the other day change your golf game in six seconds. All right I'm going to give you a tip here. That ain't going to happen but I want that six seconds for this. How can you do that? How can you do this? We're on that quest.
The Reality Behind Our Desires
Sandy was telling me last night because it's that time of year where it's warm and the ladies now it's getting cold again and the ladies are in sleeveless so Sandy's in a sleeveless shirt and when that happens every time we go out some lady will stop her and say are you a trainer? How do you get your arms like that? It's every time and she said I'm sitting in Panera yesterday and the lady comes up to me and said are you a trainer and she said no and she said I want to get arms like that. How do you get them? And my pat line is you're not going to do it. I want arms like that but you're not going to do it.
I remember one day in church there was a lady playing piano she was incredible and I said to her I'd give anything to play the piano like that and she just looked at me and said no. The next day I was in church out in the lobby and I heard the piano being played and it wasn't a song it was scales and I went in and I sat in the back of the church and I watched her for 15-20 minutes playing scales and then she saw me and she waved and I went up and I said why are you loosening up and she said no this is what I do. I play scales an hour two hours every day and I've done it for 30 years and I said so when I said I'd do anything to play the piano like you that's why you smiled and she said sure.
Well Solomon's got it and He's telling you even if you get it and you have to fill in the blank on what it is it's not going to do what you're asking it to do. Two weeks ago we talked about work and last week we talked about religion. I got into last week's lesson by the end of the week in that the premise was this if you remember ground rules for dealing with God.
Changing Rules in Culture
On Wednesday and Thursday morning I get up at 415 420 and I have a little ritual and I got my coffee and I turn on the golf channel and the RNA and the United States Golf Association are in heart they want your they're soliciting your input because they're beginning to change some of the rules of golf. Major League Baseball in an effort to speed up the game is talking about putting in a pitch clock. Here's something that'll really speed the game up in extra inning games I don't know how many of those there are but not many extra inning games every inning will start with no outs and a runner at second. I mean these are radical changes.
The NFL right now is talking about because Goodell's sick of this. Touchdown, run ads, kickoff, run ads. It feels to me it kills me and that happens they found out 20% of the 27% of the time. So Goodell says we're going to change some of these football rules. So we got rules changing, cultures
The way we interact changes, but the way we deal with God doesn't change and He sets the rules. What Solomon is doing is taking his conclusion that we saw in week one, verse one of chapter one: "meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless under the sun." He's taking that as a prism and he just tweaks it with every chapter. So if it feels repetitive, it's because it is repetitive.
Today we are—and this is my self-proclamation and I could be deluding myself—in my wheelhouse. This is my deal. I love this topic. For whatever reason, early on, the idea that captured my heart was the lack of contentment in the world. So when we get to Ecclesiastes and turn to chapter 5 verse 10, we start to talk about money. It's going to feel like a repetitive theme to you.
Financial Prosperity Defined
Look on your outline at the sentence right before we get into the outline itself. We talk about financial prosperity and try to put a little definition around it: having enough money to support the lifestyle you choose to maintain with enough left to invest for a lifetime of financial security. Now every time I talk about this, it's a real challenge because we're talking about lifestyle and future security—we might traditionally say retirement.
The problem with this is when we talk about lifestyle, everybody's answer is different and there isn't any one singular right answer. I'll give you a great illustration. I'm working as a co-banker and there's a guy that I'm working with who's a car guy. He said, "Schrage, you need a new car." I said, "Well, I don't know." He said, "I'm not asking, I'm telling you—you need a new car." I said, "Okay." He said, "I got a deal for you. I got this car and I got it out back, and it doesn't matter how I got it, I got it." At that point I figured out it probably ought to check the ownership on the deal. But he said, "It's a great deal. I'd love to help you out. You can drive this thing two, three years and sell it for what I want." I said, "Okay, that sounds like a good deal."
I went out and looked at it and it was this big black thing. I said, "I'm going to look like a pimp driving around in this thing." He said, "If you don't want it, that's fine." I said, "Well, let me check and I'll let you know tomorrow." He said, "I'll hold it till tomorrow morning, but I got to get rid of it at this price."
The Big Black Car Story
So I went home and said to Susan, "I bought a car today." Now we didn't—she didn't buy a crock-pot without us talking. I didn't buy a shirt without us. She said, "That's unusual." I told her what a great deal it was and she said, "Well, that's fine, I mean if you're comfortable." So I went down, wrote him a check, drove home, pulled up and said, "What do you think?" She said, "You look like a pimp in that car." I said, "I know, I don't feel comfortable in it."
So after a day and a half, I went to him and said, "I want to get rid of this. I'm not—it's not me, it's too much." He said, "All right, I can get this for it," which was three grand less than I paid the day and a half before for a car that was going to hold its value, if I remembered correctly, for three years. But I didn't care. I wanted out of the deal. He sold it to somebody else who's a Christian guy who was very happy, who drove it for many years. But it was a lifestyle choice. He felt comfortable in it. I didn't judge him because he felt comfortable in it, but establishing a lifestyle is a very tough thing to do. Future security financially is a tough thing to do.
Planning and Hoarding
Financial planning is important, and my basic rule of thumb is: sit down with whoever you trust, figure out what you need, re-evaluate. Anything beyond this is important—anything beyond what you plan for and say you need, anything beyond that that you retain becomes hoarding, because you've already said we're all right there. We're investing all the time in every purchase we make.
Give me a really simple illustration. You need a shirt. You can go to Dillard's outlet at Fiesta Mall and get a really spectacular golf shirt for nine bucks, let's say ten—I'm talking about a really nice shirt. But you didn't go there. You went instead to a regular Dillard's store and got yourself a shirt and paid 30 bucks for it. But then you saw one with the right logo on it and paid 80 bucks for it. Or then you went to the resort and saw the same shirt but with the resort logo on it for a hundred and a quarter.
Now I've got no judgment in that at all, but what I want you to see: it wasn't about a need, because you could meet the need for ten bucks. But you bought the logo shirt for 80 bucks. You've got $70 invested in prestige or comfort.
I'm talking to a guy the other night and he said, "I went out for dinner." I said, "Where'd you go?" He told me. I said, "How was it?" He said, "200 bucks." I said, "Well, did you have wine?" He said, "I had a glass of wine, my wife didn't have anything—200 bucks." So you're hungry, you need food. You can go to McDonald's for 99 cents, you can get a double cheeseburger, and another 99 you can get a drink. So you can feed yourself for two dollars, but you spent 200. You got a hundred and eighty dollars invested in comfort, prestige, whatever it is.
Solomon's Wisdom on Money
These issues are hard to discuss, but the answers are really important. Here's what Solomon says in chapter 5 verse 10: "Whoever loves money"—you need to mark, underline, circle "loves"—it's not money. "Whoever loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who has abundance with its income. It's vanity." "When good things increase, those who consume them increase." "The sleep of the working man," verse 12, "is pleasant whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich man doesn't allow him to sleep."
He said here's a fundamental principle: if you love money, you're never going to have enough of it. You're always going to want a little bit more. The reality is the more you make, within reason, unless you absolutely hit the mother lode and knock it out of the ballpark—and I don't know what that number is—
But within reason, the more money you make, the more money you spend. The last statistic I saw was that for every dollar increase in income, the average person spends a dollar ten. So every person in here has done it.
You bought the house that you said would make you happy and you didn't need any more, and two years later you bought a house and it wasn't smaller—it was bigger. You got a car that made you happy, but then you wanted a different car, a newer car, a bigger car. I hit this in my career when I'm moving along and all of a sudden when my income spiked, I looked around and saw that people that made what I made didn't live in the neighborhood I was living in. I felt like I needed to move to a new neighborhood, and the bank could justify it because when we were in the bank they said here's the payment you can afford, and my friends were certainly okay with it.
We started looking for houses in the new neighborhood, and then one day after looking at houses I went home and I said to Susan, "I'm done. We're staying here. I don't want to carry that extra burden. I'd rather pay this one off than be in a new house." Now I'm not—if you feel judged by that, you're not being judged by me. I'm saying what Solomon says: that's human nature.
The Statistics Don't Lie
One author writes this: "Why do we keep getting fooled? Because our hearts yearn for treasure here and now, not store up treasure in heaven. I can't see that, feel that, touch that, drive that, experience it."
There's all sorts of statistics, and reading them to you is hard, but let me give you a couple you'll get. People making 25 to 35 thousand dollars: 50% of them said "I can't afford to buy everything I need." People making 50 to 75: 42% of people said "I can't buy everything I need." People making more than a hundred grand: 27%—one in four—"I can't afford to buy everything I need." As my income increases, it seems my need increases.
I'm going to guess, because I hang around with a lot of old people like you and me, that in our discussions we look at these young folks today. I go into a restaurant and I'll see a family of six in there—four kids eating lunch—and I know that's a $70 bill, and they'll say "We don't have any money, we can't save any money."
The Starbucks Calculation
I have a friend who's a CPA and I asked her to run a number for me because I just figured this is going to kill people, because one of the things that a ton of money is spent on are Starbucks and Dutch Brothers and all this stuff. So I said to her, "Run this number: if I take Starbucks"—and she used four dollars a day, which is pretty low—"and I do it five days a week, 40 weeks a year, and I cut it out," so that leaves me Starbucks on the weekends and on vacation. It's about a grand.
If I start at age 25 and save a thousand dollars a year for 40 years by age 65, and if I invested it at 5%—you're with me, you're starting to glaze over, a lot of numbers—that's a total amount at age 65 that I'd have of $127,000. If I got 7%, it's $218,000. If you took a person and said start eliminating Starbucks during the week and you got a 10% return, at age 65—you haven't done any financial planning, you just cut Starbucks—you'd have $527,000. Half a million dollars, and all you did was cut Starbucks. The money's there.
I'll give you this. Here's a stat that blew me away. In 1900, 43% of the family budget was spent on food—40% of the family income. In 1960, 17.5%. In 1998, 15%. In 2017, 9.6% spent on food. Now I don't know if they mean groceries. There's more money around than ever before—disposable income. But what happens is as that money increases, so does the expense. One day admission to Disneyland: now a hundred bucks. You take four kids, you got $600 before you pay ten dollars for a bottle of water.
The Paradox of Prosperity
And this coincides—and maybe this is too much for you, I don't know—this coincides with the United Nations releasing their report on the happiest countries in the world. I don't know if you saw it last week, but the happiest country on earth they say is Norway. Then Denmark. Then Ireland. The United States is 14.
So they're interviewing the guy and he said, "How do you say Norway is the happiest place on earth?" And I thought His answer was fascinating. He said, "You know, I think more accurately we would say it's the least unhappy place on earth." In other words, we're never satisfied. The more you have, the more you spend. The more you make, the more it's gone.
Solomon's Grievous Observation
Verse 13: He said, "I saw something else. There's a grievous evil which I've seen under the sun: riches become hoarded by their owner to His hurt. When those riches were lost through a bad investment and He fathered a son, there was nothing to support Him."
Verse 15—yellow mark, underlined, circle it—it's the key to the whole deal: "I came into the world naked. I'm leaving naked." When I can get that in my head—I came in with nothing, I'm leaving with nothing—all of a sudden the stuff doesn't matter.
It's like Monday, God said, "Tom, you need an illustration." So David Rockefeller dies. David Rockefeller died Monday, 101 years old. Rockefeller, boatload of money. And it's the old "What did He leave behind?" Everything. It's the plight of all of us. In silence, and you've got to get this into your head.
Jesus' Solution
Jesus says it this way: "Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust will destroy them, where thieves will break in and steal them. But store up for yourself treasures in heaven. Be rich in God's economy, not man's economy."
It's not an anti-material message. It's anti-materialism. It's not saying stuff's bad. It's saying thinking I'm going to find satisfaction there is bad. And I'll give you this: the antidote—and I've read about it and discovered it—the antidote to materialism is giving. When you give, especially—I was in a meeting the other day with a guy who's written a book, interesting book, and He said when somebody
has something and they give to somebody who's lacking, the person who's giving almost always realizes that he or she was lacking something too. And Solomon said you go and get this stuff in this pursuit of it and you get these goods, and all you have are those goods to enjoy. They aren't going to do what you think they're going to do.
My favorite story is the old William Randolph Hearst story where he gets into art. He's in a magazine or book and becomes obsessed with this painting—obsessed. He has a curator of all of his art and he goes to this guy and says, "Find this painting and buy it for me." So the guy comes back a week or two later and says, "Can't find it. Don't know where it is. Was somewhere in Europe. Disappeared."
So now Hearst is really focused on this. He hires two detectives. They search all over the world. They come back three or four months later and they said, "We have tracked it and tracked it and tracked it, and we found it." He said, "Perfect! Buy it." They said, "You don't need to. It's in a crate in the basement at San Simeon. You already own it." So there was somewhere in there where he said this will make me happy. It's the warning, and again it's one of those lines that changes your thinking.
The Cumulative Effect of Earthly Things
Jim Elliott is about age 20 when he writes this: "I've been musing lately on the extremely dangerous cumulative effects of earthly things. One may have good reason, for example, to want a wife, and he may have one legitimately. But with a wife comes Peter the pumpkin eater's proverbial dilemma—he must find a place to keep her. So a wife demands a house. A house in turn requires curtains, rugs, washing machine, etc. A house with this scene must soon become a house with children." Then he writes this phrase: "The needs multiply as they are met."
I buy a car. I have to wash it. I have to clean it. I have to maintain it. Here's where I see, and again young people, this stupid idea that every kid needs his own bedroom. So every—and now we're having bigger families. So now we're in real dilemma. So now you got a mom and dad who have four kids. That means a five-bedroom house.
And here's what happens: You can put two kids in one room and you're going to help them figure out how to negotiate and problem solve and live together. You're going to teach them habits they can use all their life. But if they have their own room—in my economy, not to judge you, but under this theory—you have two extra bedrooms. What do two extra bedrooms cost to furnish? To put on a 30-year mortgage? To insure? To air condition? Look at the money that's spent. As you meet that need you perceive, or that demand, your needs expand and multiply.
The Inability to Enjoy What We Have
Solomon goes on because he can't leave it alone. He says you came in with nothing. You leave with nothing. Someone more cynical than me said, "And considering the kind of world it is, you're lucky to break even." Job comes to that conclusion. Paul comes to that conclusion.
Solomon wraps this up here. Verse 17: "Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He's also empowered him to eat from them, to receive his reward, to rejoice in his labor. That's a gift from God." You hear what He said? It's a gift from God to be happy in your work, to love your work, to enjoy your work.
Verse 6: "There's another evil which I've seen under the sun. It's prevalent among men: a man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that his soul lacks nothing of all he desires, and yet God does not empower him to eat from them. A foreigner comes and enjoys them." He said one of the saddest things you can see is a man who has all this stuff and at the end of the day says it doesn't do what I trusted it to do. Paul uses a phrase in 1 Timothy 6: "the uncertainty of riches."
The False Promise of Achievement
I think—guessing, don't know—you've all been there. I've got a grandson that's 11. Baseball season starts on the 30th, his first game, and I know in his mind he's thinking, "If I can just..." Well, skip the 11-year-old. Go to the 9-year-old. Go to Yale. I know Yale's thinking baseball's my ticket to happiness. "I'm going to get a scholarship. I'm going to go to Stanford." He came up with Stanford because somebody told him he's not smart enough to get in there. "I want to go to Stanford," and he hasn't thought beyond that.
What he'll start to think is, "From Stanford I'm going to get my MBA. I'm going to get my law degree. I'm going to get into physics or the arts, and I'm going to be the guy." And at every step we think that's the magic thing that'll make me happy. And the only thing that's going to make you happy is a deep intimate union with God through Christ. It doesn't mean don't aspire to go to Stanford. Don't aspire to be the best. But that's only going to take you so far. It's only going to give you so much.
Even Success Can't Deliver True Satisfaction
I was watching the other night "A Football Life" about a guy I met—Chuck Knoll, who was head coach of the Steelers. He's the only coach to go to four Super Bowls and win all four. They're interviewing him when he came and took the Steeler job. Here was his first—think about this—they were awful. They'd won three games in three years. His first meeting with the team, he said, "I've been watching film and this team is awful, and this team is awful because most of you guys are awful. All but three or four of you, I'm going to have to let go." He went home and told his wife, "Get ready for a long ride. This team is awful and it's going to take three or four years."
After he won the fourth Super Bowl, riding home, he said to his wife, "We're old, we're slow, we haven't had a first-round draft choice in years. We're going to start to stink." They're interviewing him after he won his first Super Bowl. Now remember, they'd been terrible. They had never been to a playoff game. They'd never had a postseason win. They won finally a Super Bowl, and I can't remember—Tom Brookshier or somebody's interviewing him and said,
Coach, congratulations. He said, thank you. He said, you gotta be wondering how you're gonna do it next year.
I love sports because that's the beauty of it. At some point, whatever sport you're in, you're no longer the guy anymore. You're no longer the gal anymore. And in life, here's what Solomon says: wake up. You don't lose your drive, but your motivation now is to please God and communicate with Him. And that's where I'm going to find real satisfaction.
All right. Only three more weeks. We'll pick up right there next week.
Father, thank You for that amazing truth. And our heads bob and our faces smile because we know it's true. Every person in here has experienced the disappointment of success, the disappointment of achievement. God, help us in light of Your word. Choose a lifestyle that we can support and plan and prepare for the future. But like any plan we have, we write it in pencil. We give You the eraser. God, let us be faithful and we trust You with the results. Father, we pray that to You in Jesus' name. Amen.