Riches Without Understanding Series

Good morning. If you have your Bibles with you, please open up to Psalm 49:1. While you are looking that Psalm up, I have a music trivia question. Does anybody like country music? A lot of people. Has anybody ever heard of the country group called The Gatlin Brothers? More than I thought. They were a country group that was made up of three brothers, Steve, Rudy, and the most famous of all was Larry Gatlin. Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin brothers performed probably late 70s, early 80s. They were very popular. They had a number of number-one songs that made the country top list, including Houston, Broken Lady, and my all-time favorite All the Gold in California. In case you didn’t remember it, I put the lyrics up there on the screen. It says “All the gold in California is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills in somebody else’s name. If you are dreaming about California, it don’t matter at all where you play before, California is a brand new game.” Like most country songs, the message is quite simple. If you are thinking about going to California or anywhere to stake your claim on some wealth, fame, or fortune, you better think twice about it because that pot of gold that is out there is very difficult to get your hands on. It is very difficult to get your name up in lights. If you were to somehow reach that pot of gold, what you find out is all that glitters is not gold. That is really the point of the song. I thought since I have the lyrics up there and since so many of you know the song, I thought we could sing it together. Everybody ready? Nobody seems excited about that. I am not too excited about it either. But I thought what we could do is watch a video from YouTube seeing Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers perform this great song. (Video played here.)

I saw some of you tapping your feet and singing along with that. What the message is here is quite simple. If you are thinking about pursuing fame and fortune, you better think about it twice because it is going to cost you something. It may even cost your life, which is really the theme of Psalm 49. We are going to read through the entire Psalm. We have been spending the summer looking at various Psalms. We looked at about six of them. We talked about how the Psalms are classified in a number of ways. Praise Psalms. Psalms of lament, and we talked about Psalms of instruction. This Psalm today is actually a Psalm of instruction designed to teach us about something. Specifically designed to teach us that the pursuit of wealth purely for the sake of accumulation can lead to nothing but death. We are going to read through the entire Psalm starting with verse 1 and going all the way through verse 20. (Scripture read here.)

There is a lot of information in this Psalm. Too much really to cover today. But the central point of the Psalm is driven home by the very last line. The very last line that says “A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.” In a nutshell what he is saying is that someone who pursues wealth just for the purpose of accumulating that wealth on earth to find a comfort in that wealth is going to end up like an animal. In other words, when the person dies and the grim reaper is standing there and says hello and the person says I am not ready to go. He says well you are going anyway. He says well I can take my stuff with me and he says no you have to leave all that behind. Because at the moment of death, everything is equal. You are standing there alone and you are standing there with animals and other people and basically you are alone. All your stuff has to be left behind. That is really the main point of this entire Psalm. There are some very good things in here that the Psalmist would like to understand. The thing that is good about this particular Psalm is that a lot of these applications are just as applicable today as they were 3,000 years ago when that Psalm was written. He wants us to remember a few things.

The first thing I think he wants us to remember is that we live in a world where people are out there trying to get you to give up your money. In other words, to give them your money. They will go through whatever means possible to try to separate you from your finances or your stuff. In this particular context, we don’t know what is going on. He goes on to say “Why should I fear when evil days come, when wicked deceivers surround me – those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches?” We don’t know exactly the situation here but apparently the Psalmist is feeling a little bit of anxiety that he is surrounded by people that are just focused on their wealth and trying to figure out deceitful ways to get at his wealth. We don’t know. It could be somebody trying to blackmail him. It could be the government trying to get some more taxes out of him. We really don’t know. What we do know is what was true back then is still true today. There are people out there trying to separate you from your wealth. They are so intent on getting money that they will do whatever they can to get their hands on it. Especially now when you think about the internet, they come up with all sorts of creative ways to separate you from not only your finances but your identity. They want to rob you of your identity so ultimately they can get their hands on the finances. They will do anything. One of the more recent scams some of you may be aware of is where somebody hacks into your computer, steals your address book, all your email addresses, and then sends out a mass email to all your friends with your name on it where you are basically asking your friend to give you money. This is true. An example would be somebody gets an email and it says hi this is Chuck. I am over in London this week having a great time at the Olympics. However, somebody stole my wallet and I need money. I can’t get home. I need about $2,000. Would you wire it to me? They send out thousands of these. The odds are, after a certain amount of emails sent, some compassionate person out there is going to say sure I will wire it to you that. Somebody will. That is the odds. They know that. You have people out there being creative on how they can accumulate wealth so that they can buy things to boast about their riches.