How to Help Friends Escape the Prosperity Gospel
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - So begins a new week of episodes with John Piper
00:00:07.320 | on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:08.800 | Thanks for listening.
00:00:10.120 | Pastor John, we have an email from a listener named Kai Tam.
00:00:12.880 | Pastor John, how do you practically and lovingly
00:00:15.120 | lead your loved ones who are steeped
00:00:16.680 | in the prosperity gospel all their lives
00:00:18.720 | back to the true gospel?
00:00:20.520 | I come from Malaysia and Singapore,
00:00:22.840 | places immersed in prosperity gospel theology.
00:00:26.480 | I understand that in 2 Timothy,
00:00:28.320 | Paul says there will come such days as these
00:00:30.320 | where people will gather for themselves
00:00:31.720 | teachers that suit their own passions.
00:00:34.600 | But what if these are your close friends and family
00:00:37.020 | whom you love so much?
00:00:38.800 | How do you teach or love or rebuke or reprove them?
00:00:42.080 | I'm training for ministry in Melbourne.
00:00:44.360 | One day I will go back to Singapore,
00:00:46.000 | God willing to preach and pastor there.
00:00:47.720 | And I know as Paul advised,
00:00:49.800 | I should preach in every season
00:00:51.440 | being ready to rebuke, reprove and exhort.
00:00:55.160 | So what does this look like in a culture
00:00:56.880 | so steeped in the prosperity gospel?
00:01:00.080 | Just yesterday, I was writing an article
00:01:04.080 | about these days being the best of times
00:01:07.880 | and the worst of times.
00:01:09.000 | And one of the evidences of it being the worst of times
00:01:13.080 | that I mentioned has to do
00:01:15.000 | with the so-called prosperity gospel.
00:01:17.720 | I wrote, "I have watched the rise of enormous churches
00:01:22.040 | and ministries who preach and export to poor nations
00:01:27.040 | a prosperity, quote, gospel, unquote,
00:01:31.560 | that mutes the Bible teaching on suffering
00:01:35.960 | and reduces the glorious gospel to earthly betterment
00:01:40.920 | rooted in human attitudes, not the glory of Calvary."
00:01:45.680 | That was my sentence that I wrote down.
00:01:48.000 | And there are three criticisms
00:01:50.640 | and I wanna just mention these
00:01:53.440 | so that it can inform the counsel that I give to Kai.
00:01:58.440 | Number one, downplaying the vast scriptural theology
00:02:03.920 | of suffering expected of Christians,
00:02:06.960 | the suffering that's expected of Christians
00:02:10.120 | and promised to Christians like 1 Peter 4.19,
00:02:13.400 | "Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will
00:02:17.720 | entrust their souls to a faithful creator
00:02:20.160 | while doing good."
00:02:22.560 | So the prosperity gospel downplays
00:02:27.440 | this vast pervasive teaching in the Bible
00:02:31.000 | that we're called upon to suffer.
00:02:33.240 | And it's not just persecution suffering,
00:02:35.680 | but body wasting away disease type suffering
00:02:38.880 | in Romans 8.23 and 2 Corinthians 4.16.
00:02:43.520 | So Christians in the prosperity churches
00:02:46.520 | are often profoundly unprepared
00:02:50.360 | for what life under God's providence is gonna deal them.
00:02:55.280 | And that's tragic.
00:02:57.120 | And so it's right for Kai to feel jealous about his family,
00:03:02.120 | that he can figure out a way to help them see these things.
00:03:06.720 | And here's just one little sidebar.
00:03:09.640 | My wife is going to Africa in a few weeks.
00:03:13.680 | Well, I think sometime this fall.
00:03:16.580 | And she's going for the third time as part of a ministry
00:03:21.260 | to give wheelchairs to the disabled
00:03:25.660 | who can only crawl around or stay in their simple houses.
00:03:30.660 | And a wheelchair changes the life of many.
00:03:36.220 | And she made the point to me
00:03:37.220 | as I was talking to her about this the other day,
00:03:39.980 | that big prosperity ministries,
00:03:43.060 | as they're looking for partners there to help them,
00:03:45.620 | big prosperity ministries usually give little help
00:03:50.300 | because disabled people in a wheelchair
00:03:53.060 | are an embarrassment to their ministry.
00:03:57.060 | They don't have a biblical theology of suffering
00:04:00.460 | and the fruit is not pretty.
00:04:04.460 | So that's my first concern,
00:04:06.980 | the downplaying of a biblical theology of suffering
00:04:12.880 | that would help people so much prepare
00:04:15.600 | for what necessarily must come in this life.
00:04:19.320 | And the second thing is the prosperity gospel
00:04:22.960 | reduces the glorious gospel to earthly betterment.
00:04:27.960 | The dominant gift of the gospel in the New Testament
00:04:32.040 | is not earthly betterment.
00:04:34.480 | The dominant gift is the joy of reconciliation with God
00:04:40.480 | and eternal joys at His right hand forever
00:04:44.600 | through Jesus Christ.
00:04:46.800 | Whether life in this age goes better here on earth
00:04:51.400 | is quite secondary to the New Testament way
00:04:55.040 | of looking at things.
00:04:56.200 | There's gonna be a great day on a new earth
00:04:59.280 | where everything is made glorious,
00:05:01.520 | but that's not the immediate payoff of the gospel
00:05:05.640 | in front of everything else in the New Testament.
00:05:09.280 | The biggest problem in the world
00:05:12.520 | is that God is angry at His creatures
00:05:15.360 | for rebelling against them.
00:05:17.520 | And the central good of the good news
00:05:20.760 | is that in Christ, God took the initiative
00:05:23.640 | to satisfy that anger and make Himself our treasure
00:05:27.000 | and not our terror.
00:05:29.040 | So prosperity preaching skews all that so badly
00:05:33.880 | by turning possible and secondary effects
00:05:38.560 | of the gospel into primary certain outcomes,
00:05:42.320 | which they're not.
00:05:43.560 | And the third problem that I see
00:05:46.280 | is that prosperity teachers distort
00:05:48.880 | the ground of our salvation
00:05:50.680 | by putting the emphasis on whether we can produce
00:05:53.320 | the kind of faith that gets healed and gets rich
00:05:57.420 | rather than putting it on the glorious work of Christ
00:06:01.360 | in dying and rising to bear the guilt of our sin
00:06:04.760 | and propitiate the wrath of God.
00:06:06.440 | So what I would suggest to Kai
00:06:09.120 | as he considers talking to his family about this
00:06:11.880 | is number one, concede and celebrate
00:06:16.880 | that they are right to believe that God aims
00:06:22.200 | at the happiness and the health
00:06:24.480 | and the wealth of His children eventually.
00:06:28.760 | God did not send Jesus into the world
00:06:31.520 | to make them eternally miserable, but eternally happy.
00:06:36.220 | And to remove all tears from their eyes, Revelation 21, 4.
00:06:41.000 | But raise the question with your family about timing.
00:06:46.000 | Prosperity preachers get the timing of this all wrong.
00:06:50.280 | Is all of that wonderful promise
00:06:53.960 | intended for now in this age in full?
00:06:57.840 | Or does the Bible teach that God saves us in stages
00:07:02.560 | or phases and that this earthly walk
00:07:05.800 | between conversion and glorification
00:07:09.320 | is one of much suffering in the hope of glory?
00:07:13.920 | So my suggestion to Kai is that
00:07:16.760 | if he can tackle this with them,
00:07:19.500 | make it an emphasis on timing,
00:07:22.280 | not whether we will be eventually healthy,
00:07:24.560 | wealthy, and happy in God.
00:07:26.280 | And second thing I would suggest
00:07:28.320 | is talk to them about God Himself
00:07:31.600 | being our greatest treasure, not His gifts.
00:07:34.960 | For example, "Whom have I in heaven but you?
00:07:37.680 | "And there's nothing on earth I desire besides you.
00:07:41.060 | "My flesh and my heart may fail,
00:07:43.500 | "but God is the strength of my heart
00:07:46.240 | "and my portion forever," Psalm 73, 25.
00:07:49.960 | And the text that Noelle and I used in our wedding,
00:07:53.880 | she just called my attention to it the other day.
00:07:56.980 | "Though the fig tree should not blossom,
00:07:58.980 | "nor fruit be on the vines,
00:08:00.600 | "the produce of the olive fail,
00:08:02.400 | "the fields yield no food,
00:08:03.980 | "the flock be cut off from the fold,
00:08:05.900 | "there be no herd in the stalls,
00:08:08.520 | "yet I will rejoice in the Lord.
00:08:13.080 | "I will take joy in the God of my salvation."
00:08:16.240 | That is so foreign to the mindset of prosperity preachers
00:08:21.240 | because of what is taken away in that verse
00:08:24.360 | and how joy abounds in that verse.
00:08:27.400 | And the third thing I would say to Kai
00:08:30.400 | is raise with your family
00:08:32.640 | the issue of how they can love those
00:08:35.740 | with permanent disabilities.
00:08:37.980 | Are they embarrassed by them in their community?
00:08:41.620 | Or is it a sign of Christ's love that they care for them?
00:08:46.500 | And is it a sign of great faith
00:08:49.460 | that these people, while not healed,
00:08:51.500 | are rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God
00:08:53.740 | rather than being miserable and angry at God?
00:08:56.700 | Isn't that glorious faith?
00:08:59.340 | And the fourth thing I would say
00:09:01.780 | is ask the family, ask them,
00:09:04.600 | what they think of the promises of suffering in the Bible.
00:09:08.820 | If they say, "Well, it's all persecution.
00:09:11.520 | "We're not promised to suffer from sickness,"
00:09:15.260 | then point them to those texts
00:09:18.220 | which show that it includes the bodies wasting away.
00:09:23.220 | Ask them about those texts.
00:09:29.120 | My sense is that the necessity of all suffering
00:09:34.120 | is minimized in prosperity preaching.
00:09:37.140 | All suffering is minimized,
00:09:38.840 | not just the necessity of persecution suffering.
00:09:42.240 | And fifth, share stories of great saints in history
00:09:47.240 | whom God used mightily and who suffered enormously.
00:09:52.160 | And sixth, as a means to these kinds of conversations,
00:09:58.240 | ask your parents or brothers and sisters,
00:10:00.640 | whoever you're having to deal with,
00:10:02.080 | ask them for permission to talk about these things
00:10:06.000 | and set up a time when they're expecting it
00:10:10.040 | rather than being rushed or surprised by it
00:10:13.920 | and needing to be defensive.
00:10:16.540 | I just think a lot of times we try to sow the seeds
00:10:20.120 | of our ideas on the spur of the moment
00:10:21.960 | and it's never quite the right time.
00:10:24.800 | We just need to ask them permission
00:10:26.520 | to set up the right time.
00:10:27.840 | And the last thing I would say to Kai is pray
00:10:31.880 | that God would give them eyes to see
00:10:34.700 | that there is great joy in suffering now
00:10:39.700 | and there will be great joy and prosperity at Christ's coming.
00:10:44.680 | First Peter 4:13, rejoice insofar
00:10:48.520 | as you share Christ's sufferings,
00:10:50.680 | that you may rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
00:10:56.520 | Amen, thank you Pastor John, very helpful counsel.
00:10:59.480 | And for more on this topic,
00:11:00.520 | be sure to listen to episode number 320.
00:11:02.480 | It's titled Six Keys to Detecting the Prosperity Gospel.
00:11:06.520 | You can find that episodes and all of our episodes
00:11:08.600 | at zaringod.org/askpastorjohn
00:11:12.800 | or also in our free mobile apps.
00:11:15.640 | Well, the new school year is well underway
00:11:18.080 | and tomorrow John Piper shares seven tips for students.
00:11:21.240 | I'm your host Tony Reinke, I'll see you tomorrow.
00:11:23.360 | (upbeat music)
00:11:25.940 | (upbeat music)
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