“If I want to believe God for a $65 million dollar plane, you cannot stop me.” –Creflo Dollar, as quoted in God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel: How Truth Overwhelms a Life Built on Lies, by Costi Hinn, Zondervan, 2019.
It is true that when you make good choices, things are more likely to go well for you. And it is also true that when you make bad choices, things are more likely to go badly for you. We reap what we sow. Sowing and reaping is a Biblical rule.
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” Galatians 6:7.
Life coaches, personal trainers, business mentors, and motivational speakers encourage hard work and chasing after goals. I do too.[1]
But some pervert the doctrine of sowing and reaping in order to make themselves rich. False teachers twist the scripture so they can tell themselves that God’s will for their own lives is boundless riches. And conveniently, sowing and reaping no longer involves such disciplines as eating right or exercise or personal Bible study or feeding the hungry. These men preach on sowing and reaping in every message, but the only sowing they talk about is giving money. That is, giving money to them.
Prosperity preachers make millions encouraging the suffering to “sow a seed,” or to “plant seed money,” promising that if you support what God is doing (by making a donation to their ministries) then God will support what you are doing. The “ministry” becomes a vending machine promising to dispense packages of your best life now.
HOWEVER.
This is not like the law of gravity. There are exceptions to the rule of sowing and reaping. You studied but failed. You dieted but lost no weight. You worked hard and were still laid off from your job. You hustled in every way you could imagine but still had to ask someone for financial help.
These things happen. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes God is at work in His own mysterious way—bringing us through experiences designed to accomplish His purposes. Perhaps the suffering will cause you to grow in some critical area, and that growth may be more important right now than the satisfaction of reaping (harvesting) the thing for which you have sowed so faithfully. Or perhaps God will use your suffering to magnify His ministry in your life–the way He has so abundantly used the quadriplegia of Joni Eareckson Tada. People will grow closer to Jesus because of your faithfulness during your struggle.
It is not just you and I who have quietly done everything “right” and seen no benefit.[2] There is an entire book of the Bible dedicated to this truth. In fact, it is the oldest book of the Bible—the first written scripture. And it teaches that when it comes to sowing and reaping, sometimes it’s complicated. The book of Job gives the lie to health and wealth, name-it, claim-it, prosperity preaching. God gave us an entire book of the Bible to prove it:
You cannot GIVE things to God in order to GET things from God.
Yet, we hear this lie preached on television every day. Here’s how it goes: if you want something from God, you must either perform some great service (such as volunteering for the ministry) or you must donate a sacrificial amount of money. (The speaker is much more interested in your money than your volunteer hours.)
Whatever you want from God is available to you, if only you give enough money to the ministry. You can BUY your blessing. Of course, it is not phrased that way. The transaction is described in terms of faith and sowing and reaping. If you sow (often in preferred $1,000 gifts), then God will give to you in response to your faith. The larger the seed that you sow, the larger the “harvest” you will reap.
It gets worse.
If you are sick and need healing, you can get that too. They preach that “it is God’s will that everyone be healthy.” But you must sow sacrificially to get your miracle. Give a big gift! The greater the sickness, the greater the gift.
And don’t forget to think positively. Speak only positive words. Do not say words like “sick” or “cancer” or “tumor.” Speak of the ill as though he is already healed. Ignore the negative people, negative test results, and often even the doctors, the medicine, and the entire medical establishment. Ignore all of that and focus on your faith and giving.
Why the emphasis on positive thinking? Does positive thinking result in more money for the faith-healer? No. But it allows them to deflect blame from themselves to the sick when the healing never comes.
If you gave sacrificially but the sick person died anyway, well, you did not have enough faith. It is your fault because you entertained negative thoughts, you spoke a “negative confession,” and you surrounded yourself with negative people. You did not have enough faith and the illness won because of you. (You probably should have given more money.) When a pastor and member of Benny Hinn’s family died of cancer, the family soon began whispering that “Uncle George” had too little faith to be healed.[3]
Of course, all of this is a demonic heresy.
Is demonic heresy too strong a phrase? No. This is a doctrine of demons being taught on television every day by false teachers. The truth is that Jesus loves you. Jesus has grace for you—and for the sick and dying around you. But God is SOVEREIGN. He heals when He chooses to heal. He does not heal everyone. And He cannot be bought, manipulated, coerced, or controlled.
The health and wealth message focuses on me and my body and my bank account and my seventy-years on earth. But the true gospel focuses has an eternal perspective. The true gospel focuses on Jesus and His grace, His will, His sovereignty and power, and His glory.
When Costi Hinn, nephew of Benny Hinn, finally discovered this, he wrote:
“I had traveled the world, seen all there was to see, and lived like royalty, but this moment outshone the brightest diamonds we’d ever owned. The words seemed to leap off the page, and the once-blurry picture of who God is and what the gospel is suddenly came into sharp focus. Coach Heefner’s words from Dallas Baptist baseball days came back to me: God is sovereign … God is in control. He’s not some cosmic genie who exists to give me what I want and do what I command him to do. He is the majestic Creator of heaven and earth whom we exist to worship … The gospel suddenly made sense. My life existed for the glory of God, not my own glory. God’s highest purpose was not to make me happy, healthy, and wealthy. It was to give Him glory!”
The oldest book in the Bible begins by describing Job, the most prosperous businessman in the world at the time. He had seven adult sons and three adult daughters. He owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East” Job 1:3.
Then the scene changes. Satan appears at God’s throne and God reminds the “accuser of the brethren” about His all-star, Job. “Have you thought about my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” Job 1:8.
Satan, ever the accuser, argues that Job only serves God because God has blessed him. In response, God—who knows He can depend on Job—tells the devil, “Do your worst,” and soon the enemy kills Job’s children, and sends raiders to steal all of Job’s flocks. But Job remains faithful, uttering his first of two great statements of faith:
“At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said:
‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” Job 1:20-22.
Job did everything right. Job “sowed all the right seeds.” But God soon trash-talked Satan a second time, rubbing the devil’s face in the fact that he could not make Job curse God. Satan argued Job served God because he still had his health. So God gave the devil permission to rob Job of his health too.
(Do you see that God is SOVEREIGN? This is not the weak, genie-in-a-bottle that can only act in response to our prayers and our gifts—though a LONG list of TV preachers have described God that way.)[4]
“So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes” Job 2:7-8.
Then the devil sent Job’s wife, his only surviving family member, to do what husbands and wives do so well—to goad him into saying something he would regret.
As if perfectly on cue, Job’s wife said to him,
“Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”
So many men would respond to their wives in anger at this moment. Job controls his words. He tells his wife her words are foolish. And then Job speaks his second statement of faith:
‘Shall we indeed accept good from God, and not accept adversity?’ In all this, Job did not sin in what he said” Job 2:10.
The devil lost.
He lost, by the way.
He tried to destroy Job’s faith, to force Job to compromise his integrity, but he failed.
The rest of the book—the next forty chapters—are simply God giving humanity a lesson in suffering well. We will all suffer. We will all be sick. We will all die. Most of us will experience poverty of one kind or another. The book of Job shows us how to suffer well.
But first, consider this:
God used Job to show the devil that some people will not compromise their integrity. Some people cannot be bought—not for health and not for wealth.
When word of Job’s tragedy reached four of Job’s friends, they came from distant cities to sit with Job and grieve his losses. They came to comfort him. They wept aloud when they saw him. And they sat with him for seven days without speaking. Don’t miss that—how many of us could sit in silence for a week? These are true friends. Confused, perhaps, about the nature of good and evil, of sowing and reaping. But I consider them to be excellent friends with only the best intentions.
Job’s friend Eliphaz begins by endorsing the doctrine of sowing and reaping in Job 4:8. The doctrine is correct. Eliphaz’s error is that he looks at Job’s suffering and concludes Job must be wicked. “All his days the wicked man suffers torment … He will no longer be rich and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the land” Job 15:20, 29. Using a classic circular argument,[5] Eliphaz assumes Job is evil because Job is suffering. Eliphaz also says the wicked will no longer be rich—because Eliphaz believes everyone who is wicked ends up poor.
Job’s friend Bildad is no better. Rather than considering that Job might be an exception to the rule of sowing and reaping, that he might be a Godly man who is suffering, Bildad assumes Job is wicked. And then he says the wicked end up childless (what a thing to say to a man who just lost ten children!). “He has no offspring or descendants among his people, no survivor where once he lived. People of the west are appalled at his fate; those of the east are seized with horror” Job 18:19-20.
When Job said he was innocent before God, Bildad doubled down, arguing Job was filled with pride and telling him he was human and thus no better than a sinful worm or a maggot, Job 25:4-6. When it comes to sowing and reaping, Eliphaz and Bildad cannot see exceptions. Then Job’s friend Zophar speaks up, telling Job that as horrible as things are, God is punishing Job less than his sins deserve, Job 11:6.
Job responds to his “judgy” friends with one of the most famous lines in the book:
“Miserable comforters are you all!” Job 16:2.
Then he addresses their ignorance: “I cannot find one wise man among you” Job 17:10. Job argues that he knows he is innocent and says God knows it too:
“He knows the way I take, and when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold” Job 23:10.
Job, a man who regularly performed prayers and sacrifices on behalf of his children, has absolute confidence:
“I will never admit you are in the right. Till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my innocence and never let go of it. My conscience will not reproach me as long as I live” Job 27:5-6.
Yet God has allowed this innocent man to suffer while the guilty do not suffer. Job asks, “Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment? Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?” Job 24:1. (In other words, when will God punish the wicked?)
Unlike his friends, Job can see the exceptions to the law of sowing and reaping. Like David and so many psalmists, like Solomon in Ecclesiastes, Job complains that the wicked keep getting away with it, while good people suffer.[6] There is truth and wisdom here: sometimes bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. There are exceptions.
Nevertheless, I suspect that before he lost everything, Job shared the simple opinion of his friends. He lived a holy life and God blessed him beyond measure. But when he lost everything, Job instantly realized there must be exceptions to the rule of sowing and reaping. He was the exception!
Job also discovered that God was so much bigger than anything Job had ever imagined. Where his friends (sounding a bit like prosperity preachers) speak of God as something of a holy Santa Claus, keeping a naughty and nice list, Job takes a step back (or a step up, as it were), looking at the earth from a “ten-thousand-foot view.” He speaks about the weather, about the continents, the heavens.
“And these are but the outer fringe of His works. How faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?” Job 26:14.
Job praises God for His creation in a manner that foreshadows what God Himself will soon say. But first, Elihu, the youngest and fourth friend speaks up. Some have written that where Job’s first three friends said Job’s sin caused his suffering, Elihu says his suffering has caused him to sin, by becoming arrogant as he repeatedly protested his innocence.
“Job has spoken without knowledge and his words are without wisdom … He adds rebellion to his sin” Job 34:35,37. “Job opens his mouth with empty talk. Without knowledge he multiplies words” Job 35:16.
Then Elihu begins to speak as though he knows what is coming. He takes up Job’s earlier theme: the wonders of God’s creation.
“God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ … Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God’s wonders. Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash? … The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power” Job 37:5-6,14-15,23.
And suddenly, God breaks in.
“Who is this who obscures My words of wisdom by covering them up with his words of ignorance? Gird up your loins like a man. Get ready to do battle. For I will ask you questions and see if you can answer Me” Job 38:2-3.
When God enters the scene, the conversation is no longer about Job, but about Himself. After all, this story is about God. The whole book—the whole Bible—is about God. Job is a bit player.
God steps into the scene and educates Job, his friends, and all of us about God Himself. He is so big. So creative. So sovereign. So much more infinite and mysterious, inspiring awe and wonder and reverence and the holy fear of the Lord. The ‘Word of Faith’ preachers have underestimated God in a thousand different ways. He is not a heavenly genie in a bottle, some religious granter-of-wishes, some saintly Santa Claus.
And God rebukes Jobs friends.
And in doing so, He rebukes all those who fail to see exceptions to the rule of sowing and reaping, who prey on the poor and the desperate, promising them outrageous rewards if they will send money to purchase another jet plane for the ministry or whatever.
I believe the entire book of Job is a rebuke of Prosperity preachers.
The book of Job rebukes the “Health and Wealth” preachers.
The book of Job rebukes the “Name it-Claim it” preachers.
The book of Job rebukes the Word of Faith movement.
The picture above shows Jim Bakker in 2020 selling a “silver solution,” an arguably dangerous supplement of liquid silver that presents known risks. Bakker was charging $120 per bottle for his alleged COVID cure, yet received warning letters from the state of Missouri telling him to stop peddling the snake oil. Not only would it not cure COVID, the product was dangerous because liquid silver can cause known harms to those who consume it. But he sold it anyway.
Jim Bakker and his first wife, Tammy Faye, were famous preachers of health and wealth in the 1980s. The two secured millions of dollars in donations primarily through their PTL (“Praise the Lord”) television show. But after a hush-money payment to a secretary-turned-mistress came to light, the financial empire suffered a high-profile implosion. Jim Bakker ended up in prison.
Later a young pastor visited Jim Bakker in prison and asked him a question:
“Jim, when did you fall out of love with Jesus.”
“Oh, I always loved Jesus. I just never feared him.”
The book of Job reminds us to fear the Lord. He is sovereign. He is almighty. He is the Creator of the universe. He is holy.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” Proverbs 9:10.
AΩ.
[1] I can put on the motivational speaker hat too. After all, I wrote a book of 150 tips for success in college! I have a never-ending store of motivational speaker energy and pithy proverbs for success. But I will always be the first to admit that there are exceptions. You cannot put God in a box and expect Him to perform because you prayed the right words (like some witch’s incantation). God Almighty is sovereign! He is not your puppet on a string.
[2] They say, “You can’t out-give God!” Oh, yes you can! If you are giving to God in order to get from God, sometimes He will just let you do without for a while. Surely I am not the only person who has experienced this! Again, God is NOT a puppet on a string. You cannot use your giving to manipulate God. Instead, honor Him! Praise Him for His sovereignty. Bow down and worship God and tell Him you want to be completely in submission to HIS WILL and not your own!
[3] More specifically, the story goes that George made a “negative confession,” using negative words about his condition, he surrounded himself with negative people, he did not have enough faith, and worst of all—he listened to those who would criticize “the Lord’s anointed” a perversion of 1 Samuel 24:6 in which David explains why he refuses to attack Saul. Benny Hinn regularly cites these verses to suggest that those who speak ill of him will not only not be healed but may become sick unto death as punishment for criticizing him. See GOD, GREED, AND THE (PROSPERITY) GOSPEL, by Costi Hinn. It was reported elsewhere that Benny Hinn responded to criticism from John MacArthur by saying, “I wish God would give me a Holy Spirit machine gun. I’d blow your head off.” Apparently, “touch not Mine anointed” only applies to Prosperity preachers.
[4] Benny Hinn, for example, said something so ridiculous and heretical, I hesitate to write the words. He said, “God will not move unless I say it. Why? Because He has made us coworkers with Him. He set things up that way.”
[5] A circular argument is a fallacy in which the conclusion proves the premise, which is then used to “prove” the conclusion.
[6] Solomon writes that sometimes “the righteous get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked get what the righteous deserve” Ecclesiastes 8:14.
Household Words: 