CHRIST SANCTUARY - 7th July 20234
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When you hear the names Jeff Bezos / Mark Zuckerberg / Bill Gates
you hear the sound of money ringing on the till
These are the names of some the riches people on Forbes List
Currently Elon Musk is the top dog sitting on that list at $58 Billion
Now there are almost 200 countries whose Gross National Product
is less than $58 Billion / This means that these rich people
have more money than almost 200 nations / in an entire year
Bill Gates is 68 / If he lives for another 20 years
and he wants to spend all his money before he dies
he would have to spend $2.9 Billion a year
- that’s $7,900,000 every day / or $331,000 per hour
Now / you might not feel so guilty because you think you’re far
from that kind of money but according to the Global Rich List
if you make $70,000 per year you’re in the richest 2.4% of the global population
Now the Bible is not as naive / as to avoid talking
about something as significant / as money
The fact of the matter is that Jesus talked
more about money than he did Heaven and Hell combined
more than He talked about salvation / or the second-coming / or sex
more than anything else / except the Kingdom of God
In 11 out of His 39 parables / He talks about money
1 out of every 7 verses / in the Gospel of Luke talks about money
We are talking about the deadly sin of greed this morning
There are two factors why greed is such a insiduous enemy to fend off
One external and the other internal
Externally we live in a culture that daily assaults us
with its idea of what makes a good life
It sends the subliminal message that unless you have this or that
you’re really not happy / not successful
The pressure may not be direct
but all the same it’s incessant and brutal
But this external factor will not succeed in luring us / if it hadn’t been
for an internal factor working / to conspire against us
I’m talking about the congenital appetite in your heart
Your heart is not neutral / it is never neutral
It is spring-loaded with desires / It is ravenous and voracious
So what chance have you got when you have pressures
working against you from both without and within!!
Now as if all that are vicious enough / greed adopts a sly strategy
Greed blinds you from realising that you’ve been infected with it
For the forty years that I served as a pastor I’ve had people coming
to me to talk about the sins they struggle with
They would openly confess to the sin of lust / pride / anger and others
But never once / had anyone confess the sin of greed
Why? Because greed is a disease of the eye
People who are greedy are myopic / Greed impairs your eyes
Greed hides itself
No one / who is greedy / ever sees himself as greedy
Like the other six deadly sins / greed is a disease of the heart
but with greed / the disease has spread to the eye
A man who has an adulterous affair / knows he’s having an affair
A glutton knows / he’s gluttonous
But no greedy person knows he’s greedy /Greed works through stealth
Greed has a way of clutching at your heart
without you even realising it
How? You ask! / Well one way he blinds you is through sociological dynamics
So with the salary you earn / you don’t see yourself as well off
because you talk and work and live
among people of the same socioeconomic bracket
And because you go on comparing yourself / with those guys
who’re a few rungs above the ladder from where you are
you’ll always believe you haven’t got enough
you haven’t yet arrived / you need more
And you’re totally oblivious / to those who really struggle
- those who have little / whose kids have very little
You don’t see all that / you can’t
The way greed blinds you / it’s treacherous your heart
It is not for no reason that Jesus says: “It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle / than for a rich person
to enter the kingdom of God” / Matt 19:24
He warns us to be careful with greed / He said:
Why? Because greed is a disease of the eye
People who are greedy are myopic / Greed impairs your eyes
Greed hides itself
No one / who is greedy / ever sees himself as greedy
Like the other six deadly sins / greed is a disease of the heart
but with greed / the disease has spread to the eye
A man who has an adulterous affair / knows he’s having an affair
A glutton knows / he’s gluttonous
But no greedy person knows he’s greedy /Greed works through stealth
Greed has a way of clutching at your heart
without you even realising it
How? You ask! / Well one way he blinds you is through sociological dynamics
So with the salary you earn / you don’t see yourself as well off
because you talk and work and live
among people of the same socioeconomic bracket
And because you go on comparing yourself / with those guys
who’re a few rungs above the ladder from where you are
you’ll always believe you haven’t got enough
you haven’t yet arrived / you need more
And you’re totally oblivious / to those who really struggle
- those who have little / whose kids have very little
You don’t see all that / you can’t
The way greed blinds you / it’s treacherous your heart
It is not for no reason that Jesus says: “It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle / than for a rich person
to enter the kingdom of God” / Matt 19:24
He warns us to be careful with greed / He said:
“Watch out! / Be on your guard against all kinds of greed” / Lk 12:15
And Paul calls greed a snare / into which we may fall
1 Timothy 6:9 says / “those who desire to be rich fall into a snare
that plunge people into ruin and destruction”
Don’t let that word “snare” escape you / a snare is a trap
And a snare is effective / because it is well-camouflaged
You don’t have to be a skilful hunter to know that when you set a trap
you show the bait / but you hide the snare
And it has been such a snare that / that on account of its allure
people have actually deserted their faith
* Achan sold his soul / for a wedge of gold
* Judas sold his soul / for thirty pieces of silver
* Ananias and Sapphira lost their souls / on account of money
* Demas deserted Paul / deserted his faith / lost his soul
Why? Let the Word speak for itself / It says
“Demas in love with the world has deserted me” 2 Tim 4:10
Now / does all this mean that it is sinful to be rich?
Some Christians naively believe that God wants us to own nothing
* that Jesus was the first communist
* that He meant for Christians to hold everything in common
But that’s not what the Bible teaches
Why would God give us the eighth commandment
if private property ownership is prohibited!
The commandment “You shall not steal” would be meaningless
if I didn’t own something / which you could steal
Many OT laws / give clear prescriptions / on how restitutions
ought to be made / for the loss of property caused by theft
These laws would be absurd unless the right of private ownership is assumed
No / a rich man is not necessarily an evil man on account of his wealth
No / it is no sin to be rich
Job / the most blameless man on earth was also the wealthiest / Job 1:3
Abraham prospered with land and cattle / Gen. 13:2
Solomon had great wealth / 2 Chron. 1:11–12
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea / were both rich
See / there IS a reason why did Jesus gets the rich ruler
to sell all he had / and give everything to the poor
and NOT demand the same from Abraham or Job or Solomon
Because unlike Abraham / Job or Solomon / who merely had money
this rich young ruler / he didn’t have money / money had him
The issue is not in what you possess / but in what possesses you
J C Ryle puts it beautifully / he said: "We may love money
without having it / just as we may have money without loving it"
It is not money that is the root of all evil
It is the love of money / that is the root of all evil / 1 Tim 6:10
Now / here’s a crucial point / And its this: Just as it is no crime to be rich
it is not inherently virtuous / to be poor either
Being poor / is not inherently righteous and honourable
Poverty does NOT automatically equate virtue
It is not the poor that are blessed / but the “poor in spirit”
And Paul calls greed a snare / into which we may fall
1 Timothy 6:9 says / “those who desire to be rich fall into a snare
that plunge people into ruin and destruction”
Don’t let that word “snare” escape you / a snare is a trap
And a snare is effective / because it is well-camouflaged
You don’t have to be a skilful hunter to know that when you set a trap
you show the bait / but you hide the snare
And it has been such a snare that / that on account of its allure
people have actually deserted their faith
* Achan sold his soul / for a wedge of gold
* Judas sold his soul / for thirty pieces of silver
* Ananias and Sapphira lost their souls / on account of money
* Demas deserted Paul / deserted his faith / lost his soul
Why? Let the Word speak for itself / It says
“Demas in love with the world has deserted me” 2 Tim 4:10
Now / does all this mean that it is sinful to be rich?
Some Christians naively believe that God wants us to own nothing
* that Jesus was the first communist
* that He meant for Christians to hold everything in common
But that’s not what the Bible teaches
Why would God give us the eighth commandment
if private property ownership is prohibited!
The commandment “You shall not steal” would be meaningless
if I didn’t own something / which you could steal
Many OT laws / give clear prescriptions / on how restitutions
ought to be made / for the loss of property caused by theft
These laws would be absurd unless the right of private ownership is assumed
No / a rich man is not necessarily an evil man on account of his wealth
No / it is no sin to be rich
Job / the most blameless man on earth was also the wealthiest / Job 1:3
Abraham prospered with land and cattle / Gen. 13:2
Solomon had great wealth / 2 Chron. 1:11–12
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea / were both rich
See / there IS a reason why did Jesus gets the rich ruler
to sell all he had / and give everything to the poor
and NOT demand the same from Abraham or Job or Solomon
Because unlike Abraham / Job or Solomon / who merely had money
this rich young ruler / he didn’t have money / money had him
The issue is not in what you possess / but in what possesses you
J C Ryle puts it beautifully / he said: "We may love money
without having it / just as we may have money without loving it"
It is not money that is the root of all evil
It is the love of money / that is the root of all evil / 1 Tim 6:10
Now / here’s a crucial point / And its this: Just as it is no crime to be rich
it is not inherently virtuous / to be poor either
Being poor / is not inherently righteous and honourable
Poverty does NOT automatically equate virtue
It is not the poor that are blessed / but the “poor in spirit”
In the same way that wealth does not spell ungodliness poverty does not spell godliness
There is simply no inherent virtue / in being poor
Right / Let me switch track here
I want for us to look at the raw brutal power of money
Money has the power of a god
Money is / in fact / a demigod / for at least three reasons
Firstly / if it isn’t / how could it accord to you / your sense of worth
Isn’t it true / that money has this bizarre ability
to confer on a person / his worth as a person
Quite carelessly / we often ascribe what a person is worth
based on the amount of money he has / don’t we
We sometimes ask carelessly: “How much is Richie MaCaw worth?”
And what is the measure we use? / His wealth!
So we say / Taylor Swift has a net worth of 1.3 billion USD
See / if money isn’t a god / it has no power to accord to people
their measure of worth / but that is exactly what it does
We treat the rich / somewhat differently as we treat the poor
There is no denying it / whether you admit it or not
you tend to treat the rich / with a measure of diffidence
When you stand before someone who’s filthy rich
quite suddenly / you’re somewhat bashful / self-effacing
withdrawn / awkward / and ill-confident
In front of a rich person / you’re suddenly reticent / even servile
Why? / Because money signals strength / it projects power
To that degree / money is sacred
Secondly / if money isn’t a god / how could you explain this strange power
that money has / to get you to organise your life around it
But isn’t that what money does to us
A large part of our lives are spent over things to do with money
* thinking about money / worrying about money / killing over money
* accumulating money / arguing over money within a marriage
People just don’t get the extent of the hold / money has on them
See / There’s virtually nothing / money can’t buy
* Loyalty can be bought / that’s why there’s such a thing as betrayal
* Patriotism can be bought
that’s why there’s a thing as treason / and spying
* Even human beings can be bought – Amos 8:6
* Marital fidelity / tragically / can be bought
as was portrayed in the movie Indecent Proposal
played by Robert Redford and Demi Moore
* Even the human soul can be bought / Rev 18
If there is virtually nothing money can’t buy / can money buy happiness?
We often hear people say “Money can’t buy happiness!”
At the height of my years of fishing madness / I would often say:
“The guy who says ‘Money can't buy happiness’
has never owned a Loomis fly rod”
Of course that was spoken with 'tongue in cheek'
But all the same money does buy a measure of happiness
The only problem is It doesn’t last / Loomis fly-rod is now gathering dust!!
There is simply no inherent virtue / in being poor
Right / Let me switch track here
I want for us to look at the raw brutal power of money
Money has the power of a god
Money is / in fact / a demigod / for at least three reasons
Firstly / if it isn’t / how could it accord to you / your sense of worth
Isn’t it true / that money has this bizarre ability
to confer on a person / his worth as a person
Quite carelessly / we often ascribe what a person is worth
based on the amount of money he has / don’t we
We sometimes ask carelessly: “How much is Richie MaCaw worth?”
And what is the measure we use? / His wealth!
So we say / Taylor Swift has a net worth of 1.3 billion USD
See / if money isn’t a god / it has no power to accord to people
their measure of worth / but that is exactly what it does
We treat the rich / somewhat differently as we treat the poor
There is no denying it / whether you admit it or not
you tend to treat the rich / with a measure of diffidence
When you stand before someone who’s filthy rich
quite suddenly / you’re somewhat bashful / self-effacing
withdrawn / awkward / and ill-confident
In front of a rich person / you’re suddenly reticent / even servile
Why? / Because money signals strength / it projects power
To that degree / money is sacred
Secondly / if money isn’t a god / how could you explain this strange power
that money has / to get you to organise your life around it
But isn’t that what money does to us
A large part of our lives are spent over things to do with money
* thinking about money / worrying about money / killing over money
* accumulating money / arguing over money within a marriage
People just don’t get the extent of the hold / money has on them
See / There’s virtually nothing / money can’t buy
* Loyalty can be bought / that’s why there’s such a thing as betrayal
* Patriotism can be bought
that’s why there’s a thing as treason / and spying
* Even human beings can be bought – Amos 8:6
* Marital fidelity / tragically / can be bought
as was portrayed in the movie Indecent Proposal
played by Robert Redford and Demi Moore
* Even the human soul can be bought / Rev 18
If there is virtually nothing money can’t buy / can money buy happiness?
We often hear people say “Money can’t buy happiness!”
At the height of my years of fishing madness / I would often say:
“The guy who says ‘Money can't buy happiness’
has never owned a Loomis fly rod”
Of course that was spoken with 'tongue in cheek'
But all the same money does buy a measure of happiness
The only problem is It doesn’t last / Loomis fly-rod is now gathering dust!!
There is a third reason / why we know money to be a god
Have you ever wonder why you never ask another person / how much he is earning
You say / “It’ll be a social blunder” / Yes / but why?
You say / “It’ll be such an embarrassment” / Yes / but why?
Very poor people have no problem / asking one another
how much each one makes
When I was growing up / I live close to a community of people
who worked as labourers in the coconut and oil palm plantations
And quite often / in a normal course of conversation / you’ll hear them
talk openly talk to one another about how much they make
For very poor people / revealing how much they make is no big deal
One Saturday morning / 23 years ago / I came into the church
and found one of the windows had been broken in
and I found a man sleeping in one of the rooms
And talking to him / He told me of his plight / and he slipped his hand
into his pocket / and fish out a dollar coin and he told me / that that
is virtually all he had to his name
Now / the question is this: Why is it that for very poor people
revealing to one another their own financial worth is no big deal?
Is it because poor people are crude?
Is it because poor people lack social etiquette?
Many years ago / Jacques Ellul helped me understand what’s going on here
Ellul tells us that the embarrassment on the part of the rich
comes from a natural reticence / hesitation
to not intrude or trespass / into a realm of the sacred
Ellul says / when you pry into how much money a person makes
you’re encroaching his sacred sanctuary
you’re trespassing his shrine / where his god dwells
For the greedy rich / the bank is his shrine / the counter his altar
and his bank-book are his sacred scriptures
They are to be treated with reverence and veneration
So / reverentially / you give it a wide berth! You just don’t go there!
Ellul is right / Where the Bible is concerned / money is
* not just simply a medium of exchange
* not just bits of paper with numbers on them
or bits of metal with images engraved on them
* Money is the only impersonal object to which
Jesus gives a personal name / He calls it Mammon
That’s a personal name of an idol / worshipped in Syria
Mammon is a principality / a demonic cultic force
Jesus personified money / He divinized money
He says it as it is: “No one can serve two masters
for either he will hate the one / and love the other
or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other
You cannot serve God and Mammon”
Jesus reduces the object of worship to only two
You either serve God / or you serve Mammon / Mtt 6:24
Now / the question is this: Why is it that for very poor people
revealing to one another their own financial worth is no big deal?
Is it because poor people are crude?
Is it because poor people lack social etiquette?
Many years ago / Jacques Ellul helped me understand what’s going on here
Ellul tells us that the embarrassment on the part of the rich
comes from a natural reticence / hesitation
to not intrude or trespass / into a realm of the sacred
Ellul says / when you pry into how much money a person makes
you’re encroaching his sacred sanctuary
you’re trespassing his shrine / where his god dwells
For the greedy rich / the bank is his shrine / the counter his altar
and his bank-book are his sacred scriptures
They are to be treated with reverence and veneration
So / reverentially / you give it a wide berth! You just don’t go there!
Ellul is right / Where the Bible is concerned / money is
* not just simply a medium of exchange
* not just bits of paper with numbers on them
or bits of metal with images engraved on them
* Money is the only impersonal object to which
Jesus gives a personal name / He calls it Mammon
That’s a personal name of an idol / worshipped in Syria
Mammon is a principality / a demonic cultic force
Jesus personified money / He divinized money
He says it as it is: “No one can serve two masters
for either he will hate the one / and love the other
or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other
You cannot serve God and Mammon”
Jesus reduces the object of worship to only two
You either serve God / or you serve Mammon / Mtt 6:24
To Jesus / our love of money / is our worship of Mammon
He sees Mammon as competing with Him
for our allegiance / loyalty and devotion
It is no surprise / that the Hebrew word for money is kesef
It says a lot / It means “to desire” “to long for” “to languish after”
Money has this power / to seduce you to long for it
Now / all this talk about the rich being greedy / does not mean
that poor people are spared / from the deadly sin of greed
Oh no! Mammon is much a god of the poor / as it is of the rich
Very poor people can be greedy too
The only difference is that for the poor the grip / the foot-hold
of Mammon on their heart / is not as crippling for sheer practical reasons
* their stomachs growl from hunger
* there is no food on the table for the children
For those practical realities the clutch of Mammon on the poor / is not as paralysing
It is with those in the middle-class that the clash of the gods begins
Now / and here’s a sober note
The Bible / on no fewer than four occasions equates greed with idolatry
* Matthew 6:24 / “You cannot serve God and Mammon”
* Luke 16:13 / “You cannot serve God and Mammon”
* Colossians 3:5 / “greed is idolatry”
* Ephesians 5:5 / the “greedy person is an idolater”
See / wherever there’s a temple / there’s a treasury
- the place you put in your money / as a symbol of your worship
Now / you want to know where your treasury is / that’s quite easy
* Your treasury is the place where you most effortlessly
most gladly / most willingly / put your money in
* Nobody has ever found it grievous to put his money into the treasury
where his god dwells
Jesus / cuts to the chase / He says / “Let’s not muck around
Just tell me where your treasure is and I will tell you / where your heart is”
For where your treasure is / there / your heart is / also”
Jesus knows that your heart is too divided
You want to worship God but you want to bow before the Golden Calf as well
You forget that when you serve two masters
you’ll always be half-hearted
you’ll always be pulled apart by two conflicting loyalties
you will always hear two voices / torn between two lovers
So ask yourself / “What it is / on which
I would most happily invest / huge amounts of money?”
And whatever that treasury is / that is where your God dwells
regardless of Who / you verbally insist / your God is
So the big question is this:
Why do we bow before Mammon!
Why do we spread our prayer-mats before the ANZ / each morning?
Why are we afflicted the way we are?
Hebrews 13 helps us greatly
After urging us to keep our lives free from love of money
and be content / the writer goes on to say two things
One / He promises us His presence
“I will never leave you nor forsake you”
Two / He promises to free us from fear
“The Lord is on my side / I will not fear / What can man do to me?
But why is it / that / in addressing our greed
He promises to free us from fear
What has fear / got to do with our greed / Well almost everything!
There is this inextricable connection between greed and fear
Greed has its roots in fear / Fear of losing our security and control
We are greedy / because we are afraid
- afraid of not having enough / of losing control
When the rich young ruler turned away from Jesus / the text tells us
that “Jesus looked at him and loved him” / Mark 10:21
How is it that Jesus could love a man who preferred money over Him
Because Jesus looked past his greed and saw his fears
It was his fear / that drove his greed
Alright / with all this talk about greed has the Bible given us a prescription for its cure?
It has / 1 Timothy 6 gives us two ways to handle money rightly
One / contentment - Two / generosity
Those two traits should mark us as Christians who live out the gospel
Contentment is a biblical goal for all of us / Paul writes:
“There is great gain in godliness with contentment / for we brought
nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of it
But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” 1 Timothy 6:6-10
In contrast to the self-destructive greed
we are to cultivate the cardinal virtue of contentment
In fact / it’s a mark of a person who knows God / Packer said:
“People who know their God have great contentment in God”
Generosity is the other biblical goal
I have a friend who was at one time the Secretary General of Scripture Union
in Malaysia / and he would tell me of this rich Christian in Kuala Lumpur
Jesus / cuts to the chase / He says / “Let’s not muck around
Just tell me where your treasure is and I will tell you / where your heart is”
For where your treasure is / there / your heart is / also”
Jesus knows that your heart is too divided
You want to worship God but you want to bow before the Golden Calf as well
You forget that when you serve two masters
you’ll always be half-hearted
you’ll always be pulled apart by two conflicting loyalties
you will always hear two voices / torn between two lovers
So ask yourself / “What it is / on which
I would most happily invest / huge amounts of money?”
And whatever that treasury is / that is where your God dwells
regardless of Who / you verbally insist / your God is
So the big question is this:
Why do we bow before Mammon!
Why do we spread our prayer-mats before the ANZ / each morning?
Why are we afflicted the way we are?
Hebrews 13 helps us greatly
After urging us to keep our lives free from love of money
and be content / the writer goes on to say two things
One / He promises us His presence
“I will never leave you nor forsake you”
Two / He promises to free us from fear
“The Lord is on my side / I will not fear / What can man do to me?
But why is it / that / in addressing our greed
He promises to free us from fear
What has fear / got to do with our greed / Well almost everything!
There is this inextricable connection between greed and fear
Greed has its roots in fear / Fear of losing our security and control
We are greedy / because we are afraid
- afraid of not having enough / of losing control
When the rich young ruler turned away from Jesus / the text tells us
that “Jesus looked at him and loved him” / Mark 10:21
How is it that Jesus could love a man who preferred money over Him
Because Jesus looked past his greed and saw his fears
It was his fear / that drove his greed
Alright / with all this talk about greed has the Bible given us a prescription for its cure?
It has / 1 Timothy 6 gives us two ways to handle money rightly
One / contentment - Two / generosity
Those two traits should mark us as Christians who live out the gospel
Contentment is a biblical goal for all of us / Paul writes:
“There is great gain in godliness with contentment / for we brought
nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of it
But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” 1 Timothy 6:6-10
In contrast to the self-destructive greed
we are to cultivate the cardinal virtue of contentment
In fact / it’s a mark of a person who knows God / Packer said:
“People who know their God have great contentment in God”
Generosity is the other biblical goal
I have a friend who was at one time the Secretary General of Scripture Union
in Malaysia / and he would tell me of this rich Christian in Kuala Lumpur
without mentioning his name / who would at the end of every fiscal year
signed a blank check to cover whatever financial shortfall SU may have incurred
Now / this rich Christian is living out 1 Timothy 6:17-18
“As for the rich / charge them not to set their hopes
on the uncertainty of riches / but on God / who richly provides us
with everything to enjoy / They are to do good / to be rich
in good works / to be generous and ready to share”
All that well and good / But in practical terms
how can we be extricated / from the tentacles of Mammon
God’s prescription for dealing with money is at one and the same time
the easiest to follow and the most difficult to do so
Ellul tells us that the only way to cut off the power of Mammon
is to do with money / in a way
Mammon never intended you to do with it
What’s that - give it away! / Just about the only way
to break the power of money
is to take excess money in your hands / and give it away
* Mammon never intended you / to do that with money
* Mammon wants you to hoard it / stockpile it / treasure it
But when you take excess money in your hands / and give it away
Mammon is exposed for who he is / and he loses his power
Giving money away / it’s a major “paradigm shift”
But it demolishes Mammon’s grip on you
Hoarding money in the face of the poor / destroys us in the end
but * giving / consecrates / the God of the Bible
* giving / scandalises / the God Mammon
But I need to be careful here / simply giving money away
says nothing about the state of greed in your heart
See / when Jesus told the rich young ruler to go and sell all he possess
and give the proceeds to the poor / before he could follow Him
He wasn’t prescribing that / as a cure for greed
That’d be far too simplistic! / Our Lord wouldn’t do that
If he should go ahead and sell all he had / it would still
say nothing much about the state of his heart
Giving money away will not rip the greed out of his heart
Sure / once he’d pulled the root of greed from his heart
he might want to sell all he had and give to the poor / but
doing that alone / says nothing about the condition of his heart
So why did Jesus tell him to go sell all he had / He prescribed that
as an evidence / by which / this man could tell
whether he’d finally dealt with greed / as Zacchaeus did
Gladly giving away all he had / would be evidence
that he’d dealt with the greed in his heart
Jesus puts his finger on the idol of greed in his life
Jesus is saying to this man / “If God is really first in your life
everything else is a trinket / a frothy bubble”
So we’ve looked at the insidious nature of greed
And we have learned the need for contentment
But what ultimately is the road that sets us free from greed
How then / may we be delivered?
Now when you’ve come to see the insidious nature of money
you’ll probably want to rid yourself of Mammon immediately
Perhaps your first reaction is
“I’m going to stop making money my security”
“I’ve got to be far more generous”
Now / you can talk like that / till you’re blue in the face it’s never going to work
Why? because we’re dealing with stuff that has deep roots in your heart
Greed cannot be destroyed / It can only be dispossessed
But we may do this / We need to first confess
* that we’ve been pinning your hope of security on money
* that we’ve always believed that money can save us
* that in fact Mammon has all along been our God
We need to repent of our sin of idolatry
Then / we need to notice how Paul got the Corinthians to be generous
In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 when Paul wanted the people to give an offering to the poor
he * didn’t take them on a guilt trip
* didn’t make them feel bad by telling them how the poor are suffering
* didn’t pressurise them / didn’t tell them it’s their duty to give
Instead this is what he does / He says
“You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich
Now / this rich Christian is living out 1 Timothy 6:17-18
“As for the rich / charge them not to set their hopes
on the uncertainty of riches / but on God / who richly provides us
with everything to enjoy / They are to do good / to be rich
in good works / to be generous and ready to share”
All that well and good / But in practical terms
how can we be extricated / from the tentacles of Mammon
God’s prescription for dealing with money is at one and the same time
the easiest to follow and the most difficult to do so
Ellul tells us that the only way to cut off the power of Mammon
is to do with money / in a way
Mammon never intended you to do with it
What’s that - give it away! / Just about the only way
to break the power of money
is to take excess money in your hands / and give it away
* Mammon never intended you / to do that with money
* Mammon wants you to hoard it / stockpile it / treasure it
But when you take excess money in your hands / and give it away
Mammon is exposed for who he is / and he loses his power
Giving money away / it’s a major “paradigm shift”
But it demolishes Mammon’s grip on you
Hoarding money in the face of the poor / destroys us in the end
but * giving / consecrates / the God of the Bible
* giving / scandalises / the God Mammon
But I need to be careful here / simply giving money away
says nothing about the state of greed in your heart
See / when Jesus told the rich young ruler to go and sell all he possess
and give the proceeds to the poor / before he could follow Him
He wasn’t prescribing that / as a cure for greed
That’d be far too simplistic! / Our Lord wouldn’t do that
If he should go ahead and sell all he had / it would still
say nothing much about the state of his heart
Giving money away will not rip the greed out of his heart
Sure / once he’d pulled the root of greed from his heart
he might want to sell all he had and give to the poor / but
doing that alone / says nothing about the condition of his heart
So why did Jesus tell him to go sell all he had / He prescribed that
as an evidence / by which / this man could tell
whether he’d finally dealt with greed / as Zacchaeus did
Gladly giving away all he had / would be evidence
that he’d dealt with the greed in his heart
Jesus puts his finger on the idol of greed in his life
Jesus is saying to this man / “If God is really first in your life
everything else is a trinket / a frothy bubble”
So we’ve looked at the insidious nature of greed
And we have learned the need for contentment
But what ultimately is the road that sets us free from greed
How then / may we be delivered?
Now when you’ve come to see the insidious nature of money
you’ll probably want to rid yourself of Mammon immediately
Perhaps your first reaction is
“I’m going to stop making money my security”
“I’ve got to be far more generous”
Now / you can talk like that / till you’re blue in the face it’s never going to work
Why? because we’re dealing with stuff that has deep roots in your heart
Greed cannot be destroyed / It can only be dispossessed
But we may do this / We need to first confess
* that we’ve been pinning your hope of security on money
* that we’ve always believed that money can save us
* that in fact Mammon has all along been our God
We need to repent of our sin of idolatry
Then / we need to notice how Paul got the Corinthians to be generous
In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 when Paul wanted the people to give an offering to the poor
he * didn’t take them on a guilt trip
* didn’t make them feel bad by telling them how the poor are suffering
* didn’t pressurise them / didn’t tell them it’s their duty to give
Instead this is what he does / He says
“You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich
yet for your sakes he became poor
so that you through His poverty might become rich” 2 Cor 8:9
He gets them to look at Christ
* how that He was rich but for our sakes He became poor
* how that He was made poor that we might be made rich
See / at the heart of every single one of us there’s something
someone we look to / to be our ultimate treasure
But the thing is this / Every single one of those treasures
is demanding / that you die / to get it
Jesus is the only treasure / that died / so you may have Him
When Jesus came to earth / He literally lived in poverty
He tells us “Foxes have holes birds have nests
but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”
When He says that / He’s giving us a glimpse
of what was going to happen to Him on the cross
On the cross / he lost his power / lost his glory
lost his relationship with the Father
He liquidated everything / so we may be made rich
If you must locate / the one single place / where God’s riches
can be ours to have / you will see it in the death of Jesus
He was dethroned / so that we might be crowned
He was defrocked / so we might be robed
He was given a stalk of reed / so we might be handed a sceptre
He wore a crown of thorns / so we might wear the crown of victory
He was booed / so that we might be applauded
He was impeached / so we might be pardoned
He was made defiled / so we might be purified
He stooped / so we might be raised to glory
Now / when you contemplate on these truths long enough / it’ll get you
You will come to see
* how utterly silly it is / to fear not having enough to go by
* how needless it is / to be hoarding and storing
It would be stupidity at best / distrust at worst
When you contemplate on these truths long enough the reality will sink in
* you’ll find your greed for other stuff / shamefully pathetic
* you’ll come to see / your money would just be money!
It wouldn’t be your security / it would just be money!
* you’ll start to cherish Him / in a way you haven’t before
* your diseased eyes will be healed
Only then / will you will turn to your idols and say
“You’re not my life / You cannot give me life / You cannot save me
“You’re not even beautiful anymore
I have One whose beauty far surpasses you”
Jehovah-Jireh / God my Provider
In Him / I shall lack no good thing
____________________________________________________________________
so that you through His poverty might become rich” 2 Cor 8:9
He gets them to look at Christ
* how that He was rich but for our sakes He became poor
* how that He was made poor that we might be made rich
See / at the heart of every single one of us there’s something
someone we look to / to be our ultimate treasure
But the thing is this / Every single one of those treasures
is demanding / that you die / to get it
Jesus is the only treasure / that died / so you may have Him
When Jesus came to earth / He literally lived in poverty
He tells us “Foxes have holes birds have nests
but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”
When He says that / He’s giving us a glimpse
of what was going to happen to Him on the cross
On the cross / he lost his power / lost his glory
lost his relationship with the Father
He liquidated everything / so we may be made rich
If you must locate / the one single place / where God’s riches
can be ours to have / you will see it in the death of Jesus
He was dethroned / so that we might be crowned
He was defrocked / so we might be robed
He was given a stalk of reed / so we might be handed a sceptre
He wore a crown of thorns / so we might wear the crown of victory
He was booed / so that we might be applauded
He was impeached / so we might be pardoned
He was made defiled / so we might be purified
He stooped / so we might be raised to glory
Now / when you contemplate on these truths long enough / it’ll get you
You will come to see
* how utterly silly it is / to fear not having enough to go by
* how needless it is / to be hoarding and storing
It would be stupidity at best / distrust at worst
When you contemplate on these truths long enough the reality will sink in
* you’ll find your greed for other stuff / shamefully pathetic
* you’ll come to see / your money would just be money!
It wouldn’t be your security / it would just be money!
* you’ll start to cherish Him / in a way you haven’t before
* your diseased eyes will be healed
Only then / will you will turn to your idols and say
“You’re not my life / You cannot give me life / You cannot save me
“You’re not even beautiful anymore
I have One whose beauty far surpasses you”
Jehovah-Jireh / God my Provider
In Him / I shall lack no good thing
____________________________________________________________________
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