Greed - America's God Series

AMERICA’S GREATEST SIN - WANTING WAY TOO MUCH

Matt. 6:19-27

“Do not store up treasures on earth / Store up treasures in heaven, - For where your treasure is there your heart is / No man can serve two masters / You cannot serve both God and Mammon (Money). Do not worry (be torn up) about your life – what you eat – what you wear.”

Philippians 4:6

“Don’t worry about anything / ask God for what you need, always asking Him with a thankful heart.” - TEV

I was conducting a revival and the nightly news revealed the appalling number of people in that county that had to choose between food and medicine. An alarming number were eating dog food so they could buy medicine. The next day the Pastor and I had dinner with one of the finest Christians in his church. He had retired and had just moved. He went from a large $300,000 dollar house to a $600,000 house on twelve acres he had purchased. He said, “Brother Bob, we prayed about this and saw that God was in it.In this down economy our house sold the week after we put in on the market.”

I wanted to say, “Man, with people all over this town eating dog food or doing without medicine, I don’t believe God was within a million miles of what you did. And from all I could tell, he was a very good Christian man; and I know a thousand just like him sitting in our pews. Materialism has blinded us to true Christianity; and our anxiety over “things” is the price we pay.

OUR WORRIES

Most of our worries are money worries. It is not by accident that Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, discusses worry in the section dealing with our relationship to material things. It is the longest section because it is our biggest problem.

Almost all of us have far more than we need. Compared to the rest of the world we live like millionaires. Yet we are stressed out; always on the go; and our family life suffers the most.

The American dream is a nightmare. We buy things we don’t need; with money we don’t have; to impress people we don’t like. When we are young we spend our health to get wealth and when we are old we spend our wealth to get our health back

OUR WEALTH

A. It Dethrones God

Jesus says in Mt. 6:21-24:

“Your heart will always be where your riches are / No one can serve two masters. He will hate one and love the other. He will serve on and be disloyal to the other. You cannot serve God and Money.”

The Ten Commandments begin with putting God first and having no other “gods”. They end with, “You shall not covet” (Ex. 20). The New Testament says “coveting” – wanting things we do not have is “idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). These are the book-ends of the Ten Commandments, and are the main reason we break the eight commandments in between.

Jesus used the Aramaic term “mammon” (money) as a personal name for the greedy person’s god. We speak of the “Almighty Dollar.

B. It is Detestable to God

1Timothy 4:10

“The love of money is the source of all kinds of evil.” – TEV

Col. 3:5

“You must put to death the earthly desires at work inside you; such as sexual immorality; indecency; evil passions and greed (covetousness); because covetousness is idolatry.”

God lists wanting way too much with the detestable sins like indecency. The church in the sixth century listed it with the “Seven Deadly Sins”. It was the first sin in the Bible. Eve had everything but wanted more. It was the first sin out of Eden. Cain killed Abel because he coveted the acceptance God gave Abel.

It is the source, the “root”, of almost all other sins. All six of the seven deadly sins come from it: pride (I want me to be first) / greed (wanting money) / lust (wanting sex) and gluttony (wanting pleasures). And since the desire to acquire makes us miserable, we can add melancholy.

C. It Damages

1Timothy 4:6-10

“Those who want to get rich fall into temptations. They end up caught in the trap of many foolish and harmful desires that pull them down to ruin and destruction.”

“The love of money is the source of all kinds of evil. Some, in their eagerness to have it have wandered away from the faith, and have broken their hearts with many sorrows.”– TEV

God is not in the business of ruining our fun; He does not stay up nights thinking of ways to make us miserable. He hates this sin because it hurts us.

1) It Dissatisfies (Damages Happiness)

“If you love gold, you will never be satisfied with gold / If you long for wealth you will never be wealthy enough.” – Eccl. 5:10