In The Almighty Dollar We Trust

1 Timothy 6:6-10, 17-19

In the Almighty Dollar We Trust

People who trap animals in Africa for zoos in the Western world say that one of the hardest animals to catch is the ring-tailed monkey. For the local Zulus, though, it’s fairly simple. They know the monkeys love the seeds of a locally grown melon. So they just put a melon on a vine, and cut a hole in the melon just large enough for the hand of a monkey to fit into. The monkey reaches in and grabs the seeds, but then can’t remove its clenched fist from the melon. His fist is larger than the hole. The monkey will fight the melon trap for hours without ever letting go of his seeds. Meanwhile, the Zulus sneak up and catch him.

Sometimes we are like that ring-tailed monkey. In fact, I would submit that despite being “one nation under God,” our true national religion is consumerism. We love to buy. We treat everything like we are marrying it. You know, “to have and to hold from this day forward.” We buy and buy, wanting more and more. And once we have something, it never quite delivers the way we expected. And so we need more.

1 Timothy is a letter the Apostle Paul wrote to his young protégé, a pastor named Timothy. In it, he has practical advice for Timothy as well as for the folks in Timothy’s church, during a time when Greek society was fairly affluent by world standards. Perhaps the same lessons for Timothy and his parishioners would hold true for us today. When it comes to the almighty dollar, consider these principles on your outline. First, learn to...

1. Be content with what you have.

Verses 6-8 read:

6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.

Paul took a word popular among Greek stoics and gave it new meaning. To a stoic, you became “content” by becoming self-sufficient. Paul says, what’s really profitable is to be godly AND content at the same time. And he reminds us that we came into this world with nothing, and we’ll leave this world with nothing. Everything we have is a gift for a time. We are not so much SELF-sufficient as we are GOD-sufficient. And all we really need are the basics, like food, clothing, and Monday night football!

Elsewhere, in his letter to the Philippians (Philippians 4:11-13), Paul writes,

11 ... I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Who’s the “him”? Christ. The secret is Christ, who gives us strength. If we have Christ, we have everything. If we do not have Christ, then no matter how much we have, we have nothing. In Christ, we can be thankful for all things, whether we have much or little. And out of our gratitude comes deep-seated contentment.

Hebrews 13:5 has some good advice on the subject. It says, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have.” How do we become content? Charles Stanley says we do it by “asking God to teach us how to have gratitude for what we have, rather than complain about what we’re missing.” Someone once said, “Contentment is not measured by what we have; contentment is measured by what we don’t have.” Learn to be content with what you have, and on the flip side...

2. Guard against greed.

Listen to verses 9 and 10: 9 “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

If the first point had one of the best-known verses of the Bible -- “We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it” -- this section has one of the most often wrongly quoted verses: “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” Sometimes people say, “The Bible says MONEY is the root of all evil,” and yet it doesn’t say that at all. Money is a necessary thing in our economy, as it was in Paul’s. He has nothing against wealthy people even. He will address them later on. But it’s the LOVE of wealth that can get us into trouble: “those who want to get rich;” the “love of money;” “eager for money.”