Fight The Good Fight of Faith #2

So this morning is the last Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I would usually take time to preach a sermon on thankfulness to help prepare our hearts as we gather together with family and friends this upcoming week as we do the work of recounting the many kindnesses of God to us. In past years, I've pointed out to us that thankfulness is an attribute that we all should have. We all know that we should be thankful or grateful. I've also pointed out that none of us are content with our gratitude. All of us would say, I should be more grateful. which is sort of a confession of sin if you think about it. You think, well, what do I do instead of offer gratitude and thankfulness? You say, well, I grumble and I complain, and I'm dissatisfied and I'm discontent, and there's things I'd like to be better. And we just sort of live in this tension. And so as I prepared to preach today, I decided that I would not preach about thankfulness, at least not directly.

This morning, I want to continue our study of 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 6 to 12. And part of the reason I wanted to continue is because I think that our text deals very closely with contentment and, I think, gratitude. The part we're going to be focusing on this morning, verses 9 and 10, deal particularly with the love of money. As we work through these verses, it's my hope that we'll see how our own love of money is often at the root of our ingratitude. It is the reason that we're not thankful. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord? From 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 6 to 12. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some, by longing for it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. It was two weeks ago when we last studied this text. And when we studied it, we saw that godliness without contentment was, in a word, worthless. That all of our efforts to please God, all of our efforts to do what we're supposed to do, to keep the law and all of the rest, didn't amount to much if we did it without contentment. And you think of that with children, it's quite obvious. If you tell your child, I want you to go clean up the kitchen, and they go, fine. You're not pleased with them.

Well, however they clean the kitchen, even if they did a great job, you would not be content with it. And they wouldn't get the benefit from cleaning the kitchen. Now, kids, I understand you might think that's strange for me to say there's a benefit to you from cleaning the kitchen, but there actually is. It actually is a tool to teach you something. And if you go in there with a grumbling, complaining heart, you're not going to learn the lesson, even if all the dishes are clean and put away. It's the same way with godliness. This is what we studied last time. Hey, Micah. Can you put this in my bag? I forgot. It's distracting me. It's the same way with godliness. If we're not content as we serve the Lord, our godliness doesn't benefit us at all. It doesn't produce in us the thing that we would want. And so if contentment is the key to godliness, and without it our hearts are continually upset, you have to ask, and we talked about this last week, what is it that...

makes contentment so difficult for us. And what I said to you is the thing that makes contentment so difficult for us is that contentment requires us to be dependent on God as opposed to independent of Him. We have to be content with what God has given to us as well as what He hasn't given to us. And if we chafe at His provision, if we don't like it, if we grumble and complain, even in our hearts, then we'll never find contentment. And the reason is because we're at war with God. We're angry at His... provision or lack as we see it. And then our discontentment leads us to do what? Well, to go in search of something we think will make us content. And so last time we talked about our contentment being a good, the key to godliness. This week what I want us to talk about is what we go in search of. When we're discontent, we say, well, what will make me happy? If you were to have a dinner, you know, dinner served to you and you went,

I don't want this, your next immediate thought would be, I want something else. And you might get up and go look in the refrigerator or the cabinet for something that you want more. That's what we do with God when we're not content with him. When we're not content with him, we go, well, I want to find something that will make me content. And that's what our text addresses to us. Before we get into the details of it, I want to say one thing to you about money, because it talks about the love of money. That ends up being the thing we go in search of.

It's very common for us to think that, oh, if I have money, if I have wealth or stuff or whatever it represents to us, when I have those, I'll be happy. I want to get into that, but before I do, I want to say something just quickly about money. Money is not a good thing or a bad thing. Money is not moral, okay? It is not wrong to have money. It is not right to have money, so to speak. You're not morally better because you have money. You're not morally worse because you don't. Money is a tool that God gives us to help us love him and to love our neighbors. That's why we have money. That's the whole explanation. It's so that we can love God better and we can love our neighbors better. It's just a way, a tool, a thing that's been put into our hands so that we can accomplish that work. And so money is not moral, but how we use it and how we desire it, that's moral. We can either use that money, as I've said, to love God.

Or we can use that money to love and serve ourselves. And that's a moral thing. If we use our money to love God, we've done something morally good. If we use that money to distance ourselves from God, we've done something that's morally bad. And it's not the money that's good or bad, it's us. And so from the very beginning of this talk of money and the love of money, I want to dispel the notion that money is the problem. Money is not the problem. We are. Our desires are. The way we think about money, that's the problem. The money is not the problem. So if we're the problem, how does that manifest? Well, what Paul warns Timothy against is those who want to get rich. And as I said earlier, when we're not content with God, we go in search of something that will make us content. And what Paul says here, and I think is a common, always true statement, is that we think money or riches or wealth will make us happy.

I can't think of anyone who wouldn't think, my life would be better if I had a little more, whatever it is they want. And yet the scripture tells us just in the verses before that with food and covering, we shall be content. And I said to us last time when we studied this, I said, how many of us could be content with food and covering? Could you imagine it? Part of the reason we were so upset about the election, because I preached the sermon right on the heels of it, is because we saw that our way of life was being threatened and that we may have to content ourselves in the future.

with food and shelter, because we may not have more than that. And I found out after the fact that a number of you were upset by me saying that. Not upset at me, but upset that you felt that to be true. It scared you, because you thought, well, the things I'm used to and accustomed to are going to be taken away from me. And even if they are, your contentment is not swept away along with it, even though it feels many times as though it is. If I lose this thing, what will I have? Where will I be? So when we're not content with God, with food and covering, we go wandering. We go in search of something that will make us content. And so Paul warns us about those who want to get rich. If you find in your hearts, when you look around at your life, even as you think about Thanksgiving and sitting around a table, hopefully with your family, and saying, what are you thankful for? If you go...

I don't know. This has been a crummy year, which has sort of been the conclusion of everybody, Christian especially. This has just been a crummy year, and I want it to be over. What's really going on in that statement is a bunch of discontentment trying to find its way out without obviously being sinful, and it didn't work. It's just our discontentment. I just want the hard part to be over. I haven't got anything to be thankful for, and if we do, it's some... something that's far off and away from us. And it's not actually something we are thankful for. It's something that we know we should be thankful for. But our real contentment oftentimes, I think, comes from our riches or from wanting to get rich. This is corrupt reasoning. If I have this, when I have this, then I'll be content. It will never produce contentment because the desire to get rich is itself a rejection of God's provision and his care. And so a desire to get rich, and my assumption is,

That there's no one in this room who doesn't have that temptation. Now some of you might go, I don't love money. And I don't buy it. Sorry. I just don't. I don't buy it about myself either. So don't think I'm standing up here going, all you bad people. I'm not. I have the same struggle. Paul didn't qualify this away from actually having any application. He just says, in our words, Those who aren't content with God's provision of food and shelter will try to make themselves rich and content themselves with that. This is true of all men. And it causes all kinds of trouble in their lives. All kinds. If we were to summarize our passage, verses 9 and 10, that's what he says. And he ends it by saying, and they will pursue it to their own destruction. They will not pull up short. They won't pursue it just a little bit. They will go whole hog after their contentment in something other than God to the point that they will reject the faith.

and fall away from God. That's the danger that is laid before us. And so if we at the very beginning start out and say, no, no, no, no, that's not really a danger for me, then we're fools. Because that self-deception, as we're going to see in a little while, is part of the problem. And so I want you to trust me. Even if you don't see how you love money, some of us, I'm sure, can see it more clearly. Our desire to get rich is more present. It's on the front burner instead of the back burner. I want us to see the desire to get rich.

is a desire to reject God's provision in your life. And if you pursue it, you will reject God. God does provide for us. He does care for us. Many of us have wants and have desires, but our needs of food and of shelter and of salvation have been provided for and provided for by God. It's not uncommon for God's people to be discontent with the Lord's provision, though. You think of the Lord providing manna for his people in the wilderness. were they happy? They were not happy. Before he provided manna, were they happy? They were not happy. And in Exodus 16, 3, it says this, the sons of Israel said to them, would that we had died by the Lord's hand in the land of Egypt when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. And in response to that request, if we can call it that, the Lord provides manna.

But I want you to catch what the people of Israel said they would rather have. What they said is, we would rather have death by the Lord's hand than his provision. Would that we had died in Egypt by the hand of the Lord. What are they talking about? Well, they're talking about all of the plagues that they had just been delivered from. The final having been all of their first morns being wiped out. And the Red Sea closing in on all of the enemies of God. They said, we would prefer that because we at least had food. We had meat and we had bread in abundance. Excuse me. So is that a danger to us? That we would prefer death by the Lord's hand than humble provision? I think it is. And it's good for us to see it so that we know what to identify and to reject in our own lives when we say, well, my desire, I just want. We have to step out of our details of our lives and step back and go, is there contentment in me?

Am I content with God's provision to me? Am I growing in that? Or am I growing in my discontentment and my frustration? Which is it? It can't be both. Neither one of them will be perfect. Which one is it? Those who want to become rich think that when I get stuff, I'll have what I need. And to think that way and to order your life that way is to prefer death than life. Contentment is possible in every circumstances of our life. Because our contentment's not based on, doesn't flow out of the circumstances of our life. Our contentment as Christians comes from the Lord providing for us his son and food and covering. And beyond those things, we have all that we need. In those things, we have all that we need. So is wealth the problem? Is having money the problem? Are you wondering, am I supposed to want to be poor? Am I supposed to not have money? No, that's not what I'm saying.

All through Scripture, you have different people being given different amounts of wealth by the Lord, some of them quite wealthy. Are they in sin because they're wealthy? Nope. Paul doesn't say here that wealth is a problem, that the rich are the problem. What he says is the desire to be rich is the problem. And so it's our desire that's the problem, our desire to content ourselves with something other than the Lord. Wanting to become rich is our danger. And that means that poor people... are in as much danger, if we consider ourselves poor, some of us, we're in as much danger of running afoul of Paul's warning here as the wealthy. You don't have to have money to love money, turns out. Funny thing is, you'll find some people, as you get to know them, who are wealthy. And if you listen to them talk about money, you might be convinced that they don't love money the way you do. That's been my experience. Not always, but there are people I know that have money, and when I listen to them talk about their money,

they don't seem to love their money the way I would. It's quite sweet and encouraging. And so the desire is the problem. The danger is the danger. That's the danger. Now, is wealth dangerous? Does the Bible teach us that wealth actually is dangerous? I just said wealth wasn't the problem. That's not what Paul's talking about here, but is wealth dangerous? Okay, but wealth's not a problem. It's not wrong to have money, but it is dangerous. What is the danger of wealth? That's the question, isn't it? To desire it is a danger. But there actually is another danger that comes along with wealth. What is the danger? The danger is that when you get wealthy, you will forget God. That's the danger. And that's what the Lord warns the Israelites against way back in Deuteronomy. In chapter 80 says this, Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes which I am commanding you today. Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied,

and have built good houses and lived in them. And when your herds and your flocks multiply and your silver and your gold multiply and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Skipping down a few verses, he goes on and he says, Otherwise you may say in your heart, My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth. But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who is giving you power to make wealth, that he may confirm. Whoops, sorry about that. You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who is giving you power to make wealth, that he may confirm his covenant, which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. It shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them. I testify you again against you this day that you will surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish, because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord.

And so the danger of wealth is that when you have the things that you want, you'll forget how you got them, and you'll abandon God. And I don't think anything truer could be said of our nation. And, you know, I'm not the first person to think it. You know who else had that same sentiment about America and who wrote it in his presidential address at Thanksgiving? Abraham Lincoln said the same thing. Surely our houses have multiplied and our wealth has multiplied, and everything that we have, we have in abundance. And I'm afraid that we've forgotten the Lord as a result. That was a long time ago. How much more is it true today? It's as though we've taken our discontentment and we've extolled it as a virtue of being an American. You can always get what you want in America. Turns out that what we want is to forget our Lord God as a nation. And may that not be true of us. Better for us to be poor and in need.

and remember the Lord our God, and to be content with his provision, than to have all of the riches of this world, all the riches that it has to offer, and end up in hell. Now if I were to come to you and say, have you forgotten the Lord God in your life, in your pursuit of wealth? We'd all say, I don't think so. I don't want to. So how is it that we forget the Lord God? How is it that Israel forgot the Lord God? Did they stop worshiping? Did they stop sacrificing? Did they outwardly reject? all of the law and the statutes and say, none of that's for us anymore. No. Their lives and their hearts filled up with other things, other priorities. Paul tells us that those who want to get rich will fall into temptation and a snare and also many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. And so what he describes for us is that we get caught in our desires. We get distracted. And we're willing to do wicked things to get what we want. Now,

Some of you know I'm a hunter. I like to hunt. And part of the trick of hunting or part of being successful as a hunter is that you have the ability to disguise or mislead your prey. Okay? If a hunter were to go stand out in the middle of the field all dressed in orange waiting for a deer to come by to shoot, his chances would be pretty low that that would happen. There's all kinds of, there's a whole industry of stuff. for hunters that help them fool the deer. And all of that stuff that hunters buy and spend money on is meant to get at the desires of the deer they're trying to kill. So there's sprays, and there's foods, and there's clothing, and there's decoys, and there's all kinds of stuff that we use to trick the deer, to distract them from what's really going on, imminent death. Because if they saw the hunter, they do tend to run away pretty quickly. And so the goal of a hunter, in some sense, is simply to trick his prey into getting close enough so that he can kill it. And that really is Satan's way with us. It's to trick us so that we'll get close enough to destruction that it can get a hold of us and we can't get away. And if we knew that we were walking toward destruction, we'd go, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. The problem is we're

we're blinded to so much of the destruction that we get close to. Our desire to get rich, we're blinded to it. We don't see it. If we saw it, we would reject it, but we don't see it as God sees it. This is why Paul warns Timothy, the danger is not always apparent, and so we need to be warned away from it. Our job is to heed the warning. So what does it look like to deceive ourselves? What does it look like for us to miss the warning signs? Well, one of the things with regard to money, that I think many conservative Christians use is talk of stewardship, good stewardship. You've got to be a good steward of the money that you have. Now, am I standing here to oppose good stewardship? Not any more than the Scripture does, but there's a tension between good stewardship and it being a covering for sin. You can imagine the rich young ruler who came to Jesus and said, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus asks him about the commandments, and he says, I've kept all of those from my youth up. And Jesus says, there's still one thing you lack.

take all that you have, sell it, and give to the poor. You could understand the rich young ruler saying, that would be a foolish thing for me to do. And again, when Jesus told the parable in Luke 12 of the rich man, it says that the land of a rich man was very productive, and he began reasoning to himself, saying, what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? And then he said, this is what I'll do. I'll tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease. Eat, drink.

and be merry. But God said to him, You fool, this very night your soul is required of you. And now who will own what you have prepared? So is the man who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. Was that man, did he not believe that he was being a good steward? Did his selfishness not masquerade as stewardship? Wouldn't he have been better off to give to those who had need then than storing up for himself for years to come? And so I think talk of stewardship is not simply a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to love of money. Much of what we would call good stewardship needs to be examined to see if it isn't really just our own way of isolating ourselves from dependence on God. Am I saying you should be foolish with money? No. I'm not saying you should be foolish with money.

But I am saying you ought to look at our lives and you ought to say, where is my comfort and where is my hope? Do I depend on God for my daily bread? Or do I, as the man in the parable, think that building bigger barns is the best way to provide for myself? I can tell you from my own experience watching, God will take your barns away. And he'll take everything that's in them away. So what is good stewardship? I'll tell you what good stewardship is. Good stewardship is prioritizing souls over wealth. That was that man in the parables' failure. He didn't prioritize his soul over his wealth. The same could be said of the rich young ruler. We need to be sure that that same thing can't be said of us. Think of it this way. The widow's might is often something we talk about in terms of stewardship with regard to money. Was she a good steward of her wealth, of her money, of what she had? She was. She was dependent on God to provide for her, and she didn't despise it.

And Jesus looked on her and she says, truly I say to you, she's given more than all the rest. And she was content and happy to do it. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, is a verse that people like to fight about, whether it means it's the root of all evil or whether the love of money is sort of the fountainhead that all of their sin comes out of. And I just want to say to you, Paul's driving his point home, okay? If you've ever driven a nail, you drive the nail, and it gets down right to the board, and it's pretty much flush, and you take the hammer one more time, and you go, pop, and you set the nail. That's what this verse is. It's Paul just setting the nail. He's not saying really anything new in the first half of this verse than what he said in the preceding verse. The love of money is a root of all sorts of evil. What he's saying is that if you're not content with God, and you think that money will give you the things that will make you happy, you'd be surprised the things you do to make to get it.

All sorts of evil. What wouldn't you do to content yourself? The love of money, this covetousness, leads to every form of corruption and temptation. And it doesn't just tempt us. It also leads us to all kinds of sin. The love of money will not just plague your mind, it will plague your life. It will cause you to do all kinds of things that are in rebellion against God. All kinds of stuff. Have you guys heard the saying, it's an old journalism saying, follow the money? Where'd that come from? I don't mean like who said it first. I mean, where did this idea that following the money was the thing to do in investigative journalism? Didn't it come from just the understanding that money motivates all kinds of corruption? That's why you follow the money. It will lead you to the problem. Most criminal investigators will tell you the two things cause a lot of crime. Money and lust or love or sex.

Those things are the root of so much of the crime that we deal with. People don't get what they want sexually, and it causes them to do all kinds of things. People don't get what they want in regard to their money, it causes them to do all kinds of wicked things. And that's what Paul tells us here. And so we ought to follow the money. Do any of us ever make a decision, ever make a decision without considering the financial implication? And I don't mean do we run a profit and loss assessment on a purchase to see if it's a good purchase. What I mean is do we not look at the things we want and go, if that will make me happy, how much will it cost me? If I think it will make me happy, yes, you can make my combo meal large. I think it will make me happier. And so when we're weighing out the financial implications, we're weighing out our desires. What will make me happy? Will I feel good?

Buyer's remorse is sort of the letdown from that when you realize, oh no, it didn't produce the joy and the satisfaction that I thought it would. And now I'm out all this money and now I have this thing, whatever this thing is. We are all willing to spend money to make ourselves happy. We do it with entertainment. Do you know how much it costs to go to a sporting event? It's incredible how much money we'll spend. And not just for the ticket, for the parking. for the meal that you have to go out to before that, to the beer or the hot dog or whatever you get at the game, to the shirt or whatever it is you buy while you're there. It is incredible how much money we will spend for just an evening of pleasure. Am I saying that that's always wrong and you should never do it? No, I'm not. But I'm simply saying, do you realize how much money we are willing to spend in pursuit of our happiness and a fleeting happiness?

No one thinks that going to a Colts game or a Pacers game or whatever is going to satisfy their deepest desires. They just want to have fun for a night. So the love of money will cause us to do all sorts of evil things. All sorts of evil things. And it leads to a rejection of the faith. In Luke 16, Jesus says no one can serve two masters. He'll either hate the one and love the other or else he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. And then he holds up the two masters and he says you cannot serve God and wealth. And that's what Paul's warning us against here. He says you'll either be content with God and with his provision, or you'll pursue your contentment and your life through wealth. Those are really your two choices. The details will vary from person to person, but those are the choices before us. We really do have to choose. Our choice is between earthly treasure and heavenly treasure. I was reading recently to my kids about John Huss. Some of you guys may have heard of John Huss. He was a reformer before there were reformers.

if you will. He lived late 1300s, early 1400s. And he decided that he would start preaching against the teaching of Rome, a number of different things that Rome was wrong about, and he started teaching against it. And so they came after him, and they tried to kill him, the church did. The Roman Catholic Church tried to arrest him and kill him. his people, they actually came to his church service and with the intent, the people of the city, the Catholics, they came to the chapel, Bethlehem Chapel in Prague where he preached. And they came saying, we're going to arrest him and we are going to tear down the temple or the chapel, the church. And his people rose up and said, no, you aren't. To the extent that they didn't take John Hus and they didn't tear anything up. But then John Hus got himself banished. He got kicked out of.

out of Prague. And so the people would go out and they'd listen to him preach and they'd do all this kind of stuff. You can realize John Hus is not a popular guy because he's opposing the Roman church at that time. And they want him dead. So then the emperor of Constance says, I'll grant you safe passage. Come to the church council here and you can defend your beliefs. And what did John Hus do? Did he go to it? Did he trust them? He didn't trust them and he went. He went to this thing, knowing that he was going to get arrested. All of his people were saying, don't go, they're going to arrest you. And John Huss said, you know, basically, that's okay. That's okay. I would rather die a miserable death than to deny my Lord. He was willing to die. And he did end up dying. Even to the point where he was tied to the stake and they were piling up the wood and the straw around him. They said, we can't and you can live. And he said, no. Lord, receive my spirit.

Into your presence I commit my spirit. As he died. This was a man who valued heavenly treasure and God's word above his own life and certainly his comfort. John Huss was a great encouragement to Martin Luther who went through basically the same thing about 100 years later. The only difference was when Martin Luther was supposed to be kidnapped and killed, the emperor of Saxony, Frederick, where Luther was from, kidnapped him first and hid him away in a castle. But Martin Luther said he was encouraged by the work of John Huss 100 years previous, a man who had loved God and who had loved heaven and stored his treasure up there. And that's the question we have before us, is will we follow behind the men who've stored their treasure up in heaven, who've loved Jesus Christ, and who've submitted their whole life, even unto death, to God? And we're content to do it. Men, as the scripture says, the world is not worthy of. Or...

That's one option. Or will we be those that Paul warns us against, those who have loved money and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith? Will we be those who reject the faith in pursuit of our comfort in this world? And I want you to know it's not a decision you make really quick. It's not a decision you make and then it's done. This is a decision that you walk out for the rest of your life. It's never done with us. I wish that it was. I wish there was something we could do to stamp our lives with indelible ink in such a way that that decision was made and we never had to wrestle through it again. But that's not the way it is. Whether we'll love God or whether we'll love our neighbors versus will we love this world in our own comforts is a question that we're going to wrestle through the rest of our lives, whether we're young or whether we're old, whether we're married or single.

whether we have money or whether we're not, whether we live in a capitalistic society or whether we live in a socialistic society. We will have to walk these questions out. Some, by longing for riches, have wandered away from the faith. They've chosen earthly treasure over heavenly treasure. It's become obvious where their treasure is, and that's where their heart is as well. The final thing I'll tell you about loving money, as Paul tells us, is that it pierces us with many griefs. We go into it thinking, if I get these things, I will be happy. And Paul ends by saying, no, you won't. You'll be pierced with many griefs. This is the warning that we need to hear. This is the warning that we need to heed. What is it that pierces us through? What is pierced? I think often it's our conscience. Could you imagine when John Huss was being killed, when he made eye contact with the emperor of Constance who lied to him, what that man would have done and been like?

The testimony I read was that he turned away. He couldn't look him in the eye because he knew what he had done. Judas, 30 pieces of silver, pierced through with many griefs because he loved money. He wasn't content with Jesus and with his provision. Satan's way is to tell you lies that are believable and then to never deliver on his promises. If we listen to him, we'll be miserable. That's the plain and simple truth. If you listen to Satan and you believe that money will make you happy, just a little more money, I mean from where you're at right now, wherever you're at financially, whatever troubles you have, if you think just a little bit more money, just a little bit is going to make you happy, I'm telling you, you're believing a lie. And that lie will take root and it will grow and it will bring destruction into your life and it will be...

a miserable destruction. It won't be a quick destruction that comes at the night all at once. It'll just be a life of growing misery and sorrow and afflictions of conscience. And what you'll find is that instead of being thankful and content, you're just more grumpy and miserable and bitter and jealous and covetous of what others have. But that's not the way of Christians. That's not our path. That's not what God's called us to. So what are we supposed to do? Well, next week we'll go on to the next few verses. He tells them, flee from these things. And so next week we'll talk about fleeing from those things and fighting it out. But for this week, what I want to tell you is, repent. Repent of your love of money. Repent of the thoughts that you have and the priorities you have in your life that say, what makes me happy is this. I'll be happy when. I can tell you, you won't. You won't be happy when you have more money.

You'll be just like you are now, only probably more bitter because it didn't make you happy and you thought that it should have. So don't love money. Don't desire riches. Desire Jesus Christ and love him because he's provided for you all that we need for life and godliness. Money won't make you more godly. Contentment will make you more godly. Contentment with what you have, contentment with what you don't have, contentment with what you want and what other people have. But you don't. That'll make you more godly, wrestling through those things. Money won't. Let's pray.