WWUTT 661 Money is the Root of All Evil?

Is money really the root of all evil? No. It's the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evils. And through this craving, some have wandered away from the faith. So you must keep your eyes on Jesus when we understand the text.

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Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Godliness with Contentment as Great Gain

Thank you, Becky. We return to our text in 1 Timothy chapter 6, beginning in verse 6, and I'll read through about verse 10. The Apostle Paul writes,. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. And it's that verse in particular, verse 10, one of the most misquoted and most taken out of context passages in the entire Bible, and you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

How is it that most people quote 1 Timothy 6 .10? Money is the root of all evil, right? And as we just read, that's not what the text says, but we'll come back to that here in just a moment. Let's pick up where we left off last week in verse 6 with Paul saying,.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. And this being contrasted with the false teachers who imagine that godliness is a means of gain, as it says in verse 5. And it's not that they think that true godliness is a means of gain, for they teach a different gospel.

That was the way we started this section, that those who teach a different doctrine are puffed up with conceit and understand nothing, and they have an unhealthy craving for controversy and quarrels and envy and dissension and slander and evil suspicions and constant friction.

Why? Because they're just in this for themselves. And so there is no unity and there is no reconciliation with the people of God. There's just constant division because the person only is out to do this for themselves.

So whatever version of the gospel it is that they are presenting, they believe that they can use the name of God or the name of Christ or the religion of Christianity to gain something for themselves, whether that is acclaim or prestige or just making themselves rich.

They imagine that godliness is a means of gain. But true godliness, Paul says here in verse 6, that which flows from the sound teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, godliness with contentment is great gain.

So you who has heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, you, when you heard the gospel, were likely cut to the heart. You realized your sinfulness in the presence of a holy God and what you deserved was wrath.

You deserve to be destroyed. You realized your need for a savior. And that's where the gospel came in. The good news that Jesus died for our sins, atoning for our sinfulness against God, rising again from the grave so that all who believe in him will receive his life.

You have been transferred from the kingdom of this fallen world, which is wasting away and is going to be judged and destroyed by fire. And instead, you have been transferred into the kingdom of God, which is imperishable and lasts forever.

And those who are truly in Christ, that kingdom will never be snatched away from you. You have been sealed in the Holy Spirit of God and have been made a fellow heir with the son of God. What can the world possibly give you that is greater than that?

When God has given you all good things in the name of his son. And so as you grow more and more in the realization of this, and you desire to be more and more like Christ, you have a love for God and his word.

And as you study the word, he is shaping you more and more into the image of Christ. This is godliness. A desire to be like God and a desire for the things of God is godliness. If you are content with the things that God has given you in this world, and you know that the godliness or the righteousness of Christ that you are pursuing and God is growing you into is greater than anything else in this world, then you have godliness with contentment and that is great gain.

The world can offer you nothing that even compares to the glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus. This is godliness with contentment. And Paul describes this to the Philippians as a peace that surpasses all understanding, guarding our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

I believe that you could equate that statement with great gain, where Paul says to Timothy, great gain here. We have a peace that surpasses all understanding. We're not anxious about the things of this world.

We are not toiling and striving for things that ultimately are not going to please us or make us happy anyway. We are content with what the Lord has given us. And maybe he has blessed you with many great things.

And that's wonderful. Praise God for that. Maybe you have very little and yet you are content with this. As Paul goes on, we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content. There's a couple of passages that I think that Paul is hearkening to here. First of all, when he says we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take out anything out of the world, very similar to something Job said, Job 121, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And then Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes chapter five, verse 15, as he came from his mother's womb, he shall go again naked as he came and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand.

Now both of these passages in Job one and in Ecclesiastes five are rather depressing. But what Paul is saying here in first Timothy six is is full of joy because it's contentment. It's knowing the hope of the gospel.

Job and Solomon did not know the hope of the gospel, but we do because we have received that ministry of reconciliation on this side of the cross. So we have godliness with contentment, which is great gain.

Therefore, knowing we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world, nothing in the world can possibly satisfy. We have received all good things in Christ. If we have food and clothing with these, we will be content.

And here's the next passage that I think that Paul is referencing when he says that. And maybe you have the same passage in mind, Matthew, Matthew, chapter six, beginning in verse twenty five. Jesus says, therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body.

What you will put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns. And yet your heavenly father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you?

Oh, you of little faith, therefore, do not be anxious, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things and your heavenly father knows that you need them all.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

James warns about worldliness as well. And he says, come now you who say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil.

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. And so we must be content with what we have been given, knowing that it is the Lord's will that we have what we have, whether that is the stuff you own or the opportunities that you have been given.

All of this comes from God. We brought nothing into the world. We cannot take anything out of the world. A common saying that goes with this, and you've probably heard this before, you never see a moving trailer attached to the back of a hearse.

When a person dies and they go into the ground, they do not take their stuff with them. Sometimes at a funeral, you might see somebody walk up to a casket and they might lay something in there with the body.

Well, that's something meaningful to them. That's not something that that person, when they get buried into the ground, is taking with them or that body is taking with them. They're just an empty vessel now.

There is no person in that particular body. And so there's nothing that we can take with us when we die. Not even whatever fancy suit they dress us in when they lay us in that coffin and put us in the ground.

We must be content with the food and clothing that we have now in this life. With these things, we will be content, knowing that godliness with contentment is great gain. We have salvation in the gospel, in Jesus Christ our Lord, Christ who is with us always to the very end of the age, who is holding us and keeping us even now and is growing us more and more into the image of himself.

Godliness with contentment. This is great gain. Then Paul goes on into verse nine. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

Notice he says here, or let me rephrase that. Notice that he doesn't say here that people who are rich fall into temptation. He says those who desire to be rich. And you could probably attest to this.

There are many people that you know who desire to be rich but never actually get rich, right? They just want the money and they might try to find fast, easy ways to acquire that money. And so they end up falling into greater traps and snares.

Their mind, their hearts are still focused on the things of this world and in a desire to get rich quick, they probably fall into greater ruin, accumulate more debt than they needed to, isolate themselves from close relationships that they had in their lives, or they just give themselves over to occasional sin with this desire to be rich.

Whether that's buying lottery tickets or going to the casino, you know, gambling and playing games of chance in order to get rich. Even this takes the heart and the mind away from God and focuses it on the desires and the things of this world.

And we should recognize from people who are rich and have everything, whether that is wealth or popularity, they're never satisfied with that. Right? I mean, you see this happen in Hollywood or in professional sports or any of those things all the time.

People who are rich and powerful, they are constantly falling into ruin because they desire more stuff. They're just simply not content with what it is that they have. Every single football season or basketball season or baseball season, we hear about some athlete who had it all, had a massive contract that was handed to them.

And then somewhere in that season, they fell into drugs. Or we read a story about a police officer pulling them over because they were driving while under the influence. Or we hear about them beating their girlfriend and now the police are arresting them and putting them in prison.

Or there was the case with Aaron Hernandez, the former tight end of the New England Patriots, who had murdered a man and was put in prison because of murder. And it was there while he was in prison that he killed himself.

We see stories like this happen all the time. And we're like, well, what's wrong with these people? And they had everything given to them. They worked hard for what it is that they had. But they they had popularity and a great career and millions of dollars.

Well, you know, the answer to this question, whenever we just like, well, what's the problem with you? It's because the world doesn't satisfy. You know that you see that among famous people, you listen to interviews.

I remember when I was a teenager hearing two interviews, one with Harrison Ford and another one with Madonna. And both of them said the same thing when the interviewer asked them if they were happy. Both of them said they weren't.

They had everything. Harrison Ford, the biggest movie star there probably has ever been. Madonna, one of the greatest female pop stars of all time. And yet both of them saying that they were not happy.

They were not satisfied. They were not content. And we'll shake our heads at that like, what is the problem with you? But we know based on what the scripture tells us, we know the world doesn't satisfy.

And we all inherently know that all this stuff is wasting away and it doesn't last. And so even while we have it, we're not content with it because there's a part of us that knows it isn't going to last.

And so and we're not going to last on top of that. So none of these things really can give us any lasting pleasure or value whatsoever. This is why Paul encourages Timothy to understand that godliness with contentment is great gain.

Those who desire to be rich, they fall into all of these evil things, temptation into satanic snares, senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. Verse 10, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. Now, like I said, that passage is often taken out of context to say that money is the root of all evil.

Well, it's clearly not. In fact, I can tell you of sins that I've committed that had nothing to do with money. So money is not the root of all evil. I had certain passions in my flesh that didn't have anything to do with gaining money in order to satisfy those appetites.

And maybe you know that you've done the same thing as well. And God does not forbid having money. We don't see that written here at all. In fact, even in Israel, God had instituted a system of currency, a system of of giving back to the Lord when you read the Old Testament law.

So money is not inherently in and of itself evil, but it is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evils. Now, you can take that as a general statement, and it would be true. The love of money is surely the root of all kinds of evils, of of greed, of nastiness, of envy, of division and deceitfulness and crookedness and and and even adultery and sexual immorality.

All of these things could be rooted in the love of money. Certainly that would apply in a general sense as much as it applies to the context in which Paul presents this. But what is that context? What is the context in which Paul says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evils?

Remember, he's talking here very specifically about false teaching and false teachers. Why is it that many of these men teach so falsely and they distort the gospel? Even when we can hear evidences in their teaching, occasionally we hear evidences that they actually know what the Bible says, but instead they won't teach that.

They'll teach something else, something that would more tickle the ears of the hearers. And one example that I've used of this over and over again is Stephen Furtick, who will actually read a passage and tell you very briefly in like a minute and a half what it means.

And then he'll say, but that's not what I want to talk to you about today. What I want to talk to you today is what I want to talk about today is this. And then he'll go into his own tangent and his own thing.

Why is it that there are teachers that do that? Well, the answer is because the love of money, because they have a lot of power in the way that they have taught, which is not according to the sound words of the gospel, because that's a very selfless way to teach.

To teach the true words of the gospel to benefit the hearers is selfless teaching. But the person who teaches what they want to teach in order to gain acclaim or riches for themselves, well, that's the selfish way to teach.

And it's that love of money that becomes the root of all kinds of evils, meaning evil teaching. And it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

See, there you have the context. They've wandered away from the faith. They've wandered away from the sound doctrine and the true words according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And they've pierced themselves with many pangs.

And some of those pangs were spelled out for us at the beginning of this section. Controversy, quarreling over words, envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction. These are the pangs that Paul is referring to.

And they've actually exposed themselves and revealed that they aren't believers at all. They're actually unbelievers. In closing, I want to come back to Matthew 6, that same section where Jesus said, do not be anxious about your life and go up a few verses from there to Matthew 6, 19.

Jesus says this. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness. 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 money. So let your eyes be focused not on the things of this world, but on Christ. As it says in Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of God.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Amen.

Let's grow together in God's word when we understand the text.