Dennis Tuuri

Sermon Transcript
Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is found in 1 Timothy 6 beginning at verse 3. 1 Timothy 6:3-12. “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the doctrine, which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but doing about questions and stries of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil musings, and surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness.

From such withdraw thyself, but godliness with contentment is great gain. But we brought nothing into this world, and it’s certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some covet after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

But thou, O man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”

Last week’s message didn’t record, I guess. So we’re going to do that whole one first and then the second hour we’ll do the new one. Okay.

We’re going through the seven deadly sins. I think this is tape number 17, I think, so far. And we’re dealing now with greed. We’ll finish greed up today. Next week, Lord willing, I’ll be in Seattle and Tony Tossie will do the first of a series of sermons on the book of Romans and then when I return the following week, we’ll go into the sin of gluttony and then the last sin will be lust and then we’ll sum those up and move on to another subject.

So we’re at greed now and this is the second sermon we’ve done on this one on greed and this will be the last one. You remember from last week we dealt with Luke 12 and in Luke 12 we had an incident that came up from a greedy brother apparently a covetous brother who wanted some inheritance that his other brother wasn’t giving him, who approached Jesus while he was teaching and Jesus rebuked the man at first and then went on to give some instructions about the sin of covetousness or greed.

And remember we made some distinctions actually between technically between covetousness and greed. We said that covetousness in terms of the tenth commandment is an unlawful lusting after or desiring what is our neighbor’s and then using fraudulent means to obtain it. Envy. So covetousness says I want what you have and I’m going to use illicit means to get it. Envy says, “I want what you have. I can’t get it, so I’m going to destroy it or you.” So envy strikes out instead of trying to obtain.

Greed, on the other hand, is simply a grasping after possessions without reference to the fact who they’re owned by—whether it’s yours or somebody else’s or just at a store—it’s a lusting after possessions and a greedy grasping after things. And that’s avarice. That’s what distinguishes this sin, the fifth of the seven deadly sins, from the second, which was covetousness and envy together.

And so this one is really a greedy grasping after possessions. And it’s really very different in many ways from covetousness and envy. Some of the translations however use covetousness in the New Testament for this greedy grasping after. In any event, that’s what our savior gave instruction about in Luke 12 after that incident with the young man. Remember we went through Luke 12 and looked at the instructions he gave first to the crowd in terms of covetousness or greed or avarice.

And then we looked more specifically at the next set of verses. We looked at the instructions he gave to his disciples and he went into more detail, gave them some assurances that he didn’t give to the general crowd and gave them some correctives as well. So that was what we talked about last week. Remember the central truth was found in Luke 12:15. And the point was that your life does not consist of possessions.

And we also said there that Jesus warned us very strongly not to give way to the sin of greed—avarice—which means that the implication of that is we need to be strongly warned because it’s one we’re going to give into without that kind of warning and diligence on our part to avoid that sin. It’s a very easy sin to fall into. And hopefully by the end of today’s talk, you’ll see how we all engage in it all the time in many forms and many ways and you’ll begin to make some modifications to your life beyond just not hoarding up money in your vault someplace.

It has a lot more implications than that.

Remember he illustrated his teaching—Jesus did—with a parable of the man who did a lot of things that seemed fine, really productive, etc., and took good care of his possessions and yet he—it was his sins of omission, his failure to give thanks to God, his failure to use his riches for the kingdom’s purposes—that were really what Jesus denounced the rich man in the parable for and which is the sin of greed or avarice.

It’s looking at possessions in and of themselves without looking beyond them to the value of God and what he calls us to do in those things. You remember we said that Jesus dealt with the sin and we’ll see it again today. He deals with this particular sin amongst his disciples in very accommodating terms. He doesn’t just lash out at them. He goes out of his way to assure them that God will provide those things that they’re concerned about.

Concern for physical possessions is really another hidden form, an alternate form as it were of greed or avarice and a misplacing our desire for contentment with things instead of with the God who provides those things. And Jesus in corrective fashion tells his disciples that they’re of far more value than sparrows, ravens or lilies. And yet God provides for these things. So he puts their mind at rest.

He calls them to be happy then and then also to go on to be holy and line up their life for kingdom work. Today we’re going to look at another extended text on this same subject essentially from 1 Timothy 6 which we just read. And although we won’t be talking about verses 3 or 4 much, it gives us the proper context for what we’re going to be saying in this talk about greed and avarice and that’s why I read the first couple of verses.

1 Timothy 6:1 and 2 have to do with the relationship between servants and masters and then verse 3 starts a new section where he says he warns them about false teachers. He says at the beginning of verse 3 “if any man teach otherwise” then this and this avoid them and so he then tells some characteristics of men who don’t teach according to the godliness taught in Christ’s teachings and according to Christ’s words.

And those false teachers are designated in the passage that we read as men who think that gain is godliness. And so the context for the first point in your outline—true gain is contrasted with false gain—in verses 5 and 6, the context for that are false teachers. And these false teachers are described in verse 5 as being perverse disputers of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness.

From such withdraw thyself. Now, if you take the King James wording there as correct, then these are men who think that if you get material gain, if you get physical possessions, then that is in and of itself godliness. Quite a confusion of belief. Of course, the New American Standard and other modern translations prefer to render this phrase that they believe that godliness is a means of gain. Little different emphasis.

And if you take it that way, then these false teachers are men who think that if they do things in a godly fashion, they do them for the purpose of obtaining gain. Either way you take it, thinking that gain is godliness or that godliness is a means to gain—either way, the material gain is the objective of these false teachers and that is their sin. They are avaricious or greedy because they seek material gain instead of true gain.

Now the reason why some of these men might think that is that—and you—this is another variation of false teachers. Some other false teachers will think that gain is an evidence of godliness. Gain is an indisputable evidence of godliness. So for instance there are men today, there were men then and men now who think that if a ministry is blessed spiritually or materially rather, if you get money coming in the door and if you have material gain then that means you’re doing things right and if you don’t have money coming in the door that means you’re doing things wrong. That’s another perversion of the concept of real gain. All three of these perversions focus on physical gain as opposed to the true gain that Paul seeks to turn their attention to in this passage.

So while material gain—the first point of this passage is that false teachers suppose that there is this indisputable link between material gain and godliness, and godliness is a means to material gain. Now, so the corrective is material gain is not in and of itself godliness, nor does it necessarily evidence godliness in a person’s life. But another corrective needs to be thrown in our day and age.

And the corrective that needs to be thrown in is that neither is material loss godliness. Now, that’s not a direct teaching upon Paul in this passage, but I think it is an implication of this passage and it certainly needs to be pointed out that in the scriptures, material loss is never seen in and of itself as godliness either. Just like material gain isn’t godliness, material loss isn’t godliness.

Both things are focused on the wrong thing. Money is not evil in and of itself in the scriptures. We’ll see we get to a few verses here. It’s the love of money that is described as the root of all kinds of evil. Money is not evil in and of itself. Money is a picture of value. And that value comes from God. If you’ve ever read through the descriptions of the construction of the tabernacle or the temple in Solomon’s time, then you’ll recognize that God does not disdain material prosperity and money.

Great beauty was found in the approach to God in the tabernacle and temple. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with great beauty being found in churches where we also come together in holy convocative worship. God is the source of all wealth. The temple and the tabernacle reflected the fact that as you got close to God, you got close to the source of wealth. And so the temple looked very elaborate and ornate and outward signs of wealth to draw your attention to the fact that you’re approaching God himself who is the source of all wealth.

And so it’s also a perversion of the truth to say that the loss of money is godliness. It’s important to point out in verse 6 that talks about the contentment that people are to have with godliness. That particular word was one of the favorite words of the Stoics. The Stoics were men who believed that independence from material possessions was important—self-sufficiency and the absence of passion and many times the absence of material gain.

That’s another perversion of the relationship between material gain and true spiritual gain. And it’s something we have to be very careful to avoid. Money isn’t evil. The absence of money is not godliness. And the presence of money is not godliness either. Rather, godliness is true gain. Material gain is not in and of itself godliness, but Paul goes on to say in verse 6, “but godliness with contentment is great gain.”

Not only is godliness when coupled with contentment great gain or gain, it is great gain. And so what he’s doing here is he’s correcting these men who thought that material aspects were in themselves true gain. And he’s saying no, they point to godliness which is true gain and great gain at that. Now, all of this reminds us the same theme we talked about last week from Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5.

Those two passages both equate covetousness or greed or avarice—is how we’re translating that word—correlates that with idolatry. Idolatry—the desire to have more and more of something in and of itself, positing value in the thing you’re grasping for—is idolatry. The basis for that statement in the scriptures is that God himself is our reward. God is the source of value. He is value and these other things are only valuable in that they reflect God and point us to him.

Augustine in commenting on the Psalms, one of the Psalms wrote this. He said, “If therefore our heart not be inclined to covetousness, we fear God only for God’s sake, so that he is the only reward of our serving him. Let us love him in himself. Let us love him and ourselves, him and our neighbors whom we love as ourselves, whether they have him or in order that they might have him.” The point is, whenever we do, the value that we see is not in the person we’re relating to ultimately.

Rather, it’s beyond that to God. We’re loving God by loving our neighbor. That doesn’t mean you the neighbor isn’t important. He is. But the point is that in back of all those relationships is God himself. Men—the men that Paul are accusing of being false teachers here—are men who have gone into idolatry by confusing material gain with true gain that it represents.

Molière wrote a stage comedy called “The Miser.” I’m probably not saying either of those names correctly, but in any event, this particular stage comedy—and we’ll talk about this a little bit later, the relationship of hoarding to wasting—but in this comedy, he drew out—it centered around a father who was a miser and a son who was a spendthrift, a hoarder and a waster. And as a picture of the kind of man that Paul is talking about, this father in this stage comedy says this when he finally gets his money stolen.

He says, “Oh, my poor money, my darling money. They’ve taken you away and because you’re not here, I’ve also lost my strength, my consolation, my happiness. All is over for me. I can’t go on. I’m dying. I’m dead and buried. Is there no one who will bring me back to life and give me back my beloved money?” A picture of the man who is greedy. He posits life itself and all value in material possessions.

Now the counteracting element that the scriptures teach us is that the world is created by God. The physical is created by God and is there to give true truth about spiritual realities. And I want to quote here from R.J. Rushdoony his book “By What Standard.” Rushdoony said that for the Christian the physical universe is explicable also in terms of the spiritual because both have a common origin and unity in God.

And then he quotes from Van Til. And this is what Van Til said. “It follows from this that the spiritual can be truly though symbolically expressed by the images borrowed from the physical. It is this conception that underlies Jesus’s use of parabolic teaching, parables. In other words, the vine and the branches give metaphysical but truthful expression to the spiritual union between Jesus and his own. Because, and listen to this now, because the physical is created for the purpose of giving expression to the spiritual.

The physical is created for the purpose of giving expression to the spiritual. We find then that one must first presuppose, Van Til says, the anti-theistic conception that nature is independent of God before one can urge the argument that symbolical language is necessarily to an extent untruthful.” So he’s saying that if you get into this wrong thinking about the revelation of God, that the teachings of our savior in the parables is essentially untruthful. In order to say that you have to first presuppose that nature is independent of God.

Now to that I would add this: the greedy man—the avaricious man—presupposes the same thing that Van Til here talks about. He presupposes that nature—the material created world—is independent of God. He must do that before he can grasp for possessions as having value in and of themselves. In fact, it seems to me that as long as man has cut the tether between the two, between the created world and the person that created it—God—if you do that, if you posit nature independent of God, you must of necessity then become either a hoarder, a miser, a waster, or one of these Stoics who saw this complete break with the material world.

Okay. What I’m saying is that if you look at the created universe as a secular occurrence, having no relationship to the God that created it and not giving expression to spiritual truth, that is what then gets you in the wrong perspective of material gain. That’s when you start saying that material gain is either in and of itself good or no good—either get rid of it all or take it all. Those are the two results of seeing the created universe not as exemplifying and picturing the spiritual realities of God and the truths that God has given us in the scriptures.

If you break that bond, then you create necessity of an inappropriate reaction to wealth and material possessions. Now, that bond—the breaking of that bond—is precisely what public schools do. I used to say years ago, “Well, I went through the public school system and I turned out okay. I can do my multiplication tables, you know,” but now I say I came out of the public school system and I did not come out okay because this very point right here is what I will be learning the rest of my life because for 15 or 20 years I was taught that this physical universe has no relationship to a god.

The scriptures say it does. But see, so the root has been laid there for all of us to be good greedy people, to be either hoarders or wasters or people that simply shun the material world. We’re much like Micah, the prophet—the false prophet—in Judges 18:23. Not the good Micah, the bad Micah. Micah in Judges 18:23, he made these golden gods and altars that he worshiped at and whatnot. And they took him away from him finally, these the children of Dan did in a very bad time of the period of Judges.

And in Judges 18:24, Micah says, “You’ve taken away my gods which I have made, and the priest and ye are gone away and what have I more and what is this that ye say unto me what aileth thee—when his physical gods were taken away his gods were taken away because that was where he posited all value was in those physical gods and that’s the relationship. That’s probably the biggest problem with public schools is it creates children who like poor Micah, when the physical things of life are taken away their gods are taken away.

Avarice is a result of confusing physical gain and the true gain that the physical world points us to, the true spiritual realities. It either assumes the ultimacy of the physical or the total worthlessness of the physical. The created world is neither ultimate nor irrelevant. The created world is a pointer to God and to spiritual reality. And that’s what Paul is telling us here in 1 Timothy 6 to these men that had confused the two.

He went on to tell them in verses 7 and 8 that contentment is necessary for true gain. Contentment is necessary for true gain. And it needs to be pointed out there, I think, in terms of teaching our children that contentment without godliness is not true gain. He says that godliness with contentment is true gain. And it is—it needs to be pointed out—as I said, that if all we try to do is teach people to be content with the material wealth that God has given them without teaching them that material wealth is to drive us to godliness and we’re supposed to see it in relationship to the person of God.

If all we teach them to do is put a constraint upon their desires or appetites in terms of the physical world, make them content with that, but still don’t show them the link between those things and the God that created them to give value to the spiritual realities that he has, then we have not led them to true gain. All we’ve done is make them not be quite as grasping of the physical world. So it’s not good enough just to leave it at contentment.

Contentment itself can become part of the problem. Contentment with a few gods is not a good thing. Okay? So to simply teach our children to be content without teaching them the proper basis of the contentment is wrong. But this passage actually goes on to say that the fact is that uh we should move on to contentment by recognizing that we bring nothing into this world. It’s certain we can carry nothing out and therefore having food and raiment let us be content.

Important here to recognize that Paul is not here trying to argue the people of God into contentment when he says that godliness with contentment is great gain. He’s not saying and then giving into verses 7 and 8—he’s not trying to convince you to be content. He’s saying that if you are godly, if you understand the person of God, and if you have a relationship with God in Jesus Christ, then a result of that, a flowing out of that relationship is contentment with material possessions because you recognize that the created world is here to give expression to God’s realities.

And so the relationship to God is the true gain that all that stuff pictures. Lenski said in his comment on this passage that contentment always goes together with the true God—godliness. Matthew Henry said the same thing in commenting on this text. Lenski went on to say that Paul is not arguing anybody into contentment. He is telling the godly who are content what a blessed source of gain they possess in that contentment.

Having arrived naked because we’re going to leave that way and we cannot possibly leave any other way, the few things that we really need for our short stay here should not disturb our minds as godly people. We’re simply going to be content. If we understand these truths—at death, after all, these verses point out, we leave this world with zero possessions. Our soul coming in and our soul going out is all that we have.

Now again, Paul isn’t saying that means all these things are worthless and you don’t want them and they don’t mean anything. Quite the reverse. He’s saying they’re worthful only in that they lead us into greater understanding and greater relationship to God and so enriches our soul as it were so that when it leaves it is enriched. We’re to have treasures in heaven, not treasures upon earth.

At death, we leave all the symbols. I want to be careful with that word. At death, we leave all the symbols that reflect God’s glory and value. They are all gone. And then we go on to the alone fountainhead of all value, which is God himself. While we’re here, as we said last week, and again in the summation a little bit ago, while we’re here, God surely convinces us and tells us he will provide the necessities of life that we need.

Hebrews 13:5 is another verse that tells us that. We read in Hebrews 13:5, “Let your conversation, let your walk—in other words—be without covetousness, without this greedy grasping after things. Be content with such things as ye have for he, that is God, hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” So Paul reminds us of that here. He says, “God’s going to provide food and raiment and that’s all you need.

God will take care of all your provisions. You’re supposed to keep focused on him and see wealth in that relationship to that.”

Paul goes on to tell us that love for the symbols of gain is great loss. So if we understand that material things are an aspect of spiritual things and we understand that we’re to have godliness then with contentment, that’s great gain. But the reverse of that is love for the symbols of wealth that God has given to us. Love for these symbols of gain is great loss. And that he points out in verses 9 and 10.

Verse 9 we read: “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare. And that word to fall into temptation and a snare has the implications in it that it is a continual present action. So those that want to be rich, who focus on the symbols of real gain, keep tripping. In other words, they keep falling over and over again into this snare. Okay? And into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown which drown them in destruction and perdition.”

Lenski in commenting on this verse said that men who are set on becoming rich uh snatch at the tempting bait. They’re caught in the snare and they are held then by the lust of their own flesh. While they may go rich, they may become rich rather, they’re never satisfied with those riches. The riches don’t satisfy because the riches were never intended by God to satisfy in and of themselves.

The riches were intended by God to cause us to value him higher and understand things about him. So the riches themselves never give the satisfaction that man is seeking after—the man who seeks riches. It’s important here as we said before to recognize that earthly riches aren’t bad. But on the other hand, it’s very important as well to recognize there’s a real warning in this passage. The assumption is that all of us have a hard time remembering that the material world we see is an indication of true spiritual truth and of the person of God.

And because of that difficulty we have, then we have to be very careful in terms of trying to avoid this desire to become rich and enriched with material gain instead of true gain with God. So becoming rich, seeking after becoming rich is a great snare and you don’t want to take away that thrust of this passage. You have to be very careful not to let that enter into your heart. He goes on later in this text in verse 17 of 1 Timothy 6 to tell Timothy to charge them that are rich in this world that they be not high-minded nor trusted on certain riches but in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.

Point of citing that verse is that even to those people that become rich, the riches then are not bad, but they do lead into another set of temptations for people. They lead into the set of temptations to become high-minded and to trust in those material gains that God has given to you. So much so that pastors are to charge people that are rich in their congregations not to let that have happened to them, to be very careful and to avoid that.

I think I pointed out last week in the question and answer time that statistics show throughout the years of generations that rich people don’t usually give as high a proportion of their wealth to help other people as poor people do. You see, they fall into this temptation and this snare to put their trust in their riches. And so they end up not wanting to part with any of it. They end up hoarding it as a result.

Proverbs 23:4 tells us another admonition to labor not to be rich. Cease from thine own wisdom. Proverbs 30:7 we read, “Two things have I required of thee. Deny me them not before I die. Remove far from me vanity and lies. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain.”

You see, so Agur in Proverbs 30 says, “Don’t let me get too rich and don’t make—don’t let me get too poor. If I get too rich, I’m going to get high-minded. I’m going to trust in those riches and not you. And if I get too poor, I’m going to end up stealing and again get out of line in terms of my possessions.” And so these scriptures as well as many others show us that it’s a very great temptation to fall into and hard to get out of—this temptation to become rich with the gain that really points us beyond the material things to the spiritual realities.

Not only is it a trap that is easy to fall into and has disastrous results and it’s hard to get out of, but it then blossoms into worthless fruit. Worthless fruit. Verse 10 says, “This love of money that he’s talking about is the root of all evil which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

So this love for money is a trap that can be fallen into and then the result of that love of money becomes in the root of all evil. The word evil there in the Greek—as I think I pointed this out last week—could be translated and has been by some people dung or refuse, bodily refuse as it were. Yet particular Greek word has been for the last couple of thousand years has become actually a scatological term that’s used in various cultures. Now I don’t say that to you know cause you to be offended at all but it’s important that you recognize what this word means.

And the point of that is it means utter worthlessness is what that stuff is. Somewhat repugnant and revulsive but it’s worthless to you. Okay? And the point is that when you get tracked into this great snare to strive after the things that represent true gain, when you get hooked into that snare, you then get produced into a sucked into a system the product of which is utter worthlessness for yourself and for society as well.

And of course verse 9 that we read there shows the utter the end of such people that fall into that snare. It says they drown men in destruction and perdition. Perdition is the final destination of those men who fall into this sin. It is a deadly sin. It is a sin that is difficult to avoid and the scriptures are replete with many examples of men who have fallen into it. Dives in the parable, Judas, Ananias and Sapphira—just from the New Testament.

People who fell into this snare of wanting to be rich, wanting to accumulate material possessions and as a result end up in perdition, hell. The list goes on and on of those who have never escaped from this particular trap and are at this moment in eternal torment in hell because of this sin. It is a deadly sin, one that must be avoided. I had meant to bring Lenski’s commentary in terms of the social ills that proceed from greed and avarice.

I forgot it, however, but it’s an interesting uh part of Lenski’s commentary. He wrote it apparently toward the end of the Great Depression, and he quoted at this particular section on 1 Timothy 6. He quoted from a man that talks about the social consequences of greed in the economy and how it produces you know inflated dollars etc. and economic cycles that prove disastrous and ruinous to people and Lenski went on then to comment from this man’s comment that at the time of his writing of this particular commentary on 1 Timothy 6 the world was about…

Are what about the people who spend all their money to their own hurt—to their own hurt—because they wanted to get their… I, because what was the second part of that? They wanted—they want to get yours. Oh, relationship they give money. So your question is what about people that instead of buying things with their money, use it to try to buy friendship.

Yeah, that’s nasty way to put it. Well, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that. I don’t know, Mark. I haven’t thought about that. Well, it doesn’t seem to be a healthy view of money because there’s a real contempt for people who have a lot of money, right? Right. And then they also have a lot of good temples for their own possessions, but they don’t care how many possessions they get through. And but what they’re looking for from that is a great deal of banks and appreciation explosives. And it seems to me like they’re putting things backwards.

Well, yeah. I think that behind all those things is the use of money, like you said, as a means of power. Money. It’s interesting how often covetousness is linked with or greed—grasping after—that word in the Greek is used in connection with other sins that we’ll be talking about in the next couple weeks, gluttony and lust. All of which seem to be an attempt to exercise control either over one’s environment or the friends that make up one’s environment.

So that model fits what you’re saying very nicely—that the person is trying to exercise control or power over you through the distribution of wealth. All of them are idolatrous in that they seek to be the determiner of their own fate or reality as opposed to being submissive to God’s providence. So the exercise of power is a common thing but I haven’t thought about specifically that kind of person.

Okay. Any other questions or comments? Yes. Yeah. Provide money as a job or whatnot. I well I think that first of all you should be satisfied with what you have. But that doesn’t mean complacent necessarily. What it means is that in terms of a job what you want to focus on is the work you do for the employer. And if one of the benefits of that is material gain back, then to see that gain to be used for God’s purposes. I mean that if all you’re trying to do is figure out a way to get more money, that’s wrong in and of itself because it focuses again on this thing that’s created to be a picture to lead you to the value of God.

Money raises in employment should come as a result of people exercising godly attributes of work. And then the value returns to you in the form of the raise. Does that make sense at all? Yeah. Yeah. I think that if you were to… Yeah. And I guess that I would never… Yeah. It seems like if what you’re trying to do is constantly make more money, that’s wrong. But if you’re trying to constantly improve yourself and do a better job for your employer, think of better ways to service for instance a broader group of people if you have some product that you think is going to be useful for their lives, that’s what you should be focusing on—kingdom work—and then the physical wealth that accumulates to you as a result of those things.

Steve go ahead. At the same time in a fallen world the market is always going to try to lessen—the market, employer—it’s going to always try to give you less possible. So there is a to be kind of vigilant to make sure that you’re getting… I’m not so sure the market. I’d want to think about that a little bit. That the market always wants to give you less. Individuals in the marketplace there may be individuals who are like that.

Yeah. Mark did you want to what say everybody’s looking for a bargain right so they can pay you less than the same work, the same product, same service they are, so I don’t think you know, you know, I would I would rather correct say that it’s never wrong that it’s wrong to want to wealth I think that if you see the wealth as something apart from God and that’s something you don’t want to pursue wealth God. That’s yes. Yes. The man who the man who does a good job should be rewarded with the wealth, the material gain that God has said should reward those people. That’s certainly true. And of course the main emphasis on us is we can’t usually—we’re not usually in a position to force somebody else to do that. But we are in a position to reward those that labor for us without forcing them into that kind of thinking.

So it seems like where you want to go with that ultimately is to say that if I hire somebody to do a task for me, I want to be understanding that whatever I pay them is in relation to their value, not to, you know, as cheap as I can get by with. So did you want to say something, Mark? Well, something similar to that. I’ve worked for people who said if you want a raise, you got to demand money that you’re working always seems to me like lazy guy position over me is first of all to tell me what I need to do and if I satisfy his requirements he should be assessing my performance and rewarding me accordingly.

That’s right. When he says I will give you a raise though and let you come and knock on my door and demand one. Yes. And unfortunately both the examples there are probably consistent because that’s the sort of marketplace we have. There’s what I think somebody referred to it as the mushroom theory of management. You grow them in the dark and everything. When they finally peek their heads up and start asking for more money, you cut off the heads, you know, and you tell them to move on.

And there all too many I’ve seen that in the places I’ve worked for and it’s really counterproductive, of course. That’s the greedy grasping after the part of the employer that ends up with employees who are dissatisfied and when they finally do recognize their own worth, they have to go someplace else to get it. So, yeah, if what you’re saying is, you know, you’ve done a value for your employer and you know that should be valued higher than what the material gain you’re getting back, yeah, I think it’s absolutely essential you do communicate that to him and not just be uh because otherwise it’s to let him skew the equation.

But I thought that what was original should be to try to increase the level of service you produce and then as a secondary result of that you should also want your employer to reward that accordingly to what you’ve done. Is there a hand back there? No. Okay, John. No, it seems I don’t know how you’d apply it exactly. Dwayne, would you say you bet? Oh, yes. Yeah, that’s the whole point of my talk really. It’s very temple that wealth should be seen first of all as picturing wealth from God’s throne so you don’t get hung up and you got throne room he is the source of all wealth. Money is created through his act of fiat creation—what these gold and silver is created—it’s there to give us a picture of this. The miser stops at this thing here and doesn’t see the value of god behind it and so that’s the corrective to the whole situation. And then secondly of course the way that works itself out is if you know that this is value emanating from God’s value, then you’re going to order your life in terms of what you do with this stuff far differently.

If this is a value in and of itself, then you’re going to grasp it. If this is a value as it reflects the value of the person of God, then you’re going to use it that other people might know the person of God, that service might be done for him in terms of kingdom building, in terms of establishment of Christian households, in terms of preaching the gospel, etc. So, yeah, that’s the corrective is recognizing that this wealth is not have some sort of independent existence from the God who created it—that it’s there to lead us to understand his value.

So as long as you have that corrective in place absolutely—that’s what I was saying is that really it’s the opposite side of the same coin to say we want to give up all wealth because that denies the value that it does have being a created thing and has true value from God. And so to deny that is just as much a sin as to try to place ultimate value in it. So to deny either ultimate value in God to assert ultimate value to the created thing or to deny any value to the created thing are both sin.

Does that help? Yeah. Any other Richard? Yeah. I really appreciate how you brought in the doctrine of creation and how it naturally shows love. Money being careless about money being careless. This world is passing away. Therefore, we’re not going to fall into this world, you know, God’s creation. Yes. And I read this point in Proverbs 27—says in contrast, be careless, be diligent on the state of your attendance.

That’s great. That’s excellent. That’s really good. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Yes, Steve. Well, at one point I believe what you were talking about as well is you almost kind of decide that you want to be careful about calling it simple. And I was thinking if there’s ever the that this might get and I’m wondering what there might be a warning there. Yeah. What I meant to say was that you could take—you could if you call these a gold for instance a symbol and of the value in God.

You could look at as an empty symbol. You know what I’m saying? But it has reality to it. It’s not just a symbol. It has a created reality to it that you don’t want to empty out. It’s not—yeah, I guess it depends on which word we use with the word symbol, but too often people think of symbol as just some sort of empty thing, but it is like that, you know, it has value. It has weight. It has substance. It’s an accurate symbol, I guess, or a full symbol.

Go ahead. Okay. Well, thinking in terms of, you know, like your definition symbol. Uh-huh. Do you think it’s okay to say that the entire physical world is basically symbol of God? Well, you know, it’s interesting as I was talking about Jordan’s book this week—Through New Eyes specifically. If you haven’t got that book, haven’t looked at it, you really ought to read it. The first couple of chapters are just delightful.

And he uses this example of the nuclear furnace. And I guess reading that book, I became more aware than ever that my own mindset is secular, you know, because that’s what I’ve been raised having. And what we’re going to have to do, and I don’t think any of us can just pull all that out and push back in biblical meaning. What we’ve got to do is raise our kids to have that understanding—the way we look at things—that the sun is ultimately an expression of God’s time for instance and the glory of the sun and these sort of things not ultimately an expression of nuclear fusion or whatever it is but the third…