Dennis Tuuri

Our sermon text for today is found in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verses 6 to 12 as we continue our series of sermons on the Ten Words and specifically the tenth commandment. Please stand with the reading of God’s word, 1 Timothy 6:6–12.

“Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life to which you are also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for bringing us to this text today at this time and in this place. We thank you, Father, for your love for us and your care. May you minister your word to us. Cause us, Father, to re-evaluate who we are in the light of our Savior and his kingdom. Help us to have a correct relationship to material blessings. And may we, Lord God, honor you by hearing and being transformed by the power of your Spirit today. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I saw a documentary on Cole Porter years ago on NPR and they were having an interview with his homosexual lover who was with him at the end. And his homosexual friend, lover, partner was so disappointed in Cole Porter’s deathbed scenes because he said, “Coley, that’s what he called him. Coley, all he wanted was his beautiful French armchairs with him. That’s what he wanted in heaven, not the man that he was the partner to.” This is the sort of depravity that God gives men over to—and women—as we do not allow ourselves to be transformed by his word and become submissive to him. All we care about are French armchairs even at our death.

God is in the process of destroying idols. What he does, you know, we tend to create idols and he tends to bust them up. And I think that in the worldwide economic scene today, there certainly has to be seen some degree of God’s destroying of an idolatry relative to material possessions that is certainly at play.

The text today is one of the most frightening texts for anybody that wants to have money. And as one commentator said—I think Gordon Fee—why would anybody want to get rich after reading this text? Well, the answer is simple. The answer is unbelief and the answer is idolatry. May the Lord God use today’s text and his servant to cause us to think about ourselves, not about the other guys much, but do some of that. We’ll do some of that. But our own motivations, our own relationship to material possessions.

We’ve seen this progression in the tenth word. We’ve kind of created a progression in the sermons coming forth from it. This imitative desire for our neighbors’ possessions. And then we looked at the idea of greediness, just wanting more things unrelated to our neighbor and the isolation that produced—to the rich man who had wanted bigger barns. We then looked at that in terms not just of isolation from our neighbor, but things can also then, in inequality of things, create envy where we can’t really have what our neighbor has and so we just want to take it away from him.

There’s an old Jewish fable that said that a man—an angel comes down to a man and he’s granted one wish, but the only caveat to the wish is the neighbor will get double whatever the man wishes for. So without skipping a beat, the man wishes for one blind eye. That’s envy. And that’s the result of moving away from a proper relationship to possessions.

Now in today’s text, as we go along in it, we’ll see that what happens in this text is isolation from neighbor and all that stuff. And then at the end of it, they have this famous proverb: the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. And Pink Floyd had it wrong. Many people have learned this proverb in the Pink Floyd way: “Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today.” Now, the Bible says it’s the love of money, not money itself. But it’s interesting that money is the word used there early in the Acts that we just read. It talks about gain, which can be gain of possessions. But when it gets around to the money quote, you know, the bottom line of the text, it really warns us against a love for money itself. And that’s significant.

The word love for money means, literally, the love of silver. The word for money was silver. And so hard money is not immune to this. In fact, it’s the very thing that’s being talked of. So God destroys our idols and may he today cause us perhaps to repent from some of our idolatry relative to possessions and the proper use of them. And may we as well be warned against this sin which can cause apostasy. That’s what it says. And you can enter into many sorrows and create many social difficulties.

And we come to this text in the context of an ongoing discussion that was played out this morning in Portland, Oregon at the Occupy Portland event. At the heart of Occupy Wall Street is this 99% and 1% thing. I found myself part of the 82% last night who on an online radio poll said the police should move in and enforce the law. So they’re not the 99%. Now they’re the 18%.

In any event, and I do think it is a real danger to civil culture, to civil society, when the police say, “We’re going to do X and don’t do it.” At 2:00, 2:30 this morning, I watched the police van go in and say, “We’re going to clear the streets. You’re ordered to disperse.” They began to push the people back. The crowd pushed the police back a block and took over the street and the corners of the street. And this morning, Occupied Portland has declared victory.

Now, whether that’s good tactically or not, I don’t know. But I know that in terms of—and I’m not, you know, I mean, if the police wanted to wait till the crowds dispersed, why the mayor gave them three days to gather a couple thousand people down there is more than I can understand. But if they want to tactically do things a particular way, okay. But to order people off the street and to say you are ordered to leave and disperse and we’re going to arrest you if you don’t, and then not to follow through—this is a serious breakdown of the power of the state to enforce its own laws and it is a serious movement toward one of the things I hope we get to today: a revolutionary kind of spirit.

Okay. Now material wealth is not the problem. Money is not the problem. The love of money is not the root of evil. The Psalms tell us that wealth and riches will be in the house of the righteous. His righteousness endures forever. Abraham was righteous. And as a result of his righteousness, he was also granted material prosperity by God. So the problem is not in these texts material prosperity. Wealth doesn’t lead to sin.

Rather, man’s sinful heart uses wealth at times to increase the scope of his particular sin. So let’s get that straight. This is not an anti-wealth text and this is not an anti-wealth church. What we’re anti is the sin of man that creates this situation.

Now let’s look at this verse. We’re going to go through the verse and then we’ll try to draw some social implications toward the end. And I want to look at a little bit of the context to explain what’s going on in the text we just read.

In 1 Timothy 6:1, we read: “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather do them service because they are faithful and beloved partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.”

So the text begins—it’s going to get to talking about contentment with our possessions, but we could say that the text actually begins in verse one with a declaration of the importance to teach and exhort you, the church of Jesus Christ, to be content with your station. Content with your station, content, you know, not to have your own business if you’re working for somebody else. In this case, content to be a bondservant to another man, even if that man is a believer. So contentment of position with godliness here is said to be really great gain, which is the point he’s going to make later about possessions and contentment generally. But here the emphasis is contentment of position.

And then in verse three a new subject arises: “If any man teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing but doting about questions and strife of words, whereof come only strife, railings, evil surmisings, etc.”

Now, what’s happened? He said, “You should be content with your station with godliness.” And then he says, “Now there are teachers out there among you who teach otherwise.” So the new subject is he’s now going to talk about teachers who in rejecting the truth of God and his word are doing their own deal. And he’s going to talk about the motivation of these teachers. And so when we get to a discussion then of the relationship of gain and godliness, the immediate context are false teachers.

And so what Paul is saying is these guys might claim to have really good knowledge. They may claim to be real intellectual. They may be able to, you know, spin their yarns around your head and confuse you. But if they teach other than this—other than a contentment with your station with godliness—they’re no good. And usually what they’re doing is they’re trying to get gain from you. They’re preaching for gain. Paul warns about this in several of his epistles, including this pastoral epistle and others. He says these men are corrupt. These false teachers, what they really want is your money. Your money.

It’s interesting because in the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3, you know, one of the reasons—one of the qualifications—it says, well, if you desire to be a bishop, that’s great. But you can’t be a lover of money. You can’t be greedy. Because some people want to be pastors, wanted to be teachers at the time, wanted to be Bible school instructors for money’s sake and not for the kingdom of God’s sake. Now sometimes they can do good work. George Bush the commentator, not the president, was a Swedenborgian as I recall. And yet he produced some pretty orthodox commentaries because he wanted money. So sometimes God can use sin sinlessly.

But that’s what’s really going on here is Paul is warning them. He’s warning Timothy about false teachers and their motivation is this money that he then is going to talk about in the rest of these verses. So that’s what’s happening here and it’s important because what it does is Paul says, you know, be careful about the motivations of the people that are teaching you or leading you in a particular direction and frequently their motivation will be gain apart from godliness.

All right. So then in verse five we have our first major point from the outline: True Gain Is Contrasted With False Gain in verses five and six.

They have evil surmisings. He goes on to say in verse 5: “Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness. From such withdraw thyself.” I don’t care how smart they think they are and how smart you might think they are, how good their teaching is, don’t hang out with them. They think that gain is godliness. And so they equate material gain and possessions and getting stuff with godliness. They suppose that gain is itself godliness.

Now, more modern translations translate this that godliness is a means of gain. And so that’s another way to translate it, probably a better way to translate. Either way, it’s the same thing. What they’re really about is physical gain, possessions, money, etc. And they think that if that occurs, then that is a demonstration of their own godliness. Or it is essentially identical to godliness. So either way you look at it, gain is an evidence of godliness. Material outward stuff is evidence of obedience. And that Paul says is just plain wrong.

They’re wrong. They think that godliness is not equated to gain. While material gain is not necessarily godliness, it is not godliness. It also needs to be pointed out here that neither is a material loss to be seen as godliness. Right? So now, Paul is not saying because they say material gain is godliness, we say that material loss is godliness. That’s not what he’s saying. It’s clear from the rest of the scriptures that material gain is actually a good and blessed thing from God. It’s our sin that perverts it. Money is not evil in and of itself.

And so, you know, the opposite of what the false teachers are saying is not what Paul’s problem is or what he’s trying to assert. You know, it’s interesting because there is this relationship between beauty and gain and material wealth and God. When we had a few lessons going through Exodus, the design instructions for the tabernacle, and then if you look at the temple later—as you approach God, the values of the materials used become more and more valuable. And as you approach God historically, the coming of Jesus, what was gold in the tabernacle becomes fine gold in the temple. What was silver becomes gold, etc. And so either when you’re going into the tabernacle environs directly or the temple directly, and then historically as we move from tabernacle to temple, as you draw near to God you draw near to the source of all value and God represents this artistically by these beautiful valuable materials as you get close to him.

And so materials are a good thing. They’re beautiful. They’re valuable and they reflect God and his presence. The problem for us is when we cut that tether between material possessions and their beauty and God and then we become idolatrous. And when the western culture has abandoned Christianity and tried to maintain some kind of work ethic and money and wealth—not now being used for kingdom purposes—what has God done? He’s destroyed the idol. We’ve cut the tether between the gold, approach to God and God, and all we want is the gold now. We want to rob the temple. And as a result of that, God takes away the gold.

So, Paul is not saying that the lack of material wealth here is godliness. Paul is not a Stoic. The Stoics thought contentment was the deal, and by which they meant we don’t really like material possessions. You know, they’re kind of not really of value in and of themselves. It’s only of value. It’s just kind of a Stoic, you know, lack of passion for anything. And Paul is not that. That’s not what he’s saying. He actually says something exactly opposite. He says, godliness is true gain.

So godliness with contentment, he says in verse 6, is great gain. So that’s in contrast to the other. So godliness with contentment means contentment with a particular thing. So the things aren’t bad. We’re supposed to be content with them. Covetousness, as we have said, is equated with idolatry in the New Testament. And that word for covetousness is not desire, which can be either evil or good. The word for covetousness means an intense craving for more and more and more things in isolation from the giver of those things. So that’s idolatrous and God is our exceeding great reward.

And when we become greedy or materialistic, we’re not seeing the true value of the material as reflecting the person of God. Augustine said it this way: “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 in ourselves, him and our neighbors which we love as ourselves, whether they have him or in order that they may have him.” It’s kind of like that the chorus to St. Patrick’s Breastplate: “Christ within us, Christ behind us, Christ in voice of friend and stranger.”

So what Augustine says—the proper relationship to the world is to see everything in it as to be used ethically for the purpose of knowledge of God. Rushdoony in his book *By What Standard?* says this: “For the Christian the physical universe is explicable also in terms of the spiritual because both have a common origin in unity in God.” And then he quotes from Van Til: “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 or parable teaching. The vine and the branches give metaphysical but truthful expression to the spiritual union between Jesus and his own because the physical is created for the very purpose of giving expression to the spiritual.”

We find then that one must presuppose the isolation of these things to fall into idolatry relative to things. We must presuppose the same thing. We must reject that presupposition. So what are they saying? That’s kind of—so what they’re saying is God created everything. And everything he created was meant to communicate who he is. Romans 1 tells us that’s what the purpose is. So material gain can give us truthful knowledge about spiritual gain because it was created by God.

An evolutionary mindset, an atheistic evolutionary mindset can’t really escape greed. Because ultimately the physical universe is the source of all value in and of itself. But to believe in a creator God means that God has built this stuff to reflect true value. When God talks in the scriptures about vines and figs and whatever else, fig trees for instance, he’s not using common ground between us and him. He’s using his created reality that he created for the very purpose of giving expression to spiritual truth.

Do you see the difference? When we cut the tether between the material and God—and many Christians do it as well as non-Christians—then we can move quite easily into greed. We presuppose the distinction between a material and spiritual, between the created order and God, and then we engage in greed.

It would appear that as long as man has cut the tether between the two, he must of necessity become either a hoarder, a waster, or a Stoic. Those are all three different responses—to grab onto things or to have joy in spending lots of things or to be completely detached from things. You see, all those things result when we cut the tether between the material universe giving us true truth about the person of God himself because he is the value behind all values.

Public schools, of course, this is exactly what they want to do. They want to cut the tether between the created world and the creator. And as a result of that, public schools are engines—you know, you don’t have to come out of it this way, but they tend to be engines for greed, for envy, for thinking that material gain in and of itself is godliness. Public schools tend to do this on steroids because that’s what they do. They don’t look at the sun as a reflection of the beauty and glory and power of the sun, S-O-N. They look at the sun as a thermonuclear furnace. And when you do that, seeing everything in its—now it is that it’s important that we know that God created it a thermonuclear furnace and that’s interesting stuff and it gives us more to know about God and his world and spirituality, but when you say it’s just that—as opposed to you seeing these symbols as symbols of the great value of God—now you’ve broken the tether and as a result of that you move into an improper relationship to material wealth.

Okay, second major point: Contentment Is Necessary For True Gain. So now he talks about not just the relationship of material wealth and spirituality or godliness, but now he says the basis for true godliness is contentment. You have to have contentment. Now contentment without godliness is no good. That’s the Stoic idea again. Just put up with it. But what he says here is that contentment with godliness is great gain.

So, contentment is what the greedy man never has. He can never get a satisfied mind, right? Hard to find a rich man in ten with a satisfied mind. He satisfaction doesn’t happen. And Mick Jagger can sing about that as a rock star. And so, you know, satisfaction, contentment is not found by more and more things. Contentment in and of itself is the proper answer. And we should teach our children contentment. And as I said earlier, the contentment here is talking about contentment in terms of the possessions, wages that the false teachers want more and more and more of. But earlier the contentment is in terms of station—our particular station in life. Earthly contentment with heavenly minded godliness is this great gain.

Verse 7: “For we brought nothing into the world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out of it. And having food and raiment, let us therefore be content.”

Now, that’s a strong statement. Contentment with food and raiment alone. And he says, you know, you can’t—we didn’t bring anything in. We’re not taking anything out. Bob Dylan said, “I was born here and I’ll die here against my will.” And we’re born here and we die here without possessions. When we leave, the possessions you can’t take with you. And no, you can’t send it ahead either. Well, I guess that’s the idea—you do good deeds, but you can’t take material possessions into heaven.

Lensky is a great Lutheran commentator on the New Testament and he says: “Contentment always goes together with this true godliness. Paul is not arguing anyone into contentment. He is telling the godly who are content what a blessed source of gain they possess.” So he’s not trying to argue him into contentment. He’s saying if you’re godly—and the word godly means properly pious, reverent, doing good things in terms of your relationship to God and man. If you have godliness, then you have contentment. And when you have godliness, with that contentment, don’t feel bad when the world wants to tempt you to be discontent. Rather, understand the tremendous value, the great gain that you have in being godly.

Having arrived naked, we’re going to leave the world that way, and we can’t possibly leave any other way. The few things we really need for our short stay are not going to disturb our minds as godly people. We’re simply going to be—yeah. So says Lensky.

Now, you know, we’re dominion people. We want to do kingdom work and all that stuff. Nothing wrong with that. But we don’t want to miss the value of this. What we see portrayed in both the super rich and the dependent class—the 20% of people dependent upon the civil state who are primarily now the ones who claim themselves to be the 99%, along with the unions, another 10%—what we see in both of those things is a failure of contentment. Now, we’re not to be content with injustice. And to the extent that crony capitalism is the way that the super rich continue their riches, we want to get rid of that out of a sense of justice, a desire for justice.

Well, we don’t do it out of a sense because we want those things. We’re content with food and raiment. We all have that. God promised us. We looked at the text in Luke in the Gospels. He promises us that he’ll care for us with those basic needs. And so contentment is tremendously important in terms of a relationship to godliness. It is the necessary thing that goes along with godliness. And so your anxieties about money—you know, where do they stem from? Your desire for more wealth, where does it come from? Do you have underneath it all true contentment? If you don’t, how’s your godliness factor running? How much are you really living your lives for God? What’s your piety level? What’s your reverence for God level?

And I think what God is showing a lot of Americans and a lot of people around the world today is our godliness quotient is way down. And so contentment is down. And so we go about trying to fix all that by getting, you know, taxing the rich or getting Obama to approve of more tax credits for our mega business. If you’re GE, we go about doing it in other ways. But I think what God would have us do as a culture is to recognize he is graciously destroying our idols of seeing wealth apart from God. He’s graciously destroying our idols so that we might become content once more with him. And then that’s what drives godly culture and that’s actually what drives societal progress and economic progress as well. And the fact that we don’t have that economic progress now is a fruit of something else. It’s not the problem. The problem is what got us to this state and the problem is idolatry, public schools, and a culture that sees material possessions apart from their creator. And God says he brooks no rivals. He works in history to destroy them.

Hebrews 13:5: “Let your conversation, your walk, be without covetousness. Now, that’s the word for greediness, wanting more and more things. It’s not the word for desire, wanting more and more things. And be content with such things as you have. Why can we be content with such things as we have? For he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” I mean, ultimately, he says you won’t starve to death. But ultimately, if you do starve to death and you starve to death faithfully and then you’re ushered into the presence of God, well, okay.

Now, the knowledge, the belief that the Lord God promises you eternal life with him, that he will never leave you or forsake you—the doubt of that is what makes us discontent, makes us fearful, makes us anxious, and makes us want to glom on to however many insurance devices we can get around us in terms of possessions. So that’s one of the big things that’s going on.

Okay. Third major point: Love For the Symbols of Gain Is Great Loss. Desire for earthly riches is a snaring root.

Lensky said: “Men who are set on being rich snap at the tempting bait, they’re caught in the snare and are held by the lust.” So when we desire to be rich, it says that is a tempting snare. In other words—and it’s in the state of the verb—it’s always happening. You’re always tripping. You’re always getting tripped up when you want the material gain apart from godliness. It’s a snaring root.

And even when you get rich, if you get rich, you can’t really be satisfied. As I mentioned earlier, 1 Timothy 6:17 says: “To charge those that are rich in this world. Nothing wrong with being rich, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches. So, that’s the snaring root—not trusting rather in uncertain riches, but rather trust in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy.” Enjoyment isn’t bad. Possessions aren’t bad. But to trust in them is this snaring root.

Proverbs 23:4: “Labor not to be rich, cease from thine own wisdom.” It’s our wisdom that the richer we get, the more happy we’ll be, and the more content we’ll be, and the more secure we’ll be. But it just isn’t true. It’s a delusion.

Proverbs 30:7: “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.”

His desire in terms of material possessions—Agur, perhaps Jacob—his desire in terms of material possessions is faithfulness to God. So see, he’s seeing beyond his relationship to things. Or usually seeing in relationship to things potential snare for him. And his great desire is relationship with God and effectiveness for God’s kingdom, not bringing disrepute to his name through stealing and not forgetting about God if he’s rich. So that his relationship, the wise relationship to material possessions, says at the end of the day, “God, do with me in terms of material possessions what will be best to affect my godliness,” because godliness with its necessary accompaniment—contentment—is great gain.

The snaring root blossoms into evil social and painful personal fruit.

So, 1 Timothy 6:9 and 10: “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, a snaring temptation. They’re always getting stumbled up—by those that want to be rich and into many foolish and hurtful lusts. Now, you know that you’ve either known people or you yourselves have tried to go for material gain and you know what a snaring root that is and how bad things happen as a result, and hopefully you’ve just forsaken it. 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 coveted after they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

I mean that is very—as I said earlier—that’s very strong language. God says, you know, boy, you want to bring evil, and the word evil there is kakos, which has this, you know, if you know excrement and its smell, God wants you to associate that with the sort of evil that’s produced in a culture from the love of money. And I think, you know, the kind of smell that’s existed in some of the Occupy camps—not trying to put down anybody there, but I’m just saying it is a symbol from God that both the thing they’re protesting and what they want as a result of that protest, they’re protesting crony capitalism.

But then what do they want? They want to tax the rich, right? And they want to take that money because they want the money. Both those things create stinky messes for a culture—literally in the case of Occupy Portland. But in terms of this text, it says that’s what happens. That’s what happens. And when you see that kind of stinky mess, follow the money. Follow the money. It’s the love of that material gain, the desire to be rich that has brought about that personal problem. You know, they’re pierced through with sorrows. And it also has brought about the love of money, this evil, this social ills.

One of the biggest reasons for social ills and evils is the love of money, which means, you know, the isolation of the material world from godliness. Love of money. I wanted to quote a couple of things here. As I said earlier at the beginning of the sermon, he doesn’t at this point say the love of gain. He earlier talked about gain. Doesn’t say the love of things. He doesn’t say the love of material possessions generally. He says—philarguria—love of silver. Okay?

And now think about that a little bit. Every word in God’s scriptures are important to understand why they’re there. And if you think about it, let’s talk about the Occupy Portland people again. They want the super rich to give money to them. Michael Moore was there a week or two ago. Like this idea that you heard in the crowd: “Let’s have the 400 richest people, the 1%, each of them give a million dollars.” They didn’t say where the money would go. Each give a million. I thought 400 million bucks. Boy, that’s going to do great things in terms of our $1.4 trillion deficit. Yeah. Four hundred million. Uh-huh. Okay.

And of course, the other thing that was interesting is a reporter starts yelling at Michael Moore. Well, are you going to start, Michael? How about your $58 million? Are you flying your private jet out of here? I mean, he’s part of the 1% or at least the top 5%. In any event. But think about this. So, the top 1%—what do they have? Are they like Uncle Scrooge, they’ve got these bins of gold and money in some place. Usually not. Usually not. The wealth of the productive people that actually do pay the majority of the taxes in this country that Occupied Portland wants shared, right? Tax the rich. What they want is the money from them.

But that money is not usually there in money form. It’s not silver. It’s not paper bills. It’s not currency. Sometimes it is because of safety reasons, but generally speaking, the rich people—the super multinational corporations, individuals who have been very successful in business—their net worth is tied up in their business. Now, because it’s tied up in their business, it’s tied up in things: desks, computers, people’s wages, skyscrapers to house all the work that they’re doing, all that stuff is productive things, right?

The rich man who wanted to build bigger barns was plowing still. He was working still. Now, if we have a love of money, we want the rich man to have to sell off some of his assets so that he can give us poor people money. And now, what have we done with that? We’ve transferred productive things being used by stewards—now who are largely, I know, not all the time there’s crony capitalism of plenty in our culture, but for the most part God says he gives blessings to those that are that labor and are being productive elements of society. And so when we’re taking things away from those that have exercised responsible stewardship at least in producing work, in producing products, and we want them to convert that into non-productive assets—money is a non-productive asset if we just like money. If we just want to put it in a hole in the ground or put it in our pockets or just use it for consumption, right? They want to transfer wealth that’s being used for production primarily into money that’s used for consumption.

You see the difference? Now, that’s a process that the world has seen before. It’s called socialism. And that process is always self-destructive because what you do is you end up with less and less productive goods. There’s less and less money. There’s less and less of it. And so you have tremendous debt. Where are we at? Fourteen trillion of debt on the part of the federal government alone. And where are we at in Europe? Tremendous layers of debt. Why? Because people want more and more money changed from productive mechanisms—from things—and they want it transferred into money, non-productive things, and in fact things that we can just consume with. Okay? So it’s a spiral. This is a spiral that leads down. And it is social evil. That’s what it is. Social evil.

You know, envy says I may not be able to get that million bucks from you, but I don’t want you to have it and I’m going to take it away from you. Right? Envy—Dorothy Sayers said—is a leveler and it always levels down. It always levels down. We’re not raising anybody up. We’re taking the 1% and making him like the rest of us, the 99%. That’s what it is. So, that’s the relationship of this particular verse, I think, and the importance of seeing why it is the love of money that Paul says is this stumbling root of all kinds of evil in the context of the culture.

Paul in 1 Timothy 6:9 and 10 warns against the love of money. And secondly, he calls attention to what it does to men, what the love of money does to men. And we see it, we can see it in the newspapers today, tomorrow, on into this week in terms of Occupy Portland and in terms of the crony capitalism on the other side of the coin. It’s all the same. They’re all the same. You know, and this is what we’re tempted to do. Money is the deal. It’s money that matters. Randy Newman said, “In the USA, it’s money that matters.” And to all these people, that’s exactly right. That’s what everybody is talking about both sides in terms of Occupy Portland and Occupy Wall Street. It’s money that matters to all these people, and the Bible says don’t—don’t do that.

And to the extent that we have done that, we’re thankful that God is cracking up that idol of money, creating indebtedness, creating huge financial problems. I know it’s going to be hard on people, but if at the end of the day, God uses the economic difficulties the world is entering into to remove an idol. What has he done? He’s taken away a false source of contentment and gain and replaced it with a true source as we focus back on our relationship to God, to his people, to his church, and to the created order in a proper way. That would be a beautiful blessing from God, would it not?

You know, if you’re a heroin addict, you got to kick it. And yet you think people are being cruel when they take the drug away, but they’re not being cruel. They’re being loving to you. And God is not being cruel to us right now through the financial difficulties. And we’re Calvinists. We can’t blame man ultimately for all of this. We’re saying that God’s hand is in this somewhere. And don’t—don’t line up with this or that atheist. Okay? Look at it from God’s perspective. Analyze what’s happening based on these texts.

The Lord God brought us to these texts the very morning that this Occupy Portland thing has become national news. Heard it on the radio this morning. National news. Very interesting. Very interesting. And we have this text because it is critical to a proper understanding of what’s happening today and the proper way out, the godly way out.

For us Christians, what we see with the love of money is a love of irresponsible wealth and power. At least the love of things—productive things, farms, etc.—that at least has some degree of responsibility attached to it. If I want your farm it’s because I want to use the farm. I’m going to make productive stuff at the farm, okay? So at least has that value to it. But if I want money, okay, now I want to take your farm, sell it, and use the proceeds. And that’s exactly, by the way, what inheritance taxes are doing in this country. They’re causing large family farms who have tremendous net worth but it’s all on paper and then they get taxed at whatever it is 30%. And to pay the money that the government wants they have to liquidate productive assets and turn it into non-productive assets—money—and worse than that turn it over to the state who all they’re going to use it for is for more propping up of their plans.

Now seeing the difficulty of all this, right? Seeing the problem with egalitarianism in terms of money specifically. Do you see how this is what leads to revolution? In France, it was this perceived inequality, the comparison with, you know, the king and his mighty and beautiful court. And of course, if you know how envious men’s hearts are, having that kind of beauty in the midst of that is sort of stupid. You know, I mean, envy avoidance isn’t a bad thing to engage in at times. He didn’t do it. This egalitarianism, this love for the things and a leveling downward is what happened with the French Revolution. And it’s not that big a step frequently in culture and history. It’s not a very big step to go from egalitarianism, a desire for money driving egalitarianism, to then the guillotine—to the guillotine.

And when we have civil leaders, and you know, oh, I’m sorry, but this is the way it is. Our president is not bringing sanity to this situation. He’s not bringing a godly perspective. I don’t know if he’s a Christian or not. If he is, he should be brought under discipline because what he’s doing is stirring the pot of the love of money, envy, and greediness. And as he does that, he prepares the way for the sort of confrontations that we’ve seen in Oakland and in other cities. And I don’t know what’s going to happen in Portland.

You know, the tweet this morning was Oakland had a crackdown and Portland had a party. Classic. You know, in Oakland, the Occupy Oakland movement was taken out with force. Well, in any event. But what our president is doing is stirring the pots of social evil according to what Paul writes here today by urging people to be dissatisfied against the rich, to tax the rich. They’re not paying their fair share. How many times have we heard it?

So, you know, when we see this kind of approach to politics, this is very bad. This is very bad. We can bring the voice of sanity to these things. We have the message. We’ve got the divine message. We’ve got the revelation from heaven about the relationship of the created order reflecting the value and centrality of God. Right? We know these things. And this text tells us what produces the sort of dissensions and evil surmisings of these false teachers. It was their love for money and was an attempt to get money—non-productive assets. So we have the truth and we know that godliness is the answer to all of this and to hold on to the high calling that which we were called to.

He urges Timothy to that end. We know that egalitarianism and revolution are fought successfully only by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re reinforced in this every time we come to church. When we come to church, we have the Sursum Corda. Why do we do that? To remind us of the heavenly realities that give sense—to remind ourselves of the throne of God that gives all of the beauty in the world around us, and proper understanding their value comes from God. So we go to the throne room. We do pray for daily bread, but we only do it after three petitions about God’s holiness and that his will might be done on earth.

We don’t ask for bread apart from the holiness and the reverence of God in his name and his person and his kingdom being done on earth, his will being done on earth and the kingdom as it is in heaven. That precedes our request for bread even. Okay? And it puts gain in the proper sense. We come forward and give tithes and offerings acknowledging that the part for the whole—it’s a synecdoche. The 10% represents all of that. Everything we have is kingdom money. And God trains us, right? Liturgies form the heart. What do you love? You love what you liturgically act in response to. Your desires, your heart flows after the liturgical actions. And God has given us a whole series of liturgical actions here in the Lord’s day that remind us of what this text is saying: that godliness is the whole gig.

And God tells us, you know, that our tithes and offerings are a way to let go. Let go of the money, right? Proper stewardship means doing what God wants us to do. And that means that tomorrow or even today at the communion table, you’ll be anxious to use your wealth for God. And you’ll be anxious to use it for productive purposes and you won’t have a love for money in and of itself. But you will have a great love for using the things that God gives you for his kingdom. And it means you’ll have open hands to give to the poor. This is another thing we’re supposed to do—to give liberally to the poor, to be open-handed. I think the deacons may be doing an offering next month as we prepare for Christmas again to help some of the folks here at church who are less well off and to bring more joy to them. Open your hand up when that happens. Right?

And so the liturgies that we go through—think of all the different elements—they all teach us what this text teaches us. They all train our hearts in godliness. Even the absence of commerce—I know nobody likes that about this church. Unpopular we are. I get it. I understand. Okay, I know you’re confused cuz all these other churches. But you know, if you look at it from my perspective, what I think is the biblical perspective, even the elimination of transaction one day out of seven, which is so hard for Americans, trains us away from the kind of secularist and transaction mentality that we want to fill everything with. To bring our transactions solely into this personal transaction where God ministers Jesus and his spirit to us and we minister it to one another and to have this day be that right.

And then we’ll go downstairs we’ll have an agape feast, training us that hey, bread’s not bad and it’s not all God’s going to give us. He’s going to give us some tasty food—corn dogs or whatever it is. We feast together, right? And God says, “In my kingdom, the material possessions are good and wonderful gifts from me. Eat, drink, be merry this day.”

Toten Comanus was buried with all his possessions, right? And we dig him up and we find him and he has held on to his gold. He has held on to his possessions. And when that tomb is cracked open and he comes up out of his tomb, there’s no Toten Comanus. All that’s left is the gold. Our Savior comes forth from the tomb, a risen man, a resurrected man, to bring man out of a love for material gain evidenced by things like Toten Comanus, and to give our humanity back to us, to give us glory, knowledge, life in his kingdom by having us attain to godliness.

May the Lord God use our finances this week, the stuff we read in the paper about Occupied Portland, Wall Street, the difficulties with Italy in the European Union, the tremendous problems as the stock markets float up and float down. May he use every bit of that the next week, the next few months, the next year to remind us of this text, to remind us of the great gain that he has given to us by bringing us into godliness, a sense of piety, reverence, and commitment to his kingdom, which inevitably is accompanied by the kind of contentment that the world cannot know, but that the Lord God has provided for us.

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you for the wonderful fact of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And not only did he come out of that tomb, body intact, but it was a new body. It was a new world, and we thank you that he has gone to your right hand empowering and uniting us with him, that our true selves are found at your right hand in Jesus our Savior. Give us that heavenly perspective then on our possessions, on our wealth, on our productivity. Give us, Lord God, godliness with contentment—great gain—in Jesus’ name. Amen.