We are going to be talking in this article about the whole biblical theme of money. We will be using Proverbs to pull out certain principles that will help us understand the value of money as well as its limitations. There is a tremendous amount of timeless wisdom found in the book of Proverbs on this important topic.
As I have often described, in many people’s lives wisdom is extraordinarily uneven. There are some who are wise in one area yet are very foolish in another area—many people are just not fully balanced in these ways. Frankly, I am one of those, and we are about to talk about one area of my greatest incompetence—money. It is an area where I know the correct principles, but I don’t always follow them.
Let me now make a few introductory comments on this: usually when you hear sermons on money you hear two things. You hear how evil it is and then you are asked to give it up. But, at the same time, the people giving the sermons have an interest in receiving what you are giving up. Apparently, it is evil for you to have it, but not so bad for them to have it. Yes, it is true that a love of money is a cause, or a root, of all kinds of evil, and we have all heard the phrase, “…the love of money is the root of all evil.” Actually, that is not a good translation of that text, which appears in 1 Timothy 6:10. The love of money is not the root of all evil; it is “…a root of all sorts of evil,” but it is not the final source of all evil. If you were to select one candidate to be the root of all evil, I would select pride. Out of pride everything else proceeds. To make money our sole goal or objective in life is really a sin against the God who holds us together, made us, and who has claims on our hearts. If Christ purchased us for Himself—both by our creation and by virtue of the new creation—then it is important for us to realize that in coveting part of God’s creation more than God Himself is idolatrous. Making money a rival of God is simply spiritual adultery.
So we want to consider what the book of Proverbs says about it. It is folly and foolish, Proverbs tells us, to make money our goal in life. If it is your goal, then you are missing the mark because you are putting the material above the spiritual. The first concern of your heart should be the knowledge of God. If that is not first, you have an idol in its place. This doesn’t mean it cannot be a secondary consideration or concern—those things are natural and God has wired us in that way. But the danger is that even when we make God first, the secondary concerns have a way of crowding out the primary focus. It is a subtlety that must be reviewed again and again.
Here are three reasons why making money your principal goal is foolishness. First of all, there are profound limitations to wealth. Money simply cannot satisfy your deepest spiritual appetite. Now, it can satisfy certain physical and sensual appetites, but it cannot satisfy the spiritual ones. It cannot buy you real love, real joy, or real peace.