We’re looking this week at how our views of money change as followers of Jesus. Here are the words of Paul, one of the first Christian leaders, to his protégé, Timothy.
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. (1 Timothy 6:17-19 ESV)
A Christian author, NT Wright note that we give lip service to the maxim that “money can’t buy happiness” and then give life-service to the opposite.
We don’t need to prove it, we’ve all seen this kind of thing.
One example, when someone is quite wealthy, they might buy more homes. But since they can’t be everywhere at once, they need to get security systems or guards, repair people, landscapers and more.
With more wealth comes the need for lawyers, accountants, investment advisors, and all the work and stress of coordinating them properly.
A friend owns a home by the lake, which is beautiful. But the amazing view comes at a cost, as they are constantly replacing shingles after every windstorm.
Another example: Justin Bieber’s incredible success and wealth may also be his downfall. He is able to try and buy happiness in cars, drugs, and surround himself with friends so dazzled by it all that they won’t try to stop him. But we’ve seen recently, that it’s not working. His wealth has turned into a trap, a snare.
Is Paul saying money is bad? Or houses by the lake, or pop music? No, but money is also not good, or happiness, in and of itself.
This is why Paul says carefully, the love of money is the root of many evils.
Money isn’t the good to be loved. It represents the good, it’s just a piece of paper, metal or computer data used to exchange for actual goods and services. The further our modern currency gets from the actual goods it was meant to represent, the closer it gets to an idol for worship in and of itself. Money is a stand-in for actual goods, and becoming less and less grounded in reality since treasuries no longer actually have to have gold on hand for every dollar they print.
What are idols? They were things like statues worshipped for rain, sun, fertitility, whatever people wanted to control. They stand in for a real relationship with God who can’t be controlled. They allow us to become ungrounded from reality, since we elevate ourselves to the status of controlling nature through our gods.
If we pursue money alone, we are pursuing something at the whim of the markets that is ultimately meaningless. We can see this as the Canadian dollar recently plugned below 90 cents US. Manufacturers who signed contracts at $1.00, bought supplies at $0.95 and got paid at $0.90 have all seen just how subjective money can be when it’s unhinged from the actual goods it is meant to represent.
The risk is that we’ll pursue this kind of thing in life, and worship things in our lives whose value is constantly in flux, hardly eternal. They may not be little statues anymore, but idols are very much objects of worship today.
That’s why Paul states the obvious truth: we brought nothing into this world, we cannot take anything out. Despite that, we regularly treat money, possessions in life as if they are permanent and of eternal value.
Question: When have you seen someone’s love for money lead to evil?
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Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan your host of the Daily Challenges. Here we are in nature. And that's because this week we're studying how following Jesus resets our views of nature, the natural world around us.
And what did Jesus say directly about nature? Well not a lot. There's a time where he kind of admired the lilies of the field and the birds. Other times he calmed nature like calming a storm. He clearly had control over nature.
Jesus also withdrew to natural places when he needed a quiet moment of prayer. He clearly enjoyed the opportunity to have undistracted time with His Father. And nature was the place to do that.
It doesn't seem Jesus had anything against nature. There was a time He cursed a fig tree. But that was very much a symbolic act, showing how the people of Israel, the tree that they represented and the temple that was their connection to God were starting to wither away. And that their time was coming to an end. That was what he was showing with cursing the fig tree. It wasn't that he hated trees and thought they had no place in the natural world that He'd created.
So to really get a good sense of what Christian faith has to say about nature, we have to look to one of Jesus' first followers, one of the first church leaders, who was named Paul. When he wrote a letter to the church that was meeting in Rome, called the Letter to the Romans, here's what he had to say that's really instructive about the importance of the natural world and how it fits into the big story that we keep studying here at Redeem the Commute.
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."
Well there's a tendency in our modern world and in some world religions to really think of nature as being perfect. To think that nature is this perfect and uncorrupted, innocent reality. And that we humans are a bit of a virus or a parasite within it. I think what Paul makes clear, though, in this Letter to the Romans is that there is something wrong with the natural world around us. It's not as it should be. And that's not just a functional thing where we have simply abused it and done nothing else wrong. He says it's very much connected to human corruption and rebellion against God. That our human corruption and rebellion against God has led to the corruption of nature and that this wasn't the fault of nature itself. He uses a lot of really passive language there, to say that nature was subjected to something. And it became futile. He's using some very submissive language there to say this happened to nature.
And it happened to nature because of the human rebellion against God, but it started with a man named Adam. The first man, Adam, rebelled against God. And this had an impact, not just on his own life, but on all of humanity to follow and then on all of creation around him. There's something wrong with us and now there's something wrong with the world too.
But Paul also makes clear that creation is waiting for something and so is humanity. We're waiting for redemption. Redemption is a great word. That's why we named our church Redeemer Church and our main outreach Redeem the Commute. We love the word redeem. Because redeem suggests that there's great value in something that's not being realized right now. I like to think of a gift card. It's a piece of plastic that holds within it some great value. You could have a $200 gift card contained within a piece of plastic. And what you have to do is you have to go to the store in order to redeem its value, in order to release all that value. In order to release all that value, in order to turn it into a DVD player or a computer, or whatever it is. You have to release all that pent up potential.
In the same way we humans were created for something amazing and wonderful, as part of an amazing and wonderful creation. God had great plans for us. God created us for a relationship with Him, created us for a relationship with one another and with the natural world around us. There is huge and wonderful potential in the human race. And yet because of our rebellion against God, our sin, a lot of that potential is not being realized right now. It's all locked up and needs to be redeemed. And that's why Paul says we humans and the natural world with us are waiting to be redeemed. When humans are redeemed, he says we'll be the sons of God. It'll be clear that we were created to be the children of God. And even though we've rebelled against God and pushed ourselves out of His life, He still wants to adopt us back into His family.
Creation itself, the natural world around us, the animals, the plants, the structure of the world itself, Paul says is also waiting for our redemption so it too can be redeemed.
We humans got ourselves into this mess by rebelling against God using our free will to push Him out of our lives. And so this is our problem to fix. And that's why since a first Adam, a first man, broke the world, a second Adam, a second man, who represents all of humanity, needs to fix it. And that's what God has done in coming to earth as Jesus Christ. What Adam broke, Jesus fixed.
There's great hope in this, and it's not just a spiritual kind of idea about what might happen in the future somewhere else. What Paul is doing is very much rooting the reality of our sin and our redemption that needs to follow in this physical world. This isn't just a spiritual thing that, oh, someday our hearts are going to change and that's it. No, he says our hearts will change and our whole body will change and the world around us will change when we are redeemed by Jesus Christ.
This is very much connected: the physical world, the spiritual world. There is no disconnect. The Kingdom of Heaven isn't some place far off in the clouds disconnected from the natural world here. The natural world isn't something to be hated or thrown away or disposed. It's very much connected to God's plan for the world, for God's plan called the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven. And followers of Jesus, having been reset by Jesus Christ, are invited to start practicing that now, to start practicing the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. As Jesus said, "as it is in heaven." So we're supposed to practice a little bit of heaven right here in the physical world. What does that look like? Well, we'll see later this week what that might look like in practice.
And in the meantime I've got a question for you to think about and hopefully discuss with others who you know are also watching these videos every day. Or maybe you can invite some friends to do that as well, to start watching the videos on the same days as you. And when you do come together and have a spare moment, you can discuss what you've been learning.
Question: What about this passage gives you hope? Have you ever seen the natural world groaning? Does this give you hope that someday that groaning ends?
Have a great discussion. I'll see you tomorrow.
When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again?
The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate.
What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives:
Reset: Goals
Reset: Time
Reset: Money
Reset: Work
Reset: Body & Food
Reset: Sex & Marriage
Reset: Family
Reset: Compassion
Reset: Nature
Reset: Society
Reset: Death
Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.
