Money Can Be Dangerous

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

1 Timothy 6:10 NIV

The Bible does not condemn money or material possessions. Some of the great people of the Bible were very rich. Abraham, Isaac, and Solomon were perhaps the richest men of their day. God’s quarrel is not with material goods but with material gods. Materialism has become the god of too many of us. It is that state in which material possessions are elevated to the central place in life and receive the attention due to God alone.

The Bible teaches that preoccupation with material possessions is a form of idolatry. And God hates idolatry. It poisons every other phase of our life, including our family life.

The Bible declares that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10 NIV), not money but the love of money. This Scripture is being verified in our national life today, and we are reaping what we have sown for several generations. We are, at least in part, suffering the consequences of our selfish preoccupation with material things to the neglect of moral and spiritual values.

We thought that man had come of age and that God, if there was one, could be relegated to the sidelines. But Jesus told the story of the man who had his barn full, and he had all of his possessions, and he said, “Soul, take your ease, eat and drink and be merry” (Luke 12:19). He left God out, and that night he died—possibly from a heart attack. And there was a voice heard from heaven that said, “You fool” (Luke 12:20).

“What shall it profit a man, if he . . . gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). There is a day of reckoning ahead. The handwriting is on the wall. What does it say?

Our Father and our God, keep me from being mesmerized by the god of materialism. Help me remember that money is a great servant but a terrible master. You and You alone are my Master, Lord. I will love only You. I will pursue only You. I will worship and adore only You and Jesus Christ, my Lord. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).

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