On our arrival back from South Africa in 2003 we were stunned by how the UK and presumably the US as well had become addicted to money. Every other advert on the TV was offering jaw-dropping sums for loan. Even more sickening was the appearance of a whole range of TV shows offering to sell your family heirloom’s for ‘cash’. It seemed to us that the whole country had been reduced to it’s base value in pounds and pence. Even people’s homes were no longer homes but cash-cows to be milked to death for money. The God of money or Mammon as the bible calls it was alive, well and ‘kicking ass’ in the western world.

2008 saw this god die. This is the fate of all gods, who are no gods at all.

The issue I want you to think about today is that with the death of this god our attention can be drawn away form the real issues facing humanity.

People (outside of Christ) are in far deeper trouble than a credit crunch, however severe. If you don’t think this statement is true you don’t understand the gospel!

We have a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to restore the church and build the Kingdom of God, serving both our own generation and many to come. To be side-tracked at this point, to be consumed by our inability to be consumers would be a foolish error.

Our commission and our great God are alive and ready for action. Be a good soldier and fight!!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

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 v 10

Probably one of the most miss-quoted verses in the Bible. Many quote this simply as ‘money is the root of all evil’ which clearly communicates a very different meaning.

Money provokes strong emotions, it is usually questions about money that initiate the longest and most detailed discussion in church life.

But there is something way beyond this understandable concern that Paul is referring to here. Genuine love is one of the most powerful forces/emotions in the universe.

• love affects the whole life of the lover
• love leads to great personal sacrifice
• love forsakes all others
• love consumes the lover’s emotions
• love engages the will, controls actions and consumes

To direct all this energy at money, says Paul, can only lead to trouble.

We live in a culture which has consitently and persistantly put it’s faith in Money. We trust it to provide for our needs, expect it to lavishly appease our wants. We rest assured that it will cushion us against the unknown and firmly rely on it to watch over us in old age.

The trouble comes when we worship money it’s self forgetting who it is that graciously gives us all things. There is a scene in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ where Bilbo finally gives up the ring to Frodo. The struggle to keep it causes his whole demeanor to be distorted, just for a moment he looks and sounds like the tragic Gollum who is doomed to an eternity seeking out his ‘precious’. It is this kind of frightening transformation that the love of money effects.

There is nothing evil about money, rich people are not intrinsically selfish or uncaring, poor people are not – by any virtue of their poverty – more holy than anyone else.

Money needs to serve us and be used in the service of God – recent events prove that it is foolish to put faith in finance. As people loose their homes and livelihoods are bartered back and forth based on romour and ‘market confidence’ this timeless verse from Paul to his young friend should be posted over the doorways of investment banks and stock market floors around the world.