Vineyard Church of Knox County
Avoiding Costly Errors in Investing
Sermon Audio from Sunday, March 21, 2004 — If I were to take 2 months out of every calendar year to teach about money, one-sixth of the teaching time, what would you conclude about my thoughts on money? You would conclude that I believed our relationship to our possessions is of vital importance to our life as a follower of Jesus. And you'd be right. Did you know that Jesus taught on money a full one-sixth of the time he was on earth in public ministry? One-sixth of the verses in the Gospels deal with the seductive power of greed. That should tell us something, shouldn't it?
Jesus was so wise; he understood people and he understood the seductive power of money. He understood what all the politicians understand about people in our country, what influences people the most on election day: "it's the economy, stupid." We could be at war or at peace; we could have the best or worst health-care system on the planet; our president could be moral or immoral; if people believe that one man can make them wealthier than the other man, that's who they will vote for. I know none of us are that way (tongue in cheek), but "other people out there," vote with their pocketbooks. People are driven by money. Jesus understood this about people. He understood just how powerfully money and possessions can strangle a person's spiritual life. Knowing that Jesus spent a full one-sixth of his time on earth teaching about money, we conclude that it must be so important that life in the kingdom of God must in some way depend on our relationship to money, whether we consider ourselves wealthy or not. This is the very message we learn today from Jesus' conversation with a rich, young ruler. This young man and the disciples learned from Jesus, and we learn today, that our spiritual lives are drastically affected by our relationship to our money. In other words, money is a spiritual issue.
