EPISODE 196 1 TIMOTHY CHAPTER 6 "What is life indeed"

Welcome to Share the Word, where we bring out the big ideas, chapter by chapter, of the New Testament. Today, money, money, money, money, which has been undoubtedly the aspect of sleepless nights for so many. But have you established the actual value of it when it comes to your eternal life? First Timothy chapter 6. What is life indeed? I remember talking quite a while back now about famous quotations or idioms that come from the Bible.

Remember we talked about that, I don't know, maybe a year ago in this series. But I'm talking about sayings that have found their way into the English vernacular that originally were in the Scripture. I just saw a page published online this week that said there were at least 200 of them. People use these every day, but many have no idea where they come from. Like, for example, Did you hear about Frank from the shipping department getting let go? Man, the writing was on the wall about that one.

What do you mean? He shows up late for work half the time, and I heard last week he got into it with his supervisor. Wow, I didn't know that. Yep, sooner or later, you reap what you sow. Why are you quoting Bible verses at me? Bible verses?

What Bible verses? People use these all the time, most without even knowing they come from the Bible. You reap what you sow, the writing is on the wall, and so on. Those are common examples of English idioms that come from the Bible. But in the final chapter of First Timothy, we find maybe the most famous misquotation from the Bible. I'm sure you've heard this one too.

Money is the... Root of all evil. I gave you a minute there between each word. You finished the line before I did, I bet, because we all have heard that one. But it's actually a misquote. What Paul actually wrote to Timothy in this chapter is, and this is at verse 10, The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.

Paul would not have said it the way we've all heard it because that's not true. Money's not the root of all evil. If you trace back evil things, you'll also find jealousy or lust or wrong anger or some other sin. Where eventually will lead you is to a sinful human's heart. Jesus once said, Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander, and so on. Money?

Money is actually a neutral thing. It's a tool, like a wrench. You can hit someone you're angry with over the head with it, or you can help someone fix their car with it. So the accurate quote is, The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, in the sense of, is there anything people won't do for money? Some people will fight and go to court and destroy their whole family over money. Some people will kill over money, and they do.

And I don't just mean mafia hitmen either. I was thinking the other day about how many people have to be involved in order for fentanyl, a deadly illegal drug, to be sold on the streets of America. It's a synthetic opioid, so the original chemicals have to be manufactured. And that takes place in labs in China, and a bunch of people there know exactly the evil enterprise they're engaged in. And why are they doing it? For money.

Then a network has to get those chemicals over to Mexico, and those involved in the shipments certainly know they are involved in an evil enterprise. And why are they doing it? For money. And then, in illegal labs there south of the border, those chemicals are turned into this deadly drug that's eventually sold on the streets of American cities. Every evil person that owns those labs, building those drugs, everyone working in them knows exactly what they're engaged in, and they are still doing it for money. In some cases, even police and border officials are bribed to look the other way to allow this to go on.

And those corrupt officials are doing it, you guessed it, for money. Then people have to go to great lengths, take great risks, to get this stuff smuggled into the United States, where it's distributed to dealers all over the country. Why take that huge risk the drug mules are taking, the major dealers are taking? Big money, of course. Finally, some guys on the street under a bridge in Kensington, Philadelphia, selling fentanyl tablets for $40 a pop, or packets of other illegal drugs laced with fentanyl and killing people. Lots of people.

In fact, well over a thousand people in Philadelphia alone just last year. Don't ask me why I've been thinking about all this, but it's just one current example of what Paul actually meant when he wrote, The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. The immediate context here in which he made that comment to Timothy isn't specifically about that problem, however. It actually has to do with another sort of evil: religious scammers. Verse 5 is translated variously to get at Paul's idea. The New Living Translation renders it, These corrupt people who have turned their backs on the truth, to them, pretending to be godly is just a way to become wealthy.

Or as the Christian Standard Bible puts it, They imagine godliness is a way to material gain. The marginal note in the very literal New American Standard Bible suggests the word could be translated religion. So, corrupt people who have turned their backs on what they know is true use religion to get wealthy. Scamming sincere people out of their hard-earned money with false claims they know good and well aren't true. What an incredible evil and done for the love of money. Such religious scammers already existed in Paul and Timothy's day and were a major blight in ours.

And the evil goes beyond stealing spiritually hungry people's money. They affect how a lot of others perceive Christianity. Undiscerning people, they don't know the difference between imposters claiming to be in Christian ministry who are really in it for financial gain and sincere, godly people who are serving Christ and the gospel because they believe it's true and everybody needs to hear it. And so a lot of people on the sidelines, onlookers, disregard the genuine on account of the charlatans. Yeah, the truth is there's not a single form of evil that someone will not do for money. And how incredibly and foolishly short-sighted that is, because the evil done in the pursuit of wealth, the, I know this is wrong, but I don't care because I have more money now than I've ever had in my life.

That is, in Paul's words, plunging men into ruin and destruction, and he's talking about hell. Jesus once said, What would you be profited if you could gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? Greedy evildoers will find out the hard way. The answer to that is no, and it's not even close. The follow-up to Paul's line about the love of money being the root of all evil is, For some, by longing for it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

The allure of easy money is not just a temptation for fake Christian showmen who scam naive people. Paul is concerned that Timothy himself not get enamored with riches. This was a young man, remember, who grew up in a provincial small town in the boondocks of Galatia, who now finds himself with an important job living in one of the largest and richest cities in the Roman Empire, Ephesus. Paul knew real Christians too. Even people in Christian ministry are vulnerable. I just read a sad story this past week about a seventy-something-year-old pastor's wife in a Baptist church in Florida named Nancy Bertine.

She was arrested for embezzling over $180,000 of funds from the church her husband has been the senior pastor of for many years. I bet she was rationalizing that she was being underpaid or they were being underpaid, so, hey, this is just a way to get what's ours. Most of the money was spent on personal items she ordered on Amazon. Talk about piercing yourself with a lot of self-inflicted grief. Now her mug is all over the local news. Her marriage broke up as a result.

Likely she's heading to prison. And in my view, worst of all, she's given Christianity and her local church a very bad name in Citrus County, Florida. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, Nancy. Paul exhorts his protege Timothy here, Flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Guard what's been entrusted to you. Fight the good fight of faith.

Take hold of eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. He's no doubt referring there to Timothy's ordination where he was charged with living an exemplary life, among other things, free from the love of money. John MacArthur has a great note on those verses. He says, The man of God should be known by what he flees from, follows after, fights for, and is faithful to. So Paul is admonishing Timothy here to get a grip on the things that are most valuable in view of eternal life, not the things men value in this one. To be all that he has to be for the potential of God, Timothy must minister with an eternal perspective.

I think that's exactly on point, because at verse 17, Paul tells Timothy, Challenge the believers in the churches where you are ministering in the very same way with these words: Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all these things we enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasures of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of what is life indeed. Why should someone who is wealthy use their money to do good for others rather than, say, build a bigger house for themselves? Why be generous and invest in things God would call a good work instead of, say, buy another expensive, impressive car?

Because it's by doing good and being rich in good works and being generous and being ready to share that we lay up for ourselves treasure for the future. And by for the future, he doesn't mean your retirement account. He means for that which is life indeed, that is, heaven. He means the life to come. By investing in things that reach into the life to come, we are taking hold of that which is life indeed, the eternal life to which we are called. For Christians who will listen to this, never ever forget that how we are investing our lives now and what we are doing with our resources now is deciding how we will be rewarded then and what we will be doing then in the life to come.

This is exactly, exactly what Jesus taught, and he taught it repeatedly. This is what he called laying up treasures in heaven, and Paul is just using Jesus' line here. How specifically can we do that? Well, one way would be to do without some things we could spend money on here and instead invest that dough in things that will advance God's interests for eternity. For example, invest in things that will help spread the gospel to people who need to hear it, or invest in things that will make people know Christianity is for real. We had a speaker at our service last Sunday from Hope of Life Ministries that is centered in a poor country, Guatemala, in Central America.

Their ministry for the last thirty-some years has been to invest in the essentials for the poorest people in that society, to show the love of Christ and so earn the right to share with them the gospel. They help build basic homes for shelter, dig wells for fresh water, maintain a hospital in a very rural part of the country that had no health care, and rescue people who were being trafficked by criminal cartels. Man, that's kingdom work. And people who invest in it are laying up treasures in heaven. I know our culture is expert at creating discontent with what we have, and that's where a lot of our money goes. But does anyone really need the latest this, the most expensive that, another one of those in a different color?

We're so manipulated to waste our resources on stuff we don't really need. It's just stuff, and we're taking none of that stuff with us. As verse seven reminds us, we have brought nothing into this world, and we cannot take anything out of it either. Even if we could hitch up a U-Haul to our hearse and somehow take our most prized stuff with us, what good would it be in a place where gold is so common it's used for paving streets? So if you're a Christian and have more than you know you need, think hard about what you do with that surplus. Think about why God may have entrusted it to you.

From a biblical perspective, and I want to be very clear about this, being poor does not mean you're ungodly, any more than being rich means you must be really godly. Being poor doesn't mean that God's displeased with you, and being rich doesn't mean He necessarily favors you. And listen, the exact opposite is also true. Being poor doesn't make you more godly, or rich make you less godly. Money, remember, is neutral. It's a tool.

It's a commodity. It's the selfish desire to get rich that the New Testament points out can be a problem. When that desire is so strong, it leads you to do wrong things. And when the desire for more and more money and the stuff money can buy becomes the highest pursuit of your life, that's when it metastasized into evil greed in our hearts and evil idolatry. The best inoculation for the tendency toward greed is generosity, when we learn that it is actually better to give than to receive, as Jesus once said, through seeing lives changed as a result of what we have given, of our generosity. So what did Paul tell Timothy his attitude should be toward money?

Godliness with contentment actually is great gain, Timothy. That's what he wrote at verse six, and what Paul had modeled to him for years. As he once wrote about the ups and downs of his own life in Philippians 4, he wrote, I've learned how to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself. I know how to get along with very humble means, and I know how to live in prosperity. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

By contentment, Paul meant his life was not driven by money. He's saying he's had plenty of it at times, and things have been very tight at other times. But he had lived his life since he started serving Christ just the way he recommended Timothy live his, with eternal goals and values atop his agenda. And that's what he meant when he challenged his son in the faith to grab hold of that which is life indeed. And he meant the life after this one, the life that goes on forever. Don't get caught up in trying to live your best life now, to use a bad book title.

Live your life for Christ and his interests now. Our best life is ahead of us. There's a prayer about this in the Old Testament wisdom book of Proverbs. In part it says, Lord, give me neither poverty nor riches. Just give me enough to meet my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, Who is the Lord?

Or if I am too poor, I may turn to stealing and thus insult your holy name. The point is, again, if we have enough, we should be content. I'm sure if you're tuning in to Share the Word because you're trying to understand the New Testament and its biggest ideas, this one may sound nuts to you. You probably never thought of money like this once in your life till right now. You've always thought, of course I want to be rich. But one of the biggest ideas in the New Testament is that this life is short, but ahead of us is eternity, which is endless.

Why would those who expect to live for eternity spend their brief time now in this world fixated on trying to get rich, trying to amass stuff? When there are far more eternally consequential things to be doing during the short time we are here, it makes no sense. I realize if you're an unbeliever to think that way, but for Christians, if we really believe what we say we believe, it makes no sense not to. Because when this life is over, the book says that we're going to be welcomed into heaven by those we have helped to get there, if we have anybody like that, welcomed by people who will be saying, Thank you for giving to the Lord. You were a big part of why I'm here. And then the day will come after that when we stand before Christ at His Bema seat and be asked, What have you done with what I entrusted with you that matters to me, that makes any difference here, now?

That is when we will find out if, in Jesus' estimation, our life consisted of wood, hay, and straw, or gold, silver, and precious stones. This is what we should be planning for. This is what will matter when this short life is over and we step into the reality of the next one, the eternal one, what is life indeed, as Paul calls it. As for Timothy, Paul knew his faith was real and his commitment to serve Christ was sincere. They'd worked together by this time for a decade or more. He was just reminding him here.

He was just, best he could through words in a letter, taking him by the shoulders, looking him in the eye and saying, Fulfill your ministry, man of God. Don't get distracted like those who love this present world too much. Fight the good fight of faith and keep a grip on what is life indeed. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. There is such a richness in this chapter and the entire letter to Timothy.

The glitter of gold has always intrigued civilizations throughout history. Evil continues to use not only money but also power to sway the hearts of man in the wrong direction. It's not having that's the issue. It's the selfish desires that fill our hearts and take us in the direction to serve our selfish purposes in this world, rather than assist those for the life to come. In Matthew 6, he says, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Look at your life and ask yourself, do you know who you work for and where everything you have comes from?

If your answer is not God, then you're serving the wrong master. Has the dollar become your God? Are you focused more on amassing rather than using what you have for the glory of God? Because there is no better use for what we have on this earth than to bring someone to Christ.