Matthew 6
Lay Up Treasures in Heaven
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
You Cannot Serve God and Riches
24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
In Matthew chapter 6 we see a personification of the lust for wealth and it is called mammon. In many churches today this is the idol that is worshipped.
While I know of many examples of good, Christian people who were poor in worldly possessions, let me cite just a few. William Carey was an early missionary to India. His beginnings were humble. As a boy, Carey was apprenticed to a cobbler. Incredibly, he taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Bengali. Later as a missionary to India he suffered many deprivations including the insanity of his first wife and the death of a son.
Adoniram Judson was an early missionary to Burma. During one period, he was imprisioned for months in the most horrible conditions. He was bound with torture thongs and put in the rat infested Ava prison which was known as a death prison.
After twelve brutal months, Judson along with a small group of surviving Western prisoners, were marched overland, barefoot and sick for six more months of misery in a primitive village near Mandalay. All but one of them died. The sufferings and brutalities of those 20 long months and days in prison, half-starved, iron-fettered, and sometimes trussed and suspended by his mangled feet with only head and shoulders touching the ground was described in detail by his wife, shortly after his release.
I could go on and on. We have forgotten the sacrifices made by the early missionaries. We have forgotten the tortures suffered by the apostles. We have forgotten the words of our Lord in Matthew 8:20..."And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
One of the finest Christians I have ever known lost his home in the Great Depression and had his business taken from him in a swindle back in the '30s. When he died in the 1960s, he worked as a tenant farmer. He was my grandfather.
The church has suffered terrible harm by wolves in sheeps clothing. "Evangelists" who fly from one speaking engagement to another on private jets. It makes me sick and want to weep. I think it makes Jesus sad too.
(some sources: wikipedia, etc)
YBIC
Bruce Baber