AN URGENT DANGER
By
D. M. PANTON, M. A.
Covetousness
- not only the desire of what we have not got, but the refusal to part with
what we have - God ranks among the blackest of sins. It is one of the
supreme Prohibitions of Jehovah (Ex. 20: 17);
it is defined by God as ‘idolatry’ (Col. 3: 5), a sin, under the Law, reserved for
capital punishment; it renders a [regenerate] believer so unholy that he is to be excommunicated
from the Church on earth (1 Cor.
5: 11); and twice (1Cor. 6: 10; Eph. 5: 5) it is stated as involving a disciple in the loss of the
Millennial Kingdom. "The peril
of the Church is not so much an unorthodox creed as an orthodox greed" (Dr. A. J. Gordon). Love
of money brought us the first awful discipline of the Holy Ghost (Acts 5: 5): love of money is the absorbing passion
of the last Church named in the Word of God -
THE MONEY CHEST
It
is extraordinarily significant that the last thing on which our Lord’s eyes
rested in the
GOD’S AUDIT
"Verily I say unto you" - our Lord pledges Himself
to the most startling of all revelations on money - "this poor widow cast in more than all":
that is, more than any other donor, or else, more than all put together.
Those who give most often give least, and those that give least often give
most. Why? Because God judges what we give
by what we keep. "For they
all did cast in of their superfluity; but she of her want did cast in all that
she had, even all her living." The widow had given all she
had to live on for that day; and was so walking with God that she could trust
Him for tomorrow’s meal. 1 Kings 17: 15; Hebrews
13: 5. God’s scales, in weighing gifts, also weigh what is not
given: so, quite literally, the poorest can give more than the wealthiest,
and all can give immense gifts: for the amount withheld exactly
determines the value of the amount given.
OUR DANGER
We
now arrive at the peril. "The love of
money is a root of all kinds of evil" (1Tim.
6: 10). It can estrange friends, divide families, and harden
hearts; nurse extravagance, pamper appetite, and foster pride; ‘sweat’ labour,
freeze up charity, and indulge every lust - "foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and perdition." Every year increases our peril.
"In the last days men shall be lovers
of money" (2 Tim. 3: 2):
"ye have laid up treasure in the last
days" (James 5: 3): "because thou sayest, I
am rich, ...
thou art miserable and poor and blind and naked" (Rev. 3: 17): "thus
shall Babylon be cast down, for thy merchants were the princes of
the earth" (Rev. 18: 23).
"Of all the temptations none has so struck at the
work of God as the deceitfulness of riches; a thousand melancholy proofs of
which I have seen within these last fifty years. By riches I mean not
thousands of pounds; but any more than will procure the conveniences of
life. Money-lovers are the pest of every Christian society. They
have been the main cause of the destruction of every revival. They will
destroy us, if we do not put them away" (John
Wesley). 1 Cor. 5:
11; Mark 10: 23.
INDESTRUCTIBLE PURSES
How
is the peril met? "Sell
that ye have, and give alms; make for yourselves purses which wax
not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not"
(Luke 12: 33). No warnings
on wealth are severer than Christ’s: so there is no greater tribute to the
power of money over the human heart than the startling silence of the Church on
these warnings of her Lord. "With such
words [as 1 Tim. 6: 6-10] before him, one would think that any Christian man who is
laying up money, or is planning to do so, would at once abandon his
project. But how many such cases have ever been heard of? I cannot remember one"
(Dr. J. P. Gladstone). O beloved, the indestructible purses must
be manufactured now! "Hearken, my
beloved brethren; did not God choose them that are poor as to the world
to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom
which He promised to them that love Him?" (James 2: 5). "The
most sensitive part of the civilized man is his pocket" (Sir W.
Ramsay): so grace is supreme when it is the biggest jewel in the purse.
Heaven’s purses are filled by emptying those on earth.
"But thou, O man of God, flee these things!" What
things? "They that desire to be rich"
- fly even the desire! The man who has
nothing to gain is the man who can never be bought: so if you would be the
man of God - a man who belongs to God, who is devoted to God, whose wealth is
in God, who lives for God - then flee these
things. "I make no
purse. What I have I give away. ‘Poor yet
making many rich’ shall be my motto still"
(Whitefield). Prov. 11: 24. The costliness of the gift is
the measure of the love behind it: God did not keep back His Son when He
loved the world: what God did not keep back was the measure of the love that He
felt. So we! One of the Lord’s people, who had once been rich, was asked
how he bore his poverty so happily. "When I
was rich," he replies, "I had God in
all my wealth: now, I have all my wealth in God." How
much more he who has deliberately lodged it there! "Lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven. FOR WHERE THY TREASURE IS, THERE WILL THY HEART BE
ALSO" (Matt. 6: 20).
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