NXR Podcast - DAILY TRUTH - The Love of Money
Aired: 2022-12-08
Duration: 07:53


=== Elders Can Be Rich (03:40) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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[00:00:19]  Jesus said, Man cannot live on bread alone, but from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
[00:00:25]  You're listening to Daily Truth.
[00:00:30]  Not a lover of money.
[00:00:31]  That is not covetousness nor greedy.
[00:00:35]  That's the actual translation.
[00:00:37]  Not a lover of money doesn't mean not rich.
[00:00:40]  Okay?
[00:00:40]  It doesn't say an elder can't be rich.
[00:00:44]  Most elders, if they're vocational elders, they need to take a livable wage, which means they're not rich, but they're also not impoverished, right?
[00:00:53]  They're not rich, but they're not poor.
[00:00:54]  So if they're a vocational elder, meaning that they actually work for the church, right?
[00:00:59]  Like I do.
[00:01:00]  Then they should take a livable wage for the work that they do.
[00:01:03]  But because we believe that the Bible doesn't just allow for those elders who are paid by the church, vocational elders, but also lay elders, some of those lay elders, while faithfully fulfilling the role of an elder, may have some other kind of vocation that actually is very lucrative.
[00:01:19]  And so it is possible for an elder to be rich.
[00:01:22]  And so the prohibition here is not that an elder can't be rich, but rather it is he's not a lover of money.
[00:01:28]  He's not covetousness and he's not greedy.
[00:01:31]  The Bible has much to say about money.
[00:01:33]  Wealth is not inherently wrong, but all wealth presents potential dangers.
[00:01:37]  Every Christian, but especially elders, must clearly understand that a man cannot serve both money and God.
[00:01:44]  He must constantly be seeking to put to death the love of money.
[00:01:49]  Not money, not wealth, but the love of it, covetousness, and greed.
[00:01:55]  And just for the record, especially, especially in our cultural climate today, there are many people who are not rich.
[00:02:04]  But are actually failing to meet this qualification more than those who are rich.
[00:02:10]  There are many people who are poor by a financial standard, but are far more covetous, far more given to the sin of envy when it comes to the riches of others.
[00:02:23]  This is a unique situation in our culture today.
[00:02:28]  This idea that you have more than me, and just by virtue of you having more, you therefore owe me.
[00:02:34]  It's like, well, okay, are you going to do some of the work?
[00:02:38]  No.
[00:02:39]  You're not better than me.
[00:02:41]  You're not allowed to be richer than me.
[00:02:43]  I keep hitting kind of this theme because I think it's a huge, formidable enemy of the truth of God's word.
[00:02:51]  That thing is egalitarianism.
[00:02:54]  It exists at every level.
[00:02:55]  So when we went through 1 Timothy 2, we see egalitarianism as it relates to the relationship between men and women.
[00:03:01]  As we're going through 1 Timothy 3, we see egalitarianism at play as it relates to congregants and elders.
[00:03:07]  An elder is in a position of authority.
[00:03:09]  There is authority.
[00:03:10]  Now, we can argue all day long as far as our polity and those kind of things, how much authority an elder has.
[00:03:15]  But an elder, the word is used double honor to the elders who do what?
[00:03:19]  Rule.
[00:03:21]  R U L E. Rule.
[00:03:24]  Meaning what?
[00:03:24]  Elders rule.
[00:03:26]  And not like boys rule, girls drool kind of rule.
[00:03:28]  But I like, but elders rule, meaning they wield some measure of authority.
[00:03:33]  And we don't like it.
[00:03:34]  So that egalitarian spirit of, which really, I think it's Marxism.

=== The Rule of Elders (04:13) ===

[00:03:40]  I'll just say it.
[00:03:41]  I can say it's a Marxist demonic ideology.
[00:03:46]  It is.
[00:03:47]  That has no bearing in the Word of God.
[00:03:48]  That just demands that no one can ever have anything that I don't have.
[00:03:54]  So men can't be the head of their home.
[00:03:57]  If a wife can't, that's not fair.
[00:03:59]  Right?
[00:03:59]  And elders can't rule in a church if the congregants don't have that equal rule.
[00:04:03]  That's not fair.
[00:04:05]  And somebody can't have more wealth than me if I don't have it.
[00:04:08]  They owe it to me.
[00:04:10]  Thomas Sowell, he's not a Christian, but he's, I think, wise in this regard.
[00:04:16]  An older African-American economist, he says that envy used to be known as one of the seven deadly sins.
[00:04:25]  Today, in our culture, it goes by its new name, social justice.
[00:04:30]  All right, all right, all right.
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