The Love of Money: A Biblical Framework for Money Every Ambitious Man Needs

💰 Get Seth's Mastering Money Bible Study: https://sethtroutt.com/product/mastering-money-bible-study/

You can probably quote the verse. "You cannot serve God and money." But somewhere between the Sunday sermon and Monday morning, that clean line gets blurry. You're not building a golden calf. You're just trying to build a life. So how do you know when the pursuit of provision has quietly become worship, and how long has it been since you honestly asked?

Here's what makes this dangerous: the shift from tool to deity never announces itself. Nobody wakes up and decides to worship money. Instead, your ethics bend one degree at a time. You stay at the job you know is crooked. You cut a corner you swore you wouldn't cut. You justify it because the mortgage is real and the kids need shoes. Money doesn't demand a blood sacrifice. It just asks you to look the other way, and each time you do, it owns a little more of you. Like carbon monoxide, the most lethal version of this has no smell.

Then there's the other side, the one nobody preaches about. A rich man named Joseph of Arimathea spent a fortune on a hand-cut tomb for a crucified rabbi nobody else would claim. That tomb is the reason the resurrection story exists. Wealth aimed at something beyond itself became the stage for the most important event in human history. Which means the question isn't whether money is dangerous. It's whether you have any framework for knowing which side of that line you're standing on right now.

Most men don't. Most men are carrying debt they hide from their wives, spending patterns they can't defend out loud, and a vague plan to "be generous later" that never arrives. This episode names four specific markers that distinguish money as a servant from money as a master. Miss even one of them, and you may be building a life that's quietly mortgaged to something that will never love you back.

💰 Get Seth's Mastering Money Bible Study: https://sethtroutt.com/product/mastering-money-bible-study/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Money, God and money. You can't serve God and money. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. The Bible paints a pretty negative view of money on the surface. But what it's mostly critiquing is the worship of money or the love of money, or this money as an end in of itself, rather than seeing money as a means of something, a facilitation of something. You know, the first time we see money show up is a story in the Old Testament where there are people who need to go and travel to the temple to offer sacrifices. But what they say is you can trade your cattle for silver, travel the distance, and once you get there, trade your silver for livestock and offer the sacrifices there. And so that's a perfect example to me of what money is for. It's for convenient transactions. That's the point of it. It represents value created or the capacity to buy value or buy valuable things in the future. And so most of the time when people are desiring to make more money, they're not really looking for a specific number in their mind. They're imagining the type of life they'd like to live or the type of things they'd like to have or the type of things they'd like to do. And so, how do you know when trying to make money is the disordered love of money or is the type of worship of money that the Bible explicitly forbids? Well, the first thing we need to understand is number one, the worship of money will be a temptation for you, period. That pretending like that's not going to be the case is just silly. There are so many Bible verses about money. Jesus critiques the use of money so often that the New Testament, it's just the Bible is so full of money because it's sober about the temptation to trust in earthly things and ultimately give yourself to earthly things. And so, number one, be sober about the temptation to love and worship money. Number two, money becomes your God when it determines how you act. And so your God, functionally speaking, is that which tells you what to do and how to act. And so you might believe in God, but if your ethics and behavior and your choices are determined by money, then money is your functional God. Money is your deity. So if God says, thou shalt not steal, you decide I want more money and you steal, money in that moment is your God. If you are conducting unethical business practices for the purposes of making more money, you are worshiping money. If you are violating God's law in order to get money, money is your God. And so if you find yourself tempted to break the commandments, tempted to violate the fruit of the spirit, tempted to not act like Jesus in order to have money, you are not just dealing with greed. You're dealing with the worship of money as God. And so we have to be honest with ourselves as we process through that. I had a guy I was mentoring one time who got a job at an unethical company, and he was telling me about how they conduct business. And I knew for a fact that company was unethical based on the way they lied and manipulated people into offering consent to things that was designed to entrap them. And I said, I want you to pay close attention for the next few weeks about how the business actually works, not just how they say it works. And what he observed in the those two weeks was enough for him to go, I need to quit this job right now, and he quit it without another opportunity. That to me is an example of a man who is not worshiping money. That is a good moral framework. Um, number three on money. We want to recognize this that money is an instrument that can be used for tremendous good. One of the richest men we see in the Bible is a guy named Joseph of Aermathea. We see this in Matthew 27. Says, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who's also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus, and Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock, and he rolled a stone across the entrance. The reason Jesus was buried and risen, the reason we have the creeds, the reason we have the resurrection story is because a rich man named Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, held on to his possessions and then gave them away when the moment required it. That he was generous with his wealth. A stone-cut tomb with the stone in front of it was an incredibly expensive thing, especially in the first century. Most people were just thrown into some type of mass grave situation, especially if they're crucified. But Joseph preserved the body and at a great financial cost to himself, served in honor of the Lord Jesus. And that's why we even have the resurrection story. So wealth leveraged rightly for the right purposes is a tremendous gift. And I think it'd be worthy of us to ask ourselves when we imagine getting wealthier in the future, are we imagining becoming the type of man like Joseph of Arimathea who is actively looking for opportunities to be generous? Or are we just trying to find some type of uh identity in being a wealthy person that's more toys, more tools, more signals of status that are ultimately about showing other people what we have. You know, I like my Traeger Grill. I bought it at Costco, but I almost didn't buy it because what the salesman said was so infuriating to me. Because I wanted to have a smoker so I could make meat because I want it to taste good and serve the family. And the salesman said, if you buy this, you'll make your neighbors jealous. And that was just disgusting to me. And I think a lot of what amounts to the way that Americans use their wealth is just to show their wealth, to have a car to be seen having a car, to not have a house to show hospitality, but to have a house to flex your income. And that type of vanity, that type of greed, I think God hates it and it is disgusting to him. And so the fourth thing I want to say about uh wealth is that, or about money, not necessarily wealth, is we live in an age where debt is incredibly comfortable for people. Credit card debts, living beyond your means is a horrible way to shackle yourself to the future. That the most basic wisdom principle you can have in money is this live beneath your means. Most people live at 10 to 30% above their means. So they're accumulating debt and they're shackling themselves, they're robbing from their kids' inheritance, and they're just making foolish choices again and again and again by making dumb and bad purchases on a regular basis. You're going out to brunch, you're going out to dinner, you don't have the money to do that, you put on a credit card, the interest rate's 35%, you're trying to live in the moment, enjoy your life. Meanwhile, you are harming yourself and your kids' future by robbing them of their investment that you can make into them for the sake of short-term temporary convenience. That most people spend money so foolishly because they live above or at their means when you should be living below your means. Contentment is a biblical virtue. And so recognize the temptation to worship money. Recognize the ways that worship may cause you to violate God's law, and that's making money, making money a God. Have a vision for yourself of what you might look like as a generous person in the future. I remember hearing a story about one guy who was wealthy who carried around $100 bills and looked to give one away every day to just someone he thought needed it. What a captivating picture. Joseph of Arimathea, radical generosity, serving the Lord. And fourth, for the love of God, live beneath your means. You will not regret it. Don't try to live like you're 45 when you're 25. Don't try to spend like you're retired when you're not. Don't live like you make 200K when you make 100K. If you make 100K, live like you make 80. If you make 200, live like you make 160. Live beneath your means. And you'll be wise and set up for success. And your kids and their futures will be set up for success as well. Those are my four basic things on money. Have a great rest of your day.