Wealth

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

WEALTH

Matt 19:16-24

16 Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" 17 "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."  18 "Which ones?" the man inquired. Jesus replied, "'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'"  20 "All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?" 21 Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."  22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. 23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." 

NIV

This is a hard saying in that it seems to be easy enough to pay attention to the lists of do’s and don’ts, even the ones that God has established rather than just the ones man has established. But it is not so easy to give up our accumulated wealth. This is the central theme of the teaching of Jesus here. When he talks about the eye of a needle it is not a needle used with thread, but rather the small gate in the larger city gates. At night the cities close they large gates so riders cannot enter to attack the city. A very small gate only one person at a time could enter and then they would most likely have to stoop down to get through it. So then a camel would never be able to get through this type of gate. This is how hard it is going to be for the person who puts value on his wealth to enter the kingdom of God. It may not be impossible for a person with wealth to be saved, but if we place so much value on our wealth we might be in trouble. What does putting value on wealth look like? It would appear by Jesus telling him to go sell his possessions and give them to the poor that when we store up wealth for our future needs without regard for the needs of others, freely giving them some of our wealth, we are definitely in trouble. It seems many believers live in this type of system. We all do the spiritual things, but separate the material things from our spiritual things. Sure, we might tithe and we might give a little above a tithe for some special offering to support a guest speaker or missionary or some local project, but we still keep the main portion of our wealth for our own self interests. Our giving is out of our abundance, yet keeping the abundance for ourselves. This is just the way of life in the world. There is so much discussion about wealth management, storing up, investing, and securing wealth with gold and silver. There is a radio program, 2 hours’ worth, telling us how we can keep more of our money. It would seem the world, or at least our country, is fixated on wealth. What makes this disturbing is most of all these types of ads and programs are on stations mostly conservatives listen to. We would have to think many Christians are conservatives, at least in the political arena, and therefor are the target audience of these ads and programs. So then how do we respond? There are so many other scriptures which deal with the accumulation of wealth, it would take more than a short a devotion to do this topic justice. But let us consider what we should be willing to do with our wealth.