Sermon Preview: The Root of All Evil

“For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil…” (1 Timothy 6:10).Money itself is not a bad thing. The truth is that money is necessary tosupport your family, accomplish good on a large scale, and help those who arein need. The problem is that when people obsess over money in a completelyselfish way and are willing to lie, cheat, and steal in order to gain money. Theydo not bear their Cross and follow Jesus; instead, they bear their checkbooksand follow every selfish desire. Paul said of greed in Colossians 3:5 that itis basically idolatry (Colossians 3:5).

The love of money manifests itself in oppression of the poor (Amos 4; James 5). When Jesus began His ministry, He associated Himself with the people that most people considered bad. They had committed sins that are easy to see which made themselves targets for the religious elite of the day. Jesus, however, hardly ever addresses those types of sins, but He instead directed His attention towards those who did not think that they were sinners. You see, Jesus did not hyper focus on the symptoms of evil but the root causes of evil – love of money, greed, and idolatry.

Listen to this sermon as well as a Bible class on Ecclesiastes today at http://christiansinarcadia.org/live! Class starts at 9:30 Eastern (9:35 start time for the stream, and the sermon is typically around 10:55.