We all have talents, some have more than others; sometimes we even have to work for our talents. There is one talent that almost everyone wants, and that is the talent of property or money.
I want to begin with a parable that Jesus told about a rich man. “There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.” Luke 16: 19–24
Here in these few verses we have two characters—the first is the rich man and the second is known as Lazarus, the beggar. But in these few verses there seems to be some constant misunderstanding. People will feel more pity for the rich man rather than the beggar; they will say that God put the rich man in hell for being rich and the beggar in heaven for being poor. God is not biased; He would not punish the rich man for being rich, but to explain in more depth, here is a paragraph from a Christian blog, which says the following: “I know Christians who believe that people should be able to be as wealthy as they can possibly be, as long as they acquire their wealth fairly and squarely. And I know Christians who believe that any evidence of wealth—a nice car, a big home, or expensive vacations—is clear evidence of spiritual failing and moral corruption. I’ve even heard Christians misquote Paul and say, ‘Money is the root of all evils.’ Of course, Paul actually warned against the ‘love of money.’”
God sees nothing wrong with having money as long as we use it wisely. The rich man did not know how to use the talent that God had given him. “But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime received thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” Luke 16:25
The rich man did not know how to give his good things to others or use them to benefit others. Quoting from another Christian blog, “Money is explicitly identified as a spiritual power in Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount when He asserts, ‘No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon’ (Matthew 6:24; Luke 6:13). ‘Mammon’ was the Aramaic term for money, wealth, or material possessions. In contrasting ‘mammon’ to God, Jesus represents money as an active and personified spiritual power antithetical to God. Money becomes a deified spiritual power, a false-god, when it is employed in the context of the foremost false-god, Satan. Satan, the ‘god of this world’ (2 Corinthians 4:4) reigning over the world-order of fallen mankind, invests money with his diabolic self-orientation which was evidenced in his aspiration to ‘be like the Most High God’ (Isaiah 14:14) and in his temptation of men that ‘they, too, could be like God’ (Genesis 3:5). Such self-orientation that sets oneself up as their own center of reference and claims to be independent, autonomous, self-determining and self-producing is the evil spiritual character of the diabolical employment of money as a spiritual power.”
May God help us not to make the same mistake as the rich man but rather to use our money for God’s purposes is my wish and prayer. Amen.
Mathew Romero