Guarding the Faith

We came to the last chapter of First Timothy this Sunday. Chapter 6. The series theme one more time. Guarding what matters. This week, guarding the faith.

Turan opened with two pictures of money gone wrong. Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka, the championship gum chewer who had to win at all costs. And Bud Post, who won sixteen million dollars in the 1988 Pennsylvania lottery and spiraled into lawsuits, violence, and bankruptcy. Post’s own words years later. I was much happier when I was broke.

Jesus warned about this. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And he drew the line sharper still. You cannot serve God and money. Fortune or faith. One or the other. Not both.

We picked up reading at verse 3. Paul finally names what drives the false teachers he has warned about all letter long. They imagine that godliness is a means of gain. Turan connected it to the prosperity gospel we hear today, the promise that God owes every believer health and wealth on their own terms.

It is backwards. Paul flips it in verse 6. Godliness with contentment is great gain. Contentment is the opposite of grasping for what you do not have.

We slowed down on verse 10, one of the most misquoted lines in the Bible. Not money is the root of all evil. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

Money itself is not the sin. Wealth is not wickedness. The danger comes when wealth possesses us instead of the other way around.

Then the turn. But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Verses 11 through 16. Turan pointed at the verbs. Flee. Pursue. Fight. Take hold.

This is not a passive life. It sounds like a battlefield, because it is one. Chase after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Go after them with the same intensity the world spends chasing money.

Paul does not leave the wealthy out. Verses 17 through 19. He does not tell them to feel unwelcome. He tells them to keep their hope on God, not on riches, and to be generous and ready to share.

Turan reminded us that a household making fifty thousand dollars a year is richer than almost everyone alive. This charge is for us. It was never only about someone else.

Paul closes with a final word. Guard the deposit entrusted to you. The deposit is the faith itself, our own faith and the gospel handed to each of us to keep and to pass on.

So the choice stands. Fortune or faith. Not only in the big decisions but in the small everyday ones this week, one path puts fortune first and the other puts faith first.

Something to sit with this week:

In this week’s small, ordinary choices, where will you be able to tell whether you are putting fortune first or faith first?