Sermon Tone Analysis

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Jeff Bezos
A woman: without a man. is nothing
In 1964, Jeffrey Jorgensen was born to a teenage mother, who split with the boys father shortly afterwards.
It might sound like the start of a hard life story, but it’s not.
You see, the mother shortly after re-married, and Jeff took the last name of the new husband - Bezos.
Jeff Bezos proved to be quite the entrepreneur and smart thinker.
By the mid 80’s, he’d graduated from Princeton University, and it wasn’t long before he started making a name for himself on Wall St.
But despite a promising career in the finance sector, in the early to mid 90’s he threw it away for a new idea.
This idea would harness another new thing to come along, a thing we call the internet.
He saw the early potential of the internet, and so he thought he might start a book shop online.
And so he decided to give the book shop the name Amazon.
He started it out of his garage, and apparently, he installed a bell so that every time a book sold, the bell would ring.
But it’s said that the bell didn’t last long because it kept ringing too frequently.
In fact the company took off quite quickly.
It wasn’t long before the company was worth millions.
But Bezos didn’t stop there.
Being an entrepreneur, and remember, the internet was still only a relatively new thing back then, he realised he could expand beyond books and into a variety of consumer goods.
Today, Amazon is still one of the big business success stories.
In fact, it was reported about this time last year that Jeff Bezos became the richest person in the world.
Towards the end of last year he became the first person that Forbes reported as having over $100 Billion.
But it doesn’t end there.
Just a matter of weeks ago, it has now been reported that he is worth over $150 Billion.
In this last week, I just read an article that suggested that Jeff Bezos would need to spend $28 million a day, just in order to avoid getting richer.
That is what I call obscenely rich!
What’s your reaction?
Now I don’t plan on judging Jeff today.
I don’t know what he does with his money, or what sort of attitudes he has.
Rather, I want you to think about what your reaction was when I told Jeff’s story.
Do you try to imagine what it must be like being in that situation?
I mean - you could give millions away each day and you’re still getting richer!
You wouldn’t have any financial concerns, and not only that, you could make sure that none of your friends have any financial concerns either.
But then, maybe you’re more like me, in that you actually would not want to be that insanely rich.
But even so, I must admit the idea of not having to worry about money certainly sounds appealing.
False teachers and wealth
This morning, my objective is to help us think about how we think about our wealth, or perhaps more generally, our material possessions.
1 Timothy re-cap
I’m going to be doing so by looking at the sixth chapter of 1 Timothy.
But first, let’s do a quick recap.
1 Timothy is written by the Apostle Paul to the young Timothy who is looking after the church at Ephesus.
The big idea running throughout the letter is the importance of holding to the truth, with Paul giving lots of practical advice on how this can be achieved.
Chapter 6
As we come to the sixth chapter, we find the first two verses are usually linked to the previous idea, but I essentially glossed over that last week.
You see, the fifth chapter covers various relationships, and we spent one week looking at his instruction to the widows, and last week his instruction on how we relate to our leaders.
The first two verses which I’m not going to cover in this series, looks at the relationships between slaves and masters.
False Teachers
In verse 3 however, Paul quickly turns back to the main idea of the letter - which is to insist on sound teaching.
As verse 4 and 5 continues, he describes in some rather blunt language, what is going on with these people peddling false doctrine.
In verse 4 he describes them as conceited and understanding nothing.
Although I much prefer the Revised English Version of 1989 which translated this by calling them “pompous ignoramuses”.
Attitudes of false teachers
Now I want to spend most my time thinking about wealth this morning, but it’s worthwhile just briefly looking here at what fuels false teaching because I believe it feeds into unhealthy attitudes towards wealth.
You see, the description that Paul gives in verses 4 and 5 can sound really harsh, and while it might be nice to characterise those who teach differently to us like this, the reality is, or at least mostly anyway, people aren’t specifically out there to cause controversies and quarrels or the other descriptors of verse 4.
However, that’s not to say I disagree with Paul - in fact, I believe Paul is right on the money.
You see, I think it usually starts with a good intention.
They perceive a problem with the good teaching of Jesus, and they think they know a better way.
But you see, it is at this point that they have become conceited and understanding nothing.
As they then blindly follow their own ideas, naturally they are going to cause controversies and quarrels, resulting in envy and strife.
That’s because it’s based on their conceited ideas.
As I move now more onto the topic of wealth, I want to hold that idea in the background, and I’ll come back to it later.
But you see, Paul links this idea of false teachers with a poor understanding of wealth at the end of verse 5.
The link comes with the idea that these conceited individuals, or as that other translation puts it, these pompous ignoramuses, realise that they can actually gain financially from what they do.
Unfortunately, in modern times we’ve seen this quite a lot.
The tele-evangelist who promises prosperity but only after you send in your money.
It’s so much the case that in the eyes of some, the church is just out there to get your money.
Balancing our view
Well, this link then gets Paul going on the topic of wealth - but what we find is a very balanced view of it all.
He effectively addresses his comments, first to the Christian poor, and then later in verse 17, to the Christian rich, but it might not be the message you might expect.
You see, depending on your view on such matters you might expect him to lift one of these groups up and condemn the other.
And unless you hold to the prosperity doctrine, you’re probably going to assume that t is the poor that will be lifted up as a model, and the rich condemned for there ways.
It’s this kind of view that we turn to people like Jeff Bezos and assume that to get that much wealth, you must be wicked in some way.
But Paul doesn’t do this.
Instead, we’ll see he takes certain views and balances it with a godly understanding.
Well, as I go through this passage, I’m going to take four different skewed view points, and show how Paul straightens them up.
The initial four views are often what we naturally move towards because they are part of our nature.
The first natural inclination is covetousness, which I’ll then look at materialism, asceticism and finally selfishness.
And as I cover each of them, I’ll show what the godly approach should be.
Covetousness
So firstly let’s look at covetousness.
By this I’m talking about the lust for more possessions.
In verse 9 Paul talks about those who want to get rich.
In verse 10 he talks about those who have a love of money.
Now you might not want to be Jeff Bezos, but I’m sure most if not all of us at some stage wishes for more.
But it is in verses 9 and 10 that Paul makes it very clear what the problem with this is.
A trap
In verse 9, he talks about it as a trap.
And it can be quite a hidden trap at that.
You see, we all know that we need money.
Our whole economy is based around money and so if we are going to live in this world (which is where God has placed us at this point in time), then money is essential.
And so, it follows that we need to go and earn some money.
But it doesn’t take long before our seeking after money to survive becomes seeking after money because we want more.
This is the trap.
You started with what was essential, but you’ve just plunged hook line and sinker, right into the realm of ruin and destruction.
We see this really clearly with those caught up in gambling addictions, but even if it is more subtle it happens to all of us.
Sometimes its those decisions we have to make in life, where we place too high a priority over the dollar figure and not enough on what is actually the right thing to do.
A root of all kinds of evil
But not only is this covetousness a trap, in verse 10 we see it becomes a root of all kinds of evil.
Now this verse is actually a well known one, but it often gets misquoted.
It’s often misquoted in such a way that you think, well, whats the harm in that, but as we’ll see soon, it makes a big difference.
You see, it is often quote, “money is the root of all evil”.
But let’s be clear.
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