Join Pastor Skip Heitzig in this enlightening episode as he demystifies one of the most misquoted Bible verses: ‘Money is the root of all evil.’ Delve into a profound discussion that explores the true biblical view of money, distinguishing popular misconceptions from scripture-based insights. Through historical anecdotes and scriptural context, Pastor Skip sheds light on the pervasive myths about wealth and its place in a God-centered life.
00:00:47 Misunderstood Bible Phrases: Money Is the Root of All Evil
This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. Thanks for joining us today. Here at Connect with Skip, our mission is to help you know God’s Word and apply it to your life through clear, practical Bible teaching and real encouragement every day. And if you’d like to keep growing in your walk with Jesus, sign up for Pastor Skip’s free weekly devotional. You’ll receive biblical insight, teaching highlights, and an exclusive resource offers straight to your inbox. Plus, when you sign up today, we’ll send you a free digital download of a chapter of Skip’s book, Biography of God. It only takes a minute to sign up. Go to connectwithskip.com and join the list today. That’s connectwithskip.com. Now let’s dive into today’s teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig.
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We are continuing in the series, The Bible Doesn’t Say That. We’re unpacking certain phrases, sayings, ideas that people have long thought the Bible says when it actually says something different. And this is one of them, money is the root of all evil, 1 Timothy chapter 6. So there was a guy who was very successful. made a lot of money, doing really well, not too happy, went to a pastor and he said, you know, pastor, when I had $50,000, I was a happy man. Now I have about $500,000 and I’m miserable. Pastor said, that’s an easy fix. Just give away $450,000. Well, the man looked at him and said, well, you know, it’s not that simple. He said, having money is like holding on to an electrical wire. The more the juice, the tighter the hold. Now, I don’t know how much juice is in your wire, how much money is in your bank account. It’s none of my business. But I want to talk about this saying, money is the root of all evil. When it comes to the subject of money, it’s impossible to avoid it for one very simple reason. You are alive. If you breathe air, if you live on this planet anywhere, you have to deal somehow with money. And it’s been the case for about 4,000 years since coins were first invented. developed and used in the kingdom of Lydia, which is modern day Turkey. That’s where they believe it all started when people started giving little pieces of round spherical discs of silver coins for work or for goods and services. Everyone has some relationship to money, even if it’s a passing relationship. You know, there was a guy who said, you know, they tell me money talks, but if money talks, the only thing it’s ever said to me is bye. But you have some form of a relationship with money. And we turn to the Bible, as always, because the Bible has a lot to say about money. A lot to say about money. Has a lot to say about earning money, spending money, saving, giving, investing, and even wasting money. To give you a little perspective, in Scripture there are about 500 verses on prayer. There’s another 500 verses or thereabouts, a little bit less, on the subject of faith. There are 1,500 verses on the second coming of Christ, but the Bible has over 2,300 verses that discuss our relationship to money or wealth or possessions. When you look to the New Testament alone, Jesus… Just his teaching, just look at the red words. 15% of all of Jesus’ preaching in the Gospels was on this subject. 11 of the 39 parables that we have deal with the subject of money. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, those three Gospels, the synoptics, it is estimated that one out of every six verses is about this subject. And the only subject Jesus taught money On more about then, money was on the kingdom of God. That was his number one subject. We also know from Scripture that money can become a problem. And there are examples of people that had a relationship with money and it just went south. One such person was a guy by the name of Achan. Any of you guys remember Achan from Joshua 6 and 7? Achan was the guy who, after they took over Jericho, lusted after a new suit of clothes, a Babylonian garment. He hid the garment and gold and silver for himself. And they found out about it because they lost the next battle because of this guy’s problem with money. And so they took him out and they stoned him to death. Yes, the Bible says that. And then he was really aching. Then there is Solomon in the Bible that had enormous amounts of wealth. But after having all of that wealth, he looked at it and he used a word to sum up his life. Remember what that word was? Vanity, emptiness, soap bubbles, you might say. There’s just nothing there, no substance. Vanity of vanities, it did not satisfy him. In the New Testament, there’s a couple by the name of Ananias and Sapphira. They pretended… to be very generous givers, but they were lying both to the Holy Spirit and to the church. Got them in big trouble. They lost their lives. Then there’s a guy in the New Testament by the name of Demas, D-E-M-A-S. And Demas was a co-worker with Paul, traveled with Paul, but at the end of Paul’s life, Paul wrote one of the saddest little sentences about this one time good friend and co-worker. He said, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. It would seem that Demas got caught up in the need for financial gain to the extreme that he forsook Paul. So we have some relationship to money. And sometimes that is only seen when we lose what we once had. Back in 1975, six armed gunmen walked into a bank and held it up. This is in London, England. And they took a little over $7 million worth of money and property, jewelry. One lady had her collection of jewels in a little box, in a safety deposit box in the bank. They took that. It was appraised at around $500,000. That’s just her jewelry. That’s just what she would wear on her neck. Well, when she discovered they had stolen it, She told the press, everything I had was in there. My whole life was in that box. That’s a pretty sad thing to say, isn’t it? Your whole life was in a box? So, is money the root of all evil? Well, we’re going to ask and answer a few questions to get around that. First of all, where does it come from? Where does this notion that money is the root of all evil come from? And you’ll be surprised to know, well, it comes from the Bible, sort of. It’s in Scripture, kind of, but the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil is the actual rendering. I draw your attention to 1 Timothy 6. It’s down there in verse 10. You can read it with me. In my version, the New King James, it says, For the love of money. Stop right there. The love of, those two words change the meaning entirely. And we’re going to get back to this text in a little bit. But this is where it comes from. Money is the root of all evil, you can see is a misquote of this verse that says the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. This verse is considered to be one of the most misquoted verses in all of the scripture, and there are several. But in every list that I have found of misquoted Bible verses, number two in the list of misquoted Bible verses is this one. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. I’m bringing this up and I’m underlining it for this reason. Anybody can take a text out of context. And when you do that, you’re on dangerous ground. You may have heard me say this before. Any text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text. In other words, you can make the Bible say anything you want it to say. You can find a proof text for just about anything you want to display. For example, I can take a verse out of context or a phrase out of context and show you there is no God. Did you know the Bible says there is no God? It says that. But now let me give it to you in context. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Changes the meaning entirely. And you can do that with so many different verses of Scripture. So any text without a context can become a pretext for a proof text. You don’t want to proof text things. You want to see things in their context, which we’re about to do in a few moments. By the way, Satan is a master at misquoting Scripture. Look at the belief system of just about any cult, and you will discover that there is Scripture that is misquoted to form the belief system for that cultic group. We know that Satan misquoted God in the Garden of Eden when he was speaking to Eve. We know that Satan misquoted the Scripture, Psalm 91, when he had a conversation with Jesus Christ on the Mount of Temptation. And Satan said, you know, you should just jump off because the Bible says he will give his angels charge over you to bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone. The phrase that he left out of Psalm 91 is he will keep you in all your ways. Well, this was not one of the ways or the will of God for him to do that. So he took a verse from He took a text and he took it out of context. Vance Hafner used to say, Satan does more harm as an angel of light than he does as a roaring lion.
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This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. When you give to this ministry, you help reach thousands of people every day with God’s life-changing truth, encouraging them to know Him, trust Him, and walk in His freedom. And this month, we want to thank you with a special resource package. You’ll receive Skip’s book, Biography of God, which helps you explore God’s nature, His power, the mystery of the Trinity, and the hope that comes from removing the false limitations we sometimes place on Him. Plus, you’ll get Skip’s six-message CD series, Expound Galatians, where Skip unpacks the book of Galatians and the freedom believers have through grace, not works. Your gift today helps bring the life-changing message of Jesus to people around the world through Connect with Skip. Request your resources when you give $50 or more at connectwithskiff.com slash offer or by calling 800-922-1888. Now, here’s more from Pastor Skip.
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Now, this shouldn’t surprise you because Satan has always been a shrewd theologian. He was trained in the best seminary in the universe, heaven itself. So when anybody comes up and gives you a text, demand context. Go back and look at it in context to get the idea of really what it means. So where does it come from? It comes from the Bible, but it’s a misquote of the Bible. Because if this saying were true, if this statement, money is the root of all evil, if that were true, that would mean then that money is the root problem of everything. single other problem in society. That it is the root of every sin in our hearts. That it is the root of every unruly act in every neighborhood, in every city, of every state, of every country in the world. That’s just not so. But there are some people who believe that the greatest evil in any society is sin. And they will preach that wealth, all wealth, is wrong. And you go, where does that come from? Well, sadly, you could look all the way back to the 4th century. I’m going to give you a little historical context now. 4th century from a Christian cleric. named Jerome. Anybody ever heard of Saint Jerome or Jerome? Jerome was born in Croatia. He was schooled in Rome. He then went to Syria. Then he went to Bethlehem and lived there, and he died there. He hated wealth, and he was vehemently against wealthy merchants and practically denied that God would ever accept them. He stated, and now I’m quoting Jerome, For all riches proceed from injustice, and unless one has lost, the other cannot find. So this proverb seems to me most true. Either a rich man is unjust, or he has inherited from an unjust man. Either way you look at it, there’s sin and evil involved in the accumulation of any kind of wealth. That’s St. Jerome. There was another guy in the fourth century. He was a monk by the name of Evagrius Ponticus. Anybody ever hear of that guy? I didn’t think so. He came up with this idea of eight evil thoughts. You haven’t heard of his name, and you probably haven’t heard of the eight evil thoughts, but you have heard of what those eight evil thoughts eventually became known as, the seven deadly sins. Yeah, one was chucked and they kept seven. And the seven deadly sins were listed as pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. And they said money is involved in most all of them. So they held pretty strongly, some of them, to the idea that money is the root of all evil. And of course, you move a little bit closer to our time, and there have been several movements, anti-capitalism movements, pro-socialism movements. The Occupy movement a few years back, some of you remember Occupy Wall Street, were the 99%. It’s all against that 1% that has seemingly most all of the wealth. Of course, that comes from, in more modern times, a very prominent figure by the name of Karl Marx, who wrote a book called Das Kapital. which was the critique of political economy. He said capitalism is wholesale evil. There are inherent inequalities in it. It foisters the exploitation of workers and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Bad, bad, bad. Capitalism is bad. Socialism is good. Didn’t do any country who believed in that any good at all. But that’s where it comes from. That’s the idea of money is the root of all evil. It has several strands throughout history. The second question I want to ask and answer is what does it mean? What does the text itself mean? So let’s go back to the text that we have chosen, 1 Timothy 6, and let’s read the text in its context. Verse 6. Now godliness… with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.” For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. What do we learn from that paragraph about money in general? Well, we learn a few things. First of all, we learn that money will not make you happy. These verses describe the misery that accompanies the person who focuses only on accumulating wealth as an end in itself. You may be familiar with the name John Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller, considered to be the wealthiest American in history. Many, many years ago he lived. He is the founder of Standard Oil, Standard Oil Company. He said, I have made millions and they have brought me no happiness. Now that’s such a categorical statement for a rich guy to make. I have so much money, it’s brought me no happiness. And I’ve actually read many such sayings of rich people. There’s no joy in it. There’s no happiness in it. He didn’t give me what I expected. It’s like what Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes. There’s an old Roman proverb that says, money is like seawater. The more you drink, the thirstier you get. So go back to verse six and look at the key word contentment. Godliness with contentment. Contentment simply means it’s enough. It’s enough. It’s enough for me. It speaks of inner sufficiency that brings peace. I have enough. I am at peace. And notice what it is tied to. Godliness. Godliness with contentment is great gain. So we learn, first of all, that money won’t make you happy. The second thing we learn from this little paragraph is that money is only temporary. Verse 7. For we brought nothing into this world… and it is certain we can carry nothing out. You’ve heard me say many times, you’ve never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer. Nobody takes what they have with them. Now, the Egyptians thought they could do that when they buried all the gold and pots and silver and statues in the tombs with the pharaohs, but the pharaohs are gone and decayed, and those items still remain. Now, when Paul writes this, we brought nothing into the world, it’s certain we can carry nothing out, it seems that he is quoting at least two verses from the Old Testament. One is from the book of Job, when Job lost everything, and he said, “‘Naked I have come into this world, and naked I shall leave. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'” The second one is Ecclesiastes 5. As he came from his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came. He shall take nothing from his labor, which he may carry away in his hand. So death is a lot like birth. You are born naked and penniless. You die naked and penniless. There was a rich man who died. He had a funeral for him, a very, very expensive, elaborate, posh funeral. People were wowed just by what they saw in terms of the flowers and the music and the band that they had. And so somebody leaned over to the undertaker during the funeral and said, well, how much did the old guy leave? The undertaker said he left all of it. You can’t take anything with you. You come naked, you leave naked. We brought nothing into this world. It’s certain we can carry nothing out. My favorite story is about the man who made his wife promise that when he died, she would take all of his money and bury it with him. So she made the promise. He’s on his deathbed. What are you going to do? I want you to take all my money, put it in the casket with me because I’m going to take it with me. They say you can’t do it, but I’m going to give it a try. So… At his funeral, the casket was about to close. The wife walked up to the casket as the guy was closing it. She said, just a minute, and she placed a little metal box inside the casket. She went and sat down again, and her friend leaned in and said, you weren’t dumb enough to put all his money in that casket. She said, well, I did make a promise, so of course I did. I put all of his money in that casket. She said, oh, that’s the stupidest thing ever. She says, don’t worry, just listen. I went to the bank, I got all of his money out, put it in my account, and I wrote him a check. That’s what’s in the box. If he can cash it, he can spend it. I’ve always liked that story. Money won’t make you happy. Money is only temporary. Third, money ruins simplicity. Money ruins simplicity. Look at the eighth verse. And having, notice this, food and clothing, with these we shall be content. Shall we? Really? With food and clothing, with these we shall be content. I remember, and I was just thinking about it yesterday, when I first gave my life to Christ, it was in San Jose, California. You know the story. I was watching Billy Graham on television. Well, I knew I wanted to go back down to Southern California to the church I had heard about and been there a few times called Calvary Chapel. All I had to my name was a couple pieces of clothing and my motorcycle, a little Honda 450 motorcycle. which I got on and I rode from San Jose all the way down in one day to Southern California, several hundred miles. I had just given my life to Christ. I was the happiest person I knew on the earth. And I am singing songs of praise. I didn’t even know songs of praise. I was making them up, but I was so happy. But then have you noticed the more things you have, the more complicated life becomes? Remember Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes and he talked about having to manage his money and his possessions and he worried about them. And he even worried about who he would pass them on to. So there are two ways to be rich. One is to have a lot of possessions. The other is to have few needs. Money ruins simplicity.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks for joining us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we go, remember, your generosity helps share God’s Word around the world, bringing truth and hope to people who need Jesus. And this month, we’d love to thank you for your support by sending you a special resource bundle, Skip’s book, Biography of God, along with his six-message CD series, Expound Galatians. Together, these resources help you explore who God really is and how to live in the spiritual freedom He offers. Give today at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. See you next time on Connect with Skip.
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Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing.
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