My new book, The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a Sixteenth Century Catechism, is now available. Jerry Bridges wrote the Foreword, which you can read here.
Sorry to say, the free book giveaway is over for today. (I didn’t mean for that to rhyme.) Anyway, keep checking the blog because there may be another giveaway in the days ahead. Congratulations to the thirty pastors/leaders who got their free copy.
To give you a feel for the book, here’s the conclusion to the chapter on Lord’s Day 42 which deals with the Eighth Commandment.
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Finally, and most poignantly, the Eighth Commandment forbids greed–stealing with the eyes of our heart. The biblical view of wealth and possessions is not simple. On the one hand, the poor seemed to be on much safer ground around Jesus than the rich. But on the other had, we see all throughout the Bible examples of godly rich people (Job, Abraham, well-to-do women following Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea).
On the one hand, riches are a blessing from the hand of God (e.g., patriarchs, Mosaic covenant, Proverbs, Kings). But on the other hand, there is almost nothing that puts you in more spiritual danger than money (“How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” is how Jesus puts it in Mark 10:23).
On the one hand, Jesus and the prophets have very little positive to say about the rich and sympathize more with the poor. On the other hand, God put the first man and woman in a paradise of plenty, and the vision of the new heavens and the new earth is a vision of opulence, feasting, and prosperity.
And then you have the famous “middle class” passage: “Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God” (Proverbs 30:5-6). It is impossible to give a one sentence summary of the Bible’s perspective on money.
But it is possible to give a one sentence summary on what God thinks about loving money. The love of money is a very, very bad thing. “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matt. 6:24). “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs” (1 Tim. 6:10). “Keep yourself free from the love of money” (Hebrews 13:5). Read Ecclesiastes sometime and you’ll see that the love of money does not satisfy, compromises our integrity, produces worry, ruins relationships, provides no lasting security, and does nothing to accomplish anything good for us in eternity. When we are greedy, it is bad for others and worse for ourselves.
The opposite of the love of money is generosity. Instead of hoarding our money, we hand it over. Instead of building bigger barns, we nurture bigger hearts. Instead of looking to take, we seek to give. We who have been given everything—life, food, family, freedom, new birth, forgiveness, redemption, the Holy Spirit, the promise of an unimaginable inheritance—surely ought to give something to those who need our help. Gospel people know that to whom much is given, much is expected.
