You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 29, 2008.
. . . goin’ all hurtful on the Get Rich Quick Pastors.
Pastor Piper this past Sunday:
Of course, contrary to what the Prosperity Gospel teaches, wealth is not usually a blessing. It is usually a curse. Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25). Wealth is a mortal danger for those who have it. It does not make us generous and humble. It makes us buy more stuff, and it numbs our conscience because we have to blind ourselves to our inconsistencies with the Calvary road.
Paul said to the prosperity preachers of his day, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 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 Timothy 6:9-10).
No, it isn’t for lack of money that there are 1,568 peoples with no missionaries. It’s because we have so much. The comforts of the West have made us soft and cautious and fearful and indulgent and self-protecting, instead of tough and risk-taking and bold and self-controlled and self-sacrificing. When prosperity preachers fly their personal jets to the Two-thirds World and promise the poor that if they believe in Jesus, they will get rich, they are not doing Christian missions. They are destroying its foundations. That is not the gospel that saves and produces sacrifice.
Where do missionaries come from? Most of the peoples that are still unreached today are in places that are dangerous. Nobody who has the mindset of the Prosperity Gospel is going to be a missionary among those peoples. The only ones who go will have the mind of Christ—who came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many, and who said, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you (Mark 10:45; John 20:21). I don’t send you to get rich. I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matthew 10:16).
Sobering.
The Responsible Puppet 