The Heart Of Money by Apostle Emmanuel Iren: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Mark 10:17-22

A young, rich, and influential ruler came to Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. When Jesus listed the commandments, the man said he had kept them all from his youth, and Jesus, looking at him, loved him. Still He said, "One thing you lack."

This was a genuinely good man: honest wealth, no scandal, no bribery, no dishonesty in business. Yet Jesus, God in the flesh, still identified one specific gap: the way he handled money. It is possible to be prayerful, morally upright, and disciplined in every visible area, and still have a leash around the heart that leads back to money. Money is a spiritual stethoscope. The way a person actually spends reveals the true condition of their heart far more accurately than what they claim to believe; where the treasure is, the heart follows, whether or not the person notices.

Three Things Every Christian Should Know About Money

1. Money Desires Your Worship

   Matthew 6:24

   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. Jesus personifies money deliberately; in the realm of the spirit, money behaves like an idol actively seeking worship. Selling out to it does not require a shrine or a ritual, violating conscience to obtain it is itself the transaction. 3 John 1:2 ties prosperity directly to the health of the soul, meaning money obtained at the cost of a clear conscience has already cost more than it appears to. Even Jesus was offered the glories of the world in exchange for a single act of worship in the wilderness; the same offer, obtain everything quickly by bowing to something other than God, still circulates today, dressed differently.

   Real wealth tends to be quiet. The wealthiest people are frequently the least visible about it, while people who display wealth loudest are often the ones with the least actual depth behind the display. Any money that has already been spent to impress someone is no longer a sign of wealth, it is simply a sign of expenditure. Living to prove a point to someone else is a costly, unstable way to manage money, and it rarely survives contact with a real financial setback.

2. Your Greatest Wealth Is Relationships, Not Net Worth

   Luke 16:9

   Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth. No matter how disciplined a person is, financial setbacks happen, and the people invested in during a season of increase often become the reason a person survives a season of loss. Investing in people, family, friendship, and genuine relationship with God is not sentimental language, it is a durable financial strategy, and none of it can be bought back once neglected.

3. Life Does Not Consist in the Abundance of Possessions

   Luke 12:15

   Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. A society that worships money teaches people how they will be treated based on what they display, and that lesson gets absorbed both ways, in how a person expects to be treated once they have money, and in how they begin to treat others who visibly have less. The measure of a life was never meant to be net worth; a person who has Christ and nothing else genuinely has everything, and a person with everything but Christ has nothing.