Weekend Preview: “5 Things I Wish Jesus Never Said”- Statement 2
Let’s face it, when we read the Bible there are some passages we run across that cause us to stop and think to ourselves, “Really?” Many of those passages are in the “Red Letters” if you have one of those old school Bibles where Jesus’ words are all written in red ink. Many things that Jesus said were hard for people to hear in His day and time, and it is true for us today as well. The truth is that we are usually okay with Jesus condemning the hypocrites and correcting the sinners, but it all changes when He begins to speak to things we view as “ours.”
This series is about looking at some of the hard sayings of Jesus that we may sometimes gloss over and honestly ignore. Nowhere is this more real for us than when Jesus addresses money. Money is one of those things that we just really don’t want to think about sometimes through the lens of our faith. Jesus had more to say about money than almost anything else during His ministry on Earth. Here are just a few things to take note of in terms of money as you read through the New Testament:
Jesus talked about money more than He did Heaven and Hell combined.
Jesus talked about money more than anything else except the Kingdom of God.
11 of 39 parables talk about money.
1 of every 7 verses in the Gospel of Luke talk about money.
This reveals to me that maybe Jesus knew something about money that we could all learn from.
Last week we stated that if you want to know what Jesus meant by what He said, look at how he lived. It never appears that Jesus worried about money when you read the New Testament. From declaring that he had no home or place to lay His head in Matthew 8:20, to finding money to pay the Temple tax in the mouth of a fish with Peter in Matthew 17:24-27. Jesus never asked for money from those around Him and He never seemed to have a need that wasn’t met, but He does give us insight on how we should view money as it relates to following Him and living life. This week we will look at a passage in Matthew where Jesus basically says you can live for God or you can live for your stuff, but you can’t do both. I don’t know about you, but for me this is a tough one to follow. Why did Jesus have to say that? Let’s talk about it this week at Journey.