1 Timothy 6:9a – Passion as Prediction
But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation… 1 Timothy 6:9a, New King James Version
Greg Carlson reads the signs of the times in Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says about You when he offers, “Robbed of a rapt audience, advertisers know that influencing how you spend what to do depends on having some control over how you spend the resources in your head.”
Of course, in that sense, the times of which we speak may be older than digital media or television advertising. Spurgeon uses 19th-century language to be sure, but he addresses the same predicament when he sternly admonishes in Morning and Evening, "If you suffer any want it is your own fault; if you are straitened you are not straitened in Him, but in your own bowels. "
The danger, of course, is older than either writer. The Holy Spirit through Paul points to the same issue in the opening of 1 Timothy 6:9. What we think about and dwell on, whether the metaphorical anatomist places such musings in our head or in our bowels, is a setup for what comes next. Those who DESIRE to be rich, phrases Paul, are those who fall into temptation. Before the temptation ever comes, while Hell is still devising its particulars, the decision of our hearts to rest in what more we could have rather than in Christ in the moment is already a sign of serious danger.
Our desires tend to be like the water that surrounds the fish. They are so pervasive and constant, we hardly notice. So it is that God gives us the habit of time in His Word to step away from our unexamined assumptions and compare them to His perfect standard. So it is that God surrounds us with contemporary friends who will prompt us to examine ourselves and might point out troublesome patterns. One of mine falls in strict accord with the warning of this verse, as his first question to me is often, "What are your desires?"
I can shut him aside as too intense, too introspective, too spiritual. Or I can see him, and verses like this, as as gifts of intrusive grace. Dare we to ask the Holy Spirit, and ask of His work through those who know us best, "What are my desires?" What do I really get excited about? Where do I start to slip from, it would be nice to have this, into God is less than perfectly good because I don't have this in the quantity I want and with the timing I want?"
This is why riches are so much better in God's hands than accumulating to be taken for granted in ours. He owns the cattle of a thousand hills. Christian, our Savior was rich and became poor. After Him, goods are to be laid aside and picked up after a more steady calling than the wants stirred up by the latest commercial. They are, to reprise Francis Bacon, a good servant and a bad master. We welcome the grace that would appraise us to see that our passion for God is supreme over our passion for the goods He may give or take away.
Greg Carlson reads the signs of the times in Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says about You when he offers, “Robbed of a rapt audience, advertisers know that influencing how you spend what to do depends on having some control over how you spend the resources in your head.”
Of course, in that sense, the times of which we speak may be older than digital media or television advertising. Spurgeon uses 19th-century language to be sure, but he addresses the same predicament when he sternly admonishes in Morning and Evening, "If you suffer any want it is your own fault; if you are straitened you are not straitened in Him, but in your own bowels. "
The danger, of course, is older than either writer. The Holy Spirit through Paul points to the same issue in the opening of 1 Timothy 6:9. What we think about and dwell on, whether the metaphorical anatomist places such musings in our head or in our bowels, is a setup for what comes next. Those who DESIRE to be rich, phrases Paul, are those who fall into temptation. Before the temptation ever comes, while Hell is still devising its particulars, the decision of our hearts to rest in what more we could have rather than in Christ in the moment is already a sign of serious danger.
Our desires tend to be like the water that surrounds the fish. They are so pervasive and constant, we hardly notice. So it is that God gives us the habit of time in His Word to step away from our unexamined assumptions and compare them to His perfect standard. So it is that God surrounds us with contemporary friends who will prompt us to examine ourselves and might point out troublesome patterns. One of mine falls in strict accord with the warning of this verse, as his first question to me is often, "What are your desires?"
I can shut him aside as too intense, too introspective, too spiritual. Or I can see him, and verses like this, as as gifts of intrusive grace. Dare we to ask the Holy Spirit, and ask of His work through those who know us best, "What are my desires?" What do I really get excited about? Where do I start to slip from, it would be nice to have this, into God is less than perfectly good because I don't have this in the quantity I want and with the timing I want?"
This is why riches are so much better in God's hands than accumulating to be taken for granted in ours. He owns the cattle of a thousand hills. Christian, our Savior was rich and became poor. After Him, goods are to be laid aside and picked up after a more steady calling than the wants stirred up by the latest commercial. They are, to reprise Francis Bacon, a good servant and a bad master. We welcome the grace that would appraise us to see that our passion for God is supreme over our passion for the goods He may give or take away.
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