Notice Jesus begins this teaching with a warning, be on your guard. You don’t really find the same kinds of warnings about other sins. Why not? You don’t wake up in the morning with a stranger in your bed and think, “wait a minute, where did you come from?” You know when you are committing other sins. Yet it is possible to be greedy and honestly never know it.

1. Greed is a moving target.

We tend to live around people who make the same amount we do, use the same schools, and have the same spending habits. We look up, not down.

Greed also takes so many forms. The one who spends all his money on parties looks at the guy who saves all his money and tells him that he loves money too much. And vice versa.

1. How can something so obviously good be bad?

Wealthy people quotes

“The care of $2 million is enough to kill anyone, there is no pleasure in it.” W.H. Vanderbilt

“I am the most miserable man on earth.” John Jacob Astor

“I have made my millions, but they have brought me no happiness.” John Rockefeller

Now let me ask you a question, do you believe any of that? Don’t you naturally assume that you could handle the pressures they cannot?

If you won’t believe the people who actually have the money and are telling you there is no joy in it, then who will you believe.

1. Money is Taboo – so we have no accountability.

The bible sticks its nose into the two places we want to keep the most secret: our bed and our wallet.

One early greek criticized the church saying: Their table is open to everyone, and their bed is open to no one.

In our culture, the culture of open sexuality, the taboo is all on the money.

Howard Stern – graphically open about his sex life, dropped out of the NY governor’s race before he would reveal his tax forms.