10/3

Ezekiel 7:19

¹⁹They cast their silver into the streets, and their gold is like an unclean thing. Their silver and gold are not able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD. They cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity.

Greed! It is a plague on the souls of man. Man will do incredible evil to gain wealth. Drug dealers in South America have semi trucks full of money and treasures galore, but when the government swoops in they lose their life along with their treasures. We think it will bring us some kind of security, but when everything falls apart, it is meaningless. Who wants gold when you are starving? What good is gold on the Day of Judgment?

The ones Ezekiel was speaking to had cheated laborers and killed people to gain a little more wealth. When the siege came and there was no bread to be found, all that ill-gotten gain couldn't fill their empty stomachs. The Babylonians would soon kill them or take them captive, and all that wealth for which they had sold their souls would then belong to their captors.

Ezekiel called their greed the stumbling block of their iniquity. It can be for us as well. We may not kill or rob others, but if it distracts us from the things of God that are eternal, then it has caused us to stumble as well. If we have placed our hope in wealth as our security, then we have already stumbled. God alone is our unchanging hope and the only real security in an ever changing world. It is not that money is evil, but the love of it that causes us to stumble into iniquity (1 Timothy 6:10). Keep money in its proper place in your life. Recognize how easily it can vanish. Use it as God intended.

Consider: History has shown that inflation can destroy a lifetime of savings in a very short time. We don't know what will happen tomorrow. God is our great provider and the only One who we can trust.