Devotions

The Appeal of Worldly Riches

I must be careful not to let the world enrich me. Abraham refused the spoils of Sodom, telling Bera, king of Sodom, “Lest you should say, ‘I have made Abraham rich’” (Genesis 14:23). Abraham saw clearly that once he began to accept Sodom’s favors, it would not be long before he accepted its atmosphere and perhaps its sins.

The world longs to enrich me. Jesus felts its appeal when the people surged around Him near the Sea of Galilee and begged Him to accept the kingship (John 6:15). That was highly flattering. But the people did not want Jesus for His own sake; they wanted Him for their sake. They wanted His miracles, His bread, His notoriety. They did not want His godliness. So Hi refused them.

The subtle appeal of the world is not to the lurid, the grotesque, or the flamboyant. Many people, who would not give in to the gross temptations of the flesh, have surrendered to the intangible thing called worldliness – a selling of their heavenly hope for the enjoyment of the material, tangible, hard substance that is available now. For God to make Abraham rich was one thing; for Sodom to make him rich was entirely different.

The Bible commands me not to have anything to do with the riches offered me by Sodom. God wants me to move back into Canaan’s highlands with Abraham and there quietly walk before Him who is my true treasure.

The riches of Sodom are uncertain. Suppose Abraham had accepted then, what then? Within twenty years Sodom became a lake of fire, and his investment would have gone up in smoke. I must not commit my destiny to smoke! So I will trust in God, who “giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17, KJV).

W. Glyn Evans