James 5 Part 1: Riches That Perish

Money CAN buy a lot of things; no fool would say otherwise. But one day you are going to learn what it can't buy. Sadly, by then, it will be too late. And by the time that you realize what it can't buy, you will realize how much it stole.
How we spend money, what we do to get it, and where we spend it says a lot. Show me where you are liberal, and show me where you are stingy, and I will see what you are pursuing. Show me where and how you funnel your resources, where is it easiest for you to spend, where is it hardest for you to spend. Wealth itself is not evil, merely having resources is not evil in itself, Wealth is simply an instrument, a means to serve higher or lesser purposes, as you purpose in your heart. But The love of money is evil, and it is the root of all kinds of evil. When we love what it can do, rather than what God can do, we are in big trouble. When our confidence has shifted from what having God gets us, to what having enough money gets us, we are trusting in mammon. Loving what money can buy for you is a kind of tragedy that sets you up for a life of misery. A man who was a selfish Miser in life dies alone in the cold night air of never having been satisfied. The flesh knows no satiation, it is never satisfied, and as King Solomon, bids us to reconsider, it is vanity, and cannot satisfy, and chasing after it is but is the chasing of a breeze and trying to catch it in your hands. It is a fool's errand. But as we will see more today, more than just an unfulfilled life of misplaced values, the end of the selfishly indulgent, and unrighteous riches is one of shrieking, terror, wailing, and agony.