The Devil’s 3 Money Traps: Avoid These Demonic Strategies!
No matter how we look at things—from either a natural or spiritual perspective—money has a purpose. We need it to survive in this world, but mere survival and financial success is not its true purpose.
Money is neither good nor evil. Ethically, money is completely neutral. It only has morality based on the actions taken by the hands who wield it. For example, let’s say I give $100 to five different people. That money will adopt the integrity by which those people use it.
Maybe one person uses the $100 to buy drugs. Another buys a new pair of headphones. Perhaps the third gives all of it to their church, while the fourth takes their friends out to a bar. The fifth could just bury it in their backyard!
The point is, the $100 has no intrinsic morality: it is neither good nor evil. What it is used for, however, can have an infinite variety of results.
Money makes a lousy master, but it makes a great servant. Money is meant to be our servant, our slave. It is simply a tool. It can be used for so much good, especially when it comes to spreading the message of the Gospel to the world. When we use money rightly, we can do great things with it!
However, if we don’t understand the purpose of why God wants us to be blessed in our finances, we will become self-centered, only looking to fulfill our own fleshly desires. The devil takes great advantage of that weakness. The spirit of mammon speaks to us to view money as evil, to desire wealth out of greed, or use money to control our life decisions. At best, it will cause us to use our finances for neutral purposes, and at worst, for evil.
My dad was a specialist in repairing cars, sometimes very expensive cars. He had many professional tools for the job. He’d take out his tools and oil them to prepare them for work. He then used the differently shaped tools to carefully tap out panels by hand so they could be repainted to look brand-new.
One day, I took Dad’s hammers out and started beating on rocks. My dad was not pleased with me! It wasn’t because he loved his hammers, but they were tools he needed to do his job. He loved what those tools could be used for—what they could achieve.
Money is the same way. It is a tool that can be used to accomplish powerful goals for the Kingdom of God! It costs money to put on conferences, to have people answer prayer lines, to travel for ministry, to broadcast on television—simply put, it costs money to spread the Gospel.
It costs money to open homes for children or shelters for abused women. Money is necessary to provide food, clothing, and shelter for those who need it. Financial resources are needed for nearly any project that is good and intended to help people!
Think of the story of the Good Samaritan in more modern terms. He picked up the beaten Jewish man in his nice car, drove him to a Hilton, and used his American Express card to pay for his housing and medical treatment! When you have the money, you have the tools you need to accomplish the good God directs you to do.
But money can also easily be misused. That is why Jesus made such a big deal about deciding who you will serve: God or money (Matthew 6:24). Serving both is impossible.
Money Talks
…money answers everything (Ecclesiastes 10:19).
The word answers here in Ecclesiastes 10:19 is the Hebrew word anah, which literally means to answer or respond. Money talks! It speaks to us. Money has an opinion on everything! Every time we make a decision, money is talking to us. Usually, the opinion of money—of mammon—is not the voice we should be following.
The spirit of mammon is the enemy’s way of getting us to trust in something other than God.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths (Proverbs 3:5-6).
These two verses tell us that we are to trust in the Lord in everything in our lives. In every choice, our trust needs to be in Him, not in anything else, including our finances. The enemy, however, will use any tactic he can to draw our trust and attention away from the Lord.
One of the enemy’s main deceptions is to use the spirit of mammon—the voice of money—as a physical alternative to trusting in God. He knows that our success in this life is dependent upon our faith in the Lord and that if he can get us to trust in the things of the world instead, he can win. We can trust in money, pursue money, and be lured by money for the very things God has already freely provided to us!
Three Tricks
However, the devil doesn’t have any new tricks. He uses the same strategies for deception and distraction that he has always used from the beginning. First John describes what the voice of mammon sounds like:
For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father, but is of the world (1 John 2:16).
Each temptation we face in life can fit into one of these three categories: 1) the lust of the flesh; 2) the lust of the eyes; and 3) the pride of life. These tricks of the enemy are what he uses to distract us, to get our eyes off of Jesus and onto the world. They deceive us into living according to the natural principles of the world rather than the supernatural principles of the Word.
The devil doesn’t have any new tricks—ways to trap us—and once we can spot them, we can avoid his traps. There are three times in the Word of God these strategies of the enemy are discussed in a way where we can see a clear connection between them.
The first was the original temptation of Eve in the garden of Eden. The second was the temptation of Jesus right before He began His earthly ministry. And the third is found in Mark 4, when Jesus was teaching the Parable of the Sower. The Bible records the very first temptation of mankind in Genesis chapter 3. First, the enemy got Eve to question God’s Word. Then came the temptation:
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate… (Genesis 3:6).
When we look closely at what these words in the origi- nal Hebrew mean, the correlation with 1 John 2:16 becomes very clear.
The word pleasant is taavah, which means a desire. When it says “wise,” it is the Hebrew word sakal, which means to be prudent. However, when you look closely at its usage, it means to “consider, instruct, prosper, deal prudently, have good success, [and] teach.”
So, first Eve saw that the tree was good for food: this is the lust of the flesh. Second, she saw that it was desirable: this is the lust of the eyes. Third, she saw that it could make them wise, which would lead to success: that is the pride of life.
Isn’t it interesting how these three tricks of the enemy, these temptations and traps, align so perfectly with 1 John 2:16?
Jesus was tempted in this very same way:
And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3).
Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours” (Luke 4:5-7).
Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone’” (Luke 4:9-11).
In Luke 4:2, it says Jesus was hungry. That lust of the flesh was probably very hard to deny, but He did! The devil then promised Jesus ultimate power and success. This temptation was the lust of the eyes, as the devil showed Jesus every- thing he would give Him if He would just deny His Father in heaven.
Then came the third temptation regarding the pride of life. How prideful would it be for a person to throw himself from a building and expect angels to catch him?
Later, Jesus taught a parable to expose the dangers of putting our trust in the voice of mammon rather than in the Word of God.
In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable of how the Word of God can be stripped of its power in our lives. This is a large passage that deals with many things, but one specific portion corresponds with these three main categories of temptation, which the enemy still uses to deceive us today.
Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful (Mark 4:18-19).
Here we see Jesus listing the same temptations that the enemy has placed in front of us since the beginning: the lust of the flesh (desires for other things); the lust of the eyes (deceit- fulness of riches); and the pride of life (the cares of this world).
These are the things that can choke the Word in our lives. We hear the Word, believe in the goodness of God, that all of His promises are “yes” and “amen.” Yet we still experience poverty, anxiety, and sickness!
When we follow the voice of mammon—and fall into these traps—they enter in and choke the Word, and it becomes unfruitful.
If you have heard the Word, believed it, and planted it in your life, but it hasn’t born fruit, it is because the voice of mammon—the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the lust for other things—has been speaking to you, distracting you, and therefore choked the Word in your heart.
If you don’t see the Word of God working in your life, go back and see where you’ve been distracted by these other things, by mammon. It’s not about money at all. It’s about when you’ve listened to the voice of mammon over the voice— the Word—of God.
