The reverse gear in a car is great … when you want to or need to back up. Imagine how ludicrous it would be to sit in your car, look out the front car window, and desire to go forward but have the car in reverse. With every passing moment, you would be getting further and even further from your destination. Eventually, you will crash.

Compare that picture to trying to achieve prosperity and financial freedom or financial success using dishonest practices. As crazy as it sounds, people try it everyday. Consider a few biblical reminders:

“Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight.” (Proverbs 11:1)

“You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a heavy and a light. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. You shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who behave unrighteously, are an abomination to the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 25:13-16)

“Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the short measure that is an abomination? Shall I count pure those with the wicked scales, and with the bag of deceitful weights? For her rich men are full of violence, her inhabitants have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. “Therefore I will also make you sick by striking you, by making you desolate because of your sins. You shall eat, but not be satisfied; hunger shall be in your midst. You may carry some away, but shall not save them; and what you do rescue I will give over to the sword. (Micah 6:10-14)

These words are clear reminders as to how our Lord views attempts toward dishonest gain. Probably the most graphic picture of our Lord’s view of dishonest gain is when He overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the temple; not once but twice. Let us close with those words.

“Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” (John 2:13-16)

“Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ” (Matthew 21:12-13)