(You will find it helpful to LISTEN to the Audio, as you READ the text below.)

"Don't even take along a walking stick, nor a traveler's bag, nor food, nor money. Not even an extra coat." Luke 9:3

Jesus charges His apostles, when He sends them forth--to study simplicity of habits, and contentment with such things as they have.

These instructions contain a lesson for all time. The spirit of these verses is meant to be remembered by all ministers of the Gospel. The leading idea which the words convey is, a warning against worldliness and luxurious habits.

Well would it be for the world and the Church, if the warning had been more carefully heeded! From no quarter has Christianity received such damage, as it has from the hands of its own teachers! On no point have its teachers erred so much, and so often, as in the matter of worldliness and luxury of life.

They have often destroyed, by their daily lives, the whole work of their lips. They have given occasion to the enemies of the gospel to say that they love ease, and money, and worldly things--far more than souls.

May we daily pray that the church may be delivered from such ministers! They are a living stumbling block in the way to Heaven. They are helpers to the cause of the devil, and not of God.

The preacher whose affections are set on . . .
money,
and prestige,
  and dress,
  and feasting,
  and pleasure seeking,
has clearly mistaken his vocation!

"For, as I have often told you before and now say again even
with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their destiny is destruction,
   their god is their stomach,
     and their glory is in their shame.
Their mind is on earthly things!" Philippians 3:18–19