| Answer:
The life of Job is proof that man usually has no idea what God is doing
behind the scenes in the life of each believer. All humans ask the
question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
It is the age-old question, and one that is sometimes difficult to
answer in human terms, but believers have an advantage because we know
that God is always in control, and, no matter what happens, there are no
coincidences—nothing happens by chance. Job was such a man; he knew
that God was on the throne and in total control, though he had no way of
knowing why so many terrible tragedies were occurring in his life. Job never lost his faith in God, even under the most heartbreaking circumstances that tested him to his core. It’s hard to imagine losing everything we own in one day—property, possessions, and even children. Most men would sink into depression and even become suicidal after such a nightmare; however, Job never wavered in his understanding that God was still in control. Job’s three friends, on the other hand, instead of comforting him, gave him bad advice and even accused him of committing sins so grievous that God was punishing him by making his life miserable. Job knew God well enough to know that He did not work that way; in fact, he had such an intimate, personal relationship with Him that he was able to make the statement, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face” (Job 13:15). There is another lesson in the book of Job, and that concerns the bond between husband and wife. Satan declared war on Job, trying to prove that he was only faithful to God because God had blessed him. God allowed Satan to test Job’s faith, but He stopped him at the point of taking Job’s life (Job 1:12). God declares that a husband and wife are “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24); therefore, because of this God-ordained bond, Satan was forbidden to take the life of Job’s wife, as well as that of Job. She obviously did not have faith like that of Job, because her response to the calamity was to tell Job to “curse God and die!" (Job 2:9). Her faith did not spare her, but her marriage bond with Job did. She was considered the same flesh as her husband, so Satan could not take her life, either. Job’s plight, from the death of his children and loss of his property to the physical torment he endured, plus the unending harangue of his so-called friends, still never caused his faith to waver. He knew who his Messiah was, he knew that He was a living Savior, and he knew that someday He would physically stand on Planet Earth (Job 19:25). The spiritual depth of Job shows throughout his writings. He understood that man’s days are ordained (numbered), and they cannot be changed (Job 14:5). Job described the experience of salvation as one in which men, destined to eternity in “the pit,” are ransomed and redeemed by a gracious God who shines His light on them (Job 33:23-30). There are also many scientific and historical facts in the book of Job. He wrote that the earth is round long before it was proven to be so, referring to the “circuit of heaven” (Job 22:14). He spoke of dinosaurs, living not before man was created as secularists teach today, but living side-by-side with man, as stated in Job 40:15: "Now behold behemoth, which I made along with you; he eats grass like an ox” (KJV). The book of Job gives us a glimpse behind the veil that separates earthly life from the heavenly. In the beginning of the book, we see that Satan and his fallen angels are still allowed free access to heaven, going in and out to the prescribed meetings that take place there. What is obvious from these accounts is that Satan is busy working his evil on Planet Earth, as recorded in Job 1:6-7. Also, this account shows how Satan is “the accuser of the brethren,” which corresponds to Revelation 12:10, and it shows his arrogance and pride, as written in Isaiah 14:13-14. It is amazing to see how Satan challenges God; he has no scruples about confronting the Most High God because he has no fear of Him. The account in Job clearly shows Satan as he truly is—haughty, pride-filled, and evil to the core. Perhaps the greatest lesson we learn from the book of Job is that God does not have to answer to anyone for what He does or does not do. What we learn from Job’s experience is that we may never know the specific reason for suffering, but we must trust in our sovereign, holy, righteous God whose ways are perfect (Psalm 18:30). If God’s ways are “perfect,” then we can trust that whatever He does—and whatever He allows—is also perfect. This may not seem possible to us, but our minds are not God’s mind. It is true that we can’t expect to understand His mind perfectly, as He reminds us “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ says the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9). Nevertheless, our responsibility to God is to obey Him, to trust Him, and to submit to His will, whether we understand it or not. When we do, we will see more clearly the magnificence of our God and we will say, with Job, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). Recommended Resources: Job: A Man of Heroic Endurance by Charles Swindoll and Logos Bible Software. |
Showing posts with label #THANKSGIVING. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #THANKSGIVING. Show all posts
Saturday, December 7, 2013
QUESTION: "WHAT SHOULD WE LEARN FROM THE LIFE OF JOB?"
Sunday, July 28, 2013
GLORY TO GOD ALONE
“I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.”
- Isaiah 42:8
- Isaiah 42:8
Today we will look at the final sola of the Reformation, the one that sums up the point of all the others. The truth that the Reformers were most concerned to promote and what can be seen as the central theme of Scripture is soli Deo gloria — to God alone be the glory.
The first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us that “man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.” God’s glory is the highest good and therefore is the purpose for which we were created. We were made to glorify Him, to reflect His glory and proclaim it to all creation (Isa. 43:6–7). In saving His people and defeating their enemies, His glory is displayed (Ex. 14). Salvation must be sola fide, sola gratia, and solus Christus — through faith alone, by grace alone, and on account of Christ alone — because to attribute redemption to our efforts in any way is to rob God of His full glory. If God and God alone is not the one who saves, then He shares His glory with creatures. But as the prophet Isaiah tells us, God will share His glory with no one (42:8). Sola Scriptura — Scripture alone is the final, infallible authority — must be the church’s confession. If any other source is placed on par with or above the Bible, then the Word of God is no better than the fallible words of creatures, and therefore the one who superintended the writing of the Bible is mocked.
We often think of the Reformation as involving only a doctrinal dispute, but for John Calvin and others, the purity of worship was a major concern as well. Calvin and others took seriously the teaching in Romans 1:18–32 that the basic sin of humanity is its refusal to honor God as God and thank Him for all that He has given us. Instead of bowing the knee to the Almighty, we suppress knowledge of Him and make all sorts of lesser gods.
Some idolatry is crass, such as the worship of trees or nature. Other forms of idolatry are more refined, such as the exaltation of human reason above divine revelation. But any time we substitute something else for the God of the Bible, we attempt to have Him share His glory with another. Any time we deny one of His attributes, we conceive of Him as less than the sovereign Lord of all.
Coram Deo
It is not all that uncommon to hear someone say, “I refuse to worship a God that would send people to hell.” But those who would define God’s love in a way that denies His holy wrath do not worship the Creator. Others say, “To me God is….” But it does not matter how we define God, it only matters how He defines Himself. Let us be careful not to adopt the views of God common in our culture but rather allow Scripture to reveal to us the God who is.Wednesday, March 13, 2013
RECOGNIZING GOD'S FATHERHOOD
"Our Father who art in heaven" (Matt. 6:9).
From Drawing Near by John MacArthur Copyright © 1993. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.com.
The term Father is one of the most commonly used terms in our prayers, and rightly so because that's how Jesus taught us to pray. But as common as that term is to us, it was very uncommon to the people of Christ's day.
Then, most of the people who worshiped false gods thought of them as distant, capricious, and immoral beings that were to be feared. Even the Jewish people, who should have understood the fatherhood of God, had removed themselves from His Fatherly care through their sin and apostasy. Consequently He seemed remote to them. Even some who did claim God as their Father were rebuked by Christ, who called them children of the devil because they rejected the Son (John 8:44).
Against that backdrop, Christ's teaching was revolutionary. He proclaimed God as a caring and gracious Father who desires intimate fellowship with His children. That fellowship can come only through faith in the Son.
Beyond that, Jesus revealed the Father's character in everything He said and did. When Philip asked Jesus to show him the Father, Jesus replied, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).
Jesus also proclaimed God as a Father who has all the treasures of heaven at His disposal and who makes them available to His children so they might glorify Him: "Your Father knows what you need, before you ask Him. . . . Do not be anxious then . . . but seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all [you need] will be added to you" (Matt. 6:8, 31, 33).
Your faith in Christ is what makes God your Heavenly Father. He loves you, listens to your prayers, and supplies your needs according to His abundant resources. Look to Him today and live as a thankful, obedient child.
Suggestions for Prayer:
- Thank God that He is your gracious and loving Father.
- Praise Him for the abundant blessings He gives to you.
For Further Study:
Read Proverbs 3:5-6 and Matthew 7:7-11.
- What are you exhorted to do?
- What specifically will God do for you?
- How should those passages affect your relationship with God?
From Drawing Near by John MacArthur Copyright © 1993. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.com.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
ALL DRESSED UP AND NO ONE TO THANK
By John MacArthur
The atheists’ dilemma: whom do you thank when you think there’s no one to be grateful to?
Thankfulness is one of the distinguishing traits of the human spirit. We sense the need to say thanks, and we realize we ought to be more grateful than we are. We furthermore perceive that we are indebted to (and accountable to) a higher power than ourselves—the God who made us. According to Scripture, everyone has this knowledge, including those who refuse to honor God or thank Him (Romans 1:19–21).
Ingratitude is dishonorable by anyone’s reckoning, but to be willfully ungrateful toward the Creator in whose image we are made is to deny an essential aspect of our own humanity. The shame of such ingratitude is inscribed on the human conscience, and even the most dogmatic atheists are not immune from the knowledge that they ought to give thanks to God. Try as they might to suppress or deny the impulse, “what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them” (Romans 1:19).
During a November 2009 debate in England sponsored by a rationalist group known as Intelligence Squared, Richard Dawkins admitted that when he looks at the Milky Way or the Grand Canyon, he is overcome by a profound feeling of thankfulness. “It’s a feeling of sort of an abstract gratitude that I am alive to appreciate these wonders,” he said. “When I look down a microscope it’s the same feeling. I am grateful to be alive to appreciate these wonders.”
But to whom does an atheist like Dawkins express such gratitude?
I’m by no means the first person to point out this conundrum. In fact, the Internet is peppered with failed attempts to justify an atheistic celebration of Thanksgiving. Atheists insist they are not ungrateful. They confess that they feel thankful, and they clearly sense a need to avoid the ignominy of brazen ingratitude on a cosmic scale—especially at Thanksgiving.
One atheist has practically made a hobby of writing articles to explain why atheists feel the need to be thankful. He tackles the question of whom an atheist is supposed to thank. His best answer? Atheists can be grateful to farmers for the food we eat, to doctors for the health we enjoy, to engineers for the advantages of modern technology, to city workers for keeping our environment clean and orderly—and so on.
Here’s the problem with that: Tipping the waitress or tipping one’s hat to sanitation workers doesn’t even come close to resolving the problem of whom Dawkins should thank when he looks at the stars, stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or studies the world of countless wonders his microscope reveals in a single drop of pond water.
Of course we ought to be thankful on a human level to people who help make our lives better. But if thanking people exhausts your sense of blessedness and satisfies that “sort of ... abstract gratitude” you feel when pondering the vastness of the universe, you have already suppressed your own conscience to a frightening degree. Your worldview is spiritually bankrupt.
Another atheist writer, acknowledging this problem, says the answer is easy for her: she thanks her lucky stars. “What it comes down to,” she writes, “is that an atheist is generally thankful for good luck, serendipity.”
That’s an odd and ironic answer from a point of view that repudiates theism on the grounds that it is not “rational” to believe in God. (Not that atheism itself truly stands on solid rational grounds. After all, the starting point for atheistic materialism is the equation Nobody times nothing equals everything. What could possibly be more irrational?)
Chance, luck, fortune, happenstance, fate, kismet—whatever label you want to put on it—is not a force or intelligence. “Chance” has to do with mathematical probability. Flip a coin and there’s a 50-50 chance it will come up tails. But “chance” has no power to flip the coin, much less design an ordered universe.
Nevertheless, this is how atheistic materialists have trained themselves to think: chance is the ultimate creator.
In the words of one Nobel Prize-winning atheist, “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution.” Fortune has thus been personified—imbued with the power to determine, order, and cause everything that happens.
That’s mythology, not science. At the end of the day the atheist is no more rational and no less superstitious than the astrologist (or the animist) who thinks impersonal “lucky stars” determine one’s fortune.
On some level, atheists themselves surely realize this. Proof of their internal angst is seen in the fact that so many of them are not content merely to disbelieve. They are militant in their opposition to God. They hate the very thought of God and would love to have every mention of Him removed from public discourse—as if that would somehow remove the burden of their own ingratitude and relieve the pangs of a guilty conscience.
Such hatred is as irrational as atheism itself, and it is further evidence that atheists have some awareness of God that they desperately want to bury. Who nurtures such hatred for someone they truly believe doesn’t even exist?
Indeed, as Scripture says, it is the ultimate folly to try to suppress our own innate sense of obligation to our Maker. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). In short, to deny God is to debase one’s own mind and dehumanize the whole person (Romans 1:28).
That’s why we remind ourselves to give thanks to God—specifically, the one true God who has revealed Himself in Scripture as a God of grace and forgiveness, who so loved the world that He gave His Son as an atonement for sin, so “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).
He graciously compels us to thank Him, and He himself should top the list of things we are thankful for.
This article is from the November 22, 2012, edition of The Washington Times. © 2012 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/21/the-atheists-thanksgiving-dilemma/).
The atheists’ dilemma: whom do you thank when you think there’s no one to be grateful to?
Thankfulness is one of the distinguishing traits of the human spirit. We sense the need to say thanks, and we realize we ought to be more grateful than we are. We furthermore perceive that we are indebted to (and accountable to) a higher power than ourselves—the God who made us. According to Scripture, everyone has this knowledge, including those who refuse to honor God or thank Him (Romans 1:19–21).
Ingratitude is dishonorable by anyone’s reckoning, but to be willfully ungrateful toward the Creator in whose image we are made is to deny an essential aspect of our own humanity. The shame of such ingratitude is inscribed on the human conscience, and even the most dogmatic atheists are not immune from the knowledge that they ought to give thanks to God. Try as they might to suppress or deny the impulse, “what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them” (Romans 1:19).
During a November 2009 debate in England sponsored by a rationalist group known as Intelligence Squared, Richard Dawkins admitted that when he looks at the Milky Way or the Grand Canyon, he is overcome by a profound feeling of thankfulness. “It’s a feeling of sort of an abstract gratitude that I am alive to appreciate these wonders,” he said. “When I look down a microscope it’s the same feeling. I am grateful to be alive to appreciate these wonders.”
But to whom does an atheist like Dawkins express such gratitude?
I’m by no means the first person to point out this conundrum. In fact, the Internet is peppered with failed attempts to justify an atheistic celebration of Thanksgiving. Atheists insist they are not ungrateful. They confess that they feel thankful, and they clearly sense a need to avoid the ignominy of brazen ingratitude on a cosmic scale—especially at Thanksgiving.
One atheist has practically made a hobby of writing articles to explain why atheists feel the need to be thankful. He tackles the question of whom an atheist is supposed to thank. His best answer? Atheists can be grateful to farmers for the food we eat, to doctors for the health we enjoy, to engineers for the advantages of modern technology, to city workers for keeping our environment clean and orderly—and so on.
Here’s the problem with that: Tipping the waitress or tipping one’s hat to sanitation workers doesn’t even come close to resolving the problem of whom Dawkins should thank when he looks at the stars, stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or studies the world of countless wonders his microscope reveals in a single drop of pond water.
Of course we ought to be thankful on a human level to people who help make our lives better. But if thanking people exhausts your sense of blessedness and satisfies that “sort of ... abstract gratitude” you feel when pondering the vastness of the universe, you have already suppressed your own conscience to a frightening degree. Your worldview is spiritually bankrupt.
Another atheist writer, acknowledging this problem, says the answer is easy for her: she thanks her lucky stars. “What it comes down to,” she writes, “is that an atheist is generally thankful for good luck, serendipity.”
That’s an odd and ironic answer from a point of view that repudiates theism on the grounds that it is not “rational” to believe in God. (Not that atheism itself truly stands on solid rational grounds. After all, the starting point for atheistic materialism is the equation Nobody times nothing equals everything. What could possibly be more irrational?)
Chance, luck, fortune, happenstance, fate, kismet—whatever label you want to put on it—is not a force or intelligence. “Chance” has to do with mathematical probability. Flip a coin and there’s a 50-50 chance it will come up tails. But “chance” has no power to flip the coin, much less design an ordered universe.
Nevertheless, this is how atheistic materialists have trained themselves to think: chance is the ultimate creator.
In the words of one Nobel Prize-winning atheist, “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution.” Fortune has thus been personified—imbued with the power to determine, order, and cause everything that happens.
That’s mythology, not science. At the end of the day the atheist is no more rational and no less superstitious than the astrologist (or the animist) who thinks impersonal “lucky stars” determine one’s fortune.
On some level, atheists themselves surely realize this. Proof of their internal angst is seen in the fact that so many of them are not content merely to disbelieve. They are militant in their opposition to God. They hate the very thought of God and would love to have every mention of Him removed from public discourse—as if that would somehow remove the burden of their own ingratitude and relieve the pangs of a guilty conscience.
Such hatred is as irrational as atheism itself, and it is further evidence that atheists have some awareness of God that they desperately want to bury. Who nurtures such hatred for someone they truly believe doesn’t even exist?
Indeed, as Scripture says, it is the ultimate folly to try to suppress our own innate sense of obligation to our Maker. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). In short, to deny God is to debase one’s own mind and dehumanize the whole person (Romans 1:28).
That’s why we remind ourselves to give thanks to God—specifically, the one true God who has revealed Himself in Scripture as a God of grace and forgiveness, who so loved the world that He gave His Son as an atonement for sin, so “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).
He graciously compels us to thank Him, and He himself should top the list of things we are thankful for.
This article is from the November 22, 2012, edition of The Washington Times. © 2012 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/21/the-atheists-thanksgiving-dilemma/).
Friday, December 14, 2012
OVERCOMING MATERIALISM ~ 1 TIMOTHY 6 : 17 - 19 ~
If you are rich, this sermon is for you.
There aren’t many sermons directed at rich people, but this one is. My text is a word from the Apostle Paul to the rich Christians in the church at Ephesus. The first phrase of verse 17 makes it very clear: “Command those who are rich in this present world.” There are certain obvious implications of this statement that we should think about. First, some people will be richer than others. This fact is one that we all accept as part of reality but it may surprise you to discover that it is also mentioned in the Bible. Some people have lots of money. That’s a fact of life. And God has something to say to those people.
But who are the rich? Certainly it’s not you or me. If someone came up out of the blue and asked, “Are you rich?” what would you say? Most of us would stammer a bit and then we would deny being rich. But we would be wrong. All of us are rich, and I am not speaking about “spiritual riches” or our “riches in Christ,” as true as that is. I am speaking of old-fashioned riches, money in the bank, greenbacks, material wealth. All of us are rich. As I write these words, I am conscious that this sermon will go out around the world, but even so I am directing my remarks to the people of my own congregation in Oak Park. We’re rich. Who are we kidding? Compared with the people of Haiti, we’re incredibly wealthy. Compared with the people of Nigeria, Sudan, Bangladesh, or Thailand, we’re loaded. But that statement is true of Americans generally.
If you own your home, you’re rich.
If you own your car, you’re rich.
If you have enough food to eat, you’re rich.
If you have extra clothes in your closet, you’re rich.
If you’ve got enough money to go out to eat occasionally, you’re rich.
That includes all of us. And even though there are some people at Calvary who have very little, those people still have far more in terms of creature comforts than most people around the world.
So this is a sermon by a rich pastor to his rich congregation.
And I should add that it’s not a sermon where the message is, “It’s a sin to be rich” or “You need to get rid of all your money and become poor.” That’s another sermon (by another pastor, I should add). It’s not what our text says. The issue is not how much money you have, it’s what you do with what God has given you.
As we think about this, let’s consider three popular money myths:
Myth #1: Having more things equals more happiness.
Myth #2: Having more things equals more importance.
Myth #3: Having more things equals more security.
Happiness, importance, security. Money can do lots of things but it can’t buy happiness, it can’t make you more important, and it can’t guarantee your earthly security. That last point is critical when you consider the dangerous world in which we live. There is no lasting security anywhere in the world today. In an age of terrorism, there is no front line because we’re all living on the front lines now. Even those who serve the Lord can’t be sure of what tomorrow may bring. That fact came home to us with great force this week.
Bonnie Witherall
So what do you think? You’re 31-years-old, a graduate of Moody Bible Institute. You and your husband feel called of God to minister to Muslim women in Lebanon. So you join a ministry working in a refugee camp. Yes, it’s dangerous, you knew that going in, but your heart is set on caring for those women. One morning you hear a knock on the door. When you answer it, you see a man with a gun. Seconds later you are dead, shot three times in the head. Murdered by some fanatic who hates what you stand for. That’s what happened to Bonnie Witherall last week. She was gunned down while working at a missionary clinic in southern Lebanon. Her sister summed up Bonnie’s life this way: “She believed in her heart that God wanted her in that place, doing whatever he called her to do and that was basically to share her life with people. It was hard for her to walk by people who were suffering.”
There is no absolute protection from suffering in this world. Money can’t buy happiness and it can’t guarantee you a long life or good health. We are fools if we think otherwise.
Wealth is not necessarily an impediment to our walk with God. History is filled with examples of rich Christians who used their wealth wisely and brought great benefit to the world. And there is scarcely a church or ministry anywhere that has not benefited from the large gifts of wealthy believers. But if money is not an impediment, it is definitely a test. The way you spend your money tells the truth about your values. Show me how you spend your money and I’ll know the truth about what you really believe. You can come to church and dance in the aisles if you want to, but that doesn’t mean as much as how you spend your money. Not long ago a noted Christian leader told me, “Follow the money.” He’s right. If you want to know the truth, follow the money. That’s an almost infallible rule of life. Money talks, and the story it tells reveals the truth about your walk with God.
Money is not evil; it’s the love of money that gets us into trouble. A few verses before our text for today, Paul says it this way: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (I Timothy 6:10). When I read that, I say to myself, “I don’t love money,” but then I read the phrase “eager for money,” and I’m stopped in my tracks. I’m like the man who said, “If money were a woman, I wouldn’t say we were in love, but we’re definitely dating heavily.” I understand that. The odd thing is, money in the end can’t satisfy. I’ve never heard a man on his deathbed say, “Thank God for my money.” Dying men give thanks for family and friends, but a dying man doesn’t have time to worry about money. As Billy Graham says, “I’ve never seen a Brinks truck following a hearse.” When Alexander the Great died, he gave instructions that he was to be buried with his hands outside his shroud so that everyone would know that he took nothing with him. Sometimes we ask about the departed, “How much did he leave?” The answer is always the same: “All of it.”
First Timothy 6:17-19 offers three specific commands for us to consider. The first one involves our heart. The heart always comes first, the money comes later.
Fifth, God gives us everything we need at any given moment. That’s a startling statement if you think about it. And it’s especially appropriate on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Do we truly believe that we have everything we need at this moment in the material realm of life? If we believe in God, the answer must be yes because if we truly needed anything else, God would have already given it to us. And the fact that we don’t have everything we might wish for simply means that in the eyes of God, it’s not something we truly need. God does not withhold good things from his children. “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11 NASB). “If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11 NLT). I realize as I write these words that someone may read them who is living every day with a serious illness or a debilitating physical handicap. How can we speak of God’s goodness in situations like that? Perhaps the only possible answer is to ask in return, How can we not speak of God’s goodness in those situations? The Apostle Paul added a helpful insight when he remarked that in every situation he had “learned” to be content (Philippians 4:11). I find great comfort in that because it means on one hand that it is possible to be content no matter where I might find myself. It also means that contentment does not come easily in every circumstance but must be learned over time as we discover God’s grace in the most unlikely places. So I think we can say—indeed, I think we must say—that at every moment along the way, God gives us whatever we need for that particular moment. And if we truly need something else tomorrow that we don’t have today, we can rest assured that somehow, someway, at some point in time, our Heavenly Father will see to it that what we need will be given to us.
In the larger context this means that generosity depends on good theology. We will be generous precisely to the extent that we have a proper view of God and his involvement in our daily life. If we separate God from life, then we’ll feel obligated to hoard our wealth because we’re in charge of everything. But if we understand that he is the Lord of all of life, including the tiniest details, then we are free from the need to trust in our wealth. We can give it away, knowing that we’ll have everything we need when we really need it. A proper view of God leads to a generous view of life, which is why giving (in the broadest sense) ought to be as natural for the Christian as breathing.
The happiest people on earth are those who have learned the joy of generous living. They give and give and give. They give their time, their money, their advice, their counsel, their talents and their commitment. They are not content to be spectators while life rushes by. They get off the bench and get into the game. And they truly enjoy giving to others. They have learned the secret that you can’t out-give God. As my friend Howard Harvey likes to say, “I shovel it out and God shovels it in. And God’s got a bigger shovel than I do.” Maxey Jarman was a wealthy Christian businessman who during his lifetime gave away millions of dollars to Christian causes around the world. At one point he suffered an enormous financial reversal and lost everything. A friend asked him if he regretted having given so much away. “Oh no,” he replied, “I only lost what I kept for myself.”
What we keep, we lose because we won’t live forever. What we give away, we keep because the benefits of giving last for eternity.
Miss Eva
The year was 1939 or 1940 and a young woman came to Chicago to study at Moody Bible Institute. While she was a student, she began attending a small church in suburban Oak Park. Back then it was called Madison Street Bible Church, today it is called Calvary Memorial Church. She attended this congregation and taught Sunday School during her Moody years. When she graduated in 1945, she felt called by God to become a missionary in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, working with the Scripture Memory Mountain Mission. Then and now, the Appalachian region was one of the poorest regions in America. It was not an easy place for a single woman to serve the Lord. Before she left Chicago, someone gave her a car, an old jalopy with so many holes in the roof that she had to use an umbrella inside the car when it rained. One of our Sunday School classes pledged $20 per month for her support. Armed with the old car, the $20 per month pledge and her faith in God, she moved to the mountains of Kentucky to begin her ministry. Back then the road system was primitive, which meant that sometimes she and her co-workers had to ride horses up into the mountains to teach children the Word of God. In 1951 she and a co-worker were asked to consider going to a remote community called Rock Fork where there was no church and no organized Christian work. She and her co-worker agreed to go. Eventually they got a vacation Bible school started that continued for a number of years. Later they managed to start a small Sunday School that met in a home. It attracted a handful of children along with a few adults. Some years later they began holding worship services on an occasional basis. They didn’t do it every Sunday and they never formally organized as a church. But eventually they erected a church building made from a doublewide mobile home on a tiny piece of property. By the 1990s they were holding services there and calling themselves the Rock Fork Bible Fellowship. If they didn’t have a preacher scheduled, Miss Eva told me they would often play one of my sermon tapes and use it as the message of the morning.
I should pause and add that Miss Eva (which is how the Kentucky folks refer to her) has been serving as a missionary for 57 years and our church has supported her all that time.
After 50 Years—A Church is Born
During a week of ministry a few years ago at Camp Nathanael (owned by the mission agency), Miss Eva asked if I would stay over and preach at Rock Fork. I recall that we had about 45 people in attendance that morning and I preached my heart out, we had a wonderful time, and I also remember that when I stood on the platform, my head nearly brushed against the ceiling. Later we had dinner on the grounds, which was wonderful because those country folks really know how to prepare a meal. Last July I was preaching again at Camp Nathanael when Miss Eva said she wanted to show us the new church building at Rock Fork. So Marlene and I and Miss Eva and Donnie Sloan drove way out in the country (we were already in the country but this was about ten miles further east) to see the partly-finished building. Even though there was much work to be done, I could tell it was going to be beautiful. Miss Eva’s eyes sparkled with joy as she told us the story of how she and her co-worker had started the first vacation Bible school a half-century earlier. And now, at last, after so many years and so many prayers, a church was about to be born. When she asked if I would come back and preach for the dedication of the new building, I told her I would be glad to do it. Then she said that she knew she wouldn’t live a lot longer and she had asked the Lord to let her live long enough to see the new church building dedicated and the church formally organized. “I’ve got more friends in heaven than I do on earth but I want to stay here a little while longer if the Lord will let me,” she said. That’s when I realized that this church building represented the culmination of her life’s work, the result of 50 years of labor to bring the Word of the Lord to a small Kentucky settlement.
We dedicated the new building on Saturday, November 23. Because I had an engagement I had to attend in Oak Park, I couldn’t leave until 10:30 p.m. on Friday night. With the help of two of my sons, Nick and Mark, we drove through the night, arriving in southeastern Kentucky about 8:00 a.m. Saturday. We ate breakfast, showered, changed clothes, and then headed for the dedication service, which started at 11:00 a.m. I would estimate that 60-70 people attended the two-hour service. Joy and tears mingled together as the people reflected on God’s faithfulness. An attendance board reported that the Sunday before the attendance had been 41, the week before that 27, and that the weekly offering had been $190. Speaker after speaker told stories of how God answered prayer over the years. And of course we had dinner on the grounds and ate like kings. Then my boys and I got in the car and headed back home. We traveled 1,000 miles in 22 hours, including six hours we spent at the church—now called Rock Fork Bible Church.
I tell that story for two reasons. First, because Calvary has been supporting Miss Eva’s ministry for 57 years. We rejoice with her in this significant accomplishment. Second, because this story allows us to reflect on the values of the kingdom of God. Some people may wonder about the 50 years spent and a church with only 40 or 50 people attending. But God’s economy is quite different from ours. The One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills is not impressed by numbers. The Lord of the universe is not more glorified by 10,000 than by 50. He can deliver by much or by little. A thousand years is but a day in his sight. If you asked Miss Eva, “Was it worth it?” she would certainly say, “It was worth it and I would gladly do it again.” She invested her life in building God’s kingdom and the results are in full view for all to see.
The Richest People I Know
As I ponder the matter, I realize that the richest people I’ve met recently are the good folks at Rock Fork Bible Church. And the richest person I’ve met recently is Miss Eva Lodgaard. Personally I hope she’s around for many more years, but when the Lord takes her home, I know the words she will hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.” She gave herself completely to the people of southeastern Kentucky. In a ministry that now stretches into its seventh decade, she has been rich in good deeds, generous and willing to share with others. There is laid up for her a firm foundation for the future. Heaven will be bright for her. And she has discovered the life that is truly life.
Now the challenge is to you and to me. We are so rich—and I mean that literally. We have been given so much. Compared to the rest of the world, we’re at the top of the heap. I do not think we need to feel guilty about that, but we ought to feel a sense of profound obligation. God never wastes his blessings and he doesn’t pour them out so that we can use them on ourselves. Blessings are meant to be shared. Money is for giving away. Material wealth is given so that we can bless others as God has blessed us.
If you are in the grip of materialism, what do you do? The oldest answer is the best. The best way to break the stranglehold of money is to give it away. That’s right. Just give it away. If your bicycle has been a snare to you, give it away. If that new boat is a problem, give it away. If your clothes have become an obsession, give all the new stuff away. If your home has become an idol, give it away. That’s right. Just give it away. If you worry too much about your investments, start giving that money away to the Lord’s work. Find some worthy cause and invest in it. Find a need and meet it. Find a hurt and heal it. Take your nickels and your dimes and then take your hundred-dollar bills and invest them for Christ and his kingdom. It doesn’t need to be something big and flashy. And the world doesn’t need to know what you’ve done. As you give to help others, you will help yourself, and in the process the stranglehold of money will be broken in your heart. That’s a win-win solution. Help others, help yourself. Bless others and you will be blessed along the way.
One of these days we will all stand before the Lord. The danger we face is that we will hear the Lord say, “You fool! You spent your life building a fortune but were not generous toward the Lord or his people.” (See Luke 12:13-21.) The Lord will not ask how much money we had at the end of our life and he won’t ask what rate of return we got from our mutual fund investments. But he will certainly ask, “What did you do with what I gave you? Did you use it all for your own enjoyment? Or did you use your money for the sake of my kingdom?”
What you keep for yourself, you eventually lose. What you give away, you gain eternally. So may God cause us—the richest people in the world—to become generous givers and so enter into the blessing that comes to those who aren’t afraid to take God at his Word. Amen.
There aren’t many sermons directed at rich people, but this one is. My text is a word from the Apostle Paul to the rich Christians in the church at Ephesus. The first phrase of verse 17 makes it very clear: “Command those who are rich in this present world.” There are certain obvious implications of this statement that we should think about. First, some people will be richer than others. This fact is one that we all accept as part of reality but it may surprise you to discover that it is also mentioned in the Bible. Some people have lots of money. That’s a fact of life. And God has something to say to those people.
But who are the rich? Certainly it’s not you or me. If someone came up out of the blue and asked, “Are you rich?” what would you say? Most of us would stammer a bit and then we would deny being rich. But we would be wrong. All of us are rich, and I am not speaking about “spiritual riches” or our “riches in Christ,” as true as that is. I am speaking of old-fashioned riches, money in the bank, greenbacks, material wealth. All of us are rich. As I write these words, I am conscious that this sermon will go out around the world, but even so I am directing my remarks to the people of my own congregation in Oak Park. We’re rich. Who are we kidding? Compared with the people of Haiti, we’re incredibly wealthy. Compared with the people of Nigeria, Sudan, Bangladesh, or Thailand, we’re loaded. But that statement is true of Americans generally.
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If you own your home, you’re rich.
If you own your car, you’re rich.
If you have enough food to eat, you’re rich.
If you have extra clothes in your closet, you’re rich.
If you’ve got enough money to go out to eat occasionally, you’re rich.
That includes all of us. And even though there are some people at Calvary who have very little, those people still have far more in terms of creature comforts than most people around the world.
So this is a sermon by a rich pastor to his rich congregation.
And I should add that it’s not a sermon where the message is, “It’s a sin to be rich” or “You need to get rid of all your money and become poor.” That’s another sermon (by another pastor, I should add). It’s not what our text says. The issue is not how much money you have, it’s what you do with what God has given you.
As we think about this, let’s consider three popular money myths:
Myth #1: Having more things equals more happiness.
Myth #2: Having more things equals more importance.
Myth #3: Having more things equals more security.
Happiness, importance, security. Money can do lots of things but it can’t buy happiness, it can’t make you more important, and it can’t guarantee your earthly security. That last point is critical when you consider the dangerous world in which we live. There is no lasting security anywhere in the world today. In an age of terrorism, there is no front line because we’re all living on the front lines now. Even those who serve the Lord can’t be sure of what tomorrow may bring. That fact came home to us with great force this week.
Bonnie Witherall
So what do you think? You’re 31-years-old, a graduate of Moody Bible Institute. You and your husband feel called of God to minister to Muslim women in Lebanon. So you join a ministry working in a refugee camp. Yes, it’s dangerous, you knew that going in, but your heart is set on caring for those women. One morning you hear a knock on the door. When you answer it, you see a man with a gun. Seconds later you are dead, shot three times in the head. Murdered by some fanatic who hates what you stand for. That’s what happened to Bonnie Witherall last week. She was gunned down while working at a missionary clinic in southern Lebanon. Her sister summed up Bonnie’s life this way: “She believed in her heart that God wanted her in that place, doing whatever he called her to do and that was basically to share her life with people. It was hard for her to walk by people who were suffering.”
There is no absolute protection from suffering in this world. Money can’t buy happiness and it can’t guarantee you a long life or good health. We are fools if we think otherwise.
Wealth is not necessarily an impediment to our walk with God. History is filled with examples of rich Christians who used their wealth wisely and brought great benefit to the world. And there is scarcely a church or ministry anywhere that has not benefited from the large gifts of wealthy believers. But if money is not an impediment, it is definitely a test. The way you spend your money tells the truth about your values. Show me how you spend your money and I’ll know the truth about what you really believe. You can come to church and dance in the aisles if you want to, but that doesn’t mean as much as how you spend your money. Not long ago a noted Christian leader told me, “Follow the money.” He’s right. If you want to know the truth, follow the money. That’s an almost infallible rule of life. Money talks, and the story it tells reveals the truth about your walk with God.
Money is not evil; it’s the love of money that gets us into trouble. A few verses before our text for today, Paul says it this way: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (I Timothy 6:10). When I read that, I say to myself, “I don’t love money,” but then I read the phrase “eager for money,” and I’m stopped in my tracks. I’m like the man who said, “If money were a woman, I wouldn’t say we were in love, but we’re definitely dating heavily.” I understand that. The odd thing is, money in the end can’t satisfy. I’ve never heard a man on his deathbed say, “Thank God for my money.” Dying men give thanks for family and friends, but a dying man doesn’t have time to worry about money. As Billy Graham says, “I’ve never seen a Brinks truck following a hearse.” When Alexander the Great died, he gave instructions that he was to be buried with his hands outside his shroud so that everyone would know that he took nothing with him. Sometimes we ask about the departed, “How much did he leave?” The answer is always the same: “All of it.”
First Timothy 6:17-19 offers three specific commands for us to consider. The first one involves our heart. The heart always comes first, the money comes later.
I. Examine Your Heart
“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (I Timothy 6:17). There are five important truths we should glean from this verse. First, some people will be rich. In particular, some Christians will be richer than others. Some will have more, others less. This means it is not a sin to be rich per se. It’s how you made your money and what you do with it that matters. Second, money has a peculiar power to make us feel insulated from the problems of life. Money makes us feel invincible. I heard a man say that while driving home from the airport, he realized that he was speeding because he was in a hurry. He said to himself, “I should slow down.” But then he said, “Why bother? I can pay the fine if I get a ticket.” I suppose all of us have had thoughts like that at one time or another. That’s the sort of arrogance Paul is warning against. We’ve all known rich people who were arrogant in the way they treated others. Money has a way of making you feel set apart so that what happens to others will never happen to you. Third, wealth truly is uncertain. You can be rich today and broke tomorrow. I wonder how many of us lost money in the stock market over the last two years? We rode that high-tech rocket all the way to the top and most of us rode it back down to the bottom. In some cases, people lost 30% or 40% or 50% or more of their investment income. People who planned to retire at age 50 will now have to work until they are 125. But that’s the nature of wealth. Just when you think you’ve got it made, your money takes wings and flies away. Fourth, putting your hope in God is a choice we all must make. It means (among other things) that you consciously decide each day that you will not trust in your money to get you through life. Perhaps it means saying, “Lord, today I trust you completely with all that I am and all that I have. I take you at your Word and no matter what happens to me, I believe in advance that you are working out your plan in my life.”Fifth, God gives us everything we need at any given moment. That’s a startling statement if you think about it. And it’s especially appropriate on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Do we truly believe that we have everything we need at this moment in the material realm of life? If we believe in God, the answer must be yes because if we truly needed anything else, God would have already given it to us. And the fact that we don’t have everything we might wish for simply means that in the eyes of God, it’s not something we truly need. God does not withhold good things from his children. “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11 NASB). “If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11 NLT). I realize as I write these words that someone may read them who is living every day with a serious illness or a debilitating physical handicap. How can we speak of God’s goodness in situations like that? Perhaps the only possible answer is to ask in return, How can we not speak of God’s goodness in those situations? The Apostle Paul added a helpful insight when he remarked that in every situation he had “learned” to be content (Philippians 4:11). I find great comfort in that because it means on one hand that it is possible to be content no matter where I might find myself. It also means that contentment does not come easily in every circumstance but must be learned over time as we discover God’s grace in the most unlikely places. So I think we can say—indeed, I think we must say—that at every moment along the way, God gives us whatever we need for that particular moment. And if we truly need something else tomorrow that we don’t have today, we can rest assured that somehow, someway, at some point in time, our Heavenly Father will see to it that what we need will be given to us.
In the larger context this means that generosity depends on good theology. We will be generous precisely to the extent that we have a proper view of God and his involvement in our daily life. If we separate God from life, then we’ll feel obligated to hoard our wealth because we’re in charge of everything. But if we understand that he is the Lord of all of life, including the tiniest details, then we are free from the need to trust in our wealth. We can give it away, knowing that we’ll have everything we need when we really need it. A proper view of God leads to a generous view of life, which is why giving (in the broadest sense) ought to be as natural for the Christian as breathing.
II. Consider Your Actions
“Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share” (I Timothy 6:18). Once you have looked at your heart (and in particular what you believe as the foundation for everything you do), then it’s time to consider your actions. Three things are mentioned in this verse: Doing good, being rich in good deeds, and a generous spirit that gladly shares with others. All three are really one and the same thing. Or you could say that doing good is general, being rich in good deeds is more specific, and being generous and willing to share is a pointed application. Note that these commands rise beyond the level of what you do with your money. They touch the deeper issue of how you spend your time. This is a word we need to hear because for many people, time has become more important than money. Time has become so precious to many of us that we would rather give $100 to a charity if we can avoid going to a banquet. Or we will write a check as a way to avoid getting personally involved. We have Day-Timers and calendars and Palm Pilots and all sorts of electronic gizmos to help us save time and manage life effectively. As a result, we are in danger of losing any personal contact with a hurting world. The answer to that is found in this verse: Be generous in the way you spend your time. Get involved with others. Go face to face with a couple in crisis. Spend an extra ten minutes talking to a friend who is searching for the Lord. Think of ways you can make a difference in a child’s life this week. Are you bothered by too many interruptions during the day? Perhaps those interruptions are sent by the Lord to keep you from making your job the focus of your life. What a difference it would make if we thought of each interruption as being sent by the Lord. How would you respond if Jesus wanted to interrupt your life today? Would you have time to talk to him? Would you put him on hold? Would you say, “Sorry, Lord, I love you but I’m tied up right now?” If we could take that perspective regarding all our “ordinary” interruptions, it would drain the irritation we feel when “our” plans are interrupted by someone else. Didn’t Jesus say something about visiting him in prison, giving him clothes to wear, and giving him food to eat? See Matthew 25:31-45 and ponder the implications of his words.III. Enjoy Your Reward
“In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life” (I Timothy 6:19). Here’s a promise for all of us to embrace, but it has special relevance to the rich. You might call this Jesus’ Investment Advice. First, generous living leads to an enhanced life in heaven. When we dare to take these words seriously, we are laying a foundation for the future that will last for all eternity. To “lay up treasure” means to live in such a way now that our future experience in heaven is enriched. We all understand the concept of investing for the future. Probably most of the people reading this sermon have made some plans for the future. You’re saving for college or for a new car or for a new home or you are putting money into a pension plan or a retirement fund. If you are planning for your retirement, that means the money you invest now won’t be yours to enjoy until many years in the future. But you do it now so that when your retirement comes, there will be sufficient funds available so you can do whatever you want to do. The same is true in our Christian life. As we live a generous life toward others, we are making payments into our heavenly retirement account. But this verse is not just about the distant future, it also promises “life that is truly life.” True life. Real life. Abundant life. Life that goes beyond mere existence. Life as God intended it to be. Paul means that generous Christians discover a quality of life that stingy Christians never know. Those who dare to become generous givers end up enjoying life on a level that those who hoard their wealth never experience.The happiest people on earth are those who have learned the joy of generous living. They give and give and give. They give their time, their money, their advice, their counsel, their talents and their commitment. They are not content to be spectators while life rushes by. They get off the bench and get into the game. And they truly enjoy giving to others. They have learned the secret that you can’t out-give God. As my friend Howard Harvey likes to say, “I shovel it out and God shovels it in. And God’s got a bigger shovel than I do.” Maxey Jarman was a wealthy Christian businessman who during his lifetime gave away millions of dollars to Christian causes around the world. At one point he suffered an enormous financial reversal and lost everything. A friend asked him if he regretted having given so much away. “Oh no,” he replied, “I only lost what I kept for myself.”
What we keep, we lose because we won’t live forever. What we give away, we keep because the benefits of giving last for eternity.
Miss Eva
The year was 1939 or 1940 and a young woman came to Chicago to study at Moody Bible Institute. While she was a student, she began attending a small church in suburban Oak Park. Back then it was called Madison Street Bible Church, today it is called Calvary Memorial Church. She attended this congregation and taught Sunday School during her Moody years. When she graduated in 1945, she felt called by God to become a missionary in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, working with the Scripture Memory Mountain Mission. Then and now, the Appalachian region was one of the poorest regions in America. It was not an easy place for a single woman to serve the Lord. Before she left Chicago, someone gave her a car, an old jalopy with so many holes in the roof that she had to use an umbrella inside the car when it rained. One of our Sunday School classes pledged $20 per month for her support. Armed with the old car, the $20 per month pledge and her faith in God, she moved to the mountains of Kentucky to begin her ministry. Back then the road system was primitive, which meant that sometimes she and her co-workers had to ride horses up into the mountains to teach children the Word of God. In 1951 she and a co-worker were asked to consider going to a remote community called Rock Fork where there was no church and no organized Christian work. She and her co-worker agreed to go. Eventually they got a vacation Bible school started that continued for a number of years. Later they managed to start a small Sunday School that met in a home. It attracted a handful of children along with a few adults. Some years later they began holding worship services on an occasional basis. They didn’t do it every Sunday and they never formally organized as a church. But eventually they erected a church building made from a doublewide mobile home on a tiny piece of property. By the 1990s they were holding services there and calling themselves the Rock Fork Bible Fellowship. If they didn’t have a preacher scheduled, Miss Eva told me they would often play one of my sermon tapes and use it as the message of the morning.
I should pause and add that Miss Eva (which is how the Kentucky folks refer to her) has been serving as a missionary for 57 years and our church has supported her all that time.
After 50 Years—A Church is Born
During a week of ministry a few years ago at Camp Nathanael (owned by the mission agency), Miss Eva asked if I would stay over and preach at Rock Fork. I recall that we had about 45 people in attendance that morning and I preached my heart out, we had a wonderful time, and I also remember that when I stood on the platform, my head nearly brushed against the ceiling. Later we had dinner on the grounds, which was wonderful because those country folks really know how to prepare a meal. Last July I was preaching again at Camp Nathanael when Miss Eva said she wanted to show us the new church building at Rock Fork. So Marlene and I and Miss Eva and Donnie Sloan drove way out in the country (we were already in the country but this was about ten miles further east) to see the partly-finished building. Even though there was much work to be done, I could tell it was going to be beautiful. Miss Eva’s eyes sparkled with joy as she told us the story of how she and her co-worker had started the first vacation Bible school a half-century earlier. And now, at last, after so many years and so many prayers, a church was about to be born. When she asked if I would come back and preach for the dedication of the new building, I told her I would be glad to do it. Then she said that she knew she wouldn’t live a lot longer and she had asked the Lord to let her live long enough to see the new church building dedicated and the church formally organized. “I’ve got more friends in heaven than I do on earth but I want to stay here a little while longer if the Lord will let me,” she said. That’s when I realized that this church building represented the culmination of her life’s work, the result of 50 years of labor to bring the Word of the Lord to a small Kentucky settlement.
We dedicated the new building on Saturday, November 23. Because I had an engagement I had to attend in Oak Park, I couldn’t leave until 10:30 p.m. on Friday night. With the help of two of my sons, Nick and Mark, we drove through the night, arriving in southeastern Kentucky about 8:00 a.m. Saturday. We ate breakfast, showered, changed clothes, and then headed for the dedication service, which started at 11:00 a.m. I would estimate that 60-70 people attended the two-hour service. Joy and tears mingled together as the people reflected on God’s faithfulness. An attendance board reported that the Sunday before the attendance had been 41, the week before that 27, and that the weekly offering had been $190. Speaker after speaker told stories of how God answered prayer over the years. And of course we had dinner on the grounds and ate like kings. Then my boys and I got in the car and headed back home. We traveled 1,000 miles in 22 hours, including six hours we spent at the church—now called Rock Fork Bible Church.
I tell that story for two reasons. First, because Calvary has been supporting Miss Eva’s ministry for 57 years. We rejoice with her in this significant accomplishment. Second, because this story allows us to reflect on the values of the kingdom of God. Some people may wonder about the 50 years spent and a church with only 40 or 50 people attending. But God’s economy is quite different from ours. The One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills is not impressed by numbers. The Lord of the universe is not more glorified by 10,000 than by 50. He can deliver by much or by little. A thousand years is but a day in his sight. If you asked Miss Eva, “Was it worth it?” she would certainly say, “It was worth it and I would gladly do it again.” She invested her life in building God’s kingdom and the results are in full view for all to see.
The Richest People I Know
As I ponder the matter, I realize that the richest people I’ve met recently are the good folks at Rock Fork Bible Church. And the richest person I’ve met recently is Miss Eva Lodgaard. Personally I hope she’s around for many more years, but when the Lord takes her home, I know the words she will hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.” She gave herself completely to the people of southeastern Kentucky. In a ministry that now stretches into its seventh decade, she has been rich in good deeds, generous and willing to share with others. There is laid up for her a firm foundation for the future. Heaven will be bright for her. And she has discovered the life that is truly life.
Now the challenge is to you and to me. We are so rich—and I mean that literally. We have been given so much. Compared to the rest of the world, we’re at the top of the heap. I do not think we need to feel guilty about that, but we ought to feel a sense of profound obligation. God never wastes his blessings and he doesn’t pour them out so that we can use them on ourselves. Blessings are meant to be shared. Money is for giving away. Material wealth is given so that we can bless others as God has blessed us.
If you are in the grip of materialism, what do you do? The oldest answer is the best. The best way to break the stranglehold of money is to give it away. That’s right. Just give it away. If your bicycle has been a snare to you, give it away. If that new boat is a problem, give it away. If your clothes have become an obsession, give all the new stuff away. If your home has become an idol, give it away. That’s right. Just give it away. If you worry too much about your investments, start giving that money away to the Lord’s work. Find some worthy cause and invest in it. Find a need and meet it. Find a hurt and heal it. Take your nickels and your dimes and then take your hundred-dollar bills and invest them for Christ and his kingdom. It doesn’t need to be something big and flashy. And the world doesn’t need to know what you’ve done. As you give to help others, you will help yourself, and in the process the stranglehold of money will be broken in your heart. That’s a win-win solution. Help others, help yourself. Bless others and you will be blessed along the way.
One of these days we will all stand before the Lord. The danger we face is that we will hear the Lord say, “You fool! You spent your life building a fortune but were not generous toward the Lord or his people.” (See Luke 12:13-21.) The Lord will not ask how much money we had at the end of our life and he won’t ask what rate of return we got from our mutual fund investments. But he will certainly ask, “What did you do with what I gave you? Did you use it all for your own enjoyment? Or did you use your money for the sake of my kingdom?”
What you keep for yourself, you eventually lose. What you give away, you gain eternally. So may God cause us—the richest people in the world—to become generous givers and so enter into the blessing that comes to those who aren’t afraid to take God at his Word. Amen.
Monday, November 26, 2012
THANKSGIVING 365 ; ~ PROVERBS 15:16-17 ~
I am writing these words the day after
Thanksgiving.
Yesterday Marlene and I traveled to Oxford, Mississippi to spend time with my brother Andy, his wife Betty, and their daughter Megan. My brother Alan and his wife Donna brought a fried turkey. Marlene had prepared several dishes for the grand celebration. We spent time eating, laughing, telling stories, eating some more, and some of us watched football.
When we got home in the evening, Josh and Leah did a video chat with us using FaceTime. As soon as we started, our two-year-old grandson Knox climbed up on the couch with a toy fire truck in one hand and a stuffed monkey in the other. When we asked him if he liked Thanksgiving, he thought for a second and then said, “Yes.” So we asked what he had to eat. Another pause, then “Bananas.” Anything else? I heard Leah whisper, “Muffins,” which Knox repeated. Anything else? Another pause, and then something that sounded like “chicken pot pie.”
So there you have Thanksgiving through the eyes of a two-year-old. Bananas, muffins, and something that sounded like chicken pot pie.
When I checked in on Facebook, I saw pictures of family gatherings from all across the country. There were good wishes, expressions of thanksgiving to God, and pictures of tables laden with food.
I saw this on one of those humorous ecards that pop up on Facebook from time to time:
We chuckle because it is all too true. Adrian Rogers highlighted this problem this way:
You might call this the “other side” of Thanksgiving. Not every family gathering is a happy time. As I thought about that, I pondered the words of Proverbs 15:15,
“All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast."
I love that last phrase. “The cheerful heart has a continual feast." People with a cheerful heart have Thanksgiving 365 days a year. What is the secret? In Proverbs 15:16-17 Solomon reveals two qualities that produce the cheerful heart that enjoys a continual feast. These attitudes of the heart are within the reach of all of us because they do not depend on income, position, reputation, education, the size of our bank account, or any sort of worldly attainment.
The least among us may have a “continual feast” wherever we go if we take these two verses to heart.
Check out the first word: “Better.”
Some things are better than others. Solomon (who was the richest man in the world) does not mean to exalt poverty as if it is to be preferred to wealth. Most poor people would like to be wealthy if given the chance, and many of them work long hours to try and get ahead.
So this is not a proverb in praise of living on the edge of financial disaster.
But from the beginning of time, there have always been more poor than rich. It’s not as if the world’s resources are evenly distributed. And no matter how the politicians may try to redistribute the wealth, there will always be more poor people. This is less a statement about the way things ought to be than a statement about the way things are. No doubt this is what Jesus meant when he said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11). Those words, which can seem callous, must be interpreted in the same light as our proverb. Jesus explains himself in the last part of that verse when he says, “But you will not always have me."
Some things matter more than other things.
If Jesus is among you, spend time with him while you can.
Then go and feed the poor.
Feed your spirit and then feed the hungry.
The words of Solomon remind us that wealth is no panacea. Yes, it is true that money is the answer for everything (Ecclesiastes 10:19). Better to have some money than none at all. Yes, the rich have large houses, nice furnishings, excellent medical insurance, and protection against many troubles.
But death comes to the rich just as it does to the poor.
The rich get cancer and die.
The rich divorce.
The rich have problems with their children.
Wealth provides only a limited protection in this world. Wealth cannot compensate for the breakup of a marriage, for children in jail, or sudden death. I read about a wealthy man whose son died in a plane crash. Speaking of it later, he said, “Once you lose your son, you find out that there is no such thing as serious money. Life and death are serious, money is not.”
If we have to choose between wealth and the fear of the Lord, let us choose the latter. In point of fact, most of us don’t get the choice. The vast majority of the world will never be wealthy. But we can all fear the Lord.
After decades of accumulating things, we’ve been in a de-accumulation mode for a few years. I think most people go through something like that. You work and save and buy and invest and build and decorate and then you store the excess. But as life rolls on and the kids grow up and move away, you find that some of the things you couldn’t do without don’t seem to matter very much. While packing for our eventual move to Dallas, I find myself asking, “What do we have that we can do without?” I figure that if I haven’t touched a book in 20 years, I probably won’t touch it in the next 20 either so why take it with us?
I thought about that, and then my mind went to the trip Josh and I took to India in January. While we were in Mumbai, we passed by slums that defy all human imagination. There millions of men and women and boys and girls live in circumstances of such grinding poverty that it almost numbs the mind. My good friend Benny Mathews showed us places where people live in cardboard boxes under bridges. Not a few, but thousands and then millions, side by side. He said that ten men may share the same tiny space, sleeping in shifts while the others go to work.
The men and women who live like that hardly worry about what to take with them when they move. They own the clothes on their back and not much else. Compared to them, I am the wealthy man of verse 16.
It is “better” to live with a roof over your head and with money in the bank and with food on the table, but it is “better” yet to live with the fear of the Lord in your heart. One need not feel sorry for having more than someone else, but what a fool I am if I think that I somehow deserve what I have or that I am somehow “better” than someone who has less than I do.
What do I have that I did not receive?
It is all a gift from God.
That includes every meal, every drink of clean water, every bit of electricity that powers my computers, every book I read, every shirt I wear, and every bowl of soup put before me.
Solomon does not ask those who have more to feel guilty about what they have. After all, even in the slums some have more and some have less. Look around. Someone will always be ahead of you, someone will be behind you, and others will be right where you are.
But not everything is equal. Better to live in poverty and know the Lord than to be the richest man in the world and think you did it yourself. The rich man eventually discovers that his riches take wings and fly away. If he doesn’t discover it in this life, he discovers it when he dies because all that he worked so hard for, he leaves behind.
In that respect, we all come in and go out the same way. The lesson is clear. Most of us will never be truly rich in this world’s goods, but we can all be rich in faith and love and rich in the knowledge of our God.
J. I. Packer tells of an acquaintance whose career derailed because of his evangelical convictions. When asked if he harbored any ill feelings, he replied quite simply: “I’ve known God and they haven’t.” Packer goes on to note that most of us would not feel comfortable speaking in such straightforward terms. But the terms are entirely biblical. Knowing God does make a difference and is the defining characteristic of those who follow Jesus Christ. To know God deeply and intimately more than makes up for the things we lose because of our faith.
Writing 250 years ago, English pastor John Gill summarizes the blessings of the man who fears the Lord:
Let this one sentence sink in: “What he has he has with a blessing, and he enjoys it, and God in it, and has communion with him.” Can the world offer anything better than that?
Here are a few other translations of this verse:
The Contemporary English Version offers us this beautiful reading:
The ERV simplifies the meaning down to the bare essentials:
Finally we have this from Eugene Peterson (The Message):
All the versions come out at the same place. The most bountiful feast in the world may be ruined if the people at the table hate each other. Discord at the dinner table destroys a good meal, no matter how sumptuous the fare, whether it be prime rib or T-bone steaks or turkey and dressing with all the trimmings. Your cooking may equal what they offer on the Food Channel, but if your loved ones do not really love each other, what good is all that effort and all that time and all that money?
You might as well skip the meal altogether.
The word “vegetables” refers to the simple fare that a poor family might share. It might be spinach or collard greens or cabbage. This family is so poor that they are vegetarian by necessity, not by choice. When they come together, they share nothing but a handful of stewed greens. It is not extravagant, but it tastes good because it is served with love.
Solomon doesn’t mean to elevate poverty above wealth. He merely reminds us that money doesn’t necessarily bring happiness. It certainly doesn’t guarantee a happy family or a harmonious Thanksgiving dinner.
The third one isn’t a spoken line. It’s the inscription in a book left for George by the angel as the movie comes to its climax:
“Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends.”
So if we know these things, why does Solomon have to remind us? Because we need reminding, that’s why. Because we all live under the spell of the big world with its flashing lights, alluring games, beautiful people, and all the promises of the “good life” on the other side of the street.
In recent days we’ve been asked to contemplate why powerful men will seemingly throw away all their common sense and after a lifetime of brilliant success have an affair that suddenly is splashed on TV, radio, and across the Internet. There really isn’t one particular answer to that question, except to note that going back as far as King David, powerful men have been tempted by beautiful women who were available to them, and that led to all sorts of foolishness and ultimately to the sort of behavior that those same men and women would have sworn they would never have done. That’s a long sentence written that way to emphasize what is left out, which is that these temptations apply not only to rich and beautiful people but to all the rest of us as well. Some not-so-beautiful people have done amazingly dumb things too. One can only hope that the finger pointing will lead us all to honest self-examination.
You don’t have to be a four-star general to blow up your life, your career, and your family.
This may sound like I’ve changed the subject, but really I haven’t because all of this is Solomon’s subject. Remember the operative word is “better.” It’s better to enjoy a simple meal where love abounds than to feast at the finest restaurant in Paris, drink the finest wines, and be surrounded by people you can’t stand. As the man on the midway says, “You pays your money and you takes your chances.” Thousands of people will read Solomon, nod in agreement, and then go out and blow up their own family by a round of foolish choices.
The point is, we know these things are true.
Lately I’ve been reading (and listening) to the psalms in my quiet time. When I came to Psalm 78 (which recounts the early history of Israel) I was struck by the emphasis on how Israel kept messing up and how God judged them and then forgave them, and then they would do it all over again.
You can read it for yourself. I’m not exaggerating at all. God ends up being the real hero of the story.
“How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
and grieved him in the wasteland!
Again and again they put God to the test;
they vexed the Holy One of Israel” (vv. 40-41)
The people who knew what God had said either forgot or didn’t care or thought they had a better idea or just decided to do things their own way. It never worked out. Then you come to a wonderful verse like this:
“But he brought his people out like a flock;
he led them like sheep through the wilderness” (v. 52).
That’s us. We’re God’s sheep. Every time you turn around, we’re going our own way (see Isaiah 53:6). Left to ourselves, we’ll get lost, or we’ll wander back to Egypt, or we’ll start fighting each other, or we’ll end up as supper for the wolves. We’re unruly and we don’t like to be led and sometimes we’re just plain dumb.
But God leads his sheep all the way through the wilderness. By his grace, eventually we make it to safety and rest and shelter.
There is a “better” way to live, but it depends on us believing that our Shepherd knows what he is doing even when we think we have a better idea. If we have faith and if we have love, then we have what we need at this very moment. I love how Matthew Henry puts it:
Matthew Henry and Solomon agree. Some things are better than other things. If you have a lot or if you have a little, as long as you have God, you have what you need. Better to have God than to live without him in the world.
I leave you with the song made famous by George Beverly Shea. It seems to perfectly capture the deeper meaning of our text.
I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold;
I’d rather be His than have riches untold;
I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands;
I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hand
Than to be the king of a vast domain
And be held in sin’s dread sway;
I’d rather have Jesus than anything
This world affords today.
Perhaps we should all say those words out loud and let them be our application of this truth.
I’d rather have Jesus.
How about you?
Yesterday Marlene and I traveled to Oxford, Mississippi to spend time with my brother Andy, his wife Betty, and their daughter Megan. My brother Alan and his wife Donna brought a fried turkey. Marlene had prepared several dishes for the grand celebration. We spent time eating, laughing, telling stories, eating some more, and some of us watched football.
When we got home in the evening, Josh and Leah did a video chat with us using FaceTime. As soon as we started, our two-year-old grandson Knox climbed up on the couch with a toy fire truck in one hand and a stuffed monkey in the other. When we asked him if he liked Thanksgiving, he thought for a second and then said, “Yes.” So we asked what he had to eat. Another pause, then “Bananas.” Anything else? I heard Leah whisper, “Muffins,” which Knox repeated. Anything else? Another pause, and then something that sounded like “chicken pot pie.”
So there you have Thanksgiving through the eyes of a two-year-old. Bananas, muffins, and something that sounded like chicken pot pie.
When I checked in on Facebook, I saw pictures of family gatherings from all across the country. There were good wishes, expressions of thanksgiving to God, and pictures of tables laden with food.
I saw this on one of those humorous ecards that pop up on Facebook from time to time:
| Thanksgiving is all about getting your entire
dysfunctional family under one roof and hoping the police
don’t get called! |
We chuckle because it is all too true. Adrian Rogers highlighted this problem this way:
| “We
buy things we do not need, with money we do not have, to
impress people we do not like.” |
You might call this the “other side” of Thanksgiving. Not every family gathering is a happy time. As I thought about that, I pondered the words of Proverbs 15:15,
“All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast."
I love that last phrase. “The cheerful heart has a continual feast." People with a cheerful heart have Thanksgiving 365 days a year. What is the secret? In Proverbs 15:16-17 Solomon reveals two qualities that produce the cheerful heart that enjoys a continual feast. These attitudes of the heart are within the reach of all of us because they do not depend on income, position, reputation, education, the size of our bank account, or any sort of worldly attainment.
The least among us may have a “continual feast” wherever we go if we take these two verses to heart.
I. Fill Your Heart With Faith.
“Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil” (v. 16)Check out the first word: “Better.”
Some things are better than others. Solomon (who was the richest man in the world) does not mean to exalt poverty as if it is to be preferred to wealth. Most poor people would like to be wealthy if given the chance, and many of them work long hours to try and get ahead.
So this is not a proverb in praise of living on the edge of financial disaster.
But from the beginning of time, there have always been more poor than rich. It’s not as if the world’s resources are evenly distributed. And no matter how the politicians may try to redistribute the wealth, there will always be more poor people. This is less a statement about the way things ought to be than a statement about the way things are. No doubt this is what Jesus meant when he said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11). Those words, which can seem callous, must be interpreted in the same light as our proverb. Jesus explains himself in the last part of that verse when he says, “But you will not always have me."
Some things matter more than other things.
If Jesus is among you, spend time with him while you can.
Then go and feed the poor.
Feed your spirit and then feed the hungry.
The words of Solomon remind us that wealth is no panacea. Yes, it is true that money is the answer for everything (Ecclesiastes 10:19). Better to have some money than none at all. Yes, the rich have large houses, nice furnishings, excellent medical insurance, and protection against many troubles.
But death comes to the rich just as it does to the poor.
The rich get cancer and die.
The rich divorce.
The rich have problems with their children.
Wealth provides only a limited protection in this world. Wealth cannot compensate for the breakup of a marriage, for children in jail, or sudden death. I read about a wealthy man whose son died in a plane crash. Speaking of it later, he said, “Once you lose your son, you find out that there is no such thing as serious money. Life and death are serious, money is not.”
If we have to choose between wealth and the fear of the Lord, let us choose the latter. In point of fact, most of us don’t get the choice. The vast majority of the world will never be wealthy. But we can all fear the Lord.
Wealth is a Relative Term
There is another way to look at it. Wealth by definition is a relative term. As I write these words, I’m sitting in my office in my home. My wife and I live in a three-bedroom house with a large front yard and a fenced-in backyard so Dudley, our beloved basset hound, won’t run away. We have one car that is parked at the moment in our attached garage. I can hear music playing in the living room as Marlene prepares a meal in the kitchen. We have one TV, two laptop computers, two iPhones, one iPad, and one Nook ereader. Since we plan to move soon, most of our belongings are packed in the garage. Two years ago I gave away 40 boxes of books to a local pastor. Now I’m down to three or four boxes of books. We have a king-size bed, some furniture, and our clothes plus some personal items. When the time comes to move, we won’t need a huge truck. We moved here in a 26-foot rental truck back in 2005. I doubt we would need one that large now.After decades of accumulating things, we’ve been in a de-accumulation mode for a few years. I think most people go through something like that. You work and save and buy and invest and build and decorate and then you store the excess. But as life rolls on and the kids grow up and move away, you find that some of the things you couldn’t do without don’t seem to matter very much. While packing for our eventual move to Dallas, I find myself asking, “What do we have that we can do without?” I figure that if I haven’t touched a book in 20 years, I probably won’t touch it in the next 20 either so why take it with us?
I thought about that, and then my mind went to the trip Josh and I took to India in January. While we were in Mumbai, we passed by slums that defy all human imagination. There millions of men and women and boys and girls live in circumstances of such grinding poverty that it almost numbs the mind. My good friend Benny Mathews showed us places where people live in cardboard boxes under bridges. Not a few, but thousands and then millions, side by side. He said that ten men may share the same tiny space, sleeping in shifts while the others go to work.
The men and women who live like that hardly worry about what to take with them when they move. They own the clothes on their back and not much else. Compared to them, I am the wealthy man of verse 16.
It is “better” to live with a roof over your head and with money in the bank and with food on the table, but it is “better” yet to live with the fear of the Lord in your heart. One need not feel sorry for having more than someone else, but what a fool I am if I think that I somehow deserve what I have or that I am somehow “better” than someone who has less than I do.
What do I have that I did not receive?
It is all a gift from God.
That includes every meal, every drink of clean water, every bit of electricity that powers my computers, every book I read, every shirt I wear, and every bowl of soup put before me.
Solomon does not ask those who have more to feel guilty about what they have. After all, even in the slums some have more and some have less. Look around. Someone will always be ahead of you, someone will be behind you, and others will be right where you are.
But not everything is equal. Better to live in poverty and know the Lord than to be the richest man in the world and think you did it yourself. The rich man eventually discovers that his riches take wings and fly away. If he doesn’t discover it in this life, he discovers it when he dies because all that he worked so hard for, he leaves behind.
In that respect, we all come in and go out the same way. The lesson is clear. Most of us will never be truly rich in this world’s goods, but we can all be rich in faith and love and rich in the knowledge of our God.
J. I. Packer tells of an acquaintance whose career derailed because of his evangelical convictions. When asked if he harbored any ill feelings, he replied quite simply: “I’ve known God and they haven’t.” Packer goes on to note that most of us would not feel comfortable speaking in such straightforward terms. But the terms are entirely biblical. Knowing God does make a difference and is the defining characteristic of those who follow Jesus Christ. To know God deeply and intimately more than makes up for the things we lose because of our faith.
Writing 250 years ago, English pastor John Gill summarizes the blessings of the man who fears the Lord:
| For such a
man, though he has but little, which is the common portion
of good men, yet he does not lack; be has enough, and is
content; what he has he has with a blessing, and he
enjoys it, and God in it, and has communion with him;
and has also other bread to eat, the world knows nothing of:
and particularly having the fear of God, the eye of God is
upon him with pleasure; his heart is towards him, and
sympathizes with him in all his troubles; his hand
communicates unto him both temporal and spiritual meat,
which is given to them that fear the Lord; his angels encamp
about him, his power protects him; his secrets are with him,
and inconceivable and inexpressible goodness is laid up for
him. |
Let this one sentence sink in: “What he has he has with a blessing, and he enjoys it, and God in it, and has communion with him.” Can the world offer anything better than that?
II. Fill Your Home With Love.
“Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred” (v. 17).Here are a few other translations of this verse:
| “Better a meal of greens with love
than a plump calf with hate” (CEB). |
The Contemporary English Version offers us this beautiful reading:
| “A simple meal with love is better
than a feast where there is
hatred.” |
The ERV simplifies the meaning down to the bare essentials:
| “It is better to eat a little where
there is love than to eat a lot where there is
hate.” |
Finally we have this from Eugene Peterson (The Message):
| “Better a bread crust shared in
love than a slab of
prime rib served in hate.” |
All the versions come out at the same place. The most bountiful feast in the world may be ruined if the people at the table hate each other. Discord at the dinner table destroys a good meal, no matter how sumptuous the fare, whether it be prime rib or T-bone steaks or turkey and dressing with all the trimmings. Your cooking may equal what they offer on the Food Channel, but if your loved ones do not really love each other, what good is all that effort and all that time and all that money?
You might as well skip the meal altogether.
The word “vegetables” refers to the simple fare that a poor family might share. It might be spinach or collard greens or cabbage. This family is so poor that they are vegetarian by necessity, not by choice. When they come together, they share nothing but a handful of stewed greens. It is not extravagant, but it tastes good because it is served with love.
Solomon doesn’t mean to elevate poverty above wealth. He merely reminds us that money doesn’t necessarily bring happiness. It certainly doesn’t guarantee a happy family or a harmonious Thanksgiving dinner.
It’s a Wonderful Life
The point is, we know these things. We don’t need Solomon to tell us because deep down we know that faith and love matter far more than money or fame. That’s one reason why It’s a Wonderful Life remains one of the most beloved Christmas movies of all time. When George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve, it takes the help of an angel named Clarence to help him see the difference his life has made. As it happens, three of the best lines in the movie come from the angel:| “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s
life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around
he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” “You see George, you’ve really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to just throw it away?” |
The third one isn’t a spoken line. It’s the inscription in a book left for George by the angel as the movie comes to its climax:
“Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends.”
So if we know these things, why does Solomon have to remind us? Because we need reminding, that’s why. Because we all live under the spell of the big world with its flashing lights, alluring games, beautiful people, and all the promises of the “good life” on the other side of the street.
In recent days we’ve been asked to contemplate why powerful men will seemingly throw away all their common sense and after a lifetime of brilliant success have an affair that suddenly is splashed on TV, radio, and across the Internet. There really isn’t one particular answer to that question, except to note that going back as far as King David, powerful men have been tempted by beautiful women who were available to them, and that led to all sorts of foolishness and ultimately to the sort of behavior that those same men and women would have sworn they would never have done. That’s a long sentence written that way to emphasize what is left out, which is that these temptations apply not only to rich and beautiful people but to all the rest of us as well. Some not-so-beautiful people have done amazingly dumb things too. One can only hope that the finger pointing will lead us all to honest self-examination.
You don’t have to be a four-star general to blow up your life, your career, and your family.
This may sound like I’ve changed the subject, but really I haven’t because all of this is Solomon’s subject. Remember the operative word is “better.” It’s better to enjoy a simple meal where love abounds than to feast at the finest restaurant in Paris, drink the finest wines, and be surrounded by people you can’t stand. As the man on the midway says, “You pays your money and you takes your chances.” Thousands of people will read Solomon, nod in agreement, and then go out and blow up their own family by a round of foolish choices.
The point is, we know these things are true.
Thanksgiving is a Choice
But you don’t have to live this way. Choose today whom you will serve, the Bible says. “See, I have set before you today life and death. Choose life, that you may live.” That’s wonderful advice, first given by Moses to the children of Israel, but even after all that wandering in the desert, and after a whole generation died, they still made the same mistakes over and over again.Lately I’ve been reading (and listening) to the psalms in my quiet time. When I came to Psalm 78 (which recounts the early history of Israel) I was struck by the emphasis on how Israel kept messing up and how God judged them and then forgave them, and then they would do it all over again.
You can read it for yourself. I’m not exaggerating at all. God ends up being the real hero of the story.
“How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness
and grieved him in the wasteland!
Again and again they put God to the test;
they vexed the Holy One of Israel” (vv. 40-41)
The people who knew what God had said either forgot or didn’t care or thought they had a better idea or just decided to do things their own way. It never worked out. Then you come to a wonderful verse like this:
“But he brought his people out like a flock;
he led them like sheep through the wilderness” (v. 52).
That’s us. We’re God’s sheep. Every time you turn around, we’re going our own way (see Isaiah 53:6). Left to ourselves, we’ll get lost, or we’ll wander back to Egypt, or we’ll start fighting each other, or we’ll end up as supper for the wolves. We’re unruly and we don’t like to be led and sometimes we’re just plain dumb.
But God leads his sheep all the way through the wilderness. By his grace, eventually we make it to safety and rest and shelter.
There is a “better” way to live, but it depends on us believing that our Shepherd knows what he is doing even when we think we have a better idea. If we have faith and if we have love, then we have what we need at this very moment. I love how Matthew Henry puts it:
| “It
is therefore far better, and more desirable, to have but a
little of the world and to have it with a good conscience,
to keep up communion with God, and enjoy him in it, and live
by faith, than to have the greatest plenty and live without
God in the world." |
Matthew Henry and Solomon agree. Some things are better than other things. If you have a lot or if you have a little, as long as you have God, you have what you need. Better to have God than to live without him in the world.
I leave you with the song made famous by George Beverly Shea. It seems to perfectly capture the deeper meaning of our text.
I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold;
I’d rather be His than have riches untold;
I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands;
I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hand
Than to be the king of a vast domain
And be held in sin’s dread sway;
I’d rather have Jesus than anything
This world affords today.
Perhaps we should all say those words out loud and let them be our application of this truth.
I’d rather have Jesus.
How about you?
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