Message; Money and Poverty or; God, Hope & Freedom
Today, I am excited to share with you the truth about our free choice in life. How God who has everything we have done, doing, and will ever do already planned out acknowledged, and ordained, yet God can still separate Himself from Himself and give us choice, and still majestically achieve His will, His plan, and His glory in the end.
It’s amazing to think about how the Lord affords our ability to make choices. Each and every day we are faced with choices that have been placed in our line of sight for a host of decision opportunities. Some choices edify, while others impoverish our very being. All the while providing lessons learned for improvement if we are open to His Spirit. And let’s face it, some days seem to be full of nothing but hard options for our decision making.
It can be so hard to make sense of my actions or even my personal goals for the future when it’s only about me and my worldly ideas. Yes, some days can seem like we are living, or at least I am living the words of the teacher in Ecclesiastes where Solomon laments the choices made by humanity. Reading Ecclesiastes 1:1-2, 12-14
1 The words of the Teacher,son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
This is the human condition, when we decide to go it alone in life, putting ourselves before God and other people. That indeed is the heavy burden we carry when all our efforts are directed to feed the whirlwind of the flesh, and selfishness. When my end goal is not geared for praising, glorifying, or magnifying God’s Holy and precious name, I am only pursuing the fleeting pleasure of abys and folly.
And yet, our choices do not have to be made in a vacuum, without either help from or consideration of our Lord. We have access to the good life, a real life when we choose the Lord for our basis of living. In fact, our Lord instructs us on this very topic in the Sermon on the Mount. Reading now from Matthew 6:23-25;
23 But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
Jesus is instructing us, God is teaching us, your Lord is equipping us with solid fact… We can not endure, grow, and flourish as we should in our Lord, with one foot in the existence of God’s Spirit walking with and in Him, and one foot immersed in the world, chasing every inclination my selfish, fearful, lustful, and petty self was born into. If I try and play both sides of reality, I am feeding the war that resides within me. Our Lord is essentially telling us, make a decision!
Now that humanity has been instructed by the Lord through His earthly ministry to choose and follow the road that leads to God, the Apostle Paul builds on that foundation of solid rock. Paul not only started seed churches across the eastern Mediterranean, he wrote letters of encouragement and instruction for the growth of Christians everywhere. As for how to go about choosing God over idolatry (which is anything but God), we have today’s Call to Worship reading from Colossians 3:1-11;
3 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
*Interrupting Paul to say; that now since the Lord has raised us up from ourselves (the dinge where we used to be in life), we are now helped by God to focus on what is healthy instead of all of that junk of the world. Now our goals and hopes are invisible to a world only consumed with chasing the desires of the moment which are anything but healthy and unworthy of second thought. Paul continues his instruction on how to choose God over our selfishness with verse 5;
5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
Paul first teaches us to walk away from our: “earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” Remembering anything I place before God, is idolatry, and idolatry is death through ruin in the chasm of wrong choices. No… We choose God, hope, and freedom instead of money and poverty, where money means mammon, the stuff of mankind instead of God’s way. Hence, today’s message title and your choice of; Money and Poverty or; God, Hope and Freedom.
As we continue to grow in our Lord’s ways, Paul is instructing us to continue the journey by saying;
“8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices…”
All choices we make when we choose to walk in God, Hope, and Freedom from all of that stuff that addicts, entraps, and erodes our ability to think and choose healthy options in life, are there for our making. Hopefully we are making those choices with God, using His Holy Spirit for discernment and council.
All of us, all peoples of the earth have this invitation to join God’s family. Paul concludes our Call to Worship at verse 10, by sharing with us that everyone can experience a new birth by belonging;
10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
And Paul is not teaching anything radical, or new to the human condition. These are the same choices people have been making from the very beginning of our creation by Him. Do I want freedom from all that stuff that Paul described to the church in Colasse; “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed” along with; “anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language”… which are all idolatry and addictive mammon created junk? Or do I choose God, Hope & Freedom? Because mammon (money) means poverty and death from the one who provides life. Reminding me of what the psalmist instructs in Psalm 49:1-12;
1 Hear this, all you peoples;
listen, all who live in this world,
2 both low and high,
rich and poor alike:
3 My mouth will speak words of wisdom;
the meditation of my heart will give you understanding.
4 I will turn my ear to a proverb;
with the harp I will expound my riddle:
5 Why should I fear when evil days come,
when wicked deceivers surround me—
6 those who trust in their wealth
and boast of their great riches?
7 No one can redeem the life of another
or give to God a ransom for them—
8 the ransom for a life is costly,
no payment is ever enough—
9 so that they should live on forever
and not see decay.
10 For all can see that the wise die,
that the foolish and the senseless also perish,
leaving their wealth to others.
11 Their tombs will remain their houses forever,
their dwellings for endless generations,
though they had named lands after themselves.
12 People, despite their wealth, do not endure;
they are like the beasts that perish.
For us to be in the same conversation, I guess before I go further, I need to define what is rich and what is poor for me. Ideally, when we speak of rich and poor it would be nice to be talking about the following;
- Faithfully Rich; having a deep and real relationship in and with God, and relationships with other people that we will take into eternity.
- Trusting that God has the worldly stuff figured out, and I am learning to follow His lead.
- Side issues of health, emotional stability, and personal growth are also essential to being rich.
- Poverty of Faith; happens to wealthy and poor alike and is a mindset absent of God’s grace, because the holder wasn’t invested in God’s Spirit.
- Trusting in ourselves before God, and only invested in what the world thinks is important
Since we are all fallen people in a fallen world, we will all die to this reality. Simple fact. But those who have been reborn spiritually (Born Again) are now ready for an eternity that reflects our relationship in and with our Lord. Moving beyond the wisdom of this world towards a clarity of thought that will elevate and not disparage, refresh, not diminish, and build instead waging havoc in our society, relationships, and our inner souls.
Life my friends, is not about getting more and more stuff. It’s about; “being just, loving mercy and walking humbly with God.” (Micah 6:8 in so many words) Here is our Lord confirming today’s message, because it’s God’s own message. Reading from today’s Message Reading from Luke 12:13-21;
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
Cutting in to say; when being rich with stuff becomes more important than God, and other people, we have lost our way indeed. Continuing now at verse 16;
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
I can almost hear some people saying, yes but what about my responsibilities to provide for myself and my family? They are still there my friends. But there is a difference in doing your due diligence in life (and we all are held accountable to do so), and being so consumed with the acquisition of money, popularity, stuff, and more junk, that we loose God, other people, and our very selves. Or as Jesus Himself instructs in Mark 8:35-37;
35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
In other words, I think a good life is about balance, being free of the stuff that addicts me, and having clarity of thought. I get those with God. I lose those blessings when I go it alone in the world. When I am in relationship in and with the Lord, I am able to clearly choose between; “Money and Poverty or; God, Hope & Freedom”
My hope for all of you this week and into the beautiful lives that you are building in and with your Lord, that you will become more and more open to serving and following God and not the poverty of mankind.
Amen!