The Christian and his Treasure

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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The Story of John Wesley and the Human Love of Stuff

Following sermon. So there is a story that's told from the life of John Wesley that has often made its rounds. And as the story goes, this is what happened. An industrious farmer was invited to go hear Wesley preach.

And going there, he ended up like many of the hearers that went to hear Wesley preach, sitting in his seat, entranced by this man's powerful, God-ordained oratory, God-empowered oratory. And on this occasion, as Wesley preached, he was preaching on the theme of money.

And so the farmer sitting there in his seat, he listened as Wesley introduced the text. And as he got into his first point, his first point was this. He said to the congregation in front of him, he said, get all that you can.

And as this farmer listened, he really enjoyed this preaching. He nudged his neighbor, in fact, and even said aloud, he said, this is very strange preaching. I have never heard preaching like this. This is very good.

And in this point, Wesley, as he fleshed out the passage, he talked about the value of industry and of activity and of purposeful living, of working diligently and getting all that you can. And then as Wesley went on, he got to his second point.

And as he introduced number two, he said, not only get all that you can, but save all that you can. And he was really beginning to win this farmer's heart. The man rubbed together his rough hands, and he said, surely I have done all of this from my youth to get and to save all that I can.

But then Wesley came to his third and final point, not only get all that you can, not only save all that you can, but then he went on to this and give all that you can. And the farmer, his shoulders dropped, he looked down and he said, oh dear, he has gone and spoiled it all.

Now, when we hear stories like this, we tend to feel, I think, at least two kind of conflicting emotions. On one hand, we feel a measure of disappointment. Here we see a man that was confronted by really constructive, true, sound biblical counsel that would have, had he heeded it, certainly helped in freeing him from the love of money and material things.

It certainly would have made for him, secured for him a happy future in eternity. But alas, he would not have it. And we don't know the end of this story. But all we see is a near perfect depiction of the tight-fisted and miserly nature of the fallen human heart.

What became of this man, we don't know. When we hear stories like this, we certainly feel some of that. And on the other hand, and I heard it here in this room, we all kind of chuckle, if not inside, outside.

Because this is exactly what we would find a man or expect a man to do in this very situation. And the reason why this is, is because, and the reason why there's some humor in it, is because whether we like it or not, we can all relate to it.

That it is disappointing on one hand, and yet it is fully relatable. When it comes to our shared human experience, I think that we're all sufferers of the same fallen condition. And frankly speaking, this condition affects us whether we are believers or not.

That we certainly like to get all that we can. If we're especially self-disciplined, we will aim to save all that we can. I mean, that's something that's drilled into us from our childhood. But there is something inside each and every one of us, in every one of you, that recoils to some degree when you are called to give all that you can.

Not just to give of your surplus, but to get it, to save it, and to give it all. And then the reality is that what ends up happening is because of our sin-tainted dispositions. We don't really like the idea of taking that which we feel at least belongs to us, that which we can use for our own comfort and enjoyment, and then simply giving it away freely without any strings attached.

Even when it is attached scripturally to God's promises of eternal blessings for our stewardship and generosity of temporal things. The reality is, I think, that whether you're a Christian or not, we all have a stuff problem.

Our brothers spoke on this last week to some degree. Our pursuit of stuff. And I think that we can all agree that we know that the stuff that we own is just stuff. If the Lord should tarry in 50 years, or 70 years, or who knows, by reason of strength, 100 years.

At some point, all of your stuff is going to end up likely in a landfill on the other side of the Henday. Because it's just stuff. And yet, we are all attached to some degree or another to our stuff. And our unwillingness, when we consider within us this unwillingness to give and to part with our material possessions and our stuff.

What it actually reveals in us, in each one of us, is a tragic misunderstanding. Not only a misunderstanding about money, or wealth, or material things, but a tragic misunderstanding about the nature of our God and the nature of eternity.

And as we arrive today at these final five verses in 1 Timothy, what we learn in this passage, it probably won't come as any surprise to you, is that we are all, because of our sinful disposition, because of who we are, where we live, what we accumulate, we are all inclined to holding unbiblical and unhelpful views about wealth, about money, about material possessions, about stuff.

We're all inclined to a variety of sinful propensities in this regard. But what this text also shows us, is that the very God who graciously and effectually called us to himself out of the world, that this very God also calls us out of this foolish and unbiblical way of thinking, and he offers us a truly excellent way forward.

But the key to our obedience in this respect is not sheer willpower. It's not dogged persistence to do better. But rather, it is possessing a biblical understanding of our God and of the future that he has prepared for his people.

This afternoon, what I want to do, brothers and sisters, is to take us, and we're going to seek today to have a reformation. A reformation of mind as it relates to what we do with the things, not the things that we own, but the things that we steward.

The things that the Lord has given us. The money, and the wealth, the time, the resources, everything that we have. Because we hear stories like that farmer, and we're disturbed by it, and we laugh a little bit at it.

But the reality is, we're not all that unlike that farmer, that the Lord tells us to get, and to save, and to give. And we excel at the first. Some of us excel at the second, and very few of us excel at the third.

And so I want to put this before us today, how it is that the Christian deals with his treasure. And we'll flesh this out in full detail as we go. Now, as we are in our text today, I want to look at three verses.

We read five verses 19, 20, and 21. We, sorry, 20 and 21. We have looked at in great detail all through the letter. I will touch on it briefly, but we're going to look at verses 17, 18, and 19. And as we do, I want to put three truths before us.

That there is a godless propensity of the rich that we must look for. The godless propensities of the rich. We will look at the godly alternative, and then we'll look at the glorious result. So the first point that we'll consider is this, the godless propensities of the rich.

And we see this in verse 17. We'll read it again. At least verse 17a, Paul writes, as for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God.

As Paul writes these final words of instruction to Timothy, he begins by acknowledging the faulty inclinations of those who possess wealth. And this is something that every single one of us must grapple with.

Because we are all afflicted by indwelling and remaining sin. And because, as I alluded to a moment ago, we live where we live. And we do possess, relatively speaking, material wealth. We must recognize that we are all inclined to an unbiblical view of money.

That if left unchecked will always, always, always lead us away from God rather than to God. We will always drift apart if left unchecked. And as we begin, it's helpful for us to understand, looking here at Paul and Timothy's context, to understand the socioeconomic climate of Ephesus at the time that this letter was written.

As we've already heard in the course of our study, Ephesus was a major center in the Roman world. It was the de facto capital of the Roman province of Asia, with the governor living there in Ephesus. Ephesus was a major military center that served as the Roman proconsul's headquarters in the region.

It was a religious hub for hundreds of thousands of worshippers of the Greek goddess Artemis, or as she became known to the Romans, Diana. And if that wasn't enough, to add to all of this, Ephesus was an incredibly wealthy city.

It was located at a critical trade route that bridged the land and the sea. In fact, Ephesus was at that time the most accessible city in the province in Asia, with well-maintained Roman roads and several ports that led to the Aegean Sea in the northern Mediterranean.

And at the same time, it was a center of thriving commerce. One ancient geographer, a man named Strabo, called it the market of Asia. And so if you were to visit Ephesus in the first century, you would see for yourself that this opulence was proudly expressed in all of its infrastructure, in everything that the city had become.

For instance, going through the city, you would find a massive amphitheater that was able to hold up to 25 ,000 people. That was 10 percent of the city's population. Now to put that into perspective, I don't know about you, but one of the radio stations I listen to from time to time, they're always going on about how we have the best arena.

We're really proud of our arena. Well, here Ephesus had its own arena, an amphitheater that seated more people than our arena, and all of that before the invention of the crane or the truck or any kind of modern machinery.

There were in Ephesus, if you were to go along and look up into the hills, these buildings that were known as the hanging houses, as they were called, and they would be hung over the edges of impressive terraces carved into the hills.

And as you would look at them, there would be these vibrant, colorful mosaics painted on all of the houses, kind of like the modern day river bend or something like that, right? Where you go and you look at the houses and go, these are incredible.

And then if you were to continue, there was a famous road that joined the Celsus library with the great theater, a central road in the city that was paved not with concrete, not with bricks, not with stones like other Roman cities, but paved with polished marble that sometimes measured meters long, pounded into the ground, which made a slippery and perfectly pristine roadway.

And then we've heard much about the famous temple to Artemis with its 60-foot high pillars. I believe there were 116 of them, or it'd take two or three of us holding hands to go around the circumference of the pillars, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

And it was constructed not only with the wealth of the people in the city, but all of the oriental kings in the surrounding regions. And it served almost as what we might call the Bank of Canada or the United States Treasury or some kind of national bank where everyone would come, they would bring their material wealth and deposit it at the temple where it would be held safe or held in safekeeping.

And so in short, Ephesus was a tremendously wealthy city, not unlike many major Western cities in the world today. And I would even suggest not even all that dissimilar to the city of Edmonton. The makeup of the church in Ephesus was probably similar to our church in many ways, that in some cases there were those who were well-to-do and they had resources at their disposal, there were those who had to get by with less, and yet they all lived in a city that was characterized by relative affluence and opportunity.

They lived in a place that was inclined to wealth, that was inclined to the accumulation of riches. And as Paul comes then to us with these final instructions, he comes with an interesting tone. He doesn't come and we need to pay attention to this because there are some in the church today who would contest this, but I want you to see with me.

He doesn't come with an outright condemnation of wealth, does he? He spoke, as we see in 1 Timothy 6 .10, about how not money is the root of all evil, but the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

So he doesn't come with an outright condemnation of wealth. He doesn't deliver an eat the rich kind of communist manifesto. But in the words of one observer, he comes with a warning that is, this is in quotes, notable for its positive and measured tone.

But Paul understood that wealth could be, in some cases, a gift from the Lord. And yet it wasn't the wealth that was bad, it was the love of this wealth. And as he comes to warn us then about the dangers that accompany wealth, he comes both to warn and to exhort us to a better form of stewardship than we might otherwise be inclined to.

And as he unpacks this, he shows us two different dangers, two ever present threats that are on the horizon. And what are these? We see them in verse 17, that for the rich in this present age charge them not to be one, haughty, or two, to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches.

Now, when it comes to haughtiness, here in verse 17, we're charged not to be haughty as a result of our wealth. But what does that mean? What does it mean to be haughty? It means to be proud. It means to be arrogant.

It means to have an inflated view of oneself. And this is a very real threat. It is a very real threat for those who grow accustomed to having money. John MacArthur commenting on this, he says, riches and pride often go together and the wealthier a person is, the more tempted he is to be proud.

Another brother, John Stott, he comments as well, he says, wealth often gives birth to vanity. It tends to make people feel self-important and so contemptuous of others. And it's remarkable how really true this principle is.

This is why when we meet someone, I want you to think about this, when we meet someone who is wealthy and simultaneously humble, we're almost always pleasantly surprised, right? When we see a man who is especially wealthy in the world, and he doesn't just give for the sake of tax purposes, but he is an approachable man who people can interact with, and he is legitimately generous as far as we can perceive, that it is a surprise to us.

It is a shock to us. It is almost always impossible for the two, for wealth and humility to exist together. They are like oil and water. And we find this, in fact, a picture of this all throughout the Bible.

For those of you who are doing our Bible in a year reading plan, we just got back into Proverbs. I'm a couple days ahead, so I don't know what day you would have read it, but Proverbs 18 is a perfect example where we find a number of texts or little tidbits that speak to this.

And in Proverbs 18 .23, we read this, the poor use entreaties, but the rich answer roughly. And why is it? Well, because the poor know their humble estate. They know that they have to ask, and they have to ask nicely for everything.

And the rich, they don't feel that they need anything. And so because I don't need anything from you, I don't need to give you any respect. I am more than you. I am better than you. I am above you. My station is higher than yours.

Or in Proverbs 28, we read a rich man is wise in his own eyes. This is something we need to understand, that wealth, the love of wealth, the infatuation with wealth, it begins to distort our perception of ourselves so that we become bigger in our eyes than we actually are.

And what it does is then it leads to the second vice that Paul identifies in verse 17, that is a misplaced hope. The Proverbs, interestingly enough, speak this as well. Another from Proverbs 18 and verse 10, where we read, the name of the Lord is a strong tower.

The righteous man runs into it and is safe. But a rich man's wealth is his strong city and like a high wall in his imagination, that he begins to deceive himself into thinking that, well, that man has God, I have my wealth, but it is nothing other than a facade.

Now, the interesting thing about our wealth is that it not only obscures our perception of ourselves, making us proud and arrogant, but it obscures our perception of our supreme need for God. You see, wealth has a way of unhitching people from reality and insulating them from recognizing their real utter and continual dependence upon their maker.

And if we want to look for an example, we don't need to look any further than perhaps somewhere on the battlefield. I'm mindful of a saying, some of you have served in the military, you've probably heard this before, that there are no atheists in foxholes.

That in the desperation of war, men have a tendency to look beyond themselves to God because they know just how helpless they actually are. That in that moment, as they're in that foxhole and they hear the bombs going off around them, they realize, I am not God, I am not sufficient, I need something stronger than myself.

But isn't it interesting that atheism seems to have found a habitable climate in our comfortable, affluent Western world? And why is this? It is because our culture, with its belly filled and its checkbooks balanced, has slid into a self-deluded state and now believes that we're able to make it on our own.

You know, you can go to poor and impoverished countries, they might not have anything, but I guarantee you, they will have some form of deity. Because sometimes that's all they have. It might not be the right God, but they have something.

And I think that we in the West, we need to see this, have fallen into the same condemnable state that we read about in passages like Hosea 13 and verse 6. In Hosea 13, 6, we find something interesting.

God charges the nation with this. He says, but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up. Therefore, they forgot me. So what we find then is that we are living in the very world that Paul is warning about.

We're living in the very place that Paul is warning against, that it's possible to have wealth and in your wealth to become proud and arrogant and boastful and to misplace your hope. And our culture has most certainly misplaced its hope to the point that we no longer trust in God, but we trust in ourselves.

We trust in our jobs and our paychecks, our insurance, our savings, our retirement, our investments, whatever it might be. Sure, we love to admire those men who lived by faith in centuries past, but we are always maneuvering, always pivoting, seeking to protect our assets and to protect ourselves by what?

It's always by our material wealth. And that's why our culture says, as long as you have health and wealth, you'll have happiness, right? And I want to ask you, brothers and sisters, how much have you been discipled by our culture in this respect?

That when you have more money in the bank account, you feel more secure. And when you have less money in the bank account, you feel less secure. When your job is at a place where things are looking precarious and you wonder to yourself, am I going to have a job next week?

And rather than being rock solid and trusting in our rock solid God, maybe is a better way to put it, having trust in our rock solid God, you begin to waver and fear and become anxious. What has happened, I think, that many of us and many of us in the church is that little by little, our hope has been displaced from God to other lesser mechanisms.

And what this does, and you need to recognize the cost of this, is that it gives birth not only to pride and delusional thoughts of self-sufficiency, but ultimately self-destructive behavior. And we see this, it's replete in scripture.

I was thinking about King Nebuchadnezzar earlier today. We read about him in Daniel chapter four. In Daniel four, he was walking along his rooftop palace. Maybe he was looking at one of his wonders of the ancient world, the hanging gardens of Babylon.

But as he was there, considering his power, his success, his military might, and his riches, Daniel 430 recounts what he said. He said, is this not great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?

And what did God do to him? What did God do to Nebuchadnezzar? But he drove him into the wild so that he ended up eating grass like an ox, and we're told that his hair was long like eagle feathers, and his fingers like a bird's talons.

Just a disgusting image of a man, utterly humiliated. Why? Because he had set his hope on riches, and it had made him mad. We find other examples of it in second Chronicles 26, where King Uzziah of Judah, we're told of him, it says, but when he was strong, he grew proud.

Then what? When he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction. We see it. Our brother has been preaching through the book of Esther. We see it in Haman. He hangs these gallows. Oh, he knows that he's going to get Mordecai on those gallows, and alas, who ends up on the gallows but Haman?

We see it in Herod Agrippa in Acts 12, when the people applauded him and said, the voice, not the voice of a God, sorry, not the voice of a man, but it's the voice of a God, and he received glory from the people, and what happened?

He died. He was eaten from the inside out. Now we look at these things, and we say, but these are all unbelievers. This could never possibly happen to us. But then I want to take you to a place like Romans, or sorry, Revelation chapter 3.

What did the church in Laodicea say? It's interesting. A church that's just a hundred miles from Ephesus. They were even more wealthy than the Ephesians. The Lord Jesus says of them, for you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

So that in their wealth, even these believers had grown lukewarm, and worthy of being spat out of the mouth of Christ. All this to say, brothers and sisters, make no mistake about it, that the love of money and dependence upon human wealth is the enemy of the kind of faith that pleases God.

And we're living in a world that is constantly discipling us to think like itself. That is constantly discipling us to become more and more enamored, to place our hope, and trust, and confidence in these material things, rather than in God.

Trusting God Rather Than Riches

But Paul, we've seen this, haven't we, in recent weeks. We see it all the time. He doesn't just address issues from the negative perspective, but he also provides us a positive. Not just a prohibition, but a command.

And we see this in the second part of verse 17b. So we have the godless, then we have our, what's the word I'm looking for here? We've got our godless predispositions, or propensities, but then there is also the godly alternative.

And we read this in verse 17b. He says, nor set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. And he goes on in verse 18. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, and ready to share.

Now what Paul does here is he offers us a necessary alternative. If I came before you today, it would be spiritual malpractice. If I said, don't trust in money, don't trust in money. Just repeat it. Don't trust in money.

If I said, don't trust, don't trust, don't trust. And I did not give you a positive directive. If I did not give you something not only to put off, but then to put on. Something to put away, and then something to pursue.

We must direct our hope and our trust, not only away from money, but toward a worthy object. That is the only thing that will cure us from our predisposition, our inclination to well. And Paul sets out this only object of our hope when he says this, set your hope on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

Isn't it interesting the language there? He's talking about the danger of riches. And then he says, but trust in God who richly provides everything that you need for your enjoyment. Now watch this. The reality is that every hope that is set on wealth or material possessions, it will ultimately perish.

Jesus taught in Matthew 619, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. Commenting on the uncertainty of riches, John Gill, he's looking at this and he writes, these uncertain riches are here today and gone tomorrow.

No man that is possessed of them can be sure of them a moment. They make themselves wings and flee away. He that gives them can take them away at pleasure. And then I'm going to skip over something of what he says, but he goes on.

He says, we should always trust in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. Almost every word carries in it an argument or reason why he should be trusted. Because he is God, not a creature, the living God.

He has life in himself essentially and originally. He is the author, the giver, the maintainer of life in others and who always is, ever continues unchangeably the same and giveth all things. Every good gift comes from him.

All the gifts of nature and bounties of providence as he gives, he can take away and therefore he only should be regarded. Now how might our lives look different? Think about this for a moment. How would your life look different if you said to yourself, with God's help, by God's grace, I will put away trust in my paycheck, in my job, in my bank account, in my investments, whatever it might be.

I'm not talking about being an unwise steward, but I will not put my trust in these things, but I will put my trust in God alone. How differently might your life look if you believe what Hudson Taylor said, that God's will, done God's way, will never lack God's supply.

What obedience or service, I ask you, do you deny our God? Because you're constantly asking the what if questions. Well, what if I do that, but then but then I lose my job. Well, what if I share the gospel with my co-workers and then they fire me the next day?

Well, what if I go and serve the Lord in this way? How will I be paid? Whatever it might be. And I must say, in this case, at least in recent history, I can speak from experience that we should never, ever, ever let our trust in material things dissuade us from doing those things that God would have us to do.

I remember it was about this time last year, I think it was a month earlier than this, where I woke up, I had been for months considering what we were going to do with this church. As the church was beginning to to grow beyond the capacity for Sam and I to shepherd this church adequately, I would look with great discouragement, and not many of you knew this perhaps, but I would look at the church and think about how poorly, how inadequately shepherded this church was.

That there were people who who needed time and attention, who needed counsel, who needed visitation in the evenings. You needed more sound sermons that were better prepared and not cooked up on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

And I remember looking at the church and thinking, what are we ever going to do? We're at this place where a small church, our church needs a vocational shepherd, and alas, we have no ability to meet the needs of that shepherd.

And then one day, I think it was March of last year, I woke up at five in the morning, and I thought, just what I said from Hudson Taylor, that if this is exactly what the church needs, and that's exactly what the church needed, and we see that the need is there, and that the Lord himself has ordained this in his word.

It's not like, you know, I want to have a Lamborghini, I'm going to trust God for it. It's like God wants his people shepherded. He wants his word preached. He wants capable, faithful leadership in the church.

He even calls those who preach the gospel to make their living by the gospel. If this is what God is commanding us to do, then we should seek to do it and trust that he will provide. And I laid in bed, and I was praying about this very thing, and then, and I'm not a burning in the bosom kind of guy, but I just became overcome with a sense of peace that God will provide.

And I texted our brothers, Sam and Alex, that morning, and I said, I'm ready. We're going to do this. I'm going to leave my job, Lord willing, and we're going to do A, B, C, and D with God's help. And we don't know exactly how it's going to work, but we are going to trust in God, because this is what God says, and this is what we will do.

And I don't think that it was presumption. It was seeking simply to understand that we're almost there. This is what God commands. I trust he can meet our needs. And we came together as a church at that members meeting.

Many of you are there. And I remember our brother Bernie, who's a numbers guy. He said, I just don't see it in the numbers. I don't see how this is going to work. And that's not a lack of faith on his part.

That's just him making that observation. And I said, we have to trust that the Lord will provide. And what have we seen over the last year? I seriously thought that what's going to happen perhaps is that I will leave my job, which was a good paying job with good benefits and a good schedule.

And when you work for the government, they say, the only way you can lose your job is if you kill somebody. And so I'm leaving this job, and I'm going to go into the great unknown. And what have we seen?

And many of you took that step of faith with us. And what have we seen that God always has met our needs? I expected that our bank account might just be depleted and depleted and depleted until eventually the church says, Shane, you gotta go look for that job.

And maybe one day that will happen. But what have we seen? But that it's like the Lord has brought people out of the woodwork to meet the needs that were in front of us. So the bank balance today is much larger than the day when we started this whole journey.

And we've seen the Lord building these things, building his church and providing stability. And some might say, well, what if tomorrow you need to go and find work? I will say, then I know that the Lord will provide because I've seen him provide.

And how many of us have put ourselves in a position not just to do that which is comfortable, but to say, this is what God commands. I will do it, and I will trust that he will provide. And put us in a position where the Lord will provide because he says he will provide.

One of the commentators looking at this passage, he says, the wealthy, that's you and I, therefore need to learn how to live with their eye on God more than their eye on their wealth. Psalm 84 tells us, for the Lord God is a sun and shield.

The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. You might not have everything that you want, but we trust you will always have what you need. And then what Paul does is he takes us then to not only a call of action, but a state of being.

That we're not only to be rich, but we're to be rich in something else. He says, they are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. And what I wanted to undo or do is unpack some of that.

What does it mean to do good? Well, we see an example of it in 1 Timothy chapter 5 and verse 10, if you look there with me. There were those widows who had a reputation for good works. If she has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work.

But Paul doesn't just tell us to do good, but to be rich in good works. For the wealthy to add to their wealth in their actions. And this is something we need to recognize. I think that a lot of us living in modern Western society, I remember one of my mechanics teachers telling me this.

He said, every new invention is created to facilitate human laziness. That the flushing toilet ultimately is to facilitate our desire to not leave the house or the ensuite, to not even leave our bedroom.

Everything that we do is to facilitate our comfort and our luxury in this life. And our affluence drives us in this way. But what Paul is telling us to do is not to seek that which is easy and that which is most comfortable, and that which is along the path of least resistance.

But to do and to be rich in good works. To do good things, hard things even. Not to be like those who are in the, we read God condemning this hard attitude in the book of Amos. In Amos chapter six and verse four, where he says, woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall.