Spiritual Capitalism - [Matt 6:19ff]

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Redeeming love has been my theme. Here's what
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Martin Luther said, whenever the gospel is taught and people seek to live according to it, when the gospel is preached and you say, by the grace of God, I'd like to live it out, two terrible plagues always come along with that.
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One, false teachers corrupt the Bible teaching. False teachers come along and say, it's not by grace alone, it's by faith alone.
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And there's another thing that comes along with it. And Luther said, Sir Greed comes along and obstructs right living.
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The gospel is preached, people faithfully want to live it, and then come along false teachers that want to distort it, and Sir Greed that wants to consume it.
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That's exactly the message that we see from the Bible in Matthew chapter 6.
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Jesus is preaching the kingdom, he's preaching right living, he's preaching right doctrine, and what two things immediately flood in.
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The Pharisees swoop down in the middle of an open field to the unsuspecting prey, and they say, you know, here's the way you really should live.
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Forget internal living, it needs to be external only. And then greed comes into play.
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Let's turn our Bibles to Matthew chapter 6 and find this out for ourselves. We're going verse by verse through the
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Sermon on the Mount. In my opinion, one of the greatest sermons, if not the greatest sermon ever preached.
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Our Lord Jesus Christ preaching it. And he said in chapter 5, Pharisees believe certain things, don't you believe it.
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And then he says in chapter 6, verses 1 to 18, he says Pharisees teach certain things, don't you believe it.
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And here's what they teach. Forget sincere devotion to God, forget this desire from the heart that wants to worship.
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External will do, hypocrisy will do. But now we move to a hinge verse, and that's verse 19.
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Jesus goes on to say, furthermore, it's not just sincere worship that I'm looking for, that the
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Father desires. The Father is looking for worship that gives complete loyalty and allegiance to God.
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That's the next movement that we see here in Matthew chapter 6.
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And it's interesting, when we talk about lordship theology, we rarely hear the words greed and materialism, but that's what
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Jesus focuses upon. Materialism is bad, because it takes your focus off the
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Creator. It's much worse for that reason than it is because it makes you poor, you become its slave.
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We're going to see this morning that Jesus is going to say that materialism's end is always spiritual poverty.
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Materialism, possessions, the love of things and money, always impoverishes.
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The world says it makes full, it makes alive, it's the good life, get as much as you can, the haves control everything.
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And Jesus says, if you're thinking wrongly about things, it will impoverish you.
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Now there's nothing wrong with things, there's nothing wrong with anything here, unless the human heart idolatrously gets a hold of it.
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And so this morning we'll look at Matthew chapter 6, the next section is verses about 19 through 34, all talking about Jesus the
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Son saying full allegiance to the Father and full trust to the Father. Now we're not going to get very far today,
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I think we're going to get into about one verse, but that's quite all right and we're quite used to that.
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Abraham Kuyper said that Christ is Lord should be written over every square inch of your life.
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Jesus is Lord. Over your day timer, over your checkbook, over your money, everything,
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Jesus is Lord. And here that's going to be the point of Christ Jesus. Living like there is a
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Father, trusting in God the Father, having full allegiance, full loyalty to the
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Father. I'm probably going to try to say it about 20 times today. Jesus is talking in this section about full allegiance and full loyalty to the
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Father. For those of you taking tick marks here for the kids, full allegiance and full loyalty to the
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Father. This is real Lordship salvation when it comes to even your money, your most prized possessions are
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God's. They say Jesus is Lord all over them. Let's just read the passage and then we'll dissect it a little bit, but not like an autopsy because this is a living and active word, but we want to see the context.
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Matthew 6, verse 19, Jesus said, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in or steal.
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For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body, so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.
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But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness.
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No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
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You cannot serve God and wealth. Jesus comes along preaching the kingdom and he says it's going to take full allegiance, full loyalty to the
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Father. Paul would later on say, Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a what?
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Living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. Since God has saved us, since he's redeemed us, since it's been his redeeming love that has rescued us from ourselves and God's wrath and sin and Satan, our response should be,
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God, now you have my full allegiance, Isaac Watts says, but drops of grief can ne 'er repay the debt of love
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I owe. Hear, Lord, I give myself away, tis all that I can do.
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To give myself away and everything that I have, it's for you, God. Worthy is the
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Lamb who was slain. And so Jesus focuses in again on living in light of God the
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Father. When I was a kid, we'd open up sardines. And sardines, to get them open back in those days, maybe even today,
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I don't know. I don't eat sardines packed in oil anymore. There's a little key. You'd open up the package, and then underneath there was a little key, right, taped on there.
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And you'd have to take that key and slip it in that little slot, and you'd open it up. Right? The key to the
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Sermon on the Mount is, God is Father. If you miss that, you can't get the
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Sermon on the Mount open. Realizing that there's a Father. The Pharisees had no Father, and they live like it.
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Ideas have consequences. But if you know there's a Father, you'll say, my dad doesn't just want lip service.
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He wants service from the inside. My father also doesn't want half loyalty to his name, half allegiance to his name.
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He wants it all. That's the key. And if you look at Chapter 5, you don't see a lot of the word
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Father there, but in Chapter 6, it's everywhere. We've looked at it many times, but just rapid fire, machine gun style,
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Chapter 6, verse 1, your Father. Chapter 6, verse 4, your Father. Chapter 6, verse 6, twice, your
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Father. Your Father. Chapter 6, verse 8, your Father. I think I can get faster.
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Chapter 6, verse 9, our Father. 14, your Heavenly Father. 15, your
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Father. 18, your Father. Your Father twice. 26, your Heavenly Father. And verse 32, your
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Heavenly Father. Jesus comes in and He says, compared to the Old Testament where Father is not used of God very often, maybe 12 times, maybe 14 times.
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Here, 12 times in Matthew Chapter 6, He says, God is your Father. Live in light of your
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Father. Off -quoted, J .I. Packer said, you sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase if you speak of it as a revelation of the fatherhood of the
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Holy Creator. That defines Christianity, in other words. God is
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Father. And here he says in Chapter 1, excuse me, Chapter 6, verses 1 to 18, sincere devotion, and now, this next section, verses 19 and following, unswerving loyalty, as D .A.
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Carson calls it. Total allegiance and loyalty to the Father. And I could ask you the question, if I had a little barometer, a little gauge, a little fuel gauge, and it described your allegiance to God the
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Father, about what degree would it be on? Now, thankfully, we are Christians, and so we realize that Jesus the
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Son had full allegiance and loyalty to the Father, yes? And so we're standing in the stead of Christ Jesus, and God sees us through the lens of Christ and His righteousness as children who have perfectly obeyed.
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But in life, we want to live up to who we are. We'd like to have conduct befitting an officer.
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We'd like to live up to God's name. And so we want to please the Father by continuing to increase our allegiance and increase our loyalty to God.
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And so this morning, we're going to look at verse 19. Chapter 6, verse 19, do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
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Jesus is very typical. He says, don't do this, do it this way, and then gives a reason.
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But because of time today, we're going to look at why you ought not to treasure up earthly treasures for yourselves.
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And I'll probably give you four or five reasons why you ought not to do that in light of the Spirit's grace and power and who we are in Christ.
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Why should you not store up earthly treasures? Magazines tell you to do it.
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TV tells you to do it. Even, quote, Christian, end quote, TV says, you've got to have it all.
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And if you don't have it all, you're nothing. Why should we avoid storing up treasures on earth for ourselves?
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Why is it a good idea? Let me give you several reasons. Number one, we'll start easy. Number one, Jesus says not to do it.
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Very simple. He says not to. He's a good Savior, a good
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Lord, and He knows what our bent is, our propensity is, what we'd like to do. And we could be enjoying
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God and His abundance, and yet we'll do the opposite because we have been affected by the fall.
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So number one, found in verse 19, why you ought not to store up treasures on earth? Because Jesus says not to.
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He says in verse 19, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.
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Two kind of nuances here. One, if you haven't started, don't start.
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And if you have started, stop. Stop doing that. Stop hoarding up for yourselves stacks of things on the earth.
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Now, how many people know what a thesaurus is? What is the etymology of thesaurus?
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How do we get that word? There's one back there that doesn't know and is proud to tell us.
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Thesaurus is a treasury of words. It's a storehouse of words.
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Thesaurus means you've got a lot of words and you've got to try to look them up and that's where we keep them all. Here Jesus says this, don't thesaurus for yourself.
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Thesauruses are where we would get the words. Don't treasure up for yourself treasures.
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And He says it with the present tense command. In other words, don't ever start. And if you have, stop.
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Always and forever in front of us. It's like a screen door. You open the door but you still have the screen door and you see life through the lens or the grid of the screen door.
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And He says here's this lens that you should put up. Living in this world where Satan and the world system says grab it all.
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He with the most toys wins. Don't do it. That's not how you live if you've got a father.
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I lived this way before I was saved. How about you? To grab and get as much as you could.
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And by the way, poor people do this just as much as rich people do. Just to a different degree.
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That was our old master. Our old task master. Our old Lord. Wycliffe says do not treasure to you treasures.
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And the idea of this treasury, this stacking up is literally stacking up where you'd go into a special room.
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It'd be like your little shed, your little storehouse. And to get the most amount of coins in there and the most amount of money in there, you had to stack it up really well.
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And it's like stacking up firewood. You've got to cross it this way and cross it that way and stack it up where the whole thing falls over.
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You've got so much stuff stacked up over your lifetime that you've got to put it in an order or it's going to all fall down in the shed.
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If you want to circle a word in this verse, verse 19, circle yourselves. Do not store up for yourselves.
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It's fine to have money for the kingdom. It's fine to have a retirement. It's fine to have money. 1
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Timothy chapter 5 says, if you've got a widow in your family and you don't take care of her, it's not good.
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It's fine to have money. It's fine to have retirement. It's fine, as we'll see later, to be a rich Christian. But you say,
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I have these things because I'm a steward. Because God uses me to distribute them.
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Because they're not just only for me. Don't do it, Jesus says, with a command.
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The good news for us is, if we do do this, we go to the Father and say, God, forgive me. And of course,
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He'd love to forgive. Wealth isn't the evil. Love of wealth is a great evil.
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Jesus says, if you live in my kingdom, in the Father's kingdom, you act like there's a Father. And in this particular kingdom, you can't be a money lover.
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You can't be selfish. You can't say, this is all mine. It's kind of the unholy trinity. Me, myself, and mine.
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For all these things, true or false, the way you please
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God the Father in His kingdom, is by becoming poor. False.
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Because then if you had a lot of money, and you gave it to someone else, you'd be in the kingdom, and now they wouldn't be. It's not, oh, it's a matter of money.
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It's a matter of where your heart is. Alcohol's not the problem. Guns aren't the problem.
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Money's not the problem. It's what the human heart does with all those things.
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And the bad news is, this is not like murder and rape. This is what Leon Morris calls, the vice of respectability.
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The people who are on TV, the people on Forbes list, the people on the websites that have all the money, and have accumulated all these things, they are our modern day heroes.
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The Warren Buffets and the Bill Gates of the world. Avarice is the vice of respectability.
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And so Jesus says, I know who you are. I know all about you. I've made you and created you.
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I know what the fall has done. Your propensity will be to grab everything you can. Number one, Jesus says, don't do it.
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Number two, the second reason why you ought not to store up treasures for yourselves is that it's stupid.
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How about that? It's unwise. It's foolish. It doesn't make any sense.
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Number one, Jesus says, don't do it because I command you not to. Number two, Jesus says, don't do it because it's illogical.
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It doesn't make any sense. And this is the rest of the verse. If you're going to have securities in the world,
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I want you to know, Jesus says, they're not very secure. Isn't that weird we call them securities?
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How's your security portfolio? Fairly insecure now and decreasing. How's yours? And Jesus says, no matter what the culture, no matter what the climate, things that we trust in and things that we think are secure, no matter if they're backed by the federal banks or not, they are by nature insecure.
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Now he's going to use older language, New Testament language, but we'll see how it easily fits into our life.
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And so look at what Jesus does as he talks about the illogical nature, the foolish nature of trusting in things, not
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God the Father. And he shows us how perishable all these things are. Take a look at this truth.
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Verse 19, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
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At the very best, things that you think are secure are not secure. There are no guarantees.
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Things that we have are prone to destruction. Things that we own are prone to disaster.
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We don't even have to go back to 1930 in the depressions to realize stocks aren't always what they used to be.
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And in these days, Jesus uses a few examples of how secure things can be insecure.
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And the first thing he uses is where a moth destroys. A moth back in the day was called the destroyer.
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And moths could destroy all kinds of things. Why would Jesus use moth? What does a moth destroy?
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Clothing. What was showing how much money you had and something that you would invest in if you lived back in the
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New Testament day? Clothing. There were no trends. There were no fads.
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Everybody wore the same thing all the time, over and over. And so you just buy these things. And if you were poor, you'd have one change of clothes, maybe none.
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But people would store up clothing because it was part of their money.
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It was part of their value, part of their riches. And if you were rich, by the way, you could embroider into your clothes certain kind of gold lining and kind of show everybody how rich you were as you had articles full of all this ornaments.
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Joseph's brothers, given by Joseph a change of clothes, not just because these were old and ratty, but because it has value.
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Achan in Joshua 7. He couldn't wait to get a hold of those things and he was coveting what?
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Babylonian garments. Why would Paul say, as he defended his apostleship,
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I have coveted no one's apparel? Because he wanted the latest kind of Armani tunic that some guy had on and it looked cooler?
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No, because it had value. And so when you have clothes, too many that you could ever wear, kind of like, you know, what's her name?
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It wasn't in my notes. The wife of the Philippine dictator, Marcos.
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That's a good illustration of what Jesus was saying not to do. I think if she tried on, she wore a different pair of shoes every day for like 50 years.
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Let's go to this one for right now. The most secure things are at best insecure.
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I don't mind that much anymore when there's problems, but I remember when
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I was first preaching, something would go wrong. Forget it. All flabbergasted.
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It was about 10 years ago. Somebody was preaching in this pulpit when the pulpit was over there. And when one thing goes wrong, it just is like a cascade.
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And this particular person didn't number their sermon pages. And this particular person had a glass of water here.
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And this particular person dropped the water here. And then this particular person dropped all the notes all over.
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This particular person was not me, by the way. I've done dumb things before. Moths.
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Moths lay eggs. Moths have larvae. And these larvae come and eat the clothes.
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Matter of fact, they make cocoons after they eat clothes. And you can tell what color clothes they make, excuse me, what kind of cocoon they make by the color.
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Because if the cocoon's red, they've been eating red clothes. There's actually protein in the fiber of wool that these larvae want to eat.
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Somebody this week said, Mike, we'll give you a bunch of money at the church if you put sermons on video on the website.
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Not. When you see moth in the Bible, the seven times that I know of, it's always used in a destructive way.
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It's a destructive thing. Let me just give you a couple illustrations. Job 13.
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While I am decaying like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth -eaten. Isaiah chapter 50.
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Behold, they will all wear out like a garment. The moth will eat them. Here's the point.
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In the ancient world, garments and clothes were valuable and that's what you would store up, that's what you would stack up, that's what you would invest in.
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It's clothes. Not only that, there's another thing that Jesus uses and that's rust.
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Here's something that Jesus uses to tell us at best, things in the world that you think are secure are not secure.
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Rust. This is the corrosion of metal. The word rust talks about an eating into.
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You can imagine as moths eat into something, so too does this rust gnaw away and eats into something.
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As a matter of fact, the word corrode is a Latin word from the word to gnaw. Gnawing and eating into something.
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And so you say, I'm going to stack up, not just for myself, but for me, myself and I, only for me
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I'm going to stack things up and you open up the door and you think these things are rusted, they're eaten away and they're not full of value.
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And then he lastly says, where thieves break in and steal. Literally the word steal means to dig through.
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You have a house made of bricks or clay, of rocks filled around with some mud and so thieves, guess what they do?
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They dig into your house and take everything. They dig through. Did you know in the
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Greek culture, a burglar was called a mud digger. Sometimes called a wall digger.
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We call them cat burglars, but they call them wall diggers. Job 24, in the dark they dig into houses.
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And so for us, the way we think about it is this. Everything that we could put our trust into, living like there's no father, these things are at best insecure.
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Food becomes moldy, portfolios go in the tank, earthquakes, war, inflation, taxation, confiscation.
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I'm not talking about the administration at all, I'm talking about life in general. Tarnished, perishable.
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And so Jesus says, don't buy into any of that. Turn with me to Luke chapter 12 for the third reason why you ought not to store things up.
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Number one, Jesus commands you not to. Number two, it's illogical because you can't really trust even if they're federally backed.
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And number three, isn't life more than just what you own? If you go home today and your entire house that you live in is burned to the ground, will you still have a life?
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Isn't life more than just things? And so that's the third reason why you ought not to store up things for yourselves on earth.
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Luke chapter 12. And Jesus is coming at this from another perspective and it's devastating. I love to listen to Jesus as He preaches.
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So much for the little, skinny, emaciated Jesus. Here is Christ Jesus talking about these issues.
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And again, it's not just because possessions are bad and they give us the worst. They deflect and take away from God's glory the
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Father who provides and whom we trust in. I could ask you this question before we read this section.
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What if you were cleaning up your kid's room and you had a 10 -year -old kid, 12 -year -old kid, 14 -year -old kid and you're going through the drawers and all of a sudden you look at the bottom drawer and you pulled it out and all of a sudden there's about 25 pieces of old bread jammed underneath there.
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What would you think? Just another normal day cleaning out my kid's room? You know, you might find firecrackers or you might find some kind of Roman candles or something else in there.
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But what if you find a bunch of bread? And then you talk to your kid. I was going to say son, but I haven't found this in Luke's room.
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What's with all the bread? Well, I don't know if I could trust you,
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Dad, in the morning to have breakfast. Sometimes you don't give me breakfast and I'm just worried so whenever I get any food,
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I hoard it. If you were a father, how would that make you feel? What would go on in your mind?
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We have a Father. He's faithful. He's good. How do you know God loves you? Look at the cross.
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He's given you the best gift, the most expensive gift, the costliest sacrifice. Won't he give you anything else?
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And Jesus comes along and says, the Pharisees trust in things, don't trust in things. Life is more than getting.
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So here Luke chapter 12 verse 13. You can watch how this plays out. Someone in the crowd said to him,
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Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. Come on, you tell him.
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You're a teacher, you're a rabbi, you know these things. And like always,
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Jesus takes it and turns it into an opportunity to preach the truth. And to say, you know, the real issue here is not to divide inheritance up.
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The real issue is not, oh, it needs to be 50 -50. My family, when my mother died, I've got the most out of the inheritance.
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Rightly so, I'm the firstborn and we're to get double honor for that. No, but I got more than my brother and my sister.
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Because you can't split 100 % by three. So I got 33 .34%. My brother got 33 .33%.
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My mother and my sister got 33 .33%. So Jesus, you know, there's a couple people, how do we divide this up?
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And Jesus says, that's all a smoke screen for the real issue. Verse 14.
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But, see the contrast right there. He said to him, Man, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you?
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Now he moves his gaze from these brothers to everyone else. He said to them,
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Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed.
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The issue isn't justice and splitting it up. The issue is greed. They're greedy. This particular man was greedy.
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Someone in the crowd. I want what I want. Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed.
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For not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.
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Greed says, I want it all. Jesus said, true living, it has nothing to do with what you own.
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It has nothing to do with your stock, your 401k, how much you've saved, do you have a three month little bumper period?
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It has nothing to do with any of that. It's a false substitute for real living.
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The world says, have and you'll be happy. Get, accumulate, acquire, merge, grow, absorb.
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And what does Jesus do for us? For an exclamation point, he gives a parable. Verse 16.
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Here's the parable to drive home that point. It's like the final hammer into the nail to drive it into the wood.
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And then he told them a parable saying verse 16 of Luke 12. The land of a rich man was very productive.
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And he began reasoning to himself. Hmm. What should I do? Since I have no place to store my crops.
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Then he said, this is what I'll do. I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.
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Larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. Mine, mine, mine, mine.
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I will, I will, my grain, my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come.
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Take your ease. Eat. Drink. Be merry. That's what souls say to themselves.
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Sinful souls say to themselves. Greedy souls say to themselves. But I wonder what God might say. I'd like to have a second opinion, wouldn't you?
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Go to the doctor. He says something's wrong with you. I'll take a second opinion. Second opinion. Oops. Verse 20.
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God's opinion. But God said to him, you fool.
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By the way, this is not someone who is wearing a dunce cap. You see, fool, in the Bible, especially as you look at it through the lens of a conversation like this in the
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Old Testament, it is a moral issue. This is an immoral person. This is not, I just am not smart, my
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IQ is under 100. This is, I refuse, I hate God, I live for myself, and here this fool who says there's no
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God, here's this fool who doesn't realize that God the Father will provide for him. Jesus has
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God say in the parable, you fool. This very night, your soul is required of you, and now who will own what you have prepared?
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The fool says, I'm going to ignore God, His precepts, His law, His authority, His fatherhood. I'm going to ignore it all.
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And then he dies. Then what? Verse 21. So is the man, certainly a woman, who stores up, sounds familiar, treasure, sounds familiar, for Himself, sounds familiar, and is not rich toward God.
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There is more to life than what you own. And I'll say it again so no one misunderstands.
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Money is not intrinsically evil. Stock portfolios are not wrong. Retirement accounts are not wrong.
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Unless you have them all because you are showing a lack of faith to God the Father.
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And they're only for you. If your life's goal and your consuming desire is,
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I'd like to live a good life when I retire, you need to revisit this verse.
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If your goal is, I'd like to retire in such a way where I don't have to go pick up a part -time job because when
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I retire from my work at the company at Corporate America, I'm going to devote myself into ministry and I'm going to serve and I don't want to have to work when
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I retire because I want to serve the Lord. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. I never forgot the first house
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I bought in 1989. I got that sinking feeling that it's more than me owning the house. That house owns me.
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I could ask you the question, do you have this habit? I know you do because we all do. Hoarding, stacking, getting.
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Saying that earthly treasure should be enjoyed from the hand of God but held on to loosely.
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Martin Luther, I quoted him earlier, he looked at his hand. One, two, three, four slits in between the fingers and he said, you know,
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I have four slits between my fingers. I don't have like a webbed hand. Why do I have fingers like this?
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He said, it's a great object lesson so people and money will quickly go through my hand and I shouldn't be surprised.
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Fidelity, maybe he's a fine company but at best, insecure. ING, at best, insecure.
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Warren Buffet has no idea spiritually what to do. I don't want to be possessed by things, do you?
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Matthew Henry got it right. Man takes great pains to heap up riches and they are like heaps of manure in the furrows of the field, good for nothing unless they be spread.
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What we do with our money and our things is a spiritual matter before God.
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It's not, well, here's my money and here's my stuff and here's what I do on Sunday. That's a false bifurcation.
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That's not what we do. We think of everything under the auspices of God, holistic living and we say to ourselves, what we do with money is a spiritual thing.
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Why shouldn't you hoard? Why shouldn't you store up only for yourselves? Number one, it's commanded that you not do it.
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Number two, it's illogical. Number three, life's more than stuff. Number four, unbelievers get judged eternally for hoarding for themselves.
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If an unbelieving person is judged to hell for doing something like that, what does that make you want not to do?
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I don't want to do it. Let me read you two verses. You tell me where they are because we're going to go there in a minute.
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Tell me not just where they are but how closely they resemble Jesus' words in Matthew 6, verse 19.
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Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth -eaten. It is the last days that you have stored up your treasure.
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Steve and I were talking about it the other day. When you read 1 Peter and 2 Peter, you say to yourself, Peter listened to Jesus.
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Peter remembered what Jesus said. Peter was a student of Jesus. There was another student that just said this, taking basically the exact words of Jesus and using them in a
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New Testament epistle. Where did I just read from? From what verse? Let's turn there.
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Matthew, no. Luke, no. James, chapter 5. James, chapter 5.
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This passage, frankly, is stomach -turning. This passage doesn't have any good feelings to it.
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This passage is not going to make you run around going, wow, I went to church feeling bad and I left church feeling good.
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This is a passage that James, the half -brother of Jesus, uses so that Christians don't get caught up in doing what unbelievers do.
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And it's with intense language of damnation. There's not even repentance language here.
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And if you do this, you'll get better. This is thunderbolts. This is Jonathan Edwards 200 years ago with sinners in the hands of an angry
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God language, but it's in the Bible. And it's so close to what
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Jesus said in Matthew 6, we have to look at it. And before you say to yourself, listen, I'm not rich.
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I'm fine. I'm good to go. If you're here today, by New Testament standards, you're rich.
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You're rich. If you have more than one pair of clothes, you're rich. It's just all relative, but here we're going to look at a straightforward declaration of the judgment of God as John Calvin said.
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James' point, don't do what these people do. Don't envy these foolish people.
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Don't desire to be like them. Don't desire to run in their circles. Avoid it like judgment.
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Now let's look at these verses. And again, they are staggeringly strident.
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Come now, chapter 5, James verse 1. Come now, you rich.
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Weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. It says in chapter 4, verse 13, come now.
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It's like he grabs them by the shoulder and says, you're living your life with your iPod on all day, watching
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TV all night, never thinking about eternity. Here's a cold slap in the face for your own good.
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You're going over the cliff daydreaming. And he says, come now, you've got to pay attention.
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It's like how many days are you going to hit the spiritual snooze button before you just will wake up? You rich Jews, be careful.
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Now, Abraham was rich. There's no problem with that. Isaac was rich. Jonah was rich. Joseph of Arimathea was rich.
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David was rich. Joseph of many colors was rich. Solomon was rich. But these men remembered that it was
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God who granted the ability to make wealth, Deuteronomy 8. They knew, as Solomon said in 1
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Chronicles 29, riches and honor come from thee. But Jesus isn't after those people through the spirit of God and James.
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He's after people who trust in them. Why do we as Christians want to avoid this behavior?
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Because it's damning behavior. And look what he says. Once I've got your attention, here's what
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I'd like you to do. I'd like you to contemplate that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. God don't make no junk.
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How would we treat a cancer patient if we just said, you know, I'm the doctor. I know this person's got cancer.
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There's treatment for the cancer. But you're such a good, special person. I could never tell you the truth.
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And here is the spiritual MRI.
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And here's the response for these rich people. You won't read anything like it practically in the
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New Testament. Weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you.
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For those that have the God of riches and hoarding, this is what's going to happen.
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Weep. This is weep bitterly. This is weep with an emotional outburst. This is crying so hard you get a migraine.
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It's exactly what it is. And it's all pushed here so the
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Christians that James was addressing would go, I don't want to be like that. And certainly for these people, judgment's coming.
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It's not too late. This is language that if you took somebody and you transported them to the precipice of hell and they looked over, this is what they would do.
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Hell's coming. Do it now, James is saying. Weep. And then a word that, if you're a kid, you're going to remember this today.
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It's an onomatopoetic word. It's a word that sounds like what it looks like and what it is.
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It's the word howl. And in Greek, it sounds just like a wolf howling.
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In Greek, it sounds just like a coyote at two in the morning howling with despair.
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If a coyote's got its foot in a trap and it's eating off its foot, this is the howl that it makes.
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And it's O -L -O -L -U -D -Z -O.
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Ololidzo. And if you'd like me to get your attention, Ololidzo!
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But that almost sounds like some call to prayer. I didn't quite have enough kind of oomph.
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It is the shrieking pain that screams out in agony saying,
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I'm going to be judged for a false god. But see, with greed, Morris is right, there's a respectability because it's promoted all the time.
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It's okay, go for it. Piercing, loud, weeping, wailing.
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What's happening? Look at the text. For your miseries which are coming upon you. Plural. Your wretched conditions.
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It's coming! Wake up! Come now! Don't let this happen! Reminds me of what
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Jesus said. But woe to you who are rich, for you're receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you shall be hungry.
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Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. This week when
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I was on the radio, I had to interview the Compassion International person. It wasn't a scheduled thing for me. They just asked me to do it.
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I said, fine. Adopting children for the kingdom. I said this. I read your statement of faith. And it says on point six out of your seven statements of faith, after Jesus as God, substitutionary atonement, all that stuff.
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All orthodox. All biblical. It says that we believe that there is a resurrection of life everlasting in heaven, and there's a resurrection of the dead to hell forever.
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I said, I just have one question for you. How compassionate is that statement? And he said, well the truth is compassionate.
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God in His holiness and justice. This is what's going to happen. I would argue that James is being very compassionate.
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Because a lack of compassion says, you'll get your due in the end. I don't want to mess with you.
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Compassion sticks its chin out and says, here's the truth. I'm going to tell you the truth. And you're probably going to hit me for it.
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James says, it's coming on you personally. You can't say I'm an Israeli person. I've got a covenant cloaking.
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It's coming on you. And not for being wealthy. But for the misuse of this and to show the heart condition.
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Look what he says in verse 2. Doesn't it sound like Jesus in Matthew 6? Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth -eaten.
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Doesn't that sound exactly like it? I've got some kind of really neat kind of old clothes, and they're worth a lot, and I'll just pass them along as heirlooms.
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And you go to the closet, and you open them up, and you go, they're eaten. And the solution is not mothballs to be invented in 1945, or whatever it is.
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Naphtalex, or whatever the chemicals are called. And then here, look at this one, verse 3. If your attention hasn't already been pricked, look at this one.
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Your gold and your silver have rusted. True or false?
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You can have gold and silver rust. I've been told it doesn't rust nor corrode.
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But on Judgment Day it does. I'd like to call the first witness to this person's reason for getting cast in the lake of fire.
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Witness number one, look at the text. And their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire.
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And then look at how similar James' words are to Jesus'.
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It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure. Destruction like rust and corrosion that will eat riches on earth, will eat away forever like the worm that dieth not, eating away the person forever in hell.
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Money's not permanent, but hell is. Someone said this week as I was studying it, rust is a symbol of disuse.
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If you use tools all the time, they don't get rusty. So when we have wealth, we don't need to have so much that we say,
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I've got plenty for retirement. I've got plenty for all these other things. I've got plenty if I need to take care of my grandmother. But I've got so much extra that it just rusts.
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That's what he's talking about. One man said, this is not rags to riches. This is riches to rags.
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The rust will be a witness against you. True or false, riches do not profit in the day of wrath.
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I hope he said true because it's Proverbs 11 .4. But righteousness delivers from death.
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And you know what happened soon after this letter was written? Something called 70 AD occurred.
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And guess what happened to all the riches in Jerusalem? Gone. Taken, people killed, raped, slaughtered, and all the riches gone.
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This was worse than the depression in 1929 where you go to bed a millionaire and you wake up a pauper. This is you don't go to bed.
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You're dead. The way you make money, James says, is important.
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Verse 4. Behold, the pay of the laborers who moved your fields and which has been withheld by you cries out against you.
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The outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath. We don't have time to get into all this, but here's what happened.
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These rich people were not condemned because they were rich. They were condemned because they worshiped money. And the way they got money showed they didn't care about the righteousness of God or anybody else's righteousness.
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People worked for a daily wage. Give us this day our daily bread. They said they had to because at the end of the day these migrant workers and farm workers had to get paid at the end of the day.
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Proverbs 13. Wealth obtained by fraud dwindles. Can't do it. No wonder
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Jesus said later in the Sermon on the Mount, but seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
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We know money is important. We know we all have to use money. We know that money, though, tends to influence us wrongly.
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And Jesus says this in the Sermon on the Mount. Don't store up things for only yourself.
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Be wise about how you use God's money. Be wise or you're going to suffer loss.
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As a Christian, never eternal loss, but certainly reward loss. And so I ask you the question.
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How are you doing with money? How's your spiritual diary? One time somebody said, are you going to keep a diary?
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I said, nah, I'll keep some diary. I like to read other people's, but I don't keep one myself.
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No, they said a spiritual diary. No. They said, yes, you do. A checkbook.
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I thought that's pretty good. I'm going to have to go fast, but we're going to do it anyway.
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Fifth reason why you ought not to hoard. You're one day closer to dying.
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Turn with me to Ecclesiastes 12. We're going to finish here. Ecclesiastes 12. Knowing that you're going to die should be an impetus for living your life now righteously.
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We don't want to store things up because our Lord and Master and Savior and friends said, don't do it. We don't want to store things up because we can lose everything we have even if it's in a safekeeping box.
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We don't want to store things up because life isn't all about what we have. We don't want to store things up because people get judged for that to hell forever.
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And lastly, we don't want to store things up because we're one day closer to dying. Friends, if you realize you're dying, it will help the way you live today.
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As we say Jesus is going to come back soon, live a holy life, the wisest person who ever lived outside of Jesus said, remember you're going to die.
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That will help you live rightly. It will help you put all the priorities together. How many people here know the hymn,
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Softly and Tenderly? A few, not many. What a nice song.
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Softly, tenderly. Listen to one of the stanzas in Softly and Tenderly. Time is now fleeting.
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The moments are passing. Passing from you and from me. Shadows are gathering.
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Death beds are coming. Coming for you and for me. Still think it's kind of a nice, soft kind of pillowy?
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It's coming! And we will be like Job. Naked when we're born and naked when we return.
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And we can't hold on to anything. So Solomon says, if you remember that death is coming, you're going to be freed up to enjoy life as a gift from God and you're going to give
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Him reverence. That's the key to Ecclesiastes. Life is hard. You can enjoy it with an eye to the fear of the
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Lord. Life is difficult, but enjoy it. And here's what he says at the end of Ecclesiastes chapter 12.
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Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth. Not just remember like I recall. Here's what it is.
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No, not just remember. Not just what you know about God. Not just to reminisce. So your life might be changed.
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Do this in remembrance of me. Not just a mental remembering. Remember the Creator in the days of your youth.
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Before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, I have no delight in them. You're going to get older.
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Storms coming before the sun, the light, the moon, and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after rain. What a wonderful poetic way to say you better do it early.
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Pleasure and hope are inversely proportional to age, Davis said. In the day and now he does something interesting.
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With poetry, he describes what it's like to get older. I'm not that old.
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I'm almost 49. But I feel older than I used to. And here's what happens.
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Here's the aging process before your very eyes. You ever seen one of those things where they take a picture of someone every day for like 40 years and you just watch it go fast time.
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The hair goes from here and it goes to the ears and out of the nose and all that. You just watch where the hair all goes. I always love it when
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I meet young guys. They're like, oh, I finally get some hair on my face. You'll live to regret that day. Hair on the back, hair on the arms, hair on the eyebrows.
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But here's the picture of a decaying man. So you go, while I'm decaying, I've got to remember to serve
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God. Look at how he writes it. In the day that the watchmen of the house tremble, probably your arms.
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And the mighty men stoop, the legs. The grinding ones stand idle.
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You should know what the grinding ones are, don't you? Teeth. Because they are what?
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Few. And those who look through windows grow dim.
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I get that now. You know, my kids run up to me and say, daddy, look at this. Get that away from me. I can't see.
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And the doors, verse 4, of the street are shut. Maybe you don't have any teeth, so you keep your mouth shut.
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The grinding mill is low. Can't sleep at night because you hear every little thing.
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One will arise at the sound of the bird, and all the daughters of the song will sing softly. Verse 5, furthermore, men are afraid of a high place and chairs on the road.
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Certainly older people are more afraid of that. Almond trees blossom. What color is an almond tree?
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Gray, white. That's what your hair looks like. The grasshopper drags himself along, and the caperberry is ineffective.
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Some say a lot of different things about this, but sexual desire is gone. For the man who goes to his eternal home while the mourners go about in the street.
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Just one more funeral after another. You get old. You think everybody is starting to die. Well, they've always been dying, but now that your friends are dying, you see everybody die.
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Verse 6, remember him before the silver cord is broken. Before death comes and the golden bowl is crushed, and the pitcher by the veil is shattered, and the wheel of a cistern is crushed.
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Then the dust will return to the earth as it was. Serve now.
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This goes against everything. Somebody goes, well, I'm 18, and after I get married and after I have a few kids, then
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I'll get going for the Lord. Friends, no. Solomon, the wisest man, said no.
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This is like a goad to get you to study and to learn. Verse 11, and then he finally says after all is said and done, death's coming, so what's the conclusion?
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Verse 13, and it's my conclusion as well. The conclusion, when all has been heard.
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You know you're going to die. You know it's coming up. You know you can't take anything with you. Fear God, and keep his commandments, because this applies to every person.
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Enjoy life, but do it with an eye to his glory, as you give him reverence and honor and fear, and might
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I say, allegiance and loyalty. Let's pray.
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Our Father in heaven, thank you for sending us your son, certainly to die for our sins, certainly to live a perfect life in our place, certainly to be raised from the dead, but also to teach us.
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And as I look at the New Testament, and I see all the writers, how they're influenced by the words of Christ, may we be influenced by the
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Spirit's power as well. Lord, I pray for our church. I pray that we wouldn't be men and women who have a third commandment and loving money.
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May you protect us from that. May you help us to be free with our money. May you give us guidance as we have to be stewards of the money you've given us.
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And Lord, would you enable our hearts to not be materialistic, to not be greedy. Would you help us to store up treasure, as we'll learn next week, in heaven.
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And Lord, we would admit that we're misers, we're stingy, we hoard, we think about ourselves, and we don't fully trust in you and give you allegiance.
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We're thankful we know someone who does, who stands as our advocate and our priest and our sacrifice.
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Lord, help us to live into who we are. We don't want to disobey Christ Jesus. We want to fear
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Him and honor Him and give Him allegiance. So we'd ask that you'd help us to do that, not just with our money, but all our possessions.