The Danger of Loving Money Part 1-8, Complete Edition

The Danger of Loving Money Part 1-8, Complete Edition

By John MacArthur

Let's open our Bibles this morning then in our on‑going study of 1 Timothy to chapter 6 and we come to verses 6 through 10, 1 Timothy 6:6 through 10. In this particular portion of Scripture there is a very familiar statement, it comes in verse 10. Let me read it to you. "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." That is the statement really which is the focal point of the text. Everything else in verses 6 to 10 before and after that statement is, in a sense, an exposition of the significance of that statement itself.

Before we look to the text, let me just back up a little bit and give you a broader perspective on the subject. As I have said to you many times in the study of 1 Timothy, there is about this epistle a certain polemic flavor. That is, Paul is correcting issues in the church at Ephesus where Timothy is now laboring. So when he brings up a subject, it is a subject that is being abused in the life of the church. Obviously, looking at verses 6 to 10 we can conclude in the Ephesian church that there were some people who were suffering the terrible tragic results of loving money. That's not, however, isolated just to that church, it's a problem of equal concern in this age as it would be for any church in any age.

In terms of what the Bible has to say about this matter of loving money, the Scripture is replete with injunctions against loving money of one kind or another. Perhaps the most telling statement in all of Scripture related to money are the words of our Lord, "Where your treasure is there shall your heart be also." To put that into common language, "Show me where your money is and I'll show you where your affections lie." To make it even more mundane, "Go through your checkbook and find out what you really care about." Your spiritual life can be measured probably better by what you do with your money than any other single thing.

Experts tell us that the average person thinks about money 50 percent of his or her waking time. Amazing isn't it? How to get it, how to keep it, how to save it, how to spend it, how to find it, whatever it might be, we're tremendously occupied with the matter of money. Jesus in saying where your treasure is there your heart is also tells us that what we do with our money is the measure of our hearts.

What should be our attitude toward money? Well Scripture has a lot of things to say about that. First of all we're not to think that having money is wrong in itself. After all, Proverbs 8:21 says, "God said to those who love Me I will fill up their treasuries." So one attitude is the attitude that money is wrong but the Bible does not advocate that. It's not wrong to have money.

Secondly, the Bible says that we are not to imagine that we are the sole reason that we have money. In fact, in Deuteronomy it says in chapter 8 that it is God who gives you the power to get wealth. So in terms of building a sort of biblical attitude toward money, the first thing would be we are not to think that having it is wrong in itself, and secondly, we are not to think that if we have it we gained it all on our own, apart from the providence of God.

Thirdly, Scripture teaches that we are not to cling to it against God's will. There may be times when God takes it away from us, that certainly happened to Job, that even happened to the Apostles and Peter says in Matthew 19:27 to 30, "We have forsaken all and followed You." We are not to cling to it if in God's will He wants to separate us from it.

Furthermore, Scripture says in building our attitude about money we are not to cater to people who have it for some selfish reason. James chapter 2 verses 1 to 10 warns us against being more favor...showing more favor to the rich than we do the poor. And the truth is we ought to show more favor to the poor because their need is greater.

Scripture also tells us that we are not to find pride in the money that we possess or the things which it can buy. In the very chapter we're looking at, 1 Timothy 6 verse 17 says we are not to be high minded. If we are rich we are not to be conceited about our riches.

Scripture also indicates that we are not to seek riches. We are to seek the Kingdom, says Matthew 6:33, and let God add the rest. Furthermore, Scripture says we are not to substitute money for trust in God. Verse 17 of chapter 6 again says that we are not to allow rich people to get away with trusting in uncertain riches rather than a living God.

So in putting together some kind of attitude toward money, it's important for us to realize it's not wrong to have it. We're not to think that if we have it we gained it for ourselves. We're not to cling to it. We're not to cater to people who have it. We're not to use it as a source of pride. We're mot to seek it. We're not to trust it in the place of God. And I might add further we're not to hoard it in a selfish way. The liberal soul shall be made fat, it says in Proverbs. Give, said Jesus in Luke 6:38, and it shall be given unto you. Generosity, sacrificial generosity should be a mark of every believer.

But the overarching attitudinal principle related to money is right here in verse 10. The watershed of all other attitudes is all really covered in this matter of not loving money. Now this is a very familiar truism, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. That's the proper translation of that pantoum, all kinds of evil is really the proper understanding of it rather than just a translation of it. We are to understand that that really covers everything. It's the same as..the same idea as when the Scripture says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." And that's the sum of all the commandments. If you just love God consummately, all the other commandments are a moot point. And if you don't love money, if you're not attached to money with strong affection, then those other attitudes are going to take care of themselves. You're not going to cling to it. You're not going to cater to the people who have it. You're not going to find your pride and security in it. You're not going to seek it first. And you're not going to hoard it.

The overarching principle for the life of a believer related to his money is not to love it...not to love it. This is axiomatic, I think it kind of goes without saying that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. But think it through with me for a moment. The term "love of money" is one word in the Greek, aphilarguria, it means affection for silver. And the idea here is not money but the love of it. You understand that, don't you? There's nothing inherently wrong with money, money is very dangerous, it's like a gun, it can be used to kill an animal for food, it can be used to protect you against an invader, or it can be used to harm somebody or even take a life. It's a dangerous thing and you go around, as it were, with money and you go around with a loaded gun by which you can accomplish good ends or by which you can accomplish disaster. The issue is your affection. The issue isn't money, the issue is how you feel about money. And the sin here is the sin of greed. Another way to say that is the love of money.

Now he says it is the root, and by that he means the source, of all kinds of evil which become the branches and whatever is hanging on them in this metaphorical tree. The root is the love of money and it produces all kinds of evil. To give you the simple understanding of that, what he means to say is that if you love money there's usually nothing that can stop you in the pursuit of it and therefore it leads to all kinds of sins. There is no kind of evil, frankly, there is no kind of evil that could be imagined which could not be the result of loving money. For the love of money people have committed every conceivable sin...every conceivable sin.

People who love money in order to get money will take bribes. They will distort justice. They will manipulate. They will take advantage of the poor. They will lie. They will cheat. They will extort. They will deceive, steal, rob. They will abuse. They will commit every imaginable sin...fornication, adultery, if they think it will gain them money. They will do bodily harm. They will kill for money. They will teach false doctrine for money. Every imaginable category of sin can flow out of loving money because if you are consumed with the love of money then that's the driving force of your life, you will do whatever it takes to get that. If you are consumed with loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, then you will set aside anything that thwarts that and therefore you're on a path of righteousness. And you cannot love and you cannot serve both God and money. There's no sin excluded from the list of what people might do for the love of money. So, if you can just deal with the affection, you've really won the battle.

Now how do you know if you love money? And I had to do a little inventory in my own life so I just posed some questions to myself this week as I sat in my study. And the first thing that I thought was a test that I would put to myself is this: do you spend more time thinking about how to get money or how to do a good job? That's the first test. Do you spend more time thinking about how to make money than you do about how to do a good job? In other words, are you more concerned on your job with how much you make or the quality of your service? Are you into excellence or into money? Is your job a means to finance your indulgence or is it a means by which you can show the excellence of your commitment and glorify God? It's a basic principle. So when you spend more time thinking about how to get money than you do how to do a good job, you love money.

One of the things that I decided early in my ministry from the very beginning was that I would never put a price on my ministry. And by God's grace and I don't know He overruled my humanness in that regard but from the very start all through these years there has never been a time in my ministry when I have told anybody that I charge a certain amount to do anything. I never ever wanted to be a position to look at ministry with a price tag. That is just too overwhelming a problem for my flesh to deal with. And so I would rather ask for nothing and be surprised. And if nothing comes, then nothing was expected.

I remember one time I was speaking across the city and I drove about 80 miles three nights in a row to a special series of meetings I was giving before about a thousand college students and they were mostly unbelieving at Whittier College. And I was speaking about the veracity of the Bible and the authenticity of the Christian faith and then having an answer...a question/answer time for an hour afterwards. And after doing that for three weeks, they sent me a thank you note in the mail with a check in it for $3.00...which I thought was very curious...a dollar a night. My first reaction was, "That's outrageous. I mean, 80 miles and all that preparation of a dollar a night." My second thought was, "You're not worth that and if you're going to put a price on yourself and you're going to be based on your own worth, you're dead...because I have nothing to offer but that which God has given me and if anybody ought to be rewarded for it it should be Him, not me." Every time I'm right, beloved, it's God. Every time I'm wrong, it's me. So the glory is His.

Listen, our response to the daily task will tell us a lot about whether we love money. Do I seek to make money or to do a good job? Secondly, you know you love money when you never have enough...you know you love money when you never have enough. In other words, you're never satisfied. You haven't learned in whatsoever state you are to be...what?...content. Thirdly, you love money when you want to flaunt it and what it provides. In other words, you get some kind of silly joy out of wearing it, or driving it, or living in it, or showing it off. When you want to flaunt it and what it provides, you're loving money.

Fourthly, you love money when you resent giving it. It kills you to give it away because you're in the mode of using all your money to make sure you get something for it. And the idea of giving it away is very distasteful. A person who loves money holds it for his own gratification, her own gratification.

Finally, and here's the ultimate test, you love money when you sin to obtain it...when you will lie on your Income Tax, when you will cheat on your Expense Account, when you will pull it out of the till at work, when you will compromise your convictions to do something you know is not really right but you know you'll get a lot of money if you do it. Anytime you sin to get money, you betray a heart that loves money more than it loves God, righteousness, truth.

So, those are fairly simple tests, ask yourself: do I spend more time thinking about how to get money than I do how to do a good job? Do I never have enough? Am I prone to want to flaunt what I have and what it produces? And do I resent giving it? And will I sin to get it?

Paul says in verse 10, if that's your attitude that will produce all manner of evil. And you have fallen as another sucker to the deceitfulness of riches, to put it in the words of our Lord in Matthew 13.

Now what brought this subject up in verses 6 to 10? Well Paul had just in verse 5 been talking about false teachers who are motivated by gain. He said they suppose that their kind of godliness which is a fake godliness is going to bring them material gain, that's their motive. And then he transitions and says, "Well, godliness with contentment," verse 6, "is great gain." In other words, when I say that the false teacher who supposes that his godliness will bring gain is wrong, I don't mean that true godliness isn't great gain because it is. And that's the transition and so he takes off in verse 6 to talk about it in a general sense and goes right on down to verse 10 to warn us all about the danger of loving money. The false teachers and their inordinate love for money trigger the subject in a general sense from verses 6 to 10. And he has just rejected the perverted idea that godliness is to be used as a means of material gain but he doesn't want you you to misunderstand the point that there is in true godliness a true gain. And so he launches into a discussion of the subject which relates to everybody in the Ephesian church and particularly those abusing it and it relates to all of even today. Loving money results in all kinds of evil, that means money is dangerous if you love it.

And may I suggest to you, you can have an awful lot of money and not love it and you can have none of it and love it? I know people who have a tremendous amount of money and don't love it. In fact, they don't spend their life trying to make money, they spend their life trying to do their best to glorify God. They don't flaunt what they have in money on what they have in possessions. They're not consumed with the pursuit of money, they're consumed with the pursuit of God. And they will never sin or compromise to get it. But God in His sovereign choice has determined to give them much.

And I have met people who have absolutely no money and are desperately in love with it. Spend all their time trying to figure out how to get more of it. That's the danger and it has nothing to do with what you have.

Now let's go into the exposition of the principle from verse 10 by going back to verse 6 and, first of all, money is dangerous because of the nature of money love, because of the nature of money love. And secondly, we'll look at the effect of it. It's dangerous twofold...its nature, its inherent essence makes it dangerous. And secondly, not only its inherent essence but what it produces makes it potentially dangerous...when loved.

First of all, let's look at verse 6. The nature of money love, it is dangerous because it ignores the true gain...it ignores the true gain. He says indeed, and de can be translated indeed or well or but, if you were to use the word indeed he would be saying playing off his prior statement, "Indeed godliness with contentment is great gain." Or it may be in an adversative sense, "But as over against a false godliness that doesn't provide any gain, true godliness does provide gain." That's what he's saying. There is great gain with true godliness. What is godliness? That's that very familiar word used in the pastorals, eusebeia, it means reverence, piety, godliness, all those good things that I like to think of as God‑likeness. Where there is true God likeness with contentment, there is great gain. Now if all you want is money, you'll never have that because you'll never be content. The genuine great gain comes from true godliness which is inseparably linked to contentment. The word autarkes means self‑sufficiency, it was used by the cynics and the Stoics to speak of self‑mastery, the person who was unflappable, the person who was not moved by circumstance, the person who lived immuned to external distraction, oblivious to outside troubles, the person who had that most noble of human virtues, the ability not to control his environment but to properly react to it. That's that idea of that word. It basically means to be sufficient, to seek nothing more, to be content with what you have. And it is a noble human trait but Paul takes it further and takes that concept and that word and sanctifies it.

In 2 Corinthians 3 he talks about our sufficiency not being in ourselves but our sufficiency, verse 5 of 2 Corinthians 3, is of God, he says. It's God's sufficiency in us. Later on in chapter 9 of the same epistle in verse 8, God is able to make all grace about toward you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work, and again emphasizes that our sufficiency is of God. That familiar section in Philippians chapter 4 where he says, "I know in whatsoever state I am, I have learned to be content, I know how to be abased‑‑ that's put down‑‑I know how to abound, everywhere in all things I'm instructed to be full, to be hungry, to abound, to suffer need, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Then down in verse 19, "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in Christ Jesus."

So, Paul sanctifies this idea of contentment by saying it is a God contentment, it is a Christ contentment in the sense that the provision of God and the provision of Christ bring about the contentment. It's more than just self‑mastery, it's more than just some human virtue. Our contentment is related to the sufficiency of God, it's related to the sufficiency of Christ, it's related to the confidence that says I want to be godly and take whatever God wants to give me. I want to live within His sovereign providential will and seek to be like Him and let the other things find their own level. And so what Paul is saying to us here in this passage is that if you love money, you really ignore the true gain. If you love money, you're pursuing something you'll never find.

True godliness, on the other hand, brings about true gain. Why? Because true godliness produces contentment. Now listen carefully. Riches is not related to how much you have, it's related to whether you're content with what you have. You understand that? The person who is rich is the person who doesn't need anything else. That's the issue. The Greek philosopher Epicurus said "The secret of contentment is not to add to a man's possessions but to take away from his desires." That's the issue. He is most rich who desires least, right? You are rich when you are content. That's riches. You have enough. Paul says it's irrelevant to me, I know how to be abounding, that is to have an abundance, I know how to be abased, that is to have less than an abundance, I know how to be full, I know how to be empty, I know how to be rich and poor and I don't really care either way because I am content to be in the will of God.

Proverbs 30 verse 8 says, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that is my portion, give me exactly what You and Your sovereignty desire me to have, I don't want too much, I don't want too little. If I have too much I might be full and deny You and say, Who is the Lord? And if I had too little, I might be in want and steal and profane the name of my God. So, God, don't give me too much and don't give me too little, give me what You want me to have with a contented heart." That's riches. That's riches. That's the kind of godliness that makes a person rich because it produces satisfaction.

True godliness and true gain is unrelated to how much you have, it is only related to how much you want. And if you are content with what God gives, you're rich...you're rich.

In Hebrews 13 verse 5 we read, "Let your manner of life be without covetousness." That is without seeking something that's not yours. "And be content with such things as you have...why?...for He has said...that is God has said back in Deuteronomy 31...I will never leave you or...what?...forsake you." Now what more could you want than to have what God has given you and to have God? That's the issue...that's the issue. That's to be content. But if you spend your whole life chasing money, you will forfeit the true gain because you will never get enough and you will never be satisfied and you'll never have contentment.

A truly godly person is motivated not by the love of money but by the love of God. He seeks the greatest riches and the greatest riches are spiritual contentment and complete trust in the ever‑present, ever‑able God. The only thing that makes people rich is contentment...that's the only thing. And contentment is a spiritual virtue born as the fruit of godliness.

John B. Rockefeller once said, "I have made many millions and they have all brought me no happiness." He's a poor man. Cornelius Vanderbilt said, "The care of millions of dollars is too great a load, there is no pleasure in it." Jacob Astor said, "I am the most miserable man on earth." Henry Ford after having made all of his millions says, "I was happier when doing mechanic's work." And John D. Rockefeller said, "The poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money." The only thing that makes you rich is satisfaction. The only thing that makes you rich is contentment and contentment is a spiritual virtue born out of godliness.

So he is saying there is great gain through godliness but it is the great gain through godliness linked to contentment. To pursue riches out of discontent is to ignore the true gain. So here are people because of the love of money pursuing, pursuing, pursuing something they can never ever reach. It is an illusion. It is an illusion.

In Psalm 63, I love the first five verses of that Psalm, "O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee. My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. To see Thy power and Thy glory as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary because Thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee. Thus will I bless Thee while I live, I will lift up my hands in Thy name." And here's why. "My soul shall be satisfied,"...satisfied in communion with His God, satisfied in praise, satisfied to love and be loved by the eternal God.

In Psalm 107, is it verse 9? It says, yes, "For He satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness." What else could anyone ask? No wonder Isaiah in chapter 55 says, "Why are you pursuing bread that does not satisfy? Why are you spending money for what isn't even bread? And your labor for that which does not satisfy. Hearken diligently unto Me and eat what is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness." In other words, why are you pursuing those things which are not the true gain and forfeiting what is the true gain?

It is bound up in the nature of money and the love of it that if you pursue it you'll never be satisfied because the love of money and contentment are mutually exclusive. It's like the old Roman proverb that said money is like sea water, the more you drink the thirstier you get.

So the danger of loving money as to its nature is that it tends to ignore the true gain and happiness that can only be found in true godliness. Secondly, it focuses on the temporal. And this is a very very direct statement. Verse 7, "For we brought nothing into the world." In the Greek the word "nothing" starts the verse, "Nothing we brought into the world and it is certain...and certainly...you can translate it several different ways...neither can we carry anything out." Is that right? You come into the world naked. Every baby is born stark naked, they don't even have a name tag. They just arrive. They bring nothing in, and they take nothing out. Nothing at all. And that's just another simple truism. Naked came I into the world, Job 1:21 says, and that's exactly the way I'm going out. Ecclesiastes 5:15 repeats almost identically the same thought that is here in this verse, let me just read it to you briefly, Ecclesiastes 5:15, "And as he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came and shall take nothing of his labor which he may carry away in his hand."

Now listen, folks, if you spend your life in the love of money, you are pursuing what is locked into time and space and has no eternal value. You understand that? I mean, it's a whole wasted life. Not one thing did you bring in and not one thing will you take out. As a friend of mine says, "You have never seen a hearse pulling a U‑Haul." The Spanish proverb of past years was, "There are no pockets in a shroud."

Material possessions are bound by time and space. And that's why Jesus in Matthew 6 said so pointedly, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupts and thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust corrupt, where thieves do not break through and steal..and then that truism...for where your treasure is that's where your heart is also."

Please, he says, don't be so foolish as to spend your life putting your fortune into what is going to stay here. It has no eschatological significance, no eternal value at all. And this principle is repeated so often by our Lord in His teachings in the gospel. In Mark, is it chapter 8? Verse 36, do you know this passage? "For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? In other words, it wouldn't matter if you gained every single thing there was in this world if you weren't prepared for eternity it would all be a horrible, horrible deceptive loss.

In Luke 12 and I'm just picking out a couple of passages, in Luke 12 the Lord instructs about the parable of the rich fool, starting in verse 15 is a good place, "He said to them, Take heed. beware of covetousness...and this marvelous truth...for a man's life, that is his real life, consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses." Boy, what a statement. A man's life consists not in the abundance of things which he possesses.

Then He goes on with the parable. "The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully, he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do because I have no place to bestow my crops." In other words, I have way more than I need. He wasn't at all interested in giving it to God or anybody else, so he said, "I'll just pull down my barns, build bigger barns and I'll put all my crops there and then I'll never have to work again. So you have much goods laid up for many years, take your ease, eat, drink and be merry, I'll party my way on through life. I don't ever need to work again, I've got all this abundance. God said, You fool, this night your soul will be required of you, then whose shall those things be which you have provided?" You spend all this energy amassing something and you're going to go out of here and it won't even belong to you. So is the person who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. You amass all your bank accounts and all your securities and all your possessions in this world and you are poor if you do not invest with God.

The point is that pursuing money as a supreme goal of life focuses on the temporal and leaves the spiritually and eternally significant things unconsidered. What folly, so ask yourself, what am I doing with my money? The nature of money loving makes it dangerous because it ignores the true gain and focuses on the temporal and doesn't consider the eternal.

Thirdly, the nature of money love makes it dangerous because it obscures the simplicity of life. It obscures the simplicity of life. Verse 8 he says having food and clothes and it's possible the word for clothes could also embrace the idea of shelter, the word can refer to that. So if we take it in the broadest sense, having nourishment, clothing, shelter, the basic necessities of life, let us be therewith satisfied. Same word in the verb form used in verse 6.

In other words, we need to be satisfied with the simplicity of life. Boy, life gets so complex. And the more money you have the more complex it gets, right? And the less you can enjoy it because you sit around worrying all the time about what you're going to do with all this money. Or you spend all your time racing around like a maniac from one place to another buying stuff you don't need, stacking it on shelves and hang it in closets, putting it in the garage. It's absolutely unbelievable how much we have that is useless. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't take us anywhere. It doesn't provide anything. It's just something to have and it really is a barometer on the condition of the heart in so many cases.

Paul is not condemning having possessions if God graciously chooses to give them. But what he does condemn is the desire for them rising out of discontent. I tell you...you look at...somebody is going to say to me, "Well, I don't see you in rags." Well that's right. God is very good. There have been in my life those people who have been kind and gracious to me to provide things beyond what I need to eke out a bare existence. And again the question is how I deal with this, how I use this for the purpose of God and the glory of God. And the greater and deeper question is is this the thing that I spend my life pursuing. And the answer is no. I spend my life pursuing ministry and God keeps giving me other things. And if that's what He chooses to do, then I guess it's fair that He put me in a position to have to be able to demonstrate that the things I preach are being worked out in my own life, and that's a real test. So it's not that Paul's condemning having possessions, he's condemning the desire that rises out of discontent.

I don't know how you feel about it but there are many many times when I wish I had nothing, I would have no decisions to make. You know, there's a wonderful fact about poverty, it eliminates all your decisions. You don't have to make any decisions. You just eat and sleep and enjoy life at the basic level. What we've done with all of our money is replace people with things...replace conversation with entertainment. And we have lost a tremendous dimension of the simplicity of life, the simple joys. And somewhere in the back of all of our minds there's this secret longing to go out in the woods, right, and just pack our little group and stay there. And what we're saying is there is something wonderful about simplicity, about talking to people in your family...pulling the earphones off the head of your teen‑ager saying, "Speak, child, speak." You know, move your lips in meaningful words. When is the last time you just sat down and thanked God for a simple meal, you can hardly even come up to thanking God for your meal because you're so over indulged, right? That's a real loss, a real loss to lose that sense of thankfulness. So much is lost when we lose the simplicity of life. It's a wistful thing to think about but I think most of us would long to go back to a simple kind of life and take away a lot of the junk that's cluttered up our world.

The substance of Christian experience should be relationships. My time in relationship to God, my time in relationship to people I love and family and friends, but that gets all clouded because the world goes so fast and pulls at me so strongly and demands that I purchase all the goodies that it drags by and somehow life gets so confused. Instead of being able to enjoy life, I'm trying to figure out how I can make my checks stretch to pay the bills for the stuff I can't stand. But I bought it and so my whole demeanor and attitude is depressed because I'm in debt. You can see the compounding of all these, the loss of simple joys. Is it any wonder Jesus reduced it all to a very simple thing in Matthew 6 and said, "Look, this is the way to live, a very simple way to live, you can't serve God and money," He says in verse 24, "So make your choice and don't worry about your life, what you'll eat, what you drink or your body, what you'll wear." And then He talks about how He takes care of the birds and the lilies and all of this, and He says, "You're certainly worth more than all of these things. Your Father knows you have need." And then verse 33, "Seek first...what?...the Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you." If we could just get to the place where our whole consuming passion and affection is directed toward heaven, toward God, toward the Kingdom, toward the work of the Lord and just pour all of our energy and all of our resources into that, that brings back that simple joy. The simplicity of life is to accept what God gives, not be covetous. Seek Him and His glory and not consume oneself with complexities that are not necessary, that just steal joy away.

By the way, who said, "riches are desirable," anyway? With riches come infinite complexities of life. It's so simple for people who have just enough.

Now let me ask you a practical question at this point, see if we can't make it practical in terms of application. How can you be content with the simplicity of life and stop desiring more things? How do you put an end to this? How do you put the brakes on? We are really moving fast and we're being blasted by all this media stuff to buy into everything. How do you stop it?

Let me give you some principles that I've tried to apply in my own life. One, consciously realize that the Lord is the owner of everything you have. Consciously realize that the Lord is the owner of everything you have. So when you go to buy something ask yourself this, does the Lord need this? Does the Lord want this? Is this going to serve Him better? Is this going to bring Him glory? Is this going to enable His Kingdom to advance? He is the conscious owner of everything I possess. So whatever is my desire, is this going to...is this going to fit with His? Is this going to make my ministry more effective? Is this going to enable me to accomplish what I need to accomplish? Is this going to be able to be used as a way to show love to other people? Etc., etc., etc. He is consciously the owner of everything I possess. That helps me in the decision process.

Secondly, cultivate a thankful heart. Cultivate a thankful heart. Whatever you have, whatever you don't have, be thankful. Which is to say I recognize, God, that Your providence has put me exactly where I am with what I have and what I don't have and I want You to know I'm really grateful...I'm really grateful.

Thirdly, discern your needs from your wants. Discern your needs from your wants and be honest about that. If you just start asking yourself that, that will be a tremendous controlling factor on your next trip to the mall. What do you need? Tremendous, tremendously simple question that could put a tremendous amount of money into the kingdom of the Lord.

Another one, don't buy what you don't need and can't use to make you more effective in serving Him, and that's kind of what we said originally. Don't buy what you don't need and can't use to make you more effective in serving Him. So you ask yourself, how will this enhance my ability to serve God?

Another question that you want to ask yourself, am I spending less than I make? Please spend less than you make. You would be staggered to find out what a high percentage of people in America regularly spend more than they make and are in debt that they'll never get out of in their life time. They're total prisoners. They have no ability to be at all in charge of their resources. Spend less than you make, save what's left...save what's left for some purpose which God may put upon your heart.

Consciously transfer the ownership of everything you have to Him, cultivate a thankful heart, discern your needs from your wants, don't buy what you don't need and can't use to make you more effective in serving Him, spend less than you make, save what's left and give sacrificially to the Lord...give sacrificially to the Lord. That should be your highest joy. You should be coming in here so anxious for the offering that you can hardly stand it, just so that you have the privilege of giving to God. Laying up treasure in heaven for the work of the kingdom.

And things like this, practical little things like this, if you can get them working in your mind are going to prevent your life from becoming a complex struggle over money. The joy of life is not what you have. Listen, the joy of life is your relationships, it's who you know and who you love. Just compare when you lose someone you love, you would have gladly traded everything or maybe anything or everything, I should say, for the person you lost because people are so much more valuable. I think Jesus when He says, speaks of the true riches, has in mind people. If you can't handle money, why would He give you the true riches, He says.

So the nature of money love makes it dangerous because it ignores the true gain, it focuses on the temporal and it obscures the simplicity of life...the simple joys of being content with whatever you have and building your life around relationships and honoring God rather than the complexity of attaining riches.

Secondly, and the second major point, verse 9, money love is dangerous not only because of its nature, that is what inherent to it, but because of its effects, what it does to you. And again there are three things that I would draw to your attention. First of all in verse 9, it leads to sinful entrapment. Verse 9, but they that will be rich, they that purpose to be rich, that they decide to be rich, boulema, they that have a settled rational desire to be rich out of their mind, not out of their emotions, but they have decided they're going to pursue it. To put it another way, they that are greedy. To put it another way, they that love money. They that approach life that way are falling, present tense, into temptation. It's kind of an over and over situation. And a snare. They're continually in the process of falling into all kinds of sins that trap them...that trap them.

I have seen people who spend their money to eat. They go out and eat and they eat and they eat out and that becomes their fancy. And they literally cannot after a period of time eat at home. They're controlled by this overpowering trap to go out and waste money eating, eating, eating, eating. And much of our eating today has little to do with food and a whole lot to do with entertainment and environment. I have seen people who are captive to the most bizarre and strange kind of sins. People who find it almost impossible to stay at home in the evening and have conversation with their family, they're so compelled all the time to be moving around in the fast pace environment of the world they can't sit still anymore. They become entrapped in that materialistic pursuit that basically is almost irrational. The greedy person is tempted initially to reach out for what he wants. He reaches out, steps into the trap, is caught in the trap of sin. That trap then begins to make a victim out of that person.

We know people like that. I think about the people who are now joining Gamblers Anonymous. They wanted money. And they started to gamble for money and it became so compulsive that it literally controls their life. I just read the article about that quarterback from Ohio State named Arch Schleister(?) who totally destroyed his football career and his life by being unable to control the love of money and the tremendous compulsion to gamble. What happens with the love of money is you love it so much something allures you, you reach for that something and you're trapped in some complex situation, you become a victim of it. It's a trap. And Satan sets the trap and holds you in it as long as he possibly can.

Scripture has so much to say about the traps of sin. I don't want to belabor the issue but back in Deuteronomy 7 I was reading this week, verse 25 says, "The carved images of their gods shall you burn with fire, thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto you lest you be snared therein for it is an abomination to the Lord your God." In other words, stay away from money, silver and gold, because it captures you, it snares you, you get into a life style you can't let go of it, you're a victim. You're just so much like a trapped animal. You reach out for the bait, you're caught. Money love is a trap and it makes people bondslaves to itself.

And then secondly, not only does it lead to sinful entrapment, but it succumbs to harmful desires. Verse 9 he says, "And they also are falling into many foolish and harmful desires." You get involved in the love of money and not only will you be trapped but you'll be controlled by your passion, controlled by your desire. He calls them foolish, epithumia, foolish evil impulses in the sense that they're irrational. Here is this person like an animal caught in a trap thrashing all over the place trying to get free, totally irrational, moral sense is blurred and the burning desire for self‑fulfillment and more money, a senseless non‑rational illogical animalistic kind of conduct. They become victims of their own lust. And James says in 4 you desire...4 verse 1 and 2...you desire to have and you can't obtain so you kill, you lust and you want, you can't get so you make war. In other words, all the violence that comes when your passions are restrained by circumstances.

So, he says first of all the love of money is dangerous for the obvious reason that it takes you into a sinful trap and secondly that once you're trapped in there you become a victim of illogical irrational animalistic desires which bring you harm. They are harmful, blaberos, it means injurious, you hurt yourself...the opposite of true happiness. Chasing money is not the way to happiness, it's the way to being trapped in sin and being a victim of your lusts and a victim of your desires and totally a victim of these evil habits that control you. So loving money leads to sin. It leads to entrapment, it leads to control by lust that is irrational and only brings self‑inflicted harm.

And then the final effect, he says in verse 9, "Which drown men in destruction and perdition." These lusts, these evil impulses ultimately drown men in judgment. The word drown means just that, to submerge, to drag to the bottom like a sunken ship. The picture is not of a partial devastation, it's of a total devastation. That's why he chose the word. They just go out of sight, they're just gone. The word "destruction" olethros is used very often of the body, the destruction of the body, although it can also be used in a general sense of destruction as it is in 1 Thessalonians 5:3. The word "perdition" is used, I think, most times of the destruction of the soul. It's used, for example, of the place where the false prophet and the beast are cast in Revelation 17:8, the hell of hells where souls go who do not know God. And what he's saying is if we can put those two together and make a little bit of a distinction, we can say that there's a total devastation of body and soul, total judgment. The combination here has the sense at least of complete eternal irreversible loss. Love of money damns people. It plunges them into an ocean of eternal destruction. It totally destroys their life.

When Simon showed his love of money in Acts 8, Peter says your money perish with you. You're in the bond of iniquity, the gall of bitterness. In 2 Peter 2:7 there's this filthy manner of life of the wicked and if you follow down Peter's description of false teachers, starting at the beginning of the chapter, we find that they're in it for the money and they're headed for destruction. A filthy manner of life headed for God's inevitable destruction.

Look at James for a moment, chapter 5 just to sort of bring a comparative Scripture that speaks directly here. Verse 1 of James 5, "Come now you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you." In other words, he's warning them about judgment. "Your riches are corrupted, your garments are moth‑eaten, your gold and silver are rusted. The rust of them shall be a witness against you and you shall eat your flesh as it were fire. You have heaped treasure together for the last days." All you've done is stored up your stuff for judgment. And then in verse 4 he accuses them of unfair wages and the cry of the unfairly paid employee has reached the ears of the Lord. You have lived in pleasure on the earth, have been wanton, you have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. In other words, you've been fattened up like an animal to be killed. There's one of those kinds of sins that comes from the love of money. An employer loves money so much that he cheats his employees in order to keep more for himself. And he says judgment comes on you.

I found a little verse I had never seen before in Zephaniah 1:18, "Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath." It won't do any good then. You see, the love of money is dangerous. It leads into sinful traps. It leads to a life of desire that is irrational and only brings harm. And it ultimately leads to the terrible tragedy of judgment. So money is dangerous from the standpoint of its nature. It's dangerous from the standpoint of its effect.

And finally the danger of money is lastly emphasized by the proof of that danger through an illustration in verse 10. He gives the principle in verse 10, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And then gives the proof, "Which...and the antecedent of which is aphilarguria, the love of money...the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil which while some coveted after." And now he says there are some living proofs of this, some living illustrations of this, some who reached out after desire, like stretching forth is the implication, who really pursued this like maybe Demas in 2 Timothy 4:10 who loved this present world. There are some living illustrations of people who passionately pursued money. And what did they do? "They erred from the faith." What does that mean? They were led away from the body of Christian truth, a faith once for all delivered to the saints of which Jude writes. They departed from the truth. It doesn't mean they were saved, it means they had the truth in their presence and it was there and they could see it but they chose money over God. They departed from the truth, gold replaced God. You can't serve God and money and they chose money.

Who does he have in mind? Who are the some who did this? Well I can think of one, he's not named but he must have been in the thought of Paul. His name was...what?...Judas who having loved money erred from the faith. In proximity to Jesus Christ, one of His disciples, and yet he chose over the Son of God 30 pieces of silver...inconceivable stupidity. You think that was rational? You think it was smart to choose 30 pieces of silver over against the God of the universe? But that's the whole point, foolish lusts, foolish impulses, harmful ones. And such who do that err from the faith and secondly, pierce themselves through with many griefs, or sorrows. Pierced was originally used of putting animals on a spit, running a skewer right through the animal. What he is saying is they skewered themselves in this, they literally ran a spear right through the full length of their own soul and brought consuming grief...grief from a condemning conscience, an unfulfilled heart, dissatisfaction, disillusionment. Certainly Judas was dissatisfied, grieving, disillusioned with a condemning conscience and an unfulfilled heart when he went out an hanged himself. He pierced himself through, believe me, with many many griefs and he will be pierced with them forever and ever in hell. That's no way to live.

So Paul says this is something that's already been out there for you to see, some have tried to live after the love of money, they have erred from the true faith and they have literally skewered their souls forever.

How should we live? We should live with the pursuit of God, not a pursuit of money. In the words of Psalm 17:15 David said, "I will be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness." That should be our pursuit. And anything we possess in this world is only to be used to bring about the advance of the one we really love. Money love is deadly. It ignores the true gain, it focuses on the temporal, it obscures the simple joys of life, it leads to sinful entrapment, it succumbs to harmful lust, it exposes to eternal judgment. How much better to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength?

That's my prayer today that God will speak to every one of our hearts and that we'll be honest and upright enough in our spiritual commitment to take the steps that we need to take to divorce ourselves from loving money and reaffirm our love for Him. Let's pray together.

While your head's bowed for just a closing moment or two, I want you to recommit yourself in your heart and say, "Lord, if there's any love of money in me, take it away. I want all my life and all my resources to be used for Your glory. Help me to love You with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and not to be concerned with indulging myself." Will you be honest enough to say to the Lord, "I know consciously transfer ownership of everything I have to You? I express to You a thankful heart for the state in which I presently find myself. I want Your Holy Spirit to help me discern my needs from my wants. I want to seek Your will with all my resources. And from now on I desire to give to You sacrificially." Can you pray that prayer? Where your treasure is, your heart is. Where's your heart? Where is your heart?

FAther, we pray that the convicting work of the Spirit of God might bear fruit in all of us. Help us to hold lightly the things of this world and whatever of the world's substance can be invested in eternity, O God, may we run to do it. Help us to be faithful to love You with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and not to love money and so to spend ourselves for Your glory. Accomplish in every life, in my heart as well, Lord, what You would desire for the Savior's sake. Amen.

The Man of God

It's fitting that we bring our Shepherds Conference to a climax by turning in our Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 6 and looking at verses 11 through 14.  The subject of these verses is the man of God...the man of God.  That in itself is one of my very favorite biblical descriptive phrases, man of God.  It appears in verse 11 as a title the Apostle Paul gives to Timothy, a title that is simple yet immeasurably wonderful and rich.

What a privilege to be called man of God, or God's man.  It is a possessive phrase indicating that Timothy belonged to God in a special and unique way.  The fact is though this term "man of God" is a very common term in the Old Testament, it is a very uncommon term in the New Testament.  Only one person on the pages of the New Testament is ever called man of God and it is Timothy and it is in this text.  In a very special and unique way, Timothy was God's man.  And Paul uses this title to increase the sense of responsibility that Timothy had to discharge his ministry.  To be reminded that you are God's man, that you are the very possession of God is to be reminded of great responsibility.  And that is precisely the sense in which the Apostle Paul uses the phrase in designating Timothy.

Though it is us uncommon in the New Testament, it is common in the Old Testament.  It first appears in designation of Moses, the great prophet of God who wrote the Pentateuch.  In Deuteronomy 33:1, Moses is first called the man of God.  He is called the man of God again in 1 Chronicles 23:14 and Ezra 3:2.  The term "man of God" one time in the Old Testament was used of an angelic messenger, one who came in the form of a man to bring a message from God to the wife of Manoah that she was to bring forth a child who came to be the man Samson.  That occurs in Judges 13:6 and 7.  In 1 Samuel 2:27 it was used to describe a prophet who spoke on behalf of God to the high priest Eli about the divine judgment soon to come on his sinful family.  It was used again in 1 Samuel 9:6 and following to designate Samuel himself as the man of God who spoke divine truth.

Anyone who was the prophet of God was God's man. And the term "the man of God" was always used in reference to one who bore the Word of God, who represented God by speaking in God's behalf God's truth.  It was used of the prophet Shemaiah who was sent from God to prophesy against Rehoboam in 1 Kings 12:22.  It was used again for the prophet who spoke the Word of God to Jeroboam regarding his being replaced and then judged, 1 Kings 13.  Elijah is called the man of God in 1 Kings 17:18 and following, and Elisha in 2 Kings 4 and following is called the man of God many times.  David in Nehemiah 12 verses 24 and 36 is also called the man of God.  The prophet who confronted Amaziah is called the man of God in 2 Chronicles 25:7 and a prophet by the name of Igdaliah in Jeremiah chapter 35 verse 4 is also called the man of God.

All of the uses in the Old Testament reflect someone who uniquely represents God by speaking the Word of God.  The sum of all those uses then tells us unequivocally that it is a reference to a messenger who is sent by God to speak for God.  When Timothy then is called the "man of God," it is reflective of his call and his ordination and his responsibility to speak the truth of God.

There are two other uses of the term "man of God" in the New Testament.  One of them reflects back to the Old Testament men of God, that is 2 Peter 1:21.  It says, "The prophecy came not...that referring to the Old Testament...at any time by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."  And there you want to see that as a technical term for the authors of Scripture who were the spokesmen of God, the holy men of God.

The one other use of it is a generic use in 2 Timothy chapter 3.  Would you look at that for just a moment?  Every use of the "man of God" is specific up to this point, referring to one or another prophet, referring as in 2 Peter 1:21 to a group of prophets, referring in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 11 to Timothy specifically, but here in verses 16 and 17 of 2 Timothy 3 it is broadened and used in a somewhat generic sense.  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness in order that...and here's the phrase...the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.  While Timothy is certainly the object in the context here since he is the recipient of the letter, and since his own conversion has been mentioned in verses 14 and 15, the term in use in verse 17 broadens beyond Timothy to include any man of God.  The statement then in verses 16 and 17 is primarily for the benefit of those who are the articulators of the Word of God, the messengers of the Word of God, though it certainly extends beyond that at the widest point of interpretation to every believer.

But what Paul is saying here is that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God for the purpose of perfecting the man of God.  That is particularly focusing on the spokesmen for God.  Obviously the Word of God will perfect all believers, but his particular object in mind is the man of God.

Now it's interesting to me that the last usage of this phrase in Scripture is a generic use and therefore we do not feel reluctant to broaden the use of "the man of God" to encompass any today who are the spokesman for God in our generation or in any other generation.  God has always had His spokesman, He has always had His prophets, He has always had His preachers.  Men of God are those who uniquely speak His Word.

We can conclude then from 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17 that the man of God can embrace anyone who having been perfected by the Word is called to proclaim the Word.  So all of us who are called by God, set apart for the proclamation of His Word, to be preachers and teachers and proclaimers are to be men of God.  And we should bear that title in some measure of consistency with the long line of holy men who make up the elite company of those so designated men of God.  We as men of God today take our place in the ranks of those who are the historic spokesman for the eternal God.  What a tremendous calling.  Paul's instruction to Timothy then, back in 1 Timothy 6, is heightened intensified and made even greater when he calls Timothy man of God because in so doing he identifies Timothy with that long line of historic spokesmen for God and intensifies his own need to be committed to the task at hand.

We are, as Pilgrim's Progressput it, the King's champions.  What a marvelous thought.  Men of God are men who have been lifted above worldly aims and who have been devoted to divine service.  Men belonging to a spiritual order with which things temporal, transitory and passing have no permanent relationship.  We are men who are not the world's men.  We are not our own men.  We are God's men. We have been raised above earthly things, we have been raised to the heavenlies, we have become the unique possession of God, His property, we stand in His stead to speak His Word.

It's important that Paul use the term here because of the weighty ministry at the feet of Timothy.  You remember that Timothy had been left in Ephesus to put things right in the church, to bring order to a church that had lost its way.  False doctrine had crept in. False leadership was there.  People unworthy of pastoral roles and serving as elders were in those roles.  Sinful leaders, heresy, ungodliness, tolerance of sin, all of that was in the church and Timothy was given the task of making it right.  In order to lay upon him the weight of that responsibility he calls him God's man.  You are there as the representative of the living God.  That adds tremendous sense of responsibility.  In fact, this is such a strategic letter for such a strategic church that Paul three times in the letter points out false teachers and how Timothy is to respond to them.  And each time he does it by reminding Timothy of the sacredness of his calling.

Let me show you that.  Go back to chapter 1.  Three times Paul speaks of false teachers.  Starting in verse 3 he talks about those who teach another doctrine.  Verse 4, who teach fables and endless genealogies, who serve up questions rather than answers, and do not provide things that godly edify.  These turn others aside, verse 6, and their motive is they want to be teachers but they have no idea what they're talking about, according to verse 7.

The second reference to false teachers comes in chapter 4.  The first four verses, starting in verse 1, speak about the fact that some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, doctrines of demons, propagated by lie speaking hypocrites whose consciences have been seered with a hot iron.

The third reference to false teachers comes in chapter 6 verse 3, those who teach otherwise, who do not consent to wholesome or healthy words, who do not consent to the doctrine that is according to godliness, who are proud, who don't know anything, who are morbidly sick about questions and disputes and debates producing only envy, strife, railing and evil suspicion, who propagate nothing but the twisted corrupt perversed disputings of men, destitute of the truth who imagine that the real gain that they're after is money, not godliness.  And he goes on to speak about their love of money down through verse 10.

So, chapter 1, chapter 4, chapter 6, Paul introduces the problem of false teachers. They were high powered, they were strong and they were in positions of authority in the church.  Each time, however, he speaks of them he follows up by telling Timothy he has to resist them.  Back in chapter 1 verse 18, he says to Timothy, "This charge...or command...I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies pointing to you that you might war a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience in the midst of battle."  Once he mentions the false teachers, he immediately then charges Timothy to resist them.

Chapter 4, he mentioned the false teachers, as I said in the first four verses, and then immediately in verse 14 having discussed all the way from verse 6 Timothy's responsibility, I mean 6 through 16, he flows through that whole passage and tells Timothy how to resist them.  Verse 6, "Put the brethren in remembrance of these things, be a good minister of Jesus Christ nourished up in the words of faith and good doctrine unto which you've attained and refuse their profane and old wives fables and exercise yourself unto godliness."

Down in verse 16 he sums it up, "Take heed to yourself and unto the doctrine, continue in them.  In doing this you'll save yourself and the ones who listen to you."  Again false teachers and then Timothy's responsibility.

Chapter 6, we find the same thing.  Three to ten, the false teachers and then in 11 through 14, Timothy's responsibility.  "But you, O man of God, flee these things and follow after," and so forth.  Each time he mentions false teachers which are the heart of the problem, he mentions Timothy's responsibility to resist them.

Now here's the real key point.  In each case Timothy's responsibility to resist them is heightened by a reference to Timothy's call to the ministry.  Chapter 1 verse 18, "Timothy, do this, I charge you, according to the prophecies which pointed to you."  That is, the Word of God that came through means of prophecy to point to Timothy as God's anointed servant.  Chapter 4 verse 14, the second portion about false teachers, Timothy's responsibility is again heightened by a reference to his spiritual beginnings, his call and ordination, "Neglect not the gift that is in you which was given you in prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the elders."  And again he goes back to spiritual responsibility based upon his call of God, his ordination, his spiritual beginnings.  Chapter 6, he does the same thing.  Verse 12, "You are to fight the good fight, you are to hold on to eternal life because this is what you were called to and this is what you have confessed in your confession before many witnesses."

In other words, Timothy's responsibility to stand against error and to fight for the truth and to be God's man in setting the church right is based upon that original call of God that so designated him as the man of God.  God's representative.  Beloved, the responsibility of the ministry revolves around a man's call from God.  That's basic.  We are called by God to be His man. We are uniquely His.  He owns us.  He possesses us.  We represent Him.

In verse 11 it begins, "But thou, O man of God,.."  "But thou" is set in contrast to the false teachers.  The false teachers are into everything mentioned from verse 3 through 10, "But you," he says in contrast, "You are God's man, they are money's man, they are materialism's man, they are the world's man, they are their own man, they are sin's man, Satan's man, hell's man, but you, O man of God..."  Contrast.  The word "O" is a personal appeal, it's an emotional appeal.  It's very rare, by the way, in personal greetings in the Greek that word would be used and it shows the pleading in the heart of Paul...but you, O man of God, remember your spiritual beginnings, your spiritual calling, don't lose sight of your identity.  As a man of God, you have a unique calling.  As a man of God, you are to be uniquely identifiable. As a man of God, you are to have characteristics that can be seen and measured.

How is a man of God known?  What is Paul going to say to Timothy as to the character of a man of God?  Four things...Timothy, you man of God, hear are four things that should mark you.  One, a man of God is marked by what he flees from.  Two, a man of God is marked by what he follows after.  Three, a man of God is marked by what he fights for.  And four, a man of God is marked by what he is faithful to.  A tremendous practical outline for every man of God who stands to speak in the place of divine truth.

Number one, a man of God is known by what he flees from.  Verse 11, "But thou, O man of God, flee these things."  That's a present imperative, keep on continually fleeing.  It's a continual running from.  It's the word pheugo, from which we get fugitive.  Someone who is running to escape a pursurer.  It pictures one running from a plague, running from a serpent that's poisonous, running from an attacking enemy.  The man of God is a runner.  The man of God does not stand still, he runs and he runs from things.  He is known by what he flees from.  First Corinthians 6:18 the Apostle Paul says, "Flee sexual sin."  First Corinthians 10:14, "Flee idolatry."  Second Timothy 2:22 Paul writes to Timothy, "Flee youthful lusts."  We are fleeing.  The man of God is fleeing at all times those kinds of corrupting things.

Here he says flee these things.  What does he mean?  The things he has just talked about. What has he just talked about? The evils attached to the love of money.  Verse 9, "They that would be rich, desiring to be rich, fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition, for the love of money is all kinds of evil which while some coveted after they have erred from the faith and literally skewered themselves through with many griefs.  Flee these things, the love of money and all its attendant griefs, lusts, temptations, hurtful things, errors in the faith, sorrows, griefs...flee these things.

The man of God is not attached to the love of money.  He does not have affection for material things.  Paul has been telling Timothy to avoid a lot of things.  He's told him several times in this epistle to avoid endless genealogies, vain repetition, fables, science falsely so called as its mentioned in verse 20 of chapter 6.  And here he says flee the love of money which is the root of all kinds of evil.  Flee greed with all its vices.  It is the sin of false teachers.  It is the sin of lying hypocrites who pervert the truth for personal gain, who make merchandise of people, who really pursue filthy lucre and people are only a means to that end, who preach for money.  From Baalam, the prophet who was bought by the highest bidder, to Judas, the apostle who sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver...from the false prophets of Israel who were greedy dogs that never had enough and were concerned every one for his own gain, Isaiah says, and the covetous prophets and priests of Jeremiah's time and the prophets of Ezekiel's time who could be bought by handfuls of barley and pieces of bread, and the prophets who divined for money of which Micah speaks, all the way to the false teachers who spoke good words and fair speeches to the Romans to deceive the innocent for the satisfaction of their own bellies and the unruly and empty talkers and deceivers of Crete who subverted whole households teaching things they ought not for filthy lucre's sake, the characteristic of false teachers is greed.  From the first to the last.  But it has no place for the man of God. The love of money has twisted and perverted many.

Paul was so careful to avoid this, he says to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, "I have coveted no man's silver, no man's gold and no man's clothing and I have labored with my own hands to provide my own living and the living of everybody with me so you wouldn't have to be charged with that.  I've gone the second mile so as not to be accused of grasping for money."  To the Corinthians he writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, "I have a right to be supported, I have a right as an Apostle to lead about a sister as a wife...that is have marriage...I have a right to be receiving a living from my ministry, they that preach the gospel should eat of the gospel, or live of the gospel, but I wave that right so as not to get you in any way, shape, or form thinking that I might be in it for the money."

In Philippians he says, "I would love to send someone to you but I don't have anybody to send because everybody does what he does for himself, not for Jesus Christ.  The only person I can send you who is not like that is Timothy."  Paul must have experienced people in his own ministry who were in it for what they could get, like Demas who having loved the present world departed from the Apostle.

In 1 Thessalonians he says to the Thessalonians, "We were gentle among you like a nursing mother cherishing her children and we did not charge you for anything," and he goes on to explain his own labor night and day in toil in order that he might provide ministry to them at no cost.

Let me tell you something.  You may call yourself a preacher, but if you're in it for the money you are not a man of God...you are not God's man.  You cannot be God's man and money's man.  You have prostituted the call of God into personal gain.  We see it all around us.  And when do we awaken to the reality of it?  Never put a price on your calling, never put a price on your ministry, never charge a certain amount for bringing the Word of God, for whatever you charge will have the net effect of devaluing you to zero.

A man of God is known by what he flees from.  He flees from sexual sin.  He flees from having other gods in his heart.  He flees from youthful lust.  And here in this text he flees from the love of money.

Secondly, the man of God is also known by what he follows after.  Verse 11 says, "Follow after..." and six virtues are mentioned, "righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and meekness."  The man of God while continually running from is also continually running to.  Something behind him he wants to avoid, something ahead of him he wants to catch.  And it's present imperative again, continually be pursuing, keep on running after.  We are always fleeing, that's the negative, and we are always following after, that's the positive.  Like that wonderful widow mentioned in chapter 5 verse 10 who has diligently pursued every good work, so the man of God has a life pursuit of that which is right.

The Christian life is not just running from what's wrong, it's running toward what's right.  And there's a sense in which as long as we're in this body, in this flesh, on this earth and victims of our own fallenness, we can never stop running because if we stop running from what is evil it will catch us, and if we stop pursuing what is righteous, it will elude us.  We'll never ever be at the point where we have finally outdistanced what is wrong, nor will we ever be at the point where we have fully captured what is right.  So our whole life is in a pursuit of what is right and a fleeing from what is wrong.

In 2 Timothy 2 where Paul said, "Flee youthful lust," he added, "and follow righteousness, faith..." and so forth.  Proverbs 15:9 says, "The Lord loves the one who pursues righteousness."  What a great thought.  Ask yourself what you pursue.  What are you after in this life?  What are you living for?  What are you directing your goals and energies at? What occupies your mind?  What goals do you want to attain...success, fame, esteem, promotion, money, possessions, house, car, whatever?  What are you really after?  That's the mark of a man of God.  He's after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, meekness.  A man of God is known by what he runs from, he's also known by what he runs after.

Let's look at these.  The first two are overarching general virtues, one having to do with the external behavior, the other having to do with the internal attitude and motive.  The first is righteousness...the beautiful word righteousness.  And I don't want to beg the issue and you all know what this means, that rich word dikaiosunebasically means to do right, do right before man, do right before God; do right to man, do right to God.

The remnant of faithful Israel were called by Isaiah in chapter 51 verse 1, "You that follow after righteousness."  The writer of Hebrews says, "The only people who see the Lord are those who follow after holiness," Hebrews 12:14.  

And the righteousness Paul has in mind here is not imputed righteousness, it's not sort of that declared righteousness that you receive positionally in Christ in salvation, it's practical righteousness.  The man of God is known by doing right.  He does right in his life.  He lives according to the standard of God. He obeys God.  His conduct is right, his behavior is right, his life is right, he does what's right.

And how tragic it is when as we have seen this week in the terrible scandal that's hit the television evangelists, living ungodly lascivious sexually disoriented lives apart from the truth of God and all the time mouthing the gospel of Jesus Christ is a total sham on everything the gospel stands for.  And I was interested to read in the paper yesterday that 99 percent of the letters that came into that program have been affirming and positive.  Ninety‑nine percent, which tells me that the truth was probably never given out through those years on that program to those constituents or they would have seen sin for sin and dealt with it as sin ought to be dealt with.  And so a man can maintain his credibility when his life would make a black mark on a piece of coal.  How can that be?  A man may be a preacher, I say it again, but he's not a man of God who lives like that.  Obeying God's standard is characteristic of the man of God.  The man of God follows after righteous behavior.  He pursues righteous behavior.  He does not pursue sexual gratification, material gratification, ego gratification, he pursues righteousness.  He lives to do what's right.  He lives to do what's good.  He lives to do what's obedient to God's commands.

And the partner to that spiritual virtue is the next one, godliness.  That has to do with the inside.  Righteousness has to do with the behavior, godliness has to do with the attitude and the motive.  This moves inside to direct our thought to the spirit of reverence, the spirit of holiness, the spirit of piety that's in the heart.  Eusebeia, that beautiful word used nine times in the pastoral epistles, a very rich theme throughout all these letters, right behavior flows out of right attitude, right action flows out of right motive, reverence for God is what eusebeiameans, godliness, it means a worshiping heart.  This is a person who not only does right but thinks right, who not only behaves properly but is properly motivated.  This is one, who in the words of Hebrew 12:28, serves God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.  This is one who lives life in the conscious presence of the holiness of God.

Godliness...what a beautiful term.  God‑likeness, this is the one who standing before the Lord some day, according to 1 Corinthians 4:1 to 5, when the time of the revealing of the secret things of the heart, the motives of the heart will receive a reward for godliness.  Those are the two overarching virtues the man of God should be known by, they are the things he pursues.  They are at the core of his usefulness.  They are at the core of his power. They are at the core of his character.  Watch your heart.  Watch your motives.  Watch your desires.  Watch your conduct.  Watch your behavior.  Don't be an unsanctified preacher.

Richard Baxter said in The Reformed Pastorback in the seventeenth century, "Many a tailor goes in rags that makes costly clothes for others and many a cook scarcely licks his fingers when he has dressed for others the most costly dishes," end quote.  Don't be a tailor in rags, don't be a starving cook, don't be preparing things for others that you don't have yourself. Paul was so concerned with these matters of godliness that in Acts 20 he said to the Ephesian elders, "Take heed to yourselves," start there.  And back in the fourth chapter we saw what he said to Timothy in verse 16, "Take heed to yourself."

Paul knew himself.  In Romans 7 he said, "I know that in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing.  And I know what I want to do I don't do, and what I don't want to do I do, and I'm a wretched man because of that presence of the flesh."  He called himself in 1 Timothy 1 the chief of sinners.  He didn't say I was, he said I am.  He knew his sinful tendencies and he knew that he had to use all the means of grace to allow the Spirit of God to conquer those tendencies.  And that's why to the Corinthians he said, "Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."  That's why he wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 that if you want to be a vessel fit for the Master's use, you must purge yourself, sanctify yourself.  The sad reality, beloved, is that we have very few men of God whose lives are marked by great power because we have few men of God who fit the standard.

John Flavil, the Puritan writer, said, "It is easier to cry against a thousand sins in others than to mortify one sin in ourselves."  Is that not so?  And it is the duty of the preacher to cry against the thousand sins in the lives of others.  It is also his duty to deal with the one sin in himself.

John Owen wrote, "A minister may fill his pews, his communion role, the ears of the public, but what he is on his knees in secret before almighty God, that he is and no more," end quote.  Unholiness, sin in the heart and life of God's servant disgraces the ministry and the Savior's glorious name.  The man of God, the real man of God pursues righteousness and godliness.  And he employs all the means necessary to that, the Word and prayer and self‑denial and discipline and accountability and worship and communion and all those spiritual graces in order that he may capture his own heart and bring it captive to Christ.  It comes down for us to making sure in the ministry that we aren't doing what we're doing for others and not for ourselves, like the ragged tailor.

Charles Bridges wrote in The Christian Ministrythis and I think it's so direct, "If we should study the Bible more as ministers than as Christians, more to find matter for the instruction of our people than food for the nourishment of our own souls, we neglect then to place ourselves at the feet of our divine teacher, our communion with Him is cut off, and we become mere formalists in sacred profession.  We cannot live by feeding others or heal ourselves by the mere employment of healing our people.  And therefore, by this course of official service, our familiarity with the awful realities of death and eternity may be rather like that of the grave digger, the physician and the soldier than of the man of God, viewing eternity with deep seriousness and concern and bringing to his people the profitable fruit of his contemplations.  It has well been remarked that when once a man begins to view religion not as of personal but merely of professional importance, he has an obstacle in his course with which a private Christian is unacquainted.  It is indeed difficult to determine whether our familiar intercourse with the things of God is more to our temptation or to our advantage," end quote.

It's true.  If we do not use the means of grace for our own righteousness and godliness, we will not be a man of God.  Stalker(?) in his book on the Yale series on preaching says, "Brethren, study God's Word diligently for your own edification and when it has become more to you than your necessary food, sweeter than honey or the honeycomb, it will be impossible for you to speak of it to others without a glow passing into your words which will betray the delight with which it has inspired your own heart."

So, the man of God pursues these two general virtues and others correspond. The dominant internal virtues are then named: faith and love...faith and love.  What does faith mean?  Confident trust in God for everything, loyalty to the Lord, unwavering confidence in God's power, unwavering confidence in God's purpose, unwavering confidence in God's plan, unwavering confidence in God's provision, unwavering confidence in God's promise.  We live believing God.  The man of God lives by faith.  He trusts the sovereign God to keep His Word and meet his needs and provide everything.  There's no frustration.  There's no forcing. There's no manipulation.  He lives in what I call a relaxed desperation.  He is desperate because of the tremendous ramifications of the ministry, but he is relaxed because of his confidence in the sovereignty of God.

He lives in faith.  The dominant internal attitude is faith.  He trusts God.  He lives in that confidence.  He believes God for everything.  He is loyal to God in everything.  Unwavering.

And coupled with it is love.  That beautiful volitional love, the love of choice, agapan(?), unrestricted and unrestrained.  You say, "What does this mean?  Love to whom here?"  Love to everybody...love to God, love to men, love to Christians, love to non‑Christians.  It's unrestricted, it's unrestrained, it's just love.  His internal virtue is predominantly that of faith in the sovereign God and love to the sovereign God and love to all men.  He understands the great commandment, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength," and he also understands how essential it is to love your neighbor as yourself, Matthew 22:37 to 39.  The man of God is a lover of God.  He longs for God.  He understands what Paul means when he says, "O that I may know Him."  He understands the significance of a spiritual Father in 1 John 2 who knows Him who is from the beginning.  He is a lover of God more than a lover of self.  And because he is a lover of God he loves whom God loves and God loves men and so he loves men.  The man of God is known as one who pursues after a life of confident trust in the sovereignty of God and love to God and love to men.  He seeks to let the love of God shed abroad in his heart, as Romans 5:5 says, out that it may touch the world.  He is a lover.  And in the sense, please, that he loves enough to confront with the truth, do not pretend to love someone whose sins you will not confront.

And then the outward virtues are designated as endurance and meekness.  Endurance or patience is hupomone, it means to remain under.  It refers not to a passive resignation but a victorious triumphant endurance, an unswerving loyalty to the Lord in the middle of trials...that's what it means...going through severe troubles, severe anguish, severe difficulty, never wavering, never compromising, always trusting, always believing whatever the circumstance.  This is the endurance of the martyr who will give his life if need be for the cause, the shepherd who if need be will lay down his life for his own flock as his master did.  This is the person who under the worst of circumstances makes no issue out of his own rights and his own needs and his own demands.  This is the noble virtue, the ability to endure injustice, to endure deprivation, pain, battle, grief, whatever it is with spiritual staying power, to endure even to death.  This is the spirit that takes what comes in victory.

George Mathison was blind.  He fell in love.  He lost the woman he loved with all his heart.  He wrote a prayer in which he pleaded that he might be able to accept that loss as God's will.  He said, quote: "Not with dumb resignation but with holy joy, not only with the absence of murmur but with a song of praise," end quote.  Only hupomonedoes that.  It is the man of God who faces the inevitable and the constant trials of ministry that must have that virtue of endurance because the stuff keeps coming and coming and coming on the outside.  Read 2 Corinthians 11 and all the things that Paul endured and maintained his victorious triumphant spirit.

And then that second outward attitude is one of meekness, or humility.  He projects a selflessness.  He projects a meekness, the sweet gentleness of one who though consumed with a great cause recognizes that he makes no contribution to its success.  Meekness.

The man of God is known because he follows those things, he follows righteousness.  That is he pursues right behavior.  He follows godliness, that is he pursues right motives and thoughts.  And in his heart he pursues a life of total confidence in God and love toward God and men.  And on the outside he pursues a life that no matter what the circumstances manifest triumphant endurance and humility.  Those are the marks of the man of God.  And again I say you may be a preacher but if these are not the things that you pursue, you're not the man of God.

Thirdly, the man of God is known not only by what he flees from and what he follows after but by what he fights for.  This is just a brief and direct point in verse 12.  "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life unto which thou art also called and has professed, or confessed, a good confession before many witnesses."

Let me say this very directly to you.  I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the literature of the New Testament supports the fact that a man of God who speaks for God is to see himself as a fighter...as a fighter.  We are polemicists.  We are usually on the attack.  We are fighters, contenders, battlers, soldiers and protagonists.  We must understand that ministry is war and we are warring with the truth against error.  We are called to be soldiers.  In fact, in chapter 2 of 2 Timothy, we are soldiers who must endure hardness, who cannot entangle ourselves with civilian life and who do everything we do to please the one who called us to be a soldier.  When Paul came to the end of his pilgrimage and ministry he said in 2 Timothy 4:7, "I have fought the good fight."  It was a battle.  It was a warfare.  And to perceive it as anything less is to lose.  We battle the world.  We battle the flesh.  We battle the devil.  We battle sin.  We battle heresy.  We battle error.  We battle apathy and lethargy in the church.  We battle the kingdom of darkness that yields to us reluctantly. And so it is a severe and never ending battle.

Sadly, some people don't even know there's a battle. And some people feel that if things don't go exactly the way they want them, they better quit.  That if it isn't the way you think it ought to be you ought to leave.  And they may be doing nothing but going AWOL.  This is a battle.  We expect a battle.  All that live godly in this present age, 2 Timothy 3:12 says, will suffer persecution.  There's no way around it.  We were made for war.  We were made for battle.  And it is a battle.  And first of all, we have to admit to the battle.  And Jesus said if you're not willing to lose your life to find it, you lose it.  And if you're not willing to take up your cross and follow Me, which means to the death if need be, you're not even worthy to be My disciple.  This is a warfare.

And so he says fight.  And it's again present imperative, as the first two verbs were, keep on continually fighting, be always battling.  The term is used in military context as well as athletic ones to describe the concentration and the great effort coupled with discipline and conviction required to win.  It's used repeatedly in the New Testament, it's the word agonizomai, from which we get agonize.  And the word "fight" is the same root, agon, agonize the agon, agonize through the battle, spiritual conflict with sin, with unrighteousness with the kingdom of Satan.  Play your part as a man of God with a noble commitment to the contest for the truth.

I'm thrilled to be a soldier.  People say to me all the time, "You always seem to be in some kind of a battle on some front."  I seem to be in battles on all kinds of fronts and that's the way it ought to be.  It isn't just that I have an ugly personality and make enemies.  I know that's not true because there are people on the outside who don't know me.  Now people here might think differently but on the outside they don't know.  It's the battle over truth.  And I am greatly distressed that we live in a time when the idea is that you don't want to be a battler for truth, you want to do all you can to set aside any theology that might make someone else disagree with you.  It's frightening to me.  We are to earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, in spite of the intensity and the danger in the fight, beloved, it's a good fight.  Fight the good fight.  The word "good", kallosis best translated, I think, excellent or noble.  Fight the excellent fight, fight the noble fight, battle for truth, battle for the faith.  He says fight the good fight of the faith.

What is the faith?  The faith once for all delivered to the saints is the contents of the Word of God, the truth.  Fight for it, it's the highest cause in the world.  Don't compromise.  Fight effectively.  If you say, "Oh I might get in trouble in this world, they might not like me and I might have to suffer," so forth and so on.  All right, then go to the next phrase in verse 12, "Lay hold on eternal life unto which you were also called and have confessed a good confession before many witnesses."  What does he mean by that?  Does he mean get saved?  No.  Timothy's already saved.  Does he mean go to heaven?  No, he doesn't mean go to heaven when he says lay hold on eternal life.  What he means, and it's very simple, get a grip on eternal life.

In other words, you won't mind giving yourself up in this world if you've got a grip on eternal life.  In other words, live in the light of eternity.  Isn't that great?  Hey, if you're ministering here just for what you can gain here, you've got the wrong perspective.  That's not the perspective of a man of God.  Lay hold on eternal life.  To put it in the terms of Colossians 3, "Set your affections on things...what?...above and not on things on the earth."  "Recognize your citizenship...Philippians 3:20...as not on the earth but it's in heaven."  Live and minister in the light of eternity, that keeps your focus in the battle.

And then he says, after all, you were called to eternal life and you confessed a noble confession before many witnesses of that eternal life, now live in the light of it.  You were called to it. That's, by the way, every time you see the word "called" used, the reference to calling used in the epistles, it is always the effectual call of a sovereign God to salvation.  You were called to salvation which is eternal life.  You confessed your confession, publicly confessing Jesus as Lord with your mouth, you affirmed your salvation unto eternal life, you confessed that Christ was your Lord, you confessed it before many witnesses, he may have in mind Timothy's baptism, he may have in mind his ordination, he probably has in mind everything from his conversion on through every confession he ever made.  He says you have confessed to being a possessor of eternal life, now live in the light of it.  See that?

I mean, what are you going to believe about a man who says, "I live for eternity, I have received eternal life," and you watch this guy and he spends everything he's got and all his energy to amass things here and now.  Does he live in the light of eternity?  Jesus said, "Where your treasure is...what?...that's where your heart is."  To live in the light of eternity.  The man of God who has been called to eternal life, who has confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior has entered into a battle with the forces of sin and a battle with the forces of hell, a battle with lies, a fight for the faith which demands every thing he has.  And the only way he's going to be able to give himself to that battle is if he can divorce himself from this world and live in the light of eternity.

Paul ministered because he knew some day he'd stand before Jesus Christ, right?  He lived in the light of eternity.  In Acts 1 it's...Jesus went away, the angels came down and they said this same Jesus will so come in like manner as you've seen Him go, which was saying to them, in effect, get about it, He'll be back soon.  Back in chapter 4 verse 8 of 1 Timothy, bodily exercise profits little, godliness is profitable to all things...why?  Because it has promise for the life that now is and for the life which...what?...which is to come.  So where you going to spend yourself on time or eternity?  On temporal things or eternal things?  The man of God, beloved, rises above the pitiful struggles for things perishable and things useless.  He fights for things that are eternal...the truth of God.

So, the man of God is known what he flees from, what he follows after, what he fights for and lastly, and very briefly, our time is gone, what he's faithful to...by what he's faithful to.  Listen very carefully for five minutes to me.  Verse 13, "I command you."  He's been commanding him on several occasions through this epistle, this isn't the first time.  "I command you in the sight of God who makes all things alive and before Christ Jesus who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession that you keep the commandment without spot, unrebukable unto the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ."

The main thrust here comes in verse 14, "That you keep the commandment," te entolen.  What does it mean?  The commandment, what is that?  Some people say, "Well, it's the gospel."  Others say it's the teaching in this epistle.  Others say it's the whole of the new covenant.  Folks, simply it is the complete revealed Word of God, the commandment, this is the commandment of God summed up in a singular word.  It could be translated the Word, the revealed truth.  He says to Timothy in verse 14, "Keep it," what does that mean?  Guard it.  Guard it with your life.

How do you guard it?  Not only by speaking it, speaking it, speaking it, but by also living it, living it, living it.  What good does it do to speak the truth and live a lie?  It just undercuts the truth, destroys, devastates.  It's so tragic when someone who keeps the Word with their mouth does not keep the Word with their life.  Guard it, he says, Timothy.  Guard the commandment from God, guard the truth, guard the sound doctrine, keep that which was committed to you.

Verse 13 of 2 Timothy 1, "Hold fast the form of sound words, keep that good thing committed to you, keep it by the Holy Spirit who dwells in you."  Use the Holy Spirit's power to hold on to truth.  How do you keep it? By preaching it, preaching it, preaching, by living it, living it, living it.  Be faithful to it, that's what he is saying.  The man of God is known by what he is faithful to.  He's faithful to declare the truth.  He's faithful to live the truth.

Even if the cost is high.  Notice how he covers this, back to verse 13, "I command you to do it in the sight of God."  God's watching.  But it's not negative, it's not because God's looking over your shoulder and He'll clobber you if you don't.  It's in the sight of God who makes all things alive, and that verb is most generally used of resurrection.  Get this.  In the sight of God who raises the dead.  What's the point?  The point is this.  You keep the truth and you don't waver on the truth and you have the courage of your convictions and you live it and you keep it and even if they kill you for it, God is watching and God is able to...what?...to raise the dead.  That's the point.

What can they do to you?  Ultimately all they can do at the worst is escort you into eternity.  So you don't compromise.  In the sight of God, the all‑seeing omniscient God who makes all things alive, He is not only creator of life, He is sustainer of life, He is provider for life and more than that, the general usage of this term, He is the one who restores life through resurrection power.  And so we are to be faithful without fear, faithful with courage knowing that God is watching who is in charge of our life, that is protective power.  At worst the world can kill us and He raises us from the dead.  And there are perhaps millions of martyrs through the history of the church who are living testimony to the fact that the God who is able to raise the dead was watching them when they took their courageous stand.  Amen?

And not only is God watching but he calls another witness.  "I command you in the sight of God who is making all things alive and before Christ Jesus who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession," which is exactly what he wants Timothy to do.  Hold fast to his confession.  He said Christ did it.  Christ went before Pilate, Matthew 27:11, Luke 23:2 and 3, John 18:36 and 37, Pilate said to Him, "They accuse You of being a King.  Are You a King?"  If Jesus says, "Yes, I'm a King," what does it cost Him?  His life.  Pilate said, "Are You a King?"  And in contemporary language Jesus said, "You said it...you better believe it.  I am a King and if I wanted I could call an army.  I am a King but My Kingdom isn't of this world."  They killed Him.  That was courageous.  That was fearless.  Jesus Christ is a living example and model and perfect illustration of courage to be true and faithful to the Word of God at any cost.  So he says, "Timothy, I command you to stand for the truth and hold it and preserve it in your message and in your living in the sight of the God who will make you alive if it cost you your life and in sight of Christ who is your example, who stood and it cost Him His life.  And God made Him alive."  Tremendous...tremendous...faithful because you trust in the God who makes alive and because you want to be like the Christ who took His stand and willingly gave His life for the truth.  Jesus told the truth about who He was and why He had come, it cost Him His life.

The man of God tells the truth at any cost.  He is faithful to the truth no matter what the price...no matter what the price.

Verse 14, "Timothy, be faithful at any cost," and then he says, "totally faithful, without spot and unrebukable."  No blemish and no accusation.  I want you to be totally faithful to the truth.  You know what the truth is, don't waver.

Not only totally faithful but permanently faithful...until the shining forth, the epiphainos, the appearing, the glorious Second Coming display of our Lord Jesus Christ.  In other words, until it's over, until Jesus comes, Timothy, should He come in your life time, until He comes, be faithful...be faithful.  Totally faithful, permanently faithful, living in the light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

What a picture of the man of God.  He's known by what he flees from.  He's known by what he follows after.  He knows...he's known by what he fights for.  He's known by what he is faithful to.  I thank God to be called into His service.  I thank Him that He in His grace saw fit to make me His man, to preach His truth.  But there's a down side risk, and let me close with that.  First Kings 13...1 Kings 13 introduces us to a man of God.  It just says in verse 1, "Behold, there came a man of God, a messenger from God, a prophet.  He came by the Word of the Lord and he was to speak to Jeroboam a prophecy.  And he did.  And God had said to the man of God, When you have spoken the prophecy leave, and do not eat in that place and do not drink water in that place, do that prophecy and leave."

And after some pleading and some deceit, the man of God was coddled into disobeying.  And so he sat down to eat...it says in verse 19...and drink water.  He disobeyed God.  Small thing.  God said give your prophecy and get out of there, don't eat and drink.  Eating and drinking is not a moral issue, disobeying God is.  "It came to pass," verse 20, "as they sat at the table, the Word of the Lord came to the prophet who brought him back, he cried to the man of God, who came from Judah, the man of God had just used in a mighty way to give a prophecy to a king. Thus says the Lord, For as much as you have disobeyed the mouth of the Lord and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you but came back and have eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which the Lord did say to you, Eat no bread and drink no water, your carcass shall not come to the sepulcher of your fathers."  They went out of there and got shredded by a lion.

It's a wonderful privilege to be a man of God.  It's a fearful responsibility.  Potential for great blessing, potential for great danger.  Let's bow together in prayer.

Thank You, Father, again this morning for meeting us here in Your presence, for we know that You inhabit the praise of Your people.  We bless You for Your Word to us, we want to be the men of God that You want us to be.  I pray especially for every man here for this conference, the men who are here in our own church.  I pray, too, that all of us might be men and women of God in the general sense who also flee from evil and pursue what is right and fight for the truth and are faithful to it.  Father, apply these things in our hearts.  Work Your work.  Glorify Your name.  Exalt Your Son in every life.  We pray in His name.  Amen.

A Solemn Call to Spiritual Duty

Let's open our Bibles this morning to 1 Timothy chapter 6. If I were to entitle the portion of Scripture we're looking at, 1 Timothy 6:13 through 16, I would call it "A solemn call to spiritual duty...a solemn call to spiritual duty." It comes at the conclusion of this epistle which in general is a call to Timothy to discharge his ministry. He has been given a commission by God. That commission has been made very clear to him not only from the desire of his heart but from the Word of God prophetically out of heaven, from the laying on of the hands of the Apostle and the other elders, very clear to him because Paul has mandated certain things that he is to do. The whole epistle of 1 Timothy lays out Timothy's responsibility to fulfill his commission to set things right in the church at Ephesus.

He was called by God. He was gifted by God. He was sent by the church. He was ordained by the Apostles and elders. And he is there with a great responsibility to fulfill his calling. His calling was publicly confirmed both by his baptism and by that ordination of which I momentarily mentioned...ago mentioned. And he is really just the victim, in a sense, of sovereign circumstances which have placed him in a crucial point in time and space to fulfill the work of God designed for him. The whole epistle then is really delineating his duty to the church at Ephesus to set things right.

But when you come to verses 11 and following Paul really sums up the call. And he says, "O man of God, do this," and do you remember that he said a man of God is known by what he flees from, what he follows after, what he fights for and what he is faithful to? And that was our last message. We're going to pick the text up from there.

Now the man of God not only needs to know what he's to do, not only does he need to know how he is to do it but he needs to know why he's to do it. He needs to be impelled, compelled, constrained or motivated. And the passage we're looking at is a passage about motivation. Let's look at it, verse 13. "I command you in the sight of God who makes all things alive and before Christ Jesus who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good testimony that you keep the commission, or the mandate, or the commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the shining forth of our Lord Jesus Christ which in His times He shall show who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see to whom be honor and power everlasting amen."

Now the passage ends with one of the greatest doxologies in all of holy Scripture. It is reminiscent of the doxology in chapter 1 verse 17 which says, "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever amen." So in a sense the epistle begins and ends with a doxology, a song of praise to the nature of God.

Now what I want you to grasp in your mind is this. Timothy has been reminded of his commission. He has been called to fulfill his commission. He has been reminded of his salvation. He has been reminded of his giftedness. He has been reminded of his public ordination. He has been told specifically what his instructions are. He has been told that as a man of God he has to flee some things, follow some things, fight for some things and be faithful to some things. And now he is given the motive and the motive is because of the character of the God he serves. Now I want you to grab that thought. It is a surpassing thought. Motivation in ministry, motivation to spiritual duty, the solemnity of our task is related to the nature of our God.

When the Apostle Paul said to King Agrippa in Acts 26:19, "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision," he set the standard for all spiritual duty. None of us is to be disobedient when God lays out our duty. We are to show instant, eager, willing commitment to follow the commission God gives is, that is what God has designed for us. And much of our commitment is predicated on how we understand God or who we believe God to be.

J.B. Phillips decrying the problem of ineffective Christians said, "Your God is too small." In other words, your life reflects a weak God. On the other hand, you show me a devoted life, an impactful life, a superior spiritual life, a life of great strength, great and effective ministry and I'll show you a life that's representative of a God that is very large. It is our theology proper, which is the technical category for the doctrine of God, which dictates the impact of our ministry. And so, Timothy is called to fulfill his duty based upon who God is.

Now you might ask the question, well, given the fact that Timothy was called by God, that he heard prophetically out of heaven that this call was valid, in other words, he wasn't just going along on some whimsical feeling, he was confirmed by prophecy to have been called by God, given that he was gifted, given that he was trained by Lois and Eunice, his mother and grandmother who were godly, given that he was the disciple and protege of the Apostle Paul, given that he had a strong desire for ministry, given that he was now maturing, given that the elders had confirmed this calling and sent him out, why did he need any further motivation? Wasn't that enough? Wasn't all of that surrounding his life, ministry and calling enough to compel him to do what God had given him to do?

Well perhaps initially it was. But as is the case, inevitably, in someone who has an impactful ministry, there will be opposition. Timothy had already begun to face that. He was alone in this church as the one Paul had assigned to get it straightened out. It was a very difficult and a very lonely responsibility that Timothy had. And then he was to right the ship in terms of purity and every time he confronted sin he would get opposition from the sinner, and every time he confronted false doctrine he would get opposition from the believer and the purveyor of that false doctrine. He was left there all alone. He was young. And they were despising his youth for that. He was young and therefore he wasn't as gentle and meek and peacemaking as he ought to have been, intended to argue too much as 2 Timothy 2 indicates. He was young and battled youthful lusts which tends really to drain your self‑confidence away. He was young and therefore didn't have a well‑defined polemic and articulated apologetic for every error that was floating around and found it difficult perhaps to be able to answer every argument on a philosophical theological level and the task was very difficult. He was making enemies without making friends, and that's very difficult when you're all alone and perhaps was tempted to compromise.

Some indications are that he may well have been thinking about just backing off from ministry all together. And in 2 Timothy Paul says, "Stir up the gift of God." Paul says, "Don't be ashamed of Christ." Paul says, "Hold on to sound doctrine." Paul says, "Don't crumble under persecution," 2 Timothy 3. So the idea here is that Paul was having....Timothy rather was having a tremendous amount of opposition and he was alone as the special legate, or representative of the Apostle Paul who had gone on west for other duties. It was a tough place. And Timothy, frankly, needed encouragement and he needed courage. He needed courage. He needed fortitude. He needed strength of character to hang on and do his spiritual duty.

I think it's that way for anyone who does their spiritual duty, there's going to be a degree of opposition. It's curious to me, I don't know why so much so lately but it seems as though there's an awful lot of criticism and opposition and even in a verbal sense persecution coming against me in these recent days. I had occasion over the last couple of weeks to listen to three tapes that were given on the heresy of MacArthurism. And they...the people giving them were ranting and raving and so loud at sometimes that it distorted the tape recorder and screaming about all of the error and so forth and so on, and of course, none of them had ever spoken to me and everything they were saying was a misrepresentation of what I believe. And then I found out that this morning at a church here in the San Fernando Valley there is the beginning of a three‑part series, one this morning, one this afternoon, and one tonight, on the heresy of MacArthurism. And they have flown in a speaker from the east coast who is an expert on my heresy and will be speaking all day there. That's really not an uncommon thing. I have been accused of all kinds of things and believing all kinds of things which I do not believe.

And sometimes it gets a little distressing. I came home the other day after listening to those three tapes and I know Patricia thought I had been shot in the leg or something because I came dragging into the house. But when you spend your life trying so hard to be a right representative of Jesus Christ and someone tears your reputation to shreds over something that is a lie and not a truth, it's a little discouraging and you get a little bit distressed and you're sort of looking around for somebody who is on your team. I kind of understand that. I read 120‑page book on me which was quite interesting...it was self‑published and probably that was the only copy in existence, I don't know. But you know, you read articles and letters about yourself and people accusing you of all kinds of unimaginable things, discrediting your ministry, calling you a heretic, accusing you of all things. In fact, the thing I think that overwhelmed me more than anything was I was told recently about a group of men in a certain place who met together for prayer, this man was there and said, "The major prayer request they were seeking the Lord for was a way to discredit the ministry of John MacArthur." And they spent an afternoon in prayer on that behalf.

That kind of opposition you might expect from the world, you don't always expect that from those who say they name the name of Jesus Christ. But when you take a firm stand on some biblical issues, some people take great issue with that. And they seek to discredit. And I think Timothy was in that situation, but I'm not speaking to you just out of the experience of Timothy here, I confess that I'm speaking to you out of my own experience, an experience which is going on even today. When you take a firm stand and when you say this is what God says in His Word, it's sometimes tough to stand up under the pressure that comes at you. And there's something in you that says I think I'll just clam up and be a nice guy so everybody will like me. But for me that passes rather rapidly, I am much more concerned with truth than popularity.

You ask yourself the question, how do you stand up under that? How does one deal with that? Timothy's in that situation. He's got to confront the sinners and the people propagating false teaching. How is he going to stick to his spiritual duty when everybody turns against him? How is he going to hold the courage of his conviction when he's under attack facing opposition? And even when he gets persecuted? And I can identify with that. I have people who are greatly concerned about my welfare, who are always worried about me. There have been threats on my life here, there and everywhere. And there's this continual encouragement that I would take greater precautions and greater securities and so forth and so on because certain people... It's hard for me to understand that. But nonetheless that's the case. And you approach life and you say I have this ministry to do and I want to do it with all my heart but sometimes it gets a little overwhelming and you wonder if maybe you just adjusted your theology a little bit it wouldn't be quite as reaction...quite as great a reaction out there.

But where do you get your strength? Where do you get the strength to stand? And the answer comes in one word and that is God. And I don't want to be trite with that so listen to how Paul unfolds that. The answer comes in the name of God. In other words, what compels me and what compelled Paul and what had to drive Timothy was confidence in who his God was. That's the substance of it. It isn't enough to be impelled by a sense of duty, some vigory. It isn't impelled...enough to be impelled by a sense of obligation to the needs of people. There has to be something more sovereign than that that compels you when you face opposition, criticism, attack, persecution. And the answer comes in a word...God.

If I understand the nature of the God whose mandate I follow, if I understand who my God is whom I serve, if I genuinely trust the true God who is my God then I will not compromise and then I will feel encouraged and I'll feel courageous. It all depends on my view of God. And I'll tell you something, people, the way you live your life is a direct reflection of how you conceive God to be. These people that we're reading about who can get on television every day and talk about Jesus and talk about God and talk about all this holiness and all this piosity and then live in a swamp of gross sin have some kind of God of their own invention who allows hypocrisy. But that is not the God of the Word of God. But their life is a reflection of their theology. I said to somebody the other day, as this whole thing crumbles, I hope the theology crumbles with it because it's at the core of it. You are a living reflection of your theology, so am I. What I really believe to be true about God controls the way I live, the way I talk, the way I think.

Paul helps Timothy to understand this by giving him one of the most magnificent presentations of the nature of God anywhere in Scripture. It is the supreme reason to do your spiritual duty because of who God is. It is a solemn doxology that acts as a motivator to spiritual duty because it describes the God who called Timothy, the God who gifted Timothy, the God who ordained Timothy, the God who sent Timothy and the God who promised to empower Timothy. And if he knows who his God is, then he can go ahead and do his duty. But if he's waffling around not sure about his God or what his God will provide for him, or whether or not his God is in control of everything, then he's going to have a very difficult time doing what he ought to do.

Now the doxology doesn't come until verses 15 and 16, but what is said about God in verses 13 and 14 are so important that we want to pick those up, even though we looked at them briefly in our last study. Listen carefully. The source of courage for the one doing spiritual duty, the source of courage to be uncompromising and faithful to the task is found in these following attributes of God. Number one, the preservation power of God...the preservation power of God. Go to verse 13. "I command you, Paul says to Timothy," and he's commanding him in verse 14 to do his duty, to keep his commission without spot and unrebukable. "I'm commanding you to fulfill your ministry, do your spiritual duty, use your spiritual gift, do what God wants you to do, obey the service God's called you to whether that specific service to which Timothy was called or extended to any of us here today, the idea is the same for all of us, we are commanded to do what God has called us to do." And then to help us be motivated, it says you're doing it in the sight of God who makes all things alive. And there is the first characteristic of God mentioned in the text. What God do we serve? The God who makes all things alive. Anything that lives, lives because God gave it life. God is life. God is the source of life.

In fact, we could sum it up in four statements. When it says "God who makes all things alive," it refers to God as creator of all things. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God...what?...created the heavens and the earth." God is creator. In fact, He is called the creator. In Romans 1:25 it says, "Men worship the creature more than the creator." God is the creator of all life. He makes all things live.

Secondly, He is the sustainer of all life. Whatever He makes to live, He keeps alive. He sustains all things. It says in Acts 17, "In Him we live and move and have our existence." God has generated life and God progenerates life and God gives continuity to life, all life is the reflection of God's power. In Psalm 36 and verse 6 we have the Old Testament simply saying this, and it's as direct as it can be, "O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast." God sustains life.

Thirdly, the implication of the phrase "who makes all things alive" is that God is also the protector of His own. In a unique sense He preserves the life of those who are His own. In Psalm 37, I think it's verse 28, it says, "For the Lord loves justice and forsakes not His saints, they are preserved forever." God gives life to all. God sustains life for all. And God uniquely preserves His own forever. In fact, in that wonderful passage in Matthew 10 verses 29 to 31, the Lord says to the disciples, "If God takes care of the sparrows that hop and numbers the hairs of your head, don't you know you're of much more value than they are?" In other words, God is intimately concerned with His own.

And because of these concepts we can approach ministry without a fear of danger. In other words, translating it into the spiritual dimension, God gave you life, Timothy, God will sustain your life, Timothy and God will preserve your life unto the fulfillment of His plan. And that's the only way to live and do your spiritual duty. If you're concerned with self‑ preservation and reputation and comfort and all of that and those are your preoccupying factors, then you're going to give yourself away to those things. But if you realize your life is expendable and if you're saying to yourself, "I'm not going to fear what men can do unto me, God gave me life, God sustains my life, He promises to preserve my life, what do I have to fear?" Timothy, go at it.

But there's a fourth principle and I believe it is really the salient primary interpretive key to this phrase. "God who makes all things alive" primarily refers not to God as creator, God as sustainer or God as preserver of His own, but God as raiser of the dead. The primary point here is that it is God who raises the dead. And so what Paul is saying to Timothy, in effect, is you know that the worst that can happen to you is that you'll die and that's the best that can happen to you. Paul put it this way in Philippians 1, "For to me to live is Christ and to die is...what?...gain." So he says I'm caught in a place between two things, both that are good, one to stay here with you and one that's far better to go and be with Christ. And you see, that's why he was able to give his life away in spiritual duty because he had absolutely no thought for his life. You remember on his way to Jerusalem, he kept being warned by everyone that he was going to get into chains and bonds and so forth and that he might lose his life and Paul's response in Acts 20, "None of these things move me." I am not motivated by fear of death. I am not motivated by fear of incarceration or imprisonment. Those things don't move me, because he says, Acts 20, "I do not consider my life dear to myself." He wasn't living for the physical. He was living for the eternal. That's the whole point. The worst that could ever happen to the servant of the Lord is that he would be killed. And if he was killed, the Lord would raise him from the dead. The Lord would instantaneously make him alive because absent from the body is what? Present with the Lord as Philippians 1 said, Paul said, "Far better to depart and be with Christ...to depart and be with Christ."

We look, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, we look for that house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In fact, we groan for that experience. Job saw it. The worms destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God. The Psalmist David saw it, "Thou will not allow Thine holy one to see corruption but will show him the path of life." Daniel said there will be a time when many shall rise from the dead unto the resurrection of those that are good and unto the resurrection of damnation...very much like John 5. Abraham was willing to plunge the knife into the heart of Isaac because he believed in the God who raises the dead, Hebrews 11:17 to 19. You see, those servants of God who could give their lives away in spiritual duty without fear were that way because they worshiped the God who raised the dead. You understand that? It's your perspective on God that dictates how you're going to live your life. We receive courage to continue in our spiritual duty when we realize the preservation power of God. God may preserve my life in life or He may preserve my life through death, either way I'm okay. And so the solemn call to spiritual duty is a call that demands we understand that God is the God who makes all things alive. God is the God who can raise even the dead.

And a strong reason why we know the resurrection seems to be the strongest implication of this phrase is because of the following illustration in verse 13. We are not only in the sight of God fulfilling our commission, but the sight of Christ Jesus who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a noble...I might add fearless...testimony in the face of death. Jesus, you know the story, was brought before Pilate, right? And the Jews had accused Him of being a king, claiming to be a king. He says He's a king. He says He's a king. He's an insurrectionist. He's saying He is the Messiah and we reject that. He's saying He's a king. He's not only a threat to Judaism, He's a threat to the Roman political system. He's a revolutionary. They accused Him of being a king.

He could have gone in before Pilate when Pilate said to Him, "Are you a king?" could have said, "Of course I'm not a king, take a look at Me, do I look like a king? I'm not a king." He could have backed off, said nothing, denied the truth. But He didn't. You want to see what He did? Look at Luke 23. In Luke 23:1 it says, "The whole multitude of them arose and led Him to Pilate. And they began to accuse Him." Here's the accusation, "We found this fellow perverting the nation." That's a lie. The nation was already perverted. He was straightening it out. "And forbidding to give tribute to Caesar," that's a lie. He said, "Render to Caesar...what?...the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." "Saying that He Himself is Christ...that means Messiah...a king." That was true. He did say He was the Messiah and He did say He was a king.

Pilate asked him saying, here it is, it's the crux of it, "Are You the king of the Jews? He answered him and said, You said it, what you said is true, is that means. That's exactly right, Pilate. I am a king."

Look at John chapter 18, starting at verse 33 you get an even more detailed account. "Pilate entered the judgment hall again and called Jesus and said to Him," John 18:33, "Are You the king of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Are you saying this thing of yourself or did others tell it you of Me?" In other words, is this your question, Pilate, or are you a parrot? Are you just mimicking what you've heard? "Pilate answered, Am I a Jew?" In other words, what do I care? This isn't my question...I'm no Jew. "Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You unto me, what have You done? Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world then would My servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews, but now is My kingdom not from here. Pilate therefore said to Him, Are You a king then? Jesus answered, You said it, I'm a king; to this end was I born, for this cause came I into the world that I should bear witness unto the truth, everyone that is of the truth hears My voice."

That is a noble confession. Jesus said I'm the Messiah and I'm the king. And He knew it would cost Him His what? His life. And that's exactly the point that Paul wants to make to Timothy. Timothy, I'm commanding you before the God who raises the dead to look at the model of Jesus who when faced with His very life made a noble confession. In other words, He never equivocated as to what He ought to say in the face of imminent danger and death to himself because He committed Himself to the God who raises the dead. Jesus knew He would rise, did He not? He said earlier in His ministry at the very outset, "Destroy this temple and in three days I'll build it again." He knew He would rise from the dead. He committed Himself, it says 1 Peter 2:23, He committed Himself to the God who discerns and judges and acts righteously. He knew God would raise Him from the dead. That's the whole point. He confessed openly the truth of His Lordship. He confessed openly the truth of His Messiahship. He confessed openly the truth of His sovereign authority though He knew it would cost His life because He trusted the God of resurrection. And I love the fact that Revelation 1:5 and I think it's also in chapter 3 verse 14 calls Jesus "the faithful witness...the faithful witness." Unflinching courage in the face of persecution, unflinching courage in the face of opposition, unflinching courage in the face of difficulty, unflinching courage in the face of temptation to compromise is based upon the fact that you believe the preserving power belongs to God. I will speak the truth. I will live the truth. I will say the truth. I will not equivocate and I will commit myself to the care of the God who will sustain my in life or who will sustain through death.

Now if you can approach life like that, then you can give your life away...then you can give your life away. In the words of Jesus, the one who gives his life away finds it. The one who tries to hold onto his life loses it. That's the heart of it. I can tell you with all of the warnings and all of the things and it hasn't been as frequent with me as it has with some other people and the concern about threats on your life and hostility and people reacting and all of that, in my life that has never given me one fleeting second of anxiety. And I think the bottom line reason is simply because my life is in the hands of God and He is preserving my life and no one can touch me until He sovereignly allows that. And the worst that could happen would be He'd take me to heaven and make me all that He ever designed for me to be in His grace.

Now when you view your spiritual duty like that, you get on with it. And you don't spend all your time trying to pad your chair, because you're not going to be in it very long.

Second attribute of God in verse 14 is indicated, we're not looking at all the detail in these two verses because we covered them last time, but just to pick up the thoughts that are germane to our main point. You will notice in verse 14 it says that he is to keep the commandment until the epiphaneia, the appearing or the shining forth of our Lord Jesus Christ. This leads us to a second characteristic of God which gives courage and encouragement to God's servants and that is the promise of God. Or if you want, the truthfulness of God, or the trustworthiness of God, or the veracity of God or the providential control of God.

In other words, God is working out a plan that culminates with the shining forth of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we've got to live in the light of that. It refers to the visible, glorious display when Christ returns to earth to establish His glorious Kingdom. Of course, from our viewpoint, the first event is the Rapture but this is not looking at the Rapture, this is looking at the shining forth. The Rapture is somewhat secretive. We go up to meet Christ in the air and we're removed from the world. The shining forth is Christ coming in blazing transcendent glory. And that is seen as the culmination of human history and primarily as the vindication of Christ and the vindication of those who are Christ's.

So Paul says, "Timothy, you've got to have this perspective, that what is happening here is very temporary, very brief...as James called it, a vapor that appears for a little time...and this little moment, this little gleam of human history will come to an end and there will be a dawning of blazing eternal glory in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and it is that to which we look. It is that promise of God for which we labor." John says, "He that has this hope in him purifies himself." The Apostle Paul said that it was his great desire to give his life in service to Jesus Christ so that when Christ came He would give him a crown of righteousness. And he said in 2 Timothy 4:8 it will not be for me only, but all those who love His shining forth, all those who love His epiphaneia, His blazing glory, His epiphany. It's the visible return of Christ that we focus on. It's the new age, the new dawn, the new day, the millennial kingdom and the eternal kingdom.

This same Jesus, said the angel in Acts 1, that you have seen taken up from you shall so come in like manner as you've seen Him go. How did He go? In the air with clouds and angels. And He'll come in blazing glory. It says in Matthew 24 and 25 He'll come with the hosts of heaven, He'll come with the clouds, He'll come with great glory. It says in Revelation 19 He has on a leukon robe, that has to do with white but more than that the idea is dazzling brilliant, riding on a leukon dazzling brilliant horse, accompanied by all the saints who are with Him on white horses in dazzling brilliant garments. And all of this great entourage of angelic beings, the blazing Shekinah glory of Christ and all the saints who have been raptured with Him returning to earth will cause people to scream and cry for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them at the face of His coming. The great shining forth of Jesus is primarily the vindication of Christ that reverses the stupid and erroneous verdict of earth that said He's worthy to be killed, kill Him and get Him out of the way. And when He comes in blazing glory, He will be vindicated and so will al who are with Him. Christ when He appears, Colossians 3:4 says, then shall you also appear with Him in glory. Isn't that a great thought? We'll all be coming back in blazing glory with Him. And not only will He be vindicated but so will all of us.

And right now the world doesn't know who we are. Do you know that? You get in your car after this is over and go putting down Roscoe Boulevard here, somebody will pull up to you at the signal, they have no idea who you are. They have no idea that dwelling in you is the life of God, the eternal God of the universe. They don't know that you possess the divine Holy Spirit. They don't know that you will live forever. They don't know that you will rule over the earth in the millennial kingdom. They don't know that you'll sail from one end of the endless universe to the other by a thought forever. They don't know that about you. They don't know that your sins are forgiven. They don't know that you're a new creation. They don't know that some day your body is going to be redeemed and you're going to glow and shine like some kind of celestial light. They don't know that. You look like everybody else. That's why Romans 8 says we are longingly waiting for the visible and glorious liberation of the children of God. We're waiting for that, for that time when we get rid of this unredeemed flesh and we get our glorious body which is like unto His resurrection body. They don't know who we are out there.

Beloved, it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when we shall see Him we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. So said John in 1 John 3. They don't know what we are. Wouldn't it be amazing if they did? I mean, if you went into the market like you were transfigured like Christ was? Nobody would say...are you a Christian? Oh....voom...see. That day will come. The glorious manifestation of the children of God. It's coming. When we are liberated. He calls it the liberation, I love that, in Romans 8, because we'll be freed from the incarceration of our fallenness. That day is coming and you have to live in the light of that day...when the Savior returns to earth and rewards His own and sets up His Kingdom. And the verdict of men, the stupid inane immoral ungodly sinful verdict of men that Jesus was worthy of death is reversed and He reigns supreme.

You see, for Timothy and the saints of this age, we have to keep our focus on that. We have to look at the public visible display of Christ and His own in full glory at His return to establish His Kingdom on the earth in order to make sure we have our perspective. You say, "Well how does that impact us right now?" Because Paul said in Romans 8:14 the sufferings of this present age are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us. We say who cares. I know where I'm going and I know what God has for me and I'm certainly not going to get myself all full of anxiety because some people are kicking at my heels...some people are jabbing me...some people are attacking me...some people are persecuting me or even if some people decide they ought to take my life. That doesn't concern me. I'm waiting for the day, when as Lenski(?) the commentator, used to say, "Jesus steps out of His present invisibility" and becomes visible to the whole world and with Him all the redeemed saints who have already been gathered in the Rapture to be at His side come back in blazing glory with Him. Here we are, world, can't you see us coming out of heaven? Here we are, you didn't know who were did you? Here we are.

He comes to vindicate His Son. He comes to vindicate His people. Glorious thought. God has provided an incredibly magnificent glorious future for us. We can't even imagine what it will be like. And so if we keep our focus on that we can endure a little bit of hassling while we're down here doing our little spiritual duty. By the way, no one knows what's going to happen. Look at verse 15, "Which...antecedent of‑is the shining forth of our Lord Jesus Christ‑...which in His times He shall show." And we'll stop at that point.

Who is He? That is God, the Father, not Christ. Because the doxology then follows, who is the blessed and the only potentate, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, that much could refer to Christ. Who only has immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto...that probably wouldn't make sense referring to Christ. Who no man hath seen or can see, that can't possible be Christ. So we know this is a doxology with reference to God the Father. And just as God the Father, according to Galatians 4:4 in the fullness of time at the right season, at the right moment, in the proper time sent forth His Son, just as God sent forth Christ the first time, God will send forth Christ the second time. So verse 15 says which in God's times He will show. And this is attested to even by the words of our Lord Jesus who in Mark 13:32 says that time the Son of Man does not even know, only the Father knows. And in Acts 1 verse 7, He said to them, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own power." It is God's timing. God's planing.

The church then must live in the imminency of that event, to some extent. We don't know when Jesus will return. We don't know when that all begins with the Rapture of the church. We are at all times living in the anticipation of that event. The church must never settle into the world for a long comfortable life. That's what's so gross and so tragic about people who say they represent Jesus Christ and are preachers of the gospel, just amassing fortunes of money to themselves, all of which is wasted on their indulgence in this earthly existence incredibly.

First Corinthians 7 makes it about as clear as it could be made. "Behold I say, brethren," verse 29, "the time is short." Time is short, he says. "It remains that they that have wives be as though they had none, they that weep as though they wept not, they that rejoice as though they rejoice not, they that buy as though they possess not, they that use the world is not abusing it for the fashion of the world is passing away." Don't get caught up in it. Now that doesn't mean that Paul thought Jesus was going to come in his life time and that was his theology. I believe Paul felt that Jesus could come in his life time, and so do I and so has every thinking Christian who rightly interpreted the Word of God. God purposely didn't tell us when. If we knew when Jesus was going to come, the temptation for many people would be to live like the devil until just before He came and slide in under the wire. The Lord doesn't tell us when He's coming. He doesn't tell us when He's setting up His Kingdom. Those things are in the mind of God. We don't know when that's going to happen. But God in His own time in due season will reveal before the eyes of the world the one who once walked in obscurity, the one who was rejected will now be displayed in all of His majesty and all of His glory and all of His magnificence and all of His power. The whole present state is temporary, folks, and eternity is forever. And you just can't get too caught up in it.

And so, you get attacked here and there. And you get some opposition here and there. But you never waver and you never compromise because you know your view is beyond the temporary. You can face all difficulty with courage in the light of God's preserving power and in the light of God's promised plan.

Paul lived in the light of that. He looked for the day when he would be awarded at the feet of Christ. He said to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5, because we know the terror of the Lord we persuade men. He also said we know we're going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ some day and we're going to have to face the fact of things done good and things done useless. And there will be a time of rewards. We live in the light of that. First Corinthians 5...4, rather, 1 to 5, Paul says I don't judge my own life, I let the Lord do that in the day that He reveals the secret things of the heart, then shall every man have praise from God. He lived in the light of the Second Coming.

The man of God, then, has a spiritual duty. He fulfills that spiritual duty because he is driven to do that. He is driven by a clear understanding of and confidence in his God. And I say it again, I said it at the beginning, you are a reflection of your theology. Your life is the living out of what you really believe about God. That's right. If you believe God is a God of utter holiness who despises sin, that's going to dictate the way you live, if you really believe that. If you believe that God chastens wickedness, that's going to effect the way you live. If you believe that God has gifted you and sovereignly called you and sovereignly placed you for ministry, that's going to be the way you approach life. If you believe that you are in the family, married to the person, living in the place, serving where the Lord has you all by His sovereign choice, that's going to dictate how you approach all of those circumstances. If you believe God to be a God of mercy and grace and love and tenderness and kindness, as indeed He is, that's going to dictate how you live also because you're going to recognize that you can go to Him for forgiveness and find grace to help in time of need.

Your theology about God, your thinking and understanding and knowledge of and belief in the nature of God is going to impact directly how you live. And if you've got a God who can tolerate sin then you'll tolerate it. And if you've got a God who can tolerate mediocrity in spiritual service, then that's what you'll give. And if you've got a God who doesn't really care that much whether your life is invested in eternity or in time, that's the way you'll do it.

Now you may know better, but what you know and what you really believe are two different things. It's what you really believe that effects how you live. And so, all of our life is a reflection of our theology proper, our view of God. Spiritual duty then is impelled by how you view God. And if you see God as the God of preservation power, then you don't fear anything because He can preserve you in life or He can preserve you through death into eternal life. And if you see that God is a God who has a promised plan of eternal glory and some day you're going to be gloriously manifested in the shining forth of Jesus Christ into a world you can't even conceive of with eternal blessings beyond imagination, then you're not going to get too caught up in time and you're going to be willing to give your life in hope of what is yet to come. That's the way to live.

Now, in verse 15 at this point, he launches into a magnificent doxology, much like the one in chapter 1 verse 17. And in this doxology there are yet more attributes of God discussed, more attributes of God which act as motivating forces in the servant who is doing his spiritual duty. Each phrase, by the way, in the doxology, expresses the transcendent incomparable greatness of God. Let me read it to you. Speaking of God, "He is the blessed and only potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who only has immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting, amen." You need to read that over about a dozen times just to let it sink in.

But let's go to the third attribute and the first one pointed out in the doxology. Follow the thought. Who is the blessed...stop there. That word hit me like it never has hit me in the past. God is the blessed. God is the blessed. How are we to understand this use of the word makarios? The word means happy, content, fulfilled. How are we to understand it? Listen carefully. It has the idea to the absence...the idea of referring to the absence of any unhappiness, the absence of any frustration, the absence of any anxiety over anyone or anything when used in reference to God. It is saying God is content, did you get that? God is happy. God is satisfied. God is fulfilled. With reference to God, there is no frustration, there is no anxiety over anyone or anything. God us unfrustrated. God is perfectly content. God is perfectly happy because anything that isn't the way God wants it cannot exist within His sovereignty.

Did you get that? Anything that isn't the way God wants it can't exist. Therefore God must be in the purest and truest sense content with everything. Think about that in reference to your life. You're a ball of frustration and God is perfectly happy. You say, "Well, doesn't He care about my frustration?" Yes, but He also cares about what the particular anxiety your going through will produce and He has that all under control. God is not like we are. God is absolutely unperturbed by anything. God is not wringing His hands. God never sweats. God is unperturbed. He is perfectly free from worry. Why would He worry when He controls everything? And anything He didn't like, He'd change. Everything is exactly as He wants it to be. Understood? It has to be. He's sovereign. He's God. He is the blessed.

Those who enter a relationship with God then enter into that calm. And we too can be unperturbed when we understand that God is perfectly content...perfectly content. We could call God the happy one. You say, "Well isn't He burdened over the lost?" Well there's a sense in which that is true. That's a sort of an anthropomorphic view of God. God takes in to His mind every single thing that exists, some things are pleasing to Him, some things are displeasing to Him. But nothing is beyond His control and everything is working exactly as He has designed it, therefore He is totally content and contentedness is the source of happiness.

And that can be our lot. Psalm 2:12 says, "Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him." "Happy is the man who trusts in Him," it says...I found three places in the Old Testament. "Happy is the man who fears the Lord and delights greatly in His commandments. Happy is everyone that walks in His ways," Psalm 128:1. We can be content.

Listen, our God is content. He's calm. Why are you upset? Why are you fretting? Why are you anxious? How wonderful it is for the servant of the Lord to know no matter what the opposition is, no matter what the persecution is, God's calm. God's happy. God's satisfied. God's absolutely content. And I say to myself, what am I upset about? And I say, "God, don't You know they're having seminars about me?" This frustrates me. "Don't You know there's a lot of opposition? Don't You know that every time we try to build a building here we have to fight the whole city? And now they tell us we've got to go back and do a whole new thing to all of our buildings to bring them up to a code that didn't even exist when we built them?" And I'm unhappy and He's happy. Totally content because it's all under control. Boy, what a way to live your life. Marvelous thought.

Yes, God has emotions of anger and emotions of wrath and love and compassion and all that, but they never effect His mind by creating worry. They never effect His mind by creating anxiety. They never effect His mind by creating fear. Because He controls them all...always calm, always happy...totally content because He's totally sovereign. So when I face danger with the knowledge that the God who preserves and restores life is my God and the God who has promised future glory and vindication is my God, and that my God is perfectly calm and perfectly happy because He is perfectly in control of everything, then I can be happy too with anything.

I'm blessed because I'm plugged into the one who is the blessed. What a wonderful attribute. I don't think I ever really thought about that before, the blessedness of God, that's the third attribute...the blessedness or the happiness of God, the contentedness of God. And so here we are in this world and we say we serve and love God and we say God is our God and then we just get all uptight. So I...this has been good for me this week, I almost came out of my seat on that airplane going to Pittsburgh when I began to look to at this truth. Saying, what am I worried about? What am I concerned about? God is happy because He's in control of everything. And I remembered Romans 8:28 that He's working things out for my...what?...my good and His glory. Why am I going to worry? The blessedness of God, what a tremendous thought.

A fourth attribute, it says He is not only the blessed but He is the only dunastes, potentate, and the Greek text reads this, the King of those kinging and the Lord of those lording. Tremendous statement. He is the only potentate, again refers to God, the one who will display Christ at His appearing. He alone is God. There's no other God. He alone is God. Well what that means is if God, my God, is the only the God then there's no competition so He is absolutely sovereign and no one is vying for control of me who can defeat Him. You understand that? Wow! It's like Romans 8, who shall lay any charge to God's elect? I mean, if God, my God, is the only potentate, if He is the King over all of those who are kinging and the Lord of all of those who are lording, then I don't have anything to fear because He's on top of the pile. To put it in childlike terms, He's King of the mountain. The Lord our God is one.

Isaiah understood that. Look at the fortieth chapter of Isaiah just ever so briefly. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 12 and following talks about God. You can read all down through there but maybe we could come down to verse 25, "To whom then will you liken me? To whom shall I be equal, saith the holy one. And the answer is nobody...nobody." Verse 28, "Have you not know, have you not heard, the everlasting God the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth doesn't faint, never gets weary, there's no searching of His understanding and gives power to the faint and to those who have no might He increases their strength." The only true God gives strength to those that are weak and he goes on to say so much strength that they're like eagles and mount up with wings. Marvelous.

In the forty‑fourth chapter of Isaiah verse 6, "Thus says the Lord the King of Israel and His redeemer the Lord of hosts, I am the first, I am the last, and there is nobody in between. Nobody beside Me is God." The only God, that's what that means. The word "potentate" dunastes is from the group of words that we know as dunameo, dunamis, it has to do with power. It refers to one in whom all power resides inherently, not a delegated power but inherent power. And He is the only one who inherently has power. The word dunastes by the way is only used here, different forms of it are used to speak of human rulers, Luke 1:52, Acts 8:27 and once in the Old Testament Septuagint Daniel 4:35. And so it's a word that has the idea of absolute monarchy. It is used of human rulers but here it is used and for the only time in the New Testament in the noun form of God who is inherently in charge. He has absolute power. There is nobody else to compete with Him.

You say, "What about Satan?" Satan isn't even close to being on His level. He created Satan. He kicked Satan out of heaven. And He has sentenced Satan to eternal hell and Satan is not an issue in the sense that he has any force that can overpower God.

In Deuteronomy 4:35 it says, "Unto thee it was shown that thou mightest know that the Lord He is God, there is none else beside Him." Verse 39, "Know therefore this day consider in your heart, the Lord He is God in heaven above, He is God on the earth beneath, there is none else." And I could track you through the Old Testament, a myriad of passages that say the same thing in one form or another. God is sovereign.

Now let me tell you something. This to me is the most hopeful encouraging comforting doctrine of God in Scripture. This is it. The fact that God is sovereign takes every anxiety out of life. God's in charge. And God's sovereignty is further amplified by that statement, "King of those kinging, and Lord of those lording." Such titles, by the way, are given to God in the Old Testament. Some feel that this is referring to Christ because He is called King of kings and Lord of lords in Revelation 17:14 and Revelation 19:16. That is true, He is called King of kings and Lord of lords, the terms used there are different but in the Old Testament God is also called by these terms. Let me show you. Deuteronomy 10 verse 17 is the first place, it says, "The Lord your God is God of Gods and Lord of lords," Deuteronomy 10:17. In Psalm 136, I believe it is, verse 3,...no, yes it is, yes..."O give thanks to the Lord of Lords." And then in Daniel's prophecy, the second chapter and verse 47 it says, "The king answered to Daniel and said of a truth, It is your God who is the God of Gods and the Lord of kings." See. So that's Old Testament terminology.

And I really believe here in a sense it's a conscious rebuttal to emperor worship. You remember now, Timothy was in the Roman Empire in the ballywick(?) of Caesar being in Ephesus. And the people were into the worship of Caesar. In fact it kind of an interesting thing that there was a growing cult of worshiping the Caesars after their death, a sort of way to immortalize them. They were turning them into gods after they died and what the Apostle Paul is saying to Timothy is there is only one God...solitary deity...absolute and only monarch. This again I say is a conscious rebuttal of the cult of emperor worship.

But what a thrilling encouragement it is. I'm telling you, folks, this more than any other attribute of God encourages me. God is in charge of everything. Isn't that wonderful? He is the ruler over everybody. That takes all the fear out of everything. I don't fear. I don't worry. I don't have to manipulate people. I don't have to compromise to accomplish something. I don't have to even be subtle. God is in charge. What a comfort. I don't have to depend on human power. I don't have to depend on a human ingenuity. I don't have to depend on a human wisdom, on human talent. I mean, if I was an Arminian in theology and I believed that salvation was a result of the will of man, I would be a basket case. If I believed that my task was to convince people apart from God that my job was to convince people in their own human will to receive Christ, I would bear a responsibility that would create so much anxiety I'd be on tranquilizers. If I felt I by my techniques or the capability of my preaching or the cleverness of my invitation was able to save people from hell, I would feel guilty for every person I couldn't convince. I'd be a case. But I don't believe that. I believe the Bible teaches that God is sovereign and my responsibility is not to convince people to change their human will and come to Christ but my responsibility is to give the Word of God faithfully and the sovereign act of a gracious God will redeem those that He sets His love upon. God's in charge.

I'll tell you something else. If I thought God wasn't sovereign in my life and that I was responsible to make sure my life turned out right by controlling all my circumstances, I'd be a rough guy to live with. I mean, if I believed I had to manipulate my life to get it the way it had to be, I'd really be hard to get along with. But you know what I believe? I believe God's in control of everything in my life and that He's moving me down a path and all I want to do is be faithful to Him. And every time I hit something that I didn't expect and say, "What in the world is this happening?" I just say God's sovereign, this is wonderful, I'm just going to wait and see what He's doing. I would make the world's worst Arminian. I would be...I would be probably in a mental institution feeling responsible to control everything or else I'd be the worst despot the world has ever seen...manipulating everybody.

I don't feel I have to do that. I don't feel the Kingdom is built by human manipulation. I don't feel people are saved because of my ability to convince their human mind and move their human will. And I don't believe that if I go out and run into trouble I created it and now I'm in it and God is up there saying, "Well, MacArthur, boy, I didn't want you to do that...and now you're there and how are you going to get out of it?" I would rather get into a mess and have God say, "Right on schedule. I know why you're there. I know how you're going to get out." Thank You, Lord. That's the way to live. God is sovereign. He's the King over all those kinging and the Lord over all those lording and the only potentate. He's totally in charge of everything and that's the way it has to be. And what a comforting truth. I love it says in Isaiah 46:11, "I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass, I have purposed it, I will also do it." And God said I'm going to make you into the image of His Son and He's doing it. Those who don't believe that, those who don't live by that truth are going to find themselves in despair, they're going to find themselves in worry, they're going to find themselves in fear, they're going to find themselves in anxiety when things don't go right. And I watch it happen all the time...people's lives cracking up all over. I personally believe that much of the anxiety of the Christian church, much of its constant preoccupation with counseling and everybody wanting their problem instantly solved is really the legacy of insipient Arminianism that has infested itself into the church where people actually believe that they've got to control everything instead of letting God do that.

Genesis 50:20, you remember that great statement? You meant it for evil, God meant it for good...isn't that good? You meant it for evil, God meant it for good. Courage in the spiritual duty, willingness to face any danger, an unwillingness to compromise, boldness in the cause of Christ is based on your theology. And if you believe in the preserving power of God and if you believe in the promised plan of God and if you believe that in the midst of everything God is totally happy and calm and content and if you believe that God is sovereign and controls everything then you can pursue your ministry with all your heart.

And that's why this doxology is so wonderful here. Because he want's Timothy to know the God he's serving. And then he says this, attribute number five, verse 16, "Who only has immortality...who only has immortality." What does that mean? This is the eternity of God. Or as some theologians would prefer, the eternality of God, that is that God is eternal. Again we go back to the emperor cult and the first century was fashionable to treat dead Roman emperors as if they were immortal. But only God is immortal. He doesn't mean only God is immortal in the sense that no man will live forever, he means only God is immortal in the sense that God is inherently immortal. You're immortal because God gave you immortality. God is immortal because He's immortal in His nature. All that He created to live forever will live forever because He gave them eternal life, God Himself possesses eternal life, no one gave it to Him. He only has immortality.

Immortality means, it's a marvelous word, it means deathless. It's the word athanasia. There's another word that's sometimes used to speak of a similar idea and that's the word aphtharsia which mens incorruptibility. It's not that word. It's the word for deathlessness. It means God is incapable of death. He's incapable of dying. He has a quality of life that is utterly unending. And He is the only one who has that. He is not simply non‑corruptible, which doesn't necessarily say how long He'll last, He is unending. And He cannot perish, He cannot die. And we have endless life because e gave it to us. Psalm 36, the psalmist says in verse 9, "For with You is the fountain of life, life comes out of You, we have it because You gave it to us. You alone possess it." Isaiah 40:28 says, "The everlasting God." And Daniel said, "I praise...in Daniel 4:34...I praised and honored HIm who lives forever whose dominion is an everlasting dominion." God who lives forever.

Do you remember Psalm 90? I believe it is, right at the beginning of the Psalm, "Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God...even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God." Habakkuk 1:12, "Are You not from everlasting, O Lord my God? Are You not from everlasting?" Why did Habakkuk say that? Because he couldn't figure out what was going on in history...that's exactly why. He watched the bitter and hasty Chaldeans, God said they're going to come over and wipe out Israel. And he grabs his head and says, "God how could You ever destroy Your people using a worse nation? You want to chasten Your people, how can You use that nation, they're worse than Your people? And how could You violate Your covenant of love to Your people and why don't You bring a revival to Your people? You're sovereign." And he's very confused about history and so he says, "But You are the everlasting God," and what he's doing is he's reminding himself that God is bigger than history, that He was here before history, as we know it, He'll be here after history as we know it, He is supra‑historical. He's eternal. And what a comfort that is that no matter what happens in this little moment of time, God surpasses that. God is everlasting. What a comfort. Outside time...uneffected by death, eternally alive beyond the influence of sin, beyond the influence of circumstances, beyond the influence of men or demons...nothing in time affects God...nothing in space affects God. He is supra‑history. He is the deathless one, the eternal one.

And so, as we sort of piddle around in this earth and get ourselves into all kinds of problems and wonder how we ever got in and if we'll ever get out, we remember that we have the deathless one who is the eternal God who is infinitely beyond history available to us. The God we have is the God who possesses eternity, is the God who has planned history, the God who is beyond our circumstances and yet understands our circumstances. Isn't it wonderful to have the eternal God? And to have the promise that the eternal God has given eternity to you as a gift? Wow!

What kind of God do you have? Can you go out and do your spiritual duty? If you really understand God you can because you understand that you have a God who preserves and restores life. You have a God who has planned for your vindication in the glorious shining forth of Jesus Christ. You have a God who is never discontent, never worried, never anxious, never perturbed, perfectly calm, perfectly happy with everything going on because He controls it. You have a God who is absolutely sovereign. He is in charge of everything. No one can stay His hand and no one can ford his purpose and everything fits into that. And you have a God who is way beyond history and absolutely deathless who will never die, who will always be there, always be there, always be there to sustain all that you need.

And then finally, the last attribute, the holiness of God...the holiness of God. Not only does He have immortality but listen to this, "He dwells in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man has seen nor can see," stop at that point.

God is beyond us. He's unapproachable. He dwells in the light which no man can approach unto. Kind of recall Psalm 104:2 where the psalmist says God covers Himself with light as with a garment. He is blazing glory..blazing glory. You remember in Exodus when Moses in chapters 33 and 34 saw the shining forth of the Shekinah of God. Do you remember when he said, "Show me Thy glory," and God let him see a glimpse of the glory of God? And then God said to him, "No man can see My face and...what?...and live." The writer of Hebrews says, "Our God is a consuming fire." If you ever got close to the fullness of His presence you'd go up in a cinder.

The idea of God as blazing light is referencing His holiness. He consumes anything that is unholy in His presence if He comes that close. God is a holy God. God is apart from sin and separate from sinners. God does not sin, God cannot sin. Absolute eternal perfection. In fact, I love the statement of Exodus 15:11, "Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like Thee? Glorious in holiness." And that associates His glory with His holiness...glorious in holiness.

In that wonderful second chapter of 1 Samuel, you remember Hannah's beautiful prophetic prayer, verse 2, "There is none holy like the Lord. There is none holy like the Lord." He is holy.

And you know something? Because He's holy, listen to this, He is inaccessible to man. He is inaccessible. He lives in an atmosphere of purity. He lives in an atmosphere of holiness. He lives in an atmosphere that is transcendent. He lives in an atmosphere that is spotless, far too holy for mortals to ever enter.

You say, "What about the vision of God?" What about Matthew 5:8 where it says in the Beatitudes...and I know you're familiar with it...let me read it to you just so you have the exact words, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall...what?...see God." That's a partial vision. That's a partial vision. It cannot be a complete vision for we could never fully see God and live. First Corinthians 13:12, "We now see in a glass darkly but then face to face." Will we really see God face to face? No, it's a partial vision. First John 3 alludes to the vision of God. "We shall see Him, we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is." And again that vision of God is really the vision of Christ. No man could ever see God and live. They would be instantaneously and forever consumed.

But what's the relationship to this text? God is unapproachable. No man has ever seen His full glory. No man ever will see His full glory. You say, "What about in heaven?" I don't believe in heaven we'll ever see it. In heaven we'll never see it. We may see a portion of it. We will certainly see a greater portion of it than we have ever...than anyone has ever seen in this world, but we won't see the full blazing eternal immense glory of God.

You say, "What's the point of celebrating this utter otherness? What's the point of bringing out in this doxology that God is so holy He's unapproachable?" I'll tell you what it is. God is so holy He never makes...what...mistakes. Never makes errors. Never misjudgments. He always does exactly what is right, exactly what is perfect and if something is wrong it isn't Him, it's us. He tolerates no sin in His presence, that's another implication of this. And He deals with sin. And He will one day end sin and be vindicated in holiness with a holy people.

Jesus prayed in John 17:11, "Holy Father." He is called the Holy One in Isaiah 43:14. He is holy. Because He is holy He never errs, He never makes a mistake. Because He is holy He hates sin and He will some day destroy it. Because He is holy He will chasten sin. He tolerates no sin in His presence.

I'll tell you, it's a wonderful thing for me to know I have a holy God. And when I go out and represent Him and serve Him in whatever ministry He's given to me or given to you, we can know that whatever He leads us into He won't make a mistake. He'll never do anything that's wrong. And that anyone who persecutes us, anyone who speaks evil against us, anyone who distracts against His Kingdom is going to some day feel His vengeance, true? And certainly those who mock His name and deny Him will never enter His presence. What a God we serve. What a God we serve. And it's the knowledge of that God that can equip us to our spiritual duty.

Is it any wonder the doxology ends with a refrain of praise? Look at the end of verse 16, and you don't even need to explain this. "To whom be...what?...honor and eternal power," is what it says in the text. Amen. Amen means let it be, affirmation. Honor is respect. The word kratos means dominion...dominion. Let it be, he says. O God, we praise You, we respect You, we grant You the dominion of which You are so worthy.

Who is our God? Preserver, promiser, the blessed one, the sovereign one, the holy one. And if we understand God to be who He is we can understand that there is great encouragement in these words of Hebrews 13:6, listen to them. "The Lord...oh, it starts at verse 6...so that we may boldly say...did you get that?...so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper." The Lord who is preserver, promiser, the blessed one, the sovereign one, the holy one, the Lord is my helper. And then he says this, "I will not fear what man shall do unto me." Isn't that good? That's the sum of it. I'll not fear what man shall do unto me. Why? Because I know my God. The solemn call to duty motivated by an understanding of who our God is. Let's bow in prayer.

Father, we have just reveled in the truth of this text and You have so filled my heart with this in these past days. And it's just been mulled over in my mind and now brought to fruition in the message of the evening. And yet, Lord, not a small grain of sand has been expressed in comparison to the numberless...numberless implications of this vast truth. Father, forgive us for even thinking small as we've tried to think big but thank You for stretching us. And help us to approach our spiritual duty with a full understanding as much is as possible within us of who it is who is our God. We bless You, O God. We honor You with respect and adoration and admiration. We affirm Your eternal power and dominion. And we say with all our hearts amen...amen to what we have learned in this brief time tonight. Make us to be among the faithful while others are proving unfaithful. Make us to be among those who rightly represent You among those who so wrongly name Your name. And help us, Lord, with eagerness to do our spiritual duty with little thought for anything other than the wonderful joy of serving such a glorious God because of the work in us through Jesus Christ and the Spirit whom He has sent. In the Savior's name we pray. Amen.

Handling Treasure, Part 1

First Timothy chapter 6 and we're coming to the end.  Two more messages, today and next week, in 1 Timothy.  And the Lord's really impressed upon my heart to go on to 2 Timothy.  I just can't let it rest.  That second epistle is so tightly tied to this first one that we've got so much ground work, we need to move on.  So we'll do that in two weeks and go through those brief four chapters, I think, rather rapidly.  But for today and next time we're going to come to the close of 1 Timothy.  And after all these many many months of study, we're so excited to see what God has taught us through these days.  And I know that my life will never be the same because of the intense study of this great epistle that the Lord has allowed me to engage in.

But as we come to this final section, verses 17 to 21, the whole issue here, although two different subjects are dealt with, really revolve around one theme and that is handling treasure...handling treasure.  Every one of us at one time or another has had the opportunity to handle something valuable that belonged to somebody else.  You remember as a child going through the department store and your mother saying, "Don't touch that, don't touch this," or holding something of precious value, something breakable and being very fearful that you might drop it.  I remember as a little boy the first time somebody scooted me up in a chair and put a little baby in my arms, and the fear of the fragile nature of that little life.  You know, we all know that.  We know what it's like to borrow someone's new car and then rue the day we borrowed it because we can't find a place to park it where the door won't get dinged or we're worried about somebody bumping it in the back or whatever it might be.

We let our home out one time just kindness to some friends to stay there for a week while we were on vacation.  And they had little children who took crayons and drew all over the walls.  And we didn't feel that that was really part of the deal.  But when we came home, they were chagrined.  I mean, they were in horror.  It was worse than as if it was their own home, you know.  And, of course, it was a great shock also to find that their children were depraved.  The parents need to wake up to that sooner or later, I think but not at the expense of someone else's house.  We all sort of feel that.

If we're given something valuable to hold for someone else, there's a great sense of responsibility we have.  And that's basically what this is all about.  It's all about handling riches which really belong to God and all about handling truth which also belongs to God.  We are stewards, to use a biblical word, we are not owners.  Whatever we have is His given to us to hold, to manage, to be stewards of.  And these two things occupy the heart of the Apostle Paul, riches and truth.  And really there are...there are really so many things to be said in these areas that just summing it up at the end leaves the subject frankly less than exhausted...but we're going to try to stick to the text and just say what the Apostle says and try to enrich it so you'll understand it and not go as far as we could go.

It's basic to the Christian life...get this thought...that you live out your Christianity on the basis of how you handle your stewardship.  How you handle your riches and how you handle truth in many ways is the mark of the character and quality of your Christian faith, the measure of your Christianity.

Now let's put it in context a bit.  You know that this entire epistle is a call to duty, a call to duty on the part of Timothy who has been placed in Ephesus as a delegate of the Apostle Paul with the task of setting the church in order...a great church, a church with a marvelous beginning, initiated by Paul himself over a three year ministry, a church used to found many other churches in Asia Minor, most of which are named in the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, a church with great great roots and strong foundation.  But in the years intervening since its beginning, it has drifted, it has drifted away from true doctrine and is on the edge of heresy.  It has drifted in terms of its spiritual life, from godliness to ungodliness.  So Paul coming out of his first imprisonment meets Timothy there, leaves Timothy there while he goes west and says, "Set this thing in order."  He isn't gone very long until he writes this letter back and says here are the things on which you must concentrate your energies.

And so, primarily this epistle is a polemic against the state of the Ephesian church and a call to spiritual duty on the part of the man who has been given the ministry of bringing it around.  Its primary theme then is duty...duty.  This is what you are to do.  And I believe that perhaps that's an insight into why Paul closes this epistle with a reaffirmation and a summary of Timothy's duty.

You will note in verses 15 and 16 the great doxology.  It is the second doxology in this epistle.  The first one is in chapter 1 verse 17.  And this is the second one.  The Apostle Paul writing about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is so enamored with that thought, is so lifted and uplifted by the reality of what he has to anticipate and hope for that he launches into this doxology, this paean of praise and speaks of the God who is the blessed, the only potentate, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords who only has immortality dwelling in light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see, the one to whom be honor and eternal power.  And then he says an amen.  And you might think that the "amen" would be it, that that great epistle would end in a glorious paean of praise, in a doxology that lifts you to the skies to think about the glory of God, but not so.  Because Paul takes us from the magnificence and majestic heights of that doxology right smack down to earth with a jolt.  And in 17 he goes right back and to the end of the chapter reminding Timothy of his duty.

Duty is the theme.  The contemplation of the glory of God, the contemplation of the nature of God was really a spiritual and worshipful digression.  And it shows you that on the tip of the pen, the tip of the tongue and the tip of the heart of the Apostle Paul was spontaneous worship.  And as he began to contemplate the Second Coming, he launched into that glorious doxology, not because it was a part of the logic of the epistle, not because it was part of the sequence of reasoning, but because it was in his heart to do so at the mere contemplation of the hope that he had in Jesus Christ.  The logic of the epistle takes him back to duty.  And so coming down from his spontaneous worshipful digression with a jolt, he speaks of duty.  And the transition, frankly, is not unlike the worship service here this morning where for the first part of the service we sing the praise of God and extol His virtues and praise His name, and lift up His majesty and we adore Him, and we offer our worship, and then we come to this time and we're brought back down with a jolt to the matter of duty.

But keep in mind that we have learned long ago that duty and worship are not at all separate.  In fact the highest form of worship is duty.  The highest form of worship is duty.  You never worship more truly or purely than when you do the will of God.  That's why the Apostle Paul in Romans 12 says, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your spiritual act of worship."  And then goes on to say, "Don't be conformed to this world but be conformed to that good and perfect will of God.  Duty is the highest form of worship.  "Him only shalt thou worship....Him only shalt thou serve," such is the spirit of the words of Matthew 4:10.

So we come back to duty.  And the first duty has to do with handling riches.  And we're going to look at that this morning, just three verses, 17, 18 and 19, handling riches.  Now Paul has already introduced the subject of riches back in verse 5 when he was describing the motive of false teachers and says they are primarily moved by gain, supposing that gain is godliness.  And then down in verses 9 and 10, "They that will be rich fall into..." and he lists temptations, traps, foolish hurtful lusts, and ultimately can be drown in the destruction and perdition of eternal loss.  And then says the love of money is the root of all evil and people who covet after it err from the faith and literally skewer themselves with many sorrows.

So he has talked about people who are motivated by money, primarily false teachers.  And we said that earlier, false teachers are motivated by money because they need it to indulge their lusts.  You see it all the time.  It's...it's literally true from the beginning of recorded history to the present day and until Jesus comes and even through the Tribulation time, false teachers will be motivated by the desire to fulfill their lusts and gain money.

And so he talked about that issue but apparently didn't want to leave that issue at the point at which he stopped earlier lest some people who had money be falsely accused of loving it, or lest some people who had money be falsely accused of having gained it from ill conceived motive.  He talked about in verses 9 and 10 the would‑be rich, but in verses 17 and 19 he talks about the already rich.  He now wants to speak to those Christians in the church who are wealthy, who are rich.  And he wants to call upon them for a proper stewardship of that wealth...those who have riches already as opposed to those who seek to have riches.  And many rich people are not necessarily motivated to that end.  Maybe they inherited it, maybe they gained it because of the proficiency of the way they did whatever they do.  Maybe they gained it because there was some providential circumstance which brought it into their possession.  It is not necessarily true that the people who are rich love money.  And it is not necessarily true that the people who are poor don't.  So he really here is talking about those who are rich rather than who would be rich at any price.  And he wants it clear that it's not a sin to be rich but it is a sin to misuse that stewardship‑‑and that's the issue.

Obviously in a prosperous city like Ephesus there would be among those who came to name the name of Christ and were converted some who were wealthy.  In fact in chapter 6 verses 1 and 2 it talks about slaves and masters.  We assume that those masters who were believing masters in the church had means, certainly means surpassing that of those who were their servants.  So we assume that in that church as in our church, in most churches, even in the Corinthian church there were some who were wealthy, though there were not many who were noble, he says in 1 Corinthians, not many who were mighty, not many who were anything other than just common.  But the church has people who are wealthy and that's by the design of God, Deuteronomy 8:18, it is God who gives you the power to get wealth.  First Chronicles says essentially the same thing in chapter 29 as David speaks in verse 12, "Both riches and honor come from Thee."  And you remember that beautiful prayer of Hannah in which she expresses the same truth in 1 Samuel chapter 2 and verse 7, "The Lord makes poor and makes rich, He brings low and lifts up."

In other words, what the Bible teaches is that people are poor or people are rich because of God's purposes, God's design.  God allows people to allow what they have.  And that's why the Scripture says that whatever state you are you are to be...what?  Content because God has given you what He's given you.  Paul does not condemn the rich, nor does he tell them that they're more blessed by God because they have more money.  Money does not translate into blessing from God.  There are people who have nothing who are at the apex of God's blessing.  There are people who have everything and are in utter misery and rejected by God.  You cannot equate material blessing with God.  That is not the way God pours out His blessing in the new covenant age.

So Paul doesn't condemn people for being wealthy, nor does he say that they are specifically those most favored by God.  Riches in itself is no favor at all.  In fact, poverty has one wonderful benefit, you don't have to make decisions about anything which simplifies life, casts you on God, puts you in a position of trust and makes every small thing that comes your way the source of great joy.  Don't underestimate the value of having little as opposed to the value of having much.

Verse 17 says, "Timothy, command them that are rich in this age," and that's the essential character of the text of the next three verses.  It is in the command that must be given to the rich in this age.  In this age refers to time.  Literally the Greek text is "in the now age...in the present age," earthly wealth.  It is the treasure of this world that he is talking about...people who are wealthy not in spiritual things but in the mundane things.

Now let's ask the question: who are them that are rich that Timothy is to command?  By the way, the word "charge" means to command.  He is calling for a command.  This is not a suggestion.  This is not counseling.  This is a command.  You command the rich.  Now you say, "Boy, that's not me.  I don't have a Mercedes, a Rolls Royce, a BMW, a house on the hill, a large bank account, a boat, a camper, etc., etc., that's not me."  Let me tell you what rich means.  Here's a definition of rich.  Rich means you have more than...finish the sentence...need.  You got it, folks.  You have more than you need, that makes you rich.  That is, you have more than you need to live, eat, sleep, clothe yourself, and do what you have to do.  If you have any discretionary funds, you have more than you need.  You're rich.

You say, "Well I'll tell you, by the time I paid our house payment and by the time I've paid for the cars and by the time I have clothed our family and we've eaten, there's nothing left."  Yes, you're still rich.  Why?  Because you choose to eat $15 meals when you're out instead of four dollar ones...because instead of wearing one suit of clothes for a month or six months, you choose to have 12 outfits for every month, because instead of having transportation you choose a certain kind of transportation, instead of having a warm place where you can sleep and eat you choose to have a furniture store that you call your home.  You understand what I'm saying?  Those are choices you make about the discretion of your dollars.

Now this is a difficult thing because I can't tell you specifically what God wants you to do in your life.  And I'm not saying we should all have one‑room apartments with boxes to sit on and cots to sleep on and we should all have one suit of clothes which we wear all the time.  Although frankly it's not a bad idea.  I'm not thinking the Lord necessarily is advocating that.  What I'm trying to point to you is that all of us are rich in the sense that we have discretionary dollars.  If we choose to spend them on how we eat rather than that we eat, or on how we dress rather than that we're clothed, or on how we live rather than that we live in a place that's warm and provides shelter for us, then that is how we have chosen to use our discretionary dollar.  But I'm not going to let you off the hook in the sense, nor am I going to let myself off the hook in the sense that I'm in the category of the rich.  I am not eating three meals a day of bare minimum food, barely clothed and barely sheltered and crying to God for my next day's provision.  So I'm not in the sense a poor person.  I have to make decisions about my money. I have to decide what to do with it.  And that happens every day and that makes me rich.  I have more than I need.  And frankly, I could enjoy a simple life where I didn't have those kinds of decisions, couldn't you?  So let's just get it right at the outset here that we're the rich.

Nothing wrong with that.  Acts 15, Lydia was a rich lady and she was able to house the Apostle Paul and all of his traveling companions.  Nothing wrong with that.  Dorcas was a wealthy lady and she was able to make garments and give it away to the poor.  Nothing wrong with being rich.  Philemon was a wealthy man, owned slaves, had a big house, a church met in his home. There were many people like that.  It's not whether you have it, it's what you do with it, that's the issue.

So command the rich.  There's no command here to give it all away.  There's no command to take a vow of poverty here.  There's no command to become an ascetic.  The command here is to deal with your money with certain perceptions.  One, I'll give you three, one, danger to avoid.  You have an outline in your bulletin which will cover the next two weeks, that third point there I don't know what that is, somebody put that in.  I don't know who or why, for there is no third point.  But anyway, the first point has to do with handling riches and the first subpoint under that is of danger to avoid...danger to avoid.

The first thing is negative.  Now what happens, Paul starts out by telling Timothy..command rich people..and the first thing you want to command them has to do with danger to avoid.  Danger number one, verse 17, "Command them that are rich in the now age, that is rich in earthly things, that they be not high minded."  The first danger has to do with your attitude toward other people.  Riches has a way of pushing you in your own mind above the people who have less than you do.  That's just part of our fallen nature.  We tend to look down on people who are lower on the economic ladder than we are.  This is the first concern that Paul has that rich people not because they have much look at people who have less or little as if they themselves were inferior and the people with much were superior.  Frankly riches and pride are twins, and the more you have the more likely you will battle pride and the exaltation of yourself.  High minded, just two compound words out of the Greek meaning to think lofty...to think in a haughty way, to be exalted in your own mind about your ownself.  And rich people are constantly faced with the temptation to put on airs of superiority...to dress to flaunt their riches, to decorate themselves to flaunt their riches, to drive cars that tell everybody on the street that they're going down how wealthy they are, to live in a certain way, a certain life style to convey that they're better, wiser, sharper, more successful, more effective, higher intelligence belongs to them, etc., etc.  You know all of that.

Riches and pride are twins.  And mark it down somewhere that because you have much is not necessarily, as I said earlier, the blessing of God.  In Psalm 73 verse 12, I think a very insightful point where the psalmist lays it out as simply as it could be laid out, "Behold, these are the ungodly who prosper in the world, they increase in riches."  The Psalm of Asaph says, "Don't look at prosperity as if it's the mark of righteousness."  And there are many godly people who have very little.

I get letters from pastors around the world.  I get letters almost every week saying, "I'm preaching the Word of God, I don't have enough money to buy books, sometimes I don't have enough money to buy a new Bible, mine is falling apart, could you help me get a Bible?"  There is no correlation between righteousness and bank accounts.  The idea that you have in your mind some justification, or I have in my mind some justification to think I'm better than somebody else because I happen to be in a situation where God providentially has given me more worldly goods is tragic.  Many righteous people suffer and are poor while many wicked people prosper.

But it's very difficult to be wealthy and have a humble spirit.  The temptation is when you get enough money you don't do anything for yourself...I mean absolutely nothing.  Everybody in your little world is there to do things for you.  You know the feeling.  You don't clean your house, you don't mow your lawn, you don't wash your car, you don't even clean the windows at home. The more money you have the less you do and you begin to see the whole world as servants.  And everybody in the whole world is to serve you and you're on top of the pile and you just dictate what everybody will do and dole out the bucks and buy their time.  And if they don't do it the way you want, you talk to them like you were talking to an animal.  This is the tendency we wealth.  And you get the illusion that you're there because of your man‑made powers and the truth is, that's not the case.  You get to the point where you're independent of needing anyone really on a personal level, you just need servants.  And so your whole approach to life is to get everybody to do what you want when you want the way you want.  And that's why Proverbs 28:11 says, "The rich man is wise in his own conceit."  And Proverbs 18:23 says, "He talks roughly...he talks roughly."

Why?  Because people aren't people to care about, they're just people to use.  And so on the other hand, Philippians 2:3 says that we're to be lowly minded, let each of us look not on our own things but the things of other, be lowly minded, not high minded, Philippians 2:3.  By the way, this is real news in the Ephesian culture because, of course, the Greeks looked down on humility, they mocked humility.  And they exalted pride, just like our society today. This society today exalts pride, flaunt it, baby, flaunt it.  That's the mindset of today and humility is no longer a virtue.

So Paul warns the rich because the inevitability is that when you accumulate wealth, you begin to make distinctions in your mind in the basic intrinsic value difference between rich people and poor people which are artificial differences, cultivated only in your own proud mind.  In Ezekiel I was reading this week in chapter 28 of Ezekiel the first five verses and very pertinent to what we're saying, "The Word of the Lord came to me again saying, Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord God because your heart is lifted up and you've said I am a God, I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the seas, yea thou art a man and not God though thou set thine heart as the heart of God. Behold thou art wiser than Daniel, there is no secret that they can hide from Thee with thy wisdom and with thine understanding. Thou hast gotten thee riches and gotten gold and silver into thy treasuries.  By thy great wisdom and by thy merchandise thou hast increased thy riches, thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches."  And so forth.  This is a soliloquy of a guy who is telling himself how great he is.  Of course, that chapter transitions as you know into discussion of Satan, starting in verse 11, who is very much behind the prince of Tyre in that proud egotistical affirmation of who he is.  And it was Satan's pride that cast him out of heaven, says Ezekiel there.

But that's typical of a person who is wealthy.  He begins to think of himself as the one who gained it because of his great ability and people are only people to be used and abused for his own purposes.  The tendency of the rich, to look down on the poor.  In the church it's the same thing.  James writing in chapter 2 of James says, "How dare you let somebody come into your church with a gold ring, sit him in the front and have a man come in with disheveled clothes and stick him under your feet somewhere.  Don't you realize that God is no respecter of persons and you have violated the royal law, the law of love?"

So the first danger to avoid when you have money is the tremendous danger of pride...pride.  That haughty indulgent attitude of the rich is a curse.  The second danger to be avoided, he mentions in verse 17, is in the words "nor trust in the uncertainty of riches."  Actually, the word "trust" could better be translated, it's the Greek verb elpizo, to have hope in, or to fix one's hope on the uncertainty of riches.

In other words, the constant temptation for the rich is not only to have a wrong attitude toward people, but a wrong attitude toward money or possessions and to put their hope in them.  Proverbs 11:28, "He that trusts in his riches shall surely fall."  And you remember the rich man, the rich fool as he is called in Luke 12?  He was making it.  Boy, he was making it and it was rolling in, money was rolling in.  He had so much crop that he never had to work another day in his life, so he tore down all his barns, built bigger barns and bigger barns, just storing it and storing it and said that's it, no more work, from now on till I die eat drink and...what?...and be merry.  I'm set...I'm set for life.  And the Word of the Lord comes to him, You fool, tonight your soul will be required of you and then whose will all this stuff be?  So are those who rich in this age and not rich toward God, is the commentary.

So the tendency is when you have a lot, you trust in a lot.  When you have a little, you trust in God.  I mean, one of the benefits of just having enough to live on is that you're totally dependent on God to make a provision, and when He provides it you rejoice in thankfulness.  I think the reason so many Christians in America and so many Christians even in this church among us are so smug and so apathetic and so cold about their Christianity is simply because they really don't need God that much.  I mean, God has been replaced by their estate planner, by their retirement plan.  We've got it wired.

Now I'm not saying that we should deny all of those things and be unwise with what we do, but what I'm saying is we want to be sure that we do not shut off the voice of the Spirit of God in regard to the stewardship of our money in order to build our confidence in that treasure which we're amassing.  Frankly it's hard for me to imagine that anybody would trust more in a bank than they would in the eternal God.  Earthly riches quickly disappear.  Proverbs 23:5 says they fly away.

So, Paul says, "Look, you better put your hope in God," that's the implication here.  They trust in the uncertainty of riches, you want to trust in God who gives us richly all things to enjoy.  Don't ever get to the point in your life where you have totally eliminated the need for God, you've got it all covered.  Now that's a balance that you have to work on on a daily basis.  I'm sure there are times when you sense in your heart, "You know I ought to give some money to this family, they have some need....I ought to give to the Lord's work over here, buy, boy, I don't want to take anything out of there, that will cut my interest down and that will mess up my plan," and so what you're basically saying is that when the Spirit of God prompts your heart you're not interested in listening because your confidence is not in the fact that God's going to care for you, but in the fact that you're going to care for you and you don't want God invading your program and messing it up.  So you hope in the uncertainty of riches.  And, of course, in the ancient times it was so uncertain because war was happening all the time and people would be conquered and all the money situations would change when those kind of things happened.  And how in the world can it ever be sane to say you trust more in the riches that God provides so generously than in the God Himself who is the provider.  Foolish.  James 1:17, He's the father of lights from whom every good and perfect gift comes down.

So Paul says, "Look, stop the sin of pride and stop the sin of confidence in money and put your confidence in God," or literally "but on God."  The word "living" isn't in the original manuscripts.  "On the God who possesses all things, who owns the cattle on the hills," and so forth as it says in Psalm 50 verses 10 to 12.  And it is God, not just God but God who gives us plousiosbountifully all things...get this, to what?...to enjoy, for enjoyment.  God gives us all things for enjoyment.  God is so good.  He's so gracious.  And everything He gave you and everything He gave me was for the purpose of enjoyment, pleasure.  That's the same word translated in Hebrews 11:25 pleasure in the phrase "the pleasures of sin."  It has to do with real pleasure, not a sensual ungodly pleasure in this context, but a real pleasure, a true joy, a true satisfaction.

In Ecclesiastes, for example, 5:18, "Behold that which I have seen, it is good and fitting for one to eat and drink, enjoy the good of all his labor he takes under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him, for it's his portion.  Every man also to whom God has given riches and wealth and has given him power to eat thereof and take his portion and rejoice in his labor, this is the gift of God.  He shall not much remember the days of his life because God answers him in the joy of his heart."  He's not sitting around pining over the past, he's enjoying the present because God has been so gracious.  God gives us things for our enjoyment.

Now many people have used that verse as a sort of a justification of self indulgence.  That's not the idea.  What is the highest form of enjoyment?  What's the highest form of pleasure for a Christian?  I wouldn't think it's luxurious self‑indulgence, would you?  Is that the highest form?  Fleshly gratification, is that the highest form?  The Lord wants us blessed, the Lord wants us happy, the Lord wants us to enjoy but does He want us to enjoy sensual pleasure, earthly pleasure, fleshly gratification, self‑indulgence?  I don't think so.  I think the highest form of joy in the life of a believer is the joy that comes to one who knows that what he is doing is bringing glory to His Lord.  So God gives us richly all things for the highest kind of enjoyment.  Spiritual delight comes in the right use of wealth, seeing it as a gift of God.  You're not...you don't own your money, you don't own your possessions, your home and all you have.  You manage it for God.  He gave it to you and said this is a test...this is a test to see where your heart is.  And Jesus said, "Where your treasure is that's where your heart is."  So if you lay up treasure on earth, that's where your heart is.  If you lay up treasure in heaven, that's where your heart is, Matthew 6:19 to 21.

So God desires us to enjoy the gifts He's given us and the best way to enjoy them is to know that they've been turned right around and put into things that are going to glorify His name and honor His name and fill your heart with the purest truest highest kind of joy.

How in the world we could imagine that God gave us everything just to indulge our flesh?  The highest joy for a believer ought to be to invest in the eternal advance of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.  So, the dangers to avoid are pretty clear.  Riches can destroy relationships through pride, set people off as aloof, uncaring, unsympathetic, selfish, indifferent.  And they can become the hope of a man's security and then nullify his responses to God.  And so he settles for a cheap thrill rather than the pure joy of taking what God's giving him, turning it right around giving it back to God, investing it in eternity, putting it into the Kingdom and knowing the joy supreme of that kind of investment in the anticipation of the eternity of rejoicing that will be his when he sees the fruit of that investment in the presence of God in heaven.

So the danger to avoid...secondly, the duty to fulfill.  Given the negative let's go to the positive.  We know what we're not to do, we're not to have the attitude of pride and the attitude of security in our money, what's our duty?  This is so simple, verse 18, "Command them that are rich...we pick up the main verb from verse 17...that they do good, that they be rich in good works, generous," and then that last one I'll explain to you in a minute.  It's translated "willing to share," but it's a very rich word.  Here are four aspects of our duty, really one duty but there are four features of it.  And it takes us sort of down a funnel.  It's a marvelous marvelous methodology that Paul has.

First of all, take your money, you rich people, and the first thing is you are to do what?  Good...do good, that's one word, one Greek verb, agathourgeomeans to work that which is inherently, intrinsically and qualitatively good.  Do good things with it, really good things, not superficially good things, not shallowly good things, not pretty things on the outside but good things.  That is noble things, excellent things, things with quality and obviously that would be determined by God, things that God would honor, things that would honor God.  Very general then.  Take your wealth and use it to do good...noble things, to work that which is intrinsically valuable.

If you look at 1 Timothy back in 5:8 certainly you're to use it to provide for your own house.  In verse 3 you're to use it to provide for widows and bereft women who have no support.  Down in verse 16, if a woman has widows they are to be relieved and cared for within the church, that would be outside the family but in the church.  Chapter 5 verse 17, you're to do it to support the elders and pastors who lead you.  In other words, there are a lot of good things.  You're to give to the needs of others as in the early church, Acts 2 and Acts 4, when they found someone with need, they sold what they had, took the money, gave it to the person in need.  That's a good thing.

In other words, get it in your mind that you're going to take your money and do things that are inherently noble, good, valuable, worthy.  That's general.  Let's narrow the funnel a little bit.

The second thing he says is here are the good things, they be rich in good works.  In other words, instead of being rich in dollars, be rich in good works.  The fourth time now that some form of the word "rich" is used in this passage.  Riches do not belong in the bank, endlessly compounding interest to provide security and a guarantee that if everybody around me is miserable, I'm not going to be.  Or to be stockpiled until our children can fight each other for it who have less discretion as to what it ought to be used for than we did.  But it's to be used to do good.  What kind of good?  Good works...good works.

The true riches, dear friends, are the accumulation of noble generous deeds, that's the true riches.  The widow who is to be supported, verse 10 of chapter 5, is to be one well reported of for good works, whose life is marked by having done noble deeds.  And the implication is on behalf of others...on behalf of others.  Titus 3:8 says the same thing, be careful to maintain good deeds, that's on the behalf of others.  So do good.  Do good on the behalf of others, that's what he's saying. Take your money and do good with it.  What kind of good?  Good on the behalf of others.

Let me tell you something.  Your money won't follow you to heaven but something will.  Revelation 14:13, "Their works do follow them."  You leave your money here, you take your spiritual good deeds there, they do follow you.  Every time we could have given and didn't give lessens the wealth that is laid up for us in heaven.  Every time we give of what we had increases the riches laid up for us when this life comes to an end.  So Paul says do good and that means do noble deeds on behalf of others.

Look at the third thing as the funnel narrows even more.  It says in the Authorized simply "ready to distribute," literally means to be generous.  The verb to be and then the word eumetadotoswhich means generous, liberal, bountiful.  Do good.  What kind of good?  Noble deeds for others.  What kind of noble deeds?  Distributing or being generous which means giving your money to people who need it, ready to meet any need, acting toward others in the same generous way God acted toward you.  Like the Macedonians who out of their deep poverty gave abundantly and were really following the example of Christ who was rich but for your sakes became poor that you through His poverty might become rich, 2 Corinthians 8:9.  Give, said our Lord Jesus, and it shall be given unto you, pressed down, shaken together and running over shall men give into your bosom.

In other words, you're rich, fine.  Take what you have and do good. What kind of good?  Noble deeds toward others.  What kind of noble deeds?  Giving..giving, distributing to the work of God to the needs of people.

Back to 1 Chronicles.  I can't resist this passage because it's so powerful.  David had called for the people to give to the temple.  And his responding thanksgiving and prayer to what they gave is just overwhelming.  In the first place, David set the example and he gave.  I mean, he just gave so generously.  He said, "I have prepared...verse 2...with all my might for the house of my God the gold for things to be made of gold, the silver for things of silver, the bronze for things of bronze, the iron for things of iron, wood for things of wood, onyx stones, stones to be set, glistening stones various colors, manners of precious stones, marble stones in abundance."  God gave David much, gave..David gave back much.  That's the idea...that's the stewardship.  "Three thousand talents of gold, the gold of Ophir, seven thousand talents of refined silver," and so forth and so on.  And gold for the things of gold.

And then he called on the people.  And who is willing to concecrate their service to the Lord this day.  And then all the people came in verses 6 to 9.  The people started giving, and giving and giving because with a perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord.  And David rejoiced with great joy.  Talk about enjoyment, the enjoyment comes when God gives to you and you give back to God.  There's the joy.  And so David in verse 10 blessed the Lord before all the congregation.  And David said, "Blessed be Thou Lord God of Israel, our Father forever and ever.  Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine; Thine is the Kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as head above all." 

In other words, "God, it's all Yours, it's all Yours.  Both riches and honor come from You and You reign over all.  And in Your hand is power and might and in Your hand is to make great to give strength to all.  Now therefore, our God, we thank You and praise Your glorious name...listen to this...but who am I and what are my people that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort?"  This isn't any big deal for us to do this because all things come from Thee and of Thine own have we given Thee.  We can't take any credit.  You gave it to us, we're just giving it back.  "For we are strangers before You and sojourners as were all our fathers, our days on the earth are as a shadow and there is none abiding.  O Lord our God, all this abundance that we have prepared to build a house for Thine holy name comes from Thy hand, it is all Thine.  I know also, my God, that You test the heart."

Boy, there it is, folks.  The reason He gave it was to see what they would do with it which was a test of where their heart was, just what Jesus said in Matthew 6, where your treasure is your heart will be also.  You're rich, fine, if that's what God's providence has brought to pass in your life.  First of all, do good with it, do noble things with it, don't waste it, don't squander it, do noble things.  What kind of noble things?  Good works toward others.  What kind of good works?  Being generous to give to the work of God and the needs of others.

And then the fourth and the funnel finally narrows, he says, "willing to share."  That's one word in the Greek, koinonekos(?).  You know what that word means?  It's a form of fellowship.  Fellowshipping, fellowshipping, that takes away the remoteness, that's far different than writing a check and sticking it in an envelope and shipping it off someplace.  That's nearness, brotherhood, common life, mutual care, communion.  That epitomizes it, get in an assembly of believers and share with those that are there.  If like in David's time, share with God's people to build God's house.  Like in the early church, share with those in your fellowship who have need.  Share with all those whose resources are limited.  Share in the advance of the Kingdom.  It's community, it's fellowship, it's koinonia.

And what is the duty then of those that are wealthy?  To do good.  And their goodness is manifest in specific noble deeds of kindness to others reflected in generous giving as an expression of loving fellowship.  That's the sum of it.

Sadly, I'll be very honest with you, sadly Christian people just don't do this.  I mean, we're really in to the world in so many ways.  For one thing, I'll be honest with you and say this, there are a lot of you people who come to Grace Church and give absolutely nothing...you give nothing.  You just come and you give nothing.  You keep whatever you've got, assuming that it's yours when it's God's and cheating yourself of the true joy and true enjoyment that comes to those who do good by giving generously in a fellowship of caring about what God is doing.  But some of you give nothing.  And you expect everything to be provided for you but you give nothing.

Others of you give nearly everything, sacrificially, generously from the heart, willingly, lovingly and you know that joy that comes to those who do that.  But I really believe that most of you are somewhere in the middle throwing tokens at God, a pittance here and there as long as it doesn't adjust your life style and sort of buying off your conscience for a little bit longer.  And you know little of sacrifice.  I hate to think of that because you cheat yourself of the true joy and I sure hate to think of the poor folks who will give sacrificially.  You know, this country is full of people who gave sacrificially to people promising them health, wealth and prosperity.  They gave millions to that, they do...to those guys that get on television and say, "Jesus wants you wealthy, Jesus wants you rich, Jesus will heal you, He'll give it all back to you, this is your seed faith, or whatever it is, and you give it here and you'll get it back," and people will send in millions.  But just tell people who know the Word of God and name the name of Christ that they're to give sheer out of sheer love and gratitude to God and may never receive anything in this life in return, and they won't let it go.  Why is it that people for wrong motives will give millions and people for right motives will give so little?  I guess that's partly why some preachers feel they have to descend to the level of the thinking of people.

The danger then to avoid, very clear.   Wrong attitudes toward money, wrong attitudes toward people.  The duty, very clear.  Use your money to do good toward others with generosity in a loving fellowship.  That's a church.  Finally, listen very carefully.  He goes to the development to consider.  The end result must be considered.  Verse 19, here's the result, think on this, this is what develops as you do your duty, "Laying up," literally the Greek term is to amass a treasure, "amassing a treasure for themselves," the next is a good foundation, it could be translated, themelioscould be translated fund, a fund.  And then that little phrase "against the time to come" means for the future.

So let me give it to you.  Amassing for themselves a good sound fund for the future.  Now you could sell that.  You know what people want?  They don't want it in the future, they want it when?  Now.  I read the other day where somebody is suing Oral Roberts because he sent in all of his thousands of dollars and it's been a year or two years and he hasn't gotten it back yet.  He's suing.  Well he ought to sue if that's what they told him was going to happen because that was false advertising.  But the point is we're not concerned with getting it now.  If we lay up treasure in heaven, we're going to wait to receive the dividend when we get to heaven.  Now if you live like that, he says, you have laid hold on the real life, that's what that last phrase means.

In other words, you have come to grips with real living, you're living in the light of eternity, not time.  That's the issue.  If you want to put your money in a fund, a good sound fund, a quality fund, if you want to amass a treasure in a quality fund for the future, then invest in eternity and you will lay hold of real life in the here and now. That's really living.  Really living is not storing up your barns full of stuff and sitting back and saying eat, drink and be merry, go for it, that's not real living.  First Timothy 5, do you remember it in verse 6?  "The one who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives."

If you want to lay hold of real life...what is real life?  Eternal life.  That is the life of eternity.  You've got to get out of time, you've got to live for eternity, that's really living.  Most people don't understand.  Most people even Christian people are living for the here and now, how foreign that is.  By storing up heavenly treasure through giving earthly treasure you gain heavenly treasure.  That's the wonder of it.  You live it up in this life and indulge your wealth on yourself and there's a certain sense in which you're poor for eternity.  But if you invest in eternity now, you make yourself rich for eternity and you grasp the reality of real life here and now.

The only thing that matters in this life is living for eternity, isn't that right? That's why in Luke 16:9 Jesus said, "Take your money, that unrighteous stuff and purchase with it friends for eternity."  What does that mean?  Invest your money in winning souls to Christ who will be standing on heaven's shore to greet you when you arrive with thankful hearts because your investment resulted in their salvation.

So as you do the noble deeds and as you give your money away generously, you're storing up a treasure in a fund that pays the highest interest and it pays eternal interest, and there's never a default and it doesn't need to be insured or guaranteed because God is in charge of it. And you'll enjoy its fruits forever and knowing that you're doing that and anticipating that allows you to live life to its fullest here and now.

It's a great responsibility to handle riches.  It's a daily responsibility.  We need to pray for each other to be wise and obedient to the command that is given to us in this text.  May God help us.  Let's bow together in prayer.

Lord, we have been given so much and we understand that it comes from You.  And it comes not so much as a reward but as a test.  It comes not because of anything we deserve but it comes to test the quality of our faith, it comes to really reveal where our heart is.  Help us to do a little inventory and see if we've really laid our treasure in heaven.  God, it grieves my own heart that charlatans and frauds and false teachers and people who lie about the Scripture and motivate people wrongly can amass millions and millions and millions to build their own foolish empires and the true work of God in His church just stumbles along because people never are committed to things that they don't feel there's some value for that will accrue to them in this life.  How can it be that people will only give to You thinking they're giving to You when in fact they're trying to get more, putting You in a spot where You owe them money rather than just giving out of love?  Lord, it's such a grief to my heart that people cannot give sacrificially, generously it seems unless they have ill‑conceived motive for it.  Help us, Lord, to be different and to believe that You have called us together as a community of believing people to care for each other, to supply needs, to meet needs not that we may gain in time but that we may gain in eternity.  Help us to live the real life, the eternal life, not the worldly one.

We have many needs, You know that, in this church.  Many needs that are unmet.  And many many folks who don't understand this command or are not obedient to it.  Lord God, pull them into obedience, pull us all into it, that we may know blessing that Your work may go forward and that we may prosper throughout eternity because we have put our treasure there.  Thank You for loving us and for forgiving us for the woeful stewardship we have so often offered You.

Handling Treasure, Part 2

  A Response to the PTL Crisis

Well this morning we come to our final message in this wonderful epistle of 1 Timothy.  Will you open your Bible with me and turn to 1 Timothy chapter 6?  We're looking at verses 20 and 21, the final words of Paul in his first epistle to his beloved son in the faith, Timothy.  Let me read these two verses to you.  "O Timothy, guard that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane, vain babblings and oppositions of knowledge falsely so‑ called which some professing have erred concerning the faith.  Grace with you."

The essence of those verses is a call to guard the truth‑‑to guard the truth.  A fitting way to end this letter.  This week I was listening to a Christian radio station locally and a listener called in with a question to the host.  The question was: I need a church, I'm searching for a church, I want to know what to look for in a church.  The answer came, and this is as close as I can reconstruct it, these are close to the words, "The thing I look for," said the host, "is fellowship, that's the most important thing in choosing a church."

Well that's a nice part of a church...sharing, caring, fellowshipping.  But that's not the right answer.  That's not the most important thing in choosing a church.  You could find sharing, caring, fellowship in a bar, to be honest.  And they might not even be condemning and they might even help you drown your troubles and probably wouldn't gossip.  You could find fellowship in the Masonic Lodge or the Order of Elks or the Royal Order of the Goats, or whatever other kind of club you might join.  You could probably find fellowship in the Mooney cult.  You might find it in the Mormon Youth Movement.  You might find fellowship a thousand different ways, that can't be the single most important ingredient in finding a church.

Others might say, "No, the most important thing in selecting a church is how interesting the preacher is."  Someone else might say how good the music is.  Or how easy it is to park, some carnal people might say.  Or how comfortable the setting is.  I suppose we would be somewhat amazed and perhaps chagrined to find out what people look for in looking for a church.

But there's only one basic essential in a church.  There's really only one thing you're looking for and that is how do they handle the truth, that's it.  How they handle the truth.  That's the essential thing.  What do they believe about the Word of God and what do they believe it teaches?  That's the essence.  Do they believe that this is the inerrant authoritative determinative Word of the living God?  And if they believe that, then what do they say it teaches?  That's the bottom line.  Do they hold forth the Word of life?  Are they committed to living out divine truth?  That's the issue.  How do they handle the treasure of the truth?  Because the church is the guardian of God's Word.

Boy, it's important for us to understand that.  When I came here to candidate in November of 1968 to preach on a given Sunday night, they asked me if I would consider coming to preach a sermon and perhaps to be the pastor of this church, I had filled the pulpit a couple of Sundays and then they asked me to come back for another one.  And I'll never forget, I came on that Sunday night and I was so loaded and some of you remember I was loaded on Romans chapter 7, I had been studying it about six weeks and I spoke that night and poured out my heart.  I don't remember if I had even notes even.  I had wanted to get this out for so long that I just unloaded everything.  And when I went down to sit by Patricia after I had preached she told me that I would probably be never invited back again because I spoke for an hour and 25 minutes.  And you don't normally do that the first time you go to sell yourself to a church.  The first person who came to me afterwards was an elder and he said, "If you were here would you teach us the Word of God like that every week?"  And I think I said something to the effect of yes but not quite that long.

But this church ever since that time demonstrated to me that they had a desire to know the truth.  And that that was the primary issue in the hearts of the people then and since that was the primary concern of my heart, it seemed to be a very workable relationship. And by God's grace it has been far more than we could have expected.

You see, the church is primarily the safe that keeps the truth and the voice that proclaims it.  We must guard and propagate the truth.  And when you look for a church, you ask what do they believe about the Bible and what do they believe that it affirms, that's what you ask.  And all the rest flows out of that.

Now let me bring it down to where we are in our nation right now.  We're faced with this great PTL scandal that is in every newspaper every day.  The saga goes on like a distorted perverted soap opera.  And we are hearing verbiage upon verbiage upon verbiage from everybody from the most secular humanistic editorial writers down to the spokesmen for the PTL themselves.  And all kinds of people in between.  But it seems to me in all this verbiage the main point has never been articulated.  The main issue has never been discussed.  No one has ever brought up the real issue.  And the real scandal in PTL is not how they handled their bodies and it's not how they handled their money, the real scandal is how they handled the Scripture.  That's the scandal.  And nobody will say anything about that.  The media doesn't say it.  The board of the PTL doesn't say it.  No spokesman for them says it.  And so no one is attacking the heart of the issue.  And the real scandal is playing fast and loose with God's truth.  That's the real scandal.

It's not sexual, as heinous as those sexual sins are.  It's not financial as despicable as the misuse of money is.  The great sin, the real scandal is a misuse, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, misapplication, misappropriation of God's holy Word.  That's the scandal that scandalizes heaven beyond all else because Christian ministry is suppose to be a depository that guards the truth, that guards it protectively, jealously, purely.  And these people have for years dishonored God's Word by their false teachings, by their unbiblical systems of belief and most flagrantly by affirming that they believe something that they don't live.  Scandalous.

In Psalm 138 verse 2 the Bible says God has exalted His Word above His name.  Scripture is the self‑revelation of God.  This is all we know about God.  If you pervert this, you pervert God.  And if you say you believe it and don't live it then you say God isn't serious, don't take Him seriously, don't take His Word seriously, it really doesn't matter that much.  We're the spokesmen for God and this is how we live.  So if we don't take God seriously, who know Him most intimately, why in the world should anybody else take His Word seriously?  That's the real scandal.  And nobody has said a word about that.  And I'm appalled at that.

This is the record of who God is.  This is the record of what He has done.  This is the record of what He will do.  This is the record of what He is doing.  This is the record of what He requires.  And we have to get this right and give it its place.  It is a holy Word, it is a pure Word, it is a true Word and the psalmist said in Psalm 119:161 "My heart stands in awe of Thy Word."  And Isaiah said in chapter 66, "God wants a man who trembles at His Word."  But when you stand up and say you are the spokesman for His Word and you live in continual violation of it, you mock the Word and you mock the authority of God and you mock the power of God by your life.  That is the scandal.  The scandal of perverting the sacred duty of a ministry which is to guard with sacredness and holiness the pure Word of the living God.  That is the worst violation of trust.

This Bible that you hold, that I hold in my hand and you hold in your hand is the most sacred thing your hands will ever touch in this world.  This is the ultimate sacred trust.  As Paul said to the Thessalonians, he had been given the trust of the gospel to keep, to preserve.  And the thing that breaks my heart is the violation of that sacred trust.  And I hear spokesman saying, "Well, we want to preserve this ministry," and I'm saying what ministry? The ministry that misuses, misappropriates, misapplies, misunderstands, misinterprets God's Word?  The ministry that says that this is the Word of God over here and lives as if it didn't matter?  Is that what we want to preserve?  What is it we want to preserve?  I'm not sure I know what it is.  We don't want to preserve some ministry that can't do what all ministry is supposed to do and that is guard the truth and propagate it.

Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 2 for a moment.  And verse 17 the Apostle Paul says, this is a personal testimony, "We are not like many others."  We're not like other teachers.  "Who corrupt the Word of God."  Boy, what a strong statement that is.  Who adulterate is the essence of it.  Who adulterate, prostitute the Word of God, hucksters, who use the Word of God to line their pockets, to finance their indulgence.  We're not like them, he says, we are not corrupters of the Word of the God, we are not hucksters of the Word of God, we are not charlatans using the Bible to manipulate for our own ends.  But, he says, we are sincere, that is we have integrity as of God in the sight of God, speak we in Christ.  We're true to God.  We're true to Christ.  We speak the truth.  We have integrity.  We're not like the rest.  We uphold the purity of this holy book.  We understand the admonition of Deuteronomy 4:2 not to touch the Scripture, adding or taking away, the warning of Revelation 22:18 and 19 not to add to or take away lest the plagues written in it be added to our destiny.  We preserve the Word, Paul says.  We hold to the purity of the world...of the Word.  We minister with integrity before God and before Christ.  We're not like the rest who pervert, adulterate, twist and use the Scripture for their own ends.

Jude verse 3, Jude writes, and this is a call really to vigilance that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.  Literally the‑once‑for‑all‑delivered‑to‑the‑saints faith, means the Bible.  And he says you should earnestly contend.  The word earnestly contend is epagonizo, and in the middle of it is the word agonfrom which we get agony, you know that.  That word originally meant a bowl or a stadium.  We talk about bowl games, the Cotton Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl and all that, that's an ancient Greek term.  A stadium was called a bowl because of its obvious shape.  And he is saying when we go into the bowl to fight the spiritual warfare, we battle over the purity of the faith.

In other words, our Super Bowl as ministers of the gospel is to fight for the truth, to preserve it.  And, boy, that's...that's from my viewpoint, as the French would say, that's my raison d'etre, that's my reason to be, that's the reason I live, that's my daily bread and breath to preserve God's Word, to treat it with the sacredness and holiness and purity that it deserves and make sure it is properly guarded and upheld and handled with extreme caution and extreme care.  And if you know me well, you know that I have a very difficult time dealing with people who misuse Scripture.  It isn't just a simple error on their part, it is a perversion of the revelation of God and if you pervert the revelation about God then you will come up with a God who is not God and you'll be an idolater.  You can't twist the Scripture without twisting God because this is His self‑ revelation.  And when you mutilate the Scripture, you come up with a God who is less than God.  And if the world believes that the God who is is the God whose been running PTL then God has been massively dishonored.  It's mind boggling to realize that the world is saying this is the group that represent God.  They're supposed to be living out God's will.  Frightening.

Guarding the truth is not only a matter of right interpretation, it's a matter of right living.  When you think about the sacredness with which the Scripture came to us and scribes, you know, who thought it was so sacred they'd take out their pen in the Hebrew language when they're writing down the Old Testament manuscripts and they would write one letter and they would take a bath, change their clothes, get a new pen, write the next letter, take a bath, change their clothes, get a new pen, write the next letter.  Go through the whole Old Testament like that because they were so serious about every single letter.  The sacredness with which people treated it, who gave their life for it, martyrs who literal blood was poured out in their guarding of God's truth. And then you have people who play fast and loose with that truth, flippantly treating it as if it was nothing more than something you use for your own ends.  Irresponsible, ill‑prepared hucksters who use the Scripture to get rich or to gain their own ends, and that's the travesty, that's the scandal.  That is the scandal.

Yes the body is a sacred trust.  Yes the body is a vessel that is to be used to honor God.  Yes and if I am a Christian my body is the sacred temple of the Holy Spirit.  And when a professing Christian engages his body in adultery, homosexuality or whatever other area of fleshly indulgence might be imagined, that violates the stewardship of the body and that is sin.  And yes money entrusted to one who claims to represent Christ is a sacred trust and when such a professing Christian uses it deliberately in gross self‑indulgence to buy houses and cars and jewelry and clothes and furniture and furnishings and drugs and pay prostitutes or whatever might be done, that is an incredible breach of the stewardship of God's gift of money.  But those are rather small issues when compared with the major issue which is the breach of trust that comes when you mishandle God's truth because now you're not betraying yourself as a failure, you're betraying God as a failure or as inadequate or as other than He really is.  It's frightening.  The severest crime against God is to mishandle the revelation of God so that people can't see who He really is.  Now you have struck a blow at His nature.

And when you preach that you represent God and you say that you represent God and you say you believe the Bible and you hold it up and wave it around and then you live a life that totally violates everything He teaches, you literally mock God.  You say God is not important, I'm important.  God is second to me, I know He said it but it doesn't matter, I'll live any way I want to live.  You mock God.  You drag God down to the level of your sin, that's why Jesus said if you are one with Christ, he that is joined to the Lord being one spirit, and you join yourself to a prostitute, you join the Lord to the prostitute, 1 Corinthians 6.  And the thing that breaks my heart is that not that these people have desecrated their bodies in sexual sin, not that they have fouled up the stewardship of money but that they have desecrated the character of the Word of God and therefore they have conveyed and communicated a God who is not the true God.  When you demand that other people follow God's truth while you openly violate it, you drag God's truth down and you show yourself to be a manipulator of God's truth for your own ends.  What a desecration.  What a mockery.

And I keep waiting for someone to say that.  So I decided since no one had, I would.  When you go a step further twisting (clapping) when you go a step further twisting Scripture so that it appears to teach that God wants everybody healthy, and God wants everybody wealthy, and God wants everybody successful, and if you'll just believe Jesus you can have everything you want, when you pump that kind of perversion out, then God is turned into some kind of celestial Monty Hall waiting to make your big deal, you know, you're going to cash in if you can just pick the right door and have enough faith to believe.  God becomes a genie who pops out of a bottle and does whatever you force him to do.  You destroy the nature of God.

The most perfect expression of His will can be through pain.  The most perfect expression of His will can be through tragedy.  A dear little baby in our family this last week drown in the bathtub, two and half year old grandson of my cousin.  I have the service tomorrow.  Are we to say, "Well that tragedy happened because you didn't have enough faith?"  Do we want to put that load of guilt on a family?  The responsibility is to see God's hand in everything.

We did a television program on this Second Look series with a man named Bob Wheland(?).  Bob Wheland was headed for a major league baseball career and then he got sent to Vietnam and he stepped on a mortar round while running across a field to rescue a fallen buddy and blew his legs off.  That was, of course, the end of his baseball career.  And he came back to the United States and decided that he was going to have a strong arms because he had to walk on his hands.  He walks because he's only got body half way down, he walks on his hands.  And so he decided to strengthen his upper body and he began to lift weights.  And before he was done he set the world's record in the bench press.  But they took the record away because he didn't have the proper uniform on, namely he didn't wear shoes so that he lost the record.  That didn't discourage him.  He decided to take up track.  And before he was done he decided to walk across America on his hands for World Hunger.  It took him three and a half years.  He recently ran in the L.A. Marathon, you may have seen him.  He loves the Lord.

And when someone asks me the question, was that fair?  I said it would have been a gross unfairness to our society if Bob Wheland had ended up another baseball player.  We would have lost the inspiration of an incredible man. Who is going to second guess God and why God does what He does?  But again, striking blows at the sovereignty of God, the providence of God, the purpose of God with a kind of theology that leaves people who don't get well afraid that they don't have the faith to believe and they're lost in the shame and guilt of their own inability to heal themselves is a frightening misrepresentation of God's purposes.  Teaching the lie that if you have enough faith you can force God to make you wealthy, that kind of unbiblical teaching will bring in millions of dollars because people want to buy a miracle but it misrepresents God.  Propagating the lie that prosperity equals the blessing of God is nothing more than saying godliness is great gain, and that was a lie of the people in Timothy's environment, chapter 6, advocating that man is sovereign in salvation and in control of his destiny.  And if he just wants Jesus badly enough he can reach out and grab Jesus, a cheap gospel, a weak presentation of salvation.  So many things.  Creating Christian celebrities who are famous for being famous and nothing else who stand up and articulate the faith and don't really know it.

See, all of these things in my judgment have misrepresented Scripture.  The PTL for years was a launching pad for every kind of charismatic message and messenger, teaching error as if it were truth.  Sure there's truth there, and I won't say there isn't.  From time to time the truth is there and from time to time it may be clear, but put it in the whole context and the whole picture is very muddy and the truth is not guarded with care.  And the whole place flaunting pride, flaunting indulgence, wasting God's money, perverting His Word, pushing the Bible to the background only to be used when it needs to be used and showcasing entertainment and celebrities and opinions and whatever else.  The misrepresentation of the nature of God, the gospel of Christ, the work of the Spirit, denying holy living, no place for humility, that meek and gentle and quiet spirit of godly women and that wonderful strong humble character of godly men with great integrity, missing.

You see, that's the sacred trust that's violated.  That's the issue.  No one is a minister of God who mocks, violates, misrepresents, perverts or cheapens the Word of the living God.  We live to uphold that truth.  And the sin of a PTL or any other ministry like that, quote/unquote ministry, is a sin against the Word of God. That's the issue.

That brings me to 1 Timothy.  If anything comes through in 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and Titus, it is the sacred responsibility of the man of God to live, proclaim and guard the truth.  This whole epistle can be summed up very briefly by reminding you of what Paul says over and over and over again to Timothy.  The whole deal here is to guard the truth.

Go back to chapter 1 for our last little review of this epistle.  After the normal salutation in the first two verses, Paul launches right into his subject and he says, "As I besought you to stay at Ephesus when I went to Macedonia that you might...here's the reason you're there...that you might stay in Ephesus for the purpose of commanding some that they teach no other doctrine."  No other teaching.  Timothy, you are there to stop this false teaching.  You are there to guard the truth.  You are there to hold the line against encroaching error.  Please, Timothy, verse 4, "Don't listen to fables, don't listen to their endless genealogies, all they do is serve up questions rather than godly edifying which is in the faith."  Don't get caught up in all of that false teaching, all of that pseudo‑intellectualism.

"Those," verse 7, "who desire to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor that about which they affirm are certainly not to be listened to."  They have no idea what they're talking about, they just want to be teachers, they assume the role without the truth.  "Timothy, I left you there to command people teaching error to stop it and I left you there to be pure and uninfluenced as the source of truth."

Then down in verse 18, "This command," and again very forceful language, "this command I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed to you that you by them through those prophecies might war a good warfare."  Timothy, you're a soldier and you've got to fight a war and what is it abouT?  Verse 19, "Holding the faith..." holding the faith because some people have put away the faith and made a shipwreck out of their lives.  The faith is the content of Christian truth...the truth of God.  Hold on to it, Timothy, hold on to it.

Chapter 2 verse 7, "For this, he says, I am ordained a preacher and an Apostle," and then I love this parenthesis, "(I speak the truth in Christ and lie not.)"  You know, that ought to be behind the name of every preacher.  Instead of saying Reverend So‑and‑so, D.D. or Reverend So‑and‑so, Thd., or Thm(?), or Mdiv(?) or whatever people like to put on their name.  It ought to say Reverend So‑and so, I preach the truth in Christ and lie not.  That's the heart of ministry.  That's what it's all about.  Don't tell me what your degree is, tell me what you have to say.  Don't tell me about your education.  I don't want to know what your dissertation was, I want to know, do you speak the truth?  That's what I want to know.  And what a tragic heartbreaking grief it is to see school after school and seminary after seminary and church after church abandoning the truth.  They don't guard the truth, sacred treasure.

No, Paul says I'm a preacher and I'm an Apostle and I'll tell you what that means.  That means I speak the truth in Christ and don't lie.  Speak the truth, proclaim the truth, live the truth.  Look at chapter 3, if it is the sacred trust more than anything else of the man of God, the believer to guard the truth, then is it any wonder that in all of the qualifications for an elder that we saw in chapter 3, only one of them has to do with a skill? It's at the end of verse 3 and it says, "Skilled in teaching, or apt to teach."  That's the only qualification for a pastor that's given in this list that's other than a moral or spiritual qualification.  It's the only skill required.  Why?  Because the primary role of the man of God is to guard the truth, to teach the truth, to propagate the truth.  That's the sacred trust, beloved.  He is to be skilled in teaching.  It's the only skilled mentioned because it's the basic skill of ministry.

Ministry is this, ministry is guarding and communicating truth.  And those who do not do the guarding cannot communicate the truth and they have therefore prostituted the ministry.  That's why my heart just continually continually runs hot over the issue of training men to teach the truth.  That's the future.  And there's so little seemingly of that.

Look at chapter 4, the issue comes right back again.  Verse 1, "But the Spirit is speaking pointedly, directly that in the latter times," and we're in those times, "some shall depart from the faith." There are going to be people moving away from the faith, we've seen it, they're going to depart.  The church will fail to guard the way they ought to guard.  Men of God will fail to guard the truth.  And so people will depart from it and they will be led astray because they listen to seducing spirits teaching doctrines of demons coming through lies, speaking hypocrites whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.  Does that sound familiar?  Who seem to be able to live a life that has no conscience.

Where do these teachings come from?  Demon spirits and they are articulated in the world by lie‑speaking hypocrites who don't seem to mind doing it, they don't have any conscience.  Their conscience has been so scarred by constantly being trampled through their behavior.

So he reminds Timothy then in verse 6 that because of the presence of such people you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ if you are nourished up in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine.  What does he mean?  The words of the faith, that's Scripture. The words of the good doctrine, that is what Scripture teaches.  So, Timothy, because there are demon spirits teaching demon doctrines through lying hypocrites who seem to have no conscience, who are in it for their own personal gain, you have to be faithful to guard the truth. And that means you've got to be nourished up in the words of the Scripture and the good teaching.  And that's the positive.  The negative, verse 7, you have to refuse to listen to the profane old wives fables which were sort of a euphemism referring to extant philosophy and you've got to force yourself to stick with the truth.

In fact, in verse 16, "Take heed to yourself and to your teaching and continue in them."  So basic...so basic.  Verse 13 of chapter 4, "Until I come give your attention to reading the Scripture, applying the Scripture," that's exhortation, "interpreting the Scripture," that's doctrine.  Read it, interpret it and apply it.  Guard that truth.  Propagate that truth.

Chapter 5, what does it say in verse 17?  "Let the elders or the pastors that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially if they work hard in the Word and teaching."  If they work hard in the Word and teaching, they're worthy of double honor.  Why?  Because that's their calling.  That's what we're all about.  We are to guard the truth, to teach the truth.  It's a sacred trust.

Chapter 6, the end of verse 2, "These things," and that sweeps back to the epistle, "teach and exhort and if anybody teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the teaching which is according to godliness, he is proud," and he goes on to lambaste those people that teach the false teaching, again saying the same thing.  Timothy, teach the truth...teach the truth, and if anybody teaches otherwise, label them.  And then he says to them in verse...to him in verse 11, "Fight against them.  O man of God, flee these things and follow these things."  Then verse 12, "And fight the good fight of the faith."  Fight for truth.  Fight for truth.  And fight, verse 14 says, until the Second Coming.  Fight right till Jesus gets here for the truth.

You see, that's the heart and soul of ministry.  That's really what it's all about in the church.  We are guardians of the truth.  Do you remember what the Apostle Paul said when he was discussing the privilege of Israel's identity?  In chapter 3 of Romans he says, "What advantage then has the Jew?"  What is the advantage that the Jews have over the Gentiles?  "Chiefly because unto them were committed the oracles of God."  That was God's primary gift to Israel, His Word.  And the church, His new people by the new covenant are in the same position, the primary entrusting given to us is in reference to His truth.  We are to pass that truth on.  We are to guard that truth.  And those ministries, they may talk Jesus talk all the time, they may do all of the peripheral stuff but if they don't guard that truth by a right interpretation of the Scripture and a godly life that says the Scripture means what it says and God is serious and we love Him and honor Him, they are not doing the very single thing God designed them to do.

And when somebody says we've got to preserve this ministry, I say what ministry?  What ministry?  You want to preserve this confusion?  For what reason?

Now Paul isn't finished because when he writes 2 Timothy you'd think he hadn't written 1 Timothy.  Because he goes back over the same thing.  Look at 2 Timothy the second epistle which came a little later to Timothy, and we'll get into this one starting next week.  But look at chapter 1 verse 13, "Timothy, hold fast the form of sound words which you heard from me."  Hold the truth, Timothy.  Don't let go of it.  Verse 14, "That good thing which was committed to you," what's that?  The truth that Paul taught him by the Spirit, that doctrinal content given to you, keep it, guard it through the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.  And don't be like the rest who all have turned away from me.  Hold the truth.

Chapter 2 verse 2, "Not only hold it, the things you heard from me among many witnesses," that is it wasn't just my teaching it was confirmed by others to be the Word of God, "the same commit to faithful men."  You want faithful men because they have to guard it also and they'll commit it to others.  Four generations, Paul to Timothy to faithful men, to others also, and you're all responsible to guard the truth.  And he launches right out of that into verse 3, you have to be a good soldier.  Why?  Because it's a battle.  It's the Super Bowl of spiritual life, it's the battle for the truth.  It's the contending for the faith. It's holding on while the Bible is under attack.  And the most devastating attack, listen, the liberals have never been able to accomplish the attack on the integrity of Scripture that the PTL scandal has accomplished...never.  This scandal is way beyond the proportions of other ones in terms of public view.  And that's why we have to be soldiers who fight for the truth.  It's always under attack.

Verse 15 chapter 2, another part of fighting for the truth and proclaiming the truth is to be diligent to study, you could translate it either way, to be approved to God a workman needing not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.  What that means?  Cutting it straight.  It's a term used for cutting a pattern to make something.  You know, when a woman makes a dress, she cuts out all the pieces and puts them together.  And what the Apostle is saying, when you come to a piece of Scripture, make sure you cut it straight or when you fit it all together it won't work.  And I've always said you can't be a theologian unless you're an exegete.  If you don't cut the individual passages right, your theology doesn't come together.  So be an interpreter.  Be an expositor, be an exegete.  Understand the Word of God.  And then verse 16, here's the flip side, the negative, "And stay away from profane and vain babblings, they just produce more and more ungodliness and their word eats like gangrene."  And he names a couple of guys who erred from the truth because of the encroachment of this pseudo‑intellectualism.

Then in chapter 3 verse 13, he says, "Evil men and seducers become worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived."  How you going to counter that?  Verse 14, "Continue in the things you have learned and been assured of," and then he reminds him of the holy Scriptures in verse 15.  Not just the Scriptures, the holy Scriptures.  And then reminds him in verse 16 that they're given by inspiration of God, profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, instruction and righteousness.  And with the consequence of making the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.  What a sacred trust.  Timothy, hold the Word.

Look at chapter 4.  "I command you...I command you before God, I command you before the Lord Jesus Christ who is the judge, I command you before these two members of the trinity, verse 2, preach the Word.  Be diligent in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long‑suffering, the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but after their own lusts will heap to themselves teachers having itching ears and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and be turned to fables.  But you watch in all things, endure affliction, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of your ministry."  In other words, don't let go of the truth.  Everybody else around you may be doing it, don't you do it.

Paul said I didn't do it, verse 7, I fought a good fight.  I fought for the truth.  I kept the faith.  I love that line, I kept the faith.  That's the way it ought to be at the end of your life.  I come to the end of my life, the question isn't going to be how big was his church, how successful was his ministry, how many radio stations heard his program, how many books did he write, all that stuff, the question is going to be: did he hold the truth?  Was he faithful to the truth?  "Because moreover, my brethren," Paul says to the Corinthians, "it is required in stewards that a man be found...what?...faithful."  The sacred trust of the truth is the issue.  And the question of all questions that a man is known by is what does he do with the truth...what does he do with the truth?  Did he uphold it?  Did he live it?  Did he teach it?  That's the issue.

And then you go to Titus the third of pastoral epistles written to pastors, Timothy and Titus.  Look at chapter 1 verse 9, here is a qualification for an elder, a bishop, a pastor, he is to be holding fast the faithful word as he's been taught that he may be able to sound doctrine to exhort and confute the opposers.  Boy, there it is again.  The whole goal of this man of God is to have the truth in his heart, fight for the truth, teach the truth, preach the truth.  There are many unruly vain talkers, deceivers, their mouths have to be stopped, verse 11 says.  They subvert whole houses, they teach the things they ought not for filthy lucre sake, they do it for money.  They're nothing more than lazy liars, evil beasts, gluttons, self‑indulgent people.  Against that we stand with the truth.

Chapter 2 verse 1, it's almost like Titus had to be reminded instantaneously after what he was just reminded of.  Speak the things which become sound doctrine.  Again that same emphasis.  Verse 7, "Show yourself in every area a pattern of good works in doctrine showing uncorruptness."  Boy, what a statement.  No corrupt doctrine.  Sound speech that can't be condemned, verse 8.  Verse 10, "Not pilfering...not getting rich by misuse of Scripture but showing all good integrity that you may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things."  Stick with doctrine, live by true doctrine, live by sound doctrine.

Chapter 3 verse 9, "Avoid the foolish questions, the genealogies, the contentions, the strivings about the law, they're unprofitable, they're empty and a man is a heretic, first and second time admonish him and then reject him knowing that he is such a man who is subverted and sins and is condemned of himself."  Just reject him after you've admonished him to turn away, don't listen to his error.

Do you see whether you're in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy or Titus, these are written to pastors.  They are models of what the concern of the heart of God is for the man of God who leads the church of God and the concern is the truth.  That's the truth.  That's the concern.  Now that is the scandal of all scandals to misrepresent the truth.

All right, with that in mind let's look at the last two verses briefly.  And it just sums up, handling truth.  First there is a duty to fulfill, a duty to fulfill.  "O Timothy, guard that which is committed to your trust," stop at that point.  That's the duty to fulfill.  The word "guard" phulasso, it's used of valuables kept in a safe place.  The interesting word "that which is committed to your trust," that's one word in the Greek, paratheke, the deposit.  Guard the deposit.  What has been, it could be translated, what has been deposited with you, guard.  Guard the deposit.  And what is the deposit?  Truth.  "O," that word "O" let's the heart of Paul leak a little bit with passion.  "O Timothy," his name means one who honors God, "O Timothy, he cries at the end, using his name, please...as if he's pleading...guard what has been deposited with you as a sacred trust."  That's the most sacred thing of all.

The Christian message...the Christian message is not something which the minister invents.  The Christian message is not something which the minister works out for himself and is entitled to embellish.  The Christian message is a divine trust which cannot be diminished or added to without serious consequence.  And I would say to you, if God was scandalized and moved in against something like the PTL, we could say He was angry with their immorality, we could say He was angry with their misuse of funds but I would venture to say the thing which broke His heart and grieved Him and angered Him even more was their perversion of His Word.  That's the sacred trust.  That's the sacred trust.  What a duty.  What a duty we have.

Secondly, a danger to avoid...avoiding, verse 20, the profane empty babblings.  "Profane," interesting word, bebelos.  It originally was used in Greek to refer to everything outside the sacred grounds of a temple, anything common, anything open to everybody.  It then came to mean anything unsacred, something outside the sacred place.  So these pseudo‑intellectual musings that attack the Scripture, these liberal neo‑orthodox new‑idea kind of theories that approach on Scripture, these private interpretations that people come up with, all of this supposed stuff that attacks the Scripture is unsacred common outside the holy place, not sacred, not holy, having no connection with God, having no connection with His truth, having no connection with His holiness, unrelated to what he really desires to communicate, all that stuff, Paul says to Timothy, avoid it.  And the word "avoid" means to go out of the way, to turn aside from.  Present tense, continually steer clear of such stuff.  Some people think that education is spending your whole life learning error.  Not so, not unless you want gangrene spiritually.

Preserve the truth, guard the truth, protect the truth and stay away from error, stay in the truth, stay in the sphere of truth, stay away from the empty voice...the word there for babblings is empty voice, empty utterances, useless arguments, vain jangling, meaningless talk unrelated to truth.  It's amazing how when it comes through some scholarly mode people want to bow to the shrine of this babbling.

And then he calls it oppositions of knowledge falsely so called.  Oppositions is antithesis, antithesis, counter affirmation.  It's a technical term used in rhetoric for a counter proposition in a debate...those who just want to argue the Scripture, who want to attack the Scripture, who want to offer their counter affirmations, their contradictions, pseudo‑ intellectualism falsely called knowledge.  Nothing but Satanic lies, Satanic heresy and he says stay away from it, turn to another path, it eats like gangrene.

So a duty to fulfill, guard the truth.  A danger to avoid, error, stay away from it.  I can't stress how strongly I feel about the necessity of avoiding false teaching.  It destroys, it eats like gangrene.  I mitigates against your spiritual strength.  It sucks your life blood out.  It creates doubts...deadly stuff.  The duty to fulfill and the danger to avoid lead him to the development to consider.  Here's a motive, look at verse 21.  These unsacred, unholy useless babblings and counter affirmations and antitheses of a false kind of knowledge, pseudo‑intellectualism, some having proclaimed have erred concerning the faith.  Some people who picked up on that and started articulating and announcing and proclaiming that have deviated from the faith.  They have deviated from the faith and therefore they have abandoned their sacred trust.  And they have led a lot of other people with them.  You know, Peter says they do this and many follow their pernicious ways, 2 Peter, I think it's 2:2...many follow their pernicious ways.

You see, how we handle the treasure, that's the issue.  What is the church to be?  Primarily a depository of God's truth.  What are you looking for when you look for a church?  What do they believe about the Word of God and how do they affirm it?  What do they teach?  How do they handle the treasure, the real treasure, the treasure of God's Word?

So Paul closed this wonderful epistle with that simple reminder: Timothy, you are there to guard the truth.  And then he says, "Grace with you."  No verb, grace with you.  Very abrupt because he knows he can't do this unless the grace of God is his portion, right?  By the way, "you" is plural.  He knows there are going to be a lot of other folks who are going to hear this letter, not just Timothy.  And so he embraces the whole church because it's their responsibility to guard the truth as well and he pleads the grace of God on their behalf for such a tremendous responsibility.  Usually he would close with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, but he just cuts it off, grace with you.  You know what you're to do and you need God's grace to do it.

So the whole epistle has been a call to spiritual responsibility and the primary issue in spiritual responsibility is to guard the truth.  Listen very carefully, I'm going to tell you how you're to respond to this.  One, believe the Word of God.  Believe it, it is the Word of God.  "This is My beloved Son," the Father said, "listen to Him."  Believe it.

Secondly, honor it.  Job said in 23:12 it was more important to him than his necessary food.

Thirdly, study it to show yourself approved, believe it, honor it, study it.

Fourthly, obey it.  John 8:31, "If you continue in My Word you're My real disciple."

Believe it, honor it, study it, obey it...love it.  Psalm 119:97, David said, "O how I love Thy law."  Psalm 19, "Sweeter to me than honey in the honeycomb."  Love it, cherish it, defend it, earnestly contend for it, believe it, honor it, study it, obey it, love it, defend it and finally proclaim it...proclaim it.  And I have found in my own personal experience that what I teach and what I preach I tend to remember best.  Have you found that to be true?  What you give away you keep, and so one of the greatest ways to guard the truth is to give it away because by the time you've poured it through your own mind, your own heart and given it to somebody else, you've solidified it in your own understanding.

We have a sacred trust just like Timothy did.  But we have a war out there and we will stand for the truth.  That's what God has asked us to do, that we might pass it on to the next generation pure and unadulterated.  Let's bow in prayer.

Father, we thank You this morning for the years that You've given us here in this place to teach Your Word, to honor Your Word, to guard it, to proclaim it.  We pray that we will be faithful until Jesus comes to continue to do that and never deviate from the path.  Make us guardians who are worthy of the task and the title.  And we plead Your forgiveness for those times when we fail to guard the truth, we fail to live the truth. And we ask that You would glorify Your name and that You would not be mocked by a society who laughs at such a God who is identified with such foolish people as You are identified with.

Be glorified, Lord, we long for the day when Jesus comes and is seen for who He is, that day when the glorious manifestation of the sons of God takes place and mystery is ended, transformed into reality and the world sees the living Christ.  But until then, honor Your name, preserve Your glory.  Help us to adorn the truth.  Forgive us for those failures when we were a dishonor to You and Your Word.  We pray in Christ's name.  Amen.

Judgment on the Wicked Rich, Part 1

1987

James 5 verses 1 through 6 and I want to read these opening six verses of this final chapter and set them in your mind for our study tonight. Beginning in verse 1: "Come now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten, your gold and silver are rusted and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. You have hoarded treasure together for the last days. Behold the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud cries out and the cries of them who have reaped are entered into the years of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter; ye have condemned and killed the just and he does not resist you."

Now I want to be very frank with you tonight as your pastor. As I said this morning in mentioning that we would be discussing this passage, much of the truth that I see in this passage seems to be being lived out before our very eyes as we watch the PTL saga taking place. In fact, not just before our eyes but the whole world has seen the love of riches and what it produces of wickedness on a far-reaching scale. We have been exposed to the opulence, the indulgence, the materialism, the myriad of houses and cars and boats and furs and jewelry and secret bank accounts and fraud and sexual sins and everything that goes with the materialistic bent.

The Spirit of God could hardly have identified a more fitting text for us to study as these things are in our minds. The ugliness of what we have seen needs explanation and the best way to understand it is from the Word of God. And so as we look at these verses probably tonight and next Sunday night, you'll see them illustrated vividly in the scenario going on at this very time.

Now keep in mind that it is typical of James to be offering tests of living faith. All the way through this epistle as he writes to a group of Christians in a local assembly, Jewish Christians, he calls them to evaluate the validity of their faith knowing that always where there is wheat, the devil over sows tares, where there is the true there will be the false. And wanting to be sure that no one is under any illusion about being a Christian when in fact they're not. And so all the way through the epistle you have one test after another. And this is no different.

How a person feels about and handles wealth is a test. How you feel about money and possessions and material things is a test which reveals the spiritual state of your heart. And James here is obviously speaking to people who though on the outside they may affirm faith in Christ and love for God, obviously love money. And their life is totally controlled and governed by that love of money. And so their spiritual state is revealed in the matter of their relationship to riches.

By the way, James did not invent this test. James is merely echoing the test that our Lord originated. This is what our Lord said in Matthew 6:19 to 21, very familiar passage. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth...notice the similarity to James' passage...and rust corrupts and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal...and then this...for where your treasure is...what?...there will your heart be also." This is a test.

You want to tell me where your heart is, show me where your treasure is. Where are you stockpiling your treasure? Where are you placing your wealth? That's the test that Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount.

In the sixteenth chapter of Luke we find another occasion in which our Lord basically did the same thing. Listen to this. Luke 16:11, "If therefore you have not been faithful in the unrighteous money, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" Do you think God will commit to you the realities of His eternal Kingdom which are the true riches if you have not demonstrated a proper handling of money? Will God give you what is really valuable if you can't handle what is not? If you have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? If you can't be faithful in the money that you manage as a stewardship from God, as it were, then why would God give you something of your own to possess with a spiritual nature?

And then He sums it up, "No servant can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other, you cannot serve God and money." And the very next verse, "And the Pharisees also who were covetous heard all these things and they derided Him." They were religious but the state of their heart was revealed in their covetousness. It is a test, how you feel about wealth is a spiritual test.

And so James here, back to James chapter 5, is really reiterating a test that our Lord Himself established. And the passage in James is a strong strong passage, the strongest in the epistle. It's a passage of damning judgment against the wicked wealthy who profess Christian faith and profess Christian life but whose real God is money. James then is building on the teaching of the Lord Jesus as he often does. In fact there are really many parallels in the epistle of James to the Sermon on the Mount. And we see a direct parallel here with chapter 6 verses 19 and 21 which I read to you a moment ago.

So he is calling on the wealthy to check the true state of their heart by how they're dealing with their wealth. And in this section he gives the most blistering, the most condemning, the most scathing diatribe and denunciation given in his epistle. It is against those wicked wealthy people who have been...having been given the benefit of wealth have perverted and corrupted it and themselves in the way they have handled it. They have prostituted the goodness of God who basically gives us the power to get wealth, as it says in Deuteronomy 8:18. They have prostituted the goodness and generosity and blessing of God of whom it says the blessing of the Lord brings wealth in Proverbs 10:22. So they have taken what God generously, graciously has given and corrupted and perverted it.

Now let me say to you that wealth in itself is not sinful. I think you know that. It's not sinful to possess money. It's not sinful to possess the blessings that God would grant. It is a stewardship given by God to some. All of us have some wealth to manage and it varies from person to person by God's design. And God can bless us in different ways, giving some of us more and some of less than others. It's not wrong to possess it, but obviously it's wrong to misuse it. By the way, the more you have the greater in many ways is the potential for prostituting its proper use. When, however, your heart is perverted and the love of money controls you, then it leads, according to 1 Timothy 6:10, to all kinds of evil. And it even leads to judgment, judgment by God Himself.

So James is speaking then against the love of money that causes people to take that which is a blessing from God, pervert it for their own ends. They may say they're Christians. They may belong to the church. They may go to the church. But James is saying you better take a look at what they do with their money because as Jesus taught, it will reveal the state of their heart. If they serve money, they don't serve God. If they're laying up all their treasure in earth, that's where their heart is. It’s that simple.

Now James sounds here just like an Old Testament prophet. In fact, you cannot study this passage without going back to the Old Testament. And I want to read them to you, several passages, so you get the flavor of what James is really saying. And it's a very rich kind of heritage that James places himself in as he speaks, as it were, like an Old Testament prophet. Listen to, for example, Isaiah chapter 3 verse 14. Isaiah says, "The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of His people and their princes for you have eaten up the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean you that you beat My people to pieces and grind the faces of the poor, says the Lord God of hosts." You have abused the poor, He is saying, for your own purposes and your own ends and you've consumed everything in sight.

Isaiah chapter 10, "Woe unto them who decree unrighteous decrees, who have grievances which they have prescribed to turn aside the needy from justice, take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey and that they may rob the fatherless. And what will you do in the day of visitation and in the desolation which shall come from far? To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your glory? Without Me they shall bow down unto the prisoners and they shall fall unto the slain for all this His anger is not turned away but His hand is stretched out still." Another strong denunciation of the ungodly for the way they have treated the poor and the misused God's gift of wealth.

Nobody says it more directly than Amos. Amos the herdsman of Tekoa, chapter 4, "Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, you fat cows, as it were, you've fattened yourselves up that are in the mountains of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to their masters, Bring and let us drink. The Lord God hath sworn by His holiness that lo, the day shall come upon you that He will take away...take you away with hooks and your posterity with fish hooks and you shall go out at the breeches every cow at that which is before her and you shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord." A time of devastating destruction.

In the eighth chapter of Amos and verse 4, and this is very powerful, "Hear this, O you that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fall, or fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone that we may sell grain?" In other words, let's get this religious holiday over so we can get back to business, we're losing money. "And the sabbath that we may set forth wheat making the ephah small and the shekel great and falsifying the balances by deceit?" In other words, putting less in an ephah which is a measure of weight than supposedly was to be there and charging them more, paying more but getting less, falsifying the balances, deceit. They hated the feasts because it ground business to a halt. "Saying that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, yea and sell the refuse of the wheat. The Lord has sworn by the excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of your works. Shall not the land tremble for this and everyone mourn that dwells in it? And it shall rise up wholly like the river and be cast out and drown as by the river of Egypt. It will come to pass in that day, says the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, I will darken the earth in the clear day, I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and baldness on every head. I will make it like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day." This is just the prophetic denunciation against the wicked wealthy, and this is where James gets his heritage in terms of how he handles them in his epistle.

I could read you Micah chapter 2 verses 1 to 5, very very much the same. I could read you Malachi chapter 3 verses 1 to 5, another diatribe against the wicked wealthy. And James sounds exactly like that. His Jewish roots really come through in this particular portion.

Now just to note so that you'll identify the direction of his text here, he is speaking and writing to the congregation of the church, those who are assembled in the name of Christ. Some of them, obviously, claiming to be Christians weren't and that's why you have this series of tests, just as you do in 1 John. Some of them by their use of and abuse of wealth and money and material things showed utter disregard for God, utter disregard for His Word and demonstrated that in spite of their claim they did not possess salvation.

And I don't believe there's any way to equivocate on who he's speaking to here. Some have wanted to say he's not talking to people in the church, then why would he talk to them in the second person and why would he be speaking to people who aren't there to hear or reading to people who aren't there to listen? The fact that he addresses them in the second person means that he has those in mind who will hear the letter, who had attached themselves to the church in some way. It would be pointless for him to be giving this kind of message to outsiders. Maybe if it was in the third person and he said, "You tell them what I want them to know," but this direct approach assumes their presence and that they would be in the sound of the hearing of this letter when it was read to the whole church. These are people who, to some degree or other, want to be identified with God, to some degree or other want to have Christ in their life. But they don't come on God's terms.

Jesus also faced the reality that this would be the case. Do you remember in the parable of the soils in Matthew 13 how He talked about a certain kind of soil that was rocky? On the top it was soft and fertile but down a little ways into it, just below where the plow pulled its way through the dirt there was rock bed. And He said when the seed goes into there its roots go down and they begin to flourish and the plant comes up, but pretty soon the roots can't penetrate, they hit rock, they can't go down to get water. When the sun comes out it burns the plant and it dies. Jesus describes those kinds of people as those who hear the Word, receive it with joy for a little while but when there's a price to pay, when they have to give up something, when they have to suffer for Christ, they don't want that, they leave.

Then He talked about a weedy soil, where the ground is still full of the roots of weeds. And though the good plant appears to come up, the weeds choke it out. And this is what He says of that in verse 32, "He that receives seed among the weeds is the one who hears the Word and the care of this age...listen to this...and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word and he becomes unfruitful." There are people who hear the Word, they want to identify with the church, they may want what salvation promises but they're too deceived by riches and too in love with the world and too unwilling to sacrifice to let go. And while they may outwardly name the name of Christ, if their heart is not toward God and their heart is not toward heaven as indicated by where their treasure is, then no matter what their claim, they don't know the Lord.

It's like that parable of the pearl of great price and the treasure in a field, in both cases the man who wanted to buy the treasure and the man who wanted to buy the pearl sold all that he had to buy it. These are people who don't want to give up anything. They want their materialism, their wealth, their wickedness and Jesus on top. And in Matthew 19, Jesus wouldn't tolerate that with the rich young ruler. He said, "Sell everything you have, give the money to the poor and come and follow Me." And the man was very rich and went away. He loved his riches more than Christ.

I would venture to say that it's a sad thing but today we have given a lot of people the illusion that they're Christians because they talk a lot about Jesus but if you look at their life style, you're going to see that they betray that their real God is money and wealth. And may I go so far as to say some of them may be TV evangelists. And if you get behind the scenes of all the Jesus talk and start to see where they put their treasure, you're going to find out where their heart is. They love money. These people love possessions. Their treasure is on the earth. And that's where their heart is. And they serve money. And so they can't serve God.

Back to James 4:4, "Don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? And whosoever therefore would be the friend of the world is the enemy of God." If you're into everything the world has to offer, you show your colors. John said, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him," 1 John 2:15.

So the denunciation is directed at the rich fakers in the church who want to name the name of Jesus but whose real God is money. And the church needs to speak to that, beloved. We can't allow people to live under the illusion that they're Christians and that Jesus talk is sufficient when one look at their life shows they are absolutely consumed with the love of money.

Now at the same time you say, "Is this directed just to those people?" And I say no. It also speaks to my heart and it speaks to your heart too as Christians. Because it reminds us of the sins of the fakers that we ought to avoid. It reminds us that we don't want to be anything like these people who outwardly name the name of Christ. As one writer says, "He shows us the pit so none of us will fall into it." It's a strong warning of judgment against the wicked wealthy who are identified with the church but whose hearts are toward their money and whose God is their money and whose life surrounds their own personal comfort and indulgence. But it's also a great statement to those who are true believers to be sure we avoid the sins that characterize these people.

Now let's begin with the pronouncement that comes in verse 1. And it is a strong announcement of judgment. "Come now, you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you." Now with that call for the wicked wealthy to respond appropriately, James begins his denunciation. He is saying inescapable doom is coming and you ought to have the reaction of weeping and howling. The words "come now" you'll note are also back in verse 13 of chapter 4. He uses that little phrase twice. Here it introduces a new group, there it introduced the kind of people who just lived their life without a thought for God. Here it introduces the wicked wealthy. It could be translated "now listen," or "get this" or "see here." It's calling their attention. It's...it's an attack in an Old Testament prophetic style. He calls them to stick up their ears and listen. And so he says, "Come now, you rich men," and that's the group he's attacking. That's the group he's denouncing...the materially wealthy who are wickedly wealthy.

Now do you remember who are the wealthy of the world? Do you remember when we defined that in our study of 1 Timothy? And we said that anybody is rich who has more than he...what?...needs. If you have what you need, you have no discretion with your money, you have to use it all to survive. But if you have any discretionary money, you're in the category of the rich. So who are the wealthy? Those people who have more than they need to live. But who are the wicked wealthy to whom James speaks? They are the ones who misuse and utterly abuse the stewardship of that discretionary money. And so he's directing his attention to those whose lives are a continual abuse of their resources.

Notice what he tells them to do. "Weep and howl," two very interesting words, "weep," klaiosite, means to sob out loud, it's not a silent crying. It means to sob out loud. It means to weep in a lamenting way. In fact, it is used for the wailing for the dead. You'll see it in the seventh chapter of Luke, verses 13 and 32, and pointedly you'll see it in John 11 in the wailing, weeping at the tomb of Lazarus. It was used for those sort of public wailings that went on at the time of a death. It is also used for the weeping and the wailing out loud that comes as a result of shame and regret. We see it so used in Luke 7:38 and Matthew 26:75. So it speaks of a verbal vocal loud lamenting wailing kind of sorrow, strong emotional outbursts as people see the inescapable damning judgment of hell facing them. That's the idea. Boy, now that you can see what you're really looking at, you better cry out loud, weep and lament.

By the way, the same word is used back in chapter 4 verse 9 where it says, "Be afflicted, mourn and weep," there it is the sorrow of repentance but here there is no call for repentance. And so another word is added here. With repentance there is a loud lamenting and John earlier shared with me his testimony that when he begins to think about his sin he cries out to God about that. There is a lament, I think, in the heart of anyone who faces God and confesses sin. But it ends at that point because where there is the lament of repentance there is the grace of forgiveness. But where there is the lament here, there is no grace and so the lament goes to a howl. It goes beyond that, ololuzo, an almost onomatopeitic word in the Greek, it means to shriek or to scream or to howl out loud beyond just lamenting, screaming, shrieking, shrill voice. It intensifies the outburst of despair, violent uncontrollable grief.

There are examples of this particularly in the Old Testament. The grief and the crying out and the howling of those who realize that they have committed the worst imaginable, the worst conceivable sins. You find it in the prophets. And in the present tense here, both of these verbs are saying "keep on lamenting, keep on screeching, shrieking, howling over your impending damnation." Very very strong words.

So James calls for a frantic response of overwhelming grief. Why? Look at verse 1 again. "Because, or for, your miseries that shall come upon you." That word "miseries" used only here and Romans 3:16 has to do with wretchedness. It has to do with trouble beyond trouble, overwhelming trouble, overwhelming suffering, overwhelming distress. And it's your miseries, he's personalizes it, the miseries that are coming specifically on you. It's not generic. He's not saying collectively all of you should howl because collectively you're all going to suffer, he's saying you individually ought to howl because you're individually going to suffer misery. He doesn't tell us when it's coming but we know when it's coming, it's coming at the coming of Christ. It's coming when they meet God. Judgment is inevitable. That's the cry here...judgment on the wicked wealthy.

In Luke, and I do want to cover a couple of other passages because it's so very important that you understand the whole picture of what Scripture teaches. And you know I like to do this because it fills up our thinking. You remember the story of rich...the rich man and Lazarus, there was a certain rich man who was clothed and purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. You remember that man? He had it all in this world. And it says he died and was buried in verse 23 and in Hades he lifted up his eyes being in torment. Very vivid, he's in the burning tormenting flame of a godless Christ-rejecting eternity. And Jesus pointed that out to the people when He gave that story of that rich man. I don't think it was a parable because people don't have proper names in parables and the beggar had the name of Lazarus. So here was a rich man who ended up in the burning fury of Hades because he had lived all his life for his wealth.

Back in Luke chapter 6 and verse 24, "Woe unto you that are rich for you have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full for you will hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now for you will mourn and weep." What statements, what fearful statements. I remember what Peter said to Simon in Acts 8, "Your money perish with you." If you live for money, you die, you perish and may your money perish along with you.

So in the Old Testament, from the lips of our Lord and here from James, pronouncements of judgment on the wicked wealthy. But why? What is it that these people did that brings about this punishment? Let's look at the first of the four characteristics of the wicked wealthy that result in their judgment and you just see how pertinent this first point is. They will be damned because, number one, their wealth was...get this...uselessly hoarded. Did you get that? Uselessly hoarded, verses 2 and 3. This is a damning thing. "Your riches are corrupted, your garments are moth-eaten, your gold and silver are rusted and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire, you have hoarded wealth for the last days, or in the last days...better translation." The sin is mentioned at the end of verse 3, you have hoarded it, you have...the verb is the verb from which we get the word thesaurus, you have heaped up your hoarded treasure. You have stockpiled your wealth. You say, "Is that wrong?" Yes because it's to the exclusion of its proper use. You have uselessly piled it up.

Boy, that's a tragic sin of our own time. Obviously when God prospers you and me and gives us more than we need, He does it that we might use it properly for His glory and to the advance of His Kingdom. My approach to life says that I want to go out of this world just at the time my money runs out. And I want to make sure that I'm not hoarding up against some nebulous tomorrow that may never come when God is calling for the proper investment of all that I have into His eternal Kingdom right now. Obviously God provides for us so that we might provide for our families. And he that doesn't do that, 1 Timothy 5 says, is worse than an unbeliever. We are to take care of our family, of those in the extended family, of those bereft and widowed women who are known to us. Beyond that, every other part of the money that God has given us and the wealth He has given us is to be used somehow for His glory. Scripture tells us that some of it is to be devoted to His service. In the Old Testament they gave it to the temple. They gave it even to the building of the tabernacle. They gave to God regularly what God desired from them, some tithes which they had to give and many many freewill offerings which they gave out of the willingness of their heart. It is to be devoted to His service.

Jesus said, Luke 6:38, "Give and it shall be given unto you, pressed down, shaken together and running over shall men give into your bosom." The Apostle Paul wrote and said, "The first day of the week let each one of you lay by him and store as God has prospered him." So our wealth is to be given to the kingdom. It is to be given to the expansion of the Kingdom, to the extension of the Kingdom. Not as a legalistic enterprise but because our hearts are so consumed with the mission of the Kingdom and with the love of the Lord who is the King.

Thirdly, not only is it to be used on the family God has given us and devoted to the service of the Kingdom, but thirdly it is to be used to win the lost. I can't think of anything better to do with money than to invest it in those who win the lost. In Luke 16 in a very very direct statement regarding the use of money Jesus said, "Make to yourselves friends by means of the money of unrighteousness that when it fails they may receive you into everlasting habitation." In other words, use your money to make friends who will greet you in heaven when you get there. Use your money to win people to Christ, what else? Uselessly hoarding it violates God's intention.

Fourthly, the Scripture says use your money to care for the needy. I read you those passages in the Old Testament and every one of the prophetic diatribes against the wicked are basically because they defrauded the poor and the needy and the fatherless and the widow. And they held back from those in need and John says in 1 John 3 that if you close up your compassion to that kind of person then you tell me how the love of God dwells in you...if you hoard your money rather than give it to those in need. Even the Apostle Paul in Galatians 2 spoke so directly about how important it was to remember the poor and said, "I also was diligent to do that."

Providing for your family, devoting it to the service of the Kingdom, using it to win the lost, caring for those in need and then a fifth we could add, support people who minister. Galatians 6:6 says, "Let the one who is taught share in the one who teaches in all...share with the one who teaches in all good things." "The servant is worthy of his hire." "Feed the ox that treads out the grain." In other words, support the ministry.

You have been given wealth by God...use it for the care of the people God has given you. Use it to devote to His service. Use it to win the lost. Use it to care for those in need. Use it to support those in ministry. But don't hoard it. And if it has been your characteristic to hoard it all uselessly, then says James you'll be damned for such and evidence of the fact that your heart is set on earthly things and your God is money, not the true God. There's no place for saying you're a believer, you're a true child of God, you're a lover of Christ, a servant of God and then amassing a fortune, uselessly stashed away without regard for God's Word at all.

Now James depicts this kind of hoarding. Look at the way he depicts it. He mentions, first of all, riches corrupted; secondly, garments moth-eaten; thirdly, gold and silver rusted. Now apart from land and houses, and we'll just cover this briefly so stay with me, apart from land and houses, wealth really was involved with those three things. First, the riches generally refer to food...grain, wheat, barley, perhaps even some meat that would be stored that was susceptible to decay. The term "decay" I think gives us the latitude to translate the word "riches" or at least to see that it has the sense of food, that which can easily decay.

People put their wealth in stockpiling grain, like the rich fool whose barns were full. He said pull them down, build greater barns, store it all there. Eat, drink and be merry, in other words, I'll live out my life, I'll never work again, I've got it all stashed forever. And that is the evidence of an unregenerate heart, laziness. I've got it all piled up. And of course that was typical in that day, stock up your grain and live off it the rest of your life, amass as much as you can for yourself...uselessly hoarding it. And they did that with grain, stockpiling it.

The word "riches," by the way, is the word ploutos. And the word comes from the name of one of the ancient Greek gods of mythology. His name Ploutos means the abundant yielding of the earth. So that's really what that word means. And by the way, he was said in Greek mythology to be the son of Demetra, the goddess of the earth. So the word ploutos then has a connection through Greek mythology with what the earth produces and thereby we also can conclude that it can be used to refer to the food, vegetables, grain and perhaps even meat that are stored up as a result of the products of the earth.

But James says they are rotted, sesapen, they are corrupted. The noun form of that verb is used for a putrefying sore and speaks of corrupting decay. It's sort of like the manna in the Old Testament, if you gathered for two days what you gathered over what you needed corrupted. So he says all your hoarded grain is rotted. And the picture here is not of a judgment but of a reality. You can't keep it, it will rot. You can't stockpile it, it will decay. Your hoarding is so useless because in the end it's going to be no good to anybody.

Then secondly, rich people put their money and their fortune into garments. And he uses the word garment here, himatia, it means the loose long outer robe, they would put rich embroidery and jewelry. Those robes were passed on as heirlooms. And you could literally have a fortune in your garments. And, of course, when those garments were folded and stacked somewhere as you well know, the larva of moth could ruin them...ruin them. And garments as our Lord even talked about could be moth eaten. And so if you're stockpiling your treasure in grain and that, it's going to get rotted given enough time. If you stockpile it in garments, they're going to be moth-eaten given enough time.

And then thirdly, your gold and silver have rusted, corroded. Obviously the coinage of that day of which James refers is like the coinage of which our Lord referred in Matthew 6 where He said, "Lay up your treasure in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt." The implication is, and we have some research to back it up, that coins in those days were not pure silver or pure gold but mixed with an alloy tended given the right circumstances to rust indeed. And James says money stashed somewhere over the long period of time, buried in the ground, may itself rust. And then what do you have...then what do you have? Nothing.

James' point is so basic. How sinful, how foolish, how stupid to hoard money, to hoard clothing, to hoard food when it all rots. And even if it remains, you won't. And if that's the way you've lived your life, the the question is whether you worship God at all.

An unfortunate miser was distressed about his unfortune. And according to the story he said, "What an unfortunate wretch I am," to one of his neighbors. "Last night someone took away my treasure which I had buried in my garden and they placed a stone in its place." To which the neighbor replied, "But you never used your treasure. So, my friend, simply bring yourself to believe that the stone is still your treasure and you are none the poorer." Wisdom. If all its going to do is rot, why worry about it?

We hoard so many things. Stocks, bonds, savings account, gold, silver, jewelry, possessions, I'd like to see what would happen some Sunday if everybody brought their jewelry and dumped it down here. All the silver and the gold and we melted it down and we might buy half of Panorama City. I don't know, that's how they built the tabernacle. Where is your treasure? Where is it invested? Where are you piling it up? We hoard so many things.

A little lady called me some weeks ago and she said, "I'm bringing you all my stock. I want to give it all to the Lord." And she came in and unrolled all these little stocks and took off rubber bands and out of envelopes and she went away blessed because now it was all in the Lord's hands. And she called me the other day and she said, "I know you're taking good care of it, aren't you?" She said, "I wouldn't give it to anybody but you." And I am responsible to take good care of it and use it for the advancement of the Kingdom. That's wonderful.

I don't want you to be irresponsible about your life. But I want you to know that you can't hoard it. Somebody said, "If money talks, all it ever says to me is goodbye." And there's no question but that that is true. So before it can say goodbye, why don't you use it for the glory of God?

Well, from there he talks about the judgment on them. Just quickly, verse 3, "The rust itself," and now he's sort of personalizes the rust, he makes it come alive, "And the rust is a witness against you when you face God, your rust will rise up and testify to your ungodliness." It will testify to your hoarding. It will testify to your stockpiling. And the ruin of the things the rich hoarded is a graphic picture of their own ruin. Their hoarded rotted moth-eaten rusted riches give loud testimony to the state of their heart. The rotting corroded riches that are hoarded become the witness at the divine court to bring unarguable evidence for their eternal damnation, their covetous selfish compassionless earthbound approach to life becomes in itself their condemnation. All that hoarded wealth is witness for the prosecution declaring their guilt and the just God to condemn them to hell.

And then the rust is personalized not only to be a witness but the rust becomes the executioner. And he says it will eat your flesh as it were fire. And he personalizes the rust into fire and the rust which first of all was the decaying element, the personalized becomes the witness and then personalized becomes the executioner. Rust moves slow but this rust acts like fire and fire is the fastest consumer of all. Corrosion may be slow but fire is the fastest destroyer. In the day of judgment the rust of your hoarded goods will rise up to testify against you and become the fire that burns you fleshes...plural. Very interesting that James uses the plural because he's not talking about a group he's talking about individuals again. Each one of your flesh will burn as your own riches rise up to be your executioner.

By the way, that's a reminder that hell is a physical place. Your fleshes will burn there. That is a physical place. There is real burning there. There is a fire that is not quenched and you will have, according to John 5, a resurrected body suited to bear the punishment of an eternal hell and feel the flame forever and never be consumed. That hell is reserved for people who hoarded their treasure. Hell is for hoarders of treasure.

And he closes by saying you have hoarded wealth, no Kingdom investment, uselessly stockpiling your goods, rotting away without regard for God, for Christ, for others and you're headed for hell and that will be a witness against you. And then he adds this final note. "And you've done it in these last days," the Greek text says. You've done it in these last days. In other words, you lived without regard for redemptive history. YOu did it in the Messianic period. These last days are from the first coming of Christ to His Second Coming. John says, "My little children, it is the last time," 1 John chapter 2 verse 17. We're in the last days. Christ has appeared once in the end of the age. This is the last time. And so what you've done is hoarded your wealth in the last days with no regard for God's clock, no regard for redemptive history, no regard for eternity, totally wasted your life and all your resources. How bizarre. How utterly unthinkable, amassing wealth in a day when the world is perishing.

I'll tell you something. If people who represent Jesus Christ really work were concerned about lost people going to hell and really were concerned about reaching the world for Jesus Christ, they would not be buying half a dozen homes, having millions of dollars in bank accounts, spending millions of dollars on cars and other personal items and spending a fortune to pad their own seat. That's a dead giveaway as to where somebody's heart is. I don't care who they say they represent. There is a betrayal of what's really in the heart. There is no way you can affirm the salvation of a person like that. Now God knows, I don't know that, but I certainly stand and say they don't seem to pass the test. They who in the name of Jesus Christ who claim to want to reach a world but busy themselves amassing a fortune illegitimately for themselves. That's absolutely inconsistent with any commitment to be consumed to win a lost world to the Savior. To have the heart of Jesus is to reach out with what you have to people who don't have what they need, not to consume things on your own lust.

The only acceptable way to live in the light of the Second Coming of Christ in these last days of redemptive history is to live holding very loosely the wealth that God gives you and to make sure you're using it for His glory. If you've been living an illusion about your Christianity but when you self-examine a little bit you see your real God is money, then bow the knee to Jesus before it's too late. And if as a Christian you find yourself infringing in this area of sin, ask God's Spirit to root it out of your life, loosen your grip on the things of this world and give you the heart of the prophet who sees all things to be used for the glory of God and anything hoarded is rotted. God gives us new things every day. He wouldn't let them take manna for more than one day. The ground replenishes our food every season. We don't need to hoard against the unknown future. We need to invest in the eternal Kingdom with the promise that God will never allow His people to want if they're faithful to Him. Let's bow in prayer.

Father, we thank You for our time tonight. It's been a wonderful and rich time and we bless You for giving it to us. We thank You for the songs and the testimonies of this hour and we pray that You'll confirm to our heart these things that are from Your Spirit that You'll work Your work in every heart here for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Judgment on the Wicked Rich, Part 2

1987

I want us again to open our Bible tonight to the fifth chapter of the epistle of James. And we will examine this wonderful opening section, rich though frightening, full of awe and wonder as we see the Spirit of God speak directly the words of judgment on the wicked wealthy. Perhaps I ought to say as an opening remark that we have carried along the emphasis many times in speaking about God's judgment on wicked wealthy people that it is not wealth that is sinful, it is the misuse and abuse of it and that, of course, is the case in this text.

As we learned last time this is yet another of James' tests for living, saving faith. It is another test to validate or invalidate a person's claim to be a Christian. It is one thing to claim to be a Christian, it is another thing to verify the claim with your life. And I suppose that all of us, to one degree or another, would disclaim Christ in the life of someone in whom we saw no reason to believe they were a Christian. And that's really what James is after. He is simply saying that the visible test, the sort of litmus test of life as to whether or not you're a Christian has to do with the way you live. And that's just about as obvious and basic as it can be expressed. Every one of us puts our claim to faith in Christ on the line every day by the way we live, the way we talk, the way we conduct ourselves. And so you could look at a person's life in a myriad of different perspectives and see the validity or the invalidation of their claim to know Christ, and money is one of those very very key tests. How a person is related to money does tell us what we need to know about their relation to God.

Jesus said, "If you lay up treasure on earth," in other words, if your concern is to amass your fortune here, then your heart is here. If on the other hand you lay up treasure in heaven, your heart is there. Your heart is either earthbound or heavenbound, so says our Lord in Matthew 6:19 to 21. And then again in Luke chapter 16 verses 11 to 14 He said, in effect, summing it all up, that those people who serve money do not serve God and those people who serve God do not serve money. The two are mutually exclusive. And if you live for money, you do not live for God. And James says it back in chapter 4 verse 4, "You adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." If you are concerned with the things of this world, you demonstrate that you are a friend of the world and an enemy of God. Again they are mutually exclusive.

And then we reminded you last time of 1 John 2 in which John writes and says, "If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." So we can tell a lot about a person by what we see in terms of their use of and abuse of money.

Now obviously in the congregation to which James wrote, scattered Jews congregating together in the name of Christ in some locale unknown to us, there were people who were claiming to know Christ but whose lives were an invalidation of the claim. And in part, some of them were obviously lovers of money rather than lovers of God. They were the weedy soil we saw of Matthew 13 and though there was an initial response to the gospel, the deceitfulness of riches choked out that life before it could ever bear fruit. And such are those professing Christians that James wants to call to self-examination in this passage.

I mentioned to you also last Lord's day because I cannot restrain myself from mentioning it, due to the fact that it's in the papers every day and on the media, that we're not surprised by the current PTL scandal. I'm not because the worship of money is especially characteristic of people who are false teachers. It is characteristic of false teachers that they are engaged in things that bring them money and in things that are scandalous and immoral kinds of conduct.

To bring that a little more clear in your focus, look with me for a moment at 2 Peter. And I'm enlarging from the text of James, admittedly. James is primarily interested in those who were in the congregation who were loving money and therefore claimed illegitimately to be Christians. I'm broadening it to say that those who are specially guilty of claiming to be Christians but loving money are false teachers, who are in it for the money and use the name of Jesus to make merchandise of people. Notice in 2 Peter chapter 2 he starts out by talking about false prophets and false teachers who secretly, always secretly, they never announce who they are, they are always wolves in sheep's clothing, as Matthew 7:15 says, and a wolf in sheep's clothing is simply a wolf dressed up in a garment of wool. And the garment of wool was the cloak of a prophet so you have a wolf dressed like a prophet...false teachers, false prophets. And they bring in destructive or damnable heresies that include denying the Lord that bought them and they bring on themselves swift destruction. And many people follow their pernicious or evil ways.

Then verse 3, and the motive is through covetousness they covet. They want things and money and power with feigned words, that is with words of hypocrisy, they make merchandise of you. They really turn you into a commodity for their own gain.

Down in verse 10 further he talks about these kinds of people being presumptuous, self-willed and you follow the text into verse 12, they are natural brute beasts that ought to be taken and destroyed. They speak evil of the things they don't understand and they will utterly perish in their own corruption. They will receive the reward of unrighteousness as they that count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, that is they engage in wildness and wickedness in the daytime. They are flesh spots and filth scabs revelling with their own deceivings while they feast with you. Their eyes are full of adultery. They can't cease from sin. They beguile unstable souls. They have a heart they have exercised with covetous practices. And then he says, "They like Balaam," in verse 15, "love the wages of unrighteousness." Verse 18, they speak great swelling words of vanity. They are proud and egotistical and they are the heroes of all their own stories. They allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantoness those that are just escaping from them who live in error. They are especially good at capturing people who are just coming out of some error but haven't yet grasped the truth. Verse 19, they promise liberty but they are the servants of corruption.

Now in those verses we find some factors that are repeated. One, they tend to be immoral, corrupt, evil. Two, they tend to be hypocritical, that is they use words that speak of God and Christ but they're words of hypocrisy. And most particularly for our thought tonight they do it for money. They make merchandise out of people. They function on the level of those who are covetous.

And then I'd like to call your attention to Jude's epistle-- a couple of books to the right. And in the little epistle of Jude which is just one chapter, and by the way in this month's issue of The Word of Grace Newsletter which we send out to all those who listen to the program, and you ought to be on that mailing list, it's a wonderful newsletter, but in that there's a little insert that I took from that magazine as I was looking at it the other day and it notes the mark of a charlatan as found in the epistle of Jude. First of all, they teach license instead of grace, verse 4. They creep in unawares. They are ungodly men turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness. In other words, they use grace to excuse their misconduct...turning grace into license. They want to talk about God's forgiveness and God's restoration and love and they're liable to sin one week and pop up as the guest evangelist the next week.

In verses 7 to 8 it tells us they engage in fornication and sodomy. Like Sodom and Gomorrah they give themselves over to fornication. They go after strange flesh, the gross sin of homosexuality. They defile the flesh, it says in verse 8. They also defy authority. They speak evil of dignities. That is they have no regard for those who are the angels of God. They assert themselves to be supreme and there is no higher court than they. They speak evil of things they don't understand, verse 10. They discredit things that are true and they give credit to things that are not. Verse 11, "Woe to them, they have gone the way of Cain and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward," that again brings up the idea of their covetous greed. Verse 12, they always identify with true believers. They come to your love feasts. They feast with you. But they don't belong with you. They're spots, filth scabs, clouds without water, trees without fruit withered up, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. They inevitably boast about themselves, verse 16, they walk after their own lust and their mouth speaks great swelling words having men's persons in admiration for their advantage. They flatter to gain an advantage and they are overwhelmed with sensual lusts. Verse 19 says, "They are sensual, they do not have the Spirit."

It's a package, folks. When you see false teachers, you look at all the accoutrements that come with it. And it's not that difficult to discern what you're looking at. So, James announces God's judgment on people who are the wicked wealthy, whether they are just people in the church naming Christ or those false teachers of whom Peter and Jude have written so clearly.

Let's go back to James and look at chapter 5 and refresh ourselves for a moment and then complete this passage. In verse 2 James says, "Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries, or your wretchedness, that shall come upon you." He directs his attention to the rich. He says to them, "Now listen to me and the right response because of the misery that's going to come upon you in the judgment of God is that you should weep and howl." Those two words call for a violent almost uncontrollable grief in the light of inescapable divine judgment. "Weep and howl," as I pointed out last time, is very much an Old Testament kind of approach. It speaks about the idea of having verbal outward remorse at the impending doom that is coming from the judging hand of God. Isaiah calls upon people, for example, that are going to be judged in chapter 15 and verse 3, the people of Moab, and he says in their streets they shall gird themselves with sackcloth, on the tops of their houses and in their streets everyone shall wail, weeping abundantly. And Heshbon shall cry out and Elealeh, and their voice shall be heard, and so forth and so on. Very much does James approximate the Old Testament prophet in calling for mourning.

In chapter 16 of Isaiah, verse 7, "Therefore shall Moab wail for Moab, everyone shall wail. And the foundations of Kir-haresh shall you mourn because they are stricken." Even in chapter...I believe it's chapter 23 verse 1, yes, "The burden against Tyre, howl, you ships of Tarshish, for it is laid waste so that there's no house, no entering in." And there are many other Old Testament passages, Jeremiah 48:20; another one that comes to mind in Ezekiel 21:12 where people are called to mourn and howl. Even that marvelous chapter 8 of Amos does the very same thing.

So he starts out by saying you better mourn, you better howl, you better weep, you better violently be agitated because of the impending judgment of God. And then he gives them the reasons for the judgment. The inexorable and escapable judgment of God is coming for four reasons, because their wealth was, one, uselessly hoarded; two, unjustly robbed; three, self-indulgently spent; and four, ruthlessly acquired. And these are the serious and damning sins of the wicked wealthy.

Now first remember verses 2 and 3 speak of hoarding. Your riches...and remember that word ploutos is connected to the name of one of the Greek gods, a name which meant "that which is yielded from the abundance of the earth." And it's my conviction that James primarily has in mind here the riches that are stored in food stuffs, like the wealthy man in Luke who stored his grain in his barns and said, "I'll take my ease; eat, drink and be merry. Live out my life never moving my fingers again, I have amassed enough grain to sustain me for food and to sell for everything else I need." In those days basically wealth was stored in three commodities: food, clothing and money. And so first James attacks the idea of food, your food is corrupted, your riches, your ploutos are decayed. Rather than using their wealth to care for their family and to give to the Lord's work and to take the gospel to the lost and to care for the poor and the needy and the widow and the orphan, rather than using their money to support those in ministry, they hoarded it uselessly. They amassed it to themselves for their own future indulgence and their food was decayed and their garments became moth-eaten and their gold and silver which then was mixed with alloy and was subject to corrosion had indeed rusted.

And so he warns them that everything they have put their trust in is useless. The grain is decayed. The clothes are moth-eaten. And the coins are rusted. What do you have now? The rust comes to life and is personified in verse 3, "And the rust becomes a witness against them." Their rusted money shows their hoarding spirit. Their rusted money shows how indifferent they were to the poor. Their rusted money shows how uncaring they were to the needy. Their rusted money shows that they cared not to spread the gospel, they cared not to invest in the ongoing of the Kingdom. And their rusted money stands up to be the witness against them and then he goes a step further, "And the rust becomes that which eats your flesh as it were fire." The rust personified is not only the witness against them but their executioner...their executioner. And why? The end of verse 3, "You have hoarded together for the last days."

In other words, you have amassed and hoarded your wealth literally in these last days. How could you do that? Realizing that we live in the last days, realizing that we live in the end of the age when the Messiah has come and we are waiting for His imminent Second Coming, realizing that we are called to the proclamation of the gospel of the Kingdom, realizing that we are to do what God has called us to do, that is to use our money to support our family, to use it for the poor and the needy, for the ministry, for the winning of the lost, you have hoarded it for yourself and your money is a witness against you and your rusted money will be your executioner. And not in a slow way like money corrodes, but in a fast way, he says, it will eat your flesh as if it were fire. Rust is slow, fire is fast. You have done it in these last days.

In other words, you lived without regard for redemptive history, you lived without taking notice of God's clock, you lived as if all things would continue as they were. You lived as if Jesus had never come and would never come again. You lived with no thought of using money to purchase for yourselves eternal friends, as Luke 16 so beautifully puts it. You wasted your life totally. You wasted your treasure. You treasured up, in the words of Romans 2:5, wrath against the day of wrath. You just piled up judgment and the more rusted coins you had and the more moth-eaten clothes you had and the more decaying food you had, the louder the testimony against you in the day of judgment. Hoarding wealth is a serious sin. Hell, frankly, is for hoarders.

Look at Matthew 25 for a moment and there is there, I think, a vivid illustration of this. Matthew 25 verse 24, "Then he that had received one talent came," and you remember what he did with the one talent? What did he do with it? Buried it in the ground, didn't use it. And he says in verse 25, "I was afraid and hid the talent in the earth, did nothing with what you gave me, got no return on it at all, no spiritual return," for this parable is to illustrate spiritual investment, not financial investment. "I did nothing with it. I did not use it to advance the Kingdom. I did not use it to exalt Your name. I buried it. It was wasted. The Lord said, You wicked slothful servant. You know I reaped where I sowed, not gather where I have not spread. You ought therefore to have put My money to the exchangers then at My coming I should have received Mine own with interest." That's not talking about having a good bank account. That's not putting your money in a good T-Bill so you that you get a good return. The physical illustration of investing with the bank is an illustration of using what God gives you to advance His Kingdom, to pay spiritual dividends. And so he says, "Take the talent away from him and give it to the one who has ten, for unto everyone that has shall be given and the one who has will have more abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." And then verse 30, "Cast that unprofitable servant into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, send him to hell, he hoarded his treasure." And so I say again, hell is for hoarders, for people who though they may name the name of Christ show by the way they amass money for their ownself and their own pleasure that they have no thought for God or for heaven or for His Kingdom.

"My little children," says John in 1 John 2, "it is the last time, it's time for us to give away what we have to gain eternal life for those who will hear and believe." It's not that our money buys salvation, it is that money invested in that way demonstrates where our hearts are. In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, the Apostle Paul in talking about the fact that we were living in the end times says, "It remains that they that have wives be as though they had none, and they that weep as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoice not, and they that buy as though they possess not and they that use this world as not abusing it for the fashion of the world is passing away." Don't get into it. Whatever is necessary or whatever comes as a blessing of God to you, accept with a thankful heart but take your resources and invest them in eternity. This is the last day.

And the man who piles up everything he can for his own pleasure, the man of Luke 12 who sits back and says, "Eat, drink and be merry, you've got it all," is the man of whom it says, "He that lays up treasure for himself but is not rich toward God and that man...to that man, God said, You fool, this night your soul will be required of you." You're a fool to amass a fortune to yourself, hoarding it from the purposes for which God gave it to you. Very basic.

In fact, later in that same twelfth chapter of Luke, Jesus says, "Rather seek the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you." Just seek the Kingdom and let God add what He chooses to add. And don't be afraid, little flock, it's your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. You're not going to be poor, you're going to be eternally rich. You're going to be so rich you can't even imagine it. You're going to be so rich forever that it's beyond yours and my ability to even conceive of it. So sell what you have and give alms, give to the poor. Provide yourselves bags which don't grow old, a treasure in the heavens that fails not, where no thief approaches, neither moth corrupts, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also. Don't stash your stuff. Use it for the Kingdom.

And in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 17, "Charge them that are rich in this age that they be not high-minded nor trust in uncertain riches but in God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to share. And thus laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on eternal life." The only way to live in the light of the coming of Christ is investing in His glory and in His Kingdom. These people claim to be Christians but obviously they hoard it, everything they had. The damning sin of uselessly hoarding your wealth brought about judgment.

There's a second sin. Not only was their wealth uselessly hoarded but it was unjustly robbed in the first place. They weren't even entitled to it. Notice verse 4. "Behold the wages of the laborers who have reaped down or mowed literally your fields which is kept back by fraud cries out and the cries of them who have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth." Instead of being generous with the poor, they exploited them. Instead of giving to the poor, they withheld from them. Instead of giving them the small wage that they had earned, they kept it back. And verse 4 begins with the word "behold" because it's almost inconceivable, hard to believe, so utterly contrary to their claim to be Christians, so shocking a behavior. The pay or the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields...it speaks of day laborers. In the economy of Israel there were people who hung around the marketplace. Every morning they would go to the marketplace in their village and they would wait hoping that someone would come to hire a day laborer. They would work for whatever agreed upon wage they could get. Old Testament law was very strict on how you paid day laborers.

For example, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Deuteronomy as God is laying down the regulations for the life of His people He says, "Thou shalt not oppress," verse 14, "a hired servant who is poor and needy whether he be of thy brethren or of the sojourner who is in thy land within thy gates, at his day...get that...at his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it for he is poor and he sets his heart upon it lest he cry against thee unto the Lord and it be sin unto thee." He'll cry to God against you because if you don't pay him for that day he can't eat, he works to eat and to feed his family. He has no ongoing source of income and he must be paid before the sun goes down so that he may take his pay and feed his family.

In Leviticus 19:13, "Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor, neither rob him, the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning." You pay him before the night falls, the same idea. Strict pay for day laborers.

A perfect illustration of this kind of aspect of Jewish economy is found in Matthew chapter 20 where it says, "The Kingdom of heaven is like a man as a householder, went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard and he agreed with his laborers for a denarius a day." Met them in the marketplace and they negotiated and they went off to work. You remember the parable. He hired people all during the day and at the end chose to pay them all the same. But the point that I want to draw is simply that was a normal part of the economy of Israel. The agricultural cycle demanded that. You couldn't employ people all year long, only at the time of planting and the time of harvesting. And so day laborers were much a part of the economy.

And he says to these wicked rich people, "These people have come and they have mowed your fields, they have worked for you, reaped down your crops and you have kept back by fraud the wages that are due to them." The verb "kept back by fraud" is one word aphustereo, it means to withhold by default, or to withhold by fraud. It doesn't indicate delay, it indicates total default. It isn't that they delayed in paying, it's that they refused to pay. They robbed the poor people.

Now it doesn't necessarily mean that they didn't pay them anything, what it means is they didn't pay them what they were due. And so the rich then had money hoarded that they unjustly gained. And again he personifies those wages like he personified the rust and in verse 4, "The wages cry out..." krazo, present active, it's like screaming. That very same verb is used of the screaming of demons when they're expelled from their victims. You'll find it used, for example, in Mark 9:26 and Luke 9:39. And what James is saying is, the wages themselves cry out to God. They are personified. Much like other inanimate objects that cry out for justice. Do you remember Genesis 4:10? How that the blood of Abel cries out from the ground for justice. Or in Genesis 18:20, Genesis 19:13, it says that the sin of Sodom cries out to God.

Does God here? Look back at verse 4. "And the cries of them who have reaped," and here we have the cries of the people, "are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth." I read you the Old Testament text, Deuteronomy 24:15, you better pay their wages or the cries of the people who have been defrauded will reach the ears of God. And this is what this says. It's as if James took it right out of Deuteronomy 24:15 and he says the cries of those who have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. The painful cry of the robbed victims, the poor defrauded people reach the ears of God. And they continue to echo in His righteous ears until He makes it right.

By the way, "Lord of sabaoth" is a marvelous thought. Sabaoth is untranslated, it's transliterated right out of the Greek into the English, it means Lord of hosts. And that means Lord of the army of heaven, Lord who is the almighty commander of all the hosts of heaven, Lord of the supernatural army. In other words, the one who hears you is the almighty God who commands the armies of heaven and who will call that army into judgment. And by the way, do I need to remind you that when the Lord steps out in judgment it is His army that is the executioner? In 2 Thessalonians 1:8, "inflaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God." Who does that? Who comes in flaming fire? Verse 7, "When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels." The angels are the agents of judgment. In the parables of Matthew 13 it is the angels who reap. It is the angels who separate. They're the agents of judgment. And so the cry of the poor defrauded people reaches the ears of God.

I've been thinking about that lately. I've been thinking about these media ministries that rob poor people. I've been reading that the average donor is a 55 to 65-year-old middle America woman who has very little. And that these people, trusting people are sending their money to robbers and thieves who are living in opulent luxury and self-consumption that beggars language to describe at the expense of the people they've defrauded in the name of Christ. It's a frightening sin for which to be guilty. They have robbed people in the name of Christ and they have, in fact, robbed God because I fear that they have received much of the money that would have been given to that genuine movement of God that occurs in a local church where those people might attend. Money could have ended up in service to Him, it ends up in some evangelist's pocket, buying his cars and boats and houses and trips and hanging jewelry all over his wife and whatever else. It's a very very serious issue.

When people in the name of Christ or in the name of any religion rob people for supposedly the sake of spiritual ends, only to pour millions and millions into their own indulgence, they certainly are living illustrations of verse 4. And a frightening judgment falls on those who defraud, those who default. First of all, that which they possess having stolen from other people cries out against them. And furthermore, those people who see them exposed and see the defrauding will cry out to God, the God who commands the armies of heaven in eternal judgment, and I believe that God will act. The judgment falls on the wicked wealthy because they uselessly hoarded and unjustly robbed wealth and they face the judgment of hell.

There's a third sin and they all overlap. Self-indulgently spent...their robbed and hoarded wealth they spend on themselves, verse 5, "You lived...you have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton...is the Old English word...you have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter." After increasing your wealth through robbery and after hoarding it all, you now use it for your own indulgence. And to express the self-indulgence of the wealthy wicked he uses three verbs. First of all, notice verb 5, "You have lived," literally it reads, "You have lived luxuriously on the earth." Truphao, the word in itself doesn't necessarily relate to sin. It means basically softness. You have lived in softness, soft luxury is a good way to say it. You're no Robin Hood. You're not stealing from people to give to other people, you're stealing from people to pad your own bed. Extravagant comfort, that's the idea. You have indulged in extravagant comfort. Listen, God doesn't necessarily want you to sit on a soap box and sleep on a straw mat. But you've carried it way beyond anything reasonable.

And it follows. Look at what we're seeing today. These people who have amassed these huge amounts of money, who have robbed the people that they have taken it from have consumed it on themselves. Oh they'll want to point to this over here and that over there and this good thing over here, but frankly, the massive amount of it is to give them soft luxury, a life style of indulgence, personal indulgence...that is the issue. To live way beyond what is normal, what is acceptable.

What do you think you're going to see?...they said about John the Baptist, Luke 7:25. "A man in soft clothing? Behold, they who are gorgeously appareled and live delicately are in king's courts," not anymore, they're on TV...naming Jesus name. You watch them. You ever see them with the same outfit on twice? Ever? A fortune, an absolute fortune is spent on their wardrobe, their cars, their houses, their furnishings. It just follows.

And he goes further. Soft luxury, then he says, "And you have been wanton." Or as the NAS puts it, "You have led a life of wanton pleasure." To put it simply, you gave yourself the vice...luxury leads to vice. You start living the soft life and it takes its toll. And you begin to be consumed with your own pleasure and your own pleasure takes over and then you want all the pleasures that you desire and luxury turns to vice. We've seen it. We've watched it. It's played right out in front of us. She that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives, 1 Timothy 5:6 says. But people live it out. They live out that wanton pleasure mad vice filled life that really begins when someone wants everything that makes them feel good. Soft luxury leads to vice. It plunges people into dissipation.

A life you see here...let me put it to you another way...a life without self-denial is a life that soon runs out of control in every area. People totally concerned with luxury and pleasure can't restrain themselves. A man with money closes his eyes to the needs of other people, closes his eyes to the work of God, but has his wide open to his own self-gratification. And he lives to gratify himself. I watch these people spend money like a drunk sailor. It's absolutely beyond comprehension. And then to indulge themselves in every imaginable vice...

And then thirdly he says, and this is a climax. He's moving down the ladder deeper into the pit. Thirdly he says, "You have fattened your hearts." Stop at that point. Trepho means to feed, nourish or fatten. It's used of an animal. It's used in the Septuagint of Jeremiah 46:21 about fattening up calves. And what do you do when you get a calf? If you've ever raised cattle or any kind of animal like that, you fatten them up for what? For slaughter, that's the whole point. You fatten them up because the fatter they are the more they're going to bring you on the hoof when you weigh them, and that's why you fatten them. And he says you fatten your hearts, you've satiated yourself. That's right, you've indulged yourself to the limit. If you wanted to buy it, you bought it. If you wanted to do it, you did it. And you drank the cup dry. You started with soft luxury and then you led yourself right into vice and you have satiated every desire you've got. When it says you've fattened your hearts it means your inner desires. You sought to fill out every single self-indulgence.

That reminded me as I was thinking about that of a man. His name was Solomon and he wrote a book called Ecclesiastes and this is what he said in chapter 2 verse 4, "I made for myself great works, I built houses, I planted vineyards. I made gardens and orchards. I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits. I made pools of water to water there with the wood that brings forth trees. I got servants and maidens and had servants born in my house. I had great possessions of herds and flocks above all that were in Jerusalem before me. I gathered also silver and gold and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces. I got men singers and women singers and delights of the sons of men as musical instruments and that of all sorts." Boy, I had one long party. "So I was great." Modest fellow, isn't he? "And I increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem, also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy for my heart rejoiced in all my labor and this was my portion of all my labor. I worked for it, I deserve it." Have I heard that recently? I worked hard for it, I deserve it.

"And then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought and on the labor that I had labored to do and behold all was nothing and there was no profit under the sun, it was vexation." And Solomon says I got it all and it was nothing. Worse than that, worse than being nothing, it brings about judgment.

Notice that little phrase at the end of verse 5, "As in a day of slaughter." What is a day of slaughter? It has to be a day of judgment. That's a frightening depiction of judgment. You know how they killed animals? Same way they kill them today, slit their throats. You're just like a fat cow headed to have your throat slit. Very very vivid language. And the wealthy wicked who have uselessly hoarded the money they unjustly robbed and have self-indulgently spent it are some...are simply fattened calves waiting the judgment of God. You say, "Is there any hope that anything could change?" Of course, if there would be repentance and true saving faith.

In Isaiah 34, I was thinking about this and I want to take just a moment as we draw this message to a conclusion...not quite yet, don't leave me, but I want to take a moment, this phrase haunts me "as in a day of slaughter." And I was reading Isaiah 34, "For my sword...verse 5...shall be bathed in heaven, behold it will come down on Edom and on the people of my curse to judgment. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness and with the blood of lambs and goats with the fat of kidneys of rams for the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. And the wild oxen shall come down with them and the bullocks with the bulls and their land shall be soaked with blood and their dust made fat with fatness, for it is the day of the Lord's vengeance." And that tells me what James had in mind when he said the day of slaughter. He was talking about the day of the Lord's vengeance...the day of judgment on the wicked...the day of the Lord's vengeance when He comes with a sword and starts slaughtering.

In the forty-sixth chapter of Jeremiah verse 10, just listen, "For this is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance that He may avenge Himself on His adversaries...and listen...and the sword shall devour and it shall be filled to the full and made drunk with their blood." And in the fiftieth chapter, two chapters from the end of Jeremiah and verse 26, "Come against her from the utmost border, open her storehouses, cast her up as heaps, destroy her utterly, let nothing of her be left, slay all her bullocks, let them go down to the slaughter. Woe unto them for the day is come the time of their judgment."

Now there were many days of the Lord. Every time God came in judgment it was the day of the Lord. And there will be a day of the Lord for the wicked wealthy of every age. James looks ahead to that day yet to come when God through Christ and the holy angels comes with His sword in flaming fire to take vengeance on those who know not God that have rejected Jesus Christ. And I believe James is looking at that great judgment yet to come.

In the thirty-seventh of Ezekiel, you can read further about the same kind of thing. But let me take you to Revelation for a moment and chapter 19. And this I know will be familiar turf for most of you. In verse 17 of Revelation 19 we read this, "And I saw an angel," and now we're looking at the final judgment, "standing in the sun he cried with a loud voice saying to all the fowl that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of captains and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and them that sit on them and the flesh of all men free and enslaves, small and great." And that's the slaughter of Armageddon. That's the ultimate final holocaust. What brings it about? The coming of Christ. In verses 11 and following He comes on a white horse, His eyes are a flame of fire, He comes, verse 15, and out of His mouth a sharp sword to smite the nations.

As I said a moment ago, and let me make it clear, there are many days of the Lord, days in which God brought vengeance and judgment. When a wicked wealthy person dies, that for him in a sense is a day of the Lord, when he faces God in judgment. But there's coming an ultimate judgment time that really stretches through all the events of the Second Coming from Armageddon right out to the Great White Throne, when God will finally judge. An eternal slaughter takes place as the wicked wealthy who have never turned from their sin and embraced Christ are sent forever to hell. So, James says they have self-indulgently spent their wealth and will be damned because of such sin.

Finally, lastly, he culminates a denunciation of them not only for uselessly hoarding their money, not only for unjustly robbing, not only for self-indulgently spending but for ruthlessly acquiring. Verse 6, "You have condemned and killed the just," stop at that point.

You have condemned and killed the just. Hoarding greed led to fraud. Fraud led to self-indulgence. And self-indulgence becomes so consuming that you will literally do anything to sustain your life style. You will condemn and kill. You will murder. And the implication here is they use the courts...they use the courts. You have condemned and killed the just.

You remember the Old Testament God established in the nation of Israel courts where a judication of justice was to carry on? Deuteronomy 17:8 to 13 is where God laid down those courts. And then God commanded that the judges were not to be greedy. Any judge in Israel from Exodus chapter 18 on was not to be greedy. They were not to be partial, according to Leviticus 19:15. They were not to tolerate perjury, according to Deuteronomy 19. They were never to take bribes, Isaiah 33:15 talks about that, so does Micah 3:11 and Micah 7:3. So God ordained courts and judges who were not to be greedy, partial, not to take bribes, not to tolerate perjury, they were to seek justice for everyone. Everyone was to get justice. And yet even in Israel of old there was tremendous corruption...tremendous corruption.

Amos again writes about it. "I know your manifold transgressions...Amos 5:12...and your mighty sins, you afflict the just, you take a bribe and the judges turn aside the poor in the gate." Then in verse 15, "Hate the evil, love the good and establish justice." God says you have perjured, you have been bribed, you have perverted justice. It's pretty standard stuff. The rich will always try to use the system to effect negatively the poor.

The word "to condemn" katadikazo means to sentence someone. And the word "put to death," phoneuo means to murder. You have sentenced people and effectively you've murdered them, judicial murder. You literally have used the courts to murder people.

Go back to James 2:6, we had an allusion to that. You have despised the poor, do not rich men oppress you and draw you before the judgment seats? Sure. That's what they had to endure. The murder of the incarceration of innocent people, would you deny that in biblical times? Of course not, not if you read the biblical record. The Apostles, the majority of them died as unjustly condemned criminals. The Apostle Paul certainly was incarcerated and gave his life unjustly. Today people use the courts to get rich, to abuse the innocent. If nothing else they use lawsuits.

And so the point I want you to see here is that James is saying you start out amassing. Your amassed fortune in part is due to defrauding others. You then begin to spend it on your lusts which are so consumed that you literally destroy people in the process...you destroy them.

Someone was telling me the other day that...and I don't know anything personal about this woman Jessica Hawn, but that the tragedy of the destruction of that woman's life is beyond description. There are many others who are destroyed in any kind of self-indulgent scandal. People are used. People are abused. And sometimes killed.

And James ends the indictment interestingly enough with an interesting little statement about these poor abused people, "And he does not resist you...and he does not resist you." Admittedly it is difficult to be dogmatic about who "he" represents. But it seems best that the "he" is the just, the innocent one who was abused...the innocent one who was destroyed for the sake of fulfilling the lust of the wicked wealthy. He doesn't resist you. Maybe he's a believer and in the grace of the meekness of Christ he doesn't fight back. Maybe he wants to be like his Lord of whom Peter said, "When He was reviled, He reviled not again but simply committed Himself into the care of God." Maybe he wanted to live out those wonderful truths of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. You remember don't you verse, I think it's verse 39? "Whosoever shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue you at the law and take away your coat, let him have your cloak. And whosoever shall compel you to go a mile, that is carrying his burden, go with him two miles. Give to him that asks and from him that would borrow from you, turn you not away." Maybe this is such a wonderful righteous believer, the word "just" there means righteous, this is a righteous person, doesn't fight back. Maybe he's so rich in faith that he commits himself to God like Christ did.

In a sense that even makes it worse. And why the condemnation of the rich? Because of their useless hoarding, their unjust robbery, their self-indulgent spending and their ruthless acquisition. Fulfilling their lusts at the expense of the destruction of anybody and everybody who gets in their way. What a...what a travesty, what a frightening way to waste the substance that God has given us.

I was reading this week also about Count Zinzindorf(?). He was a German who lived about 1700 to 1760, he was instrumental by God's grace in beginning a missionary society known as The Merravians(?) who really pioneered world missions. He was very wealthy. And he gave everything he had to the ministry of the spread of the gospel through the Merravian mission. The very antithesis of everything we see here. Anybody who has resources makes a choice to use it for the Kingdom or to waste it and end up in the judgment of God.

Now let me say what I said at the beginning. This was written to those who claimed to be Christians but were not, as evidenced by their love of money. But at the same time, we as believers can learn from this because we don't want to repeat the sins of the hypocrites, do we? We want to be sure we use what we have for the advancement of the Kingdom, for the glory of the Lord and that we don't love the world, that we're not concerned to be friends of the world, that we don't want to lay up our treasure in this world, that we don't want to be lovers of money. Quite the contrary, we want to use every resource we have for the sake of the exaltation of Christ. May it be so, especially in these last days. Join me in prayer.

Father, we know that these things are not new to us but what a refreshing and needful reminder they are for how easy it is for us to fall into the terrible materialistic trap of the time in which we live. Lord, we have the best of things. I know there are faithful ministers more faithful than I, pastors of churches in Third World countries who have one suit of clothes and walk everywhere they go and eat because someone gives them a meal and are thankful and feel rich. And I know, Lord, You have blessed our society more than the societies of the world and thus You have laid at our very feet a great responsibility. Help us not to fall into the sins of the wicked wealthy who will be judged. Help us not to uselessly hoard but to give and give and give and give and then trust you to replenish even as every season the crops grow again. Help us to live by faith. Help us never to defraud, holding back that which is justly that belonging to someone else. And help us to know as Christians that if my brother has need what I have belongs to him and to hold it back is to rob him. And help us, Lord, with what we do have that You've given us so much, houses and cars and clothing, and much of it is Your grace and we accept it as that, but, Lord, help us not to use it only to indulge ourselves but to use our homes as places where Jesus Christ is exalted and where people can find rest and provision and love. And help us, Lord, not to become so consumed with ourselves that we abuse and condemn and misuse other people to gain our own ends, but ever and always to look on the things of others. Don't let us fall into these sins for which the rich face judgment.

And, Lord, we pray as well that if there are some in our fellowship tonight who do not know the Savior and maybe have had their heart penetrated by the Word tonight that they might seek forgiveness for a wasted substance, not used in the glory of Christ and that they might come to the feet of the Savior to receive that free forgiveness that is there for all repentant sinners and be delivered out of judgment into light, into hope, into life eternal, newly motivated to use what they have for Your glory. To that end we pray for Christ's sake. Amen.

Avoiding the Love of Money

Let's open our Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 6...1 Timothy chapter 6. We're going back this morning to the text from last week. I really just want to expand on it. I didn't get to say everything I wanted to say last Lord's day, which is not an uncommon phenomena for me. We covered verses 6 through 10, this matter of the danger of loving money. And afterwards, several people inquired of me, even to the point of writing me letters, about how to avoid that, how do you set yourself in a spiritual position not to be victimized by the love of money.

Let's look at verse 10 just to establish a starting point. The Apostle Paul says, "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil which some coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many severe griefs, or sorrows." And we talked last time about the danger of loving money. What I would like to do this morning is just to follow that up a little bit and talk to you about how to avoid loving money, how to avoid loving money. And the best text for that is just to leave 1 Timothy and let's go to the sixth chapter of Matthew. And I want to draw us back to this wonderful portion of the Sermon on the Mount to the teaching of our Lord Jesus and have us look at verses 19 through verse 34, the end of the chapter. And in so doing come to grips with the very basic elementary teaching of our Lord on how to live a life that is not preoccupied with affection for the material.

Now in looking at Matthew 6:19 to 34, we have a very practical portion of Scripture which our Lord outlines for us. He gives principles to eliminate the love of money, principles to remove our affection from moving in that direction. There are four of them. Let me suggest them to you at the outset and then we'll look at them individually. First of all the Lord says in order to avoid love of money you must have the proper treasury. Secondly, you must have the proper vision. Thirdly, you must have the proper allegiance. And fourthly, the proper confidence.

Let's look first of all at the proper treasury, beginning in verse 19 and reading through verse 21. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where your treasure is there will your heart be also."

Our Lord is saying your perspective must include the proper treasury. In other words, where do you put your deposits? Where do you invest? Where do you put your money? The principle simply stated in verse 19 is treasure not up for yourselves treasure. It's the Greek verb from which the English word "thesaurus" comes from which has to do with a treasury of words. The word means to lay aside, to store, to horde, to keep, to actually stack up. In fact if you look at some of the lexicons it indicates that it has to do with a vertical stacking rather than a horizontal kind of stacking. It's an interesting word. And what the Lord is saying is this, He's not forbidding us from earning money. He's not forbidding us from keeping money for good purposes. He is forbidding us from storing money to be wasted on self indulgence. That's the whole issue here. That when you perceive life as mainly involving the gaining of money to be stored and then used for your own indulgence, you have a wrong perspective. The key words here are the words "for yourselves." You might underline that or make a note of it in your mind because that's the issue. He doesn't say, "Lay not up treasures on earth," He says, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth."

John Wesley himself said, "I have three great principles when it comes to money. Principle number one, earn as much as you can. Principle number two, save as much as you can. Principle number three, in order that you may give to God as much as you can." It is never a question of how much you have, it's always a question of what you're going to do with it. And the key here is "for yourselves."

Somebody said there's no smaller package than a man wrapped up in himself. Very true. The sin here is not earning money, the sin is not even saving money. The book of Proverbs tells us to save money and Jesus in a parable said you would have been better to have put your money in the bank and earned interest on it. The issue here is the accumulation of wealth for self‑ indulgence, that's the issue. Extravagant luxury with hard‑ heartedness toward the cause of God, materialism in a word. A sinful habit that is very hard to break and very prevalent in our society. The Lord never condemns money itself. The Lord never condemns the possession of money. In fact it is God who gives you the power to get wealth, it says in Deuteronomy 8. And it is God who has made men wealthy and made other men to be poor. It is God, it says in 1 Timothy 6:17, who gives us all things richly to enjoy. It was rich Abraham who was called in James 2:23 and in the Old Testament, the friend of God. It was Job who was made wealthier than he had ever been by God. The New Testament even extols diligence in business, Romans 12:11. It extols providing wealth for our households, 1 Timothy 5:8. And so there's no question that God allows and even grants a certain amount of wealth to people.

The sin comes in where you put that. If you invest it in the kingdom of heaven, you've made the right choice. If you invest it in self, you've made the wrong one. So in verse 20 He says, "Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven." And again the key is "for yourselves."

What do you mean by that? How can I be giving money to God, investing in eternity and have it reap dividends for me? Well that's the whole point, that's exactly what it does. That is exactly what it does. And I'll show you how as we go along. You lay up for yourselves treasures on earth and they will remain here. You lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven and they'll be there to greet you when you arrive. But we tend, don't we, to horde things for ourselves, like the farmer who said I have two calves, one I'm going to grow for myself to feed the family, one I'm going to grow and sell and give the money to the Lord. And some months later came in to announce to his wife a terrible thing has happened, the Lord's calf died.

Well that's a rather arbitrary choice, isn't it? But that's pretty typical of so much of our thinking. Make your fortune but store it in the right treasury. That's the issue. A proper treasury where it will be drawing eternal dividends. All our efforts and all our gifts to the Lord's work to advance His Kingdom and glorify His name constitute heavenly treasury.

Look with me for a moment at Luke 16 verse 9, a quite interesting statement is made here, Luke 16:9. And we could really deal with this entire passage, it's so germane to the subject. But verse 9 for now, "I say unto you, says the Lord, Make to yourselves friends by means of the money of unrighteousness that when it fails they may receive you into everlasting habitations." That is a very unusual verse...very unusual. It's even hard to understand at the outset. Money is unrighteous in the sense that it is not righteous, it has no righteous property inherent in it. He says take your money which is basically unrighteous, or maybe a better way to say it would be non‑righteous, and use it to make for yourselves friends.

You say, "You've got to be kidding me. You mean the Bible is saying take your money and buy friendships?" That's right. "What kind of friendships?" Friendships that when your money fails they will receive you into everlasting habitation. The best understanding of this verse is simply this, invest your money in the souls of men and women who will some day greet you in heaven with thanksgiving when you arrive. What a thought. What an incredible thought...to take your money and purchase eternal friendships by investing in the Kingdom. What you keep, you lose. What you give to God you keep forever. And that's why Paul writes to the Colossians and says, "Set your affections on...what?...things above and not on things on the earth."

And He says further, let's go back to Matthew 6, that if you do lay up treasure on earth, you're going to run into problems. Let me give it to you very simply, in ancient Palestine treasure basically came in three forms. One was garments, your clothes; two was grain, your crop; three was gold. That's basically it. Garments, your clothing; grain, your crops; and gold, your monetary fortune. He says regarding your garments, "Moths eat them." Regarding your grain, the word "rust" is a poor translation really of brosis, the word literally means eating. It's never used to be a reflective of rust, it has reference to rats or other things that eat stored grain. So He says, first of all, moths will eat your clothes and then rats will eat your grain and then thieves will steal your gold. The word for thieves is interesting, mud diggers. Most of the houses were made out of mud and so a thief was somebody who dug a hole in a mud wall. They'll break in and steal.

So if you put your fortune in worldly things, it is subject to worldly corruption. We say, "Ha, but I'm covered, I have moth balls, rat poison and burglar alarms. And there's no way they can get at me." Yeah, well as I said last week, you've never seen a hearse pulling a U‑Haul. There will come a time when it all ends and you're not taking it with you.

The major thing that He wants us to consider is in verse 21. He says in verse 20, there are no need for moth balls in heaven, there is no eating that can corrupt what you've laid aside and there are no thieves, but the real issue in verse 21 is, wherever you put your treasure, that's what? That's exactly where your heart is. Show me a man's checkbook and I'll tell you where his heart is. Just let me see the list of where he writes his checks and I'll tell you where his heart is. Pretty simple because wherever his treasure is, that's where his heart is. And rather than give away what you have to purposeless consumption and indulgence in this world, Jesus says give to the Lord that you may place your heart where your fortune is and that is in the matters concerning His Kingdom.

Where's your treasury? That's the question. If you love money, it's here. If you love God more than you love money, it's there. Very simple.

Secondly, to avoid the love of money you not only must have the proper treasury but the proper vision and they go along with each other. Verse 22, "The lamp of the body is the eye," that is it is that organ of the body which lets light in. "If therefore thine eye be healthy, thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?"

Now what is He saying here? Let me give it to you simply. Just as your eye effects your physical perception, so where you fix your heart determines your spiritual perception. In other words, a seeing eye floods the body with light, you see, you are filled with light, light is everywhere, your eyes can capture it. And so it is with a spiritually clear eye that has its focus on the kingdom of heaven, it has a heavenly vision of treasure and therefore spiritually is lighted. The heart that is set on godly things is lighted, it is lit with spiritual sight. Blind eyes bring only darkness. An earthly perspective, an earthly vision that is selfish and indulgent plunges one into spiritual darkness.

The point is this, if your focus is continually on money and on accumulation and on materialism and self‑indulgence, you will be blind to spiritual reality. Your spiritual eyes are dark, your vision is clouded and it is a severe darkness, it says at the end of verse 23...a severe one. Greedy people become blind to spiritual reality. They can't see spiritual reality. They can't see spiritual need. They can't see the joy of spiritual investment. Their focus is really on the wrong thing and they therefore become blind.

The word "healthy," just as a note, in verse 22, the Authorized says, "If your eye is healthy," is actually the word that is translated at least three places I found in the New Testament by the word "generous...generous." And so this tells us really what he means here. The word for "evil" in verse 23, poneros is used in the Septuagint, Deuteronomy 15:9 and translated there with the idea of grudging, or ungenerous. So what he is saying is if you are characteristically generous in putting your treasure in heaven, you're going to see clearly spiritually. If you are characteristically ungenerous and put your money in your own self‑indulgence in the world, you are going to be characteristically blind. Generosity forms a clear understanding of life, grudging selfishness distorts everything and it distorts the spiritual dimension most of all. So the call here is for a heavenly vision. And a heavenly vision is a corollary to a generous heart.

So, first of all, if we're going to be free from the love of money we want to make sure we've chosen the right place to invest, and secondly, we want to make sure we have a perception of spiritual reality and that our viewpoint is that which pertains to the kingdom of God not to self. One who is consumed with his own self aggrandizement becomes blind to the things of God and if we can sharpen our focus on the Lord and on His Kingdom, then we can really see spiritually.

So avoiding loving money requires having the right treasury and the right vision. Thirdly, and this is so important, the right allegiance...the right allegiance. And these really run parallel to each other. Verse 24, "No man...and that's inclusive, no man....can serve...what?...two masters." It's impossible, that is axiomatic, it is impossible. "Either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other." And so the conclusion is you can't serve God and at the same time serve money. So the love of money is exclusive and therefore eliminates the love of God. On the other hand, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength is then to set aside the love of money. You must have the proper allegiance. You ask yourself the question: do I love God or do I love money?

John Calvin said, "Where riches hold the dominion of the heart, God has lost His authority." That's true. Because where riches hold the dominion of the heart, when the Spirit of God prompts someone to give money to the Kingdom to invest in the Kingdom, the person resists that in self‑indulgent prideful protection of his own investments and therefore the authority of God in that life is blunted and ignored.

On the other hand, M.E. Bern(?) wrote in that lovely hymn, "Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise, Thou my inheritance now and always." Jesus first in my heart, he said. You see, the orders you get from God and the orders you get from self‑indulgent love of money are diametrically opposite. One commands you to walk by faith, the other to walk by sight. One calls you to be humble, the other to be proud. One to set your affection on things above, the other to set your affection on things on the earth. One to look at things unseen and eternal, the other to look at things seen and temporal. One to have your conversation in heaven, the other to cleave to the dust. One to be careful for nothing, the other to have all anxiety. One to be content with such as you have, the other to enlarge your desires as big as hell. One to be ready to distribute, the other withhold. One to look at the things of others, the other to look at your own things. One to sing...to seek happiness in the creator, the other to seek happiness in the creature. They're mutually exclusive and so you have to determine your allegiance.

The love of money is inseparably related to where your treasury is, what your vision is, and to whom your allegiance is given. The safest place, by the way, I feel, for my money is in God's hands. You feel that way? He's the safest steward of all. And sadly we live in a world that is gone mad over the matter of accumulation, for selfish purposes, indulging itself under the illusion that that brings happiness, joy, peace and contentment. It doesn't. Contentment comes from being attached to the right master...the right master.

After all...have you thought about this?...who owns everything? Class? God...thank you. Who owns everything? God owns everything. That's good. The earth, Psalm 24:1 says, belongs to God. Anything in the world is His. First Chronicles 29:11 says, "Everything in the heavens and earth is yours, O Lord." It all belongs to Him. I was reading John Wesley some years ago. His house burned down. And he said simply this, "The Lord's house burned, that's one less responsibility for me." That's the spirit.

Do you realize that there's only really been one nation in the history of the world that understood the proper relationship to possessions and that was the nation Israel? Because they understood that God owned everything, that God owned everything. They were a theocracy and God owned everything. They were just managing it as a point of stewardship by which they could be spiritually evaluated. But God owned everything. We are victims not of a legacy of the culture of the Old Testament but of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans who believed they owned everything and that mentality dominates us.

Not only does God own everything, He controls everything. He controls everything. First Chronicles 29 again 11 and 12 says, in effect, that God controls everything. Therefore if God owns everything and God controls everything, then God provides everything. Is that not so? Everything we have...absolutely everything that we have is given to us by God. There is nothing that we possess, even the most mundane things of life that God has not allowed us to possess. For believers particularly, Luke 12:31, "Seek ye the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added to you....Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom so sell what you have, give alms, provide yourselves bags which grow not old, a treasure in the heavens that fails not, where no thief approaches, neither moth corrupts, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Basically the same ideas with the added thought that you can give it all away because God is in charge of providing what you need.

The point is, beloved, we don't have to control our destiny. We don't have to control everything. We can't say, "Boy, I dare not give that to God because what's going to happen to me in the future," etc., etc. If the Spirit of God prompts your heart, respond to the Spirit of God with the confidence that God owns everything, God controls everything and God promises to provide everything needed by His own. If God gave you life, God will sustain that life, won't He? So we're anchored to that confidence.

As World War II was coming to a close, the allied armies gathered many of the hungry orphans that were left as a result of the war. They were placed in camps and they were well fed. Despite excellent care, they found that these children couldn't sleep. They seemed nervous and afraid and they would stay awake all night with insomnia starring at the ceiling. Finally somebody came in to try to figure out what was going on. They came up with a solution. Every night before the children were put in bed, they were given a little piece of bread to hold in their hand and they went to sleep clutching this little piece of bread.

You say, "What was the point?" The point was they had lived so long existing without food in hunger that they couldn't sleep for fear that they wouldn't be able to eat the next day. But once they put a little piece of bread in their hand and they knew the next day was secure, they could sleep. It's as if when God gives us the promise, "Fear not, little flock, it's your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom," He puts a little piece of bread in our hands and says go to sleep. What are you worried about? What are you worried about?

And that brings us to the fourth point and the final point in avoiding the love of money and this one stretches through the rest of the text, it demands that you have a proper confidence. Not only the right treasury and vision and the right allegiance but the right confidence built on who your God is. Verse 25, "Therefore...and you know what the therefore's there for, it's a transition...because of what you have just heard, having the right treasury and the right vision and the right allegiance, therefore with those things in place I say to you, stop worrying, don't be anxious...don't be anxious." Verse 31, "Don't be anxious." Verse 34, "Don't be anxious." He says it three times. You get the feeling that they were...what?...anxious...very good. They were excessively worried about things they ought not to have been worried about at all.

Now what is it He says? "I say unto you," by the way, He says stop being anxious in this verse, the form of the Greek, don't start being anxious in verse 31, so He hits it from both angles. But He says, "Don't be anxious for your life." psuche, your physical earthly life. Don't be anxious for your physical life. Don't worry about that. Because, you see, people are going to say, "Well I'd love to give to the Kingdom and I'd love to open my spiritual eyes and have that perspective, and I would love to have this allegiance that invests in the glory of my God who is my Lord, I want that, but I'm concerned about providing for myself..." and so forth and so on. Now it's not a question of giving away what you need to live. It's a question of that stock piling mentality that says I'm amassing my fortune to cover all my bases. And when the Spirit of God prompts your heart to give, you don't do it and you're disobedient to that authority because you feel you have to have it to indulge yourself in whatever way you've decided.

But what our Lord is saying is since heavenly treasure fully satisfies and sets the heart in the right place, since generous giving brings mental, moral, spiritual vision and since allegiance to the Lord puts us under His loving authority and care, therefore we can have confidence and not worry about our physical life. Don't be preoccupied with that. Even the basic necessities of life are in God's control.

Now you remember in Timothy, the text basically said that man was to provide for his household, if he didn't do that he was worse than an infidel. And you remember also that we are to be content with the basic necessities of life, be content..the Scripture says...with such things as you have. That's the idea. And anything beyond that, God may want us to save for future use in His Kingdom, God may want us to give to someone in need, God may want us to invest in the Kingdom, God may want us to do all kinds of things, we want to be responsive to whatever He asks without fear because we have the confidence that we're under His care. That's living by faith.

Now what are the things He refers to here? The necessities, food, water, and clothes. Now if you lived in Palestine at that time you would realize that that's basically what occupied most people's life...the pursuit of food, the pursuit of water and the pursuit of clothing. They were into the basic necessities of life. He says you shouldn't worry about this and let me show you why.

Number one, the first reason you don't worry about this is because you have confidence in your Father. That kind of anxiety is unnecessary because of who your Father is. And He promises to take care of these necessities. First of all, food...He says in verse 25, "Don't be anxious for your life, that is the physical part, what you eat, what you drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on. Isn't life more than food and isn't the body more than its clothing?" In other words, don't get preoccupied with mundane things...material things. Boy, that seems so obscure to us and so hard to interpret and understand because we're so locked in to that kind of preoccupation.

But first of all, in verse 26 here's why you don't worry about food. Here's why you don't worry about it. "He says, Behold the fowls of the air," it's very likely that they might have been flying by at that very moment, there is obviously to anyone who knows any of the history of Israel a very very prominent place given to birds. In fact, one ancient assessment was that it was the crossroads of bird migration, that is Galilee was. Sowing in the field brought birds to eat the seed, and so maybe there were some birds flying by. And He says, "The fowls of the air, they don't sow...they don't sow, they don't reap, they don't gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them." And then there's an ????? ????? argument which says from the lesser to the greater, "Are you not much better than they?" What are you worried about? Ever see a bird lying on its back saying, "Woe is me, I'm starving?" God cares for them.

The Scripture emphasizes this. Job 38:41, "Who provides for the ravens his food?" Psalm 104, "So is this great and wide sea wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts, these wait all upon Thee that Thou mayest give them their food in due season." God feeds all the created world and will He not feed you? Are you not better than they? Much better than they?

Now this is not an excuse for idleness. You don't see the birds lining up at some God‑centered distribution point. They do their work. They don't sit on the branch waiting for food to drop in their beak, they search for it. They gather insects and worms, they prepare their nest, they care for their young, they teach them to fly and pursue their own food. And so it is with man. We do our work. In fact, the Scripture says in 2 Thessalonians if you don't work you shouldn't...what?...eat. So there's work to do but the provision is made by God. And to say that God will provide your food is to say also that God will provide a means for you to earn your food. And that's the promise. Our Lord's argument from the lesser to the greater. Birds don't overdo a good thing like the rich fool, they don't build barns and keep more than they need. They don't store up, stock up, and add to what they already have unnecessarily. They simply gather enough and they're satisfied. No stock piling, no stuffing, no hording and that's what the Lord is saying. The birds can't plan ahead, they have no reason to worry. You have no reason to worry either, you're more important than they are. Are you not more valuable than them? What a beautiful thought.

So that frees me. Does that free you? I'm not worried about my future. People say to me all the time, "What are you doing for your retirement?" My first answer to that is, "What retirement?" You mean when I stop preaching? That will happen when I don't have a voice. What do you mean what am I doing for my retirement? You mean when I get to the point where I don't have anything to do but sit back and indulge myself with all that I've amassed? I'll never come to that point. All I want to do is take what God has given me, reinvest it back in His Kingdom in a wise manner, some to be given today, some to be saved for future use for His glory when He lays before me things that He wants me to be a part of in the days to come, but always the perspective has to be that. And I don't have any anxiety about the future because of God feeds birds, I think He'll feed me. That's His promise. And when He stops feeding me that's because He wants me to go home. But as long as He gives me life and breath here, He'll make sure that I'm sustained.

You say, "Yes, but I want to be sustained at the manner of life in which I am accustomed." Well, that's a whole different ball game, folks. I just want to be sustained in life in the manner in which God decides I need to be sustained. Life is a gift from God. And if He gives it, He'll sustain it. I'm not going to be anxious for that. If He gives me the gift of life, He'll give me the gift of food that life may be sustained.

So, first of all, it's pretty silly not to have confidence in God because of who our Father really is, He is the provider of our food. Look at verse 27, and this is quite interesting. He is the provider of our life span, verse 27, "Which of you by being anxious or worrying can add a cubit to his stature?"

Now people have misunderstood this. A cubit is basically 18 inches...18 inches. Now that wouldn't make a lot of sense. Which of you by worrying can add 18 inches to your stature? That would make me about seven foot ten...that's...that's at best hyperbolic at that point. What you have to understand is the word helikia basically means not so much your stature as your span of life. And the idea is somewhat metaphorical. He's saying which of you can worry yourself into a longer life. The converse is true, you worry and you're likely to have what? A shorter one. Worrying isn't going to do you any good. You cannot add to your span of life by anxiety, in fact what you'll do is shorten your span of life by anxiety.

So we're not going to give ourselves to something that shortens our span of life. Worry...Charles Mayo, the Mayo Clinic says, "It effects circulation, the heart rate, the glands, the nervous system." He said, "I have never known of a man to die of overwork, but many die of worry." That's right. You can worry yourself to death but you'll never worry yourself into longer life.

Such a sin of mistrusting God is so foolish. God has given us life and God has given us food and God will give us the fullness of the span of life that He wants us to have, His sovereignly designed life plan. I can't lengthen it. I could shorten it by my sin, 1 Corinthians, 1 John 5. He might just take me out because of sin, but I'll live that full span that God sovereignly designed. And why not live it to His glory? Do you understand what I'm saying? You don't need to control your destiny. You need to invest in God's Kingdom as prompted by the Spirit and let Him take care of the results. And I'll tell you, that's the only wonderful way to live. And you will see that God will keep providing more and more than you can possibly use because He is a God of grace.

And then He gives the third illustration, what about my clothing? Boy, I have got to keep working because I have these withdrawals if I come to the end of a full week and I haven't been to the mall in seven days. I...as somebody recently said, "A woman's place is in the mall." And there's...I get pangs if I don't get there and get a new dress or a new suit or whatever it is that people go there to get. I've got to take care of myself. We've got to be clothed properly. So in verse 28 He says, "Why are you worried about your clothes? You worry about your clothes? Consider this, the lilies of the field how they grow, they toil not neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these, wherefore if God so clothed the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you? Oh you of little faith."

That's so practical. Why are you anxious about your clothes? Some people are very anxious about their clothes. They don't want to go out of the house if they have something on they had on the day before. They're very conscious about what they wear. They also can be fearful about what they might not be able to wear and so there are many working wives who are out abandoning their children for nothing more than to support certain fashion habits, lusting after costly clothes is a sin. In fact do you remember what it says in Timothy that a woman is to be adorned not so much on the outside but...what?...on the inside. The hidden man of the heart, that sweet meek quiet spirit, that which characterized Sarah who called her husband Abraham lord, as 1 Peter 3 tells us.

So the Lord says look, don't worry about your clothes. I'll make sure you're not only clothed but I'll make sure you're clothed beautifully. You want an illustration? The field lilies...the field lilies...look at them how they grow. They grow with seemingly no effort, freely gorgeously without effort. I'm looking at these flowers and I'm saying I don't see anybody in here that's as delicately and beautifully arrayed as they are. What an indictment, He says. The best of human garments, verse 29, Solomon in all his glory can't even come close. That little flower, that anemone that grew in Palestine, that lovely little gentle flower, that fragile flower was more beautiful than any garment, gorgeous, fragile in its beauty. Put it by the side of any garment Solomon ever had and it pales to the magnificence of that flower. The finest fabric that any human being ever wore cannot under a microscope look like anything but sackcloth. Take that flower, put it under a microscope and see the delicate living beauty of God's glorious creation. There's no comparison.

He's not indulging in hyperbole, He's stating fact. No garment loomed in the finest and softest texture is anything but sackcloth when placed beside the petal of a flower. The little scarlet poppies that blossomed one day on the hillsides of Palestine and were clothed in a beauty surpassing royal robes and a day later burned up and vanished away and replaced by new ones exceed in beauty anything that we could ever create.

So He says in verse 30 if God's going to clothe the grass of the field, those little flowers and it only lasts a day and tomorrow is thrown into the oven to be burned, how shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith. And again His argument is from the lesser to the greater. Let the men of the world worry. Let the people of the world worry. I'm not going to worry about that. I'm not going to say, "I can't give to God, I might not have enough for my new suit." I don't want to say that. I want to give all I have to God and let God clothe me in a wonderful way.

And I can tell you the Lord does it, folks. I just want you to know that the Lord knows how to do that. And I bless His name for that. So God is good. In fact the suit I have on now was a gift to me from the Moody Bible Institute when they asked me to make a movie...they wanted me to have a gray suit...so they said, "Here, take this money and go buy a gray suit." So the Lord said He wanted me to have this suit through that means. The Lord is good. Not long ago there was a gentleman who said, "I want you to have a car." The church has provided a car for me in the past but they don't have to do that anymore because a man gave me a car. And...see, I never worry about that. In fact the man called me a couple of days ago and said, "I don't know if your wife has a car." "Well," I said, "at the present time we kind of share the car." He said, "Well Monday you come and I want to give you a car for your wife." Now I don't know...I'm just saying, "All right, Lord, if You want me to have this, I can handle it." I'm not going to argue about it. But I have this sense of stewardship, you know. But I'm not going to worry about that. I'm not storing up money to save for my future, God has proven Himself to me. And I'm just grateful and I don't want to be...I don't want to be...I don't want to be selfish about those things and I don't want to be indulgent but I have learned that my God gives and He gives richly and He gives to be enjoyed.

See, the sum of it is very clear. God takes care of all the necessities of life in a grand and glorious way so what are you worried about? And so He says your real problem at the end of verse 30 is you have little faith. And remember what we called the disciples, the little faith association. Inevitably He was giving them this speech at some point or another. Don't you worry about those things, just trust Me. Boy, it's really wonderful to live by faith. That doesn't necessarily mean you live by poverty, it just means you live by faith and you accept what God gives and you invest in His Kingdom. So you know where your treasury is, you know where your vision is, you know where your allegiance is, therefore you know where your confidence is. And I'm not going to distrust God because I know who my Father is and I know what His resources are.

Therefore, verse 31, He hits it again, Not only am I confident because of who my Father is, but I'm confident because of my faith in Him. "Don't be anxious saying, What shall we eat, what shall we drink, or what we be clothed with, for all these things do the pagans seek." You see, that's the world. They're out there hacking through the jungle to make sure they get their share, carving out their space. Not us, your heavenly Father knows you have need of all these things. Isn't that wonderful? He knows exactly what you need.

So, your task is to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be...what?...added unto you. I'm not anxious about what I eat, what I drink, what I put on. Why? Because that's typical of unbelievers. They're worried about that. It's needless for me because of God's bounty. It's senseless because of God's promise. It's useless because of man's inability. And it's faithless. It is uncharacteristic of Christian faith to worry about that.

I just want to see God work. And as I've said to you in past years, what do you believe in God for that only He can do so when He does it you give Him all the credit. Boy, some of us are so insulated against God doing anything because we've got every base covered. Where's your vulnerability where God can work? God works. I tell you, folks, there is a God who loves and cares for His own and who shows Himself faithful in what He wants to do. And if He doesn't have a lot of folks to do it like at Grace Church, He'll find somebody else to do it. And we see by faith the hand of God. That's how it is in life and that's what makes it exciting to live by faith.

The heathen? Hey, they're in complete darkness. They don't have any connection with God so they're amassing it for themselves. Not us. Not us. Some people think that materialism is a trivial sin. No, materialism is one of the grossest most heinous sins, let me tell you why. Because it strikes a blow at the character and the promise of God. You understand that? It is a devastating sin against the character of God as provider and the promise of God who said He will care for His own. The Gentiles seek with all their might, it's an emphatic phrase there in verse 32, they really seek, consumed with material, gratification. Not us...not us.

What do we seek? Well first of all we know our Father knows we have need of all these things. He knows we need food. He knows we need clothing. He knows we need to care for our families. He knows all that. But we seek first the Kingdom and all of that He adds. That's the way to live. So you don't love money, you love God. You don't seek money, you seek God. You don't seek to be rich, you seek to do your best. And He knows you need these things.

And then finally in verse 34 and we'll come back to verse 33 in a minute, just wrap it up. But in verse 34 He is saying I am confident in God because of who my Father is, because of my faith in Him and then lastly He sort of says, because of my future. "Be therefore not anxious about tomorrow." Don't worry about tomorrow. "For tomorrow will have enough worry for the things of itself sufficient to the day is its own evil." Don't worry about tomorrow. Why? God is the God of tomorrow. Tomorrow will be whatever tomorrow will be but God will be who God is tomorrow just as He is today. God is the God of tomorrow just as He's the God of today. The worries of tomorrow will be there tomorrow and so will God and I want to live for today. What a wonderful approach to life.

Worry about the future debilitates people constantly. They're worried about usually what hasn't happened. Is that not true? They're worried about usually what never will happen. And so they forfeit the joy of what could happen today because they've sentenced themselves to anxiety about a non‑existent future. The Lord says don't do that. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Every day has enough trouble all by itself. You don't need tomorrow's trouble added to today's. You understand that? But some people aren't satisfied with today's trouble, they want years of trouble pushed in to today. I don't know why. God only gives you strength for what? Today. His mercies are new every morning, great is Thy faithfulness. We sung it, didn't we, from Jeremiah. There's no sense in worrying about the future. Fear is a liar. Fear lies to you about the future. It doesn't tell you the truth. Don't cripple the present by worry about the future.

So, the fourth thing then is you have to have the proper confidence. You trust God who is your Father, you put your faith in Him, you let Him take care of the future and you live for today. Beloved, you're no spiritual orphan. You're the child of God. He hasn't abandoned you. He's there. And He'll meet every need.

So go back to verse 33 and let's focus finally on what we're all about. "Seek ye first...that's the priority...the Kingdom of God and His righteousness." What does He mean by that? Well in everything you do that's your pursuit. I'm seeking God's Kingdom. What is the Kingdom, what does it represent? Well there's a sense in which the Kingdom represents conversion, entrance into the Kingdom is by grace through faith and so what He is saying first of all is seek to enter the Kingdom, if you're not there. We're assuming that the ones to whom He speaks are. So He is saying seek the conversion of others. Seek the extension of the Kingdom. Seek the expansion of the Kingdom through conversion.

Secondly, when He says seek the Kingdom He is saying seek to fulfill the commands and demands and character of the Kingdom through your own spiritual commitment. As Romans 14:17 says, "The Kingdom is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." In other words, spiritual principles, spiritual blessings, spiritual characteristics. So we seek the Kingdom by seeking the salvation of the lost, by seeking the extension of the power of the Spirit, the joy of the Spirit...all those spiritual principles.

And then thirdly, seeking the Kingdom means to anticipate the coming of the Christ in that great millennial glory which will invade the world and usher in what ultimately will become the eternal Kingdom of Christ. Seek the Kingdom in every sense. Let your life and your energy and your talent and your time and your money all go toward the advance of the Kingdom, that's the issue. And then if God responds by giving you much or giving you little, you be content because you know your needs will be met. He says if you seek the Kingdom, all these things will be...what?...added unto you. When somebody comes to me and says, "Boy, I don't know if I have enough money to make it." Often I'll say to them, "Well maybe it's because you haven't been giving enough." Sometimes people will step back and say, "What? I couldn't afford to give anymore." Maybe the reason you can't afford to give anymore is because you haven't given enough. You've never allowed yourself the privilege of living under the promises of God.

Well, I want the Holy Spirit to apply this to all of our hearts individually as we think on it and meditate on it. Let's bow together in prayer.

We thank You, Father, for the good word that comes to us from the dear Apostle Paul who says that we are to avoid the love of money because it is a root of all kinds of evil. We thank You for that wisdom, that Holy Spirit inspired wisdom that reminds us that people who pursue that as a way of life are consumed with all kinds of grief. Err from the faith, pierce themselves through like meat on a skewer with their soul literally torn apart. Father, help us never to pursue those things which are so unfulfilling, but help us to love You so much that all we ever seek is for the advance of Your Kingdom that our resources are poured into that. And if You're gracious enough to give us a comfortable home, may we use it for Your glory and share it with others. And if You're gracious enough to give us clothing and a car and some of the benefits of life, the ability to travel and to enjoy some special things to put in our homes objects of beauty, pieces of art, pictures, help us to realize that the source of beauty, the source of design comes from You and to give You glory for it and to share it with others that they might in enjoying its beauty see the wonder of the creative mind of our great God. Lord, just give us that focus in everything.

And, Lord, help us to take our resources and under the prompting of the Spirit of God not withstand Your authority as You call us to invest in eternity that the Kingdom might be built. What else would there be to live for? And then to know Your good and gracious hand which continually pours out on us the benefits of Your sweet grace. Bless every person here, Lord. There are some struggling with this, some who have much and are struggling with being selfish, some who have very little and are struggling with having their very needs met. Help us all, Lord, personally and individually in that intimate relationship which we enjoy with You to seek Your will and to wait for Your provision and to be content with whatever we have, be it much or little, knowing it is what You have given us for Your glory. In Christ's name...Amen.