We left off yesterday with a look at two parables and I hope you opened your Bibles and read the actual scriptures for yourselves. We know about the ‘Rich Young Ruler’ that wanted to get to the Kingdom but would not give up the material things he acquired in order to have eternal life. It seems like what we would call a no-brainer doesn’t it? But humans just don’t see it that way. We are mortals that think we will live forever. In my business I am consistently pointing out the risks people face only to hear, “it won’t happen to me”. I am always amused when one of my clients begins reviewing the ownership of their assets. It gets me when they say, “If anything happens to me what happens to this stuff?” I always very quickly point out that something will happen. Yes, you will die, so prepare. And I will die. We all will come to room temperature sooner or later. When it happens it always is too soon.
We looked at the ‘Rich Fool’ that wanted to build bigger barns to hold his stuff but didn’t know he was about to die that night. You know, just before the parable of the ‘Rich Fool’ Jesus addressed another unknown character from the crowd that had a question. It was what led to him giving the parable. Jesus didn’t spend too much time on the question because it was a guy that wasn’t happy about how much inheritance he was getting and wanted Jesus to help him get more from his brother. He and his brother had to settle that score themselves. The greedy brother wanting the inheritance was not following the ideal of living in harmony with his brother. “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1) We can assume this man knew the Scriptures but did not care much. The greedy brother treasured riches more than his relationship with his brother. He did not love people. Verse 15 gives us a big clue as to what the point of the parable of the ‘Rich Fool’ was going to be. Jesus condemns greed and warns that even if the man gets a larger share of the inheritance, it will not bring life.
The point of the parable is not that death may come at any time, however, that centering one’s life on possessions and pleasures is not to be the focus. The kingdom is at hand! The message was and is, that we are not to put too much emphasis on acquiring wealth. People think that if they can only get enough material things these things will produce the abundant life.
What profit will it be to gain the world and then lose our soul? We need to be careful to not get caught up in covetousness. In our society it seems to sneak up on us and get us no matter how hard you try to ward it off. It is like being that frog in the cold water on a fire that slowly turns to boiling and eventually takes your life. The experience we should get from this is to spend much time in prayer and in the Word. We should concentrate on Godly things and that is where our treasure should lie.
Getting back to the main subject at hand, we would need to surrender everything. Not just most of it but, I mean every ounce of all we desire in order to completely follow Christ. I left off by saying, “We are all unwilling to take that step”. We go away in sorrow and we live in some kind of faith that seems to comingle the parts of God’s word we can deal with and the parts of the world we must partake of. We are so weak! And it is so shameful.
In many ways we are much more deceived than the two rich guys I mentioned earlier. Satan is having his way with us. We and the people in our nation are reaping the consequence. Let’s face it. We are letting God down. Revival is needed and revival starts in the heart. Has your heart waxed cold? If not, get back in the race. The time is now! I read somewhere the other day that when people really know Christ they ‘talk about Him’. How much do we talk about Christ each day? How many times do we avoid talking about Christ when we should because we don’t want to make waves or we don’t want to make someone uncomfortable. Maybe it is so it won’t make us uncomfortable?
We all read about prophecy and we know about the prophecy that has already come true. We know about the great falling away and we can see it is happening now. We read about the false teachers and they are about us. But we let them do it. Why? We are responsible. Each and every one of us owns our piece of the problem. We need to take up our crosses.
We just had a national election. Listen to what was said by one national Christian leader, “I didn’t hear any of the candidates say that we needed to call our nation to prayer. I didn’t hear any of the candidates say that we needed to ask God for help. I don’t believe there is leadership in Washington that can solve this problem. We just deal with it as issues for the day, and it kicks the can further and further down the road. We need God’s help to solve this problem – we can’t go without God. What has happened is we have allowed ourselves to take God out everything that we do – and I believe that God will judge our nation one day” , Rev. Franklin Graham.
As “The Church” We Are Losing the Race.
Check back with me for the next post (JUST CLICK HERE) and we can see what we are supposed to look like as “The Church”.
God bless you all,
“The Tubthumper”