The Gain of Godliness

 

Text: 1 Timothy 6:6-19

Focus: money

Function: to help people rest in God instead of money.

⁶Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, ⁷for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it, ⁸but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. ⁹But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

¹¹But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹²Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you ¹⁴to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. ¹⁶It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

¹⁷As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, ¹⁹thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Good morning to the beloved Children of God!

Peace be with you!

I love the imagery of that last line of our text from today as brother Paul is warning us about the trappings of riches and to focus on living for God instead. And that last line says: “Take hold of the life that really is life.”

Our economic system is basically capitalism and it appears to be somewhat different than the one that Jesus showed by example. Jesus shows us the value of sharing and how it places us in the position to be blessed and provided for by God as we live by faith trusting God to provide our daily bread. We plan for the future and invest, but the command from the passage is for us to place our hope in God instead of our own ability to provide for ourselves. God wants us to live humbly by faith in God’s love for us.

So, when he says for us to take hold of the life that is really life, he is showing us that our lives are bound up in the love of God for us and when we live in that kind of love God provides for us. We indeed are living our lives by faith.

And I believe it causes us to be generous.

This is a passage about money and our relationship to it. But when he says take hold of that life that is the abundant life that Jesus promised us in John 3:16, when he told us that we will have a life without boundaries, eternal, he is speaking of the possibility of what can happen when we live by faith and God blesses us.

I remember that God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others. It is a test to see if we will indeed be generous.

And although this is a passage about our relationship to money that gives us the great verse often misquoted that says: “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil,” when I speak of being generous, I believe it extends much more beyond our monies to the way that we show mercy toward others.

Be generous is the command from God.

I reiterate that command to say be generous with mercy.

Remember last week we talked about how Jesus choose to associate with those that society rejected? He said that he came to seek and save lost. He came to heal those sickened in their souls by the evil that corrupts this world. He did it by showing mercy toward them.

It is the kindness of God that draws people toward repentance.

Let us go to the first verse. Godliness is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment.

Contentment is resting in God’s provision for us.

I ponder what I call the gateway command to loving others from the 10 commandments. The first 4 deal with loving God, the rest deal with loving others and the first one of those is: Don’t desire, or be jealous of what your neighbor has.

Be content is how Paul describes it.

In my experience, when I abide in love and allow the Spirit to have control, it comes through prayer and contemplation, I find myself loved and embraced in my Spirit or soul by the love of God and it gives me a feeling of contentment.

On the other hand, when I watch TV or browse social media and am bombarded with all the advertising designed to make me unsatisfied with what God has provided for me.

Thank God for prayer and scriptures like this one that remind me to place my trust in God instead of my finances. Then we can live by faith.

Living by faith is living in God’s kingdom and it includes caring for the Creation that God entrusted to us. I don’t mention this lightly in conjunction with this scripture about the greed of loving money over others. God wants us content but one of the problems with our culture is that the economy relies on consumerism. We need to produce more and more in order to survive. The problem with that is that we are overproducing trash and we cannot process the waste as fast as we are making it.

Although I have been an environmental activist since the 8^th grade when I was President of the ecology club, and I cringe when I do it, I am just as guilty of my use of single use plastics because our whole marketing system is built around them.

Our love of money system is harming our future.

It is the love of money that is causing this destruction of our planet and we are poisoning our children’s future for the sake of short term profits.

I realize that we need fuel to somehow facilitate our transportation, heat our homes and drive our industry. Fossil fuels make that convenient.

But right now, it seems we are placing the profit made by using them over the health of the human race. God gave us the planet as a garden to care for since it sustains us. I believe that destroying it for profit is an offense to God.

This is about more than money, it is about greed.

So let me remind you that it is true that the love of money, not money, but the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil. Don’t place money over God by hoarding money.

Again, Money itself isn’t evil. Loving it is. We need money to survive. And whether it is biblical or in accordance with the ideal economics that Jesus taught, we live in a worldly system that values the gain of money over the need of the community.

I am reminded that Jesus implies that this kind of attitude is sin.

And we are called to live differently than the world around us.

I am not going to end the sermon with the biblical command to care for creation.

I am going to end with sermon with the idea of care.

An alternative to greed and hoarding is using our excess to help care for others.

Loving others and caring for them keeps us from greed.

We, in the Church of the Brethren believe in a different way of living. The way of the world is greed, the way of Christ is the kind of care that leads us to be generous.

Let us be filled with care for others instead of greed.

Found By God

 

Text: Luke 15:1-10

Focus: restoration

Function: to help people see how God welcomes everyone.

15:¹Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

³So he told them this parable: ⁴“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? ⁵And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. ⁶And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ ⁷Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

⁸“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? ⁹And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ ¹⁰Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

I was reading in my morning devotions yesterday about the importance of knowing that God loves us.

The author, in her spiritual exercise asked us to close our eyes and imagine God speaking the words over and over to us until it finally sinks in as true that God loves us. Imagine God whispering in your ears the words: “I Love You.”

When I read this passage, I do get overwhelmed with the sense of God’s purpose for us and for the church. I had a board chairman who was also a deacon in the Church one say in Sunday School these words: “The Bible has one message throughout its book and it is this: God wants everyone back.”

This passage is about the effort of God whom sends the Spirit of God inside of us to lead us into paths of love and mercy for others and bring us back.

I want to start out with the concept of mercy as it entangles itself with God’s plan to bring everyone back to God’s family. (Not that they left, they just don’t know that they are part of it.)

The reason why Jesus tells these two parables about restoration is because they religious folks didn’t like with whom Jesus was spending his time.

Jesus deliberately choose to side with the outcasts in society. It should teach us something about what mercy looks like. I don’t know why some religious folks do not like mercy when we all depend on it for God’s favor because not one of us is perfect.

Religion can be either good or bad. When our religion leads us to love and mercy, the characteristics of God, then it is good. Jesus, by choosing to hang out with those whom society had rejected, demonstrates that God’s mercy goes to all. He contradicted bad religion with mercy.

For me, that command by Jesus from Matthew 7:1 when he says: “Judge not lest you be judged” he is saying do not judge others because then you will be held to a standard of perfection that you cannot obtain. You live in God’s mercy.

Jesus did a lot of teaching with words, and he also did a lot of teaching with his presence. With his presence in the midst of people who needed healing Jesus shows us how God takes the initiative to bring us back b y eating with sinners.

I believe that the Spirit of God is calling everyone to give up selfishness and greed and to learn to share and love others. We share mercy more than anything. God freely showers us with mercy and wants us to show that Love to others.

That is why John said that we love others because Jesus first loved us.

I don’t want to break the text down to far and make a point that isn’t there, but I notice that he makes two categories of people that were shown extra mercy. The tax collectors are one category and sinners are listed as the other.

Jesus only descriptions of sin always have to do with the way we show mercy and love to others. Even when he is talking about marriage vows being broken, has angst is at the way that people refuse to give in when they are wrong, refuse to honor the others as an equal partner in love or, refuse to forgive and care for one another. So, we don’t know who is actually meant when the text says he hang out with sinners, but I get the sense that it was a category of people that others judged like we see today when we hear judgment against our lgbtq brothers and sisters in humanity.

The tendency to judge others is part of a human nature that God wants us to control by extending God’s mercy and worrying about ourselves instead of others.

I think a big part of it is that we feel better about ourselves if we have someone to put down. Remember, God loves the person we criticize and wants to restore that person to love and mercy toward others.

So, the category of sinners are people we tend to judge. The category of Tax Collectors was different. Tax collectors were agents of the oppressive government that had virtually enslaved the Jewish population. They were hated by the people because the helped the enemy make their lives miserable. Simply put, we can categorize them as: The enemy.

Jesus hung out with people whom others hated. This is the part that convicts me: Jesus hung out with people on the different side of the political divide. And the division between the two sides was often violent.

And it has to do with the power of Love to overcome evil. Love conquers a multitude of sin.

And the power of love permeated the disciples relationships with each other and conquered the bitterness of the violence.

What I mean is that Simon the Zealot was what the Romans would have described as a domestic terrorist. The zealots were known for the curved and hidden dagger in their sleeves used to murder people like Matthew the Tax collector, another one of the disciples.

And yet Matthew survived his encounters with Simon because they had found something superior to human hatred. Matthew had to forgive Simon and Simon had to forgive Matthew and they had to forgive for offenses that they were willing to kill over. Don’t we need this kind of forgiveness today?

This plan by Jesus to spend time with sinners was what transformed them into people who claimed for themselves to have come back to the family of God.

This is how much God loves us. Prejudices, rivalries, bitterness are set aside to build a family. What a picture for human society!

The Joy of Salvation

 

Text: John 3:13-17

Focus: salvation

Function: to see God’s healing for the whole world.

¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

I love talking about God’s salvation for us.

And I also love talking about God’s love.

I think one of the most memorable sermons I heard was the preacher standing up and saying; “ You all know John 3:16, but let us start this message by saying together the first 4 words.”

Let us do that together, in unison: For God So Loved…

And then, as I often do, he built the whole sermon on the concept that everything about salvation springs from the fact that God loves us.

I love the way our passage ends in Verse 17 with an emphasis on the fact that God is not the God of judgment but of mercy.

Everything springs from the fact that God loves us. In 1 John 4:8 we read the words about God that say: “God is Love.” If God is love, then indeed everything springs from God’s love.

Verse 17 points out that God’s purpose in sending the Savior into the world was that we might be saved. Salvation is healing. It is restoration. It is God making us whole and redeeming the purpose and strength of our lives through the Holy Spirit.

Think about what you hear in your mind when you hear the word “saved.” I used to hear that I no longer needed to fear the punishment of hell because I was saved from the wrath of God.

But that idea of wrath is just not present in the passage. The idea of restoration and redemption are prevalent in the passage.

I think my confusion came from a misunderstanding of the way John the author uses the word aionios .

Throughout his writings John uses the word to speak of life with Jesus being a life that is without limits as the word implies.

It is a different word used that the word for abundant life, but I believe the meaning is still the same. Jesus came to heal and restore us to a better way of life.

This passage is in context of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, a Pharisee of important standing. Jesus has just got done telling him that in order to be one of God’s followers, one must be born from above by the Spirit of God.

One must seek the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. We call it being born again.

I suppose it happens many ways and differently for different believers.

For me, it was as I mentioned when I was four and I asked Jesus to come into my heart.

I didn’t know that he was already there. But it was a simple act of faith. It was an act of trust. I placed my trust Jesus.

So the passage say that this healing and restoration that God has for the world comes to us when we place our trust in Jesus.

For me, I take that to mean that I will follow the teachings of Jesus in my life and reject the worldly values of greed and selfishness that are contrary to living successfully in a community.

Through Jesus, God brought a different kind of Kingdom to the earth.

It was characterized by the baptismal vows that stated no difference between classes, races and genders, all are equal in God’s eyes.

When they were baptized that proclaimed to the world that God loves everyone and they were committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. Diversity, equity and inclusion are indeed Christian values and they were the values that transformed the society and brought about the healing that God wanted.

When the community of believers laid down their selfishness and adopted this new way of living, the Jesus way of caring for everyone else as well as they care for themselves, they proclaimed a message that resonated with people who were tired of striving against their neighbor to survive and instead joined a community that shared resources and cared for the least of these.

I am convinced that the healing to society comes when individuals rest by faith in the promise of God to provide for them. We live by faith and when we live by faith, we become generous people because we admit that it is God who has given us the power to be blessed and a blessing to others.

All of this is living by faith in the power of love for others so that we can obey Jesus. Jesus said that if we love him, I believe if we are grateful to him for his sacrifice for humanity, then we will do what he told us to do.

We live in a consumerist driven economy. In order for that economy to survive, we are bombarded with advertisement telling us that we are incomplete without their product or idea.
That same world we live in tells us it is okay to be greedy. It tells us more will make us happy.

And none of that works in bringing true happiness. Happiness comes to us from God and one of the ways is from the community that God has given us to support us.

Later on, in the John 17:20-23 we read Jesus’ prayer about extending the love of God to us in a powerful way. ²⁰“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Do you see? He prays that we may also be one with God as he is one with God. That is wonderful!

The joy of salvation is restoration to God and to others. It is God healing us by recreating us from the inside out, by the Spirit faithfully leading us to love others.

What Would Happen If?

Text: Luke 14:25-33

Focus: Community

Function: to help people learn the value of interdependence

²⁵Now large crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and said to them, ²⁶“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. ²⁷Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. ²⁸For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? ²⁹Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, ³⁰saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ ³¹Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²If he cannot, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. ³³So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Good morning to the beloved Children of God.

I am going to try to wrestle with this very difficult passage of scripture. I wonder what would happen if we took it literally? So, I am going to try to point out where Jesus takes literary license and exaggerates to make a point.

Jesus is speaking to us about our commitment to him and what we historically in the Church of the Brethren have called: “The Cost of Discipleship.”

I have a dear friend in the Church of the Brethren who is pretty modern, like me, in her thinking, but she still wears the head covering and dresses in plain clothes. I asked her about it and she said she was raised in the strict tradition and when she was baptized, to her, it was a part of her vows to dress in a fashion separate from the people in the world around her.

“Count well the cost” was the phrase that she reiterated often as she spoke of what it meant for us to follow Jesus in a world that celebrates selfishness and greed as positive virtues contrary to the teachings of Jesus, the Christ.

I have always wrestled with the translation of the word “hate” in the 26^th verse because we are called to love everyone, even our enemies and the idea of hating them is foreign to the believers ideal living. Don’t take the word hate literally, it is an exaggeration intended to make a point.

And I hope you understand that it is hyperbole. Jesus is speaking about our attitude toward following him in relationship to others and he is telling us to place our devotion to his teachings over our own personal passions and beliefs. He wants us to rethink things through the lens of his teachings.

He wants us to reorientate ourselves to his way of thinking and in order to do that for some of us we have to break with the concepts of selfishness and greed that the world teaches us. We have to allow those beliefs to die inside of us. The concept of dying to worldly values explains the harsh language in the passage.

One cannot successfully follow Christ and idolize one’s own possessions. We have to remember that even when we are blessed and successful because we have worked hard all of our lives and have been frugal, it was God who gave us the ability to do that. God wants us to be humble and believe that God is the one who has given to us our increase.

As believers who pray regularly for God to provide our daily bread, we remember that all that we have comes to us from God. So, to hoard our wealth to the harm of others is sin.

God wants us to be generous with what God has blessed us with.

I see this passage as an attitude check to help us understand a divine perspective about living by faith.

When Jesus tells us in perspective to love his teachings more than our own lives. Again, he isn’t telling us to hate ourselves or anyone else. The whole faith that we have is based on love, not hate. It isn’t: “love in contrast to hate” where we ourselves have to fight evil in a cosmic battle. No, it is love overcoming hate by love’s irresistible power. We believe the cosmic battle is already won and Jesus already defeated sin’s power to destroy and has set us free to love and prosper.

And Jesus said that we love him by following his command to love others. (John 14:15) That is why I say love his teaching instead of loving him. Loving him without following his teachings seems meaningless. Amos 5:21-24 tells us that worship without caring for the least of these is abhorrent to God. If we love God, we will love others also.

I believe that counting the cost of discipleship is an ongoing process and requires us to live lives full of change and redirection toward the divine calling of love.

When I came to Christ, it was through the promise that if I invited Jesus into my heart, I would have a relationship with the God who loved me.

It was a simple answer of faith done on July 4, 1961 by a 4 year old and I when I was telling my parents about it, I realized that I felt Jesus inside of me.

No one told me that I was committing to be a martyr. I didn’t think of taking up my own cross. The idea of making a commitment to allow myself to be martyred for my faith wasn’t something possible for a 4 year old to understand, imagine and consent to.

At 4, what I knew was love, especially from my mom when she kissed away the pains that 4 year-olds feel.

When I came to Christ, I came in order to know and experience the love of God. And my experience has been that God’s love for me and for others and for the whole world has become a life long journey where I see the circle of whom God loves just get bigger and bigger.

So, this is a passage not so much about sacrifice as it is about gaining a perspective on what is important.

I find that in living by faith and placing that one supreme command that Jesus gave in John 13:34 to love others reminds me that God will indeed take care of us.

When the passage concludes he phrase with give up all your possessions, he isn’t speaking of financial stupidity, he is speaking of living by faith in the fact that God is the one who provides no matter what our circumstances are.

Let us rest in God.