The American Christian
The American Christian
Bible Study Ecclesiastes 5:8-16
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A study on the oppression of governments and the use of the money the Lord shares with us.
Well, welcome. We're going to be studying Ecclesiastes chapter 5. We're going to start with verse 8, I believe, and try to work our way through verse 20. That was my goal, as it turns out. We did not get to 17 through 20, so we will continue and cover that the next time we meet. We're going to be talking primarily about two issues. One is oppression in government. And if you are living in the United States of America today, you should be very familiar with government at all levels oppressing many people as they that is the government forgets about the many freedoms that our Constitution gives to its citizenry, even though they all take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Most of them lie when they say I do. And what happens? We get oppressed. We get abused and they misuse their powers to crush the average citizen who just wants to try and live their lives in freedom. Somebody once said, you can boil down the conservative patriot comments to all this by saying these three words. Leave me alone. And those are good, those are three good words to think about because as we excuse me, as we read these first few verses in Ecclesiastes chapter 5, Solomon is going to tell us that that's exactly what an oppressive government does not do. They do not leave you alone. They want to control your lives, they want to take your money, and they want to limit your freedoms. They tell us, all for the common good. That's just another lie, another way of oppressing us. Then we're going to move from that to a personal introspective view, and that is how we are handling the money that the Lord has given us. We must always remember it's always his, it's always his money. He does bless us and give it to us. We work for it, but nevertheless, he's responsible for what we have. It's always his. And where do we put money in our list of important things in our lives? Is it one? Is it two? Is it three? It's up there for most of us, because most of us are you know middle, upper, maybe even uh a little bit better than that. We're very, very rich compared to the rest of the world, and we have to constantly remind ourselves what Jesus has told us and what we will talk about in this session, and that is we cannot serve two masters. For either we're gonna favor the one or the other. And that's so important for us to think about when uh when it comes to our incomes, and uh, we're gonna study that tonight. Um I'm indebted to uh the commentaries I use to uh uh help me gain um additional insight for teaching. One of them is a commentary by R. Kent Hughes called Preaching the Word, and uh and I've used one or two other commentaries as I uh go through uh this. So I don't want to take away from anything that they may have uh allowed me to understand, and so I just wanted to begin with that uh right away. So let's go into our study. Those last three verses, uh 18, 19, and 20 are very good advice from Solomon, and we're gonna be talking about that to some degree um as we get into this, but um it's not easy to do, and yet that's what we're called to do. As I as I begin this study, I'm gonna uh I'm gonna pass around this. It's actually it's a painting. It's a painting by a man by the name of Quintin Um Messez. I think I'm pronouncing that correct. He was a Renaissance painter, and this is very appropriate. What he painted here is very appropriate. It's called the Money Lender and His Wife. And I want you just to take a look at that for a minute and then pass it, pass it along, and we will uh talk about why that's so uh uh pertinent tonight to tonight's uh discussion. So beginning with verse eight, um as we just as we just heard it, um Solomon is going to be talking about the oppression that takes place in the government, and uh primarily it's of the poor. We've talked about this before in chapter two, and he says there's also a violation of justice and righteousness, a violation of righteousness as well. And he tells us don't be amazed by this, for the high official is watched by a higher one, and yet there are ones that are even over him, and then ultimately we've got a king over all of them. Earlier in our study, we talked at gr at at pretty good length about corruption in government, so we're not gonna spend a lot of time there again. But Solomon indicates here in this passage that this corruption should not be a surprise to us. While it is a necessity that civilizations and countries, and in our case, states and communities, uh uh need a government for civil law and civil order. Solomon states what is probably obvious to each and every one of us, and that is that the government is most often corrupt at many, if not all, the levels. Biblically, historically, we see this many times. If we were to study the kings of Judah and Israel, after Solomon uh had the kingdom ripped from him, the the single entity of Israel was divided into a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah. Um, we find that as we read through 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles, that there was there were in the kingdom of Israel, there wasn't even one good king. Not one. Now that was a period of 208 years. The dividing of the kingdom started in 930 BC, and uh Israel, again, which was the northern kingdom, it was the ten tribes. It ended in 722 BC. You do the math, that's 208 years, and it ended with the siege of a heathen gentile nation called Assyria that besieged all of Israel, the northern kingdom, because they would not repent and turn back to God. And he said, enough is enough. Twenty kings, two hundred and eight years, not one was a good king. And how does the Bible describe a good king? A king that does what's right in the eyes of God. Now, the southern kingdom Judah wasn't all that great itself, but there were some kings that did what was right in God's eyes. There were also kings that did not do what was right in God's eyes, and eventually Judah would fall to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. Again, because God had incredible patience. His patience is always merciful, but it's not always never-ending. It is with his children today, us, but it wasn't back then with his chosen people, the Jews. And um and they just wouldn't return. They would not return to him. And so with some good kings, but also some bad ones, God says, enough enough. God said, enough is enough. You're not coming back to me. And I'm done. I'm done pleading with you. I'm done showing. He's still gonna show mercy, even though Assyria crushes the northern kingdom and Babylon crushes the southern kingdom. There is still mercy in his judgment. But many were killed, many were taken away, and the nations were utterly overtaken by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. So when Solomon, and of course Solomon is writing Ecclesiastes before this stuff takes place, before the Assyrians do anything with the Northern Kingdom or the Babylonians in the Southern Kingdom. Um he wrote Proverbs before any of that happened. He wrote Ecclesiastes before any of that happened in the Song of Solomon. Um so one of the things I think we can look at or should look at is what makes a good leader. And this might not only be a good leader in government, it certainly will be. It will be a good leader in church, it will be a good leader at work, it will be a good leader in sports or any other type of activity that needs leaders. It will be good for us to understand what makes a good leader at home. What makes, in part, what makes a man who's a husband, what makes him a good leader of his wife, which is what he's called to be? Women who are given a lot of responsibility with the rearing of children, uh, side note there, it's ultimately the man's responsibility, the father's responsibility for that. But oftentimes while he's off to work, mom's got the kids. And what would make her a good leader? Someone to look up to, for the kids to look up to. The number one thing, of course, would be that they would be born-again Christians and that they would live by the word of God, that they would do everything to please Jesus. That's that's the ultimate, that's the ultimate answer to the question. Because we're all going to make mistakes as leaders, whether they're government leaders or in our home, we're not gonna do it perfectly. But after becoming a child of God and being put in a position of being a leader in whatever realm you might be in, again, home, work, play, uh, government, wherever, church, wherever it might be, uh, other than the incredible wonder of being a born-again child of God, which will lead you to do so much correctly, uh, because you're in the word and you want to please Jesus through obedience. What are some other qualities of being a good leader? And I've grabbed some from mostly from Proverbs. And so here's a quality of a good leader. A good leader is a hard worker, him or herself. Proverbs 1224 says, Work hard and become a leader, be lazy and become a slave. So be a hard worker. So if you're in a position of leadership right now, the people underneath you, right, are when you tell them, I want you to do this chore or that chore, this job or that job, they're gonna be saying, Have I seen my mom, my dad, my boss, my elected official, uh, the coach on the court, whatever it is, the elder or the deacon at church. Have I seen them working? Or are they just meeting out the jobs and sitting back here eating potato chips and chocolates? Be a hard worker. Number two, don't penalize people for honesty. Again, Proverbs 17, 26 says, it is wrong to punish the godly for being good or to flog leaders for being honest. And we see throughout the Bible evidences of men and women that would stand up to tyranny and anarchy. And even today, it could be biblical times, it could be times. There's a there's a uh pastor in Canada, and I've forgotten his name right now, and he would not shut down his church during COVID. He's been arrested a number of times. He spent days in jail. He still has court battles to fight, and he said, I will not stop preaching the word of God. I could care less about COVID. I could care less about the laws. You want to drag me off in handcuffs, do it. I'm not gonna stop preaching. You know, our beliefs are things that might change throughout our lives, but our convictions, they're things that we would die for. So we all need to ask ourselves, where are we with our Lord Jesus Christ, right? Certainly everybody in this room is a is a born-again believer. Have we made that commitment that should the nest should the necessity arise, that we're gonna be called to stand for him, has our belief turned into a commitment to him that we would it's it's unchangeable. It's a conviction that I've got, and no matter who comes after me or what happens to me, I'm standing. I'm standing on the Lord Jesus Christ. Um, and of course, if we look at our government, don't penalize people for honesty. It is wrong to punish the godly for being good. We can think of uh the uh the cake maker in Colorado, I think it is, or what yeah, you know, Jack, I can't think of his last name, and and the gal that had the flower shop that's lost everything. Um the government is coming after them and they won't back down. She's broke. She had no money left. They took everything. The fines, it's over for her, right? She's she's starting from scratch. Um they tried to break her and she wouldn't break. Now, you know, I'm sure she's had difficult times. She's probably in a difficult time right now, but she stood by her conviction. You know, I I will give I will send flowers to any wedding there is, but I won't send flowers to a gay wedding. Even though the guy that wanted me to do that has been a customer of mine that I've given sold flowers to for years. And same thing with uh Jack the the baker, right? I'm not gonna make a wedding cake for a gay couple. And he's fined and he's still fighting court battles, right? It's wrong to punish the godly for being good. If you're in leadership, it's wrong to do that. Our government does that all the time. It's a heinous sin that they do that. Also as a leader, listen before answering. Now, many times we'll ask somebody, maybe it's our kids, maybe it's somebody that's under us at work, could be again, once again, it could be anywhere where we're in this leadership role, and we'll ask them a question, and we've already got the answer coming out of our lips before they respond. Here's what Proverbs 18, 13 says. If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and his shame. Listen, pay attention. You have your mind open along with your ears to hear what that person has to say before you respond. Be open to new ideas. Most of us are stuck in our old ways. Don't like the new ideas, hate change. This has always worked before. Right? However, Proverbs 18, 15 says, an intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. So, you know, when we're in those positions, are we are we working with those around us to gain wisdom or knowledge from them? It makes us better leaders. Listen to both sides of the story. Remember Solomon when he's got the two women there that both say that the baby's theirs? He listened to both of them. He came up with an ingenious plan, right, to make sure that the true mother was was sought out. But he listened to both sides of the story. Proverbs 18, 17 says, the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him. Oh yeah, that sounded like an awful good explanation that you gave me right there. But wait a minute, we got to hear from the other side. And today, when you look at where our society is today, where our government is today, where Facebook is today, where uh up until the recent acquisition of uh Twitter is today, where um Instagram is today, say something that's against what's supposedly politically correct. Say something against the left. And you're taken off. It's if you don't agree with their point of view, they call you unscientific, biased, a homophobe, a hater, you know, a racist, whatever it is, simply because you disagree with them, but more importantly, you're right and they're wrong, and you have the right, we used to have the right in the United States of America to have our opinions heard. And the left doesn't want to hear them, and I'll tell you why they don't want to hear them, they'll never admit it, because they know we're right. When it comes out of the Bible, they can't fight it. And so instead of being they can't be smart enough to fight it, all the worldly knowledge on the whole planet will never be able to fight the word of God. So they know they can't beat it. So you know what they say? We're gonna shut it up, we're gonna turn it off. A good leader stands up under pressure. Proverbs 24, 10 says, if you fail under pressure, your strength is too small. And again, think about this all the way down to the home and up to Washington, D.C. And everywhere in between. The word of God, these Proverbs are applicable to all leaders. A leader stands up under praise. Proverbs 27, 21 says, fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but a person is tested by being praised. How do they respond to the accolades that they've earned, more than likely? How do they respond to that? Is it with humility? Is it giving credit to those that were around them that helped them accomplish what they accomplished that was good in the people's eyes? Now, what happens without good leadership? Proverbs 26.8 says that fools are honored. And again, think of our society, think of our culture, think of the workplace, think of our government. Proverbs 26.8 says, honoring a fool is as foolish as tying a stone to a slingshot. Pull the slingshot, the stone stays in the slingshot. Never does what it was built to do. It's worthless, right? And Solomon says that honoring a fool is just that worthless. And you know, we could check the boxes of the fools that are in government. It's our own fault that they're where they are. Because Christians for too long have said, all I'm concerned about is the gospel. I'm not concerned about the world around me other than the gospel, and so I'm not running for office. I'm not even going to vote because there's no because Jesus isn't on the ballot, so there's no perfect candidate, so I'm just going to sit at home. Well, this is what you get. This is what you get. You know, I don't remember who said it, but the statement of all it takes for evil to advance is for a good man or a good woman to do nothing. And that's what we've done as a church in America. That's what we've done. Not every individual in the church, obviously, but there is a multitude of them, so much so, guys, that in the last election, uh, people have said that if 25% of the born-again Christians that didn't vote would have voted, Donald Trump would have clearly been president. Um another thing that happens without good leadership: a wicked ruler becomes dangerous. Proverbs 28, 15. A wicked ruler is as dangerous to the poor as a roaring lion or an attacking bear. And you and I guys, you we we have the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we've got the Department of Justice, uh, we've got some major powerful portions of our federal government that have more power than they should have ever had. And you know who they're going after? You know who the DOG is going after? Well, I mean, we've got a lot of problems in this country, insurgents and terrorists and all sorts of stuff. You know who they're pinpointing right now? Those parents that are against the CRT theory in schools. The FBI and the Department of Justice is going after those people. They're going after the government in Texas for not allowing abortion to take place, willy-nilly, in that state. They're gonna fight that. We've got fools in office that become dangerous. They could blast through this front door, and there's nothing Sewerai could ever do about it. They hold all the cards, all of them. And unless they're good people, unless they're honest people, unless They're God-fearing people, what are they going to be motivated by? They're going to be motivated by the dangerous fool that's their boss. And that's how they're going to move. People groan. People groan when there's a lack of good leadership. Proverbs 29.2. When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked are in power, they groan. And a wicked ruler has wicked advisors. Last, I've got Proverbs 29, 12. If a ruler pays attention to liars, hmm. Biden, who really, if it was easier to tell the truth, he'd lie. Clinton? I mean, we got lies upon lies upon lies that have all been exposed. They'll never admit to it. But if a ruler pays attention to liars, all his advisors will be wicked. Try to find a cabinet position that Joe Biden appointed and got confirmed that's not a wicked man or a wicked woman. You know who's in charge of the Department of Health? I think it's the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. I think I've got this right. It's a transgender woman. Right? Who's the Biden administration now wants virtually all children to be able to begin um uh taking prescription drugs to change their hormones, to eventually change their uh sex from a from a uh humanist perspective, and they want that to be done without any parental uh say-so whatsoever. That's evil, guys. That's evil. There's no other word. We shake our heads and we say, I can't believe we're in this situation that we're in. But I I I'm gonna tell you, guys, and I'm not saying, and I'm part of the thing, right? I mean, I vote every time, I vote every time, and I and the only person that would never get my vote is a pro-abortion person. They could be right on everything else. This is just my conviction. If they are pro-abortion, if they're not pro-life, I don't care what that person says. You want to reduce my taxes, you want to do all these wonderful things, I ain't voting for you. But we need, we need to have candidates that are worthy of our votes. And so when somebody that we know is thinking about running for office, you know, we need to support them. We need to encourage them. They may not win, it doesn't matter. We're working for Jesus to try and change this country one little community at a time. Just as an example, for those that may not know, Rich Frazier is going to be running for the Webster School Board. So, what chance has he got? I'll tell you what chance he's got. God's on his side. Doesn't mean he's gonna win, but God's on his side. And he's publicly stated, I don't care what they try to do to me, I know what's right and I know what's wrong. Nobody's moving me. Now tell me you don't want that guy on a school board. When CRT comes up and all the other garbage that comes up in the school boards today. When we think about the layers of government, and incidentally that's what Solomon is really talking about here in these first couple of verses that we're studying, he's gonna dive down to us personally, but right now it's an overarching statement about government. So when we think about the layers of government and the evil that's within them, and there is no perfect government, right? We got a very bad one right now. But God ordains the governments that are in power, right? He recognizes that without government, there's chaos. We need government, we need the police people, we need the court system, we need the attorneys, we need all those people to keep law and order. So when we walk out our front door, we don't have to worry about somebody on the other side of our car shooting us dead and walking away and having breakfast. We need government, but God is going to hold all these people accountable for everything they did against the word of God. They will be held accountable. Unless they come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, He, the Lord, on judgment day, will find a merciful yet deserving place for them and hell to spend an eternity. He has allowed them to have incredible power. Whether it's Washington or Albany, the power obviously gets less as we reduce the size of the territory or Monroe County. God holds them responsible for every decision they make. And when Joe Biden and his ilk say, I want all you guys in here to pay your taxes to go in part to perform abortions for women that don't want them, that's evil. That's evil. And that's the course he's on. So when we think about the layers of government and the evil that's within them, it's very understandable that when fighting against these injustices, the guy or gal on the lower steps of the ladder rarely feel that they will actually ever receive true justice. There's just too much evil in all the layers. And it goes all the way to the top. But also, due to the depravity of the heart, think of this. If the poorest of the poor could find some way to garner a little bit of wealth or a little bit of power for them so that they're no longer on the very bottom rung, but now somebody's below them, they too might find that they would oppress even those that are below them. We are desperately wicked people. We are so depraved. We have no idea how bad, how evil we can be. By God's grace, most of us never got to that point, right? Before he saved us. But the heart left unchecked is desperately wicked. Desperately wicked. It is black with evil. True to the other arguments that we find in Ecclesiastes, the comment that Solomon makes once again on the oppression and the violation of justice is a very, very sad thing as we see it. We see people that, whether it's somebody standing up for their uh beliefs in Jesus Christ or just standing up for what they feel is right, and the government comes pounding and compounding, it's hard to beat them. They have unlimited resources, they've got our money. It doesn't make any difference how much it costs to take you to court, how many times you have to go to court to win the battle. You and I, we've got to pay the attorney every time we go. Unless we're blessed by having somebody like ADF or Thomas Moore Society or somebody like that come along our side because the case is so big and so important that they want to do that for us for nothing. But it's hard to beat the government. That's why we need to really be in a lot of prayer all the time. It is, this is Solomon remains in our face in the way that he's telling us how this world is under the sun. And yet it's realistic. Right? It's where we're at. This is the world we live in. Everything that we've discussed right here, there might have been some reminders in there, or there might have been some things. Oh, yeah, that's I never thought about that out of Proverbs kind of thing. But none of this is new to us. We're living it. We're living in it, we're living through it, we see it, we wring our hands, we scream at the TV, we pray that God would change these things. Because we know that this government and this nation is filled with injustice and unrighteousness because it has wandered far, far away from him and his word. And so what else would we expect? We're never gonna find morality coming from men and women whose father, according to Jesus, is the devil. Gonna find morality from them? Do you think the latest Supreme Court justice that just got nominated, you think she's got biblical morals? She doesn't have biblical morals. If you ever read any of the things that she has said or that she has done, she is stuck in a political climate within her brain that um everything that the she would agree with everything that the left says. Frankly, she didn't have the temerity to state what the definition of a woman is. Judge, can you tell me, can you define a woman for me? I can't. I'm not a biologist. Really? So you don't know if you're a woman or a man? You see how without God, guys, there's so many things we don't even think about, but without God, there's not even logic. We don't have laws of gravity and entropy and all other sorts of things that help make sense of the world that we're in. He holds the molecules together. He holds the nucleus of the atoms together. He holds the valence electrons next to the nucleus of the atoms. He takes that piece of wood, which, if you were to put it under enough of a strong microscope, would find that there's more gaps between the molecules of wood than there are wood, yet we can't put our finger through it. Who holds all that together? Colossians tells us in the very first chapter, Jesus holds everything together. He does so physically and he does so spiritually. And so without him, there's no hope that anybody they might trip over themselves and accidentally do something that we would say is morally correct, but they're not doing it because the Bible says it so. They're blind, remember? They're blind. They're blinded by the prince of this world, the prince of the air. The devil's got power, and he's got virtually everybody in our government, and therefore they are heinous oppressors to those of us that are good. Stand up and raise your hand sometime and say, you know what, I'm at a board meeting. I just want to say something. I think trying to change the sex of a seven-year-old kid is wrong, and I'll tell you why it's wrong, because God says in his word that he made male and female. That's what he made. And if you want to get with your electron microscope, you're gonna find that I'm gonna be able to tell you without looking at you, if I can look inside your DNA and I can find two X chromosomes in there, I don't have to see you. You don't have to talk to me, none of that stuff. You're a woman. And if I find an X and a Y chromosome all the way in that DNA, you don't have to say, I don't have to look at, you're a man. That's it. Choices are up. Choices are up. Say that in a board meeting. Right? I just watched a thing on T on YouTube. Uh there's an organization called uh Students for Life. They are the the woman, the person that has it up happens to be a woman, and she is as brave and as compassionate and as outspoken as you could ever imagine anyone, but a woman, especially, because you know, we look at them and usually say, well, they're more demure and that kind of stuff. No. She's filled with love and she's filled with compassion and she's filled with ideas and the truth of the word of God, and she just held a uh seminar loaded with pro-choice people in there. And I didn't watch the whole thing, but what I watched, it stayed, it didn't get out of hand. Uh but they were in her face, and she had a loving answer for every one of those pro-abortion people. And she's not going away. She's not going away. And that that pro-life contingency on the colleges and the universities in our country is actually growing. And the greatest opportunity we have as a nation to stop the the evil of abortion is to support and pray for and come alongside those young men and those women that don't care what anybody says, they're standing by their convictions. We need more of that. And you know what, Solomon, even in in spite of all this injustice and hatred for what's good and what's right, um, he doesn't tell us. Well, there is this um you know, utopian answer to all of these problems. Um he knows that under the sun we have to deal with these things, all right? Because Solomon, being a man, knows what's inside a man. So he tells us, don't be amazed at any of this stuff. And again, we aren't, are we? We might want better, and I hope we all do. But to see what's happening with the sons and daughters of the devil, as I said before, that are in charge, why would we ever be surprised? Do we ever think that they'll honor God in their leadership? And the answer is hardly. Hardly. They don't feel they're answerable to God. Verse 9 is a difficult verse to comment on because uh actually the Hebrew in verses 8 and 9 are not really well understood. The New Living Translation of verse 9 says, even the king milks the land for his own profit. The NIV says the increase from the land is taken by all. The king himself profits from the fields. The Amplified Bible says, after all, a king who cultivates the field is an advantage to the land. It seems, commentators aren't really don't fall on one side or the other, but it does seem that verse 9 is telling us that everyone, all the way up to the king, takes advantage of the wealth of the land that the Lord has given them. Now, verses 10, 11, and 12 at the least address the issue of the foolishness of reaching for riches. Additionally, um, again, as I already mentioned, the first verses uh uh eight and nine talk about government. Uh 10, 11, and 12 are going to work down to you and to me. And this is where we have something we can do about it, right? The subject of these verses should have our interest, perhaps primarily because we think we're immune from them. Why? Because more than likely, none of us here has boatloads of money, or would consider ourselves in the upper echelon of the wealthy. Therefore, we could very easily have a tendency to take the approach that these verses are not for us, at least not for us right now. But is that true? And let's just review those three verses. He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This is also vanity. It is a vapor. Here today, gone tomorrow. When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. As Jesus implied, when he warned us against making mammon a second God, he tells us to lay up our treasures in heaven and says in part this no one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. That's the ESV version. Love and hate, in in this particular instance, where Jesus says you will either hate the one and love the other, is a Jewish idiom. And an idiom is an expression of a given language where when you look at the sentence, you can't define each of the words in the sentence and come up with what that sentence means. Um, a good example of that would be like this. You I say to you, will you please watch so-and-so out there? And you say to me, Don't worry about it, I'll keep tabs on them. Or what's a tab? Right? It's an idiom. I'll keep tabs on them. It means it's an English idiom. It's an American idiom. And it means over time it's drawn the meeting that I'm gonna watch them, I'll keep an eye on them, I'll keep tabs on them. Yet if you looked up the definition of tab, you're not gonna find anywhere where it says you're keeping an eye on somebody, right? So Jesus' meaning in what we just read seems pretty clear. You're always gonna prefer one over the other. And Luke uses the same idiom in chapter 14, 26 when he says, where he says, Jesus says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even hate his own life, he cannot be my disciple. In other words, in Luke, if you prefer your own family members over me, then you can't be my disciple. If your love extends greater for them than it does for me, you can't be my disciple because I demand first place. He's not, Jesus is not telling us to hate our family members. He's not telling us to hate ourselves. Matter of fact, one reason we can come up with that is what's the second of the greatest commandments? Love your neighbors how? The way you love yourself, right? So, you know, Jesus knows we love ourselves, we look out for ourselves, we eat to be healthy. We everything we do, typically on a regular day in and day out basis, are things that will help to promote our well-being. So when Jesus talks about what he talks about about uh money or mammon and God, and he says either you'll hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and not to the other, that's really what the meaning is right here. You can't serve them both. You can't serve them both because you're gonna be divided, you're gonna be pulled. And this is the point that I'm trying to make where I say, you know, we probably don't think too much about this, but I want to try and bring this out so that we make sure that within ourselves, this is between you and the Lord, uh, and your spouse, if you have one here tonight, uh, how are we doing with serving God and serving money? You know, there's a story, and it is a story, there's a story about a farmer who one day came into his home where his wife and kids were, and he said, I've got great news. Our prized cow just gave birth to beautiful, perfect twin calves. And he said, You know what? Uh one's brown and one's white. But other than that, they're perfectly identical. After a few months, after I've tended to them equally over a few months, we're giving one of these to the Lord and the other one's going to be ours. And um, the wife says to the farmer, Well, which one are you gonna give to the Lord? He says, We don't need to come up with that answer right now because they're both identical now, and I'm gonna treat them identically in their upbringing as they grow up. Some months later, the farmer walks into the house and says, I've got bad news. The Lord's calf died. She said, the wife said, Well, how do you know it was the Lord's calf? He said, Well, you know, in my mind, I picked the white calf all along to be the Lord's baloney, right? It's a funny story. Uh, but there's a lot we can glean from this story, right? About promises of things we're gonna give the Lord and things change and we back off on them. Incidentally, if you want to think about doing that, go back to the first part of Ecclesiastes chapter 5, right? Don't make a promise to God and not fulfill it as quickly as possible, like some fools do. You know, I know a dentist, Sue knows him as well, uh, and his wife, that have given 55-0% of everything they earned, I think, since they've been married, to the Lord. 50%. That was the commitment they made to the Lord. Um, they'd made this commitment to only serve one master, and that master would be the right one, the Lord Jesus. We don't have to commit 50%, but in their minds, that's how they did it, right? And P. S, they've never lacked anything that they ever wanted or needed. Why? Because they amended their wants and needs according to what they had left, and the Lord had never. Let them down. And here, if we want to get into this, is how troubling can how troubling money can be. First Timothy 6, 9 and 10. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. You see, real contentment and material prosperity, honestly, even though we put too much into material prosperity, they have nothing to do with contentment. They have a lot to do with happiness, but they don't really have anything to do with contentment. But we're fooled. Don't we have a better time in our lives when we have money? But acquiring things has nothing to do with godliness. Because Paul says in verse 6 of that same chapter, he says this godliness with contentment is great gain. There's where great gain is. Godliness with contentment. Nothing else. And if we are juggling money or possessions against godliness, we find we are trying to serve two masters, and it won't work. Now, hear this warning from verse 9 in 1 Timothy. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap under many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. Greed has a way of causing people to look in directions that they might never have looked at otherwise. Now, you remember the painting? Where did the painting make it? Michael's got it? Just hold that up for a minute, Michael. There's the painting. Yes, thank you, Vanna. The title of that painting is on that piece of paper. It's called The Money Lender and His Wife. Okay? It's a famous painting. Until I was doing the study, I didn't even know the painting existed. But this came up, I think, on an internet search or somewhere. And again, it was by an artist of Quintin Massis, if I'm pronouncing his right name right. He lived from 1466 to 1530, a Renaissance guy. That was a long time ago, right? We're at 2022. But he confronts us with the choice that everyone must make between God and money. The moneylender, that's the wife's husband sitting in that picture. The moneylender is sitting at home with a measuring scale and a pile of money in front of him on the table, carefully assessing the value of a single coin. Yet our eye is also drawn to the woman sitting next to him. Was your eye drawn to her? What's she looking at? She's looking at what her husband's doing with the money. The book that's in front of her is probably the Bible. Okay. She is, uh, yet her eye is drawn to the woman sitting next to him. Uh she is leafing through a Bible, or maybe a book of spiritual exercises, which presumably may have very well been bought by her wealthy husband. We don't know that. Could have been a gift. She's having her devotions, except she's being distracted by all the money that's being counted. As she turns the page, her gaze is captivated by the coin in her husband's hand. He painted this image to make a serious point. We got windows open, Susie? Just that one. Isn't the one upstairs open, too? Oh, yeah. At the head of the thing?
unknownYeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So Nassis uh lived in a city, lived in the city of Antwerp, Belgium, which at the time had become a world center for business and trade. And he saw how easily money can pull our souls away from the worship of God. And I think from time to time all of us have felt this tension. We know that God demands our highest allegiance. And this came from one of the commentaries. We believe that nothing is more precious than the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of our sins, and the free gift of eternal life through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet we are easily distracted. Sometimes we would rather thumb through a mail order catalog, because we have the money, than listen to what God has said in his word. End quote.
unknownUh oh, nobody brought a quote.
SPEAKER_00So again, greed has a way of causing people to look in directions that they might never have looked otherwise. Think of the wife in the painting. Think of the wife in the painting. Loving the Lord, opening his word, flipping a page, whether it's his word or a spiritual book, we don't know. But yet her gaze goes off what's of most importance and goes on to the counting of the money. Those pursuing riches push the edge of the envelope. They turn a blind eye toward moral or ethical questions. They refuse to think things through. We don't have to be talking about how do I get a million? It might be a hundred, it might be a thousand, it might be twenty bucks that doesn't belong to us that we covet. We turn a blind eye toward moral and ethical questions. Or at least we have the very real possibility of doing so. We would refuse to think things through. Is this really right? Is this what God would want me to do and want me to have, as opposed to, I want. Those that are in that thought process are thinking about perhaps exchanging money for their biblical values. And then as they find themselves with more and more money, they find that the biblical rules they once followed are now ignored. What was once unthinkable becomes a normal way of doing things. So let's let's put the millionaire, I got a chance to cash a cashier's check made out to cash, right, that I found on my boss's desk, and let's bring it to you and me, more than likely. Um and and let the let the Lord do the convicting. Now, me, I'll just give you an example or two. Um I have an opportunity to work for somebody under the table. Um, it's gonna wind up, doesn't matter what the amount is, could be ten dollars, could be a thousand dollars, or anywhere in between, or over and above that. Uh he doesn't he doesn't want to hire me as an employee because he doesn't want to pay taxes and social security and Medicare and all that stuff. And so he wants me to take the money uh without without any taxes being tailored. He's just gonna pay me under the table. Um now all of you might not be convicted by that, but um if you are, um, or if that's an example that you can draw another one from you, um what would you do if you were convicted in that case? Would you tell him I can't work for you under the table, him or her? Um or would you say, ah, what's I could use the thousand bucks or the two thousand or whatever it is, what's the big deal? That's the cliff that we put ourselves on. Because if the Spirit of God dwelling within us is moving us to even have that thought, there's a reason for having that thought. Right? And that's because God is saying, you've got a choice here. This is another step in our Christian walk that needs to be guarded. And which way are you going to go? No, nobody's gonna find out. The IRS will never find out that you're being paid under the table. Uh, you don't have to worry about filing your income taxes and adding that income to it. Um, and frankly, if you said to yourself, you know what, I'm gonna take the money, but then I'm gonna report it on my income taxes. And when you put the employer down or the guy that hired you, that could be a red flag to the IRS that you were really an employee and then go after your friend, and now maybe you've got him in trouble. You see, we've got this web of deceit that we start, we start to weave. And those are the things that we might not have to deal with day in and day out, but they're gonna come across our desk, they're gonna come across our lives, and and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna have to deal with those things. Who are we going to serve? And you know, it really leads into more than that. I could really use the thousand bucks. I got a car payment, I got uh, I lost my job, um you know, what whatever whatever it might be. Um, and I and I really don't have the income I need to make my next payment of whatever that might be. Um and this is a way out from underneath it. And God will understand. God knows that when I bought the house, I had a job and I could make these payments, or he knew when I bought the car that I could make the payments, that I didn't get in over my head or anything. But now, you know, COVID's come and I've lost my job, I've been out of work for six months, the savings are gone, I've got no money, but yet I got a chance to do this. They're not all easy predicaments, right? Where would our convictions be? I think we know where they should be, but where would they be, right? Um and and when we decide, if we decide to go the route that is against serving God with the first of the greatest commandment, right? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. There's there ain't even a little gap in there, right? There's no wiggle room in there for me not to love him with everything that I am. We don't do it perfectly, we don't do it uh righteously, but that's that's the command he's given us. That's the number one command he's given us, right? Everything else falls underneath that one, along with loving our neighbor as ourselves. But you see how we start to rationalize the ethics? Well, God will understand. You know, I'm not stealing the money, I'm working for the money. It's just that it's not going to be reported and and and that kind of stuff. Um we're not trusting Him to take care of us. Because you know what we are? We're worried about losing what we've got. And it's a real anxiety. Nobody wants to voluntarily lose what we've got. But if it is a decision that you or I have to make, I'm gonna lose the car, I'm gonna lose the home, we're gonna have to find a new place to live, it's not gonna be the same, all that kind of stuff. And we cry through it and we weep through it and and we ask God why through it and that stuff. But when it's all said and done, if we love him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and our conviction is that we want to honor him and that we want to trust him, even though we don't see a way out. And we understand things might be different, but we're gonna rely on his love and grace in our lives. Then we make the right decision. Who gets honored? He does. He gets honored, he gets honored, and that's what it's all about. 1 Timothy 6.10 says that uh for the love of money is a root of all kind of evil. Notice it doesn't say that money is the root of all evil, it's the love of money. And, you know, we we picture this love of money as opening up a satchel filled with money and just throwing it up in the air and saying, it's mine, it's mine, it's mine. It doesn't have to be like that. Right? It doesn't have to be like that. A man by the name of George MacDonald wrote this. Very insightful. People who want to get rich, they're the wannabes, they fall into temptation. If it be riches that slay you, what manner if it be riches you have or riches you have not? You do not have to be rich to fall to greed. In fact, the danger may be even more intense for the poor. Some of the most greedy are those who once had or even now have so little. And this is apparently what happened to the one-time spiritual leaders who Paul references in the final portion of that passage that we read. Some people, eagle or eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. And from one commentary I wrote, the language, piercing themselves with many griefs, they said the language here is gruesome. It literally means they impaled themselves with many griefs. These things that Jesus teaches us that we can't serve two masters, that Paul tells us that the love of money is at the root of all sorts of evil, so much so that Christians fell from the faith because greed overtook their faith. And incidentally, that you know, one of the conditions for becoming a deacon or a uh an elder in your church is that you are not taken away by those things, right? That you are not a greedy person. And there's why. Be very careful. And we find that Solomon in this passage in Ecclesiastes is bringing us down the same road. So, some practical things as we end. When you and I look at our finances, where does the living, where does the giving to the Lord come in? I don't want an answer from anybody, right? Is it first? Or is it first when you have two healthy calves? Does your weekly or regular giving remain steady as long as your income remains steady? Proverbs 3, 9 and 10 says this. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce. Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine. Do we believe this? That dentist and his wife I talked about believe this. They've never wanted for anything. Does the guy live in a two million dollar home, even though he probably could have? Nope. Does he live in a home that was more than adequate for him and his kids? Yep. Did his kids have everything they needed to grow up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, clothing on their back, food on the table? Yep. Did they take time off and go to vacations? Yes, they did. They didn't go to Bermuda or Aruba, but they took time off to be on vacations. They never once thought about the fact that they couldn't do what so many other Christians were able to do with their money. Because they had made a commitment to the Lord to give what they decided to give. That is not a statement to anybody here of guilt. I'm just saying that when we look at Proverbs 3, 9, and 10, they believe that if they made this commitment to the Lord and fulfilled this commitment to the Lord with everything that they earned, that they wouldn't have to worry about a thing, and they never worried about a thing. We read in Deuteronomy 26, when you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there. And you shall go to the high priest you shall go to the priest who was in his office at the time and say to him, I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us. Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand, set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. Deuteronomy 26, 1 through 4. Why do you suppose the Lord is requesting first fruits?
SPEAKER_02Because they're all his anyway.
SPEAKER_00They are all here, all so that's true. Why wasn't he saying, uh, you know, and we'll get into this in a minute here, I think we've got time. Why the first fruits?
SPEAKER_02Well, it's not an idol.
SPEAKER_00So it's not an idol?
SPEAKER_02It's a testing of our heart.
SPEAKER_00Testing of our heart? To show that he's first in our lives? Yeah, all these all these answers are good and and they're right. Think about it from a farmer's point of view at that point in history. He works hard from sunup to sundown, day after day after day. He tills the soil, he plants the seeds, he continues to groom the fields from weeds as his crops start to grow. The sun has been warm, the rain's been plentiful, and so he starts harvesting his crops, and they're beautiful. Back then, there were multiple times when farmers harvested their crops. There wasn't just one harvest, right? There were multiple harvests. There was a perhaps a late spring harvest and an early fall harvest. There might have been a summer harvest, right? There was all those types of harvest depending on what type of crop he was growing. But now God says, I want the first fruits of your harvest. And the farmer says, but wait, this is a great harvest. What happens if it doesn't rain or the sun is too strong and dries out the next harvest? What harvest? What will I have left to eat and sell? And so the farmer chooses not to give the first fruits, but will give to the Lord after he's gotten all the food he needs to eat or sell. What's wrong with this picture?
unknownP.
SPEAKER_00S. It's done all the time. Let me see if I can wrap this up. Keep this in mind. Solomon is not advocating either poverty or riches, right? We know that the Lord has blessed very rich people. He's blessed very poor people and everyone in between. And this isn't uh this this this teaching, if you will, if you want to take it that way, is nothing more than trying to bring things to light that we may have, maybe passing over in our even in our lives right now. Remember the Lord's parable about the rich fool in Luke 12? Right? Man thought his problems were all over when he became rich. He was faced with big problems. I got a big build, have big build, I have to build bigger barns for all my wealth. He thought he was safe and secure for years to come, and that night he died. So his money provided him no security whatsoever. Those that are rich and those that are poor, both have their problems, both have their issues. And you know, guys, we may not consider ourselves monetarily rich, but if you look at the entire world, I don't know where we are, top 1% of all the people in the world. God's been very gracious to all of us, some more than others, but he's been very gracious as his perfect will would allow to all of us. Um I want to read this Proverb, Proverbs 30. Matter of fact, can you turn, if you have your Bibles, turn to Proverbs 37. So we're going to start at 7. Proverbs 37. Proverbs 30.
SPEAKER_03Verse 7.
SPEAKER_00Starting with verse 7. And I am going to ask Christian Christian Christian Chris Christian, if you will read verses seven, eight, and nine.
SPEAKER_03Two things I ask of you. Deny them not to me before I die. Remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me either poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me. Lest I be full and deny you and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.
SPEAKER_00Kevin, would you read that one more time? I think this proverb is so applicable to all of us.
SPEAKER_01Eight and nine?
SPEAKER_00Seven, eight, and nine.
SPEAKER_01Two things I two things have I required of thee. Deny me them not before I die. Remove far from me vanity and lies. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with food convenient for me. Lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain.
SPEAKER_00So for us tonight, obviously he's asking that he would not be a liar. It would not be one that states falsehoods. But he's saying, Give me neither poverty nor riches nor riches. Give me neither of those things, Lord. Just give me enough that I might live. And of course, we know Jesus says, you know, we're more, you know, God's got us covered, right? He's got us covered. He knows our needs. And the Bible tells us he will supply us our needs. And and this proverb is telling us, God, I don't want to be rich. I don't want to be poor, that I might wind up having to steal a loaf of bread or whatever it is, and and and and um uh use your name in vain, if you will, or drag your name through the mud. And I don't want to be rich lest I get to the point where I say, This is mine. I earned it. This is mine. No one's gonna take it away from me. And God plays no part in that picture. In the closing verses of this chapter, 18, 19, and 20. Well, I'll gotta say that for the next time. The goal here, the goal here tonight, guys, was to think about if we've wandered from giving the Lord what is rightfully his. We know that the New Testament says God loves a cheerful giver. And um in part, what I take from that uh verse is that if you're gonna give to the Lord, begrudgingly keep it. Keep it. Oh, brother, here it is again. Here's my tithe again this week. You know, we're not gonna be able to go to Disney now or whatever. Disney's a bad place now, but um are we giving him our first fruits? And of course, we're talking most specifically about our finances because that's what Solomon's talking about. But it could be about any part of our lives. Could be any part. Are we giving him the first see? In order, what God wanted the farmer to do by giving the first fruits, what he was, God, somebody said it here, it's all his. He didn't, God doesn't need the first fruits, he doesn't need a nickel from you or me to advance his kingdom, doesn't need it. Why did Jesus say in the Gospel of Matthew, you know, when he's talking to the Pharisees, you know, you you should uh you should have uh um continued with your tithes and offerings and and and done these other things as well. So we're called, as God would lead each one of us, to give to him on a regular basis. It should be our first fruits. Why? Because it forces us to trust him to to his promises toward us. If we say, God, I'm gonna give you what's left over, we're not trusting him. We're saying, I'm gonna make my way uh acceptable to me, and then, oh, look, I happen to have $100 a week left over, I'm gonna give it to him. And as long as this amount of money continues to allow me to live the way I want to live, not even need to live, but the way I want to live, then he's gonna continue to get this chunk of money. I'm gonna look pretty good because every week it's gonna be regular, kind of thing, and there you go. It's reverse. It's not the first fruit. It's it's it's harvesting the first fruits and saying, I'm gonna use it for what I want to use it for. I'm gonna sell it, I'm gonna use it for my own food or whatever. And then if he gives me another good harvest, then I'll give to him me first, him second. Heavenly Father, we just uh we again we thank you for your word this evening, Lord God, and we thank you, Father, that you know, one of the reasons you've given us your word is for correction. And uh, you know, Father, from time to time, I think all of us need to relook at those things that we do day in and day out, what our motivations are for them and where they are in our list of things that need to be done. Lord Jesus, you've called us to make you first in our lives, in all things and in all ways. And yet, you've left us here on this planet to be your witnesses. And so we go through all that everybody else goes through. We go through having plenty, and we go through having not so much. We go through health, we go through sickness, we go through joy and happiness, and we go through sadness and sorrow. And through it all, you continue to say, Come to me. Come to me, I will give you rest. I know what's best for you. Make me first in your life. If that's changed in any of our lives, Lord God, even if it's a teeny weeny little bit, remind us how you, Lord Jesus, feel about being lukewarm. May we be on fire for you. And if you need to tweak us a little bit in our personal lives, Lord, in our church lives, and our work lives, or anywhere else, Father God, please may we yield to your word and your will and not ours. May we not find ourselves rationalizing, making excuses for doing this or doing that. May we have the faith and love for you that if by giving you our first fruits, time, money, whatever it might be, that we knowingly have to do away with something, that we would be yet a cheerful giver. May our spouses be in agreement, Lord God, with making you first. May our family always, families always be in agreement with making you first. We love you. We know we don't do that perfectly, Lord God, but we love you and we want to do what you've called us to do because you've done everything for us. And so, Lord, for the remainder of this evening, we pray that we would continue to think about your word and how it might change us. We pray for a good time of fellowship. We pray in thanksgiving, not only for the food, but for the taste buds to taste it and the bodies to enjoy it and derive nutrition and nourishment from it, Lord God. It's all a gift from you. And so may we praise your name this evening, and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you for joining us. It's our prayer that uh as we studied the Word of God, that His Spirit guided and directed you and taught you, and perhaps as you pondering who's first in your life or what's first in your life, and to make the necessary changes if it's not Jesus. Until we meet again, may the Lord richly bless you and yours. Good night.