MONEY AND AN ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE

Contentment is the result of having our perspectives determined by Scripture and that to which God has called us. Contentment means that the greatest gain in life is to come to the place where Christ is more important than anything: more than things, more than money, and more than accumulation. Christ satisfies me most. Paul says, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils (I Timothy 6:10). If we are controlled by our desire for things and money, what are we willing to do to obtain those things, and what does that do to our spiritual lives? Our love for Christ and our focus upon him is replaced by greed and covetousness. This is why covetousness is a form of idolatry. We love things more than we love Christ. We worship the temporary things we crave, things which will not bring contentment, while ignoring the one who can bring the greatest contentment, the one who is eternal. A Roman Proverb said, “wealth is like sea water, so far from quenching a man’s thirst, it intensifies it.” The more he gets the more he wants and more he is willing to do whatever it takes to obtain it. He becomes more and more willing to compromise his principles.

PREACHING WITH PASSION

This past week I took a continuing education class with a well-known theologian and seminary professor. He spoke of the Scripture's reference to that which is of "first importance" - the gospel (I Corinthians 15:3). He made this observation which he had learned in forty years of preaching and teaching. Those who come to hear him preach and teach will not remember everything he preaches and teaches. What they will remember is the passion of his heart which will come through in his preaching and teaching. What is most important to the preacher? Where is the heart of the preacher? The gospel is central in all of Scripture. May the gospel capture our hearts and be the passion of our lives.

SERVING WITH AN ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE

Yesterday I preached from I Timothy 6:1-2 on the subject, "Work as Worship and Witness." In his commentary on the pastoral epistles, Gordon Fee makes what I consider to be a very significant statement, that applies to much more of life than just our work: “The instruction that they ‘should consider their masters worthy of full respect’ tends to strike a discordant note to twentieth century ears, especially if such masters were pagans and unworthy of ‘all honor’…Paul’s instruction is quite in keeping with the entire New Testament understanding of Christian behavior as essentially reflecting servanthood (cf. Mark 10:43-45; I Corinthians 9:19; Galatians 5:13) and of Christian existence as basically eschatological – the form of this world is passing away; as an eschatological people, our present status is irrelevant (I Corinthians 7:17-24, 29-31). Therefore, precisely because it is essentially irrelevant, one may live one’s present status in loving obedience”

Gordon Fee, NEW INTERNATIONAL BIBLICAL COMMENTARY, I AND 2 TIMOTHY,TITUS, pages 137-138.

CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

"Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.

In this wise does one, whom God has placed in common life with other Christians, learn what it means to have brothers. 'Brethren in the Lord,' Paul calls his congregation (Philippians 1:14). I am a brother to another person through what Jesus Christ did for me and to me; the other person has become a brother to me through what Jesus Christ did for him.

The fact that we are brethren only through Jesus Christ is of immeasurable significance.

Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what the man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us.

The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity. "

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together