Have you ever played the game called
“Would You Rather…”? We played it as kids and I played it just the other day
with one of the youth. You make up your own questions but it goes something
like this. Would you rather be fat and have a nice face or have a nice body and
be ugly? Would you rather fight Superman or Batman? Would you rather have
hiccups the rest of your life or feel like you need to sneeze and not be able
to the rest of your life? You get the point. It’s always something horrible and
every time somebody asks me that question, I think, “I don’t want to do either
one. I would rather you quit asking me those questions.”
What is it about kids that like to come
up with those horrible scenarios and make you choose which one you would rather
do? Well, I have one for you. I want to ask you a question and I want you to
think about which one you would rather do. But I will just go ahead and tell
you that only one of these is a horrible scenario and yet it is usually picked.
The question is, would you rather serve God or serve yourself?
Now, that sounds like a pretty easy
question to answer sitting here in church this morning, doesn’t it? Nobody
would dare answer anything except serve God. And the rewards of serving God are
so great and the consequences of serving yourself are so bad that I’m sure we
would all say that we would rather serve God. And yet, if you think about it,
both are going to be difficult sometimes. Both are going to involve a struggle.
Serving God sometimes means doing without something or giving something up.
Whereas, serving yourself can be pretty
fun sometimes. Even the Bible admits that sin can be fun…for a season. So, you
really have to look at the long-term benefits to make an intelligent choice.
And unlike the kids’ game, this is real life and you have to make a choice. And
choosing not to make a choice is still choosing and the default setting is
always serving yourself. So if you say you are not going to make a choice then
you have chosen to serve yourself and not God.
The problem with serving yourself or
going after only what you want in life is that it’s sort of like trying to fill
up a bucket that has a hole in the bottom. You can get everything you want and
as you get it you are putting it in that bucket but the bucket never ever fills
up. In fact, the more you put in, the bigger the hole gets and then you need
more and more and more but you are never content. You never will be.
But Luke 6:38says that when we
serve God, “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over,
will be poured into your lap.” Some of you understand that more stuff, more
possessions, goodies, toys, clothes and things do not have anything to do with
your contentment. And some of you have learned that the hard way by having
stuff and then losing it. And some of you have learned it…also the hard way by
not having it and then getting it. And either way you have learned that it is
not stuff or lack of that defines your happiness and contentment. It is your
relationship with Jesus that brings contentment.
Because I love you, I am going to
preach a brief, traditional Christmas sermon this Tuesday night, Christmas Eve.
It will be great to bring a friend or neighbor to. But also because I love you,
I am not preaching a typical Christmas sermon today. Because I love you and I
am desperate for all of US to learn the secret of contentment, especially at
this Christmas giving season, I want us to continue in 1 Timothy chapter 6
at Paul’s writings about money, stuff and contentment.
You can spend a lot of money and time
preparing for Christmas and have a miserable time if you are expecting the
gifts under the tree to bring lasting happiness and contentment. Christmas day
won’t even be over yet and you will be wondering, “Is this all there is to it?”
You’ll say, “All that work and all that money and this is all I have to show
for it? That wasn’t worth it.” But next year you will get sucked into the
advertising and the guilt of not giving your loved ones the latest and greatest
and Satan will just sit back and let you go, laughing all the way.
So, let’s turn to 1 Timothy and read
chapter 6, verse 11 and 12.
“But you, man of God, flee from all
this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and
gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life
to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of
many witnesses.”
Just like water runs
downhill and follows the path of least resistance, most people want to take the
life path that is easiest that will get them to the place they want to
be. All things being equal, people will take the shortest and easiest
route to their goal. The problem is…all things are not equal. Some
people have higher goals than others. Some people are born with more or
better resources to help them reach their goals.
Some people don’t want
to be obedient to God’s standards because they think it is too hard. They
think you can’t have fun and that the Bible is just one big book of “No!
Don’t do that!” True believers, those who have a relationship with God through
His Son Jesus, feel the same way about those who don’t. I don’t
understand how people can get through this life without the help and
encouragement of the Holy Spirit that lives inside us. How can you have
joy and peace outside of faith in Jesus? I don’t know how people get
through the difficulties that hit all of us without knowing God and
fellowshipping with a local body of believers like this church.
But whichever way you
go; whichever route you choose it is going to be a struggle if you want to
reach your goals. The passage we just read tells us that there will be
work involved. It will require some effort to reach our goal of –as Paul
might say – knowing Jesus better and better. The good news for us is that
the more and better we know Jesus the more contentment we have whatever our
present circumstances might be. And doesn’t everybody want that, to be
content?
There are three things
we need to see and do in this passage and they all require that we put out some
effort. There is a time to be still and know He is God and there is a
time when we are seeking the prize of contentment that we need to flee, follow and fight.
The first part of verse
11 says, “But you, man of God, flee from all
this…” Flee from what? Paul tells
Timothy in previous verses to be on guard against greed, the love of money, material
possessions and the desire to be rich. And it is these things that he is
saying to flee from.
I looked up the word “flee” in my
mongo-jumbo concordance and do you know what? I didn’t really learn a
thing. It means to run. Get away. Put some distance
between. Put up barriers to. Do whatever it takes to get away from
and not be a part of the slightest shadow of impropriety when it comes to
earthly possessions or money. It’s not wrong to have stuff or
money. It’s wrong to lust after it or to go after it in ways that don’t
honor God. And if it doesn’t honor God then FLEE from it.
Have you ever heard of the curse of the
lottery? If you track past big lottery winners there is a definite
pattern of suicide, divorce, depression and even bankruptcy for the winners and
their families. It has become so obvious that people have called it a
curse. It’s not a curse. It’s what naturally happens to people who
do not flee from the trap of the love of money.
Paul says earlier in verse 10, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of
evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced
themselves with many griefs.”
They have pierced themselves with the lottery. Flee from it. Stay
away. Paul wasn’t telling Timothy to flee from this stuff because having
possessions was bad. Paul didn’t want Timothy or the church there or this
church to get hurt in the quest for more and better things.
In Mark chapter 10
Jesus talks to the rich young ruler. The man was sincere in wanting to
know how to be saved. He sincerely wanted the contentment that came from
following Jesus. And what did Jesus say? He didn’t take him through
the Roman Road or use Evangelism Explosion or say what Kirk Cameron says.
He didn’t even tell him the Gospel. Isn’t that odd? He told him to
sell all of his possessions. Not because possessions were bad. But
possessions had possessed him and Jesus knew that you can’t serve God and
money.
That rich young ruler
walked off with all of his stuff but no salvation and no contentment. And
if he was like most people, he didn’t start off wanting to be filthy
rich. He just wanted to have enough to be happy and content. But as
always happens, one thing led to another and the man was caught in the
trap. The trap, as it says in verse 9, which plunges men into ruin
and destruction. Now isn’t he just the picture of ruin and
destruction? Jesus told him to flee from all that stuff but it was too
late for him. He couldn’t give it up. It was too much to ask.
So, Paul tells Timothy
not to even go down that path. He tells him to flee from that kind of
thinking and lifestyle. But he also goes on to tell Timothy that not only
should he not go that way but he tells him which way he should go. If you
wanted to get instructions on how to get to Fort Worth, would it be helpful if
I told you not to go that way? Well, yea, but it would be more helpful if
I told you how to actually get there. That’s what Paul does in the next
part of verse 11.
The King James says to follow
after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and
meekness. In our quest for contentment, we are to flee from the love of
and lust for money and stuff and we are to follow after these things.
Some of you know what it means to pursue or follow after. Some of you
guys are only here because at some point in your life you followed a cute
little girl to church. You were pursuing her and wound up in
church. It happens all the time.
But your pursuit took
some effort, didn’t it? You got dressed up when you went to see
her. You washed the car, put on cologne. You probably even put
cologne on the car, right? You spent some time and money on her.
You listened to her. You looked deep into her eyes. You laughed at
her jokes. You would call her up just to say you were thinking of
her. You complimented how she looked even if it wasn’t her best.
Aren’t you glad all that is over with now? J
An older couple was
sitting on the couch when the woman gently took the man’s glasses off and said,
“"You know, honey without your glasses you look like the same handsome
young man I married." "Honey," he replied, "without my
glasses, you still look pretty good too!"
For too many, marriage means
you can quit trying or at least you don’t have to work so hard anymore.
You got her. Now you can relax and be yourself. But it doesn’t
really work that way does it? It doesn’t work that way with your
relationship with God either. If you want to be content with your life
and with what you have or don’t have, then the secret is to have a vital and
growing relationship with God through His Son Jesus. And to do that, it
takes some effort.
Paul is telling us the
secret to contentment right here. He says to flee from the pursuit of
stuff and, instead, to pursue righteousness. Do you want
righteousness? Righteousness, for us, means to live according to God’s
will. If you want to pursue living according to God’s will then you will
do what it takes to stop doing that thing or things in your life that God calls
sin.
I want to give you some
advice that my uncle gave me years ago. I want you to think about that
favorite little sin of yours; that thing you do or think or whatever it is you
do that displeases God. You have struggled with it for years but it’s so
hard to stop. You want to but well, you know…
I do know so let me give
you some advice. Are you ready? STOP IT! Just stop. Do
whatever it takes to pursue righteousness. Your stiff neck and hard heart
are an offense to God and people who offend God are not going to be
content. Pursue righteousness.
Pursue godliness.
Do you want to please God? Then become more like Him. What is God
like? That’s a big question because He is a big God but for one thing,
God is holy. And do you know we are commanded to be holy? We are
commanded to be different than non-believers. We don’t do the same
things. We don’t go the same places. We don’t use the same
words. We don’t even think the same thoughts because our minds have
supposedly been transformed.
Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able
to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Don’t conform to the pattern of this world because the world has proven itself
to not be content. Pursue godliness and holiness.
Paul also says to pursue
faith. He says to follow after faith. Forget acquiring stuff and
pursue faith. And how do you pursue faith? You pursue faith by
putting yourself in position for God to do something that only God can
do. What would happen if you doubled your tithe? This is one thing
that God says you can test Him with. And I don’t bring up money because
the church needs it. I don’t bring it up because God needs it. I
bring it up because you need it. You need to pursue faith and money is
where your heart is. So pursue faith.
He continues by saying
we are to pursue or follow after love. And that sounds easy enough,
right? We love everybody, don’t we? We even love
non-Christians. Except when they say something bad about Duck
Dynasty!!! Then the gloves come off! Now they messed with the wrong
guy! Now comes the fiery wrath of the righteous!
Ok, look. I have a
lot to say about the whole Duck Dynasty flap going on with the gay and lesbian
crowd all worked up but I don’t have time to talk about it now. So, I
will just say: stand up for what you believe, speak the truth, but do it
in love. And don’t be surprised when non-Christians act…like
non-Christians. They will know you are a believer when you pursue love.
Uh, oh! Do you see
what the next one is? Paul says to be content, we have to pursue, or
follow after, endurance or patience. Thomas a Kempis described
patience in these words: "He deserves not the name of patient who is
only willing to suffer as much as he thinks proper, and for whom he pleases.
The truly patient man asks (nothing) from whom he suffers...But from whomever,
or how much, or how often wrong is done to him, he accepts it all as from the
hand of God, and counts it gain!"
Did you catch
that? He accepts it as coming from God. If God is truly in control
then your lack of patience in anything is really a lack of patience with
God. To be content, we have to be patient with God, knowing that He loves
us and wants more than anything for us to be like Him. Because, as we
have already learned, when we are godly…we are content.
And Paul ends this list
with the word “gentleness”. We are to be gentle if we are to be
content. It’s sort of like the chicken or the egg question. Is a
person content because they are gentle or are you gentle because you are
content? I don’t know but they obviously go hand in hand. And do
you know where gentleness comes from? It comes from confidence.
Some people might think
it’s just the opposite, that a gentle person is a scared person, but that’s not
true at all. A gentle person has confidence, not in themselves
necessarily, but in the fact that they are a child of the one true King and as
such they are highly favored and greatly loved, protected and provided
for. And no matter what comes their way, they don’t have to get upset and
call names and throw a fit because God is at work in their life, giving what
they need and taking away what is not needed to make that person more like
Him. And when you realize all of that, how can you not be content?
Let me end with this one
last point. We have seen that we are to flee from the love of money
and possessions and those they do not make a person content. But that
contentment comes from following after things that make us more like
Jesus. And lastly, we are to fight the good fight of the faith as
he says in verse 12.
Do you think of this
life as a fight? Ephesians 6:12 says that our battle is not
against flesh and blood but against Satan and his schemes. People we
should be gentle and loving with. Satan we have to fight. And every
fight is a struggle. It’s a battle. There are no time outs, no
vacations and you have to put out some effort or you will lose that hard-earned
contentment.
The good news is that
it’s really God’s fight. That same passage in Ephesians never says we are
to attack or do anything except to prepare ourselves and then to stand.
Stand behind God and His Word. Stand on the promise of contentment that
comes from serving God and not yourself this holiday season.
In the fifth century, a
man named Arenius determined to live a holy life. So he abandoned the conforms
of Egyptian society to follow an austere lifestyle in the desert. Yet whenever
he visited the great city of Alexandria, he spent time wandering through its
bazaars. Asked why, he explained that his heart rejoiced at the sight of all the
things he didn't need. http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/c/contentment.htm
Do you know what God
wants for Christmas this year? He wants you to be more like Him. And
that does not happen sitting in front of a new TV or iPad or iAnything.
There’s nothing wrong with those things. There’s nothing wrong with
having nice things or lots of stuff. And not having all that stuff
doesn’t necessarily make you content. Only a growing relationship with
Jesus will ever do that. It’s not about the stuff. It’s about
Jesus.
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