"The View of Life"
Pastor Harvey Brink
Bellevue CRC, Bellevue, WA
Text: II Corinthians 5:16-21
The words of II Corinthians 5 are going to introduce us to spiritual
warfare this morning. That spiritual warfare is not going to take place
some place in the Middle East. It's not going to happen in conflicted countries
in Europe. The spiritual warfare won't focus in Washington D.C. or Olympia.
The spiritual warfare is going to be going on in our hearts. The gentle
words of II Corinthians Chapter 5.
"Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have
a building from God, an eternal house in Heaven, not built by human hands.
Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling because
when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this
tent, we groan in our burden because we do not wish to be unclothed, but
to be clothed with our Heavenly dwelling so that what is mortal may be
swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose
and has given us the spirit as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come.
Therefore, we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home
in the body, we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight.
We are confident and would prefer to be away from the body and at home
with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at
home in the body or away from it, for we must all appear before the judgment
seat of Christ and each one may receive what is due him for the things
done in the body whether good or bad. Since then we know what it is to
fear the Lord. We try to pursuade men. What we are is playing to God and
I hope it is also playing to your conscience. We are not trying to commend
ourselves to you again but are giving you an opportunity to take pride
in us so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather
than what is in the heart. If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake
of God, if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ's love compels
us and because we are convinced that one died for all, therefore all died
and He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves
but for Him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on, we
regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ
in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he
is a new creation, the old has gone but the new has come. All this is from
God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry
of reconciliation. God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ,
not counting men's sins against them and He has committed to us the message
of reconciliation. We are therefore, Christ's ambassadors. As though God
were making His appeal through us we impoor you on Christ's behalf be reconciled
to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we
might become the righteousness of God." This is our second message on stewardship. There was a time when pastors
would call congregations to contribute a silent offering that was in contrast
to the noisy offerings of coins hitting the bottom of the collection plate. Silence was the preferred because those were the bills and the checks.
Now there are pulpits which resound with the sound of Visa cards being
validated, the click of multiple copies being created as folks sign off
their obligation to the church. The devil takes Visa too. With all the
mud slinging and the high sounding arguments in this most recent election,
the fact remains that for most American people, the economy was the thing.
We're sort of used to hearing that kind of message about the majority
of the American population. What about Christian people? Is the economy
the thing for us too? George Barn is someone who has devoted his rather
considerable intellect to better understanding the belief, mindset of
the American society. By way of summary in his recent compilation of statistics,
he tells us that one of the most penetrating and inescapable questions
that confronts Americans is, "Why am I alive?" Millions of Americans address
that question every day, consciously and unconsciously. The sad reality
is that most adults conclude that we exist simply for the gratification
of the flesh. Two out of three adults, 63%, concur that the purpose of
life is enjoyment and personal fulfillment. They have little sense that
we have been placed on earth with a higher mission, or to fulfill the goals
of an omnipotent God. In line with the secularization of the nation, Americans
typically view life as a temporary effort to obtain all the satisfaction
and pleasure possible during their tenure on this planet. Service, worship--
these notions have little if anything to do with why people believe they
inhabit the planet. You're probably saying, "what a break, 63% of the population
in general. That means that Christians must have a much better percentage,
right?" Sorry, 57% of evangelical Christian people believe that the reason
they exist is for their personal gratification. The problem with that,
my brothers and sisters, is that if that is our reason for existence, then
we are enslaved to material possessions. Just as surely as somebody put
shackles on our wrists and put a big ball and chain on our ankle, we are
enslaved to our possessions. If we really understand that the purpose for
our existence is to have more things, then those things create a cell and
the clanging you sound is the door of that cell closing behind your back.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Paul says, I don't want to view things that way anymore. I once did.
My whole life was driven by that kind of a conviction. In my case, I was
convinced that the possession of religious perfection was the goal of my
existence, but it was still a possession. By having that as the goal of
my existence, I was imprisoned by that goal, but I've been set free, Paul
says. I'm now a new creature, I don't view things that way anymore. I confess
to you my Corinthian brothers and sisters, I used to see things through
those kinds of lenses, but those glasses have been removed and I don't
see it that way anymore and I would urge you not to look at things that
way either. Do you understand why these simple, beautiful words might call
for spiritual warfare? It's because deep down inside of us, where our minute
decisions are being made on a constant daily basis, we have a strong tendency
to view things the way the world does.
I've listed four illustrations, four examples of the way the world views
our possessions and I think we've established the fact that Christians
have the tendency to view things that way too. What the world is telling
us is that our self-concept, our sense of appropriateness, our sense of
self-satisfaction is directly connected to what we have. If you don't have
much, you aren't much. The world says we exist in order to gratify our
self-centered desires and if you can't gratify your self-centered desires
then you have not yet arrived. You are probably of no account. What Paul
is saying to us is that we stop looking at things that way. We look at
things a different way. What the world suggests to us, first of all, is
that we live in order to consume. I exist in order to have more things.
When I was just a wee lad, we lived with such poverty and such want. There were many a night I crawled into my stone, cold bed with an angry
knot in my stomach and so now I can tell you, I'm going to eat everything
under the sun! There is not a buffet that will not turn my head. There
is not an opportunity to gorge myself that I will pass by. I will eat until
I drop. You fill in the blanks. I don't know what you had to do without
as a youngster, but if we live to consume, then our whole existence is
focused on the next opportunity to have more things. It becomes a frantic
treadmill, doesn't it? Always looking for some way to get something.
Maxine and I met a very stylish attired lady in Nordstrom's. Someone
we hadn't seen for quite a while. We were chatting about how things
were going and she was in a big hurry because she had just returned an
outfit that she has bought at the Bon-Marched. She was on her way to the
second floor at Nordstrom's so she could buy another outfit knowing full
well that she had returned and was buying because she had had a lousy day
at the office. She was feeling a little picked on and had to have some
stuff in order to put her fragile ego back into place. She liked those
two stores because the return policy is so liberal that you can buy an
outfit, wear the outfit, return the outfit and you can beat the revolving
charge. There was a panicky sense about her telling us these things, like
maybe she was trying to run to catch up with something that was so far
ahead of her. She wasn't even sure what it was she was following anymore.
Living to consume is a terrible way to live, but the world does it all
the time
The second thing the world says to us is that we've got to have choices.
What's interesting is that we didn't always have choices. As Christian
people for a long, long time we realized that our lives were given to us
by a loving, creator God who also redeemed us. Our choice was to recognize
the fact that He choose us, but along with Charles Finny the Christian
world was introduced to a brand new concept. We have a choice. We can choose
to serve God. We can choose where we worship. We can choose what we do. We can exercise as a sovereign right as human beings to choose what we
want, when we want it and how we want it. Boy, do we love choices. You're
blitzed with the same promotions that I am about 55 channels of electrifying,
educational television service. You can enrich your life beyond measure,
all you need to do is to sign up for the basic package and then the premier
package and then add on this and that and the other thing and you can begin
to view the world with all of it's choices! It boils down to essential
elements of poor, poorer, and worst entertainment. But we want to exercise
our options, don't we? We want to be able to choose this, or this, or this,
or this and if option #1 doesn't measure up to our expectations this week,
we'll go someplace else because we have the right to choose. Paul says
that's what the world would like you to think. The world would have you
suppose that we not only can choose between a couple of TV channels but
we have the ultimate freedom of choice, we have free will!
Tough to find that in here. It's essentially the world's point of view
that we are free, absolutely free and when the choice is yours to make
and the result of the choice is yours to bear, you find yourself in jail,
in the kind of cell that that ultimate choosing presents. If it's really
all up to us, then every decision we make is so fraught with difficulty
that we stand like the donkey between two bails of hay not knowing which
one to eat from. We starve to death because we can't stand the wait of
responsibility of our choices.
I've got to have more. I don't know if Esmarelda Marcos went barefoot
when she was a child, but she needed more and for her it was being able
to open her closet door and see those hundreds of pairs of shoes. She was
born and will probably pass away with only 2 feet. But, I've got to have
more. I signed up for one of those CD's of the month things. I began to see how
frequently they were giving me my options. It got down to every 12 days
and I said, "Enough already. I don't need more. I've got so much fine music
that I could do nothing to listen to music non-stop until the day I die
and not get bored". You realize, of course, that a couple of generations
ago our parents produced just about everything they needed to live. Now
I realize that the value of the dollar was substantially higher than it
is today, but there were people who lived with an annual cash income of
$10.00 a year because they produced what they needed. John Calvin said
we live in God's good earth and He has called us to reflect His creative
activity by producing that which we need. Calvinism has been blamed for
this exponential treatment of possessions that don't just produce but create
need for that which is produced. In the Industrial Revolution, the people
didn't just produce enough for themselves but produced enough for the whole
world. There were those who said, "Boy, we've got to create some needs".
There was a time in which advertisements were downright boring. You needed
to be wanting this thing that you were shopping for and the advertisement
said, this is what, this is what you pay, this is where you can pick it
up and this is how it will be delivered to you. There weren't any pictures,
there wasn't any pitchman, there was precious little sexual innuendo because
the idea of advertisement was, if this is what you need, then this is what
we'll supply. But when the Industrial Revolution began cranking up production
and there was enough for every man, women and child about six times over,
the pitchman said, we've got to start creating needs, otherwise we're going
to work ourselves out of existence. So, you've got to have more and more
and more.
A friend of mine subscribes to the Seattle Times and the Seattle Times
comes with funnies. He loves the funnies but he never has time to read
them. So he puts them under his bed where they stack up. He laughs about
it, but he says, "I've got enough funnies, I better retire soon or I'll
never read them". The world sees things that way. The world says, your
sense of self, your sense of permanence, your sense of completeness demands
that you have more of what you consider to be important and if you don't
have more, you can't compare yourself to somebody else and say, "But I'm
way ahead of him in the comic department". After awhile that stack of journals
that we have to read in order to get ahead in our position, that sea of
whatever it is we've accumulated, begins to become a burden, we drag it
around. Paul says, don't look at things the way the world does. You understand
that the bottom line here is the fact that the world is singing a siren
song and the refrain of the song is, you can have charge of your life.
You will be in control if you live in order to consume, if you have choices,
if you have more and more, you will be in control of your destiny.
We were sold a bill of goods a generation and a half ago. The best thing
about social security is its name. It gives the impression that all of
society is going to be secure. My grandfather lived on a farm all of his
life, worked a farm all of his life and after he sold the farm, he worked
for General Motors for about 10 years and at age 65 he started receiving
checks from the government. He had no idea why. He took this check to my
dad and said, "what in the world is this for?" My dad said, "That's Social
Security". "What? What kind of thing is Social Security?" "Well, the government
has agreed to pay you until you die." "What did I do to earn this?" My
dad being a slightly cynical person about Social Security himself said,
"absolutely nothing". My grandfather plunged right into the heart of the
matter and said, "How can they keep that up?" My dad said, "You probably
won't have to worry about it". So my grandpa didn't. He just put it into
the bank. It was a source of enjoyment and amusement to him that the government
should pay him for existing on money they didn't have yet. Social Security
gives us the impression that somebody is in control on our behalf, and then
by extension, we are in control and we look toward to our future with that
sure and certain knowledge that we will want for nothing. Except everybody
keeps telling us about how broke the government is and how Social Security
is in jeopardy and how it may never come to pass and how fewer and fewer
people are paying in and paying out to more and more people. Where in the
world is the social or the security? We find ourselves once again just
as the world never has paid off, in a prison cell of insecurity and anxiety.
Alienated all ourselves into thinking, I'm the only one that faces my retirement
years with inadequate income potential.
Paul says stop looking at things from the world's point of view. We
are new creatures now. We consume in order to live. In third world countries
and fourth world countries there is a standard greeting and the greeting
is, "Have you eaten today?" Sort of reduces this matter of consuming to
its appropriate place. If you have eaten today, you are warmed and fed,
if you have not, what I have, I will share with you so that we may eat
together. It recognizes the fact that in order to live, we have to consume
some stuff. God created us that way. It creates in us a sense of dependency. It acknowledges before Him that everything that we receive from His hand
is His gift to us and we need some of that in order to survive. Consuming
in order to live. We can hear the creaking door of our jail cell begin
to open and we can go past a buffet and say to ourselves, "I've eaten today,
I don't need to get my monies worth." Do you really want to live with the
implication that you are finally responsible for your choices? I can't
stand that burden. Thanks be to God. He has chosen me and in His choosing
of me, He has given me a place at His right hand, a place at His table,
a place in His family. His choosing of me has put all the other choices
that I have in life in the perspective of His loving care. Paul said to
the folks in Corinth (incidentally people in Corinth were really picking
on Paul, if anyone was liable to have a low self-esteem, it would be Paul).
These folks were writing letters about him. They were holding conversations
about him. They had petitions of recall about Paul. They were calling into
question who he was and what he did and for whom he did it. Paul says I
want you to know if I'm out of my mind, it's for your sake and if I'm straight
as an arrow, it's for your sake. I've been given a place, I've been given
ambassadorship, I know what I'm supposed to be doing because the Lord has
chosen me. Given me what I am and what I need and my sense of self satisfaction
is so potently the result of God's grace in my life that I wouldn't have
it any other way.
Maybe you read Kangaroo and Kangaroo to your kids. They had to have
stuff. Pretty soon they found themselves in the prison house of their own
dwelling. They had so many possessions, they believed they needed to have
more and more and more until finally they had to have the mother of all
garage sales in order to find room to live in their house. Paul says, look
at things from the standpoint of a new creature in us and recognize that
a hundred pairs of shoes are not going to make you walk any better.
We had a copier salesman stop here once. I don't think Mary Ann and
I will ever forget it. Probably the only time a Rolls Royce has been parked
in our parking lot. This salesman came breezing in the front office and
he almost clanked with the gold jewelry he was wearing and he wanted to
sell a copier to a couple of conservative folks like Mary Ann and me. By
way of introduction he said, "I specialize in the church market." 57% of
evangelical Christian people believe that the reason for their existence
is to please themselves. Maybe that's why driving a Rolls Royce into a
church parking lot helps you sell copiers to the office staff. But thanks
be to God. We don't need more to please Him or to have a sense of self
because He gives us the gift of who we are. You recognize how this touches
our spirituality? If we think viewing things from the world's point of
view that we've got to be more spiritual, that we've got to have more evidence
of our spiritual maturity, that we've got to do things better, that we've
got to be superior to others. If we are looking at some sort of treasure
chest of spiritual capacity in order to demonstrate to God that we are
worth His attention, then we are playing the same game and that treasure
chest, once we crawl inside of it, becomes our spiritual coffin. What God
says is don't keep those chests around because that's the world's view
of the way spirituality works. That's the exercise of religious priorities.
Recognize that I have established a relationship with you and in that relationship
I give you exactly what you need which is, "why am I and who do I serve?"
He's in control. He sets my life on it's course and He walks with me every
single day and the first steps He walks with me is out of that cell called
consumerism.
I'd like to ask you to practice some steps. The first step that I would
suggest is to do whatever you can do, little bit by little bit to get rid
of the interest you are paying. Paying interest is almost as painful as
paying speeding tickets. It is money that produces absolutely nothing except
the gratification of having stuff now. Save up for it. Don't pay anybody
8% or 12% or 20%. If you're a young person and you have you life before
you and you want to know how to manage your money, let me give you a financial
formula that can begin to set you free way down in here. The financial
formula is this. Find out what the interest rate is on the savings deposit
that you have created. Lets be extravagant and say it's 6%. Then you remember
this magic number, 72 and you divide 6 into 72. Are any of you mathematically
equipped people to tell me what the result is? Thank you. The reason why
this is magic formula is because when you divide the rate of interest that
you earn into 72, you find out how many years it takes for whatever your
saving to double. 6% compounded interest produces in 12 years a 100% increase.
Conversely, my brothers and sisters, when you are paying somebody in another
city who doesn't even know how to spell you name, when you are paying that
person 19.6% per annum, how long does it take for the stuff you have bought
to double in cost? 72 is still the magic number. Take 20 and divide it
into 72. What do you get? Some of you have done this before and you've
said to yourself, there is no way I am going to pay somebody 100% more
for what I have just bought and in only 3.8 years, it will cost me twice
as much! On your way out of the cell, when you stop looking at yourself
and your possessions from a worldly point of view on you way out of the
cell you say, "I'm going to use those cards for my convenience and if they
want to give me something as a bonus, that's their problem, I am not going
to pay them interest". Because the Lord is in control of our lives, we
can be in control of our finances.
There's a second thing I would invite you to do in your way out of that
cell. Do you notice how frequently "I" showed up on your outline this morning?
I do this, I do that. Stewardship means that we think in terms of we. We've
been created to be in community. We've been created to be in fellowship
with God. We've been created to be in fellowship with each other and what
I have and what you have are not two desperate realities, they are a continuum.
I've got to think about what I have in concert with what you are thinking
about what you have so that WE think together.
One of the most profoundly spiritually disturbing things that is happening
in American churches today is that people are saying because this is my
money, I will give it the way I want to and if I don't like what you're
doing, you don't get my money. If I want to influence you to do what I
want you to do, then you'll get my money. That's the way the world does
business. Paul says I don't want to look at things from the world's point
of view anymore. I want to view things like I've been made a new creature,
like Christ made me over from the bottom up, from the inside of my billfold
to the outside.
In the ancient world, people used to have to travel long distances to
get to their shrines, places where they met their gods. We've come a long
ways, we carry our shrines in our hip pocket. Next Sunday I'm going to
ask you to take this out and check out the shrine. Let's stop viewing things
from a worldly way. Let's be set free from our dependence upon our material
possessions to define our worth and our place. Let's let God tell us who
we are. You know what He says? You're my daughter, you're my son, you have
it all. Let's pray.
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