What Are You Carrying to Heaven?
April 22, 2007
Good Morning:
In today’s lesson from 1st Timothy chapter 6 we are reminded that we can carry nothing of this world out of it when we go. The possessions of this life remain in this world and we are only left with those things that we stored eternally in the realm of heaven. Thus we must consider what is of real value to us as we progress through our brief stay here on earth. It isn’t what you gain in this life that makes you great but it is what you do in this life that makes you great. Many people who profess Christianity have completely overlooked this most basic teaching of Yeshua and look to Christianity to bring them worldly wealth. Some of have even gone as far as to embrace the concept of getting rich with God or prospering by his word. But we know that that is not what the message of our Lord and Savior was all about. Yeshua told the rich to sell all they have and give the money to the poor so that they could truly follow him. Take careful note that he told the rich to give the money directly to the poor not to the church. Paul goes on to tell Timothy “some have been led astray from the faith in their greed”. Now what does Paul mean by this? Paul isn’t just talking about those who left the ranks of the faithful to pursue business interests that would make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. No Paul is also talking about those of the faithful who are being misguided into believing they are following a righteous path when in fact they are not. Now you may ask how can one be faithful and not follow the path of salvation? So let me explain.
We must first and foremost remember that the Lord God Yahweh himself placed Satan in our world to deceive us and accuse us. Okay, so Satan has a role to fulfill and he can do nothing without the consent of Yahweh but what does that mean? Yahweh (God) allows Satan to be an adversary against us and to bring accusations against us before God (Yahweh) but he also rebukes him when he goes to far or starts operating outside of the boundaries God (Yahweh) has established for him. Let’s look at Zechariah 3:1-2 for a good example of Yahweh (God) exerting his personal control over Satan “And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist (accuse) him. And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” Here we have a perfect example in the verbal picture Zechariah paints of this event that took place in front of Yahweh (God). Satan had come to not just accuse but to demean Joshua of not being good enough to Judge God’s (Yahweh) people and God determined that Satan was going to far in his actions against Joshua, so Yahweh rebuked him. That is God reprimanded or chided him. This as an extremely accurate picture of the relationship between Yahweh (God) and Satan that has kind of been forgotten or pushed aside by “halleluiah commercialism” creeping into contemporary Christianity. The scriptural truth of God having full control over what Satan can and cannot do to us just doesn’t sell as many books as the Satanic deception that Satan is the arch enemy of God who can challenge him and steal you away from God. You know it just isn’t as romantic or mysterious to find out that Yahweh (God) calls Satan on the carpet from time to time and scolds him for not behaving. But it is true and because it is true we must reassess what has become a popular notions of what is good and what is bad. We must turn back to the scripture and the teaching of Yahweh’s prophets and messengers and cast aside the misinformation that is being spread by Satan, because if you don’t know the truth you can’t know if you are going astray.
Spending your money on bad things like drugs isn’t the only way money can lead us astray. Not spending your money on things Yahweh (God) gave you the money for in the first place is also a way of going astray. The thing is that most of us can’t see what we are suppose to spend our money on because we have closed our eyes and ears to the will and voice of God. God doesn’t speak with us in some elaborate code that keeps Satan from understanding. No Yahweh (God) speaks with us in such simple and easy to understand ways that we just simply ignore him, while we imagining he is going to give us some complex message decipher. Many people out of sincere desire to hear God find some sort of complex message that they think is from Yahweh and hang onto it for eternal life, never knowing that they have in fact attached themselves to a deception of Satan. Yahweh’s message to us is so simple and so direct that we can’t believe it. We are told by the Messiah to give to the poor, it is that simple. We are not told to give to the churches we are not told to give to the big organizations, and we are not told to give to the governments; no we are told to give to the poor. Paul in his letter Timothy reminds Timothy to explain this to the rich, “that they naught be haughty”. That is, they should not be self-important, exalted, or supercilious and patronizing. Paul goes on to tell Timothy to remind the rich that they shouldn’t trust in their money to save them in the future but they should be ready to help out those in need were ever they are found. See Paul already knew that many greedy people working under the spell of Satan’s smooth talking deceptions were already spreading false messages with the Messiah name on them. They were systematically editing, redacting, and banning the messages of the Messiah until they had just the few they needed to do Satan’s work and mislead the masses. But the deception to work had to be subtle. One couldn’t get up and say donate to Satan’s cause. No it had to seem to the layman that the donation was going to building the Messiah’s church. And it worked then and it continues to work even to this day in a much grander scale.
What does all this mean to me? You may be asking yourself. Look into your life and ask yourself are you trusting in your riches rather then in the Living God Yahweh? Are you afraid to do the good works that Paul speaks to Timothy of or are you sitting on the wealth that Yahweh gave you incase you have a rainy day? Don’t you trust your God to give you more when you need it? Oh you say I gave to the church and I gave to this charity or that charity. But what about your neighbor and I don’t mean only the guy next door? Neighbors in this context are those people that Yahweh sends to cross our paths to test our metal, to see what we are made of. Just like in the story of the Good Samaritan in the Judean traveler. God gives us money, food, clothing, and other stuff not only for our own use, but to make sure all of his children are taken care of. You know here we are in living in what is suppose to be the wealthiest nation in the world, yet we are the poorest of all Yahweh’s creation because we have forgotten the two greatest commandments. Love our Lord God Yahweh and Love our neighbors as ourselves. You don’t get to heaven by giving your donations to the local church. Not that it is bad to help pay for paper, heat, and other church needs but it isn’t the distributing God (Yahweh) is commanding of us. Yahweh is expecting us to use the gifts of money and other wealth to help those around us in need and who have not the resources to help themselves. Yahweh is watching you and does know what you do with his gifts, and just like he chastised Satan, as described in Zechariah so will he chastise you until you get it right.
Have you ever had all your plans go wrong? Maybe that promotion didn’t come through for you, or that house sold before you could get it, or some other personal disaster took place? When Yahweh speaks to us it is not in a secret code, it is in plain simple terms. All we have to do is open our souls to his voice and we can learn to follow his words everyday. Many of us, myself included, have had numerous chances over the years to help others around us. To distribute, the Lords wealth, that he is trusting to us. Most of us have failed at one time or another. I know I have. Yahweh doesn’t overlook these failings and he takes actions to correct us. Sometimes he gives us another chance to help that individual or someone else because he knows we innocently, like little children, just didn’t know what to do. Other times he takes away the wealth a little at a time until we hear him and turn from our erroneous ways. Other times we encounter major changes in our lives, that totally disrupt our vary existence in this world. Then we are again offered the chance to do the good work of a believing Christian. Some of eventually get it and actually see what God (Yahweh) has bee directing them to do and they go out accomplish the task. It is sad however that most Christians never hear him; they never open their souls to his voice. They exist in a world surrounded by their dollars but consistently unhappy and unfulfilled. They use the wealth of God (Yahweh) to impress their friends and colleagues; they waste away the gifts of salvation on the pretense of earthly satisfaction. Often their actions seem to make sense on the surface but when you look under the veneer it is easy to see that the so-called acts of goodness are really self-serving acts. People put in their lives by God (Yahweh) to afford them a chance to do good works suffer while Yahweh’s gifts a foolishly squandered.
In our lesson from Daniel 2 today we learned how Daniel was faced with true challenge of faith that required him to hear Yahweh’s words and act on them. Daniel didn’t need some silly book on how to pray in secret code, like one I saw once on the Internet, to speak to and hear from God (Yahweh) in a secret code that Satan couldn’t understand. Come on get real Satan can read any book you do, he has even read the scriptures themselves. No Daniel didn’t care if Satan was listening or not because he turned to Yahweh (God) and trusted him above all other things. He spoke to God (Yahweh) from deep in his soul and he got a straightforward and exact answer from God (Yahweh). You can do this also if you are willing to commit. You must commit yourself to doing Yahweh’s (God’s) works here on earth. You must recognize that all you have is his and you are just a distributor for him. If you truly love and trust in love him you don’t worry about your rainy day, you help those around you who are out in the storm. When he sees you doing that, things in your life will change. Those plans will materialize for you, maybe not as you originally envisioned but in a wholesome and fulfilling way. I know they have for me. Many people may look at me and think that Yahweh has deserted me, but I know he is blessing me everyday and there will be so many more blessings for me and opportunities for me to do his work in the future. It is not the size of the help you give others that counts to God (Yahweh) it is the completeness of it.
In closing I want to remind you of the words of our Lord and Messiah in today’s Gospel reading from John 8, “The father hasn’t left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” Yahweh (God) will always be there to help you through your challenges if he sees that you “remain in the word” of the Messiah Yeshua. The truth sets you free only if you open yourself to hear the truth and not the smooth spoken and oh so soothing lies of Satan, that so many of us seem to want to believe. So will you be carrying your heavenly riches to paradise or will you go empty handed with all your stockpiled riches left behind in this world as you meet the Lord? Amen