Our theme for this morning is Atheist Lives.
Atheist Lives.
One thing that we would all agree on,
and that is that Christianity is losing ground
throughout the world.
Large numbers of countries that were considered, in
some sense anyway, as Christians in the past,
say the United States and our northern European
countries explicitly, Canada being included, of course, are
now in the post-Christian world, with the
Christians being not just a small minority, but
a total minority in an absolute sense.
And then, of course, as the population of
the world grows, the proportion of those who
are Christians in any sense has decreased, and
surely among those who are named as Christians,
the largest proportion wouldn't be Christians at all,
it would be some kind merely of external
saints, or in relationship to a group where
the doctrinal position is not clear at all.
So here we stand now, in this place,
of all places, we wrestle with the question
of the Christian in the post-Christian world.
We discuss it, we talk about it, we
ask what it means in our art form,
how we are going to communicate.
We wrestle in the area of literature and
painting, poetry, so many different areas, looking to
see what's wrong with what is being presented,
and asking ourselves, how can we do something
in the midst of this post-Christian world,
and the decrease of Christianity in that world.
We mustn't ever talk about these things, however,
merely abstractly, we carry something with it, in
a very definite nature.
And I suggest two things are carried along,
if we are going to really show any
real seriousness about living in a post-Christian
world and being concerned for it.
The first one I'll mention very briefly, and
then spend time on the second.
The first one, of course, is that our
doctrinal position must be right.
The kind of thing that I would have
emphasized, is that Berlin Congress on the practice
of truth must also be right.
And that is, we must be united with
those who are holding a clear position, and
not confusing the thing by saying we believe
something, and yet showing that we really are
not so serious about it, by being united
with those who hold a position which is
anything but clear in its typical sense.
We can't expect to go out into the
post-Christian world with all its tough fiberness.
We just can't expect to do this, and
present an uncertain sound.
We can't go out in the epistemological world
today, where no one thinks that truth is
even thinkable, and then present less than a
practice of truth, and expect anyone to take
it seriously.
Surely this cuts like a knife down over
many of our questions of church affiliation, boards
we will work with, missions we will work
with, who we will cooperate with in what.
And it must be taken seriously.
The practice, the holding, and the practice of
truth.
But it must go deeper than merely being
orthodox.
And this is the second point.
It must go really deeper than being orthodox.
It is perfectly possible to be completely and
even obnoxiously orthodox, if I could express it
so, and still have absolute nothing in what
we present into the teeth of a tough,
the non-Christian, post-Christian world.
Not to diminish the necessity of the orthodoxy
either in what we hold, what we confess,
or what we practice in our cooperation.
But we can say we can do this
unhappily in such a harsh way, and such
a merely external way, that it has no
real meaning in the 20th century anyway, and
the orthodoxy might as well be non-orthodoxy
as anything as far as a real cutting
edge goes in such a generation as our
own.
Rather, we must go into the practice of
our orthodoxy.
Because, as you know, it is one of
my very strenuously held beliefs that every doctrine
is meant to be practiced.
That even such a doctrine as Trinity is
meant to be practiced in the concept that
we must show the seriousness of personality in
our daily living to show that we really
understand what the heart of the final great
beginning was and environment is, and that is
personal rather than impersonal.
So we must be practicing our doctrines.
In the midst of doing this, and therefore
practicing our doctrines, we must understand that along
with the orthodoxy there must be true spirituality.
And my thought in this direction would be
the last chapter, for example, in Death in
the City, the concept of two chairs living
in the supernatural chair.
But this morning, now, I want to take
it and look at it from the other
side.
And that is, look at it from the
side of something that stands in antithesis of
spirituality in the Christian's life, in the hope
that we might then, all of us together,
feel something more of what it means to
be practically spiritual.
And that is, I want to talk about
materialism.
Now, as soon as we talk about materialism,
of course, our mind falls in a place
like this, where many of us are philosophically
orientated and where we're trying to help some
of the rest of you who haven't been
to be.
It falls naturally into the concept of philosophic
materialism.
And it's perfectly true, of course, that philosophic
materialism stands as an absolute antithesis of Christianity.
If you have a philosophic materialism, religion can
only be a psychological or a sociological tool.
It all can be.
It can't really deal with truth, the real
sense of truth.
Or we might think, and we reject this,
of course, the Christian rejects this.
If he's a Christian, he cannot be a
materialist.
On the other hand, from a philosophic viewpoint,
on the other hand, many of us, our
mind would jump into the practical kind of
materialism represented by the communist count and the
communist world and communist philosophy.
And we react to this.
And we say, is this not horrible that
here are these thousands and thousands of people,
and especially the children, being raised in a
situation where the limitation of their view is
a practicing materialist.
And all this is carried with it of
the subordination of the individual to the state,
all these other things.
And we as Christians say, isn't that horrible?
So we say, oh, we're talking about materialism,
downward philosophic materialism, downward communist materialism.
But there's another kind of materialism which all
too happily, none of us perfectly, and all
too many others living this way, do practice.
And this materialism which the Christian often does
practice, tragically, and we all do sometimes, we
must acknowledge, is certainly just as much materialism
and just as much is practiced the antithesis
of true spirituality as would be, is practiced
now, as would be, let's say, the other
forms of materialism that I have discussed.
And that is simply our materialism tends to
be that we do live as he's lived.
That is, that most of us spend most
of our time and most of our money
in what is going to end in the
city dump, and we live this way.
Now, we must understand, in thinking of these
things, that material possession, let's begin this way,
though it's the least important, but let's begin
this way.
Here we are, we're going along, we live
in the midst of the affluent society, a
society that has, in the system, in the
establishment, in the syndrome, the concept that what
is really important is material possession.
And what is important is technology, in one
form or another, and the products of technology.
And, of course, even in the unbelieving world
today, there is coming a conviction that technology
is not always good.
We've given up our innocence in relationship to
technology.
We no longer think that everything man can
make, that he should make, because everything he
should, because if he made it, it would
necessarily be good.
So even in the intellectual world, in the
non-Christian intellectual world, there is a huge
discussion today of the problem of technology.
And this falls down in the area where
I've just spoken.
But I'm saying, do we really feel it
in our bones?
The understanding that material possessions, in themselves, are
not necessarily always good.
One should visualize that we came to the
emission field, first of all in 1948, and
even more, a little sharper, still in 1947,
when I first visited Europe, and went into
the various emission fields.
And, of course, Europe in 1947, and even
in 1948, was exceedingly poor.
And if you were working, except for a
very, very few, very, very few wealthy people.
So here you came into Europe as a
missionary, and you were confronted with a poverty
-stricken people.
And I was very struck in the misuse
of material things among some of the missionaries
in 1947.
For example, I remember being in Italy, and
maybe happily thinking of Italy today, there were
not many automobiles running around Rome in 1947.
But there weren't many there.
And then you would visit a missionary, and
he would invite you into a great big
American car, and drive through the streets of
Italy.
It was no good for the world.
It was a misuse of material possessions.
It was a complete denial, not only of
spirituality, but a complete denial of sensitivity.
To think that the big American automobile skipped
over a titanic expense on a boat, and
landed in the docks of, let's say, Genoa,
and driven to Italy, to Rome, would automatically
increase the missionary's effectiveness.
It didn't.
It diminished it.
It sunk.
It was awful.
And I just came back wounded with a
lack of sensitivity.
That there was a real materialism.
These people, some of them, would not have
understood philosophic materialism, but they were materialists.
Were they Christians?
Yes, they were Bible-believing Christians.
But they had no sensitivity.
They had failed to understand that material possessions
are not necessarily good.
That was true in 1947.
It was true in 1948 in Europe.
Another experience.
I mentioned many of them.
But I went to Spain.
And Spain in 1947 was bitterly poor.
But it was bitterly poor.
And I was invited.
People were living in the most dreadful ways,
except for the very, very wealthy, who were
completely up there, and in contrast to the
people.
And yet I was invited to a missionary's
apartment in Spain, in one place, which was
overwhelmingly luxurious.
It was tremendous.
It wasn't luxurious, mind you, in comparison to
what this same man would have had as
a pastor in America.
But it was just as luxurious.
He had brought all his luxury with him
to Spain.
I want to ask you something.
What do you think happened when he invited
the poor people of his community into that
apartment to give them a Bible study?
It would be a complete antithesis of anything
that would be useful.
It was the very opposite.
One could run down through these things.
Now, of course, there are still countries in
the world where this is true.
Many of the countries in the world where
this is true, many, many countries in which
you can't possibly make the people to whom
you talk believe that you're serious about trusting
your Father in Heaven and sharing your things
with your fellow men.
But in Europe, this is not so true
now.
Now, we, the shapers, are the ones who
are secure because we don't own an automobile.
So you come then to our own country.
And the missionary countries, this is what Europe
was in this other situation.
Now it is somewhat different.
These things do not stand out because the
Jewish people have no problem in Switzerland, let's
say.
But now when you come to this, we
must realize this isn't our problem in exactly
the same way in Switzerland and for most
of you coming from various well-developed countries,
not all of you, but most of you,
that isn't your problem back home.
You are not going to stink in the
presence of the people to whom you're trying
to work merely because you have an automobile.
In the midst of our own countries, whether
we're living here in Switzerland or whether we
are living in one of the other well
-developed and rather affluent countries, do we really
understand that even in such a situation, even
for this life, because now what I'm talking
about is this life, that even in this
life, material possessions are not necessarily good in
themselves?
Let me give you two illustrations from here
in Switzerland and then I'll come back here.
But when we first came, most of the
women still washed at the village pump.
And this was not just something you saw
and something that was on a picture postcard
for the tourists.
Very few women washed anywhere except at the
village pump.
When we first came, all these places you
see set up for washing were still being
used, very largely.
And as I came into Europe and I
saw these women getting cold, they were out
here in the weather, as an American, I
reacted.
And I thought, isn't it a shame?
Isn't it too bad?
Isn't it going to be wonderful if people
could just have more material possessions in this
life so that these women didn't have to
work at the village fountain?
I don't think this anymore.
I want to ask you a question.
Very often.
Here you have a woman and she works
in the fountain.
And it takes a lot of her time
to work in the fountain.
And it takes up a lot of her
day.
And she's there in the fountain and the
time all laid out nicely in the village.
She's with the other village women and she's
working away in the fountain.
She's doing her job, she's talking, and she's
here in her own cell.
It's a very human cell.
It's not necessarily better for a woman then
to suddenly have, let us say, I'll choose
my own country, the United States where she
has all these labor-saving devices where she
merely pops the roast in the oven, can
set the timer and come back at night
and the thing is all nicely cooked, theoretically
anyway.
Or pop a wash into the washer and
then it goes away and it comes back.
And she's being lonely.
If she spends her whole time just doing
nothing or if she spends her whole time
as a modern suburbian woman, most of them,
getting into trouble, wouldn't it be much better
not to have the material possessions and do
washing at the village pump?
I think so.
It depends what you do with it.
Material possessions are not necessarily good in themselves.
It's what you use the material possessions for.
The same thing can be true, the same
thing can be true with the women working
in the fields.
When I first came to Europe, all the
women worked in the fields and there was
no such thing, there was very little farm
machinery in Europe in 1947, 1948, 1950 in
Europe.
Even on the larger farms, most of the
work had to be done by hand and
surely so out here in the small farms
of Switzerland.
And I came and in those days cutting
the hay wasn't very hard.
I'm intrigued to see the little balers they're
making now, the bale hay.
This is a revolution.
But in those days, cutting the hay meant
somebody took the scythe, somebody turned it by
hand, somebody loaded the wagon.
It was hard, hard, hard, hard work.
And I saw these women out here working
with their husbands, turning the hay, sometimes doing
the hard work of pitching the hay, and
they didn't have to do this.
And I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful, repeating
the same, if they just had increased material
possessions.
And I changed my mind completely.
The women out here who work with their
husbands in the fields and then go to
sleep with them at night have the greatest
riches in the world.
What is more poor than our American situation
where the wife and the husband have no
share in the real life of the man?
Nothing could be more poor.
And the women out here who work with
their husbands have the greatest riches in the
world.
What is more poor than our American situation
where the wife and the husband have no
share in the real life of the man?
Nothing could be more poor than our American
situation where the wife and the husband Nothing
could be more poor than our American situation
where the wife and the husband have no
share in the real life of the man?
Nothing could be more poor than our American
situation have no share in the real life
of the man?
Nothing could be more poor than
our American situation where the wife and the
husband have no share in the real life
of the man?
Nothing could be more poor than our American
situation where the wife and the husband have
no share in the real life of the
man?
In other words, if you only take the
material possessions in the present life, if there
were no future life, this would be true.
But if you extend it into the biblical
perspective that we are never to live in
the perspective of the present life.
The Christian is a man who is to
live constantly in the perspective of the horizontal
extension into the life to come, a cause
-and-effect relationship between the now and the
then.
These are not separated, they stand in a
causal relationship one to the other.
What we do now has a result in
what will be the eternal then.
So therefore, as we look at the biblical
position, we must realize it is more that
we are told that our perspective concerning material
possessions is that it is not true that
you can't take them with you.
Did you ever think of that?
Everybody gives us a truism, you can't take
it with you.
It isn't true.
You can take it with you if you
are a Christian.
Let's look at some of the verses.
The liberal theologian, with his concept of realized
eschatology, and this would include personal eschatology, would
merely say this is an optimistic way to
stir up some kind of motivation for the
present life.
But that isn't what the Bible says, it
isn't the perspective of the Bible.
He only says that because he doesn't believe
the Bible and doesn't have the biblical perspective.
The biblical perspective is simply this, and that
is, as I said, there is a horizontal
projection from this life into that which is
to come.
Now, look at those verses where your Bible
is open.
Notice what it says.
You can lay up your treasure in one
of two places.
In one place it's going to rot away.
In the other place it'll never rot away.
You can lay it up in land, in
verse 19, or in the bank, or investment,
but the Bible clearly indicates it is just
as realistic and objective of laying it up
in heaven.
In other words, from the Biblical viewpoint, there
are two places where you can put your
treasure.
They're both equally real.
One is, it isn't just a psychological adjustment,
it isn't just inside of your head, it
is something very, very specific, that there are
two banks, and it's specifically from Jesus' viewpoint
as much as, though he said, the first
national bank, in opposition to the bank suite.
And you have two banks, and you make
your choice whether you're going to make your
investments in America or whether you're going to
make them in Switzerland.
And here you have two possible banks to
bank them in.
Jesus' mentality is exactly the same, the Christian
perspective.
There are two places where you can bank.
You can bank in the places in this
life, or you can bank in the bank
which carries over in a horizontal extension into
the days to come.
This is meant to be taken totally literally.
If you make it less than literally, you
reduce the Bible to merely some kind of
a pious, in the bad sense, expression.
And this is what it's meant to be.
Notice further in the book of Luke, in
the 12th chapter, verses 15 through 21.
Luke 12, 15 through 21.
And he said unto them, Take heed, and
beware of covetousness.
For a man's life consisteth not of the
abundance of the things which he possesseth, but
of the things which he possesseth.
And he spake a parable unto them, saying,
The ground of a certain rich man brought
forth plentifully.
And he thought within himself, saying, What do
I do?
Because I have no room wherein to bestow
my fruits.
And he said, This I will do.
I will pull down my barns, I will
build greater, and there will I bestow my
fruits and my goods, enriching his pleasant place
of store on the one side of the
ledger, on the ledger of the here.
Now Jesus goes on, and he continues, And
I will say to my soul, Soul, thou
hast much good laid up for many years,
take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merit.
Jesus responds, But God said unto him, Thou
fool, this night thy soul shall be required
of thee.
Then who shall those things be whom thou
hast provided?
So is he that layeth up treasure for
himself, and is not rich toward God.
A very strong word.
A man is a fool to lay up
treasure in a bank that isn't going to
last, when there is a bank that will.
Now, it's perfectly true that most of us
as evangelicals tend to use this as a
kind of an evangelistic verse, and say that
a man is a fool to lay up
everything in this life and forget that one
day he is going to have to stand
before the judgment seat of Christ concerning heaven
and hell.
And undoubtedly this is involved, it's not a
wrong use of it.
But let me point out to you that
it's not the only use of it, it's
not all that is met in it.
It is spoken for Christians as well as
non-Christians.
The man who lays up all his treasures
in the now, and is not consciously laying
up his treasures for heaven, either really doesn't
belong in heaven, or belong, pardon me, either
he does not really believe in heaven, or
he's a fool.
He's a real fool.
And Jesus is speaking here not only to
the man who spends all his time, like
some of our family, all their time accumulating
wealth, and we know they're going to die
and they're lost, and we cry out to
God for them, he isn't only speaking to
them, he's speaking to you and to me
if we are Christians, and saying, either we
don't really believe in the horizontal extension into
the future life, we really don't believe it,
or we're fools if we spend all our
energy laying up money in a bank that
is going to just leave it open to
the thieves instead of the place where it
really is going to count, where it's going
to count in time, where it's going to
count in the area of importance as well.
Thinking of this which Jesus says about thou
fools and this matter, and the verse, so
that he that layeth up treasure for himself
and is not rich toward God, let me
repeat again, and notice how Jesus' words fit
into this in Matthew 6, 19 and 20,
lay up not for yourself treasures upon earth
where moth and rust doth corrupt and where
thieves break through and steal, but lay up
for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth
nor the rust doth corrupt and where thieves
do not break through and steal.
Notice that these clusters, Luke passage makes one
thing, it makes one thing, the man, the
rich man who is a fool cannot be
applied only to the non-Christian, it must
be applied to us.
Notice in Luke 12, 33, the end of
the verse, Luke 12, 33, the end of
the verse, provide yourself bags which wax not
old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth
not, where no thief approaches neither doth moth
corrupt.
Notice again it's exactly the same thing as
the Matthew passage, Matthew 6, 19 and 20.
You can choose two bags.
It's as simple as this.
Jesus is being very explicit.
Here's a man and he's going to carry
35,000 francs in gold coins, and he
has two choices of bags.
One bag is made out of cheesecloth and
won't last very long and pretty soon the
coins will be drippling out as he walks
over the mountain field, let's say if he's
trying to get over the frontier in the
time of war, and he can choose a
cheesecloth bag and his money is going to
drip out, so by the time he gets
over into Italy or France or wherever he's
trying to go and he needs his money,
it will all be gone.
The other, he can get a good heavy
leather bag which when he gets there the
money is going to be inside.
Jesus is being just as explicit.
When we lay up our treasures, only in
this life we've chosen a stupid bag, we've
chosen a stupid, stupid bag, a container to
carry it in, in contrast to the bag
which is strong and light, and when we
get where we're going, because we're going someplace,
you know, we're really going someplace, when we
get where we're going, our riches are still
in the container.
This is Jesus, this is Jesus' balance here.
Notice how practical this is in the beginning
of that verse, so what ye have and
give on.
Now this is a very important thing to
notice, that the scripture does not make a
distinction between giving to those who need it
and missionary work.
To the Evangelical mind, money is given to
the Lord when we give to missionary work,
and I'm not minimizing the giving to missionary
work.
Certainly it is altogether true that Christians do
not give enough to missionary work, there's no
doubt about this.
It's shameful that a country like the United
States, a country like Britain, even with its
financial needs, gives such a small amount of
the Christian's income into God's work.
And God sold us for this, and we
will one day answer to God.
We will one day answer to God for
this, there's no doubt about this.
But let us notice that in the Bible,
giving to God is not cut up absolutely
to giving to missionary activity.
Remember, I'm not minimizing it, anything else, but
at the same time you can give to
God not only by giving to missionary work,
but giving to people who need it.
There is a very, very practical humanitarianism in
this scripture.
We have an importance to being our brother's
keeper, and not just in other areas, but
in his material needs.
You read in the book of James, the
Bible is very tenuous at this point.
It's a horrible thing for Christians to fail
to understand we have a responsibility for the
material needs of our brothers and of our
fellow men.
To love our neighbor as ourselves, even beyond
the Church, includes a care for his material
needs.
If the Church had remembered this and preached
it in the rise of the Industrial Revolution,
we wouldn't be in the mess we're in
now.
We simply have been poor.
We have been poor in our comprehension.
I do believe in capitalism, as long as
it's a biblical kind of a capitalism.
I don't believe in the state owning everything
and everybody being its slave.
But having said that, there is a very
peculiar kind of capitalism in the Bible.
It's a capitalism that cares for people, and
that is what we have forgotten.
The choice is not between a harsh capitalism,
which is hard and cold and unloving, and
not giving one care for anybody else and
amassing great fortunes, and on the other side,
a state owning everything.
The Christian choice is not between these two,
but a third thing entirely.
I know a man who has made $150
million, and he has a granddaughter who has
spit on the floor about the whole thing,
and she refuses to wear shoes.
I don't blame her.
What in the world can you do with
$150 million to keep to yourself?
You can't do anything with it.
It's ridiculous.
It's wicked.
And as you have here, we must understand
the biblical, biblical form of laying up our
treasures in heaven includes not only the missionary
giving, remember I'm not minimizing the missionary giving,
but they'll go somewhat hand-in-hand, too.
We in the Evangelical Church in our affluent
countries are poor in our missionary giving and
we're poor in our other use, our wider
use of money for God's purposes of caring
for people.
And I will repeat, I'll repeat, if the
Church has preached this message, and it is
a biblical message, just read the Old Testament,
if you loan something to a man and
he gives it to you as a collateral,
his cloak, be sure to return it before
night or he'll be cold.
It's a very, very special kind of capitalism,
and poor capitalism, let me repeat, in contrast
to totalitarian situations, either in rule or economically.
But it's got to be a Christian thing
or it soon becomes ugly, and really ugly.
Now notice Jesus has something stronger still to
say about this in the book of Luke,
in the 16th chapter, and now if we'll
read responsibly, Luke 16, 1-7, Luke 16,
1-7.
You will read this responsibly and then I'll
go on and give a quick exegesis of
8-14.
Luke 16, 1-7, and he said also
unto his disciples, there was a certain rich
man which had a steward, and the same
was accused unto him that he wasted his
goods.
Then the steward said unto himself, what shall
I do?
For my Lord taketh away from me my
stewardship, I cannot dig, to beg I am
ashamed.
So he called every one of his Lord's
debtors unto him, and said unto the first,
how much owest thou unto my Lord?
Then said he unto another, and how much
owest thou?
And he said, a hundred measures a week,
and he said, take thy bill and write
for a store.
Now let me say that the exegesis I'm
going to give is the one Alfred gives
for this, and I think it's right.
If you think another one's right, it doesn't
change anything about the message, however, because what
I'm going to say is certainly what the
Bible teaches.
But I think it's what Jesus is saying
explicitly here.
Now keep your Bibles open and follow along.
The 8th verse.
The Lord.
The confusion here often comes that people think
that this is Jesus speaking.
It isn't Jesus speaking, it's the steward's Lord
speaking.
So the steward's law commended the unjust steward,
not because he was unjust, because by this
time the unjust steward is a technical term
referring to the man.
If he had been called John Smith previously,
it would have said his Lord commended John
Smith.
Why did he commend him?
Because he had done wisely.
What he did was a wise thing.
What did he do that was wise?
Well, Jesus then takes and applies it, beginning
in the 9th verse, so Jesus' application begins
in verse 9.
And I say unto you, make for yourselves
frames.
How make for yourselves frames?
Why, by the wise use of the present
world's riches.
You are to make friends, says Jesus, if
you're going to be as wise as this
wicked man, who is wicked but wise.
You are to be wise, not wicked now,
but wise.
You are to be wise by the present
use of your money, that when you fail,
and I do think what's being talked about
here is when you die, they, who is
the they?
They are the ones of whom you have
been made friends by the use of your
money.
And these then now are pictured here as
already having gone before you, and they're in
heaven.
So therefore you are to use your present
money now in such a way that when
you die and when you get to heaven,
they are already going to be there, and
they will receive you into everlasting habitation.
They will receive you, that is, with joy
in heaven.
Very realistic.
It just happens that's the Bible's mentality.
The Bible's mentality is heaven isn't an upper
-story situation, it isn't an L.S.D.
trip, that heaven is just as real as
the year, that it is not merely something
you teach people so that they can stay
in the present problem, but you're really going
to be there.
And when you get there, it's just going
to be as real as this, that some
of the people you now know are already
going to be there.
And Jesus is pictured in something, and you
say it's simplistic.
I want to tell you, the Christian's profound
philosophy is not simplistic, but simple, and that
is that there is a continuity, a horizontal
continuity of cause and effect between the present
and the future, and the future is just
as real as the present, and when you
get there, you're going to meet some people
up there, and they're going to speak to
you about what you did down here.
And it's a nice thing to meet somebody
and say, thank you very much, thank you
very much for that money you gave to
me when my children were starving.
I didn't have a chance to thank you
then, but I thank you now.
And that's just what Jesus is saying.
Jesus is saying, be careful how you use
your money now.
Remember what he said to the rich man,
you're a fool if you don't keep this
in mind.
Remember what he said about the bags, you're
a fool if you choose a bag that's
going to be all leaked out by the
time they put you in a box, put
your body in a box, and bury it.
There's a way to lay up money now
so that you can take it with you,
is the whole point that Jesus teaches.
Now he goes on further, and he emphasizes
this in 10 and 11, he says another
facet.
He that is faithful in that which is
least is faithful also in much, and he
that is unjust or unfaithful or unrighteous in
the least is unjust also in much.
If you therefore have not been faithful in
the unrighteous manner, that is just plain money,
what jingles, who will commit to your trust
the true riches?
Any Christian ought to know, as we've covered
today, that the true riches would not ever
be just money.
And we're talking about, remember how we started
this sermon, and that is we're talking about
how to live in a post-Christian world
so we can see something accomplished in the
midst of the awfulness of the present post
-Christian world.
How can we do it?
Well, we need true riches.
We need spiritual power.
Remember what I said?
I was examining the fact that it is
not only necessary to be orthodox, but spiritual,
and I wanted to come to the question
of spirituality through the problem of materialism.
All right, now, what we need is spiritual
power, but Jesus is saying, if you don't
have enough sense to use money correctly, why
do you think you're going to be given
any spiritual power?
It's a very nice question.
The Church is saying, where's our power, where's
our power, where's our power?
Well, this is certainly at least part of
the answer, and that is, if we don't
know how to use even money with a
view in mind that what counts is eternity
and not the present, if we don't even
know how to use that this way, why
do you think God is ever going to
entrust to you spiritual power which can be
used in so many different ways, both positively
and in a way that is less than
it should be used?
Jesus says, don't be foolish, don't be foolish.
Why should God give you anything more if
you haven't got sense enough to use your
money correctly when you say you believe in
heaven and you believe you're going to live
forever?
Notice he carries this on into a different
phase again in verse 12.
He says, and, the priest says, and, and
what you have here is saying there's a
second thing, if you have not been faithful
in that which is another man, he shall
give you that which is your own.
No servant can serve two masters.
You notice how the whole thing begins in
16.1, a steward.
This was not the steward's money.
It was not the steward's money.
And our money is not our money either.
When Ellen stood up here today and said
she, Christ would be the Lord of her
life, and I looked to her, and I
said this would mean something for all of
us, that includes our time and our money.
Our time and our money are not exempt
from the Lordship of Christ, and it's his
money and it's not mine.
And what Jesus is saying is here, if
you don't use your money wisely, why do
you think anybody's going to give you something
that's more important and of more value and
more explosive, really, in its use or its
disuse?
And on the same, on the same hand,
if you don't use what's mine, why do
you think I'm going to give you anything
for yourself, for you?
If a son can't take his father's money
and get it to the store safely and
home safely, the father isn't very apt that
same way to increase the child's allowance.
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't go.
Now you notice, finally, he says in 13,
14, and this is the key to the
whole thing, shows what the perspective of all
these verses, the first verses, are, and those
serving can serve two masters, for either he
will hate the one and love the other,
he will hold to the one and despise
the other, you cannot serve God and riches.
And the Pharisees also, now these were the
Orthodox party, boy, they would fight for their
orthodoxy, but the Pharisees also, which were covetous,
heard all these things and they derided them.
They laughed at them because they really wanted
money.
So they were Orthodox, remember the Pharisees?
The Pharisees were the people who believed in
the resurrection in contrast to the Sadducees who
don't, but they love money and so they
don't want any part of it in Jesus'
teaching.
And let me say with some tears that
there are all too many of us who
are Bible-believing Christians who are also Orthodox
and we fight for the resurrection, but we
live as though the whole life is going
to be on this side of the grave,
as far as our material possessions and our
time and energy and our talents are concerned.
What Jesus is saying here is simply, and
notice again how it fits into 624, no
man can serve two masters, for either he
will hate the one and love the other,
or he will hold to the one and
despise the other, you cannot serve God and
riches, he has just said over this where
after what we have read so many times
now, lay up not for yourself treasures in
heaven, etc., etc., etc., he says here are
two irreconcilable reference points for life.
Here are two irreconcilable, yes, two reference points
that cannot be reconciled for life.
It can't be done.
It can't, I'm not going to try it
again.
It just can't be done.
You either live with one reference point or
you live in another reference point and you're
always at one reference point or the other.
One will be the overshadowing task of your
life or the other will be the overshadowing
task of your life, and then existentially at
every moment one of these will be the
reference point of your life.
It will be riches in this life or
the reference point of the reality of God
and the future.
And Jesus says if you've chosen your money
and your time and your talents and the
whole thing you've got, if you're living always
in the reference point here, you're not living
in the reference point there, and these cannot
be missed.
They're two totally irreconcilable reference points.
They cannot be done.
You cannot keep them together.
So we find in Matthew 6.21, for
where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also.
For where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also.
The bank where your bank.
The bank in this life or the bank
in the life to come where your wealth
is stored.
In other words, here is a spiritual thermometer,
and here is a test of the reality
of the whole thing to us at this
moment, whatever it is in our life.
If I say I am Orthodox, but I'm
only banking for this life, do I really
believe there is a resurrection?
Do I or don't I?
If I really, really am banking only for
this life, what is my spiritual temperature?
Well, I must say it must be counted,
if I'm banking only for this life, it
must be counted as something very, my spiritual
temperature very low indeed.
Now, in conclusion, let us notice then that
each moment we spend, each gilder, each mark,
each franc, each dollar that we spend, we're
either laying a treasure in heaven or it's
to end in the ashes.
Everything we do, every dollar, every mark, every
use of our talent, every use of our
time and our energy, it's being banked one
place or the other.
It's either being placed over there where we're
going to be someday, or it's being placed
in a thing that's going to end up
totally in the ashes.
And let me emphasize again, it's not just
the money we give to the church, quote
unquote, but it's the way we spend everything
we've got.
The question is not just what to give
away, but what to keep.
The question is not only missionary giving, but
to care for your fellow man.
And then how you spend, the mentality with
which you spend what you have.
You have a right to spend money.
Spend it on your family.
Don't start not getting guilt feelings in the
wrong place, because you love your neighbor as
yourself.
You need something.
You need some clothes.
You need some food.
And there's a time to buy flowers.
And there's a time to go on a
vacation.
But the question is your mentality and the
set of your mind and your reference point
in the whole situation.
I would invite you as we come to
the end of the message to join me
in the city dump.
Have you ever walked through a city dump?
Those of you who come from St. Louis,
Missouri and lived there in the old days
until when they hadn't yet put in the
smoke ordinances, everybody had their own dump in
the back of their yard.
Nice little concrete or brick dump.
And you would walk in the front of
the houses and they were terrific.
Really nice.
Then you go up to a place with
a driveway and you passed all the little
dumps.
You had to hold your nose.
You looked in and saw amazing things in
there.
Things that people have really been spending a
lot of their life for.
And now they were there just picking up
the city and making the smoke in the
street over the city.
Or even better, to go into a big
city dump.
A big city dump is one of our
great cities where they're burning this stuff.
And here they are burning it and burning
it and burning it.
You don't have to go so far away.
There's one between Egg and Olom.
And it'll do.
It's a small one, but it's sufficient.
And you just go and walk through the
city dump.
And I've had some very, very silver moments.
Because as I look into the midst of
the city dump with its smoke and its
stench, I see there almost everything that most
people spend their life for.
And that's where it is.
That's where it is.
Have you ever broken up a rich person's
house?
Isn't it pathetic?
All these things they've spent their life for.
I'm, of course, you know, I'd be the
last person to say it isn't worth having
beautiful paintings.
It's too much a part of the Christian
life, the aesthetic expression.
But it's the mentality and what you spend
your life for.
It's a tragedy to go to a person's
house who has spent their whole life for
the riches in this world.
And now they're dead.
And they could be a Christian too.
And the admonition of Jesus has come to
pass.
They've proved to be a fool.
Because everybody just takes it and carves it
away when you look at it.
And it's overwhelmingly, totally overwhelmingly pathetic.
God must point out to us where our
own follies in this area lie.
But purely just as the machine dominates, just
as the automobile dominates the world today.
I was just reading a thing on this
great art exhibit on the machine in the
Modern Museum of Art a couple of years
ago.
Someone sent me a catalog and I've just
gotten around to reading it.
And they're quite right that the automobile dominates
our culture.
The machine dominates the culture.
The automobile dominates the machine in our lives
because it touches more people's lives directly.
And if there's anything, anything, anything that exhibits
this folly, the absolute folly of living only
for this life, it's the automobile.
It's the automobile.
The thing to do is to go into
the showroom and see the pride with which
the man drives out his new automobile.
Deeply dilly, you know, the whole thing, and
preferably purple.
And he drives it out.
He drives it out.
And then go immediately from there to the
town automobile graveyard.
You ever do that?
I've done it just to feel it.
And I'll tell you, it's an experience.
If there's anything so ugly, it is the
automobile jumped on the American city street in
a bandwidth by thousands.
These are awful.
They're skulls.
They are screaming against all materialism.
I'm just saying, you're fools.
You're fools.
You're fools just as much at this point
as we unsaved man.
I had my own experience in this that
taught me a lesson.
We had our A Model Ford in Vietnam.
And we were married in it.
We had our honeymoon, not in it, but
in it.
We had our honeymoon in it.
I rushed to the hospital like mad to
get Priscilla born properly in it.
And we served in our first pastorate in
it.
And previous to that, I had courted Edith
in it.
And it was a very, very precious automobile
to me.
I wish now I had kept it.
I really do.
But I got paid the place where I
had to sell it.
The Catholic Church decided that it was going
to ransack for their pastor.
So therefore, I sold it.
And I bought a brand new second-hand
automobile to take its place.
And I've never been more filled with pride.
I was sad about my own automobile, but
this was really tremendous.
And I dilly-dallied home from the automobile
showroom until somebody passed me too closely and
scratched the finger.
And the whole joy was gone out of
it.
I never enjoyed that automobile again.
But I'm so glad.
I'm being very, very, very, very, very grateful.
That was one of the best things that
ever happened to me.
I suddenly learned how much riches change if
you just look at them in a slightly
different perspective.
And I want to say to you, some
of you who are trying to do some
kind of Art Expressions Master, guess the topic.
The topic would be meditation in an ashram
or old in a city dump.
Now, I'm not being humorous.
I'm being exceedingly, exceedingly, exceedingly serious.
A Christian may be to go from time
to time.
You just stand in the city dump and
see the stuff that is there that men
have spent their life on which has been
laid up in a bag with holes.
In a bank, there is nothing.
And on the other side, the bank is
increasingly empty.
Now, at this particular place, I'd ask you
to open your Bibles and read some responsive
reading.
1 Corinthians 3, 10-15.
I am not exaggerating.
This is the perspective of Scripture.
1 Corinthians 3, 10-15.
According to the grace of God which is
given unto me as a wise master builder,
I have laid the foundation and another buildeth
thereon, but let every man take heed how
he buildeth thereupon.
But, because it is but, but if any
man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious
stones, wood, hay, stubble, if
any man's work abide which he hath built
thereon, he shall receive a reward, safe,
but everything gone.
Safe, but everything gone.
Because things were laid up, were seized, bred
through, and stealed.
This is not only true of the businessman.
It is certainly the problem of the missionary.
It's the problem of the minister.
It's not only the problem of the individual.
It is the problem of the individual congregation
and the problem of the individual Christian activity,
organization, mission, or work.
And I'll finish with a story.
And that is, when we were in Champery,
the Lord enabled us, Betty Carlson, the Lord
enabled us to see a woman's wonder Christ.
He later led us to Betty Carlson, knowing
her, and then Betty's salvation.
And this was Baroness Von Dummerath, a very
important name in Germany, a family name.
And she was an old, old woman, and
she had spent her whole life in the
social circles of Egypt.
Highly placed, in the ecclesiastical circles of the
ambassador life there, and a very important person.
And she had had everything.
And she had lost everything, and she was
living in Champery on a dole from one
of her family.
And she was living there and looking back
over her life.
And we came and we met her, and
after some time she made a real professional
face.
And I'm perfectly convinced that Baroness Von Dummerath
is a real Christian, and we're going to
meet her in heaven.
Completely serious, completely certain about this.
But I'll never forget Baroness Von Dummerath.
After she saved, she sat and she was
crying, and I said, but why do you
cry?
And she said, because I remember.
But now I'm saved, and I've wasted everything
I've had.
And I could point her to the blood
of Christ and forgive me, but I want
to say to you, it's far more serious
for those of us who have been Christians
for years, and if we were honest with
ourselves, we would have to sit and cry,
because we don't have, we have practically nothing
waiting for us when we get there.
We've banked in the wrong bank, we've professed
one thing in our orthodoxy, and we have
lived another way in our life.
And Jesus said to the man, this is
the way you have lived.
Shall we pray together?
Now, Heavenly Father, we ask that these things
may have meaning to us.
They may not just be words.
They may not just be a sermon for
a Sunday morning.
Now, Heavenly Father, we would confess that every
single one of us in this place will
have something to tell you we're sorry for.
And Heavenly Father, for those here who are
still struggling with the problem of truth, of
Christianity, may they understand what a foolish thing
it is to live in a small circle
for this life and never, never, never really
come to grips with the problem of what
happens with a horizontal extension of death.
But, O Heavenly Father, for those of us
who are Christians, forgive us, and we need
the greater forgiveness.
We need the forgiveness, O God, of fighting
against the liberal theologians and insisting on a
resurrection and then living as though there is
no.
We need forgiveness, O Heavenly Father, for using
our talents and our time, as well as
our riches, really in a perspective as though
everything were only under the sun.
O Heavenly Father, forgive.
Forgive us, O Heavenly Father, and make us
to realize that it isn't just a matter
of individual reward either, but also that it
has something to say about why the Church
is so poor in the present world and
in the present post-Christian situation.
Why it is we do so little.
To understand, O Heavenly Father, that the real
reason comes that we exhibit materialism of a
crass sort when we express in our doctrines
that which is contrary to materialism.
Forgive us, O Heavenly Father, for how easily
we speak about communism, and yet, O Heavenly
Father, we live in a circle of materialism
in which we are bound by material things.
Remind us to be wise in understanding that
material things are not even always good for
themselves in this life, but to make us
to understand that once we look beyond this
life, that then indeed it becomes foolish to
lay up treasures only upon earth where the
thing is going to be drawn.
Help us, O Father.
Help us indeed to live this way.
Help us to live this way not only
for the lost world and not only for
our own good, but to realize that it's
the only expression, the only expression, that really
finally will give cutting edge to the fact
that we believe what we say we believe.
Help us.
Now, Heavenly Father, we ask in the name
of the Lord Jesus we may remember that
this is a part of following Christ, because
Paul, in talking about justice subject matter, points
out as an admonition that we are to
follow Jesus, he says, who though he were
rich made himself poor for our sake, but
surely in the circle of understanding the completeness
of all there is may we live this
way by thy grace.
We ask, O Father, that beginning this day
we may consciously take our talents, our time,
our energy, our riches and place them in
a bag that is solid.
And we ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.