Pastoral Letter 127
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and peace to you all.
It seems like COVID and the flu are looming yet again, threatening us and our COVID restriction-free days. Fortunately, restrictions are not put in place, and we hope they won’t be again, as we are moving towards a pandemic-free future. Wearing masks is encouraged and please feel free to use one during our services and activities. Unfortunately, Wendy and Ken have been infected and are isolating. We wish them a quick recovery.
We’re now looking forward to our much-awaited Market Morning. After a two-year hiatus, we are back and the next week will be a busy time for us, for Virginia and our team. I am sure that by God’s grace we will have a successful program and good results as usual. Please be ready to do your utmost to support us as we are missing some of our usual active members.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love and let us know if any member of the congregation that you know of needs our help and prayers.
If you will not be able to join us at our face-to-face service, you can worship with us at home. Please light a candle and follow the attached Order of Service.
Here are some more prayer points for this week:
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for those who are unwell and struggling with different kinds of medical issues.
- Pray for the Demirchian family in Artsakh as they struggle to have the minimum to sustain their lives.
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
- Pray for the hope that God gives.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Best Regards,
Krikor
MESSAGE
Our Priorities – Rich in God!
What’s Important in Life?
Luke 12:13-21
The passage from Luke that we are going to be looking at today helps us to look at our lives and ask ourselves: “What’s really important in life?” Our scripture tells the story of a man who had more than plenty and what he did with his bountiful blessings.
This passage is very relevant to us today because most people in Australia have made their priority in life the attainment of enough money to live the good life. This country is a blessed one, with one of the highest living standards in the entire world, though recent statistics show how far the inflation has gone in recent months. Having possessions is good and necessary as long as it does not become a sin.
In the passage we find Jesus sitting and teaching His disciples and many were there just listening to Him teach. He was trying to teach His disciples to fear God alone, when a man suddenly interrupted who was not trying to learn what Jesus was teaching, but he was only concerned about his own problem. He asked: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
I’m sure Jesus stopped what He was teaching and looked over at this man and then said: “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?”
Jesus refused to be side-tracked from His mission of seeking and saving the lost. He looked at that man and saw that the problem wasn’t the fair division of the inheritance, but one of ‘greed’. Jesus saw that not only did this man have a problem with greed, but also his brother. Jesus knew that no settlement would be satisfactory, until both the brothers had a change of heart.
“A change of heart” … that was what made Jesus’ teaching so different. He knew that everything that comes from man starts in the heart. We find Jesus saying in Mark 7:20 “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean’. For from within, out of men’s hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean’.”
What Jesus saw coming out of this man was ‘greed”, and so He began to teach about the sin of greed in the parable of the “Rich Fool”. I don’t believe that Jesus had a problem with a man having possessions or even being wealthy. Jesus was concerned with man’s heart…where is your heart? Is your heart turned toward getting more and more of what you already have…or is your heart bent on loving and giving to where it is needed?
Starting in verse 16, Jesus gives us five principles of what happens when our hearts begin to focus exclusively on ourselves.
1. We do not give God the credit for things He has done
Jesus spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.” Jesus spoke of a man who was rich, a man who had honestly earned what he possessed. Jesus didn’t have a problem with that, He was speaking of a man who was leaving God out of the picture. He was speaking of a man who was saying to himself “Look what I have done. Look what my fields have yielded. Look at me and my wonderful problem”.
God had blessed him with a good crop and ‘his cup overflowed’. His barns could no longer hold all that God had given him. This man was not giving God any credit for these things that he had done.
2. We make plans but leave God out
“He thought to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build greater ones, and there I will store all my crops and my goods.’”
There was nothing wrong with the man’s desire to build more barns; it was probably a good and practical idea. The problem laid in the fact that there was not any thought of sharing his wealth with others. It is interesting to note that in the parable the personal pronoun ‘My’ occurs four times and ‘I’ occurs six times. The rich man said: “My crops, my barns, my grain and my goods.” “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.” Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, …. There is no thought to putting God into his life. In all his plans, he had left God out.
3. We consider spending our resources only on ourselves
“And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” In this verse, the rich man was talking to himself and assessing his future physical well-being. This man thought that when he put his plan into action that he would have it made for years to come. He was convinced that his future would continually expand under his control. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was beginning to show behaviours of being a ‘Fool’.
James 4:13-16 speaks about this rich man’s attitude when it says: “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
One of the most dangerous words in our language is the word, “Tomorrow”. When we speak of the future, we should say: “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” The Bible does not discourage us from looking into the future, however, as we make our plans, whether it is in business, in relationships, or in our personal lives, we should have the perspective that ultimately God is in charge. With this in mind, we should plan with a humble heart, knowing that God is with us, to help us and to strengthen us in all we do.
4. We store our treasures in the wrong places
“But God said to him, ‘You Fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” God called this rich man a fool.” In scripture, a fool is one who leaves God out of any consideration. In Psalm 14:1 it says: “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.”
A man becomes a fool when he begins to think that all that he is and all that he accomplishes and all that he possesses is because of his doing. I don’t see Jesus having a problem with us owning possessions; that is one way God blesses our lives. It is how we think about our possessions that makes the difference.
It’s very hard not to become emotionally attached to our things in this life.
5. We will find ourselves in conflict with God’s Plan for our lives
“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
Riches have one major weakness; they have no purchasing power after death. All our earthly riches will do us no good as we come to the end of our time, unless our riches are used to help others, unless we use our abundance to bring others to the belief that giving is better than getting, that God blesses the giver and places treasures in his house for the righteous person. Until we can come to this realization, we have not brought God into our lives. We have not opened our eyes to what Jesus taught and we are not living the Christian Way.
As we think about what’s really important in life, it all seems to come down to two options for us:
1. Do we want a life that is dependent on things of this world? Or;
2. Do we want to live a life, knowing there are no guarantees of permanency in this life, but knowing that treasures await us in heaven and knowing that we have a bond with our God and our Creator?
There is no escaping the fact that we are part of this world, but that shouldn’t stop us from realizing that we are also part of God’s great universe. And even though we are daily immersed in the cares and concerns of this life that shouldn’t keep us from knowing that this life and everything in it was given to us by a Loving and Caring Father.
So, our decision comes down to a very simple question.
Are we going to live for ourselves or for God?
Also,
What is important in our life?
What are our priorities?
Are we rich in God?
Simply, to be rich in God is better than to be rich in goods.
Let’s not fool ourselves and discern our priorities and let us put God first in our lives.
Amen!