Thank you, Kim and Mark.
Well, a few years ago, our family had just enjoyed a meal at one of the local buffets.
I pushed the tray back as far as I could reach at that point.
And my young son, who was sitting next to me, said,
Daddy, I feel like my belly button's going to pop out.
Have you ever felt that way after a buffet?
Sometimes life feels that way, doesn't it?
Because life is a lot like a smorgasbord,
where the food selection is much more than one's stomach can hold.
Life in a world like ours, with its affluence, mobility, and technology, offers a lot of options.
There are more options than we have years to live to make them.
Like those who visit a buffet, we have choices to make in life.
We can't have it all.
And the choices that we make are determined by our appetite and our tastes,
as well as by our discipline, a word I don't like to use in relation to eating.
But when eating at a smorgasbord, what's important may well include whether we like beef or fish,
whether we want to feel good for the next couple of hours, what we know is good for us.
Those are the kinds of things that help us to make up our mind what to put on the tray.
And so it is with life we have to make choices that are determined by our appetites and discipline.
By the priorities, in other words, that we set in life.
We choose to invest in life with its resources according to what we truly believe is important.
In other words, we invest our money, our time, our influence, our relationships
according to those things that we think truly are important to us.
Our choices, in fact, may not always correspond to our doctrinal statement.
Because we sometimes profess things that are important that really, in truth, in fact,
when they come right down to it, aren't that important.
Our choices show that.
And that's my point this morning.
It is that the choices that we make in life ought to be according to what's truly important.
The text that we have before us in closing out 1 Timothy helps direct our thinking
in determining the priorities that we should have in life.
So that we will make good choices, so that we will know what to live for.
If we don't listen to what the Scripture of God tells us,
then we're likely to make our choices based on the appeals of the world.
And those will be bad choices.
In 1 Timothy 6, I begin reading in verse 17,
Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited
or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches,
but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.
Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works,
to be generous and ready to share,
storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future,
so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.
Oh, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you,
avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments
of what is falsely called knowledge,
which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith.
Grace be with you.
For the Bible-believing Christian,
the single most important event that influences our values
and our decisions about life is the coming of Jesus Christ.
A future age will soon appear with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What God tells us to do is to order our priorities of life
with the next age in mind.
In the text that we've read, it seems to me there are at least three priorities
that God wants us to establish in life so that we make good choices,
healthy choices with all of life's options.
With each of these priorities, there is a summary exhortation that deals with life.
The first priority as is appropriate is God.
And the exhortation that I see coming out of this text for us
is that we are to rest on the certainty of God's presence
and God's provision in this life.
All these verses that we've read were written to the rich.
The earlier text, verses 9 and 10 that talked about wealth
were written to those who wanted to be rich.
But here, he is writing to those who are rich.
You say, well, then I'll tune out until it's time to listen.
No, the fact is that most of us here are rich in terms of the world.
Even a person who is on welfare in this country earns far more
than the average person in our world.
The fact is that all of us, even if we're up to here in debt,
are incredibly wealthy in terms of this world.
Most of us fall into that category of the rich.
And there are two dangers that the rich people encounter.
The one danger is that of conceit or arrogance.
Notice he says, instruct those who are rich, that's you and me,
those who are rich in the now age, this present time, this world,
not to be conceited. That's one danger.
We can become incredibly self-focused.
We can imagine ourselves to be self-sufficient and without real need of God.
One of the great dangers of living in an affluent society like ours
is that very attitude that I don't really need God.
I'm glad he's there for when I get into trouble.
But I don't need him every day
because we have so many things that fill our life instead of God.
That's conceit. That's arrogance.
And so we are instructed to beware of the danger of arrogance
that says I am sufficient without God most of the time.
Oh, I need him occasionally.
I need him when I get into a severe battle. I need him when I get sick.
I need him when I'm poor and I'm looking for a job.
I need him then, but most of the time I don't need God. Arrogance.
God is to be the priority of our lives all the time. All the time.
The second danger he points out is that we trust in riches.
Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope.
The word fix there means to place your hope on something and to allow it to rest there.
Those who fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches.
It is easy for us to do that, to forget that the riches that we have are uncertain.
There are really two realities that we are to embrace in light of these dangers.
One is that God is the only certainty in life.
Everything else changes. Everything.
God is the only one who does not change. He is immutable.
The second reality goes along with that and it is that God is the ultimate supplier in life.
God can be counted on and he can be counted on as the ultimate supplier of our needs.
Notice that he says that we are to fix our hope on God, make him number one priority.
He reminds us that it is God who extravagantly supplies us with all things to enjoy.
A couple of things there.
It says that God is extravagant with us.
Just because I may be in debt doesn't mean that God hasn't been extravagant.
Perhaps he has and I have been more extravagant and that is why I am in debt.
Just because we may not have everything we want doesn't mean that God hasn't been extravagant.
Did you see that sunset this week that God put there for you to enjoy?
You see God's extravagance is in many realms, but the focus here is in material things.
The point isn't that God is going to make all of us wealthy as we think of wealth in our culture.
But it is that God is extravagant with us in relation to our needs.
He has promised to take care of us.
What God gives us, he gives us to enjoy.
That really goes against the theology of some people who think that somehow when God gives something
He is just waiting for us to abuse that and when we do He is going to slap our hands hard.
What a pitiful picture of God and yet how common that is.
God wants us to enjoy life.
God wants us to enjoy the things that He gives to us.
God is generous and like an earthly parent He gives to us.
With the desire, the hope in His heart that we will appreciate and enjoy the things that He gives us.
Is God your first priority?
If God is your first priority then everything else is measured from that point. Everything.
Our theology statement says that God is number one.
But I fear that our life statement often says something else, doesn't it?
And instead of being truly grateful to God we complain and grumble because God hasn't given us more.
God says, look I am giving you lavishly.
But I want you to enjoy it.
How grateful we ought to be.
J.P. Morgan died in 1913.
He was an incredibly wealthy man.
I was reading a little about him recently.
He was a contemporary of James J. Hill.
The Hill Mansion here in St. Paul that many people visit.
North Oaks is built on the Hill Estate.
Some of the land that's undeveloped up there still belongs to the James J. Hill Estate.
A contemporary of his who overshadowed him in wealth was J.P. Morgan.
Equitable Life Insurance Company, he controlled that.
U.S. Steel, he started that.
But he was also a man who loved God.
The wealth did not cause Morgan to become conceited.
He did not trust in the multiplied hundreds of millions of dollars that were at his disposal.
When he died his will contained about 10,000 words.
And it incorporated 37 different articles.
But what Morgan valued most was indicated by the opening statement of his will.
And here's what it said.
I commit my soul to the hands of my Savior,
full of confidence that having redeemed it and washed it with his most precious blood,
he will present it faultless before the throne of my Heavenly Father.
I entreat my children to defend at all hazard the blessed doctrine of complete atonement for sin
through the blood of Jesus Christ once offered and through that alone.
There's a man who knew what it was to put God first.
Now there's a second priority that we see in the text and that is the priority of others.
And the summary statement that I'm pulling out of the text is that we are to use this life to lay a foundation for the next.
Unfortunately in this materialistic world we are controlled by secularism.
Secularism says that this life is all there is.
It is ungodly.
We profess to be theists.
We believe that there is a God who oversees this creation, who is above and beyond all of it.
We are theists, not secularists.
As theists we believe that others ought to be part of our priority.
There is an instruction given to us here.
It is that what God places into our hands we are to use for the welfare of others.
And the greater our means for doing so, the greater our obligation.
He says that not only are we to enjoy what God gives to us, but we are also to do good.
This word is only, this idea, this phrase is only used twice in the New Testament.
The other time it's used in Acts 14 verse 17 where it speaks of God himself doing good to the world.
It is God's providence to the world.
In other words, our giving to others ought to reflect how graciously God gives to his whole world.
We are to work or to act for someone else's advantage, he says.
Not only so, we are to be rich in good works.
And, he says, to be generous and ready to share.
Again, these are unusual words used only here in the New Testament.
We are to be noble sharers of what God gives to us.
We are to use what God places into our hands to create community and fellowship with other people.
Others must be in our list of priorities.
First God, then others.
There is an advantage, by the way, of living this way, and he tells us what it is.
When we live this way, it returns a fortune to us.
When we keep others in our priorities and we faithfully minister to them and help them and give to them,
it says we amass a treasure for ourselves, which he identifies as a good foundation for the future.
A good foundation for the future.
Kind of reminds you of Social Security, doesn't it?
Not.
We tend to hoard things, to lay them up in store.
And the fact is that when we do that and we keep our arms around what we possess,
and we use it for ourselves only, we're fools.
We're like the farmer that Jesus told about in Luke chapter 12 who did that very thing.
Who kept everything for himself and just kept reinvesting it, multiplying his wealth.
And then God said to him one night, you fool.
This night your soul is required of you.
Now whose will all of those things be that you have gathered together?
You know, that's not a bad question to ask.
Of all of that stuff that you're hoarding, when your soul is required of you, who's all that going to belong to?
And what good is it going to do you then?
And so the point of the Word of God is that we need to keep others second in our priorities and be givers.
Be beneficiaries to others.
To share, to create community with others.
To be rich, not only in money, but in good deeds, good works.
And he says when we do that, we're laying up a treasure for ourselves in heaven.
Isn't that something like what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6?
Of course it is.
He says doing this will result in our getting a good grip on life.
Not just life, but the real life.
The true life. Reality.
And so he says that we must use this life to lay a foundation for the next.
And beware of secularism.
Which has so influenced our thinking that we believe that this world is all there is.
The real life is the next world.
And now in this world we're simply laying a foundation for them.
So in your priorities, it's God number one, it's others number two.
And then he says, third, it's mission.
We're to see this life as a stewardship of a trust.
Oh Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you.
This is a legal term. What has been entrusted to you. Parotheke.
It's a legal term that connotes something placed in trust with another's keeping.
Something has been entrusted to you, pure child of God.
That something is the gospel.
Paul talks to Timothy more about this in chapter one of the next book.
Just turn over a page to 2 Timothy.
Notice that in verse 12 of chapter one he says, I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I've entrusted to him.
Same word.
And here Timothy is being reminded by Paul that as believers we entrust our souls to God.
We put them on deposit as it were with God for safe keeping.
But then in verse 14 he says, now Timothy, guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in you
the treasure which has been entrusted to you.
That treasure is the same treasure he's talking about back in verse 20 of 1 Timothy 6.
It's what's been entrusted to Timothy and to you and to me.
It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
What are we to do with this trust? We are to guard it, he says, which means to keep it, to watch over it, to protect it.
And we know from this book he's talking about protecting it from false teaching.
Which Satan is constantly trying to sow into the gospel.
We're to guard it, to keep it pure, we're to protect it.
There's also the sense in which it means to give it, to use it, to invest it, to sow it.
We have a mission.
In our list of priorities, the mission that God gives us, the cause that we have in this world, must take a place.
We're to see life as a stewardship of a trust with a mission to be accomplished.
How do we test our priorities?
First we have to honestly examine our checkbooks.
That's one way to do it.
We need to go down our checkbook and find out how much of our material resources we've made available for God to use.
How much of it have we given away for good works, for generous sharing?
How much of it have we invested in the mission of the gospel?
We can tell what our priorities are very simply by going to our checkbook and examining what it says about our lives.
Secondly, we can honestly ask ourselves some pointed questions.
These will help us determine what our priorities are, what's important to us.
What makes you laugh?
What makes you cry?
What makes you angry?
Reflect on those three questions, find the answer to it, and you will find something about your priorities in life.
And finally, to test your priorities, honestly ask yourself how eager you are for Christ's appearance.
That's the whole context of what he's writing about here.
He talks about it back in verse 14, the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
How eager are you for Christ's appearance?
Folks, life is complicated.
There is so much out there in a world like ours that we can choose from.
What we have to decide is what to live for.
And the Word of God tells us, we're to live for God.
We're to live for others.
We're to live for the mission that God has given us.
I'm afraid that too many of us are like the man who slept as long as he could in the morning.
And one day, he woke even later than usual.
He jumped out of bed, he dashed some cold water on his face, quickly ran his razor over his face.
He made a hasty pass with his comb through his hair, he gulped down a glass of milk,
grabbed his briefcase, gave his wife a kiss as he ran out the door and raced to catch the bus.
He barely got on the bus before it began to pull away.
He dropped the coin in the meter.
And then as he was walking down the aisle to his seat, he stopped, he looked around and he blurted out,
by the way, where's this bus going?
And some of us are just like that, aren't we?
We're in such a big hurry in this world.
But where are we going?
Where are we going?
And what are our priorities?
What's really important to us?
What are we living for?
Let's pray.
Father, may we be able to answer that question in a way that honors you.
As we come to this table of the Lord,
and we remember these elements and the sacrifice that they represent,
may our hearts be caught up in evaluating the answer
from our hearts to this question, what are we truly living for?
May it be Jesus.
May it be the priorities established in the Word of God.
May it be the mission. May it be others.
Yes, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.