Pastor Dan Little
The Landmark Church
February 19, 2012
email: adfontes.djl@gmail.com
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Riches! Real or Imagined?
2 Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
You all know that I follow the news of the work of the Holy Spirit in places around the world where the church is growing and multiplying at astounding rates.
Culturally these places and peoples have very little in common but spiritually there is common thread running through these far flung congregations.
It is this, the unquenchable urge to celebrate and rejoice in the wealth of God’s love, a wealth that they are increasingly aware of by direct experience.
There is this deep sense that they are actually living WITH GOD instead of frantically trying to live FOR GOD.
Go to North East India, go to places in China, Mogolia, places in the Arctic among the Eskimo tribes, go to Cuba, or Guatemala or Africa where God is moving—some places where people live on $1.50 a day, and you will find these people joyfully celebrating the wealth they have found in the grace of God as well as joyfully taking the love of God to others.
They are experiencing God’s love in powerful and real and deeply personal ways. They burn with it. They are immersed in it. They carry the fragrance of His love with them wherever they go.
I inquired of the Lord to know why we experience so little of this wealth in our American churches. Why we have looked upon the spontaneous joy and celebration and love-powered evangelism of this wealth and sought to duplicate it by human force of energy, by ginning up emotions with highpower entertainment.
The Lord showed me two reasons.
1. We neither look for nor expect direct experience of the love of God.
2. We have embraced a shrunken and diminished definition of wealth—a money & stuff & comfort-based definition of wealth.
REASON NO 1.
Lack of direct experience.
When the Holy Spirit through Paul says (2 Cor. 8:9); YOU KNOW THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
That word KNOW means to become progressively acquainted with this love and grace by first hand experience.
Here among the churches that profess to believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, our tendency is to study about the grace and love of God, but we don’t know what it means to be immersed in it to the place where our very lives give off the rich fragrance of God’s grace, love and provision.
What we do in this country is not too dissimilar to launching a great study on water. The study team brings in cases of spring water from many different bottlers. We have samples of tap water from here and there.
We talk about the water.
We analyze the water.
We test it under various conditions.
We even put little test drops on our tongue now and again.
And then after a grueling 14 hour day of study and research when everyone is parched with thirst we leave the water on the lab table and go off into the world in search of something to drink. We don’t drink it. We can’t stop analyzing it long enough to drink it and celebrate what God has provided.
Jesus spoke to this problem when He said to the Scribes and Pharisees John 5:39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. ESV
And we too, very often suffer from the paralysis of analysis.
In contrast, when Jesus to averred; “I and my Father are one” He was doing more than talking good theology. He actually lived a life of experiential union with God. And so can we. The work of the Holy Spirit is to teach us to live with God which is quite a different thing than frantically living for God.
The great shame is this, that so have lived for so long without a first hand KNOWING the grace of God that we no longer think it possible or even necessary to become progressively acquainted with the vast wealth that is ours in the grace of God.
Too many people read their Bible thinking that that is what good Christians do. They want to be a good Christian so they read their Bible.
There is a much higher reason—a living reason for reading your Bible.
• You read it in order to become progressively acquainted with Jesus and his infinite love for you,
• You read because you love the presence of the One who is speaking.
• You read because His Word becomes the inner voice of the His Spirit and that voice turns to active faith in your life.
See if this illustration helps.
My wife and I were married August 18, 1967. Someone gave us a How-To book to take with us on our honeymoon. Forty-five years later we have three sons, three daughters through marriage, and 8 grandchildren. But here is what I think most of you know; our sons did not magically start to appear in the 19 month of marriage by reading our How-To honeymoon book.
Nathan first, and then Jason and Seth in their turn, appeared because Judy and I were becoming "progressively acquainted with each other".
The book told us what was possible to those who believe. We read, we believe and we acted on that belief before you know it, I had to buy a bigger house and build a bigger dinning room table.
My wife and I now have 45 years of accumulated direct experience of each other. We are more married now than we have ever been.
Do you understand what I just said to you?
For Jesus to say “I and my Father are one” was more than good theology, or just a way of speaking. He lived a life of experiential union with God.
That is where the Holy Spirit wants to take us. The great shame is this, that so have lived for so long without a first hand KNOWING the grace of God that we no think it possible or even necessary to become progressively acquainted with the vast wealth that is ours in the grace of God.
So, among other things, 2 Corinthians 8:9 is telling us that our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ must go beyond “book-learnin” and into the realm of experiential reality.
So that is the first reason. We neither look for nor expect direct experience—this active knowing of God’s love. We suffer, as some would say, from the paralysis of analysis.
REASON NO. 2
We are victims of a false definition of wealth. We have embraced a money & stuff & power & comfort-based definition of wealth.
Jesus didn’t gather money and stuff. To Him wealth meant people. It meant preaching the gospel to the poor and seeing their eyes begin to see, their ears beging to hear, and seeing them come alive as they felt the power of His love and grace.
He came to seek and to save and to heal the bruised and blind and to set captives free—captives of addictions, of fear, of abuse and captives to all kinds of sin.
He looked with compassion upon the staggering number of people who did not know that God loved them and likened them to the millions of stalks of grain in a field that were ready for harvest.
He gathered disciples with the purpose of teaching them to enter into the harvest, or to use another of His metaphors, to fish for men as He fished for men.
He was looking for people who would help Him to look for people.
These would be people whose eyes were open to see great worth in the midst of sadness and ruin.
Like Him they would not fear hardship of any kind because of the wealth they found in Him—the forgiveness, eternal life, joy, freedom from fear, peace of mind, the affirmation and appreciation they found in Him empowered them to walk in an unshakeable confidence. Nothing could cut them off from His love or the riches that were theirs in Christ.
What they found in Christ did not come from the world, could not be shaken or taken by the world. It was theirs by His grace and it was theirs forever.
SCRIPTURE READING
Luke 7:37 And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner." 40 And Jesus answering said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." And he answered, "Say it, Teacher."
41 "A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?" 43 Simon answered, "The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt." And he said to him, "You have judged rightly." 44 Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman ? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little." 48 And he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." 49 Then those who were at table with him began to say among
themselves, "Who is this, who even forgives sins?" 50 And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."
A WOMAN OF THE CITY WHO WAS A SINNER
This is not a parable. This actually happened.
This woman, it seems, was known to be a sinner-perhaps an abandoned woman or a prostitute. It is certain that she had much to be forgiven, and she had probably passed her life in crime. There is no evidence that this was the woman commonly called Mary Magdalene, thought I have read excellent sermons that assume that this is her story told without mention of her name.
If so then this is a severely bruised woman, a prostitute whom we would never know or care about accept for the fact that Jesus loved her and said she would be honored forever.
What is clear in Luke’s narrative is that the whole city characterizes her as a sinner.
What is equally clear is that she holds the same view of herself.
She is less than everyone else. She lives in the shadow of shame. She is a sinner.
What caused her to screw up her courage to the point of entering into this Pharisee’s home to find Jesus?
No doubt she had heard Jesus speak somewhere, or had seen how He interacted with others who lived under the cloud of shame. Maybe she saw Him touch lepers. Maybe she saw Him at a banquet eating with publicans and sinners. She saw that far from putting a heavy religions foot upon their necks, far from heaping guilt and condemnation on them He was there with them celebrating the gift of life that God had given to them.
There was something about Him that lifted her hopes, and in that fresh wave of hope she found the courage to enter this Pharisee’s house to find Jesus and when she came upon Him she began to weep. Weep!
Do not think of a silent person with tears running down her cheeks, or of someone softly sobbing. Rather think of someone who under and load of pain and grief began to wail at the thought that the burden and the pain might now be lifted. It was sorrow based in once sense of the word, but even more it was hope based. Jesus gave her hope.
She came up behind Jesus and dropped to His feet . She poured wet tears out upon them. She broke open a flask of very expensive perfume (her former definition of wealth), and poured it upon His feet, and then proceeded to wipe His feet clean with her hair.
It certainly wasn’t the Pharisee’s opinion of her gave her hope in Jesus.
It wasn’t the opinion of the townspeople that made her think Jesus might sit still for this kind of outpouring of pain and grief and hope. It was Jesus Himself! It was clear to her mind that He was a friend—a holy and pure friends to sinners.
There was no air of condemnation in His presence. What she felt was a pure and powerful love that was setting her free and pouring a goodness into her that was not her own. And as fast as His goodness poured in just that fast she began to feel the darkness and shame leave.
And what seems clear in this passage is that it wasn’t her repentance that made Jesus love her. He had always loved her. Instead it was Jesus’ love and forgiveness that enabled her to repent.
She is an excellent picture of a 2 Corinthians 8:9 person.
She was knowing and drinking in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
pouring out upon Him the riches that she found in Him.
That is the essence of worship--pouring back out to God the wealth we have found in His Son..
People might think she was crazy.
We’d rather have the sinner back. At least we understood her, at least she was sane.
But now what do we have?
She is wasting a year’s wages in pouring out this spikenard oil like this.
But to this woman, it no longer mattered what the Pharisee thought, or what the townspeople thought. In fact it no longer made any difference what she thought about herself.
She knew that Jesus was accepting and affirming her.
To the Pharisee in whose house all this took place found the whole scene scandalous.
All of his religious sensibilities were shocked by this sinful woman coming right into his house, coming up behind Jesus, and then the spectacle of her weeping, and the oil, and then wiping the whole mess up with her hair. She stank up the whole house and ruined a very expensive meal, and she was a sinner.
It was scandalous that Jesus didn’t stop her.
If He was half the prophet people thought He was He would have stopped this woman in her tracks and sent her packing.
More scandalous still was the clear fact that Jesus DID NOT stop her, but obviously and openly receive her worship.
Everyone else saw her as damaged good, but Jesus loved her.
He loved and accepted her as she was as well as accepted what she was doing.
It quenched His thirst. it was for persons such as her that He had come.
She (and me) was the very reason He came, the very reason why He stripped Himself of His glory and became poor. It was so we might come out of the prison and poverty of sin and be made rich.
He had come to earth with a thirst for sinners, thirsting to find the, love them and forgive and heal them. Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."
And the most scandalous thing of all?; there on the spot He forgave this woman.
No classes, no hoops, no process by which she could earned His forgiveness or became worthy of His forgiveness; He just gratuitously forgave her. It was an outrage against religion.
And that is the way it is with the true grace of God. It is an outrage against the control of organized religion. It was why Jesus was despised by the religious authorities of the day.
In organized religion credentials are of great value.
You are what the credentials say are.
You must produce your bona fides where ever you go.
With Jesus religious credentials are of no value at all.
If you come thinking your education or your tithe record or anything else will earn you some right to salvation Jesus will treat them as filthy rags.
Paul looked back on his long list of credentials and confessed that he now looked upon them as nothing more than a stinking pile of manure.
But if you come to Jesus with your sin and pain (weeping or not weeping) and pour them out on Jesus feet He will receive you. He will enjoy you. His thirst will be quenched by you.
Why?
Because the highest level of worship and honor we can give to God has nothing to do with our credentials, nothing to do with our background good or bad. The highest honor we can give to God is to believe in His only begotten Son.
God’s weeps with joy for His Son when any heart turns and says “Jesus, I believe you can help me.”
In fact all heaven celebrates.
Luke 15:7 … I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
Irrepressible joy and worship and celebration erupt where ever the revelation of this vast wealth breaks upon a person or a community. It cannot be hidden.
It may look like waving branches and dancing and singing and parading down the city streets in Kiambu, Kenya.
It may look like jumping up and down in celebration as it did with the Mouk people in Papua New Guinea.
It may look like singing and honking of horns and carrying huge banners down the streets as it did Almolonga, Guatemala.
It may look like hours of sinning and boasting the Lord as it does in Cuba.
It may look like hours of believing corporate prayer as it does in China, praying in confidence because they know that they cannot be cut off from the love and grace of God that is theirs in Christ.
It may look like weeping and pouring out our former definition of wealth on the feet of Jesus as it did with the woman of Luke 7.
But this worship in spirit and in truth will always look like something.
It will not for it cannot be hidden. It cannot be bottled up and preserved as good theology. When the revelation of God’s love comes it must be and will be released.
If God’s people are silent, if we give ourselves over the paralysis of analysis then, as Jesus said, “the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:40).
Let us look closely at our definition of wealth and riches and to what ever degree we find it out of whack with how Jesus defines our riches then we can take to heart the instructions to the church at Laodicea. BE ZEALOUS AND REPENT…
No heavenly joy can come while we are living under the low and oppressive ceiling of false wealth.
Let us be zealous and repent of our false notions of wealth and look to Jesus to put us right on this matter—right so that we might come to a firsthand realization of the love and grace of God so abundantly available in Christ.
