You Can Take it With You
The Time was over one hundred years ago, at the very beginning of the great Klondike Gold Rush. Two prospectors, among the very first to travel north, in 1896, came to the Yukon Territory of Canada to hunt for their gold.
They knew the risks were high as there were no developed settlements around for many, many miles, and they had only each other and their wisdom to keep them from death in the Great White North.
But they took their chances, and with meager supplies, and began to dig for gold. And the two found more than they had ever hoped for.
But Winter Was Coming! And they were in the Yukon, right by the northern part of Alaska. They knew no one would come up to mine until Winter ended, but when they did, there would be a lot of competition. Do they seek shelter for the winter, with the millions of dollars worth of gold they had already dug up, or do they stay in the tundra and keep digging, even though they were pretty unprepared in terms of food and shelter where they were?
Well, they turned out to be right about their fear that a great many people would travel to the Yukon in the spring. About 100,000 traveled up. And when the first wave of prospectors came, the two men were found lying dead on top of piles of millions of dollars worth of gold.
One of the two left a scratched out letter warning those who followed them not to make the same mistake they made of letting their greed for abundance in this world blind them of wisdom.
This, as you can imagine is not an isolated incident; or the only time in human history where greed blinded people from wisdom. There are stories of pirates who, when they found gold on a small island with no food, tore their ship apart to use it for digging tools, only to have their dead bodies found years later next to their half rebuilt ship.
Romans believed that items that you were buried with would accompany you to the next world, so they would leave coins on top of the eyes of their loved ones to pay the ferryman to get them across the river Styx to their eternal destination.
Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs were buried with great quantities of treasure so that they could take it with them into the next world. Some Asian princes even had their servants buried alive with them so they could serve them in the next life.
Solomon struggled with this on a different level. He knew the impossibility of taking things with him, he wasn’t worried about that so much as he was very concerned and frustrated with what was going to happen to his kingdom after Rehoboam became King.
2:18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is VANITY!
Vanity is best understood as “vapor” or a mist that cannot be grasped. Even if we amass great wealth in this world, we cannot keep it, truly grasp it, and make it our own. We can only “rent” it.
With a eye on the futility of trying to hold on to the material, our Gospel lesson brings us part of a sermon Jesus gave on just this subject. How should a Christian live in relation to money and talents?
Interestingly, Jesus says to us in a way in which the world cannot understand, that- YOU CAN TAKE IT WITH YOU!
Now before everyone grabs stones and get ready to rush the pulpit, I’ll explain what I mean.
I want to first look at our Gospel lesson in the light of Christ’s words in Luke’s account of this sermon from Luke Chapter 12:32-34. Sometimes there are interesting additions when you compare parallel accounts in the Gospels.
32 Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The first thing that should catch your eye in these three verses, ….. a verse which is often missed, so it’s on your cover...is verse 32.
“It is Our Father’s good pleasure to entrust His kingdom, his church, to the likes of us.” That really is an awesome thought when you personalize it.
Everyone here can say that. Since I don’t know everyone here yet to know who minds being made an example of, I will pick on Nick, who never minds being an example.
God is very pleased to entrust His Kingdom to Nick’s stewardship.
The Lord has chosen to make us, faulty, sinful human beings, the stewards of His kingdom. We are the vehicles through which world hears the Gospel of Christ, and as Paul says, the “fragile jars of clay” through which He is pleased to build up His Eternal Kingdom, His Treasure, His Bride.
So, even though there is no earthly treasury by which we can receive eternal returns, there is a treasure Jesus tells us about,
A treasure which does not fail, a treasury into which we are commanded to invest our time, energy and finances.
However, before we can really understand how we can invest our talents in an eternal treasury, we need to know what it is to invest our faith in God, for without faith, our other investments are worthless.
Hebrews 11, our epistle lesson, is a chapter commonly called the Hall of Faith. Through faith in the blood of Christ, shed on the cross, we are born again as children of God, are made just and righteous in His eyes. But once born, The Just also must live by faith.
The author of Hebrews describes Faith in this chapter, and I’ll go back to the familiar KJ, as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is that which we hold as evidence to our very own souls that God and his promises are true.
Hebrews 11 shows how God’s people lived by faith in this life, and then received the promises of that faith in the next life.
When Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than did Cain, it was not just a matter of sibling competition.
Abel’s faith governed what and how he offered things to God. His faith moved him to give back to the Lord as the Lord had blessed him.
By faith, Noah, living on dry ground, built an ark, believing the warnings that God had given him, no matter what the neighbors said.
Faith moves us to believe the promises of Christ and build up the kingdom of God, rather than store for ourselves treasures in this life, which only turn into vapor.
We are told in verses 13 and 39 of Hebrews 11 that these men of God died not having yet received the promises given to them by God.
However, through faith, those promises were real to them. These all died in faith, says vs. 13, not having received the promises, but since they saw that what God promised is certain, they were assured of them.
So the question this morning is, how can we use what we have, or view it in such a way in which what we have becomes the most profitable and useful both for us, and for God’s Kingdom.
How can we take it with us?
We are as Christians given stewardship over gifts and talents of which we are responsible to make an accounting. Some are blessed materially, some musically, some with good friendships, and others with incredible hospitality, of which I have been the happy recipient.
But all of us are blessed by God with gifts and talents that make us useful for the building up of the church. And by investing our resources and talents in the Kingdom of God, Whatever they may be, Christ says we lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.
So, for instance, Christ says to consider the lily. Without planning it all out in their minds, as they don’t have minds,
They follows God’s design for it to draw in water from the roots, and to combine the water with CO2 in the atmosphere to make sugar in order to grow and produce seed and a beautiful flower, feeding the birds. They please God by doing what He has designed them to do, taking what they are given, and they naturally give back.
We are instructed by Christ to take what talents and treasures we are given as stewards, and transform it, and offer it back to God.
We do this through evangelism in sharing the Gospel, through fellowship and encouragement, through our prayers and the sacraments, and through the study and the spread of His Word into all the World. And all of these add to God’s Kingdom, both in this world, and in the next, as we bring the lost to Christ.
We are told to trust our Heavenly Father rather than ourselves. He promises to take care of us as we take care of His Kingdom. Looking at Christ’s words, he says that it is perfectly understandable that the people of this world worry about and spend their time seeking after what they will eat, or drink, or wear. They know they need these things. We know we need those things. And God knows we need them too.
Christ’s Sermon this morning is that we need to examine what should be our primary focus in this world. If we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all these other things shall be added to you.
