- To gain the world and lost your (national) soul, that’s indeed a tragedy.
- We want to talk about gaining the world tonight and what the tragic cost sometimes is.
FOURTH OF JULY CHURCH SERVICE: We praise God for letting us participate in America’s prosperity.
- Churches often celebrate God’s blessing on America around the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day. Inevitably, the church will praise God for freedom of religion and the right to worship. And those are significant praises. Inevitably, the church will also praise God for the “material blessings” that He has “showered” on our country.
- I’m not going to stand here this evening and say that it’s inappropriate to be thankful for those things. I am very thankful for freedom of religion and the fact that I preach each Sunday without fear of being arrested simply for proclaiming the gospel. I am also thankful for having enough to eat, a roof over my head, hot water for a shower each morning, and enough money to pay my bills. There is much to be grateful about there.
- But, speaking on the second of those, we hold that thankfulness in one hand while holding in the other the reminder that Paul gave that “money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
- This passage this evening speaks in an interesting way to that second part. It’s an important reminder to us as Americans about keeping money and prosperity in their proper place.
STRONG ECONOMY: The measuring basket was normally used for grain, a symbol of economic prosperity.
- Zechariah 5:6.
- So we have another peculiar vision from the book of Zechariah. As usual, your first question is likely to be “what in the world does that mean?” We will unpack it as we go and hopefully bring some clarity to this vision.
- Let’s start with verse 6 and the measuring basket. This is the type of basket that would normally be used in that day to store grain. Grain in that day speaks to economic prosperity. Remember the story of Joseph storing up grain in Genesis 41 for the famine that was coming? You could say that the grain there was a sign of their economic status.
A WARNING: The economic prosperity is tied to a vision of wickedness.
- Zechariah 5:6-8.
- Now we start to get deeper. After seeing the basket, we find that this symbol of economic prosperity also represents the wickedness of the people. NASB translates it more simply as “This is their appearance in all the land.” The word can mean “appearance” or “wickedness.” Either way, though, we end up in the same place because v. 8 explicitly points to the wickedness.
- Some believe that it is implicit in this vision that there was grain in this basket as well as the woman, although we can’t be definitive on that. That would further the economic idea.
- “This is the iniquity of the people throughout the land.”
- So we are dealing with the sinfulness of the people in the land. They were not living by God’s law. They were not obeying God’s guidance. And there are consequences to that.
- “Then the cover of lead was raised.”
- Why a cover of lead? I think it had to do with the ability to contain the wickedness if needed. As we get into the part later with “when it is ready” it speaks to divine timing for all of this to happen. You could say here that God is indicating His ability to contain the situation no matter how bad it looked like it was.
- This also goes along with the next phrase about the woman being pushed back down in and the cover being brought down.
- “. . . there was a woman in the basket.”
- Who is the woman? It is possible that she is merely the personification of unbelieving Israel, but I think maybe something else is going on here. To understand that, there is another passage that we will need to look at (Revelation 18).
A PROPHETIC WARNING: Economic prosperity is a major player in Satan’s plan in Revelation.
- Zechariah 5:9-11; Revelation 18:2, 7, 9, 11-19.
- I’ve mentioned earlier in this series that these are prophetic visions. That means that while we may find application for our lives today, they were written with the intent of letting Israel know what was coming. Sometimes prophecies have dual fulfillment: they have a fulfillment within the lives of the hearers in that day as well as a long-term fulfillment in the prophetic plans of God.
- Let’s focus for a second on the prophetic fulfillment of these verses.
- Look with me over in Revelation 18. Without getting too deep into the intricacies of Revelation, here we have the downfall of the great world power that is Babylon. This represents the power of Satan in the world.
- Notice as we read these verses the prosperity.
- As we come back to Zechariah, this Revelation passage helps us put everything in place.
- Remember we had the basket with the woman in it. This was a symbol of economic prosperity as well as moral wickedness. In v. 9 we have two winged women flying off with the basket. Are they good workers or bad? I think our clue comes in the reference to the stork, which the Mosaic Law declared an unclean animal.
- Equally important, notice where they take the basket. Verse 11 tells us they are taking it to Babylonia! This dovetails perfectly with what we just read in Revelation 18.
- Because of that, v. 11 points us toward the idea that economic prosperity and moral wickedness is being taken to Babylon for that future moment.
- This is an important warning for us to keep in mind, lest we get too focused on economic blessings as always being signs of God’s presence and pleasure in us.
- Certainly that can be true, as evidenced by some of the Old Testament promises from God to Israel concerning the material blessing He desired to pour out on them. But that does not mean that material blessing is always a sign of God’s blessing on your life.
- We also need to be reminded that Babylon’s greatness is temporary.
- Babylon is certainly overwhelming in its splendor for a while. But all that will go down in flames.
- It’s important for us to remember that the material is temporary while the spiritual is forever. It’s difficult to do that in a culture as obsessed with the material as America is. But we have the Word to guide us in this. We have the non-materialistic life of Christ to guide us.
- We are called to stand out, not conform.
BRAVE NEW WORLD OR 1984? Dragged into sin or rushing forward enthusiastically?
- Unpack the differences between BNW (and people being controlled by pleasure) versus 1984 (and people being controlled by pain). Banning books versus no need to ban books because no one reads anymore.
- When it comes to sin, sometimes we think of sin dragging people away. But, more often, we run to it.
- Specifically, in this context, we need to know that economic prosperity can spur us forward to run headlong into sin. To go back to the opening statement, we sometimes thoughtlessly praise God for letting us participate in one of the greatest economies of all-time. Certainly there are blessings there, but there are also dangers. It’s dangerous for us to “rah-rah” all things American and capitalistic and ignore the spiritual dangers that may present themselves.
- This passage is a stark reminder that economic prosperity may be used by our enemy to move people away from God. Economic prosperity may be used by our enemy to blind people to their need for God.
- And, as this sermon outline point notes, the particular danger here is that we are not dragged kicking and screaming, but we rush enthusiastically after it.
- In light of this, we need to be aware of the spiritual dangers of prosperity. Prosperity can cause people to run headlong away from God without any thought to what they are doing spiritually. The economic can trump the spiritual. And we don’t do that explicitly, with a declarative renunciation of spirituality. We do it thoughtlessly, automatically. We are so busy running after the prosperity that we fall right into wickedness.
- Yes, this is true for the Revelation 18 situation with Babylon. But it can also be true for us in our everyday lives. We run after prosperity so hard that we edge spirituality out of our lives.
- It is a blessing that we live in a country with material prosperity. It is also a danger.
- Sometimes the most dangerous sins are not the ones that are the most obvious because everyone is arguing over them (like, in our culture now, homosexuality). Sometimes the most dangerous sins are the ones that everyone agrees on (like, in our culture now, materialism).
