The Poverty Of Complacency

THE POVERTY OF COMPLACENCY

TEXT: 2 Kings 7:3-9

ll Kings 7:3 9 -- “And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die?” “If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.” “And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there.” “For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us.” “Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life.” “And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it.” “Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household.”

l. THE POVERTY OF COMPLACENY

-Complacency is the enemy of the soul. Spiritual satisfaction can lead us to a place of spiritual poverty. Our own spiritual complacency keeps men from striving toward the great places of the Kingdom of God.

-Spiritual satisfaction leads to spiritual paralysis and our soul atrophies and becomes useless.

-Spiritual complacency is a vice that must be fought against every single day of our lives.

Abraham Lincoln -- “Failure is not a crime, but low aim is.”

-Yet there are some things that creates a sense of spiritual complacency for men.

Insurmountable Odds.

Overwhelming Losses.

Entrapment in the Past.

Fear of the Future.

-Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness.

Philippians 3:13 14 -- “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,” “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

1 Corinthians 9:26 27 -- “I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:” “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”

-Spiritual growth never comes without some form of sacrifice or suffering.

-The greatest men of God has always had something inside of them that was hungry for more of a work of the Spirit.

Psalm 42:2 -- “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”

Psalm 63:1 2 -- “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;” “To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.”

-The cries from the Psalms are nothing more than the echoes of life. They are true to life because they are drawn from the stuff that life is made of:

Hope and Fear

Love and Hate

Jubilation and Frustration

Faith and Anxiety

Joy and Despair

-One moment the singer stands on the bedrock of hope, the next he is wallowing in the quicksands of horror, one minute he is shouting, the next he is shaking. One minute faith thrills him, the next fear threatens him. Often we seesaw back and forth between confidence and collapse.

-All of our struggles and all of our victories should have one common purpose and that is to create within an insatiable hunger for God.

-God’s greatest were those whose longing for God consumed them. It propelled them onward and upward to heights that the average never see. What the average did see, through lethargic spiritual eyes, they never had any hope of reaching such a place with God. I never want to be in that category of just marking time with my life.