Common Sense Commentary: Always allow for the possibility you are wrong. Most self-assured people are .... more often than not. RB
First True View of stuff:
The only things we can keep are those we send on ahead, to heaven, while we are still living on this earth. Material things qualify....but only if they are first given away, spent for God and good, and for which, God gets the credit and glory.
Nothing is so dead, after you yourself are gone, as all that stuff you spent your lifetime accumulating. The things you treasured and didn't think you could do without, are junk and useless to your grandchildren. They see most of it as old, dusty or moldy trash and wonder why you ever kept it. Ninety percent of it will wind up at Salvation Army or Goodwill stores with a one dollar or 25 cent price tag on it. That's not much of a price for the wasted time, effort and money invested in.... all my stuff. I guess it's the memories attached to some of it, and anticipation of "hard times" returning, for the rest of it, that addicts us to keep it .... til death do us part.
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal But lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven...." Matt.6:19-20. Even though Jesus did say, "Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth....", He also said, "Give and it shall be given unto you ...." Lk.6:38. It's that "given unto you" part that gets overlooked in the formula. So, after you have given and given and God keeps giving and giving and giving back unto you, what do you do with all that "receiving stuff"? Well, you just keep giving and God keeps giving even more back "..... good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running
over, shall men give into your bosom." So if God is giving it back to you faster and greater than you can give it back to Him, you have lost control, not of your giving but of your receiving. Now what do you do with all that "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over"? Your "bosom" ain't that big. You can't wear it all or eat it all, so you have to spend some of it like Joseph in Egypt and Noah did .... on preparations. Joseph filled warehouses and silos for a coming seven year drought and Noah built a huge ship and filled it with animals and six months of provisions for a coming flood. Neither of them were greedy; they had a God-called mission of preparation for hard times to come. They did it in obedience to God, for God not themselves.
Which brings us to the Second True View:
Noah lived in a world rather like ours.... Genesis 6:5 "And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Sound familiar? So God warned Noah and moved him to prepare a bunch of stuff for some hard times ahead.... to preserve his family: "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." Heb.11:7. His was both a physical and spiritual deliverance as was Joseph's.
Joseph, in Egypt, did a similar thing. As God directed him, he saved Egypt and more importantly, his own family, Jewish descendants of Abraham, the children of Israel, through which God later sent His Son, Jesus Christ to save and preserve all who would believe .... from the judgement and destruction to come. You call it "preparation".
Even Jesus told His Apostles ".... he that hath a
purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath
no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." Lk.22:36. He was obviously preparing them for some of those "hard times", with swords to use in conjunction with love, forgiveness, peace, prayer, soul winning and protection. Jesus was not only God in the flesh and divine in every way, He was also human and practical in His dealings with flesh and blood people, including trouble makers. He used a whip on those religious money changers and drove them out of God's Temple. Jesus and His Apostles using weapons really strains the brains of Liberal preachers. Don't you just love Jesus. He was so real .... no pretension, play-acting, hypocrisy, religiosity or foolishness with Jesus. He was, with all His heavenly, deified glory, also humanly pragmatic..... "buy a sword" he said. Thank you Jesus; I'm too old to run or fight... so I need a little leverage. Liberals would call Jesus, His Apostles, me ... and even God, extremists, fanatics or terrorists, but I call it Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh, or Out Of Obama's Oxymoron Orbit. So I will hold on to my little, large caliber sword, purse and scrip ... and prepare .... for the future .... til death do us part. RB
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