Good morning.
Today’s message is going to be a little different. It’s probably not a surprise, since I’m speaking, and I am a little different. I don’t have one overarching large point to make this morning; I have a lot of small ones.
First, I want to talk about a major theme in Scripture and then take that major theme and apply it, hopefully, to our lives. So let’s start with a word of prayer.
Father, I just thank You, Lord, for Your love for us, Your provision for us, Lord. Thank You, Lord, that You are patient with us and that You want to be with us, Lord. I just thank You, Father, and I pray, Father, as I speak today, that the words that come out of my mouth would be glorifying to You and beneficial to Your people. In Christ’s name, amen.
Okay, the first thing—the major theme of Scripture. Through all Scripture, you’ll find many references to walking. It’s mentioned hundreds of times in Scripture. Actually, in the Old Testament it’s mentioned 281 times, and in the New Testament, 87 times: the word walk, walked, walking, or some derivation of that.
The first mention of walking is in Genesis 3:8. This is after Adam and Eve have sinned, but before they have been judged by God.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.
It doesn’t explicitly say this, but the sense is that the Lord was coming down in the cool of the day to take a walk with His people whom He had created. You know, it’s a beautiful picture of this all-powerful Creator, all-powerful God, coming down just to take a walk with His people.
It doesn’t explicitly say that in Scripture, but the sense is there because of a few hints, a few clues that we have. First off, Adam and Eve knew what that sound was that was coming in the garden. They knew the sound of the Lord walking in the garden. They were not afraid of that sound per se; they knew what was going to happen next.
They did something unusual when they heard that sound: they went and hid. That means the usual thing they would have done was gone out and been with the Lord. I think it’s precious that the Lord was coming down. The Lord knew that Adam and Eve had sinned, but He did not rush down in angry judgment to judge His people. He came normally, in a loving way, again wanting to spend time with His people. But that’s another message.
Using the principle of first mention—the first time a word or picture is used in Scripture kind of sets the tone for that word or picture throughout Scripture—the first mention of walking is God walking in fellowship with His people.
That tone, that first mention, continues to set the tone of walking throughout Scripture. In Scripture, when it mentions walking, it is almost always in a spiritual context. When we go about our daily life, that is considered walking.
We have been designed to walk in fellowship with the Lord. That is how He would like us to walk. When we go about our lives, it should be as if the Lord is by our side—when actually He is by our side, whether we know it or not.
So the daily conduct of our lives needs to be a time of fellowship with Him. It kind of goes back to and ties into that whole “pray without ceasing” thing that Paul mentions.
When you look at the concepts of walking in Scripture, you find walking in the Old Testament very different from walking in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, you find this phrase used in many places: “walk before the Lord” or “walk in His law.”
It gives us the perspective of us walking and being viewed from a distance. You know, the Lord is a spectator watching us walk. The Old Testament reader is implored to walk before the Lord, to walk in the law, and to keep His law before the Lord.
When I think about this, it makes me very, very uncomfortable—sort of like doing ballet in front of Baryshnikov. I’m supposed to walk before the perfect Creator.
There is a separation there, where we are down here walking and He is up there viewing. I’m down here, all around; He is up there judging. I’m down here falling short, apart from the Lord, I guess.
It also reminds me of a dog show. I don’t know if you have ever watched a dog show. To win a dog show, everything has to be perfect. The dog has to be perfectly groomed, has to walk perfectly, its ears have to be pointed perfectly, its tail has to do the perfect little thing in the back for whatever the breed is, and it has to have the perfect stride as it walks in front of the judge. Even the person handling the dog has to have the perfect stride when walking in front of the judge.
The dog that is the most perfect wins the dog show. Well, there is a problem with this dog-show type of life. What do they call the winner of a dog show? A dog. That’s correct. Did you read my notes?
The winner of a dog show is a dog. If you turn your back on that dog, that dog is going to be messing up the carpet. He is going to be eating week-old roadkill. He is still a dog.
So if we are trying to live this dog-show life, we cannot do it because we are still sinners inside. We can try to walk perfectly and be perfect, but we just cannot do it. The whole idea of walking before the Lord illuminates the fact that we are incapable of living a life that satisfies the Lord.
Well, thank the Lord, this perspective changes in the New Testament. In the New Testament, you will not find the phrase “walk before the Lord.” That phrase is completely gone. We are still encouraged to walk in a manner that is satisfying to Him.
Turn to Colossians 2:6-7.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord,
so walk in Him,
having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith,
just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.
So gone is the walk before, and now there is the walk in. We are to walk in Christ Jesus the Lord. We were instructed to walk in His ways in the Old Testament, and now, in the new covenant and new life, we are given the position to do just that—to walk in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord.
We are no longer parading in front of the Father; we are inside His Son.
In the Old Testament, we are commanded to walk in a way that is impossible for us to walk because we are sinners—we are dogs. We have no good works to use in that life. But in the New Testament, Ephesians 2:8 resolves the whole situation:
For by grace you have been saved through faith;
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
So in Christ, we have been created for the purpose of good works, for walking in His ways. I just want to be clear that our good works do not put us in Christ, and our manner of walking does not put us in Christ. The sacrifice that Christ made in His life and His resurrection has put us in Christ.
As one commentator put it, we are a new creation for good works, not by good works.
Gone is the dog-show life, where we have to be prim and proper and perfect and perfectly groomed at all times because we are walking before the Judge. Arrived is the life where the standards are the same as before, but we were placed in the One who has met those standards, who is righteous enough to satisfy God.
We are not walking before the Lord to display our good works. We are walking in the Lord, and we get to see good works displayed and lived out in us. We just get to be there when they happen.
In Ephesians 4:1-3, Paul encourages us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling.
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love,
being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
So this walk to which we have been called is a walk that will ultimately preserve the unity of the Spirit. A worthy walk is a walk that builds the body of Christ.
If you trace this theme logically back to the first mention, it all logically connects. The walk of our lives becomes a conduit of fellowship to the Father. If we are walking a walk that is worthy of the calling, we will be building the body of Christ and being built into the body of Christ. It will preserve the unity of the Spirit.
It means being built into the body of Christ and leading to fellowship with one another, fellowship with the body of Christ, and fellowship with the life of Christ as found in each one of us. Our walk—building the body, building the church—is a walk that is in fellowship with the Lord.
A walk that is characterized by good works will always lead us to fellowship with His church. This walk that is worthy of the calling will lead us to preserve the unity of the Spirit.
So this whole issue of walking is an important issue. Our life in the Lord is not a stable and stagnant one. I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but when you are walking, you are not stable. It is kind of a controlled fall.
If you are walking, you are always moving. You have always got to be doing something to keep from hitting the ground. That is part of walking. There is always kind of an imbalance there. Things are changing, things are happening, and you are moving forward.
In our walk with the Lord, things are changing and things are happening. If you are looking for stability, walking with the Lord is not going to give you stability. But it will give you change and growth. We move from childishness to sonship, from immaturity to maturity, and from isolation to communion—communion and fellowship with the Creator.
Enough specifically about walking. Now for a big transition.
As I was mulling over this concept of walking, it occurred to me that in Scripture there are a lot of people doing a lot of walking—actual physical, real-life walking, real-life journeys.
You have Adam and Eve walking out of the garden. You have the Lord walking in the garden with Adam and Eve. You have the Israelites walking from Egypt to the Promised Land, then walking from the Promised Land into exile in Babylon and back into the Promised Land. You have the disciples on the road to Emmaus. You have Paul’s missionary journeys. That is just some of the walking that is in the Bible.
I think all these walks, when you look at them, portray a picture of some aspect of our daily walk with Christ—probably some aspect of how we can walk in a manner worthy of our calling.
I am not going to look at all of these walks today; that would be quite a long message. In fact, I am not even going to look at one whole walk today. I am just going to look at one tiny aspect of one of the walks.
The walk I want to focus in on today is the walk of the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land. As Stephen spoke about last week, there are a lot of pictures portrayed in this walk: salvation, sanctification, life in Christ, baptism, and a number of other things. Of course, to portray that much stuff, the Israelites had to do a lot of walking.
But I want to focus in even further beyond that. I want to focus on a fact of their walk that is so obvious that we usually ignore it or completely miss it. It is one of those things that is so obvious that you do not see it until somebody points it out and makes a big deal out of it, like I am going to do today.
That fact is that when they went on this walk, they took some stuff with them. They did not leave Egypt empty-handed.
The things I am going to talk about are not the spiritual things that they took with them; they are the physical things they took with them. We will talk about how those physical things impacted their spiritual walk and their spiritual life.
When we look at how their physical possessions impacted their spiritual life, I also want to apply that to our life today and our spiritual life today. It may seem kind of fleshly and mundane to talk about physical things, but I think there are important lessons that we can learn from the Israelites and what they did with their stuff.
Physical stuff may seem unimportant, but we are tripartite beings. We have a body, a soul, and a spirit. Our reborn spirit is dealing with our soul, and our soul is being transformed. As it is being transformed, it is dealing with our body that is yet to be transformed.
What we do with our body impacts our soul, which impacts our spirit. What we occupy our minds with impacts our soul and impacts our spirit. All these physical things that we deal with every day—all the stuff that we have—it is all going to burn one day. But how we deal with it today does ripple into the eternal.
In talking about their possessions, I want to look at the stuff they took with them and what they did with that stuff, and I want to apply it to our lives today in the twenty-first century.
If you look at our lives today in the twenty-first century, it is phenomenal. We are confronted with an unprecedented array of stuff. Never in the history of mankind has there been so much stuff.
Most families in this country have a car, or actually most of them have two cars. We have TVs and stereos and computers and cell phones and PDAs and MP3 players and portable video games. We have all kinds of toys for the kids that are really neat, and all kinds of toys for the adults that are really neat.
Who knows how many changes of clothes we have? Back in the Israelites’ time, most people had one set of clothes, and they wore it all the time—unless they were bathing, and then they did not wear the clothes. But they wore those clothes all the time. Now each person probably has twenty or thirty different outfits they could put on. Some women have more; some men have less.
We live in homes that have more conveniences than a king one hundred years ago would have ever dreamed of. I think we would be foolish to think that this abundance of material possessions does not impact our spiritual life and our walk with the Lord. I think it does.
I think it is somewhat ironic that these primitive Israelites, with their one change of clothes, can provide lessons for us today in our materially abundant life.
Scripture does not go into a lot of detail about what they took with them. It does not provide an inventory, like a genealogy, of what they took. It gives us some broad categories.
Turn to Exodus 12:35-36. It talks a little bit about how they got the stuff that they took with them on their walk.
Now the sons of Israel had done according to the word of Moses, for they had requested from the Egyptians articles of silver and articles of gold and clothing.
And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and they let them have their request.
Thus they plundered the Egyptians.
Usually, when an army plunders somebody, they come in, steal, and take everything they want. It is a very violent, rough thing. But in this case, the Israelites plundered by just asking. They asked the Egyptians for stuff, and the Egyptians gave it to them.
The Lord paved the way for this to happen. The Lord put it on the Egyptians’ hearts, whether they knew it or not, to give them this stuff. If the Egyptians had wanted to bless the Israelites, they would have paid them for their four hundred years of slavery. But they did not. The Israelites asked, and the Egyptians gave them this stuff.
Similarly, it is not the world that has blessed us with such material abundance. It is the Lord who has blessed us with material abundance. Like the Israelites, our possessions will be used by the Lord to purify us.
Now, from looking at a high-level view, I am going to divide the things they took with them into three different categories. Then I will talk about the lessons from each category as we go through it.
The first thing they took with them is probably the worst thing they could have possibly taken with them on their walk from Egypt to the Promised Land. It is not much mentioned in the Old Testament, but it is really highlighted in Acts 7:42-43. This is Stephen’s message right before he was martyred.
But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets:
It was not to Me that you offered victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, was it, O house of Israel?
You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha,
the images which you made to worship.
I will also remove you beyond Babylon.
I have read this passage before in Acts, and somehow I never really noticed it. But when I read it this year, as we were studying the book of Acts before Friday night meeting, it really jumped out at me.
How could these people, who had just witnessed the plagues on Egypt, who had just witnessed this miraculous deliverance from bondage and the parting of the Red Sea, carry along these two idols with them? It knocked me speechless. How could they do this? It is such a wicked, stupid thing to do.
It is beyond belief, but they did. They took these idols with them. Both of these idols came from other nations, the Amorites and the Canaanites. There is not a whole lot known about the god Rompha. It is believed that he had something to do with Mars or Saturn, some kind of worship of the planets.
But the other one, Moloch, was much worse. I want to talk about him a little bit today and how that may apply to our lives.
This god, this idol they had, was a large hollow bronze statue. It stood there with its arms out as though it was holding something. When it came time to make a sacrifice to this god, they would build a fire inside the statue and heat it up glowing hot.
Then they would take a child and lay the child onto the outstretched arms of the idol. When the priests of this god laid the child on the idol, they would start banging drums and making a huge racket to drown out the noise of the child screaming and dying in agony. They did this to distract the parents from the fact that their child was being burned to death.
In Scripture, this is called putting someone through the fire. It is mentioned several times: you put your son through the fire. In fact, King Solomon put one of his sons through the fire.
These gods, Moloch and Rompha, were evident in Jewish society up until the exile in Babylon. When they returned from Babylon, there was never mention again of these gods in Israel.
“Well, Jack,” you say, “that’s all interesting and everything, but what does that have to do with our life today? We do not have any hollow bronze statues lying around.”
Well, chances are we have taken some idols from our captivity and are carrying them with us on our walk with the Lord. These idols we are carrying with us are probably not physical possessions. I know there are no little idols in my house.
They are probably intangible possessions: ideas, philosophies, motivations, goals, habits, and priorities that we carry along with us, that we have borrowed from the world, from other nations.
These intangible things are pretty difficult to inventory because they do not stand out. They have kind of blended in with our daily lives, but they still affect what we do.
For example, one of the things I have had to closely examine is my motivation for having my children homeschooled. There is the motivation that we want them to have a godly education, a Christ-centered education. But there is also the motivation that we want them to have a good education, that we want them to be academically strong, able to get into the best college, get the best job, make the most money, and be successful.
To be honest, I have a tendency to lean toward the second motivation. I want my children to be successful. I am very glad they are getting a godly education and that Brenda spends a lot of time in Scripture with the children. But the thing I brag about the most, the thing I am most proud of, is their academic performance.
Almost anything that we get involved with in our life can become an idol. When we get involved with these idols that we have borrowed from the world, there always seems to be a giant ruckus: a lot of noise, a lot of stuff going on, a lot of busyness, and a lot of commotion.
All that commotion seems designed to hide the fact that we are sacrificing the next generation, or sacrificing our children, to a false god. Of course, we are not physically sacrificing them to a false god, but we are still causing mortal injury to their spiritual life.
If you live in a constant ruckus, constant noise and commotion, maybe you need to pause and seek the Lord and try to discern what that ruckus is hiding. What is happening behind all that noise? Are we passing our children through the fire?
I think we need to take a thoughtful and full inventory of the ideas, motivations, goals, priorities, habits, hobbies, and all these things that we have borrowed from the world, and see where our focus is.
Should our jobs be the focus of all our thoughts? Should our children be the focus of all our family activities? I think we need to stop and listen through the cacophony of today’s life and see if we can hear our children crying out for us to be devoted to the one true God.
Okay, on to the next thing that the Israelites took with them. They also took with them a lot of household stuff: jewelry, clothes, and some stuff that we do not have, like porpoise skins.
I am sorry to say, the first thing they did with this stuff was build the golden calf out of it. Kind of depressing, after talking about false idols, to talk about the golden calf. But Exodus 32 talks about the golden calf.
Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”
And Aaron said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”
Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.
He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”
Again, another incomprehensible thing that they did after being delivered from bondage. Moses had stayed on the mountain for forty days, and after forty days the people had lost faith. They lost faith in Moses and lost faith in God.
They had lost the comfort of having some visible representative of God there before them, leading them. So they decided to make something tangible that they could see and lean on. They took their possessions, melted them down, and made them into an idol so they could have something visible to see.
As you would expect, the Lord disciplined them for this. The discipline that came was a great division in the camp. Thousands died. One part of the Israelites turned against the other part and killed about three thousand of them.
In the end, Moses took the golden calf, ground it into dust, put it in their drinking water, and made them drink it. In the end, it became a bitter taste in their mouths and a pile of dung.
“Well, Jack,” you say, “that is interesting and all, but what does that have to do with my life today?”
First off, we humans seem to prefer the visible to the invisible, and the immediate over the delayed. If given the choice of spending time with something visible or something invisible, I think we would all choose the visible.
Given the choice between something immediate or something delayed, we tend to choose what is immediate rather than what is delayed. We need to be careful that we are depending upon Him who is invisible and not depending on the visible things that we have carried with us.
There is also the aspect that the children of Israel took their possessions and used them outside the direction of the Lord. They stepped outside the direction of the Lord, and they made this molten calf.
If we take our possessions, our stuff, and use it outside the direction of the Lord, we will probably quickly end up with an idol. The result of that idol will be division in the camp, great strife and turmoil. It will end up being a bitter taste in our mouths and a pile of dung.
But if you look at the disgrace of the golden calf, it really stands out when you look at the next thing the Israelites did with their stuff. Turn to Exodus 35:20.
They took their stuff and put it in subjection to the Lord, and they built the tabernacle out of their stuff.
Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel departed from Moses’ presence.
Everyone whose heart stirred him, and everyone whose spirit moved him, came and brought the Lord’s contribution for the work of the tent of meeting, and for all its service and for the holy garments.
Then all whose hearts moved them, both men and women, came and brought brooches and earrings and signet rings and bracelets, all articles of gold; so did every man who presented an offering of gold to the Lord.
Every man who had in his possession blue and purple and scarlet material, fine linen, goat’s hair, ramskins dyed red, and porpoise skins, brought them.
Everyone who could make a contribution of silver and bronze brought the Lord’s contribution.
Every man who had in his possession acacia wood for any work of the service brought it.
Skip down to Exodus 36:1.
Now Bezalel and Oholiab—and I do not know if I am saying this right—and every skillful person in whom the Lord has put skill and understanding to know how to perform all the work in the construction of the sanctuary, shall perform in accordance with all that the Lord has commanded.
Then Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab, and every skillful person in whom the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him to come to the work to perform it.
So the people took their possessions, took their stuff, and put it in subjection to the Lord. They provided their stuff for the building of the tabernacle.
What was special about the tabernacle? The tabernacle was the dwelling place of God on earth, right in the middle of the camp.
It was not just giving their stuff to the cause of building a tabernacle. It was also putting their skills in subjection to the Lord and being directed by the Lord on how to stitch the tabernacle together.
One day, you have the children of Israel using their stuff to make an idol; three chapters later, you have the same people giving their stuff for the cause of building the dwelling place for the Lord here on earth.
“So, Jack,” you say, “that is interesting and all, but what does it have to do with my life today?” Well, that is a good question.
I think we can answer that by asking a question: Is our stuff a calf or is it a tent?
If our stuff is a calf, then we are serving it. We are seeking comfort from it, and we are somehow worshiping it. It becomes the focus of our life rather than the Lord being the focus of our life.
It is amazing how much time our possessions take. Taking care of the car takes time. Taking care of the house takes a lot of time. Fixing the computer when it does funny stuff takes a lot of time. Following a hobby takes up time. Tracking a sports team takes up time.
We have all these things that we think make life so much better, but we are actually just serving those things, and those things really are not serving us.
The calf takes us away from the Lord. We do not consciously take direction from these things—from the house or from the car, from the MP3 player, whatever—but we let those things direct our lives.
A calf takes us away from His people and from His house. And for what end? When the calf takes us away, it becomes division in the camp, a bitter taste in our mouth, and a pile of dung.
On the other hand, if our stuff is a tent, then our stuff is placed in subjection to the Lord, in subjection to His desires and His goals.
The Lord has a goal of having a dwelling place here on earth, a dwelling place in His people. During the Exodus, the Lord could have just poofed the tabernacle into place. Boom, there it was. But He did not. He sought the participation of His people.
He sought for them to bring their stuff, put their stuff in subjection to Him, and put their skills in subjection to Him. In the end, their possessions were used to build the dwelling place of the Lord. The same possessions that could have easily been an idol ended up building the dwelling place.
In our last days, I think we need to take an inventory of our lives and our stuff. We need to lay those things before the Lord and honestly consider each thing: Is it a calf or is it a tent?
Am I willing for this thing to be used to build the dwelling place of the Lord? Is this thing separating me from the brethren or binding me to the brethren? Is this thing too valuable for me to give to the Lord?
Is this thing—this hobby or this idea or this thing that I have—more valuable than my brethren?
Like the idols that the Israelites carried out of Egypt, these things in our lives may not be tangible things. They may be intangible things, such as philosophies, interests, goals, hobbies, or motivations. But they can also be tangible things, like cars or homes.
You may say, “Well, Jack, I do not have much of anything, so I am immune to this syndrome of having a calf or having a tent.” But there is something that we all have, that we all have the same amount of: our time. We each have twenty-four hours a day.
Our time is a possession that we have, and we determine how we spend it. Are we spending our time building a dwelling place for the Lord, building a dwelling place for His people, and encouraging His people? Or are we spending our time on our possessions, our goals, and our ideas?
Are we spending our time serving the Lord or the world’s idols?
Going back to our children, I think we need to be very careful how we spend our time and energy in relation to our children. There is so much peer pressure in this country these days to lavish everything possible on our children.
We want to expose them to everything that we can expose them to, to make them a well-rounded child. There are all kinds of sports they can do. There are all kinds of extracurricular things we can expose them to just to have them well-rounded. There are things we wanted to be exposed to as children that we could not, so we want to expose our children to them to try to make them well-rounded.
But are we just rounding our children out with stuff that is going to burn? Or are we rounding them out with the life of the Lord?
As somebody said at the conference—I do not remember who said this—the best thing you can do as a parent for your children is to be wholly devoted to the Lord.
So I will ask again: Is there stuff pulling us away from Christ and pulling us away from His people? Or is our stuff being used to build His house?
Also at the conference, somebody mentioned—I think it was Ed Milver—that the assembly here is characterized by looking at things from the Lord’s perspective and asking the question, “What is the Lord’s perspective on some issue?”
Since our stuff is not neutral, since our stuff impacts our spiritual walk, the Lord is not neutral on the issue of our stuff.
I found in my study two ways that the Lord looks at our stuff. The first is 1 Timothy 6:9.
But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.
For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
So the Lord sees our possessions as a potential snare and distraction, something that can pull us away from Him and plunge men into ruin and destruction.
You may say, “Well, the stuff that I have is not plunging me into ruin and destruction.” But I think our stuff, and our dealing with our stuff, can be much more subtle than that.
I want to give you an example from the life of one of my children. I have some object lessons here.
My daughter Rachel is a very wonderful, loving, tenderhearted child. She is a very, very sweet girl. Because of this, she quickly becomes attached to things and people, and she falls in love with them. She likes to be around them.
When she was younger, about three or four years old, she had two stuffed animals that she really fell in love with. These are not stuffed animals; they were Beanie Babies, and they were much smaller. I wanted to get these because they were kind of to scale. I am a lot bigger than she was then.
She had these little stuffed animals, and she loved to have them with her wherever she went. When she started out with them, she would carry them in her hands. She had them with her at all times, in her hands, which was great because she had them close to her and could always hug them.
Well, this was a problem. She could not do anything because her hands were full of her stuff. Whenever she needed to do something, she could not get it done.
Nobody’s thinking Barbara Manatee, are they?
Anyway, Rachel is also a very intelligent child. She quickly figured out that there was a way she could have her stuff close by and still have use of her hands. So she would carry them underneath her arms.
This went on for about a year. She kept these two stuffed animals and went everywhere with them underneath her arms. This was great because she could do some stuff with her hands and still have her stuff close to her.
But there was still a problem. She could not use her arms from the elbows up. Anytime she needed to reach for something, a stuffed animal would drop. She would have to reach down, pick it up, and put it back under her arm, or put it under the other arm and do something.
It was this big giant distraction, having these things stuck underneath her arms.
Eventually, she grew up a little more. She finally realized that these two guys could live without her, and she could live without them. So she put them on her bed. I have no idea where they are now. I think we may have sent them away or something. Anyway, we still have them? Okay, we still have them.
Now she can serve. She can set the table. She can use her whole arms and her whole body because she does not have these things stuffed underneath her arms.
To get to a spiritual picture, I think this is a picture of our spiritual lives. Sometimes we get some stuff, and we like it. We do not want to let go of it. It is in our hands, and it prevents us from doing anything else.
We cannot serve anybody. We cannot serve the Lord because our hands are full of our stuff.
The Lord will not let that situation go on for very long because we are prevented from serving His people. So He confronts us about it.
We are smart people, smart in a way. We figure out a better way. We just put the stuff underneath our arms. We still have our stuff close by where we need it, and we can serve the Lord. We have our hands free. We can do stuff for the Lord.
Well, this is also a problem. Yes, we can do some stuff for the Lord, but we are just serving Him from the elbows down. If He calls us to do anything that is the slightest stretch, we suddenly get distracted. We have to go pick our stuff up again and take care of our stuff.
Then we can try to serve the Lord. Maybe we will rearrange our stuff one day and serve the Lord with one whole arm. But we still have this stuff bothering us.
I think the Lord will confront us about that also. One day, we will mature and say, “Well, Lord, I can live without this stuff. I am going to put it aside and serve You with all my arms, with my whole self.”
The second way the Lord can look at our stuff is as a tool. Acts 2:44 and Acts 4:32 show this.
And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common;
and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.
And then Acts 4:32:
And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul;
and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.
And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.
For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales,
and lay them at the apostles’ feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.
Now, to be honest, these verses have always made me very uncomfortable. They bothered me.
In the church, we talk about everything around these verses: the wonderful life, the apostles’ teaching, and all the spiritual times and stuff. But we skip over these two verses like they are a genealogy. We just kind of put them away.
You would see these wonderful things happening, but we never seem to acknowledge this other thing that, in a way, is unspeakable: they were sharing their stuff.
To be honest, I am still struggling with the impact of these verses on my life. I trust that the Lord will deal gently with me in this area. I hope none of you have thought that I have my act together in regard to my stuff, because I do not. The Lord is dealing with me on that.
There have been movements in the church that have focused on these verses. They have become communal and shared everything. But in focusing on those two verses, they have neglected other things, such as sound teaching and discipleship.
God forbid that we lurch off in any one direction on any one teaching, even in teaching about sharing our possessions.
I think, for now, that I need to remember that my stuff needs to be in subjection to the desires and goals of the Lord. I need to be willing for my stuff to be used to build the body of Christ. I need to be aware when my stuff is dividing me from the brethren.
The world has built this tremendous system around the acquisition, possession, and enjoyment of stuff. A person’s standing in the world is measured by how much stuff they have.
We have a concept called conspicuous consumption. We buy the most expensive thing just so people know that we bought the most expensive thing.
If we are to be separate from this world, if we are to be the called-out ones that the Lord wants us to be, we need to directly address how we deal with our stuff.
Because how we are dealing with it now is exactly how the world deals with its stuff. There is really no difference between our life in regard to our stuff and the world’s life in regard to its stuff.
We cannot be separate from the world, and we cannot have a testimony to the world, if we look like the world.
So we need to prayerfully consider: Whose system are we following in regard to our stuff? Are we following the world’s system, where our stuff is our stuff? Or are we following the Lord’s system, where our stuff is used to build the body of Christ?
So, in conclusion, I just want to summarize what I have talked about here today.
As we walk with our heavenly Father in this life, we must learn to rightly deal with the things that we carry with us in this world.
We need to discern what idols we have borrowed from the world and are carrying with us. We need to make sure the things that we are carrying with us are not a barrier between the brethren and ourselves.
Instead, we need to make sure that our stuff—the stuff we are carrying with us—is used to build the house of God.
As we are walking, and as we are walking with our stuff, we need to be mindful of the stuff that we are carrying. Is there stuff distracting us from the Lord and distracting us from His people? Are we having to spend a lot of time tending our stuff and not able to serve the Lord fully?
Is our stuff being used by the Lord to build us together and to build His dwelling place? Is our stuff being used to strengthen the fellowship of those who have His life?
Amen.
So let’s pray.
Father, I just seek You, Lord, in regard to my possessions and my stuff. I ask, Lord, that You would show me where I am holding on to things and need to put them aside so that I can serve You and serve Your house better, Lord, and serve Your house fully.
I pray, Father, that what has been spoken here today would be covered and that no one would be offended by what I have shared; that we would be encouraged, Lord, and that we would be drawn close to You.
I pray this in Your most holy and precious name. Amen.