What I Learned on My Summer Vacation, Part 1 (2000)
Tom Shrader opens with a practical lesson on compound interest, using a savings illustration to argue that financial stewardship is a spiritual issue requiring wisdom and long-term thinking. He then examines how Jesus divided His time between believers and unbelievers, and between individuals and groups, challenging Christians to pattern their lives accordingly rather than retreating into a 'Christian ghetto' or abandoning community altogether. Drawing from 1 John 2:15-17, he unpacks the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life as marks of worldliness that stand in opposition to loving the Father, and closes by calling the congregation to contentment rooted in the understanding that this world is passing away.
“If you say you're a Christian, if you say Jesus is Lord, if you say you've been saved by grace through faith and you understand that salvation's not a result of works, but it results in works — do you get that?”
— Tom Shrader
Series: What I Learned on My Summer Vacation
Recorded: 2000 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 38 min
Themes: stewardship, money, worldliness, contentment, community, evangelism, temptation, priorities, engaged couple, newlywed, struggling with materialism, young adult, new believer, feeling isolated from culture, navigating finances, parent
Scripture: 1 John 2:15-17, John 1:10, John 17, Matthew 18:7, 2 Samuel 11, Galatians 1:4, 1 Timothy 6:6-8, Hebrews 9:27
Theological Themes: sanctification, loving the world, 1 john 2, lust of the flesh, spiritual formation, biblical stewardship, incarnational living, eschatology
Full Transcript
What I Learned on My Summer Vacation, Part 1
This is when I would say, open your Bibles — but not this week. As you came on campus, you could almost feel the electricity. You could cut it with a knife. You know why, don't you? It's the fourth annual "What I Learned on My Summer Vacation."
Here are the ground rules: there are none. What I do is collect material while I'm on vacation and try to condense it down into two weeks — this week and next. It moves from extraordinarily practical stuff to hopefully helping you see the biblical implication of virtually everything that we do.
Next week we'll look at a Time Magazine cover story on women, featuring the cast of Sex and the City, in which they determined they don't need husbands — ever. We'll marry that, no pun intended, with the news that Gloria Steinem, at age 66, got married this week. George Magazine also had a cover story on George W. Bush titled "How George W. Found God," and we'll talk about that next week, along with a couple of other things that happened while I was home.
The Ministry Happening Behind the Scenes
This first thing may surprise you, and you may even wonder how it fits in — but hopefully you'll see that it does. I was invited in to speak to the couples who are just finishing up their premarital classes. There are people who minister on this campus who get almost zero recognition, and they're not doing it for the recognition, so that's not a problem. But there are things happening here that you're not even aware of.
One of those incredibly time-consuming and yet so fulfilling ministries is the one that John and Diana Messier have for engaged couples. They spend hours and hours with them and expose them to all different sorts of issues. I'm then invited in for the last week to talk about sex. I don't know why, but everybody says it's their favorite one.
Before I was up, Dave and Alice Weaver were in there talking about money. They head up the Crown Ministry here at the church — a ministry we would love to see everybody go through. It talks about your relationship with God and the gifts He's given you, especially your money and how to handle it. Dave Weaver did a magnificent job. He was absolutely terrific.
The Power of Compound Interest
Dave asked the couples a question that I told him last night I was going to use this week. My daughter Haley was home and asked what I was going to talk about. When I told her, she said, "That's a loser." The reason was that she didn't want to hear about it — I'd been talking to her about it for a month and she was sick of it.
Here was the question: Who will have more money saved at age 65 — a person or couple who saves $1,000 a year from age 21 to 28 and then stops saving, or a person or couple who saves $1,000 a year from age 29 all the way through age 65? The answer is the first couple. Using a 10% interest rate, a person or couple who puts away $1,000 a year from age 21 to 28 and then stops will have $481,000 at age 65. A person or couple who begins at age 29 and saves $1,000 a year all the way through to age 65 will have $388,000.
The lesson is the power of compound interest. The reason I would use valuable time from this pulpit to talk about it is because this is a spiritual issue — especially for those of you on the younger side of the equation. Time is your friend in building security. Compound interest is your ally.
When I shared this with the girls in that class, I got two reactions. First: "Where am I going to get $1,000 a year?" Second: "Who cares? I'm not 65." I took that as a challenge. Let's say you're a couple, both working. Between lunch, dinner, snacks, and Starbucks — just Starbucks and a bottle of water — you can set aside $5 a day without any problem simply by taking your lunch to work four days a week. Five dollars a day, four days a week, fifty weeks a year — we'll give you your vacation — and that's a thousand dollars. Look at the minimum effort and discipline required. It takes discipline, but all of a sudden you've taken care of yourself without depending on Social Security. And at $1,000, almost all of you could do more than that.
Wisdom, Foolishness, and the Future
What is alarming is the attitude that says, "Who cares?" The Bible talks a great deal about wisdom and about the contrast between a wise person and a fool. The fool is continually pictured as someone who thinks about today to the exclusion of tomorrow. If there is any group of people who should be concerned about the future — planning and preparing for it — it should be us as Christians. To be a wise person is to plan and to prepare.
When you talk to me about how God has blessed you, how grateful you are, your family, and yes, your material things — those material things are a picture of where you are spiritually. The way you handle them is a picture of where you are in your heart before God. I was so impressed with what Dave did in that class that I asked him to email me his PowerPoint presentation. You're only as good as the people you plagiarize — that's my view.
The C.S. Lewis Challenge on Giving
As I was going through this, there was a quote from C.S. Lewis. It happens to be talking about giving. I'm not trying to talk to you about giving specifically, although that is part of it, but just listen to this quote. The reason it grabbed my attention was that we get the question all the time: how much should I give? The problem is people are always talking about money. I would expand that into time and energy and everything. How much should I give to the Lord?
Here is C.S. Lewis's answer: "I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditures on comforts, luxuries, amusement, et cetera, is coming up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they're too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them."
A Poem About Comfort
My friend Larry Wright, whom almost all of you have heard of and perhaps have seen, is someone many people don't know also writes poetry. I'll be honest — I never get poetry. It's way too subtle for me. Almost ten years ago he sent me a book of his poetry, and I could rarely make heads or tails of it.
What a lot of people also don't know is that Larry's grandson is seventeen years old. He cannot read music, but he writes music. They were just at Estes Park for a big music festival, and this seventeen-year-old won it. What makes it particularly interesting is that the music is written by him, but the lyrics are written by his grandfather. You have a seventeen-year-old with an incredible musical style combined with the depth of a sixty-six-year-old man's insight — that's pretty remarkable, and this kid will go very far.
As I was going through Larry's book of poetry, I finally found one I could understand. Let me read it to you:
*A comfortable home, a comfortable wife,*
*comfortable children, a comfortable life,*
*a comfortable church with comfortable pews,*
*comfortable pastor with comfortable views,*
*a comfortable soul in comfort to dwell,*
*a comfortable road to discomforting hell.*
The Myth of Comfort as a Standard
That idea of comfort — here is all I am saying. Why don't you stop and take a little inventory of your life? We apply the comfort standard by comparing ourselves to everyone else. Everybody that makes what I make lives in this neighborhood, therefore I'm okay to live there. Everybody at my income level drives these kinds of cars, takes these kinds of vacations, has the cabin.
Now, let me be clear: you will never hear an anti-material message from me. I like material things. What I will speak against is materialism — the idea that you can find fulfillment in stuff. We have long said there are two things that will tell you where your heart is: your checkbook and your calendar. The specific tools we name have changed over the years — from checkbook and day timer to checkbook and Palm Pilot — but the point remains. Where you spend your time and where you spend your money will show us where your heart is. You cannot say Jesus is Lord and give Him nothing: no time, no effort, no energy, no cash.
A Personal Illustration: The Mall Conversation
I remember when presidential income tax statements were released some years back. Jesse Jackson's income that year was about $150,000, and his charitable giving was about $200. A man of the cloth. That, to me, is hypocrisy — and this is not about Jesse Jackson personally. My point is that if anyone ought to understand the physical and financial responsibility we have, that our life and our investment ought to represent what we say our heart is, it ought to be the person who has "Reverend" in front of his name. Shame on us if we are not giving — and giving to the point where, as Lewis says, some things genuinely compete.
I will never forget the moment we were at Fiesta Mall, just after our family had decided I would leave private industry and go into full-time ministry. Haley was about six and Sarah was about seven. We were walking through the mall when Sarah said, "Oh, I'd like to have that," and Haley replied, "We don't have money for that stuff anymore." I remember right where Gloria Jean's was, next to that little shop with the cuckoo clocks — there were two benches right there. I took the girls over to those benches, sat them down, got right in their faces, and said, "Listen. I want you to understand something. We have money for that. We are choosing not to spend it on that." That is exactly what we are talking about. There ought to be in your life a sense that comfort is not the driving force.
The Two-Income Myth
It takes so little to be prepared for the future economically, and yet there is a great myth floating around right now — a lie that will destroy you and your family — and that is the idea that you need two incomes to survive. That is not true. Rarely, when people come to see us, is their problem too little income. It is almost always too much expense: a comfortable house, a comfortable life, comfortable children, a comfortable everything.
What Happened at the Vancouver Airport
The second thing I want to share happened on our way back from Vancouver. Not wanting any hassle at the airport, we arrived early, got through security, and were waiting for our America West flight — which, I should note, was on time and prompt, as it always is when I fly them. With my book finished and time to kill, I was waiting at the gate when...
What Would Jesus Do — and What Did He Actually Do?
Picking up a copy of *U.S. News and World Report* dated August 21st, 2000, I came across a story on God and religion — not just from the religious right, but addressing how God was becoming such a factor in presidential politics, including Joe Lieberman's involvement. They used this illustration: they had asked Al Gore how he would make decisions if he were president, and here is what he said. He said he would ask, "What would Jesus do?"
We are not entirely surprised by that. Maybe we are surprised to hear it in presidential politics, but we are not surprised by it because we see that question all around us — that ubiquitous abbreviation, WWJD. You see it on bookmarks, calendars, and most prominently on bracelets. I have no problem with that. If I have a problem with it, the problem is that I didn't think to market it first.
It is important for us as Christians to understand that "What would Jesus do?" is a good, legitimate question — but it is a question for other Christians. You do not ask a pagan what would Jesus do. It is a question we ask of those who know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. We need to be very careful here, because we could do exactly what Jesus would do ethically and still go to hell.
Consider Mahatma Gandhi, whom we wheel out all the time in these conversations. Gandhi said — and this is close to a direct quote — "I read the Gospels every day. I follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, but I refuse to accept that Jesus or any other man could die for my sin." That is why we say, based on his own profession of faith, Mahatma Gandhi is the nicest man in hell — a man who did magnificent things, who had an extraordinary lifestyle, who asked what would Jesus do and then attempted to do it.
The Two Tests of Christianity
When we talk about Christianity, there are two tests. The first is the doctrinal test: do you confess Christ? To confess means to agree. To say "I am a Christian" but not believe Jesus was God is a self-contradicting statement. Anyone who is truly a Christian believes Jesus was God come in the flesh — that is the testimony of your Christianity.
The second is the moral test. Jesus said, "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments." If you say you are a Christian, if you say Jesus is Lord, if you say you have been saved by grace through faith, then you understand that salvation is not a result of works — but it does result in works. A Christian is someone who passes the doctrinal test, who has fellowship with Him, walks with Him, and walks with others.
A Better Question: What Did Jesus Do?
So "What would Jesus do?" is clearly a question that ought to be reserved for Christians. But perhaps — and I am trying to make a point here — a better question is WDJD: What did Jesus do? Rather than wondering what Jesus would do, why not look at what He actually did?
This came fresh to my mind because I had a flat tire recently. The only thing I knew for certain was that I was not going to fix it myself. My wife Susan and I were stumped. We hated to call AAA for a flat tire, but we did not know what else to do. It struck me that rather than driving past people who are hurting, going to the coffee shop to debate what Jesus would do, and then coming back to find they have already gone, we should simply ask: what did Jesus do?
What got me thinking about this specific question is the call on our lives. Here is what John says: "The one who says he abides in Christ ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked." In other words, you should do what Jesus did. There ought to be principles in your life. Your time, your energy, your effort, and your resources ought to be invested as Jesus invested His.
How Jesus Spent His Time
Gene Getz took the time to carefully break this apart and study it. All of this will be posted on the website at evbc.org, so you can access it there. He examined the incidents recorded in the Gospels — not time measured in minutes and hours, but individual encounters — and found essentially this breakdown of where Christ spent His time.
Jesus was recorded spending time with the disciples approximately 26 to 29 times. Breaking that down further, He spent about one third of His time with individuals and about two thirds of His time in group settings — with the scribes or Pharisees, with two or more of the apostles, or with the multitudes. Interestingly, Jesus spent approximately 53% of His time with people who responded positively, and about 46% of His time with people who responded in a neutral or negative fashion.
Five Principles for Following Jesus
So what is the point of all this? Where are we going with it? There are five straightforward things that may be helpful to you when you try to figure out what Jesus would do — that is, what you should do.
The first thing you need to understand is this: Jesus spent time with many different types of people. I see people making two kinds of mistakes in this area. One mistake is spending all of their time with other Christians — Christian radio, Christian television, Christian books, Christian music — to the exclusion of everyone else.
The Danger of Two Extremes
Christian concerts, Christian fortune cookies, Christian mints, Christian everything. The dog's converted — growing dogs God's way. It's all Christian. Well, that's a Christian ghetto. That's sterile. That's awful. We don't want to be there, and we're inbred.
Here's the other side of the coin, equally dangerous. These are people who spend all their time with lost people. On the surface, we might say that's good. All they do is talk about Jesus, and all they are involved in is evangelism and apologetics. The problem is that's not a view that Jesus had.
His time was spent with those who would say, "Yes, I'm a follower," and those who would say, "No, I'm not." And so should your time. Shame on you if you are forsaking the assembly. I know a lot of Christians who say, "I can worship God on the golf course. Church is filled with hypocrites." So they just go hang out, claiming that's where Jesus hung out — in the bars, the strip joints. Well, that's bad. But so is the other extreme.
Jesus was there with both types of people — not just both types, but people who responded negatively and positively. There were times when He was praying, times when He was involved with those who followed Him, times when He was teaching those who said, "Yes, I'm a follower," and times when He was among those who wanted to kill Him. He was involved with both groups.
He spent about a third of His time with individuals and about two-thirds of His time with groups. And as He engaged with groups, He spent as much time with those who were hostile as with those who were positive. At the time He spent with individuals, He spent about a third with the sick, about a third with just general groups of people, and about a third with the apostles.
The Pattern of Christ's Life
I think that's really helpful and genuinely interesting. I'm not saying break it down exactly like that, but do you get the picture that Christ paints? When Jesus comes along in His life, He just busts the walls out of what we think ought to be right.
Listen, if you say you're a follower of Christ, if you say He abides in you, then I ought to be able to tell it by looking at you. It ought to be clear. It ought to be evident. I ought to be able to look at you and say, "There's a follower of Christ." Look at the way they walk. They start to look like their Father. They start to act like Him.
We're trying something very new, and we'll ask you next week to be praying for us. Susan and I are going to Houston next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and I'm going to speak to a totally secular audience — the convenience store operators of America. So we're going to see how that shakes out.
Turning to 1 John
Now I would invite you to open your Bibles, and we'll spend the rest of the time in 1 John. We've got about fifteen minutes or so left. Here's what John does: John is talking about false Christianity and real Christianity, about how to tell authentic, genuine Christian faith. He speaks of Antichrist — meaning those who are against Christ, not just the capital-A specific person. After he says you ought to walk in a manner like your Father, he says this:
"Do not love the world nor the things of the world. If anyone loves the world" — we're in 1 John 2:15 — "the love of the Father is not in him. For this is the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. It's not from the Father, but it is from the world. And the world is passing away, and also its lusts. But the one who does the will of God abides forever."
The Meaning of "World"
The word that jumps off the page at me is the word *world*. If you're in that passage, you can circle it or underline it — you'll see it there six times. And it is so often the case in the Greek that one word translates as one English word, yet carries different meanings. This word *cosmos* is used to speak of the physical world — the earth, the planet, the stars, the moons, all of that. It is also used, with the same word, to speak of the human race.
In John chapter 1, verse 10, John uses that word in each of these ways. Here's what he says: "Jesus was in the world" — that's the earth — "and the world was made through Him, but the world" — that is, the human race — "did not know Him." So when we see that word *world*, we need to understand the context in which it is being used. When he says do not love the world, is he saying hate the planet? No. Don't love the human race? No.
It's the third way the word is used. It speaks of a system — the way we talk about the world of politics, or the world of sports, or the world of medicine: ideas, activities, and purposes that relate to a specific area of study or industry. In this case, the word *world* speaks of that invisible spiritual system of evil under the oversight of Satan himself and his demons. Don't love this world system. Don't love the way this world thinks. Don't love the things that are part of this world system.
And if you do — and this is very solemn — if you do, then you don't love the Father. To be a greedy person running around saying, "I love this, I love all this stuff," is to say, "I don't love the Father," because according to John, they are mutually exclusive.
Five Reasons a Christian Should Not Love the World System
Now, why should a Christian not love the world system? Five things quickly.
Number one: they are in opposition. How could a Christian possibly love a system that attempts to defile everything that is good and everything that is godly? In Matthew 18:7, Jesus says this: "Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks." This world is in opposition to God. They are mutually exclusive. This world defines as good things that God says are
The World's System Versus God's System
The world's system is short-sighted and narrow, whereas God's system is eternal. These two are in direct opposition. I was at the hospital this week with a man, and when I walked in and asked how he was feeling, he said, "Great." He looked good. But there is one problem: he has a viral infection in his heart, and according to the doctors, there is a one-third chance he is not going to make it. A lot of people hear something like that and think this is awful — that a man in the land of the living is about to head to the land of the dead. But we know as Christians that he is in the land of the dead on his way to the land of the living. That is the difference.
The world says, "Grab all the gusto you can. Get everything you can. You only go around once." And what is interesting is that is actually true — but here is what Jesus says: do you live for Him or do you live for yourself? The author of Hebrews says it is appointed a man once to die. You only go around once, and then comes life and judgment. That is the other part of the equation the world leaves out.
The world says, "This is really living." You have seen the ads — you are on the beach, you have your Corona, there is the volleyball, and it doesn't get any better than this. They never show you the guy the next day feeling wrecked. That is not what they advertise. I spent a lot of time in my life in happy hours, and here is my general observation: we were never happier at the end of the hour than we were at the beginning. That is not real life.
The world's system is spiritually dead. Jesus says the night before He dies, speaking to His disciples, that the world cannot even receive the Spirit. That is why it is so powerful in John 17, the true Lord's Prayer, when He says, "I pray for the disciples — I do not even pray for the world," because it is spiritually dead. The world's system is morally polluted, filled with selfish ambition, carnal ambition, greed, and selfish pleasure, all manner of evil.
This is why you should not love the world — because you have been freed from it. In Galatians 1:4, Paul says Jesus gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from the present evil world. The world distracts you from the things that are really important, and that is the core problem.
The Cost of Materialism
That is why materialism is so dangerous — not because the accumulation of stuff is a problem in itself, but because that accumulation comes with a cost. The new house, the extra bedroom, the new car, even education — these things carry a price beyond money. There is a lot of noise about the cost of a college education, but you can go to ASU, the University of Arizona, or NAU and get an excellent education without breaking the bank. The problem is the pressure to send your son to Brown or Harvard to make a statement. When he graduates and goes on to run a yogurt store, at least he will have a diploma that says Harvard. But really, that is about mom and dad, isn't it?
That is the world's system at work. Is education a good thing? Absolutely — it is so important, and providing it for your children is worthwhile. But it is wrong to put yourself so deeply in debt that you spend the next ten years of your life exhausted and stretched thin, when that time and energy and money could have been invested in God's kingdom rather than in this world.
The Three Areas John Identifies
John expands on this: do not love this world or the things of this world, because if you do, the love of the Father is not in you. He then breaks down the love of this world into three specific areas: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.
The lust of the flesh refers to those desires within us. We typically think of sexual immorality, and that is certainly one of them, but it is broader than that — it is a general attraction toward evil. There is a desire, a lust, that resides in the flesh. Paul says he does not do the things he wants to do; he finds this battle, this struggle, within himself. That is why in your own life, the closer you draw to God, instead of feeling more holy, you actually feel more sinful. Because the closer you are to Him, you suddenly see all the areas of your life that fall so short. That is why many of us who are walking closely with the Lord see more sin in our lives now than we did the day we were saved.
The Lust of the Eyes: David and Bathsheba
The lust of the eyes — that eye gate — is illustrated perfectly in 2 Samuel 11. There is David, and there is nothing wrong with the fact that he sees Bathsheba. That is not the problem. That is a glance, and you cannot stop a glance. But the lust of the eyes is David on that rooftop, seeing the figure, and not merely glancing — he looks, he stares, and in that moment he essentially calls for the royal binoculars. And once he does that, now we have sin, now we have problems.
He looks closely, he stares, and then he says, "Bring her to me." He has relations with her, she becomes pregnant, and now he has to cover it up. Remember what happens next: he invites her husband Uriah back from the field, knowing that any man who has been away would naturally go home and be with his wife. If Uriah does that, he will assume the child is his, and the situation is resolved. But Uriah says, "How could I do that? How could I go home and enjoy those comforts when my men are out in the field?" And he sleeps on the concrete outside. Then David is backed further into a corner. And how did all of this start? It started with something entirely natural —
The Boastful Pride of Life
The third thing is the boastful pride of life. The Greek refers here to being proud when you really have no reason or nothing to be proud about — a bragger, putting on a big show, blowing about how big things are. Take it back to what we talked about at the beginning: money. This is not the classical economic definition, but debt is something that allows us to pretend to be something we aren't. If we have two Lexuses — Lexi — in the parking lot, Lexus A and Lexus B, you don't know which one is paid for and which one is about to be repossessed. Debt allows you to pretend to be something you really aren't.
Why would I care what other people think? Because I'm in love with the world, not with God. When I'm in love with the world and in love with the things of the world, that opinion matters deeply to me.
The World Is Passing Away
Then John adds — and we have to stop here — verse 17: the world is passing away. That perspective is so important. First Timothy 6 is a passage I love and return to often: godliness plus contentment equals great gain. We came into the world with nothing, we leave with nothing; if we have food and covering, with those we should be content.
For years I couldn't understand why verse 7 is in there — the part about coming with nothing and going with nothing. But that is the ticket to contentment. There is no way you will be content until you understand that this world is fading away.
When you understand that the world is fading away and it affects your behavior, then you have the love of the Father in you, not the love of the world. Do you see how this closes the circle?
A Challenge and a Call
I learned a lot on my summer vacation, and almost always these lessons are gentle reminders. Let me really challenge all of you here — but especially young men and women and young couples — to understand the power and the responsibility that come with the gifts God has given you. And when you find yourself thinking He didn't give you much, just remember that the next time you enjoy a latte this week.
It is fair to ask what would Jesus do — if you know Christ. If you are not a Christian, you need not worry about what Jesus would do. What would Jesus have you do? He would have you come in repentance and faith. That means acknowledging you are a sinner separated from Him, and that through His grace and mercy you can find salvation.
For those who do know Christ, Jesus spent His time with believers and non-believers alike, with those who responded positively and those who responded negatively. But here is what He would say: before we worry about your actions, what about the condition of your heart? Are you in love with this world, or are you in love with Him? Do you understand that those two loves are in opposition to each other?
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Father, would You send us out as a group of men and women and students who are committed to live for You? Father, thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank You for the life that we find in Him and Him alone, and we pray that our relationship with Him makes a difference in our lives. We pray this to You in Jesus' name, amen.