Trying to Find Safety in Numbers
Tom Shrader teaches on David's decision to take a census despite God's prohibition, showing how this represents the universal human tendency to find security in numbers, knowledge, connections, or possessions rather than in God Himself. He connects this to Deuteronomy 17's warnings about kings trusting in horses, wives, and gold rather than in the Lord, emphasizing that our natural inclination is to trust the gifts rather than the gift giver.
“Human nature, our tendency, is to be dependent upon the gifts rather than the gift giver.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Dumb Mistakes: How to Avoid Them (2017)
Recorded: October 12, 2017
Duration: 39 min
Themes: security, trust, pride, fear, control, idolatry, wisdom, faith, struggling with control, business leader, feeling insecure, new to leadership, parent, seeking validation, pastor, middle aged
Scripture: 1 Chronicles 21:1-8, Deuteronomy 17:14-20, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Luke 12:15-21, 1 Corinthians 1
Theological Themes: providence, sovereignty, stewardship, biblical authority, temptation, spiritual maturity, discernment, obedience
Full Transcript
What you have today is week four of a series titled Dumb Mistakes: How to Avoid Them. The "how to avoid them" is the important part. I'm not going to take a lot of time on the summary, but what we're trying to do is look at mistakes that we find in Scripture and then take that to our life and not duplicate them. Last week was confusing lust and love, and there was a lot of humor in it. It was somewhat light-hearted though instructive.
This today is more serious, but I will tell you this—for me this lesson today is huge. I'm in Cannon Beach this summer teaching, and I told somebody the other day I think I'm going to pull this out and put that in there, maybe help me do something at Cannon Beach, maybe a greatest hits kind of thing or something. This would be a gigantic lesson for me. Now it may not be for you, and if it's not for you, the good news is you only have about 40 minutes left to sit there. Fortunately you have iPads and stuff and you can do other things, so go ahead and do that.
Now I'm going to give you a background, and there are some rabbit trails in here. If you're new to Priority Living and you've never heard me or anything, this is vintage me today. This is what I do. I know this sounds arrogant—this is what I do best today. You will walk out awestruck. That would be my guess. If not, and I mean this, then there's really something wrong with you at this point, because it's not me. I know this.
The Background: Moses' Warning About Kings
Here's the background. It's not in your notes—Deuteronomy 17, verse 14. Dumb mistake number four is from the life of David. If I said to you we're going to do dumb mistake number four, it's from the life of David, I would say what do you think it would be, and you would immediately say Bathsheba. See, which is why I'm up here and you're down there, because it's not Bathsheba.
It's from an incident in David's life that some of you will know, but even some of you who have been around a while are going to go, "Gosh, I didn't remember that" or "I didn't know that." So here's the background. The background is 450 years prior to that, from the life of Moses, and Moses is writing Deuteronomy 17:14: "When you enter the land the Lord has given you, take possession of it, settle it, and when you say, 'Let us set a king over us like all the other nations around us...'"
Didn't get very far—stop. It's human nature that you want to be—we get it. We're very much concerned about everybody else. The nation of Israel is going, "Gosh, we got all these guys, we got all these leaders, we have this structure, but we want a king like everybody else." That's the tendency. I think it's a human nature tendency—peer pressure after peer pressure after peer pressure, which doesn't go away.
I would suggest, if I had time to develop it and to talk to people, I would say in my mom's independent living place there's probably a great deal of peer pressure. When I was looking at all these Amish people, I was thinking, "How do you show off if you're Amish?" Because they all kind of dress alike and their buggies are alike, and you can't have like an upgrade. It's not like one guy's got a Chevy buggy and the other guy's got a Mercedes buggy. But I guarantee you there's something—one of them had an extra ribbon or something.
God's Instructions for Choosing a King
"You're going to go on the land, you're going to want a king because you want to be like everybody else, but don't do that. When the Lord chooses—okay, here's how you ought to look at a king—don't place a foreigner over you, one who's not a brother."
Now here's what they want from the king. It's going to take just a little bit of thought, but you're going to see the beauty of this. "The king must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you don't go back." One: no horses. "Two, he must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray." "Three, don't acquire much gold or silver."
Now then He goes on and He talks about when he takes the throne: "Here's what I want them to do. Go to the priests, get a copy of the law, write the law down, and then follow the law." The focus is on what not to do: not many horses.
Understanding the Cultural Context
In that agricultural economy, the agricultural work was done primarily by oxen. Horses were used primarily for military. When we were back there, there were these guys—I mean, getting ready to plant, there were these Amish guys with a plow and horses that drew that plow. I mean, it would be just a really difficult—for me it would be a really difficult way to live. In that culture in Israel, that would be work of the oxen. The horses are military.
The wives—don't take many wives. One of the things that they would do as they would encounter different tribes or different battles or different nations—cut me slack on terms here, but you get the picture—the Secretary of State would engage the other nation's Secretary of State. Under the misguided notion, by the way, that if you were married to somebody from that nation, you wouldn't want to fight them, they would hook him up on that level. So now he's getting all these wives for political power. And then money.
Now the primary way—it hasn't changed a lick—the primary way for government to get money is taxes. It's one-on-one what you tax. It's like right now—I just heard this, somebody's alarm goes off this morning, and this is the stupid news story—the government is about to throw another eleven billion dollars at the post office under the idea that they'll discontinue Saturday mail. There's no hope. The only thing you get in the mail is birthday cards and ads and once in a while a bill. You get nothing in the mail that has urgency.
I was home last night and I said to Sandy, "I haven't picked up my mail. I ought to go get my mail." So I went down and there was a note that says, "Your box is full. Do you not pick up your mail? You got to come now to the office. Call this number and give us 24 hours advance notice."
to get your mail together. So I called the number, put it on speakerphone, it rang for an hour without him picking it up. So they're gonna get me, they're screwing me now. They're playing with my brain now.
Here's my point. You only need to deliver mail Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Thursday, Saturday. You don't need mail every day. Who needs mail every day? But you can't redo the system. Eleven billion dollars. The mail in the post office could be a profit center, not a loss, if they put like that much thought into it. But you can't do it. Why? Jobs program, that's why.
I rambled, I'm away from the point. But don't let him get a bunch of mail. Now look at the point, look at what He's saying. If you got a king, don't let him trust the military. Don't let him trust the political power. Don't let him trust the money because I want him to trust me - God speaking. Give him the law because human nature is, once I get those that, here and I'm going to say this several times: Human nature, our tendency, is to be dependent upon the gifts rather than the gift giver.
Trusting Gifts Over the Giver
My tendency is they're going to trust in the provision rather than the provider. And trust in, although I give lip service, as long as I have the stuff - and this is the real tension frankly. When God gives us stuff, we have a tendency to trust the stuff more and trust Him less. When I don't have anything, I have no choice but to trust Him. So if God really loved you, He'd take everything away from you. But He's a gracious God and knows that we need these things and that we trust these things.
So there's the law. Now 1st Chronicles chapter 21 verse 1, 2 & 3. This is all background, long introduction. 1st Chronicles 21:3. Satan rose up against Israel and, here's dumb mistake number four, incited David to take a census. So David's dumb mistake number four, here's his action was - and you went right for Bathsheba as you should - was to take a census.
So there should be a whole bunch of you right now going, "Really, that's it?" We're gonna see why. David said to Joab - so Joab's like his right-hand guy - and the commanders, "Count the numbers of the Israelites from Bathsheba to Dan and let me know how many there are." And Joab says in verse 3, "May the Lord multiply your troops a hundred times over, my lord the king. Are they not all your subject? Why does the Lord want to do this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel?" Here's a God has said, "Don't be counting these people."
The Need for a Joab
Now hit the button. Here's another - I said this is really good - here's another rabbit trail. Two questions: Do you have a Joab in your life? Now not this accountability stuff. I'm getting to the point where I can puke when I hear about accountability. Because accountability, first of all, I don't even know that it's biblical. You'll never even hear that. I mean, there's relational fellowship in there. But the accountability, five, six guys sitting around, "Have you looked at porn? Have you done this? Have you lied to me?" Well, if I lied about the first stuff, I'm gonna lie to you about this. This isn't hard to figure out.
Accountability is this. It's not you holding me accountable to your agenda for my life. And that's what so much of this is. And I'm not minimizing that, by the way. If you're in an accountability group, I didn't take a shot at you. Took a shot at the concept. Accountability is not unilateral, it's mutual. And it's you and me agreeing that these are the standards for my life, plus what the scripture says. And now you, based on relationship - that's what makes everything work. Based on relationship, you go, "Hey, you said you were gonna do this," or "You said this," or "God said this, now are you gonna do it?"
So do you have a Joab in your life? And I'll give you, this is just me now. I think that Joab person needs somebody who has proximity to you, relationship to you, contact with you. So I know a lot of guys who would say, "Yeah, my accountability partner is in Dayton." How can that be? He doesn't see you with your spouse, he doesn't see you with your kids. Your accountability guy, if you're gonna have one of these, needs to know who you are and see you in those situations.
So like for us, at church, we try to get people - let's say a husband and wife are having a problem. Well, rather than get the husband with a guy and the wife with a gal, though we'll do that, I need to see them interact with each other. Not just once a week, do this homework and come in and talk, but like, we need to see you at a picnic when she screwed up the meal. We need to see you in a setting where you screw up the parking and the arrangements, where your kids are there, see what I'm saying?
Number one, do you have a Joab? Here you go, now here's the big test, number two: Do you listen to him? Because David's got a Joab, but he doesn't listen to him.
Finding Security in Numbers
So David, Joab says, "What are you doing here? Yeah, no guy doesn't want you to do this." So now, here we go, dumb mistake number four: David's finding safety in numbers, or security in stuff. The king said, moreover, to Joab, "The king's word, however, was to overrule Joab," verse four. So he says, "Go do it."
Joab goes and conducts his census, and he finds that David has 1,100,000 soldiers who can wield a sword, and that isn't even counting the Levites and the tribe of Benjamin. But because the king's command was so repulsive to him, he didn't even count those. And this command was so evil in the sight of God that He decided to punish Israel.
Now, there should be a growing sense in your mind here of going, "This seems a little weird to me." Especially in a minute, because you're gonna see the punishment. It was okay, all David did is what we do every 10 years. What's the problem here? David is finding security in his stuff. David's going, "Look at all that I have." Or we could even go in the security of numbers.
Years ago, and this is the way I prep - you all know this - I create no new material for poverty living.
So if you were here four or five years ago, you heard this lesson. Probably forgot it right away, but you heard it. I forget it, and I taught it five times. So one of the ways I prep, I prep in different ways, but one of the ways I typically prep for a lesson is I'll go through all my notes. Then I'll listen to the CD from five years ago. Then I'll go through all my notes. Then the morning of the first presentation, I'll get up a half hour, 45 minutes early and go through it again.
A Personal Investment Lesson
So five years ago, I'm at this point in the lesson. Trusting numbers, trusting security in people. And Susan is in the other room, I'm listening to the tape, and she yells out the name of an investment, of a company. Won't give you the name, doubt you'd know it, but under the remote possibility you would, I don't want to infect you with this.
So I'm talking about numbers, security, people, and she yells out the name of this. And all I can hear is this irritating noise. I can't even hear what she's saying. And then I hear the company.
So then I said, so here's the story. I get a call one day from a friend who said, "I have an investment opportunity for you." And I said, "Okay, what is it?" And he told me, and he said, "Stop, stop, stop. I don't know anything about it." Warren Buffett has told me, not personally, don't invest in something you don't understand. So I said, "I'm not interested."
And he said, "All right." And I said, "Just out of curiosity, how'd you find this?" And he told me, and then he said this. He said, "Bob is in it, Art is in it, Mike is in it, Paul is in it, and it's a great opportunity. You can get in on ground level."
Now, I'm on a subset of a subset at this point. Here's what I've discovered in my investment opportunities. The ground level and ground zero are very close to each other. They're right there. So anybody who's, any objective person at this point is saying, don't do this.
So I said, "All right, I'll get how much?" And he told me, I said, "God, that's a lot of money for me." All right, so I go home to Susan. I don't write the checkbook, I don't handle it. I don't even know what a checkbook is.
I said, "Susan, I need a checkbook, a check." And she said, "Well, what for?" And I said, "It's an investment opportunity." She said, "What is it?" And she said, "Do you know anything about that?" And I said, "No, I really don't." And I said, "But," and she said, "Why would we do it then?" I said, "Well, Bob is in it, and Art is in it, and Mike is in it, and Paul's in it."
And she said, "I don't feel good about this." And I said, "Susan, give me a reason. Do you have a reason to not, I don't feel, just write the check, give me the check." So I give him the check.
About a month later, I get a call, and he said, "Listen, we've consumed a little more of our startup capital than we thought, and so we're asking everybody to re-up." And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, "Geez, I just don't know." And he said, "Bob re-upped, Art re-upped, Mike re-upped."
So I went home to Susan, I said, "I need a check." And she said, "What's it for?" And I said, "It's for this." And she said, "How much?" I told her, she goes, "That's a lot of money." She said, "This must be really going well, that we're putting more money in it." And I said, "Well, just give me the check."
Now, I'll give you the bottom line here. When we're all done, nothing, zero, nothing, it's all gone. About six months later, she said to me, "I haven't heard much about that investment. How's that going?" And I said, "Well, Bob lost all His money. Art lost all His money." And vintage Susan, she just said, "Oh, I see." So we lost everything, and I said, "Yeah." And she goes, "Oh, okay, now it'll work."
Learning from Warren Buffett's Wisdom
But look at the rationale. I mean, if you listen to a lot, and I'm not holding up Buffett as an icon, but if you listen to a lot of Buffett stuff, it's just one-on-one stuff like that. You don't invest in something. But Buffett misses all of the tech stuff. He doesn't understand tech. He understands Fannie Farmer, Fannie Mae, or whatever, Fannie Farmer, and jewelry, and crap that He understands, that's what He invests in. Use your head.
But my fatal flaw was, oh, if Bob's in it, which, by the way, is not His real name, because if I gave you His real name, you'd know. Then it must be good, because Bob must know. And I bet Bob was buying, anyway, it goes on and on and on. Here's His fatal flaw. He's trusting in these numbers. So God says, don't do it.
David's Guilty Verdict
Now, here we're going to do a little interactive play here. God said, don't take the census. David takes the census. David's guilty. You're the jury. Not to find innocence or guilt, but to determine the penalty of what should be done with David.
Now, let me give you a little more information. In chapter 21, verse eight, David said to God, "I've sinned greatly, and I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I've done a very foolish thing." So now we get an insight into His heart.
The last time I was called for jury duty, it was a guy who allegedly, I say allegedly, He obviously did it, allegedly took His girlfriend's checks and wrote checks in His name, in her name. Now, I'm massively neutral. I don't care. But this guy, they're in the whole process of jury, you know, all jury stuff, the guy's up there asleep. I wanted a piece of His, I wanted on that jury so bad.
Now, they said, "Could you listen, here's the question, could you listen to the testimony of the defendant? We'll wake Him up to testify. And a policeman, could you listen to both of those and be impartial?" And I put up my hand and I said, "No, I couldn't. I don't, the guy's asleep. He's obviously guilty or we wouldn't be here." Literally, that's what I said, and they said, "You know, juror 14 is going to be dismissed here soon."
But I couldn't, I just couldn't do that. I'll never get picked in a jury because I can't get by that. And so that's my fault, I'm not saying, but that isn't David, David's not asleep at the hearing. David's saying I'm guilty. So put that on, He took a census.
And he says I'm guilty, and he said, I don't even, I'm guilty, guilty, guilty. What do you do? Here's what God says. God said, I'm going to give you one of three options, pick them. Number one, three years of famine. Number two, three months of being swept away before your enemies. Or number three, three days of the sword of the Lord, days of plagues in the land. Now you decide, tell me which one.
Now stop. Isn't your sense of fairness violated? Five weeks from now, I'm at summer camp, so this is good practice. Because at summer camp at this point, we would say, look up here. I want you to see this. Arbitrary. How big is David's sin?
The Disproportionate Nature of Divine Justice
So let's say for purposes of illustration, David's sin is this big. Doesn't it feel like the punishment is this big? And that's often the way it is with God. I mean, go to Adam. What did Adam do? Adam ate fruit.
Now I was at the doctor's office yesterday for a procedure that honestly I didn't know existed. I've been through a lot of stuff, okay? Trust me, you didn't know this existed. I think based on the procedure yesterday, he and I have to get married. I'm not totally positive. I just know that there was a level of intimacy with him that I didn't have with Susan. I've never had this, I'm just telling you, you've never heard of this procedure. As I'm leaving the office the last time, he said, it just dawned on me there's one more test. We rarely do it. And I said, well, what is it? And he described it in terms like we need to go in there and we need to get, and I said, those are the same things we said about Saddam Hussein. Those are the same terms we use. So then he told me my responsibility at the end of this. And I said, wow. He said, let's do it now. And I said, I'm not prepped for this right now. I need time to be ready for this emotionally and physically.
If I said to this doctor yesterday, what would you recommend? One of the things he would say to me is you need to eat more fruit. That's a long way to go to get to the fruit. My point is Adam eats fruit. Our doctor says do it.
Adam sins. How big is it? It seems like this big. But how big is the punishment? My gosh, it's the whole world around us. See, here's what this ought to tell you is that somehow God sees sin differently than we see sin. And it's somewhat arbitrary, though not capricious. It's somewhat arbitrary in the sense that God says, I don't want you to do this, Adam. And the minute Adam hears that, all of a sudden, this sin becomes almost irresistibly attractive, this fruit.
God said, I don't want you to take this census. And David said, well, I did. I'm sorry, I should have never done it. And God said, all hell's going to break loose.
David's Response and God's Judgment
Now, to this point, at verse 13, David, this may be an understatement, David says, and I quote, I'm in deep distress. This is the problem. So he said, listen, I'm not in any position to pick door number one or door number two or door number three. God, I trust you. I've screwed this up big. You figure out the solution. God said, all right.
So the Lord sent a plague on Israel and 70,000 men of Israel fell dead. And God sent the angel to destroy Jerusalem. But the angel, as he was doing so, God saw it and was grieved because of the calamity and said, that's enough. Wow. Sin is this big, 70,000. And this is not an allegory. This is an actual event.
So let's put this in perspective. Let's say it's a football Saturday and you filled Sun Devil Stadium. This is obviously theoretical because you're never going to fill Sun Devil Stadium for a football game. Unless they're playing Iowa and there'd be 50,000 Iowa people there. And then the 14 season ticket holders from ASU. Let's say you sold out Sun Devil Stadium. That's how many people God killed.
55,000 men and women died in Vietnam. This is what, 15,000 more than that. 55,000 men and probably a few women, I don't know, died at Gettysburg in three days. This is more than that.
Wrestling with Divine Justice
Now, honestly, for some of you who are new right now, we got a problem because you're going, this is the very reason I don't like this God. For those of us who would say, all right, He's God and we get it. Even you, you got this sense of going, this just doesn't seem right. But I know it is right. How do I know it is right? God did it. Can't explain it or even try to justify it, nor would I.
I'll tell you what, we can at least learn this, that we don't sin in a vacuum. And if you're a leader, you really don't sin in a vacuum. And if you're a leader that, in essence, uses other people to accomplish your sin, you don't sin in a vacuum. But God sees sin differently than we do.
One of the statements I've used a billion times, and Jamie latched onto this, probably has used it up at SBC and not given me credit for it, but that's okay because it wasn't me, it was Tozer anyway, is that our theology doesn't rise high enough or fall low enough. Or ascend high enough or descend low enough. So what he's saying is, our God's not big enough and we have too big of you a man. So in this process, that's the entire thing that's going on.
The Root of David's Mistake
A dumb mistake was that David is putting his trust in stuff. The motivation for his sin is to see, look at the provision that I've found.
Now once you're in Jeremiah chapter nine, and we're going to find the principle here, and then we got about 10 minutes left and that'll be the end of it. Jeremiah 9:23, this is what the Lord says: "Let the wise man not boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches. But let Him who boasts, boast about this, that he understands and knows me the Lord who exercise kindness and justice and righteousness on the earth for in these things I delight."
Now I'm going to paraphrase it and try to get it in the context we have. He said, I don't want you to boast about wisdom.
He's not talking about godly knowledge—fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. He's talking really about education. There's a guy that used to be on TV, Christian TV all the time, and he would have his name up there, so it was his show, his name, and then have all these degrees behind it. I always wondered, why is that there?
I have to be very careful here because I don't have—I may have a degree from St. Ambrose College. It's not an impressive institution, nor should you be impressed with the degree because really all I did to get it was pay tuition. I barely showed up and I cheated my way into a C. I haven't been to seminary, so there could be an accusation that I don't value education. I do value education. I don't need to see that. Why do you have all those degrees behind your name? I would guess it's because it's really impressive to you and you think it's supposed to be impressive to me. I look at it, right? Like I took a bunch of courses and all the professor did was read the book to me. He didn't teach me to think. Or I'm talking to somebody that's in the middle of a master's degree and they said, what have you learned? And they said, "to do research." So here you go. So I could brag about what I know.
The Temptation to Boast in Connections
Or boast the strong man, boast of His strength. It's not just physical, it's this idea of political strength or connection. This idea of who I know. So you walk in—and I get this by the way—but you walk in people's office, especially in office situations, and you'll see a guy or gal and there's His picture and then a picture with the president. Or Whitey Ford. Joe Namath, or Warren Buffett. Now, Whitey and Joe and Warren don't know who you are, but you either paid for or corralled them in an airport to get a picture, and somehow, now, that makes you think more of me because of my picture.
Now, I'm into that, I just don't display them. So in my office are pictures of Sarah and Haley, Susan—the only picture I have, and I will just confess, I don't know this or have a relationship with this person, is Secretariat. There's a picture of Secretariat at the Belmont, winning the race by 31 lengths. I just like it, like one of the great performances. Jack Nicklaus says it's the greatest performance in sports He ever saw. It's the only time He saw an athlete perform perfectly. Nicklaus watched that race alone and said He just cried as He watched it. I just watched the race again the other night. Secretariat is just amazing.
Now, at home by my bed, I have three pictures. One of Susan and me on our wedding day, but I didn't have any money, so I had friends take pictures. It's the best picture we have of the two of us, and it's the back of her head. So it's not a really great picture. And then there's a picture of Coach Wooden and me, and then a picture of Muhammad and me, but they're not out where you look at them. I look at them and go, I remember that. I'm not shooting you down, by the way, if you got pictures. But it's kind of like, who do I know?
The Problem of Trusting in What We Have
We're on a plane going into Boston, and these people find out we're going back for this game, and what we heard over and over again is how did you get tickets? How did you get tickets for the 100th anniversary? And the way we got them is, I don't even know. Tyler went to high school with a guy who's playing for Him. That's how we got Him. But we didn't go—gosh, you see what I'm saying?
Or what you have, you say He's got all this money. So there's a tendency to go, look at what I have. Look at the stuff I have. And it can be a lot of stuff or a little stuff. Every year, every six months, the government sends me a brochure. I have no idea how much this costs them. Sends me a brochure to tell me how much Social Security I have, and then all of these. I guess that's helpful. Think of the money. They don't even think of these. Think of the money they could save if they sent a postcard, which they could throw a little dough, rather than give them $11 billion, why not send something through them? Send me a postcard, go online, you can check your own thing. But they don't think that way. Because there's like five people in the country who don't go online. But that's the way it does, because we have to be worried about those five. Which I get it.
The Real Issue: Where We Place Our Trust
Here's what God's saying. Don't trust what you know, who you know, or what you have. Because that's going to be your tendency. Your tendency is going to be to do that. Your tendency is going to be, here's what I know.
So you get all these people. You have all these college graduates, and I don't mean—this sounds dismissive, I don't mean to be. But you have all these college graduates, and this is the time of year, those will start to pop up on the nightly news. They're graduating and there's no jobs. Well, what's your major? Anthropology with an English history minor. But I don't want to teach. I want to work like at the aquarium at SeaWorld. Well, sweetheart, they aren't hiring for that. But boy, I got all A's in anthropology. Well, you got all F's in common sense. You should have got a business minor. Go and do it. I'm not saying there isn't a place for it. I'm not saying there isn't that. But look at what I know. It doesn't matter, we're not hiring that.
Look at who I know, I know Bob. Here you go, here's the deal. Bob used to be the president, He retired. It's now Barb. She doesn't know you. She's not returning your call. Look at what I have. Look at all these things I have.
I've told this story a billion times, but you know it. Susan and I walk in at Cannon Beach, walk down one cigar, walk back the other cigar, and I'm in the process of saying to her, let me check time, we got two minutes. So I'll probably go like three minutes long because it's my fault. And I'm saying, Susan, here we are. Because when we go to places...
We go to places like that, and what we do is ask, "Could you live here?" Those kinds of things. So we're walking along and we're surveying our life, which we always would do. It's at the end of summer. Summer's always very much a reflective time for me on vacation.
And I said to Susan, "Based on everything we've done, now anything can happen. Anything can go sideways in a second. But based on everything we've done, we have not made a lot of money, but we've been great stewards. I shared with you a story we blew, but by and large, fundamental principles, pay cash, all that. We got enough money, we're going to be fine. The only thing that can screw us up is if one of us gets sick." That's in September, and then in November, she's diagnosed.
But I'm walking along, even as I said that, thinking, "But what are the chances of one of us getting sick?" Here's what God says. God says, "I'm going to give you great gifts. But don't trust the gifts. Trust the gift giver. I'm going to give you great provision, but don't trust the provision, trust the provider."
The Parable of the Rich Fool
Now the solution to this, I give you this story, I'm going to let you read it, but it's in Luke 12, verse 15 to 21, and it's the story of a guy, and I'm going to tell you about this guy. He worked hard, he made a lot of money, he did really well, he invested that money and made more money, he was incredibly successful. And at the end of the day, he said, "Here's what I'm going to do. I will tear down my barns, build bigger ones, I'll store." He did financial planning, and God's response to him was, "You fool, this very night, your life will be demanded of you."
God is not saying here, "Don't plan financially." I'm right in the middle of this right now with going through one of the guys that does my financial stuff and I just want to understand where I am and I want to be prudent and everything. He's not saying that. He said it was the guy's problem. The guy worked hard, accumulated, saved, reinvested, was successful, that wasn't the problem.
The Real Problem: Wrong Perspective
The guy's problem was, he didn't do it with an eternal perspective, he did it with an earthly perspective. In his heart of hearts, he was saying, "God's blessed me, I got it. But why wouldn't He look at me? Look at how smart I am, look at that schmuck over there. Is He going to bless that guy?" See that? Because my flinch is always going to be to trust the gift, not the gift giver, the provision, not the provider. And the tendency is the more I have, the more I'll trust it.
That's why, go back, connect this. This is so rich. I mean, we could just nuance this to death, but go back to 1 Corinthians 1, and that's why, it's very interesting, because Paul said, "That's a cool church you have, it's pretty jacked up, and I've noticed there aren't many highly educated people there, there aren't many politically powerful people there, and there aren't many rich people there." Why? Well, because, and some of you must know people like this.
If you know people who have all that, you go to them, you start to talk about Christ, and their flinch is going to be, "I don't need anything." Why don't I need anything? "I'm educated, I'm connected, I have a bunch of stuff."
Chuck Colson's Example
Isn't it interesting, like Chuck Colson just died. Chuck Colson sees a need for a Savior not when he's at Brown, cranking out a degree, not when he's in the Marines, not when he's in the White House, but when he's up against it, and he's understood that he's in deep, deep trouble. And it's at that moment, he goes, "You know what's interesting? I graduated from Brown, the president had me on speed dial, I have money, none of that is what I need at this moment. I don't need even a get out of jail card, because that isn't my problem."
His problem is he sees he's deficient, and he's a sinner, and that's how God tends to work.
The Universal Mistake
So dumb mistake number four is trying to find security in numbers, security in stuff, you take the words and put them however you want. That's an awesome lesson right there, because to me, it's almost universal. There are so many subsets in there about God, and who He is, and in His judgment of sin and man, there's a whole bunch of stuff, but don't let that get lost in what God's teaching.
And by the way, He's not saying don't boast, because Paul says, "I boast all the time." Now I don't boast in what I have, or who I know, or what I know. In fact, Paul looks at all those things, and he says, this is the King James, "I count those but dung."
Where to Place Our Boast
He said, "Here's what I do boast in, I boast in the cross, and that I know the Savior." Now if I want to boast in what I have, it's salvation. If I want to boast in who I know, it's Jesus.
Next week, dumb mistake number five, I don't even remember what it is, but we'll figure it out when we get there.
Father, thank You for these awesome truths. Now, will You take it and adapt it to our life, bring us close to You? We ask You to do that, we ask it in Christ's name, amen.