1 Chronicles 21 - Trying to Find Safety in Numbers
Tom Shrader explores David's decision to take a census despite God's warning, showing how this led to 70,000 deaths as punishment. He connects this to modern culture's tendency to trust in knowledge, connections, or possessions rather than in God. The lesson challenges listeners to find their security in knowing Christ rather than in material accumulation or worldly achievements.
“When I've got stuff, or when I've got political power, or I've got military power, I tend to put my faith and trust in that.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Dumb Mistakes: How to Avoid Them (2004)
Recorded: March 18, 2004
Duration: 46 min
Themes: pride, trust, security, wisdom, obedience, consequences, materialism, fear, struggling with pride, seeking security, new believer, business leader, facing temptation, pursuing success, trusting in wealth, making decisions
Scripture: Deuteronomy 17, 1 Chronicles 21:1-8, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Luke 12:15, Romans 8:28
Theological Themes: divine judgment, god's sovereignty, stewardship, biblical wisdom, faithfulness, worldliness, spiritual dependence, divine warning
Full Transcript
Today, session four. Session four of eight. Series titled, Dumb Mistakes, and subtitled, How to Avoid Them. Please don't miss that part of it. If you miss the how to avoid them part, you've wasted the opportunity here. The point is this: in life, you're going to make stupid mistakes, but a lot of them are avoidable. One of the ways to avoid them is to look at what other people have done and to learn from that. So it requires a little bit of insight and a little bit of discipline.
We've looked at three mistakes. First one was failure to fear God. If you fail to fear God, then the rest of this stuff doesn't matter, even if you get them figured out. Failure to fear God was the first one. Then we said mistake number two was thinking a little booze wouldn't hurt you, when in fact you're vulnerable to all sorts of things at that point. Last week, we looked at number three, confusing lust and love.
Moses' Warning About Kings
Number four, we'll look at today. If you've got Bibles with you, you can open them to the book of Deuteronomy and the 17th chapter. I love this story. Let me tell you why I love this story. Because the tendency would be to blow through this. You'd be reading along. If you were going to read through the Bible in a year, you'd come to this. You'd see some things that would raise some questions, but you would tend to just blow right through this. And this is rich with application, especially in our day and our age and our time, right here, right now in this place.
So we're looking at the story of David. Moses is giving some advice to the nation of Israel in Deuteronomy 17. And here's what he says. He says, "When you enter the land the Lord will give you. And you've taken possession of it, and you settle in. And you say, 'Let us set a king over us, like all the nations around us.' Be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord has chosen. You must be among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother of an Israelite."
So here's what Moses is anticipating. He's anticipating their arrival in the land God has given them. And he also understands that when they get there, they're going to say, "We want to be like everybody else. Give us a king." That wasn't God's design necessarily, but they're going to say, "Give us a king. We want a king." So Moses is saying, "Heads up now. When you get to that point, here's some things you want to look for in that king. If you don't see these things present in that king, then run from this guy."
Three Dangerous Temptations for Leaders
Now obviously, it should be one of you. But here's three other things. "The king, moreover, must not acquire a great number of horses for himself, or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you you're not to go back that way again." So here's the first thing. Don't get a bunch of horses.
Here's the second thing. "He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray." Second thing, not a bunch of wives. Third thing, "he must not accumulate great amounts of silver or gold."
Now, you could run through that and miss it. So let's spend a second on it. In that day and that age, the oxen were used for agriculture. The horses were used for military. Horses were used for war. So in his own way, here's what Moses is saying. I don't want that king to establish a vast military-industrial complex. I don't want that king to get a bunch of horses.
And I don't want him to have a bunch of wives. Now, we could think of all sorts of reasons for that, but let me give you what he has in mind here. Here's the driving motive. Again in that day and age, there were nations that would battle with one another, tribes that would war with one another. And frequently, the "secretary of state" of one nation or one tribe would contact another and arrange a marriage under the somewhat misplaced thought process that in-laws wouldn't fight. So he says, "Look, I don't want you forming a bunch of political alliances here, and then I don't want you to have a bunch of silver and gold."
The Economic and Spiritual Dangers
Now, there's a couple of things here. This is a side note. The way that they would get their silver and gold typically is through taxation. And any time you tax, and this is just fundamental economics, whatever you tax, you hurt. You and I, I've heard Barry Asmus talk about this a thousand times, and it gets more true each and every day. You live in a global society, and money is going to run to where it's treated the best. The heavier the tax, the more it will run away from it. And that's just a fundamental principle.
But I don't think that's what Moses has in mind here. He said, "I don't want you to have a bunch of silver and a bunch of gold." Why? Here you go. Put them together. If you've got military strength, or you have political strength, or you have financial strength, your tendency is going to be to trust in them, to put your faith in them, to rely on them.
Independence from Parents, Dependence on God
We are just two weeks away, two weeks from tomorrow, Sarah's wedding. So Sarah's married, then we're done. Now, in this, well, I meant done with that phase. I understand not done. You all remind me very quickly of that.
Our child-rearing philosophy was really simple. We tried to make our kids independent of us, but dependent on God. I run into parents all the time, they're trying to develop these independent thinking kids. Not a good idea. Not a good thing. You don't want a renegade, free thinker, no rules, no boundaries. You want them independent of you, but you want them dependent on God. It's okay if you want to be a free thinker within the bounds of what this book says. This is the book. This is the truth.
You know, all of you now have run out to see The Passion, and in The Passion, Pilate says, "What is truth?" It's a great moment. There's really a great moment in there, and we don't have time to develop this theologically. There's a great moment in there when Pilate's wife says to him, you know, "If you can't see it, you aren't going to see
If God hasn't given you eyes to see, and ears to hear, and a heart to receive, you're never going to get it, no matter how long we talk to you.
Well, Pilate fires off this question. It's a magnificent question. It's one of those times you wish you had an audio tape, because did he say, "What is truth?" or "What is truth?" or "What's truth?" Did he really want to know? Do you want to know truth? If you want to know truth, if you want reality, if you want to deal with the real world, then you run to the Scripture.
Teaching Our Children About God's All-Seeing Nature
So what we try to do when our kids are saying this: Listen, there's going to be times in your life where you can fool me, and you can fool your mom. But I would even go so far as to say to them, probably not many of them, because most of the things you're going to think about doing I've done, and I'll smell it out early. There's a lot of things that I conceived and planned, but never executed, so I'm way ahead of you here.
So you might, might, in that rare instance, fool me, fool your mom, fool your friends, but you're never going to fool God. You want, not just in their life, but in your life, you want to be dependent upon God and who He is.
The Danger of Trusting in Human Power
Here's the real simple principle, and we're just going to apply it the rest of the day: when I've got stuff, or when I've got political power, or I've got military power, I tend to put my faith and trust in that. So Moses has warned them, he says, watch out, don't do this, be careful. Obviously make sure he's an Israelite, but you don't want a guy who's putting his faith and trust in military, political, or economic power.
So here's what happens. They go, they get into the land, they want a king. They get a king, they better get a bad king. They get Saul. Now it's time for a good king. Samuel goes to Jesse and says, the next king's coming out of your boys. Your boys are going to give us the next king.
So he says, get them on in here. It's kind of like Israel Idol, where they're going to come in one after another until they pick the guy. So here he comes, he says, it's not him, no, it's not him, no, you're an insult to kingdom, get out, get out. And he says, we're done.
God's Choice: David the Shepherd
And he says, well, it can't be, because the king's going to come from your line. You can't be done. And he said, well, I got one little kind of puny, runty little guy. In fact, he's never been much. He's out there right now playing the harp with the sheep. He's got this guy named David, and so he brings him in.
And that's where Samuel says these extraordinary words: God is not like man. Man looks at the outside, God looks at the heart. Man looks at the outside, God looks at the heart. So now they've got this new king, and his name is David.
The Census: Satan's Trap
Satan rose up against Israel. We're in 1 Chronicles now, so we've made a move. We've fast-forwarded in the story. 1 Chronicles 21, verses 1, 2, and 3. This will set the pace now leading up—still background to dumb mistake number four.
"Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census. So David said to Joab, the commanders of the troops, 'Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan, then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.' But Joab replied, 'May the Lord multiply His troops a hundred times over. My Lord the king, are they not all my Lord's subjects? Why does my Lord want to do this? Why should He bring guilt on Israel?'"
Joab comes to him and he says, David, I've been going to La Posada and this guy's doing this series on dumb mistakes and I smell dumb mistake number four here. I don't want to do it. Listen, how many troops—it doesn't matter, they're all yours. Don't do this, David.
The Importance of Godly Counsel
Now two things here before we go on. This is practical to you. Number one, do you have a Joab in your life? Do you have a guy, gal, person in your life who will come to you to tell you the truth?
That's not enough, is it? What's the second part of that? You got to listen to him. It doesn't do anybody any good to sit down and say, here's what's going on, here's what I see, shoot straight with you if you don't listen to him.
David's Fatal Choice
Here's what, and now we're at dumb mistake number four. 1 Chronicles chapter 21 verse 4: "The king's word, however, overruled Joab." I don't want to hear it. I'm not interested in that.
So here's what's happened. David's decided to take a census. "So Joab left and went through Israel and then came back to Jerusalem. Joab reported the number of the fighting men to David. In all of Israel there were 1,100,000 men who could handle a sword and 470,000 in Judah. But Joab did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering because the king's command was repulsive to him. This command was so evil in the sight of God that He punished Israel."
The Heart of the Problem: Finding Safety in Numbers
Now listen to this. Dumb mistake number four: He's told don't take this census. In spite of that, he takes this census. What's this stupid mistake here? He's trying to find safety in numbers. He's putting his faith and trust in numbers.
What's your reaction when you hear that? What's your reaction when you read that story? David says take a census and Joab says, you know what, I don't know. What's your reaction to that? What's the big deal? We do it every ten years. It's no big deal. Look, it's just a few numbers. What's the big deal?
Here's the big deal. When David's counting this, he's counting it for no reason other than to find out numbers so he can put his faith and trust in his numbers. Faith and trust in the safety of numbers.
A Modern Example of Misplaced Trust
Maybe you've had this happen to you. I've had it happen to me. Somebody came to me years and years ago and said, I've got this idea, this business idea, this widget, this new widget. It's a great deal. And I said, well, I don't know anything about this. I couldn't make a judgment. I couldn't assess this accurately. I don't know anything about it.
He said, I'm not looking for you to assess it. I'm looking for you to invest in it. And I said, well, I don't know anything about it. And then he pulled out the Trump card. He said, Bob's
Bill's in it. Travis is in it. And if you want to get in it, you're going to have to get in it today or tomorrow. I went home and said to Susan, "Hey, we've got a great opportunity here." So I laid it out to her and she said, "Well, I don't know anything about this." I said, "I understand that." She said, "Well, you don't know anything about this." I said, "I understand that. But Bob's in it and Bill's in it and Travis is in it."
A few months later, we all got together and just flushed it all down the toilet together. After the Civil War, an insurance company came to Robert E. Lee and said, "We'll pay you $50,000 a year." He said, "I don't know anything about insurance." They said, "No, we don't want you around. We just want to use your name." Robert E. Lee said this: "My name is not for sale."
Now today you'd have a little swish on him somewhere. Today his name would be for sale, but there is something powerful. Why do they want Robert E. Lee? If I'm Albertsons, there's Patricia Heaton and I happen to like her. All of a sudden I think, well, their fruit is better than everybody else's fruit because Patricia shops there all the time in that gown she's wearing.
David on Trial
Here you go. I'm the judge, you're the jury and we're going to put David on trial. I'm going to put David on trial. What we're going to accuse him of is taking a census. So I'm going to ask you in a moment or two to sentence him for taking a census.
Joab has gone out. He didn't even count all of them. This is literally repulsive to Joab. He knows it's wrong. So now God is going to punish him. He takes a census. He's guilty. You're the jury. What are we going to do with him? Life? What's the big deal is our whole conclusion. Five years, three years, one year probation, community service?
Well, maybe I can give you some more information here. 1 Chronicles chapter 21 verse 8: "Then David said to God, I have sinned greatly. Now I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing." There's something you never see. This is in the day and age where all of these guys say, "I'll be vindicated. I'll be exonerated. I'm innocent and ultimately, I'd love to comment on it now, but my lawyers won't let me. But when all the facts are in, I'll be innocent." That's what we hear from everybody. Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, Peterson—they all say the same thing. When all the facts are in, when everything is heard, I'll be innocent.
David doesn't say that, does he? David throws himself on the mercy of the court. He says, "I have sinned greatly. I beg you, take away the guilt. I'm guilty. I'm not hiring Johnny Cochran. I'm not getting a team of lawyers. I don't need anybody to plead my case. I'm guilty as charged. I have sinned and it's a great sin and I'm guilty of that."
The Three Choices
Now you're the jury and you're sitting there saying, "Hey, he's not even wasting our time. What are we—he took a census." You're in the jury room and somebody says, "Look, think about it." The Lord said to Gad—Gad is a seer of David's—"Go and tell David, I'm going to give him three options." So the time for sentencing is here. I'm going to give him three options. You choose the one you want.
David, here you go. You get door number one, door number two, door number three. Door number one is three years of famine. Door number two is three months of being swept away before your enemies with their swords overtaking you. So for three months, your enemies are dominating you. Or door number three, three days of the sword of the Lord, days of plague in the land with the angel of the Lord ravaging every part of Israel. Now you go and you decide.
We're going to come back to this in a second, but honestly, doesn't it feel like the punishment is far more severe than the crime? Doesn't it feel that way to you? All he did was take a census and now we're going to have three years of famine or three months of the enemies attacking you or three days of the Lord ravaging Israel.
David at this point has come to a decision. Here's what he says: "David said to Gad, I'm in deep distress. No kidding. Let me fall into the hands of the Lord for His mercy is great. And do not let me fall into the hands of man." Here's what he said: "I'm not about to pick door number one, two or three. I screwed it up to get us here. I'm not about to go out and make some sort of judgment on this."
God's Justice and Mercy
Here's what I know. God is fair. God is just. God is merciful. God is righteous. God is holy. God loves. So God, you pick the one that you think is appropriate. So the Lord sent a plague on Israel and 70,000 men of Israel fell dead. God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem. But as the angel was doing so, the Lord saw it and He was grieved because of the calamity and said to the angel, "Enough, withdraw your hand."
David looked up and saw the angel of the Lord standing between heaven and earth with His sword drawn and His hand extended over Israel. David and the elders clothed in sackcloth fell down. Here's what's happening. As this plague comes, 70,000 men all around Israel—just to give you a sense of proportion here, there were 55,000 men killed in Vietnam. 70,000 men dead.
David's in sackcloth—that's a sign of public repentance. David's not just saying to God, "I've sinned." Now he's saying before everybody publicly, "I'm sorry. I've done this." David said to God, "Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I'm the one who's done this, not these sheep. What have they done?"
Oh Lord my God, let your hand fall upon me and my family. Don't let the plague remain on your people.
Now look at David's reaction. I just want to make sure we get this. David doesn't in any way diminish this or soft sell this. He says "I've sinned." He doesn't diminish it. 70,000 people are killed.
Now play with me here for a second, and I know this is totally subjective. How big is this sin? This big? This big? Let's say it's this big. How big is the punishment? This big—way out here. My short little arms won't go big enough to show you how big this is.
The Disproportionate Nature of Sin and Punishment
Now really important point in the lesson. It's not the primary point of the lesson, but this is a really important point. That is always our view of sin.
Here you go. How do we get where we are? How come I'm sitting in a hotel having a cup of coffee and two seconds later it's collapsed in a terrorist bomb? Or I'm just riding a train in Madrid, minding my own business, not bothering anybody? Or like the call I got the other day from a lady. She's in her 16th week of pregnancy—great gal—and the doctor called and said this baby has no chance of survival. Probably be stillborn, maybe last an hour, no more than a few days. How come I'm just driving down the street and somebody runs a red light—boom? Why? Why? Why? Why?
Ultimately the answer to all that is sin and Adam's sin. We look around and say, "Why would God create a place like this?" Well, He didn't. He created a place called paradise. And then your ancestor chose this. What did Adam do? He ate fruit. I mean, if he called the right doctor, they wouldn't say that's not only not a bad thing, that's a good thing to do. "Eat this fruit. It'll clean you out. You'll be great. You'll be a happy guy. Load up on the fruit."
So here you go. Here's Adam. How big is Adam's sin? This big? This big? How big is the punishment? Good grief, it's all over the place.
Our Tendency to Minimize Sin
It's the same thing in your life, isn't it? Isn't that what you do when you sin? When you sin, don't you right away say, "Listen, I'm not Saddam Hussein. I'm not Adolf Hitler"? You're driving down that 101 and you're going 75 and the speed limit's 60. They pull you over, and your first reaction—even though you're guilty—is to say, "Why don't you go catch some real criminals?" Well, they did. They caught you. You're a real criminal.
Do you see that? See what we're saying here? To really grow spiritually, you've got to start to see sin like God sees sin. David says, "I'm not going to trust my own intuition here. I'm not going to choose in any way, shape, or form this punishment. God, whatever you think is right, whatever you think is fair, whatever you think is just, you give it to me."
Here's what happens. To summarize all this: David takes the census, and God kills 70,000 people who weren't even involved in the decision. That doesn't seem right, does it? And that's certainly contrary to the God that you hear about and read about and hear on TV.
Don't Run from Difficult Truths
Let me tell you something. When you hit an idea like this—this is a really important principle—when you hit an idea like this, don't run from it, but run to it and study it. Study it and study it, not until you say "I guess I can live with that." Study it till you can love it.
It's like the whole idea of how you became a Christian. How you became a Christian is contrary to virtually everything you've been taught about how you became a Christian. Before the foundations of the earth, God chose that He was going to save you. He sent a Son, Jesus, to die on the cross to accomplish that. At the fullness of time, the Holy Spirit changed your heart, changed your mind, and now you could see the truth. Now you're born again.
I have people who want to argue and fight with that. You know what? Here's the problem: once you start reading the scripture, it's on every page, isn't it? What are you going to do with it? Now it's right in your face, isn't it. Are you going to quit reading the book? No. Study it and study it and study it, not until you say, "Oh, I guess I can live with this," until all of a sudden you say, "How great is God's love!"
Understanding God's True Love
See, we talk about "Oh, God loves me." Wait a minute. What does that mean? He loves you, and so He lets you kind of hang around for a while, and then at a point in time you just made kind of this good decision and He cleaned up your act? No.
Here's how much He loved you: while you were yet a sinner, while you hated Him, while you couldn't stand Him, while you loved your sin more than Him, in that moment He saved you—in spite of you, not because of you. Now there's real love. How solid is that love? What Romans 8:28 and following says is His love is so deep that nothing can separate us from the love that God has for us.
The Danger of Generic "Love" Theology
Because you live in a world that does not embrace God's standards, it basically says "Do your best, let Jesus do the rest. Do the best you can. Try to clean up. It's no big deal. It's just a piece of fruit." And in the spirit of love—and it'll get very sickening now in the next couple of weeks as we're heading toward Easter—so that's when Pat McMahon and all these goofs come out of the woodwork and they start talking in these broad generic terms about God. "God is this ethereal thing" and all this stuff that goes with it. "God's a God of love and He loves all His people."
That's the most damning of truths because it keeps you from ever understanding who God really is. That broad, generic, loving understanding of God—as you want Him to be—condemns you with a death sentence to hell. It's really horrific, but it sounds really good, doesn't it?
What sounds better? What I just said—that there's a narrow, hard way, and if you don't believe in this you go to hell? Or "God's a God of love. He loves everybody. We're all God's children. We're all in this together. We're just slugging it out. We're all on a journey"? It makes you sick when you listen to it. But it sure sells good, doesn't it?
Here's the problem: it isn't true. How do we know it's not true? Because it's not what the Bible says.
The Fourth Dumb Mistake
So here's his dumb mistake number four: he tried to find safety in numbers. Here's the principle—Jeremiah...
Finding Safety in the Wrong Places
Jeremiah chapter 9, verses 23 and 24 reveals the principle that you don't find safety in numbers—you find safety in God. "This is what the Lord says: Let not the wise man 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 of this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness and justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, says the Lord."
Boy, does He nail you and me cold. He says you know what, you're naturally going to want to brag, and you're going to want to brag about one of three things typically: either what you know, or who you know, or what you have.
What You Know
I was at ASU at a baseball game the other night. You had 60,000 students there. Now why are those 60,000 students there? I can tell you why they're not there. They're not there—not one of them—to learn anything. There's not one kid going down there saying, "Well, how come you're here?" Not one of them says, "Well, I really just want to learn. I'm intellectually curious."
In fact, the parents paying the tuitions didn't send them there to learn anything, did they? They sent them there for one reason: to get an education. Why? So they can get a job, so they can walk into an interview and say, "Here's what I know. I know this and this and this. I know this theory and this and this. This is what I know." That's where they find value—in what they know.
Who You Know
Or who you know. "I'm connected. You need tickets for a sold-out concert? I'm the guy to call. You need tickets for a ballgame? I'm the guy to call." Who I know.
I love to go into somebody's office and look at the pictures, especially if they're somewhat influential, because you'll see a picture of them with a famous person. Maybe it's them with a president, and there they are: "Best wishes, President So-and-so." There they are, big as life. This is who I know. That's what that picture screams: "I am somebody."
Go to a Suns game. I don't know about now, but when they were successful five or six years ago, you walk in a half hour early and all the seats that are filled are all on the top. Those aren't season ticket holders. Those are guys for whom this is a big deal, this is a big game. Then as the game gets closer, it fills in down until there are like the last two or three rows. Then right before game time, out they come. Look at me! It's about "see me, see me, look at me, look at what I know." Now I understand that's judgmental and I'm sure that's not everybody, and they may have the cleanest of hearts, but it's who I know. "Do you know so-and-so? I know so-and-so. What about so-and-so? Do you know this person?"
What You Have
What I know, who I know, and what I have. I got something in the mail a few months ago from the government. I just started getting these a few years ago—my Social Security statement. Now they send me this thing and tell me that when I'm 65, they're going to give me, and I believe them, I don't think there's any way this won't happen, they're going to give me X amount of dollars a month. They're going to just send it to me.
What I do is sit down with all my other stuff and put it together and say, "I'm on a great track here. If I just don't do anything else, I'm fine where I am. I love where I am." I look at this and periodically I'll say to Susan, "Look at this. We're set. We just don't want to do anything now. Just let everything go as is. Just don't screw it up." I feel a great sense of confidence when I get that. Don't you?
You see, it's what I know or who I know or what I have. And God says, "No, no, no, no, no. Don't you boast in that, because what you know and who you know and what you have can be gone like this. Boast in the fact that you understand me and that you know me."
The Real Solution: Count the Stuff Right
The dumb mistake is to find safety in numbers. The principle here is to find safety in God. Here's the solution: count the stuff right.
Take the time to turn to Luke chapter 12. We'll spend ten minutes on this and see if I can slam this right into our culture, our time, the way we think. Jesus is telling a parable, and Jesus says to them in Luke chapter 12, verse 15: "Watch out! Be on guard! Heads up! Take note!" This is a warning. "Watch out, be on guard against all kinds of greed. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
Let's stop there for a second. I'm not asking you to say this answer out loud, but if you were in a true-false test and I said to you, "A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions," most of you would say that's true, I think. But how do you live? See, that's what we're getting at.
The Parable of the Rich Fool
So Jesus told them this parable: "There was a certain rich man whose ground produced a good crop. And he thought to himself"—now look here, there's a singular personal pronoun. Words are important here. If you've been around, you've probably circled it because I've encouraged you to do this in the past—"What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops."
"Then he said, 'This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my grain and my goods. And I will say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."'"
Now I want to stop there, because many of you are familiar with this parable and you're missing what I think would be your normal reaction. If you read in Forbes Magazine or Wall Street Journal about this guy, I think you would say, "That's pretty good." You understand what you've got here? You've got a guy that's worked hard, he's been diligent, he's been somewhat successful, he now has this bumper crop, he's now hit the mother lode.
He's got this windfall, and now he says, "You know what? I'm going to reinvent myself here. I'm going to store this, I'm going to protect this, I'm going to get some good, solid financial planning." Now you're telling me you wouldn't say to him, "Congratulations?" Come on! When you're sitting dreaming, that's the stuff you dream about. There's nothing wrong with this guy right here, in what he's doing, in my mind. Got an idea, got a plan, got all this.
The problem is not what he's doing, the problem is in His heart. God said to him that night, "You fool, you moron, you idiot. This very night your life will be demanded of you. Then who will get what you've prepared for yourself?" This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself, but is not rich toward God.
There's nothing wrong, by the way, with accumulating, planning. This isn't an anti-planning message. God knows it's not an anti-material message. It certainly isn't an anti-materialism message, and that's what Jesus is saying. If you're out there, and you are out there trying to acquire, accumulate, and now hoard, He says, "You got issues, my friend. You got problems, my friend." That's foolish, because life has an expiration date on it, and you're bumping up against it, and don't miss it.
The False Security of Material Abundance
See, we're going to trust what we know, and who we know, and what we have, and that's what that man's doing. He's saying, "Now I'm secure. I got all this stuff. Now I'm just going to enjoy life."
Let me talk just a bit about the culture. I'm reading three books right now. I'm really scanning them more than reading them, and they're all saying the same thing. So let me just kind of grind you on this a little bit.
This is called The American Paradox by a guy by the name of David Myers, and in this whole book, what he's talking about—and he's a psychologist, and he's not writing from any Christian perspective at all—here's what he says. He said, if we were to take Ronald Reagan's question of "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" and if we were to expand that a little bit, and say this: "Are you better off, you and me and us as a society, are we better off than we were 40 years ago?" He said our answer would be materially yes, morally no.
The Paradox of Too Many Choices
So then you get into Barry Swartz and The Paradox of Choice, and here's what he says. He says we just have choices all over. This book was birthed out of his going in to buy a pair of jeans. Here's what he writes:
"About six years ago, I went to the Gap to buy a pair of jeans. I tend to wear jeans until they fall apart, so it had been quite a while since I made my last purchase. A nice young salesperson walked up to me and asked if she could help. I said, 'I want to buy a pair of jeans, 32-28.' She said, 'Do you want them slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy? Do you want them stonewashed, acid washed, or distressed? Do you want them button fly, zipper fly? Do you want them faded or regular?' I was stunned. A moment or two later, I spit out, 'I just want a pair of regular jeans. You know, the kind that used to be the only kind.'"
And he goes on, and this whole book is about you and I as a culture, and how we have all these choices, and these choices have screwed us up.
The Explosion of Options
Well, here's USA Today from two weeks ago. Cover story: "You want it your way. Americans have become picky. They demand and get what they want." Consider this: Starbucks offers more than 19,000 ways to order a cup of coffee.
Let me give you just a little bit, even though time's pressing. Dreyer's Ice Cream, which offered 34 flavors in 1977, sells 250 today. Arby's, which sold only one kind of roast beef sandwich when it was founded in 1964, now sells 30. Tropicana, which had only two kinds of orange juice a decade ago, has 24 now. And this list just goes on and on and on, and just says we've got all these choices. We've got all this stuff.
And then this book, The Progress of Paradox, this guy goes out and says, "You know what? America's just so far better off than it's ever been." And this—and I'm not trying to make some sort of a judgment here, so you think that there's some sort of race bias in me—but he's saying, if you just take the fact, if you take out immigrants, recent immigrants primarily from Mexico, you take them out of the equation, we're so far ahead of where we were 20 years ago. At the turn of the century, no one had health insurance, and air conditioning, and on and on and on.
The Universal Conclusion: We Have a Spiritual Problem
And all three of these guys, not one who's writing from a Christian perspective, all land on the same conclusion. We got problems, and our problems aren't material. We got plenty of choices, and plenty of things. We got a spiritual problem.
Let me read—and these are some politicians—but let me read you what the politicians say. This politician said this: "There is a sleeping sickness of our soul. We lack at some core level meaning in our individual lives." Listen to this question this politician asked: "Who will lead us out of this spiritual vacuum?" Hillary Rodham Clinton.
You guys are so cynical! "There's a spiritual crisis in modern civilization that's based on emptiness at its center and absence of a larger spiritual purpose. Most Americans are hungry for a deep connection to moral values, spiritual values." Al Gore.
"There is within us a crisis, a kind of spiritual surrender. Can we rebuild a wall of hope? We have money, we have education, but there's something within us that's in trouble." Jesse Jackson.
Here you go: Norman Lear. And I think you can make an argument that Norman Lear is probably one of the chief causes for the position we're in. Here's what Norman Lear says: "At no time in our life, in my life, has our culture been so estranged from spiritual values."
Our problems—see if this sounds, this makes me sound really smart, so just listen to this and see if this isn't something that you've been hearing for 20 years—our problems aren't economic or political. Our problems are
The Root of Our Problems
The moral and spiritual nature of our problems makes the next part of the sentence absolutely accurate and therefore must be addressed on that level if real solutions are to be found. See, if our problems are economic, then the solutions are economic. If our problems are political, our solutions are political. If our problems are psychological, our solutions are psychological. If our problems are sociological, our solutions are sociological. If our problems are environmental, our solutions are environmental.
But our problems aren't any of those. Our problem is a moral vacuum. Our problem—and you would not expect these guys to use the term—our problem is sin. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Even though at times we mask that pretty successfully, we can pull together the guys in the office to throw some money together to send some flowers to somebody who's lost a loved one. We might get nuts and knock ourselves out and go build in a day a house for Habitat for Humanity. We might give money—I don't have a clue why you would—to the United Way. We might do those things, but all they're doing is masking a problem, because our fundamental problem is sin.
Spiritual Problems Require Spiritual Solutions
It's spiritual, and spiritual problems have spiritual solutions. So if I want to understand the spiritual solution to the problem, I need to go to the source of truth, and that's God. God Himself has not only created this earth, He has visited this earth, and He has spoken, and His word is preserved. See, that's why we go to that book again and again and again and again.
Here's what I love: Whether you go back thousands of years to David and God's saying, "David, don't count those people. Don't be getting a bunch of horses. Don't take a bunch of wives, David. I know what you are. Here's what you are—you're human, and you're going to put your trust in the military or the politics, or you're going to put your trust in the wealth."
Or I fast-forward to Jesus, and Jesus is saying, "You know, there's this guy"—think about it, Jesus tells a parable, and in those moments what Jesus is really doing there is connecting with His audience. He's really connecting. Now He's hitting a nerve. Now He's saying, "There's this guy and he's got all this stuff, and he's going to die, and isn't that foolish?" And they go, "Yep."
The Universal Human Tendency
Or you come now to our day and age, and here's all these guys saying, "We got all this stuff, but it really doesn't matter because we got a spiritual problem." Here you go: your tendency—not David's, not theirs, but yours—you, you right now, your tendency naturally is to trust what you know or who you know or what you have. And all of them are going to ultimately be deficient because ultimately the test is: do you know Christ? Have you come to Him in repentance and faith?
Your overriding problem is sin. That's what produces the guilt in your life. We'll hammer it—I know you got to go, I got to go—but that's what we're seeing. We're seeing extraordinary conversations come out of this movie because the movie's doing a giant favor.
An Extraordinary Moment in History
I have not had one conversation with one person who said, "Well, you know, Jesus never was born or never died." This is an extraordinary moment in history right now. You used to have to argue about that stuff. Now Mel Gibson has done us a giant favor. The whole world is saying Jesus died. Let's talk about who killed Him and why He died. That's a big deal. That's a giant leap forward.
Now everybody's saying, "Oh, Jesus did live. Jesus did die." Now we ask the question: why did He die? So we get a bunch of pinheads from Stanford and Harvard sitting around trying to figure out why He died. You know what? It doesn't matter what they think. It doesn't matter what I think, does it? He told you why He died.
The angel told Mary, "You're going to have a son. His name will be Jesus." Why is He going to die? To save His people from their sin. That's why He died.
The Clear Choice
If you believe that, you will have life here in its most abundance, and you'll spend eternity in heaven. If you don't, your life here will have moments where you can endure it generally, but it will be awful, and ultimately you die and go to hell. That is the clear choice. There's no middle ground here. No spiritual Switzerland. No place to hide. This is the deal. It's either this or this. You're either for Me or against Me. Choose.
Conclusion
That's mistake number four: trying to find safety in numbers—what I know or who I know or what I have. Next week, number five, we'll take a look at that.
Father, thank You for this truth. Thanks for these men and women that are here. I pray that these are indeed Your words and that they express Your truth. God, we love You. We thank You that You love us. We pray our lives would make a difference. We pray this in Jesus' name. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.