When one of my sons was a toddler, he put every toy he owned in his backpack. Then, he had one of his brothers help him put his backpack on because it was too heavy to lift by himself. After a struggle, it was done. My son promptly fell on his back, like an upended turtle, dragged down by the weight of all he was trying to hold onto. Did he own the stuff? Or did the stuff own him?
Then, there’s the story of the little boy who kept getting into trouble because he would take a toy from one of his brothers or sisters. Each time, he was told by his parents, “Give that toy back. Your brother (or your sister) had it first.” So, one morning the father walked past the little boy’s bedroom and heard his son crowing with delight as he lay, spread-eagle over every toy in the house that he had piled up in the middle of the floor. He was saying triumphantly, “I have ‘em first today!”
Paul makes a statement in 1 Timothy 6 that I wonder if we should write in permanent ink on our checkbook covers, stencil on the walls of our houses and even scratch with a penknife into the dashboards of our cars. He said, “Now godliness with contentment is great gain.” What? You mean having the most toys is not the way to victory or even to great gain? I thought I could only be content if I had every need met along with most of my wants. It reminds me of the king who was not happy with his life and suffered greatly, to the point that he could not sleep or eat. His wise men told the king that if he could wear the shirt of a contented man, he would be cured of his suffering. So, the search began for such a man, but not one could be found in the whole kingdom. Emissaries were then sent beyond the kingdom, and finally, outside the realm, a contented man was found. But he had no shirt.
Where do we find contentment? Apparently, it cannot be found in money, no matter how much we are able to amass. John D. Rockefeller said, “I have made many millions, but it has brought me no happiness.”
Being content starts with right thinking about stuff and about God. What did you have when you were born? Nothing. What will you carry with you when you die? Nothing. After John D. Rockefeller died, his aide was asked how much he left behind. The aid answered, “He left it all behind.” Job said it like this: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there.” Job knew that everything he “owned,” including his health, was temporal and the One who owned him was eternal. God alone is our source for contentment.
Think about this. Everything in your house will end up in the landfill. Your house will fall down and be hauled off, piece by piece. Our money can buy a house, but not a home. It can buy a vacation, but it cannot buy rest. It can buy a health care plan but it cannot buy health. It can buy a wedding ceremony, but it cannot buy a blessed marriage. It can buy a college degree but it cannot buy understanding. Contentment cannot be bought, but it must be sought.
The truth is that if we have contentment, we have everything. Then we will be among the richest people on earth.
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I thought this week about the whooping cough scare in the schools. There has been a lot of press about it. The schools and health care community are dealing with it. I also received a text and an email from Elon this week because they were practicing their emergency alert system, in the event that there’s a tornado coming or another disaster strikes. Alamance Community College had an “active shooter drill” on campus last week in order to prepare for the event if it really does happen.
Medical warnings in the schools. Tornado warnings at the university. Active shooter drills at the college. These are all very important warnings, and we should not minimize them at all. There’s another warning, however, that has been issued to the church, and it is just as important.
The threat to the church, like a tornado or a terrorist on a college campus, is deadly and dangerous. In fact, it may be more so, because the poison of this threat affects not just this life, but life eternal. At the very least, this threat can render a church ineffective in its mission and turn it into a weapon against the truth, rather than the pillar and the ground of the truth.
Paul wrote, “and if anyone tries to teach some doctrinal novelty and does not follow sound teaching (which we base on our Lord Jesus Christ’s own words and which leads to Christlike living), then he is a conceited idiot!” (J.B. Phillips’ translation) Another translation says that this one who has brought doctrinal novelty into the church is a “pompous ignoramus.”
There was a constant parade of itinerant teachers in the first century, some who were legitimate, many who were not.
The illegitimates came with novel ideas and people with itching ears flocked to these characters.
These teachers are even more dangerous today because they don’t have to come to the church building in order to corrupt sound doctrine. They do it through webinars and podcasts. They go on talk shows. They speak on college campuses. They write books.
Many of these “teachers” do not claim to follow Christ, and so we should expect novelty doctrines from them. But what about those inside the church who teach and preach novelty doctrines? What about the doctrine that the book “Love Wins” made popular last year, that there is no Hell? How does Jesus refute that in His own words? Or what about the doctrines of God and sin that were twisted in the huge bestseller “The Shack”? What about a TV preacher who taught recently that the reason tornadoes hit Kentucky and Indiana and killed 39 people was because there weren’t enough people praying?
For the record, I am not comfortable claiming that these men are false teachers, but I have no problem saying that those are examples of false teaching.
What is the church to do? Perhaps we need an emergency alert system. Wait. We already have one, and it is the clear and compelling case for Christ and His doctrine that is laid out for us in the Bible.
The reason why the average Christian cannot spot a doctrinal novelty a mile off is because he does not know the truth when it is right under his nose.
How do we avoid being a pompous ignoramus or following those who are? We read the Bible, knowing that the main things are the plain things. We embrace the truth.
Then, we will be able to reject doctrinal novelty and avoid those who are “obsessed with disputes and arguments over words.”
When I got fired from my job, it wasn’t because I threw the cat. That was part of it, but the cat bit me first, and it bounced off the wall and landed on its feet unharmed. No, I got the pink slip because I was not a good employee. At the age of 16, I figured I knew better than most people what was good for me, and that included my boss, the vet. I worked hard when it pleased me, and goofed off the rest of the time. It also didn’t help matters that I had been chosen by my youth group at church to deliver the sermon for “youth Sunday.” I made sure my boss knew that and impressed upon him my sincerity in the faith and my diligence in studying the Bible. The problem was, he saw a hole in my life big enough to herd a family of St. Bernards through, the gap between my profession of submission to God and my commitment to honoring my employer.
The Bible says you are to “Count your own (employer) worthy of all honor.” How do you do that?
With obedience. This has to do with work ethic. You honor your employer by carrying out his wishes, starting with showing up on time and promptly getting to the work you are hired to do. The sign in the store window read, “No Help Wanted.” As two men passed by, one said to the other, “You should apply — you’d be great.” One employer told the story of having a bad taste in his mouth for Christian workers because they tended to “stand around and talk about God during work hours.” The deal was sealed when he saw one of his Christian workers go into the bathroom and not come out for 20 minutes. When he finally emerged, the boss heard him whisper to another Christian worker, “I just had a wonderful time. I read three chapters of the Gospel of John.”
With sincerity of heart. This has to do with our attitude. Even if you work hard and do what you are supposed to do, you can do it with an attitude. Some display an attitude that says, “I will do whatever you ask me to do, but don’t expect me to like it. Don’t expect me to be pleasant. As long as I am doing my job, that’s all you need and that’s all you’re going to get.” OK, Miss Sunshine or Mr. Happy, but that’s not what the Bible teaches. There are also those who work hard, but they are constant complainers. They can find nothing but problems with the way they are compensated, with the way everybody else does his job, and with the way management runs the company.
Not with eye-service, as men-pleasers. This has to do with honesty. Are we working hard when the employer is watching us, when his eye is on us, and doing anything but work when the employer is out of the room? Character is who you are in the dark, someone has suggested. When no one is watching, do you work hard? Keep this in mind; there is never a time at work or anywhere else when no One is watching. Also, to the degree that we serve our employer faithfully, we will be recompensed by the Lord himself. See Ephesians 6:5-9.
Dr. Robertson, you probably will never see this column, but I want to thank you for teaching me a lesson I could not learn any other way. And, I am sorry about the cat.
What if a church leader is guilty of persistent sin? He should be “rebuked in the presence of all.” The Bible is as clear on this point as the church is confused on it. Sin happens in every church, large or small. The question is not whether it happens, but how the church should respond when it does, especially when persistent sin is found in the life of a leader. How many times have you heard about a church where the pastor, youth pastor, worship leader, or one of the elders has been discovered in an ongoing pattern of adultery or another sin that disqualifies him from leadership, and he has simply been quietly dismissed? Or worse, he has been given a stern “talking to” by the other leaders in private; meanwhile, he remains in his position with no public rebuke, no discipline whatsoever. Whatever sin a church ignores, especially in its leaders, it welcomes into the body. A large church in California chose not to discipline sexual sin with a pastor and his secretary, but rather kept it quiet. The next year, 17 marriages of senior leadership people in the church ended. Why is public discipline necessary? Paul says it clearly in 1 Timothy: “that the rest also may fear.”
I remember being fascinated by a guy in the seventh grade named Steve. Even at 13, he was a wild child, living on the edge. We were walking down the hall one day, when Steve suddenly stopped, pointed to the ceiling tiles and said, “It would be so easy to put a bomb up there, under one of those tiles.” I looked at him with surprise, thinking he was just kidding around. I laughed, nervously, unsure what to say, but Steve was lost in his thoughts. Just days later, during a wholeschool assembly, the principal called Steve down front. He then told the student body that Steve was trouble and warned us to avoid him.
Apparently, Steve’s bomb talk had been voiced to other students and had made its way back to the principal’s office. I don’t know why the principal handled the situation with public censure, and I am not suggesting it was the right way. Today, he would probably be fired. The end result, for me at least, was mortal fear. I stayed away from Steve from then on, and was very careful about my behavior for the rest of the year. The last thing I wanted was to be called to the front of the gym during an assembly.
That is the point of the instructions Paul gives to the New Testament church. If discipline of a sinning church leader is done properly, the result will be a healthy and glorifying fear of God. Why, then, has the church lost its courage to discipline her leaders? Al Mohler writes, “The decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church. No longer concerned with maintaining purity of confession or lifestyle, the contemporary church sees itself as a voluntary association of autonomous members, with minimal moral accountability to God, much less to each other.”
What can result when churches lose their courage? John Leadley Dagg wrote in the 1850s, “It has been remarked that when discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.”
What if the church does have courage and the sinning leader repents? Then restoration is made possible, at least to the fellowship as a member, if not as a leader.
A healthy church has courage to exercise church discipline, especially with its leadership. We ignore this at our own peril.
Nate and Tara Ariel left town last fall. They packed as much as the airlines allow, boarded a plane with their seven children, and moved to Bocachica. That’s an island off the coast of Cartagena, a beautiful port city in Colombia, South America. The Ariels don’t live in the beautiful port city; they live on an island that is a 30-minute boat ride off the coast. There’s no running water on the island, so bucket showers are the order of the day. Drinking water for non-natives, like the Ariels, has to be brought by boat from the mainland. There is electricity there. Sometimes. Most of the houses have dirt floors and no bathrooms. That’s why the early morning trek to “the hill” is necessary. You either do your business behind the hill or out in the ocean. One of the main reasons missionaries come to the Proyecto Libertad mission is to build latrines and pour concrete floors for as many as they can. The Ariel family went to Bocachica to serve the Lord for the rest of their lives. It’s just been a few months, but the impact one family has had there is astounding.
Their children already have dozens of friends. Spanish is quickly becoming their second language, with love being their first. Besides playing soccer and kickball with the children, they chase iguanas, work hard at serving the mission, and keep visiting missionaries entertained with their giggles and pranks.
Tara picked up right where she left off, already earning a reputation on the island as a woman who loves her husband and is ready to help him accomplish his calling. She loves to bake and has won the hearts of many Bocachican ladies with her sweet gifts. Tara is also an encourager of the young ladies who come from Germany to serve in the mission.
Nate was known around Burlington as a hard worker and a straight shooter. You didn’t ask Nate what he thought unless you wanted to hear the truth. He also made no empty promises; he simply delivered. In the Bocachica community, Nate has risen quickly to earn the respect of the men, especially the day laborers. They admire his skill; Nate can do nearly anything with his hands, especially if he is working with brick or block. They also appreciate his acceptance: Nate could not care less about skin color or socioeconomic status. He just wants to know if you are willing to work hard and if you are teachable. Those qualities are rare everywhere, and Bocachica is no exception. Jobs are hard to come by on the island, so men who have a good work ethic have found a friend and an employer in Nate Ariel.
Not only that, Nate is teaching the men how to be good fathers. One of his employees sells ice cream on the island when he is not working with Nate. Nate said to him recently, “Why don’t you take your son with you, and let him help you in your business?” That thought had never occurred to the man, nor to anyone else on the island. Relationships between fathers and sons are strained there with much neglect and sometimes abusive. This man took Nate’s advice and found a working partner and a friend in his son that he never knew he could have.
Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.” How do you do that? One child at a time. One wife and mother at a time. One husband and father at a time. The Ariels are discipling a nation. How about you?
The greatest struggle of the average pastor in America is with discouragement and sometimes flat-out depression. The source of his discouragement may be the stress of the ministry and the absence of elders who are walking with him in it. Or the feeling that he is not equipped to take care of a flock. Or that he or his wife or children are struggling with their own sins that they believe they have to keep hidden in order to maintain the facade of a “nearly perfect family.” Or the source may be financial stress.
Alistair Begg gave a talk at a pastors’ conference years ago entitled, “Dealing With the Blues.” His subject was ministerial depression, and the auditorium was packed with discouraged pastors and elders. After the session, elders from one church asked to talk with Alistair in private. “Our problem is not with the pastor, but his wife,” they said. “She is deeply depressed and we have tried everything, but nothing has helped. What should we do?” Pastor Begg said, “Increase your pastor’s annual salary by $5,000.” The elders were shocked and had no response. Later, one of the members of the church who had heard about this conversation found Alistair and said, “You don’t know how right on target you were. Our pastor’s wife has never been able to buy new shoes for her children, and the elders wear it as a badge of honor that the pastor’s family has to scrape together pennies to make ends meet. They believe they are helping them trust God. They think they are helping the pastor never to become a lover of money by making sure he doesn’t have any money to love.”
I heard about another pastor who was thrilled when a couple of families in his country church started giving him milk and eggs every week. Until he found out that the cost of the gifts was being deducted from his salary.
Paul addressed this issue of remuneration for pastors a number of times. He said to the church in Corinth, “If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things?” To the church in Galatia, Paul wrote, “Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches.”
Part of the problem is disobedience to the Scriptures with regard to providing for pastors. But there is a deeper problem with disobedience to the Word with regard to giving to the church. The average church in America operates on a 10/90 basis. Ten percent of the people give 90 percent of the money so the church can operate, the pastor and the elders can feed and equip the people (100 percent of them), the lights can stay on, and the missionaries can do their work. Let me ask you something: What percentage of people in churches in America make the payment on their car, which provides them with physical transportation, in the same way they give to the church, which provides them with spiritual nourishment and development? I would guess that most do not.
The few who do pay their bills that way end up losing their cars or their homes. Now, if we pay our bills 100 percent of the time because we feel an obligation to do so and we want to continue to enjoy the material things that those bills represent, how much more should we cheerfully give to the church where we are fed spiritual truth?
Does your pastor or his wife have the blues?
Who says the Bible does not help us deal with every issue of life? Those who deny this truth simply have not read the Bible themselves or have rejected the book, hoping this will somehow make them less accountable to it and its Author.
The Bible speaks clearly on the question “Who is to care for widows?” which is a practical concern for every generation in every place. The widow has always been one of the most vulnerable in society. It may be true that the American widow has the safety net of the government and its programs to help provide for her, and it is certainly true that the American widow has more disposable income than nearly all of her global counterparts. That doesn’t change the truth of Scripture, however, which clearly lays the responsibility for widows at the feet of the family, first, and then the church.
The family is responsible to care for its own widows. It is the children and grandchildren who are to provide for their elderly relatives, not the government. This was so ingrained in the cultures of the first century that Greek law demanded that sons and daughters were not only morally, but also legally, bound to support their parents. Aristotle had written three centuries before, “Anyone who refused that duty lost his civil rights.” He said, “It is more honorable to help the authors of our being, even before ourselves.” William Barclay writes, “As Aristotle saw it, a man must himself starve before he would see his parents starve.” Maybe this helps us understand why the Apostle Paul would say that anyone who does not provide for his own “has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Even the pagans took care of their parents in their old age.
It is interesting to me that when Jesus is confronted by a weeping widow who has lost her only son in Nain, he did not simply comfort her and then tell the government or the local gathering of believers to take care of this lady. Instead, Jesus raised her dead son to life. He “awoke” the one who could care for his widowed mother. Jesus stopped the funeral procession and said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” May I suggest that is what needs to happen in families all across our land that are dead to their responsibility to care for their aging parents and grandparents? They need to be resurrected, brought back to life, have their eyes opened to see their charge to care for the “authors of their being.” What if our parents provide for themselves financially, like many in this generation have done? We still must honor them by keeping in touch and caring for them emotionally.
When does the church step in, then? The Bible teaches us that the church provides for “widows indeed,” those who have been left all alone, without family or financial provision from any other source. They also must be “godly widows,” those who trust in God alone. The widow who lives for pleasure and “is dead while she lives,” Paul says, is not the responsibility of the church. Paul suggests that this widow be left to her sin in hopes that she will repent.
The Bible speaks to every issue of life, including the question of who cares for widows. The family and the church that follow this clear instruction will be blessed. So will a nation that is racing headlong toward involuntary euthanasia and other “final solutions” for the elderly. May God help us.
So, you want to be a leader? There’s no better leadership checkup than what Paul wrote to Timothy: “Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” Leadership is not a function of age or ability, according to the Scriptures, but a function of character. You want to be a leader? Don’t tell me about your SAT score or your internships or the offices you have held and the influence you have wielded. Tell me about your character. Better yet, show it to me. Be an example.
In your speech. Remember, Paul is writing this letter to a young pastor, a man who speaks every day as part of his job. I feel Timothy’s pain, and yours as well, if you are one of those who only opens his mouth to switch feet. Those who lead must be good examples with their tongues, whether they are running for office, leading a church or business, or doing anything else that puts them out front.
In your conduct. You can fool some of the people some of the time, Lincoln famously said. That’s true with speech. But your conduct, how you behave, will eventually show who you really are. Good leaders don’t say one thing in public and do the opposite in private. Not if they want to be useful to God and man.
In your love. It is possible to say all the right things and do all the right things … for the wrong reason. That’s why the Bible teaches that even if I give all my goods to feed the poor and my body to be burned as a martyr, but I do it to somehow win favor with God, not because I love God and mankind, “I am nothing.” Sobering words those who lead must heed.
In your spirit. This word in Paul’s instruction may refer to the Holy Spirit or to man’s spirit, or even to the way we say someone “has a good spirit about him,” a genuine fellow. I consider those three intertwined like a threefold cord.
In faith. This is the missing ingredient for many leaders whose hope and confidence is in their own intellect or ability. Chris runs a family conference center in New Hampshire. Once, someone gave them a few packages of English muffins, and with 11 children in the family, they disappeared quickly. One child complained, saying she wished they had more. So, Chris said to his children, “The muffins came from God, right? Let’s stop right now and ask the Lord for English muffins.” They stopped the meal and prayed. Within a week, a miracle occurred: Six hundred packages of English muffins arrived at their door. “We gave them away,” Chris said. The English muffins really started pouring in then; some weeks there were 1,200 packages delivered. Chris said, “It was great to see God provide for us so we could share with others. We have to have the God-factor with our finances.”
In purity. Paul started with the tongue, and ended with the thought life and the heart motives. The sins of lust, greed, and pride are much harder to see, and we can become masters at keeping them covered up. That’s why we each need people who are willing to ask us the hard questions so we cannot hide in the darkness. How many “good leaders” have been derailed by their hidden sins brought into the light?
You want to be a leader? Do a check-up with these truths from God’s Word.
I had the privilege to meet in St. Louis last weekend with 17 men from around the country. We flew or drove there from places as far away as Gresham, Ore., Ovid, N.Y., and Lake Wales, Fla. We are fathers and grandfathers, pastors and conference speakers, lawyers and entrepreneurs, writers and researchers, life coaches and salesmen. We gathered in a hotel conference room for three days to talk about what God is doing in our lives, to share our successes and our failures and to encourage one another. Here are a few favorite words of wisdom I heard, along with a great story.
“Too much Christian ministry goes undone because instead of reaching some, we are waiting for the opportunity to reach all.” Stop waiting and start reaching the few, or the one.
“You cannot be healed from that which you hide.” Does that need any explanation? Stop hiding and step into the light; that’s where hope resides and is waiting for you.
“The heart is made for hope, so whoever offers the most hope gets the heart.” Maybe that’s why the Bible says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” One application is for parents: Are we offering hope to our children?
If there was a theme for the gathering, I would have to say it was this: “It is not about me. To live is Christ.” That message was shared with tears, as men confessed failures and struggles, and asked for prayer support. That message was also shared with exciting stories of how God is working in our lives, our families and our jobs for his own glory. We celebrated together the sovereignty of our loving God. This story illustrates it as well as any I have ever heard.
A missionary was traveling in rural Kenya, taking a truck filled with valuable equipment through a territory known for thieves. There were five people in the truck, including two nationals who were part of the Masai tribe. The truck started making noises in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch black of night. Then it threw a rod, and the five were stranded. The missionary said that he thought he knew someone who could come and fix the truck, but it would take him two days to bring the man back. “The rest of you stay with the truck and protect the supplies,” he said, and he was gone. The four pitched a tent, ate a late supper and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, they were awakened by a blood curdling scream. A lion had grabbed the tent with his paws on either side of the head of one of the Kenyans, and was trying to drag him out through the canvas. The tent held firm and the other team members were able to scare the lion away. The next night the team constructed a perimeter around the tent and truck with brush and built a good fire. Again, they were awakened by a scream in the middle of the night as a lion was stalking one of the men who had gone outside the camp to relieve himself. The others ran at the lion with firebrands and were able to rescue their terrified and embarrassed companion. The next day, the missionary returned with his friend, the mechanic, whose jaw dropped when he saw where the truck had broken down.
“You are camping in the middle of the lion’s den in this area,” he said. “If you weren’t, you’d be dead. Robbers would have killed you for your valuables.”
Our hope is in Christ alone.
Why do we applaud and want to be like the famous athlete? Or the famous musician? Perhaps because he or she is the best; excellence in any arena is a magnet. The question is, how did the athlete or the musician get to be the best? Discipline. A master violinist held the audience breathless with his music. When the concert was over, a young man approached the aged musician and said, “I would give my whole life to be able to play like you do.” The violinist replied, “I have given my whole life to play like I do.” Discipline.
What do we do when we want to lose weight or get in shape? We find some kind of plan to follow and we follow it. I want to complete a marathon in four weeks, so I have been on a training plan for the past 14 weeks. Last Saturday, I had to run 20 miles. If I had tried to run 20 miles 13 weeks ago, I would have ended up in the hospital. Or, more likely, I would have quit before I got close to the 20-mile mark and decided that I just could not run a marathon. But the training program works; I have been trained by the day-by-day routine of it. Running 395 miles in the first 13 weeks, combined with a huge helping of the grace of God, enabled me to run 20 miles at one time. Discipline. It works for the athlete and for the musician. It also works for those who desire to grow in godliness, which is why the Bible is filled with commands for the Christian to labor and work hard in the spiritual disciplines. But there is often a problem with our thinking here.
We understand what discipline means when it comes to bodily exercise. But what if your pastor says that you need to read the Bible every day and you need to pray every day? You might protest and say, “That’s legalism!” That seems to be the mantra of many Christians today, a label they apply to anything anyone tells them they have to do. Can we come out from behind that mask once and for all? Kent Hughes says, “Legalism is self-centered, but discipline is God-centered. The legalistic heart says, ‘I will do this thing to gain merit with God.’ The disciplined heart says, ‘I will do this thing because I love God and want to please him.’ Paul knew this difference well, and he never gave an inch to legalists, even while challenging young Timothy to ‘train (himself) for godliness.’”
There is no shortcut. I was thinking this week about a good friend, Jeff, who just ran a marathon a few weeks ago, and how nice it would be if I could just get the benefit of his hard work without any effort myself. You know, Jeff does the training, and I get the conditioned heart and lungs and legs. Or what if my son Jesse lifted the weights, and I got the muscles? Sorry, friend, but it doesn’t work that way, in either physical fitness or spiritual fitness. That’s why Paul said, “Train yourself.” You have to read your Bible for yourself and study it and obey what it says. You have to pray.
I wouldn’t mind being a master musician or a world-class athlete. But those things are for this life only. “Godliness,” on the other hand, “is profitable for all things,” both for this life and the one to come. That sounds like a can’t-lose proposition.
Go ahead and train yourself for godliness.
