20 Oct 2014 - don't let the money make you

“Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”

This is kind of what we're working so hard for isn't it? Wouldn't it be nice to finally get all the work done so that we can just sit back and enjoy it? No need to fret about expenses or anything like that. We've taken care of all that.

But "one’s life does not consist of possessions". We don't just work for the sake of working. Yet we don't just work for the proximate gains of possessions and security. We don't want to be "the one who stores up treasure for himself".

It is hard to see our work as an effort toward something greater. It is hard to see our taxes as an offering to God. But these spheres can't function independently from him. We must do all things for the LORD. We must work so that we can be "rich in what matters to God."

Jesus shows us "the immeasurable riches of his grace" and these are the riches that matter to God. Yet they are not from works. If they aren't from works but we have to keep working anyway, what is to prevent us from isolating that aspect of our lives from God, from making it purely secular, and ultimately selfish?

For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works
that God has prepared in advance,
that we should live in them.

The riches that God gives us prepare and equip us for good works. We no longer live to store up treasure for ourselves. Our time, our talent, and our treasures, are now at the service of love. There is now more to life than the drudgery of the daily grind. But it isn't just a vacation home in Florida. It is the fulfillment that we only find when we make ourselves a gift to others and to God. This is true wealth. We don't need to worry about what will happen to riches of this kind.

So we keep working, but no longer "following the age of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient." We keep working, but not for "the wishes of flesh". There is something greater on the horizon now because God has "brought us to life in Christ and seated us with him in the heavens." The view is good from up here. We don't need to work for fading earthly splendor. And when we're tempted we remember that there is more "in the ages to come" when God will "show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus."

"The Lord made us, we belong to him", sings the psalmist. But we have twice the reason to sing, remade in Christ, "created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them."

Sing joyfully to the LORD all you lands;
serve the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful song.