Do not hold on to anything (1 Timothy 6:6)

I said that I was going to continue thoughts that I could not conclude last Sunday in this study that we are doing about the rich fool.

Beginning with verse 6. “But great gain is godliness accompanied by contentment because we have brought nothing into this world and certainly nothing we can take out. So, having sustenance and shelter, let us be content with this because those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and harmful greeds that plunge men into destruction and perdition. Because the root of all evils is the love of money, which by coveting some lost faith and was transferred with many pains.”

We continue with verse 11. “But you, oh man (and women don't get too comfortable because it also refers to you) but you, oh woman of God flee from these things and follow justice, mercy, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of eternal life to which you were also called having made the good confession before many witnesses.”

Let's skip to verse 17. “Command those who are rich in this age not to be haughty or to put their hope in riches which are uncertain, but in the living God who gives us all things in abundance for our enjoyment. May they do good, may they be rich in good works, generous, generous, treasuring up for themselves a good foundation for what is to come. Let them take hold of eternal life.” May the Lord bless his holy word.

Last Sunday we studied the parable of the foolish rich man. This man we see that he made many mistakes, many mistakes about important things that teach us how not to approach wealth. We did this study in light of the concept of stewardship. The idea that everything belongs to God, life, our money, everything belongs to God. When we give the Lord time, energy, talent, in reality we are not giving to the Lord but we are simply returning part of what belongs to Him in its entirety. We saw mistakes that this man turned. Let me remind you of the mistakes of this foolish man:

1. He does not recognize God at any time, everything is him at all times.

2. Does not have a sense of stewardship. Everything is his, nothing belongs to God, but he has the right to manage everything he has.

3. A purely lateral vision, that's why we mean that what he did was redistribute things, everything stayed in the world. He did not have a vertical vision, he did not have a vision of eternity.

4. He believes that his soul is going to be satisfied with purely material things. We know that the soul is not satisfied with the material, it is satisfied with the Lord, with the spirit, with his word. "Enjoy yourself soul, drink, eat, enjoy", he does not know that these things do not reach the soul.

5. Plan for the future, not considering God. He says I will do this, I have many years to live and enjoy and he does not ask the Lord: What do you want me to do with my wealth? We always have to put God first, brothers. When you do anything, commend your life to the Lord. Never do anything without first asking: Lord, what is your will for this?

6. This man does not recognize the fragility of life. The Bible says: "man is like the flower of the field that the wind passed through it and perished and its place will know it no more." And that is the life of man, we have to be aware that we are fragile and that life is fleeting and that we have to have our issues clear with God for when the time comes to give an account to God. So he does not prepare for eternity. He does not plan for eternity. Eternity grabs him in his underpants, pardon the expression, out of the blue, completely at a loss for what to do. How terrible that, we work so much for the current time and we forget that eternity is much longer than this time. Or that is the idea.

And now here in this Timothy passage is a prescription for how to positively relate to money and riches. Here the apostle Paul writes to Timothy, and by extension to us, about how our attitude towards wealth, money and possessions should be.

I like this saying “but great gain is godliness accompanied by contentment”. For me that is one of the deepest expressions of the Bible "great gain is godliness accompanied by contentment." Why brothers? Because there are many people in the churches, saints who love the Lord but are not satisfied. Holiness, if not balanced by a sense of peace in the Lord and of depositing our lives in the grace of the Lord, can become neurotic and harmful. There are many neurotic people in the world close to holiness, and that is not from God because where there is no peace there is no holy spirit. There has to be a balance.

You know what the Word says, it says that “mercy triumphs over judgment”. In the heart of God there is a very great appetite for justice and also mercy and when those two things get in the way of each other, mercy is like it always has a little advantage and prevails over the justice of God.

And why does Paul say this here? Because there are many people who are in the church but have not appeased their appetite for money and are always restless about material things. That tension is like the rich young man, the rich young man loved God, the rich young man needed God and kept the commandments, but when Christ told him, well, if you want to be happy, take your money, give it to the poor and follow me. , the young man, as he loved money and possessions so much that he could not choose what Christ told him and left sad. This young man revealed that his love was greater for riches than for the Lord.

Brothers, I ask the Lord if I have a comfortable cloth to wear and a banana with green oil, because at least I ask for green oil, and a glass of water if I can't have an orangina or horchata that I'm happy with that. Now if you want to give me some filet mignon from time to time, glory to God, who doesn't like that as the Dominican meringue says.

If you have a clean little two-bedroom apartment and you don't have that four-bedroom house that you see around when you pass through the neighborhood where you work in Newton or Welsley, don't envy that, don't let your peace be taken away by it's. Because there are people who have a house, who buy a house in Sommerville or Midport and when they already have the house of their dreams, they go to Wellesley and go through those mansions, they forgot that one day they wanted a house and that God would give it to them. gave and now they want that house, and now their day is ruined because they don't have 'that house'.

Material things the more you scratch the more it itches, pardon the expression. You are never going to be satisfied, because when you have something you are going to want something else, you are going to want to add a little more to it. Now the 25" television is not going to be enough, you are going to want a 59" one and the devil is going to take care that when you have the 59" you add HDL TV or some of those things, three-dimensional, the giant will it comes off the screen and you touch it, stir the hair or whatever, smells and tastes come off the screen and you're going to want that.

There has to come a time when one says: no more, I'm not going to keep squeezing myself, I'm not going to keep tearing my skin off because I don't have this or that. There comes a time when you must say: I'm going to be content with what I have. Now, am I going to want something else? Glory to God because it is not that we do not have a healthy desire to progress, brothers, but we must do it in peace. Let me take a deep breath and say: Lord, I am going to live in peace and what you want to give me is in addition! What we must not do is connect our heart and plug it into material things and that our sense of identity and personal value is somehow tied to the things that we have or do not have.

You are more than the TV you have or the clothes you have. You are an eternal soul that when you leave this world you will not take anything with you, not even the body you have on you will take it with you. You're going to have to leave it here on earth because you borrowed it from the elements.

Someone has said that they never saw a hearse pulling a moving van, and it's true. Because great gain is piety accompanied by contentment, because we have brought nothing into this world and without a doubt we will be able to take nothing.

I want to put the text down for a moment and read you something I wrote. I want to give you some indications or signs for your benefit and mine to have a good attitude towards money and possessions, to have a good stewardship as we said.

How can I know if I am more or less oriented with respect to material possessions?

If you can answer in the affirmative that this applies to you, that's great.

1. I recognize that God is the origin and owner of my life and my possessions. It's a good way to tell if you have a sense of stewardship about life. Do you know that everything you are, everything you have comes from God? "The earth belongs to the Lord and its fullness", says the Word, because when you know that everything was created by God then you cannot say, ah! This is mine or that is mine, my wife is not mine, my children are not mine, my money is not mine, my time is not mine, my talent is not mine, it belongs to God.

The man or woman who has reached a clear conscience, a conviction holds everything in his hand tentatively and lightly, nothing squeezes him. I recognize that God is the origin and owner of my life and my possessions.

2. I dedicate a good part of my time to the things of God. For example, attend church, study the Word, pray, serve the Lord, do good works, bear good fruit. Spend good time. How much time do you dedicate to the Lord? Ah well, I go to church on Sundays.

Look brother, the week has 168 hours if you give the Lord two hours, that is not even 1%, that is not enough for a God who has given you everything. We must give to the Lord, brothers, everything that He asks of us. Saturday is the Lord's day, Sunday is the Lord's day, every day is the Lord's day. Give to the Lord generously. When you have the opportunity to do something for God, dedicate time to prayer, to the search for God, to the Word, to spiritual things, give that time to the Lord.

It tells us that the spiritual man or woman thinks about things of the spirit, their priority is on things of the spirit. How much time do you give to the Lord? How much energy do you give to the Lord? Brothers, I beg you in the name of Jesus, give to God, give to the Lord generously and God will bless you beyond what you can imagine. Give the Lord everything you can, give it with your hands full, give it desperately, give it with love, give it madly and the Lord will give you, give you and give you and bless you and you will find the peace your soul needs. Give to the Lord.

3. I give a part of my money to the work of the Lord (at least the tithe). Why the tithe? Because the word of the Lord speaks many times about giving the Lord that 10% of our money, which is a symbolic deposit and an implicit recognition of his dominion over our lives.

I believe, brothers, that the New Testament contains a much more sophisticated spirituality because it is a spirituality that recognizes that man has developed from his time in the Old Testament to the New Testament. And already God relates in the light of the most complete revelation of Jesus with man in a much more sophisticated way, much more comprehensive and God expects us to give more to Him than the tithe, because you cannot say: Well, I I gave the Lord my 10% on Sunday and at the moment there is a needy person in your neighborhood and you say, well I already gave to the Lord so bandage yourself as you can.

And the Lord says: “No, no, give them something to eat”. What God asks of you, give it to him. The person who loves God knowing that one has lost himself in God, has lost the barriers and the border between what is mine and what is God's. Now God is everything, and I am in God, and God has my whole being and I have everything from God, and the difference between the beloved and the lover has already blurred and everything is now one single thing. This is how the person who is in God lives.

4. I am generous with my money to help those in need. Because it is one thing to give to God but we also have to give to others, we have to be generous with our relatives, with our friends, with those in the family of faith.

If you see someone in need, brother, give generously. You have to have a balance because there are people who are abusive, there are people who lean on others and I believe that you have to have a healthy balance for love, even so as not to encourage abusive behavior that hurts the people who practice it and therefore so much we have to be discerning and prudent.

The Word says: “he who does not work, must not eat”. When we see genuine need, brethren, genuine need in someone, give generously. Be a cheerful giver, give to the Lord but also give to your neighbor and you will see that God will bless you. Give your time, your money and God will bless your life.

The happiest people on earth are the people who give generously, the people who are not picky, who are not stingy, those people are happy. And it's like a magnet that attracts more. One of these days brother, start giving away things that are precious to you, give it as an exercise, and it will hurt.

Some of us are going to feel like our arms are cracking when we extend our hand to give something away, because we're not used to it. That is there full of mold and you have to release it. With a little bit of 3-in-1 and drop it here on your elbow so it loosens up nice and practice generosity, practice generosity.

Sometimes we have to do it as an exercise in faith. We have to say to the mind: Da! And to the arm: stretch out! And at hand: open up! And to the pocket: let go! I rebuke you in the name of the Lord, be free now! The idea of giving and for a moment you enjoy what God gives and you hold it, and you breathe it and you enjoy it and then you release it for someone else to have and then God gives you more. And that will stay a moment in your life, it will bless you and it will continue to flow. Praise God for that! How good it is when God manages the flow of our possessions instead of us. There is a big difference in that, brothers, that is why we have to be generous with others.

5. I also trust that if I am generous to God, He will bless me and give me much more than I invest for Him. That is the key to generosity in life, brother. Know that when you give to the Lord, God is watching and God blesses you. Now it is not that you give mechanically so that God gives you more, but you give knowing that it is so. That is a law of the universe. The Lord when you give something in his name that is precious to you, He says “Don't worry. You will never feel the pain of what you have lost. I am going to bless you, I am going to give you more and perhaps what I am going to do is that I am going to give it to you in a different way. I'm not going to give you this for that, but I'm going to give you something that if you knew at the time, you would ask me. But I'm going to give it to you without even asking for it, without even knowing what you want.

6. Eternal life is a reality for me and I make my financial decisions in light of the coming Kingdom. Here the key is "eternal life is a reality." It's this idea that spirit is real to me. Many people are merely religious and the truths and values of the Kingdom of God and the Word are just beautiful concepts that they poetically handle but are not real things that they feel with their guts. There are powerful feelings that rule your life. The writer of Hebrews says in Chapter XI, the chapter on faith "that many died without seeing the promised land but they died greeting it and seeing it" because it was a reality for them. Brethren, how real is eternal life to you? How real is God to you? How real are spiritual things to you? How real is eternal life to you? We have to ask the Lord: Lord, make me feel eternal life. Because? Because when eternal life and the spirit and the Kingdom of God are real then this world pales and loses its intensity and its ability to govern and control your decisions. You are already a citizen of the Kingdom of God, you are a pilgrim and a foreigner who is here passing through and you handle things in life lightly if possible, but you know that your true residence is in the eternal. Eternal life is a reality for me and I make my financial decisions in light of the coming Kingdom.

7. Things of the spirit are a priority for me. If I have to choose between the spiritual and the material, I go for the spiritual. One of the clearest passages that illustrates this is the passage we discussed a while ago, the Daniel passage. You remember that Daniel, when it came time to choose food, which is a symbol of material things, chose rather not to eat the king's food and simply keep himself clean and pure and not partake of food that was contaminated and offered to idols. But Daniel also chose between food and also his future, because by rebelling against not eating the king's food they would think, oh you think you are better than us, or you are despising the king's food or you are not a team player and therefore cannot be part of our team. Daniel was putting his professional future at risk. Are we willing to compromise our professional future for God? If you had to truly choose, and one day we may have to, if you had to choose between your professional future and honoring God, are you sure what you would choose? I am not sure of my answer, I am like Peter when the Lord asked him "Peter, do you love me?" and he answered "Lord, you know all things." Brothers, sometimes it is not so dramatic to choose between the material and the spiritual, sometimes it is simply choosing between the novel and the service on Wednesday at 7:30. The difference is in caring for that sister who is depressed and who is already calling you for the third time so that you listen to her and that you give her advice, and that she knows that there is an ear that is listening to her and sleep an extra hour or do something else. And you do it Lord, I put myself like a slaughtered ram on the sacrificial table, it's okay, tell me what you need, and you comfort her and listen to her and give her a word of affirmation because you are an instrument of God and your time is of God and your life is of God. When I was in college and I don't say this to be admired or anything, even as a pagan that I was, I was a young man loving God and all that, I always said to God: "Father, if there is any young man, many times in universities there are many young people who are depressed, especially in high pressure schools, many young people get depressed and even commit suicide because they do not have good grades and there are many neuroses in the great universities of this country. I always told the Lord, it doesn't matter if I have an exam or whatever, if someone needs me I will be available to give someone comfort or advice. And that's how we have to do it. God always blessed me academically, I never lacked that time that I gave to someone for the Lord. 8. It does not hurt me to part with my possessions if it is for a noble and good cause, especially if it is to advance the Kingdom of God. We can say that especially, that it doesn't hurt me, because one thing is sometimes we do good things but sometimes we do them with pain and with a feeling of discomfort. I confess brothers that there are things that I do in the ministry that I go kicking and grumbling around and complaining to God because I have to do something for the ministry. I raise my hand, I'm guilty. Then when I do it, I'm like, wow, good thing I did it, and God bless me. And we end there, because as the Scripture says, "Godliness accompanied by contentment is a great thing." See if you are going to serve the Lord, serve him with joy, if you can be used to advance the Kingdom of God or to bless someone in a noble cause, consider yourself lucky and blessed, consider it a privilege. I thank God because God chose to use me to bless lives and I do not consider myself a hero, on the contrary, I consider myself privileged because God could have chosen another and handle the truths of God and the principles of God and business of the Kingdom, what a greater privilege, how can I complain about that? Sometimes when I complain, I am aware that this is my problem and it is not God's problem, so sooner or later I have to reconcile with God and return to my biblical lucidity, which is to know what a privilege it is to go out of my way for God, invest my energy for God, burn as a living sacrifice before God and leave it all here and invest it in lives. That is a privilege, brothers and we should thank God. So, brothers, let us be good stewards. Let's learn to love God above all things. Happiness is there, you want to be happy. Get rid of everything you have, get rid of your heart, get rid of yourself and give it all to God and then let Him give you back what He wants to leave you. The less you have, the more you will be. I'll leave that for you to chew on a bit. The less we have, the more we are. The more we get rid of, the more we acquire. The less we grab, the more we live. The more we love, the more we experience God's love. The less we worry about ourselves, the more family we have and the more we receive. The less we think about the future we want to create, the more God cares about giving us the future our hearts long for. That's the truth, as simple as that.

God willing that today we can say, Father, I am going to prefer you above all things, I am going to prefer your Kingdom above all things, I am going to love you above all things. I am going to serve you and I am going to give with joy in my heart because it is a privilege to burn for you, to live for you.

Lower your head for a moment and acknowledge with me, Lord, that my life serve to advance your Kingdom: May I be a living burning sacrifice for you. May I always love you above all things. Receive right now that touch of the Lord that cuts that umbilical cord between you and the world and promise yourself that you will think of Him first, think of the Kingdom of God, seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice and all other things will be yours. added, says the Lord. Seek first the Kingdom of God and all other things will be added to you. Thank you father, we received your call, we received your challenge this morning. Praised and glorified be your name. Glory to God. Amen, amen. Glory to the Lord. Glory to God. May we live up to that revelation this morning.