Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

us that the worship of God has entrance requirements. Psalm 15 is an entrance liturgy. It reminds us as we come forward to praise God, response to the blowing of the trumpets of God’s call to worship, which is a blowing of trumpets to rest in the finished work of our savior. The blowing of trumpets is a call of the coronation of the king, the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a call to go forth into battle as well.

And trumpets were blown as Jericho and Jerusalem fell. And so the trumpets will blow as we go forth preaching the word of God and applying it to all of our lives. But as we come forward, it’s good to hear those entrance requirements in Psalm 15. Very practical, aren’t they? Our tongue, our pocketbook, our word to people. These are the entrance requirements. Not that these things merit salvation or entrance to God’s holy hill, but they’re evidence that we’re covenantally in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The sermon text today is a very practical one as well and relates to our pocketbook. It’s found in 1 Timothy 6:17-21 and it may seem like two different subjects but they are related and this will conclude a series of sermons on the book of 1 Timothy and this deals with stewardship as this entrance requirement did as well. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word. We’ll remain standing for the song of prayer as well.

1 Timothy 6 starting in verse 17 reading to the end of the chapter: “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us freely and richly all things to enjoy, that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so-called which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.”

Let us sing this song as our prayer to God that he would illumine the text for understanding.

Okay, we conclude with this sermon the epistle to First Timothy written by Paul. And you’ll notice that these verses 17 and 18 fall easily in this last section, the last half of the book which is occupied with relationships between people in the context of the house of God.

Remember that First Timothy tells us that Paul says in the middle of the epistle that he writes these things that Timothy might know how to behave himself in the house of God which is the pillar and ground of the truth. And so this is talking about the church of Jesus Christ and it’s addressed the worship services. It’s addressed the officers of the church. It began with all that discussion of discipline and the need to tell some teachers not to teach what they’re teaching which was false teaching, these vain babblings are referred to in this text.

And so at the end here, he kind of comes back to that subject at the end of it by warning Timothy to guard what he has in possession. But he precedes that with these few verses about the rich. He’s talked already, and we talked about this before, about those who desire to be rich, probably referring primarily to the false teachers. These false teachers had a wrong motivation. They wanted to be rich.

They had a wrong standard. Remember that profit is an indicator of truth or value. And then they produced this terrible environment of schism and division in the context of the church. Those were, as they were elder wannabes—remember we talked about that at the first of this book—they’re also rich wannabes. And now he addresses specifically those that are rich, not those who desire rich. And so first of all, we want to see that there is a charge or a commandment here to the rich.

Now the title of the sermon is “The Job of the Layman” and the job is summarized in the word communicate and you’ll see why as we go through this. But he, by way of interpretation of the text, addresses really specifically a particular portion of laymen—those who actually are rich and they are rich. Particularly the text tells us that he is to charge those that are rich in this world and the word “world” there is not cosmos but aeon, and let me read a definition of what this means.

According to Trench, the word “world” is used in this particular verse as “all the floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations at any time current in the world which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define but which constitute a most real and effective power being the moral or immoral atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale and again inevitably to exhale.”

The early church fathers looked upon spiritual warfare as changing this atmosphere as we inhale and exhale and driving out the noxious fumes so to speak and putting out the sweet fragrance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now another definition of what this word aeon means comes from Bengel and he defines it this way: “the subtle informing spirit of the cosmos or world.” Now this isn’t cosmos but the spirit of the cosmos or world of men who are living alienated and apart from God.

So he puts a very negative connotation on it and it’s a connotation that some who are not historically optimistic would want to put on the word all the time but the Trench definition is better because it could be moral or immoral—it’s simply the atmosphere of the world. Charge those that are rich in this context then of where we’re living now is what Paul tells Timothy to do. They’re rich—they have more goods than other people. Rich is a tough one to come up with but it means a super abundance of goods. And there are many people who think that this defines all of America, that we have a super abundance of goods.

But it’s kind of tough to say that because we live in a debt economy and so many of us are not rich as rich as we may want to think ourselves to be because we don’t really own the homes we live in. We rent or we have a mortgage or we have property, whatever it is. However, there are people in the context of, you know, most congregations that have an abundance of money more than they are required to provide for their family with.

And those are the particular people that are addressed by this. And so in this congregation, there’s probably not going to be many of you with a direct application, but it will be many of you with a very indirect application, which we’ll make as we proceed in the text.

Okay. Paul tells these people two things negatively. The rich and the world, they be not high-minded. He starts here with a proper view of oneself in relationship to God. Really, ultimately, people are to view the source of their own blessings with the correct perception of that. And the proud are those who have the tendency, the temptation is to be highminded, to think of themselves better than other people and really the cure for that is not comparison with other people although there is some of that goes on in the text but primarily it’s comparison with who we are to God.

Pride, as you know, is the root. So the church fathers said of the seven deadly sins it was one of the seven but it was the head from which the rest grew out of. And so pride here is the great sin of man that exalts himself against God and it is this pride that is a particular temptation to the rich that’s being talked about at this particular point in the epistle.

So the starting point of the correct consecration of one’s goods begins with the correct perception of who you are and how you attain those goods in relationship to God. And so there is a call for them not to be high-minded here. The starting point here is humility. And I’ve got in your outline that this is rooted in Calvinism. Why do I say that? The Canons of Dort and the commentaries that are produced on the Canons of Dort, the five points of Calvinism. You know, one of the charges that the Arminians made against the Calvinists is that they were proud of themselves because they were elected by God.

But in point of fact, if you understand God’s election, that it is unconditional, that there’s nothing in you that merits God’s choice of you. There was no foreseen faith on your part on the part of God. God’s foreknowledge refers to his forelove of you. That is a very humbling thing. It is the Arminian who has the latent tendency, if not the developed tendency, to think that somehow he’s better than the next guy because he made the decision. He had that foreseen faith that God saw in him that was the basis for his choice.

So really the charge by the Arminians, the Calvinists are tending to pride is one that is only true if the person does not really have a full grasp of the sovereignty of God and God’s unconditional election. Because the assertion of God’s sovereignty in salvation is the starting point of humiliating man, humbling him properly with an understanding of his depravity.

Okay? And so it is the Reformed doctrine of the depravity of man, God’s unconditional election of man that forms the basis for the rich man to properly apply this verse and to be charged by it to not be high-minded. This is a charge, by the way. It’s not simply an instruction. Now, all of God’s instructions are charges, aren’t they? I mean, if there’s no word charge attached to it and God says this is what you should do, honor your parents, even though there’s not a charge attached to it, there is an implicit charge.

So when he gives us a charge here particularly, it is particularly needed for that particular person. And the rich have a particular need to hear a charge as well as a command by God to humble themselves and not be lifted up. The flesh—the will—always desires… the old man is what I mean by the flesh. We don’t believe in a spiritual physical dichotomy. We’re one person. But when the scriptures use the term flesh, it refers to our old man, our old nature and habits who we are in that depraved state.

The flesh always wants to exalt itself somehow. It always wants to have a part. And we’ve talked before the danger of talking about this—the standard of God’s law as God’s chosen one of God’s chosen means for sanctification as the spirit writes it on our heart. The danger is that your flesh, your old man, will attempt to earn its sanctification. Now, if it can’t earn its justification from God, it will attempt to sanctify itself by its own works.

And neither is true. The works that we see manifested in us are always symbols of the grace of God. And so the Canons of Dort say that when we see the things that God has brought to pass in our lives, then we glorify God for those things because we know that in our flesh, nothing good dwells. And so the rich man particularly has a difficulty here because he in the providence of God has been given an abundance of goods.

He and by the standard of the world of the flesh, that standard says that he must be doing something right. And so he has a particular temptation to be high-minded about himself. Nehemiah said, “Lord, remember me for my works.” Twice. It’s a very interesting phrase. Nehemiah says it a couple of times in his epistle or not his epistle but in the book of Nehemiah. And Nehemiah says this and Nehemiah does not mean by that somehow his works are going to merit the grace of God toward him.

I believe he’s holding it up as an emblem of what God has done in him—that God will indeed perfect that which concerns Christ in his church. And Nehemiah as part of the Old Testament church would be perfected as well if he saw the demonstration of God’s call and election in his works. And so he calls and asks God to remember them. And we come forward in obedience to the entrance liturgy and have tried to conform our lives to those standards as exemplified in Psalm 15 for instance or the Ten Commandments. And there’s an essential conformity to it—not perfect—we always fall short, we always confess our sins but we hold those up as an entrance liturgy and we thank God that it is by his grace that we have these riches of a demonstration of his grace in us that we manifest to the world.

You see, so a proper understanding of all of this doesn’t do away with works. It doesn’t do away with an understanding of those things. Rather, it puts them in the context of God’s sovereign grace. And so Paul tells Timothy to charge the rich to be very careful on this starting point of a correct estimation of who they are. And he’ll compare them shortly here to God. That’s how we humble ourselves. That’s how we fall on our knees and our face as Daniel did as he’s presented with the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He falls down just as John will see that same image amplified in Christ’s resurrected glorified state in the book of Revelation and he dies. He goes through decreation. He goes through deep sleep. He goes through death. That fear of God is the beginning place to a humility that will lead then to the rich man being able to do the things, the actual works he’s required to do with his money and with his wealth.

Jesus said that it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. The implication there is first of all that nobody can do that and the rich man can’t do it either. But we are not being fair with the text I don’t think if we leave it at that. Because Jesus wanted to warn about the particular difficulties that in the providence of God, the particular stumbling blocks he’s provided to those that are wealthy.

They have a temptation here. Calvin said that the temptation to the rich that Paul addresses here to Timothy and Timothy to the congregation. Those temptations are even as the shadow accompanies our body. Calvin said, “We can’t walk around in the sunshine without having our shadow there.” So it is that the rich, he always has these temptations to be high-minded relative to God and to trust in uncertain riches.

And so these admonitions to not be high-minded are extremely important in the context of the correct use of one’s riches. Now in Romans 11:20 we read that the admonition is to be not high-minded but fear. The correction to a high-minded attitude is a proper fear reverence but also a desire to humble oneself before the living God. And so it is this apprehension of God that we go through that we practice liturgically and hopefully it’s more than that to us.

It reaches out into our inner soul and we come to worship. We recognize our humility before God. So a proper worship service that begins or has prominent in it a confession of sin and ideally—and we can’t do it in this church not easily—but ideally a falling down on our knees before him is a liturgical device that God has placed in to correct the high-minded man, the rich man’s thoughts that he not be high-minded against God.

It’s a temptation we all have. They have a particular temptation to that particular thing. They have a vain confidence in their riches as Calvin said, and then this high-mindedness or hardiness follows their trust in their riches. So this is a very important truth which is followed immediately by a second one and that is to don’t hope or trust in your always uncertain riches.

Verse 17 goes on to that. You’re supposed to charge the rich not to trust in uncertain riches. The perfect—let’s see the particular Greek tense of this word trust is an important one for us to mention briefly. The idea here is of somebody who has trusted in the past, continues to trust in the present and is in danger of trusting in it forever. It’s becoming a fixed trust in uncertain riches.

And the word trust is the same word that’s translated hope. So as opposed to hoping in one’s riches, the rich man is charged to hope instead in the living God. And he is in danger from his point of being enriched by God of this temptation to trust in riches. And if he continues to let that reside in his bosom, he’s going to end up trusting in that eternally. And of course, that will send him—that will be an evidence that he’s never elected and instead he ends up having missed the mark as those false teachers do at the end of the text and as a result are cast into hell.

So the rich man has this particular temptation to not only have a high-mindedness against God but to also trust in those riches which are always uncertain. A proper view of the source of hope is here required. This is the proper view of who we are before God is stressed in the first charge. A proper view of our hope that is to be settled in God who is certain and not uncertain riches is stressed in the second charge. This negative charge to those that are rich.

Job understood this. Job was tested to see how much his trust was in his riches and in his children who were seen as and are linked in the scriptures to riches as well. And Job met the test. “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job had the context, the proper understanding of proper contentment before God. Remember we said that earlier as he was speaking of those who wanted to be rich.

The image of Job is brought forward with this saying by Paul that naked we came, naked we shall return. But Job himself confesses before God. The key to contentment, the key to bowing the knee to a sovereign God by not placing our confidence or hope in the things round about us. The rich are to be neither snobbish nor smug, high-minded or to trust in uncertain riches.

Now the Proverbs tells us in chapter 23:5 that he that sets his eyes upon that which is not—why do you set your eyes upon that which is not? Riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away as an eagle toward heaven. Riches are uncertain. They can burn down tomorrow. The thief can break in and plunder and destroy. They can corrupt. They can mold away in terms of some of the riches that we pile around ourselves. Riches are transitory—they fly away.

And then secondly you fly away. Jesus in the parable of the man with who built more barns for all his goods, all his riches—the picture isn’t there that his riches fly away. He’s going to fly away. His soul is going to be required of him that very night. And so at that point the riches fly away in a negative sense—he’s flying away from them. But either way the scriptures point out the transitory nature of riches and a need to remove ourselves from the temptation to see them as our hope and trust.

Well, that’s easy to see about the rich man who has the barns. He appears to be pagan. And that’s an easy one for us to take. But Deuteronomy 6 warns us as well. Deuteronomy tells us that when you go into the land and you have all these blessings of God showered upon your head, be careful that you don’t forget the living God as the source of these things. You’re going to be tempted to think, “I did all this.”

Now, the picture of that in the Old Testament is Nebuchadnezzar. He looks at the great empire that God had given to him and he says, “My hand did all this.” But you see, that’s a temptation to you as well. If God so blesses you with riches and exterior external prosperity, you should take those admonitions of Deuteronomy 4 and 6 to heart that you not be tempted to think in your heart, “It’s your hand that gives it to you.”

This temptation is not simply one that comes to pagans is what I’m trying to say. It comes in the context of the covenant community and God warns us very severely about it. And so we want to pray. Maybe it doesn’t have direct application to you. You could pray for those that are rich that they don’t fall into this temptation that as Calvin said follows them about as a shadow does our body. Instead, the rich man of course is to trust in the sureness of God.

Let me make one or two other comments about this trusting in riches. Even Hezekiah, good King Hezekiah, the scriptures tell us in 2 Chronicles 32, that Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit unto him for his heart was lifted up. Hezekiah also—his heart was lifted up in pride against God because of the great blessings that God had given to him. It happens to the best of men is what these things are trying to tell us. It also happens to the worst of men.

We think of Sodomites today and the immediate connotation is the political connotation, the moral connotation of homosexuality. But what do the scriptures tell us? The scriptures does certainly condemn homosexuality and wants us to make that association. But there’s another association that’s made as well in the scriptures. In the book of Ezekiel 16:49, we read this:

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom. Pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

So when it comes around to Ezekiel talking about God’s condemnation of the Sodomites, he doesn’t single out homosexuality here. He singles out a pride, a haughtiness before God, a smugness, and a self-sufficiency that accompanied Sodom because of the great wealth that God had given to her. You remember Sodom looked like—remember, as the area was divided between Abraham and Lot—it looked like the Garden of Eden over there, a lot of external blessings.

And their failure as Sodomites was first of all not to thank God and consecrate those blessings for his purposes. And not simply to thank God for them, but to not be lifted up as the prophet warned against here and to not trust in those exterior prosperity, external prosperity. And Sodom was to fail to dispense those goods that she had as riches to the poor.

So, you know, it’s easy for us today to say, well, you know, we don’t want to engage in homosexual acts. But the scriptures say that if you fail to take this admonition seriously, if you gain material prosperity for your own hoarding up instead of dispensing abroad to those members of the church of Jesus Christ who have need, then you are at the source of the sin of sodomy. Now with the Sodomites, it progressed on, but the progression into the homosexuality was a further indication of their internalization of all the blessings of God as opposed to dispensing them outside of themselves.

It’s an inward collapse. That’s what homosexuality is. And that begins in the context of the Sodomites with a failure to understand or a moral failure to obey the commandment of God to give him thanks for riches, to humble themselves before him and then in giving thanks for those riches to consecrate to the use of God and dispense them the way he has seen fit to tell us to dispense them.

So very importantly here Paul begins before he tells the rich man what to do with his wealth he begins with the source of what is all of our difficulty isn’t it? Our pride and being high-minded against God, that we can sustain ourselves and then a smugness in the arm of flesh that can do things as we want to do them and it particularly relates to the things that God has trusted to us. In the case of the rich man, wealth. In the case of other people, different things. Jeremiah says, you know, that the rich shouldn’t boast in his riches the wise shouldn’t boast in his wisdom or the strong in his strength. “Well let him boast in this: but he understands and knows me.”

Okay, so it isn’t just riches here. Paul applies it to the rich man but it refers to the strong man or the wise man very explicitly by scripture as well. The whole point here is that we got to get our attitudes straight relative to God. It’s first tablet stuff we’re talking about here. Okay. The first tablet of the law, how to love God, and the second tablet, how to love our neighbor.

Well, he begins, as all proper evaluations do, with men’s sins and the correction to those sins, the need to repair relative to God. If all we talk about is the second tablet, we end up becoming a moralist, doing things on the basis of humanity. But God always drives us back to our relationship to him that flows out then into and is indicated of our relationship to our fellow man.

Okay. So if we have problems with the entrance liturgy of Psalm 15, our problems ultimately are not with our fellow men. Our problem is with God and our need is to humble ourselves before the mighty God and to take away our trust in ourselves, reliance in ourselves and rather to see the good things that God does as Nehemiah did as indication of God’s blessing, God’s gracious blessing upon us.

Okay, those are the don’ts. Do trust in the living, giving, joy-bringing God. Verse 17 goes on, “but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.” Throughout chapter 6, this word rich and wealth is used over and over and over again. And here it is. Don’t trust in the uncertain riches, but trust the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy, who quickens all things. That’s verse 13.

Remember that Timothy was to remember his profession of faith and charged to keep his commandment that God had given to him. He was doing this in the sight of God, a humility that’s produced as we see ourselves in relationship to the present God with us. But it is the God who quickens all things who is lifegiving as opposed to those useless dead treasures—whether there’s stone, wood, gold, whatever it is in inorganic material. We have the living God. We have organic God. We have the God who in fact gives life to all things.

He is the lifegiving God who quickens all things. He is the very picture of liberality. He graciously manifests his liberality to all men. And he pours out these riches of his grace. He gives us everything that we have that belongs ultimately to him. And he gives it to us to eat, to breathe, to consume. And that’s just a pale shadow of the riches of his mercy and grace to us in Jesus Christ.

Over and over and over again in the New Testament, the riches of God are tied to his mercy demonstrated to us and his grace, his undeserved favor shown to the elect community of Jesus Christ in the personal work of Messiah. So when Paul reminds the rich man to trust in God who lives, he’s reminding him of the deadness of his riches. And when he tells the rich man to trust in the living God who gives richly, he’s reminding the living the rich man that God’s gifts are gifts of grace and mercy.

And so the rich man is to use his goods graciously and mercifully giving to people who don’t have much.

Okay, mercy. Mercy is at the core of this. Pilgrim’s Progress. This verse is quoted. The story is where Brisk, an energetic young man, but kind of not quite directed in the right way. Kind of a busy sort of fellow, but not in the things of God. Brisk comes in to the house of mercy. And Mercy is pictured as a woman who is working away and diligently working with her hands. Whenever she’s not busy doing her own vocation, she’s busy making clothes for the poor and needy and making things for them.

And Brisk is looking for a wife, you know, and he comes in, he sees Mercy, pretty industrious. That looks good, he says. “What are you doing?” “Well, I’m making things for the poor,” she says, “that I might lay up treasures in heaven.” Quoting 1 Timothy verse 17 here. And Brisk says, “Well, I guess that’s okay.” And walks away. And Mercy says to—I think it’s Prudence in the story, another woman there—she said, “You know, Mr. Brisk seems pretty energetic and all, but he doesn’t seem to have the same spirit as we have.” And Prudence says, “Well, don’t worry about it. That is interesting you because he’ll lose interest in you shortly as you continue to do your works of mercy.”

And indeed, Brisk comes back a little while later and “Oh, you’re still at that making stuff for the poor.” And he walks away considering her in ill condition that she’s somehow fallen into this continued busyness in doing deeds of mercy for the poor. And Mercy then says to Prudence, “Well, I guess you’re right? You know, he sure left me quick.” And Prudence says, “Well, not only that, but know this also: that when he walks away, he’s going to speak to others of your ill condition, of your goofiness. You know, that you’re rich in mercy.”

And so, you know, Mercy isn’t sad to see Brisk walk away. Well, the point there is that in Pilgrim’s Progress, we have the correct connection to the deeds that are done relative to the rich who have time on their hands in the case of Mercy. Their deeds of mercy. That the riches of God talked about here over and over again in the New Testament. That richness of God toward us is described as his mercy and grace toward us. And that’s what Paul is exhorting the rich to do is to trust in this God who is the source of all life and gives life to others. That way they can give life to the poor.

Who graciously shares his mercy. His riches to us are riches of mercy and they can be merciful to the poor. But who also gives us all things to enjoy. There’s a correction there. There is a correction in this verse as well to an improper sense of giving things to other people and somehow thinking they’re not to be enjoyed. He points out here that God does indeed give us things but he gives us things that we might enjoy them.

Westminster Shorter Catechism which says the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. There’s nothing wrong with enjoyment or the physical things of this world. In fact, God gives us these things for joy. He gives us wine that man’s heart might delight and be glad through that particular gift. So there is this correction to asceticism here as well. There’s a correction to being profligate and using all your wealth for yourself and there’s also a correction against asceticism that you want to be poor and give everything you have away and that you give it to people who won’t enjoy it.

Won’t enjoy the bread you might give them or the money you might give them. They’re going to give it away too. No, that’s not the idea. The idea is that there is this communion or sharing that produces enjoyment in the context of the covenant household. God is the picture of liberality and he is the one that men are to trust in. And specifically, the scriptures tell us that we’re to trust in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 12:21, “in his name, that is in Christ’s name, shall the Gentiles trust.” We’re to trust in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in contrast to that, Jesus chastised the Jews for trusting in Moses and instead we’re supposed to trust in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, here the picture is not that Moses is bad. It’s not that the law is not a proper reflection or the Old Testament isn’t a proper reflection and particularly the Pentateuch of God and the way he works and what he’s created.

But the idea is to trust ultimately in our obedience to keep the law and our obedience with the hand of flesh is our ability to get blessing to ourselves is to place our trust in the wrong thing. We place our trust only ultimately. Our hope—fixed hope, not a wishing hope but a fixed hope and trust—is in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and his name encompasses all that he is.

So it is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the good news of the ascension of the Savior King to the throne. That’s what we place our trust and confidence in, not our abilities, not our riches. We trust instead in the living God, who is the lifegiving, quickening God, who graciously and liberally showers us with gifts to the end that we might have a life that is not always marked by a solemnness or a somehow an asceticism, but rather a joyful partaking of the gifts of God and delight in him for those gifts.

Okay. So, having got the mind set straight here, having worked on the moral rebellion of the rich that manifests itself in pride and smugness and correcting that by pointing them to the God who they should humble themselves to and to the God who is the Lord Jesus Christ who they’re to trust in. Then he moves on to the action items and they’re much easier to step through fairly quickly here.

They’re to work good. They’re to do that which is good. Verse 18, “that they do good.” They are the wondrous image bearer of God. They’re able to work good. We’re able to minister grace with our tongues. The scriptures say we’re supposed to use our tongues to minister grace. What a blessing. What a blessing to be able to be given material goods by God that rich men are that they might work good with those things.

Isn’t that a blessing to be the image bearer of God to accomplish not evil in the world, not to accomplish neutrality with our riches, but actually to accomplish good in the context of the world to be God’s image bearer in bringing good things through the wealth that God has given to us. And as Calvin said, this begins then the movement that God makes. Now the rich men go through particular actions not just that good might be distributed but to train the rich men away from that depraved attachment to the things of the world.

You see, because they don’t want to end up like that rich man who had all the barns full. His attachment is to this world. And because he hasn’t brought eternity into this world he can’t leave this world and so he’s not able to enter into eternal life with God. Give it away is the point that God tells the rich men here. I don’t say all of it. There’s no foolishness in the scriptures. There is a need to provide for oneself and be a good steward and it’s not good stewardship to give it to people that aren’t going to use it well.

But there is this continued warning throughout the scriptures to not hoard the riches that God has given to them. Ecclesiastes 5:13, “There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. Riches kept to the owners thereof to their hurt.” It hurts them. So Calvin, you know, one of the things that’s accomplished in giving away to do good works with your money that God has given to you is to pull you away from this depraved attachment to things.

Matthew 13:22 talks about the sower. And he says that “the sower that the seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and he becomes unfruitful.” Unfruitful, not doing good. Why? Because of the deceitfulness of riches. Riches are a temptation. They’re deceit in that they say, “Trust me. Trust me, trust me.” And if you do that, you become unfruitful and you don’t give it away.

So Paul tells Timothy to tell the rich specifically have this right attitude and let it manifest itself in the second tablet now in a relationship to men—God’s image bearer by doing good. And secondly, not only do good—that’s the beginning place—to be rich in good works. Have a lot of good works that you end up participating in. James says here that you know without these kind of good works faith is dead. To have the right intellectual attachment to Reformed theology as good as it might be and yet not to have the open hand to dispense the gifts abroad that God has given you liberally is to confess that you’re not of Jerusalem, you’re of Sodom.

That’s what the text says. That pictures the lifestyle of the Sodomites who accumulate wealth to themselves and don’t instead use it to do good in the world. And not just to do some good, not to just toss a coin in a beggar’s pot, but to be rich in good works. You’re rich in possessions. Take those possessions and translate them into good works. Transform those material things into the eternal blessings of doing good works in the context of the world and cause the kingdom of God to flourish and grow and be manifested in the context of the world.

Over and over and over again in the scriptures, good works are commanded of God’s people. It is a terrible shame that sovereign grace has been turned in some churches into a doctrine that we shouldn’t ever have works. Works are vitally important to the Christian. They’re a mark of the Christian lifestyle as James tells us in other places. Titus says that they’ll warn those that are that have believed in God that they might be certain to maintain good works.

Hebrews 13:16, “but to do good and to communicate, forget not.” I think it’d be an excellent thing to evaluate ourselves and our children at the end of every day or at the worst at the end of every week and say, “What good works have we done? Have we become rich in good works this week? Have we been like Mercy, the good bride, that all the men in this church should be seeking after? Such a woman who is anxious to do good things for the poor on earth and to do good works in the context of our lives.

And Mr. Brisk, you know, he doesn’t have those things. He’s busy about doing other stuff, but he never gets around to the job of showing mercy through good works in the context of his community, in the context of his community, either in the terms of the church or the context of his community in which he lives. So, it’s not good to be brisk without having mercy as our companion as it were, to be brisk and to be effortful, effortful and all this stuff, to do good works. That is a good thing in God’s sight.

Without it, God says that we’re dead. Dead orthodoxy is what is being preached against here in terms of the rich. Okay? And so they move from doing good to being actually rich in good works and then being ready to share. And this is a combination of two words. One is to distribute. This word distribute is used both in the context of goods but also in the context of who we are. Okay? And then the word that’s attached to it is being real good at something. Okay?

So it doesn’t just mean be ready to share like you know when it comes a time do it. It means be really good at sharing what your wealth with those around about you who don’t have as much. Be really good at it. Do be abounding in distributing. In other words, be abounding in sharing with people that don’t have things.

Let me give you a couple of verses here. In Luke chapter 3:11 this word “to give.” That this word is a strength in the form of refers to the giving away of coats. If you have two coats and your neighbor has none, give him a coat. Impart to him a coat. Distribute to him a coat. Okay. But the word is also used in a broader sense where Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:8 that he says that “being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls because you were dear unto us.”

That’s 1 Thessalonians 2:8. I’m sorry. 1 Thessalonians 2:8, where the same word is used not of physical possessions, but of imparting instead the gospel and not just the gospel in isolation from community, but rather the gospel in the impartation. Paul said, of who we are ourselves. We impart ourselves to you. And so, we move from this transitory nature of riches. And this verse tells us that we from getting a correct attitude toward God, a correct idea of doing good, being rich in good works, and then a readiness to distribute not simply material possessions, but moving on now in terms of distributing who we are ourselves.

So, it’s moving us away from the context of just material riches to a distribution of who we are in ourselves to other people. And that movement continues then and finds its culmination in the next phrase in verse 18 that they are to be willing to communicate. Communicate here is the word koinonia that we talked about at family camp—fellowship. And it means a sharing of everything that we are. We have koinonia with God through the Lord Jesus Christ and we’re partakers of the blessings of Christ and we’re joint partakers.

So this as we get to the fourth action here it’s an action that now has moved not totally away from things because there is a fellowshipping at koinonia in goods and services but primarily the context of koinonia is a giving of who we are. You see, so the rich man who gives a lot of money and yet doesn’t give his own personage, okay, in friendship, in dialogue, in a relationship, intimate relationship with other members of the body of Christ, he still hasn’t performed the requirements of this text.

He’s just done it relative to what is truly the treasure of his life, the money. But if he understands the call of the gospel, it’s to communicate. Capital letters. And that’s a communication in goods. There is a sense in which there’s a—to a degree—now don’t I’m not you know some kind of Anabaptist radical but there’s a degree to which the scriptures say there should be a movement towards some sort of equalizing out of the material possessions of a particular community of Jesus Christ. Not through forced taxation, not through guilt manipulation but through the richer people of the congregation.

Seeing those who are poor and have needs and distributing to them that they might lift them up some and the result of course is a lowering down of themselves some. Now there’s not an equalization because God gives riches to whom he decides to give riches to and in the context of the correct use of them. The rich man has been given a gift by God to distribute physical assets. And when he corrects his attitude and his actions according to this text he is a blessing in the context of the congregation.

To take it all away and distribute to everybody else. That would be foolishness because God doesn’t give most of us riches because he doesn’t trust us with them. We’re not going to be good stewards of them. So the rich man maintains his stewardship, but he does it in the context of this communication of who he is.

Okay. Now, this is to a particular end that the rich might live the godly life in the context of this covenant community. Verse 19 says that if he does these things, if he corrects his attitude toward God and he corrects his actions toward fellow man—first tablet, second tablet. He humbles himself, understands that he didn’t get the riches that God gave them to him, uses them in the consecration for God. Thanks God for them. They are to be enjoyed. Thanks God distributes them correctly.

He does good. He’s rich in good works. He’s more than willing and ready at any time to participate in well-being with other by giving things to other people. And he actually communicates, brings his life into fellowship with the poor. Then the end result of that, verse 19 does, is that he does this. He lays up in store for himself a good foundation against the time to come. He has a capital investment plan for future gain.

He defers present gratification for the immeasurable gain of the Savior’s word of commendation, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” He postpones present gratification. Now, if he’s gotten wealthy according to God’s means, that’s how he’s gotten there, too, by the way. You know, you get wealthy by not eating the ice cream cone today but rather investing that money and you having more in the future. You postpone present gratification for the sake of future gain. And that isn’t done in spades here.

If he corrects his attitude toward the wealth and transforms it into these intangible good deeds and fellowship that God says he can do as he obeys this command, he lays up in store for himself a good foundation against the time to come. The word foundation is also used in the Greek as a deposit in a bank. It’s not simply the base of your life. Rather, the idea here, I don’t think Paul is mixing his metaphors. I think he’s saying is that he’s really investing in the intangible benefits of the age to come.

He saves these things up for the time to come. So he invests in the future as it were. And it goes on to say that he may lay hold on eternal life. And I’ve said in your outline that they might live the genuine life. Why do I say that? Well, the word eternal here refers obviously to eternity and what goes on after this life is over after you die. But the beauty of the Christian faith and the Christian lifestyle is that isn’t postponed till we die. That the relationship in heaven, the communion or fellowship we have in heaven invades this aeon and changes this age as well.

You see, Paul isn’t saying that…