January 1, New Year's Day, Epiphany Sunday, Communion Sunday

Lesson: 1 Timothy 6:2-10

(Back to Study Home Page)   (Back to Sermons for 2005-2006)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)   (Back to Shultz Home Page)

INTRODUCTION:

1. There is a great deal of discontent in the world.

1. We want what we cannot have.

2. We are dissatisfied with what we do have.

3. We cannot wait to get what we do not need.

4. What we need we do not often recognize or desire.

A cartoon shows a couple arguing, one spouse chiding the other for extravagant spending.

"How many times do I have to tell you," one of them stormed, "that it's economically unsound to spend money before you get it?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," the other snapped back. "This way if you don't get the money at least you have something to show for it."

(Top)    (Back to Study Home Page)   (Back to Sermons for 2005-2006)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)   (Back to Shultz Home Page)

MAIN BODY:

1. We too often trust in the gods of chance or fate.

1. Where do you think the lottery winnings come from?

1. The many are supporting the one.

2. The many are depriving themselves of the benefits of their own hard work.

2. The gods of chance or fate are cruel gods.

1. Actually they are not gods at all.

2. Because of this there is a high level of discontent.

2. We have the opportunity in 2006 to learn how to be content.

1. If you are content, then you have the opportunity to develop a deeper level of contentment that may not be shaken by discontent.

2. Paul writes to Timothy with some excellent counsel.

3. The elements in this passage speak to our need.

3. We have the need to learn to delay gratification.

A thirty-year-old financial analyst complained over a period of months about the tendency to procrastinate in the job. ⁽¹⁾

After spending many hours spent in standard and painstaking psychoanalytic work the client continued to procrastinate.

Finally, one day, the therapist writes, we dared to look at the obvious.

Therapist: "Do you like cake?"

Therapist: "Which part of the cake do you like better, the cake or the frosting?"

Client:"O the frosting," the client responded enthusiastically.

Therapist: "How do you eat your cake?"

Client: "I eat the frosting first, of course."

From the client's cake-eating habits they went on to examine the client's work habits.

On any given work day, the client was spending the first hour with the most gratifying part of the task, and the remaining six hours getting around to the unpleasant part of the job.

It was suggested that the client spend the first part of the day taking care of the most objectionable then spending the rest of the time on the most pleasant.

Needless to report the problem with procrastination ended.

1. Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling.

2. You schedule the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with.

3. It is the only decent way to live.

4. In my study Bible, the heading of 1 Timothy 6.3-10 is "False Teaching and True Riches."

5. The people who are critical, contentious, and difficult are the people who have not learned to delay gratification.

6. They desire instant gratification.

(Top)    (Back to Study Home Page)    (Back to Sermons for 2005-2006)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)   (Back to Shultz Home Page)

2. We have the need to learn to love.

1. The people of whom Paul writes are not loving people.

1. Simply listen again to verses 2-5

²Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful to them on the ground that they are members of the church; rather they must serve them all the more, since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved. Teach and urge these duties. ³Whoever teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that is in accordance with godliness, ⁴is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words. From these come envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, ⁵and wrangling among those who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

2. These are people who are essentially selfish.

3. They do not love themselves or any significant other.

2. While Jesus taught others-centered love as the ideal

1. This is the second commandment and the first law of societal functioning

1. Indeed it is obvious that much of life and society is organized around a vastly different set of priorities.

2. We are invited to look for, understand, and apply love in all the right places.

2. What happens when we look for love in possessions

1. Ann Landers column: Dear Ann: I've got to decide between the new car and getting engaged. I love the girl. But every night when I go to sleep I dream about the car. What should I do?

2. Donald J. Shelby (Santa Monica, California) gives a potent illustration of the predicament most of us have who live in our consumeristic, materialistic society. He tells of participating in the annual Shopping Spree sponsored by the Salvation Army. With funds provided by donors who make the event possible, underprivileged children were allowed to shop, within a certain dollar limit, at a local Sears store. Community leaders were matched with individual children, and instructed to guide and assist the child in filling a shopping list which he or she brought from home. It was a delightful experience!

3. He writes that I shall not forget one little boy. His arms were loaded with what he had selected, but he had come upon a large-sized item which he wanted very much. What was he to do? Take that item, but his arms were full? Should he give up what he had chosen and go for this other item? Tears of frustration welled up in his eyes as he had to choose.

3. What happens when we look for love in knowledge

1. We no longer live in an industrial society. The Age of the Machine, based on heavy input of energy, labor, and capital has given way to an information society, a high technology world where knowledge and innovation, not stability, order, and uniformity, are the critical resources. America no longer produces things. America produces information. Because knowledge, as information, has become a focus for feelings of self-worth and personal power, it is now one of the most attractive, indeed seductive, substitutes for Roy's First Law of societal functioning, other centered love.

Materials scientist at Penn State, Rustum Roy, has this to say about Jesus: "One could quite properly assert that Jesus was a most original social scientist. His theory of 'unselfish love' (even to turning the other cheek and giving up one's life for a friend) could be called the First Law of societal functioning...that other centered love is the most effective guideline in life." ⁽²⁾

2. One of the great theologians of this century, Karl Barth, confessed to a recurring dream. He saw himself arriving at the Pearly Gates pulling a child's red wagon in which were stacked all his writings. He believed the dream was telling him that in the final analysis, all his knowledge, all his theologizing, was mere child's play compared to God's great grace.

3. Famous question of Who is more satisfied? The man with ten children or the man with ten million dollars? One student answered: The man with ten children. The professor answered Why? The student replied: Because the man with ten children doesn't want any more.

4. What happens when we look for love in self

1. The ethic of self-love is prevalent and pervasive. Indeed, the number one reason why people go to church, according to Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) is simply to feel good about themselves. Fixated on self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and self-gratification, lives revolving around self-love produce selves that are perversions of love.

2. A cartoon once appeared in the New Yorker in which a man had just walked past a sign that read: Prepare to meet thy God! The next frame shows the man stopping before the mirror of a vending machine to brush his hair and straighten his tie.

3. Some of us have gone from being in love with ourselves, to being in love with our neuroses.

The Puritan Richard Baxter liked to point out that as millstones wear themselves if they go when they have no corn, so do the thoughts of the neurotic and depressed who think not of better things than their own hearts. ⁽³⁾

3. Love does not come through self-advertisements; love does not seek its own-its own pleasures or its own gratifications; true love is self-surrender.

3. We have the need to accept we have and, as we are given opportunity, to improve on it.

1. We are provided the opportunity to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

2. Jesus was a contented person.

3. It is here that we need to distinguish between contented and happy; they are not the same.

Happiness is equated with physical ease and freedom from care. that basis, the happiest creature would not be a person at all, but a healthy cow. The cow is undisturbed by taxes, wars, wayward children, styles in dress, religious disputes. He concludes his essay with these words:

"I have observed many cows, and there is in their beautiful eyes no perplexity; their serene faces betray no apprehension or alarm; they are never even bored. . .Well, since the daily life of an American cow is exactly the existence held up to us as ideal-physical comfort with no pains and no worries, who wouldn't be a cow? Very few human beings would be willing to change into cows, which must mean only one thing. Life with all its sorrows, cares, perplexities, and heart-breaks, is more interesting than bovine placidity, hence more desirable. The more interesting it is, the happier it is. And the happiest person is he who thinks the most interesting thoughts." ⁽⁴⁾

(Top)    (Back to Study Home Page)    (Back to Sermons for 2005-2006)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)   (Back to Shultz Home Page)

CONCLUSION

1. Fanny Crosby was only six weeks old when an incorrect poultice was placed on her eyes and she became permanently blind.

1. When she was eight years old, she made a decision that would affect her entire life. ⁽⁵⁾

2. She wrote:

"Oh, what a happy soul am I
I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be.
How many blessings I enjoy.
That other people don't.
To weep and sigh because I'm blind
I cannot, and I won't."

3. She did not ask God to make her smart, or make a wonderful man fall in love with her, or help her become rich or popular or famous, or for all the clothes she would want, as if it could repay her being blind.

1. She did not even ask for a special task, but she did ask God for a way to serve Him the best way she could.

2. She did not consider this too much to ask.

3. Doors were opened to her as she was able to attend a fine college for the blind.

4. She met and married a fine songwriter and on one occasion was invited to Washington, D.C., and where she addressed the Congress of the United States. They gave a standing ovation.

5. She wrote many songs, and at the age of 44 someone suggested that she write sacred songs and hymns.

4. This seemed to be a turning point in her life as she wrote many of the now famous hymns of praised.

1. She wrote over 8,000 hymns and songs in her lifespan of 95 years.

2. Some of them are: "All the Way My Savior Leads Me;" "Blessed Assurance;" "I Am Thine, O Lord;" "Jesus is Tenderly Calling;" and "Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross."

3. All this was accomplished because she asked only to serve!

2. Have we now some idea what it means to be contented in 2006?

1. Delay gratification

2. Learn to love God, ourselves and others.

3. Accept what you have and improve on it.

4. And in all this remember

⁶Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; ⁷for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; ⁸but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

AMEN!