SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/30/2014
9:54 AM
This Spiritual Diary will be a bit different because
I have a desire to write about the sin of Greed, which is what we have been
looking at in our last two SD’s from Jeremiah chapter seventeen.
I believe that we can look at the last days of the people
of Judah just before the Babylonians took them captive and see similar things
that are going on in our country today, and this is greatly troubling to me. I can give an example that may not be the
best, but it does make a point about being greedy in our country. I like to watch older TV shows and so I was
looking at “Dragnet” which I got from my Netflix account. The show which took place back in the late
1960”s all the way up to the early 70’s was a half hour show. When you watch on Netflix you don’t have any commercials
and so you can see how much show you are watching and how much time was spent
on commercials. The shows were 25
minutes long with only five minutes of commercial time. Now compare that to another hour long show
that I recently watch and it had 43 minutes of show and 17 minutes of
commercial. The percentage of show has
greatly decreased and I believe it is all because of greed. People seem to be inventing different ways to
make sure that they make more money in or country.
Let us look at a few verses in the Scriptures that speak
of greed. 10 My son, if sinners entice
you, Do not consent. 11 If they say,
"Come with us, Let us lie in wait for blood, Let us ambush the innocent
without cause; 12 Let us swallow them
alive like Sheol, Even whole, as those who go down to the pit; 13 We will find all kinds of precious wealth, We
will fill our houses with spoil (Proverbs 1:10-13).” In these verses Solomon is speaking to his
son about how he can avoid trouble and part of the things that he describes
here is that thieves are greedy, and they are also too lazy to work so they
steal to make a unjust living.
1 When Samuel got to be an old man, he set his sons up as
judges in Israel. 2 His firstborn son was named Joel, the name of his second,
Abijah. They were assigned duty in Beersheba. 3 But his sons didn’t take after
him; they were out for what they could get for themselves, taking bribes,
corrupting justice (1 Samuel 8:1-3).”
These verses speak of Samuel’s sons and they surely did not take after
Samuel for they were greedy unjust crooks.
27 A greedy and grasping person destroys community; those
who refuse to exploit live and let live (Proverbs 15:27 Message).”
“11 And the dogs are greedy, they are not satisfied. And
they are shepherds who have no understanding; They have all turned to their own
way, Each one to his unjust gain, to the last one (Isa. 56:11).” Isaiah, like Jeremiah was speaking about the
greedy rulers of Judah.
Now we can look at a solution to this problem of greed and
it is found in the book of Hebrews chapter thirteen and verse five: “Make sure that your character is free from
the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said,
"I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU,’” We see here that the love of money will bring
a flaw to your character and this can cause all kinds of problems in our
lives. Paul writes to Timothy the
following “1Ti 6:10 For the love of
money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered
away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” Now as we go back to our verse in Hebrew we
can see that we are to put our trust in the Lord and as I have written in
earlier SD’s we are to trust the Giver of the gifts and not the gifts of the
Giver. God has promised to the believer
that He will never leave us or forsake us, so He will take care of us.
We live in a world that promotes the idea that we need a
lot of things in order to be happy, and that is not true for things only make
us happy for a little while and then they get old, but our relationship with
the Lord is fulfilling and it does not get old as long as we continue to grow
in our relationship with the Lord. The
last thing that Peter wrote, and this very soon before he would be crucified
upside down for the cause of Christ was “17 You therefore, beloved, knowing
this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error
of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, 18 but grow in the
grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory,
both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.”
This is wonderful advice for the believer.
I once heard a message that the speaker was quoting from
a book that spoke about giving funds for the cause of Christ and the author
said that by doing this it is the best investment that one can give. We can put our money in stocks and bonds and mutual
funds but they will all be gone one day, but our Lord said “19 "Do not
store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and
where thieves break in and steal. 20 “But store up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in
or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21)
As the end of March is tomorrow I wanted to say what I
desire to be studying and therefore putting on my blog. We will continue in the book of Jeremiah and
we will also begin to look at the second chapter of First Thessalonians. I am not sure how much of chapter two we will
look at as it is a longer chapter than chapter one, and when we look at the NT
it does take longer to go through verses as in some cases we have to look at
individual words to better understand the verses and what the author is
conveying to us.
3/30/2014 10:33 AM
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