Living Wisely

Transcript

Well, this morning, our brother Norm Thiessen will be preaching for us. And given that many of you are fairly new to Trinity Church, I thought it would be appropriate for me to introduce Norm to you this morning. Norm Thiessen is one of the founding pastors of Trinity Church. So if it weren’t for Norm and his commitment to see the Lord’s church take root in Portland, we would literally not be here this morning. So thank you, Norm, for that. Norm has served as one of the pastors on and off for many years, and Norm also serves as one of the professors at Western Seminary in the counseling department. And he and his wife, Elaine, have been faithful members of Trinity Church ever since the very first service that we’ve had. So for that, I’m very thankful. Norm throughout these years has been many things to me.

He’s been a good and wise pastor. He’s been a great counselor. He’s been a thoughtful encourager and a wise, wise advisor. But more than anything, he’s been a wonderful and faithful friend. And so it is my wonderful privilege to have Norm come up and open up God’s word to us this morning. So would you please join me as we pray for Norm as he gives us God’s word? Father, we do thank you for our brother Norm. We thank you for his faithfulness to this church, and for Elaine and for her faithfulness to this church. We pray, oh Lord God, that you would give us the help of the Holy Spirit that we might hear from you this morning. We pray that you would empower Norm as he gently and winsomely proclaims your word to us this morning. May your truth, your wisdom penetrate our hearts deeply and make us more into the image

of your son. We pray all these things in Christ’s name. Amen. In God’s great sense of humor, I ran into that thing back there and put a big gash in my forehead this morning. So if I start bleeding, don’t worry about it, I’m okay. There’s plenty of blood in the system, but I just didn’t want you all freaking out if blood starts dripping down my head. When you came in this morning, we gave you all a laptop computer. So you have a laptop computer sitting on your lap right now. And so what I’d like you to do is I’d like you to open that laptop computer because I’m in control of it, and I would like you to look at the screen. I’m going to push a button, and that screen is going to take a picture of you, and you’re now going to see a picture of yourself on the laptop computer.

The Mirror of Time

Now I’ve also put an age acceleration program in the laptop computer, and so I’m going to press that button, and you’re going to accelerate in age. And the person looking at you now is you at 80 years old. By the way, you know that software does exist. So you are now looking at you at 80 years old, and if you’re an average American, you have only about five more years to live, at best. I’m going to hit another button, and I’m going to take that picture of you at 80 years old, and we’re now going to transform it into an avatar. And now it’s you sitting in front of you, only the you that you’re looking at and talking to is now 80 years old. Now I’m going to give that avatar the power of communicating with you. What do you think that 80-year-old you would say to the present you?

Do you realize that you are now creating that 80-year-old you? Maybe to make it more realistic, let’s change the screen again, and let’s go and put the – you young people maybe can’t do this, but you older people can – let’s put the 18- or 20-year-old you in front of you. What would you like to say to that 18- or 20-year-old you? Some of the things you might say is, hey, good job there. There’s probably some things you’d like to go through that screen and wring their neck, because they’ve kind of stuck you with a life that really is not what you wanted. That you or 18-year-old 20 didn’t really think that someday you would be a different kind of you, an older you. There are three main aspects to life. First are the givens. You didn’t choose where or when you were born. You didn’t choose your family.

You didn’t get to choose your body. If we could have done that, I would have never said to God, God, I’d like the runt that’s bald. I’m not going to say that. Would you give me the guy that’s tall, handsome, talented? Come on, I’d like that guy. But I didn’t get that. So we’re kind of stuck with a lot of things in life. Second of all are the world we live in. It’s the environment that we have. It’s the people around us. They have an influence on our lives, a pretty significant one. The third is the choices we make. It’s the decisions that we make about the givens that we have and the other people that impinge upon our world. These decisions can be everything from pretty insignificant to life-changing, but ultimately they accumulate into becoming the life that you now have. You know, the Bible is a book about life choices.

A Tale of Success

It’s a book about life choices. In fact, the major choice that you will have to make is binary. And every single book of the Bible, it talks about this. Are you going to be a part of the covenant community or not? Are you going to be saved or not? Are you going to be a Christ follower or not? So the decisions that are probably the most important ones in all your life are binary. But secondary, the decisions of our life that we address most often are spectrum in nature. They exist on a continuum of probably one to a hundred, let’s say, and every number in between. And most of our life decisions are probably on this continuum. Now the thing that the Bible talks about mostly after the binary one, it uses the measure of wise versus foolish. In fact, this is so important that a whole book of the Bible is given to that, and that

is Proverbs. Now how do you know where your decisions on this spectrum fall? As you make decisions, are they in the lower end, the foolish, or are they at the higher end, wise? How do you make that determination? I would like to suggest that God’s word gives us some very practical guidance in how to do that. So if you have your Bibles, you could turn with me to Luke 12, and I believe it will also be on the screen. Starting with verse 13. Someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you? And he said to them, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully.

And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things that you have prepared, whose will they be? So the one who lays up treasures for himself is not rich towards God. Now basically, trying to put it into one sentence, this is a story about a good businessman whose decisions lead to success, and he plans to continue this success with further investments and enjoying them. But the interesting part of the story, the part of the story that’s kind of the shocking

part is God’s evaluation of it. He calls him a fool. Notice that it’s God calling him a fool. Now what he’s not saying, let’s clarify what he’s not saying. He’s not saying you’re foolish because you’re rich. There’s plenty of people in the Bible who were wealthy. He’s not saying you’re foolish because you’re a good businessman. In fact, there are many proverbs about being a good businessman. He’s not saying you’re foolish because you plan for the future. We should be planning for the future. You’re not foolish because of an isolated choice, but because of a lifestyle. So then why did God label him as a fool? I’d like to propose four reasons. Reason number one, he’s foolish because he forgot God. If you’ll notice in the conversation here with himself, he uses the terms I, myself, my 11 times. We all talk to ourselves inside our heads.

We call that self-talk. Your brain was built to think, and you can’t stop it from thinking. It will think. There is this dialogue that is constantly going on in your mind, but most of the time you’re frankly kind of unaware of it. What makes you a fool, or what makes this man a fool, is that he lives his life and makes decisions about life without reference to God in his thoughts or that internal conversation. Psalms 14.1, the fool says in his heart there is no God. This is referring to a philosophical atheist who says God doesn’t exist, or a practical atheist who says God doesn’t matter. Now the philosophical atheists are really quite often, they’re in a minority in America, but the practical atheist is probably in the majority. God doesn’t really matter in the decisions I make in life. Function under the illusion that they own their own life and that the most important

thing is yourself. Frank Sinatra sang this theme song for these people, I did it my way. No, God’s judgment here of foolishness is even though the person is successful. We’re prone to believe the illusion that earthly success is somehow correlated with God’s blessings. In this case they’re not. The second reason is it’s foolish to forget the eternal. My life is success, I’ve got everything to enjoy, so I’m going to do so. The focus of this man was on the now, he invests in the present. He has a closed worldview, meaning that there’s nothing out there, this is all there is. So the measure of success is who wins with the most toys. The measure of success is who wins with having the most experiences that the world offers. Jesus provides a commentary on this for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole

world and forfeits his soul, Matthew 16, 26. He’s foolish because he forgets that he has a soul and that soul will outlive his life on earth. It is foolish to forget that you’re not in control. This man had worked hard, he’d made some good life decisions, and now it’s time to enjoy the fruits of the labor and success. His attitude was, I’ve got my life all planned out. I got the right degree, I got the right job, I got the right wife, I have my IRAs, my pension plans, my savings plans, I’ve got it all laid out. He was a fool because he thought there was going to be a tomorrow. See you’re foolish when you believe that you can control or predict your future. Fourth reason, it is foolish to forget security is not immaterial. I’ve got all I want. I’m secure. Why? I’ve got enough money in the bank, I’ve got enough to provide.

The Anatomy of Foolishness

Even in that day, it was a materialistic culture. Materialism is defined by what I can see, what I can touch, what I can handle. Materialism isn’t new, it’s been around for generations. We’ve just taken it to a higher level in our technological society. See it’s foolish because the foundation to view your foundation of life as material. See Jesus illustrates the wise and fool continuum from the negative. But we really need a positive statement to provide guidance for our lives and life direction. Could you imagine going to an airline counter and and you were walking up to the person checking you in and you walked up and you said, I don’t want to go to Hawaii. They would look at you and what? I don’t want to go to Ohio or you could say, I don’t want to go to Disneyland.

You probably would have a candid camera movement because the person serving you wouldn’t know so. The question they’re going to ask is, what do you want? So the way to find out what God is saying here, let’s turn the negatives into a positive so that positive can provide us with life direction. In all likelihood, we would find that wisdom should be the opposite of the choice of a fool. So then what is a wise life? A wise life is first of all, God aware. It’s an awareness that in the daily choices, in the daily activities of your life that God is there. How often do we have a God awareness in our thinking? How much does he live in our awareness? John 8, 29, Jesus says, and he who sent me is with me and he has not left me alone for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.

He always did the things that were pleasing to him because he had an awareness of God’s presence in a continual way. Ephesians 6, 18 says, praying at all times means to talk to him. Oftentimes we have our devotions in the morning and then for the rest of the day, we never talk to God. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we had a watch that recorded our conversations with God and at the end of the day, you could look at it and you could go, 10 minutes, that’s kind of poor. Wouldn’t it be neat to just simply look at the watch and go, my gosh, throughout the whole day, you just kept talking to God. See if you have an increased awareness of God in your life, you will make wiser decisions. So our goal ought to be, how do we increase that awareness? How do we get a greater awareness of God?

Because the likelihood of making a foolish decision when you have an awareness of God is pretty low. So increase your awareness of God. A wise life makes the eternal a priority. Stephen Covey, a rather well-known speaker, says, always begin with the end in mind. He got that from the Bible. Our end is eternity. The life here is but a very short prelude to it. In fact, James defines it as a vapor. Matthew 6, 33, seek ye first the kingdom of God, which means in all your decision-making, start there, start there. Matthew 6, Jesus says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The Path of Wisdom

How much treasure do you have? I can pull up all my retirements and look exactly at the numbers. Wouldn’t it be funny and fun, interesting if we had a computer program that could go, here’s your eternal retirement plan? How big is it? See, it’s wise to invest heavily in eternity. But you might ask, well, how do you do that? Well, probably it’s going to boil down to your time and money. So if you want to be wise, you ought to increase those in some way and some degree. See, if eternity became a more priority in your life, you would probably make wiser decisions. Third, I call a whatever attitude. Now I get this from Philippians 4.11 where Paul says, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. Now this isn’t the whatever of you’re getting stoned and you kind of go, whatever, I don’t

care. That’s not the whatever that he’s talking about here. He’s talking about an acceptance of God’s sovereignty and control of your lives is that when God interrupts our lives, we kind of go, whatever. Paul constantly in his letters and in Acts makes plans, but he always leaves room for God to trump them. He holds onto those plans very lightly. James has a lot to say about this. Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit, yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are but a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. Now if the Lord wills, it’s not an incantation, it’s not a magical thing you say.

It’s an attitude. And here’s the way that you test whether you have this attitude. When God blocks your plans, how do you respond? Do curse words start coming out of your mouth? Does anger? No matter how much I plan, you ever notice that you get on the freeway and the freeway is blocked? Are you ever able to sit there and just go, okay, Lord, whatever, whatever. For some reason you block the freeway and I can live with the whatever. Tough, tough, but if you have an attitude of whatever, whatever God puts into your life, the time of days that you have, the things that he allows or doesn’t allow you to do, it’ll probably increase your wise decisions. Faith focused. The opposite of trust in what you see is faith, Hebrews 11. Our security is not in material, but in the faith and work of Christ.

Jim Elliot, the missionary martyr, in his famous quote, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. We can’t keep anything, in fact, go home today, look at your car, look at your home, look at everything you got, can’t keep any of that, can’t keep any of that. But the things that we can’t see, we get to keep them for eternity. Second Corinthians 4, Paul says, for this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comprehension. As we look not for the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Do you ever notice that all major aspects of our belief require faith? A faith in God, a faith in his sovereignty, a faith in his goodness, a faith that he is

preparing an eternal home for us. See if your faith in the gospel is increased in your life, you would make wiser decisions. You might ask, why is this so difficult? I mean, it seems so easy, I mean, put it here on paper and it’s kind of like, you know, 100, zero, why would I make zero decisions on the low end? There are two reasons. The first is psychological, and the second is spiritual. Psychologically, the reason that we tend to make foolish decisions is because of the dominance of the present self. Most decisions that you make in life are made based on your present self. Have you ever noticed that no one would ever as a life course choose to be an addict? I can’t imagine anybody saying, I would like to choose that as the end of my life. But in the pressures and stress of the dailiness of life, they make present decisions that

end them up in a place that they don’t want to go. Have you ever been there before where you made a present decision and 30 minutes later you go, why did I do that? I really didn’t need to eat a half a gallon of ice cream. But at that present moment, it was really dominant. See one of the things that’s required of maturity is that you mute the dominance of the present self. In fact, if you want to define what a child is, a child is ruled by the present self. The definition of maturity is the muting, we call that self-control, self-discipline, delayed gratification. One of the ways to mute the dominance of the self is to live by your values. Rather than your dominant self, the present self making the decisions of your life, the values that you hold make the decisions of your life.

That’s hard, it’s hard. But the second reason why this wisdom versus foolishness is difficult is because of the nature of our present age. Paul best expresses this in 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2. And what I’d like to do is I’m just going to read down through little clips of this just to give you an impact of what he’s saying. The word of the cross is folly. I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For the foolishness of God is wiser than men. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. But we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of the world is folly with God. See, what’s wise to the world is foolish to God. What’s foolish to the world is wise to God. You realize that when you walk out of this building, you walk out into an upside down world. That world is going to tell you that all the things that God says are wise are really foolish. Not using his word, foolish. Not putting yourself first, foolish. Living for eternity that you can’t see, foolish. Trusting in things that aren’t tangible, foolish. See, we spend most of our lives out there. We watch TV. We read magazines. We listen to podcasts. We check out the internet. Good stuff there. But the underlying philosophy is foolish.

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Living in an Upside-Down World

It’s foolish. In fact, Paul warns us. Romans 12

, he says, don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold because it’s squeezing you into making decisions that are foolish. They’re foolish. You’ve been here a while. You recognize that Trinity, we begin with God’s word. We sing God’s word. We hear God’s word. And we end with God’s word. You might not realize this, but that’s all intentional. We do that for a reason. Sometimes the best thing to do is, remember the old kiss, keep it simple, stupid. This is the kiss principle. You can forget everything I’ve said, but let’s let Jesus have the last word. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who builds his house on a rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, but

it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. See this continuum of wise versus foolish is determined most often and basically by one simple thing. Are you willing to hear and do God’s word? It all boils down to that. Paul, giving counsel to the Ephesians said, and I think could have very well been talking to us today, which I’m sure he was, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best of the time because the days are evil, therefore do not be foolish. A couple of suggestions.

Number one, occasionally I think you ought to have a conversation with your future self. There’s really some benefit sometimes to just sitting down and talking to that person you will someday be. And if you get anybody over 60 and we stand around and talk, one of the things we always say is it passed much faster than we thought it ever would. You will someday be the you of 50, 60, 70, 80 years old. You need to have a conversation with that person because the decisions you’re making today are controlling the life they’re going to live. If you do that, you probably will make wiser present decisions. But most importantly, I’d like to continue to encourage you to continually have a conversation with God about his word in your life. If you have that conversation and you do it seriously, I guarantee you, you’ll make wiser

present decisions. Let’s pray. Father, we live in foolish times, but they’re not unique to present history. They have been true throughout all of human history, but you haven’t left us without guidance. You said, here’s my word. Here’s my spirit. Here’s brothers and sisters in Christ. I use all of those things to make wise decisions. Father, that’s our desire. We want the evaluation of our lives not to be a one of foolishness, but a one of wisdom. Thank you, God, that you’re the kind of God that lets us start over every single day. You forgive our foolishness and you invite us once again into the life that is abundant. And Father, we anticipate the day when all foolishness will be banished and we can live perfectly wise lives because we are in your presence. In Jesus’ great and wonderful name.