Mr. Melvin Rhodes
Sermon Transcript
October 19, 2002
Seek God First
Good afternoon, everybody. It was really nice to hear the choir again. We have such a small congregation in Lansing, we don’t have a choir. If we had one, they’d have to put me in it, so they decided they didn’t want one. Obviously, Mr. Nutzman and I have that in common, but anyway, the music was really nice, very inspiring. I always appreciate it. I was also amused at my being introduced as the senior writer. It’s that word - senior - I’m still having a problem with. I was appointed a senior pastor for Ghana this year, and on Tuesday night, I had dinner with one of our members in Lansing, and he and I both had exactly the same items off the menu, and at the end, when the checks were brought, his was for a higher amount than mine. And I was trying to figure out why, and then he said, "I think they’ve charged you the ‘senior citizen’ rate." It’s very humbling. At least I don’t have a seven-year-old granddaughter to make me feel really old. Not yet, anyway.
Well, I bring you greetings from Ghana. I was talking to one of our elders there on the phone a couple of days ago, and he asked me to pass on their greetings to the congregation this Sabbath. The greeting in Ghana in Ghanaian culture is extremely important. And sometimes, when you’re traveling between two cultures, and it takes about thirty hours to get from my home in Lansing to Accra in Ghana, and thirty hours coming back. When you switch cultures in such a relatively short period of time, sometimes it’s very difficult to adjust immediately. So, when I get to Ghana, not only am I very tired and anxious to get to bed, but I also want to make sure that the men there know that I’ve arrived, and I’ve safely gotten there, and I’ll be at church the next day, or the day after, or whatever. So I like to try and call one or two and let them know. That’s not as easy as it sounds because it’s difficult getting through on the phone. Sometimes it’s almost impossible, so by the time you actually get through on the phone to somebody, you’re anxious just to say what you want to say, and then hang up, and then go to bed and get some sleep.
So, I’ll quickly say, "Oh, Richard, it’s great that I got a hold of you. I just want you to know I’m here. I’m going to be at church tomorrow. Everything’s fine."
You know, I carry on talking like that, and then after about three minutes, he will say, "Mr. Rhodes? Is that you?" And then he will say, "Greetings." And he will say, "How are you?" And I have to go through all that first. I have to remember, this is the culture. The greeting is one of the most important aspects of life in West Africa, and you have to spend time greeting each other, saying, "Hello, how are you? How is your wife? How are your children? How are your goats and your chickens and whatever else you’ve got. How is everything?"
And then after you’ve done all that, then you can say you’ve arrived, if you’re still awake, and get to whatever business you want to bring up, if you can still remember what it is. The cultures are very different, and I have to say that every time I go to Ghana, I’m humbled somewhat.
Now, this isn’t one of those sermons where I’m going to make you feel guilty because you’ve got everything and most people in that part of the world are poor. There are reasons, I think why Africa struggles with its economics, and a lot of those have a great deal to do with the culture. There are reasons why the various nations of Africa are not doing very well. Nevertheless, there are a couple of lessons to be learned from the people in Ghana, and I want to share those with you today.
It came home very much during the Feast of Tabernacles this year. I was able to take my wife and two of our three children. They’re not really children anymore; they’re in their twenties, but it was the first time we’d been back since we lived there. We spent a total of seven years living in Ghana, and it was in 1990 that we left, and since we’ve left, they’ve not had the opportunity to go back. I’ve been back a few times, but I took them with me on this particular trip. And the contrast between the Ghanaian way of life and the American way of life led to some interesting conversations. Also, when I got back, the following day, I had to go to the library to do some research for an article, and while I was there, I say the book Let’s Roll by Lisa Beamer, and I checked that out, and I read it, and that ties in with my sermon as well, and the lessons that I want to share from Ghana.
Now for those of you who may not remember, Lisa Beamer was the wife of one of the men who led the fight back against the terrorists who seized the fourth plane on September 11th, the plane that crashed into the field in Pennsylvania. And her husband was killed in that, along with everybody else on the plane, and she was just a young mother. I think they’d only been married about seven years, and she is left now with three children. In fact, she had two and was pregnant with the third, and the third was born a few months later, so she has now got three children.
And in the book she talks about their life together, and talks about those horrible events on September 11th, and talks as well about the subsequent weeks and months and coming to terms with it all and the adjustment that she had to go through. It’s not a negative or depressing book. In fact, it’s very inspirational. It’s a very encouraging book, and if you’ve got the opportunity to read it, I would highly recommend it.
But there was just one problem in their marriage. And she relates that problem on page 125 of the book. "Todd and I didn’t argue a lot. He was such an easy going guy, it was almost hard to pick a fight with him. But any conflict and tension we experienced in our marriage usually related to our efforts to balance Todd’s work and home responsibilities. How much time and effort should he put into his job? How could he juggle other areas of life and give proper attention to the relationships that were most important to him, namely his relationships with God, his family and his friends. It was not an issue Todd was unaware of, and he really wanted to fix it. We talked about it often, sometimes heatedly, praying about it, and talked with friends about it."
Later on, Lisa emailed her husband a survey for him to complete. She asked the following questions. She asked others as well, but these were the ones she shared with us in the book. "How many nights do you want to be home for dinner per week? How many hours are you going to spend working at home each night, or on the weekend? How many nights are you going to be away, on the average, each month? How many days are you going to spend on vacation? How often are you going to call home when you’re on the road? What sort of things are you going to do if your schedule demands last minute changes? How far in advance are you going to inform me of your travel schedule?"
This problem continued right to the end of his life. In fact, on September 10, 2001, late in the evening, Todd and Lisa arrived back from a company vacation to Rome in Italy, and they had been there for, I think, seven days. And when they got back that night, she went to bed immediately, but I think he was up until about three in the morning, and then she remembers he got himself up at five fifteen in the morning because he had to take that fateful flight to San Francisco. So when, between getting back from Rome and going to San Francisco, was there any time with the children. Well, there wasn’t.
I think it’s very sobering, when you read the book, to realize, and I know we all know this, but we don’t really think about it too much, we all need to realize that we could go at any time. Lisa Beamer brings that out. She says, "Truth is, as much as the airlines and the government do to improve security onboard airliners, subway systems, cruise ships, or other public transportation, our best efforts are not fail-safe. In some ways there is no true security anywhere in our world. Tall buildings are vulnerable, and tunnels, nuclear plants, public stadiums and other large public places will always have a level of danger. The only true security in this life comes from placing our trust in the God who loves us, and is in complete control of the events of our lives and our world."
At a memorial service for Todd conducted at Wheaton College, President Duane Litfin summed it up when he said, "Todd had learned the lesson of martyred missionary Jim Elliot, who lived by the adage, ‘When it comes time to die, be very sure that all you have to do is to die.’" Page 269. So, what does all this have to do with Ghana? Well, this is where I find myself corrected by the Ghanaian example.
I started to think about this when one of the elders asked why my wife and children could not stay longer in Ghana? And I explained to him that my wife works full time and only gets ten days off a year. And when I said that, his mouth fell wide open. He said, "Ten days?" He said, "In my job," he said, working for the Ghana government, "I get forty days off a year."
And then I said, "Does that include funerals?" Because in West Africa, funerals are a very big part of life. People live for funerals, if you can see through the contradiction. You know, they say the only difference between a funeral and a wedding, is that at a funeral, there’s one less drunk. It’s a big celebration of a person’s life, and funerals can go on for three or four days in Ghana.
And, you know, he said, "No, that forty days doesn’t include funerals."
Now, of course, this is one reason why, countries in Africa are poorer, because the work ethic is not the same as it is here. Physically, the countries in Africa are somewhat lacking. But I think spiritually, we are more lacking, and I’ll tell you why.
I have to ask myself a question, why is it that in spite of their poverty, their lack of hygiene, forty-five years of turmoil since independence, the fact that few of them have cars, many don’t even have electricity or running water. In spite of all these things, in general, they are happier than we are. Why is that? It really is a happy country. People are very happy, smiling, very friendly. Why is it that people are happier and less stressed? None of them die from stress-related diseases or sicknesses as we do in the west. They have to walk everywhere, which takes more time. You’d think they’d be more stressed than we are, because we have cars to go from A to B, but they have to walk. I think the answer lies in the fact that they have more time for God and for each other.
Look in Matthew 22. I don’t think this is something which is deliberate on the part of people in Ghana. I think this is just a part of their culture, and the result is that they are more balanced than we are in that sense, because it’s always been a part of their culture that their religion is very important to them, even back in the pagan culture, before the arrival of western missionaries, before they’d heard the name of Jesus Christ, in their pagan culture, their Animist religion, the traditional religion, religion was extremely important to them. And after their religion, the second most important thing is people. I said in the beginning, the greeting is the most important thing in Ghanaian culture. Nothing is more important.
You’re walking down the street. You’re late for an appointment. You bump into a friend; you have to greet him. You have to ask about his wife, his children, his animals, you know, his farm, how he’s doing as far as his job is concerned if he is not in farming. You have to stop and talk, if that makes you a half an hour late for your appointment, so be it. If it makes you an hour late, or two hours late, so be it.
I learned many years ago, when we lived in Ghana, that just because a government office is open from eight to five, or a private business is open from eight to five, doesn’t mean that you can go there anytime between eight and five and expect to see somebody. The best time to go is around ten in the morning, because by that time the chances are somebody’s arrived and it’s just before people start leaving for lunch. And I also learned wherever I went to take a book with me; something like War and Peace because while you’re waiting, there’s plenty of time to read.
You see, without realizing it, and it’s not deliberate at all, it’s just kind of accidental on the part of their culture, going back for centuries, they put God first, and then they put other people second before anything else. Look at Matthew 22, because we see that these are the priorities that we should have too.
Matthew 22:34 - "When the Pharisses heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
Verse 35 - "Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him and saying,
Verse 36 - "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?
Verse 37 - "Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Verse 38 - "This is the first and great commandment.
Verse 39 - "And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Verse 40 - "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
Now, I know we believe this, but I think in our fast-paced western society, we fail to put this into practice to the extent that we should. And the result is a great deal of stress and unhappiness in people’s lives. I saw an article in Newsweek magazine a week or two ago, the cover story was on teen depression, which is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the United States. And again, it just brings home the problem, why is it people in Ghana aren’t depressed?
You know, Ghana has a population of about fifteen million, and there isn’t one psychiatrist in the country? Not one. I find that interesting. Now probably, I suppose, it’s because the average income is about thirty dollars a month, and psychiatrists charge, you know, a couple hundred dollars an hour, so who’s going to pay that kind of money? So, I’m sure that’s part of it, but you know, there aren’t any psychiatrists, and the concept of paying money to go to talk to somebody about your problems would just be so alien to the people that they wouldn’t be able to understand it. Well, why can’t you talk to your friends?
Maybe some of you may remember the movie Crocodile Dundee that goes back a few years now, but if you remember, Crocodile Dundee was in New York, and the girl that was showing him around was engaged to a guy, and one night, you know, he says to her, "Well, where’s your boy friend?"
And she said, "Well, he’s gone to see his therapist." And she said, "Do you have psychiatrists in Walk-About-Creek in Australia?"
And he said, "Nah, we have Wally."
And she said, "Who’s Wally?"
And he said, "Oh, Wally, he’s the barman. When you go to the bar, you tell Wally all your problems; he tells everybody else; problem solved." Saves a lot of money.
They’ve had a couple of separate studies wanting Germany, about a year ago, no two years ago now, wanting Holland, which showed that, you know, when people suffered a great loss, and they then go to counselors. You know, how, whenever there’s a major disaster they say, "Professional counseling is available; counselors will be available for anybody who needs them." Well, they found that when people talked to counselors, it actually prolongs the pain. And they found in their studies that the best thing is for people just to talk to their families and their friends. And then everything’s fine. But of course, today in our western society, often people live a long way away from family, and often, they don’t have many friends, because they’re working such long hours. Again, you know, I have to ask, why do we have this problem?
I was born in England; I have five brothers still in England. And England is somewhere in the middle between America and Ghana in this respect, because most people in England still work traditional hours, and in western Europe, most people get four or five, or in some countries, even six weeks vacation a year. And when they go on vacation, they don’t take their laptops to keep in touch with the office. We do. I do. Well, I’m just as bad as everybody else in that respect.
You know, what is it that drives us like this? Now, folks, this is one reason why we do have a higher standard of living than everybody else, because that work ethic is still there, and you know, we’re always working. But is that the way that we should be? I think we need to get back more to what Jesus Christ is saying here to these two priorities.
When I’m in Ghana, I’m always thinking about that. I mean, every evening, for example, when I stay at the church house there, the other elders in Ghana are downstairs, and they’re talking and talking, and by about nine o’clock at night, in Ghana with the humidity and everything, I’m just exhausted. And you know, I usually retire at about that time, and go to bed, and, you know, I can sleep right through until the morning. But sometimes I wake up at two or three in the morning, and I hear the men downstairs still talking. And then presumably they go to sleep at some point, but they all get up around five or five thirty. Now what are they talking about until three in the morning? They’re talking about the Bible. They’re studying the Bible together, and sometimes, they have different ideas, and again, in West African culture, people can’t talk in a normal volume when they are discussing something. They have to shout. So, you know, you hear the shouting coming up, you think there’s a fight going on downstairs, but there isn’t. You know, they’re all very friendly; they’re all very close; they all love each other. But they will argue a particular point, and then later on in the day, they’ll ask me to settle the argument for them. Difficult position to be in sometimes. But they have this incredible enthusiasm for God’s word.
Now when I go to Ghana, you know, I take along with me three or four books to read, because I’m always trying to read books for article ideas and good quotes and everything, and often, when I’m at home, I don’t really have the time to read that I would like. Like Mr. Antion, they all kind of stack up until my wife threatens to leave me unless I throw them out. At which point, I hesitate for a while, but then eventually, I usually throw them out. That’s the way it is. So, I take some of these along with me when I go to Ghana. And I read a lot on the plane, and when I’m there, I like to read as well. But what do I find with the other men that I’m working with in Ghana, when they’re reading, they’re always reading their Bibles.
Now I think there is a time to read other books as well, you know, and I encourage them to try to read some other books and magazines as well, but you know, their enthusiasm for studying God’s word does make me stop and think. Well, you know, I really need to spend more time studying. I need to get more organized and be more like everybody here in Ghana. I wouldn’t say they’re organized as such, but they have their priorities right in that sense.
And the two commandments, which Jesus Christ gave us in Matthew 22 sum up these ten commandments. The first commandment, love toward God, sums up the first four commandments, and the second commandment, love toward others, sums up the last six. These commandments are vital if we’re to live a balanced life, and if we are to be good Christians. We need to understand them in that context. You know, why is it that the first commandment says, "I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, you shall have no other gods before Me."
When you think about the ten commandments - let’s take the seventh commandment, "You shall not commit adultery." You know, why is that there? Because adultery is wrong. But human nature, being what it is, we wouldn’t know that if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s here in the Bible? People would just stumble into it. Their emotions would get the better of them, their lusts, their desires, and before they know it, they’ve committed that sin. Most people today don’t even realize it’s a sin. But the fact is, when somebody commits adultery, a lot of people’s lives are ruined including the life of the person who commits the sin in the first place. People’s lives get messed up, so God, here, in giving the ten commandments, is warning us, telling us, "Don’t do this. It’s not good for you; it will do you a lot of harm."
It’s the same when it comes to the fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother. If people grow up with a lot of hatred and animosity toward their parents, it’s going to affect them for the whole of their lives. Not only is the relationship with the parents going to be affected, but other people’s relationships may be affected too. They may get violent, become criminals or whatever, all kinds of things could happen, so again, that commandment is given there because it is good for us to honor our father and our mother.
You shall not covet. If you covet something, whatever it might be, whether it’s your neighbor’s house, or your neighbor’s oxen, or your neighbor’s wife, you know, again, it’s not good for you. Jealousy, coveting, desiring things that don’t belong to you can make your life miserable, and it can lead to other sins as well.
And the same way, if we don’t put God first in our lives, there’s going to be a negative consequence. And the consequence is that our lives are not going to be in balance, and the result is going to be stress, unhappiness, depression, even all kinds of emotional problems as a result of not putting God first in our lives. So it’s important for us to take the first commandment literally, and to realize that our relationship with God is the most important relationship that we have, exactly as Jesus Christ told us.
But the problem is, in our world today, in our western world, I should say, the pace of life is such that often, unintentionally, I’m not saying that anybody here would do this intentionally, but unintentionally, God is often put aside, and even our relationships with other people are put aside because we’re so busy with our jobs; we’re so busy trying to be more successful, or make more money, have a bigger house, whatever it is we want to have.
I read an interesting article recently by somebody who was trying to cope with this problem of being stressed out. This was not an article by anybody who was religious in anyway whatsoever. But he said, "You know, the average person works eight hours a day." Well, I think it’s probably more than that. But he said, "The average person works eight hours a day, and the average person needs eight hours to sleep each night. That leave eight hours in the day." And he says, "Statistics show us, research shows us the average person spends four hours watching television each day, and the average person spends two hours commuting to and from work, which leaves only two hours then, to get ready in the morning before you go to work. So that’s your time in the bathroom to shower and everything, and also time for meals, and time with your wife or husband and children. Not much time." So, his solution was quite a simple one. He said, "The solution is to move to within ten minutes of work. That cuts your commuting time down by an hour and forty minutes, on average. And then he said, "The second thing is to throw the T. V. out the window." Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
You know, how we each resolve this; we each have to examine ourselves, but we do need to examine ourselves, because we need to understand that only when we put God first in our lives, and then put our relationships with others second, are we really going to have the happiness that God wants us to have.
You see this in the Ghanaian culture. Like I said, it’s not something that they’re consciously thinking about, having read the scriptures, but it’s just a part of their culture, going way back, and if our culture is more that Puritan work ethic, or working really hard all of the time, although if you really study into the Puritans, they also knew how to have a good time. So, they were probably more balanced than we are today. Because today, of course, we live in a twenty-four-seven society, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, everything’s open; stores are open, factories work, hospital, and so on. I’ve got a daughter who works nights at the hospital; I’ve got a son who starts work at six in the morning, until two-thirty in the afternoon. So everybody’s hours are different, so it’s really hard to get the family together. Really difficult, and relationships suffer as a result of that.
You know, these commandments, these first four commandments, especially numbers one, two and four, you know are very difficult, even with the Sabbath. A lot of people now have all kinds of things that encroach into the Sabbath Day. Things we wouldn’t have done before, and yet, you know, people just find it hard to fit everything, so sometimes they’re doing things on the Sabbath now that they didn’t used to do. So, we do need to examine ourselves in the light of these things, and realize the importance of these relationships. Look at Revelation 3. There’s another passage of scripture I’m sure you are very familiar with. Again, it’s a warning to us about our spiritual condition. It’s the message to the Laodiceans, and if you believe that these seven churches are eras, then the Laodicean era is the one prior to Christ’s return. It’s the seventh one, and in my Bible, the title of this particular section is, "The Lukewarm Church." But it’s interesting what God says here.
Revelation 3:14 - "To the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True witness, the Beginning of the creation of God:
Verse 15 - "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.
Verse 16 - "So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth." So it is quite a stern warning here in this message. But then, notice in verse 17:
Verse 17 - "Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked." You see, we are the richest generation, and the richest nation in history. And this is an attitude that we can have without even realizing it. We’re comfortable. We’ve got everything that we need. We’re in need of nothing. In order to have all of those things that we think that we need, we have to work so many hours, though, we can be neglecting the two great commandments. We can be neglecting God, and also neglecting our relationships with other people, which are the two most important things. The result will be an emptiness in our lives, and I think we see this more and more in our society that people’s lives are just empty. Why is it we have record numbers of young people committing suicide? Why is it we have such a major problem with depression in our society, and especially with young people today? Why do so many need to go to psychiatrists? It’s because we’ve gotten away from the most simple life that we have, where many people, even people in churches that know little of the truth understood the importance of that relationship with God and the importance of their relationships with other people. Today people don’t have time for people like they used to have.
Verse 17 - "Because you say, ‘I am rich, I’ve become wealthy, and I’ve need of nothing,’ and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked." Let’s think about that for a moment in the context of Ghana, because the Ghanaians, physically, are poor, blind, you know, we’ve got blind people; we’ve got people who are disabled, or have some problem, some physical problem that stops them from being able to function normally. And also naked, and a lot of people are dependent on others for help when it comes to used clothing. I always take down at least one suitcase each trip of used clothing for people. You know, physically, they are deprived. They can learn a great deal from America when it comes to the physical because we could show them how to have the kind of hygienic toilet facilities, for example, that would reduce the number of fatalities especially for young people as a result of poor hygiene. We could show them how to eradicate some of the diseases that they have. We could build really nice roads. We could build houses that are good houses and that, you know, stay up for a few years. Many of them live in shacks that just collapse so easily. We could show them all of these physical things, but I don’t think that we have anything to teach them when it comes to relationships. Nothing at all.
I can understand why the people in Africa feel like, you know, their way of marriage, for example, is better than ours. I don’t agree with that. I think that our way of doing things, say a hundred years ago, was better, but the way marriages are today in the western world, you know, I would agree, there’s a lot lacking. So, we could show them a great deal physically, but I think we can learn this lesson from them spiritually. Again, it’s not deliberate on their part, but as a result of the culture which has developed over the years, they do put God first, and then they put their relationships with others, and those are so important that their whole lives revolve around that.
On the Day of Atonement, I kept Atonement in a small village called Agona where we have a congregation. I should mention we had 750 people at the Feast in Ghana. This was the first Feast when the church was called - The United Church of God. Last year, it was still - The Remnant Church of God, but they became United earlier this year, so, it was an historic moment, and there were three Feast sites. And we went to all three. The first one, in Accra, had 350 people; the second one in Kumasi had 250 people, and the third one in Takoradi, which is the third biggest city, had 150, so about 750 people altogether. And one of the villages there, a place called Agona has a small congregation of about 50 to 60 people there, and I decided to keep Atonement with them. And I drove out there in the morning, and when I got there, I found that they were having a church service under the trees. They had started building a church building, but they had run out of money, and so they couldn’t build the roof, and therefore it was more comfortable; you were more protected from the sun by sitting under the trees. So, I sat under the trees and listened to the sermonette, and listened to the singing, and then, you know, I got up and gave my sermon, and afterward, I asked Benjamin, the pastor there, I asked him, I said, "How do people get here in the morning, and how do they go home?"
And he told me, and I said, "Well, what are we going to do now for the rest of the day?" Remember the holy days are fairly new to them, so I was curious. What were they going to do on the rest of Atonement?
And he said, "Oh, they will go home now and rest, and then they will come back at 3 o’clock for another church service."
Well, the first one had been at 9:30 in the morning. The second one would
be at 3. For a moment, I had this internal panic, and I thought maybe he was
expecting me to come back and give another sermon in the afternoon in this heat,
which is very difficult, especially on Atonement. But he said they were coming
back at 3.
And I said, "What about after the Sabbath?"
He said, "Oh, everybody will stay here, and then we will fellowship together and break bread together; we will eat together."
I said, "Well, what did people do last night?"
He said, "Oh, we had a church service last night on the evening of Atonement."
So, three services, lasting 3 hours each, plus having to walk there and back, you know, because they don’t have their own transport, plus after the services, a meal together in the evening. You know, this great desire just to be together. Now, you know, it does make you feel a little bit guilty. You think, you know, well, why is it, I just want to go back to the hotel, which is air conditioned, and lie down and sleep. That’s basically how I felt at that moment. You know, and you feel kind of guilty, but you realize, they don’t have the distractions that we have. We have a lot of distractions in our society, a lot of things that pull us away from what is most important, and it’s a constant battle that we have to struggle with, because we do have to constantly remember the priorities which Jesus Christ gave to us, on which the commandments also emphasize. And we need to be struggling to try and maintain those in our lives.
Look at II Timothy 3. Here’s a description in II Timothy 3 of the way that our society is today, and you know, this is the end result of this very materialistic, fast-paced, unbiblical, anti-God, secular society that we live in.
II Timothy 3:1 - "Know this, that in the last days perilous times will come.
Verse 2 - "For men will be lovers of themselves. . ." What do we find, you know, all this emphasis on materialism has resulted in people being fairly self-centered, ". . .lovers of themselves, lovers of money." There is nothing more important to most people than money. Money is most people’s god, so they break the first commandment just in that one respect. And as a result of that, at some point, it’s going to catch up with them because their lives will be out of balance; they will be miserable. Something will happen at some point in their lives. "Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money. . ."
Verse 3 - It says, "Unloving. . ." You know, I think a lot of people today find it very hard to love in the western world, because they haven’t felt that love. I mean, so many people come out of broken homes, for example, rather traumatic circumstances in their early lives, and they find it very difficult to love, difficult to have feelings. Of course, we have more violence today as a result of that, too, because people just lack natural affection. ". . .unloving, unforgiving, and without self-control. . ." is mentioned here too. We see more and more of that in our society, too. And this is the world that we live in, and it needn’t be this way. And it wouldn’t be this way, if people would try to live as Jesus Christ wants us to live.
Todd Beamer took his cell phone and computer wherever he went, even on vacation. As his wife, Lisa, writes, he was sending a subliminal message to her and the children that they came after his work. I think it’s a very American problem. Now, it’s not just American, because other western countries have this problem to a certain extent, but we do statistically work more hours, more days, than any other nation in the industrialized world. We do. And also research shows as well that a far higher percentage of people in the United States take their work with them when they go on vacation than people in other industrialized nations. So, this is very much an American problem, and of course, you know, we are at one extreme; Ghana is at the other extreme. Ghana is a very poor country, a third world country, some have even said fourth world county. It’s extremely poor. Physically, we are truly blessed. Physically, they are not blessed. They can learn a lot from us physically, but they’re happier than we are, because they’ve got those first two commandments right. The commandments which Jesus Christ gave to us.
Now Lisa and Todd Beamer struggled with this, and, you know, he did not resolve it. He died without resolving it. And that means that during the seven years they were married, and during the four years he was a father, he missed out on some of the time that he could have had with his wife and children. But now, it’s too late; he’s gone. Something which could happen to us just as easily as it happened to him.
It’s something for us to think about, let’s go back to Matthew 22 again in closing. Let’s read that passage again in closing. We’ve become a very secular society. I think we all realize that, and it’s something we all have to struggle with, and we all have to keep these words of Jesus Christ in mind.
Matthew 22:37 - In explaining the greatest commandment, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Verse 38 - "This is the first and great commandment.
Verse 39 - "And the second is like it: You shall your neighbor as yourself.
Verse 40 - "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." This is what it’s all about. This sums it up. These should be our priorities, and if we’re going to have fulfilled lives, then we need to make them our priorities in our lives. And it’s a struggle. It’s a struggle in our society, but we have to keep on struggling, working on it and trying to overcome the world in which we live.