The Gods of the Age

From a Moody Bible College website: "I shared Christ with my 11:30 this morning. We can pray for him that he receives the Word.
I have serious doubts that this man would have walked into any Church at all, he told me as much. He said that he felt that he 'knew' about God, but that God knew nothing about him. He left saying that he sees he has been serving money and it has not worked, but is not sure if he can give that up.
Just an encouragement to others who are Serving the Lord 'no matter where'."  -JT

When you speak to the gods of this age, you are providing an opportunity for a person to make a real and a costly choice between what the world makes and what God wants to make in you.  To present hard and divisive truth is a costly decision for your Pastor.  You either will agree with the case that he makes from scripture, or you will disagree.  And having listened to what people say as a Pastor and as Parishioner, I know what those kinds of things sound like.  Somehow, for those who don’t agree with what I say today, it will become about me and not about the issue at hand, or your obedience to God.

There are several gods of this age.  Some of them are easy for us to deny.  Some of them not so easy.  A few provoke rebellion even among the ranks of those who name Jesus as their Lord.  

Let’s think about some of the easy gods to name.  One of them is the tyranny of the self.  This age teaches us that we are all free moral agents, and that none dare deny our own personal sovereignty.  In essence, what we have done is made our own selves as gods.  Paul called it out by saying “Their god is their belly.”  But we say “its just being me.”  “I was born that way” and “how dare you judge me” are also the mantras of the adherents of this god.

The second god is pleasure.  This god’s dominion includes sex and indulgence as its more well known sphere of authority.  You see it everywhere when you talk to people about restraint of self, and of self-denial.  Those who serve this god sexually objectify everything.  Any and every opportunity is fair game for a double-entendre.  Its priests are desperate to promote sexual promiscuity in public schools, and its acolytes write the scripts for nearly every tv show and movie hollywood produces.  But he manifests himself anytime we decide to take it easy rather than do what is right.

The third god of this age is affluence.  The servants of this god are continuously hooking on to the latest trends of fashion or diet, of living room furniture and toys. The servants of this god love to talk about their latest acquisition, or their cleverness at hooking on to the current hottest stocks.  The priests of this faith live on Madison Avenue, and their livelihood absolutely depends on making you dissatisfied with what you have, or to provoke discontentment with what you don’t have.  Many of the priests of this religion have also invaded our government and media, and they love to provoke unrest by telling you that “the rich get rich and the poor get poorer,” and that you’ve been robbed by the rich of what you so much deserve.  Its chief evangelist loves to tell everyone that has worked hard “you didn’t build that.” His servants also love tell people that they fit the standard of poverty if they don’t have an x-box, a cell phone, or a 40 hour a week job that does not pay you more than 11 dollars an hour.

The next god is control.  This one is quite insidious.  In many ways he is the most powerful of this set.  He goes by some other names too.  He has many manifestations.  But he runs his dominion by fear.  His greatest enemy is faith in God.  The others don’t care too much about faith, because they often can catch God’s servants and ensnare them fairly easily if they are not careful.  But faith is an absolute denial and nullification of the god of control.  Control wants you to fear.  He feeds on conspiracy, and raises up many prophets that speak ill and raise doubts concerning your future and your safety.   He is always pointing you to the latest safe investment, or the need for a bunker.  He is more well known as Mammon.

Yes, this is Mammon.  He loves greed because that is the stock and trade of his dominion.  He loves enormous bank accounts, because of the false sense of safety they give you.  Mammon wants you afraid and dependent on anything but the one true God for your future.  If its government or the affordable care act, he wants you afraid so the you will hoard, hoard.  And his voice doesn’t always come from the left.  There are plenty of voices even from the right that feed and serve the god of control.  He is tricky.  He is insidious.

Lets focus on Mammon for a bit.   We used the figure of gods for this.  In a sense they are really more ruling principles which the great god of this age, the devil, along with the principalities and powers have sown into this age.  But lets continue with this image for a bit so we can look at our topic in a slightly different way.  Jesus talked about Mammon a lot.  In fact he even names this ruling principle during one of his talks.  He knows that Mammon works against the kingdom of God in a way that is more diametrically opposed to him than even the other ruling principles do.  This is because Mammon/Control denies the sovereignty of God, denies that He is all good all the time, and denies that God is all powerful.  Control whispers in your ear “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”  It says that you have to horde and horde resources because the end is near.  It says that you can survive the next economic cash if you invest in gold or this other sure fire mutual fund.  And he whispers to you that “you sure need your money more than God does!  After all, he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, right?  So if he needs money, let him provide it.  After all, you may break your hip 10 years from now, and you may need to fly to Mexico to get it fixed since the ACA is going to wreck medicine in this country.”

Control wants, more than anything else, to keep you from trusting God with your resources and your future.  So when the Pastor begins to tell you its time to make your choices about how your money is being spent, we here in this wealthy, affluent, power and pleasure loving culture get pretty worked up.  I can stand here and tell you that we need to deny ourselves the pleasures the world offers.  As christians we may shudder over the porn we have to stop seeing, and the tv shows we may have to shut off.  I can tell you that we need to shrug off affluence, and you will learn to mock the commercials that say you deserve a break today, or learn to put a balm on your conscience by dropping some clothes you aren’t using anyway at the Salvation Army.  I must admit that I do these things too. They are easy targets.  

But when I tell you that your money belongs to God, and that a portion of it, 10 percent belongs to him, that’s when the fur begins to fly.  That’s why this is a heart issue.  That’s when the comments start and roast pastor begins to be served.   The amazing thing, tithing is the most easily performed of the actions of defiance against the gods of this age that you can take.  It requires only a little math and writing a check.  Throwing off affluence and pleasure is often times much harder because of the addictive power of the behaviors associated.  But tithing?  Its a few strokes of a pen and simple addition and division.

“That’s the problem with Pastors these days, all they want is my money.”  “What’s he want this money for, doesn’t he make enough?”  “Doesn’t he understand that I have worked hard for my savings, and that I don’t have enough to make ends meet as it is?  How will I pay for my cable if I tithe?” (By the way, yes, seriously I have had conversations about tithing where I was told that these individuals would not tithe because they did not want to give up their cable). “God and greed.  That’s the problem with today’s church. That’s all they talk about.”  “I thought this was the age of grace?  What the Pastor is preaching is legalism!”

It is pretty amazing how often talk like that gets around, even back to the Pastor’s ears.  And if you think about it, all of these retorts come back to the arguments that Mammon likes to make.  When church leadership hears these things, we know its because you’ve been listening to HIM again.

Christianity in America is wealthier than historical Christianity anywhere at anytime.  Yet the churches languish with few resources.  We want a first class production from our churches, but must make do with less than first class resources because leadership doesn’t have money to do more than keep the lights on.  Capitalism and business are supplanting missionaries as powerful evangelists of the false gods because missionaries of the true God don’t have the funding to compete with the big corporations moving into their lands.  People turn in dependence to the government to find food because churches are unable to meet needs in an impactful way.

The result is that we have fewer resources in our land because they are going elsewhere, and there are fewer producers because the government does not encourage people to work and be content with their wages like a church would.  As a result it makes our economy shaky and us more inclined to want to hold onto our money.  Control wins.  And we, because of desire for control reap what we have sown; Stinginess that brings poverty and economic paucity. 

Yes, I know I am kind of speaking to the ages. This is really more of statement about Christianity in generally than about what is going on right here in Bancroft, MI.   While the church at large in America has been giving an average of 2.5 percent, I do believe that we are doing much better.  But is EVERYONE tithing?

A few people who maintain an awareness of the giving in our church tracked the giving of our church for a period of time.  Knowing how much they themselves give, and making a guess at the giving of one or two others who were at least claiming to tithe, they discerned that only a few people at our church, again this was several years ago, were actually tithing.  That means, giving 10 percent.  I would like to think that this has improved substantially.  But I am also guessing that it by no means includes all. 

Jesus affirmed the Tithe when speaking to the Pharisees (Matthew 23:23).  He spoke often on Mammon, and was mocked for it (Luke 16:14).  When Pastors and leaders call out people for not tithing, and we are scoffed at, we are in good company with Jesus.  We realize the problem that people have is not really us.  Its the fact that they are still struggling with sin and the issues of the Lordship of Christ.  

That’s what it comes down to: Lordship.  Who is your Lord?  Is it the elementary principles/gods of this world?  Or is it Christ?  Do you trust in His kingdom?  Or in yours?  Who is more responsible with money, Jesus or your investment firm that you picked?  This IS the dividing point!  The tithe!  Which way will you go?  It really is an obedience issue.  Argue all you want, Jesus still expects that you will tithe. What will you do?  Which principle will you obey? Will you give up control of your finances and future to Jesus, or keep it for Mammon’s sake.  Its the Lordship of Christ or that of Mammon.