"The Investment" - Ronald L. Dart

i know once again i speak for all of us when i say that our hearts and our prayers go out to the men and women of the uss cole and their families in this hour when tragedy has struck it's a very sad day for our country and i know that all of us will want to remember them and also to pray for the peace of jerusalem there were scattered individuals last night who prayed one thing far more fervently than the rest of us did they prayed from the bottom of their hearts thy kingdom come these are the people who have basically lost all hope in this world and they range from people who are suffering from pancreatic cancer almost all of whom are dead within a year to people in prison to the very very old and infirm for whom life holds really no more pleasures and to people in perpetual and intractable pain they don't have much to look forward to in this world anymore and so when they go to their knees before god if they're even able to get on their knees when they say thy kingdom come they really mean it i know in a small way how these people feel i have grazed that territory a couple of times that edge of that world a couple of times in my life but the very fact that some people pray more fervently thy kingdom come than the rest of us do underlines i think how much the rest of us have invested so much of ourselves in this world we still have hopes we still have desires and wants we pray for a better job they pray for the kingdom and the prayers of all those who have lost hope also underline an important way i think for all of us what this festival is really about we have long talked of the feast of tabernacles pictures the millennium which is just another way of saying it looks forward to and pictures the kingdom of god but it really means much more than that god told his people many long years ago that the 15th day of the seventh month they were to dwell in tabernacles for seven days so they would remember something very important in their lives the scripture is found in leviticus 23 and verse 39 and some of you who are long-standing members may already be there also in the 15th day of the seventh month when you have gathered in the fruit of the land you shall keep a feast of the lord seven days on the first day shall be a sabbath that's today on the eighth day that shall be a sabbath and that's a week from today you shall in verse 42 dwell in booths seven days all that are israelite born shall dwell in booths that your generations may know that i made the children of israel to dwell in booths when i brought them out of the land of egypt i am the lord your god but what's the value in that for us is this just an exercise in national history to remember that god made a bunch of jews and israelites live in tents when he brought him out of his egypt for 40 years while i took him on to the promised land is that what this is all about for us i've heard this cited in fact the way it's worded every one israelite born they'll say well that means only jews have got to keep the feast now it's odd considering that so little attention is given to another very important reference to which many of you also could quickly turn it's zechariah 14 and verse 16. but let's take a look at it it says and this is looking to the last time after that last war that's been fought against israel he said it shall come to pass that everyone that is left of all the nations which came up against jerusalem now who would that be gentiles right that of all that are left of the nations that came up against jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the king the lord of hosts and to keep the feast of tabernacles who all the nations that came up against jerusalem everybody that fought against her would do so and it shall be that whoever will not come up of all the families of the earth to jerusalem to worship the king the lord of hosts upon them there shall be no rain notice this isn't an optional festival you don't keep this feast you don't get rain it doesn't have that then you claim well i'm a gentile i'm not an israelite sorry no feast no rain and the family of egypt go not up and come not up that have no rain there shall be the plague where with the lord shall smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles so the egyptians who don't depend on rain can't get away with it either they will get the plague this shall be the punishment of egypt and the punishment of all nations that don't come up to keep the feast of tabernacles this is not merely a jewish holiday folks and everyone should really get that straight once and for all it is a worldwide observance with sanctions against those people who don't do it now i i don't know how anything could possibly be plainer than that i don't know why it is that people have such a hard time getting their mind around the obvious that these are the festivals hebrew moad or appointed times of jehovah not of the jews for israel that time of dwelling intents in the wilderness turned out to be a lot longer than anyone imagined they lived in tabernacles for 40 long years 40 years and throughout that time these people did not really invest themselves in the wilderness their hope was for the promised land which unfortunately most of them would never see but i'll bet for many of them the wilderness became all there was to their lives they could hope for a better tent they could hope and pray for cooler weather they could hope and pray for a shorter journey to water maybe a better position to camp drier ground a better more level spot to put the tent they could hope and pray for all these things which i'm sure they did you'll remember that all the adults of fighting agent upward because they refused to go into the land initially were told they would never enter the land that they would all die out there in the wilderness which they all did do for them there was no chance that they would ever enter the promised land and so for them there was no prayer thy kingdom come for the kingdom could not come until their lives were over for them it would never come as for the younger generation as they were coming of age to pray thy kingdom come was to wish for the death of your father and of your mother because they could not come to the kingdom they could not cross jordan into the promised land until their mothers and fathers were all dead and buried in the wilderness kind of a sad commentary and a sad thing to think about for these people for them the promised land seemed a long way off and the needs and the wants of life in the wilderness were every day at hand and i'm sure that's what most of them thought about most of the time and for us the kingdom seems a long way off and the needs and the wants of everyday life are always at hand and i think we think about them most of the time and we find it much more important to pray for a new job than to pray for the kingdom no well maybe we ought to take a look at the things we pray for maybe we ought to check our pulse about how fervent we are in the way that we pray for them and we can become much more fervent about a lot of things that have to do with this world than with the kingdom of god and every day of our lives we invest ourselves more deeply in this world there's a scripture that is not very often invoked in connection with the feast of tabernacles and i want to take you there it's the eighth sorry the 11th chapter of the book of hebrews often referred to as the faith chapter and it very much is the faith chapter and it's about faith but it's also about something else that's very important and i think sometimes perhaps not adequately developed hebrews chapter 11 by verse 8 by faith abraham when he was called to go out to a place which he should afterward receive for an inheritance obey and he went out not knowing where he was going by faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country dwelling in tabernacles with isaac and jacob the heirs with him of the same promise for he looked for a city that had foundations whose builder and maker was god he was looking for something now the writer of hebrews tells us what he was looking for was a city whose foundations and whose building was god and the maker was god what is he talking about here well every day of his life abraham drove his tent stakes into sand and if he hadn't moved that day at least he had to go out and check all of his tent stands in 10 stakes because he had no foundation to his tents all he had was sand and dirt and every day the stakes had to be checked every day the ropes had to be tightened everything had to be secured again before it would loosen overnight with the winds of the desert and while abraham held a deed signed by god to every acre and hectare of land between the nile river and the river euphrates he never invested himself in that land think carefully about the significance of that fact the writer of hebrews goes on in verse 11 to say though through faith sarah herself received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child when she was way past age because she judged him faithful who had promised and there's spraying even of one in him as good as dead so many as the stars of the sky in multitude and as the sand and the seashore innumerable and then comes this zinger these all died in faith not having received the promises now what kind of a god gives you promises and you die before you get them maybe a more important question is what kind of people hear those promises invest in those promises and die in faith of those promises when they still have not seen a bit of them what kind of people were these you know it's one thing to trust god to answer prayer and to fulfill his promises right all of us at different times in our lives do that and we've had answers to prayer it's one thing to do that but to die without getting the promises and still to trust him that makes a statement and it's a very profound statement and one needs to be thought about surely it speaks of an investment in something far greater than land than jobs than careers than sheep and oxen camels and asses surely these people were making an investment in something far greater than any of that the writer of hebrews says in verse 14 they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country and really if they had been mindful of the country they came out of why surely they could have gone back at any point in time you want to go back he says go back but now they desire a better country and heavenly wherefore god is not ashamed to be called their god for he has prepared for them a city what kind of people were these that god himself can say i am not ashamed to be their god it was at this point in preparing this sermon that i nearly came to tears i really did because i thought to myself would god be ashamed to be called my god have i brought credit to his name have i always honored him have i been the faithful servant that god would look down and say to satan ah see my faithful servant ron man that hates evil holds to his integrity i'm not ashamed to be his god he's my servant i'll claim him i'll own up to him and i think all of us ought to think very deeply about this what kind of people were these of whom god could say i am not ashamed to be called their god for which of us has lived his life in such a way as to never bring shame upon the name of god now think about this by faith verse 17 abraham when he was tried up offered up isaac and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son he'd gotten all kinds of promises from god but when it came down to it he was willing to offer up his only begotten son verse 20. by faith isaac blessed jacob and esau all concerning things to come not things that were here but the things to come by faith jacob when he was dying blessed both the sons of joseph and worship leaning upon the top of his staff when he was dying he passed on his blessing by faith joseph when he died made mention of the departing of israel and gave commandment concerning his bones he was looking way out beyond his death by faith moses when he was born was hid three months by his parents because they saw he was a proper child who were not afraid of the king's commandments by faith moses when he was come to years refused to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of god than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season moses invested himself in the people of god as a conscious deliberate choice when he could have chosen to have invested himself someplace else verse 32 what shall i go on to say time would fail me to tell of gideon barack sampson jephthah oh and david also and samuel what a great man and all the prophets who through faith subdued kingdoms worked righteousness obtained promises stopped the mouths of lions quenched the violence of fire talking about daniel shadrach meshach and abednego escaped the edge of the sword out of weakness were made strong waxed valiant and fight turned to flight whole armies of aliens women received their dead raised to life again and others others were tortured not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection you're on the rack and they got you stretched out and they have the hot hot irons and the whips and whatever they need there to create problems for you and all you've got to do is say the right words and you can walk and these people refused they wouldn't do it they endured the torture not accepting deliverance so that they might obtain a better resurrection this is stunning what kind of people are these and where were these people investing themselves because they surely were not investing themselves in this land in this world in this time in the things of this world were they they were investing themselves entirely somewhere else now you've probably heard people express the opinion that there wasn't any salvation in the old testament that people in the old testament didn't know anything about the resurrection well you can hammer that nail down bend that nail over and jerk it out because obviously that's not true the writer of hebrews testifies to us these people not only knew about the resurrection they were looking for a better resurrection from the dead and they knew that they were investing themselves in the kingdom of god whatever they may have called it at their time in their place they were making their investment in god himself what pray tell were these people doing if there was no salvation no nothing no resurrection available to people in the old testament it's crazy idea hebrews makes it plain they knew about the resurrection and that they invested themselves in it verse 36 others had trial of cruel mockings and scourging moreover of bonds and imprisonment they were stoned they were sawn in two they were tempted they were slain with the sword they wondered about in sheepskins and goatskins destitute afflicted tormented of whom this world was not worthy they wandered in the deserts and in mountains and dens and caves of the earth and now comes the most startling revelation that takes place out of this entire passage he says in verse 39 these all having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise that we have established but why why not here's the answer god having provided some better thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect these i want you to think about what this means people of this caliber people who have a faith that you and i can only really dream about died without the promises because they had to wait for the likes of us of us waiting for us i think you and i owe something to these people they invested themselves wholly and completely in the kingdom of god they invested themselves to the death but long before their death they invested in everything of their life their person their being their time their circumstances you know all their effort and all their work were invested in the kingdom of god and we owe it to them to live worthy of that investment they confessed that they sought a country and the way they made that confession was with the investment of their lives for us the feast of tabernacles is our confession that we're strangers and pilgrims and that we like them seek a country but for us it would be very easy for this confession to be false we seek a country we're looking forward to the kingdom we want to invest in the kingdom we confess i'm a stranger i'm a pilgrim this world's not mine would be very easy for that confession to be false if the feast is merely a family vacation with a few spiritual overtones if we invest this week in the kingdom and then return to making our investment in the world like we always do then our confession is false that we are not really confessing that we are strangers and pilgrims we are still ready to make the investment in this world those people listed in hebrews could not be made perfect without us so god calls upon us to be in solidarity with these people but how can we be in solidarity with people like those listed in hebrews 11 when we have so much of ourselves invested in this world now there's another incident in jesus ministry that i think underlines this question in an important way it's found in matthew 19 verse 16. these scriptures i know or make us uncomfortable but that's part of what we have to do matthew 19 and verse 16 behold one came and said to him good master what good things shall i do that i may have eternal life that's what everybody wants to know and he said to him why do you call me good there is none good but one that is god if you will enter into life keep the commandments he said which commandments and jesus said you shall do no murder you shall not commit adultery you shall not steal you shall not bear false witness honor your father and your mother and love your neighbor as yourself and the young man said all these things have i kept from my youth till now what do i lack jesus said to him another passage by the way tells us jesus looked at him and loved him and he said to him if you will be perfect go sell everything you have and give it to the poor and you shall have treasure in heaven and come follow me when the young man heard that he went away sorrowful because he had great possessions now i think it's important for us to understand that this young man was not a bad person one of the accounts says that as i said when jesus looked at him and considered him he actually loved him and i don't think jesus would have so readily loved a person whose basic moral character was bad i think he was a good man but he had invested so much of himself in this world's goods that he found it impossible to disengage himself from it and you know this is an interesting thing to understand that as you become increasingly involved and engaged in and invested in this world more and more people depend on you to maintain that investment and to walk away from it for him might have been to have left people without jobs it might have been who knows what it would have left people without he felt an obligation to what he possessed not merely a graspy greedy desire to hold on to it and i think this is an important distinction to me that as we invest ourselves in the world the world gets its tentacles into us at the same time and we may find it ourselves in some cases a little bit hard to let go young man was sure he owned a lot of stuff but in a way his stuff owned him and you and i think we own our things but there is a sense in which our things own us everything you own demands time and space from you you have to daily invest so much of yourselves in these things and one of the best illustrations i can recall was one year i attended a class reunion and i met there a man i'd known some time ago he was a a well-to-do man he had made a lot of money in his time he was a very active energetic intelligent person and he had made a lot of money and had retired and so knowing him to be an active person i wondered well what are you what are we doing these days so i said uh bill what are you doing with all your time these days he says i manage my money it takes a lot of time you know to manage your money well i i didn't really know but uh i could imagine i could imagine what he was talking about what troubled me so deeply though was the image of a talented intelligent gifted healthy energetic mature experienced wise man spending all of his days in front of a computer screen managing his money now you aren't in that category most of you can manage your money in about five minutes a week and so consequently you don't have that to worry about but i really believe there is a message in it for all of us to think about where it is that we invest ourselves he invested himself in money some people invest themselves in oprah some people invest in maury povich some of them invest themselves in politics some of them invest themselves in in you know well you name it what's your poison what is it that's taken your life what is it that consumes you what is it that you are making your investment in every day of your life well jesus after this young man went away said verily i say unto you i'll tell you the truth boys a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven it's going to be tough because it's so hard for him to let go and again i say unto you it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god why because he can't let go that's why it's the only reason and when his disciples heard it they said well who can be saved now to me that sounds like a silly question but the general wisdom of that time was that rich men were blessed by god and poor men weren't so if you had a lot of wealth you were blessed by god so if those guys aren't going to be saved what's going to happen the poor guy in a lot of trouble well they didn't understand but jesus looked at him and said with men this is impossible but with god all things are possible and then peter asked the question look we we have forsaken everything and follow you we've just left it all the disciples made a complete investment of their lives in jesus christ didn't they walked away from family walked away from business walked away from jobs careers everything just gone and followed jesus and he said well you know what are we going to have as a result of that and again i don't know that peter was that worried about it i think this whole thing raised a big question in his mind and he wanted to know and jesus said i'm going to tell you the truth that you who have followed me in the regeneration of the son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory you shall sit on twelve throne thrones judging the twelve tribes of israel and every one everyone who has forsaken houses or brothers or sisters or even your father or mother or your wife or children or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and inherit everlasting life but many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first it's a sobering message isn't it now you encounter some of these people who have made even though their lives were not trashed by the world you find people from time to time through the bible who in spite of everything made an incredible investment of themselves in god and his kingdom they made these investments not because they lost other hope they made a conscious investment in it i mentioned one of them in the gospel in the program in the sermon last night a man named simeon from the second chapter of luke in second chapter of luke verse 25 it says there was a man in jerusalem whose name was simeon he was just he was devout he was a man who made his investment day in and day out in the kingdom of god and god in his service waiting for the consolation of israel and the holy spirit was upon him this old man because of his faithfulness to god got to hold the baby jesus in his arms to look into his little face and to rejoice in the fact that god had kept him alive long enough to see the consolation of israel and his prayer was well now father you can tell it let your servant depart in peace because i have seen what you've done but there was another there on that occasion her name was anna and she to me is very fascinating in verse 36 there was one anna a prophetess the daughter faneuil of the tribe of asser she was of great age she had lived with a husband from seven years from her virginity we don't know what age she got married as a virgin she lived with her husband for seven years and he died and she was a widow now 84 years old from all that time she had never remarried and she departed not from the temple but served god with fastings and prayers night and day and she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise to the lord and spoke of christ to all that look for redemption redemption in jerusalem as i say you just stumble over these people every so often and you wonder what vision they got how did god reach into their hearts and minds how did he let them see something that was so great that they wanted to invest everything that not the things that they had they wanted to invest themselves in that kingdom they're here from time to time and they're worth thinking about now i'm not suggesting that all of us should or even could do what these people did what i am suggesting is that we all need to pay greater attention to what we own and to what owns us we need to pay a lot more attention to where we are making our investments of ourselves how do you go about making an investment in the kingdom of heaven well jesus said to his disciples on the sermon on the mount he said he said lay not up yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal you all heard this one lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust do corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal for where your treasure is there will your heart be also i want to tell you something he's not talking about money it has nothing to do with money it has to do with the investment of yourself not your possessions and not the things you have except incidentally paul wrote to the corinthians about the philippians and he said you know i asked those people to prepare an offering for the saints in jerusalem and they didn't do what i hoped they would do they went way beyond that they first gave their own selves to the lord and then gave themselves to us they invested themselves in all of this you make an investment in the kingdom of god by investing yourself in god's people there are so many things in the scriptures about the teachings of jesus are just replete with examples of the things that we are supposed to be doing for one another the investment that we are supposed to be making in one another you make an investment in the kingdom by investing yourself in your church and i'm afraid we're in a situation where people are like a bunch of desert nomads wandering around from church to church to church making no commitments anywhere and making no investments anywhere and forget the money throw the silver and gold out in the street i'm talking about investment of your life in a church of yourself in a church to the people of that church and to the programs and the things that that church needs to be doing people who i don't know we just seem to be lost like sheep wandering around on the hills without a shepherd somewhere i have heard that metaphor before you can invest yourself in the children of the church not just in activities but in keeping these children under the wings of god and that involves attention it involves time it involves teaching involves care it involves method involves work planning foresight it involves more than i could tell you in one short discussion and it's an investment that many people are already beginning to make in your children and you also need to be making that kind of an investment you can invest yourself also in prayer beginning to realize increasingly that there are those among us who are doing this that we have prayer lines and prayer lists and stuff circulating on the internet all over the place about people unfortunately so many times we don't know enough some so many times we only know a name we know please pray for bob jones he needs a job well that doesn't help very much when the time comes to pray for old bob but increasingly people are realizing i think that that they need to collect for their own responsibility as it were a group of people with stories that they know about that they care about and that they carry up before god on a regular basis and they are beginning to be to make a difference in the lives of so many people and as they are doing that they are making an incredible investment of themselves in the kingdom in the kingdom of god i have sometimes found myself sitting in front of my computer with my ira statement in hand looking for a place to invest and one wonders is it so very hard kneeling before god to find a place to invest yourself is it that hard is it that difficult well there is one thing you can do when you kneel in prayer tonight invest a little bit of yourself in all of your brothers and sisters who pray every night more fervently than you possibly can thy kingdom come

Channel: BornToWinCEM

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Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Born to Win, Ronald L. Dart, CEM

Id: QUjQYSvlOUw

Length: 34min 47sec (2087 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020