…for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
(2 Corinthians 8:9 – ESV)
(2 Corinthians 8:9 – ESV)
Recently (1/28/07), CNN Money had an article online with this title, “Go Green, Get Rich”. It revealed 9 companies that were aiming at tackling humanity's supposedly biggest problems. The headline read, “Meet the companies tackling nine of humanity's biggest problems – and making millions saving us from ourselves.” I’d like to take a look at what they say are our biggest problems, and relate these to the church world, and see why we think we are rich, but we are not.
Problem #1: Global Warming – the problem in the church is that we are warming up to the world, we are on fire for the wrong things, and instead we are getting cold.
Problem #2: Oil Dependency – the problem is a limited supply, and so we rely on foreign oil, which is worldly oil, fleshly oil, because there is not enough oil of the Spirit.
Problem #3: Hunger and Malnutrition – Amos 8:11 – churches are starving for the Word of God.
Problem #4: Dirty Air – the problem in the church is that we won’t clear the air of bitterness, envy, strife, and vanity (Ephesians 4:29 – 5:6)
Problem #5: Dirty Water – James 3:11 – corroded pipeline / Jeremiah 2:13 – no water
Problem #6: Overfishing – the problem in the church is underfishing.
Problem #7: Epidemics – the problem in the church is crisis Christianity.
Problem #8: Drug-Resistant Infections – the problem in the church is we don’t use God’s prescriptions. The Word of God will pierce through any poison (Hebrews 4:12).
Problem #9: Waste Disposal – the problem in the church is we just hang on to all our old garbage
Oh, they missed #10, and it is kind of a big one, it is #1 really: SIN. That is humanity’s biggest problem.
The world thinks it knows what the problems really are, and it thinks we can educate ourselves into a solution. They are wrong, of course, as we could “solve” all these problems but the heart of man would still be beating after its own master, itself. A new host of hellish problems is just waiting to be born in the heart of man. No amount of “going green” is going to change that. Companies may get rich, and people may get wealthy in the world’s eyes, but their money will fade away and their problems are only the latest fashion of the foolish heart. Instead, if you tend to God’s greenhouse, you will be indeed rich, with a harvest of the fruit of the Spirit.
4 comments:
This was taken from a previous post from 2-27-07, and reposted on 6-29-09, but now includes the audio in our SermonAudio files, which has additional material in it...we will be doing this with many of our older posts, so that they can have the audio attached to them and be archived at SermonAudio...hope these are edifying and enjoyable for you...God bless...
We will also be doing many brand new posts with new audio as we did last week, mixing it up as we do new posts but also adding some of our older posts for the SermonAudio audience who may not visit this site...stay tuned!
Ae you running on fresh oil, or flesh oil?
It was 2-22-07 not 2-27-07...
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