The Gospel in three verses...

[shnarkle]

Proclaiming the gospel can be difficult as times, and sometimes I try to see how to boil it down to the essential message. Here are three verses that I think sum it up:

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" Jer.17:9

Jeremiah presents the state of fallen depraved humanity succinctly in that one insightful verse. The next two verses are a quite concise description of the process of salvation:

"And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ "Luke 15:5,6

We are found, and lifted up from our cast state of deceit, and given the gift of repentance. We are known by God Who reveals and presents the kingdom. What else is there to do except abandon this fallen world which is quickly passing away? This isn't to say that we turn our back on the damned, but that we make our way into the kingdom by proclaiming the kingdom, and there is no room for anything else in the kingdom. Everything else is garbage. Anything that can be stolen is worthless trash to be discarded.

Therefore: "whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple." Luke 14:33

Luke is not suggesting that forsaking all of one's possessions will lead to salvation or that it is a means of salvation. He's pointing out that those who have discovered the kingdom are incapable of holding onto anything else. It's like that trap for monkeys where they grab the nut in the jar, but can't free themselves from the jar without letting go of the nut first.

We can't work for God and Mammon. We can't put God first and then Mammon. It's one or the other. It's not a matter of prioritization. It's a choice. Let go or be trapped. Eternal life or eternal damnation. For those who discover the kingdom, it's a "no-brainer". There is no choice at all.

 

[bbyrd009]

And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting ...

A Brief History of the End of Time—The love of Money and the Root of All Evil
A Brief History of the End of Time—Rockefeller and Bill Gates

i doubt our def of Mammon is een very accurate tbh,
https://www.google.com/search?q=mam....69i57j0l4.15095j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[lforrest]

People who use their worldly wealth to help others are taking something of no eternal value and trading it for something of some eternal value. Should the person happen to be saved, they will remember the kindness and you will have a friend that lasts for eternity when you meet again.

 

[shnarkle]

People who use their worldly wealth to help others are taking something of no eternal value and trading it for something of some eternal value. Should the person happen to be saved, they will remember the kindness and you will have a friend that lasts for eternity when you meet again.

When someone sees someone else getting rid of all of their material wealth, there are going to be plenty who will never think to ask why anyone would do such a thing. They will just grab as much as they possibly can. Then there are those who might begin to wonder what could be more valuable than all of that wealth that suddenly seems so worthless to someone else.

What happens to a person to make them suddenly abandon everything they spent their life acquiring?

About 30 or 40 years ago there was an article in the paper about two guys that caught my eye. The first guy's goal in life was to become the CEO of a multimillion dollar company. He did exactly that by the time he was 30. Another guy had a goal to build his own company from the ground up. He built himself a multimillion dollar company as well before he was 25.

Both of these quite successful young men killed themselves, and the message was that they didn't set their goals high enough. I didn't get that as the message. The message I got was that they realized that it didn't matter what goals they set for themselves, nothing was going to make them happy. No goals in life were going to give them a true sense of fulfillment. All the material wealth in the world would never be enough. If I remember correctly, there's a James Bond movie that says essentially the same thing.

They discovered that they couldn't work their way to a sense of fulfillment, but didn't get around to noticing that they never needed to in the first place.

God accepts them as they are because they are conformed to Christ. Too many simply don't know this.

 

[Truth]

Luke is not suggesting that forsaking all of one's possessions will lead to salvation or that it is a means of salvation. He's pointing out that those who have discovered the kingdom are incapable of holding onto anything else. It's like that trap for monkeys where they grab the nut in the jar, but can't free themselves from the jar without letting go of the nut first.

This Analogy is Perfect, Thanks!