Three Signs You are Worshipping a False God (2015.08.23 Sermon Audio)

August 24th, 2015 | John Chandler

Chris Morton shared from Matthew 6:19-24 about moths, vermin, death, storage units, and a goat headed false god .

Links and quotes mentioned:

• It is said to be a great duty of natural affection for a father to lay up for his sons; rather it is a great vanity, one who must soon die is laying up for those who must soon die also. (Augustine of Hipp0)
• [We might expect Paul to finish by saying] “Therefore, since you have such a great hope, sit back and relax because you know God’s got a great future in store for you”? No. Instead, he says, “Therefore, my beloved ones, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
  What does he mean? How does believing in the future resurrection lead to getting on with the work in the present? Quite straightforwardly. The point of the resurrection, as Paul has been arguing throughout the letter, is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die.
  God will raise it to new life.
  What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it. And if this applies to ethics, as in 1 Corinthians 6, it certainly also applies to the various vocations to which God’s people are called. What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future.
  These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom. (NT Wright, Surprised by Hope)
• “Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, Eustace had become a dragon himself.” (CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader)
• Prayer of Examen, a Jesuit prayer practice.
• Clearness Committee, a Quaker practice for discernment.

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