Title: Spiritual Choice or Carnal Choice?
Contents
1. Words that begin
To choose the Lord Jesus is to renounce self and the worldly life.
The difficulty of choice is not in choosing one, but in giving up all the others. Also, the difficulty of choosing is that life after that depends.
Modern people are exposing the folly of giving up not only the gospel, but also precious treasures such as love and friendship, righteousness and truth, gentleness and humility, freedom and human rights, by repeating choices for wealth. There are foolish people who, despite gaining considerable wealth and status, choose more wealth rather than a job worthy of their position.
As a result, the family is dishonored, the family is dishonored, their lives are lost, and they are destroyed. The results of those who choose not the desire of the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, but the desire of the flesh, or self, are not very different.
When serious problems arose, the lives of Abram who chose the lust of the Holy Spirit and Lot who chose the lust of the flesh changed dramatically.
2. Abram and Lot's Choices on Serious Matters
Abram, who gave up everything including the mainland, his relatives, and his father's house, and chose God's word, was obedient and met with a severe famine. However, he did not seek God's instructions and chose Egypt according to his rational judgment. When he got close to Egypt, he told his wife a trick. When an Egyptian sees a beautiful wife, he will kill him and take her away, so call her your sister. Only then can you be safe and save your life.
But because of a trick rather than a thought of faith, the wife was handed over to Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt.
He spared his life and obtained sheep, cattle, slaves, male and female donkeys, and camels from Pharaoh, but he wanted to die because of remorse, anguish, and pain. Fortunately, by the grace of God who brought great calamity to Pharaoh and his house, Abram regained his wife and realized the limitations of his head and the power of God to the bone.
Abram came out of Egypt and arrived between Bethel and Ai, where he had built the first altar and pitched his tent.
However, it was not easy for them to live together because the land was small, and Lot, his nephew, also had tents and had many possessions such as sheep and cattle. There was always the risk of crashing. No, Abram's cattle shepherd and Lot's cattle shepherd fought each other for water and pasture. To make matters worse, the Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in that narrow land.
The shepherds of both families thought that they had no choice but to fight because the land was too small to live together. In order to make a living, one must be loyal to the master, but if the other side is loyal, the other side will become disloyal, so we decided that we have no choice but to fight. As a worker, I have a duty to increase the property of the owner, but if the other side fulfills its responsibilities, the other side must take responsibility and step down, so we decided that we had no choice but to fight each other.
Perhaps the shepherds' thoughts and judgments are not natural. How many people have such thoughts or judgments? This is why Lot, Abram's nephew, pretended not to know that the workers were quarreling with his uncle's workers. Lot's ultimate goal was to pursue wealth.
However, all these thoughts and judgments are a manifestation of a selfish head and a lack of personality, and it is neither right nor natural.
'Do' or 'Mo', 'Black' or 'White', 'My side' or 'Enemy side' prevails. that causes it.
There are ‘dog’, ‘girl’, and ‘yut’, there are colors other than black and white, and there are sides that are neither on my side nor the enemy? God did not create humans by standardizing or leveling them, He created them in ten colors. He created all things differently.
Therefore, rather than dichotomous thoughts and judgments that easily come out of the human head, we need to be able to make comprehensive thinking and judgments that cover the front, back, left, right, and up and down sides. In other words, we must think and judge according to the blessings of human life and death and the eternal Word of God who provides all things.
The Apostle James declared to positive and positive-minded people that business could be successful.
“You would rather say, “If it is the will of the Lord, we will live and do this and that.” But now you boast of false boasting, and all such boasting is evil. James 4:15ff.
Abram was different.
When faced with a severe famine, Abram's thoughts, judgments, and choices were different from those of Abram, who had chosen Egypt, which was rich in food, according to rational thinking, not religious thoughts. He said to his nephew Lot, "We are one flesh, so let's not argue with each other, neither me nor you nor my shepherd nor your shepherd."
Abram did not value wealth, but people, especially the weary. That
However, he did not force them to yield opportunities to gain more wealth by claiming their superiority. If that was the case, then perhaps Lot, my nephew, would say, ‘Your uncle doesn’t live longer than me, and I need more wealth, so your uncle has to give it up.
You may have thought or said, ‘Don’t you still have more wealth than me?’
When money problems are involved, love and friendship are destroyed, and when money problems are involved, trust is also destroyed.
When it comes to wealth, don't love become hate, righteousness become injustice, truth becomes lies, and the high-level become the coveted ducks? Aren't there lawsuits between the rich and the brothers and sisters over property issues?
A 73-year-old man signed up for pension insurance in the name of his wife and three daughters in January 2006 to receive tax reductions such as financial income tax. There were 8 insurance products, and the amount of insurance alone amounted to 6.64 billion won. Mr. A, who received monthly pension insurance payments until February 2008, divorced his wife.
In March 2008, Mr. A was unable to receive any insurance money because his ex-wife and daughters changed the contractual insurance payment account from an account managed by Mr. A to an account managed by Mr. A. So Mr. A applied for an injunction against his ex-wife and daughters to stop paying insurance payments, but when they were not accepted, he filed a lawsuit, but lost. In the end, he lost 6 billion won in insurance money.
It is really ‘A’ (Mr. A).
How would it have been if this family had known these words of the Bible?
Abram chose the path of obeying God's will, not choosing the path of greater wealth or the vested interests of a superior or a gracious uncle.
He believed that the world created by God was infinitely wide, and that all blessings, including wealth, were in God's hands. That belief made us yield our priority and further strengthened the reconciliation of bone and flesh.
“Is not the whole earth before you? Leave me. If you are left, I will be right; if you are right, I will be left.”
Lot, who had to be ashamed of his uncle Abram's words of concession, was rather relieved.
Lot would say, “Your uncle must choose first,” even with empty words, but he chose first as if he had waited.
“So Lot lifted up his eyes and looked at the Jordan, and there was plenty of water in all the land as far as Zoar, and it was like the garden of the Lord, and it was like the land of Egypt, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. moved away, and they departed from each other.”
Lot, a man of the flesh, saw well the wealth and worldly glory unfolding before his eyes, but had no spiritual eyes to see the hand of God's judgment that was soon to come there. The people who lived there were great sinners before God. Lot, who chose more wealth and the glory of wealth, did not enjoy it properly, was caught in an international war and was rescued by Abram, and later suffered a catastrophe in which all possessions were turned to ashes due to God's judgment on the area. also do. His wife, unable to abandon her lust for wealth and worldly glory, looked back and became a pillar of salt.
However, Abram, who gave up his priority by thinking and judging with faith according to God's will, was promised God's wonderful and abundant blessings.
“Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, east, west, north and south, and I will give to you and to your descendants the land that you see, and I will give it to you forever. Arise, walk through the land in length and breadth, and I will give it to you.”
Abram, the father of faith, moved his tent and came to dwell in the oaks of Mamre in Hebron, where he built an altar to the Lord.
3. Conclusion
Many people give up not only the gospel, but also the more precious treasures of love and friendship, righteousness and truth, meekness and humility, freedom and human rights, by repeating the choice for wealth. There are foolish people who, even with considerable wealth and status, choose to have more wealth than to choose a job worthy of their position. As a result, you don't know how many people are dishonored, dishonored by their families, and fall into hell.
May we all repeat our choices for God's will and glory, receive God's new grace and blessings, and live a more loving life. (Poongseong Methodist Church. Book: Complete Commentary on 27 New Testament Books/ Interpretation of Difficult Scriptures I, II/ Salvation Before Jesus Came/Paul’s Understanding of Man/ Prosperity Prayer/ Seasonal Sermonbooks/ Sermonbook 18. -3051)