We are looking at Beveridge’s sermon about setting our affections on things above. This daily devotional concludes the look at reasons against focusing on earthly things.
Nuggets
- Accepting the gift of salvation means focusing on God rather than this life.
- Accepting God’s wisdom brings our salvation, which is priceless and leads to our happiness.
- Choosing to accept God’s gift of salvation means we commit to Him without delay.
To read devotions in the Redo for Godliness series, click the appropriate button below.
Devotions in the On Things Above series
In the last devotion, we began looking at the reasons we shouldn’t set our affections on things of the earth. We are going to finish the list in this devotion.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
Let's Put It into Context #2
When we look up the definition of affection in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it says, “the state of being affected.” Affect means “to act on and cause a change in (someone or something).”
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
Let's Put It into Context #3
“Place no trust in oppression or false hope in robbery. If wealth increases, don’t set your heart on it” (Ps. 62: 10 CSB)
The verse tied with the fourth section in Beveridge’s sermon is Psalm 62: 10. When we look at the word the modern versions translate as oppression, we consider it to have the following components under it:
- Persecution
- Abuse
- Maltreatment
- Tyranny
- Repression
- Subjugation
- Exploitation
- Injustice
These actions are beneath us, unsuitable for us, and unsatisfying. Let’s look at what else they are.
Resource
These Actions Are Deceiving
“As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mt. 13: 22 ESV)
Accepting the gift of salvation means focusing on God rather than this life.
This verse is in the Parable of the Sower. It is a sad verse. The people hear the good news of salvation, but they are too entrenched in the worldview to accept it.
- Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from evil and the consequences of sins to replace them with good and eternal life.
- The consequences of sin are spiritual death and physical separation from God.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- Eternal life is the promise of living eternally – even if we have died in this life – because we have admitted our sins, believed Jesus as Savior and Redeemer, and confessed God as Sovereign Lord.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
This life is deceiving. It appears to bring hope and happiness, but hope is only found in God. Hope is a future expectation, called a living hope, based on the confidence that our names will be found in the book of life.
Instead of hoping for our eternal life, we spend so much energy concentrating on this life. There are many cares of this world.
- We worry about how to resolve issues at work.
- We worry about whether we will have a job to worry about.
- We worry about relationship problems that we have to work out — whether they are with family, friends, or coworkers.
- We worry about decisions we have to make.
- We worry about whether we will have the money we need to do what we need to do.
Beecher wrote that “riches are deceitful in the insidious growth which they promote of the desire for wealth, quite independent of what it is worth in its positive power.”
Resource
All of this chaos takes our focus off of God. He knows what will happen in our futures. He knows the plan for our lives.
If we look at our list of components, we can see where deception is used to further the oppression.
- Much of the abuse is predicated on the abuser trying to convince the person being abused that they are not of value. That is a lie.
- Exploitation is usually one big lie, trying to get the person being exploited to believe the exact opposite of reality.
Instead of believing Satan’s lies, we need to put our trust in the Father of Truth. God is both the true God and truth itself.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Robinson reminded us that we can’t serve two masters. “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Mt. 6: 24 ESV).
We have to be loyal to God only. He is a jealous God.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Serving God brings us peace instead of chaos. We can trust God’s word because we know He will never lie to us.
These Actions Will not Make Us Happy
“It cannot be bought for gold, and silver cannot be weighed as its price” (Job 28: 15 ESV)
Accepting God’s wisdom brings our salvation, which is priceless and leads to our happiness.
This is an interesting verse. When I first pulled up the sermons, there was nothing for this verse. What I found for this verse was buried in talking about the chapter as a whole.
That is interesting, because the chapter is on wisdom. Wisdom is an enlightened acceptance of God’s principles that leads to knowledge, discernment, and good sense that is put into practice through salvation, increasing our goodness and virtue.
It is going to be interesting to see where Beveridge how happiness is going to hook to money.
This is a continuation of the last section. We can’t serve two masters.
Johnson contended that there are two kinds of wisdom. He wrote, “Practical wisdom, the principle of right conduct, and theoretical wisdom, or insight, – where in all the wide world shall they be found (ver. 12)? None knows the purchase-price, nor the market for wisdom in all the wide land of the living.”
Resource
Yes! Wisdom is priceless. This does pertain to the worldly definition of smarts.
God’s wisdom is infinitely more priceless. Salvation can’t be bought with money. “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isa. 55: 1 ESV).
Are you not seeing how I got salvation out of this verse? “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst’” (Jn. 6: 35 ESV).
True happiness only comes through knowing and serving God. It doesn’t come from what money can buy.
I am going to piece this together.
- God provides all of mankind with blessings — or treasures as Adeney called them.
- We find the blessings through God’s guidance.
- This guidance is needed because they have been buried under the world’s sin.
- The greatest blessings are reserved for those who gain wisdom by seeking Him and appreciate the wisdom.
- Our relationship with God takes place in the mind.
- We must remain humble. Bevan wrote, “True learning is to learn what we cannot know.” We learn to understand what God shows us.
- As we learn, we are more concerned with others, as opposed to the selfish society.
- Because of our relationship with God, we act differently with others than worldview people do.
Resource
If we set our affections on earthly things, we will miss the blessing God has for us.
These Actions Are Short-Lived
“And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’” (Lk. 12: 19-20 NIV)
Choosing to accept God’s gift of salvation means we commit to Him without delay.
Luke 12: 19-20 come from the Parable of the Rich Fool. He had one good harvest and was wanting to expand his operation to store his windfall.
The rich man was making a big assumption. He was assuming that the worldly goods would satisfy him.
God had other plans. The man’s life was going to end that night.
Why was God shutting him down? It wasn’t because he was successful. It was because of how he handled his success.
The man didn’t acknowledge that God provided the abundant harvest or that it belonged to Him. M’Lean stated that the man was pursuing worldly business at the expense of his relationship with God. He was forgetting how uncertain this life can be.
Resource
Robinson pointed out that the man was very narrow minded in his thinking. He was just thinking of his property. He never once considered that God would ask him to use his abundance for other people.
Resource
This brings home the fact that we have to be ready for today to be our last. We have to have navigated the Sanctification Road so that our character is now like His.
Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration, gradually changes our nature through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness. Regeneration is the change in us that God brings about when we go from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
Glossary
Making the Connections
Why should we not set our affections on earthly things? Our souls are too precious.
Look at what Robertson said. He wrote, “In the soil of the heart is found all the nutriment of spiritual life, and all the nutriment of the weeds and poisons which destroy spiritual life. And it is this which makes Christian character, when complete, a thing so inestimably precious.”
Resource
Elaine-speak. We can swing either way. We have the capacity to follow God, but we also have the capacity to follow Satan. Because we choose not to follow Satan but to follow God, our souls are priceless.
How Do We Apply This?
The choice is ours. Are we going to follow Satan? Sure, we might have it better in this life if we do.
Eternity will be hell if we do.
To read a devotion in the Hell Does Have Fury series, click on the appropriate button below.
We want to choose God. We want to live with Him for eternity in Heaven.
Father God. The choice is ours. We can set our affections on things of this world, or we can choose to obey You. For this obedience, You will bless us beyond what we can imagine. We choose You. Amen.
What do you think?
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