Proverbs 6:6-11 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou
sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide,
overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in
the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
How long wilt thou
sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?
Yet a little sleep, a
little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:
So shall thy poverty
come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.
I’ve told you about the
guy that worked at Payless Shoes in Warrenton, Oregon haven’t I.
My family and I was in
the Payless Shoes years ago.
After we had picked out
the shoes we were going to buy we stepped up to the counter where another
customer, a woman we knew, a member of one of the Pentecostal Churches in the
area, was already standing and obnoxiously badgering – she would have called it
witnessing to – the man at the register.
As I approached, she
called out to me and said, “Pastor
McKenzie, tell this man that he needs to be saved.”
I can’t recall the entire
exchange but it ended with him saying, “I
don’t have time for God. I am 25 years old. I have to save for retirement!”
I was pretty young
myself, maybe 32-35 years old.
As a Christian I
inwardly jeered at his lack of sound priorities.
· He did not know he would live until retirement
· His retirement account isn’t nearly as important as his
eternal destiny and
· He was 25! He was way too young to be thinking about
retirement
If I was 35 he’s now
about 48.
If he is still alive,
his retirement is a lot closer now than it was back then.
I come from a generation
of pastors who didn’t think a lot about their future years.
· Jack Hyles aggressively told us he had no retirement
· Most of us had opted out of Social Security[1]
· We all planned to pastor until we died and
· Jesus is coming before I need to retire anyway[2]
I can remember reading
passages like,
Matthew 6:27-34 (KJV)
Which of you by taking
thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought
for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you,
That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so
clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the
oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Therefore take no
thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal
shall we be clothed?
(For after all these
things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have
need of all these things.
But seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you.
Take therefore no
thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of
itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
And really struggling
because I had started a retirement IRA account when I was 24 years old.
It wasn’t much money I
was setting aside, but with as little as we were living on back then, it hurt a
lot to put that money away each month.
Did I lack faith in God?
Years have passed since
then – much more quickly than I would ever have dreamed they would.
Jack Hyles did die while
still pastoring but
· A whole bunch of preachers lost their health and had to quit
pastoring way before they died.
· A lot of preachers opted back in to Social Security when
offered a window to do so and
· A bunch of preachers realized that there are other verses in
the Bible besides Matthew 6:27-34
Verses that present a
different side to the whole saving for the future thing.
Verses like Proverbs
6:6-8 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou
sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide,
overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in
the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
*I. A LESSON FROM NATURE
Proverbs 6:6-8 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou
sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide,
overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in
the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
We would be mistaken to
take from this that ants have no organization.
There is a great deal
of:
· Order
· Structure and
· Organization
in an ant colony.
· There is an ant whose job is to be the queen
· There is an ant whose job is to be a drone and mate with the
queen
· There is an ant whose job is to be a worker whose job is to
care for the colony’s needs
· There are even ants who are born specifically to fly off and
start new ant colonies
There is a lot of
organization.
What there isn’t is an
ant whose job it is to make sure all the rest of the ants have a solid savings
plan.
None of us can force
another person to save for the future.
But a wise person does
do it.
Notice secondly
*II. A LESSON FROM GOD
Proverbs 6:6-8 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou
sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide,
overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in
the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
The lesson of the ant is
a lesson from God on at least two levels:
A. It is God who gives the ant her instinct to
save
The ant colony works, I
think, similarly to the involuntary organs of our body.
· Nobody tells the heart to pump
· Nobody tells the stomach to digest
· Nobody tells the liver to filter
They just do what they
were made to do.
Ants, like almost all
creatures except man, just do what they were made to do.
We were made to love and
fellowship with God. We would be much better off if we did that.
B. It is God who teaches us to “consider her
ways”
By the way, in
preparation for this lesson I read up a bit on ants.
Did you know that the
majority of ants in a colony are female?
All of the ants that we
see outside of the nest are females. This REALLY explains why they get in such
a panic when you mess up their house!
God tells us to consider
her ways and then points us to one specific “way.”
*III. A LESSON ABOUT THE FUTURE
Proverbs 6:6-8 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou
sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide,
overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in
the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
The ant prepares in the
summer for the coming winter.
Now here is the lesson:
Someday is coming.
The future, which seems
so far off when we are younger, gets here much more quickly than we will wish
it did.
Preparing for that
winter of our life is not a lack of faith because that winter will come.
I do not recommend you
quit church and start putting everything you have into some sort of retirement
account.
But I do recommend you
put something into a “someday account.”
It does not have to be a
huge amount – especially if you begin early.
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