Choosing Oranges Over Diamonds

Do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness? And moral man says, we don't care.

See Paul's point in Romans chapter 2 verse 4 is this, the immoral unbeliever and the moral unbeliever are really just the same at heart. They couldn't care less about having a personal relationship with God, yet God sends them gifts. He constantly sends them the gift of falling snow. He writes them letters of love on the petals of flowers. He sends his kindness to them at the dawning of every new day, but they don't care.

What would you grab if you only had moments to exit your house? Stephen's going to tell you how the tragic sinking of the Titanic revealed the shocking choices people made when faced with death. In today's message, we'll see how Paul warns the moral person in Romans 2 about making the ultimate wrong trade. Choosing temporary wealth over eternal riches. Many people underestimate God's kindness, patience and grace.

Could that be you? Don't miss this powerful message that could change your priorities forever. Stephen called this message choosing oranges over diamonds. A frightened woman on the Titanic had already been given a place on one of the lifeboats. The lifeboat was about to be dropped into the raging North Atlantic.

Even those who were on the lifeboats didn't know if they would survive. She suddenly thought of something that she wanted in light of death that was now breathing down her neck. She asked if they could wait and if she could just run to her stateroom for just a moment. They said to her, you can, but hurry.

If you're not back in a moment or two, we're going to have to lower away without you. So she got out and she ran across the deck, which was already at a perilous angle. She ran through the gambling room where money had piled on the floor and she didn't stop.

She didn't even reach down and pick up a few bills. She ran until she reached her stateroom and she ran to a shelf that was over her bed and on that shelf was her jewelry box filled with diamonds and she brushed the box aside and behind that box were three small oranges. She grabbed them and ran back to the lifeboat and was lowered away. Sangster wrote, death had boarded the Titanic. One blast of its awful breath had transformed all values. Instantaneously priceless things became worthless and worthless things had become priceless.

In that moment of life or death, she preferred oranges to diamonds. In the book of Romans, Paul is describing for us the foolishness of man throughout history. As he distorts the priorities of life and inverts the value of everything. Remember chapter one has explained the guilt and the sinfulness of immoral people. Chapter two is in the process of describing the guilt and sinfulness of moral people. And chapter three will chronicle the guilt and sinfulness of religious people so that you come to the end of chapter three and Paul is able to say, there is none righteous known at one.

All the world is guilty. Now here in chapter two, he deals with the moral man and what is the root of the problem with moral people? I could summarize it in a word. Although they are on a sinking boat, they would rather collect diamonds rather than oranges. For the sake of applying the metaphor let me define it this way. If you have your notes, an orange represents those things that are permanently valuable according to God's point of view. And the diamond is something that is preferred by mankind but is only of temporary value. And what does the moral man prefer?

Oranges or diamonds? Well Paul answers that question by asking a rhetorical question. Let's pick our study back up at verse four where he asks the moral person, do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance. The phrase to think lightly translates a Greek word which literally means to look down upon.

To look down your nose is sort of the phrase that we use today that comes from this word kataphroneo. Now Paul here in verse four specifically mentions three things that the moral man looks down on or underestimates. And these are true riches from the heart of God toward mankind.

These by the way are those things of infinite eternal value. Even though man might pursue his diamonds that are only of temporary value, these are as it were the oranges of God's riches. The first valuable from the treasure house of God's heart is the gift of kindness. Paul writes or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness?

The word is often and maybe in your translation translated goodness. The first acts of God's goodness if you go back in the catalog of scripture would of course be at creation where in Genesis chapter one verse three God said, let there be light. And then he said of that light, it is good. You go through that chapter and he says in verse four or verse 10, again, God saw that it was good. Again in verse 12, God saw that it was good.

The first appearance of something good appeared at the creation, the acts of creation. But the full effect of God's goodness is seen by all creation. Did you know that every person who has ever lived has personally experienced in some way, some small, some great, the goodness of God in many ways. We call this in theological terms, the common grace of God. That is it is common to all men.

It is common to all women. The Psalmist wrote, the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. Everybody benefits from the goodness of God in some way, whether they realize it or not. In Matthew chapter five, we read that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. That is a wonderful reference to the common grace of God. One author wrote, he gives both the righteous and the unrighteous food to eat, fire to keep warm, water to quench thirst. He gives us all blue sky, warm sun, green grass, and beautiful mountains. One of the amazing things about the goodness of God is that it extends to the unbeliever, the blasphemer, the wicked man. He allows them relationships that bring love and happiness. He gives them the ability to thrill over the excitement of the birth of a baby.

He gives them a sense of personal worth and he gives to them an intuitive knowledge of right or wrong. Unbelievers can paint. Unbelievers can sing. Unbelievers innovate and invent.

They write symphonies, they build skyscrapers, they invent medical cures and computer programs and they put together a cable TV networks. The unbeliever can to a point much greater than we would allow were we God to enjoy life. This is one of the riches of God that the moral unbeliever looks down his nose at and underestimates. So the moral man then becomes just like the immoral man at heart. The immoral man in chapter one, verse 21, it says of him, even though he knew about God, he did not honor him or give what? Or give thanks, but became futile in his heart and his speculations. His foolish heart was darkened.

And so now here in chapter two, even though they experienced the goodness of God, what did they refuse to do? Give thanks. Honor him. If I were God, I would make people say thank you.

Thank you. Or you don't get any more rain. Thank you or no more sunshine for you.

Thank you or that's the last promotion. Thank you or no more health. If I were God, I would be running around the universe leaning and saying, what? Excuse me.

I didn't hear you. So they said, thank you. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness. Maybe you have in fact experienced some of that yourself. Maybe you've experienced the suffering of Christ as he wept over Jerusalem.

We would not love him. Maybe you know what it's like to give a good gift to a child and not be thanked. Maybe you know what it's like to love parents and they will not respond with love.

Maybe it's your spouse, maybe your coworker, a friend, and you do everything you can do, but nothing is ever good enough. And they look down their nose at your attempts, perhaps even ridiculing you for who you are. You are then personally experiencing what Paul said in Philippians three, verse 10, the fellowship of his suffering. See Paul's point in Romans chapter two, verse four is this, the immoral unbeliever and the moral unbeliever are really just the same at heart. They couldn't care less about having a personal relationship with God. God sends them gifts. He constantly sends them the gift of falling snow. He writes them letters of love on the petals of flowers. He sends his kindness to them at the dawning of every new day, but they don't care. He is the scorned one. He is the ignored friend. He is the trampled lover of their souls as they step around him and on him and they trample his gifts underfoot.

That's not all. Paul goes on in verse four to mention that the moral man thinks lightly of the forbearance of God. Another gift then from the heart of God towards all of mankind, including the unbeliever, is the gift of forbearance. Now this noun appears only twice in the Greek New Testament, both times in the letter of Paul to the Roman believers.

The word anaxes comes from the root word, which means to hold back. You might write that in the margin of your Bible, to hold back that act of hatred unleashed against the Savior could have called the armies of God's angelic hosts. John tells us that even right now there are probably more than 100 million angels worshiping at his throne. And Jesus said if he needed to for his defense, he could call just 12 legions, 72 some thousand angels.

All he'd have to do is snap his finger and wicked evil, envious, murderous man would be extinguished. But there was forbearance. You have the ongoing extension of God's forbearance over these last 2000 years of blasphemy and wickedness and unbelief. They benefit from one more gift. Paul tells us in the middle part of this verse, he uses a word translated in my text, patience, to compound word macrothumias.

The word macro we use in our own English language for something that is great, for something that is large, for something that is big. So in other words, God's patience is big. God's patience is great. God's patience is long. That's why often English texts will translate that word long suffering. He has a long fuse.

Compared to us, we have a what? A short fuse. God is long in his patience. God has not lost his patience as it were for 2000 years. The judgment that does not come is not proof of his powerlessness. William Barkley wrote, it is proof of his patience. The incredible riches of his patience. Now what should the response of man's heart be? Well, one is defiance.

That's what it is, though it shouldn't be. They're like a person clinging to a bag of heavy diamonds, those temporary valuables in life while they're in the process of drowning. We will not give up our diamonds. And Paul describes how they have stored up wrath for themselves in verse five. And they will eventually reach the end of God's patience.

His long suffering will end. There will be no more gifts from the heart of God. But the death of man, the judgment will come. The second response that Paul would hope for them to have is the response of repentance. He said the goodness of God or the kindness of God leads you to repentance. Repentance is changing your mind about oranges.

Repentance comes from a word that means to change your mind. So you change your mind about life. You change your mind about priorities.

Those things that are considered insignificant to the world are very significant to you. You change your mind ultimately about God. You no longer look down your nose at him. You love him and you follow him. You respond to the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience by saying, oh, could I do anything less than follow you?

Oh, God, I love you. You need to understand there are two kinds of repentance, worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is simply remorse. It's the emotional feeling that temporarily feels sorry for being caught or for the mess that the person's in.

But it's short lived. It doesn't really produce godliness. The opposite of worldly sorrow is godly sorrow. It isn't just remorse.

It is reorientation of the mind, heart and will. Remorse, if I can say it this way, is being sorry you got caught in sin. Repentance is being sorry you sinned. Paul writes to the Corinthians and says, I now rejoice not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God in order that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret leading to salvation.

But the sorrow of the world produces death. And how does God bring an unbeliever to repentance? True godly repentance by the riches, Paul writes, of his kindness. Do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

An old translation reads it this way. The goodness of God is gently drawing you. God draws you in. He doesn't drive you in.

He has chosen not to use a club. He has chosen to use a cross. The arms of the Savior, as it were, stretch outward, saying whosoever will may come. My friend, do you think lightly of the riches of God's kindness, forbearance, patience? Unbeliever, the kindness of God has been extended to you today once again for you've heard the truth of Christ.

Will you defy him or will you receive him? Christian friend, it's possible to be caught up in the circumstances of life and decide that God isn't kind after all. Do you know the repentance of God or the kindness of God moves you to repentance, first of all, for salvation? And through your life, it is the goodness of God that brings you to those repeated moments of repentance for fellowship when the values get turned around and upside down. He also works in the lives of believers through his goodness in bringing them to repentance.

So our problem is that we tend to define God's goodness in light of weeks or months or years rather than in the light of eternity. I read a story recently about a Christian who had given up in despair. He had decided that God was not really good. He was a believer, but he believed that God wasn't kind.

His name was David Flood. In 1921, he and his young wife, Sevea, left Sweden for the heart of Africa as missionaries. They were soon joined by another missionary couple, so the story goes. And together, they decided on a remote village. When they arrived at the village, the chief rebuffed them and would not allow them to testify of Christ in the village and they had no choice but to go up a hillside and on a slope build two huts made of mud. And then they prayed for a breakthrough, but none came.

The only contact that they had was with a little boy who was allowed to sell them chickens and eggs twice a week. Sevea Flood decided that if this was the only contact that she could have with that African village that she would try to lead that little boy to Christ, and she did. He accepted Jesus Christ and the gift of salvation through faith in Christ alone.

Beyond that, there were no other encouragements. Nothing else happened, even though they prayed and sought God. In the meantime, malaria began to hunt them down and soon the other couple decided that they'd had enough, and they left for another mission location at a more comfortable region nearby, and David and Sevea flood with their son who had been born before they came and they were left alone. In the midst of those trying times, Sevea found herself pregnant. When the time came for the delivery of their child, the village chief softened just enough to allow a midwife to come and help her, and a little girl was born. It was too much for Sevea.

She was exhausted and weak from her bouts with malaria, and she lived only another 17 days, and she died. Something inside of David Flood snapped, and he dug a crude grave and he buried his 27-year-old wife. He took his son and his newborn daughter down that slope to the mission station, and he handed the missionaries his daughter, and he said to them, I'm going back to Sweden.

My life is ruined. God is not good. God is not faithful.

He has in fact ruined my life, and I don't know how to raise this little girl. He turned his back on his calling and on God himself, and he left. Within eight months, those adoptive parents of that little girl were killed by malaria, and the baby girl was given to another missionary couple who brought her and raised her in the United States. She had been given the name Ina, and they changed her name to Aggie, and she grew up in South Dakota. Eventually, as a young woman, attended a Bible college, North Central Bible College in Minneapolis and married a man who entered the ministry, and years went by. Aggie knew nothing of her past apart from the fact of her parents' brief missionary journey in Africa and her own birth there and the death of her mother. She had never seen her father. She enjoyed with her husband the fruitful ministry.

Her husband Dewey had become the president of a Bible college in Seattle. Then one day, a Swedish magazine arrived at their mailbox. She had no idea who sent it, and she had not asked for it. In fact, she couldn't even read it. But as she turned the pages, all of a sudden, the photographs stopped her cold. There in a primitive setting was a picture of a grave with a white cross, and on the cross were the words, survey a flood. She rushed to the college. She found a faculty member who could translate the article, and he sort of summarized quickly. The article is about missionaries who had come long ago and the birth of a baby girl and the death of a young mother and the one little African boy who'd been led to faith in Christ and how after the missionaries had left the little boy had grown up and talked the chief into building a school for children, and he had won all of those students to faith in Christ, and the children had led their parents to faith in Christ, and the chief himself became a Christian, and now there were 600 believers in that village, all because of the sacrifice of David and survey a flood. For their 25th wedding anniversary, the Bible college gave Aggie and Dewey a vacation to Sweden where, among other things, she was going to find her father.

It wasn't difficult to find him. David Flood had remarried, had had four children, but in bitterness, he had wasted away. After an emotional reunion with her half brothers and sister, Aggie brought up the subject of seeing her father, and they replied, well, you could talk to him. He's very ill, but you need to know he's had one rule in our family. Never mentioned the name of God. God is not good.

Aggie was undeterred. She went to his room and approached him. He was now 73 years of age. He turned toward her and, strangely enough, immediately recognized her, and he began to cry, and he said, Ina, I never meant to give you away. It's all right, she said. Papa, it's all right. God has taken care of me.

With that, he stiffened and turned to face the wall. She said, Papa, I want to tell you a true story. You didn't go to Africa in vain. Mama didn't die in vain. The little boy you won to the Lord grew up to win that village to Christ.

Today, there are 600 African people serving the Lord because you followed the call of God in your life. Papa, God had a plan all along. He had a plan, and he didn't forget you. He turned from facing the wall, and tears returned. They began to talk, and by the end of that afternoon, the kindness of God had brought him back in repentance to fellowship. Aggie and her husband returned to the States. A few weeks later, David Flood went home to heaven.

I know this is a long story, but there's a little bit more I want you to hear. A few years later, Aggie and her husband were attending an evangelism conference in London, and a report was given from the nation of Zaire by the superintendent of the national church who represented 110,000 believers. He talked eloquently about the spread of the Gospel in his country.

Afterwards, Aggie couldn't wait. She ran up to him, and she said, Have you ever heard of David and Sevea Flood? He said, Yes, ma'am, as a little boy. I used to sell them chickens and eggs twice a week, and Sevea Flood led me to Christ. She told them who she was, and they embraced for a long time and cried.

Then he said, You've got to come to Africa. Your mother is the most famous person in our church history. We keep her grave.

In time, Aggie did come. She was greeted by throngs of cheering villagers, taken to her mother's grave without white cross, with the words Sevea Flood written on them. She knelt in the soil. She gave thanks to a good, patient, kind God who planned the death of her mother, who planned those horrible events.

While she knelt, the national church leader of that boy who'd grown up read from the scripture saying, Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. My friend, do you think lightly? Do you underestimate the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience? The world says, Yes, we do not care. But the believer says, Oh, no.

Oh, may it never be. And he brushes away every diamond off the shelf, and he reaches, as it were, for those three oranges, and the world laughs at his values, and the world mocks his decision, and the world can't understand his choices. But he grasps in his hands those treasures, and he takes his seat in the lifeboat of his life that faces churning, dangerous water, and he holds. He clutches in his hands those three precious gifts from God's heart, the patience of God, the forbearance of God, and the kindness of a good and faithful God. The world laughs at those who trade diamonds for oranges, but in God's economy, true riches are found in his kindness, patience, and grace.

The question is, are you underestimating God's goodness? That was Stephen Davey, and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Today's message was called Choosing Oranges Over Diamonds. Want to stay informed and connected with us? Follow our ministry on social media. Like our Facebook page for updates. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for daily Bible lessons. We'd love to interact with you there. If our teaching blesses you, why not share it with your friends and family? You can help us reach more people by sharing our content. Visit our website to find easy share links for all the major platforms. Let's spread the word together. Please be sure and join Stephen back here next time on Wisdom for the Heart.