Being lovers of self really does describe many people, doesn't it? Men and women tend to pursue whatever brings them pleasure. In the last days, men will be lovers of themselves. And of the 18 things that Paul goes on to describe, that one sort of serves as a categorical heading. They will love themselves, and it is no surprise then that they are secondly lovers of money.
They are concerned only of themselves and then they are concerned only of the things that they can purchase so they give their lives to making money. What kind of legacy are you leaving behind? Will it be one that impacts future generations?
Or will it be like chasing after sticks, leaving little behind? Today, you'll learn the meaning of Romans 1-8. You'll discover the legacy of a godly man whose affections were firmly set on God, His people, and His purposes. Paul's desire was to pass down a spiritual inheritance that money can't buy and time can't erase. Keep listening today as you're challenged to think about the kind of legacy you're leaving behind.
Whether you're a father, mother, leader, this message will stir your heart toward a life that glorifies God and impacts others for eternity. A spiritual legacy is one that money cannot buy and taxes cannot take away. It is passing down to the next generation what matters most.
Is that true? Well, we do know the very nature of the transmitting of doctrinal truth is the responsibility of one godly man to another. It is the passing, as it were, of a legacy. Paul told Timothy, the things, Timothy, which you have learned from me, the same things teach to godly men who will be able to teach others also in 1 Timothy 2. I find it interesting that the truth of Scripture is treated as if it were a priceless heirloom to be passed from one generation to the next.
Is it any surprise that the vast majority of people who have come to faith in Jesus Christ accepted Him as Savior while they were still children under the influence of those who handed them a godly legacy? There is a rather well-known research project that has been around for some time now. J. Oswald Sanders repeated it in his book, A Spiritual Clinic. I've seen it in several books that I have read. It's the famous study of two families who lived during the same era in the state of New York, and their generations were traced coming down from the beginning of when they began their research on one family in the name of a man named Max Jukes and his descendants, and another family was researched that lived during the same time, a man by the name of Jonathan Edwards, who also lived in New York. Now many of you know of Jonathan Edwards. He was a godly man who married a woman who also loved the Lord. And over the next 150 years, among their descendants were the following 14 presidents of universities, one vice president of the United States, three congressmen, 30 judges, 60 physicians, 60 authors, 100 attorneys, and 300 theological professors, missionaries, and pastors. During the same era, the descendants of Max Jukes, an unbeliever who also married an unbeliever, were traced. And over 150 years, among their descendants were more than 100 alcoholics, 190 prostitutes, 300 wandering vagrants, 130 felons who served an average of 13 years each, seven of them sentenced for murder. The interesting thing about this research is they tracked through 1,200 descendants of this unbelieving man and found that out of 1,200, only 20 of them ever learned an honest trade, and 10 of those 20 learned their trade while serving in the state prison.
The family of Max Jukes cost the state of New York an estimated $1.5 million to care for them and attempt to rehabilitate them. Now certainly, that research is extreme that chooses one very well-known family and pits it against perhaps one of the more infamous families of New York. But the principle remains in some form. A godly man can influence, godly influence can impact generation after generation.
And what would the evidence of our own generation indicate as to the model that we seem to be following? Paul said that men who were self-serving and men who were violent and men who cared nothing but for themselves would not be the exception. They would be the rule in the latter days, and we are living and have now lived in the end times for some 2,000 years. But Paul wrote this to his son in the faith. He said, Timothy, realize this. In the last days, men will be lovers of themselves.
And of the 18 things that Paul goes on to describe, that one sort of serves as a categorical heading. They will love themselves, and it is no surprise then that they are secondly lovers of money. They are concerned only of themselves, and then they are concerned only of the things that they could purchase so they give their lives to making money. They are boastful, he goes on, they are arrogant, they are revilers, they are dishonoring to their heritage or disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, gossips without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. 2 Timothy 3, 1-4. Could there be any more fitting description of the contemporary men in our culture than that description?
In love with themselves, in love with what they can earn to the expense of everyone else. Now, it would be comfortable for me to give you statistics and illustrations as I have done to tell us how bad it is outside the church, and we could all sit in the auditorium and cluck our tongues and whack our heads and think, oh my, those unholy and godly men out there. The trouble is, ladies and gentlemen, the church today is crying out for that kind of leadership within its own boundaries. She is asking, as it were, where have all the godly men gone? The typical church I have read has about 60% women and 40% males attending. Married women who attend church without their husband outnumber four to one.
Men who attend church without their wives. One major denomination recently released the fact that 85% of its subscribers to its premier devotional booklet were women. The same statistic is proven throughout as the major resources and books purchased from Christian bookstores are purchased by women. The majority of ministry in the church and parachurch organizations of the world are organized and prayed over and moved forward by women. The cry of the church today, more than perhaps any recent generation would be, where have all the godly men gone? I have discovered that the more godly a woman, the more desirous she is to have a godly man lead. What I have discovered about women who walk with Christ is that the closer they walk with Christ, the more agonized they are over the fact that men in their lives do not walk with Christ. Where have all the godly men gone?
Maybe it's time to stop and evaluate where we stand and what kind of legacy we are leaving. Well I want to ask and answer the question over the next few weeks. What are the affections of a godly man? What does he chase after?
What does he long for? Well the answer begins in the second sentence of Romans chapter 1. For the first time as Paul begins to answer what are the affections of a godly man, he begins to talk with intimate terms and very warm and personal language. Thus far it's been somewhat formal as he introduces himself as the apostle of God and the nature of the gospel, but here he with intimate and heart-revealing language speaks on a personal note. By the way, as I read this letter about a year ago in preparation for this coming exposition, just carefully but yet reading it through, I wrote in the margin of my Bible by verse 8 the word affection.
Let's just read through several verses and I think you'll pick up on the same thought. First he writes, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of his Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you. Always in my prayers making requests, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you.
For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established, that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us, by the other's faith, both yours and mine. The first affection of a godly man back in verse 8 is affection for God. When Paul reveals his investment of prayer on behalf of the believers living in Rome, he reveals his close relationship with God. In fact, his prayer here is based upon intimacy with God and the intercession through Jesus Christ.
He says, I am thanking my God through Christ. He did not say, I am thanking my wife's God. As a member of the Sanhedrin, he would have by law been required to be married. We never hear of his wife. Perhaps she's not living at this point. But he didn't say, I follow the God of my wife.
He had children. I am thanking my children's God. To bring it into our vernacular, I am thanking my co-workers God or my close friends God.
No, I am thanking my God. You ought to circle the word my. Martin Luther, the reformer, said that Christianity was the religion of possessive pronouns. Anyone can say God, but only the believer can say my God.
And he talks about him in a possessive way. He doesn't say, oh, the man upstairs or the big guy or none of that. He talks as a man who has an intimate, active, personal, possessive relationship with God. And he says, I thank my God. His first and foremost affection is for his God. That is the very reason Paul can precede these two words with the most astounding two words, I thank.
You would have to be kidding. This is the man who was stoned and beaten and jailed and mistreated and jeered and left for dead and imprisoned. And in Rome, he will be imprisoned again and die. Acts chapter 20, verse 23, the Spirit of God prophesied or came to him and gave him the prophecy that would be proven true over and over again. He said, in effect, Paul, wherever you go, bonds and affliction wait for you. How many of us would sign up to serve God if we were told that? As you serve me in every city, there will be bonds and affliction.
Here's a man that said, I thank my God. He will live out the remainder of his days in the Mamertine prison in Rome, a prison that had the city's sewer running by the gate of the prison. And anybody that was put into that prison never walked out alive. They were either strangled by the guards or starved to death.
And when they died, they simply opened the gate and flooded the cell and washed the corpse out into the sewer system. How can you ever say I thank? You can only say it if you can say my God. When you have an affection for your God, you can say, I thank him.
Paul began by saying, I am thanking my God for you. In other words, I'm investing my life in praying for you. This investment requires spiritual vigilance. It will require saying no to certain things so that you can put into your calendar of events prayer for people. Kent Hughes, in his excellent book, The Disciplines of a Godly Man, said that godliness requires the habit of refusal.
What is it that you've said no to lately so that you could be involved in something like he is involved in here? You'll never get out of this kind of investment all that God intended if all we do is chase after sticks. You see, the question is, who's praying for your wife? Who's praying for your children? Who's praying for your church? Who's praying for your country? Here's a man who said, first of all, I thank my God for you. And can you imagine for a moment what it meant to be a Roman Christian getting a letter from Paul and finding out that the apostle is praying for you? Ever had anybody say I'm praying for you? It always warms your heart and gives you hope and encouragement.
There are a couple of men that when I look at their lives and their schedules, they are busier than I could ever dream of being, and they live outside of this geographical area. Every once in a while I get a little note, you were on my heart and I prayed for you. He says, I am praying for you.
Now he says more than that. In this first phrase of verse 8, Paul revealed another affection of a godly man. It was affection for God's people. If praying requires spiritual vigilance, then this affection requires spiritual vision. Paul said, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you. What's the next word? All.
You ought to circle that startling word. I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all. Wait a second, not everybody in the church at Rome ought to have equal commendation. Surely there were some fence sitters and some bench warmers.
There were. He'll get to them later on in the letter. How can he say I thank my God for you all? Well, we know that Paul was writing to a church that was struggling with division between Gentile and Jew, and yet here he wonderfully encouraged unity by praising them. In effect, what he is saying to them is, I love every one of you equally. How that must have encouraged them.
I thank my God for you all. He knew there were some that needed to grow up. He knew that he would get to points where they needed to correct their living. He knew the leaders who were in fact needed to step forward, and he knew the ones that needed to be commended, but he mentions in this broad sweeping statement of encouragement, he graciously commended them all.
I'm thanking my God for every one of you, and he takes the opportunity to praise the Lord for them all. That's why it required vision because he knew about stories and scenes there, but he was trusting God to do in them what he could see, trusting God to do in their hearts and lives and bringing them into an intimate relationship with the Lord. He could see that, and so he could praise them all. Barclay wrote it this way.
Listen to these interesting words. He says, there are some people, and by the way, Paul is one of these, there are some people whose tongues are tuned to praise, and others whose tongues are tuned to criticize. There are some people whose eyes are focused to find faults, and others whose eyes are focused to discover virtues. Now, I don't believe that Paul was blindly flattering these people. His affection for God's people here was simply because he had focused on their potential and not at the moment their problem, and so he was investing in them, and he was giving them in this investment this encouragement.
I'm praying for every one of you, no matter who you are. In his recent book, Anchorman Steve Farrar told of the process of vision that is required in Malaysia for the growing of bamboo. In an interesting illustration, he talks about a rare and very expensive form of bamboo that takes a lot of energy, and he adds a lot of vision to ever do. He gives the process.
He says, in the first year, here's how they do it. They plant the seed, water, and fertilize. Nothing visible happens. In the second year, they continue to carefully water and fertilize. Nothing visible happens. In the third year, water and fertilizer are even more necessary. Nothing visible happens. There is absolutely, he wrote, no visible indication that your three years of work are even close to being successful. The fourth year comes around, and water and fertilizer must still be applied in the right amounts and at the right time.
Nothing visible happens. In the fifth year, and I insert my own thinking, I'd plant something else, but in the fifth year, you again diligently water and fertilize, and the bamboo grows 90 feet in 30 days. Not, he writes, 9 inches in 30 days, not 9 feet, 90 feet in 30 days. Now, I would have to admit that the fifth year would be very exciting, but I don't know about the first four. Laying the groundwork, working, watering, fertilizing, I'd probably be interested in planting something else. Maybe that's why chasing sticks is so attractive. There's an immediate result.
There's immediate accomplishment. Maybe that's why there are more men chasing sticks than becoming godly. Paul would say to the Ephesian elders and congregation, I taught you for three years, day and night, with tears.
Acts chapter 20 verse 31. I poured my life into you, he said, for three years, day and night, and I bathed my teaching with tears. What an incredible investment and what incredible vision he had in his affections as a godly man. I read an interesting and yet thought-provoking, very convicting illustration by a Christian psychologist who wanted to sense and understand a little better the investment that fathers were making in the lives of their children. And so he interviewed many of them, and he said, how much time do you think you're spending a day in interacting with your children?
The average response was about 15 to 20 minutes. And with their permission, he hooked up little microphones and Walkmans and recorded the course of those days over several weeks. And then he edited those tapes down to personal interaction between father and child and came to the astonishing discovery that I have read in several reports now and works that I have researched. The average father spent an average of 37 seconds. Now, he edited out the impersonal, pass the butter and go to bed, but he left only the personal questions and conversation. And when I read that, I sat back and I said, okay, how am I doing?
And you know, when I whittle down the leave your sister alone and don't drive your mother crazy and do your homework and finish that. And there are times when they don't get 37 seconds. You cannot pass along a spiritual legacy in 30 second blocks of time. Thirdly, the affection of a godly man includes affection for God's purposes. So we have spiritual vigilance. We have spiritual vision. And here we have spiritual values. Paul writes, go back to the last phrase of Romans 1.8. And this, I think, is perhaps the most telling phrase of his godly character.
He says, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all. Why? Because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. Paul, in effect, is communicating here, I am so proud of you.
Why? Because you have become famous for your faith. He is saying the vibrancy of your trust in God, the commitment of your walk for Jesus Christ, it is on everybody's tongue. Can you imagine how significant it would be for the church at large to hear that the believers in Rome who lived where Nero sat enthroned and that evil metropolis sort of plugged away in its vile essence, that there were some there who had not bowed their knee to Caesar and they had not gone along with a culture that was popular in their day. They instead were following after God and their life of faith would certainly be news.
And he's saying, I am so proud of you. Why? Because your faith is being spread abroad to the rest of the world. One author provoked my thinking when he said, you know, some churches are famous for their architecture. Some churches are famous for their organ. Some are famous for their program. Some churches are famous for their pastor. Some are famous for their history. Some are famous because of who attends or who has attended in the past.
But can you imagine being famous for your faith? One of the things you can miss here in this phrase is the fact that Paul is quietly encouraging their priority by virtue of what he praises. And we do the same. These unconscious messages that we communicate by what we consider praiseworthy. What is it that you praise in the lives of those around you? What is it that you you compliment? What is it that impresses you about others? You find yourself praising them for is it their job, their looks, their car, their title, their connections, their house, their grades. The godly man whose affections are driven toward God and toward God's people and toward God's purposes is most excited about the evidence of the Spirit of God living and breathing through a person around them. And they commend them for their activity for God. I'm so proud of you.
Why? Because your faith in God is so obvious. The one who is excited about those things is on his way to becoming a godly person. I picked up this little volume in the bookstore some time ago. All it says on the cover was, thanks, dad. That got my attention. It's a compendium of authors who write brief stories of their fathers who passed along to them a spiritual legacy.
It's by Ken Gere, by the way, if you want to get it. This particular author wrote, My father grew up on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia in the early 1900s. With a family of six, he lived in a second story apartment above the Germantown Gospel Hall where they all worshiped. In 1917, when my dad was only five, his father wired the Gospel Hall with electricity as a volunteer, determined to have the job completed in time for Sunday morning worship. Grandpa worked steadily on the project from Monday after dinner until Wednesday night when he paused for the weekly prayer time. He continued his work the next day and pressed forward on into the weekend. The last two nights he worked, he had a high fever, but he kept going by wrapping cold cloths around his head. By Sunday morning, the lights were on, but grandpa couldn't go to the service to see them because he was in bed with the flu. He stayed in bed all the next week too. In spite of the doctors coming to care for him, he grew worse. By now, grandpa was delirious with fever, tossing and turning, his bed clothes wet with perspiration. In a moment of lucidity, grandpa looked at my then five-year-old father and with tenderness in his eyes, put his arm around him and uttered the words, Hush now, God is in it. A few moments later, he died. Fast forward to a Sunday morning when I was now five. About fifty people have gathered in a circle around a table to partake of the Lord's Supper.
In the middle of the table, covered with a white cloth, were the elements and I, as a five-year-old, was lying there on the floor, oblivious to the event or the elements. As my dad stood to pray, I remember looking up at him. And as I listened to him pray, I thought, whoever he's talking to means more to him than anyone else does. The greatest gift my parents and grandparents gave me was the realization that I was not the most important person in their lives. Neither was my brother.
Neither were they to each other. No one was more important to them than God. I learned that everyone's life is a story whose point is discovered only when that story is lifted up into the larger story of God. We are not the point.
None of us. God is. And until we see our story as a subplot in his eternal drama, we will never see the meaning of life. I learned that lesson from my father as he taught me the value of God. He is in the process of passing on a spiritual legacy, whether he can see visible evidence or not. To him, like the Apostle Paul, no matter what happens in life, he can say with confidence, God is in it.
That was Stephen Davey, and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Today's message is entitled Chasing Sticks. You're not here on this earth to chase after sticks. You're here to chase after God and leave behind a legacy of faith just like the Apostle Paul.
So, what are you chasing? Let's set our hearts on what truly matters and leave a lasting impact for the glory of God. 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 and come back and join us next time, right here on Wisdom for the Heart.
