Keeping Up: Poverty and Justice

Introduction

Hey everyone, it’s so great to see you again. I know that it has been 3 weeks but scheduling the Landing around things like Mother’s day gets tricky. I hope that you all had a great time spending that Sunday celebrating your amazing moms. So, we are actually going to wrap up our series called Keeping Up: Learning To Be Content In Life today. We are going to wrap it up today so that we can begin a brand new one at the next Landing in 2 weeks on June 2nd. That day will be the day that we invite our 8th graders to begin attending here at the High School Landing! So it would be fitting to start a new series then.

“If I Had a $1,000,000”

How many of you (raise your hands), have ever heard of the song “If I Had a $1,000,000” by the Barenaked Ladies? Yes I know that is quite the interesting band name but let’s choose to ignore that for now. I grew up listening to this song, and honestly it became a popular topic in my house to talk about. What would be the first thing that you would buy if you won a million dollars? (take a few answers)

I’m sure we would buy all sorts of things that we would never need. But the sad thing is that we spend so much time thinking about what we could have that we don’t think all the time about what others don’t have. Did you know, that it’s estimated that one in six people in America struggle with hunger and food insecurity? One in six. And that’s right here in America. The statistics are even worse for children. The US government estimates that 1 in 8 people live in poverty. That is over 39 million Americans.

We as humans have physical needs. Statistically it’s likely that someone you know may have a family that is struggling financially and could be struggling to meet those physical and basic needs. These statistics and truths come across differently to everyone. One thought that often comes from hearing statistics like these, especially if you’re living like that, is “why do some people have so much and some have nothing?”

It doesn’t seem fair. I want to read from for you. In this Psalm, the writer is voicing their struggle with this very issue.

Read

It Isn’t Fair

Everywhere the Psalmist looked, the wicked were getting rich. They were prospering while others that were better people than they, were suffering. They wicked had everything they needed: good looks, money for whatever they wanted, and no cares in the world; they never stressed (vv. 3-5). They were arrogant jerks who took advantage of others and scoffed at God (vv. 6-12). The psalmist brings his struggle to God, and we should feel the freedom to do the same.

We live in a world that doesn’t operate the same way God intended for it to work. It never has, but we can have confidence that God empathizes with us and understands our frustrations with the injustices in the world caused by greed and sin. God knows that we feel that life isn’t fair. The author falls so deep into this pit of despair that he wonders if he should even continue following God. It only seems to bring him more trouble (vv. 13-14).

The sad thing though, is that the psalmist did not realize that yes life isn’t fair, but God will provide for us anyways. And not only will He provide, but He will do it so much more than we deserve. Through Jesus, whom God sent to die on the cross for you, we have freedom from death and have been given a clear path straight back to Him. Practically speaking, God doesn’t owe us anything. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we deserve some sore of “blessing” for following His Word or being a good person. We want to have that little gold star that says “good job, you’re doing great!”

We look around and at our lives and wonder if our obedience and faithfulness to God even matters. Comparison destroys our faith because if the person who isn’t following God gets all the things I should be getting, then why bother? If is even more frustrating when we compare ourselves to other Christians and wonder why they seem to be showered with good things while we are trudging along with our blessingless lives.

Are we less spiritual than they are? Aligning and living our lives with God’s purpose and Word does not guarantee a future of wealth, marriage, happiness, or ease, even though we hope it does. When we are motivated by what God will give us in return for our obedience, we miss the point of the Gospel. We seriously miss it.

That’s a wrong way of understanding how God works. It’s called “Prosperity Gospel” or “Prosperity Theology.” God doesn’t choose to bless those that follow Him most closely with money and wealth.

Consequences

See, we can all agree that life isn’t fair. And that is 100% correct. But when it comes to things that aren’t fair, we usually want justice. We want the people that are jerks to us or wrong us (or others) to pay for being jerks. We want there to be consequences. A lot of that comes from when we are children, we are all taught consequences. You do something in school, you get a stern talking to or a detention. You do something illegal when you’re older, you go to jail. You touch the stove when your parents told you not to, you get your hand burned.

And our sins should have consequences too. That’s logical. We have all sinned towards God and deserve punishment. But that’s what is so radically and outrageously amazing about what Jesus did on the cross. He took all of that punishment and consequence that we deserved and He took it upon His shoulders and paid that price for us. He paid that price so that everyone who believes in Him would have eternal life. See, Life isn’t fair but thank God for that because if it were, then we would all be in trouble.