It must be the American Dream—living on easy street with every luxury available and no worries or responsibilities.  The Bible, however, tells us that Easy Street is the most dangerous place in the world to live.

 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. “Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery...  Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth Deut 8:7-14, 17.

  And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully,  and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”Luke12:16-21.

  I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot!So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.  For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked Rev3:15-17.

 Those are perhaps the largest passages about this problem.  I challenge you to find any passage about wealth that calls it “good.”  No, it is not a sin to be well-to-do, but if the Word of God means anything, it means that wealth will put your soul in danger as much as any other temptation out there, perhaps more.  It makes you complacent, it makes you dependent on yourself more than on God, and it can easily lead to greed and a miserly spirit instead of a generous one.  That is why Paul warns the rich:  As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life 1Tim 6:17-19.

 And by now you are shaking your head and thinking, “But I’m not rich.”  You are wrong.  Compared to about 90% of the rest of the world, we are all rich.  People in the rest of the world live day to day.  I buy a week’s worth of groceries at once and have a freezer that would feed us for several months if suddenly all the stores in the world ran out of food.  Every Sunday I look in my closet and choose between ten dresses to wear.  I know women who have at least 2 dozen pairs of shoes, and still say, when they get a new dress, “I need a new pair of shoes,”—to match the new dress, I suppose.  Every family I know has so many cars they won’t all fit in the garage, and sometimes not in the driveway.  This is “rich,” folks.

 A roaring lion prowls your neighborhood every day.  He isn’t just trying to get you to commit the big, bad sins like adultery.  He is also in your wallet, in your bank account, in your IRA, and in your portfolio.  Please be aware.  That’s only the first part of the test and most of us flunk before we get past that.

And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven Matt19:23.

Dene Ward

Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs, Amos 7:14.

Amaziah, the [false] priest at Bethel had just told Amos to go back to Judah.  They were tired of his scare tactics, what they viewed as rebellion against their king, Jeroboam II.  That is how we learn of Amos’s occupation.  While some view him as the owner of the sheep rather than the shepherd who actually slept outdoors watching his flock, you cannot get away from the humble position of fig picker.

Sycamore figs (also spelled sycomore figs) were not the figs of the upper classes, but a smaller fruit, slightly sweet, watery, and a little woody.  This is what the poor people ate.  The only way a sycamore fig would ripen was for someone to pinch it, causing it to bruise.  About four days later it was fit to pick and eat.  Can you imagine anything much more tedious than pinching every single fruit on every single tree in an orchard?  Then going to the next orchard and doing it all again?  And again?

As I was pondering this in our Tuesday morning class, I suddenly thought, “And isn’t that what happens to us?”  The only way for us to ripen as a disciple of our Lord is to be bruised.  In my ever increasing number of years, I have seen only those who reach their lowest point realize their need for God.  If I am proud, smug, self-reliant, self-righteous, all too sure of my own knowledge, I will never be able to prostrate myself before an Almighty Creator and commit my life, my belongings, MYSELF to Him.  I will never be able to take up the cross of self-denial and self-sacrifice and serve my Savior and my neighbor. 

Some people have a stronger spiritual sense and can recognize their need for salvation quickly.  Their bruising is a bruising of the spirit that occurs when they recognize their sin and remorse hits them like that proverbial ton of bricks.  Others need a physical bruising.  You see it often when tragedy strikes—a serious illness, a devastating accident, the loss of a loved one.  A bruising in this physical life may be necessary for them to see the need in their spiritual lives.  I have often heard it said by preachers that the best time to reach your neighbor is in a time of tragedy, and the scriptures bear that out as well.

Isaiah preached imminent destruction.  In the latter chapters of his book he tells those impenitent people that God will be waiting to take them back—not before the calamity, but afterward—after they have been bruised by a physical destruction the like of which they had never seen before.  That, after all, would be the time when they would finally listen.

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. ​For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made. Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry, I struck him; I hid my face and was angry, but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, ​creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the LORD, “and I will heal him. Isa 57:15-19.

Ezekiel says much the same: I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice,  Ezek 34:15-16.

And who does Jesus offer His invitation to:  Come all you who are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest for your souls, Matt 11:28,29.

And so each of us must face our bruising.  The more quickly we yield, the easier that bruising will be, not because trials will cease, but because our humble hearts will accept both them and the help we will have to face them.  We won’t be alone any longer, a state of affairs that only comes to the stubborn, who refuse to surrender to Divine love and protection.  Sometimes it takes a “fig-pincher” to help with the process, someone who, like the prophet Nathan, can stand before us and proclaim, “Thou art the man.”  And like the sycamore fig, we will ripen into the fruitful child of God each of us has the potential to become.

He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint, Isa 40:29-31.

Dene Ward

 But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. Rom 11:4-5

Dene Ward

Recently Keith’s sister came to visit and we took her to the Butterfly Rainforest at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.  We have lived here since before the exhibit even opened and never managed to get there.  When we went in, we saw what we have been missing.

In the first place you cannot go inside with anything that cannot be closed properly, which means I had to leave my purse behind—it has a snap across the top, but is not sealed with a zipper.  Then you enter one door and cannot open the second until the first door has closed.  When you leave, you go through the same process—through one door, wait, close the door, then through the second door—but with an added precaution:  you check each other over for hitchhikers.  The butterflies will land on you, especially, it seemed from our experience that day, if you have on bright colors or large floral prints.  They will also land on your bare head and arms.  You must walk the paths carefully so as not to trod upon one that has landed there.  You sit on benches only after inspecting them.  But mainly, you just look and look and look, up and over and around.  They are everywhere.

The colors and patterns are breathtaking.  Scarlet and black, Halloween orange and black, an intricate black and white that looks for all the world like a tatted doily; olive and black, chartreuse and black, emerald green and aqua; pale blue, royal blue, teal and blue violet; solid brown, spotted brown, banded brown, and a brown design that looks like it belongs on the walls of ancient Aztec ruins—and that’s not the half of it.

Many of these beauties were brought from other places as pupae, and as they hatch are let go every day while the visitors watch.  It was a wonderful couple of hours.  And after I got home I started wondering if there were any butterflies in the Bible.  Well, yes, in a way.

First of all I found that back in the early days, the butterfly symbolized the resurrection of Jesus and later the resurrection of his saints.  That makes a certain amount of sense.  The caterpillar spins its pupa, which hangs there looking dead for a couple of weeks.  Then suddenly the adult emerges, alive again, or so it appears.

But it seems to me that the better Biblical image comes from Romans 12:2: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.  Just as the caterpillar is transformed into something completely different, we should be too.  I am, in the words of 2 Cor 5:17, “a new creature.”  Those butterflies were beautiful, but when we walked the exhibits in the halls outside their “rainforest,” the pupa on display there were mottled gray-brown and just plain ugly.

I looked up that word “transformed” and guess what the Greek word is?  Metamorphoo.  I would be surprised if you haven’t heard that in a sermon sometime in your life, but maybe you have never really thought about the change that insect makes from worm to butterfly.  Looking at those beautiful things that morning, and then seeing those ugly pupae hanging by the score really brought the message home to me.  I am not just to change a little bit; I am to change drastically.  That may be difficult for you to comprehend if you were “brought up in the church” as we are prone to say, and have never really done any “big bad sins” as we tend to define them.  Yet it is my obligation to find the things that need changing. 

I may not read pornography, but I might become insensitive to the sin around me, especially when our culture deems it “appropriate” for television.  I may not steal, but my selfishness can rob others of any time or service they might need from me.  I may not commit idolatry, but I can become so celebrity-conscious that what those people say, do and wear become my model instead of Christ.  I may not murder, but I commit character assassination every time I call, text, or post unkind words about another.

Those butterflies we saw that day were almost too pretty for this sin-sick, ugly world.  That’s what people should be thinking about us.  We are not like the world, and we don’t like the world.  There is a better place coming, a “Butterfly Rainforest” for all those who have transformed their lives to be like their Lord.  Don’t land on the coat of a passerby and allow yourself to be removed from that hope.

…put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and…be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, Eph 4:22-24.

Dene Ward