The Upside of Stress

STRESS
THE UPSIDE OF STRESS
DR. JIM DIXON
NOVEMBER 13, 2011
2 TIMOTHY 3:1-5

Our Lord Jesus tells us that before He returns to this earth, there will come a time of great tribulation. He said this in the Olivet Discourse, found in Matthew 24 and 25. He said that there will come this time of great tribulation such as the world has never seen. Now, this great tribulation is described in a variety of passages in the Bible, including the Book of Revelation. It’s mentioned specifically in Revelation chapter seven, and we’re told that it will be a time of calamity, a time of inordinate catastrophe, unusual earthquakes, unusual volcanic eruptions, pandemic disease, pestilence, and famine. It’ll be a time of economic collapse. And of course, ultimately it will lead to Armageddon.

Now, the word for tribulation is the Greek word “thlipsis.” And this word thlipsis literally means “pressure.” So at the end of the age, the earth itself will experience pressure. The earth itself will be stressed. Now, of course, the unusual thing, the interesting thing, is that the same word thlipsis also refers to individual, very personal, internal pressure. It doesn’t just refer to global, external pressures. It refers to very personal, internal pressures as well. The Bible says that in the last days there will also be for us very personally, individually, internally, pressure and stress. That’s what is said, really, in our passage of scripture for today. 2 Timothy three says, “In the last days, there will come times of stress.”

Now, here the Greek word is “chalepos,” and this is another stress word, and it means “hard to bear.” In the last days, individually, personally, within ourselves, it will be hard to bear. And the thing is, every generation (and there’s some scholars who believe we’re in the last days) experiences stress.
This passage of scripture, 2 Timothy chapter three, actually explains to us what causes stress. And the central message is this: stress is caused by loving the wrong things. We’re stressed when we love the wrong things. So I want us to take a look at two different love words that are in our passage of scripture for today. These are love words, but warning words.

The first word is “philautos.” In the last days, there will come times of stress for people will be lovers of self, philautos. Now, you might be thinking, well, aren’t we supposed to love ourselves? And the answer’s yes. You might be thinking, well, doesn’t the Bible say that we should love ourselves? And the answer’s yes. And of course, in Mark’s Gospel, in the 12th chapter, and in Matthew 19, and in Matthew 22, our Lord Jesus Christ quotes the Shema (which we’ve seen many times), Deuteronomy six, and the Shema tells us that our supreme love must be for God. Love of God should be our highest love. And so the Shema says, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strengths, and with all your mind.” So love of God is to be supreme.

Now, Jesus quotes that, and then Jesus adds the corollary, which He takes from Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18. And the corollary is this: and you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. So the love of self is assumed. It’s assumed in Leviticus 19:18, it’s assumed in Mark chapter 12, in Matthew 19, and in Matthew 22,. Old Testament and the New Testament both assume that we love ourselves and it’s the will of God that we do love ourselves, but we’re to love God supremely more than ourselves, and we’re to love our neighbor as our ourself.

Okay, now, what is philautos then? Well, because philautos is a negative word, it’s love distorted. So, in the last days, people will have a distorted love of self. This is described in a couple of ways. When you look at the word philautos, first of all, it can refer to an excessive love of self. And of course, we have all known people who seem to have an excessive love of themselves, or people who are just excessively focused on themselves. Oftentimes psychologists tell us that people like that are actually compensating for core damage. And the truth is, we all have core damage, because this is a fallen world. We’ve all sinned, we’ve all fallen short of the grace of God. We’ve all fallen short of the holiness of God, and we’re all in desperate need of grace.

We’re all messed up, we’re all broken. We all have core damage. So it’s hard not to have an excessive focus on ourselves. It’s hard to love correctly now. Now, philautos means you love yourself more than you love people. Philautos is to love yourself more than you love people. It’s to love yourself more than you love others. Or even worse, philautos means to love yourself more than you love God. But you see, because we have core damage, we often do love ourselves more than we love people and we often do love ourselves even more than we love God because of this core damage. And it’s this improper self-love that actually leads to stress in life. That is what the Apostle Paul is telling us in 2 Timothy three.

Now, this word philautos has another special meaning, and it really helps us to understand. The other special meaning of philautos is “to make yourself your highest cause.” This is what ultimately leads to stress. You’ve made of yourself your highest cause, and God has not crafted us this way. God has crafted us in such a way that our highest cause should be outside of ourself. And when we make ourselves our highest cause it does great harm. Never were we meant to live for ourselves.

Now, I’m sure that most of you have heard of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was born in 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1917, she was 12 years old, during the Bolshevik Revolution. And of course, from the very beginning, even when she was 12 and the years immediately following, she rejected the Bolsheviks and the casting down of Tsarist Russia. She hated socialism. She hated communism. She hated Marxism. She hated any form of collectivism, and she was an advocate of capitalism. And of course, today her writings are becoming ever-more popular. In the aftermath of her death and these years that have followed her death, her books such as Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead and Anthem have risen in popularity. And all of her heroes have what she called rational self-interest which is a focus on self and a belief in self.

Now, Ayn Rand left Russia and came to the United States in 1925. She was 20 years old. She came to New York City. She lived there for less than a year. She came to Hollywood. In her second day in Hollywood, she met Cecil B DeMille. And Cecil B DeMille, at that time, was shooting the movie King of Kings: the Story of Christ. It was award-winning. It was highly acclaimed even by non-Christians. And so here’s Ayn Rand, meeting Cecil B DeMille. And Cecil B DeMille says to her, “Hey, why don’t you come out to the film site and I’ll show you around.” So Ayn Rand does that, and Cecil B DeMille gives her a bit part as an extra in the movie and also a reader. It’s kind of ironic. I think it’s safe to say that the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, never had more than a bit part in the life of Ayn Rand.

Of course, that’s because she was an atheist. She was an atheist, and I marvel today. I mean, I understand because we are a nation that has historically affirmed an economic system called capitalism. And I’m an advocate of capitalism and I certainly believe in its merits. But I marvel when I see Christians who are Ayn Rand advocates, and they don’t seem to realize that she was an atheist and that she actually said that the only god worth worshiping is the god called I. She actually said the only god worth worshiping is the god of self. She actually believed that if everybody worshiped themselves, they would be better off and society would be better off. If everyone was self-serving, self-motivated, and worshiped themselves and lived for themselves, it actually would make a better world. And if you’re a Christian, whatever your social, political, and economic persuasion, you cannot agree with Ayn Rand on those things.

Her teachings are contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ. We live in a world where a lot of people… certainly, what she describes is where a lot of people are. I mean, the world over people, people truly worship the god called self. A lot of people live their whole life and breathe every breath serving themselves supremely. They have become their own first cause, their primary and highest cause. And that’s the world we live in. It’s a stressed world, as people are living vacuous lives. And the ultimate cause, our ultimate cause, must be outside of ourselves. God made us this way. That’s why Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God.” You see, the kingdom of God was meant to be our highest cause, not ourselves. That’s why in this passage, 2 Timothy chapter three, we’re told that, “In the last days there will come times of stress. People will be lovers of self rather than lovers of God.” “Philotheos” is what we’re meant to love—lovers of God, not philautos.

If God is our highest cause, there’s a peace and a sense of purpose that comes to our lives that will never come if we live for ourselves. Now, what does it mean to make God your highest cause? If you make God your highest cause, that means you’re becoming an agent of His love. You want to be an agent of His love. If He’s your highest cause every day, you want to be an agent of His love. If God is your highest cause, then every day you want to be an ambassador for His kingdom. If God is your highest cause, then every day you want to be a servant of His church.

Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades, the powers of hell, will not prevail against it.” If God is your highest cause, you will serve His church. If God is your highest cause, you’ll be a herald of His truth. In a world that’s filled with deception and darkness you will be a herald of His truth. If God is your highest cause, you’ll take the gospel to the nations, where He has given to us the Great Commission.

Now, all these things will be true of us if God is our highest cause. In the midst of that, I’m not saying there won’t be stress, but there’s going to be a sense of purpose and there’s going to be an underlying peace.

This last week, on Thursday afternoon Barb and I had lunch with some elders, and then Barb and I went up to north Arvada too visit Fritzy Oaks. Fritzy Oaks is a member of our church and an old friend of mine and Barbs, and we’ve known Fritzy for 38 years. And Fritzy is dying. She was told she has three months to live, and she was told that one month ago. So we went up to see her at her son’s house. She’s staying with her son Ron and Ron’s wife, Julie. And I remember Ron as he was growing up. I helped him with his Eagle Scout program.

Fritzy’s husband, Omer Oaks, was one of my best friends. When I served at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora, Omer Oaks was an elder there. He was the chairman of the Christian Ed committee, and when I was hired to be Christian education director over there, Omer was kind of my boss, both as an elder and as chairman of the Christian Ed committee, and we became great friends. Omer and I met for lunch every month. Omer was a chronic smoker. I mean, he just loved Jesus Christ. He was an awesome and a great guy and a great friend. But he was a chronic smoker, and just struggled with that. And every time I meet him for lunch, he’d have a cigarette in his mouth. But then I’d sometimes see him with another cigarette in his hand. I’d say, Omer, you’ve already got one burning there in your mouth. You’ve already lit this other one in your hand? He’d say, oh yeah, this one’s almost gone. I mean, he smoked many packs a day.

For Omer it was hard. He died of lung cancer 17 years ago. I did his funeral, and it was so hard to see Omer struggle to breathe and struggle to get a breath. He was such a great guy. We’d meet and we’d laugh so hard. He just had a great sense of humor. And when he laughed, he just seemed to laugh from his soul, you know? And he had season tickets to Broncos games, and we’d talk Broncos and all kinds of stuff. But mostly we’d talk about Jesus. Omer loved Jesus, and he’s with Jesus right now.

And Fritzy loves Jesus. I mean, Fritzy was the office manager for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the state of Colorado. She’s been office manager for FCA for so long. People just think of F CA and think of Fritzy. She’s also been office manager for Kingdom Builders. Fritzy Oaks loves Jesus Christ, and when we went to visit her… I mean, she had been so shocked. She didn’t even know she had a problem. She felt fine. She was losing weight. And so she went to the doctor just because she was losing weight, and then when she got this report back that she had cancer all through her body and she had three months to live. She was just stunned. But I tell you, the joy that she has… I mean, as Barb and I sat there with Fritzy and we just talked in the afternoon, she’s so excited about going to heaven. She’s so excited about seeing Jesus. She’s so excited about seeing Omer. She she still loves him and greatly misses him. She’s so excited about heaven and all that she’s going to experience there. And every day she now views as a gift. And she’s just enjoying each day in Christ. And there’s a peace and a joy that, I’m telling you, the world can’t understand.

This world that’s so stressed out cannot possibly understand. I hope you understand, I’m not saying there’s not stress. I know there’s stress. And if you make God your highest cause, your highest love, if you make His kingdom your highest love, you’ll still have stress. But it’ll be different. I mean, was the Apostle Paul stressed? What do you think? There isn’t any doubt he was stressed. You look at 2 Corinthians chapter 11, and it’s that famous passage where Paul described his life as an apostle. And what does Paul say? “Is anyone a servant of Jesus Christ? Well, I serve Him more, though I’m speaking like a fool. But I’ve had far greater labors, with far more imprisonments, with countless beatings and often near death, five times I received at the hand of the Jews, the 40 lashes less one.”

That means that five times Paul received the 39 lashes. The 39 lashes were given by Jewish authorities to those who are deemed apostates with regard to Judaism. And so, because Paul had become a Christian and a follower of Jesus Christ, the Jewish authorities had judged him to be an apostate. Five times they dragged him into synagogues and gave him the 39 lashes. They stripped the shirt off him and gave 26 lashes on the back and 13 lashes on the front. Some barely survived. Five times Paul received that.

“Five times I received the 40 lashes less one, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, near to death. Three times I was shipwrecked, a day and a night adrift at sea. I was on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, from robbers, from the gentiles, from my own people, from false brethren; in danger in the city, in the wilderness, at sea; in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night; and in hunger and thirst, oftentimes without food, and in cold and exposure.

“And in addition to all of this, I have the daily pressures of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak and I don’t feel their weakness? Who is made to fall and I am not enraged?” Was he stressed? Oh yeah, he was stressed. But I’ll tell you, you can’t go through his epistles and deny this: in the midst of the stress is an amazing joy and an amazing hope and a peace. That’s why Paul wrote to the Philippians and he said, “Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance, for the Lord is at hand. He is nearby. And have no anxiety about anything, but in everything with prayer and supplication and with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God that passes is all understanding will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

At the end of his life, he was able to say, “I fought a good fight. I kept the faith. I finished the race. And henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the only righteous Judge, will give to me on that day, and not to me only, but to all who have loved His appearing.” So Paul had this sense of purpose, and he had made God his cause. And it affects the kind of stress that you have in this life.

Well, there’s a second word I wanted to take a brief look at this morning, and the second word is another love word that’s a warning word, and it’s “philarguros.” So in this passage, Paul says, in 2 Timothy three, “Understand this: in the last days, there will come times of stress, for people will be lovers of self, and they will be lovers of money.” Philautos and philarguros.

Has the thought ever occurred to you that the love of money might bring stress? Does that register at all? Have any of you thought or reflected about the possibility that materialism might actually be stressful and produce massive stress in life? In the last days people will be lovers of self and lovers of money rather than lovers of God. So the pursuit of money becomes this high cause. And of course, I know that you’ve all heard of Karl Marx. He looks a lot like Santa Claus, and he wanted to be Santa Claus to the proletariat, to the working class. And of course, he was a sociologist and an economist. His writings, his thought, his philosophy really became foundational in the development of socialism and communism.

And of course, his ideas are referred to as Marxism. And he wrote Das Capital, which took him 30 years to write that. And he wrote the Communist Manifesto, along with Engels. And throughout most of his life, Karl Marx had few friends and he had fewer friends as time went by. He just had the gift of alienating people. The one friend he held onto was Engels. In fact, Engels supported Karl Marx through much of his life, because Marx rarely had a job and rarely had an income, although he had a brilliant mind.

Now, Karl Marx was a Jew by blood, and of course his father before him was a Jew by blood. His father would take the family, as Karl was growing up, to the synagogue every Sabbath. They never missed. They honored every feast and festival within Judaism. They honored all the holy days. And yet Karl knew that his dad was an atheist. He knew that his dad, incredibly, had memorized the entire works of Voltaire, who himself was an atheist. So Karl Marx knew his dad didn’t believe, but his dad had said, “This is a Jewish community. We live in Prussia in a large Jewish community. I’m a lawyer. I’m an attorney at law. I can’t make money, I can’t be a success, I can’t have a successful practice unless I honor the Jewish faith, because I’m in a community of Jews. So we go to the synagogue every Sabbath. We honor the holy days. We do what’s necessary in order to prosper my business.”

The time came when Karl’s dad moved to a different part of Germany to a different city, and he said to the family, “There’s not a substantial Jewish community here anymore. We live now in an area that’s entirely Lutheran. These people are Christians and they’re Protestants, and we are now converting to Lutheranism.” Karl Marx and his family that were stunned. But they understood, because for his dad it was all about making money and being a success as a lawyer. Whatever he had to do to further his moneymaking capacity, he did.

Now, is it any surprise that Karl Marx would reach the point in his adult life when he would call religion the “opiate of the masses?” I mean, he would view religion as something just to be used to further your own cause, something to be used to pacify people around you. And of course, is it any surprise that Karl Marx would view money as the driver in society and in this class war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat? At the root of it is money.

I think the love of money is pandemic on the earth. It just fills every culture. It doesn’t matter what your economic system is. You find greed in socialism. Don’t think you don’t. Most socialistic nations and socialistic governments develop totalitarian regimes and there’s great economic polarity. And those totalitarian regimes are oppressors of the people. They hoard, in their greed, great wealth. At least in capitalism, you have reason to not be slothful. At least in capitalism, there’s opportunity and incentive. And remember, sloth is a deadly sin, as identified by the early church. It’s a root sin which leads to other sins. So you need to be concerned about sloth and greed. But because the human race has fallen, every economic system gets corrupted. Because the human race has fallen.

This love of money is everywhere. And of course, in 1 Timothy 6:6-10 we have this warning from Paul: “There is great gain in godliness with contentment. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge man into ruin and destruction. The love of money is the root of all evil. It is through this craving that many have wandered away from the faith and pierced their heart with many pangs.”

I think the word “pang” is not used by most of us, right? You probably can’t remember the last time you used the word pang, but in the Greek, it’s “odune.” And odune literally means “distress in the mind”—distress of the body or distress of the mind. So the love of money is going to distress your body and your mind. That’s how that passage ends. And it will “plunge you into ruin and destruction.” And this word plunge is the word “buthizo,” which means to be buried under an avalanche or to drown in the depths of the sea. It means to suffocate. It will suffocate you in ruin and destruction.

Those words, ruin and destruction, odune and buthizo, are hell words. Those words are normally used in the Bible to describe hell. So Paul is saying, “Hey, if you give your life over to money and to materialism, you’ll find yourself in hell.” It’ll plunge you into hell and to ruin and destruction. And so it’s a powerful warning in this passage.

Of course, materialism leads to a life that’s just consumed by bills and stress and worry over money, income, and debt. Materialism leads to envy. Materialism leads to so many problems. And the problem isn’t making money. God’s not against you making money. God doesn’t mind if you make a lot of money. The issue is, what are you gonna do with it? And if your love is primarily love of God—if you love God more than you love self and more than you love materialism—your needs are gonna be relatively simple and you’re gonna have money to support the cause of heaven.

That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing this month. That’s why as a congregation we’ve challenged ourselves to tithe to Cherry Hills Community Church this month. I hope you’re being faithful. We wanna see what God is gonna do in your life if you tithe to the church in the month of November, and what He’s gonna do in the life of the church and in this ministry. We want to see what blessings He’ll bring if we’re faithful. But it’s really a test of our love and whether we’re loving the right things and whether our supreme love is for God and for His kingdom. This is one great challenge in this culture and time.

Well, as we close, I know most of you have heard of Howard Hughes. He was kind of a dapper looking guy. Does he look like Leonardo DiCaprio? I don’t think so. But Leonardo DiCaprio played in the role of Howard Hughes in a recent movie. I think Leonardo DiCaprio likes to play the part of guys that are really talented but kind of strange. And that was certainly true of Howard Hughes. He was a very, very strange man. He had it all. Howard Hughes had everything the world says is important, and he loved all the wrong things—money, sex, and power. And of course, he was the head of the Hughes Tool Company, which provided almost all of the tools in the machinery for the oil industry. He made mega millions through that.

He was also an aviator. He set world records in aviation, founded Hughes Aviation, and was the head of Trans World Airlines. And of course, RKO was the motion picture company that produced most of the movies in Hollywood in those days. And in fact, it seemed like in those days any movie you saw you’d see the letters RKO come up. Howard Hughes seemed like he owned everything, and he was a serial womanizer, living a life of total promiscuity. So, money, sex, and power were was all his. Beautiful women—they were his. And you know, he had philarguros. He had the love of money. He had “philedone,” the love of pleasure. In this passage, it also mentions philedone as one of the bad loves. “People will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” And there’s nothing wrong with pleasure. God has given us a capacity for pleasure. But when you live for pleasure, when you live for sex and alcohol and drugs and food, even the culinary world, if that’s what you’re living for—you know, sports and entertainment, even relaxation—these things were never meant to be the purpose of life. It becomes ultimately vacuous. That’s why we need to give ourselves to the love of God and to the kingdom of God.

Howard Hughes, in his latter days, I think saw that it was all vacuous. I think Howard Hughes saw that it was all meaningless, and I think he just gave up the last 20 years of his life. He just disappeared. For 20 years he holed up in a hotel room in Las Vegas. He actually took the entire floor and just hid there for the last 20 years of his life. It was just weird. He just bailed. Everything was vacuous anyway. So he just laid there in his room, served by Mormons. He was not a Mormon, but he knew that Mormons didn’t smoke and Mormons lived kind of clean lives, and he had this fetish about disease. And he thought maybe Mormons had cleaner hands, although those who served him he forced to wear gloves. Nobody could touch anything that wasn’t wearing a glove.

He mostly just laid down. He let his fingernails and his toenails grow for year after year after year after year until he looked like a raptor. He just became emaciated and he urinated in bottles. And when they found him in his room after his death, there was just bottle after bottle just lined up along the wall, filled with his urine. And he ate nothing but ice cream (perhaps the only good decision of his life). But there was only one brand of ice cream and one type—it was Baskin Robbins ice cream—and there was one flavor that he ate, and that’s all that he ate. Baskin Robbins discontinued it, but he got them to make vats of it and paid for it just for himself. So he ate that, laid there, watching his nails grow, urinating in bottles, watching a movie called Ice Station Zebra scores and scores and scores of times, that movie that starred Rock Hudson. It was a good movie, but not that good.

It’s just amazing because, what was life about? It’s all vacuous. I hope that when you leave here today, you might just ask the question, am I loving the wrong things? Have I made myself my highest cause? Do I love myself more than God? Have I become a materialistic guy or materialistic gal? Is the love of money greater than my love of God? And do I love pleasure more than I love God? And you might just ask yourself the question, what if I gave God first place? What if I made the decision to live for His kingdom, whatever my career field? What if I chose to serve God there? What would that look like? How would that change me? What if I decided to seek first His kingdom and see if it didn’t give me peace and purpose in the midst of all the stress and craziness of life?

I think maybe the upside of all these stresses are that they’ll cause us to ask that question. I mean, maybe you’re under such stress that it makes you think, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I need to love God—“philatheos.” Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.