More Than a Meal Ticket

By the late 1800s, Americans were using an unusual expression to describe their work. People began calling their jobs their “meal tickets.”

“My arm is my meal ticket,” the construction worker would brag. “My voice is my meal ticket,” the singer could claim. “My smooth talk is my meal ticket,” the politician could boast.

A “meal ticket” is an interesting way to describe your job, because it means you’re not really doing your job because it’s your job. You’re doing it to put food on the table, to put money in your bank account, and to create the ability to live comfortably—to enjoy your weekend and someday make it to retirement. Your job is a means to an end. It’s something you do so you can eventually do what you really want to do.

But that kind of living is exhausting.

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More Than a Book on the Shelf

This past Sunday at Zion, we celebrated the 509th anniversary of the Reformation, a period in church history ignited by a young Augustinian monk named Martin Luther when, on October 31, 1517, he posted 95 theses on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, protesting what he saw as corruption in the Church of his day.

At the heart of Luther’s complaint was the Church’s sale of indulgences. Indulgences were certificates you could purchase that promised to reduce the divine punishment due for your overindulgences—your sin. You could also buy them for loved ones who had died, if you feared they might be stuck working off their peccadilloes in purgatory for a little too long before finally making it to heaven.

Luther saw this practice as flatly unscriptural, and he waged an unflagging campaign to teach people Scripture so they wouldn’t fall for what he saw as a grift. With his characteristically sharp tone, he argued for the importance of studiously studying the Bible:

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Giving Away What Was Never Ours

When King David launches a capital campaign to raise funds for a new temple, the haul is enormous. David himself makes the lead gift:

“In my devotion to the temple of my God I now give my personal treasures of gold and silver for the temple of my God, over and above everything I have provided for this holy temple: three thousand talents of gold (gold of Ophir) and seven thousand talents of refined silver, for the overlaying of the walls of the buildings, for the gold work and the silver work, and for all the work to be done by the craftsmen. Now, who is willing to consecrate themselves to the LORD today?”

Then the leaders of families, the officers of the tribes of Israel, the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, and the officials in charge of the king’s work gave willingly. They gave toward the work on the temple of God five thousand talents and ten thousand darics of gold, ten thousand talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of bronze and a hundred thousand talents of iron. (1 Chronicles 29:3–7)

As I explained in my message on Sunday, using today’s metal prices, David gives and collects nearly $40 billion—and this is for a temple he will not even build! God has already told David that his son Solomon will be the one to build the temple:

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A New Heart for an Old Temptation

This past weekend at Zion, we continued our message series Keeping Score, where we’ve been exploring some of the different ways we keep score in life. And we do keep score—all the time.

We tally what he said. We track what she did. We log our own guilt, calculate what we’re owed, and obsess over the hidden ledgers of our lives.

Keeping score might offer a brief sense of control, but it’s a rigged game where everyone eventually loses—even the person on top.

So, what if we stopped all that? What if we kept score no more?

In Sunday’s message, we confronted one of humanity’s most destructive scorekeeping struggles: lust.

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When the Score Says God Let You Down

This weekend at Zion, we continued our series Keeping Score, where we’ve been looking at some of the scores we’re keeping that we ought to be canceling.

We tally our superiority over others. We fixate on the slight someone committed against us. We keep a meticulous account of everything we’ve done for someone—and how they haven’t bothered to return nearly all of our fabulous favors.

Then there’s the score we talked about this weekend: the score we keep against God.

We count the prayers we’ve prayed, the weekends we’ve dragged our family to church, and the dollars we’ve dropped into the offering plate. We tally every fragment of faithfulness we can find. Then we set that total against what God has—or hasn’t—done for us. And before long, we’ve convinced ourselves that God’s account with us is overdrawn.

But what if we wiped our scoreboard against God clean? What if we kept score no more?

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