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Chapter 1 A Consecrated Life - Far Eastern Bible College

Chapter 1 A Consecrated Life - Far Eastern Bible College

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three generations. All the wealth that one generation accumulates is<br />

often dissipated in the generations that follow through bad investments,<br />

misfortune, disasters, wars, sicknesses, a decadent lifestyle, and<br />

extravagant spending.<br />

So let us not be foolish but wise. Since it is certain that you can<br />

carry nothing out of this world with you, and that whatever you have to<br />

leave behind will not last for very long, please do not waste your<br />

precious life just accumulating all kinds of wealth and material assets.<br />

The world around you, your closest friends and neighbours around you<br />

may all be rushing madly after all these things, but you don’t have to<br />

follow them. You don’t have to keep up with them. Never mind if you<br />

find yourself being left behind. It’s a futile pursuit anyway. As God’s<br />

Word in the book of Ecclesiastes says, it is “all . . . vanity and vexation<br />

of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”<br />

There are better things for you to pursue. Things that deserve your<br />

time and trouble, things that will last for ever and ever, things that will<br />

make you rich toward God, things that will lay up “treasures in heaven,<br />

where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not<br />

break through nor steal” (Matt 6:20). Make up your mind today to<br />

pursue the riches that are of infinite worth, riches that are worth far<br />

more than all the riches this world can offer to you.<br />

In all human history, there was never anyone who had to make a<br />

more difficult and decisive choice of this nature, than Moses:<br />

By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be<br />

called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to suffer<br />

affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures<br />

of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater<br />

riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the<br />

recompence of the reward (Heb 11:24–26).<br />

What is so striking about this passage is the fact that Moses<br />

attached greater value to the reproach of Christ, to being a servant of<br />

God, than to becoming probably the next king of Egypt.<br />

From what we know about Egypt in the time of Moses, it was the<br />

world’s richest and strongest nation at that time. It was very powerful<br />

Worldly Temptations<br />

59

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