The Miser of Marseilles

There was a man by the name of Gouzon who lived in the south of France in the town of Marseille during the 19th century. He was a peculiar person who kept to himself as he worked long hours at his trade. The local townspeople made fun of him because they knew he was a successful merchant but who chose to live like a poor beggar.

Gouzon went out in public, dressed in well-worn, outdated clothes and his shoes had holes in them. He had a reputation for being a miser. The teenagers would laugh at him in the public square and shout, there goes old skinflint.

But Gouzon always continued on his way, paying no attention to the abuse directed at him. Finally, bent over from age and overwork and his long white hair falling upon his shoulders, the miser Marseille died. The executors of his estate discovered he had amassed a fortune in gold and silver.

Among his papers was his will, with the following paragraph. I was once poor, and I observed that the people of Marseille suffered hardships from the lack of pure water. Having no family, I have devoted my life to the saving of a sum of money sufficient to build an aqueduct to supply the poor of the city of Marseille with pure water so the poorest will have a full supply.

In the years between 1837 and 1848 a canal nearly a hundred miles long was constructed to bring water from the Durrance River to Marseille. I love that story, friends, because it demonstrates how one man can make a difference to an entire community for good, but also believe that the miser of Marseille puts many of us Christians to shame for a lack of giving to the cause of Christ and living for him and the sake of souls for eternity. If this man Gouzon cared so deeply for the people of his community that he went without creature comforts to give them a tremendous gift of clean water and a legacy from a humanitarian standpoint, how much more should we deny ourselves and spend ourselves for the sake of the gospel and for the souls of men? I believe the trouble with many of us is that we are misers in our own right, but misers for the wrong reasons.

We want our stocks and bonds and mutual funds and gold to grow and grow so our net worth becomes larger so we can have a bigger nest egg for retirement to play more golf or to travel more and enjoy ourselves more and to leave a legacy not for the good of our neighbors but just for our family. We seem to find plenty of time to do things we enjoy, but we are misers of our time, not willing to begrudge ourselves more than ten minutes a day in incessant prayer for souls who perish into a burning hell. We are misers with our witness and our community in that we hoard Jesus all to ourselves and refuse to share him with a stranger.

People all around us are in need of Jesus, and we, like misers, keep him to ourselves. There are believers in China who can't get a Bible, but we've got stacks of Bibles sitting in our homes that we don't even use. I believe God will honor the follower of his who is willing to venture all on Christ and the spread of the gospel.

It's often the nobodies for Jesus who do the most for him without drawing attention to themselves by living a life of prayer and faith and doing all the good they can for Christ while they are still in this world. Listen, friends, life is short. We only have so much time allotted to us to do good for Christ and our fellow man.

How can we indulge ourselves and lounge in our comforts like the rich man in Luke's gospel and ignore the Lazarus in need at our gate? Does it matter more that our investment portfolio had a ten percent return for our personal gain or that we took those resources and put them to work in evangelism to spread the gospel to the spiritually hungry and receive a thousand percent return in eternity? An old Frenchman spent his life so his neighbors could enjoy clean water. How much more is the benefit of giving the living water of Christ Jesus to thirsty souls? Jesus said, I am come, that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. Let us pray.