We're going through a sermon series and a Sermon on the Mount
series of Matthew chapter 5-6 and seven.
And as we've been going through this passage, we can mentally
picture how this progressed. We began with some teachings of
Jesus on who are the blessed? Blessed are the poor, blessed
are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, and so on.
And blessed are you when you face challenges.
Then from there Jesus went on to teach on the significance and
purpose of God's law and how God views what He says compared to
how people view what God said. Then we learned that these
explain to the people that keeping the law but not having
the spirit of the law was not enough.
God wanted a hard change, not just outward performance.
And Jesus explained that showy performance style worship is not
what God is after. And so Jesus taught that just
making sure people are not getting killed by us, but we're
still angry at them, that puts us in the in the murder category
or just not doing physical adultery, but lusting is already
putting people in the adultery category.
But then Jesus switched it up from the law against doing wrong
things, not doing wrong things. He said that's good, you
shouldn't do wrong things. But then not doing wrong things,
that in itself was also not good enough.
You know how many people evaluate their lives, but how
bad they not are? They evaluate themselves by the
list of bad things they don't do.
And so how are you good? Well, I don't do this and this
and this. I must be good.
That's not what God uses as the standard.
Then we learned that giving to the poor, as good as that is,
the left hand should not know what the right hand is doing.
When we pray, we should not pray with self focus or pride.
When we fast, we should not do it for a show.
Now today we see another shift. Jesus switches it up.
This time He talks about the earthly material and physical
part of life. And we might think, why would he
do that? What does the physical have to
do with the spiritual? I remember many years ago,
before the days of technology and digital stuff, people
carried checkbooks. They would go to the grocery
store and pay for the groceries with a checkbook, write a check,
and they would carry these little booklets.
And I used to do it for years too, with a little day planner,
open it and OK, my day on this day is empty, My day on that day
is empty or no, I'm busy and so on.
I remember an old preacher one time said he said this.
He said buy your checkbook and by your day planner.
I can in a very short time tell where your heart is.
And I think that is true. But let's just think about that
for a second. Imagine that if all my minutes
of every day and my dollars that I receive and spend, if that was
on a PowerPoint projector on the Billboard summer for everybody
to see, would I be comfortable with that?
I was. Maybe I got some changes to
make. And this whole area of money and
time is very sensitive. People are reluctant to talk
about it. We keep that private.
And yet Jesus does not shy away from it.
How we spend our time and our money is of interest to him.
And it's not new. It was back then and it's today.
And someone might be going through the Sermon on the Mount,
reading Matthews 5-6 and seven and thinking, is there nothing
off limits for him? Does he have to say something
about everything? Yes, he does.
He has something to say about everything.
And in this passage I want to just say that whether you are
rich or poor, we are all in the same boat.
We all need mercy and grace from God in our lives to live our
lives, to honor God. Whether we have little money, no
money, or lots of money, it doesn't matter.
That doesn't change anything. We're all in the same boat.
All of us need Jesus. All of us need mercy and grace,
but Jesus does have a lot to say to both rich and to poor in this
passage. And in the end, it's about
trusting Him. And again, if you're poor and
not wealthy, just keep on being faithful.
Keep trusting him to meet your needs.
If you're rich, don't look at your money as a source of
security, because it's not. It can be gone in an instant.
And for everyone, rich or poor, beware of covetousness.
It's a serious problem in the church as well as in the world.
The reality is that as much as we do need material things and
we can't live without them, and they are a blessing, but if we
make them our security, our anchor, that is dangerous.
So let's turn our thoughts to Matthew chapter 6, verse 19.
I'll read that out of the Bible, and I want you to follow along
in your Scripture. Matthew chapter 6, verse 19 to
34 to the end of the chapter. Do not lay up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves
break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys,
and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good,
your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of
darkness. If therefore the light that's in
you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
No one can serve 2 masters, for either he will hate the one and
love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise
the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon.
Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you
will eat or what you will drink about your body, what you will
put on. Is not life more than food, and
the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air,
for they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet your
heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than
they? Which of you, by worrying, can
add 1 cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about
clothing? Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin.
And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass
of the field, which today isn't tomorrow's thrown to the oven,
will he not much more clothe you?
O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying,
What shall we eat, what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?
For after all these things the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly
Father knows that you need all these things, but seek first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these
things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Let's look at a few definitions here before we unpack this
passage. What is poverty?
The status of people that do not have or do not earn enough money
for the basic necessities of life.
That excludes most of us. There are some here who would
say, you know what? I don't have what I need.
Granted, that may be true, but for the most of us, we have our
fridges full, our fridge is full, we need to empty it, or
our closets are full. Have a nice house or what's
wealth? An abundance of valuable
resources such as money or property or other assets that
can be used to meet one's needs and desires.
So there's the basics. I've sometimes said in the past
that something does not need to be sin to be dangerous.
Something does not have to be sin to be dangerous.
Material wealth just is, but it has an attraction and it's
dangerous. Verse 19.
I hope you keep your Bibles open.
Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth.
Were moth and rust destroyed? Were thieves breaking in steel.
Beware of the dangers of wealth. Who was he talking to?
Notice Jesus says this to the whole audience.
There's no exceptions here. No exceptions.
Jesus speaking to the rich and to the poor.
He's not saying to the rich, hey, you rich guy, stop laying
up treasures on earth or you poor people don't try to be like
the rich people. He's not saying that.
He's saying don't lay up treasures on earth to all
people. Whether it's a dollar, a $10, a
million or 10 million is not the question.
Whether it's a small host, a big host, how much stuff you have or
wish you had, it's a matter of the heart and what the heart is
attached to. Laying up treasure on earth does
not depend on the size of the bank account or the business or
the paycheck. Laying up treasure on earth is
any temporal, material, physical thing or position or status in
life that we put more trust in and depend on more than in
Christ. The object, the position, the
status. That itself may not be sin,
money, stuff or whatever, but our dependence on it that is.
And for some people these actually did tell them get rid
of it what you have, because for you you're better off without
it. Does wealth ruin people?
It does ruin many people. Many people seem to have fairly
decent lives and stable until they attain wealth and it
corrupts them. And then when the economic crash
crash happens for those people, they lose what they trusted in.
They sometimes think what's the end of the world?
Lives fall apart. But in reality, an economic
crash is sometimes healthy. It's a wake up call, even
liberates them. If we depend on and trust in our
material wealth, it can rob us of our peace, steal our joy,
erodes our trust in God and eventually lures us away from
Him. What's the problem with earthly
treasure? Again, the treasure is not the
question. I mean, the stuff is not the
question. We need stuff to live, but it's
temporary. It won't last.
Trusting in and wanting stuff was a problem in Jesus day.
But you know something? It's a far bigger problem in our
day than it was then because we have so much more access to
everything. There were some very rich people
in Jesus Day reading the story of Mark.
Won't go there this morning. Mark 19, we're 16 to 26.
There's a rich young ruler. Imagine a rich young and a ruler
doesn't get better than that in Jewish society.
That's it. You're at the top, comes to
Jesus, wants to know what must I do to have eternal life long.
But do the commandments say love your father and mother And on it
goes. I've done all that.
Jesus, you lack something. You lack one thing.
Go sell your stuff. Give money to the poor.
Then come follow me and you'll have treasures in heaven.
The man turns, walks away because his trust, his
attachment to his money was too strong.
It controlled him. That hasn't changed.
Friends. If we look around the world
today, the trust and wealth today is as big as it's ever
been. But again, I want to tell us
it's not the amount of money or the size of the income, it's the
relationship we have with it. Jesus told his audience in verse
19, they were not to store up stuff on earth that could be
taken away or could lose value or be stolen, eaten by moths and
rust and so on. But he says, he says in verse
20, but lay up for yourselves treasured in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in
and steal, for where your treasure is there your heart
will be also. Our threat today is not so much
rust. We have stainless steel.
We have protection from rust and not a ME.
I don't think most people have moths in their closets today.
Back in those days was an issue, but this, the principles remain.
We have way more ways to get robbed than they did.
Somebody would physically break into their house, get into their
closet or whatever they had, take the gold, the silver and
then and take off. Today we have digital wealth.
Think about it. Bitcoin, I know next to nothing
about it except that it's some form of computer code on some
computer and you you can sell and buy Bitcoin and it's very
volatile and some people have lost Bitcoin, lost money huge.
Some have, Some have made money, some have some wish they had
made money and it can even be robbed.
Then people have investments, mutual funds, RSPS and so on.
A lot of wealth is digital, and people can get robbed if they
give away their passwords and whatnot.
All kinds of things can happen, scams and whatnot.
I'm not saying digital wealth is sin, don't get me wrong.
It's just is. But is there confidence in it?
Is that where we hang our trust in?
What's our motive for having it to begin with?
How do we lay up treasures in heaven?
Again, it's not the amount, it's not the earthly value, it's the
heart. Remember the story of the poor
widow in the temple? There was a lot of people coming
in and they were just taking their big pouches of coins and
silver and gold and just dumping it into the treasury box in the
temple. Here comes this poor widow.
You can imagine the story. Old widow has 2 copper coins,
clunk, clunk puts them in there. Jesus watches.
He says that Lady right there, she put in more than everybody
else. Imagine the cash, right?
Not the cap, but the the spreadsheets in heaven going up.
She's wealthy, Jesus says she's wealthy.
Jesus saying here, laying up treasure in heaven is using the
temporal, temporary earthly things for Kingdom purposes.
That's an internal investment, eternal investment.
And this does not now mean that we, when we earn money, we can't
buy good things. I don't want to sound that way.
Jesus is not condemning the purchase of nice things, but
what's our purpose? What's our goal?
That's the question. I read a store of a young boy
one time. He had some coins in his hand
and he was hungry for an ice cream.
Went to the local ice cream store and walked inside and the
lady behind the counter says what can I do for you?
He says well I like to buy that ice cream.
Pointed to ice cream he wanted and she proceeded to prepare the
ice cream and finished. It wasn't cheap ice cream wasn't
one of the lower lower priced ice creams was not nearly the
expensive ones. She gave it to him.
He went and sat down and enjoyed his ice cream.
When he was done, he put a few coins on the table and getting
ready to leave and she said, hey, you could have you have
some money love, why did you not buy a different ice cream?
He says to her, then I wouldn't have had it.
I would not have had enough for a tip.
You see friends, this boy got it right.
The principle was the same whether $1,000,000 or $0.75.
The store sold ice cream. He was hungry for one.
Nothing wrong with that. He wanted to buy 1.
Nothing wrong with that. But he thought of her.
This the the lady behind the counter.
He thought of her. He was free to enjoy an ice
cream, but in so doing he was mindful of the person who was
serving him. He wanted to leave a tip for
this woman, this young man's view.
He had a Kingdom approach to wealth.
He had a Kingdom value mindset. You would say, well, that's not
even a dollar, it doesn't matter.
It's the heart. It works like this when for the
sake of the Gospel, we do with less than we need for the
benefit and blessings of others. That is storing up treasure in
heaven. That is a Kingdom view of
wealth. Let's ask ourselves, how are we
doing? Are we storing up treasures in
heaven? How's our account?
How's our treasure account in heaven?
How is our treasure account in heaven?
Selfish living is storing up treasures on earth which we will
lose. Sacrificial generous living is
storing up treasures in heaven. There's a story in Luke and I
want to just read this story, Luke 1213.
You can read it on the PowerPoint here.
Then one from the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to
divide the inheritance with me. But he said to man, who made me
a judge or an arbitrator over you.
And he said to him, Take heed and beware of covetousness, for
life's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he
possesses. Then he spoke a parable to them,
saying, the ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully.
And he thought within himself, What shall I do, since I have no
room to store my crops? So he said, I will do this.
I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will
store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul,
you have many goods laid up for many years.
Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.
But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul will be required
of you. Then whose will those things be
which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure
for himself, and is not rich toward God.
You know what's so striking about this story?
He was an honest man. He was a taxpayer.
He hadn't cheated anybody. He was a good man in today's
standards. He wasn't wanting what wasn't
his. The story of the parable and the
man who came to Jesus saying to tell my brother to divide the
inheritance with me. That man too only wondered
what's his. He didn't want what somebody
else's His brother was wrong. His brother should divide the
inheritance. That was law.
Jesus, you got a problem, man. Sure, you, you deserve that
inheritance, but that's not your issue.
You have a heart issue. And you know what?
If Jesus had helped this man, fought with his brother to get
the inheritance, the man would have felt satisfied, but he
would have been entrenched in this me focused attitude.
That's why Jesus told the parable about this rich farmer.
I, me, I me my. We know why Jesus didn't help
him. He could have helped him and
would have cemented in and solidified this covetous craving
for wealth. He had a right to it, but it was
unhealthy. It was wrong for him to pursue
because of his motives. That's why Jesus spoke the way
he did and told him the story of the rich successful farmer.
The truth is this. When material wealth is what
people strive for and work for most and and work for the
hardest, it can trap them. The man in the parable worked
for his wealth. It was on the stand, not stolen,
not unfair. He was a good farmer, but he was
anchored to it. And when that thing goes down
and we're anchored to it, it takes us down with it.
Whenever we find ourselves becoming drawn in and blinded by
the desires and things of this world, we have a we have a need
to undergo cleansing. So what is the answer?
How do we how do we navigate this?
Well, this has a response that's read verse 22.
The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good,
your whole body will be full of light.
If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that's in you is darkness, how great is
that darkness? No one can serve 2 masters, for
either he will hate the one, love the other, or else he'll be
loyal to the one, despise the other.
You cannot serve God in mammon. First and foremost, we need
vision, we need sight, we need light so we have a right view of
wealth. Jesus says the lamp of the body
is the eye. He's not talking about our
physical eye, He's talking about the focus of the heart, the
spiritual eye. This is a very simple concept,
but it takes a lot of discipline and practice.
It's easy to become distracted and derailed.
The desires of our heart will be revealed by what we focus on.
So what is our focus? I read of a man who made it rich
in the early years of oil discovery back in the 1800s.
The man's name is John D Rockefeller, and some of you
heard of him. He became very rich.
He accumulated a lot of wealth in his time.
He became a billionaire in his day and it was a lot of money.
One source I read mentioned that in those days an hourly wage was
maybe $0.20 an hour. You do the math or a family
might live on $8 a week and he had a billion.
That means 1000 million dollars. Very rich.
One man asked him one day and says how much money does a man
need? He said just a little bit more.
I dare say that we would be very hard pressed here to not have
people say, you know what? I want less money.
Most of us would say, yeah, I could use a little bit more.
I work a little more. I'm not judging that.
But why? The story goes that he gained so
much control over the oil industry, The Supreme Court
stepped in and kind of split the monopoly, so to speak.
And but he was very, very rich. He began to have health
problems, came to a point where the doctors were saying he was
going to die soon. It's said that at one point he
was so I'll he could tolerate only a diet of soup and crackers
of a very strained, intense life.
He continued to go down during those critical days.
It was believed it was one of his was going to die soon was
the last day, so to speak. He shifted his focus away from
the business then, focusing on what he could do with his
wealth. He started building institutions
and giving his money away to good causes and so on.
And surprisingly, his health became better and better and
improved, and he lived on and on.
And at age 97, he died. The doctors predicted he
wouldn't live long, but he did. He said what had happened.
His eye had become light, no longer darkness.
I want to say here that even though he was so very rich, this
does not hinge on the dollar amount, but how he viewed what
he had. Wealth is dangerous, and for
those who do not well, have wealth but desire it, that's
dangerous too. Again, the question is not the
size or the amount for the rich, it is having it.
For the poor, it's wanting it. At the end of the day, it's a
heart issue because the eye is dark.
Whether it's the poor man coveting it, the rich man
hoarding it, it's both the same problem.
Universe 22 The lamp of the body is the eye.
If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of
light. If your eye is bad, your whole
body will be full of darkness. If therefore, the light that's
in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
To have our focus in this life on the things of this life only.
And that's where it's at. It's going to take us down.
Many people live their whole life struggling, striving,
pushing for what this life has to offer and that's it.
They don't concern the other side what's coming after this
life. You see, we have such a short
window of time here and when it's up, it's up.
There's no rewinding, no resetting, no do over.
Jesus says clearly no one can serve 2 masters.
Either he will hate the one, love the other, or else he'll be
loyal to the one, despise the other.
You cannot serve God and Mammon. We will serve one, but not both.
We need to be honest with ourselves.
Who are we going to worship? Who are we worshipping?
Our lives tell the tale people who serve material or earthly
things and they set their hearts on that.
They will be disappointed in the end.
It does not make life better, it makes it worse.
Then Jesus goes on, he says in verse 25, He says, therefore I
say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or
what you will drink or about your body.
What you'll put on is not life more than food in the body, more
than clothing. Look at the words of the air.
They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns that your
heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than
they? Such simple common sense, right?
But you don't know my story and you don't.
He does. So Jesus says do not worry.
We're commanded to trust God with our lives and not just part
of our lives. He wants the whole thing, our
whole body, everything. Do we worry about what we will
drink? So what are you talking about?
Just open the tap and drink. For us it is.
We don't have to go to the town hall, town well or the village
well to draw water as they did in Jesus Day.
Remember the story in Samaritan? The Samaritan woman, she came to
the well to draw water. They didn't have running water
in their houses, never mind hot water.
People would sometimes worry about things like that.
Even today, truth be told, there are many countries in the world.
Water is a scarce commodity. You don't have enough.
You have to carry it a long way. And Jesus says don't worry about
what you're going to eat. Food's another thing in Canada,
so recently very affordable. Now it's getting more and more
expensive. We complain a lot about it, like
prices are going up so badly and so on, but we still have
freezers pretty full of food, fridge is pretty full of food,
pantry is pretty full of food. In most cases still plentiful,
maybe not cheap anymore, still plentiful.
And if it's just calories that we're concerned to fill our
stomach while they're still reasonably cheap depending what
we want to eat. Eating healthy is getting more
costly, sure, but not in compared to what some countries
where people are starving. Do we worry about what we eat?
How about what we wear? Have you noticed how big closets
are getting in new houses? He's not saying that when we go
and stand in front of our overstuffed closets debating
what to put on that day, That's not it's not what he has in mind
here. You see, in those days, there
was literally the case where people might have one shirt, 11
robe, whatever, one pair of sandals of that, that's all they
had. Some might have two pairs.
They literally didn't have enough, had very little.
But in our time with modern mass production, we don't know what
to do with all the garbage clothes we throw out.
We have more clothes and we'll know what to do with.
I'm just going to speak for myself a bit here, but I think
sometimes my wife would like me to worry a little bit about what
I wear because I just go to my closet, pull something out and
put it on, come out of the bedroom and say, oh, no, no,
Jake, not that today that happens.
I don't worry a lot about what to wear.
She has to help me and for US men, perhaps sometimes we wish
our wives would wear a bit less. But what to wear?
So one man said his wife goes in front of the closet long row of
dress. I got nothing to wear.
I'll leave it there. Jesus reminds us of such missed
placed worry. He says verse 27, which of you
by worrying can add 1 cubit to his stature?
Why do you worry about clothing? Look at the lilies of the field,
how they grow. They neither toe nor spin.
Yet I say even Solomon, all his glory was not read like one of
these. Now if God so clothes the grass
of the field, which today is tomorrow's thrown to the oven,
will he not much more clothe you or you of little faith?
He says worry, change is nothing.
It's one of those things that really take up our time, our
mind and gets we exhaust us. It tires us out.
It's like this hamster in a wheel running and getting
nowhere. Jesus had a very simple approach
to life. It doesn't mean we shouldn't
care or be diligent or work. We should do all those things,
but from what perspective? And because all this is so, we
should entrust all of our needs, all of them to God.
He says it's the Gentiles who worry about those things, not,
not you. He says, therefore don't worry,
saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink?
What shall we wear? For after all these things the
Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows
that you need all these things, but seek first the Kingdom of
God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added
to you. Therefore do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Seek first God's Kingdom and His righteousness.
We can only do that if the eye is light.
Dark self focused eyes can't do that.
We stopped caring. Caring and worrying about what
the other guy has. Or that I would like to have one
extra and then I'd be happy or one more and then life would be
good. It goes for everything.
The house we live in, the type of food we eat for the most
part, the clothes we wear, the car we drive, and the list could
go on and on. Seeking God's Kingdom is living
with a right focus in our heart. I know when money is short, the
bills keep coming, worry does want to become a part of life or
health is no longer there. Life begins to look bleak.
It's when life becomes that that Satan works over overtime,
trying to divert our focus away from God only onto the problems.
But we must look to Jesus to trust him to see us through.
He is our role model when it comes to Kingdom views on
wealth. We must look to Jesus.
In Philippians chapter 2, Paul writes about this, how Jesus
emptied himself, gave up everything.
Glory and majesty in heaven became one of us.
Not just one of us, but the poorest of us, dependent on
earthly parents, had next to no earthly wealth, had a row Robin,
maybe a few items. We don't know what he had, but
he had nothing, comparatively speaking.
He never looked out for his own benefit.
He taught the same to the apostles.
He wanted his people, his audience, to experience the
freedom of not being tied down with things that won't make it
to heaven. Many people believe that wealth
having more is the answer. And there are some who do need
more money. That's true.
But most of us don't. Most of us want more.
I'm not saying good opportunity should be bypassed or should not
be taken advantage of. But why?
For what purpose? He says seek first the Kingdom
of God. The blessing of material wealths
are real. God chooses some people to bless
them with plenty so they can be generous and to give and so on.
And He chooses some to withhold wealth from them in order to
show His power in their lives through trust in Him.
And for those whom He chooses to bless with material wealth, it's
not for the purpose of self resorting or putting trust in
it. And for those whom He chooses to
suffer through want, He expects them to serve faithfully in that
category. We need to keep on working, keep
on earning, keep on giving, keep on sharing.
So what difference does this make for us today?
Jesus LED a worry free life. I'm not saying I've accomplished
that. He was poor by the standards of
his time. He died young, was killed, had
no regrets. He rose from the dead.
And He promises eternal life and eternal peace to all who repent
of their sin and receive Him as their Lord and Savior.
And it's only as we trust Jesus and all Him into our lives we
find this sweet peace that only He can give.
And in Him we have a New Hope and new life, and we go forward,
forward with confidence and trust.
So let's make it our aim. Surrender ourselves to Him,
trusting Him in everything, trusting Him to work on all
things for His glory. Let's pray.
Lord, thank you for the hope you give in Scripture.
Lord, help us to be free of greed, free of worry.
Thank you, Lord, you died for our sins.
We have a gift of eternal life, and it's all for all who seek
you. Lord, we pray that you will.
We'll have eyes that see and may our bodies be full of light.
We thank you for your word to us.
May your word light up our hearts in such a way that people
can see it and they too will be attracted to you.
Thank you Jesus, we pray in Jesus name, Amen.