Text this morning is Matthew chapter 6.
So if you've got a Bible, I encourage you to open it and
land there. This is part of the Sermon on
the Mount where Jesus is introducing so many critical
aspects of life in the Kingdom of God that he's teaching them
what is it like to have life in the Kingdom of God?
And unsurprisingly, he talks about money.
He had already talked about sort of 3 hidden secret disciplines
of the Christian life, that of giving to the needy.
Like he started his series of disciplines with giving.
Secret disciplines, give to the needy, secret discipline, pray
in your closet. Secret discipline, fast from
food, these are secret disciplines.
And then, knowing that this is likely stirred up in people's
hearts some anxiety, he begins to address the question of
money. And so this is what he says.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths
and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths
and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in
and steal. For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of
light. But if your eyes are unhealthy,
your whole body will be full of darkness.
If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that
darkness? No one can serve 2 masters.
Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be
devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
Jesus understood the reach of Babylon.
We talked about Babylon last week.
If you're like Babylon, where's that?
But it's that move of empire to always draw us in to power and
where the question of money comes up.
There is power, but there's some things that Jesus knows about
us. Jesus knows that your heart will
be owned by your treasures. Notice he said, For where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Will you say it with me? For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also. In other words, your treasure
will own your heart. Your heart will be owned by
treasure. Your heart, in the conception
that Jesus had in his culture and the history and cultural of
the Bible, is that your heart is this sort of internal governing
center. It is more than just your
emotions, it is your intellect, your will, your emotions, your
moral character, and your spiritual orientation with God.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your seat of will,
your seat of power. Love God from there.
And he says, where your heart is, there your treasure will be.
Where your will is being oriented, there your treasure
will be. So choose your treasures
carefully because your treasures will also shape your heart.
There's a mighty feedback loop going on here, and he says you
can have earthly treasures or you can have heavenly treasures.
How many of you have some earthly treasures?
Yeah. I'm so glad you all are so rich.
You have earthly treasures? We're grateful for those, right?
We know. And we often treat them in our
circle as blessings from God. In other circles, I have friends
who say I earned it. It's mine, it's mine, it's mine,
it's mine. They're like the seagulls.
It's mine, it's mine, it's mine. Swooping in to take everything,
it's mine. Leave no crumbs behind.
It's mine. And though we may have money in
the bank, though we may have an emergency fund, though we may
have money even invested in companies.
So we own a little bit of a company and we see the
trajectory of what 30 years can do with compounding interest.
I mean, you all know that's like one of the 8th wonders of the
world. It's compounding interest.
Those are earthly treasures, he says.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
And so he says and offers an alternative.
You could have heavenly treasures.
Heavenly treasures, then can can actually be stored up as well.
When you have earthly treasures, you worry about the market.
When you have earthly treasures, you worry that someone's going
to take it or that you're going to spend it all.
When you have earthly treasures, you worry that, my goodness, it
takes so much to have a car. Who knew about insurance when
you're 18? Everything costs and costs and
costs. And so we become anxious there
with earthly treasures. Having earthly treasures is not
the problem. The problem is when you also
lack heavenly treasures that you say are of a greater value and
worth. And so my true energy for
storing up is to store up heavenly treasures.
I'm redirecting my will towards heavenly treasures, knowing and
being known by God, receiving my identity instead of just
constructing it, being loved by God, giving myself to doing the
work and will of God, responding to Jesus rightly, valuing people
as greater than money. The list could go on of heavenly
treasures. In fact, the incredible worth of
the soul is the greatest treasure you personally have.
What does it value and merit? A man to gain the whole world
but lose his soul? Put your soul in the heavenly
bank. Do you know the issue of our
treasures and our heart is that we develop habits of heart that
we're not even aware of? The year before I graduated from
high school, Robert Bella wrote a really famous book, I don't
know if you know it, Habits of the Heart.
It was written in 1985 S. That may seem like a really old
book to you, but in it he was trying to examine America and
North American values and what is happening to the habits of
our heart. And he said this, our culture
does not give us much guidance as to how to fill the contours
of this autonomous, self, responsible self.
In other words, we're incredibly individualistic.
Our culture is always trying to set us free.
If you find yourself trying to differentiate from your parents
when you're 13, you're really absorbing our independent, self
defining culture. Define yourself.
It didn't just start in the 2000s.
It started early, early in North America.
Define yourself. And he says we're not getting a
lot of help with this except in two areas.
One is the area of work, the realm par excellence of
utilitarian individualism. The other area is the lifestyle
enclave, the realm part excellence of expressive
individualism, your work and your lifestyle.
How many of you have little streams of work and lifestyle on
your Instagram? Well, how many of you don't have
Instagram? What else are you looking at on
Instagram? It's about work and lifestyle,
isn't it? How are you going to earn a lot
of money? How are you going to spend it?
Work and lifestyle. Maybe it's not about the money.
Maybe it's about nature, lifestyle.
How many of you have nature? Lifestyle, Art, lifestyle, good
looks, lifestyle, lifting heavy lifestyle.
I mean, it's all about the lifestyle and the work.
And this started and this was known as a as a feature of our
culture. In 1985, the Internet didn't
exist yet. That was back in the days.
Thank you for that, Aidan. Thank you, he goes.
Robert Bella goes on to note the difficulty with this next slide.
He says in the absence of any objectionifiable criteria or
right or wrong, good or evil, the self and its feelings become
our only moral guide. There, each individual is
entitled to his or her own bit of space and is utterly free
within its boundaries. But while everyone may be
entitled to his or her own private space, only those who
have enough money can in fact afford to purchase the private
property required to do their own thing.
It's like having an island where your heart is, there your
treasure will be also. Do you want Treasure Island or
do you want treasure heaven? And Jesus strangely teaches us
to pray, Oh God, may your Kingdom come on earth as it is
in heaven. So that somehow I think even in
that prayer, we get little taste of the experiences of Kingdom
treasures and heavenly treasures even right here on earth.
When your heart is rightly aligned, when you've been drawn
out from just work and lifestyle enclave as the defining features
of your life, Jesus recommends BHT.
This is not a stock recommendation.
BHT next slide, the Bank of heavenly treasures.
BHT remember it. Are you investing in BHT the
Bank of heavenly treasures? Jesus knows not only about our
treasures and our heart. Jesus knows about the health of
your soul. He knows that your soul's health
will be impacted by your gaze. I know it seemed a little
strange that all of a sudden Jesus shifted to talking about
your eyes and and the health of your eyes and what's going on
inside your life. But what do you do when you have
great treasures? You look at them.
If you treasure yourself, you just look at yourself, say hey,
your LG today looking good and you know, this is what we do.
If you're really keyed up about your investment portfolio, you
look at it every day. If you're able to just let it
go, you forget about it. And you look at it once a year
when you do your taxes. What you look at also influences
your soul. Notice what he says.
Let's read it together. The eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of
light. Your eyes are the lamp of your
body. And we are always looking for
treasures, the next shiny thing squirrel.
And we're looking, what we gaze at definitely impacts our lives.
And there has never been quite the time and the generation that
you are currently living in who's been so drawn to fix their
gaze on that which is passing quickly away, it's designed to
do that. Jesus knows this and he knows
there's great competition for your attention.
He knew this before the Internet.
Jesus knows that what you attend to either enlightens or dims
your soul. Jesus knows next slide, that the
lens, the way you see the world, will also affect the health of
your soul. If you see the world primarily
as a competitive environment, that will affect your soul.
If you see the world as always out to get you, that will affect
your soul. If you see relationships as if
someone's always trying to get advantage of you, that will
affect your soul. If something is changed in the
way you see the world, so that you see the world as a place of
great abundance, that will affect your soul.
This is my Father's world. If you see the world that way,
it will affect your soul. If you see the world as if there
is enough for everyone, that will affect your soul.
If you see the world as a place in which you can trust others
and you will risk trust instead of always fearing, that will
affect your soul. A friend of mine was discovering
but that he had cataracts and so he needed to have cataract
surgery. It's not covered under MSP.
So he was figuring out which kind of lens he would have put
in his eye. I was like, Peter, this just
freaks me out. You're having to decide which
kind of lens. He's like, yeah, if I get this
lens, these will be the benefits.
If I get this lens, that'll be the benefits.
And I said, and then what else is going to happen?
He says I won't need glasses anymore.
I was like, man, that's incredible.
The changed lens changed the way he was able to live, and Jesus
actually is offering a change of lens so that He can change our
souls. This too is another powerful
feedback loop and it will affect the way you hold and spend
money. The Desert Fathers said this
about money, that he who is the slave of money guards his money
as a slave, but he who has thrown off the yoke of his
slavery to money dispenses money as if he is its master.
Who gave that idea to that group of Christians?
It was Jesus. You see, Jesus knows something
else. Jesus knows that you are not
made for 2 masters. Let's read it together.
No one can serve 2 masters. If you ever had a situation
where you had two bosses, it's just like what, what, what?
And they each had their own opinion.
It's terrible. You need to know who your boss
is and Jesus understands that. Most of us assume that in having
money, we're are the boss of money, and he's making it clear
that's not so. There's A2 master syndrome, and
this happens when you sort of wave at God, but your gaze is
set on the money, money, money, money.
You're waving at God, Say, hey, God, I see you over there, but
hey, look at that money. Look at that great salary.
Look at that opportunity and you just wave at God with no wisdom,
with no sense of where your treasure is.
In fact, your heart is being dominated by guarding your
treasure. Now, some of you don't worry
about this a lot because you don't have a lot of treasure at
the moment. I know this.
I know it's true. Student life is situational
poverty. Immigration is often situational
poverty. It's just a situation for a time
that you hope isn't going to last long, that you're just
going to pass through this time. This is why over 300 student
households a week come to the Acadia Food Hub, a food bank
here on campus. It's situational poverty you're
passing through. I know you're passing through,
but someday somebody's going to try to sell you a security
system because you've got to worry that someone's going to
break in my house and get all the money that I have stored in
my mattress. I don't know, like, how much
treasures are you all keeping in your homes?
Who cares if somebody breaks in? What's really there to take?
Maybe your computer. That's the one, right?
That's the one. I mean, how many forks does it
matter if they take? But when you've got really
wealth, you have silver forks and you're like, oh, you know,
price of silver is going up and so you worry.
In fact, the proverbs tell us that those who build high gates,
high security systems, actually invite destruction.
Because everyone's wondering, well, what are you hiding over
there? Maybe I need some of that.
Better, he says, to just have enough.
And so when you have money, money becomes your master unless
you've let your heart be mastered by someone else.
Flip side of this is not having money.
If can also let money be your master where you say, well, I
see that opportunity out there or I hear God calling me to do
something or I really have this better, better and greater
vision of my life, but I can't do it because I don't have
money. That's money being the master
again, instead of being set free to enter into the abundance and
the opportunity and the provision and the way of God.
Because if you get your head up and your eyes open and your
heart free from anxiety, you can see more opportunities.
But the two master syndrome means that you're either going
to hate the one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to
the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and
money. And so our determination has to
be, I will serve God and God will teach me so that money
becomes my servant. God will free me, so money
becomes servant. Now the word money here isn't
just about cash in your pocket or coins in your pocket.
The word money is actually a word mammon, and some of you in
your Bible translations, it may have actually translated it as
that Mammon. You can say it to your neighbor
mammon. And mammon is this sort of this,
this aspect of stuff. And that stuff develops its own
personality and power and draw. And Jesus is inviting you to ask
the question, who's the money master in your life?
Who's the master of your life? It's very simple question and
principle. During the next 40 days, Lent
will be going on. And Lent is the opportunity to
move towards Easter and the celebration of Jesus.
But Lent actually is a recognition of our own
finiteness that that we actually are going to die.
And the truth is that in knowing and calculating that you're
going to die, you know that you don't take anything with you
naked. You come into the world naked,
you go out from dust to dust. There's great wisdom in
calculating that. And it right sizes the issue of
money and possessions and comforts in our lives.
It right sizes the greater treasures in our life to be
valued beyond just money. It actually invites us to be
freed from greed, which Paul calls a form of idolatry.
And so for the next 40 days, I want to invite you to use the
Lectio app that's on the link tree.
Of course. Use the Lectio app and pray
daily on a 40 day journey with the Desert Fathers and Mothers
with 24/7 prayer. The Desert Fathers and Mothers
lived in the three hundreds and it was a movement to leave the
city, to draw away from wealth and to draw closer to heavenly
treasures. It'll be an interesting journey,
so I invite you with us on that. Who is your money?
Master Zacchaeus climbed a tree, didn't he?
He climbed a tree because he was we.
He was short, and he climbed up in the tree to see who he could
see. Thank you.
You're following along.
Why did Zacchaeus climb that tree?
Zacchaeus, the man who was a tax collector.
Zacchaeus, the man who had great wealth.
Zacchaeus, the man who had position but was actually in a
squeeze because he was tolerated by the Romans for his skill at
collecting taxes. He was despised and hated by his
Jewish brothers because he collected taxes.
The tax collectors were known for lining their pockets with a
little bit extra. They were given judicial rights
and privileges to collect more, and apparently he had collected
more. But something was drawing him to
Jesus and because of the crowd, he couldn't get close.
So he climbed up in a tree to see Jesus.
I don't know you. When's the last time you saw a
short, wealthy person climb up in a tree?
Unheard of, right? Sort of humiliating.
And so in that move, Zacchaeus was actually humbling himself.
He climbed up and humbled himself, and Jesus saw him and
honored him. Zacchaeus, come down.
I'm going to go to your house today.
And it says that Zacchaeus gladly welcomed Jesus.
He was so excited. This was probably more than he
expected. You see, his treasure was
shifting, His treasure house was shifting.
His heart was moving, drawn to Jesus.
And ultimately the master of his heart would change too, because
they're at that banquet where Jesus was seated and just
enjoying the hospitality of Zacchaeus, the hospitality of
his wealth. Something completely opened in
the heart and soul of Zacchaeus. Something changed about his eyes
and what he would truly value now.
And notice what he listen to what he says.
Zacchaeus stood up at the supper and he said, Lord, look, look,
Lord, look, fix your eyes on me. Wow, this is really interesting.
He already knew that Jesus had seen him.
He already knew that Jesus could see his heart.
He already knew that others were missing the transformation that
was starting to happen in his life.
But now he wanted to make it clear here and now he says, I
give half of my possessions to the poor.
Oh, do you see the shift of treasures?
No longer were his his treasures just in his possessions, but now
his treasures were in the life of people.
I give it to the poor. And he says if I have cheated
anybody out of anything, can't you imagine that?
Some people in the room began to laugh.
His his own company around him. What?
Yeah, we all know you're a cheat.
We know you've you've won by cheating.
He says if I've cheated anyone out of anything, I will pay back
four times the amount. A shift of heart.
The first evidence, the public evidence of Zacchaeus
transformation wasn't just climbing up the tree, it was
declaring his freedom by being able to give, by being able to
say that's not my true treasure. People are my true treasure with
God. Look, Lord, he says they've been
a mighty shift in his life and it impacted his money.
When we come to the table of Jesus, we're actually saying
that Jesus is our treasure. When we hold the bread and hold
the cup, we are recalling and remembering Jesus and saying, oh
Jesus, you are my treasure. I'm going to gaze upon you here
at this table. I'm going to remember you.
And This is why it's so important every week that we
realign and shift the allegiances of our heart to
Jesus so that we can go out of here having said to the Lord,
hey Lord, look at me, could you say it with me?
Lord, look at me, what a prayer. Lord, look at me, can you say
it? Lord, look at me.
Lord, see my heart. Lord, look how I'm shifting the
treasures of my life. As we'll see next week, this is
actually the pathway to great peace in our lives.
Even when money is a trouble. Let's stand together.
Going to invite the worship team to come up.
I want to invite you to all be like Zacchaeus, but we don't
have trees to climb. But whatever it takes for you in
this moment to express humility to Jesus, that's what I want to
invite you to do. So if some of you would like to
just sort of kneel in front of Jesus, do it carefully.
We don't want you falling all the way down, but you can go up
to the to the railing up there and you can kneel there If you
want to kneel, if you want to just open your hands and say,
Jesus, I'm humbly opening my hands and or I'm pointing
towards you. You're my greatest treasure.
Whatever it takes for you right now to just physically and in
your heart say to Jesus, Son, look at me, Lord, I'm going to
humble myself in front of you. I want to shift my treasures.
I want to invest in BHT, the Bank of Heavenly Treasures.
And some of you may find along the way that you can't do it,
that you feel like there's too much darkness, too much anxiety,
that you can't do it that that you thought you had a grip on
the money, but money's got a grip on you that you can't do
it. Your future ambitions right now
have more a grip on you than you have a grip on God.
Ask Jesus for help and surrender to him.
He's the kind of master that gives you so much agency.
He's not looking to just control and dominate and squish you
under his great power. He wants to pump you up, build
you up, and to set you free in the Spirit.
What are the gifts of the Spirit?
Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness
and self-control. So much agency in the power and
Spirit and gift at the freedom of Jesus when you've been given
freedom in Him. He's saying I'm giving you
self-control. I'm giving you control of your
life. You have the agency in your life
about your treasures, about your eyes, about the health of your
life and what you do with money. And all of that comes about
because Jesus, though he was rich in heaven, became poor for
our sakes, and he gave himself for us.
So whatever it takes, as we sing the song and prepare for the
Lord's Supper, just humble yourself in front of the Lord,
yeah.