Sunday 02 • 11 • 18

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 eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor 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. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things and your heavenly father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. — Matthew 6:19-34

Thank you, the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Would you pray with me? Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are a rock, our fortress, and our redeemer. Amen.

In 2015, the writer and columnist David Brooks came out with an article about the rise of the simplicity movement in this country and he chronicles how there are so many blogs and books and articles that are about decluttering your home, decluttering your lifestyle, decluttering your calendar. He points out that there's an organization now that's called the National Association of Professional Organizers with several thousand members. I didn't know that. Wish that they would come visit my garage.

And he points out too that one of the best selling books of 2015 was a book by the Japanese writer Marie Kondo called The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. We are all about this. We like this stuff about getting rid of and decluttering our stuff. But his article is titled "The Evolution of the Simplicity Movement" and Brooks goes back and chronicles what's happened now compared to the roots of the simplicity movement earlier in the history of our country. So he goes back and looks at the Quakers, and he looks at Henry David Thoreau, and he makes this observation.

One of the troublesome things about today's simplicity movement is that they're really often just alternate forms of consumption. Magazines like Real Simple are sometimes asking you to strip away your stuff so you can buy new and simpler stuff. Simplification is not really spiritual or anti-material, just a more refined, organic, locally grown, morally status-filling form of materialism. And today's simplicity movements are also not as philosophically explicit as the ones of the past. So the Puritans were stripping away the material in order to have a closer contact with God. It's easy to see what today's simplifiers are throwing away. It's not always clear to see what they are for.

I think that is a very fascinating observation. And whether you agree or disagree with Brooks, I think it shows us that we have a tangled relationship with our stuff. Our relationship with our wealth is complicated.

And I know that some of you are new to our church this morning and it's just now dawning on you like, "Oh no, I came on money Sunday. I can't believe my poor fortune in coming this Sunday of all Sundays." And if you feel that way, I understand because money is always a touchy subject for us. Americans do not talk about our income levels. We don't want to have this conversation. We don't want to talk about this, and especially in the church. We could be honest: the church in America has a spotty track record with regard to money and possessions and how it is misused in many cases, the money that's been given to its care.

And yet, here's the thing: money is not a touchy subject for Jesus.

Of all the things that Jesus taught about, this is only behind the kingdom of God in the frequency with which he discussed this subject. It's not at all a concern for him to talk about this. He's not nervous about it because what Jesus wants for us is not our money, it's our redemption, and our hope, and our freedom in this area.

So today, if you take notes, here's my outline for you: good investment advice, a better investment strategy, and the best investment vehicle.

Good Investment Advice

Let's look at this passage. Good investment advice—it's verses 19 through 21. Now, when Jesus talks here about treasure, he's not just talking about money. He's not just talking about possessions. He's talking about what money can buy for us. Things like significance, things like security, things like yes, material goods, but there are a lot of things that money purchases for us, that money gives us. And Jesus doles out this very good investment advice: if you put your hope in things that are of this world, of earthly significance, they will—they are guaranteed to let you down.

So he points out three threats in the first century to people's material goods: moths, rust, and thieves. Maybe we could translate that for a modern audience. We could say things like, don't put your trust in the housing market. It will bust eventually. Don't put your hopes in a new car. It will be in the dump in twenty years. Don't put your treasure in fashion. Five years from now, it'll look ridiculous. Don't put your hopes in property values, in things online. Hackers will break into mainframes. There is no place where we can hide our treasures in this life that is safe. There's no place that we can put this. Our earthly treasures are going to let us down, and none of that's news to anybody here.

We're grown-up people. We know this. And yet here's the unique thing that Jesus is saying: that our money, our possessions—in fact, he uses kind of a pirate term here, treasure—if we put our hearts in that, it's not just those things that are at risk. Our hearts are at risk. When our hearts are tied to our stuff and our money and what money can give us, it's not just those things that are at risk, we're at risk, and that is dangerous behavior.

Notice, Jesus never says here that money and possessions are bad or are evil. He never says this. It's just that he says they're not neutral. Money is not just pieces of paper or coins, pieces of metal, or bites in a computer program. It's God—our money always has a gravitational pull to it.

This is why he says in verse 24:

No one can serve two masters. He will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can't serve both God and money.

The problem with money is not that it's evil, it's that it has power. It's a master. It has a gravitational pull on our hearts, on us.

And now, it is easy to listen to Jesus' words about money and sort of let yourself off the hook. You're going to look around this room and even say, compared to other people, I don't have that much. I'm not a wealthy person. I'm not controlled by my possessions. I don't even have much to look at. Here's the thing though: money is a master whether or not you have a lot of it or you have a little of it. More money doesn't liberate us from the mastery of money.

So case in point, there's a guy named Robert Frank, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, who wrote a book a couple years ago called Richest Stand, where he goes and takes us on a tour of the wealthiest people in this country. He goes through the lifestyles of the jet setters and discloses things like people who buy yachts that have space in the back for their cars to go on—stuff that you don't deal with—or my favorite one, buying a customized personalized alligator skin toilet seat cover for your favorite toilet in your house. Stuff that probably you don't have.

And while that's very distant from us and the things that he describes, there's something about his conversation with the uber wealthy in our country that's not so foreign. In fact, what he found is that the wealthiest people in our country have developed wealth support groups.

Now, you may be wondering, why would the uber wealthy in our country need any support groups? It's because they are riddled with anxiety. And this blows my mind, but what would you be up at night worrying about if you have millions and millions of dollars in the bank? About losing it.

Here's his survey work. He cites a survey and said, "How much money do you need to feel financially secure?" So he talked to one multimillionaire who said, "Ten years ago, I used to think five million per year was enough to stay above the waterline."

Now I know I need twice that every year. Above the waterline? Right? And to the $10,000,000 crowd, about 20,000,000 a year would really make me feel secure. To the $50,000,000 crowd, double that. And the few in the very top tier make a $100,000,000 a year. Yeah, you know, just a little more.

While the alligator skin toilet seat cover is very foreign to us, that is not. That sense of worry: Am I going to have enough? Am I going to have enough? This is where Richestan goes from something very foreign to us to very local and close to home. Because isn't this what you say? Isn't this what I say? Like, man, if we just had a little bit more, we would be really generous. If I just made another $15,000 a year, I'd feel really secure about where I am right now. If we just had a little bit more, right? And no one says enough. No one among those millionaire groups said I have enough, and that's my heart. And I would bet that's your heart too. Like, it's never quite enough.

See, that's the danger of treasures on earth. That which you are reaching for holds you. What you grasp after ends up grasping you. You ever dropped something valuable down the disposal? You got to get that out. I kind of have thick, fat hands. So sticking my hands down the disposal, I can stick them down and pull them out. But if I try to grab anything, that's not coming out. My fist is too big to get out of that disposal.

And what I hear anecdotally—I've never done this before, okay?—but that's how you trap a monkey, actually. You take a coconut, drill a hole in the coconut, put a treat down in the coconut, and the monkey will come along, see the treat, stick his hand through the hole, but can't get it out. Just like my fat paws in my disposal. And yet it's not held there by any chains, but it's held there by its own desires. Like, all you gotta do is let go and pull it out.

But such a picture for me. And I've never trapped a monkey, but I know what a monkey feels like. I know what it feels like for the things that we're trying to hold onto that hold us. The things that you reach for and grasp for in this life that say, this will make it happen for me. That ends up grabbing yourself.

You cannot serve two 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. — Matthew 6:24

You will either center your life on God or you'll center your life on money and possessions, but you can't do both. Because money is a master. Jesus doesn't say that serving two masters is difficult or unwise or impractical, but impossible. It's impossible.

So I know what this feels like. And this is what I would say to you: We can't trust God enough with our money. You can't do it enough. My treasures in this life are too dangerous for my hands alone. It's too much. I can't handle it. We can't trust God enough with our money and possessions.

A Better Strategy

So if treasures on earth is a bad investment strategy, what's a better one, Jesus? And Jesus tells us here: move from short term to long term. Store up treasures in heaven—long term investing.

So how do you switch from short term investment strategies to long term, to eternal investment strategies? And Jesus gives us three answers to this. They're birds and flowers and eyeballs.

Let's look at these. First, birds.

Jesus points out the birds, and such wisdom in God's timeless word. As I studied this, I laughed out loud when I got to this because Jesus is speaking these words in the Sermon on the Mount to first century farmers in an agricultural society where it was day to day: Are we gonna make it? Are we gonna have enough for the next day? And Jesus tells these people, hey, look at the birds. Look how God feeds them.

And he doesn't say to them, don't work. Just let go and let God. He didn't say anything like that. He doesn't say don't work, but he says, don't worry. Don't worry. Don't give so much time and space in your head, in your life to concern about your next meal. You're going to trust God in this. Look at the birds and how he cares for them and look at them as a parable right in front of you and trust God for your provision.

Now, as I was thinking about this, I'm like, we couldn't live in any more of a different culture, could we? I mean, for most of us, it is almost never the experience where we're having to look to God and say, daily bread, will I have it? We're not concerned. We're never worried about our daily bread. Here's us: We're worried what's in our daily bread. So we're worried about GMOs and hormones and gluten and food additives. We're worried like, what is it I'm consuming?

And if you Google right now, like, top diets, here they are, some of them.

We have the Atkins diet, the Whole30 diet, the Paleo diet, the DASH diet, the Flexitarian diet, the Volumetrics. And can we just be honest? Time out here. Aren't these all saying about the same thing? Like, you need to eat more fruits and vegetables, be more selective in your carbohydrates, less sugar, less fatty foods. We all know this. This is not news to anybody here. But we don't worry about whether we'll have daily bread. We worry about what's in it.

I think though that God's word still speaks to this. Fair warning, I'm about to step all over your toes. There's wisdom in those diets. Sure. I am not going to debate anybody here about corn syrup and your data on corn syrup. But I think that what Jesus would address with us is the same thing he would address with those people in the first century. How much space that our food and our thoughts about food take in our brain, in our conversation, in our worries, how much we give to this.

We think about this way too much. We read about this way too much. We spend way too much on this. It costs a lot to eat this way. And if there is one thing that we are evangelistic about, it is our diets. "You shouldn't eat that. You should eat this. This is so much better for you. You should stop eating that." We are so evangelistic about what we put in our bodies. This is a big topic of conversation.

Now I know some of you are frustrated with me right now. Listen, because you're thinking like, "Hey, these are right, wrong decisions. You're talking about my health here. I'm not being frivolous in this. This is my health we're talking about." But I'm not challenging you on the data. I'm challenging you on how much space it takes up in your world. Are we worried about this?

If it were just me, I would say, "Hey, look, you grew up on Kool Aid and Big Macs, you're okay. Chillax." But it's not me. This isn't my sermon. Jesus says:

Isn't life more than food? — Matthew 6:25

Remember, Jesus told those first century farmers—he didn't say don't work, just let go and like God. He said, don't worry about this. You may be saying, "Look, I'm not worried about food. I'm just careful." Really. Can I point this out to you? The problem for us is food has become a treasure. So if your toddler eats Cheetos at a friend's house, you freak out about it. If you break your dietary laws, oh my goodness. If you eat things that you're not supposed to, this is just too big.

I think Jesus would say to us, "Look, can you trust God with your food and make it not such a big part of your life? Can you trust me in this? Is not life more than food?" Look at the birds. Look at the flowers. Consider the lilies of the field. Jesus talks about lilies and grass, and he makes the same point with both. Their lifespan on Earth is so short. It's so brief, and yet God takes care of them. He tells us:

Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow. — Matthew 6:34

I think that Jesus is preaching to my unbelieving heart and your unbelieving heart with regard to our concerns and worries and cares. He says:

Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? — Matthew 6:27

We're so worried about tomorrow. We're so worried about the stock market. We're so worried about our job security. We're so worried about our health. We're so worried about our kids and our parents. We are people who are living so far in the future. And Jesus invites us: Look at these grasses. Look at the lilies. Look how God takes care of them.

There's something about worry that makes us feel like we're doing something, that we're in control. We can think about our lives. We think about the problems that we're facing, and we trace all the little pathways of how this can go—all the choose-your-own-adventure pathways—so we can be prepared. And does it help us? Come on people, you gotta talk to me this morning. Does it help us? No. Does our anxiety and worry actually do anything to affect that future?

Jesus invites us, in the uncertainties of life, to trust him in his providence. That word there about providing—it's the same root word from which we get the big theological term providence. God providing what we need for when we need it.

Now, I know some of you are like, "I got some history with this. I've been to some really hard times in my life, preacher guy. And I look back and I'm like, where was God then? God seems kind of arbitrary in some of this. I've been through some hard things, and if that's how God loves his children, I don't want any. Thanks very much."

But I want to challenge you to consider what view you have of God's providence. I think a lot of times we borrow this from Greek and Roman mythology that we learned in elementary school. The gods are up there having a party and they don't care about us, and there's this cruel wheel of fate that's coming to crush my life. That is not the God that is revealed to us in scripture. This is not our savior Jesus who tells us about lilies and birds: "I care deeply and intimately about you."

This invites us to verse 34:

Do not be anxious about tomorrow. Tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. — Matthew 6:34

Man, can you just let verse 34 wash over you? Just stand in that one and let it wash over you. Sufficient for the day are its own troubles.

One of the things that I love about this passage is that Jesus not only tells us don't worry—he gives us a script. You can take this passage outside in a couple weeks and preach this to your heart. You're going to see the flowers coming. You're going to see the birds. Go spend an afternoon sitting in the arboretum, sitting out by the art museum, and allow the power of these words to preach to your heart. God's taking care of them. All those birds. God is caring for those flowers. So we can take these words to ourselves and say: self, unbelieving self, if God takes care of birds, how much more valuable am I? If God takes care of flowers, how much more does he love us?

The Eye as a Lamp

Birds and flowers and finally, eyeballs. Look what Jesus talks about here regarding the eye, in verse 22:

The eye is the lamp of the body. — Matthew 6:22

I know this sounds really weird. Jesus is not speaking in twenty-first century ocular science, but to a first-century audience. If this troubles you, he is conforming his words to their understanding of how the eyeball works. Their view of the eye in the first century was not as a window that takes in light, but as a lamp that looks outward and shines outward.

So Jesus says your eyes are like a lamp, and if the eye is good, the whole inside will be filled with light. If the eye is bad, the inside will be filled with darkness. What is he talking about?

Let me give you a parallel to this, and it'll help you. A few chapters later, in Matthew 20, Matthew records a parable that Jesus tells. He says, suppose there's a landowner who's got a bunch of work to get done. He goes out early in the morning and hires people to come work in his field. "I'll pay you this much," he says. "Okay, we'll come to work." They begin. Midday, he's like, "I need more workers." He goes out and hires a bunch more people. He says, "I'm going to pay you this." They start working. At 4:30 in the afternoon—almost quitting time—he goes out and hires another group of people. He's like, "Put you to work. Here's how much I'm gonna pay you. Go for it."

Well, it comes time to give out money at the end of the day. The landowner gives the same amount of money to the people who started in the morning as those who worked starting at midday, and the same amount as those who started at 4:30. And this is what Jesus says in the Greek. He says literally: when they start to complain, he says to them, "Wait, is your eye bad because I am merciful?"

Ain't that weird? Is your eye bad because I am merciful? What does he mean by that?

What's bad about their eye is they don't see the mercy of the landowner, the generosity of the landowner, as more valuable than the money. They think the money is more valuable than the mercy, and they can't handle it. So they don't see the boss's generosity as beautiful—they see it as ugly. Their eyes are bad.

So let's take that back to Matthew 6, the passage here. You have a good eye if you look at heaven and you want to maximize your reward and treasure there. You have a bad eye if you're like, "No, that's not as valuable as the stuff that this world provides for me."

A good eye is one who looks at Master God and Master Money and says, "Master God is so much more beautiful and compelling and worth giving myself to." A good eye is a valuing eye. It's a discerning eye. It's a treasuring eye. A good eye doesn't just look at the facts about God and say, "Well, God is, I guess, theoretically better." No. A good eye says Jesus and his kingdom and what he gives to me in eternal life is so much more valuable than the best sports car or ten thousand more dollars a year or anything else this life has to offer me.

A good eye says: what I have in Christ, the love of the Father, the way that God's love is showered on my life and given to me in Jesus Christ—that is so much more valuable than anything else I could have.

Do you have a good eye?

Do you see? This is not a sermon about giving in the church. No. It's about an investment strategy. Are you investing in the long term in what is of ultimate value, what's really beautiful, the mercy of God? Are you investing in just what's right here? Is your heart invested just in what's right in front of you? If so, what a tragedy. We are so anxious about stuff. We're so worried about money. We're so clutchy with our things. We can't trust God enough with our stuff. This is the better investment strategy.

The Best Investment Vehicle

And finally, the best investment vehicle: Jesus and his kingdom. This is verses thirty-three and thirty-four. See what he says:

Seek first the kingdom of God and all else will be added to you — Matthew 6:33

You know, the best investment vehicle is the kingdom of God—entrusting all of our treasures to him, seeking him first. Does God need our money? That's a question for you, church. Does God need our money? Really? No. He has all things. And graciously, he comes to us who really, really need to give it away because it is such a dangerous commodity. It is such a dangerous master. What we need more than anything else is to let go, to entrust it to him.

You know, in twenty years of pastoral experience, I have never seen anyone get too carried away with trusting God with their money. I know people are always like, "Well, you don't want to get carried away. You want to be careful about this." You know, I've never seen anybody do that. I've never seen anybody live a reckless, trusting lifestyle with their money with God. Never. We're like the richest man. Always, there's never enough. There's never enough.

How Much Should We Give?

See, what is the conclusion? And some of you have been waiting for this. You know, how much should we give? And some of you are type A personalities like me and you're like, "Give me the line, give me the number." So tell me, you're going to say 10%? 20%? 40%? You can say like, okay, $45,000 cap your salary at $45,000 and give away everything else? No.

The human heart loves rules and is always looking for like, "Hey, tell me what the standard is and I will meet that." You tell me and I am an overachiever. I will do that. See, law preaches really well to the human heart. We love like, "Give me a standard, let me meet it."

The New Testament writers always resist that. They always resist some kind of little line because the New Testament points us that it's not about the rule, it's about the heart. It's about the heart. The Bible focuses on the heart, not the amount we give. When the heart is right, giving will be right.

So the New Testament just gives us values. Like, you know, invest in eternity. Don't tie your heart to the here and now. Value Jesus and his kingdom above all else. Those kind of things.

And here's my point: Christians who worship God and not money will live sufficiently and give extravagantly. Christians who say, you know, "Jesus is my great treasure"—we're going to be people who don't need as much cash in the bank because Jesus is my security, and I don't need as much stuff around me because Jesus has given me so much. He's been so generous with me. Stuff? It's just not that big a deal to me. To live sufficiently, give extravagantly.

So here's the question: Are you giving enough? And here's the answer. The only way that the word "enough" is used over and over in Scripture is applied to one thing: Jesus. About how he is enough. His cross, his death, his resurrection, his personal presence by the whole power of the Holy Spirit, him being in your life, his pouring mercy over you—that is what is sufficient. That is what is enough.

See, the question "Have I given enough?" will always come with compulsion and guilt. And the New Testament tells us no. Like, this is what God desires: cheerful givers. You're saying, "Jesus is my ultimate treasure. He is my ultimate reward. Everything is his. It's all for him."

Living Out the Treasure

So, bottom line, here's what my family is doing. We are trying to live in such a way where we're not going to wait until we feel really rich to start being generous. Our lifestyle now will reflect a difference from that of other people who earn the same amount of money as us.

In fact, let me tell you this. If you're going to live a life where you're like, "Jesus is my treasure," your life is going to look one big step down in difference from the people around you who earn the exact same salary. It is. The stuff you have, the kind of vacations you go on, how long you drive your cars for—it's going to look different.

And if you are committed to living debt free, and we know most Americans are up to their eyeballs in credit card debt, it's going to be two big notches down from people who make the same salary as you. And that's not a loss, but we just need to expect it.

Because our investment is in a kingdom vehicle and a strategy that's long term, it's going to last forever. So my wife and I have been asking God to help us live on less, be content with that, and give away more. We are really overwhelmed by what God has given us. We're heirs of salvation. God has given us his Son. He's at work in manifold ways in my family life. He's at work in the lives of my kids. We feel rich. I don't feel poor. I feel rich in that way.

And yet, at the same time, we're saying like, we also enjoy the good gifts that come from God. We don't feel guilty about going out to dinner and having a nice meal and being like, man, God gives good gifts and we are grateful for those. We're grateful to go on vacation. But we also have a wartime mentality of like, man, there's light and dark, there's death and life, there are people who are perishing without Jesus, and we want to invest in that because that really, really matters.

So I believe the life that most glorifies God in this age, in every age, is a life that lives sufficiently and gives generously.

Giving Opportunity

In two Sundays, we're going to give you an opportunity as a community to examine your own money and your own giving and to put this into practice. So if you came in today and didn't get this last week, we handed out three things to you. We handed out a card on the weekend initiative that explains what we're targeting for our money as a church. We gave you a lame magnet. I thought they were going to be great and I put it on my car and in the rain this week, it already fell apart. So those are for your fridge and not for your car. And then we gave you this card.

This card is an opportunity for all of us to sit down and pray about our money. We're going to give you an opportunity—you don't have to do this, but we're giving you an opportunity to reflect on your giving and your spending and how you're living. And for those of you, some of you made a commitment last year to support our church, and you have a chance to write that same number in two Sundays from now. We're going to invite everybody to come forward and drop these off. It's a way for us to affirm, "Jesus, you're my treasure."

Some of you are like, "Man, God has been incredibly generous to me this year," and you can increase the amount of money that you give to our church. Some of you weren't here last year. We'd be glad to welcome you into this, but this is an opportunity for us to say, "Jesus, you're what I value," and to put that into practice.

Don't Waste Your Life

Let me close this way. Several years ago, I read this in a book by John Piper called Don't Waste Your Life, and probably some of you are familiar with this. Piper says he was reading one day this article in the Reader's Digest about a couple who had taken retirement early at 59, had cashed out everything. They lived up in the Northeast. They went down to Florida, bought a big yacht, and spent the rest of their retirement really excited about it. They were going to spend time playing softball and collecting shells.

Piper looked at this and at first he thought, "I thought this is a joke? Like, this is their dream. This is what they want to do." And then he said the more he thought about it, the more he realized how tragic that was. This is what he says:

"Here's the dream. Come to the end of your life—your one and only precious God-given life—and let the last great work of your life before you give an account to your Creator be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment, saying, 'Look Lord, see my shells?' That's a tragedy. People are spending billions of dollars of their hard-earned money to buy into that kind of dream. We're being persuaded all the time to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest. Don't buy it. Don't waste your life."

Brothers and sisters, do we believe this? Do we really believe that God is sufficient? That we can trust him enough with what he's given us? That he is that good a provision for us, and that he is a treasure above all else? Do we really believe that?

Let's give God a chance to prove it. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.