Wisdom in the Desert (Week 4): Treasures in Heaven

Matthew 6 verse 19 Don't store up yourselves treasures on

Matthew 6:19

earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break

in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,

where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves

don't break in and steal. For where your treasure is,

there your heart will be also. See.

The light is the lamp of the body.

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.

So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that

darkness? No one can serve 2 masters,

since either he will hate 1 and love the other, or he will be

devoted to 1 and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and. Money.

My phone is a little bit older. I recently have been having some

trouble with it. Some friends have very politely

and persistently let me know that some of their texts haven't

been coming through to me, and I think part of it is due to the

age of it. This is what you call a pre

pandemic phone all the way from 2019 and having a phone this old

I have found is just completely socially unacceptable.

Evidently, OK, I mean, I, I pull this thing out in front of my

friends and I might as well have just like pulled out a Rotary

phone, you know what I mean? Like they look at me like I'm

some sort of something, OK. And so I got to be honest.

So as it's been acting up, I've been, I've been sort of doing a

little bit of, of the research on buying a new phone, right?

And you know, my plan has the free upgrade and all of that.

But I've, I've started to notice, I've gotten sucked into

the marketing campaigns that are out there with technology.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

Every year it starts up, there's a new phone and a new product

promising, you know, the the latest and greatest features,

right? The new phones have AI that will

literally make all of your life better, evidently.

OK, it's turns out that the new phones have like 10 different

cameras and all of the features and all of that.

And even though my phone's been acting up, I'm the type of guy

or I like to I like to fix the things in my life that are

broken and not just replace them, you know?

And so I did a little work. I did some backup, I did a

factory reset and it and it's working again.

It's functioning. Yes, we can clap for that.

OK, I heard some collective moans from my friends out in the

audience, which is fine, right? But I gotta be honest, right?

Like like the, the new phone is still calling my name, you know

what I mean? Like the advertising's been

working. I've been researching the latest

and greatest and I've seen all the features and I kind of, I

kind of want a new phone. But here's the problem.

The old phone still works. You know what I mean?

The old pre pandemic phone is still functioning.

Well, at least now it now it's functioning OK.

And the question is, what do we do with that?

What do we do with our culture that is constantly trying to

sell us on the latest and greatest all the time?

There was one study that showed that we are exposed to somewhere

between 4008 thousand advertisements every day,

everyday, right? You may think that's

astronomical 4000, but maybe if you factor in every single logo

you see during the day, every emblem on a car you see every ad

while you're scrolling, that number is tremendous.

We are constantly being sold on the latest and greatest in the

next. It's consumerism at its finest.

And my question today is how do we know if we're just justifying

the next purchase, not because we need it, but because we want

it? You ever felt that tension?

And how do we know if we're being sucked into the pole of

materialism of accumulating more and more and more?

And beyond that, how do we know if we're being sucked into the

the allure and the enticement of wealth or what Jesus called

mammon? We're going to discuss this

today as we continue on in our sermon series called Wisdom In

the Desert. And we're taking the season of

Lent, which is traditionally the 40 days leading up to Easter.

And we're intentionally taking some time to to strip back to

practice spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting.

And our sermon series is an examination of the desert

fathers and mothers. They were this sort of like

radical group of early Christians who escaped their

culture and went off into the wilderness in order to truly

seek Jesus, in order to truly find him.

They were escaping the materialism of their age, the

corruption and the church and politics, and they went off into

the desert to do spiritual warfare and to choose a

different lifestyle. So we're kind of looking at

this, this radical group of Christians and saying, is there

any ancient wisdom, any truth that we can embrace for

ourselves today? And one thing about the desert

fathers and mothers that they all shared this very common

trait, which was this, they actively and very intentionally

rejected the pull of materialism.

And they did that by embracing what was called an ascetic

lifestyle, that basically a a lifestyle of self denial, of

renunciation. They were renouncing the way of

the world and their culture and materialism, consumerism.

And they chose a different way. Now, they took it to some pretty

crazy extremes. I mean, they went without

luxuries, they went without clothes.

Sometimes they went without sleep, they went without food.

It was radical. Sometimes they even were

training one another to go without praise, as in like,

don't let people compliment you or praise you because it does

something to the soul and it's radical.

Their way of life, and we're not meant to emulate it all the way.

But the question is, why would they do this?

Why would they go out into the wilderness for this?

There was a church father by the name of Hyperachaeus, and he

said this. He said to accept poverty freely

is the monk's treasure. Therefore, my brother lay up

treasure in heaven, where there will be endless time for rest.

And what he's doing here is he's riffing off of the teachings and

the lifestyle of Jesus himself. So we're going to be in Matthew

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6 today. If you have your Bibles, we

always encourage you to bring physical Bibles.

If you have it. You can always look at it on

your phone. It'll be on the screen as well.

Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, the first gospel.

It's about 3/4 of the way through your Bible.

If you want to turn there, we're going to be starting in verse 19

today. And again, these desert fathers

and mothers, they chose the radical lifestyle in order to

counteract the forces and the poles of the culture that they

live in. We too, as followers of Jesus,

are constantly being swayed and pulled by the waves and the

tides of our culture. And this is what Jesus speaks on

the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples.

This sermon is one of the most famous passages, famous sermons

of all time. It's sort of Jesus's inaugural

address announcing what the Kingdom is like and how we can

live into God's Kingdom. And he says this in verse 19.

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 Moss

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. So here Jesus gives two options

for the for the place where we can store our treasure.

One is heaven and the other is down on earth.

So the question becomes like, why would we be tempted to store

all, all of our stuff on earth? Why do we do that well, as human

beings, you and I live in a material world.

We we work for a living. We get money from our work in

order to pay for a food or roof over our head right.

Our our needs are visible and they're tangible and by the way,

that working for our keep is a is a good and beautiful thing.

God designed us to work as we see an Adam and Eve with the

Garden of Eden. But so often what happens is in

our pursuit of our tangible needs, we often times fear that

we won't have enough. We worry and we toil and we

build up for ourselves. We store up for ourselves

treasures here and now on earth. We build storehouses that are

bigger and bigger. When God wants us to store our

treasures elsewhere, you know it's not that.

It's not that storing up your treasures is bad per SE.

That's not what Jesus is coming against.

He knows instinctively as human beings we want to store up

enough. The question becomes where are

we storing our treasures? So today I'm going to give you 3

quick reasons why there's wisdom in storing up your treasures in

heaven instead of here on earth following Jesus's commands.

The first and first reason is this.

Moth and vermin destroy treasures on earth.

Again, take a look at verse 20. But store up for yourselves

treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy and

where thieves do not break in and steal.

So again, it's not about the fact that humans want to store

up treasures. It's about all about where we

choose to store it on earth or in heaven.

Now the word here for vermin, some translations call it rust,

and the word literally means sort of this eating away.

So think of how rust sort of eats away at metal.

What Jesus is saying here is like, due to the fallen nature

of our world, due to sin, this world has a sort of corrosive

effect on all of our material possessions.

Everything decays, it falls away.

And So what he's saying here is don't put all your eggs in the

basket here on earth where it will be eaten away eventually,

either by moth or by rust or by vermin.

In other words, what he's saying is this.

Heaven is the only secure place to invest your time, your talent

and your treasures. It's the only place where your

treasures won't be stolen, where they won't decay, where they

won't eventually be eaten up by time or by others.

Store up your treasures in heaven.

If I was going to go back in time, like let's say I had a

time machine and I could go back to, you know, young 19, 90s Ben,

right? And I could give him some advice

on where to invest. I want to tell you, I would not

tell him to invest in something like Blockbuster, You know what

I mean? Instead, I'd maybe say, all

right, invest in Apple or invest in, you know, NVIDIA or Google

or something, but don't invest in Blockbuster.

I know it's, it's like peak right now for you, Ben.

I know they have N60 fours inside of them, but trust me, it

will fall away. That would be a poor investment.

What Jesus is saying here is saying don't store up here on

earth. That's a bad investment.

It's going to fall away. None of that's like financial

advice, by the way. Don't take that from me, but

don't store up for yourselves Beanie Babies, right?

They're not going to be worth what you think they're going to

be worth. Instead, the only safe

investment is to store them up in heaven.

Now we need to also sort of avoid the the opposite of

extreme here, which says, you know, don't store up anything

for yourself. Don't, don't save for tomorrow

or save for the future. I don't think that's what Jesus

is saying here. Again, we look at the broad

context of Scripture to understand individual passages

and all throughout Scripture we see that saving up for tomorrow

is a wise thing to do. In Proverbs, it talks about the

ants and how they work during the summer in order to save up

for what the winter. Scripture also talks about how

Joseph, he was storing up grain for Egypt because there was a

famine that was about to come. Corinthians talks about saving

up for your own children and so on and so forth.

Parable of the talents. We get the picture.

It's not that investing is bad. It's not that saving is bad.

In fact, it's good. What Jesus is saying here is he

saying that with the excess? Resist the urge to just keep

building bigger and bigger storehouses for yourself.

Resist the urge to just keep and accumulate and fall into the

trap of materialism. Does that make sense?

So far, heaven is the only safe investment.

So that's number one. Moth and vermin destroy

treasures when we store them up here on earth.

Second reason why we need to choose the wisdom of heavenly

treasures is that our heart follows our treasure.

Our heart always follows our treasure.

Matthew 621 Jesus says for where your treasure is, there your

heart will be also interesting. So for Jesus, this idea of

materialism and accumulating and having more and more, it always

comes back to the heart. It always is about the heart

first and foremost with Jesus. By heart I'm talking about the

center of our will, the center of our emotions, the center of

our desires. That's the heart.

It's the the kind of the deepest part of who we are.

And what Jesus is teaching here is he's saying your heart

follows your money and your time and your treasures.

Now, sometimes we think it's like the opposite, right?

We think, you know, the things we really care about are the

things we spend our money on. And that's true, right?

If you were to show me your budget and you were to show me

your calendar, I'd get a pretty good picture of what you care

about, right? Same.

Same with mine. But Jesus is saying it's, he's

saying, yes, it's that, but it's, it's also the opposite.

He's saying wherever you, wherever you send your treasures

off to your heart will also go with it.

You will follow your treasure. Part of this is because, you

know, if we, if we just store up for ourselves here on earth, we

fear because we know that we might lose it all in a moment.

We might have job loss or the economy might turn or someone

might take it or someone might betray us.

And so if our heart is with our treasures here on earth, we, we,

we live in fear or we might be tempted to greed because we

never quite feel like we have enough.

Let me put it this way. Our hearts, our desire and our

energy, our attention follows our treasure.

It goes with it. It's inevitable.

The things you spend your money on and your time on are the

things that you care about. And then Jesus says this really

next, this next part, which was really interesting.

There's a couple different interpretations that you can go

with it. It's not quite clear, but in

verse 22, he says this. He says 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? What is Jesus talking about

here? How many of you have ever heard

the phrase the eyes or the window to the soul, Anyone.

Yep. Show of hands.

Few of you. I think that's from like

Shakespeare or something. And it's kind of the idea of

like, if you really look into someone's eyes, you can see what

they're really like. You know, you can see inside to

their souls. It's almost like a portal into

their souls. And Jesus, I think is, is kind

of saying something similar. He agrees that the eyes are the

are the portal to the soul. But what he's saying is, is the

eyes are are the thing that allows things externally to come

in and land in our hearts. What do I mean by that?

What Jesus is saying, he's saying, yes, the eyes are the

window to the soul, but it's it's like a portal that allows

things into our hearts. Our hearts are sort of the

repository of treasures. There's a storehouse even in our

heart. And what we focus on is what

fills our hearts. So if we have good eyes, our

focus is on God, Our focus is on loving him.

Our focus is on living righteously for God and his love

and his righteousness fills our heart.

But if we have a bad eye, which is sort of Hebrew for if we have

a bad eye, it's sort of the connotation of like, we look at

what our neighbors have and their house and their, their

cars and their possessions, and we become envious of those

things. Covetous is another word for

that. He's saying if we look out and

we just want what our neighbor has, our, our eyes are evil.

They're darkened. And what happens?

We allow that darkness into our heart.

We become greedy. Does that make sense?

So. So what we choose to focus on is

what fills our hearts. Our eyes are like a portal.

Michael J Wilkins puts it this way.

If a disciples eyes are fixed on earthly treasure as his or her

value, personal significance or earthly security, then the heart

will likewise be full of darkness.

When we focus on something evil, the eye becomes the conduit by

which evil fills the inner person.

If the eye is good, it is the conduit that allows the heart to

be filled with the light of God's treasure.

Let me put it this way. The longer we behold something,

the more it takes residence in our hearts.

Have you found that to be true in your life?

The whatever you focus on, whatever you're desiring,

whatever you're really just like watching and and folding and

giving your attention to it begins to take seat in our

heart, residence in our hearts. And so the invitation of Jesus

is to have a singular focus, to turn our attention purely and

strictly to Jesus himself, because where our treasure goes,

our heart will go also. OK, so that's number two.

Third reason why we choose the wisdom of storing up in heaven

rather than on earth. You guys can say this with me,

it's on the screen. You cannot serve 2 masters. 24

Jesus says no one can serve 2 masters.

Either you will hate the one or love the other, or you'll be a

devoted to 1 and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

Wow, powerful words. What it what it did Jesus say

it's really hard to serve both God and money?

No. Did Jesus say some people

struggle with serving both God and money?

He says you cannot serve both God and money.

It's one of the greatest sayings of all time.

Jesus knows what he's talking about here.

Some translations have it this way.

They say you cannot serve God and mammon thinking mammon.

What is mammon? I don't know what that is.

Mammon is actually an Aramaic word, which would have been what

they would have spoken at the time.

But Matthew chooses not to translate Aramaic into Greek.

In this instance, he leaves it as mammon.

It's likely as a call back to the Hebrew.

So he left it untranslated and scholars think it was because

the word mammon was the name for an ancient Syrian God of wealth.

Interesting. So here, wealth, materialism,

accumulation, it's being personified as a rival God to

Yahweh himself, God the Father. You catch that this is not just,

you know, oh, money's nice to have.

And so we all kind of chase after it.

Jesus is giving the impression that no, this is like an

animated demonic force that can grip you and lay hold of you if

you let it. Do you see?

Do you see why this matters? OK, it's not just a passive

thing, but it's an active thing. Mammon is to be taken seriously.

It's Jesus's way of saying there is a rival God out there,

lowercase G God out there. Beware of it.

I kind of wanted to help personify this idea of Mammon as

a rival. And so I did what I, what I like

to do lately, evidently is like I go to ChatGPT and I'm like,

hey, show me what like a rival God Mammon might look like.

And I, I really didn't like what it pumped out because it was

sort of this like dark demonic, like scary horned creature.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Mammon is not scary. Mammon is enticing.

Mammon allures us in with the promise of wealth and well-being

and security. Mammon is not some scary thing

that you say, whoa, I don't want to go near that.

It's the opposite. And so I found this, this

painting, it's from 1909. So think industrial revolution,

so on and so forth. Take a look.

This painting is over 100 years old, painted by Evelyn De

Morgan, and it's a depiction of Mammon.

So you can see that Mammon is sort of this golden God like

like figure in the background, intentionally out of frame with

its size and notice something. Notice that the woman in this

painting is not going for the bag of gold that Mammon is

extending here. No, she she's lost interest in

the gold a long time ago. She's now worshipping the God of

wealth itself. How many of us?

We may start off with just trying to get enough to get by,

then get enough to be comfortable, then get enough to

outperform our neighbors or whatever.

We start off by chasing money, but then something shifts.

Our heart actually starts to worship the God of Mammon

itself. You can see her just kind of

looking up in desperation at this mammon, and he's just kind

of towering over her in full control.

This painting carries with it significance because this is the

struggle that each of us face when it comes to wealth and

mammon and accumulation. It's what Scripture writers

would call an idol, which is a false God.

And an idol replaces God's role and function in our lives.

So a false God, they, they attempt to say, hey, I'm going

to give you all these things. I'm going to perform this

function in your life. But they try to entice us by

giving us things that only God was meant to give us.

Tim Keller says that idols are usually good things that turn

into ultimate things. Wow, how many good things in

your life can easily become an ultimate thing?

It's interesting to me that accumulation, materialism,

consumerism, it's interesting that workaholism is is one of

the only acceptable drugs in our culture.

Have you noticed that it's because you see a very positive

return when you are a workaholic in life, do you not?

People are like, whoa, you must have it all together.

Whoa, you got the new iPhone, you know, 200, That's amazing,

right? Like, wow, you must have it

together. You must be a hard worker,

right? Workaholism has become an

acceptable drug. Most people are, you know, when

it comes to like, like heroin or meth, it's like, no, no, no,

don't do that. That's destructive.

But when it comes to accumulation, it's like, yeah,

good for you, man. Have you noticed that?

It's an idol, and it's a dangerous one at that.

Mammon offers us all sorts of things.

Mammon tries to offer a security.

You're going to be taken care of.

You're going to be fine. Mammon offers us a sense of self

worth. Oh, you must have made it.

Offers us power and influence over others.

It allows us some sense of independence.

I can do what I want, when I want to do it, wherever I want

to do it at. And finally, Mammon offers us

pleasure. Everything, all the pleasures

that the world offers us, we can have at our disposal if we would

just worship and bow our knee to Mammon.

The Rockefeller family with some of the the wealthiest family

ever. I think it was Standard Oil.

Is my history right on that? Standard Oil, very wealthy,

probably one of the wealthiest people in our nation.

And one time someone asked Rockefeller, they said

Rockefeller, how much money is enough?

It's a good question. And what is his?

What did he say? His response was this just a

little bit more. Isn't that telling?

He's making commentary on the human heart, our propensity to

just want more and more and more up and to the right.

Accumulation, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, just a little bit more.

But I want to, I want to, I want to say something.

It's it's not that wealth itself is bad.

It's not, you see, wealth itself isn't evil, but wealth's grip on

the heart is dangerous. Does that make sense?

It's the grip, it's the, it's the trapping effect that it has

that can be dangerous. And I think that's why Jesus

said, hey, it's easier for, it's easier for a camel to go through

the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom

of heaven. He's not saying it's impossible,

He's just saying there's difficulty there.

So be cautious. Does that make sense?

So don't store up and build storehouses for yourself.

Give it over to God. The only safe investment in

heaven, The difficulty to escape Mammon and actually put our

security and our sense of self worth and our pleasure in God

the Father is something we have to pay attention to.

God Himself wants to be our security.

He wants to tell us our worth and give us pleasures at His

right hand. Not pleasures we go out and seek

ourselves, but the pleasures from His right hand.

The desires of our heart will be met when we find our full

fulfilment and desire for Him. There's a there's this movie

called Interstellar which one of the focuses towards the end of

the movie is this massive black hole.

If you know anything about a black hole, it's that the

gravity is so strong that even light itself can't escape from

it. You know that.

And this movie is incredible because at the end they are sort

of circling this black hole trying to escape from it, but it

just is sucking everything into it.

Mammon is like a black hole. It constantly is trying to pull

you in. It's force that exerts over

ourselves is always drawing us into itself.

We cannot serve 2 masters, and Jesus's point here is that

disciples of Jesus are to have no other gods, including the

rival God of Mammon. No other gods.

There's only one true God. OK, so the question becomes, how

do we actually store up our treasures in heaven then?

What does that look like? One of the best ways that we can

store up our treasures in heaven is through a practice called

generosity. Generosity could be defined this

way. It's sacrificially and

cheerfully. Those words are important.

Sacrificially and cheerfully giving our money, our time, our

gifts, and our power. Matthew 62 Jesus implies or

expects his disciples to be giving to the needy.

He says, so when you give to the needy, it's very common in

Jewish, Jewish culture to be giving to the poor.

They took the Old Testament commandments very seriously to

look after the oppressed. So giving to the poor was a

common thing. Jesus expected his disciples to

do the same. Elsewhere.

We read Jesus's words in Acts 2035 where he says this.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

That word for blessed we learned about in the Beatitudes is the

word marcarius. In other words, you'll be

happier if you give then you will if you just receive.

Do we actually believe that? Do we live like we believe that

challenging verse here for most of us, what we see here is is

generosity is certainly it encompasses more than just

money, but it definitely includes money.

It's not less than money because of the grip that money has on

our hearts. You see, Jesus expected and

encouraged his disciples to give.

But give to what? That's the question, right?

What are the things that we're meant to be generous towards

with our time, talent and treasure and our power and

influence? Well, number one, we are called

to be generous towards the poor all throughout Scripture.

It's a justice issue to look to the poor and the oppressed and

the widow and the fatherless and the orphan and to take care of

their needs because they're near and dear to heart and to God's

heart. He looks after the poor.

And we are called to be the conduits of God's grace and his

mercy and his justice to the people who are down and out.

We will always have the poor among us.

Jesus said, you know this or this, There's a passage where

talks about like God, when did we see you hungry and feed you?

And what does Jesus say said anytime you fed the least of

these, you fed me, you took care of me.

So first and foremost, our time, our talent, our treasure, our

power is to go to the poor. The second thing we're called to

give to all throughout the Bible is the church or those who

advance the gospel. We see that the the work of the

ministry is supported by the people in the Old Testament and

the New Testament. In the Old Testament, it's the

people brought bringing their gifts and their talents to build

the Tabernacle, to host the festivals.

And you think about the temple worship and you think about

synagogue worship. It was the tithes and offerings

of the people that were able to allow that to function.

In the New Testament, Paul talks often about paying the people or

taking care of the people who are giving you or presenting you

the gospel, which is why we very frequently encourage tithing and

offering in the church, for instance.

So first, giving to the poor. Second, giving to the church or

those preaching the gospel to you.

And then third is just any other Kingdom ventures, any other

things that are trying to do good in this world for the sake

of the gospel. It could be a nonprofit, It

could be someone who, you know, is just doing really good work

for whatever refugees or the poor or whatever.

But the point is this, we are called to be generous to the

initiatives that are going to advance the Kingdom because

those are the things that will last forever.

Everything else is going to fade and fall away.

Your house is going to be a pile of rubble someday, or it's just

going to be turned into something that's much nicer and

fancier, right? Your, your, your 4-O1K, your

bank accounts, all of that is going to be redistributed in

about 200 years, 300 years. You're not going to know the

people who have your money. It's all going to go somewhere.

The point that Jesus is making is this.

He's saying give to things that last forever.

Relationships, the oppressed Kingdom, gospel work, souls

being saved. Use your wealth to advance the

gospel. Because the gospel and the

Kingdom are forever. They're forever.

Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth.

That's stupid. You hear me?

That's stupid. Store up your store up your

treasures in heaven. It's the only safe place to

invest you with me so far. You guys are like, I wasn't

expecting a giving talk today. OK, this isn't a giving talk.

This this is a escaping from mammon talk.

You hear me? That's the point of the day is

how do we escape the lure of materialism and greed in our

culture? It's all around us.

I started preaching and I lost my place.

I'm going to find it here. Just give me a SEC.

Here's the thing, when it comes to generosity, we are hard wired

to give to others. Why?

Because God made us in His own image and there is nobody who

was given more than God himself. He gave His only begotten Son

when Jesus was here. He gave all of His time, His

effort and energy. He got down and washed His feet.

He willingly gave His life for others.

You can never out give God. And because we're made in the

image of God and His likeness, you and I are hard wired in our

DNA to give, to be generous. As a matter of fact, science

supports the idea that you and I are meant to give.

Did you know that life satisfaction goes up whenever we

are generous with our money and generous with our time?

There's multiple different factors that improve in our

lives when we give. Sociologist Hilary Davidson and

Christian Smith in their book The Paradox of Generosity, they

say this. People rightly say that money

cannot buy happiness. But money and happiness are

still related in a curious way. Happiness can be the result not

of spending more money on oneself, but rather of giving

money away to others. The data examined here show this

not to be simply a nice idea, but a social scientific fact.

It is a social scientific fact that the more we give away, the

more happiness we receive. It's almost like Jesus knows

what he's talking about, right? It's almost like the King of the

universe knows how the universe operates and how we are meant to

live into this Kingdom. Blessed are those who give, not

those who receive. It's so much more better, so

much better to give than it is just to take.

But here's the thing. When it comes to generosity,

there's a bit of a disclaimer here.

There's a bit of a disclaimer. Our motivation matters.

Our motivation of the heart matters deeply.

You see, if we're generous people and we give a bunch of

money and you know, we, we give a lot away, but we also let

people know that we're giving a lot away, that's kind of a

problem. You see, we, we can't escape the

grip of Mammon if we're just exchanging the idol of greed for

the idol of vanity and looking good in front of others.

You guys are like, oh boy, here we go, right?

You can't exchange the idol of greed for the idol of control

and power. It doesn't work like that.

So Jesus reminds us that our motivations matter deeply when

it comes to our generosity. As a matter of fact, the

beginning of Matthew 6 is all about the heart posture and all

about acts of righteousness in front of others.

He says be careful not to practice your righteousness in

front of others to be seen by them.

It's not that acts of righteousness are bad.

Go do a bunch of really good things.

It's actually even OK if people see you doing the good things.

What Jesus is saying is don't do it to be seen by them.

Does that make sense? Don't do it because you want

their attention in the accolade and the notoriety.

The motivations of the heart matter deeply, and so make the

wise investment. Be generous with your time, your

gifts, your talent, and everything else.

If you were to go through Matthew chapter 6, you would see

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

that all of Jesus is teaching here on doing acts of

righteousness and praying and fasting and giving.

We see that it's all in the context in the relationship to

knowing God as our Father. If you were to just take a look

at this screen, just take a look at this list.

This is chapter 6 alone. All these different times where

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Jesus says your Father in heaven, it's your Father who

sees your Father who sees your Father knows our Father in

heaven. Your Father will forgive you.

All of these commandments are meant to be lived out in the

context of loving relationships with God as the Father.

Because none of this makes sense if God isn't on the throne.

Being generous and giving more than we feel like we can bear,

or giving sacrificially makes no sense unless it's in

relationship with God the Father, the King, who is the one

who provides for us. So when it comes to generosity,

all of this has to be taken into relationship with God.

And if you're here today and and you're checking out church for

the first time or you don't even know if you have relationship

with God, the invitation for you is, is to know him as your

Father, your perfect heavenly Father who loves you deeply.

Again, Wilkins says the transformed disposition of the

disciples in her heart motivates us to discipline our lives to be

like the Father. In other words, we give of

ourselves freely so we can become like Jesus together and

honor the Father, recognizing that everything we own is

already His. We're just stewarding it here.

All of this is because we have received the righteousness of

God. When we put our faith in Jesus,

what He did on the cross and the resurrection, we've received

that inner righteousness from Him.

And now we can go do acts of righteousness out of that

posture, out of gratitude, out of thankfulness.

It's all about making Dad proud. It's all about making him proud.

That's the motivation. As we close here, we release the

grip of Mammon by investing our lives in what will last.

Invest in what will last. So we have some practices for

you to help us. A sort of escape the grip of of

wealth and materialism and accumulation #1 we already

mentioned is just the practice of generosity, lent

traditionally as a time of alms giving or giving to the poor or

the needy. So maybe in this next week,

maybe you choose to look at your budget and choose to give a

little bit of time or give a little bit of money to an

organization that you know is looking after the poor and the

needy. Maybe you choose to give some

time or money to Love Inc, one of our partners that you'll hear

about after the sermon. Maybe you want to make a

donation to Ankeny Service Center or Hope Ministries or

whatever it may be. Or maybe you want to look into

volunteering your time. Almsgiving and generosity are

great ways to break the grip of mammon.

Generosity is one of our convictions here at a church and

you can look it up on online. We have some language about that

as well. Giving and choosing generosity

is the pressure relief valve from just storing up for

ourselves. In other words, when the movie

Interstellar, you know that the black hole is just sucking that

spaceship in closer and closer and closer, and you want to know

how they escape it, how they finally get out of the the

gravity of of the black hole. They start shedding their

weight, they shed off and sacrifice.

They detach part of their valuable ship in order to escape

the pull of this black hole. In the same way, church, in the

same way, in order to escape the pull of materialism and wealth

and mammon, we have to shed off and sacrifice and be generous

people. We got to release it so we can

escape. Another practice is the practice

of Sabbath. Actually, no, this quote is

good. I have to share this quote here.

It is what my coach said it this week.

He says money is like manure. If you let it pile up, it starts

to stink. If you spread it around, it

makes things grow. How good is that, right?

Don't let it pile up, it starts to sink.

Spread it around and makes things grow #2 is the practice

of Sabbath. Traditionally, we often times

Sabbath is a time where you refrain from buying or selling

or being productive for productive for yourself.

Maybe you want to try just gratitude or gratitude

journaling or the practice of simplicity.

Simplicity is incredibly difficult as Americans because

we really don't like a downgrade, do we?

We like upgrades, not downgrades.

You know, if you were to say, Oh yeah, we're my, my husband and I

or my spouse and I, we're, we're down grading our house and we're

down grading our car. People will be like, what's

wrong? Is everything OK?

Right. But as Christians, what if we

instead chose to simplify, chose to grant downgrade for the sake

of running away from materialism?

I'm going to invite the the band to come on forward here and

play, but I want to conclude by talking about Jesus because

there was this moment. There's this moment where where

Jesus is dying for our sins, where he is.

He's on the cross. And we see this picture where at

his feet on the ground there are these soldiers.

And what are they doing? Scripture says that these

soldiers on the ground are casting lots for his clothes.

And so I want you just to imagine that scene for just a

moment, that that these soldiers with Jesus on the cross, they're

not looking up at him, but rather they're looking down and

they're throwing dice, trying to get better clothes for

themselves, trying to better their circumstances.

In other words, they're looking at their material goods rather

than looking up at Jesus. They're focused on the ground.

They're focused on getting more for themselves, getting the

treasures here on earth when they could have looked up, and

seeing instead that there are treasures beyond imagination

found in Jesus himself. In a similar way, may we not get

caught in the cycle of just looking what everyone else has,

looking to our own circumstances, but instead may

we look up at the One who gave it all, who lived a life of

poverty for us, who sacrificed. And in him may we found find a

Pearl of great price. In him may we find that we have

everything we've ever been looking for, and nothing else

will satisfy. To follow Jesus means to let go

of earthly trinkets and return for eternal treasures.