"Your 401K" Matthew 6:19-24 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew six, verse nineteen, Jesus says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal.

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye 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.

If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?

No one can serve two masters.

Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

This is the word of God.

And it is no surprise that Jesus turns the attention of the Sermon on the Mount here to the issue of money.

He just finished preaching on food, and next he will preach on worry, what keeps you up at night.

And so he's hitting food, money, and your secret worries in life.

I mean, there are no sacred cows in Jesus' preaching.

He's getting up close and personal here.

Obviously, the Bible has a lot to say about money, both the Old and the New Testament.

One commentator estimates that 15% of Jesus' words in the New Testament are about money, either directly or by illustration.

He will often use finances to illustrate other points that he is making.

And that's because the Bible shows that money has a kind of a foundational effect on our lives.

There's a fundamental element to money.

Money exposes what is important to you, and it is, in a sense, the temptation to think that your life is dependent or contingent upon your financial ability to provide.

This foundational element of money is that, you know, money can be helpful to you, of course.

We all know this.

Money can be helpful to you.

I'm not going to tell you this morning that money is not helpful.

Money is very helpful.

The most helpful thing about money is you can buy anything in the world with it.

There's nothing else quite like it.

Money is amazing.

It is helpful, but it can also be hazardous.

It's helpful to provide for your family.

It's hazardous because it becomes an entrapment.

It can ensnare your soul.

Money can be precious to you because you use it to advance the gospel.

You use it to support missionaries around the world.

You use it to put food in the mouths of your kids.

So money, of course, can be precious to you.

But money also can be perjurous to you because it can expose the falseness of your confession of faith.

There is no shortage of people that say that Jesus is their Lord, that say that Jesus is their rock and their security in life, but then live their life as if their rock and their security is, in fact, the dollar bill.

And so money can be precious to you, but it can be perjurous to you as well.

It can expose you as a liar.

Money can be liberating to you.

You know, you see the temptation for loving the world all around you, the temptation to fall into the trap of the love of money.

But as you use money by giving it away, you can advance the gospel, of course, but you are also freeing yourself from that temptation, from that trap.

You are liberating yourself from what is probably the most common trap in the world.

More people have made shipwrecks of their faith over money than they have over women or sexual immorality or over uh gluttony or over any of the other sins.

It seems like money is the catch-all trap that ensnares so many people.

And as you use it to give things away, you free yourself from that temptation.

But it can also be a liability.

It can be a liability to you precisely for that same reason.

Because it can make a shipwreck of your faith.

And so if you're tracking there, money can be helpful but hazardous.

It can be precious but perjurous.

It can be liberating or a liability.

You know, the Bible tells you if you don't provide for your family, you are worse than a non-believer.

That's 1 Timothy 5.

Now, in the context of 1 Timothy 5, it's not even talking about providing for your kids, it's talking about providing for your parents.

As they get elderly and can't afford their own life, the scripture commands you to care for them.

So money at the very least can be helpful because it makes you better than a non-believer.

But on the flip side of that, Paul goes on to tell Timothy the love of money can pierce your soul with great pangs of grief that lead to death.

I mean, there's just piling up of these words in that verse.

You can make shipwreck of your faith.

It's foundational in the Gospels.

Before Jesus began his ministry, John the Baptist was doing baptisms at the Jordan River.

People came out to him for baptism, and different groups of people, after coming out of the water, asked John, What are we supposed to do now?

You know, we came and we were baptized, we believed the message of repentance, repent from your sin, put your faith in the Savior who's coming.

We believe that.

What now?

And John's answers had three categories of answers, but they all were about money.

He told the first group of people, Great, give away all that you have.

Give stuff away, help the poor.

He told the second group of people, don't cheat on your taxes.

Don't extort people with their money.

You repented from your sin, great.

Give stuff away, share with those in need, stop cheating on taxes.

And he told the third group of people, take a church membership class.

He didn't say that, but if you have been baptized recently, you should take a church membership class.

The third group people were Roman soldiers who got baptized.

And he told them, and this is like the polarizing issue in Israel, Rome's occupation of Israel was the issue of not just the day, of that generation.

There were wars fought over this issue.

There was nothing more divisive in the Israelite world than the Roman occupation of Palestine.

And here these soldiers come to John the Baptist, Roman soldiers who have repented from their sins and they say, What should we do?

And John says, Be content with your wages.

You gotta be kidding me.

Not surrender your arms and get out of dodge, but be content with what Caesar pays you.

Wow.

Money in that sense is foundational and it exposes the truth of somebody's heart and validates the reality of their repentance.

You want to know if a tax collector is regenerate, does he cheat people?

You want to know if a soldier is regenerate?

Is he content with what the government pays him?

That's the most basic element to it, according to John the Baptist.

So last week we looked at fasting.

And if you remember, last week I said to understand what Jesus is teaching about fasting, you almost need to take a step back and ask yourself an even more basic question, which is what is food?

Why did God make food in the world?

How does food function?

I hope you remember this from last week.

It would encourage me if I saw a few people nodding.

Yeah, okay.

This week, let's take a step back and ask ourselves this question.

Jesus is talking about storing up treasure in heaven.

Let's ask it a very basic question.

What is money?

Why did God design the world with money in it?

And I know that money wasn't pre-fall.

You know, there was no currency in Genesis 2.

Uh, I think the argument for currency comes with government in Genesis 9.

When God establishes government, government is supposed to protect the food source, protect family, protect human life, and government is supposed to check wrongdoing, check evil.

That's the functions of government described in Genesis 9.

This is the start of government.

Government didn't exist in Genesis 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8.

Government comes into existence in Genesis 9 to bear the sword, to protect food, family worship, even is part of that, and to punish wrongdoers.

In order for the government to do that, it collects taxes.

So that's what our money is for.

Our money is to provide for food, our money is to provide for our family, and our money is to fund the government to punish people who sin and do wicked things.

That's the design of money.

But even in a more basic element of that, what gives money, it's worth.

Let me give you an illustration.

I have in my pocket, I think I had in my pocket at some point today, I will find relatively rapidly, you're going to have to trust me that I possess.

You've got to be kidding me.

Oh, you know what?

I have something better that I'll share later.

This is going great.

I had at first service a hundred rupee bill.

A hundred rupees.

The currency of India.

And you look at this bill, and the first question you would have, unless you are like Indian, like lived in India yesterday, kind of Indian, the first question you would have, as I were to hold up this bill, and you'll have to imagine with me right now, the first question that would go through your mind is, how much is it worth?

And now go one question deeper.

How would you answer that question?

And you would probably answer that question by saying, What's the conversion rate to the dollar?

I know what a dollar is worth, and that's because you're an American.

You're pegging it on the dollar.

You're like, oh, I've been in countries where people have lived in country, I've visited a missionary, a dude who's lived in his country for years, and he still, before he buys something, is converting it to the dollar in his head.

Like that's not what the dollar's not what determines the value of, you know, a Canadian, whatever they have up there.

That's not what it is.

It's what you can buy with it right on the store in front of you.

What gives the rupee its value?

It's not his conversion rate to the dollar, but that's the way you think.

Because your mind goes one step further.

Your mind goes from that to what else costs that amount of money?

And even if you're not using foreign currency, you still have that, don't you?

You're in the store, and one of the kids says, I'd like to buy this Barbie doll.

And another kid says, You could buy 24 tacos for that Barbie doll.

And I'm thinking, man, I would prefer 24 tacos.

You get three Starbucks for that.

And you do that all the way up, right?

You you peg the car, the cost of the car based on what your mortgage is.

You know, that that would be my mortgage for 10 months, or that'd be my mortgage for a year, or something like that.

We think that way.

We peg everything to value.

What gives money its value is what you value.

It's it's a circular argument here.

Money has value based upon what you value.

It buys things that you desire, and that's what gives it its worth.

Some of you spend more money than others on cars.

That reveals that you value cars more than other people.

Some of you spend more money on clothes than other people.

And that reveals that you value clothes more than other people.

Some of you spend more on nice restaurants.

You value it.

Some of you spend money on entertainment.

You'll drop$100 for a ticket to a Nats game.

And others of you would say, There's no way I'd go see the Nats for a$100 ticket.

It's got to be way better seats than that.

And some of you would say, I would never go to a baseball game.

Like it just pegs differently, and that's not even judgment statements.

Like if baseball is super important to you, you'll drop more than a hundred bucks on a ticket.

And some of you would just be aghast at that kind of spending.

Because you value things differently.

This is the primary function in Jesus' teaching of money it shows what you value.

That's what money is.

It's a great big window into your heart.

It shows the world what you value.

It only has value if you can get something that's worthwhile.

And here's what I did pull out of my pocket, which first hour I decided not to use.

I have a Zen Burger gift card, which I bought at Costco.

$25 Zen Burger gift card.

You remember Zen Burger?

Gone the way of the buffalo.

That thing is not there anymore.

I've had this thing sitting on my office desk for like five years.

I have a sister who lives in, a sister-in-law who lives in Phoenix.

They have Zen Burger there.

I brought this gift card on an airplane with me to Phoenix to take her to Zen Burger.

I tried to use it and they're like, we have different owners, sorry.

So now I still have this gift card as a constant reminder of how worthless money is.

Pointless.

Everything in life is like that.

It shows you what you value and it has value in as much as it corresponds to something you can buy.

This is the truth about money.

And that's why Jesus says that money is a window to your heart.

The main point of this is verse 21.

It's not highlighted in your Bible, but it's so obvious it may as well be.

The main point of the text we read, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Your treasure and your heart are linked.

This is not a cause and effect statement, like if you spend your money, your heart will follow.

It's not the other way around, like whatever you love, you'll spend money on.

It's a tautology.

Like it's something where both sides are true because the other side is true.

Where your money is, your heart is there.

And where your heart is, your money is there.

You can imagine this.

Take two rocks and tie a string around both rocks and throw one of the rocks.

The two rocks will end up in the same spot.

They will end up together.

It doesn't matter which one you throw first, they're tied to each other.

Your treasure and your heart are like that.

Wherever your treasure goes, it's pulling your heart along with it.

Whatever you love, it's pulling your treasure along with it.

That's the point of this.

Money reveals what you value.

They're connected.

So I am appealing to you, based upon the words in Matthew 6 and the sermon that Jesus gives here, that you should value heaven more than earth.

That's the main point of this.

You should value heaven more than earth, and your money should back that up.

Otherwise, you're perjuring yourself.

Let me borrow a phrase from Luke chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

Jesus commands people to be rich towards God with their money.

And it's worth pausing and saying, what does that mean?

How can one be rich towards God?

Does God need money?

How could I give him?

Does God have a venmo?

How can I even send money to God?

What does that mean to be rich towards God?

If he was hungry, God says, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

Even if he was hungry, he wouldn't ask you because he has enough food on his own.

So how exactly is one rich towards God?

And the answer is by understanding that money reveals value.

When you value something, you spend money on it.

If you value God, your money will reflect that.

This goes back to an even more basic question than what is money?

The basic question is why did God make the world?

He made the world to display his glory.

He made the world to be glorified.

This is the first question of the Westminster Confession.

For what is the chief end of man?

The chief end of man is to glorify God.

And you glorify God by delighting in him, by enjoying him, by using your life in a way that shows that God is precious and valuable to you.

This is like the most basic level of the catechism here, that you delight in the Lord.

God made the world to glorify himself.

So does your money glorify God?

Do you spend your money in a way that is rich towards God, that is elevating the stock price of God?

I mean, God has infinite value and worth.

Of course, you can't put a dollar amount on that.

Is your money buying that in a sense?

Is your money displaying that you want in on the God market?

Are you valuing him over the things of this world?

That's what it means to be rich towards God.

That your money displays his glory.

So I'm appealing to you this morning that you invest your money in heaven rather than on earth.

That you bank in heaven, not on earth.

And I'm going to be a bank salesman this morning.

I was going to wear a banker's vest this morning, but my wife vetoed it.

Three reasons you should bank in heaven, not on earth.

First, first reason.

The deposits there are fully insured.

You can't say that for the things on earth.

Jesus says in Matthew 19, Matthew 6, 19, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.

That idea of layup, we're going to see it repeated again.

It means don't squirrel away for yourself treasures on earth.

Don't store them.

Don't accumulate wealth on earth.

Because he starts with the practical reasons.

Moth and rust and thieves.

Now that might not seem very practical to us, but you have to understand they're dealing in a world where there is no, you know, complicated banking system.

There are no stock options in the Greco-Roman worlds.

There's not uh savings accounts, there's not retirement funds, any of that kind of stuff.

So what do you do with your money in that world?

You have$10,000.

You want to keep your$10,000.

What do you do?

You can hide it under your bed, but thieves could get it.

Very common thing people would do would be to uh spend it on clothes, to buy clothes.

And that seems so weird to us because clothes are, you know, they depreciate.

They aren't as shiny as they were when you when you bought them.

But let me give an American analogy.

We will park our money, is the expression that's often used.

We'll park our money in a house.

You know, you have a lot of money, and you might think, you know what, the housing market is increasing at a rate that is bigger than the interest that I pay on it.

So it would make more sense to put my money into my house because that's guarding my money so that when I die, the house can be liquidated and the money is still there.

That's a common way Americans think.

In the Greco-Roman world, they would do that with clothes.

They would buy expensive pieces of clothes.

You could pass the clothes down.

You're parking your money in the clothes.

And you gotta imagine now what kind of person would put on the$10,000 suit and wear it around.

You know, his money is parked in it, but he wears it.

That's like flaunting your wealth, you know?

That's flaunting your showing, I don't care if I spill coffee on my clothes, I'm loaded.

The problem, Jesus says, with parking your money in your clothes is that moths will eat your clothes.

Like the best intentions of man are just ruined by those little annoying moths that eat clothes.

And we still have them today.

I have found clothes in my closet eaten by these wretched creatures.

Imagine if you put all your wealth in that.

Or rust.

And rust is not maybe the best word here.

The the Greek word here is the word for eating.

It probably means the worms and stuff.

Like you put park your money in crops, in grain, in wheat, and you build yourself bigger barns to store all your stuff.

Great, you got all your money parked in a big silo out there, and caterpillars get in it, and worms get in it, and fungus gets in it.

There went your wealth.

And rust is fine, I guess.

You might park your money in a car, you might buy an expensive car, and cars, of course, depreciate in value, but you think, oh, not this beauty, not this beauty.

It's the last year Nissan made the Titan, it's only gonna go up in value.

And you walk out one day and it's rusting.

What?

That's my future.

It's rusting.

Or thieves break in and steal.

Thieves get through the window.

The best intents you had, you had something that that bugs don't like, that rust won't touch, and a thief just breaks your window and snags it.

There was a press conference this week with the head of giant grocery stores who said that some of his stores in East DC have a 20% uh theft rate.

He called it shrinkage.

Uh you love that kind of language.

They have a 20% shrinkage.

You know, nationwide, if a grocery store is has a 2% shrinkage, the manager would be in trouble, you know.

They expect like a 1.8%, 2%, the guy would be in trouble.

20% in DC.

And he said, if this isn't getting fixed, we're closing the stores.

Not gonna have grocery stores there anymore.

You can't have 20%.

But isn't that the way the world is?

You can't have things on the shelf without a flash mob getting it.

What are you gonna do with your wealth?

Do you have a better plan than that?

I mean, everything is going to be lost.

Everything in the world will end, even if you figure out a way to keep it from thieves, the world.

Will end.

I saw a meme this week that said, You think you're having a bad day?

Remember that one day the sun will explode and no one will remember what a loser you are.

That's a way of clarifying things, doesn't it?

Who cares how rich you were?

One day the sun is gonna explode and nobody will be alive to remember you.

If there's no resurrection and God's not true and there's no eternal life and heaven's not real, does your wealth even matter just at that most basic level?

Of course not.

Of course not.

All of our money will be worthless when the sun explodes.

Or even before that, when you die.

Another illustration, when I was in high school, we often played soccer games down in Mexico, starting when I was in middle school.

We'd we'd drive down there, we found out that soccer clothes and cleats and everything were just so much cheaper in Mexico.

We would pool our money, we'd buy our uniforms in Mexico, we would play games there probably once a month.

We'd be down there playing soccer.

And right before I graduated high school, I saw a story in the news that said Mexico was changing their currency May 1st of this year, changing their currency, and it was not a gradual change.

As of May 1st, all of the pesos would be worthless and replaced with the nuevos pesos, the new pesos.

And I'm looking at my desk and I have hundreds and hundreds of Mexican pesos.

And I wasn't planning on going to Mexico between the time that I saw that story and when they would be worthless.

So I made a bonsai run, got friends on my soccer team, we bolted down to Mexico and bought a bunch of soccer cleats with money that was about to expire.

We valued soccer cleats at the time.

All of your money is in that category.

Do you understand that?

Every dollar you have is in the old pesos.

It's all gonna be worthless tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or the moment you die.

You have a window to where you can spend it to achieve the value of it before it's worthless.

So what do you value?

What do you value?

Now, how do you store up, Jesus goes on to say, instead, store up treasure in heaven?

Just him saying that indicates that there is a way to store up treasure in heaven.

Now he gives you some examples in Luke 16, verse 9, for example, he says you can store up treasure in heaven by making friends in heaven.

Luke 16:9

And there he's talking about using your money to fund missionaries that are taking the gospel around the world so that when the missionary dies, they have shared the gospel with somebody else in some far-flung country, and somebody got saved there because of your dollar.

You never met that person, but you're gonna die and you're gonna go to heaven, and you're gonna meet somebody in heaven who's like, hey, I'm here because of your money.

We're friends, and you're like, I had no idea.

And you'll have friends waiting for you in heaven because you use your money on missions.

That's the the most obvious way to start for yourself.

Treasures in heaven.

That's drawn from Luke 16, verse 9.

Luke 16:9

But I think Jesus has an even broader view of it here.

He's talking about using all of your money in a way that shows that you value God over this world.

And every purchase has the effect of saying that.

You know, at a basic level, you want a return on your investment.

You want that.

You use your money to display the glory of God so that treasure is stored up in heaven.

There was the man who was a successful farmer, a prosperous farmer.

He got so much wealth from his grains.

And he said, What should I do?

I know what I'll do.

I'll build bigger barns and store all the grain.

And Jesus tells him, Luke chapter 12, be fool.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

Tonight your soul will be required of you.

The things you prepared, whose will they be?

So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.

That's where that phrase rich towards God is drawn from.

Now, what makes this guy a fool?

Why was he foolish?

Because he was a prosperous farmer?

Of course not.

We need prosperous farmers.

The world needs more food.

Praise God for farmers that grow enough food.

I've heard that I don't know if this is true, but I've heard from multiple farmers that there is enough food grown in the United States.

In fact, grown in California that could feed the whole world.

The only reason there's hunger in the world is for distribution problems and government extortion and all that.

It's not because there's not farmers that don't grow enough food.

Our world needs farmers.

Our world can support a massive population because we have farmers that are this kind of prosperous farmer.

He's not a fool because he grows a lot.

And if farming is not your jam, imagine meeting a new business owner who comes in and says, hey, I started a business last year and we've, you know, a thousand percent return on our investments.

We're starting franchises all over the country, we're bringing in the cash.

You wouldn't say, oh man, you're a fool having a successful business like that.

Are you out of your mind?

No, you'd be impressed with the guy.

So what makes this guy a fool?

And the answer is he's a fool because he thinks his security for tomorrow is based on his wealth.

He's gonna die that night, Jesus says.

The illustration from this parable, what this parable is illustrating here, is not it would be okay for him to do that if he actually had another day of life.

The illustration is that you don't know when you die, but you will, and at that point, all your money is the old pesos.

It doesn't matter.

The richest person who ever lived was John Rockefeller.

And when he died, do you know how much money he left behind?

All of it.

That's all you need to know.

So, first, thieves don't get into heaven, they don't steal things in heaven, moth doesn't get there, rest doesn't get there, heaven is secure.

Second, invest in the bank of heaven to give you stability.

Stability.

And here's the next section, verses 22 and 23.

Uh verse 22, the eye is the lamp of the body.

So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be filled with light.

I know this is this is kind of a confusing part of this, but it's it makes sense if you walk through it.

The eye is the lamp of the body.

The eye is the only opening in your body that takes in light.

You see based upon your eyes.

You don't see based upon your nose.

You might be able to smell food, but you can't make your way into the restaurant and order off the menu based on your nose.

You know, your ears, you don't see through your ears.

You can have the Doppler effect, you can hear the train coming, and you might know, you can estimate how fast it's going, but you can't even get out of its way.

You cannot see through your ears or your nose or your mouth or your fingers.

You know, I can hold my gift card here, but I couldn't tell you what brand it is just from touching it.

You only see through your eyes.

The eyes are the lamp of the body in that sense.

If your eye is healthy, you see clearly.

If your eye is cloudy, you can't see anything.

If you go skiing and you've got fog goggles, you hit a tree.

If you go driving and you've got a cracked windshield and mud on your window, you you hit a pothole.

If you're blindfolded, you run into a pole.

I'm trying to walk down these steps.

If I can't see the steps, sometimes these shadows freak me out here.

If I can't see the steps, I'm gonna fall.

And when I fall, it is not my eyes that fall.

It is my feet that fall, followed by my legs, followed by my chest, my hands, and my head.

The whole inshalada falls.

But if I can see clearly, it's not just that my eyes can walk out, but my feet and my body and my arms and my head will all follow.

That's Jesus' point here.

When the eyes see, every part of the body avoids falling.

But if the eyes can't see, if your eyes bad, verse 23, your whole body is full of darkness.

If you can't see, you fall, and all of you fall.

How great is the darkness! Jesus says the same thing in Luke 12, and in Luke 12, he makes it clear that the eye is the window to the soul.

What he is meaning by this is he's making a parallel.

If your goggles are cloudy and foggy, you can't see where you're going.

If your heart loves money, you can't see how you're living.

If your heart loves money, you have no stability in life.

You are stumbling, you are tripping, you are falling.

If your heart loves money.

And you don't even know it.

I mean, the does the blind person know how blind he is?

If he was born that way, does he know what he's missing?

If your heart loves money, you can't walk life on the straight paths that God has given you.

You're zigzagging all over the place, and you might not even know it, but everybody around you knows it.

Perhaps you have family members who who are like that, they love money, and the result of it is you don't trust them.

You know, your phone rings out of nowhere, and it's you know, it's them calling.

You first thing that goes to your mind is I wonder what their ask is.

What are they angling for?

You know that about people.

When they love money, they're not trustworthy.

They're not trustworthy, they can't walk straight.

That's Jesus' point here.

They have no stability to their life.

The flip side of it though is that God sees the heart.

We have such mixed motives in our heart, we can't sort through our motives in anything.

We we give money to the church.

We have mixed motives in that.

We you help your wife with the groceries in from the store.

You have mixed motives in the most basic thing like that, your motives are all messed up.

It's so hard to analyze your own motives.

You can't even search through those yourselves.

There's a certain amount of introspection that's helpful, but you start getting introspective about your motives about it, wondering what your motives are.

It's a never-ending cycle.

But God knows the truth of your heart.

He sees the heart, he knows what you love, he knows the truth, and he will reward you.

He also knows if you love money, it's on display for the world and it's on display for him.

First Timothy 6, verse 10.

1 Timothy 6:10

Love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Through this craving, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

The love of money hurts you.

It's like you trip and you fall.

You keep running into poles because your heart is cloudy with the love of money.

Hebrews 13, verse 5.

Hebrews 13:5

Keep your life free from the love of money, be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never leave you or forsake you.

So we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear.

It is not a coincidence, by the way, that the money sermon here is followed next week with the worry sermon.

If you love money, you're going to have anxiety.

You're going to be worried.

It's just, of course you will.

They're connected.

So Jesus says, Look at your heart.

If you have a love of money, it's going to cloud everything in your life.

How great is the darkness?

How great.

If you got a blindfold on, how great is your darkness.

If you love money, your life is unstable.

But if you love the Lord, the Lord is storing up your treasure in heaven.

He knows your heart.

He knows your heart and he will reward you.

Thirdly.

Bank with heaven because there's security, stability, and thirdly, fidelity.

Fidelity.

Everything you do in the service of the Lord will be rewarded.

This is where he goes in verse 24.

No one can serve two masters.

Hate the one, love the other, be devoted to one, despise the other.

And here's another one where the word translation here kind of makes us a harder verse to understand than is necessary.

No one can serve two masters.

You might read this and think, Of course I can serve two masters.

A high school kid I was talking to is like, of course I can serve two masters.

I can work at Chewy's and at Chick-fil-A, both.

Just fine.

Like, man, you work at those two restaurants?

I want to be your best friends.

Of course I can serve two masters.

I have my mom telling me what to do, and my dad tell me what to do.

I have six different teachers at school.

I definitely have six masters.

You might be in the military and you get a whole flow chart of bosses that go all the way up.

You got a lot of masters above you.

But this is not the word for serve.

It is the word for master, but what's paired with masters in the Romans world?

It's not servants, it's slaves.

This is the Greek word doulos.

You cannot be a slave of two masters.

It's just not ontologically possible.

If you're a slave, somebody owns you, not two people.

They don't go into like a shared investment.

You get a Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.

There's no structure like that.

And Jesus' point is even if that were possible, even if there were a slave that was owned by two different families or whatever, how does that work?

He's going to end up loving one and hating the other.

That's just axiomatic.

He's going to like one more than the other.

And that like will produce love, and the dislike will produce hate.

It's not an effective system.

As a side note, notice that Jesus is borrowing a slavery illustration, both positively and negatively.

If you love money, Jesus says, you are a slave to money.

If you love God, you're a slave to Him.

Who would you rather be owned by?

You're going to be owned by someone.

I remember reading that book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, back in the day.

And perhaps some of you have read it.

It was a popular book for a while, a while ago.

And it gave the most basic investment advice.

I don't remember much of the book, but I remember this most basic investment advice.

View your money as your employees.

Every dollar you have works for you, and you send your employees out into the world during the day, and you want them to come back home at closing time, and they should be bringing friends with them.

I sent you out one by one in the morning, come back with friends in the evening.

That's good investment.

If you serve money, you are the employee of the money.

Money sending you out in the world to bring back friends for it.

That's not how the slow chart's supposed to work.

But if you serve the Lord, your money is a stewardship and you put it to work.

Remember the other parable Jesus said about the three guys that each had money and two of them put it to work and the third one buried it?

That guy was not rewarded, by the way.

He was punished.

But if you're a slave to money, you work for it.

And that's why Jesus says you cannot serve both God and money.

There's nothing wrong with money.

You are in the world, aren't you?

We're here.

You're supposed to provide for your family.

I mentioned that earlier, 1 Timothy 5.

Husbands are supposed to work and labor the land.

Genesis 3 says, you're supposed to provide food for your family.

That's a creation mandate for you in your household.

Money is helpful to that end.

You're required by God to provide for your family.

Money's not evil any more than the old pesos were evil.

It's just it has a shelf life.

And it can't actually give you security in life.

It cannot find your comfort in both Christ and cash.

There's always the tyranny of things.

Things always want to take over your life, and if you serve things, it will crowd out serving the Lord.

And some people will sanctify serving money in their mind by saying, Hey, I'm not serving money because I love money.

God has called me to provide an inheritance for my children so they won't have to work as hard as I've worked.

I've heard people try to sanctify their selfishness that way.

I want my kids to have an easier time than I had.

And there's a sense that's a noble endeavor, but it's also kind of silly.

I mean, the Bible doesn't actually command you to that.

And the one passage in the Bible that talks about it has some, let's just call it mixed reviews about the success rate of that.

Ecclesiastes 2, Solomon says, I labor under the sun all day long, 2.18.

All day long I'm working out there to store up riches to give to my son.

And then Ecclesiastes 2.19, he says, it dawns on me, my son's a fool.

And now what?

You wasted your whole life, so your son would have an inheritance, and that guy can't work a day in his whole life because you've given him everything.

You're still gonna die, and now a fool gets your cash.

Was that a good investment?

And if you know Solomon's son, like the dude was a prophet, Rehaboam was a fool.

Was a fool.

Squandered everything.

Everything.

Luke chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

Jesus says, the guy with barns, that guy is a fool.

Because he tried to squirrel it all away.

If the trajectory of your life is angling for comfort and ease of riches, then you are in for a crash landing.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't work.

Ecclesiastes 3 22.

There's nothing better than man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot.

Who knows what the future holds?

That's how Ecclesiastes 3 ends.

Who knows what the future holds?

You know how to answer that question, right?

God knows what the future holds.

So you have a basic choice to make.

Are you gonna spend your life living for this world and the comforts of cash and money?

In which case the sun explodes and it's meaningless.

Are you gonna recognize that your life has meaning because of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to bear the penalty for your sins, who descended to the grave, who rose from the grave, conquering death, and now you have meaning in your life as you serve Him and store up treasure with Him.

With no resurrection, this is pointless.

If there's no resurrection, there's no heaven in which you can store your treasure.

This is why Paul tells the Corinthians, if there's no resurrection, guess what?

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

But if there is a resurrection, store up for your live for that life, store up for yourself, treasure there.

God, we're grateful that your word guides our life, shows us how to live and what to value.

We want to live in a way that gives you value.

We want to honor and glorify you in all that we think and do and say.

We want to make much of you.

God, keep us from living for this life as if it's all there is.

Calibrate everything on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We ask this in his name.

Amen.

And now, for parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or occurrence service time, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with all of us.