Summer on the Mount: Money | Matthew 6:19-24 | Jarryd Cole

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side.

We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

Well, hey, I just want to uh thank you guys again for uh stepping up and meeting the need to provide backpacks for Hope Street.

Can you guys give it up for that one more time, please?

Uh at Ambassador Church, we want to be a generous church.

We want to be a church that cares about the city that we're in, and Hope Street is a great ministry that uh deals with some of the um homelessness issue here in the city of Milwaukee.

And so we're coming alongside them and saying, hey, we see you, we love you, we value you, and we want to help you care for the kids in your midst by helping them have a great start to the school year uh by giving backpacks.

And so, hey, uh thank you, thank you for prioritizing that, for helping us be a generous church.

We're grateful.

So, hey, let's get into it.

We're continuing our series in the Sermon on the Mount uh called The Summer on the Mount.

If you have your Bibles, get those out.

Meet me in Matthew chapter six.

We're gonna be in verses 19 and 24 today.

Matthew 6, 19, 24.

And speaking of generosity, I gave you a kind of precursor last week.

And so uh if you're here today and you're surprised that today's the money talk, that's your own fault for not listening to me last week for saying today's the money talk, all right?

Uh but today we're gonna be talking about money.

And as I say that, it can be uncomfortable talking about money in church, can't it?

It's a little taboo, right?

Because there's a lot of history of a lot of church pastors right doing so many different things when it comes to money.

Maybe you will come from a church where this is your background, and maybe you've seen some things and tabloids over the years of what pastors and churches do uh with their money.

You've seen them abuse their position and their power and their authority when it comes to money.

I don't have to name names, okay?

But you've seen the news, you've seen all the things, billionaire pastors who have the third and fourth homes, buying jets, all these different kinds of things.

And in reality, we can just own that this isn't a good look for the church, okay?

It's not a good look for pastors.

And so, because of that, it is difficult to develop a healthy understanding of money and giving towards the church, and I know this because I've even struggled with this in my past, okay.

I remember growing up and I didn't have a healthy view of giving and money and even as a whole or any of that.

And even now, right, one season, I find myself I can be really generous in one season, and then the very next one, I'm like, I don't know.

Like, maybe I should hold on to this more.

Is God providing how he's been providing?

I don't know.

I don't know if I trust that.

And so I don't know what the church is gonna like.

Should I should I give?

Should I not?

I don't know.

I can I can kind of be like that.

Like there's no rhyme or reason to it when it comes to me, right?

It's just my brain, and maybe you're like that too.

I'm broken like that.

I don't know if you are.

So if that's you in the room today, I get it, but we shouldn't desire to stay that way.

I believe God, through his word, wants to help us with our understanding of generosity.

And so I want to unpack that just a little bit for us today.

If you're in the Bible, Matthew chapter 6, verse 19, I want to read these next several chapters for us.

Matthew 6:19

We're only going to verse 24, verses 4.

So I'm gonna go to verse 24.

Here's what Jesus says, starting in verse 19.

He says, Hey, don't store up for yourselves treasures on 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.

Why?

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

He continues, 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, then your whole body will be full of darkness.

And so if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness?

No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

He finishes, you cannot serve both God and money.

So here Jesus is today.

He begins by coaching us about storing up our treasures.

And spoiler alert, he's talking about our money and our possessions.

There's no secret here.

This is what Jesus is talking about.

And so Jesus is inviting us to ask the question here in this passage hey, am I aiming at earthly treasures with my possessions and money, or am I aiming at heavenly treasures?

This is the question.

What are you aiming at?

See, several years ago, uh in my less responsible years and with another even less responsible friend, we thought it was a good idea to get these BB guns and see, hey, uh, could we hit each other from about 120 yards out?

Okay.

And so we're at this place, we have some friends with us, we're doing this thing, and we're like, hey, this would be a really good idea if we could just see if we could hit each other with these BB guns.

Okay, no one's gonna get hurt too much.

I thought I had never shot a BB gun to that point, and so I didn't know.

Maybe you knew and you should have told me back then that you didn't know me, but hey, you should have somehow got that news to me.

And so we're back here in the backyard, we're playing with these BB guns, and I go, Okay, you go first and I'll go second.

All right, so my friend he goes back 120 yards, he gets his BB gun.

I'm a little ways ahead of him.

He aims at my back, you know.

Boom, pulls the trigger, gets me right my lower back.

I'm like, oh, I didn't hurt too bad.

Now I crumble to the floor, okay.

If you've ever been hit by a BB gun before, right?

The the pain's a little bit delayed, all right?

It's a little delayed.

And so I go, all right, my turn.

So I go get the gun, I go back 120 feet, he takes my place, and I aim the gun, and you know, I'm aiming at his back.

Mind you, I've remind you, I've never shot a gun before.

So I'm, you know, I pull the trigger, boom.

Trajectory looks good.

Next thing you know, it goes south a little bit to the right, boom, right onto his right butt seek.

I aimed right, didn't quite hit the target I was aiming at.

But okay, some of us are just bad shots, all right.

And so sometimes you aim at something, you don't hit it.

But I think we can get something from this because what Jesus wants us to know is that the thing that we're aiming at is important.

And the truth is, when you're aiming at something, it's most likely that you're probably going to hit that something.

Even if you're a bad shot, you can get into the vicinity, okay?

You can get kind of close, like you can aim at it and you can actually hit it.

So I'm trying to make this point that whatever you aim at, you will hit mostly.

And that's what Jesus is getting at in this passage.

And it will sound like this from verse 21.

He says, For wherever your treasure is, wherever you're aiming, he says, there your heart will be also.

In other words, you will hit the target that you are aiming at.

If you're new to the Bible, here's what you need to know: that aiming at earthly treasures is a fool's errand.

And it's not because earthly treasures are bad in of themselves, not because money is bad in and of itself, but it's because there are two principles that earthly treasures have that heavenly treasures just simply do not.

The first thing is this that earthly treasures don't last.

And you can get this from verse 19: earthly treasures don't last.

There is a literal expiration date on everything on this side of eternity.

Our our possessions and the resources we use to buy them, all of these will one day fade.

Okay?

They don't last.

Two, earthly treasures will tempt us to substitute them for God in our lives.

That's what earthly treasures would do.

And I would argue this is actually Jesus' primary concern.

In fact, it is a concern of most of the authors in the Bible who mention money, possessions, and wealth.

There's over 2,300 verses in your Bible, if you don't know this, that mention these topics: money, wealth, and possessions.

To put it in perspective, there's only about 500 verses in the Bible in total that talk about these two combined: faith and prayer.

500 for faith and prayer, 2,300 for anything to do with money.

All include content related to money and possessions.

Money was Jesus' most taught on topic outside of the kingdom of God.

This is what Jesus talked about.

And which today we get a bonus because Jesus speaking about money in the Sermon on the Mount means that we get both money and the kingdom of God in the same message.

You guys aren't as excited about that as I am, I can tell.

But I'm really excited about that.

See, I get it because there's some wild things that the Bible has to say about money.

And most of it is wisdom warning against the rich.

Most of it is wisdom coaching us towards generosity and coaching against greed.

Like, check what James says, the brother of Jesus in chapter 5, verses 1 through 3.

He says this when he's talking to these rich people who like hoard everything they have and don't care about what they do for the kingdom of God.

He says, Hey, come now, you rich people, weep and wail over the miseries that are coming on you.

Your wealth has routed, and your clothes are moth-eaten.

Does that sound familiar?

Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire.

For you have stored up treasure, and that's earthly treasure, in the last days.

This is what James says in agreement with his brother.

Even Matthew 19, Jesus continues and elaborates on this.

One of the many places he talks about money outside of the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 19, verse 23, it's right after he tells the story about the rich young ruler.

Matthew 19:23

And Jesus says to his disciples, Hey, truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

This is what we need to know about money in our lives.

And if you're the kind of person that has a little bit of money in your bank account, which would be the vast majority of us in the room.

And if you're honest, it can start to sound like Jesus is speaking against you quite a bit, doesn't it?

But here's the truth we have to know that Jesus isn't against you having money, he's not against money specifically.

But here's what he is against he's against money having you.

This is what these texts are showing us.

But so if Jesus isn't against you having money in this passage, we have to see that he's against money having you.

Like money is a neutral thing.

We have to know that, believe it or not.

And a lot of people, we can kind of misquote the Bible.

There's this uh famous verse.

The apostle Paul wrote this.

Maybe you didn't even know the apostle Paul wrote it.

He probably thought it was a proverb because it sounds like a proverb, okay?

But this is in 1 Timothy 6, verse 10.

1 Timothy 6:10

It's pop up here on the screen, and it's the verse that talks about money being the root of evil, right?

You might have known money is the root of all evil, but that's not what the passage says.

The passage says this for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

Emphasis mine.

And there's more to it.

And by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

First off, he's saying it's not about money as a whole, it's about your heart for, it's about your love for.

Do you love the thing?

And it's not the root of all evil, it's the root of evil.

Like there are some evils that happen because of money.

Not all evil happens because of money, but some.

So I think we have to have a right understanding of the money in our lives that yes, it can lead to destruction.

Jesus warns about that, right?

But we also have to have a right understanding that it's not evil in and of itself, it's just not.

There's no prohibition on having money, but rather a flashing warning light to alert you, to check your heart, to see, hey, not do you have or want money, but are you consumed by chasing it?

And does money have you?

Like, yes, Jesus warns us about the dangers of money, but no, Jesus is not against money.

But yes, Jesus is concerned with what you do with your money.

He wants you to be someone who not aims at earth, but someone who aims at heaven with your resources.

So for the rest of the time, I want to show us from our text why Jesus says this.

There's three reasons we can see from our text.

One, aiming at earthly treasure reveals what's in your heart.

Two, aiming at earthly treasure impacts your generosity.

Three, aiming at earthly treasure reveals your true God.

Firstly, aiming at earthly treasure reveals what's in your heart.

Look back at verse 19 with me.

Jesus says, Hey, don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rest destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rest destroys, and where thieves don't break in and steal.

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

Here's how I like to summarize this part of the text right here.

Your money flows downstream towards the things that you care about.

Your money flows where you're aiming.

It flows towards what you want.

Uh, I love sports, I'm a big basketball fan, football fan.

Okay, the Super Bowl happens every single year.

You sports nuts know that as well, okay?

I don't know if you've ever been to a Super Bowl before, but do you know it takes a lot of money to get to the Super Bowl?

I looked up on average how much do Super Bowl tickets cost?

Not because I wanted to buy any, I'm just saying I wanted to know how much of these fools are spending to get to the Super Bowl.

The costs start at$5,000 to get a ticket into the game.

On average, you'll spend$10,000 to get a ticket to get into the Super Bowl.

$10,000.

Have you ever looked that up before?

That's alarming.

That's that's very shocking to me, okay?

And mind you, that does not include your travel to the city the game is in.

That not does not include the hotel you're going to buy, the people that are coming with you.

Does not include the gas for the car or the Ubers you're going to be taking.

Like that is a lot of money.

You you add that up, you're probably for that trip, you're looking at 20 grand down the drain to go watch some dudes bump into each other and kick a couple field goals.

You maybe will get a chance.

I that's bizarre to me.

But so many people go.

70,000 fans will on average be at the next Super Bowl.

You add that up, 20 grand, 70,000 people live at the Super Bowl, 1.4 billion dollars.

Let's say you save a little bit of money because you're just an internet shark and you can find great deals, okay?

I trust I got some frugal people up in this thing.

If you choose to go to the Super Bowl, you might spend 15 grand instead of 20 grand to get to the Super Bowl.

Still, 1.05 billion dollars just to go to the Super Bowl for a sub-part-time and a terrible halftime show because you can't outdo 2022.

Snoop Dogg, you know what I'm saying?

50 Cent.

Eminem, all of them.

You can't outdo it.

But here's what's true: the people that choose to do something like that, you want to know what?

They're not looking at their pocket, their bank account, and going, oh my goodness, I just spent 20 grand on the Super Bowl.

They're like, I can't wait to drop this 20 on the Super Bowl.

Like, this is how they act.

Why?

Because the thing that they give their money to, it flows downhill.

There's a desire for it.

They love to do it.

You want to know what?

Like, low-key, I'm not even mad at them because you can do it.

Hey, keep balling, bro.

Like, get on you.

It's a great experience.

Like, do your thing, do your thing.

Because I have things that flow downhill too in my life.

You know what money flows downhill towards for me?

I like me a nice pair of Jordans, okay?

I can't buy them as much as I want to because I don't have that kind of money and my feet are too big, size 16s.

I can't find them everywhere.

Thank God, because he knew if I could, I'd be buying them things.

I like tattoos, okay?

We just had a staff retreat this past week, and uh, you know, it took everything in me to withhold and not looking up where's the nearest tattoo shop for us to go get a new tattoo?

Because I mean, because we kind of like that, right?

My my crew just rolls that deep.

Like we just had cold, and we like tattoos.

I'm guilty.

Money even flows downstream towards the things that I care about.

And here's what's true: it actually should.

Your money should flow downstream towards the things that you care about.

But the thing is, God's greatest desires for the thing for you to care about most is to be Him in the kingdom of God.

If you want to know what you care about most, all you have to do is look at your bank statements.

I once had a small group leader in Iowa.

We were he was leading our connection group, and um he thought one day we had heard a message on giving, kind of like this.

And he comes to group and he's like, Hey, when y'all show up to group, bring your bank statements with you.

We're looking at bank statements, so we're gonna see what you care about.

We're starting small groups here in the fall.

Small group leaders, if you're in the room, don't do that to your small group, okay?

At least not yet.

They don't know you like that.

You know what I'm saying?

You might be a little slim the following week.

I'm just saying.

I don't know, but maybe you should.

Who knows?

But I remember going to this group and we brought our bank statements and we took those things out and we were looking at them.

And you want to know what we saw about everybody in the group?

We were doing amazing, serving the kingdom of God with all of our funds and finances.

Am I not convincing?

Dang, that's not true.

We were doing terrible.

It was an embarrassing exercise for us to see where our money flew downhill towards.

Like we were embarrassed to show our bank statements.

And that embarrassment that was up is actually good because we should have a heart check for the things that we care about in our lives, and for the Christian, God is saying, Hey, does the thing that you care about most does it look like me?

Is it about my business?

See, well, over the course of that year, here's what is true.

We started to hear stories of how hearts began to change.

Like you don't know what needs to change until you uncover, you turn on the light and look at it, and you realize, hey, this is what's true of me.

And now the Holy Spirit can begin to do his work.

And what we saw was stories begin to change.

Hearts begin to desire the kingdom of God over the kingdom of earth.

And here's the crazy thing.

Yo, that was before I even had a heart for ministry, before I was even on the path to be a pastor, before I even thought about going to plant a church.

But you want to know what?

To this day, there are people from that group who still help finance and resource us, my wife, and ambassador church right here, right now, from that time in our small group.

They were looking at their bank statement saying, I want to get to the kingdom of God.

And when God impressed on our heart to be like, hey, there's a new church plant going out to the city of Milwaukee.

Your friends are going, God, what would you have me do?

They wanted to be generous towards us as we left and came to this place.

And let me tell you, it's not just us they're supporting.

This is above and beyond what they're doing in their own local context for their own local church.

They're being generous with this thing.

Like there are people right now, imagine this, in the cornfields of Iowa, using their resources to bless a people in a church in a city that they have never even seen in person.

This is what happens.

This is what it looks like when your heart is changed by the gospel and you search for ways to use your treasure to aim at heaven instead of aiming at earth.

This is what it looks like.

So, firstly, aiming at earthly treasure reveals what's in your heart.

Next, aiming at earthly treasure impacts your generosity.

Look at the next couple verses here.

Jesus continues, hey, the eye is the lamp of the body.

And 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.

And so the light within you is darkness.

How deep is that darkness?

Really unique passage.

Okay.

Jesus talking about lamps and eyes, and after talking about treasures and all this kind of stuff, okay, this kind of seemed out of place.

We have to ask what's going on here.

What Jesus is doing is he's letting us know that what you treasure on the front end and what you serve on the back end of this message is linked to how you see.

Specifically, how you see the use of your money.

And he's using these two ideas: a good eye and a bad eye.

This is an ancient idiom where the good eye simply means this hey, like your life and possessions, like you see these things rightly.

A person with a good eye would see these things rightly, and they would be singly focused on God, and you are generous with your things.

That's what it means to have a good eye.

But a bad eye is the opposite.

It's an eye fixed on wealth, it's divided loyalty, you're grasping and you're stingy with your things, right?

And what Jesus is saying, hey, when you live that way and you view your possessions and stuff like that, what you're doing is you're not living in the light, you're living in darkness.

Like when light passes through your eye, like you, you're you can't even take into account the light that's coming in.

You're blinded, you can't see.

Why?

Because you you're distracted by so many things.

Even while you think you're seeing clearly.

But if the light is that that's in you is really darkness, how deep is it when you're confused if you have light or darkness?

Or not.

That's pretty deep.

That's deep.

Jesus saying the good eye is full of light, the bad eye is full of darkness.

And so good eye plus full of light equals generosity.

Bad eye plus full of darkness equals stingy.

So the question is, Room, is your light on or is your light off?

Good eyes or bad eyes.

I heard this quote the other day.

That in the American churches alone, we have the financial power to get the gospel to the ends of the earth in the American churches alone.

We have the power to get the gospel to the ends of the earth in the American churches alone.

And you want to know what's stopping us?

Stuff.

Materialism.

This old missionary, Elliot, mid-1900s missionary, he was killed in Ecuador for sharing the gospel.

He's famous for this quote.

He says, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Yo, the heart is generosity.

We want to be people who have good eyes, full of light, be generous with our resources.

Thanks for the gospel.

Care about the kingdom of God.

Why?

So that we can see people come to know Jesus.

We man, could you imagine if the American church was rallied around that?

Lost people saved.

Right now.

The world a completely different place.

Right now.

Surrender and sacrifice.

When we first started Ambassador Church, like we didn't start groups immediately.

We wanted to focus on serve teams because why?

We underwe knew we'd underestimate how many people it take to pull off a Sunday morning.

I think we severely underestimate how many people it will take to see the gospel go to the ends of the earth.

But my mama, what if that was a priority of ours?

I think we could do it.

See, one of my greatest prayers is that ambassador doesn't become a bottleneck for the advancement of the gospel, but that it becomes a catalyst for it as we continue to grow into a generous church.

So to help us do that, I want to give us a practical tool for us to gauge where even we are with our generosity.

And this tool, maybe you've seen it before, it's called the giving ladder.

It's going to pop up right here.

And the giving ladder is this helpful tool for you to see.

Hey, like what it looks like.

Maybe from the back you can't see that.

If you have a bad eye, that's a joke.

Maybe you can't see that from way back there.

Screw it up so you can see it.

Um, no, the giving ladder.

Okay, this isn't like a thing to achieve for, but these are steps that you can take as the Holy Spirit lives within you and keeps working on you to help you become a generous person.

And so in this church, there are people who represent each rung on this level.

Guarantee it.

The first rung is the non-giver.

Okay, this is the person who doesn't give at all.

Like maybe you have some hurts with the church, or maybe you just have uh like a hard grip on your possessions and your money and your wealth and all that kind of stuff.

And like your main thought is, man, I don't want to give to the church.

I want to give to so many different things, right?

Like maybe you're a non-giver.

Some of us are right here.

You haven't taken that first step to open up your hand and say, God, hey, I trust you with my resources, what I have.

Would you do with it what you please?

Maybe that's some of you in the room.

For some of you, you're a first-time giver.

You've given something to the church.

You've given one time.

You said, Hey, my heart is for this, and I see something.

Maybe I see a need for a backpack, and so I want to give a backpack.

I gave a one-time gift.

Some of you are first-time givers.

You've done something like that.

Or maybe you're a regular giver, okay?

You've given more than once.

It's consistent, but not super regular.

Or it's regular, but not super consistent, right?

Maybe you give here, you give there.

Backpack drive, you give that.

We have an impact offering, you give to that, right?

But you don't have a consistent element from the way you give.

You're a regular giver, but not super consistent.

The next one is a percentage giver.

These people are saying intentionally, going to God, praying and saying, God, hey, here's the resources I have, and I want to intentionally and prayerfully commit to consistently giving a portion of what I make to you all throughout the year.

It could be a monthly gift, it could be a yearly gift, whatever it is, a consistent gift that says, Hey, here's a percentage that I'm willing to give and give up.

This is what I can do in my heart.

This is what I feel convicted about.

The next one is a tither, where that percentage isn't just any percentage, but it is a tenth of what you have.

It's a 10% giver.

And then you have generous givers, people who go above and beyond the 10%.

Okay, these are like the people who are in Iowa right now.

They're generous.

They're saying, hey, I want to give to my local church that I'm at right now because I'm here and I'm present, but then I'll also see this happening over here.

And I want to give above and beyond what I'm even giving to show God I have a generous heart.

And they're even doing that for the places that they're in.

And so these are people have been so impacted by God that says, Hey, as I have it, as I see it, the first thing that I want to do is not hold it, but give it up.

And then you have sacrificial givers.

This is a radical type of giving.

This giving is a costly giving.

This giving changes something about you from the core, it changes your desires so much to where you say, Hey, I will even alter my style of life so that I can be generous to the things of God.

That is a high and holy calling.

And not everybody is trying to be a sacrificial giver.

But maybe you are, maybe you could be.

And there are people here in this room who are on all these different kinds of rungs, full of generosity.

And here's what I want you to know: um, that you are helping ambassador do incredible things already.

I look at this list, I'm not saying, hey, we need to show this to the room because nobody here's being generous.

No, no, no.

We have an extremely generous church.

And I want to honor and celebrate you for just a moment because you need to know that every baptism that we celebrate here at Ambassador Church, this is all because of you.

Because your giving and your generosity, what you're doing is allowing us to be here.

You are sustaining us in this place to move here to a place we've never been before, with new people coming here to say, hey, the gospel can go forth from this outpost.

This doesn't happen without you.

We've had 23 of those, by the way, within the first year of the life of Ambassador Church.

23 baptisms in 10 months.

God willing, many more on September 6th.

Sign up if you're interested.

The outreach that we do, because of you.

So many things we do in the city are national reach.

Believe it or not, 10% of everything that comes in here actually leaves out of here to go towards church planting alone.

Like when we say we're church planters, we care about church planting, we put our money where our mouth is.

We're saying what you give to us, we're not even holding on to that, but we want to give that out to say we care about things like this happening in other places in other corners, not just here in America, but in all around the world.

We want to see that happen.

Our investment in the next generation, this happens because of you.

We heavily pour into our 18 to 22 year olds, investing in them as the nation's next leaders and teachers and politicians and mechanics and engineers and all these different kinds of people.

Through our college ministry, the SALT Company.

Every Tuesday night, meeting here at 8 o'clock p.m.

September 1st, the kickoff for the new year.

Come out.

If you're 18 to 22, we'd love to see you.

Our impact offering.

We do this every year.

Last year was our this is our first year existing as a church.

We launched in October last year.

In November, we said, hey, we're doing an annual impact offering.

I don't think you can call things annual if you haven't been around annually yet.

And yet we did it anyway.

We said we're having an annual impact offering because we're putting our money where our mouth is.

We're saying we want to be a generous in giving church.

And so we're saying, hey, as a church plant, we're going to take up resources, not to hoard in this place, but to give out.

You know how much we brought in with that annual impact offering?

We told you, you probably forgot.

Over$20,000 to give out to local missions, to church planning, to college students.

We want to be a generous church.

Lives changed.

And there's much more I could go on and tell.

I'm already giving away some of my team night content.

So if you want to know more, come to August 30th, 6 p.m.

I'll tell you more.

But I want you to know right now, your giving is making a difference, and you're aiming at heavenly treasure or earthly treasure.

And as you're doing that, you need to know your aim is not in vain.

Would you keep being a generous church?

So firstly, you have to see aiming at earthly treasure reveals what's in your heart.

Secondly, it impacts your generosity.

And lastly, aiming at earthly treasure reveals your true God.

Here's the third thing we didn't know.

Verse 24 in Matthew 6, here's what it says No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

Very simple illustration to say, hey, if you have one person who's serving somebody else, okay, and another master comes and says, Hey, serve me too.

What's inevitably going to happen is that that person who's serving cannot dance in the middle.

You cannot serve two masters.

This is just what's true.

I have a daughter, she's seven years old.

Uh, she plays soccer, she loves soccer, okay?

And what happens in soccer when you're seven years old is that you make a lot of mistakes and you often kick the ball into your own goal.

Okay.

And me as a dad, I'm looking at that, I'm like, yo, don't go the other way.

Go, don't do that.

All right.

Like, I'm I gotta sit on the sideline and convince myself, hey, dad, you probably shouldn't yell at seven-year-olds on a court or on a field.

She's just a little girl, and the rest aren't getting paid that much.

I don't do that, all right?

But I do it anyway.

But you know the pain of kicking an own goal, it's self-defeating.

You can't be on two teams at once, you can't serve two masters.

This is what Jesus is trying to say.

You have to pick a team.

The old translation says you cannot serve both God and mammon.

Mammon is just this personification of money.

And so we have to know mammon isn't a specific God.

Some people think like mammon is like the money god.

Okay, mammon is not a god.

Mammon is a word that's a stand in word for the power of money, materials, and possessions, and the ruthless pursuit of them.

This is what mammon is.

And that spirit is very tempting, and it's something we can all desire to give ourselves to.

And so, what Jesus is saying is that you have to die to the spirit of the age to pursue mammon and come alive with the spirit of God so you can pursue the things of the kingdom of God.

Jesus saying you can't bend your knee to the pursuing money, materials, and possessions and bend your knee to God.

You have to choose a team.

And the reason why money is talked about so much is because it has that power.

Like, no, it's not a God, but it does have the power to lord itself over you like this dark, dark force that is impossible to escape unless you're intentionally and actively surrendered to someone else.

You have to choose one.

There's a pastor, old pastor, and author, Tim Keller, uh, late great.

He wrote a book called Counterfeit Gods, my favorite book Tim Keller's ever written.

Counterfeit Gods, subtitle The Empty Promises of Money, Power, and Sex.

Amazing book to read.

If you want to know what it looks like to live your life and give it for the kingdom of God, read this book, Tim Keller Counterfeit Gods.

Take that note.

So here's a question I'm gonna pose to us.

How do I know which master I'm serving?

I want to bring this full circle.

I have one question for you.

You know, if you can answer this question, what gets my first and my best?

What gets my first and my best?

What do you give downhill towards?

What do you wake up thinking?

Hey, I want to pursue that.

I want to hold on to that, I want that to be mine.

I want this to be what I want it to be.

I want this to grow.

I want this to be under my control.

I want this.

What gets your first and your best?

What do you give downhill towards?

This is what we need to answer.

This, I believe, is the greatest indicator of who has your heart and where your heart is, your money flows with joy.

And when money is your God, it flows with the most joy towards the things of this world.

But here's what we need to know: when God is your God, when the God of the Bible is your God, it flows with the most joy towards the things of heaven.

In church, submitting all you have, submitting all you are to God is worth it.

Can I just remind you what this God has done for you?

The gospel is the most generous news that you can ever hear.

That God gave himself up.

John 3 16, you know the text.

For God gave his one son, he gave him to us, died on the cross, came here, lived the life that we should have lived, died the death that we should have died, hung high, his body broken, his blood poured out, the most generous act anybody has ever done in all of history.

And an act that had to be done.

Why?

So that the people that he loves so much, you, me, and undeserving people could have something that we don't deserve at all.

Eternity with him, entrance into heaven, 10 billion years of ultimate joy and satisfaction, void of the fleeting things of this life.

He says the things you want, the things you desire, the thing that your heart longs for, your heart is designed to long, by the way.

And so the things you're longing for, the the thing that thing your heart is doing, that's not like a that's not a bad thing about you, that's not a defect in your design.

That was on purpose, and what God is saying, hey, the thing that you desire the most, the thing you are like created to desire the most, is me and the kingdom of God.

So the question is, would you do it?

Would you believe that?

Would you believe that God even went first?

He gave his first and his best for you.

He gave downhill toward the thing that he cared about the most.

He gave downhill toward you.

And some of you need to hear this this morning, even that God cares about you more than anything else in the world.

And he's not split, he's not split between you and the person next to you.

He cares about you.

There's enough of him to go around, and he's just as generous with you as he is with him.

Oh, he loves you, and oh, he's given himself for you, and oh, he wants you to realize this, realize his generosity.

Why?

Because the impact of the generous gospel should help us be generous people.

If there was a generous God who gave it all for you, how would we not be generous people who give it all for him?

Oh, he spent it lavishly for you.

So here's the key takeaway for this morning.

Aiming at generosity is a key marker of someone who is aiming at heaven and has been saved by a generous God.

People who have been saved by God seek to be more like him, and there's arguably no time that you're more like God than when you are being generous.

So here's the application.

Would you take a step in your generosity?

Take a step.

Search in your heart.

Do it now.

You can close your eyes.

The message is almost done.

You don't need to look at me anymore.

Maybe you need to search right now with God in your own heart in this secret place.

How would you have me be generous?

What step could you maybe even take on the giving ladder?

Could you go from being a non-giver to a first-time giver?

Could you go from being a first-time giver to a regular giver, regular to percentage, percentage to tither, tither to generous, generous to sacrificial?

Who knows?

I don't know your state.

God knows your state, and between you and him, know how he's calling you to be generous.

Why?

Because he's been generous towards you, you know.

So, church, I thank God for a generous church.

I thank God for Ambassador Church in less than a year.

I'm floored by the generosity out here in this room.

Yo, I pray it doesn't stop.

I think God wants to do something special through the life of Ambassador Church and what a joy it would be to be a part of it.

We pray this be true of us.

Father, we love you, and we're grateful for you.

We're honored at who you are.

We're thankful for your example to be generous and to go first and to give us your first and your best, to display what it looks like to be generous, even to a people who don't deserve it.

You understand and you model that generosity isn't a matter of if you want to, generosity is a matter of a heart.

And so we be people who believe that and trust that.

And would we be people who pursue you above all?

We hold our hands wide open and say, God, whatever we have, we understand and trust, it is not our own.

We are not owners of our things, we are stewards of our things.

And God, we thank you for giving them to us.

And so, would you help us see how we are to steward things for your glory?

So, Father, we love you.

We're thankful, we praise in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast.

To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at AmbassadorMKE.

And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m.

at 2308 East Bellevue Place.

Grace and peace.