Wealth
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
Hey, I want to take you back to the year 1776 when the Revolutionary War was well under way. And a man by the name of Thomas Payne wrote a series of pamphlets called The American Crisis. And he did so during the winter encampment at Valley Forge primarily to encourage the Revolutionary soldiers and the public to continue the fight despite the hardships that the war had brought upon everyone. You may remember from your history lessons that Payne began his pamphlets with these now famous words- “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Now, we’re beginning a brand new year and a brand new decade. And we could perhaps borrow the words of Thomas Payne and said these are the economic times that try men’s souls. I don’t need to remind you that we are in a deep and painful recession. The declines in the housing and credit markets in 2008 and 2009 sent quakes and aftershocks throughout the U.S. economy and beyond. And every one of us in this room has felt the pain from that. And some of us are still scratching our heads wondering how in the world did we get here as a nation. And perhaps some perspective will help.
0:01:39.3
In the past 77 years the United States has experienced and endured more than a dozen recessions. Did you know that? They’ve happened on average, if you do the math, once every six years. And they happened for a variety of economic reasons. For instance, back during the dot com bubble burst, we slid into a recession. The reason was temptation excesses in the dot com market. Every recession is part of a financial cycle that is necessary to purge excesses from the economy. That’s what the economists tell us. And the current recession is the result of excesses in the credit and housing markets. And I want to suggest to you that there are three reasons for those excesses. My opinion, but I think we could find common ground on this. Reason number one is bad financial legislation on Capitol Hill. The second is greed on Wall Street. And the third is average Americans like you and me overextending ourselves financially, buying homes that, in earlier years, lenders would have said, “You cannot afford that.” And, of course, the legislation on Capitol Hill allowed for some of that. And you look at these three reasons for the recession and excesses and they form a little bit of a triangle. And as it were we have flown into the Bermuda triangle of recessions.
0:03:15.1
Now, there are couple of different views you can have on this recession. One view of the Great Recession, as it’s now referred to, says that ours is a resilient economy. It’s the greatest economy in the world. And those economists who have had this view will remind us that we have survived a Great Depression. We have survived subsequent recessions, and we will survive this Great Recession and perhaps look back on this time as a time that made us great. Other people are saying that these are unprecedented times. And when you consider the unprecedented amount of national debt that we are assuming, you have to wonder- where did we lose our economic wits?
0:04:01.7
And it brings me to a couple of questions this morning as we look at the Sermon on the Mount again in Matthew 6:19-24. I wonder, where do we go for answers in times like this? And if I could ask so bold of a question, what would Jesus say? What would Jesus say to Wall Street? What would Jesus say to Washington? What would Jesus say to average Americans like you and me who are trying to survive this recession and get through it? Well, we’re back to our study on the Sermon on the Mount. And we’ve landed upon the topic of wealth. I didn’t cherry pick this text for the start of the New Year because I wanted to speak on this subject. We’re just resuming our study of the Sermon on the Mount. And as the schedule would have it, we’ve landed upon Matthew 6:19-24, one of my favorite passages in Jesus’s most famous sermon that He ever preached early on in His ministry 2000 years ago on a Galilean hillside overlooking this beautiful sea called the Sea of Galilee.
0:05:12.5
And He said these words. He said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” And then in verse 24 He says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” And some of your translations read, “You cannot serve God and money.” Some pretty powerful words. And from these words I find three principles, four principles or thoughts or ideas that are instructive for us at any time, but especially when we are in the midst of the one of the greatest recession, the deepest recessions since the 1930s. And it’s on every one of our hearts. It’s on every one of our minds. We enter into this New Year and into this new decade and wonder if America is every going to recover, let alone the economies of the world. And what would Jesus say to us? How would He turn our focus and our attention?
0:06:57.8
Four principles I want to suggest this morning. The first thing He says is that giving, yes, giving, is an investment in eternity. Look at what He says in verses 19-20. “Do not lay up for yourselves…” That’s investment language. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” I suspect every one of us in this room would like to have a good investment tip for the New Year, kind of a surefire tip that you know is going to yield all kinds of returns for you. I would have loved to have received the tip on Dell, you know, when Dell was just a little computer company in Austin somewhere. I would have loved to have gotten the tip on Microsoft when those guys were still in their garage, you know, putting computers together. Wouldn’t you like to get a tip like that, you know, before the stock rises like a rocket, you know, in the Wall Street stratosphere?
0:08:04.7
Well, Jesus gives us sort of an investment tip here. And it goes something like this. Are you ready for this? Pull everything out of earth and put it into heaven. Now, in case you missed that, let me say it again. Pull everything out of earth and put it into heaven. He says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.” Why? Because there is no guarantee that they’ll be around later. The moth eats it up. The rust corrodes it. The thieves, even the identity thieves, break in a steal it. It’s not the smart, safe place to invest, He says. He says no. Lay up for yourselves. Invest in heaven, because the moth, he’ll never eat it away. The rust will never corrode that investment. The thieves, the identity thieves even, will never have an opportunity to steal it away. Pull everything out of earth and put it into heaven. You can imagine the people in the 1st century sitting there on that Galilean hillside just saying, “What in world was this guy talking about?” And if I could fast forward the analogy, imagine Jesus on…well, let’s say the Fox Business channel with Neil Cavuto. I love Neil. And imagine Neil interviewing Jesus. “Hey, Jesus, it’s 2010. It’s January. What kind of investment advice would you give us?” And Jesus says, “Neil, it’s real simple. Pull everything out of earth and put it into heaven.” And you think, how crazy is an idea like that?
0:09:33.0
I really think Jesus is focusing our attention on one of two portfolios we need to invest in as people and as believers in Jesus Christ. You know about the first portfolio. That’s your earthly portfolio- savings and investments, interest, dividends, capital gains, all of that. We could go to other passages of scripture and build a case for the importance of saving and investing for the future. Unfortunately, the average American today…70% of Americans, the Wall Street Journal says, live paycheck to paycheck. We are not a saving nation. But we can build a case for that. Your earthly portfolio, that’s important. But Jesus, with laser-like focus, wants us to remember our eternal portfolio, which is equally if not more important to invest in. And the way we lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven, the way we invest in our earthly portfolio is not through saving and investment and capital gains and dividends. It’s through giving, giving to the Lord’s work, laying up for yourselves treasures in heaven, storing up for yourselves treasures in heaven. This is how we build our eternal portfolio.
0:10:49.0
Jesus might remind us of the old adage that goes something like this. You know, you can’t take it with you. You know that don’t you? You can’t take a bit of it with you. Now, you want it to last until the end, right? But you can’t take it with you. The pharaohs of Egypt thought they could take it with them. And they built these tombs. And they took all of their treasures and put it in their tombs. But if you open up those tombs today, guess what? The treasures are still there. They couldn’t take a bit of it with them. I’ve never seen a U-Haul trailer hitched up to a hearse. Never seen that in 19, 20 years of ministry, and I never will. Because you can’t take it with you. But consider this. You can send it ahead. And that’s what Jesus is talking about here.
0:11:31.9
He says, “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.” And I want you to imagine, if you will, that you have a heaven 401k account. You say, “Well, preacher, that’s the craziest thing I have ever heard.” Well, just run with me on this a little bit on this. You have a heavenly 401k account, something that was opened for you when you became a believer in Jesus Christ. Now, it’s your responsibility and my responsibility to put something in it, just like it’s your responsibility and my responsibility if our employer sets up a retirement plan for us to actually put something in it. Okay? And it’s not such a crazy, because this is I think what the apostle Paul had in mind when he was writing to the Philippians in Philippians 4:17. And he is thanking them for the financial investment that they made in his ministry. And he says to them, “Not that I am looking for a gift…” He says, “I’m not looking for something from you.” He says, “But I am looking for what may be credited to your account.” And it’s a financial term that he uses here. I think the apostle Paul understood this idea that we have a heavenly 401k account. And it’s to your benefit and my benefit to put something into it, to lay up and store up for ourselves treasure that will be waiting for us when we get to heaven.
0:12:57.5
And did you see those words “for yourselves” in Matthew 19-20? Jesus says do this for yourself. I call this sanctified self-interest. A lot of us get nervous when the preacher or the church talk about money and giving and all that because we think that, “That guy just wants something from me. The church just wants something from me. They’re always reaching into my pocket. They want something from me.” No, not at all. Like Paul, I say not that I’m looking for a gift. Not that the church wants something from you. God wants something for you. He wants something for you. Jesus says, “Lay up for yourselves,” because it’s the smart, safe thing to do. Now, I believe that heaven will be heavenly for anybody who is there by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But I believe these verses suggest that it will be more heavenly for those who take them seriously and choose to lay up for themselves treasures in heaven.
0:14:00.3
Radio Bible teacher Haddon Robinson explains it this way. He says, “Two thousand years have passed. The situation may have changed, but the reality hasn’t. Stocks and bonds are at the mercy of a changing market. Inflation, like a rat, can nibble away at a bank account. Currency can be devalued. Houses, boats and cars are subject to fire, tornadoes and rust. Even land can lose its value with a single chemical spill. Wherever we put our wealth there are no guarantees. Only shortsighted investors build up portfolios on this earth. Jesus gave better investment advice,” he says. “Equities built up in heaven are more secure and bring better dividends.” That’s important for us to remember, isn’t it? I don’t know of anybody who has laid up for themselves treasures in heaven who is wailing and gnashing their teeth during a recession because all of that was lost. Because, no, Jesus says it is safe, it is secure from the moth, from the rust, from the thieves. And, friends, God has a heavenly dividend reinvestment program that is out of this world. In fact, I like to say that Jesus has a vision for your financial life that is truly to of this world. And that’s what He’s talking about here in verses 19 and 20.
0:15:23.6
Now, He goes on to suggest that not only is giving an investment in eternity, but giving, listen to this, moves my heart closer to God. Look at it in verse 21. He says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I love the Capital One commercials, you know, that company that sells access to credit through your little plastic cards. “What’s in your wallet?” I don’t know who came up with these creative commercials, but they’re pretty good, aren’t they? But I think that’s the wrong question. The question is really, what’s in your heart? And what’s what Jesus is getting at here. He says,
“Where your treasure is, where your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be also.” And I believe it suggests to us that how we give and save and invest our money on this earth, the money that God entrusts to us, really does affect us spiritually. You know, we need to be careful not to compartmentalize our life into our financial life over here and our spiritual life over here. Jesus doesn’t let us do that. He takes those two areas of our life and brings them together into a single compartment when He says, “Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is also.”
0:16:46.3
He really wants to get to the heart of the matter here. And the reason Jesus talks so much about money, friends…and He did. Ten percent of the Gospels, 1 in 10 verses, mentions money, wealthy or material possession. Did you know that? Jesus was an incredible storyteller. He told all kinds of parables. And we love to read His parables. We have 38 recorded parables in the four Gospels; 16 of them have a money or financial theme to them. Why did He talk so much about money? Because He knew the quickest way to a person’s heart is through their treasure, their pocketbooks, their investments, their bank accounts. I like to say that glimpse inside your checkbook and my checkbook is a peek inside our hearts.
0:17:35.2
Now, why does giving move us closer to God? Because God Himself is a generous giver. He’s the most generous being in the universe. And He…well, the Bible says that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And so He loves when His children mirror and model His heart. When our heartbeat begins to align with His heartbeat in terms of generosity and giving, our heart moves closer to the heartbeat of God. Jesus once met a rich young ruler who asked Him about eternal life. He said, “How can I have eternal life?” And you know what He told him? He says, “Sell all of your possessions, give them to the poor and come follow Me.” Sounds like a pretty radical piece of advice, doesn’t it? And, no, Jesus didn’t say that to everybody. But with laser-like vision, He looked inside that particular man’s heart and saw that his god was his money. And so He proposed an extreme money makeover in that person’s life that involved radical financial surgery. And He said to him, “Sell everything. Disengage from the worldly possession you have come to worship. And then you’ll be free to follow me.” (0:19:00.0) You can’t buy your way into heaven, but I tell you what. The stuff that we have in this life has a way of keeping us from following Jesus. And Jesus knew that about the rich young ruler.
0:19:14.1
Number three, giving clarifies my vision. Now, watch this is verses 22 and 23. “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light,” He says. “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Now, I’ve got to be honest with you, friends. For a lot of years I read these verses and I wasn’t quite sure how they fit into the flow of what Jesus was talking about here with regard to our investments and laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven. It just seemed out of place until I came across some early rabbinic teaching that kind of unfolded the text for me here. Apparently the rabbis in the 1st century used to say (0:20:00.1) that a person who was generous had what they called a good eye. But a person who was stingy and greedy had what they called a bad eye. Simple little insight into the text, but it unfolds these verses in a beautiful way. So let’s read it with that in mind.
0:20:21.5
The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good…” In other words, if you’re a generous person deep down in your heart. “If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad…” In other words, if you're a stingy, Scrooge-like, greedy kind of person…and oh, we have wonderful ways of kind of camouflaging that in our life, don’t we? “But if your eye is bad, your whole body,” He says, “will be full of darkness.” And then He warns us about the depth of that darkness. And He says, “If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
0:21:08.2
Now, here is what I’ve observed over about 20 years of ministry. I’ve observed a connection, friends, between generosity in a person’s heart and the ability to envision what God wants to do among His people and in His church. I’ve also seen a connection between the inability to capture that vision and to see where God is going and to see what He wants to do in His church, the inability to see that and a stinginess and greediness in our hearts. It’s not always the case. But I’ve kind of boiled down my observation into two statements here. And that is that—listen to this carefully—stingy, “bad eye” people lack vision and they have what I call a scarcity mentality. They're always wringing their hands and saying, “Oh, we don’t have enough money to do that around here. You know, that may be what God wants us to do, but there’s never enough money to do those kinds of things around here.” But generous, “good eye” people are full of vision and have an abundance mentality, partly because they understand Psalm 24:1. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” It all belongs to God. They understand the scriptures when it says He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. They understand as they are faithful stewards of their own resources and generous stewards of their own resources that God never has a resource problem. He never has a resource problem. What we have is a vision problem, a vision problem. And a generous, “good eye” person…and I have met a number of them here at Immanuel Bible Church and number of them throughout my ministry. And it has nothing to do with income level, friends. Nothing to do with income level, this generosity thing. At all places on the spectrum of income you’ll find generous, “good eye” people. But I find that those are the folks who really engage with the vision that God has given to a church and to a people. And they see themselves as part of the resourcing solution to that. It’s a beautiful thing.
0:23:24.5
Let’s review where we’ve been. Jesus says giving is an investment in eternity. You’ve got two portfolios you need to keep in mind, and He’s focusing us on that eternal portfolio. Giving moves my heart closer to God. Giving clarifies my vision. I see where God is going. There is light in my body. And finally, giving realigns my priorities. Let’s look at verse 24. “No one can serve two masters,” Jesus says. “For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve,” He says, “God and mammon.” Some of the newer translations say, “You cannot serve God and Money,” and they will capitalize the word M in money to give reference to the deep meaning in this ancient word “mammon,” a word that the dictionary defines as “the false god of riches and avarice.” You see where Jesus is going here?
0:24:41.6
He’s drawing a financial line in the sand here, friends. And He’s saying no one can serve two masters. You can only have one master, one person who is calling the shots in your life. You're either gonna be loyal to one and despise the other, or you're gonna love one and hate the other. But you can’t have it both ways, friends. You can’t serve God and the god of money at the same time. He didn’t say it’s difficult to do that. He didn’t say it would be hard to do that. He says you cannot do that. Partly because years earlier when Moses came down Mount Sinai with those two clay tablets, one of the things written on there was, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” And in our culture that includes the consumerism and materialism and mammon worship that is so prevalent in our culture today. I don’t know what God is doing in the midst of this Great Recession, but I know one of the things is, you know, He’s certainly got our attention, hasn’t He? And maybe we need to come back to these ancient words spoken 2000 years ago on a Galilean hillside and remember you cannot serve God and money. Jesus forces us to realign our priorities in a kingdom direction.
0:26:15.2
Now, I want to give you a little insight into mine and Cathryn’s financial life. We’ve been married a little over 15 years now. Celebrated our anniversary in August. And from day one in our marriage we began living by what we call the 10/10/80 financial plan. And one of the things this does is to align our financial priorities in a kingdom direction. And this is a starting point for us. We’ve adjusted, you know, at times throughout our marriage, but this is a minimum expectation we have of our financial life. The first 10 is 10%, and we give to God first as a matter of priority. You can look inside our checkbook. Salary deposit, and the next line there is our giving to the Lord. And I said to the elders when I came here, whatever you pay me, just expect to know that 10% will come right back into the offering plate right off the top. We’re committed to that, of putting God first in our lives. So we give to God first.
0:27:28.6
Secondly, we pay ourselves. That’s the second 10% as a minimum, savings and investment. First is our eternal portfolio, the second is our earthly portfolio. And you’ll see on my paystub 10% coming out of my paycheck going into our 401k and our investments and all of that. It’s important to do that. I don’t want to live paycheck to paycheck, all right. And then we adjust our lifestyle to live off the rest. We’ve been doing that for 15 years, friends. Laying up for ourselves treasures on earth. And there are times that we give more, but never less. Saving and investing for the future. It’s important to do that. We can talk about that from other scriptures. And then making lifestyle adjustments in terms of the house that we buy, the cars that we buy, when we buy them, delayed gratification. All of that comes into play. The 10/10/80 plan. That’s just how we do it. That’s how we have applied this. And I suggest that might work for you as well, because we are so prone to mammon worship in our culture. The gods of this age are not atheism—although that still exists—or pantheism and all of that. No, the –ism of our day is consumerism and materialism. And we have replaced the one, true God with the worship of mammon in our culture.
0:28:58.8
What do we do with a message like this? How do we put this into practice? I was convicted of that this week. And I came up with, well, a crazy idea that might get me fired. I don’t know. You may not like me after this. But I thought how important it is to be doers of the Word and not just hearers of the Word. James tells us that. But maybe he got the idea from Jesus. If you fast forward in the Sermon on the Mount, we’re coming quickly to the end where He says in verse 24, “Therefore…” And it’s a summary word. He is summarizing everything He said on the Sermon on the Mount. He says, “Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine…” Have you been hearing them? Have you been listening? “Whoever hears them…”—Do you have ears to hear?—“…and does them…” Wow! He’s got the audacity to say we’ve got to put this into practice? He says whoever does that, “I will liken him to a wise man who builds his house upon a rock.” Then He goes on to say, “The person who hears these words of mine and does not do them, I will liken him to a man who builds his house upon the sand.” And He imagines the rains coming and the winds coming and the floods coming and the Great Recession coming and pounding on these two houses. And He says the man who built his house upon the rock, he’s left standing. So I just thought it was a crazy idea this morning to actually challenge all of us as I challenge myself to put the truth that we’ve just heard into practice immediately. Like, before we leave today.
0:30:30.6
And here is what I’m gonna challenge you to do. I suspect all of us have, you know, what I call pocket change. You know, some bills, maybe some coin in our wallet. I want you to empty your pockets before you leave today. Don’t walk out of here with a single dollar, a dime, a nickel, or a penny. I know what some of you are saying. “Oh, there’s that preacher again. Every time I come to church they’re asking for money.” I understand all the suspicions. That’s why we talked about this as a staff this week. And I said I’m gonna go out on the edge a little bit here, but I think it’s so important for us to be doers of the Word and not just hearers, especially as we start a New Year, especially as we start a new decade, especially in the midst of this recession. We’ve got to get it right. And so we identified three ministries to which we will evenly divide this money outside the walls of the church. So you don’t have to think that I have anything to gain from this. The church, Immanuel Bible Church, doesn’t have anything to gain from this. This is about putting into practice what we’ve heard today in a real, tangible kind of way.
0:31:41.3
And so we have identified three ministries. Some of these are familiar because some of you are very involved in these ministries, and I think you’ll like this. Central Union Mission downtown in the District is one place that the money will go. Africa New Life Ministries. We’re going overseas with this one in international impact. The work they're doing in Rwanda is fabulous. We send teams to Rwanda every year. And the Children of Mine Center. That’s my kids’ college fund. No, I’m just kidding. I learned about this one this week through our student ministry who is very involved in this wonderful mission to children down in the District. So here is what I’m gonna challenge you to do as I challenge myself. And I emptied out my wallet. I got a little bit more this morning from my wife, who carries all of our cash. But I emptied it out last night and had a great response from our Saturday night service. Unbelievable. I’m gonna ask you to empty your pockets. I don’t have anything to gain from this. I’ve got nothing to gain, and we, together, have nothing to lose. It was Jim Elliot who said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” And I think Jim Elliot understood something about Matthew 5:19-24. Let’s pray together.
0:33:04.2
Father, thank You so much for Your Word. And I just love this Sermon on the Mount. It has challenged me to the core. And, Father, we would be less than loyal and fully devoted followers of you if we didn’t consider deeply how to put the truth that we’re learning into practice. Father, I think today, perhaps, of the person who, like the rich young ruler, has questions about eternal life. I mean, how do you have a relationship with this one called Jesus? And I pray that today would be a day of salvation. No, we can’t buy our way into heaven. That’s been paid for in full. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It’s a free gift paid for in full by the blood of Jesus Christ, offered to us by the grace of God. But, oh Father, how the consumerism and materialism of our culture, the mammon worship of our culture has perhaps gotten in the way of somebody here this morning coming to faith in Christ. I pray that today would be a day of salvation. And for every one of us in this room, that today would be a day that we as individuals and as followers of Jesus Christ decide in this New Year to obey God no matter the cost, taking this simple step of faith this morning as we’ve challenged each other to do so. I pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.
0:35:16.1