Kelly Kinder: I'm so excited.
Kelly Kinder: We've been continuing in our series on the book of Matthew on the Sermon on the Mount, called Red Letters, and I'm just thrilled to get to be able to do this.
Kelly Kinder: It's Jesus' sermon that he preached there to a group of people that were really challenged by his message, and so we're also challenged by it.
Kelly Kinder: I think most of us.
Kelly Kinder: If we read it and take it seriously, we just think of the things that this message today we're going to be talking about.
Kelly Kinder: Where is your treasure?
Kelly Kinder: And it's a good question.
Kelly Kinder: We all need to answer that question.
Kelly Kinder: Miss Bertha Adams was 71 years old when she died alone in West Palm Beach, florida, back in 1976.
Kelly Kinder: And the coroner's report read cause of death malnutrition and after wasting away to 50 pounds, she could no longer stay alive.
Kelly Kinder: That's pretty serious.
Kelly Kinder: They found a veritable pig pen the biggest mess you can imagine, they wrote.
Kelly Kinder: One seasoned inspector declared he had never seen a dwelling in greater disarray.
Kelly Kinder: Bertha had begged for food at her neighbor's doors and had gotten what clothes she had from the Salvation Army.
Kelly Kinder: From all appearances she was a penniless recluse, a pitiful and forgotten widow, but such was not the case.
Kelly Kinder: Amid the jumble of her filthy, disheveled belongings were found two keys to a safe deposit box at two different local banks.
Kelly Kinder: The discovery was unbelievable.
Kelly Kinder: The first box contained over 700 AT&T stock certificates, plus hundreds of other valuable notes, bonds and solid financial securities, not to mention cash amounting to $200,000.
Kelly Kinder: The second box had no certificates, just cash $600,000 to be exact.
Kelly Kinder: Bertha Adams was a multimillionaire, and then some.
Kelly Kinder: She yet died of starvation.
Kelly Kinder: Her case was even more tragic, I guess, if she was destitute spiritually.
Kelly Kinder: Her story is kind of an extreme example of a distorted value system, and we want to talk about that today.
Kelly Kinder: Our consumer society you see it's kind of like drives us to get more, have more, buy more, doesn't it that we think that life consists of what we have, our possessions?
Kelly Kinder: And Jesus comes along and he says something different.
Kelly Kinder: This Sermon on the Mount is, I guess you could say, as people call it, an ethical sermon.
Kelly Kinder: It's Jesus' ethics of the kingdom, and there's a distinction here between what we might say is the kingdom of self versus what Jesus offers here, where morality is often defined as whatever feels right to me.
Kelly Kinder: We're living in a society that has the morality based on whatever feels right to me versus the kingdom of God which Jesus is going to tell us about today.
Kelly Kinder: But one thing is certain, I know this, that the gospel, it really upsets our value system and we've gone through this passage where Jesus says you have heard it said, but I say to you you have heard it said, but I say to you, and today he's going to challenge our value system and I think, while we know that, as Christians, the tug is so strong for us to say no to the, to the buy me now culture.
Kelly Kinder: Really, what we're talking about is how Jesus wants us to say no to the buy-me-now culture.
Kelly Kinder: Really, what we're talking about is how Jesus wants us to live for one person and that's him.
Kelly Kinder: Chuck Colson, way back in 1991, made me think of this, this idea between ethics and morality.
Kelly Kinder: Chuck Colson, if you remember him, if you're old enough to remember him, he was involved as a cabinet member in the Nixon administration, president Nixon's administration, and the result of that was, as many of you know, was the Watergate scandal, and back then it was a pretty big deal.
Kelly Kinder: I don't know that it compares anything with what's going on today, but Chuck Colson was basically convicted of the crimes that he was involved in in the Watergate scandal.
Kelly Kinder: He was put in prison and he spent a number of years there and during the prison time he actually came to Christ.
Kelly Kinder: He became a Christian and he kind of, for that time after that, began to teach and preach about what God had shown him, as he had changed his value system.
Kelly Kinder: And he discussed the difference back in 1991 at a lecture at the Harvard Business School.
Kelly Kinder: And they tell the lecturer why Harvard can't teach ethics.
Kelly Kinder: And he argues that ethics, he says, is rooted in a transcendent moral order, while morals are more subjective and influenced by societal and individual beliefs.
Kelly Kinder: So in other words, morals are what is so it's what you see but ethics are what ought to be.
Kelly Kinder: So essentially we have, I think, in our society so rejected the truths of Scripture that our nation has essentially become demoralized.
Kelly Kinder: So when truth is rejected or it's put down, it's made less than what it should be.
Kelly Kinder: Guess what we have?
Kelly Kinder: We have cultural chaos, because nobody knows which end is up.
Kelly Kinder: And as the Old Testament described those who lived in that day like this they did what was right in their own eyes, everybody did what was right in their own eyes.
Kelly Kinder: And so, if you haven't realized it by now, we're living in a culture whose value system is more distorted and perverted than I think I've ever seen in our history.
Kelly Kinder: So what are values?
Kelly Kinder: Values are fundamental beliefs that guide us or motivate us to think.
Kelly Kinder: That is our attitudes and how we live, that is our behaviors.
Kelly Kinder: Values are like I guess you'd say they're like our moral compass, and so if our life is aligned with Jesus' values, guess what we're going to?
Kelly Kinder: Our moral compass is going to point us always to the right thing.
Kelly Kinder: It's kind of what Cody said this morning.
Kelly Kinder: We had really two other messages this morning, derek and Abby and Cody, so we're just thankful for what God is going to show us this morning.
Kelly Kinder: I hope you'll be listening.
Kelly Kinder: Let's kind of look at this Matthew 7, 24.
Kelly Kinder: I just want to remind you the scripture.
Kelly Kinder: We're going to look at chapter 6 of Matthew, but I want to go back to what really the thrust of this whole sermon is about, and I said this last time when I spoke Matthew 7, 24.
Kelly Kinder: Matthew 7, 24, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Kelly Kinder: So, with these words in ringing in our ears, let's look at Matthew 6.
Kelly Kinder: We're going to look at verses 19 through 24.
Kelly Kinder: Where is your treasure?
Kelly Kinder: Jesus speaking, 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.
Kelly Kinder: The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
Kelly Kinder: If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
Kelly Kinder: No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
Kelly Kinder: You cannot serve God and money.
Kelly Kinder: Let's pray, father, spirit of God, lord, we ask that you would open the Scripture today.
Kelly Kinder: Lord, as we hear your words, lord, we ask that you would open the scripture today, lord, as we hear your words, lord, we ask that you would leave no area of our lives that would keep us from following you.
Kelly Kinder: With a whole heart, lord, I just pray that we would be like those first servants who were told Lord do whatever he tells you.
Kelly Kinder: And when they obeyed you turned water into wine.
Kelly Kinder: So, lord, transform us by your Word today.
Kelly Kinder: Speak to us, holy Spirit, in Jesus' name, amen.
Kelly Kinder: Let me just say up front, really, just so you don't get the idea, because when you hear the title when is your Treasure?
Kelly Kinder: You may think this is a sermon about money.
Kelly Kinder: That's part of it, but really this is not about wealth.
Kelly Kinder: Primarily.
Kelly Kinder: It's really about what we would say is our ability to follow Christ.
Kelly Kinder: It's about absolute discipleship.
Kelly Kinder: So, jesus' words, if you, we what he's saying here.
Kelly Kinder: They cover a lot of issues of the heart which we don't have to count time to cover all these, but let me just kind of mention them because the tendency, as I said, is to live for the here and now.
Kelly Kinder: It's what we see.
Kelly Kinder: We have blinders on and that's the mentality of getting all you can and canning all you get.
Kelly Kinder: We have words for it.
Kelly Kinder: You've heard them probably Covetousness, wanting that car, that house, those clothes, that whatever is on your heart, and it just keeps you focused on that.
Kelly Kinder: If I could just get that, if I could just have that covetousness.
Kelly Kinder: It's really what you say would be you're wanting what someone else has that you don't have.
Kelly Kinder: You want their car, you want their house, you want whatever.
Kelly Kinder: That's covetousness.
Kelly Kinder: And then materialism.
Kelly Kinder: There's a word we've heard.
Kelly Kinder: It's simply the unsatisfied desire to have more.
Kelly Kinder: And it goes unsatisfied because we always want more and we want more and we want more.
Kelly Kinder: And then that phrase worldly desire.
Kelly Kinder: Worldly desire when we delight in our treasures more than God.
Kelly Kinder: And when I was writing those words I thought well, that sounds kind of old-fashioned.
Kelly Kinder: And it might sound old-fashioned, really even out of touch for many people, maybe a lot of people talking about those ideas.
Kelly Kinder: But what do they do?
Kelly Kinder: They reveal the critical issues that are going on inside of us, in our heart, that we don't talk about, and more for sure we won't admit.
Kelly Kinder: And they keep us from the abundant life which Jesus is talking about here.
Kelly Kinder: So we make trade-offs, but we don't know what we're trading off.
Kelly Kinder: Someone said the fight of faith is the fight to keep your heart contented in Christ, to really believe and keep on believing that he will meet every need and satisfy every longing.
Kelly Kinder: Do you believe that?
Kelly Kinder: Well, I'm hoping I'm going to convince you a little bit of that today.
Kelly Kinder: This is what Jesus is going to convince us of here and think about.
Kelly Kinder: Just keep in mind who his audience is.
Kelly Kinder: Here he was speaking to people who didn't have a lot.
Kelly Kinder: These were probably poor people, and you get the idea sometimes that people that Jesus spoke to didn't even know where their next meal was coming from.
Kelly Kinder: They just followed him around because he had the words of life.
Kelly Kinder: So these are probably not rich people by our standards of life, so these are probably not rich people by our standards, and yet Jesus is telling even them these things.
Kelly Kinder: How much more do we need to hear it in a culture like ours and I thought about this.
Kelly Kinder: So you know, wealth is relative, isn't it?
Kelly Kinder: It's kind of like what may be considered wealthy by our standards may, or someone else's standards may just be what we need on a daily basis in our culture.
Kelly Kinder: For example, in some places there are people who and it's like I'd love to have a car, and in that culture they either walk or they ride bicycles right, and so we think a car is a necessity, and maybe it is in our culture.
Kelly Kinder: It's the way we get around.
Kelly Kinder: How many of us would love to walk to work?
Kelly Kinder: That'd be hard, wouldn't it?
Kelly Kinder: It's funny what we deem wants versus needs, isn't it?
Kelly Kinder: And you know it's kind of interesting too.
Kelly Kinder: It's like okay years ago, I think.
Kelly Kinder: You know it's kind of interesting too.
Kelly Kinder: It's like okay years ago, I think you know, when everybody got cell phones.
Kelly Kinder: It's like, wow, everybody wants a cell phone.
Kelly Kinder: You know, I don't think there's probably anywhere in the world somebody I see people in the jungles of deep dark Africa who have a cell phone.
Kelly Kinder: It's like everybody's got a cell phone.
Kelly Kinder: What I'm saying, the point, is that wealth is relative.
Kelly Kinder: What's not relative is our attitude toward it, and this is what Jesus is going to get to.
Kelly Kinder: So let's see what he has to say to us this morning, what's relevant for us to hear, and what does he do here?
Kelly Kinder: He's basically given us these words in contrasting choices, and he presents three of them.
Kelly Kinder: There are two treasures, on earth and in heaven, two bodily conditions light and darkness and then two masters God and possessions.
Kelly Kinder: And what Jesus says is make a choice, because you cannot sit on the fence.
Kelly Kinder: Let's look at it First of all.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus presents us with a choice, because you cannot sit on the fence.
Kelly Kinder: Let's look at it First of all.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus presents us with a choice of treasures.
Kelly Kinder: This is in verses 19 through 21.
Kelly Kinder: And the first one is in verse 19.
Kelly Kinder: He says essentially stop accumulating earthly treasures.
Kelly Kinder: Here's the words Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
Kelly Kinder: And the verb tense there is.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus is saying something in the original that says You're doing this, stop.
Kelly Kinder: This is something they were already doing.
Kelly Kinder: He's telling them to cease doing it.
Kelly Kinder: Stop doing this, stop accumulating earthly treasures.
Kelly Kinder: And you know, in that day people didn't have a closet full of clothes like we do.
Kelly Kinder: So when you think about what he says here where a moth and rust destroy, a moth eating a hole in their clothes would be disaster.
Kelly Kinder: What if your whole closet full of clothes got wiped out by some insects?
Kelly Kinder: This is what's in their mind.
Kelly Kinder: Or he says or rust, rust the word here is the word for rot or decay.
Kelly Kinder: Because guess what If I left my lawnmower outside in the weather?
Kelly Kinder: Eventually I wouldn't have to touch it, but it would waste completely away.
Kelly Kinder: This is the nature of things.
Kelly Kinder: Anything left to itself deteriorates.
Kelly Kinder: Today, nothing we buy, think about it.
Kelly Kinder: Nothing we buy is made to last, and yet we put great, great value on it.
Kelly Kinder: What do they call that?
Kelly Kinder: Planned obsolescence?
Kelly Kinder: Is that what the term is.
Kelly Kinder: Yeah, so there are no banks in that day, and so we have places to put our money.
Kelly Kinder: But in that day, what do they do?
Kelly Kinder: Well, he says there where thieves break in and steal.
Kelly Kinder: And that day, the way to put your money away safely, they would go along and find a place, walking along, and they'd dig a hole in the ground and cover it up they knew where it was, but hopefully nobody else did or they would dig a hole in the soft sides of the clay houses they lived in and put it in the walls.
Kelly Kinder: And what he's saying.
Kelly Kinder: That literally says where thieves break through and steal.
Kelly Kinder: So their worry was that the thief would get inside and steal their life savings by digging through the walls in their homes.
Kelly Kinder: And so there's this kind of fear for all of us that what we have we might lose.
Kelly Kinder: So we got to protect it, and that's probably true in our culture.
Kelly Kinder: But what is really?
Kelly Kinder: What's Jesus getting at here?
Kelly Kinder: It's not.
Kelly Kinder: That's just kind of the surface meaning.
Kelly Kinder: What is Jesus talking about here?
Kelly Kinder: Oh, we know this.
Kelly Kinder: He's not telling us that we can't have nice things.
Kelly Kinder: The Bible tells us that Jesus, or God, has provided everything richly for us.
Kelly Kinder: To what Enjoy.
Kelly Kinder: He's not telling us we shouldn't have nice things.
Kelly Kinder: He's also not saying that we shouldn't save for a rainy day.
Kelly Kinder: You know, if you look through the Old Testament you see the passage in Scripture that talks about the ant.
Kelly Kinder: It says go to the ant you sluggard, see how he gathers food in the summer and he stores it away for the winter.
Kelly Kinder: That's a principle for us.
Kelly Kinder: So he's not saying don't save for the rainy day.
Kelly Kinder: And we're also told that we're also to provide for our family.
Kelly Kinder: If your family has a need, you're the one, if you're in the family, to provide for them if you can.
Kelly Kinder: And we have to save for those kinds of things and help for those kind of things.
Kelly Kinder: So now Jesus is warning us something else.
Kelly Kinder: He's warning us against finding our greatest satisfaction in the things of this world.
Kelly Kinder: And there are two really practical reasons for this.
Kelly Kinder: He gives them to us.
Kelly Kinder: Number one is earthly treasures are unreliable and they're easily lost.
Kelly Kinder: I mean, you can lose your wealth in a heartbeat if you're not careful.
Kelly Kinder: Proverbs 23, 4 and 5 says don't wear yourself out trying to get rich.
Kelly Kinder: Be wise enough to know when to quit and some people never know when to quit In the blink of an eye.
Kelly Kinder: It goes on to say wealth disappears for it will sprout wings and fly away like an eagle.
Kelly Kinder: And how many people have lost their fortunes?
Kelly Kinder: And they didn't ever expect to?
Kelly Kinder: Economic downturns, poor business decisions, online fraud which is a big deal nowadays, right or just simply basic financial mismanagement.
Kelly Kinder: All those things can happen and we can lose our earthly wealth.
Kelly Kinder: But Jesus said it's unreliable and it's easily lost.
Kelly Kinder: There's another practical reason Jesus tells us to stop accumulating our earthly treasures.
Kelly Kinder: He says, secondly, material wealth is worthless beyond this life.
Kelly Kinder: Luke 12, 16 through 21,.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus tells a parable about a man who is building into and now I'm not going to go through the read it for you, but he's basically he's telling the parable and saying this guy is into building bigger and bigger and better and better barns, bigger and better barns, and he's filling them up with all of his treasure.
Kelly Kinder: And God comes to him and says you don't know, your very life is going to be required of you this very night.
Kelly Kinder: And what did he do?
Kelly Kinder: He spent his life investing here and he didn't have anything for eternity.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus' point is that you cannot take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.
Kelly Kinder: So wealth is temporal, it's not eternal.
Kelly Kinder: This is what Jesus is getting at.
Kelly Kinder: He's trying to tell us the wisdom of making the right choice here, and sometimes we're so blind to this that we fail to consider the eternal.
Kelly Kinder: There's an old story about an old miser who called the doctor and lawyer and minister who was his friends.
Kelly Kinder: Three friends a doctor, a miser, or in, and lawyer and minister, who were his friends.
Kelly Kinder: Three friends a doctor, a miser and this lawyer and minister to the deathbed.
Kelly Kinder: He's about to die and he said they say you can't take it with you, but I'm going to try.
Kelly Kinder: So here are three envelopes and each one of you I'm going to give $30,000 to, and what I want you to do with the envelopes, I want you, when I die and they lower my casket into the ground, throw in the envelopes.
Kelly Kinder: And when the old man died, sure enough, each one of those three, they threw in the envelope as requested.
Kelly Kinder: But on the way home after the funeral service, the minister texted the other two and confessed I needed the money for the church.
Kelly Kinder: So I took out $10,000 and threw only $20,000 into the grave.
Kelly Kinder: And the doctor read that and he texted back.
Kelly Kinder: I too have to confess, I'm building a clinic.
Kelly Kinder: He texts it back.
Kelly Kinder: I too have to confess, I'm building a clinic.
Kelly Kinder: So I took out $20,000 and only threw in $10,000.
Kelly Kinder: And the lawyer said and he read that he said, gentlemen, I am so ashamed of you, I threw in my credit card for the whole amount.
Kelly Kinder: The old miser's fixation on trying to have a scheme to get his wealth to follow him didn't work too well.
Kelly Kinder: It didn't even work well even at his own burial, because his friends were so materialistic.
Kelly Kinder: Stop accumulating earthly treasures, j Jesus said.
Kelly Kinder: Instead, what does he say?
Kelly Kinder: Wisdom, start stockpiling heavenly treasures Verse 20,.
Kelly Kinder: Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
Kelly Kinder: Literally make a treasure for yourself.
Kelly Kinder: Make a treasure for yourself.
Kelly Kinder: Heavenly treasures are a wiser and more secure investment than you might ever believe, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus' examples that he's given here lead, I think, to a deeper principle, which is what we might call the treasure principle.
Kelly Kinder: It's in verse 21.
Kelly Kinder: And he makes those examples and he comes to say this.
Kelly Kinder: He says why.
Kelly Kinder: For where your treasure is verse 21, there your heart will be also.
Kelly Kinder: In other words, put your treasure in the right place in the kingdom is what he's saying and your heart will be in the right place to live a life now in a way that will pay off later.
Kelly Kinder: Here's the principle, this idea.
Kelly Kinder: He's not just talking about money and wealth, he's talking to me, he's giving us wisdom about the right priorities and he's basically saying your heart will be wherever your treasure is placed.
Kelly Kinder: So if we put it in the wrong place, it'll reveal itself.
Kelly Kinder: And he uses that word treasure kind of in a really broad way.
Kelly Kinder: We think of it always as about financial and money stuff.
Kelly Kinder: It could include potentially a lot of stuff that we call our treasure Family, the position at your job, artistic pursuits that you have, relationships that you think are so important in comparison.
Kelly Kinder: Maybe it's social media, and that's where you put all your time and attention.
Kelly Kinder: It could even be a memory that you hold as your treasure.
Kelly Kinder: If anything in the world is everything to you, it is an earthly treasure.
Kelly Kinder: So what is your treasure?
Kelly Kinder: The treasure is what you love the most.
Kelly Kinder: Your treasure is what you love the most.
Kelly Kinder: What do you love the most this morning?
Kelly Kinder: Now, jesus moves on from a choice of treasures to a choice of visions In verses 22 and 23,.
Kelly Kinder: He says in verse 22, the eye is the lamp of the body.
Kelly Kinder: What an obscure line.
Kelly Kinder: What an obscure statement.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus is not giving us a lesson on ophthalmology.
Kelly Kinder: He's not trying to tell us how to better read an eye chart at the doctor's office.
Kelly Kinder: This is not physical stuff.
Kelly Kinder: He's talking in spiritual terms and he's using a metaphor from their culture.
Kelly Kinder: He's really referring to the way we see things, the way we see life, the way we view life and what he's saying.
Kelly Kinder: Just as your heart will follow your treasure, so also your body, that is, your whole life, will follow your eye.
Kelly Kinder: When he's talking about his heart, he's not talking about we think of.
Kelly Kinder: Well, the heart is the affections he's talking about, not just your affections.
Kelly Kinder: He's talking about your whole life and what your eye, if you look at the things he's saying, your eye will follow.
Kelly Kinder: Your body will follow what your eye is focused on.
Kelly Kinder: So we're intended to understand here that having the right outlook on life.
Kelly Kinder: It enables us to orient ourselves in the right way, and the opposite is true.
Kelly Kinder: If you're focused, if your outlook on life is not in the right way, it's not aligned to what Jesus teaches.
Kelly Kinder: Guess what You're going to be living a life of darkness.
Kelly Kinder: Now think about that.
Kelly Kinder: Because you use that idea of an eye, you could have a cataract, you could have floaters, you could have problems in your eye, and those could be fixed by the doctor.
Kelly Kinder: But this spiritual problem, there's only one doctor that can fix that.
Kelly Kinder: His name is Jesus.
Kelly Kinder: It's a spiritual vision and our outlook on life will determine the direction of our life.
Kelly Kinder: It's so interesting to me how so many times we get our outlook our philosophy of life is about the values of certain things here and we get ourselves caught up in so many problems.
Kelly Kinder: The Scripture says the love of money is the root of all evil.
Kelly Kinder: No, it doesn't say that.
Kelly Kinder: It says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
Kelly Kinder: So it is a danger for us.
Kelly Kinder: If we have our focus in the wrong place, we're going to live lives that will really be disoriented and going in the wrong direction, and you don't think that happens.
Kelly Kinder: It happens a lot, but he says so.
Kelly Kinder: If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
Kelly Kinder: In other words, you're going to have an enlightened sense of the direction you should take in life, because your treasure is in the right place.
Kelly Kinder: But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
Kelly Kinder: If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
Kelly Kinder: So, these two perspectives on the eye, there's what he calls here the healthy eye.
Kelly Kinder: That's verse 22.
Kelly Kinder: And this is an interesting word, because if your eye is healthy it might not be the best translation it can mean generous, literally.
Kelly Kinder: If your eye is generous, if you well, I'll give you a reference Proverbs 22, 9.
Kelly Kinder: Whoever has a good eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor, and so what you have, if you have a generous eye, is you live with open-handed liberality to people.
Kelly Kinder: Sometimes we're so tight-fisted with what we have, god has to pry our fingers off of it.
Kelly Kinder: And then what it is?
Kelly Kinder: It's really painful when we lose it.
Kelly Kinder: So it could be generous.
Kelly Kinder: The other word it can mean and it typically means this is single.
Kelly Kinder: If your eye is single and you have these varying translations when you look at it, it's either generous or single, sometimes healthy, but single it's the idea of being single-minded in your focus, focused on one thing.
Kelly Kinder: Or we could put it like do you have one passion in your life that you're focused on?
Kelly Kinder: And Jesus says, as we'll find there's only one that we're to have and it's Jesus.
Kelly Kinder: You know, I was interested in how this kind of came to me this week because my little two-year-old granddaughter my wife will kill me because I don't have it exactly right.
Kelly Kinder: Two-year-old granddaughter my wife will kill me because I don't have it exactly right, but she is.
Kelly Kinder: Ever since she was able to sort of start talking, she has been focused on fire hydrants and I thought why is that?
Kelly Kinder: Well, maybe they're about her height, you know.
Kelly Kinder: And so everywhere we go it's like hydrant, hydrant.
Kelly Kinder: There's a hydrant, you know, and we were driving down the road just the other day and she's pointing out hydrants everywhere.
Kelly Kinder: That's all she sees.
Kelly Kinder: And I said her name's Lily and I said Lily, you have such a good eye and I thought how true that is.
Kelly Kinder: When our eye is single, we see Jesus as the most valuable thing to our lives.
Kelly Kinder: That's all we see.
Kelly Kinder: The picture here you can see how thrilled she is with her hydrant.
Kelly Kinder: The neighbor across the street from where they lived got wind of her focus on hydrants and so they went out and decorated the hydrant in her neighborhood and had her pose for this picture and she's absolutely thrilled.
Kelly Kinder: That's a good eye focused on the right thing.
Kelly Kinder: And then Jesus talks about the bad eye, and you might think of the bad, the unhealthy, the diseased eye.
Kelly Kinder: He ends up saying people with that kind of vision, that kind of outlook, that kind of focus can't see, can't see much at all.
Kelly Kinder: They're clearly blind.
Kelly Kinder: David Brooks, in a 2023 article in the Atlantic entitled how America Got Mean that's an intriguing title, isn't it?
Kelly Kinder: How America Got Mean makes this observation we're enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crises of our democracy.
Kelly Kinder: What is going on, he's, of our democracy.
Kelly Kinder: What is going on?
Kelly Kinder: Over the past few years, different social observers have offered different stories to explain the rise of hatred, anxiety and despair.
Kelly Kinder: So he's looking out on our culture and he says what is going on.
Kelly Kinder: And so he goes on to touch on a variety of proposed answers from people who were supposed experts, from technology to sociology, from demographics to economics.
Kelly Kinder: And these answers, he said, well, they may have something to do with it, maybe have a measure of influence, but he writes something beyond this that I think really touches on the biblical narrative and the way the Bible teaches us about what's going on.
Kelly Kinder: He writes, our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free reign.
Kelly Kinder: We live in a society that's terrible at moral formation.
Kelly Kinder: Moral formation, as I will use that stuffy sounding term here, comprises three things First, helping people learn to restrain their selfishness.
Kelly Kinder: Second, teaching basic social and ethical skills.
Kelly Kinder: And third, helping people find a purpose in life.
Kelly Kinder: Morally formative institutions hold up a set of ideals and I thought, god, that's why we're here, that's why the church is here.
Kelly Kinder: And is it a statement against how poorly we have done this of late?
Kelly Kinder: You know?
Kelly Kinder: Because the culture's values have spread into the church and this is now needed to be retaught to us as Christians, who would have thought what are we talking about?
Kelly Kinder: Nothing less than the gospel of the kingdom.
Kelly Kinder: Our eye needs to be made healthy again.
Kelly Kinder: So now Jesus goes on to the core issue, which is our last thing, and what is he doing?
Kelly Kinder: I felt like this, even for me.
Kelly Kinder: I just thought, okay, and this is a good thing, every time a preacher preaches, it ought to go through him.
Kelly Kinder: I was discouraged this way.
Kelly Kinder: I was like Lord, you're talking to me, you're stepping on my toes, and so Jesus has gone through this kind of stepping on our toes from the little toe all the way now to the big toe.
Kelly Kinder: And this is the bottom line.
Kelly Kinder: He's telling us to choose the right treasure, then choose the right vision and now to choose the right loyalties Verse 24,.
Kelly Kinder: No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
Kelly Kinder: And I think Jesus just knew the emotional bond that wealth and money has on us.
Kelly Kinder: And there's a spiritual connection between our money sometimes and what God has wanted to show us here, how we think about money.
Kelly Kinder: You know, I don't know about you, but I've been involved in a few settling of wills over the years and I've been amazed at what sometimes normal peaceful people will turn into sometimes from Jekyll to Hyde, when money becomes the subject.
Kelly Kinder: I got to get mine.
Kelly Kinder: Maybe you've been a part of one of those.
Kelly Kinder: See, the question is do you possess treasures or do the treasures possess you?
Kelly Kinder: And the danger for us is that we let the pursuit of what we deem our treasure to really substitute for our pursuit of God.
Kelly Kinder: You know what the Bible calls that Idolatry, calls that Idolatry Our treasure becomes our substitute for the thing we should love the most.
Kelly Kinder: He says you cannot serve God in money.
Kelly Kinder: He doesn't say you should not try.
Kelly Kinder: He says you cannot serve God in money.
Kelly Kinder: Why?
Kelly Kinder: Because, ultimately, this is a matter of worship.
Kelly Kinder: Why?
Kelly Kinder: Because, ultimately, this is a matter of worship.
Kelly Kinder: It's a matter of worship.
Kelly Kinder: You have to choose.
Kelly Kinder: Because why Jesus won't compete with lesser loyalties, lesser gods, money?
Kelly Kinder: I've figured this Money is a good servant but a poor master, and so what he's telling us is, instead of letting it be your master, make money your servant.
Kelly Kinder: In fact, he says that in Luke 16.
Kelly Kinder: He says go out and use your money to buy friends for the kingdom.
Kelly Kinder: Don't let it be your master.
Kelly Kinder: There's only one of me.
Kelly Kinder: Don't let it be your master.
Kelly Kinder: There's only one of me.
Kelly Kinder: Well, I want to finish up by drawing our attention to a couple of short, really short parables that he talks about later in the Gospel of Matthew, and they kind of emphasize the incomparable value of eternal life and the kingdom of God.
Kelly Kinder: Listen to these.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up.
Kelly Kinder: Then, in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who, on finding one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.
Kelly Kinder: And so the true riches that Christ offers us, they're not material, they're spiritual, they're not temporary, they're eternal.
Kelly Kinder: A number of years ago you know, it's kind of like, I think, of the scripture, it's like from the mouth of infants, you have ordained praise, the Bible says.
Kelly Kinder: And years ago, when my youngest daughter was, we were sitting around, I remember, downstairs on the couch and I think we were just, we were talking about Jesus.
Kelly Kinder: And at the end of our conversation and she's like three years old she looked over at my wife and I and she said Jesus is our greatest treasure.
Kelly Kinder: And I looked at my wife and she looked at me, me and I was like that was a God thing, jesus is our greatest treasure.
Kelly Kinder: And to those with spiritual eyes, jesus is our greatest treasure.
Kelly Kinder: The problem is with so many we never buy into that truth.
Kelly Kinder: But this is true wisdom that Jesus has given us here today.
Kelly Kinder: Let me kind of tell you how Jesus is our treasure and we'll end here in just a moment.
Kelly Kinder: Several places in Scripture where Jesus is talked about.
Kelly Kinder: In this way, the unsearchable riches of Christ cannot be fully searched out because, it says, in Christ all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form.
Kelly Kinder: So the riches of Christ include think about it all that God is.
Kelly Kinder: The unsearchable riches include the wisdom of God, the glory of God, the truth of God, the life of God and the love of God.
Kelly Kinder: The Bible says in Christ God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing.
Kelly Kinder: The Bible says in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Kelly Kinder: And the Bible says in Christ God has given us everything we need for a godly life.
Kelly Kinder: That's a lot of treasure and we haven't even scratched the surface.
Kelly Kinder: So how do you measure your treasure?
Kelly Kinder: How do you know where your treasure is?
Kelly Kinder: How do you measure it?
Kelly Kinder: That's just a question of what brings you the most pleasure.
Kelly Kinder: Let me read this again the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up.
Kelly Kinder: Then I hope you didn't miss this.
Kelly Kinder: Then in his joy it says he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field.
Kelly Kinder: He is thrilled to transfer his earthly wealth to pursue something that is eternal.
Kelly Kinder: John Piper wrote this makes pleasure also the whistleblower of your heart.
Kelly Kinder: If something sinful gives you pleasure, it's not a pleasure problem, it's a treasure problem.
Kelly Kinder: Your pleasure mechanism is likely functioning just fine.
Kelly Kinder: It's what you love.
Kelly Kinder: That's out of whack and pleasure is outing you.
Kelly Kinder: Pleasure is the meter in your heart that measures how valuable, how precious someone or something is to you.
Kelly Kinder: Pleasure is the measure of your treasure, and Jesus ends his part there on.
Kelly Kinder: Where is your treasure?
Kelly Kinder: I want to ask you this morning, let's just take a minute here, because I feel like the Holy Spirit has already pinpointed something, or someone who has taken the place of Jesus, has taken the place of God, and I'm going to have Zach come up and just play just for a minute.
Kelly Kinder: This looks like oh, you've changed your appearance, zach.
Kelly Kinder: Okay, so you're, I swapped.
Kelly Kinder: So thank you, tyler.
Kelly Kinder: If God has spoken to you, if the Holy Spirit has spoken to you about where your heart lies, that you have placed value in something else other than Jesus this is for Christians then I want you to come down and just with your coming down, just give that back to Jesus and just say Jesus, I take you for my treasure.
Kelly Kinder: It's really simple.
Kelly Kinder: I mean, you're not doing this for me.
Kelly Kinder: You're doing this as God has spoken to you.
Kelly Kinder: You looking for some other treasure in your life, something more valuable than Jesus.
Kelly Kinder: So right now, as Tyler plays, would you make that transaction with the Lord?
Kelly Kinder: And then this is for those who don't know Jesus If you've never trusted Christ, you've never seen him as someone who is worth trading this life for eternity.
Kelly Kinder: For it's real simple.
Kelly Kinder: Jesus just says.
Kelly Kinder: He says confess your sins, know that you have sinned and he has died for your sins.
Kelly Kinder: He died on the cross to take away your sins and he will give you eternal life.
Kelly Kinder: It's just a simple thing, a simple act of faith that you come and you say Jesus, I want you instead of me in my life.
Kelly Kinder: Would you just give your life to Jesus this morning?
Kelly Kinder: We're going to take just a minute.
Kelly Kinder: Anybody who wants to come, let's do business with the Lord this morning.
Speaker 2: Thank you, jesus, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.
Kelly Kinder: Amen, amen, amen.
Kelly Kinder: At the end of our time today, there'll be people down here.
Kelly Kinder: If you didn't make a decision right now, didn't want to do that right now, there'll be people here who would love to share how you can know Jesus.
Kelly Kinder: And if there's any other prayers, there'll be a prayer team down here today to pray for you.
Kelly Kinder: We always love to do this because you know the Bible says don't go to the Word, don't hear the Word, like you're looking at yourself in the mirror.
Kelly Kinder: Sometimes we go to the mirror and the Bible makes this analogy we turn right around, we forget what we look like and I believe God has shown many of us here today what we look like.
Kelly Kinder: So do business with him this week.
Kelly Kinder: Father, we thank you for your word this morning.
Kelly Kinder: We ask you, lord, to apply these truths to our heart.
Kelly Kinder: Lord, that we would find in you our greatest treasure.
Kelly Kinder: We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.