Finding the Ultimate Treasure

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said it is possible to live a financially and materially non-anxious life. This message explores the foundation — our relationship to money and possessions.

In order to live a financially non-anxious life, we need to:

1. See the limitations of money and possessions
2. See the power of money and possessions
3. See the ultimate Treasure is available to us

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

The sermon text reading for today is Matthew chapter 6, verses 19 through 24. You can find this passage in the Sanctuary Bible on page 1476. Please listen as I read God's word. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Here ends the reading.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Glad to be together with you this morning. My name is John, and I get to serve as the lead pastor here at Elmwood. If you are newer with us, I want to invite you. Whether today is the first Sunday you've been here or you're newer-ish to Elmwood, I want to invite you to our upcoming welcome party, which is coming up uh just a few Sundays from now, on Sunday, April 26th. It's going to be right after the service, right back in that room back there. And really all it is is it's a very short, about 20-minute time where we want to uh just connect you with other people who are newer to Elmwood, give you the chance to connect with some of our staff and ministry leaders and uh find ways that you can uh get connected and take some next steps towards uh getting connected here at Elmwood. So uh if you're newer with us, uh I want to invite you to join us for that. If you'd be willing to RSVP, that'd be awesome so we can get a sense of how many people are going to be there for that. Uh but I want to invite you to join us in a few Sundays for that. As we come to this passage, let me invite you to join me in a word of prayer. God, as we look into these verses today, we ask that you would be uh present with us. We ask that you would be with us in a unique and special way as you are each time we open your word. We ask that by your spirit you would illuminate what is before us, that you would help us to see and understand and know how to rightly live in response to and apply the things that we see in these verses. So God, we look to you for all these things, and we trust you to provide for us exactly what we need here today. So for those who need a word of encouragement, for those who need a word of challenge, God, we pray that you would bring to each one exactly what they need. And we look to you for this. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Uh this past Sunday was Easter Sunday, and uh we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and as is our custom here at Elmwood, the Sunday after Easter, for the next couple weeks, we spend a little bit of time uh thinking about the subject of money and possessions and generosity. And the reason that we do that is because at the heart of the good news that we call the gospel is the most stunning act of generosity that has ever taken place. At the heart of the message of the gospel is that God gave himself to us. God sent his son to die for us so that we could experience resurrection life here and now as we await the time when he returns to make all things new. And because that radical self-giving act of generosity is at the center of this gospel, this good news, and because as followers of Jesus our lives are centered around that message, we believe that that kind of generosity also ought to be at the center of our lives and at the center of our being as well. A life of radical self-giving generosity is a part of the new resurrection life that's available to us because of what Jesus has done. Now, one aspect of a generous life is having a right relationship to money and possessions in the first place. So think about it like this: imagine that there's a person who says, I want to have a life that's filled with deep, meaningful relationships. A person who says, I want to live a life that's that's deeply connected, where I'm present with those people around me. And for that person to have this kind of life, their relationship to something like technology has a direct impact on their ability to have this kind of life, doesn't it? If you can't put down the phone, and if your brain is stuck and you you can't get free from the screen, you're never going to experience a life of connection with the people around you. And so uh this life that you want to have is directly impacted by your relationship to technology. And a similar thing is true as it relates to money and possessions. If we want to have a life of generosity, our relationship to money and possessions is going to impact and influence whether we can actually have that life of generosity or not. Now, you may be here this morning and you are uh not yet a follower of Jesus. Even you, I would guess, would say that a life of generosity is a good thing. That we ought to live lives of generosity. So this is not just like a Christian thing. This is a like lots of people believe this, that it's good to live a life of generosity. And what we're going to explore is how our relationship to our money and possessions can either keep us stuck in a life of non-generosity or can free us to live a generous life. So today we're starting a new series of messages that we have titled Unstuck, and what we're going to be exploring is how we can find freedom from the power of money and possessions. So we're going to spend three weeks looking at Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that you heard read this morning. And in these verses, Jesus tells us that it is entirely possible to live a financially and materially non-anxious life. So how do we do that? How do we experience a financially and materially non-anxious life? Well, uh, let's look at these verses and find out. And today I want to begin by sort of just laying a foundation, because what in these verses that Jesus uh gives here, what we hear him saying is he begins by addressing our relationship to money and possessions in the first place. And so that's where I want to start today. So in order to live a financially and materially non-anxious life, I want to suggest that we need to see three things that are in these verses. Number one, we have to see the limitations of money and possessions. So in verse 2019 to 20, Jesus says this. But store up for yourself treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. So in these few verses here, Jesus uh he makes a very compelling case as to why money and possessions are an unreliable source of hope and security. Money and possessions are good things, but they're a terrible thing to build your life on. And Jesus tells us why. He gives two different reasons. Number one, they all degrade and wear out over time. So maybe you've had the unpleasant experience of uh pulling a sleeping bag off the shelf in your garage that you left out there over the winter, or you open up a bag or a bin of clothing that you had in storage and you find that it has been eaten by mice, and there's mouse droppings all over, and there's you know pieces of fiber all over, and there's holes in everything. And uh not only is this disgusting because mice are disgusting, it's also a really painful reminder that material things are temporary. Every single thing made of cloth that you own, and most everything that you own will get holes in it, it will rip, it will tear, it will wear through, it will wear out with enough use. This is the trajectory of every single thing that you own. One day everything you own will end up in a landfill at some point in its existence. Everything. And so Jesus says, Why store up treasures on earth where they can be eaten and in things that degrade? Why would you build your life on money and material things that can degrade and wear out over time? So this is the first reason why they're a bad source of uh security and a bad source of hope. The second reason he tells us that money and possessions are unreliable is uh this they can all be lost in a moment. A person could break into your home and steal anything and everything you have. And Jesus talks about someone breaking in and stealing here. A natural disaster could level your home and ruin everything that you own. Your house, God forbid, could burn down along with everything inside of it. The market could crash, and all the money and savings that you have put into your future security can be lost or come to almost nothing in an instant. All the things that we have can be lost in a moment. And it's not just the physical currency or the material possessions themselves that are so fragile. It's everything that those material possessions and money can purchase for us. Those are also fragile. So the status and the identity that we can gain from having certain brands of clothing, the comfort uh of being able to afford luxurious or frivolous things, the comfort of uh having nice things, the sense of security that we can get by having lots of money in the market, the enjoyment of experiences and vacations and traveling, all of those things can be gone in a moment. They're an unreliable source of hope and security because they can all be lost just like that. Now, just to be clear, Jesus is not saying in these verses or anywhere else, he's not warning us against having or enjoying material possessions. He's not warning us against having or enjoying money in the things that it can purchase for us. He's warning us about treasuring them. He's warning us about finding our hope and our security and investing our lives in and building our lives on those things. And so Jesus here, he tells us what not to do. He says, Don't store up treasures on earth. He says, Don't build your life on earthly treasure, but then he tells us what we ought to do. Instead, we ought to accumulate better treasure. Store up treasures in heaven, store up treasure with God. Well, what does that look like? What does it look like for us to store up heavenly treasure? Now, uh to my consternation, Jesus doesn't tell us exactly what that looks like here. He just tells us to do it, and so what we're left to do is with the help of God the Spirit, sit down and think about, okay, what does it look like for us to invest in heavenly treasure? What does it look like for us to uh store up heavenly treasure? There's a lot that we could say about this, okay? So I'm just gonna like very briefly scratch the surface of this. You can spend more time thinking about this or meditating on this uh later on your own time. Uh, but I think at the very minimum we can say that accumulating treasure with God looks like growing in our love for what God loves. Okay, we know that God loves people being formed into the image of Christ. We know that God cares, he's far more concerned about character and virtue and what's happening on the inside of us and what kind of people we're becoming than he is with external appearances, than he is with our human accomplishments. And I think we accumulate heavenly treasure by becoming quicker to praise character than accomplishment. When we're the kind of people who value character and Christ-likeness over accomplishment and things that we can gain for ourselves. So accumulating treasure with God looks like growing in our love for what God loves. But it also means, I think, investing in the things that God loves. Investing in the things that God loves. Now we know that God loves people, and God loves people coming to know and follow Jesus. We know that God loves when people grow in their faith, and when they come to maturity in Christ and are transformed and changed into new people. We know that he loves the announcement of good news about Jesus going forth and going out into new places, reaching new people that don't yet know him. We know that God has a particular heart and a particular love for the local church. So these are all things we know God loves. And the question is, how much of our income do we invest in those things that God loves? Investing our income in those things God loves is a way of storing up heavenly treasure. When we give faithfully and generously and sacrificially to the things God loves, we are storing up treasures with God. When we care more about character and virtue than external appearances and accomplishments, we're storing up treasures with God. And again, there's so much more we could say. So get a cup of tea and take a long walk and think about this sometime this week. In order to live a financially and materially non-anxious life, we have to, number one, see the limitations of money and possessions, but then secondly, we need to see the power of money and possessions. In verse 21, Jesus says this. He says, For where your treasure is, there your hearts will be also. Verse 24, no one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. There's a few different ways here we can see the power of money and possessions, but we only have time to look at one of them briefly. Uh and it and it's this the the power of money and possessions can be seen in that they they have the power to direct our lives by getting a hold of our heart. Maybe the most important thing to see about what Jesus says here is he talks about uh he talks about money and possessions not using language of the intellect. Not using language first of the mind, but language of the heart. He talks about the things that we treasure. Think of a small child with their stuffy. Stuffed animal that is just maybe kind of gross because it's very well loved and it's got snot all over it, and it it's it's a treasure to that child. And if you've ever left one of those stuffies somewhere, you have to go back and find it. Because your child loves and treasures that that little stuffy. And this is the language that Jesus uses to talk about our relationship to money and possessions. It's not language first of the mind, it's language of the heart. He says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So the power of money and possessions is not first an intellectual thing, it's first a matter of our heart. It's a matter of our affections, it's a matter of the things that we love. Uh our our family has a uh membership to REI, and occasionally we get these catalogs in the mail that have all these wonderful new products and all these seasonal sales and things like this. I'm sure some of you get the same exact catalog at your house too. Uh, but let's just say that the way Dina and I read these catalogs are very different. Okay? When Dina reads these catalogs, she reads it from a functional standpoint. And so as a result of that, she's uninterested in just about everything that's in there because it doesn't serve a functional need that she already knows she has when she picks up the catalog in the first place. So she's just like, yeah, whatever, it's just a bunch of stuff that's overpriced anyway, right? So that's the way she thinks about it. Uh I, on the other hand, when I page through an REI catalog, I want all the things. Okay? I want all the things, and here's what I've come to realize over time is that the reason I want those things is because my heart craves adventure. And what is REI selling you except adventure? You know? Do I need the things? No. Do I need this gadget or that gadget or a new this or a new that? Absolutely not. Do I need a different or a better backpack? No, I don't. But I'm not interested in those things because I need it. I'm interested in them because I can envision where it takes me. I'm interested in it. I'm interested in the adventures and the experiences that those products are promising they're going to give to me. That's why I'm interested in an REI catalog, and REI knows there's a whole lot of people out there who are just like me, which is how they've built a successful, thriving business. Uh so please understand uh I'm not saying that having or wanting things from REI or whatever catalog you get is inherently bad. In fact, I own a lot of things from REI, okay? What I'm getting at is that money and possessions have the power to capture our heart. That's where it starts. And once it captures our heart, once they've done that, they direct the entire course of our lives. We are willing to do anything and everything for the things that we love. And that's what money and possessions do. One scholar said it like this He said, our whole lives drift relentlessly towards the spot where our treasures are stored. Our entire lives, relentlessly, whether we want them to or not, they constantly are drifting towards the places where our treasures are stored. Money and possessions have that kind of power over us. And so here's the question that we should wrestle with is how can I know if money and possessions have a hold on my heart? If I'm supposed to store up treasures with God and not treasures and earthly things, how do I know if money and material possessions has a hold on my heart or not? Well, unfortunately, there's no simple answer to this question. The trouble is we all know people who have more money than us, and so no one ever feels wealthy. We can all point to this CEO that makes this much money, or this person we know who makes this much money, and so we never feel wealthy. We can all look to people in our lives who uh who have much more extravagant lives, and they have nicer things, and they take more expensive vacations than us, and they do all these things, and so we never feel, we never feel like we are greedy, we never feel like we are wasteful, we never feel like we are enslaved to money, because we can see other people who uh are more so than us. Being enslaved doesn't have anything to do with how much money we have or how much money we make. A person who makes very little and whose heart is consumed with jealousy for those who have more is just as enslaved to money as the person who has lots and blows it on ridiculous stuff. Having little or having much. Is not what makes us greedy or enslaved to money. It's a matter of the heart. And so how do we know if money has a hold on our hearts? I will suggest uh three things we should do that can help you discover and discern if uh money has a hold on your heart. Uh these are three uncomfortable things, by the way, just be honest with you. Uh so here's what they are: ask yourself, ask God, and ask others. Okay, number one, ask yourself. There's some diagnostic questions and some reflection that you have to do yourself. And so I'll put myself on the hot seat and go back to the REI catalog. And uh I have to ask questions like this. What am I willing to do to get this thing? How much financial maneuvering or finagling am I willing to do? How much effort am I willing to spend trying to convince my wife that this is a good thing for me to buy? What kind of effort do I go to in order to gain this material possession? Another question is: am I willing to go into debt for this? Am I willing to put this thing on a credit card and then pay potentially between 17 and 25% interest on it? So I'm willing to actually pay more for the thing than the thing is worth because I want it now, as opposed to maybe finding a different way to get it or waiting and saving? Am I willing to go into debt for something like this? Another question: will this purchase crowd out my ability to give generously to the things that God loves? If I give myself financially to this thing, does it mean I can't give the money that I've committed to give to the local church or to ministry or to charity or to other causes? Do I have to reduce my generosity in order to gain this thing? Those are some of the questions that can help you sort of figure out. The answer to those questions may be uncomfortable. And that's kind of the point. But those are the kinds of questions that when you ask them, they can help you see and discover okay, does money have a hold on my heart? So ask yourself, uh, second, ask God. Ask God to reveal the ways in which money and possessions have captured your heart. And equally as important is ask Him to reveal why. Why is it that my heart is so enamored with or captivated by these kinds of things? What is it inside of me that is actually longing and craving for that? Ask God to reveal those things to you. Thirdly, ask others. Ask others to help you see what you don't see. Say to someone in your sphere of influence who is a trusted friend, that's key here. You have to be a trusted person that you're actually willing to listen to. Say to that person something very open-ended, which is terrifying. Say, as you observe my life and how I relate to money and possessions, what do you notice? You may be surprised by the answer. You may think, oh, this person sees this in me when in reality they see something different. Something you think is a problem, they don't see it, something that you don't think is a problem, they look at and say, Yeah, you seem to spend a lot of money on X, Y, and Z. Tell me about that. Are there other people in your life who you've given permission to share those kinds of things with you? As they've mentioned earlier, uh, one of our core values as a church is better together. And this is the way that God does his formative work inside of us, is we have the kinds of relationships where we can ask those questions and we can receive that feedback because we know that we we love each other and have each other's best interests in mind. Do you have people in your life who you've given permission to share what they see about your life financially? Or are your finances off limits? Asking ourselves and God and others can help us see the degree to which money and possessions may have a hold on our heart. The reality is that money and possessions has some hold on all of our hearts, right? So how do we get free? How do we break free from the power of money and possessions? Thirdly, we have to see the ultimate treasure. We have to see that the ultimate treasure is available to us. We get free from money and possessions not by becoming dispassionate, not by becoming um detached from money and possessions, or from you know, cultivating a negative view of money and possessions and sort of holding them at arm's length as if they're always bad. That's not how you get free from money. You can do that and still be just as enslaved to money, just the opposite direction. Okay. We get free not by becoming detached, we get free by finding something better. We get free by finding a better treasure. We find the treasure with a capital T. And that treasure is Jesus. In the book of Exodus, that's a book that you'll find in the very first part of your Bible, in the Hebrew Bible. Uh, in the book of Exodus, after God rescued his people out of slavery in Egypt, he brought them to uh Mount Sinai, where he entered into a covenant relationship with them. He entered into uh a covenant, made them into his people. And it was at Mount Sinai that God said this to his people. He said, You yourselves have seen what I did in Egypt, and how I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The story of the entire Hebrew Bible is that God chose a people, not because of anything that they had done, not because they were better than anyone else, or had, you know, they're they're more spiritually mature than anyone else, or had something else about them. God chose them simply because he chose them. He set his affection on them, and here in the book of Exodus, God says, it says that God set his affections on them, and he made them into his treasured possession. Then if you fast forward all the way to the New Testament, there's a letter that was written by a man named Peter, who is one of Jesus' inner circle of disciples. And in the letter that we call 1 Peter, that's written to churches that are scattered throughout the Roman Empire, we see Peter saying this to those who have entrusted themselves to Jesus. He says, But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession. Which is just a flashing, glowing blue hyperlink back to the book of Exodus, where God says, I'm making you into my treasured possession. And what Peter is saying is through Jesus, God has set his affection on you. God has given himself to you, and as a result of that, through faith, you are God's treasured possession. How we get free from the power of money and possessions is by looking to the one who left the riches of heaven. We look to the one who left the riches and the glory of heaven, and he took on a life of poverty in our world. He emptied himself of his glory, he emptied himself of his riches, and he suffered and he died for us, and in doing so, he demonstrated how much he treasures us. In doing so, he secured us as his treasured possession. By giving himself to us, he made us his treasure, won us back from darkness, sin, and death. He made us his treasured possession. The one who gave his life for us, he is the ultimate treasure. He is the ultimate treasure and he has made himself available to us. And when our hearts begin to, when we see what he's done for us, how he's made us his treasured possession, and our hearts begin to love and delight in him, when our hearts treasure him, money and possessions will begin to lose their power over us. That's how this works. And this is not a, this is not a one-time line in the sand, I did that, now I'm free. This is a lifelong process of learning to love and treasure Jesus as the ultimate treasure. And as we do so, money and possessions will slowly over time have less and less pull on our hearts and less and less pull on our lives. And friends, this is how we get free from the power of money and possessions is not by turning away from them and trying to shield ourselves from them, but by finding a better treasure. And when we do, those things have less hold over our lives and our hearts. And so the invitation for each one of us is to see and receive Jesus as the ultimate treasure. There's an old hymn that perfectly summarizes what we've been talking about today. It says this it says, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. As we behold Jesus, earthly treasures will begin to have less and less pull on our hearts. We come to offer ourselves to him again in faith, and in doing so, as we come forward with empty hands to receive him, we are again declaring our desperate need for him, and we are declaring that he is our treasure. So come to the communion table this morning as an act of worship to the one who is your treasure. As we come to the table, let me invite you to take a few moments for silence and confession, and then we will uh join in receiving Christ together.