Content With What We Have

What does it look like to live without anxiety in a world of overwhelming abundance?

Drawing from Matthew 6:25-34, this message offers a framework for navigating material abundance without losing your soul to it. We dig into what the Bible actually says about enjoyment, the hidden costs of accumulating stuff, and why contentment isn't about owning less — but about treasuring something more.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning, everyone. Hope you're doing well this morning. Uh my name is John. I get to serve as the lead pastor here at Elmwood. Uh, whether you are here today for the first time or whether you are new-ish to Elmwood, I want to take just a moment and invite you to something that's taking place right after the service today called a welcome party. Uh, it's gonna be right back there in the fireside room. It's gonna last about 20, maybe 25 minutes. And really, all this is is a chance for those of you who are new to Elmwood to meet other people who are new to Elmwood. And it's a chance to do that and to connect with uh some of our staff and ministry leaders here at Elmwood and uh learn about some next steps for some ways that you can get connected into what God is doing in and through uh the Elmwood Church community. So uh if you are newer to Elmwood, whether today is your first Sunday here, or whether you've been here uh for a little while and just have not been to one, or if you're the person who came to the last welcome party and you feel too guilty to admit that you just want to come back and eat more cupcakes, you're still welcome to come too, okay? Uh so we'd love to have you uh join us for that. It'll be right after the service uh this morning. A few weeks ago I went to investigate and purchase a product. And the first place that I go for things like this is on Amazon, which is where uh many of you also go as a first stop when you go to purchase something. And uh the first thing I did was I went on Amazon and I typed the product into the search menu and then it populated it with all these different options, pages and pages worth of options. And as many of you are familiar with doing, I started by looking at the number of stars that each product received. I looked at some of the reviews, which unfortunately are hopelessly contradictory to one another. If you read the fives, that all say this is the greatest product you'll ever buy, and then the ones are like never buy this product ever again. Uh they're hopelessly contradictory. But that's all a part of the process, so is comparing those products to one another. And then somewhere throughout this process, I had the thought, okay, maybe there's a different company that makes this product that doesn't sell it on Amazon. So then I Googled it and found that there were other products that were out there and started looking through those ones and realized that well, some of those are more expensive, but they seem to be better quality. And then you start thinking about, okay, well, is it is it worth it to spend a little bit more money and get the higher quality, or is it okay to have the lower quality thing? And uh, after about two hours of my life being invested in this process, I finally made a purchase that came to less than$40. Uh my guess is that you've had an experience like this at some point in your life. Uh, it could be for you that it was an Amazon or some online purchase. It could be that you have stood in front of a wall of product at the grocery store where quite literally you're staring at 150 different options of the same thing. There's the big one and the medium one, and there's the small one, there's the low fat and the normal fat, there's the uh the the low sodium and the regular sodium, there's the low fat and low sodium, there's the gluten-free and there's the regular, there's the name brand, and there's the store brand, and and you're standing there looking at this wall of product and you're thinking to yourself, I just want a box of crackers. Like that's all I want is just to make a purchase, and it can feel so sort of uh overwhelming and even uh paralyzing and depilitating with all the different options that are out there. Or maybe you have gone to go purchase a pair of jeans, and if you go to purchase a pair of jeans and you realize, okay, uh not only do I have to choose between which wash I want, okay, there's stone washed and there's acid washed and there's dark wash and light wash and medium wash and there's distressed, but then you start thinking, okay, I gotta choose that, and then also do I want baggy or regular or straight leg or slim or skinny or bootcut or flared, and all the permutations of this are just like overwhelming, the amount of choices. Barry Schwartz is a sociologist, and he wrote this book. It's a book called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. And this is what he says. He says, when people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates but debilitates. We've been in a series of messages where we are looking at Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount about money and possessions, and really what we're attempting to do is uh to learn what it looks like and how we can live a financially and materially non-anxious life. Jesus says that that kind of life is in fact available to us as followers of Jesus. And so we've been thinking together over these last couple weeks, and this is the last Sunday, of thinking about how do we live a life that is free from the power of money and possessions. So last week we looked at these same verses that you heard read today, and we talked about the worry and the stress and the anxiety that comes along with having little and wondering if there's going to be enough. That certainly does produce a certain kind of stress and anxiety within us, but having little isn't the only thing that produces stress and anxiety. As we just talked about, and as you have certainly felt in your own life, there's also an anxiety and a stress that comes along with having much, with having lots, with having access to material abundance all around us. And that's the anxiety that we're going to be thinking about this morning. So the question is, how do we navigate the anxiety of having much? In our time today, I want to lay a framework that I'm hoping is going to help us as we try to navigate a life of material abundance. Uh, and we're approaching it this way in part because we we looked at the opposite side of this last week, but also because the vast majority of us here, even if you find yourself on the lower end of the American socioeconomic status uh level, you are wealthy in comparison to world standards. And so we do, whether we think we do or not, we are wealthy, rich people in so many ways, and we're surrounded by material abundance. And so the question is, how do we live a life well when we are surrounded by such material abundance? So I'm going to talk about a framework for that today. And as a part of this framework, I want to suggest that there are three things that we have to do. Uh, the first thing we have to do is this we have to embrace the wise enjoyment of good things. Now, I'm hopeful that some of you are surprised that this is the place we start. Because oftentimes in the church, the place you start with talking about is talking about uh how suspicious you should be of money and possessions and how dangerous money and possessions can be, and we'll get there in a moment. But the place that we have to start as we think about what it looks like to navigate a life of abundance is we have to cultivate and to uh think through and create a theology of enjoyment. Okay? We have to create a theology of enjoyment. And the reason I start here is because this is where the Bible starts. The Bible does not start by giving us a negative view of creation or material possessions, but by giving us a wonderful, beautiful picture of material possessions. So let me just briefly sketch for you what uh what the Bible says about material things. Uh we can start all the way back, if you flip all the way back to the beginning of your Bible, on page one, you get to Genesis chapter one, and it's in Genesis chapter one that we see this amazing picture of the glory and the goodness and the beauty of God's creation. In fact, all throughout the creation narrative, there's a refrain that's repeated over and over and over again, and that refrain is, it was good. And then after God finished his work of creation, what he stands back, so to speak, and pronounces over his creation is it is very good. So every part of God's creation is very good. And God placed humans in the garden and gave them free reign to eat and to enjoy all of the abundance that was found there. So the picture we see in the opening chapters of the Bible is that God created and provided for us in excess. And part of the job that Adam and Eve were given was to enjoy all that God had given them. That's how the Bible starts. Not with a squinty-eyed suspicion of material things. It starts with enjoyment. It starts with excess and abundance, and the enjoyment of that excess and abundance. You can fast forward from here to Psalm 104, verses 14 and 15. In Psalm 104, uh the Psalm talks about how God provides for his creation. And what it tells us is that God provides food that sustains and wine that gladdens our hearts. What this shows us is that good food and good drink have more than an instrumental value. Meaning they're not just there to bring mere sustenance, there's enjoyment that is to be found in good food and good drink, and it is a good thing for us to experience and to receive that good gift from God. You can fast forward from here to the ministry of Jesus. And in Matthew chapter 11, we see Jesus saying about himself, he says, The Son of Man came eating and drinking. And they, that is the religious leaders, say of Jesus, he is a glutton and a drunkard. So it's obvious from looking at Jesus' life that he was he was no prude. Okay, he was he was not embarrassed or ashamed to enjoy good food and good drink, and he did so in such a way that he was accused of overindulgence, even though he uh committed no sin of overindulgence. He was not embarrassed or ashamed to enjoy all the good things that are part of his father's world. Then, if we go to the last book of the Bible in the book of Revelation, we see this beautiful picture. The story comes full circle, and it comes to new creation. And new creation is described as a feast. And the language of that feast is language that's taken from the book of Isaiah, chapter 25. There's a hyperlink that's here. And listen to what it says in Isaiah chapter 25, starting in verse 6. This is where God, through the prophet Isaiah, gives this beautiful uh foretaste of what new creation will be like. And this is what it says, Isaiah 25, verse 6. On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats, and the finest of wines. On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all people, the sheep that covers all nations, he will swallow up death forever. The whole Bible, from start to finish, speaks to the goodness of God's creation. And of all people on the planet, Christians ought to be the best at enjoying the good things that are available to us in God's world. Now, obviously, we live in a broken and in a fallen world, and ourselves, we are broken, we are corrupted by sin, which means that our enjoyment can easily turn into overindulgence. It means that good drink can easily turn into drunkenness, that eating can turn into gluttony. So obviously, there's a wisdom component to this, which is why we have to brace all these good things with wise enjoyment. But the point is that we must, as followers of Jesus, we must enjoy the good things that God has provided for us. So, how do we navigate a life of material abundance? The first thing we have to do is we have to embrace the wise enjoyment of good things. The second thing we have to do is we have to recognize the true cost of material abundance. We have to recognize the true cost of material abundance. Now, the fact that we live in a time and in a place where almost anything we want can be shipped to our doorstep in like two days or less is amazing. It's a wonderful thing. And having access, not just to the amount of resources and the amount of possessions, but having access to them so quickly, there are costs associated with this. Let me just uh name a couple of these costs. These are uh not in any particular order, these are not certainly comprehensive, there's so much more we could say about each of these, but I think it's helpful that we spend time thinking about what are the actual costs of living in an environment with such material abundance. Uh first there's a financial cost. Duh. Okay, this is this is maybe the most obvious, the most self-evident, is we have to pay for the things. We have to have resources to be able to buy the things. And of course, some of the things we buy are a one-time purchase. You purchase it once and you don't have to purchase it for ever again or maybe for years. Some of the things that we purchase have ongoing costs associated with them. Homes and vehicles and you know, things like this. So not only do we have to pay for the thing, we also have to maintain them, and we have to insure them, and we have to repair them, and we have to sometimes pay to store them somewhere, and we have to uh pay to use them in many cases. And so that one-time purchase is not a one-time purchase. There's an ongoing ecosystem of costs that's associated with all of those things. And I think we're we're all familiar with the financial costs of having material abundance, okay? The second cost we can identify is there is an emotional cost to all of our stuff. The stuff that we surround ourselves with, it affects our inner person. We all know that every single space we enter has a feel to it. Sometimes there's a sort of visceral negative feel to it, and sometimes there's a very uh positive feel to it, but every single place we enter has a feel and affects us emotionally. So I want to just give you an example. Uh think about this room. Someone's living room, it's just full of clutter and stuff that's kind of just strewn about everywhere. Uh, my guess is that there are many of you who, when you see this, uh, some of you feel shame because you're like, did he take a picture of my home? Like, how did he get that picture? Uh and some of you, on the other end, might might, you might feel your stress level rising as you look at this picture and you're like, there's just so much stuff. What do you do with this? Just imagine someone saying to you, uh, just go, just go off in that chair in the corner and just push some of that stuff off and have a meaningful time of communion with Jesus. And you'd be like, uh, no, I can't, because all this stuff around me feels so just like claustrophobic and oppressive to me. Or just say, well, just you know, shove some of that stuff on the couch off to the side and sit down for a good three-hour stint of deep uh productive work. And you'd be like, I can't do it. Because the stuff around you affects you emotionally. We all know this is true. Of course, we all have a, we've all got a point at which the stuff around us makes it hard to focus on anything except for the stuff around us. And that threshold is different for different people. Okay? Dina has a much lower threshold for piles and for clutter than I do. She will she will say, Why didn't you pick up that thing that you stepped over? And I will say, What thing? Because I literally didn't see it, even though I stepped over it. You know? So she has a different threshold than I do, but even still, I have a threshold at which if I walked into this room, I would be like, I can't stay here very long. The stuff that we surround ourselves with, it does have an emotional effect on us. It affects our inner person, it affects our mood, it affects our productivity, it affects even our physical health. Now, some of you here today may be uh thinking that I'm sort of you know overstating the case a little bit. Uh, and and maybe maybe you uh are feeling defensive because you look around your home and you you just have lots of stuff and you like your stuff. And uh number one, I'm not here to try and make you feel bad, okay? Uh I I promise. What I want to just ask you to be open to considering is that being surrounded with as much stuff as you are maybe has more of an effect on you than you think it does. Just be open to that possibility, okay? So there's a physical cost, there's an emotional cost, uh, there's also an environmental cost. Uh I'll be brief on this. Did you know that each year we humans produce 150 million tons of plastic packaging for our stuff that's on shelves in stores and that we use to, you know, package our things in. 150 million tons. Okay? I tried to figure out how many pounds that is. So I took 150 million and times it by 2,000, and it broke my calculator. I was like, I have no idea what 3E11 means, but I think it's a big number. I I actually think it's like 300 trillion pounds, is how much that is. That's more than the weight of all the humans on Earth combined, by the way. Is how much plastic packaging we produce every year. And 95% of that plastic packaging ends up in a landfill. And so the questions that we should ask as we think about these costs is is that wise? Is that good that we do that? It's one of the costs associated with the material abundance that we are surrounded with. And lastly, uh, the last cost I'll mention here is a spiritual cost. There's a spiritual cost to having so much stuff and access to so much material abundance. Now, the real danger of this, the real danger of material abundance is not that we would have cluttered homes. Even though that I would suggest is not a good thing. Okay? The real cost, the real danger is not that our homes would be cluttered, the real danger is that we would become cluttered of heart. That's really what's at stake here. The real cost, and the real danger is that our inner person, because of all the stuff we surround ourselves with, would become distracted. And our attention would be torn between what's truly important, that we would become inwardly cluttered and frazzled and preoccupied and inwardly muddled and in disarray. That's really the danger of being surrounded by so much material abundance. The danger is that we would spend so much time accumulating and managing our stuff that we would not have time for the things that we would self-identify as the most important things for us. That's a spiritual cost. We could probably go around and name other costs associated with material abundance. And uh, we live in an environment where this this is uh it is pressed into us all the time because of the the way that our market and economy works. It's constantly pressed into us that more is better. If you can afford it, you should have it. It's more things, more technology, more this, more that, it's always better. And as followers of Jesus, we have to at some point say, no, it's not. There's real cost associated with having all this stuff and managing and navigating and paying for all the things that's maybe not as good as we might think it is. Again, we ought to and we must enjoy the good things of God's world. And we have to do so with wisdom. Enjoying the good things of God's world, that practice of wise enjoyment, I think by definition means that we are not ignorant to the costs associated with all the stuff, with all the material abundance. So to navigate a life of material abundance, we have to embrace the wise enjoyment of good things. We ought to be the best enjoyers on the planet. We also have to recognize the true cost associated with material abundance. And the third thing we have to do, and this is maybe the most important, is we have to set our hearts on better treasure. We have to set our hearts on better treasure. In these verses that you heard read this morning, Jesus is setting out a contrast between two different ways of life, between a life characterized by two different pursuits. On the one hand, there's the person whose life is governed by the pursuit of material possessions. And for them, it looks like living in constant worry about what am I going to eat and what am I going to drink and what am I going to wear? And is there going to be enough? That person, Jesus says, runs after. And their life is governed by and lived in the direction of material possessions and earthly treasure. And Jesus gives us a different way to live. On the other hand, there is the person whose life is governed by the pursuit of God's kingdom and righteousness. Where Jesus says, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. Now he's not setting up here a mutually exclusive thing where he says, you have to choose between either having and enjoying good things or pursuing the kingdom of God. That's a false dichotomy. He's not saying that. And this is the life Jesus says we must choose. We must live our lives in that direction. Seeking his kingdom is a concept that's a bit nebulous. So let me just uh summarize it and simplify it in this way. Giving our lives to the pursuit of God's kingdom means bringing our lives under the gracious and life-giving reign of the king. That's what it means to pursue the kingdom of God, is to pursue a life where we are living under the life-giving reign of the king. And in his letter to the church in the city of Colossae, Paul tells us who this king is. He says that through faith, God has transferred us out of the kingdom of darkness and established us as members of the kingdom of his son Jesus. Jesus is the king of that kingdom. And seeking the kingdom is first about being in relationship with the king. Okay, this is ultimately what we are after, is not just being a part of some sort of nebulous kingdom thing. What we are after is being in relationship with the king. He is the one that we treasure. And when we set our hearts on him, when we treasure him, two things are going to happen. Number one, it's going to heighten our enjoyment of every good thing. Christianity is not a system of beliefs that will lead you to less joy, that will lead you to less fun. It's not a killjoy way of living in the world. When we treasure Jesus and live life in the direction of giving ourselves to Him, it's going to heighten our enjoyment of every good thing that God has given us. See, when we remember who we are, when we remember that we are broken and we are sinful and that God Himself left the riches of heaven in order to give Himself for us, to die for us who were trapped in abject and irreversible spiritual poverty. When we see that He has done that for us, when we remember who we are, that we are His image bearers who were created to not just enjoy those good things that He's given us, but to allow those good things to lead us to worship and exaltation of God. And yet we so often enjoy those things in place of God. Those things become for us, we turn them into idols. We idolize them. When we see who we are and who we are supposed to be, and what God has done for us, we'll begin to see the magnitude of the grace God has given us in that He has poured out so many good things on us in spite of us. And it really is true. He pours out so many good things on us in spite of us. We will more fully enjoy the gift when we know the giver. And so treasuring Jesus, finding him to be our treasure, setting our hearts on him is not going to lead us to a boring, dull life of non-enjoyment. It will heighten and increase the enjoyment we have in all those good things. But secondly, it'll set us free for a life of contentment. When we find Jesus to be our treasure, not only will we be able to more fully enjoy all the things God has given us, we'll become free. Free from the power of money and possessions and free for a life of contentment. Jesus told a parable of a man who found treasure buried in a field. The kind of thing that most of us would only dream of. He said there was a guy who found a treasure in a field, and when he realized what it was that he stumbled upon and how much value that treasure had, he went out and he sold everything that he owned in order to buy that field. Which means probably the rest of his clothing, the rest of his material possessions, maybe his home, everything he owned that had nostalgic or emotional value and meaning to it, he's like, this is expendable. I'm willing to get rid of all of this stuff because I found something that's so much better, so much more valuable. The treasure was worth losing everything in order to gain. The same principle is true as we think about our relationship to money and possessions. And when we discern that money or material possessions is getting in the way of our relationship with God, or when we discern that our material possessions and our enjoyment of all these good things is preventing us from being as generous as God wants us to be, when we discern that our stuff is drawing us away from the one that we treasure, when we discern those things, we have the power to let it go. Because we have the better treasure. We have the better treasure in Jesus, because in the end we know it's not worth it. Right? It's not worth holding on to all of these earthly material things if it means that we have less of Christ. And so because we know the cost, because we know Him as a treasure, we are free then to be content with what we have. Sometimes that means being content with not having more, even though we might want more. Sometimes it means being content to have a lower standard of living and choose not to experience more or enjoy more than we could, because it means we can give more money away and we can be more radically generous. But in either case, coming to find Jesus as the treasure of great value, the one worth losing everything to gain, it sets us free from power, from the power of money and possessions. And it enables us to live a life of contentment. So knowing Jesus as the better treasure will both heighten our enjoyment of all the good things God has provided, and it will also set us free for a life of contentment. So, friends, this morning I want to invite you to embrace the wise enjoyment of good things. Recognize the true cost of material abundance, and set your heart on the better treasure.