SPEAKER_01: Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Peter 2, tell us the goal is to become a slave of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is it's pretty simple.
SPEAKER_01: If all you want is Christ as your savior, but you're like, you don't get to tell me how to live my life.
SPEAKER_01: I want the whole like hell like fire insurance, hell insurance thing, but like you don't get to tell me how to live my life.
SPEAKER_01: Fire insurance, I gotcha.
SPEAKER_01: I like that.
SPEAKER_01: Like, you don't have a good idea of what Christ came to do.
SPEAKER_01: Because a relationship with Jesus and becoming a Christian is so much more than just not going to hell.
SPEAKER_01: It's all about when I submit myself to the Lordship, to the Master Jesus Christ, in every feasible way my life becomes what it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01: When I submit my preferences and my goals and my me, my me to him, and I say, you, you, you, my life in every way, shape, or form will become the most fulfilled that it can be because I'm not getting the glory God is, and that will always be to my benefit.
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, Lord, we do know that you will provide.
SPEAKER_01: Everything we need, our Father has it.
SPEAKER_01: And so, God, we can run to you with arms wide open, just saying, You've got it all.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to have control of this situation.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to have everything figured out, because all that I need, my Father will provide.
SPEAKER_01: Give us courage, give us power, give us wisdom to live out of that reality as we go into this week.
SPEAKER_01: And God, as we're about to open up your word, would you just help me get out of the way and would you let your uh your your Bible speak?
SPEAKER_01: Would the Holy Spirit speak through me and would it be a blessing?
SPEAKER_01: We love you.
SPEAKER_01: It's in Jesus' name through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And all God's people said, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You guys can take a seat.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for being here this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, thank you for the fact that our our uh our freeze, we're alive, we're here.
SPEAKER_01: We we're we're we've got warm hands, we got coffee in our hands, so we're doing okay, which is awesome.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That's what I love to hear.
SPEAKER_01: All right, hey, we are going to be continuing right where we left off two weeks ago in Matthew chapter six.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you are new with us, my name is Ian Weber.
SPEAKER_01: I am the student pastor here, but every once in a while Neil breaks me out of the student ministry, and I get to preach in front of y'all, and I'm very excited to do so.
SPEAKER_01: Um, if you have not been here before, we like to do something called preaching expositorily, which is a big fun fancy word.
SPEAKER_01: That means we go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, start of a book to the end of a book.
SPEAKER_01: And so you have caught us right in the middle of one of the most famous teachings in all of Scripture, the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: Now, a little bit of a lightning fast recap is necessary for this passage this morning, as well as it's been two weeks since we met, and so we need a little bit of a refresher.
SPEAKER_01: So here we go.
SPEAKER_01: The last three weeks, Jesus has taught through when you give, when you pray, and when you fast.
SPEAKER_01: And in all of these, he has explained that there is a right way to do them and a wrong way to do them.
SPEAKER_01: The right way is in secret, and it says that your father who sees you in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_01: The wrong way is for the praise and the admiration of others.
SPEAKER_01: For the wrong way, Jesus says, if you really want people's affirmation that much, you'll get it, but that's all you're gonna get.
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite things that Neil said in the last three teachings was you can be a somebody in the in the in the Christian subculture and a nobody in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is is a really good uh segue into this next passage where Jesus essentially is gonna hold up a mirror to his audience and to us and say, What about you?
SPEAKER_01: Where does your allegiance lie?
SPEAKER_01: Does it, does it, uh are you more concerned with God getting the glory or with you getting the glory?
SPEAKER_01: And he's gonna help us kind of figure out where we're at with that by looking at three different parts of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And so go ahead and pick up with me in verse, I'm sorry, chapter six, verse 19 through 24.
SPEAKER_01: Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and where thieves cannot break in and steal.
SPEAKER_01: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: The eye is the lamp of the body.
SPEAKER_01: So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
SPEAKER_01: But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
SPEAKER_01: If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot serve God and money.
SPEAKER_01: This morning we are going to test our treasures, our eyes, and our masters.
SPEAKER_01: So, I know we just read it, but reread the first three because we're going to break these into the three sections that he gives us.
SPEAKER_01: So, back again, 19 through 21.
SPEAKER_01: Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, where neither moth and rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
SPEAKER_01: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we see two different kinds of treasures in this passage: earthly treasures and heavenly treasures.
SPEAKER_01: And I see the biggest difference of these two things being bad spiritual investments and good spiritual investments.
SPEAKER_01: And by that I mean Jesus is saying, uh anything that a moth can eat, rust can decay, or that can be stolen is a bad spiritual investment.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, what are those three things?
SPEAKER_01: The moth is anything that nature can destroy.
SPEAKER_01: We live in Houston.
SPEAKER_01: I did not live in Houston during Hurricane Harvey, but I'm assuming a lot of you did.
SPEAKER_01: I remember seeing pictures while living in College Station of Hurricane Harvey and the destruction it brought to a ton of this city.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of us are intimately acquainted with the fact that nature can destroy our comforts, our possessions, and Jesus is saying anything that a that nature can destroy is a bad spiritual investment.
SPEAKER_01: The rust is anything time can decay.
SPEAKER_01: If it will stop working in your lifetime, or if it is something you cannot take with you to the grave, it is a bad spiritual investment.
SPEAKER_01: And finally, the thief is anything that quite literally can be taken with you with no heads up.
SPEAKER_01: Without a doubt in my mind, there are several people in this room that have felt the pain of a job loss, uh, of a layoff, where you went into work thinking everything was totally fine and you left without a job.
SPEAKER_01: Anything that we that can just be taken without a heads up.
SPEAKER_01: Uh in student in students' lives, what I've seen happen, not all the time, but it happens, is like a rumor gets spread and that robs somebody of their reputation.
SPEAKER_01: Uh it paints a character on them that that robs them of friend groups and it kicks them out of events and whatever.
SPEAKER_01: But the most obvious of all of these, because this whole passage really is, is pointing to a very obvious uh uh uh fallback for all of us, which is our money.
SPEAKER_01: If the thief can come in and take it, it is a bad spiritual investment.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're sitting there listening to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, you're probably thinking, well, Jesus, what's left?
SPEAKER_01: You've kind of taken everything off the table.
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, exactly.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the thing that all of all of us are tempted to make something our idle, to make something our bad, to give ourselves to a bad investment, whether that be our kids, our marriage, our careers, our physical fitness, a significant other, a desire for a significant other.
SPEAKER_01: All of us are tempted in some way, shape, or form to give ourselves to a bad spiritual investment.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus is saying, all of them are not worthy of your total and complete submission.
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, he does give us good investments.
SPEAKER_01: He says to uh store up heavenly treasures.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the beauty of the heavenly treasures is that nature cannot destroy it, time cannot decay it, you will still be able to enjoy it into eternity, and it cannot be stolen from you.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's something that we should go, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what is a good spiritual investment?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the reason we did that lightning fast recap is because Jesus has already given us three.
SPEAKER_01: When you give, when you pray, when you fast, these practices that help us fall more and more in love with Jesus, our heavenly Father, cannot be taken from you, and they will only get richer all the way into eternity.
SPEAKER_01: They only get sweeter and better, and the best part is when you have the right uh idea of heavenly treasures, when you have this idea of God makes everything way better, it puts all of the other things that we're tempted to love and put as God.
SPEAKER_01: We actually get to do those things better than we ever could if they were our master in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: And so what I mean by that is this uh verse 21 is kind of, I would say, the nail for everything else around this passage.
SPEAKER_01: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: You show me what a person treasures, and I will tell you a lot about that person.
SPEAKER_01: You tell me what somebody's thoughts go to, what their wallet opens up to, what controls their emotions, what shapes a person's worldview, and I can tell you, with just some basic human reasoning, so can you, who that person is and how their relationship with God is.
SPEAKER_01: You see, uh I found a note in my study Bible on this specific passage referring to the heart, and it said, the heart is throughout scripture represented as the center of one's being and one's deepest desires, including one's reason, convictions, emotions, and will.
SPEAKER_01: So for where your treasure is, there the center of one's being will be also.
SPEAKER_01: I've actually uh I've used this passage as a uh a text or a teaching when I do premarital counseling with couples.
SPEAKER_01: Now you might be thinking to yourself, wait a minute, didn't you say you're the youth pastor?
SPEAKER_01: Are couples getting married?
SPEAKER_01: What kind of a weird youth ministry is this?
SPEAKER_01: To which I say, chill.
SPEAKER_01: I do a lot of counseling with people over the age of 18, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_01: And when I do premarital counseling with a couple, uh it is obvious that we're going to talk about money, because that's like a really important thing to talk about.
SPEAKER_01: And I use this passage to say, hey, one of the key reasons why every Christian should tithe to their church is because where your treasures are, where your money is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: Tithing is not for the benefit of the pastors, and it's also not like God's up in heaven being like, hey, my bank account's a little low, can you break me off a little bit?
SPEAKER_01: Like, what's up, what's up?
SPEAKER_01: Like, that's not God's intent for tithing.
SPEAKER_01: The intent for tithing is for our benefit, as in your benefit, every individual Christian's benefit, because it helps us put our treasures, which leads to our heart falling in love with the things that God falls in love or is in love with.
SPEAKER_01: So, like, when God says uh that one, he loves his bride, I tithe to the church because it helps me love the bride more.
SPEAKER_01: But also, God says things like, I care for the widow and the orphan.
SPEAKER_01: The church should be the primary person, the primary entity that cares for the widow and the orphan.
SPEAKER_01: And if you look through that wall right there, if you walk out after the service, you'll see that there is a ton of food and clothing that is going to go to people that need help.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because the church loves what God loves.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we put our finances, our treasures towards the church, it helps us fall more in love with the church.
SPEAKER_01: It is always to the benefit of the Christian to put their treasures where they want their heart to be.
SPEAKER_01: And the heart should always be on the things that God loves.
SPEAKER_01: So a good question to ask ourselves before we move forward, it's a cheesy question, but it's a really good question, and sometimes cheesy questions can actually be really helpful.
SPEAKER_01: What has your heart?
SPEAKER_01: Where is the core of your affection pointed?
SPEAKER_01: Can nature destroy it?
SPEAKER_01: Time decay it?
SPEAKER_01: People take it?
SPEAKER_01: Or are you investing your soul in the things that God loves?
SPEAKER_01: Recently, uh, over just last month, I've had three conversations with people that in some way, shape, or form have said this the following phrase: My goal in life is to make enough money to retire early to spend time with my family.
SPEAKER_01: What are the treasures in that sentence?
SPEAKER_01: Money.
SPEAKER_01: Time and family.
SPEAKER_01: Are all of those things able to be taken by nature, time decay it, or people take it?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: So even though that is a perfectly admirable American idolized dream, it falls short of what Jesus says is a good spiritual investment.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the better investment uh is that we would desire to become a man, a woman, a boy, or girl who has God at the forefront of everything we do, and that will absolutely help us be the kind of dad, parent, provider that we're supposed to be, and it will fill us with joy and fulfillment rather than backfire on us.
SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by backfire is this at best, at best, a a lesser God, if we make any lesser God, which is literally anything less than God, our ultimate, at best, it will leave us unfulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: I I've seen this time and time again.
SPEAKER_01: I remember it even happening when I was in middle school watching some of my older friends' parents.
SPEAKER_01: Parents who have made being a parent their everything.
SPEAKER_01: When that kid or their last kid goes off to college or leaves the coop, they just kind of flounder.
SPEAKER_01: They have this existential crisis.
SPEAKER_01: What am I supposed to do?
SPEAKER_01: Who am I supposed to be?
SPEAKER_01: What am I, where am I supposed to spend my time?
SPEAKER_01: When we make being a parent our everything, and when that's no longer a part of our primary day-to-day, it dysregulates us significantly.
SPEAKER_01: I've even seen it do things like totally backfire.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen families totally fall apart when the kids left.
SPEAKER_01: Or I've also seen when a dad does, or when a parent, I've seen this a couple of times in my life, when a parent has made retiring early, having lots of money so that they can spend time with the family, and they get there in like their 50s.
SPEAKER_01: When they're finally at that point, they come home and they're like, I'm retired, I can do this now.
SPEAKER_01: And their kids are already like late high school, if not even already out of the house.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Why would I let you into my life?
SPEAKER_01: You haven't been there for any of it so far.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not trying to say that there's a perfect right and wrong there.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that our when we make lesser gods our ultimate God, at best they leave us unfulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: At worst, they can completely backfire.
SPEAKER_01: And so the first way for us to know where our allegiance lies is to ask, what or what has our heart?
SPEAKER_01: The second way we know where our allegiance lies is to ask, what do you see?
SPEAKER_01: Read verses 22 through 23 with me again.
SPEAKER_01: The eye is the lamp of the body.
SPEAKER_01: And if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
SPEAKER_01: But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
SPEAKER_01: If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
SPEAKER_01: Here Jesus makes the exact same point in a slightly different way.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than good and bad investments, he points to good and bad eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Everything in this passage, like I said, is kind of focused on a verse 21, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_01: And so a good eye seeks heavenly treasure.
SPEAKER_01: A good eye sees and has the clarity to know the value of living and thinking and acting the way that God tells us to, because in so doing, we will live in the way that is the most fulfilling, that Zoe John 10, 10, abundant life that he has for us.
SPEAKER_01: And so when he says that if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, that he's not making an anatomical or a biological statement, he's making a spiritual statement.
SPEAKER_01: If you can see the world the way that God sees the world, if you can interact with it the way that he tells us to and think about it the way he tells us to think about it, then you are going to have your whole body follow suit.
SPEAKER_01: It should naturally go from your mind into your hands, into your feet, be the hands and feet of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You hear that, be salt and light, you hear that.
SPEAKER_01: Like it should naturally start influencing every part of ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Our whole body will be full of light.
SPEAKER_01: It informs how we spend our time, how we parent, what we open our wallet to.
SPEAKER_01: All of that.
SPEAKER_01: When your eye is healthy, your whole body's full of light.
SPEAKER_01: Then he says the reverse.
SPEAKER_01: Unhealthy, uh, bad spiritual eyes miss what God has for them.
SPEAKER_01: And as such, their whole body gets full of darkness.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying the more we wrap ourselves in darkness, the more that you start to say, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna uh fudge the lines a little bit here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna I'm gonna kinda uh have my my own preferences in this realm.
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, God gets to be over here, but like I'm gonna have my own my own little secret thing here.
SPEAKER_01: What he's saying is, is when you start compromising, your eye starts to get dimmer and dimmer, and you will find yourself being corrupted in every part of your life by the darkness.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where this last sentence comes in, and it packs a heck of a punch, but it's weird.
SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of the times we read it and we just kind of like zoom by it, but it's really important that we slow down and hit it.
SPEAKER_01: He says, If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
SPEAKER_01: Well, how can light be darkness?
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.
SPEAKER_01: But this is so important for us to understand because in Jesus' culture, the eyes were a window into the soul.
SPEAKER_01: They were kind of a moral compass for a person.
SPEAKER_01: And we have similar verbiage for this.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard somebody be like, oh, his eyes are heavy, or like she's got a fire in her eyes?
SPEAKER_01: Like you can tell a lot about somebody just by kind of looking at their eyes and seeing how how they they relate to people.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has a very similar his people, his audience has a very similar culture, and he's saying, when your eyes start to see things that are clearly evil, clearly wrong, clearly morally in uh against God's will, and they start to see that as a good thing, how dark is that darkness?
SPEAKER_01: One of the key ways that this looks like in our modern world is uh rationalization and justification.
SPEAKER_01: You know the darkness of your eyes is getting worse when you start to rationalize and justify all of your behavior.
SPEAKER_01: Nah, you don't really get it.
SPEAKER_01: If you were in my shoes, you would have done the same thing I would have done.
SPEAKER_01: No, you don't get it.
SPEAKER_01: Like, this made me a lot more money.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, this was gonna provide for my family in the long run.
SPEAKER_01: Like, it it's it's good, it's okay, I promise.
SPEAKER_01: When you start to justify and rationalize things that are clearly against the teachings of Scripture, that is one of the ways that you start to have your eyes get dimmer and dimmer.
SPEAKER_01: To the non-believer, their eyes are already totally darkened.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Philippians 3.19, which you do not have to turn there, says that the non-believer glories in their shame with their mind set on earthly things, because that's the only thing that it has the capacity to do.
SPEAKER_01: They don't have good eyes, they have darkened eyes.
SPEAKER_01: And so, of course, they're gonna glory in the things that are normal and familiar to them.
SPEAKER_01: And we see this all over our culture, where people are celebrating and idolizing moral debauchery, sexual deviancy, hatred of other people groups or belief systems.
SPEAKER_01: And because darkness is all they've ever known, it must be light.
SPEAKER_01: But for the believer, here's the thing that's really good about the believer, right?
SPEAKER_01: Is one, uh, this is not a call to blind people to squint really hard and try to see.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't, this passage isn't determination.
SPEAKER_01: This passage is Jesus saying, when a relationship with me starts, I give you new eyes.
SPEAKER_01: And how this verse applies to the believer is yes, we have new eyes, but we can dim their effectiveness.
SPEAKER_01: When we start justifying and rationalizing our behavior and start moving away from what teaching or what scripture teaches, it starts to dim their effectiveness.
SPEAKER_01: And to the believer, this is this passage is a warning, it is an invitation to turn back to Jesus no matter what it costs you.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever uh inconvenience it has, whatever financial difficulty it has, whatever relationally straining thing it might bring up, turn back from the justification and the rationalization and say, what does Scripture call me to?
SPEAKER_01: No matter what it takes, I want that.
SPEAKER_01: And the last thing I'll say on this is that Jesus is not trying to mock or shame those who are either fully in darkness or who those who are dimming.
SPEAKER_01: He is trying to say, you are missing out on what you were designed for, to live in the light that enjoys and loves the thing that God loves and enjoys.
SPEAKER_01: And so, as we've talked about uh uh your heavenly treasures in good or bad eyes, the next question is to ask: are your eyes healthy or bad?
SPEAKER_01: How would you even know?
SPEAKER_01: What lens do you see the world through?
SPEAKER_01: Is everything about my preferences, my habits, my dreams, does it start with me or my?
SPEAKER_01: Or are my eyes fixated on the light of Christ that informs every other part of me and it it lives out, it oozes out of me into everything that I do, into my parenting, into my career, into even just the TV shows that I watch, does it ooze into everything that I do?
SPEAKER_01: You've also heard it say this way, even just from the stage, I think a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01: One of the ways that you can know if you have good eyes, healthy eyes, or bad eyes is if you've started doing things for God that you never thought you would, and if you've stopped doing things for yourself that you've always done, that's a great indication you've got healthy eyes.
SPEAKER_01: It's also a great indication of bad eyes if you're like, nothing has ever changed in my life, and I keep doing the things I always want to do.
SPEAKER_01: God is saying, Come to me, come to me, and I will give you new eyes.
SPEAKER_01: So he's talked about our treasures, he's talked about our eyes, and finally, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus triples down on this point with his last analogy of our masters.
SPEAKER_01: Reread verse 24 with me.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot serve God and money.
SPEAKER_01: Now we don't like this one because we're like, well, I don't want to be a slave to anyone.
SPEAKER_01: How do I get that option, Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: But if you think about it, Jesus is very obvious in that he's saying that isn't an option.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody's a slave to something.
SPEAKER_01: You're either a slave to yourself, your preferences, your money, your career, God.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody's a slave to something.
SPEAKER_01: The question is not, do you want to be a slave or not?
SPEAKER_01: The question is do you want a good master or not?
SPEAKER_01: The good master, to no surprise, is what we've been talking about this whole time.
SPEAKER_01: That's why he keeps doubling down on this and tripling down on this.
SPEAKER_01: He's trying to make it really obvious.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is the good master, and when we submit to him, he gives us good eyes, which help us to see Christ's likeness and live in Christ's likeness, which allows us to do the things that store up heavenly treasures.
SPEAKER_01: The whole thing all comes together.
SPEAKER_01: And the beauty is that this idea of slavery to Christ is not something the Bible shies away from at all.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Peter 2 tell us the goal is to become a slave of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is it's pretty simple.
SPEAKER_01: If all you want is Christ as your savior, but you're like, you don't get to tell me how to live my life.
SPEAKER_01: I want the whole like like fire insurance, hell insurance thing, but like you don't get to tell me how to live my life.
SPEAKER_01: Fire insurance, I gotcha.
SPEAKER_01: I like that.
SPEAKER_01: Like, you don't have a good idea of what Christ came to do.
SPEAKER_01: Because a relationship with Jesus and becoming a Christian is so much more than just not going to hell.
SPEAKER_01: It's all about when I submit myself to the Lordship, to the Master Jesus Christ, in every feasible way my life becomes what it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01: When I submit my preferences and my goals and my me, my me to him, and I say, you, you, you, my life in every way, shape, or form will become the most fulfilled that it can be because I'm not getting the glory God is, and that will always be to my benefit.
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, it's no surprise that there are bad masters.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, every master besides God is a bad master.
SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of bad masters.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a reiteration of all that we've already talked about: earthly treasures, bad eyes, self-fulfillment.
SPEAKER_01: And when we enslave ourselves to these earthly ways of thinking, we are enslaving ourselves to masters who, like I said, at best leave us unfulfilled, and at worst are actively seeking our destruction, are actively seeking our downfall.
SPEAKER_01: And so, um, what I find really interesting about this passage, that last that last sentence, it's just the same verse, but that last sentence, you cannot serve God and money.
SPEAKER_01: Of all the things, Jesus could have pitted against the good master.
SPEAKER_01: He uses money.
SPEAKER_01: That Greek word is mammon, which is a fun word.
SPEAKER_01: It means money, or it also can mean like possessions, your stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Of everything he could have pitted against uh uh the good master, he doesn't say false religion, he doesn't say uh that the biggest temptation for people is gonna be fill in the blank.
SPEAKER_01: He says your stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And how interesting is that, right?
SPEAKER_01: That our stuff is the thing that is so easily able to dim our eyes, that's so easily able to just make us reject God from the beginning.
SPEAKER_01: And and and the the thing that this brings to my mind is I'm in youth ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Over and over and over again, I've seen this from when I was in youth ministry and all the things I've done up until now.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen students that something happens in their life, it's almost always a boyfriend or a girlfriend breaks up with them.
SPEAKER_01: And so they're like, you know what's gonna solve this?
SPEAKER_01: Religion.
SPEAKER_01: So they hop into church and they start getting super bought into Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then they they're like on fire and they're learning and they're growing and they're they're having a blast, but then they get that text.
SPEAKER_01: What's up?
SPEAKER_01: I miss you.
SPEAKER_01: And like the New Testament says, like a dog returning to its vomit, they return to a thing that they should never have been in in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: And also sadly, I find that they tend to disappear.
SPEAKER_01: You see, one of the most frustrating statistics for my job that nobody is going to be surprised about in this room is that the vast majority, I think it's somewhere in the 60 percentile now, of students when they graduate high school of churches in America, they leave the church.
SPEAKER_01: You see, they might they might look like they're serving the right master all the way up until they actually are faced with whatever they want and nobody can tell them no.
SPEAKER_01: And they make it crystal clear who their real master actually has been the whole time.
SPEAKER_01: Their preferences, their goals, their girlfriend, their boyfriend.
SPEAKER_01: And so the idea of we cannot serve two masters is critical for us.
SPEAKER_01: And when I think of you cannot serve two masters, I'm gonna just I'm gonna give y'all a little bit, a little bit of my my myself here that you're either gonna accept or reject.
SPEAKER_01: I think the greatest piece of fiction ever written is the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
SPEAKER_01: Can I get an Amen?
SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Those are my people.
SPEAKER_01: For everybody that didn't say amen, we got beef.
SPEAKER_01: In the Lord of the Rings, there is a very interesting character.
SPEAKER_01: He's one of, I find the most fascinating characters in the entire franchise, and his name is Gollum.
SPEAKER_01: And Gollum has two masters.
SPEAKER_01: He's got the good master Frodo, who offers him hope, who offers him freedom, and then he has the bad master, the ring, which is essentially like evil incarnate.
SPEAKER_01: But he had the ring for decades before he ever met Frodo.
SPEAKER_01: And this ring, he calls it his precious.
SPEAKER_01: He calls this master his precious.
SPEAKER_01: But the entire time that he is uh obsessing over this master, it is slowly destroying him.
SPEAKER_01: It's warping his body, his mind, his soul, and yet he craves it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when the time comes, Gollum has to choose between his two masters, as everybody does, and he chooses poorly.
SPEAKER_01: Spoiler alert, but the movie's been out for 25 years.
SPEAKER_01: That's on you.
SPEAKER_01: When the time comes, he chooses the ring.
SPEAKER_01: Not because Frodo was a bad master, but because the ring still owned him.
SPEAKER_01: And see, that's that's kind of bringing it to our passage, the whole point of this.
SPEAKER_01: The goal is not good intentions, it's not determination, it's not proximity to godliness.
SPEAKER_01: The goal is total deliverance.
SPEAKER_01: Through the blood of Jesus Christ, he buys you from the bad master and he delivers you to the good master in whom and in the relationship which you thrive, you grow, you experience life the way you're supposed to.
SPEAKER_01: The answer is deliverance.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus takes out our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh, it's not determination.
SPEAKER_01: And that process, that sanctification process in which you say no to the old you, and you become the you that is alive in Christ is the thing that changes everything.
SPEAKER_01: No one can serve two masters, one will give way to the other.
SPEAKER_01: And that brings us to kind of our big question uh here at the end, and this is where I'm gonna land the plane.
SPEAKER_01: What has your allegiance?
SPEAKER_01: If you reflect on where your treasures are, what your eyes see, who your master is, and Jesus is nowhere to be found, my prayer for you is that the Holy Spirit would radically slap you upside the head today.
SPEAKER_01: And he would put in you a desire for the good master.
SPEAKER_01: That he would give you the good eyes to see that there is a wonderful way to live and you're not living it.
SPEAKER_01: My prayer is that the Holy Spirit would rock you, that you would say, I don't know what's going on, I need to talk to somebody, but I have this desire, this need to know about this right master.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're here today and you are a Christian, uh, and you do have good eyes, or you've been given good eyes, and you do serve the good master, but somewhere in your life, this passage has brought, has pinged something for you of man, I've fallen off the wagon in some way, shape, or form here or there.
SPEAKER_01: My prayer for you is that this passage would convict and invite you to come back to a loving father who has everything you need.
SPEAKER_01: Everything you need, your father has it.
SPEAKER_01: The good eyes, the heavenly treasure, the good master.
SPEAKER_01: He desires that relationship to be one that is strong and growing in you.
SPEAKER_01: You see, one of the things that you can do with this passage that would be wrong to do with this passage is just to reduce it all down to like determination.
SPEAKER_01: Like, you just gotta try harder.
SPEAKER_01: Like you just gotta pick the right master.
SPEAKER_01: You just gotta have better eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Like it's all on just like effort, which is a horrible misreading of this passage.
SPEAKER_01: What this passage is saying is that you can't have heavenly treasures, you can't have healthy eyes, you can't have a good master apart from the Holy Spirit doing all of the work for you in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: And so that what we have to do here is he's saying, when a relationship with me begins, I give you these things.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot keep the you cannot have the new and keep the old.
SPEAKER_01: If if if you're still holding on to the old, I think of that treasure, or I think of the parable that Jesus says, or he goes, uh uh, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, that when a man found it, he went home and with delight, and that's the key word of that passage, with delight he sells everything he has to buy the field with the treasure.
SPEAKER_01: My prayer for all of us is that we would be able to say, I delight in renouncing everything that is earthly treasures, bad eyes, my past self.
SPEAKER_01: I delight in being done with it, and I can't wait to embrace more and more and more of what God has for me.
SPEAKER_01: So heavenly treasures, good eyes, good master.
SPEAKER_01: Where are you at with that?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: If you are a guest this morning, our tradition here is that we like to preach the Bible, and then we like to give you a couple of mental worship questions for you to ponder on your own.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna slip away for a second.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna give you a couple minutes.
SPEAKER_01: Clyde will play some music.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then you are just gonna be able to have a couple minutes between you and God.
SPEAKER_01: One of these, some of these questions might speak to you.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so this time's for you.
SPEAKER_01: Lord be with us.
SPEAKER_01: Guide us, guide our footsteps, go before us and make our paths straight.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to know that heavenly treasures are so much more worth it, both now and later.
SPEAKER_01: Give us good eyes to see you clearly, so we can see ourselves clearly, so we can see the world clearly.
SPEAKER_01: You are the good master.
SPEAKER_01: And we are at our best when we submit our lives to you.
SPEAKER_01: It's in Jesus' name, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and all that's people said.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this message.
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SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to go deeper with our sermon content, you can hear more on our Circling Back with Neil McClendon podcast at Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.