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You guys can have a seat. Good morning. Everybody doing okay? Good deal. I thought all of y'all would be out running the Cap 10K this morning. No, you're like me, right? No Cap 10K for you. I would do it, but I don't like to run. So it's kind of a bad thing, right? They don't really mix well. I know there's some folks that are out there, so uh congratulations to them. Uh I'm glad that they're doing that. And uh we can all feel feel better for them. Well, my name is Nick, and I'm one of the pastors here at Point Community Church. And just again want to say welcome to you. If you're a guest, if it's your first time here, especially you want to say thanks for being here today. Uh, we had a great week last week as we celebrated Easter and uh really uh a lot of fun just to celebrate the life that we have in Christ because Jesus is alive, we are alive, and uh and so we want you to know that we don't anticipate or expect that every person sitting in this room uh believes that or buys into that. And so if you're here today as a guest or as a seeker, someone just trying to uh process through what you really do believe. Uh we talked a little bit about last week how that many of us have doubts, uh many of us distance ourselves from God, and many of us just kind of go through the motions, uh, but we need God to be real to us, and and so just know that this is a safe place uh to ask questions and and to wrestle with doubts and fears and and uh and stresses and anxieties, and we are not a perfect family by any means. Uh we all have issues and uh and we don't wallow in those issues. We look to Christ to save us and rescue us, and he he does a phenomenal job of that. So I'm thankful we have a Savior who understands our weaknesses and is gracious towards us in them. So um this morning, you guys are here on a Sunday that we're gonna get to talk about money. I was gonna see if anybody would cheer, right? Everybody's like, oh great, you know. How did I miss that memo, right? I missed the memo. We're gonna talk about money, you know, because that's what you do after the resurrection Sunday. We celebrate, we're all excited, and then we come in and talk about money. It's like like we just let the air out of the room, right? No, seriously. Uh this is a big issue. It's a huge issue, but I want you to know just on the front end that we're not talking about money so that we can get yours. Because here's the thing: God doesn't need your money uh funded, to say the least, okay? But here's the thing: money is a big, big deal. In fact, uh there are a lot of people walking around on this planet, particularly in the United States of America, and they've got lots of money problems. Lots and lots of money problems. And most people assume that if they could just get more of it, their problems would go away. Right? Uh people would assume that if I could just get a little bit more than what I've got right now, then my money problems would go away. If I could just get another thousand bucks a year, or if I could just get another few hundred bucks a month, my problems would go away. But here, I just just to burst your bubble, like, no, that's that's not how it works. Uh, it's not gonna work that way. In fact, uh, there's a man named Robert Page. Maybe some of you guys have uh heard of this story, and um, you can actually Google his name and read it for yourselves, but uh, he went to an ATM machine and he only had a few hundred dollars in the bank, but accidentally he typed in the wrong amount and he got some money from the bank from the bank, and it actually all came out of the ATM machine. He thought that's kind of cool. So he overdraws and it just gives it to him anyway, so he starts hitting up these ATM machines. He does it over 15 days. You know how much he withdrew? 1.5 million dollars over 15-day period. He kept someone just going to ATM machine. Anybody want an ATM machine like that? Yeah? So he goes and he gets this money. Finally, after 15 days, you know, they're like, wait, wait, wait. These two banks were merging, they had some issues in their their system, and they didn't realize that this was going on, and you know, $1.5 million is a pretty obvious amount that shows up, and they they go and they they say, hey dude, what's going on here? And uh they indict him and he said, sure enough, you know, I'll do the time because I did the crime. And uh, but they did actually hold the banks accountable because for some of it, and they they let him off on a lesser uh charge because it was their their system that was messing up. But the guy actually gambled all of the way. So he didn't just get the money and then use it, he actually gambled it away. Isn't that crazy? Because that's the thing, is that no matter how much money you have, we still have money, we have problems. Sometimes the way I like to say it is that money isn't the problem, it just funds our sin. Like it funds the issues that are going on, right, in our lives. So if you have a Bible, why don't you go ahead and open up to Matthew chapter 6? And we're gonna camp out in Matthew chapter 6 primarily this morning, beginning in verse 19. As you guys are doing that, a couple things. One, if you did not get a worship guide when you came in, uh the ushers would love to hook you up. It's just a little, there you go, a few folks, if you'll just raise your hand real fast, we'll make sure you get a worship guide so you can take some notes. There's some fill-in-the-blanks in there for you. There's some scriptures to read during the week. There's some questions that we ask at our life groups, and this is a great opportunity for you to jump into a life group if you don't already uh have a group that you attend, if you don't know what a life group is. It's just a group of a smaller group of uh people who get together during the week uh for a couple hours and invest in one another, and then hopefully uh those couple hours turn into friendships for lifelong uh relationships that you can help each other grow spiritually and apply what we talk about on Sunday into everyday life, okay? And so I am so thankful personally for my life group meets in my house on Tuesday nights, and and uh we have a great time just getting honest about where we are, and it's not just about getting smarter intellectually about the Bible, but actually applying it into our lives every day. And so I encourage you to find a group, and if you don't have one, there's a guide on the back connection point table. I'd love to hook you up and uh help you get connected to one. And this is a great series for you to do that so you can get into a room and all feel awkward about money, right? It's good. Let's read Matthew chapter six, verse 19. Start there. Uh it says this don't collect for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don't 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 eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness? No one can be a slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves of God and money. Now, we're just going to cut straight to the heart of the issue this morning because Jesus talked a lot about money. He talked a lot about money. Half of his parables were about money. One out of every six verses in the four gospels, those are the first four books of the New Testament in the Bible, one out of every six verses has something to do with money and possessions. That's a pretty high percentage, wouldn't you say? So what's the deal? I mean, in fact, if I taught at Point Community Church about money as much as Jesus did, we wouldn't have a church. Because nobody would come anymore. Because we live in America and we don't want to hear about this, right? But here's the thing: Jesus talked about money all the time because he saw that money really wasn't the problem. In fact, if you're following along, there's a fill-in-the-blank there. Jesus talked about money a lot because he knew it was not just about money. It wasn't just about money. There was something much deeper going on in the way that we as human beings are wired. And we're going to talk about what that is today. But know this that money reveals the true values of a person's heart. Money reveals what's really going on in your heart below the surface in your life. I can tell you what's important to you based on how you spend your money. I can tell you what you really love based on how you spend your money. So the surface problem that we have or that I hear a lot from people is what I already touched on a while ago, and that is I don't have enough money. I never have enough money. I always need a little bit more money. And we're sold this everywhere we go, aren't we? Everywhere you go, you drive down the road and you see the billboards and you see commercials and you're listening to the radio, and everyone is trying to sell you on what you need. That's why some of you have Gensu knives in your house, or you have Taebo, or you have whatever other item you've bought off of uh these uh these these infomercials, right? Because you you made the mistake of actually stopping and watching that stuff. Okay? And you got sucked in, didn't you? Some of you are like, I don't want to admit that. You're like head down. Yes, I did buy something impulsively. Listen, advertisers get paid big bucks because they're good at it. They suck us into thinking that we just need more and more and more and more. And we live in a culture that's the epitome of this, right? That sells us constantly on the idea of more. And I know that for many of us here, it doesn't take long to just say, yeah, uh, I've bought into that lie. I've really absorbed that way of thinking and I've implemented it in my life. Most of us don't believe we have enough. So we do what this passage says. We collect, collect, collect. But here's the real problem. The real problem isn't that we don't have enough. The real problem is that we treasure the temporary. We treasure the temporary. Notice what he says in this passage. He says, don't collect. Another version says, translation says, store up, right? Accumulate. Don't accumulate or collect or store up for yourself treasures on earth. Now notice what he goes on to say, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. Collecting, treasuring the temporary. We are masters at this, aren't we? We've got this one figured out. Because we are always collecting things. We're collecting treasures. And I want you to hear my heart this morning that my goal is not to beat you down or to manipulate you or to try to make you feel worse about yourself this morning. My goal is to help you find freedom. To experience, to invite you into financial freedom, to unlock the door that's going, that's been locked in your heart for a long time because you have, like me and many others, bought into this lie that money will satisfy. How many of you are Lord of the Rings fans? Yeah, I love Lord of the Rings. It's a great book, and then it's turned into a good movie, and I enjoy watching that. And you know, in the in the movie, the book, uh, the storyline, uh, we have this ring that's called the what? The precious. Right? They call it the precious. And so they're always talking about the precious, and they're talking about how the precious is everything that they want, and they're just locked in on it and just consumed by it. It destroys them because they're so listen, every one of us in this room in our souls, have a precious. We do. Every one of us in the core of who we are have a precious. Something that we grab onto, we cling to, we hold on to. In fact, the Bible just simply calls that idolatry. It's whatever our idol is, it's what we worship, it's what we bow down to, it's what we give ourselves to, it's it's our precious, and we cling to it and we hold on to it. And maybe yours isn't money, but because you live in the United States, I would dare say that it's a pretty good chance that at some point it has been material possessions and money. And maybe, just maybe, it's there and you didn't even know it. And I think we're gonna talk about that a little bit this morning. You see, at the center of our soul is that precious, and we're collecting these treasures and we're building it up. And we say things like this treasuring, by the way, it means to assess to give value to, to give worth to it, to put uh to put our our stock in it, okay, because pieces of paper like this money that we have in the United States, it's valuable. Why? Because somebody has given it value, right? It's not like if you just hold up a $20 bill and you say this is this piece of paper has value in and of itself. No, it's not true. It has value because the bank, the federal bank, has said this is worth $20. So it's got value to it, and we assign value to things all the time. And we say things like, if I can just have blank, it would all be worth it, and therefore I'll be worth it. If I can just have blank, whatever it is, you fill it in the blank, because I don't know what your your item is that you're thinking about right now, or what you've been thinking about this week, but if I could just get blank, then it'll all be worth it, and I'll be worth it. This is a dangerous game to play, isn't it? It's a very dangerous game to play. You see, treasuring, assigning value is really about not just giving something value, but then getting our value from what we've given that value. Does that make sense? Tracking with me? When we give something value, it's because we give it the value, so then therefore we can get our value from it. And we must recognize that this is a trap. That power, that money has power, and when it moves from something we use to something that we worship, it's very destructive. When we start to see money not as something that God has given us to use, but something that actually defines us, it's dangerous. In fact, we see it two real ways. What does it look like practically? Well, first, for many of us, how we spend our money shows where we get our significance from. Where we get our significance from. From our worth, our value, our acceptance of others. Um, we use money to get that significance. Uh, you see it all over the place, right? You see it where people who have more think they're better than people who have less. Because why? Because we assume that if you have more stuff, that you're more important, you're more valuable, you're worth more. Now, that's a faulty idea, but let's be honest, if any of us go into a context, a setting, an environment where there's people that have less than us, there's something in us that says to us we're better than them. I know we don't want to admit that. I'll just be the first to tell you. I don't want to admit that. But in my heart, because we're messed up, there's this part of me that assumes that because I have more stuff, then I'm more important than others. There's nothing more earth shaking in this area for me than when I go to like Mexico or to Indonesia or someplace in the world and to another culture, and I see the poverty. And I just get a little perspective. And sadly, in there's moments, there's part of me that wrestles with thinking that I'm better than these people because I have more than they do. Which is an indicator that I'm trying to find my worth or I see my worth and my value attached to what I own, to what I have. Stuff. Materialism. Materialism, which is just an inordinate desire for the things of this world, these material possessions. So for many of us, we seek significance from our stuff, from our treasure. And we can easily become arrogant, and then we can begin to think that our self-worth is tied to our net worth. We can begin to believe that our self-worth is a tie to our net worth. But I want you to know this morning, your valuables do not determine your value. Your valuables do not determine your value before God. All of us in this room, we come in and we are all level ground before a holy God. We all are valuable because we are created in God's image. It's good to know, isn't it? Not about what job you hold down, not about what house you live in, what restaurants you are capable of eating at, what kind of vacations you go on. We are valuable because we are made in God's image. But not only do we look for significance or approval, importance, worth in that, we also tend to look at money for our security. Now, this is a big issue in America because let's be honest, again, on the salesman side of all the folks who try to sell you on these long-term investments so that you have retirement, right? That if you could just get enough money in retirement in your savings account, then you can be secure. Anybody ever seen that, heard that, even felt that? You know, I watch people a lot, and based on the amount of money they have in the bank, their attitudes go up and down, their emotions are up and down, a roller coaster. If they have enough money in the bank, they're okay, and if they don't have enough money in the bank, they're freaking out. But here's the thing: I'm longing for the day when these retirement companies actually put a commercial on TV that says, here's what you need to be doing to prepare for after retirement. Are you with me? You know what's after retirement? Eternity. Death. And then you you were with God forever. And my guess is that at that point, what what do you do in that moment? What do you do at that moment when you're with God and none of this stuff is with going with you? As you guys have probably heard so well, you can't take it with you, right? You don't ever see a funeral hearse, which I had to drive one before, and that was a strange, strange experience. But anyway, you never see a U-Haul behind a hearse, right? It's like there's all their stuff. That's great, let's take it. We're gonna take it right into glory. Don't think so. Not gonna happen. Because you can't take it with you. And we think we can fund our way, pad our way financially to a place of safety, to a place of control. But listen, there is no amount of money that can save you when you stand in front of a doctor and he says you have cancer. Maybe you can get better treatments, but every one of us in this room are terminal, and rich people die. Rich people get sick, rich people have relational problems, they get divorced. In fact, maybe the new mantra of the United States marriage should be more like till debt do his part instead of till death do his part. So many marriages breaking up over this issue of not having not not being able to manage money. But I know this morning that there is no amount of money that can give us the safety, the control, the security that we long for, because money can't stop death or tragedy or any of those things in our lives. In fact, this week as I was studying Proverbs 23, verse 4 and 5, it just came blaring into my face, and I just thought this was so powerful. It says this in verse 4 of Proverbs 23. It says, Don't wear yourself out to get rich. Stop giving your attention to it. As soon as your eyes fly to it, it disappears. For it makes wings for itself and flies like an eagle to the sky. Saying your wealth, it can be gone like that. Just flies away like an eagle. Now that's funny because I think all of our American money has eagles on it. Right? So every time you see an American dollar, a coin, you just look at the eagle and you go, Yep, that's right, it flies away. Okay, that's a good reminder, right? Right as you're getting ready. Oh man, it's flying away. Of course, everybody uses plastic now. But here's the thing we know that you can't put your hope and your trust in something you can lose. And you can lose your money, and you can lose your material possessions. We had some friends in Round Rock and their house burned down, and probably you have friends that have experienced something like that, maybe gone through a natural disaster or some sort of tragic scenario where they lost everything they had. And some will say to you, they've said to me, it was the best thing that could have ever happened to them. Because it gave them perspective on what really matters. What really matters. What's really most important is not our stuff, it's people. I tell my kids this all the time. They come in the room and they're fighting over something, you know, they're arguing over it. I'm like, look, people are more important than stuff. Stop it. And they go back to fighting, right? Because we're hardwired this way. We protect our stuff. We are all about it. My question is if this is the case, why don't we see it? Why don't we see that this is really the problem? Well, did you not notice this weird passage that's got these weird two verses that are kind of sandwiched in between this section on money? He says this, verse 22 the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness? What in the world is Jesus talking about? And how does this go with money and possessions? Well, let me just illuminate you. In Luke 11 and 12, we get a little more clarity because he attaches to this the idea that the Pharisees who were religious and arrogant and prideful and also wealthy, they were blind to their greed. They were blind to their greed. Here's why we don't see this problem this morning. Here's why I struggle to see it. Because we're blind to it. I mean, let's be honest. When you say somebody says, you know, I struggle with lying, that's a pretty easy one to admit, right? Or how about adultery? It doesn't really sneak up on you. You don't like right in the middle of adultery and say, wait, wait, wait, you're not my wife. I mean, that doesn't happen, right? Let's be honest, right? But with money, it's so sneaky. It sneaks in. You know why? Because we always compare ourselves to people who have more than us. We always look at those who have more and we go, hey, look at them. I don't have that much. See? I'm not greedy, I don't have a materialism problem. And all the while, God's saying, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What about the way that you try to find your significance and your security and money? Listen, for some, it's found, like I said, in spending a lot of it. And so some of you in this room, you know you're a spender, and every time you get stressed, you just go and spend money. And your spouse is like, quit spending money. Right? You just go spend it. That's how you deal with it. But there's others of you that you save, save, save, save, save, save. But it's the same issue. Because we think that somehow this money can give us something that it cannot give us. And it sneaks in. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. It's like being in a room that is filled with light, but if you can't see, it's still dark. Right? Jesus is saying straight up, if the eye is bad, then all of it is dark. And even goes on to say, if it's dark, how great is that darkness? This is a very difficult issue to see in our own lives. And my guess is that for some of us in this room, already you're like, look, I don't need you to tell me I'm greedy. I'm not greedy. I don't have a problem with this. I don't hoard. You know, I don't buy stuff. I give some of my money away to the church and to poor people. I'm not greedy. My guess is if that's your response, watch out. That may be an indicator you're exactly what you don't think you are. Because it sneaks in on us. I think you guys know this, but if you make $30,000 a year or more, you're in the top 2% of wage earners in the entire world. Are you catching that? If you make $60,000 or more, you're in the top half a percent of wage earners in the entire world. We are wealthy. We just don't view it that way. We don't see it that way because we get sucked into our culture's view of money and greed. For many of us, we spend so much money buying things that we don't need with money we don't have to keep up with people we don't like. Right? And we think we take things like that are luxuries and we turn them into necessities. We take things like, I'll be honest, like a cell phone. I'm not saying I shouldn't have a phone. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a phone. I'm saying it's pretty easy to take something that's a luxury to much of the world and to say, this is a necessity, I have to have it. And I gotta have this big of a data plan. Right? Or let's let's go to the heart issue, like for me sometimes. I gotta have this kind of coffee. Oh, that one hurt. I gotta have this kind of this, this kind of that, right? We take luxuries and we turn them into necessities. I'm with you guys on this. I'm not standing up here in judgment over you as if I've got this figured out. I'm telling you, this is a sneaky, sneaky thing. And we are playing a game that we cannot win. So, what are some of the effects? Let me just move quickly through these. Three effects that we'll see. Number one, disappointment. You will live a disappointed life because you'll discover that all the stuff that you accumulate never satisfies you. It never meets your needs. You get it, and you're like, oh man, that was great, but I like that one over there better. Right? You get the car, you get the house, you get this item, you get this piece of clothing, you get whatever it is, and you get it, and it's for students in the room, whatever it is you you get, you get it, and then you're like, whoa, they just came out with a new version. Right? Or there's what about theirs? I like theirs better, better color. Because we play this game that you cannot win. And so we're constantly disappointed that it doesn't deliver. Second thing is anxiety. There are a lot of Americans, while we live in the top 2% of wealth in the world, most of us in this room, we're still freaked out about our stuff all the time. We're anxious, we're fearful, we're gonna lose it. He says in there, he says the rock, the moth and the rust will destroy, the thieve will break in and kill, or to steal. And so we basically get this idea like, oh man, I gotta just hold on to it, my precious. It's got a lock on our hearts. We're sucked in so easily. But the third one is really, really, really dangerous. And this is why I say this is an invitation to freedom this morning, and that is slavery. Notice what Jesus says in the last section of this passage. He says, No one can be a slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves of God and money. Listen, money will enslave you, just like every other idol. In our hearts, according to John Calvin, I think this is a spot on our idol factories. We find things that are temporary and we worship them as if they can really meet our ultimate needs. And so he says to us this morning, he says to you and to me, he says, Look, if you give yourself to the things that are temporary, you just need to know the cost. You need to make sure that you're aware that the price tag to put your treasure in the temporary is that it's going to demand your life. You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, how do we just go there? Listen, the Bible tells us that everything that we put our treasure in, that we hope in, that we put our security and our safety in, and we don't find our control in, that will ultimately demand our lives from us. This is why people take the jobs that they take. It's why they they live in debt the way they do. This is why people pursue things that they wouldn't pursue otherwise because they're enslaved. They're enslaved to money. And I'm telling you this morning, God wants to set your heart free from the love of money. Is money bad? No. Money is not bad. It's what we do with it, right? And it is so easy to be enslaved to it. We become slaves of it, and it is a terrible master. Terrible master. So here's the question. How do we fix this problem? How do we how are our hearts unlocked? Because I could stand up here all morning long and tell you, here's my spreadsheet of how I budget my money every month. We live on a cash system, here's how we do our life, and here's how we try to keep ourselves from being in debt, and here's how we try to do all these things practically. I could talk about that all day long, but that doesn't fix the heart issue. I mean, in this series, we're gonna talk about that next week. We're gonna give you some practical steps and ways you can be more effective at managing your money. That's good. But if you don't get the heart issue right, you can manage your money and still worship it. Right? You can still worship your possessions even as you manage it. In fact, you can get so lost in the management of it, you've you're sucked in all your time and energy and resources again trying to manage it, which is really just trying to get security and significance from it. Here's the answer: treasure Jesus. That's how we overcome. We treasure Jesus. Now that sounds real churchy and cute and everything, right? Oh, yeah, Jesus is always the answer. I get it. Jesus is always the answer. Listen, Jesus is the only treasure in your life that will not take your life from you, but he gives his life for you. If you want to know what Jesus' precious is, his precious is us. Because Jesus didn't pay green for us, he paid his blood for us. He didn't buy us on credit cards, he didn't empty himself in that way and monetarily, but you know what he did? He became bankrupt. He bankrupts heaven so that he could become our savior, our rescuer, our redeemer. So we would never have to say, am I loved anymore? Am I valuable? Am I significant? Am I worth it? Am I secure for eternity? And the answer is a resounding yes, because Jesus bankrupt himself. In fact, 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9 says it this way that God, this is what it says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich, for your sake he became what? Poor. So that by his poverty you might become rich. Jesus owns everything. He is God, and yet he bankrupts himself. So why? We could have life. We could be set free from the love of money. We could be set free from the idolatry of materialism. So we could be set free from looking to things that are temporary. He solved the problem for eternity. That's Jesus. He offers that to us today. That's why God doesn't need your money. He wants you. In fact, in 1 Peter 2, he says that those who have trusted him, they are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, a possession that he has paid with his blood to purchase you. So you can stop trying to purchase your way into significance. See, all the buying, all the investing, all the work that we do with money is an indicator that we are all looking for something to rest our souls in. We're looking for something to rest our souls in. And you will only die for what is precious to you. And Jesus died for us, showing us that we are precious to him. There is nothing that you can buy in this world that is worth more than what you already have in Jesus. You hearing that? C.S. Lewis says it this way. He says, He who has God and everything has no more than he who has God alone. So do I want you guys to have a lot of money? I would love for y'all to have a lot of money. We could do a lot of kingdom work with that money. Right? Is it bad to have a lot of money? No, but just know that it doesn't change your value one cent depending on how much money you have. I pray that Point Communion Church is a church of people who are from the poorest of poor to the richest of rich and everywhere in between, and we can minister and love and serve one another, and we are all before Jesus the same value. Because he has paid the ultimate price for us. Here's my last encouragement to you this morning. Matthew 13, 44 says this the kingdom of heaven is like treasure buried in a field that a man found and reburied. Then in his joy, he goes and sells everything he has and buys that field. Just a heart check this morning. Is that how we see Jesus? Is that how we see his kingdom? May somehow, in the words that I've said and the way that the Spirit's working this morning, remind us that He is the greatest treasure. And that when that issue is settled, we're no longer loving money and using God, but we're loving God and using money.