Sermon Tone Analysis

The Sermon on the Amount

 

Matthew 6:19-24

 

November 20, 2005

 

*/Focus:/*/ Stewardship means investing 100 percent of everything we have with God./

I heard about a little girl who experienced a major breakthrough in her life when she learned to tie her own shoes.

Instead of excitement, she was overcome by tears.

Her father asked, “Why are you crying?”

 

“I have to tie my shoes,” she said.

“You just learned how.

It isn’t that hard, is it?”

“I know,” she wailed, “but I’m going to have to do it for the rest of my life.”

My hunch is that some of us feel the same way when it comes to Christian stewardship.

We learn that it’s exciting to give.

But isn’t there just a tiny bit of dread because we know we have to do it over and over again for the rest of our lives?

So let’s read today’s passage.

If you have your Bible with you, please open to Matthew chapter 6 and we’ll start reading at verse 19: “ \\ /"Don't store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal.

Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves.

Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be.

\\ "Your eye is a lamp for your body.

A pure eye lets sunshine into your soul.

But an evil eye shuts out the light and plunges you into darkness.

If the light you think you have is really darkness, how deep that darkness will be!

"No one can serve two masters.

For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.”

/

 

As I thought about preaching on stewardship, it occurred to me that maybe we should just skip the stewardship thing for a year.

It’s been a tough year for many: there are so many bills to pay, so many obligations to meet, the dollar has hit new lows, and the national debt has hit new highs.

Why don’t we just skip it this year?

Are you all nodding!

You know why we don’t skip it?

Stewardship is not an annual fundraising campaign.

It is a lifestyle to which God has called us.

I don’t want anybody here to burst into tears because of this news, but stewardship is never over.

Every Sunday is really Stewardship Sunday.

We have to define our terms a bit here.

It’s not just about giving money.

Christian stewardship is really nothing less than all we do with all that we have.

That includes money, a subject about which the Bible has a lot to say.

Someone has taken the time to calculate that the Bible has about 500 verses on prayer, about 500 verses on faith, but more than 2,000 verses on money and possessions.

Let’s take at look now at a few of the parables Jesus used to spiritual application:

·       In Matthew 13:44-45 He referred to investment in Jewels and treasure to illustrate the importance of investing in the kingdom of God.

·       In Matthew 13:52, He referred to saving new treasure as well as old treasure to illustrate the importance of storing up both old and new truth.

·       In Matthew 18:23-35, He used indebtedness to illustrate the importance of forgiveness.

·       In Matthew 20:1-16, He referred to hiring procedures and wage structures to illustrate God’s sovereignty and generosity in treating all with equality, forgiving sins, and rewarding people with eternal life.

·       In Matthew 21:33-46, He told a story about a fruit farmer who leased his property to illustrate the way the chief and Pharisees were rejecting God and His Son.

·       In Luke 19:11-27 He discussed capital, investments, banking, and interest to emphasize our human responsibility to utilize God’s gifts in a prudent and responsible way.

·       In Luke 7:41-43 He referred to money lenders, interest, and debt cancellation to illustrate the importance of love and appreciation to God for canceling our debt of sin.

·       In Luke 12:16-21 He spoke of building barns to store grain for the future while neglecting to store up spiritual treasure as a very foolish decision.

·       In Luke 18:9-14, He contrasted the proud Pharisee who fasted and tithed regularly with the humble tax collector who acknowledge his sin of dishonesty and greed to illustrate that God acknowledges humility and rejects self-exaltation.

·       And, finally, In John 4:34-38 He used a grain-ripened field and harvesters to illustrate “spiritually ripened hearts” in Samaria and the part the apostles would have in harvesting people’s souls.

Jesus talked a lot about money.

Of his thirty-eight parables, almost half tell us how to handle money and possessions.

In the Gospels, an amazing one out of ten verses deals directly with the subject of money.

Money is not all that stewardship is about, but stewardship includes money.

The passage we read from the Sermon on the Mount is one of those stewardship passages

 

*Firstly, let’s look at evaluating investments: Earthly ones vs. Heavenly ones*

 

You’ll notice the passage begins with Jesus’ recognizing that people are born with an investment instinct.

People are born to save and treasure and to store up, as the passage says, “to value something.”

That desire isn’t bad.

From Jesus’ point of view, it’s all a matter of focus.

What are you saving for?

What are you storing up for?

Where are we depositing our resources of time, talent, and treasure?

As one translation has it, Jesus says, “Don’t keep making big investments for yourselves here on earth.

Instead, make big investments for yourselves in heaven with God.”

The passage is telling us that earthly treasure is a bad investment.

Jesus says that sooner or later the moths are going to get to it.

Our cashmere and cotton sweaters will begin to unravel someday.

But even if our fortune is under lock and key so moths can’t get to it, the rust will get at it and begin to corrode it.

If the moth and rust don’t destroy it, you can sure bet that thieves are going to get it.

There’s an old Jack Benny joke (you’ve heard of Jack Benny, haven’t you or am I the only one old enough to remember him?) in which a mugger accosts Benny and says, “Your money or your life!”

 

There’s a brief silence, and the mugger says, “Well?”

Jack Benny says, “Don’t rush me I’m thinking.

I’m thinking!”

Thieves will always come, and they will not always be so patient.

They may not give you much

time.

I love the way Clarence Jordan says it: “The thieves don’t always poke a pistol in your ribs.

Most of our assets are not taken with a pistol but with a pencil—just like that.”

The most serious thief we face is death itself.

You can be sure that, in the end, death will take it all.

Several years ago, construction workers were laying a foundation for a building outside the city of Pompeii.

They found the corpse of a woman who must have been fleeing from the eruption of Mt.

Vesuvius but was caught in the rain of hot ashes.

The woman’s hands clutched jewels, which were preserved in excellent condition.

She had the jewels, but death had stolen it all.

That’s the bottom line in life.

Worldly treasure is not a wise investment because you can’t take it with you.

Jim Elliot, a missionary who was martyred for his faith, understood this reality when he wrote in his journal, “A person is no fool to give up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose.”

This is one of the most profound statements of all time, so let me read it again: “A person is no fool to give up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose.”

It’s not foolish to give up what you cannot keep in order to gain what you cannot lose.

That’s what the text is calling us to.

Don’t make big investments for yourselves here on earth.

Instead, make big investments for yourselves in heaven with God.

We are born with an investment instinct.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t remove our desire to invest, but he does redirect it.

Make big investments for yourselves in heaven with God.

Heavenly treasure is a good investment because it’s a sure thing.

When we enter into a divine partnership, depositing the resources of our time and our talents and our treasure in the business of building God’s kingdom, we are valuing what’s really valuable.

Nothing can diminish the worth of that kind of investment because it’s an eternal investment