Three Questions about Riches
Notes
Transcript
Matthew 6:19-24
Matthew 6:19-24
Matthew 6:19-24 Three Questions: Where Are Your Treasures? What Are You Looking at and Longing for? Who Is You Master
When we started our journey through the Sermon on the Mount I told you that much of what Jesus taught on was not behavior as much as attitude. Let’s face it our attitudes determine what we do. What you think and what you feel about things (attitudes) ends up being what you do. Jesus started with the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who realize that they cannot save themselves because they understand that the only thing that can save them is the Lord. That is their attitude. We could go all the way through the beatitudes again and see that Jesus is teaching His disciples about the attitudes His disciples would have. Jesus moves on to murder. If you hate someone in your heart then the attitude is that you would kill them. Adultery, we know that it begins in the heart, you see what you want and you go get what you want. You have already considered as an option or you would never do it. Going the second mile, our reason for serving others should be because we want to serve them not because we have to serve them. Loving your enemies doing good to those who would do you harm instead of retaliating. This is all about our attitudes. Then in chapter 6 He starts talking about giving alms, acts of service. If your attitude is that you are doing those things to get the attention of man then you already have your reward. Our Lord talks the same way about prayer. Is your attitude to draw attention to yourself so people will say “what a loud and long prayer life he has”? Jesus talks about fasting the same way, if you walk around with your face all scrunched up so people will know you are fasting then you already have your reward. He doesn’t say don’t pray, don’t give and don’t fast He says to do those things but do them in private so that your Father in heaven who sees you in private will reward you openly.
This brings us to the passage we are going to look at today. We usually look at this passage as it relates to monetary riches. We are going to look at it a little bit differently. We are going to look at it as it relates to our attitude towards riches. Let’s pray then we will take a look at the passage for this morning.
We will start out reading the entire passage this morning then we will come back and divide it up a little bit to try to look at three questions that we all have to answer as it relates to riches.
Matthew6:19-24 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! 24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.[1]
Since all of Jesus’ teaching thus far concerns His disciples attitudes I see no reason for Him to change what He is doing when He comes to riches. Often when we begin to think about riches we almost automatically go to the idea that there has to be something bad about being rich and something noble about being poor. Rich people are bad and poor people are good. Our political parties try to teach us that. How many of you have seen the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”? That is a Christmas staple at our house, we watch it almost every year. Does anyone remember the name of the bad guy in that movie? Mr. Potter was his name and he was rich and everything he did he did to get richer. He was rich which made him greedy and crooked to the core. He was the rich man. And who is the good guy? George Bailey is the good guy and George Bailey is poor so George Bailey is good. But folks we can no more attribute being rich to being bad than we can attribute being poor to being good. Instead it is based not on what you have but your attitude towards it. It is less about what you have than it is about what you love. We have to be careful when we try to make this passage about wealth being good or ba because even rich people know this: Everything you have is either going to wear out, rust out, rot out or fall out. Did you get that? Nothing in this world lasts forever; even rocks and we have a few of them around here. In these first three verses Jesus is simply telling us, His disciples, that it is not about what you have, it is about what you love. I have, somewhere in a box right now, something that is a treasure to me. It is not something that you would think of as a true treasure, it is not shiny or alluring, in fact it is utilitarian in nature. It is an old hatchet head and on the side is stamped U S. You see I never got to meet my grandfather although I was named after him, George Kenneth Box. He died about 5 years before I was born. But that hatchet head was one of the weapons and tools he carried in the Aragon forest in France during WWI. Why do I treasure it? I don’t know except it is somewhat special to me. The things we have the things we treasure can easily become what we love. Don’t get me wrong I don’t love that hatchet but if I lost it, it would hurt me. We all have our treasures, the things we own, the things we love. Jesus is telling us here to be careful what you treasure, what you long for, what you want because whether they are good or bad, that is where your heart is, that is what you love. Matthew 22:37 tells us what we are suppose to love. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind, our entire being. That is where our treasure should be, our Lord should be our only treasure. If we try to store up things here they are all going to wear out, rot out, rust out or fall out, they are all going to go away and if you love those things you will lose those things. So the first question you are going to have to answer this morning as it relates to riches is where are your treasures? Are they the things of this earth or the things of heaven?
Let’s look at verses 22-23 again: 22 “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
We are not going to get too much into the eye today. We could, in Deut. it says that a person with a bad an evil eye is one who wants to withhold all the good things and not share them with anyone else. They have an evil eye. But I’d like to look at this from a little different perspective. I like to think that I am a pretty simple guy. I like to think of myself like Paul says in Philippians 4:12 12 I know how to be abased (that is poor, destitute) , and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.[2] I like to think that I can be content in every situation. I can be content in being poor and I can be content in being rich (I would really like to try that out sometime and see if I could be content). I like to think that but then I watch television and I see the commercials and my eyes take in all the stuff the world has to offer and I want it. I’ll turn to Raechel and say “I want one of those, or it would be nice to have one of those”. It doesn’t matter what it is I saw it and I wanted it. Let’s face it there are some things I want. There are a couple of books I want. I’ll be looking on the internet and I have found a few guns I want. I even have them saved in my wish list. If anyone wants to buy me a birthday present you can just go to those websites and find out exactly what I want. That is not a hint but…There are just things I want. Most of the time you don’t even know you want something until you surf the internet or walk into a store and start casting your eyes on things. We human beings are sight creatures, yes we have the other senses that can influence us, smell, touch, sound, taste but it is our sight that influences us the most. That is why Jesus says it is the lamp to the body. When we see stuff we want stuff. It is a part of that fallen nature, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Sometimes we just see what we want and we will do whatever it takes to get it. What you keep your eyes on is what you end up desiring and what you desire the most is what you love. That is why Jesus said if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. If you are looking at the things of the Kingdom of heaven then you are literally looking at life itself, if you are dwelling on the things of God then you we love the things of God. But if you are looking at and longing for the things of this world if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! The apostle John said something very similar in 1 John 2:14-17 15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that isin the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.[3] You have to understand that you will not start loving the world or the things in the world if you do not look on them and long for them. When you look you want, when you want you love, when you love you attain, or so you think. In reality when you acquire the things of the world you don’t have them, they have you. This can be anything. When I first met Raechel my thought was she looks good, I’m interested in her, then I started wanting her then loving her and now she has me. It can be good things like your spouse but it can also be things like pornography, romance novel desiring what they describe as romance. It can be a boat, a car, a cruise; it can be anything you attach your heart to. How many of you remember that little song you learned as a child? “Be careful little eyes what you see, be careful little eyes what you see. For the Father up above is looking down with love so be careful little eyes what you see.” When you sang that song as a kid you were learning a spiritual truth. What you see or look at becomes what you want and what you want becomes what you love. The love affair begins with what you look at.
So the first question you have to answer as it relates to riches is wher are you treasures, are they things of heaven or things of the earth? The second question is; what are you looking at and longing for? This brings us to the reason these questions are so important. Let’s look at verse 24: 24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.[4]
What you long for is what you treasure and what you treasure is what you love and what you love is what you serve, it becomes your master. It becomes your lord and master and a very simple definition of lord and master is owner. If you treasure the things of this earth and you gaze on them to begin loving them then the truth is they become your owner. As I said earlier this can be anything, your family, your job, your retirement, a boat, a gun, anything can own you. And you cannot serve two masters, you will love the one and hate other or be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve the things of this world and serve the Master, Jesus Christ, at the same time. But what is so important about that? We are going to look at two passages to answer that question. You could read about this in Luke 18 or Matthew 19 but we will look at it from Mark 10 beginning at verse 17 through 21: 17 Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is,God. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’ ”20 And he answered and said to Him, “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.”21 Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”22 But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.[5] This young man is the perfect example of what we are talking about this morning. Having riches was not the problem this young man had, it was his attitude towards his riches. You see he couldn’t serve the Master even though he had an idea that he wanted to follow Jesus and serve Him, he obviously knew it was the right thing to do. He wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven and have eternal life, he wanted all the good of following Jesus. But he was not willing to give up those things that owned him, those were the things he loved the things he treasured. Literally his possessions possessed him making him unable to follow Jesus. If you read a little further in this passage you would read the part where Jesus says that it is difficult for those who trust in their riches to enter the kingdom of heaven. This shocked His disciple because the belief of the time was that if you were wealthy it was because you were righteous and God blessed you. But what Jesus said was; “What is impossible with man is possible with God”. You see, only God can change your heart. Only God can change those things that own you into your possessions, into things you have to give back to God. Only God can do that. If love those things they own you but if you love God rather than those things and you are storing up treasures in heaven rather than here then you are willing to give those things up. This young man had laid up his treasures, his riches, his good works and they were possessing him. Whatever you love, those things own you and you will not take up the cross and follow Jesus. You won’t serve the Lord is you are serving your stuff.
Mark 8:34-38 34 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? 37 Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”[6] You can’t serve both. You can’t serve Jesus and the world too. What you love is what you are going to serve. And you need to understand this; Jesus will not share His reign. You cannot just throw a little Jesus into your life and think everything is ok. Jesus is very clear here; deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Him. Is it easy? NO! Is it supposed to be easy? NO! But the truth is you cannot serve the things of this world and Jesus and it is not just that you are not able it is clear from this passage in Mark that Jesus does not allow it. So I ask you this morning which will it be? You cannot serve two masters so who will you serve.
So there are three questions that you have to answer for yourself this morning as it relates to riches: Where are you treasures? Are they stored in heaven for eternity or in the here and now where they will wear out, rot out, rust out or fall out? What are you looking at and longing for? And Who is your Master? You cannot serve two. Let’s pray.
[1] The New King James Version. (1982). (Mt 6:19–24). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[2] The New King James Version. (1982). (Php 4:12). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[3] The New King James Version. (1982). (1 Jn 2:15–17). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[4] The New King James Version. (1982). (Mt 6:19–24). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[5] The New King James Version. (1982). (Mk 10:17–22). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
[6] The New King James Version. (1982). (Mk 8:34–38). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.