“Better Than Gold”
Matthew 6:19-24
Sunday Morning Sermon
July 6, 2003
FCC – Piggott
“Our Attitude toward money is often the pulse of the heart of our discipleship”
Intro:
In 1928 a group of the world’s most successful financiers met at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. The following were present: The president of the largest utility company, The greatest wheat speculator, The president of the New York Stock Exchange, A member of the President’s Cabinet, The greatest "bear" in Wall Street, The president of the Bank of International Settlements, The head of the world’s greatest monopoly. Collectively, these tycoons controlled more wealth than there was in the U.S. Treasury, and for years newspapers and magazines had been printing their success stories and urging the youth of the nation to follow their examples. Twenty-five years later, this is what had happened to these men:
The president of the largest independent steel company, Charles Schwab, lived on borrowed money the last five years of his life and died broke.
The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cutten, died abroad, insolvent.
The president of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Whitney, served a term in Sing Sing Prison.
The member of the President’s Cabinet, Albert Fall, was pardoned from prison so he could die at home.
The greatest "bear" in Wall Street, Jesse Livermore, committed suicide.
The president of the Bank of International Settlements, Leon Fraser, committed suicide.
The head of the world’s greatest monopoly, Ivar Drueger, committed suicide.
All of these men had learned how to make money, but not one of them had learned how to live.
Someone asked Willie Sutton, the notorious bank robber why he robbed so many banks. "Because," replied Sutton, "That’s where the money is."
Measure wealth not by the things you have, but by the things you have for which you would not take money.
Money will buy a bed but not sleep; books but not brains; food but not appetite; finery but not beauty; a house but not a home; medicine but not health; luxuries but not culture; amusements but not happiness; religion but not salvation; a passport to everywhere but heaven.
Discussion:
In Matthew Chapter 6 Jesus gives an excellent sermon. He’s speaking to the disciples. He talks about topics like murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, love of enemies, giving to the needy, prayer fasting and money. I think so many times we shy away from the money part. We are all about Jesus talking about murder, because we’d never murder anyone. We are all about Jesus talking about adultery, because we’d never commit adultery. I wonder how many of us would embrace Jesus talking about money. Let me suggest that we might embrace this topic with caution because of the many times we’ve seen the abuse of money in the church. We’ve seen the air conditioned dog houses and preachers in towers saying God will take them away if you don’t give $$.
Turn with me this morning to Matthew 6:19-24 (Read)
Jesus speaks about:
I. A Single Treasure (19-21)
a. Jesus speaking about the wallet and the heart
Our Attitude toward money is often the pulse of the heart of our discipleship
i. I have a book that’s entitled – The hard sayings of Jesus
1. This should be in the book.
b. Great misunderstanding about the teaching of money and rewards in heaven.
i. One misunderstanding
1. The balance of my checking account has to do with the amount of faith I have.
This is completely false. I read one statistic that said over half the church is funded by people who make less than $30,000 a year. The people who make the most seem to give the least. It’s hard to gauge by stats anyway.
ii. Another misunderstanding
1. God hates rich people
You could read the Bible and come to the conclusion that if you are wealthy (as far as money goes) you will – for a lack of a better way to say it, not see the kingdom of heaven. That somehow if God has blessed you in this life he will not bless you when it comes to eternal life – Again that’s just not true.
iii. Still another misunderstanding
1. God needs your money
a. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills
b. Everything you have from the shoes you wear to the hair spray that you fixed your hair with this morning – is his.
Let me make something clear God doesn’t need your money, he needs your heart. This section of scripture has little to do with money, and more to do with the heart.
c. What this is speaking about
A literal translation of the first phrase in verse 19 would read: “do not treasure up treasures for yourself”
i. The idea
1. stacking up coins for a rainy day
2. Storing money just for storing it
The idea is that of stockpiling or hoarding, and therefore pictures wealth that is not being used. The money or other wealth is simply stored for safekeeping; it is kept for keeping’s sake or make a show of wealth or to create an environment of lazy overindulgence.
Jesus tells a parable about a man who produced a good crop.
Luke 12:16-21 16 "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17He thought to himself, ’What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18"Then he said, ’This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I’ll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." ’ 20"But God said to him, ’You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."
The Lord did not specifically require His disciples to give up all their money and other possessions to follow him, although it may be that some of them voluntarily did so. He did require obedience to His commands no matter what the cost. The price was too high for the wealthy young ruler, to whom possessions were the first priority.
3. The idea
a. Be Generous
John Wesley earned a lot of money from his published sermons and other works. Yet he only left 28 pounds when he died, because he continually gave what he had to the Lord’s work.
b. Be Thankful
G. Campbell Morgan Wrote:
“You are to remember with the passion burning within you that you are not the child of to-day. You are not of the earth, you are more than dust; you are the child of tomorrow, you are the offspring of deity. The measurements of your lives can not be circumscribed by the point where blue sky kisses green earth. All the fact of your life cannot be encompassed in the on small sphere in which you live. You belong to the infinite. If you make your fortune on the earth – poor, sorry, silly soul, -- you have made a fortune, and stored it in a place you cannot hold it. Make your fortune, but store it where it will greet you in the dawning of the new morning.”
Our material possessions are “unrighteous” in the sense of not having any spiritual value in themselves. But if we invest them in the welfare of human souls, the people who are saved or otherwise blessed because of them will someday greet us with thanksgiving.
Jesus is talking about:
II. A Single Vision (22-23)
The word “eye” in these verses actually means the heart. Sometimes we can be blinded by our own involvement in a situation. We can get wrapped up in the world and not realize what we are living for or why we live a certain way.
a. Clear Eye
i. Equals clean heart
ii. Equals the whole body being full of light
b. How to have a clear heart
i. Read God’s word
1. Start reading the book of James
2.
ii. Pray about your life
1. Pray for those in your life who aren’t Christian – who aren’t actively involved in a walk with Christ.
2. Ask God to make you his instrument to bring those people to him.
iii. Seek the fellowship of his people
1. Drawing close to him
Hebrews 10:22 --let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
c. Self-deception
i. Things that we are involved in aren’t really that bad
ii. We can get by with a little bit of sin – it won’t hurt us
Jesus says – If your eye (heart) is bad your whole body will be full of darkness. Let me suggest to you that you can have a bad heart and think it’s pure. You put your Bible down seeking to judge things on your own – after all you know what is right and wrong.
The people who work to stop counterfeiting don’t study the fake money. They don’t spend their time thinking up all the possible ways money could be changed or forged. Let me tell you what they do spend their time doing. They spend their time studying the real thing. They know what the dollar bill looks like forwards and backwards, upside down and inside out. They do this so when they have a fake in front of them they can tell the difference.
Some of you have put down your Bibles – for whatever reason you have. Maybe you don’t understand it, maybe you don’t have the time. I encourage you this morning to have a passion for God’s word. It’s more than a book it’s a love letter from our creator. It’s more than a bunch of “Thee’s” Thous and Thou Shalt Not – It’s the word of life. Pick up your Bible again – if you don’t have one that you can understand let me know and we’ll see what we can do about it.
The Third thing Jesus talks about is:
III. A Single Master (24)
This might bring forward the idea of an employer – but that’s not what Jesus is speaking about. You can have more than one employer and this verse is not about you. I know people who work two jobs, they love them both, they are dedicated to both equally, and this verse doesn’t apply to them in that context.
a. Master of Slaves
i. A slave can’t be owned by more than one master
When a slave is owned by a master he gives the master everything he has. He has nothing left for anyone else – to give anything to anyone else would make his master less than master. It is not simply difficult, but absolutely impossible, to serve two masters and fully or faithfully be the obedient slave of each.
b. God is our master
i. We are his slaves
Romans 6:16-22
16Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
1. We belong to him
2. He bought us with his son who died on the cross that we might have life with him eternally.
Conclusion:
If you get nothing else this morning get this. The things of this earth are not everlasting. They won’t last forever – you can’t take your cars, your boats, your stuff with you. Do you think it’s going to matter to God how much you have in your checking account? You can spend your whole life searching for treasure – and miss the true treasure. Because we live in this world we have the ability to follow either this world or God.
Our text this morning says that you can’t follow both. The world tells you that you can follow both, the Bible says you can’t. The one commands us to walk by faith and the other demands we walk by sight. The one commands us to be humble and the other to be proud, the one to set our minds on things above and the other to set them on things below. One calls us to love light, the other to love darkness. The one tells us to look toward things unseen and eternal and the other to look at things seen and temporal. A disciple of Christ won’t look around at the world and be happy with what they do.
Can you say that you only have one master? What do you spend your time doing? Where do you spend your money? I am convinced that God doesn’t want your money as much as he wants your heart. He wants every ounce of you as you are. This relationship that he desires to bring you into, is a relationship based on love. He wants you to place all your anger and frustration, all your self-pity and doubt, all your loneliness and hurt at the foot of the cross. He doesn’t want you to leave half-devoted to him.
Bill Parcels is the new coach of the Dallas Cowboys. I heard a story about him. He’s coached several teams and they get all the clothing from the team. Every shirt, every pair of pants, every coat they get free from the team they coach for. Not just the coach but the staff as well. When he coached the NY Jets – and then moved on to another team he gave away all his clothes. He slowly began filling his closet with new team stuff. When we went to the New England Patriots he won Super Bowls – I heard that he gave every bit of that stuff away because now he is with the Cowboys.
In a sense what this text is asking us to do – is shed our clothing of belonging to self. Shed our desire to belong to this world, take off our willingness to do what the world desires – and fill our minds with the things of God.
Is Jesus Lord in your life this morning? Have you given him your everything? He only wants the life he gave to you, so that he can fulfill his purpose in you. If you haven’t accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior and would like to do so this morning – or if you realize that you have been trying to serve both God and the world and are tired of the frustration. Come as we stand and sing.
