Matthew 6:19-34

A priest stood outside his church one Easter Sunday with the doors locked. As the time for the evening mass approached, a crowd gathered on the steps. People were anxious to get to their seats and begin, but the priest refused to let them in. Soon there were hundreds of people pressed up against each other outside the church doors.

“Father,” one of the parishioners finally shouted, “Why won’t you open the doors?” “I can’t let you in,” replied the priest. “There’s no room left in the sanctuary.” “That’s impossible,” the man said, challenging the priest. “Every member of the congregation is standing here outside. How could the sanctuary possibly be full?”

“Its full all right” said the priest. “Full of all the promises, all the lofty intentions, all the silent vows you left behind the last time you were here. Not one of you took them with you when you left this holy place.”

How appropriate that story is in light of the teaching we have done from the Sermon on the Mount. This is the seventeenth week we have dedicated to teaching from this great sermon of our Lord. To take it seriously has been life changing for those us who have done so. We have not become perfect in fact we have become perfectly aware of how far away we are living from the pure teaching of Christ. The demands of this sermon are almost too much to bear. Yet we are determined to be like Christ and to let Him invade our homes our hearts and our work on this earth.

In the first half of Matthew 6 (1-18), Jesus describes the Christ followers private life ‘in the secret place’ (giving, praying, fasting); in the second half (19-34) He is concerned with our public business in the world (questions of money, possessions, food, drink clothing and ambition).

You cannot separate the sacred from the secular if you are a Christ follower. The divorce of the sacred from the secular has been and continues to be disastrous. If you are a Christian, everything you do, however ‘secular’ it may appear (like shopping, like working in the office or factory, like being in school etc.) is ‘religious’ in the sense that it is being done in God’s presence and according to God’s will.

One of the things that Jesus stresses in these verses is God is concerned with our public and private lives; our secular and our sacred. In Chapter 6 we are called to avoid the hypocrisy of the religious and the materialism of the irreligious.

I want to ask you something this morning. What are you investing your life in today? What part of your life is receiving your biggest investment of time and resources? What really matters to you?

I want to talk with you today from the depths of my soul. I sincerely hope that you don’t walk out of here today with some kind of euphoric high from another creative service at Newark Church of the Nazarene. In fact, I hope that we are brought face to face with ourselves in a way that shakes us to our very core. I hope that we find ourselves face to face with the God who created us and put us on this earth for one purpose and that was to do His will.

You might want to fasten you seat belts today. I am talking shoulder straps, roll bar and airbags, or you might just let the word of God hit you full force and allow it to truly alter you for life.

Our consumer society is constantly telling us that life at its best consists of having more and more possessions and pleasures. As Christians, we are supposed to know that this is false. The tug is so strong that many of us try a balancing act between what the Bible teaches and what the admen say, between the spiritual riches that God offers us through Christ and the worldly treasures that cannot feed our soul. Losing this balance in the western world is probably the greatest tolerated sin in the church!

With that in mind let’s ask ourselves some questions:

1. What do you treasure?

19 “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. 21 Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Every one has treasures. It is an essential part of being a human being. Dallas Willard writes, “To have nothing that one treasures is to be in a nonhuman condition, and nothing degrades people more than to scorn or destroy or deprive them of their treasures. Indeed, merely to pry into what one’s treasures are is a severe intrusion.”

Even those who are in prisons, concentration camps or homeless will go to great lengths and even risk their lives to hold onto things that might be judged to be ridiculous by others. Our personal treasures can easily be identified as the things we protect, secure and keep. To be honest we should borrow from Willard again who suggest we should think about our “treasurings.” It is to deal with the foundational structure of our soul.

“Jesus never taught that owning something or having possessions was wrong in fact the bible commends the lowly ant for storing food in the summer that it will need in the winter. Jesus is teaching here that we are not to store up for ourselves treasures on earth; extravagant and luxurious living; the hardheartedness which does not feel the colossal need of the world’s underprivileged people; the foolish fantasy that a person’s life consists in the abundance of his possessions; and the materialism which tethers our hearts to the earth.” (Stott)

The wisdom of Jesus is simply this: invest your life in what God is doing. This means that we will invest in a relationship with Him and that we will devote our life to the good of others. We devote ourselves to the management of the earth instead of the raping of the earth to support our lifestyles.

The most important thing is to find a godly balance in this teaching and to understand that it is intensely personal. You don’t get to go around judging others for what they have or what they do with what they have. Focus on your life and your resources.

While the bible includes a story of Jesus telling the rich young ruler to sell all that he had and to follow him he did not say that to others. For instance, he did not say that to Mary or Martha or Lazarus or John the evangelist. He said it to the “rich young ruler” because it was the very thing that was obstructing him from following Christ.

So how do we store up treasures in heaven? Find the things that will not die when you die. Invest your time and your resources in doing things with your life that matter and will matter beyond your time on this earth. When we die so much of what we have had to spend our time doing will be of so little consequence yet we have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others by living with a truly authentic godly perspective in our lives.

Listen, this is why we are trying to lead this church to be outward focused. It is why it is critical that we give up our resources to put school supplies in the hands of those in our community who need them. It is why we provided a free sports camp to kids many of whom could not afford to go to one. It’s why we invest in showing God’s love in practical ways to those who need to feel something from Christ followers that doesn’t smack of self-righteous hateful judgment.

Three times in the last two weeks I have seen bumper stickers with a variation of the message: I have no problem with God: I just can’t stand his fans. Or how about this: Lord, deliver me from your followers. Do you know why people feel this way? Do you have any clue? It is because the church for generations has been so self-centered and made ritualistic rules out of things that are ridiculous. We have come to love the way we have always done it instead of finding out where God is working and how God is working and being a part of it. We have made idols out of the methods and destroyed any hope of the pure simple message of the gospel reaching lost people.

There is nothing sacred about this building. We are going to use it and abuse it for the sake of sharing the gospel. If you are worried about coffee spilling on the carpet or somebody getting our building dirty you are so far away from the vision and where we are going as a church that you may want to consider finding another place to worship whatever it is that you worship. What is sacred is what you do with Christ in your life. What is sacred and what is important is you and I focusing on the sowing to the fruits of the spirit. What is important to treasure is our personal ability to become more like Christ.

Ed Stetzer wrote these words: “Churches that are breaking the code are paying a high price for reaching the unchurched/unreached. They are discovering that churches that focus on the unchurched/unreached often create a degree of discomfort among some churched/reached. In other words, you cannot have it both ways - either the lost like you or the satisfied religious crowd likes you.”

Some time ago I had a lady say to me, “It seems to me that if you had to pick between the churched and the unchurched, you’d pick the unchurched.” My response to her was “I’d pick the unchurched every time.”

The bottom line is this, there are enough churches “reaching out” to the “churched.” On the other hand, there are shockingly few churches aggressively reaching out to disconnected, disenchanted, and disappointed people.

I know I digressed today from the personal aspect of this teaching but we need some correction as a body of believers and you need to hear it from this place of trust and leadership. As a church we are going to keep investing in people outside our walls. We treasure them and we are going to keep finding ways to connect with them and to love them to Jesus.

What are you treasuring today? What are you holding dear in your personal life and even in your church life?

2. What do you see?

22 “Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. 23 But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!”

He is really talking here about seeing with your heart. “Heartsight” is equated to eyesight. The person who sees and understands the kingdom of God will see everything in its true relationship to God. Those who see with earthly eyes see everything from a distorted perspective. At least compared to God’s way and the teachings of Christ.

Again I am begging you to get on your knees as church people and let the scales of self-centeredness fall off the eyes of your hearts. Willard said it best, “Life organizes itself around our heart.” Jesus said your heart will be where you treasure is. Our heart is the seat of our emotions, our will and the place from which our life and the order of it flows.

Jesus is saying you need to see my ways with your heart. To see what Jesus sees has always been one of the greatest challenges of the church culture. The call of this message and the heartbrokenness I have felt this week is almost more than I can take. I can relate to the frustration of the Old Testament prophets who would exhaust their lungs proclaiming the word of God only to have God’s “people” not see it time and time again. They just couldn’t get it. They refused to get it. Do you get it? Do you see and value what God values? Are you investing your life and the resources that God has blessed you with wisely?

I have been thinking a lot this week about our fatness. You can take that anyway you want by the way. Since I qualify as a fat person (according to our government I am about fifty pounds overweight or two feet shorter than I should be!), let me say this: I am not just talking about body fat I am talking about the fatness of living in this great country of ours. This land of milk and honey. This land of plenty and then some. It is so hard to see spiritual things because we have invested so heavily in the American dream. I am right in the middle of it.

I have been thinking about having a mid-life crisis now for a couple of years and you know what I have decided that it shouldn’t involve a new wife or fast car or even chains around my neck. I think it should involve committing myself to living like Jesus. Talk about crisis – that would do it. Nearly every Christian friend I have would think I had gone off the deep end. That’s exactly where I want to go my friend. I am sick of nominal living and seeing this life from the perspective of myself and what’s in it for me.

I am asking for some of you to get serious about serving Christ in this way and come with me if you will. John Wesley the founder of the Methodist church said, "Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth."

3. What has the most worth?

24 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Take a look at that scripture for a few seconds more. Could Jesus have been any plainer in His speech than that? James Montgomery Boice asked this question of this passage:

“Can anything be more insulting to God, who has redeemed us from the slavery of sin, put us in Christ, and given us all things richly to enjoy than to take the name of our God upon us, to be called by his name, and then to demonstrate by every action and every decision of life that we actually serve money?” A farmer one day came home and reported to his wife that his best cow had given birth to twin calves, one red and one white. He said, “You know, I have been led of the Lord to dedicate one of the calves to Him. We will raise them together. Then when the time comes to sell them, we will keep the proceeds that come from one calf and we will give the proceeds that come from the other to the Lord’s work. His wife asked which calf he was going to dedicate to the Lord, but he answered that there was no need to decide that then. “We will treat them both in the same way,” he said, “and when the time comes we will sell them as I have said.” Several months later the man entered their kitchen looking very sad and miserable. When his wife asked what was troubling him he said, “I have bad news for you. The Lord’s calf is dead.” “But,” his wife remonstrated, “you had not yet decided which was to be the Lord’s calf.” “Oh yes” he said, “I had always determined that it was to be the white one, and tit is the white calf that has died.”

Why is it that the “Lord’s calf” always dies? Unless you clearly understand as a Christ follower who owns your possessions it is very likely that you will not opt for Christ to have the final say. Jesus is simply saying either God owns our possessions and we serve Him or our possessions own us and we serve them.

4. What do you worry about?

It dawned on me this week that the end of this chapter is really a sermon in itself but it is also a part of this message. Verses 25 through 34 conclude this chapter and I am going to have the beginning verse and the ending verses put on the screen. I would like for us to read them together and I will fill in the verses in between. Let’s read these words together:

25 “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?”

28 “And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, 29 yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 30 And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

31 “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God[d] above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

34 “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

Mrs. Bertha Adams was seventy-one years old when she died alone in West Palm Beach, Florida on Easter Sunday 1976. The coroner’s report read, “Cause of death. . .malnutrition.” After wasting away to fifty pounds she could no longer stay alive. When the state authorities made their preliminary investigation of her home, they found a veritable “pigpen. . .the biggest mess you can imagine.” One seasoned inspector declared he had never seen a home in greater disarray. Bertha had begged food at her neighbors’ doors and had gotten what clothes she had from the Salvation Army. From all appearances she was a penniless recluse – a pitiful and forgotten widow.

But such was not the case! Amid the jumble of her filthy, disheveled belongs were found two keys to safe-deposit boxes at two different local banks. The discovery was unbelievable. The first box contained over 700 AT &T stock certificates, plus hundreds of other valuable notes, bonds, and solid financial securities, not to mention cash amounting to $200,000. The second box had no certificates, just cash -- $600,000. to be exact. Bertha Adams was a millionaire and then some! Yet she died of starvation.

Her case is an extreme parable of the lethal dangers of materialism, which promises so much but cannot give what we need most.

Do you know that the local auction house here in town has numerous auctions each year selling the content of people safe deposit boxes? Unclaimed treasures. Things that were so important they paid a bank a monthly fee to store them safely. Do you know why there are being sold? Because they weren’t so important after all.

I said something like this recently but when I set down with families to plan a funeral and talk about their loved ones life there is an amazing thing that happens. People rarely if ever talk about the kinds of things we pad our resumes with or their loved one’s professional achievements. You know what they remember? They want to talk for hours about the tiniest, intimate, simple moments that they shared with the person who died. The day they let them skip school and took them to an amusement park or fishing or a ball game. They remember their mother driving them to school, Saturday morning breakfast in their pajamas, hot chocolate on cold winter nights and a meaningful conversation.

What are you investing your life in? Most every one of us have to work to make a living but beyond that or even while you are doing that, how are you investing your life?

Let me close by giving you the potential cost of living this way. Jesus plainly taught that there is a good chance when you follow him with true devotion you will be hated by the world. Not because of your self righteousness or hateful ways but because you can’t be bought or sold by this worlds values.

In sixteenth century Holland, the Mennonites were outlawed and, when caught, often executed. One of them, Dirk Willens, was being chased across an icefield when his pursuer broke through and fell in. in response to his cries for help, Willens returned and saved him from the waters. The pursuer was grateful and astonished that he would do such a thing but nevertheless arrested him. A few day later Willens was executed by being burned a the stake in the town of Asperen. Listen to this carefully, it was his Christlikeness that brought about his execution.

You need to know that before you sign up to live this kind of life that you may be risking your life. We are so insulated here in America. I am convinced that we live in a kind of a vacuum or bubble. Did you know that more Christians have died as martyrs in the twentieth century than in all the period from the beginning to 1900? We are dominated by this age of enlightenment and we get caught up in the pursuit of happiness after all Thomas Jefferson said it was one of our rights. We love prosperity gospel preaching and the gospel of liberation. Yet here is Jesus calling us to a much different standard then what we hear today.

Will you hear His call? Will you respond with your life and the stuff that you are holding onto so dearly? Will you just take the time this week to let His word work in your life?

Prayer: God deliver us from our own comfortable and selfish ways. Show us where we are living and where we need to be. Help us to be willing to move in your direction. To move in the nuances of your Spirit and in Your love. May we live the way you lived and love the way you love?

Song

Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can. –John Wesley