Hey, I'm Matt Brownell.
And I'm Van Owens.
And I'm Tim Adams.
Welcome to Climbing the Mountain, where we dive into the scriptures and discuss themes,
connections, and real life application.
We're kicking off a series here where we're going to examine the Sermon on the Mount and
discuss implications for this teaching for Christians today.
It's my great pleasure to introduce Jim Garton to our listeners.
First and foremost, Jim is one of our good friends.
Jim is a teacher in our church and loves the Sermon on the Mount.
However, what excites me most about Jim joining us is what he brings to this discussion.
He's really passionate about ancient societies.
And as we've observed already, it's really important to consider how Jesus' hearers took
his words.
Jim is also a great questioner.
So we're going to turn it over to him to lead this discussion on perhaps one of the most
pressing issues of our day, God and money.
Contrary to what you may have heard, greed is not good.
Well, thank you, Matt, for the very nice introduction.
I am a great questioner, but I am a questioner, and so I always tend to ask why.
I ask, what is this getting at?
And I do have an interest in ancient societies because I want to understand the world that
these people lived in, not just what this means, sounds like it means to me, but I want
to know what it means to them and what it means in their world.
So that's one of my big passions.
This comes at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus' ministry.
We don't know if this was several sermons mashed together, but the way Matthew writes
it, it's really at the beginning of what Jesus was doing.
And so it feels like, and reads like, it's setting the stage for the rest of his ministry.
And Matthew makes a decision to put this here, and whether this was the combination, where
he said it, when he said it, why Matthew made that, I'm going to let you wrestle with that,
because I, to be very honest, I don't have a great answer for that.
And he's talked about a lot in the Sermon on the Mount.
He's talked about giving to the needy, our righteous acts, not being done for the purpose
of being seen by others, and a little snippet of how to pray.
He's also talked about loving your enemies, which I know you guys did a lot of podcasts
on.
He's talked about revenge.
He's talked about reconciliation.
He's talked about a lot of difficult, challenging things so far that don't just challenge our
actions, they challenge our hearts, and they challenge how we view God and how we view the
world.
And so now he goes into one thing that I always find challenging, and just to be very
upfront about this, we're going to talk about God and money.
I am currently applying to grad school.
One of the reasons I'm applying to grad school is because it's a better financial situation
if I have the graduate degree than if I don't.
And I think this is a very hard thing to talk about, because we don't have the choice to
not engage it.
We have to engage this on some degree.
We can't just go off into the wilderness and ignore money.
Money is something we have to engage with.
We don't have a choice to skip out on it.
And so we're going to talk a little bit about God and money, and how does that work, and
how not straightforward that can be in the society we live in that absolutely, unequivocally
worships wealth and stuff.
And so he goes into three sections here.
There's three sections here.
There's the do not store up for yourself treasures on earth.
And there's the eyes, the lamp of the body, and then there's the no one can serve to
master.
So we're going to read this, and then we're going to kind of go section by section.
It says, do not store up for yourselves in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 14.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and vermin destroy and where
thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy and
where thieves do not 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 eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
No one can serve two masters.
Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise
the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
So we're going to go section by section.
We have some questions.
We're going to start with the first section.
When we consider the idea of treasures on earth versus treasures in heaven, how would
the people sitting and listening to the sermon have taken that?
Specifically, how would some of the different views within Judaism have taken that, have
understood that and heard that?
I'm talking things, Herodians, Pharisees, just a quick definition for any of our listeners
who may not know.
Herodians were Jews who accepted Greek culture and kind of tried to straddle the world of
Judaism and Greek Hellenism, which was money which looks suspiciously like America does.
And the Pharisees went off on their own to be devoted to the Word of God and to knowing
the Word of God and to walking it out.
That's probably an overly simplistic explanation, but that's sort of the bucket you can put
them in.
So how would they have taken it?
I might perpetuate some stereotypes here with my response, I don't know.
But because I'm sure there were some soft and heart-hearted people in each of these
groups when they heard Jesus.
But in general, I'd say, I bet a Herodian or I'd say a Sadducee for that matter would
have been either deeply disturbed or maybe dismissive.
I don't know.
It's hard to know.
I'd say they were probably heart-hearted or deaf to Jesus' words on this matter.
I think they probably would have tuned him out or maybe sought to discredit him and therefore
discredit what he was saying.
I think you were mentioning that they were entrenched in the world, they benefited from
creature comfort.
Of all the people in Jesus' society, you're right, we're probably closest to them with
our whole consumeristic culture.
The thing that I'm reminded about is I was thinking about the church in Laodicea when
Jesus, the words that were spoken to them, you say, I'm rich.
I have acquired wealth.
I do not need a thing.
But you do not realize that you were wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
I think that speaks to them, but I think it speaks to our society too.
Yeah.
I'd be really curious, Jim, how you would think each of these people have heard this,
because it's not something I'm super familiar with.
I just thought about in the passage in Matthew 19 where we're seeing the rich young ruler
and Jesus is talking about it's more difficult for a rich man, for a camel go through, I
have a needle in for a rich man under the kingdom of heaven.
The disciples are shocked because they assume, I think like most of the culture at some way,
that there's a link between, if I have a lot of wealth, then I've been blessed.
And so the fact that we're not supposed to store up treasure on earth, I think would
just sound strange to most people because, well, aren't I doing something right if I
have this material blessing?
That's a good point.
My understanding is there was an idea within Judaism that if you were wealthy, you were
blessed.
How prevalent that idea was amongst the disciples and there are kind of different ways of seeing
the world is an open question that we probably don't have a good answer to.
I've heard some people talk about blessed or the poor in spirit, but then they just
say blessed or the poor.
So speaking to that, if you've got great wealth, oh, God has blessed me, well, are you
sure it's a blessing?
I don't know.
Yeah.
But in the Old Testament, there's a ton of examples of God materially blessing people
and that's part of the divine promise in the covenant that God's going to take care of
as people.
So I would even question our view of that, is God blessing them with abundance or is
he blessing them with enough?
Is the blessing that God provides you with just enough or is it that God provides us
with far more than we could ever hope for materially?
And if you were blessed in such a way in that society, would you have a lot of people that
worked for you that you would be providing for at the same time?
And so you're blessing, but you're also giving out?
I don't know.
I, that's, yeah, I think that, well, so my first thought about Herodians, Pharisees,
Sadducees, and I had to refresh myself on who those different groups of people were.
And the thing that they had in common was that they were all religious, right?
And I think that as a person who's been religious for a long time, there is a tendency when
something hits you from the Bible or something hits you from a sermon.
There is a tendency when you've got sort of solidified religion in your soul.
And I don't mean religion in a good sense because there's a good sense and a bad sense
that the first thing I can do is to say, boy, that's a good passage for Jim.
Cause I think he's got some issues.
Or boy, this is a good passage for me to share with so and so because he's got, so my tendency
can be the first thing I can think, if I'm a Pharisee, the first thing I can think is,
yeah, that's those Herodians.
They have a problem with this.
I don't, I'm cool.
But this is a good Jesus.
When you talk to them and the Herodians are thinking the same, yeah, talk to those Sadducees.
They're the ones in charge of the temple and they're the ones who got all the temple treasury
and they're the ones who are abusing that money and they're the ones who are living off
the fat of the land from all these poor people who are contributing to them all the time.
This is for them and to, to, to, uh, to rebuph it by putting it on someone else.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
So, so to, just to get back to what Tim's question was and my, my own personal thought
is if a Herodian heard, if a good-hearted Herodian heard this, it would be wincing in
the crowd like, oh, I, uh, and they would see that, yeah, I'm proud.
I would like to think they would see I'm probably doing that.
And if a bad-hearted Herodian heard this, they'd probably do some sort of mental gymnastics
to explain it away, which I'm sure none of us have ever done any mental gymnastics to
explain things away.
Jesus says,
I had a gold medal in mental gymnastics.
I'm not smart enough for that.
Um, I, I actually think the Pharisees, and this is a thing that, uh, at least a couple
of you and I have discussed at different points.
If we take the Pharisees as a group, which is not totally fair, I know, but we have to
talk in general terms to ever have a discussion, the Pharisees were actually pretty good at
denying their, at denying the pursuit of wealth if you take them as a big picture.
They didn't, they didn't have ornate houses.
They didn't have extra stuff.
They really did in a lot of ways devote themselves to the text and to walking it out.
And I, I think most Pharisees would hear this and say, yeah, I'm with that.
I'm for don't store up treasures in heaven or don't store up treasures on earth, store
up treasures in heaven.
So don't pursue wealth this side of eternity.
I think the Pharisees might have been figuratively standing up and clapping here and, and would
be that a lot of them would be totally with Jesus.
Now there was also, I'm sure there were some Pharisees who were working with the Sadducees
who had the temple treasury and who greatly benefited from materially from this.
But so I think what I, what I think is so challenging about this is that there's different
ways that people can take this even within the same faith tradition.
You know, you have Jews and you have different Jews are going to hear this different ways.
A zealot would probably hear this and go, yeah, you can't store up treasure on earth.
I have no treasure on earth.
Now the zealot would have been challenged by some other things that happened early,
that he said earlier in the sermon.
What do we do with that information?
Well, I, I was kind of thinking, I don't know, something you said about the Pharisees
I wanted to, to react to because I, I feel like you're probably right there.
And maybe I felt if I could lump the Essians in there too, because they were another group
at the time.
I feel like what you and what Van were saying about, I think speaks to us today too, because
anyone who's been religious could have that trap of falling into that mindset of saying
that this is, yeah, really good.
And point your finger at everyone else that needs to repent.
And I could see, you know, the Essians, they were, they were an apocalyptic sect of Judaism
and they went off and, you know, abandoned the corrupt temple in Jerusalem.
The Pharisees, I think were a little more interesting because they didn't go off somewhere
else and they tried to bring that to the people.
But they also, I think, wanted to be gatekeepers.
And that's, that's something that I think in, in each of our hearts, our sinful nature
wants to be the one who's in control somehow and feel good about myself.
And I've got all these rules and I, I know we don't see totally eye to eye on the Pharisees.
I really, I appreciate everything they did.
I mean, we owe a ton to them for how the synagogue system was set up and Paul, you know, hey,
he's wrote a whole lot of, most of the New Testament.
I think you, you end up with probably some of the pillars of the early church being former
Pharisees who were repented.
But I think it's really interesting at the same time that Jesus, his ministry was in
the epicenter of their, their work because I think the other thing about them is that
they're, they're kind of the pinnacle of the way I view them as relying on their own strength,
like doing their own thing, which is kind of a lot of what the Old Testament was.
We're going to do this.
And then the New Testament, I think, is marked by the Holy Spirit and about reliance on God
turning to him.
And so I think there's, there's something about that in all of this that I think rings
is a through line in these passages.
Yeah.
And I, Matt, I think your, your idea of not relying on self and I, and this is where I
think it's an open question.
Sorry, there's a lot of open questions in this, like any Jesus, like any good Jewish rabbi
gives you a lot more questions than he gives you answers.
So they're open for us to wrestle with.
I don't know how well formed a concept of like relying on God.
And certainly the Holy Spirit was at the time Jesus was saying this.
So I don't want to like count the fact that the Pharisees were not relying on the Holy
Spirit prior to Jesus against them, but I can certainly see where you're coming from
of they sort of acted as gatekeepers and they, they certainly were not good at remembering
the outcasts, the people that God that that was not their strength.
They did a pretty good job walking out the text for them.
They didn't necessarily do a great job, including the marginalized, including the people who
didn't traditionally fit into God's, you know, the thing they thought God was doing.
Like when I, when I was reading this, I was thinking they were probably defensive because
the pre preceding passage seems like a lot of stuff that they, you know, prayed in public
and gave and people knew about it and all that kind of stuff.
They probably were the ones saying, Oh, yeah, this isn't me, of course, because, you know,
I give a tenth even of my spices.
Yeah.
You know, everyone knows that.
But I do think when they heard this, they might have been like, Okay, I can get, I can
get behind that.
If I was, if I'm trying to put myself in the headspace of a Pharisee listening to this,
I probably would have thought I can get behind what he's saying here.
So we're going to try to move on a little bit because we got a lot of questions to get
through.
Can I not move on for just a second?
You can not move on.
I have one script to read too.
This is how Matt and I talk on a normal basis.
I know.
I go off in a million directions.
But you did ask, what's the, what's the big picture here?
Right.
I mean, I think, I think that's worth spending a second to think about too.
And I think the bigger point Jesus is making is about our heart and what we treasure.
So, and, and I just want to bring out one little thing about the translation here.
It's fine to use store up treasures, but it's missing the word play.
Jesus is actually using a different form of the same word.
A better way to put it might be quit, treasuring earthly treasures, begin treasuring heavenly
treasures.
And then I think, you know, versus 21 and 24, which we'll talk about that they unlock
the rest of this for me.
But I think what Jesus does is he pits the focus of our heart's desire as a struggle
between looking to God or the world.
And money is that, that thread through all of it because it, I mean, abstinently, you
can buy anything with money, any earthly treasure.
Yeah.
Money does solve a lot of problems in the war, in our world.
More money does, it solves some stuff for you.
And I like, and I, and Tim, I want you to definitely read your scripture, but I just
want to say one little thing about your note about the translation, Matt, is that I think
it is important to think of treasure as a verb in this sense, because what you treasure
does not, does has nothing to do with how much money you have or how much money you
make.
And Jesus's concern is not necessarily the fact that you have money.
He's not saying don't have money.
He's saying don't treasure things that don't last forever.
And so I think that that's a, that's a really important point for me when I read these passages
about not just this one, but any passage usually about money is what's your attitude towards
it.
Yeah.
No, I think that's a great point.
I'm just looking at the parallel passage in Luke 16, where, I mean, there's a couple
places in Luke, but this one is verse 13 and 14.
So it says, no one can serve two masters.
Either you hate the one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one despise the
other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
And then it gives a response.
It said, the Pharisees who loved money heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.
He said to them, you are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows
your hearts.
What people value highly is the testable on God's sight.
So, I mean, it doesn't say all the Pharisees love money.
It doesn't say all the Pharisees.
Yeah.
That was the point I was going to make.
But I did, I did think about that while we were talking.
And that last line, I think gets at what you just said, Van, will people value highly is
the testable on God's sight.
There's a mismatch in our, in our values.
In our values and what we treasure.
That is extremely different than what God actually values.
Yeah.
And as soon as you, as soon as you start to start to put yourself in a tribe, as soon
as you say, I'm a Pharisee, then you, you develop this kind of tribal devotion to being
that.
And then that can, if you're not careful, shield you from your own weaknesses, the weaknesses
of the group.
And the fact of the matter is there were Pharisees and Sadducees and Essens and Herodians and
everybody.
And there was greed and love of money and all of those groups, no matter what their standard
was.
And I think that what Jesus is talking about here, and I really appreciate you bringing
that scripture up, Tim, is because what Jesus is talking about here is your heart.
What is in your heart?
What are you cherishing in your heart?
What are you treasuring?
And, and he's addressing the fact that you cannot treasure what you cannot keep forever.
And that's, and that's a great way to kind of wrap this episode up is that, is two things,
what we cherish on this earth we can't keep forever.
And we're called to value, to change the way we think, to value what God values.
And that's not an easy equation.
And I think for the rest of our discussion, one thing I just, I want to go back to what
Tim said, it says the Pharisees loved money and while, in my opinion, the Pharisees were
generally 30,000 foot good at denying wealth, not pursuing wealth, it also shows that we
can't view them as a monolith.
That they're not, just because the Pharisees as a group were not that, and like Van said,
that their strength as a group was that, that doesn't mean that the, some particular
Pharisees weren't, didn't have some weaknesses in those areas.
And so hopefully next podcast, we're going to start talking a little bit more about some
of the ways we do this and some of the pitfalls of money and stuff and wealth and, and all
of that.
But I really appreciate what you guys had to say, really good thought provoking stuff.
And we're going to continue this discussion in the next pod.
Thanks Jim.