So most people who are preparing for retirement,
most of them have their retirement money
at least growing usually in some sort of stock portfolio
be it a 401K or retirement plan invested into the stock market
to see yearly returns.
But I want you to imagine for a moment
that you have insider knowledge,
insider knowledge that the stock market
is going to crash tomorrow.
Just absolutely wipe out all of that wealth.
Every single dollar invested in certain companies
will be wiped out completely overnight.
But imagine for a moment at the same time
that you know of a secure investment somewhere,
one investment that is guaranteed to last.
What would you be doing tonight
if you had that information?
Would you not be divesting of everything you possibly can
and shifting it to that one secure investment
that is going to weather the storm?
Well, I think we all would and you'd be stupid not to.
And if only investing was that easy, right?
Where we had that kind of knowledge.
Well, Jesus says in Matthew chapter six,
beginning in verse 19,
don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth
where moth and rust destroy
and where thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven
where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves don't 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 eye is healthy,
your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is bad,
your whole body will be full of darkness.
So if the light within you is darkness,
how deep is that darkness?
No one can serve two masters
since either he will hate one and love the other
or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
This is God's word.
So earlier in chapter six,
Jesus talked about the contrast
between doing works of righteousness
and works of devotion like giving and praying and fasting
on the one hand in order that others might see you
and you might gain the reward of their praise.
And then on the other hand,
doing them in a true devotion to God
and a desire to remain connected to him
in which case you would receive the reward
of living in the light of his presence
and his presence in you.
And now Jesus digs into the idea a little bit further
of rewards and treasures
and contrasts it with materialism
and ultimately addresses where our loyalty lies.
The question on our minds as we go into this teaching
in this text should be what are we really living for?
What are we really living for?
Jesus uses three ideas to get his point across
in this text, two treasures, two eyes and two masters.
So if you're taking notes,
the first point I'll have you write down is two treasures.
What you value shapes you.
Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth
where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven
where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves don't break in and steal
for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Jesus begins by using a negative,
don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth
and then he turns it around to a positive
but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
And so the issue is not whether or not we store up
but where you store up and the temporal and eternal value
of the things being stored up.
The punchline of that first part is this,
your heart is wherever you store up your treasure.
And the Jewish concept of the heart
is far more than just emotions or passion or will
but it's something like the whole person.
In other words, you are what you treasure.
You are what you treasure.
It's not simply what you're after
but you are what you treasure.
Both places that Jesus lays out aren't equal, right?
One is subject to decay, the other is free from decay.
One can be stolen, the other is secure
and in the end one is subject to destruction
and the other is eternally precious.
And so back to the stock market.
If you knew it was all crashing tomorrow
but there was a secure investment, what would you do?
The theologian John Stott says,
the question is not so much what we own but what owns us.
Jesus doesn't need your wealth.
He doesn't need your wealth.
God in the Psalms says, the earth is the Lord's
and everything in it.
Every jewel, every mineral, every precious metal,
the cattle on a thousand hills are the Lord's.
He doesn't need your pittance of a wealth
but he wants your loyalty.
And materialism, the pursuit of earthly temporal things
is in direct conflict with the loyalty of God
or loyalty to God.
You store up treasure in heaven by living
in devoted obedience to God in all areas of your life
and there is a reward that motivates the disciple
to put God first above and before all things
we talked about this last week.
But sometimes we get in this mindset
that we have to do everything from an altruistic standpoint
meaning I do it but I want nothing out of this.
I gave nothing, right?
And Jesus flips the script and tells her
10 times in Matthew says, do it for the reward.
Like, you guys like rewards, right?
You like to do something and you like to get paid
at the end of the day, right Jordan?
That's good, right?
Remove some junk, get paid, right?
Unless you just do it for the love of removing junk.
And Jesus says, there is a reward for the disciple
at the end of the day.
There is a reward for the disciple who puts God first
above and before all things.
So what are you valuing?
Have you put your hope and what will not last?
Have you been working wholeheartedly to counteract,
decay and entropy?
Or have you been loving and loving for the disciple
or have you been loving God with your whole heart?
The key truth from this first point in the scripture is this,
wherever your treasure is, so is your heart.
Don't be deceived into thinking you can have both.
As Jesus will point out later.
What you prioritize, what you invest in,
what you lose sleep over,
reveals what you truly love and trust.
And that leads to Jesus' next idea, two eyes.
What you see determines how you live.
The eye is the lamp of the body,
but if your eye is healthy,
your whole body will be full of light,
but if your eye is bad, your whole body
will be full of darkness.
So if the light within you is darkness,
how deep is that darkness?
I keep ending it with a question.
I don't know how to do it with an exclamation point.
It's so weird.
Sorry, I kept noticing that in first service.
I'm like, it says exclamation point,
but I make it into a question every time.
Sometimes you become aware of yourself
and you can't undo, like, there I am.
So he uses this idea of eyes, right?
And to us, it's probably lost on translation
because this is a Jewish idiom,
something that they would have been very familiar with,
but we're kind of like losing it
in the translation into English.
What is he talking about here about
the idea of the eyes of the body?
What is the idea of the eyes of the body?
What is he talking about here about eyes?
Well, they had an idea of a healthy eye or a bad eye
or what they would call a good eye or an evil eye.
And the idea of a healthy eye in their understanding,
literally the word healthy translated in the original
means single, single.
It's one singular undivided focus.
A healthy eye is one singular undivided focus
and not just a focus on the anything,
but it's a focus on the right thing.
It's seeing life in reality through the lens of God's kingdom.
It's a life totally devoted to God's service
and interesting enough elsewhere in the scripture,
when it is used, it is directly connected often to generosity.
So whatever it is about seeing life correctly
and living life in the kingdom,
it has something to do with generosity.
That's the healthy eye.
But the eye that is bad represents greediness,
enviousness, jealousy, and stinginess.
It's seeing life through the lens of selfish gain.
And so if your eyes are single and focused devotion
to what is supremely true,
that is devoted to loyalty to God and God's service,
then your body is filled with light and the light of truth
and in that light you can flourish.
But the opposite is true as well,
that if your eyes are jealous and envious
of a different life and a purpose,
a different life from the one that God has assigned you,
then you will let darkness into your body
and what flourishes in darkness except sin and despair.
We know this with plants, right?
Don't ask me much about them, but I know a few things.
Sun is important, at least somewhat, right?
Light is important to them doing something,
becoming something, growing, that's what it's called.
Light is important, it feeds them.
What flourishes in darkness?
Sin, despair, not good.
And so the eye is almost like a window
and how the eye sees the lens through which it filters,
either lets light in to fill and nourish the whole man
or purple woman, or it dulls the light, distorts the light
and what it lets in is nothing but darkness
to fill the man or woman with darkness.
It's like a crack on a camera lens.
If you view wealth or success or security
through that distorted cracked lens,
then your heart will become distorted by materialism,
by the pursuit of those things and filled with darkness.
And Jesus is warning that if we live this way,
friends, we will experience a fractured distorted life.
We will experience a life of anxiety, a life of decay,
a life fractured by sin and despair.
And so the key truth in this is what you fixate on
either brings light or blinds you spiritually.
Brothers and sisters, have you ever experienced this?
Anyone here experienced that when you got fixated
on something, you became spiritually dull?
Anyone?
Raise them high.
We're gonna be proud here at Village.
Raise them high.
We're gonna boast in our sin so we can glory in God's grace.
Amen.
Look what we were before God.
I've been there before where you fixate on something so much,
something that you want, something that you think you need,
something that you desire and you become spiritually blind
and darkened and you begin to feel the despair
of the ache of the heart for light to fill you again.
And I've been on the other side where my eyes were wide open
and light was flooding in and I felt nourished and flourishing.
Jesus is warning that we should not live this way,
that what you fixate on either brings light
or blinds you spiritually, that your perspective
shapes your soul.
And so do we live our lives as if God's kingdom
is the supreme purpose for living?
Do we view our lives and our stuff as kingdom property
for God's glory and honor?
Or are we jealous and envious of a different life
than the one assigned to us by God?
Are we envious of God's resources
that he has spread about elsewhere that aren't mine?
And I want them now.
Now, are we living in light or living in darkness?
Two eyes.
And now, finally two masters.
Who you serve controls you.
No one can serve two masters since either he will hate one
and love the other or he will be devoted to one
and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
This afternoon is the Super Bowl, right?
And we all want no one to win, right?
That would be the best Super Bowl this afternoon.
But if someone has to win, it's gotta be the,
I mean, if someone has to win, it's gotta be the Eagles.
If someone has to lose, it's gotta be the Chiefs.
Come on.
Let's divide the room.
Sheep goats.
Not.
Could you imagine though, this afternoon,
as they're announcing the offense that's taking the field
for the first one, let's say it's the Chiefs
coming on the field and they're like playing quarterback,
you know, Patrick Mahomes and everyone.
All right.
And then they go through a series
and it's a three and out and they kick off, right?
And now they're gonna announce the offense for the Eagles
and they get to the quarterback
and they say playing quarterback today is Patrick Mahomes.
That would be ludicrous, right?
He's playing for both teams.
He's the all-time quarterback, right?
I don't know if you've ever played like pickup game
of football, but when you're the all-time quarterback,
you actually do favor one of the teams
or the other one.
Like it's more fun to play with one than the other one.
Like you really do want one to win and not the other.
Or if you've ever played, tried to play chess with yourself.
Anyone tried to play chess with yourself?
Yeah, the game of chess.
Like you start off, right?
Where even we're going to battle and pretty soon you're like,
I'm going for the underdog, right?
And you start to make bad decisions over here
and cripple this team, right?
You can't serve both masters. Either you'll hate one
or despise the other, be devoted to one, right?
Jesus is saying you have to stop living that way.
You have to stop living one foot in the world
and one foot in the kingdom, one foot in materialism
and one foot in reliance on God's provision.
You can't live in both.
Stop.
Stop living that way.
And in fact, the word serve when it says
no one can serve two masters.
It is literally a slave of.
No one can be a slave of two masters.
There's no gray area here.
You can't have a slave of this person and of that person.
There's one master.
There's no third way.
You either are serving God
or you are serving something else,
but you cannot serve both God and something else.
The reformer, John Calvin said,
where riches hold dominion of the heart,
God has lost his authority.
God has been kicked off the throne of the heart
of that person.
And you might ask, why is he specifically talking
about money here?
And I would say people, you know exactly
why he's talking about money.
There ain't a person in this room
who hasn't gotten anxious or stressed about money
at some point in time, amen?
He's talking about money because whether it's 2000 years ago
or today, the phenomenon continues.
We get wrapped up in possessions
and earthly material wealth.
And when he says money, he's talking more than cash.
It includes the possessions that one could buy
with that money as well.
It is truly a catch all phrase for material temporal wealth.
And some translations actually transliterate the word money
into an Aramaic word, mann, with a capital M.
In other words, they personify money or material wealth
as if it is a rival master to God
that is in direct opposition to him.
You have God and you have mammon.
You can't serve God and mammon.
And again, this isn't about money or wealth itself,
but rather the love, the trust, the loyalty
and the pursuit of wealth over other properly ordered loves.
You guys know about proper order of loves?
Who are we to love first and fully?
God, he is to have that spot, that position in our lives,
no matter what.
And for some of you who are married, you have a spouse
who is to take a proper order of love over other people.
This is good and right.
If you're not showing love here,
but you're showing love everywhere else, this is not good.
If this is a proper order of love and this is to be higher,
this is the way it is.
And oftentimes we will pursue things like wealth
or material goods and we will have disordered loves
where our love for it will begin to remove
or usurp other loves that are supposed to be higher.
Haven't you guys seen wealth destroy relationship
or more importantly, the pursuit of wealth?
Oh, honey, I gotta work another 80, 80 hours this week.
Sorry, I won't be around.
Multiply that times 52 and you got a year
lived separate apart in pursuit of what?
In pursuit of what?
Pursuit of what?
Material wealth, success, status.
Mammon is personified in the scripture here
as a rival master to God in direct opposition to him.
And when we love and trust and pursue those things
over the proper loves like God's supremely,
then it begins to take place in our hearts
that ought to be given to God.
And material wealth which makes all kinds of promises to us.
Yes, what are some of the promises
that material wealth makes to us?
Anyone?
Happiness, security.
What else?
Freedom, confidence.
Anything else that material wealth promises us?
Power, strength.
Someone in first service said,
like a hedge against suffering.
We can buy our way out of suffering.
Anything else?
What does material wealth promise us?
Fun, prestige, status.
Things, things and more things.
I don't know the stats off the top of my head,
but I know that the personal storage unit business
is thriving in the United States of America
because we got our house and we got our garage,
but we have more stuff.
I've got a detached garage at home
and there are things in there that I haven't seen in three years.
Like I don't even know what's in there.
I'm talking about a stuff problem, right?
This made me think of Greek mythology.
In Greek mythology, there are these creatures called sirens.
And the sirens, they're these dangerous creatures.
They're beautiful but deadly.
And they live on rocky islands
and they sing enchanting songs
that lure sailors in to their doom.
Their voices are irresistible
and they promise things like safety and pleasure and fulfillment.
But as the sailors draw near,
they discover the truth that their ships are crashing upon the rocks.
It's too late and they are destroyed.
And so I think Jesus warns us that wealth
or man or material possessions,
they work the same way.
That material wealth or man and sings a very sweet song.
Just like the sirens, material wealth whispers promises to us,
more money will make you secure.
Success will finally satisfy you.
You deserve comfort and luxury and more.
And at first it sounds good.
Like who wouldn't want security?
Who wouldn't want comfort and pleasure for all your days, right?
But those who set their course toward wealth
as their ultimate goal soon find themselves headed straight for the rocks.
The problem with mammon is that it never fully delivers on its promise.
More money is never enough, right?
A wealthy man was once asked,
you have all this wealth, you have all these possessions,
you have all this money, how much is enough?
To which he replied, a little more.
A little more, it's always a little more.
Have you felt that before?
If we just make X amount as a household, we'll be set forever.
Eh.
Money never feels like enough, it always is something we're chasing.
Success never fully satisfies.
It leaves us wanting.
After First Service, Kimberly shared a story of Michael Phelps, right?
The swimmer.
If a while back you probably remember where he goes to the Olympics
and he sweeps the categories and wins all the gold, right?
And you would imagine from that point on,
he is standing on a mountaintop with glory beams coming out of his eyes and his head,
and he's just standing there in awe and glory for the rest of his days
until Jesus comes and what happened?
He fell into a deep depression.
It's all my life I was aiming for this mountaintop
and now that I'm here, what do I have to live for?
There's nothing here.
I've got to find a new mountain to climb.
I've got to find something to conquer.
Success promises.
It sings that sweet song, come on up.
It's going to be amazing and then you stand on top and you go,
there's nothing.
Nothing.
Lasting.
In Homer's Odyssey,
when Odysseus had to sail past the sirens,
he decided that he was going to tie himself to the mast of the ship
so that he wouldn't be drawn in by their sweet song.
But another hero, Orpheus, he escaped in a different way.
Orpheus, he played a more beautiful song than the sirens
and he drowned out their deadly melody.
The only way to resist material wealth's call,
the only way to stand against Mammon's sweet song
is to listen to the greater song,
the voice of Christ,
calling us to trust in him,
calling us to come to him and find rest and security.
To drink from the well that never runs dry,
to eat of the bread that fully satisfies.
This is the call, the song of Christ.
Instead of trusting wealth for our security,
we trust in God's provision.
Pastor John Piper said, no sane person on his deathbed
ever was comforted by his possessions.
Notice he said sane, right?
I could imagine an insane person being like,
look all my stuff.
Like Scrooge McDuck, right?
Swimming through his...
Instead of storing our treasures on earth,
invest in eternity.
Tim Keller said, the only way to free ourselves
from the enslaving power of money
is through a deep trust in Christ
that makes us radically generous.
In other words, what Tim Keller is saying is,
you can't just occupy a neutral place between the two.
Oh, I want to trust in Christ,
but I also want all this other things.
I'll just occupy this.
If I start to go this way,
I'll just go the other way for a little while.
What he says is the only way to combat the power of it
is through act of generosity.
To let your heart and your mind and everything that you know see,
you act in radical generosity,
pushing against the bent, the desire to store up for yourselves
here on earth,
but instead to soak freely and generously
for the kingdom and God's glory.
Unless you think that you're now in that
church service that everyone dreads to be at,
where we're talking about giving to the church,
that's not the point.
I'm not going to look at our giving this week
and see if there was a little bump.
All I care about is whether or not you are a generous person
with your spouse, with your kids,
do your neighbors go, wow, they're really generous?
Do your coworkers go, wow,
one thing that marked them, generosity,
they just kept giving.
They gave of their time, they gave of their energy,
they gave of their finances,
they gave of anything that they had as a help
and as a testament to what Christ had given to them.
That's all that matters.
And that's all Jesus is talking about here.
He's not trying to build an institution
or manipulate people into giving.
He's trying to say the kind of radical love
and devotion to God and relying upon his provision
is the kind that pushes against materialism
through radical generosity.
Remember, the healthy eye is single focused, it's devoted,
but it also shows up over and over again
in passages about generosity.
It's looking to give, it's looking to advance,
it's looking to put employee, it's resources,
whatever they are, whether great or small,
employ those resources for the kingdom.
The eye is scanning about seeing
how can I put the kingdom resources to work for God's glory.
That's a generous eye, a healthy eye.
I'm gonna invite the worship team to come up.
And I'm gonna invite us to stop chasing
what fades in this world
and start clinging to the only thing that lasts, Jesus.
The key truth for this final point is this.
You will serve what you trust.
Who is really on the throne of your life?
I brought this up, I'm gonna grab my Bible here,
but I brought this up in first service
because there's this Psalm written by a man named Asaph.
He was one of David's Psalm writers.
And Asaph, he's got a problem because he wakes up one day
and he says that his foot almost fell off the ground.
He wakes up one day and he says that his foot almost slipped.
He almost fell that day because he woke up
and he started envying the evildoers.
He started envying the arrogant.
He started to see the prosperity of the wicked.
And in his heart, he started to say,
why are they prospering?
Why do they look like they're floating about on air
with no worries in life?
Why does it look like they can cruise through?
And they're not obeying God, they're not trusting in Him,
they're not devoted to His Word.
What is going on?
And he said his foot almost slipped as he began to envy.
He said they have easy times until they die.
Their bodies are well fed, they're not in trouble like others.
They are not afflicted like most people.
They wear pride around their neck like a necklace
and violence covers them like a garment.
And so he's like, God, how can this be?
And then he says, did I purify my own heart?
Did I live right and righteously before you?
Did I wash my hands in innocent for nothing?
Did I live this way for nothing?
Why am I afflicted all day long and punished every morning?
Why am I in the situation I am when everyone else seems prospering?
Then he said, he held all of this until he entered the courts of God.
And upon entering the courts of God, he saw their fate.
He saw their ultimate destiny.
He said, until I entered God's sanctuary, then I understood their fate.
Indeed, you put them in slippery places, you make them fall into ruin.
How suddenly they become a desolation, they come to end, swept away by tears.
Like one waking from a dream, Lord, when arising, you will despise their image.
He says, those who pursue all of those other things, those things that seem to be the right things to pursue in this world,
they all have an end.
They come to ruin.
They find darkness entering in instead of light.
And they ultimately find desolation and fractured despair.
And then how does he respond in worship to the Lord?
Well, he says this.
He says, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
Who do I have in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire beside you.
My heart and my flesh may fail, but you are the portion of my life and my strength and my portion forever.
You are the strength of my life and my portion forever.
He says, you're my treasure.
He says, you're my focus.
You're my hope.
You're where I stake my claim.
In my order of love, it's you and you and you alone.
And I will not let that be displaced by any other pursuit.
Church, if we have put our heart or affections on anything else, then you know the outcome.
Put your hope in the Lord.
Serve Him only.
Trust Him.
And watch as you become a generous person, that your eyes light up, your life lights up.
You become like a tree planted by streams of water, fruitful and flourishing.
Will you pray with me?
Father, I pray that your word would sink deep into our hearts and take root.
That we would be a generous people.
That you would mark us in our relationships with those that we love and in our neighborhoods and with those around us.
That we would be marked by a generosity, radical generosity that comes from a life that is put its hope and trust in you and you alone.
Others may trust in things that fail or things that decay, but we trust in you, the eternal everlasting God.
And we invest for rewards in heaven.
That is rewards to stand in the light of your presence, to have your presence and glory in our lives.
To cause us to flourish in a bound here today, not some future time.
To have your life in our life.
That we would be fruitful and flourish.
We thank you God for your word and we pray that you would continue to shape and mold us by it as we allow for it to do its work in our hearts.
Forgive us if we have set our affection on anything else.
Forgive us if we put our hope in anything else and if we've pursued other things except you as our first love.
Restore us God and return us back to our first love.
Experience the joy that comes from that.
We ask in Jesus' name, amen.