This Is The Way: The Words + Ways Of Jesus
Week 17 | Matthew 6:19-24 (CSB)
Matthew 6:19-24 (CSB)
19 “Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal.
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
23 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!
24 “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.
Message Title:
Treasure
Today, in our series This Is The Way: The Words + Ways of Jesus, Jesus begins to teach the disciples and crowds of Hebrews on the hills of Galilee about a Kingdom perspective on two seemingly unrelated topics: one’s spiritual health and one’s money.
Did you know that throughout the entire Bible, Jesus talked about and taught about money more than anyone else in Scripture?
Our natural sinful default toward money is greed and a love for money that produces a life of entitled selfishness instead of a Kingdom, Biblical worldview of money that leads to generosity and a life of grateful, others-centric, healthy selflessness.
I have two very strong and challenging points today, so I encourage you to listen to what the Spirit of the Lord is speaking to you and invite you to trust in Him today and for the rest of your life as a follower of Jesus.
Point 1: If
is your master, then you will be led into
darkness. If
is your Master, then you will be led into
light.
Matthew 6:19-23 (CSB)
19 “Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal.
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
23 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!
Okay, today I brought one of my little treasure chests from the house. I want us to imagine a giant one of these inside of a treasury or a storehouse or a big barn. Think of all of your valuables being placed by you into this place (Begin to remove all of my jewelry, cash, debit cards, gift cards, and my wallet and place them in this treasure chests.)
Jesus gave and still gives a strong command here for His Kingdom citizens, the children of God. He opens up today’s Scriptures with the command “Do Not!” Somebody shout “Do Not”. Do not store treasures here on earth. Not what Jesus is not saying is to be irresponsible with the monetary provision that God provides to you. Jesus is not inviting us to be poor stewards of the money and currency that He graciously provides us with. Back then, treasures would be stored in a secured vault, stored underneath someone’s home, or hidden in a large farm field.
Jesus declared that moths and rust destroy stored treasures on earth and they are liable to be stolen by thieves who can break into your places of storage and steal your earthly treasures. Your earthly treasures are not your True Treasure. Jesus is making a huge point about the brokenness and destructive patterns of this sin-marred world that is being redeemed and restored into a New Heaven and New Earth one day, but until then, your treasures stored on earth are susceptible to being lost, devalued, and destroyed in the fallen, sinful, brokenness of our world.
Then Jesus gave and still gives a strong contrasting command here for Kingdom citizens, the children of God. He continued by commanding to store up treasures for yourselves in heaven where moths, rust, and thieves cannot and will never get access to. Heaven and New Heaven are perfect, peaceful, sinless, and the delightful reality of God’s fullness and His presence. No sin is there because God’s holiness does not allow sin to abide with Him. And Jesus gave and still gives today an alternative storing plan, store your treasures, really True Treasure, in Heaven.
Pastor Aaron, how do I store treasures in Heaven when I’m still living on earth?
The answer to that question really is answering this question: Who is your master?
Whoever is your master has your heart and wherever your heart is there your treasure is as well.
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
So a better question to ask yourself today, and really each day, is not what is my True Treasure…but Who is my True Treasure?
Whoever has your heart has your treasure and whoever has your treasure is your Master.
This is why Jesus included the topic of spiritual health alongside this topic of money during this Kingdom teaching and Kingdom unveiling.
Jesus ties how you treasure and steward your finances to your spiritual health!
You cannot separate money and health. In our Lord, King, and Savior’s point of view, our stance of money reveals the posture of our heart toward God, self, and our neighbor.
Let’s look again at how Jesus explains our spiritual health with the example of light and darkness
*22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
23 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!***
In this 1st century Palenstine context, Jesus’ use of light references someone who is GENEROUS with money. Jesus’ use of darkness references someone who is STINGY with money. Light enables us to see. Darkness blinds us to stumble in the dark. So Jesus is saying a spiritually healthy person is GENEROUS, and a spiritually unhealthy person is GREEDY.
The way God designed our eyes is to let light in and out through our iris which open and close. So if our eye is bad, our eye struggles to let light in and out. So the storage of a bad eye lets in dimmed or low light which eventually becomes darkness and blindness and the eye doesn’t even realize it is storing up darkness!
Those who are greedy find it mighty difficult to see ways to be financially generous.
Those who are generous find it very simple and visible to be abundant in sharing financially and the generous find it repulsive to be selfish and stingy financially.
Adventure Church, who is your master?
Point 2: The
of our
is trusting God with HIS
.
is our relational
to the
goodness of God.
24 “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.
Adventure Church, you cannot have two masters. God is jealous for you and He will not share you with other masters who will not treat you like True Treasure.
The word money in verse 24b in the Greek is mamōnas which means: wealth, riches, money, or assets *personified *
In Aramaic this word is also called Mammon.
Jesus is personifying money as an idol. And this idol has a demonic evil spirit behind it known as Mammon.
The Words and Ways of Jesus reveal that money, or the spirit of Mammon, has the potential to be an idol and master in your life.
How do we break the greedy and stingy spirit of Mammon in our life?
We break the spirit of Mammon with generosity and the genesis of generosity is tithing. We learn how to become generous children of God by trusting God with the tithe of our money. We will break this down deeply in small groups today, so let me first set some balanced theological and practical foundations.
Tithe: tenth
We don’t give God a tithe. We RETURN God HIS tithe. The tithe is holy. God is holy. The tithe is set apart for God, God’s glory, and our good!
Tithe is the firstfruit from what we earn.
Tithing happened before God gave the Law (Cain and Abel, Abram, Isaac, and Jacob), God established tithing of food, cattle, grain, lambs, and other edible substance with the Law as a means of caring for and taking care of the Levites who did not have land or homes since they served and lived in the tabernacle, tent of meeting, and the temple, and Jesus even mentioned tithing in the New Testament before His death on the cross, and the Book of Hebrews mentioned tithing after the Law was fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Jesus into the reign and era of God’s grace, and what tithing does in the spiritual realm when we tithe on earth the generational line of Melchizedek, Jesus receives our tithe in heaven.
Tithing is the only place Scripturally God challenged His people to test Him. I will share a testimony about this in a few moments.
Tithing is the starting place but not the stopping place. Tithing sanctifies our heart and renews our mind to become more generous and more spiritually healthy like Jesus.
Let’s stay Biblical and remember that all of you and all of your possessions (money, paychecks, and bonuses) belong to God. Book of Acts chapter 2-3 reference of the church sharing everything during that 1st century Palestinian context. So tithing should lead to a life of generosity. The 10% belongs to God AND the 90% belongs to God. We are not our own. God bought us back from sin, death, and hell with the shed blood of His Son Jesus Christ.
Valissa and I have lived on 90% of our income since our dating days and now we live about 80%-85% on our income generously beyond the tithe.
Ultimately, tithing is a tool that teaches us to truly trust in God.
In Adventure Church, all tithes go to ministry related items, tools, and resources for local and global Great Commission purposes. Not one tithe goes to any pastor’s salary in Adventure Church since all pastors are co-vocational. Define co-vocational/bi-vocational. Give practical examples of where tithe goes in this church.
We tithe our tithe monthly (extension tithe) as a church to God by tithing to our denomination known as The Foursquare Church. The Foursquare Church uses local church’s tithe for four areas of ministry across different regions in the U.S.A and internationally:
- New global workers and projects (FMI: Foursquare Missions International)
- New pastors and churches (Church Plants and pastoral training)
- Transitions for senior pastors and re-starting churches (Succession plans and church revitalizations)
- Next generation of students (NextGen Ministries: Cradle to College | 0-30 years old)
To accomplish this, The Foursquare Church does a Return of the Tithe every quarter to faithful tithing and Hub reporting Foursquare Churches. We recently got our return of the tithe because we are a faithful tithing and faithful stewarding Foursquare church and I prayerfully made the decision to split our recent Return of the Tithe evenly across all four areas of ministry I just mentioned instead of receiving it for the church.
We don’t pass a basket or tithing plate, this season all of our tithe and giving is done in our church app with the GIVE tab and on our website’s GIVE tab.
TITHING is the genesis of living a life of generosity!
Tithing is returning to God and honoring Him with the best with our firstfruits or increase. Firstfruits back then were what you grew as agricultural people: food being grain, pressed oil, and cattle.
Conclusion: Tithe and give generously, with a clear conscience, willingly as the Holy Spirit leads you.
JESUS IS OUR TRUE TREASURE!
Colossians 1:15-20 (CSB)
15 He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
16
For everything was created by him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities—
all things have been created through him and for him.
17
He is before all things,
and by him all things hold together.
18
He is also the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have
first place in everything.
19
For God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him,
20
and through him to reconcile
everything to himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
This Is The Way: The Words + Ways of Jesus
Week 17: True Treasure | Matthew 6:19-24 (CSB)
Sunday Small Group Questions
- Let’s just take a few moments to first thank and praise God for Jesus and read about God’s generosity first and foremost. Read John 3:16-17.
- Since the Gospel reveals that God gave first and God is the most generous Person, let’s read and unpack some contextual Old Testament & New Testament verses on tithing and generous giving together. Read the following set of Scriptures on tithing AND generosity: Genesis 4:1-4, Genesis 14:17-24, Genesis 28:20-22; Leviticus 27:30-32, Numbers 18:21-28, Deuteronomy 26:12-14, Proverbs 3:5-9, Proverbs 30:7-9, 2nd Chronicles 31:5-12, Nehemiah 13:5-12, Malachi 3:7-12, Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42, Hebrews 7:5-10, 2nd Corinthians 9:1-12 1st Timothy 5:17-18, 1 Timothy 6:17-19, Hebrews 13:16, James 2:14-17, 1st Corinthians 9:1-23, 1st Corinthians 16:1-3, Acts 4:33-35, and Acts 20:35.
- Tithing and being generous with our money is an act of trust and a posture of worship to God. What are your questions about tithing and being generous with your money in your life and in Adventure Church?
- Pray for one another to serve our True Treasure & our true master Jesus Christ, and for God to break the spirit mammon off of our lives with a life of obedient tithing AND generosity.