Laying Up Treasures in the Kingdom

Good morning, church. Glad to see you here today. My name is Pastor Stephen Combs, and I'm filling in while Pastor Gary is taking a little time off. And it's my pleasure to be here with you today. And just as a reminder, always, we have two venues going on simultaneously right now.

We have the worship center right here. We have the gathering place next door. And I just was popping my head in worship with them a little bit. On the count of three, gathering place. Why don't y' all make some noises if you can hear you in here?

One, two, three. Well, y' all. Not. Not y' all. Y' all weren't the gathering place.

This is the worship center. Gathering place is over there. Gathering place. They yelled over you. I'm sorry.

Let's try this again. 1, 2, 3. Did you hear them? I love that. Anyway, glad to have everyone here, and we're all one church.

And those who are watching online, glad to have you here. Can you yell on the count of three live streams, see if we can hear you? No, never mind. Anyway, so we're continuing our series today. This is called Kingdom Living.

And this has been such a powerful series going through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, chapters five through seven, which is considered the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived. And so last Sunday, today and next Sunday, they're actually all kind of connected because all three of these are talking about having priorities that are kingdom priorities. And last Sunday, Mike taught us about how to. We learned how to pray prayers that are kingdom prayers that prioritize God's kingdom first. And then next Sunday, we're going to see that if we seek God first and we seek his will above all else, that he will provide for us here today.

We will see that there is eternal meaning in the goals that we have set for ourselves at work, goals that we've set for ourselves in relationships, our time and our stuff. You see, in our culture, which is we're going to specifically talking to the American culture, there are many things that compete with the culture that God intends for us, his people in the kingdom. And there's a battle that's going on within you for your allegiance to what one of these cultures, whether it be the culture of the kingdom or the culture of America. So today we're going to be discussing the battle between two specific masters, and that is God and money. The pursuit of money is one of the greatest adversaries to the kingship of God in our lives.

But as we're going to see this morning, the Word money, which in the Greek is the word mammon, it's transliterated the word mammon. And so if you grew up like reading King James Version Bible here in King James Version, you know that when you read the passage we're going to be reading today, the word mammon is the one that you're most familiar with. And in this time, it would have to the audience that heard it, the word mammon would have been to them a personification of money and riches that actually kind of. It's like a mammon is like a false deity against God. And so mammon represents all the things that direct our attention to, away from God and his kingdom planned for us.

So what are things that do that? Wealth will do it, security, success, comfort, even our dreams. Are those things inherently bad? No, but they can. When you pursue those things above the kingdom of God, it can become a form of mammon, an idol in our lives.

And so we have these two words that I think, you know, is kind of like it's ingrained into our culture is the desire to live the American dream. And that's to have a good paying job, have a spouse, have a house, have some kids, have some pets, some transportation. Man, if you can really live the dream, you'll have a beach house or a mountain house. And it just keeps on going. And the idea is climb higher up the corporate ladder.

Become the greatest that you possibly can for your own glory. Consume constantly. You deserve it. And the truth is though, mammon, which you could call that, it's called the American Dream, we could just as easily call it the Mammon Dream because it says you never have enough, it never actually lets you feel content. And it just always is whispering in your ear just a little bit more.

If you could just get that next thing. And that's the Mammon Dream. But some of us have already discovered that there's an emptiness in that pursuit. And we found that the treasures that come with the American Dream, the Mammon dream, not only do they not satisfy, but they don't last forever. It's been a painful part of my life to see some loved ones who seemingly like, were living the American Dream, like they had all the stuff I was just talking about.

And then to end this life, grow old to the point where they need to be put in a nursing home. And so all the stuff that they've been accumulating and in this world suddenly gets dispersed to family members and they move into a single hospital room with some knickknacks from their life. And then that's all they now have. It's been taken away even in this life. And some of y' all are nodding your heads because you've experienced that.

And it's really hard to see that, because, you know, the stuff can become ingrained in who we are. It can become ingrained in who you thought they were. And then when you see somebody go through that, it really challenges the idea of, like, what really matters. When you see that happen to someone, you're like, that stuff didn't really turn out to matter all that much because all they really need to survive is a bed and some food and a shelter. But all that stuff, what good did it do them in the end?

And the truth is, time never stops, right? The aging process never ends. People, even the ones that you love the most, come and go because time always wins. So at face value, it seems like that there's nothing worth valuing. Seems like there's nothing worth placing our treasure in that has a lasting value or a permanent value.

And so if we stopped right here, it'd be the biggest bummer sermon you've ever heard in your life. But God, he offers us eternal treasures, things that are worth valuing, that have everlasting value. He didn't create us to join the rat race. He created us to pursue Him. And there's nothing that can substitute the peace and the joy and the purpose that we can find in that pursuit.

So in today's text, we're going to see our Savior, Jesus, offering to each one of us a better pursuit, a better dream, a greater treasure, and a permanent treasure in the kingdom of God. So turn to someone near you right now and say, I'm done with the rat race. Go ahead and do it. Say, I'm done with the rat race.

When we leave here today, we're going to leave with a knowledge and a readiness to pursue treasures that really matter, treasures that last forever. Are you ready for this? All right, that one person's ready. The rest of y' all, you'll catch on. You'll catch on.

In Matthew 6, Jesus continued the sermon on the Mount by teaching that those whose heart is on God, that these are, if you're his kingdom citizens, that you will lay up permanent treasures in heaven. And we, too, can put away permanent treasures in heaven as God's kingdom citizens. So how do we invest our treasures in heaven? I'm wondering as much as you are right now. Well, the scripture is going to give us three ways to lay up treasures in heaven.

Let's stand to our feet as we Read. Right now, we're going to be turning to the Book of Matthew, chapter six. And if you were, like, you know, professional at Bible Drill, growing up, this is your chance to get that Bible out and flip it out to Matthew, chapter six. The rest of us joining on. It's on the screens in the Bible app.

Lots of places we're looking at Matthew, chapter 6, verse 19. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, 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.

So 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. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

Let's read this last sentence together. You cannot serve God and money. And may God bless the reading of his Word. Amen. You can have a seat.

So this is going to give us three ways that we can lay up treasures as God's kingdom citizens, by, first of all, realigning our hearts on heavenly things. Realigning our hearts on heavenly things. And so a practice that, if you're new to us this morning at Eastgate, we take very seriously the word of God. And every single word has value. And so we like to pull out some words that maybe could be misunderstood or maybe have more deeper meaning than just surface value.

And so that's what we like to take a chance here to do. So as we look at verse 19, it says, do not lay up. So right there off the bat, like, not necessarily two words that I would often use, but it means to gather, to store up, to accumulate in reserve. And then he says, do not store up. Lay up for yourselves treasures.

Now, the word treasure here is in Greek, the word thesaurus, which is where we get the word thesaurus. And I found that kind of fascinating as we were studying this week. But it's a place where good and precious things are collected and laid up. So this is fascinating because it doesn't. He's not actually specifically saying that the treasure is the precious thing.

It's saying that the treasure is the place where the precious things go. So Jesus is saying, do not store up, store houses. I find that fascinating because it does actually give us the symbol of what we can be so guilty of. Just drive through Wilson right now. How many storage centers are there in Wilson?

Because people have run out of room in their own house, so they need more storehouses. That's the prime example. Like a really, really great example. Do not store up more storehouses because moth and rust can destroy them. Look, we all.

If you just take a second and just observe what the world is doing. The earth wants to reclaim the land that we've taken. Just go to the beach anytime, build sandcastle, and see if it makes it through the night. Fort Macon here in North Carolina. I remember when they were having to, like, I can't remember what the process is called, but they pull sand out of the ocean and bring it to the shore because the ocean was washing the shore away.

I've seen neighbors to have just glorious yards. And then whenever they move away, it doesn't take like a year for it to just go to weeds. Because the earth is constantly wanting to reclaim the impact that we've had. So moth and rust destroy it. We're thieves.

Break in and steal. We all know the saying, time is a thief. So, look, we talked about this earlier. You can hoard every single thing. You can guard it with your life, but at some point, all that you own is going to pass on to someone else.

And they're not going to value it the same way that you do. In fact, a lot of the stuff that you pass on, they're probably going to think it's junk because they don't know what it is. And so in this world, moth and rust destroy, thieves, break in and steal. And that in and of itself, Jesus is saying, don't do that, because I've got a better way. Lay up treasures in heaven.

Now, this is a word right here that I find can be somewhat misunderstood, because when we all think of the word heaven, we tend to think of a place that is in the future. And that when I store up treasures in heaven, it's like I'm doing, like, a spiritual retirement plan. And I don't get to touch that IRA or 401k or whatever, you know, I don't get to touch that for this lifetime, But I'm laying up treasures that one day will be a benefit to me. But Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is near. And we see in scripture evidence that heaven is near.

It's just that it's in the spirit and we can't see it, but it is near. So when Jesus is saying, store up Treasures in heaven. He's talking about a storehouse that doesn't just have future benefit, it can have present benefit as well. So I genuinely, when I was reading this this week, was going, what are some heavenly rewards that I can try to build up treasure towards? I'd like to really know what those are.

So we did some study and here's four that readily come to mind. One is a reward is relationships. There's one relationship in Christ that is especially rewarding. There's a greater joy and passion and hope and life that comes with having intimacy with Christ. And that's a reward you can experience both now and forever.

A year ago, Pastor Gary took us through a series called Heaven and he unpacked some of the rewards, such as crowns. So there's these symbols in heaven, and crowns is one of them that represents honor and achievement. So when you store up treasures, it actually can be a symbol that sticks with you for eternity. Also responsibilities. We see in the Bible that one of the rewards that we receive in heaven is to have authority over some things.

And I've seen so many people begin to experience those rewards here on earth. I've seen people who never saw themselves as leaders, but to come to Christ and begin to follow him. And all of a sudden this leadership gifting comes out and this authority begins to be about their life, where they're experiencing the heavenly reward here and now as well. And the one that's most obvious to pretty much everybody is the heavenly reward of living forever. Have an eternity with him, that the impact of your faithfulness will never be lost or forgotten.

But let's not forget the greatest reward is Jesus. The greatest reward is Christ himself. And he says it in Genesis 15. He says, I am your very great reward. Paul got it right in Philippians 1.

He said, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

So Jesus reads on here. He says, so lay up treasures in heaven where neither moth nor destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. So these are going to be permanent, eternal treasures. And then he finishes it with 21 saying, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. When he says heart, he's not just talking about the blood pumping organ that's in our chest.

The word heart denotes the center of all physical and spiritual life. This is where you're getting the vigor and passion that you have. And it's where you find like, what is the central purpose that drives you to do what you do, what gets you out of bed in the morning, that is pointing at your heart. And so Jesus is saying something very challenging to us here. He says, where your storehouse is, what is most precious to you, that's where your heart's at that is actually going to start affecting who you actually are at the center, at the core.

And we see there's a quote here by Daniel Akin, that a heart that values the treasures of earth more than the treasures of heaven is sinful. Here's what he says. One of the basic and fundamental truths of the Christian faith is that our heart, who we really are on the inside, should point to God. He created us and has redeemed us in Christ, purchasing us with the precious blood of his Son. To love anything or anyone or to treasure anyone or anything more than Jesus is spiritual adultery.

It is adultery of the heart. We're called the bride of Christ. And so when you love something or anything more than Christ, guess what? You're an adulterous bride. That's sin.

So seek. What do we do about this problem? Like, I'm pretty bummed out right now. Okay, here's what we're gonna do about it. Seek treasure that truly lasts, which is a kingdom treasure.

It's a heavenly treasure where Christ is. And in Matthew 13, he says, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and then he covered up. And then his joy. In his joy, he goes and he sells all that he has and buys that field. This is just a field.

Fantastic picture here of what Jesus is trying to tell each one of us, and that's so hard for us to see sometimes, is that the treasure of heaven is so great that if you could somehow lay hands on it in this life, you would sell everything for it, because you would very quickly have your eyes open to see. Nothing else is worth it like that treasure. And so this is showing us how valuable the heavenly treasure is. And then in Luke, Jesus is going to hit us with a hard parable. Here in chapter 12, he says, the ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.

So he thought to himself, what shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. And then he said, ah, this is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and I'll build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I'll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years.

Take life easy, eat, drink, be merry. 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? This is how it will be with whoever stores up things but is not rich toward God.

You see, one of the treasures that we're all born with is time. And it's not all the same amount. We don't all get the same amount of time. But time is considered one of the greatest treasures that we are given. And so knowing that our days are numbered, but we don't even know how many we have left to us, guess what?

They're fully known to God. He knows exactly how many days you have left. So how foolish would it be for us to spend all of our energy building bigger storehouses and investing in this earthly treasure when we don't even know if we're going to wake up in the morning? I mean, statistically, I can look at. Don't pop that picture up yet.

We're not there yet. You didn't see that just now.

She likes that illustration. It's coming. We don't even know if we have tomorrow coming. Like, statistically, we look at our. I'm, like, I'm healthy.

The chances are I'm waking up tomorrow. But you don't know for sure. You don't know what's happening when you leave this building today. And so how foolish that would be to put it all in that basket when your time is limited.

All right, we're gonna go to that illustration now. So as she's popping this up, I recognize that it's probably too soon to be talking about COVID I'm so exhausted by that, and as we all are. But here was something that came from it that I think is worth pointing out is that In March of 2020, everything came to a stop, and the rat race had to be paused for every single one of us. We had no choice for a couple of weeks there but to stay home and to. To just try to figure it out.

Now, what I had, this busy, chaotic life. So many things going on. I had so many things that I was looking forward to doing, and now they're just paused, and I don't know what's coming. It really challenged us to consider what really matters in this life. I remember, you know, my kids were in soccer at the time, and March is soccer.

That's like prime, like, rec soccer and baseball season. And all of a sudden, my Saturdays are empty now. And so it forced us all to kind of, if we were smart, we paused and analyzed what really mattered. And then as the doors began to open back up and as we begin to come back together. Oh, by the way, I did mean to mention this picture right here.

This is Me sitting in front of a zoom meeting with my small group, which I found at the time was. It was. I realized just how precious this human interaction is. I could do it, never do a zoom meeting for the rest of my life and be happy, because that's just not the thing.

So as the doors opened, we had an opportunity with a blank calendar to decide what gets to go back in it. So the question I have for us is how has your post Covid schedule affected your heart? Have you dropped some things that were actually worth keeping and maybe added some things that have done nothing but stress you out and weigh you down?

Realigning our hearts on heavenly things means us changing our pursuit from building earthly storehouses to building heavenly ones. And it means shifting how our time is spent. So if somebody were to look at your calendar right now or your budget, what would they sell that you value the most? If you lost everything tomorrow, like Job did in the Bible, if you lost it all, would Christ be enough for you? And I recognize there is a modern attack that parents deal with where sports and arts are demanding more and more of our time than they used to.

And they don't have any consideration for church anymore. It seems like sports take place on Sundays now. They take place. It used to be here in the south, especially Wednesday nights, like, was kind of a sacred night. Most people knew not to schedule sports activities.

Yeah, it's not true anymore. In fact, if you, if your kid, let's call, let's say they're a soccer player. If your kid's on the soccer team, the coach may have come to you at some point and said, hey, if they don't do travel ball, they're probably not going to have a starting position anymore because they're not going to be as good as the other kids or maybe your kids, you know, doing theater. But because you have these set days, you know that you're trying to go to church, you're trying to be in a community group, it's kept them from getting lead roles because they weren't going to be able to be at those practices. And so there's a really difficult decision that we as parents have to make is am I going to put the success of my child here on earth?

Which, let's say they're a professional athlete one day. How many years do they get to actually do that? Am I going to put that value above where their heart stands with God, which is going to affect them for eternity? And here's something even scary to consider. Have I accidentally put my treasure placed my treasure in my kid's success and let that be something that I value and shape my whole life and time and schedule around.

Well, here are some suggestions for how we can realign our hearts. And I'm going to start with the calendar thing. There's a well known experiment where if you have a jar that you're trying to fill with large rocks, medium rocks and small rocks, you don't start with the small ones because the small ones are going to fill up the bottom of it and then you're not going to have room to fit all the rest of it. But if you put the big rocks in first and then put the medium sized rocks, then it will all fit. And so maybe look at your schedule, maybe you need to do a Covid reset.

Now I'm not saying you should isolate because that's not a good idea, but maybe you need to look at it and say what are the big rocks that should be here that aren't? And I'll give you an example of some church is one. I was just talking to a pastor this week that said that growing up, the consistent attendance of church is probably the single thing that affected his life the most. Be consistent at church Community group is a big rock that I think we should all put in our lives serving and we're going to talk about that more. Is a big rock that belongs being in a discipleship, relationship with someone.

And then of course, like time with your spouse, time with your kids, you can decide like between you and the Lord. Pray about this. What are the big rocks that need to go there? Look at your schedule right now. As I was just saying those things, if any of those big rocks were missing, I wholeheartedly think you're missing something very important.

And then let the rest fit in. Reassess your spending. So if your budget is so packed that you can't be generous, then you need to reassess it and create some margin so that way you can give towards the Lord. Practice sacrificial generosity. So giving away that stretches your faith.

Giving away that you give God the first fruits and not just the leftovers. And then maybe, you know, we have like a bank ledger, create a heaven ledger. Track your spiritual investments, like your time in prayer, like keep track of that, your time. Giving, serving, discipling. Those are just some examples of how we can realign our heart.

And then point two, we can lay up treasures as God's kingdom citizens by refocusing our vision on Christ. Refocusing our vision on Christ. Now I have to be honest if you're just reading this passage in your private life, it probably feels like Jesus was talking about treasures and then just had like a add moment and then started talking about the eye and the lamp. And I'm like, what? What are you saying?

Well, check this out. When we were studying this this week, this is no add moment. This is a God moment. He's getting ready to drop something on us that's gonna shape the whole way we see this passage. He says, here the eye is the lamp of the body.

And so this word lamp here is meant to be like a candle that is placed on a candlestick. It's the vessel that. That carries light. It's not creating the light. My eye itself doesn't create light, but it carries light.

And it takes the light from there to inside to my body, okay? So it lets light in. It illuminates the world ahead. When I squint my eyes, it lets less light in. If somebody were to turn all the lights out in this room and it'd be complete darkness, my eyes would just, like, instinctively start looking for something to focus on because my eye wants light.

So it's the lamp of the body. And then he says, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be light. This word healthy in the Greek is the word haplos, which means a simple, single, to mean whole. And the King James Version, if you were reading that right now, it would say, if therefore thine eye be single. So singleness has to do with being sincere.

It has to do with being genuine, to being, like, single minded. And it is often translated in the New Testament as the word generous. What about that? If your eye is generous, then your whole body will be full of light. We see evidence in 2nd Corinthians 8.

Their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity, which is the word haplos. Second Corinthians 9, you will be enriched in every way to be generous, hapless, so healthy. So here Christ is saying, if your eye is generous, then your body will be full of light. So the health of our eye is measured in our generosity.

But look, it gets better. I'm already kind of mind blown, but it gets better. We were studying the Bible project this week, which is definitely worth checking out. It's a. It's a website you can go to, and it was really helpful.

It says in the Hebrew, Jesus was contrasting the good eye, which is the words tovayin, with the bad eye, which is ra' ayin. And so we see the words Tovayin in the old Testament, Proverbs 22 One who is generous, that word generous is tovayin good eye. So to be generous is to have a good eye because they will be blessed because he gives some of his food to the poor. Whereas rain bad eye is self centered. And we see that in Proverbs 23.

Do not eat the bread of the selfish. That word selfish is rad eye. Do not eat the bread of a selfish person or desire his delicacies. For as he thinks within himself, so he is. He says do you eat and drink but his heart is not with you.

So Jesus is communicating something so rich here. Kingdom citizens, if you are, if you are saved by Christ and you are a citizen of God, then you should have a good eye, a heart set on generosity and a single mindedness that is fully devoted to God and that's opposed to the world in our flesh which is a bad eye. It's self absorbed and it's double minded people who they pretend to care for others but they're self obsessed and they're publicly posturing as this generous person when their true agenda is about personal gain. I'm mindful of the challenge that we have. We have a wonderful praise and worship team here at Eastgate.

But every time I step up on this stage there is a challenge that I have to check in my spirit that you might hear me sing words or play an instrument and give me the glory whenever I'm here to say those words for his glory. But I have to in my spirit check that every single time I step up here that I'm not doing it for your clapping of hands, I'm doing it for him. And that way we would clap to him. But this is something that we have. That's what a bad eye.

A bad eye wants the glory for your talent. A good eye wants the glory for him. And so then he says in verse 23, if your eye is bad, which kind of has this idea of being like diseased or evil or wicked, then it will be, then your whole body will be full of darkness. Ephesians 4 says, Their minds are full of darkness. They wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and they've hardened their hearts against them.

Charles Quarles, such a hard name to say. Who named this guy this? Charles Quarles says in the Sermon on the Mount book when greed forces out any trace of inner good and only evil remains, the inner person is indescribably evil. The greedy person's corruption is complete. No Room remains for love for God or pursuit of the kingdom and its righteousness.

So if you let greed do its work, the bad eye, it will make you indescribably evil.

So what do we do? How do we fix this problem? Like, I'm with you. I'm like, this is bad. How do I fix this?

I set my eyes on things above and I make the vision for my life be Christ and him alone. Here are two passages that encourages on how to do this. Second Corinthians as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient. The things that are unseen are eternal.

Hey, what did we just talk about earlier? Heaven is in the unseen. So fix your eyes and can you see it? No. This is a posturing.

This is a focus. I'm going to focus on the things that I can't see. Hebrews 12 Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God. When you're going through some difficulty, remember what Jesus went through.

So put your focus on him.

And some of y' all were already thinking this. When I said the words good eye, you were already thinking about this because in baseball, if you're watching a baseball game or maybe you've been on a baseball team before, what are two words that you've often said in reference to a batter? Good eye. And why are we saying that? Well, oftentimes it's because he's standing there in the batting box and you got your strike zone and a ball flies and goes outside the strike zone and he just looks at it, goes by kind of with a smirk on his face like, I ain't hitting that.

Everybody's like, yeah, good eye, good eye. Because what this person is demonstrating is I can tell the difference between a good ball and a bad ball. I can see a 3 inch white ball flying 90 miles per hour at me because my focus is singularly on that ball and I can determine if it's in the strike zone or not because I have a good eye. Now what does a bad eye do in baseball? Well, I was a baseball player, I've experienced this myself.

That if your focus is on anything else but that ball, that's a bad eye. Because that thing's coming at you fast. So if your eyes are on the fence, you're going to miss it. If your focus is on what the people in the crowd are thinking of you, then you're probably going to mistake that ball and swing at something you shouldn't have swung at or let something good go by that you should have swung at. And even worse, a bad eye is not just unable to determine the good from the bad.

It wants to look at two things at the same time. It wants to look at the ball, but also look at the fence. And the eyes want to do this. Now, I don't. I'm looking at y' all.

I'm looking for some eyes that are pointing like this right now. Nobody has that. Thank God. We're not. We were not created with that ability for a reason.

It's almost like in our. In our. In the way he created this. He's trying to teach us something here. You can only look at one thing at a time.

Da Carson says the good eye is the one fixed on God, unwavering in its gaze, constant in its fixation. The individual with a single eye towards kingdom values is the person that's characterized by maximum understanding of a divinely revealed truth and by unabashedly pure behavior. The person's eye is on the prize of one treasure, one kingdom, one master. And they will not be distracted by anything this world has to offer man. Good word there, Carson.

So how do we focus? How do we refocus our vision on Christ? We remove things that distract us from following Jesus. Like, when you're thinking about your life, how much of your mental bandwidth is spent on things that pull you towards Christ versus the things that pull you away from Him? Is your eye trying to look at two things?

Like, you're trying to follow the Lord, but you're also thinking about your own success and your own treasure here on Earth. You're also thinking about what other people are thinking of you and saying about you. Or is your vision so set on Jesus that you are sincere in your devotion to him and you're generous because of him, because it's all about his glory and not your own. Here are some practical ways that we can take this step. One, reset your mornings.

Start your day with God's word before anything else. And so I actually, I practice what I preach. This morning I got out of bed, I grabbed my phone like I typically will do. And although I usually will grab it and go on social media because it's just a habit that I've developed that it's not a good one. And so what I do today, I was like, I better do what I'm getting ready to say I'm going to do.

So I pulled up Bible app and began to read. And I got more reading done this morning than I typically do. And I set my focus right off the bat on him. I prayed and it made a difference in how my day started.

Maybe fast with your eyes. Maybe we need to take a break from social media. Maybe we need to take a break from Netflix. Take a break from Amazon shopping for a week, which that can be kind of an addicting thing, too. Looking for that sale.

Prime day's coming up. I'm gonna buy something I may not use for years because it was a good deal.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus. I love that old song. Use your time and your talent and your treasure. Use them to help you redirect your attention. And then finally, we can lay up our treasures as God's kingdom citizens by recommitting our service to God alone.

Recommitting our service to God alone. He says, no one can serve two masters.

And this is opposed to the idea of hablos. There's that word that we used earlier. A single focus, a single master. You can't do them both evenly. Like, okay, okay, I can do this.

I can serve God, but I can also serve mammon. I can also serve myself and serve. No one's always going to supersede the other. And he makes it really like blunt right here. He says, either he will hate the one and love the other.

So he's saying, you try to serve two masters. What you actually are doing is saying, I hate that master and I love this one. Charles Spurgeon said, God in the world will never agree. And however much you may attempt it, we shall never be able to serve both. You can live for this world or you can live for the next.

But to love, to live equally for both, it's impossible. Good Spurge. So he says, you'll either be devoted to the one and despise the other man. Those are some strong words. So he says, you cannot serve God and money.

And I already kind of spoiled this for us earlier, but it was important for that we get in the mindset this word money is the word mamonas in Greek, which is where we get the word mammon. It's a personified treasure. It really. I mean, it's an idol. So many of the church fathers described mammon as like a rival deity.

It's like opposing Christ to want lordship over a heart. So Daniel Akin says, either you are mastered by money and you therefore. Sorry, I'm pointing. You therefore ignore God or make him a bellhop for your business, or you are mastered by God and make money a servant of the kingdom. This quote offended me this week.

The whole concept of me trying to make God a bellhop for me, how diminishing in my heart to ever desire that. And I would never put that into words that say that, but my actions do so. Church, I heard us. We need to understand this. The King of the universe does not share allegiance.

The Creator does not share worship with his creation. John Stott says anyone who divides his or her allegiance between God and money has already given it to money. Since God can be served only with an entire and exclusive devotion, to try and share him with other loyalties is to have opted for idolatry. And when the choice is seen for what it is, a choice between creator and creature, between the glorious and personal God and a miserable thing called money, between worship and idolatry, seems inconceivable that anybody could make the wrong choice. But we do.

Often Paul said Colossians 3. Don't be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater. Worshiping the things of this world. The opposite of generosity is greed. So when we hold these things close to our chest, we worship the world.

I placed this stool up here to illustrate this point. Imagine here that this is the throne of our lives. And that whenever we try to say I worship God and money, we're asking God to sit on one corner and to share it with Mammon. But what he's saying is, nope, it can't happen. I won't let it happen.

I am God. I alone am worthy and worthy of praise and worthy of glory. So he's saying, you're either going to have me on the throne or you're going to have something else, but it can't be both. And so when I have God on the throne, then that means everything else in my life is going to serve him. It's going to always serve whatever's on the throne, whatever's the most important to me.

And so when I say that God is on the throne, then that means my money has to serve him.

Whatever's sitting in my bank account, for the good or for the worse, that is his money. And if it's running low that month, that's a conversation between me and God. Hey, God. Count's looking a little low. That's your money, right?

My possessions. You know when a strong wind hits your house and knocks your soffits loose and you're going to have to pay $1,150 to have those repaired? Not a true story for me at all that happened recently, if God's on the throne, then I'm concerned about that. But I'm not concerned about it because the Joneses are going to look at my house and think it looks ridiculous or that I'm just worried about my stuff. I'm concerned about that because that's his stuff.

God, hey, here's this shelter you put over my head. I'm trying my best to be a good steward of it. What are we going to do about this, God? Because this thing serves you. When I think about my legacy, if God is on the throne, then the impact that I plan to leave here on Earth, whether it be through my job or through my kids, maybe it be through the impact I might have in at the church, that I'm doing everything I can to make that legacy fit under his authority, that even my children, that I've given them to the Lord and said, God, your will be done.

And that's a scary thing to consider, that you're really the Father and I'm going to trust you with the results. And wherever you take them, wherever you lead them, they're yours. That wherever you take the name Stephen, whether it be you rub it in the dirt or exalt it, that name's yours. And that leads us to the final, which is what am I most tempted to put on the throne? Me.

I want so badly to make everything revolve around me and to make it all about me. Money, possessions, all that stuff. I want it all to kind of simultaneously happen. But here's what I'm saying. Whenever I put myself on the throne, I'm saying, God, be my bellhop.

I want you to be my servant. How despicable to say something like that. Well, I'd never say that with my words, but my schedule says something different. My mouth and what I exalt and glorify says something different. And my heart can say something different.

The God you trust to provide for you is the God that you truly serve. And ironically, I find that the word mammon sounds an awful lot like the word manna. But they couldn't be more different than one another. Mammon is something that we seek to provide for ourselves. But when we look at the word manna, which is the bread that God provided to the Israelites in the desert, he provided had never existed before and has not existed since.

It came from God. They couldn't provide for themselves because they were starving in the desert, and he provided it. And even to make things even, like, more practical for us today, he wouldn't provide it on the Sabbath and wouldn't let them harvest it either. So they had to work a little extra harder the day before the Sabbath. So that way they would rest, learn what it's like to trust God with the day off.

So how do we commit? How do we recommit our service to God alone? Give God the best of your time, your energy and your attention. Are you still obeying God when it's inconvenient or costly? Are you getting so ticked off because you're sitting on the throne and you're like, God, let this happen.

And maybe you're here this morning, you're angry with God today. Maybe you're distant from God. Maybe somebody in your life died and you've been mad at him ever since then. Because, let's face it, that person was somebody you were placing your treasure in. They, at the end of the day, matter to you more than the wealth of the kingdom of heaven.

And that has put you in a place where you're distant from God today. How do we counter this?

Well, here's one example. Recommit to a ministry so serve God. The act of serving him will actually help reorient your focus and your heart. It'll help correct some of these things. It'll remind you by that act of service that I'm not getting paid anything for this.

This isn't helping my earthly kingdom at all. I'm only helping his kingdom. It helps us take a Sabbath seriously. I feel like that we don't talk about that often enough. But I have to confess to you that this morning I literally was waking up thinking about how much work I had to do this coming week and literally thinking, I'm probably going to have to.

Monday is my Sabbath as a pastor here. It's how we've worked my schedule out. That's supposed to be a day where Stephen honors what God told him to do in the Bible and takes a Sabbath and rests. But guess what Stephen wanted to do this morning. I need to work because it won't get done otherwise.

Can I trust God that I can get more done in six days than I can in seven? And say, you're going to have to make up the results of the difference because, God, I can't do it. I just can't do it all. And then finally tithe is, can you trust God that you would live better off 90%, that you would off of 100%?

What would it look like to just radically say, God, that 10% is yours? I have no clue how I'm going to make this work. But I trust you with the results. That act of giving him some of your mammon, it actually helps correct you, helps focus our eyes and change our heart. So, friends, he's called us to these three things this morning.

I'm gonna say them one more time. Realign your hearts on heavenly things, refocus our vision on Christ and recommit our service to God alone. Let's pray.

Maybe you're here this morning and this concept of heart and vision and service is foreign to you because you don't know Jesus. You can't recommit a heart that wasn't committed in the first place. And Jesus promises us in the Bible, I will give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit in you. So, friend, if you would pray with me right now.

We're going to ask God to do that. We're going to ask God to give you a new heart. Let's pray together. Jesus, tired of trying to run the show myself, tired of trying to live the American dream and hoping that that would satisfy the mammon dream.

And if the word I need to use here is to say, I give you lordship whatever word it needs to be, but I'm just going to say, you get it all, you get to be the king. Now I give you my heart, would you make me new now? Would you change me? Because I can't do it in my own power, Jesus, I'm sinful and I ask you to forgive me. And I confess here and now you are lord over my life, friend.

If you prayed that prayer, then Jesus said, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. We believe that you've gone from death to life. A new heart is in you. And maybe you're here today and you've prayed that before, but you're very convicted right now because you recognize that your heart off, your vision is bad, you have a bad eye, your service is to yourself. Would you pray with me right now, Jesus?

You know, you and I both know what you were saying just now to be during this sermon. You and I both know where you're poking my heart and convicting me. Help me now to take that first step towards making this right with you. I want my treasure to be a permanent one that is in you and not in and of myself in this world. So help me now, Jesus, we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

Audio

Audio

What to watch next...

Seeking First in the Kingdom

Judgment in the Kingdom

The Currency of the Kingdom

The Narrow Way of the Kingdom

Ready to Dig Deeper?