Serve and Guard: Treasure is Where the Heart is
Notes
Transcript
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean
2 weeks ago Lexi and I went out of town, and we took Ezra to the most magical place on earth. Yea. Disney World. You probably know this, but that place is exhausting. I’m still physically recovering from it. And I am an endurance athlete ok!
But seriously, going to Disney world with a toddler is a lot of fun. He didn’t know what was going on. But he loved it. Watching him soak in the world around him and probably have to form new categories in his little mind for what is possible was a really joyful experience.
Now I’ve been to Disney a lot in my life. Disney ain’t cheap. The rational part of me says “we’ve got to experience everything in order to get our money’s worth.” And thats great… when you’re young. But thats not a mentality that really works out when you’ve got little ones. That expectation needed to shift, and I’m going to go ahead and say that the shift happened pretty naturally and gracefully for me this time. Maybe Lexi will tell you differently, I don’t know.
But what I accepted pretty early on in this adventure was that it wasn’t going to be like any other Disney or amusement park vacation that we’d ever been on together. It was going to be more expensive, like a lot more expensive. And we were going to see more bathrooms than rides. Which is to be expected when you hang out with a toddler and a pregnant lady. Its just science right?
However, although I wasn’t getting what I would traditionally consider “my money’s worth” I have to say that I most definitely got what I paid for. What I got was an experience that stretched my heart in new ways. Ezra soaked in every moment. He won’t really remember it. But he was locked in on everything happening around him. He legitimately grew up in front of our eyes. He was figuring things out and we were there, in real time, watching it happen.
My most memorable experience of this came on a ride that we all went on as a family called the Pirates of the Caribbean. Now its a pretty tame and neat little boat ride with lots to look at. But at the beginning of the ride there is a small drop. You accelerate and drop down a hill in your little boat and its a bit thrilling. Now what was memorable about this experience for me was that Ezra, my little guy who’s 15 months old, was sitting on my lap. And as we began to drop this little dude throws his hands up in the air and giggles the loudest baby giggle you could imagine. It was the most grown up thing I’ve ever seen him do. Like he really understood the thrill of the experience.
But you know what else happened on that ride? I remembered that God is always speaking to me, even if it takes me a while to realize. Because I hadn’t really reflected on all of this in the moment as an experience that relates to stewardship. But now that I look back, It’s like God was handing me the blueprints for how to talk about today’s topic.
At the end of the pirate’s ride, there is a scene of Captain Jack Sparrow, sitting inside of a room filled with treasure. And he seems happy, but he’s also super drunk. And while it’s meant to be funny, the reality is that through the entirety of the ride, you are witnessing this manhunt for Captain Jack, as well as the sneaky stuff that he does in order to acquire the map and the key to get to that treasure.
And so my entire disney experience was kind of set before me against a typical human relationship towards money or treasure. There is the way of spending money I’ll never get back for the reward of allowing my son and Lexi and I by proxy experience the world in a new way — an investment in which I may never see the real fruit of — or the way of Captain Jack — Striving and sneaking and hoarding for the purpose of self indulgence.
Jesus and Money
Jesus and Money
This is the final sermon in our stewardship series. And so you’ve probably guessed it. I’m talking about money today. If you’re new, I’m sorry, but don’t worry. It isn’t like this every week I promise. I hope you’ll still pay attention because these principles are still valid even if you don’t feel inclined to commit yourself to giving to this church.
Money is one of those topics that is kind of taboo to talk about, but here’s the deal. This place doesn’t run on faith and pixie dust. It runs on faith and the good old US dollar. And in order to keep it running, we’ve gotta give. So the question that we need to address is what our attitude towards giving is going to be here at First Church Fort Pierce
That attitude is going to spring forward from our understanding of stewardship, which we have talked about extensively over the past several weeks. Specifically I have been saying over and over that stewardship is the natural outpouring of the human vocation — which is to serve and guard our world and our church on God’s behalf.
We’ve said that the reason why we are called to serve and guard this church and our community is so that God’s will can be done in Fort Pierce as it is in heaven.
The question that we need to ask ourselves is whether or not this why statement is the foremost guiding principle in every area of our lives or if something else is really driving our decision making. This is critically important, because if the driving force behind our attitude towards giving is anything other than a desire to see God’s will done on earth, then our priorities require rearrangement.
Jesus was very persistent about this point. In his famous Sermon on the Mount he concerns himself with everyday topics, but has a way of cutting through the surface level issues that people dealt with as a part of their human existence and focused on the heart orientation that drove the decisions that people made.
We all know that money makes the world go round. This isn’t a new concept. Wealth has always been a fundamental piece of the human experience, and Jesus had a lot to say about it. Jesus talked about money more than he talked about really any other subject. And in the Sermon on the Mount he takes to that task rather expansively. Today’s scripture is going to come from Matthew Chapter 6. This is going to show us Jesus’s fundamental understanding of wealth.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
I’m just going to pause here, but I think that for the most part, this piece of Jesus’s teaching is pretty straight forward. Jesus is setting the fundamental tension that we experience when it comes to wealth in our own lives and in our world. What do you consider treasure? The answer to that question comes from where you store it.
Now, what Jesus is not saying is that its morally wrong to have wealth. What Jesus is asking is this, “is the money you have the most important thing in your life?” Essentially does your money serve you only, also known as treasure stored up on earth, or does your money serve the eternal purpose of God and God’s kingdom — aka treasure stored up in heaven. Either your heart is selfish or your heart is focused outward. Your use of money betrays the truth about this for you.
Jesus is then going to use a metaphor to further explain this:
“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 unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Jesus is still talking about money. Don’t be thrown off by the seeming shift in subject matter. The point that Jesus is making here is that the way one sees money is a key indicator of their spiritual health. If your relationship to money is healthy then your entire spiritual life will be set on a positive path. But if your relationship to money is skewed, so will the rest of you.
Jesus goes on:
“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
This concluding statement from Jesus really puts the truth out there in no uncertain terms. Either you serve God or you serve wealth. Which in means that either you are mastered by God or you are mastered by greed, human striving, and all of the other ways that we pursue the accumulation of wealth. There is no in between. Either God is your Lord and Savior, or money is.
And I think you and I have seen that money is not a trustworthy god to put all of your faith in. Money won’t save your soul. Money won’t buy you peace. Money won’t give you a community. Money won’t heal your trauma, it won’t satisfy the longing of your heart, it sure as heck won’t make you happy.
Joyful Giving
Joyful Giving
What I want you to get from this whole discussion is an understanding of what a proper relationship to money looks like. Again, money isn’t evil — the love of money is what the problem is. That’s the main point here.
And I want you to know that I’m more concerned with your relationship with money than I am with getting you to give some of it to the Church. I believe that is what Jesus was most concerned with.
So what I want you to understand is that God wants you to give from a place of joy. Paul, who was taking up a special offering for Christians in Macedonia who were facing pretty extreme poverty wrote this to the to Church in Corinth regarding their attitude towards giving.
Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
This is the guiding light behind how I want you to give. I want you to give joyfully. I don’t want to to give from a place other than joy and a deep desire to see God’s will done in Fort Pierce as it is in heaven.
Giving needs to be the natural outpouring of your love of God and your dedication to serve God first and foremost in your life.
Giving to the church should NOT be a few things.
Giving to the church should not come from a place of obligation or guilt. God doesn’t want your money if you are feeling pressured to give it for any reason. We don’t operate that way here. You aren’t obligated to give. That leads to this:
Giving to the church as not requirement for belonging. You don’t buy a membership here. You don’t buy a seat at God’s table. Don’t give because you think you have to give in order to be a part of God’s kingdom or this community.
Giving to the church doesn’t buy you a ticket to heaven. This is really important. There’s not tickets for sale to eternal life. Don’t give because you feel bad for being a sinner. Jesus already paid that debt.
So if that’s what giving isn’t, then what is giving? And how should you give?
Well giving is the natural outpouring of a heart that is oriented towards serving God. Giving is something that we do out of the joy of our hearts because we are excited about the work of the church and the mission of God in the world.
Giving is something that we do because we recognize that all of our money is God’s anyway, and therefore we are just dedicating what is already God’s back to the work of God in the world.
Giving is something that we do so that others can benefit. It is an outward expression of an inward reality. That reality is that we care more about others than we do about our bank accounts.
So how much should you give? Well that’s really up to you. You should give as much as you can. The founder of the Methodist movement — John Wesley — said “earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”
I know that everyone has their own complex financial situation. I know that many of you are at the end of your “earning” journey and are living on the treasure that you worked for over your entire career. I know that some of you may struggle. I know that the economic outlook right now is not good.
Generally, 10% of your income is a good rule of thumb. For some that’s easy, for some it’s well out of reach right now. My hope, my ask is that you will make a commitment to give something to this church regularly over the next year if this is a church that you call home. If you are just visiting — don’t worry about all that. Just worry about thinking about the truths about money that I’ve talked about.
But if this is your church home I want you to commit to giving something. Give an amount that you can give joyfully, without causing undue hardship. Lexi and I give 10%. That was a commitment we made when we got married and one that we have built our budget around.
There have been times where things were tight because we give, but we have always made it work.
I think about that time spent at Disney, really about that money spent at Disney. I didn’t get everything that I wanted. But it was a valuable investment in my son’s life. The real blessing came from watching him experience the magic of Disney. Watching his little arms go up in thrill. Watching him develop and soak in all was a gift to us. It was a reminder that this life is not my own.
That’s the reality. This life is not our own. This life belongs to Jesus, and if we truly believe that, then it is a joy to give and see the fruit of our giving go towards the ministry of Jesus in our world. It’s a joy to see people experience the magic of the transformed life that Jesus offers them. It’s a joy to watch people go from spiritually dead to spiritually alive. It’s a joy to watch people who have been isolated and outcasted become people who are richly changed by the way that they belong in God’s beloved community. It’s a joy to give to God when God is our master. Don’t be mastered by money.