Sunday Sermon
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Introduction
Introduction
Good morning and welcome to FCC, where we worship God is Spirit and in Truth, one verse at a time.
I wanted to say thank you from our family! Thank you for your prayers, love, and support during a most difficult time.
Joseph’s service was absolutely amazing and the Lord showed up and showered us in his love and grace over and over...
We estimate that there was over 250 people there that day that my brother had impacted in some form or fashion, despite his battle with addiction.
He is at home now and his war with cancer and addiction is over.
No more tears, no more pain, no more struggles and his faith has be made sight.
So thank you, thank you, thank you for everything!
You are all amazing and full of love!
We have come as far as Matthew 6:22, but I would like us to turn to verse 19 and start there.
Read Matthew 6:19-24
Read Matthew 6:19-24
“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 lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is 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 else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Prayer
Prayer
Lord, thank you for your faithfulness and because of your faithfulness, the faithfulness of the saints. Heavenly Father, we come to you as broken cisterns that need repair, leaky cisterns, cisterns that need a fresh refilling of your generous and gentle Holy Spirit. Would you please O’God fill us? Would you purge out the leaven in our souls that produces sin in our lives and help us to grasp what is the height and depth of your love for us so that we can share it with a lost and dying world. May you give us practical application today and may you make us more like Jesus. We surrender all!!!
In Jesus Name, We Love You! Amen!
Review
Review
In looking back, it is important for us to remember that we are in the greatest sermon ever taught by the greatest Teacher that has ever lived.
The Lord Jesus Christ!
We are in The Sermon of the Mount and Jesus is teaching his listeners, his readers, what true righteousness and discipleship is.
For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
See the general context of Matthew 6 is the contrast between the false, external righteousness of the Jewish Pharisees and the genuine, internal righteousness of true Christians.
The Pharisees were very rich and they taught others that riches were a sign of God’s blessing.
Because they were rich, they thought that this was an evidence of God’s blessing on them in particular, for they believed themselves obedient to God.
They were very proud of their wealth and their so-called spirituality.
Here our Lord sets out to correct their false views concerning wealth.
Wealth, possessions, and money are not wrong in themselves, but the Word teaches us that is the love of these things:
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Wealth, possessions, and money are wonderful servants church, but cruel masters!
Wealth, possessions, and money are wonderful servants church, but cruel masters!
However, I want to emphasize that God is not against His people having money or possessions.
For all material blessings come from God:
“And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
God prospered Abraham, Job and David and he is prospering each one of us in His own special way.
What then does the Lord oppose when it comes to treasure or our possessions or wealth?
It is an attitude that excludes Christ from our material possessions.
This is the person who is discontent and not happy with their lot and they live by the motto: more, more, more!!!
“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.
Today, we are going to look at the three two’s:
Two treasures, with two places to store or lay up...
Two eyes or vision...
Two Masters..
Having possessions in this life is not a sin.
The issue Jesus is addressing is not have possessions, but you possessions or treasures having you!
There is nothing wrong with working hard and achieving success.
The problem begins when we allow the love for our possessions and the desire to accumulate more and more dictate our lives, like the rich man who built bigger barns to store more...
Here in our text, Jesus is giving us an imperative in the Greek. He is saying for us to not store up on the earth.
In todays, language, I think Jesus would be telling us to not hoard!!
When Jesus is talking about the various treasures, he is talking about the three things that wealth was measured by during those days:
Garments
Grain
Gold
Church all material possessions can perish or be stolen.
Moths eat expensive clothes, mice eat grains and jewels can be stolen as thieves dig through walls.
Earthly wealth is something one can have today and lose tomorrow.
Then what is Jesus saying?
He is saying that all earthly wealth is transitory and passing.
He is asserting the fact that financial and material wealth is never secure and certain.
Because we now have bank vaults which are far more secure than money hidden in a mattress does not mean it cannot be lost. Other types of thieves are constantly threatening to steal our material possessions - illness, a business loss, depression, war, inflation and finally death itself. One or the other of these thieves will eventually take our money from us.
Therefore we are not to selfishly horde up our money, for we cannot take it with us out of this world.
Salomon said it like this:
Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away like an eagle toward heaven.
Some folks try to make this verse say that Christians should have no earthly financial security at all. This is not the proper interpretation.
This does not mean it is wrong to have a bank account, a retirement fund or an insurance program.
The point is that money is not to be the driving passion of ones life. We are not to find security in money.
Jesus shifts from the negative to the positive when he says this:
but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
This is a positive command.
It first of all means that Christians are to be more concerned about spiritual and heavenly things than carnal and earthly things.
The great thrust of the Christian’s life is to glorify God.
Secondly this means that Christians are to employ their earthly treasures and money for spiritual ends.
Our material investments should be accumulating heavenly profits.
Money used for God down here on earth is actually put on deposit in heaven. Every investment for Christ is eternally safe in the heavenly bank.
Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.
This is all of us church..
This is not an issue of being rich or poor, because both the rich and poor can covet, be discontent, and greedy and store up on earth...
Someone has said, “What I kept for myself; I lost; what I gave God, I kept.”
A recent survey of Discipleship Journal readers ranked areas of greatest spiritual challenge to them:
1. Materialism
2. Pride
3. Self-centeredness
4. Laziness
5. (Tie) Anger/Bitterness
5. (Tie) Sexual lust
6. Envy
7. Gluttony
8. Lying
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Someone once said, the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.
Not the blood pumping vessel that is the concern of your cardiologist, but the seat of your personality that is the concern of the Gospel.
Where we store our treasures goes right back to our hearts church.
Jesus taught us today that there are only two places that we store our treasures, either in heaven or on earth.
It is hear that we can say if we are storing on earth it is for self and that this is driving by fear, anxiety, and even in-security.
Or if we are storing in heaven, it is for God and others.
This means that storing in heaven means being generous toward God and others church
If we want joy in our lives church, storing in heaven is the great remedy.
Our joy is not dependent on our material possessions, but only on the living God.
If we don’t have joy in our life, it is because we storing in the wrong place.
And this is not just talking about money, but our time, resources, and the talents that God has given us to bless the world, to bless our families, friends, and even enemies.
Where are you storing your treasures?
Do you know how many times prayer, love, and give are mentioned in the Bible?
Prayer= 313xs
Love= 310xs
Give= 880xs
Do you think it is important for us to give if it was mentioned this much?
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
GOD GAVE!!!
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
If you storing up on earth, do you think you eye will be full of light??
Church the single eye is the healthy eye.
If our eyes are healthy, we can see clearly our bodies are full of light.
The view of life we have depends on the kind of spiritual eye we have.
If it is a diseased eye, distorted by a materialistic outlook, everything we see is out of shape and concerns money and possessions.
What you see depends on what kind of an eye you have.
Your spiritual vision is distorted if you are trying to keep your eye on earthly treasures.
Your vision becomes clear if you lay up heavenly treasures.
Church, God’s Word often uses the eye to represent the attitudes of the mind.
If the eye is properly focused on the light, the body can function properly in its movements.
But if the eye is out of focus and seeing double, it results in unsteady movements.
It is most difficult to make progress while trying to look in two directions at the same time.
This is simple church, if our aim in life is to get material gain, it will mean darkness within. But if our outlook is to serve and glorify God, there will be light within.
The bottom line is that materialism dulls the mind and keeps us from thinking clearly about spiritual things. We begin to rationalize to please selfish lusts.
We settle down to a life of ease in our materialistic comforts and forget to serve Christ.
Poor spiritual vision leads to wrong spiritual priorities and thus will influence the entire direction of our life..
The bottom, bottom line is materialism is idolatry church!!!
Here we have seen two eyes, one full of light and one full of darkness.
Note: there is no middle ground here.
We either have good eyes or bad eyes according to Jesus.
A bad eye is not a single eye, a good eye is.
Where is your focus?
Finally we come to the last two, tow Masters...
Let’s read what Jesus said :
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
We cannot serve tow Masters church.
What masters you? Who or what is your master?
Is the Lord your Master? Or are you enslaved to materialism, money, wealth.
Serve-douleuō (do-lou-oo)- (servanthood) v. — to work for or be a servant to; in a bad sense, of those who become slaves to some base power, to yield to, give one's self up to.
The word for slave in the Greek is the word doulos, so basically Jesus is referring to slavery here.
Are you a bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ or are you enslaved to your money and possessions?
Jesus said we cannot serve two Masters, it is absolutely impossible...
For we will hate the one and love the other.
This is not talking about your employer, so if you have two jobs, then you are ok!
Its talking about a slave and Master relationship.
John Wesley said:
Earn all you can!
Save all you can!
So you can give all you can!
John Calvin said this, "Where riches hold the dominion of the heart God has lost His authority."
That's the issue, plain and simple.
If I have my choice I want to take the money I have and I want to give it to friends who someday will meet me when I enter the eternal habitation.
One last quote from a old hymn:
M.E. Burns said this, "Riches I heed not nor man's empty praise, Thou my inheritance now and always."
How do you use your treasures?
Where are you storing them up? On Earth or in Heaven?
Do you have a single eye?
Who is your Master?
Prayer
Prayer
Lord, thank you for your loving exhortation and correction, we know you love us too much to allow us to stay where we are. We know that when a child is born, that they are born with quenched fists, fists that say mine and more. But when we come to you, you open our fists so that we may be vessels of mercy to all. God deliver us from the slavery of materialism and enable us to store up in the heavens. We confess before you and each other, that at times are eyes are not single and fixed on you, therefore, we seek to self-gratify. Please forgive us and help us O’Lord this week to seek You first Your Kingdom, and Your righteousness and in so doing may you give us all opportunities to store our treasures in heaven.
In Jesus Name, We Love you! Amen!
Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.
THE LORD BLESS YOU!
YOUR MISSION STARTS NOW!