My Grandma, the Hoarder

Crisis

What is something that you absolutely can’t live without?

Complication

How many plates are you currently spinning right now? How many hats are you wearing? How many irons are in the fire? How many metaphors can I use at one time? Think about your life: is it pretty hectic and chaotic? Do you have space built in for actual rest—not just sleep, but rest for your soul? Think about the number of times you go through your day and you forgot to eat, let alone be with Jesus.

Clue

Story: my grandma, the hoarder.

Maybe there’s a way to declutter our lives. Maybe there are some things filling up our time that shouldn’t be. Maybe there are some things running our lives and we don’t even realize it. Maybe Jesus has a solution. We’re going to find out in Matthew chapter 6 tonight and we’re going to start in verse 19. Before we open the Word, let’s pray.

[PRAY]

Climax

“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,” (Matthew 6:19-21).

My grandma had a lot of “treasures” laid up for herself on earth. Moth and rust were definitely destroying them (along with the excessive amounts of cat urine).

When Jesus told his followers on that mountain side overlooking Galilee not to “lay up treasures on earth,” he was actually talking to a group that predominantly didn’t have a lot of earthly treasures to begin with. Their natural temptation was to envy those that had earthly treasures.

Jesus’s words translate a bit differently to us in our modern context. When he says to not “lay up treasures on earth,” he’s talking about the earthly possessions that we so often value and have in abundance: clothes, shoes, money, video games… “stuff.”

At this point in the message, it’s really important to remember what we talked about in the very first week: Jesus’s invitation to the kingdom is inside out. Jesus is more concerned with what’s inside than what’s outside.

He’s talking about stuff, but he’s also not talking about stuff. He’s really talking about our hearts and how our hearts are affected by our stuff.

Ask yourself: Do you own your stuff or does your stuff own you?

Instead of treasuring “stuff,” Jesus challenges us as his disciples to “lay up treasures in heaven.” Now that means flipping the script on what we consider “treasures” to be. He’s talking about an entirely different value system and an entirely different kind of wealth.

The invitation from Jesus here is this:

Check your heart.

So, the natural question then is, what would it look like to “treasure” things in heaven? Luckily, Jesus goes on to say in verse 22…

“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 the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23).

When Jesus calls the eye the lamp of the body, he’s using a metaphor that might take a minute to understand. Try thinking about it this way…

Illustration: Have you ever been in a room with bad lighting? Like a hospital room with oppressively white lights? Headache city. The first thing I do when I get to my office is turn off the florescent overheads and turn on my warm mood lighting. That’s my definition of good light.

Jesus is saying that whatever your eyes are focused on, that’s the “light” that’s being brought into your body. Is it a goodlight that brings life to your body, or is it a bad light that actually brings darkness and death?

Asked a different way: What do you spend your time focusing on?

Who remembers what we said in week 1 is the central point of the entire Sermon on the Mount? (Answer: the kingdom of God)

That’s right! And the kingdom of God can simply be defined as anywhere and anything where God’s rule/authority is active over his people for the sake of his place.

Jesus wants us to shift our focus off of worldly things that are temporary and can be evil and twisted and can bring “bad light” into our bodies and fill our lives with darkness and stress. Ultimately, he wants us to shift our focus onto his kingdom. This makes me think of the words of Paul to the Colossians:

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Chris is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth,” (Colossians 3:1-2).

It is easy to be distracted by all the plates we have spinning at all times. It’s easy to be distracted by the clutter that builds up in our hearts and our lives. Being a teenager is complicated and complex and life is full of challenges and distractions; sinful things can take our focus off of Christ and his kingdom, but so can good things.

That’s why we have to fight to practice what Jesus is inviting us to do here:

Clarify your focus.

Be intentional about what your eyes are fixed on. Take a second to really consider what you spend your time and money on. Where is your energy being used up? Are they what the apostle Paul would call “things above” or “things below”?

This question is really important, because the final invitation from Jesus is the strongest and maybe the hardest to hear:

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money,” (Matthew 6:24).

Jesus’s words here could not be clearer. He just says it like it is—either you love and serve God or you love and serve money.

Special note: the word here for “money” is actually the word mammon.

The word mammon means “property or any resource of financial value” and it originally comes from the root word that means “something in which you put your trust.”

Did you catch this little line in the definition of the word Jesus uses here? “Something in which you put your trust.”

That’s the key here. What are you putting your trust in? What are you trusting in to bring you peace, fulfillment, joy, stability, power, etc.? Anything you are putting your trust in other than God is what the Bible would call an idol.

Here’s the thing: this isn’t really about whether or not you have a lot of stuff or come from a lot of money. This is about your heart and what has a hold of your heart! You can be serving the idol of money whether you’re poor or rich. You can be serving the idol of possessions even if you don’t have many. You can also be serving God and loving God even if you have a lot of money and possessions. And, sometimes, it’s not about money or possessions at all: the thing that you are placing your trust in is something else entirely (relationships, family, status).

Illustration: Anybody watch American Idol? At the end of the show when they get down to the finalists, each week they ask viewers to text in their vote for who they want to win. The invitation is for America to choose their next idol.

Funny enough, that’s kind of what Jesus is telling us to do.

Choose who you will trust. Are you going to “choose your next idol” or are you going to choose to put your trust in God alone for your security, dependence, and identity?

What I believe Jesus is doing in each of these three invitations in the Sermon on the Mount is really addressing one core idea that is easy to say but deeply challenging to do:

We must be ruthless in identifying and eliminating idols in our life.

Conclusion

How do we do this?

Uproot your idols.

The greatest and most damaging “clutter” that builds up in our hearts over time is idolatry. One writer described our hearts as “idol factories.” We’ve got to regularly go in there and clean them out.

Consider beginning the whole process by praying the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) to get your heart and mind in the right place and begin focusing on the kingdom of God.

Identify idols by asking 3 simple questions:

How do you spend your free time?

Where do you spend your money?

What is something that you could never live without?

Then, confess and strategize.

Once you identify your idols, confess them to a trusted friend or adult and work on an accountability plan to tear down that idol.

[CALL THE BAND UP]

Tonight’s invitation of Jesus is a challenging one. It was challenging and convicting in his own day to the people he was speaking to on that mountain and it is challenging for us today. We are prone to worry and be anxious about many things. We are prone to materialism and we live in a culture consumed with things, abundance, affluence, and status chasing. May we be a people here at FSM that are relentless in our daily effort to eliminate the clutter and the distractions from our hearts. May we be the kind of people that do not idolize our money or our stuff. May we be the kind of people that truly live simply for the kingdom of God and live to see it come in Little Rock, Arkansas as it is in heaven.