2024-06-09 What We Hold On To Matters

Well, we are continuing our series, / / Money Matters this morning. And of course we are in the greater year long journey through the Sermon on the Mount, and what Jesus teaches about what it means to live as those who follow Him and live in the Kingdom of God. And as we saw last week in our introduction to this shorter series, is that Money Matters in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Kelley and I come from, what we would call a Charismatic, more Pentecostal background where we have experienced a lot of incredible things in God. This is why we invite the presence of God to be with us every week, because Jesus said he would send us the Holy Spirit to be with us, guide us, transform us. We believe it and we expect it. It’s why we pray for healing every week,, we know that the Bible is 100% clear that God heals, that Jesus didn’t just heal people himself, but that he chooses to invite us into that precious and wonderful opportunity of prayer and experience for the freedom and deliverance of others. And I love the power and the wonder and the miracles of God.

But I also noticed that those things can be so incredible that the everyday matters of the Kingdom can be overlooked, and can end up feeling less important. But they aren’t. I mean, why talk about money when we could be talking about miracles and salvation, evangelism. Let’s get out there and get the world saved, right? But we have to ask ourselves a question, and I think, a very important and serious question. What are people saved INTO? Are we inviting people into an experience only, or are we inviting them into a way of life, of following Jesus as we are following Jesus? And that begs the question, are we truly following Jesus? In John 14:15 Jesus says, / / “If you love me, obey my commandments.” And in Matthew 28:20, which is right at the heart of what we call the Great Commission, the great sending out to get everyone saved, after he tells his disciples to go make more disciples, He says, / / “Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you…”

The experience of encountering Jesus should lead to the invitation and the heart to follow Him. When Jesus was alive, no one just encountered Jesus for a moment. They were either directly invited, or compelled to follow after him from their experience with him. And as ambassadors of Christ, ministers of reconciliation, we are not in this world to just create a momentary experience through miracles that Jesus has invited us to be a part of, but we are teachers and leaders who show people how to follow like we follow. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:1, / / And you should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ.

Power is awesome, but you know what is more powerful than just having a unique talent or ability, even if that is miracles and signs and wonders? It’s a life laid down and devoted to following Jesus no matter the cost, in every area of our lives, that represents the transformation of the Holy Spirit. That means healthy families, healthy marriages, healthy parenting, healthy finances, a healthy attitude, healthy bodies, and let me tell you, I have become renewed and re-awakened to that fact in the last few weeks.

So, as the church, those who have already had that experience, and those who say we already follow Jesus, our lives should look like something. They should look like His life. Even if just a little bit, right? And maybe a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more, as we, like the disciples, learn to obey all that he commanded. Because if people experience something wonderful and powerful through you, but they don’t want their lives to look like yours, they aren’t going to follow who you follow. They’ll thank you for the miracle and be on their way.

What our lives look like matters.

So, does the kingdom of heaven need money? No, of course not. But does how we relate to and interact with money, how we use and view money show a bit about what we believe and who we follow? Probably more than we think. These things actually matter in our representation of the kingdom.

So money becomes important. It’s not everything, and it has to have it’s rightful place, not being more important than it should be, which we’ll be looking at today. We have to learn to look at money in a healthy way. An often misused and misunderstood verse in the bible is 1 Timothy 6:9-10, which says, / / But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

We’ll probably get into this a bit more next week, but in older translations of scripture that verse is written, / / The Love of money is the root of ALL evil. Point blank. But in many of the modern translations it now says, / / The Love of money is the root of all KINDS of evil.

Why the difference? Why the change? Some people try to argue that the newer translations are trying to be soft on this because the modern church wants more money. It’s usually a little more complicated than that. But there’s definitely room for the question, right? Because All evil, and all kinds of evil, are two very different things. Well, it’s a simple matter of translation. The word for “all” can be used to mean “all” as in every single one, but it can also be used, and is used in other scriptures to mean, “all kinds” or “many”… “a lot”. It’s used in Colossians 1:6 to say that the “whole world” was seeing the gospel bearing fruit. Well, that’s not true. But much of the world was. A whole lot of people were. And in Matthew 3:5, it says “all” of Judea went to be baptized. Again, not all, but many.

Think of your those conversations you had with your parents when you were younger and you said, “Everyone’s doing it.” and your parents looked at you and said, “Well, not ‘everyone’…” And you rolled your eyes and said, “You know what I mean…”

All… not all, but all. Ya know? So, then a better translation is to say that money is the root of all kinds of evil, because that actually lines up with the rest of scripture more than saying it is the root of all evil. If money was the root of all evil, then we should have no money at all, yet, the bible is full of the faithful, the hard working, the diligent having money. It’s full of people being generous and looking after people with money. It’s full of stories of good and yes, warning, when it comes to money.

I was thinking this past week, Kelley and I have written some songs, produced some CDs and some of those songs get sung by other churches around the world. Well, every church that uses other people’s music has to pay and report to an organization called CCLI, Christian Copyright Licensing International. And we got a payment from them this past week. Right into our bank account. I know right. Pretty amazing. You’re not going to believe it…

Now I don’t want to brag, because money is the root of all kinds of evil. But, it was $2.22.

I took a screen shot of it and sent it to Kelley and said, “We’re really winning at this CCLI game.”

But I had a thought. Someone like Chris Tomlin, or Matt Redman, or Brandon Lake, who’s songs we sing here and every other church in the world sings are probably getting these automatic deposits with a bunch of zero’s attached to the back of that number, and have net worths in the millions. Why? Because they wrote songs to honor God, other people are benefiting by using those songs to honor God, and the result in this time period, at this point in the history of the world is money in their bank account. Without getting into all the ins and outs of the Christian music industry and what may or may not be great about it, I see no “evil” there. We as a church pay a couple hundred dollars a year to honor those who write music we use in our worship of God, and we have personally benefited from that as well, and some songs get sung more than others because they are fantastic songs. Also, because of what Kelley and I have had the privilege to be a part of in our lives, we have met so many great worship leaders and ministry people over the years with hearts of gold that aren’t in it for the money, it just happens to be a result of the great work they have been doing.

/ / Having money and your money having you are two very different things.

And one of the things I think people don’t notice about this passage of scripture in 1 Timothy is that both the verse before, and what’s written after point out the real problem. vs 9 says, / / People who WANT to be rich, fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.

There’s no punishment there except the consequences of our own actions. And I would venture to guess that we’ve all met someone who was so consumed by the idea of having more that they made bad decisions that affected so much of their lives.

And then immediately after, it says a similar thing, / / And some people, CRAVING money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced THEMSELVES with many sorrows.

When Jesus said that in this life we would experience trial and sorrow, we don’t often think that some of that sorrow might just be self inflicted, but maybe we should.

This is why we are looking at what Jesus says about money and possessions because…/ / Money Matters, because how we learn to handle and use money will effect our lives, the lives of those around us, and our ability to be an ambassador, a witness, for Christ in this earth. If you don’t deal well with money, why would people want to hear about this “savior” that supposedly changed your life for the better?

So I want to pick on something a bit that we talked about last week.

Last week we spent some time talking about the tithe. And I realized that that conversation is about so much more than giving to the church, or even if you look at it purely from an Old Testament perspective, and how it applied just to the people of Israel, which we can do, for sure, it speaks to so much more than just giving to the temple.

As I said last week, God is intending the people to learn something through the law of the tithe. Generosity.

/ / In creation, God shows that He himself is generous. He is the giver of life and all good things.

/ / In the law, God teaches generosity to His people. Generosity toward Him, toward ourselves and toward those around us.

And / / in the gospel, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus shows God’s ultimate provision and generosity. The gospel message is the ultimate expression of generosity because God gives us something we could never accomplish ourselves. You are the most generous when you do for someone else what they cannot do for themselves. That is the height of charity and generosity.

Now, what I realized walking away from last week, continuing to think about these things, and I mentioned it briefly last week, that it might be weird for someone to talk into a church and hear people talking about giving to the church every week. That’s not customarily normal for most places, unless there’s some sort of club fee or membership fee. People understand that, but why the church?

And what I realized is that we don’t know what it is like to embrace generosity as a societal norm. I don’t even think we understand it in the church. Let me explain.

Remember last week I said that the tithe was meant to teach the people of Israel to be a generous people in three different ways, to God, to themselves, and to the people around them.

Numbers 18 describes the first tithe people were meant to bring to the temple that would provide for the temple itself and the people tasked with serving there.

Deuteronomy 14 describes the other two tithes, one used for that religious vacation, to go to Jerusalem and worship God together, and the other, given every third year to look after those who were in need.

And each of those was designed to invite the people into the work of God. To worship, to look after yourself, and to look after others. God is teaching through these things.

A unique part of the first tithe, the temple tithe. When the Levites and priests received that tithe, God told them to take a tenth of that and set it aside for God. So, they receive the tithe from the people and then, because they don’t have their own stuff, they rely on the gifts of the people, God invites them into this process by taking a tenth of the received tithe, so that they are invited into the same process as everyone else. Now, why do that unless you are trying to teach something of generosity and honor of finances toward God?

And as we saw last week, the tithe commanded blessing. Of the third tithe, scripture ends with this thought in Deuteronomy 14:29, / / Then the Lord your God will bless you in all your work.

Now, to make this very clear. God still blesses people without tithing. I’m not just translating this from Old Testament to New Testament and saying it is mandatory that everyone gives 23.3% of their income.

But what God was trying to teach Israel was that generosity breeds generosity. That their generosity gives Him reason to bless them. Not that this is the only blessing, but that he wants to lead them to life and life more abundant, as Jesus would say, and part of that was not holding on to their possessions like they owned them, but to recognize they were stewards of God’s good creation and were meant to be generous out of that, and because of that generosity, God would ensure that they always had enough, both for themselves, and for increased and further generosity.

And it’s the same thing today. You want to talk New Testament, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9:10, / / For God is the one who provides seed for the farmer and bread to eat. In the same way, he will provide and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you.

Remember what Jesus said in what we looked at last week. Don’t give to receive the reward of man’s recognition, because you’ll forfeit the reward that my Father wants to give you. Some people kind of get bent out of shape over this because they think the church is demanding payment for blessing. And some churches have gone that far to preach that you won’t be blessed unless you give. Some go as far as connecting tithing to salvation. And that is just 100% wrong. It’s not the teaching of the bible, it’s not the way of Jesus.

What Jesus is saying is that God wants to reward generous people. AND YOU GET TO CHOOSE to be generous or not, but on the other side of that generosity, is reward, when it’s given with the right attitude and motive.

And this is what I realized this past week. We don’t know what this is like. Generosity as a societal norm, baked into culture and practice. See, God gave the law of the tithe right at the beginning, at the birth of Jewish society. They had just left 400 years of slavery in Egypt. This was the first time they were a nation of people. When they got to Egypt 400 years before Genesis 46 says they were just 70 people, a large family. Jacob and his 12 sons and their children. When they left Egypt they were a million strong, walking through the desert, having never lived on their own, without the provision of Egypt, even if that was under slavery, but they had never been in a position to look after themselves. They had never harvested their own crops and got to keep it all. They had never had a home that was theirs without threat of it being taken away. They haven’t known what it is like to live without constant threat and persecution.

For the first time they are free. But freedom without boundaries can get you killed in the harsh world that we live in. They left Egypt and walked into the desert. So, God gives them the law, to live by, so that they can create a healthy, functioning society. And within that law is how they are meant to live before God, and that included generosity, because to be like God is to be generous. So at the very beginning. The first year they are growing crops of their own, grateful for the freedom they have been given, they are bringing the tithe. The third year, the first time they are meant to bring their tithe for the poor. It’s easy. This is the beginning of their nation, of their society, built on the law of Moses, given by God, that leads to life.

We don’t have that.

Our society doesn’t encourage generosity. My email inbox, my actual mailbox, my social media advertisements, all of them are geared towards me getting what I want, even if I don’t have the money for it. We are encouraged toward personal debt to get everything we dreamed of because “you deserve it”…

They don’t know me, but somehow they know I deserve it… ok. What a lie!

And unfortunately the heart behind the tithe has not always been communicated. Again, I’m not teaching we have to tithe. I recognize this as the invitation to Israel to follow God through the law of Moses. And I can only speak for myself here, but I grew up in a church that it was expected that everyone tithe. And it wasn’t connected to our salvation or anything weird like that, but I did walk away from my childhood thinking that if I didn’t bring my tithe to the church, specifically, God wouldn’t be able to bless me, and actually, that I would be cursed, or at least my finances would be cursed.

Malachi 3 was used against us. We were robbing God if we were not tithing and that was why what we were doing wasn’t blessed. And I was so in fear of that that even when I wasn’t wanting to go to church, and I was old enough that my parents weren’t making me, I had a running tab in my head of how much I “owed”, and I would bring that when I would go back. Honestly.

That doesn’t teach generosity, does it? That teaches unquestioned demand under threat of curse.

It wasn’t until many years later that I decided to stop tithing because of fear, and for a season I didn’t even give, without remorse or without burden, but that season also brought me to a place of wanting to honor God with what He’s entrusted me with. And from that day on tithing became a completely different thing for me. It was out of honor to God, not out of duty or fear.

Again, society, and I would say even within the church, we don’t have a great understanding of the idea that the world is the Lord’s and everything in it, and we are simply stewards of what is His and he’s given us all that He has with the intention that we are to be generous with it, toward Him, toward ourselves and toward those around us.

And here’s where I think we miss it. I don’t know if there is anywhere in scripture that talks about giving that doesn’t include some sort of benefit, reward, or blessing. / / Biblical generosity is seen by God and rewarded by God.

A biblical view of finances, if you read cover to cover, I believe you would come to this result: / / Work hard, be generous, God will reward you.

And I think that’s the message for us as Christians today, because we aren’t even there yet. See, the Jews that Jesus was talking to in these passages of scripture we are looking at, in some ways had lost their understanding of the way that God had told them to live, but we don’t even have that. We have no baseline for generosity - not saying you personally, but as a society.

Look at what our nation is built on. Independence day. It’s ours. We are out to make a name for ourselves. To provide for ourselves. To look after #1. A life of biblical generosity is not the norm. And I would end that thought with this. God still blesses it. In my experience, God still blesses biblical generosity.

I know, that was a long introduction, but the next passage of scripture we want to look at today is just three verse. Powerful, important, but nice and short.

Matthew 6:19-21, Remember, Sermon on the Mount. Jesus teaching on this hillside, inviting people to follow him, to live in the way of the kingdom, says, / / “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

Three simple thoughts:

/ / Don’t store up treasure on earth

Store up treasure in heaven

Your treasure reveals your heart

Ok, so last week we saw that Jesus starts with generosity as the foundation of his financial talks, and then moves on to what you do with what you have left. After you’ve been generous, what are you holding on to? And so if I’m giving this message a title today it is, / / What we Hold Onto Matters.

/ / 1. Don’t Store Up Treasure on Earth

/ / “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal.”

With these verses it is really important to see what Jesus is saying, and also, to see what Jesus is NOT saying. I do not believe that this is just a straight forward literal thought. Jesus is not saying:

Don’t have a savings account.

Don’t invest your money.

Don’t have nice things.

Don’t own stuff.

I don’t think that’s what Jesus is saying. If Jesus was against having any sort of things then why would arguably his most powerful parable be about a father giving his inheritance to his two sons? God isn’t anti-possession or anti-money. God isn’t against planning or using money well.

In Luke 14:25-30 Jesus compares choosing to follow him to the construction of a building and that just as it is wise to figure out how much it will cost before you start building, you should also count the cost before you decide to follow him. So you can’t read this as, “Don’t save money.” or “You shouldn’t have any extra, so you have to give it all away.” That’s just not what he’s saying.

I think the first thing he is speaking to, just like He did in the first section that we looked at last week is motive, or priority. / / What is your priority when it comes to money and possessions? What is your motive?

If we look at the overall message of the New Testament, I would say it boils down to three distinct thoughts: / / Follow Jesus, by being Led by the Spirit, as we journey toward the Father.

Jesus said, Follow me. over and over again, that was the invitation.

He also said that it would be the Spirit that would lead us and guide us.

And He said, No one comes to the Father except through me.

What’s our priority? Why are we living? Why are we doing what we are doing? Is it with thought about our journey of following Jesus, being led by the Spirit toward the love of the Father and His kingdom? If it isn’t, then we have to ask if our priorities are misplaced.

So, the first thing Jesus is directing people to in this “Don’t store up treasure on earth” is, are your priorities misplaced?

The Second thing he’s pointing to is why people actually do that, and I would suggest that as much as we want to argue that it’s practical to save, and it’s wisdom to have something for a rainy day, all of those things are based in a question, / / “What if?” And “What if?”..not always, but often comes out of a place of fear.

What if I lose my job?

What if I don’t have enough?

What if the stock market crashes?

I’m not saying those are bad questions to ask, or aren’t even good questions to ask. I think having a plan in life is good, but is our plan for our finances based on our following of Jesus, or a fear that we have to look after ourselves?

This is a tricky one, ok. This is going to press every button that we have when it comes to finances, because this is what we’ve been taught. Because we live in a world where it seems impossible to just live by following Jesus. We sign a 30 year mortgage, and have to pay property tax and county tax and city tax and garbage collection, and water and electricity, and we can’t just find a plot of land and live off of it. Well, maybe you could, but very few do, and even then, the gov’t still wants their cut.

So, I’m not saying this is easy, and I’m not saying God is anti-saving or planning, but this boils down to the motive behind it. The reason behind it. Are you holding on to funds because you’re afraid, or is it because you are living in good biblical wisdom?

/ / If we are living out of fear, our money is holding on to us much more than we are holding on to it.

/ / 2. Store Up Treasure In Heaven

/ / “Store your treasure in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.”

So this is the flip side of what He just said. If you’re not storing up treasure on earth out of fear, you are giving your whole self to following him toward the Kingdom of Heaven regardless of whether you have money or not.

I think a really healthy question we could ask when it comes to money and possessions and how we are living in regard to these things is, / / Why am I doing what I am doing?

If we are honest with ourselves and we answer:

“I am afraid I won’t have enough.” Then that is something God wants to heal, because God does not desire for you to live in fear.

“I am worried about the current economy.” I get it, it’s easy to look at the world around us and be impacted by it. But who is our provider? Our job, the world, the government, or God?

“What if I default on my mortgage, or car payment, or student loans.” Again, do you trust that God will lead you? Do you trust that God wants to look after you?

“I can’t give because I need to hold on to all that I have.”

“I can’t make this financial decision, because what if I can’t see how it will negatively impact me.”

I said this to you last fall. It didn’t make the most financial sense for me to go to University at 42 years old. But if God is telling me to go then I have to trust that God has a plan for making it work. God is not going to lead you down a path of ruin. Yes, the path he leads you on might go through some hard times, some stressful times, some difficult decisions and some opportunities to really rely on Him through it all.

But, remember the words of Jesus, In this world you will experience trial and sorrow, but do not worry, I have overcome the world.

Yes, we might go through difficult times, but we are meant to be led by the peace found in Jesus Christ and the confidence of the Holy Spirit rather than the fear of not having enough and needing to hoard.

How many know the saying, / / “Hope for the best, plan for the worst.” ?

I’m not sure that’s biblical, is it? / / “FollowJesus, to the best of your ability, regardless of your current experience” is a little more like it.

N.T. Wright proposes that Jesus is not even talking about the heaven of the future in when we die, like what we do here builds our treasure stores in heaven. And I actually like that thought because that could easily produce some sort of spiritual greed or goal setting to build up a fantastic heavenly bank account by being so awesome here on earth. “My mansion will be big and full of stuff because I didn’t store up my treasure on earth.” That feels a bit weird when you actually think about it, doesn’t it? Why are you doing good deeds? Building my heavenly bank account…

If this whole conversation, the sermon on the mount, is truly about living in the kingdom of God, and as Paul would later say, being ambassadors of Christ, then the heaven we are reading about here is the heaven of the here and now. How are we living now, like we will live then?

Imagine with me for a second. Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus has come back, and He has brought the new heaven and new earth. Jesus is sitting on the throne, ruling the world. Are you worried? Is there anything at all to be worried about? Are you afraid of where your next meal will come from or what you will wear tomorrow?

Ok, now, as an ambassador of that, bring that forward. And let me just ask: What good will treasure be in heaven? To compare to each other how we did? That doesn’t make sense, does it?

So what’s the Goal? It’s really been the conversation of most of this Sermon on the Mount so far. / / Learn to love and serve God right now, and you will have treasure in the present, not just in the future.

But it might not be, and I would say probably won’t be, treasure like we think. Jesus says in John 4:34, / / “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work.”

Treasure, nourishment, reward from doing the will of God, from following Him.

Hebrews 11:6 says, / / Anyone who wants to come to [God] must believe that [he] exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

Matthew 6:33, as we will read in a couple weeks, / / “Seek the kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”

Here’s the deal. We either believe that, and that changes the way we live, allowing God to remove from us the fear of tomorrow and embrace the work of today. Or we don’t actually believe that and it leads us down a very different path.

If my decision to follow what I believe Jesus is saying to me, is dependent on my own person financial provision, then I am going to miss following Christ.

Wright says, “[Jesus] wanted his followers to establish heavenly treasure right now, treasure which they could enjoy in the present as well as the future, treasure that wasn’t subject to the problems that face all earthly hoards…” And the key to doing that is, / / “Learn to live in the presence of the loving Father. Learn to do everything for him and him alone. Get your priorities right.”

/ / 3. Your Treasure Reveals Your Heart

“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

So, Jesus brings it all home with this thought. What you focus on as your treasure reveals where your heart is. It reveals your motives more than anything else.

I can’t say this of the entire industry or everyone who works within it, but a CEO of a pharmaceutical company was asked what his favorite drug was, and the question was asked thinking the response would be what has the greatest potential to cure illness and disease, but his response, “My favorite drug is the one that has the most side effects we sell other drugs to fix.”

In 2020, 7 of the 10 biggest drug companies spent more on advertising and marketing than they did on actual research and development of medicines.

/ / Treasure reveals motive, which comes from the heart.

I’m picking on Big Pharma for a moment, knowing that’s not the whole industry, but is a clear example in how we as humans can lose our way.

So, the ESV says it this way, / / “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The question that I believe Jesus is bringing us to this morning is, / / “What are you holding on to?”

The word treasure here in scripture means “a deposit” literally, wealth, or treasure. the place in which good and precious things are collected and laid up. It’s talking about what you are collecting, what’s in your storehouse.

So, let’s go back to the initial thought we started with. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. The word evil there implies of a bad nature, a mode of thinking, something that causes injury. If we expand that a little bit. The love of money, or the pursuit of money, the thought that money will solve it all, that if we just had a bit more, we’d be good, will cause injury to those who fall prey to that thought pattern.

What does that sound like? To me, that sounds like the definition of sin - to miss the mark. What is Jesus doing here? We know that the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus inviting people to be his disciples and follow a better way. To live differently than they have been.

In a famous quote, John D. Rockefeller, who was the worlds first billionaire, was asked, “How much is enough?” and his answer was, “Just a little bit more!” And that might just best define the insatiable hunger that a heart focused on this world can lead to.

So, put these three verses, these three thoughts together. Jesus is saying:

/ / 1. The normal way is to amass as much as you can here on earth.

/ / 2. The kingdom way is to focus on kingdom purpose rather than material wealth.

/ / 3. How we do that is by putting our priorities right within our heart.

Why is this something Jesus has to say? Because money gets in the way of discipleship. Worldly priorities get in the way of following Jesus. Look at how many people work on Sunday now. Do you remember, not that long ago, when I was a kid growing up, everything was closed on Sunday. Was it just for church, maybe not, but at some point someone had the thought, “Wait a second, we’re missing nearly 15% of the week we could be selling people things…”

Do we shop on Sunday for convenience? Come on, we could last a day. I’m not saying shopping on Sunday is bad, or even working on Sunday is bad. But two of the reasons people decide not to come to church is because they have to work, or because they are so busy during the week that Sunday ends up being their time to go “get things done”, shopping, errands etc…

“But I still love God.”

Yah, but are we letting the material, the temporal, get in the way of the eternal.

And the culture around us, society around us, doesn’t think like we think, doesn’t care about what we care about, and it is increasingly more difficult to make these decisions to prioritize the kingdom of God.

What are we holding on to, and what are we reaching for?

I want to end this morning with an invitation. I just felt like God wanted to work in our hearts this morning in regards to this whole idea of priorities. I do not think anyone here is out for greed and to amass all the wealth and hoard earthly treasures. But I do know, for myself included, that money has a way of getting in the way of our trust, our motives, our decisions, and ultimately our discipleship to Jesus. And if there is any way that money and possessions are doing that in my life, I want it removed, and I trust you feel the same. You might not see any obvious distractions, and you might see very obvious ways you want change. But in the end, are we open to the invitation of Jesus to a better way?

Like I said earlier, culturally we have not been taught God’s way of finance. We have not grown up with a Godly, biblical understanding of money and possessions. It’s foreign to us. We are like Israelites who have been living in Egypt, coming out of the fog, being introduced to a completely different, radical way of living.

And often times that means being willing to trust that if we choose to follow Jesus, He will actually lead us to life!

So, the invitation this morning is one of trust. It’s an invitation to say, “Jesus, I trust that you know better when it comes to what I should prioritize, that when it looks in the natural like I should do one thing, but I feel in my heart, in my spirit, that I should do another, that I am going to trust you.”

Romans 12:2 says, / / Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

That’s the invitation this morning. To see the world of money and possessions, what we lay up, what we gather or hold on to, through a new perspective, God’s perspective. And whether we think there’s big issues in our lives or not, I would suggest we all could see things even more clearly from his perspective.

So, why don’t we stand this morning, together. This doesn’t need to be a, identify yourself and come forward. I think we can all agree that we don’t have a perfect revelation of God’s money and possession mentality and could use some help. Maybe you need 1% change while I need 60% change, but we all need revelation. We all need the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts and minds to change the way we think, rather than following or being conformed to the ways of this world.