Sermon on the Mount series
8.  Simplicity – Matthew 6:19-34 – 4.6.08   Dennis Mullen

        Back in the 90s when interest rates were up, there was a commercial that, at first glance, appeared to be for an expensive watch.  It talked about the fine workmanship of this $6,000 watch  (the one on the slide is $275,000) and how much it would impress everyone and improve your status…and then the voice-over said:  “Of course that $6,000 watch will cost you $40,000 over twenty years in lost interest for your retirement!”  The commercial was about investments and the watch was an illustration of a poor one, of throwing your money away now and losing out on a big payoff later.

        That’s where Jesus is coming from in Matthew 6:19f, only his focus isn’t on now vs. twenty years from now, but this life vs. eternity.  He says:

¹⁹ "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Last week I showed you a picture of a pile of cash and a stack of Monopoly money and I posed the question of treasure exchange:  Why would you swap God’s reward for the fleeting pleasure of being approved by someone else?  Last week, in the first half of Matthew 6, Jesus talked about fasting, prayer, and giving and said that if you do these things for the applause of other people, you have received your reward in full – BUT if you keep them to yourself and you let God and God alone be your audience, well, your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.  The choice is between a false and fleeting treasure and one that is worthwhile and lasts forever.

Now he applies the same teaching to those things that we actually call treasure – our money and possessions.  Now a $6,000 watch isn’t my thing, but what about a $2,000 computer, or a $40,000 car?  What about the home I choose for myself or the other tools, toys and trinkets that catch my fancy?  Maybe that $40,000 car will cost me $200,000 in retirement savings, but more importantly, Jesus says that it may cost me wealth untold in eternity.

We talk as if the eternal kingdom will be the same for each of us or that it just doesn’t matter what kind of treasure we store up there.  Jesus never did.  There’s an old joke about heaven where Steve Spurrier (former Florida football coach, current S. Carolina coach) goes there.  God takes him to his new home, and it’s just a little shack with a S. Carolina flag flying above it.  Steve says:  “I can accept that.  It isn’t what I hoped for, but I’m just glad to be here.”  But then he walks down the road a bit and sees a magnificent mansion covered in UT flags.  He says to God, “Now I was ready to accept my little shack till I saw this.  What has Phil Fulmer ever done to deserve such a nice place?”  God says “Oh, that isn’t Fulmer’s place.  It’s mine!”

Jesus tells me that it matters and it matters a great deal in eternity how I invest myself and my treasure in this life.  I cannot explain it and Jesus doesn’t give us a lot of detail, but I don’t want to get to the gates of heaven and find out that I invested poorly because I chose the ways of this world and ignored the words of Jesus Christ.

Before we go further, let me ask:  Is it wrong to do the right thing just for the sake of getting a reward?  If you do the right thing and your heart really isn’t in it but you do it anyway, and your reason is that Jesus commanded it and he promised you eternal rewards…does that ruin the good that you do?  I heard a guy this week in a radio interview say exactly that.  The guy was Greg Epstein and he is the humanist chaplain at Harvard, the chaplain for atheists, agnostics and anyone who doesn’t hold to a traditional religion.  He said that if someone does good for the sake of a reward they plan to get in heaven, then they aren’t really looking out for others, that it’s just a very admired way of looking out for yourself.  When Mother Teresa died, I heard a few people say the same thing about her, that according to her belief system she was really just looking out for herself, storing up treasures in heaven with each beggar she helped in Calcutta.

A couple of responses:  First, it is REALLY hard to find an example of anyone doing a good thing without SOME self-centered reason behind it.  If you give money to someone, it might be partly because it makes you feel good inside for awhile, or because you worry that you’ll feel guilty later if you don’t.  Some of the happiest people I know are people that make a habit of serving others, which means that serving others isn’t really self-sacrifice, it’s just a wise way to choose to live.  People who don’t believe in God explain generosity and self-sacrifice as something that developed and survived in us because it is good for the survival of the species.  If my wife is especially forgiving of my bad mood today it’s partly because she is a good person and partly because she hopes to train me to do the same for her!  Good people do good things all the time that have at least some element of self-interest, and it is very hard to find an example where NO self-interest is involved.

Second, I suppose I could imagine a guy running an inner city mission, and every time he picks up a homeless guy off the streets, in the back of his mind he’s saying:  Did you see that Lord?  Did you record that one?  I want to make sure I get my reward for that one. 

But it doesn’t really work that way.  That isn’t how people behave.  People who are that into rewards can’t wait for God.  They tend to aim for them in this life.  They tend to make sure that PEOPLE see them doing good, and that is just what Jesus opposes in the first part of the chapter.   But the more you get to know the Father, the closer you let yourself get to him, the more helping others begins to consume your heart because your heart is becoming like his.  The eternal rewards are then kind of like a reminder in the background rather than a reward card you’re getting stamped each time you do something good in hopes of redeeming it someday for a nice prize.

Third, Jesus more than anyone warned against following him in action and not in heart.  In Matthew 15:7-9 he challenged the religious leaders by saying:  ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

⁸" 'These people honor me with their lips,
                  but their hearts are far from me.
 ⁹ They worship me in vain;
      their teachings are but rules taught by men.’" (quoting Isaiah 29:13)

And in the very next chapter, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks of false prophets who do amazing miracles in his name, and yet he says to them at the last day:  “I never knew you.  Depart from me.”

Having said all that, we are left with the fact that Jesus repeatedly promised us that the investments we make from this age into eternity are ones that will last forever, so that what seems like sacrifice from the outside is simply smart investing.

So anyway, Jesus was saying:

¹⁹ "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Then this paragraph, which has always seemed to me like it doesn’t quite belong here:

 ²² "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. ²³ But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

I have never been really good with symbolism and poetry, but John Stott in his book on the Sermon on the Mount explains this pretty well and tells me why it is here.  The part that’s easy for me to understand is that our eyes let light into our bodies – not literally, it’s an illustration – and if your eyes go bad and stop working, things go dark.  Now the deeper meaning that Jesus has here is that the same is true spiritually speaking.  Whatever you focus your inner self on, whether light or darkness, that is what you will become.  Will you focus on sex?  You’ll become a slave to it.  Will you focus on pleasure or power?  That will cast its darkness inside you, and you’ll become that on the inside.  Or will it be money and material things (his case in point)?  If that’s your focus, then you are letting darkness into your soul, and if you extinguish the light within, how great is the darkness!

This section of Scripture is on Simplicity, which is why I gave the sermon that title.  Simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean giving away all your stuff, though it might mean that.  Simplicity means living for only a few things and having those few things in proper order.   Simplicity means following one God, which is the reason for the ONE on the bulletin.  A life of duplicity or multiplicity is a life lived in service to too many masters.  Simplicity says that if you have two rulers in your life, that’s one too many.  As they said in Highlander, there can be only ONE!  (and that’s God, in case you don’t get that!) 

Simplicity says that money, to name one important thing that gets in the way of simplicity, makes a good servant but an awful master.  Simplicity says that you can’t serve two masters.  Simplicity says that worry and anxiety are signs that you have too many masters, and that the wrong thing is leading you.

Here’s how Jesus put it:

²⁴ "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

²⁵ "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

²⁸ "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I know what Jesus says is true, and more than that I choose to stake my faith upon it and I urge you to do the same – to accept that God will provide even when it appears that he will not.  But I have to admit that it’s harder to preach on this passage today than it used to be, especially if I want to come away with easy answers.  The reason is that my eyes have been opened more over the past two years to the folks around the world and just down the street who don’t have what they need through no fault of their own that I can see. 

This problem is most difficult overseas where there is widespread famine.  How do you account for that, especially when saved and sinners alike have to go without clothes and daily food?   Is the problem a lack of faith?  Is it that there aren’t enough people seeking first the Kingdom of God?  And if that’s the reason, why are people so well-fed in, say, Hollywood?  Or around here, for that matter? Well I know that we who have plenty have a huge responsibility to care for those who don’t, in ways I’m just starting to understand. 

But just to keep it manageable, let’s think about the situation right around here in our church.  Here at Morrison Hill I can say with confidence that no one who is part of the family here needs to worry about food, what they will eat or drink, or clothing, what they will wear (look around you and you’ll see several guys who obviously give no thought to what they will wear!)  Why no need to worry?

One, because God says not to.  Worry is faith in reverse, faith that God will fail to come through for you.  It dishonors him.  When it comes down to it, faith really is a choice you make.  I think my choice to believe in God and trust him to provide is based on good reason, but when it all comes down, I have to choose to trust his words here, and sometimes that means choosing to believe in him in spite of what appears to be the case in the short term.  So Jesus says “Do not worry about your material needs”?  It’s not a promise I can take to the person on the street who doesn’t know God.  But for me – for us – it is the word of our Father.  We have chosen to believe in him for our salvation, and we must do it here.

Two, because God really has provided plenty for everyone.  It doesn’t even take much faith to see that.  Someone said that it’s hard to pray “Give us this day our daily bread” when we have food in the pantry for a month.  Well, it’s easy to pray “Lord, please provide me what I need to survive” when you’re part of a loving family like this one where God has already supplied the needs and wants of so many.  I can have confidence in God that I’ll be provided for if my hour of need comes because I have learned what he is making of you people.  I have seen your generosity and love time and again in examples too numerous and often too personal to name.  Why am I saying this?  Just as a reminder that being part of the community called the church is such an integral part of God’s plan.  If I have more than I need, I can be the way God meets your need, and at other times you can be the instrument by which God provides work or food to another in the body.  “Seek first the Kingdom of God” Jesus says – seek the place where God’s authority reigns.  I think it’s significant that he doesn’t say:  “Get saved” or “Get to be good friends with God”.  Those are important Bible concepts, but he says “Seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

    That’s the defining Scripture of true simplicity: ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  I want it to be our invitation too…

Morrison Hill Christian Church - P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E. Race St.
Kingston, TN  37763   (865) 376-5205