Upside Down Living #16 - Investment in a Time of Opportunity
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:19-24 looking at what our culture says about wealth, how Jesus' words are upside down compared to culture, and three realities we should hold close to as Christians.
Message Transcript
So, I don't know if you've ever seen a movie or a TV show where somebody's lost at sea, but these shows often have the person who is thirsty and in the sun, baking, and water all around them. And the one thing that they need to not do is drink the salt water because the salt water, instead of satiating their thirst will actually create more thirst and hasten their demise rather than prolong their life. But everything in them says, there's water everywhere. I'm thirsty. I need to drink. And so you have probably seen this kind of a movie or show where somebody has to internally wrestle with themselves not to do the very thing that they know they shouldn't do, because it seems on the surface to be the most logical, reasonable, best thing to do.
Well, we've been in a series that we've called Upside Down Living. And what we've been doing is we've been working our way through Jesus' most famous teaching, the Sermon on the Mount. It's found in Matthew chapter five through chapter seven. And the reason we've called it Upside Down Living is because what Jesus does over and over again is he encourages people, his followers, all people, to understand that so often what seems most natural, most intuitive, most logical is the exact opposite thing that we need to do. And today we're going to talk about this in terms of the things that we treasure in this world. Earthly treasure if you will. Because intuitively, logically, common sense says the more you keep to yourself, and we could be talking about material well-being, we could be talking about a claim, about success, about leisure, comfort, whatever it is that you say, "This is what I treasure. This is what I value." Your appearance, whatever it is.
If you say, I am going to do all I can to get all I can here and now, that just seems logical. But Jesus comes and he says some striking, instructive, important words for us to not be the kind of people who drink the salt water of our world, our time, and say, "This will say satiate me." When it will not. And here's what Jesus says very simply in Matthew chapter six, verse 19, he says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on Earth where moths and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal." And what we have here is we have the first of what I'm going to call three realities that we need to hold closely if we're going to avoid, in a sense, drinking the salt water.
And here's the first reality, and that is earthly treasure will not last. That's what Jesus says. He says, don't store up treasure. So, he gives us a command, but then he tells us why. Earthly treasure won't last because earthly treasure is something that moths can basically erode, that vermin he says, or some translations say rust, can corrode, and where thieves can break in and steal. And so the image here is of something that's vulnerable to calamities, which is the moth image, and this is where if you have clothes and moths get in and all of a sudden you go to wear something that has a big hole in it, and it's unusable. Then what you realize is that you stored something away and even though you tried to keep it and preserve it, there was a chance that just a random moth got in and ate it and made something that you valued or treasured almost useless.
And then he talks about this idea of rust, which is something that's vulnerable to lose its shine, so to speak. And you've probably experienced this. You've had something that you bought that you thought, "This is amazing. This is great and it's really good." And then five or ten years later, or five or ten months later, the thing doesn't live the way that it once lived. We bought some furniture several years ago and that furniture now has the years of wear and tear, and it no longer has the luster that it had when we first bought it. And all of us have experienced this. And so, Jesus here is just simply saying, you can invest your life in things that are vulnerable to calamities, vulnerable to decay, and then you can invest them in things that are vulnerable to be taken. Things that thieves can break in and steal.
And what Jesus is doing is he's painting this picture and he's saying not that having earthly treasure is wrong, but when we make too much of earthly treasure, that's not smart because earthly treasure will not last. I was talking with a friend of mine who works in the airline industry, and he was telling me some of the prognosis for what's going to happen to the airlines over the next year if travel doesn't pick up substantially and quickly. And really what you're going to see, barring a government bailout or a likely government bailout, is an entire sector of industry where whatever they have built is in jeopardy. And who could have predicted that? But that's Jesus' point. He's saying you can build a great company, you can build all kinds of things that seem secure, that seem like they will last, like they will give you what you need, and yet those very things can be susceptible to decay, to destruction, to calamity, or to somebody else taking them away.
It's almost like he's saying to us as people who live in this earth, be careful that you understand that this earth is like living for a summer in a rental. And here's why I say that. If you rented a place for a summer or a winter, maybe you go south in the winter and you say, "Hey, I'm going to rent a beautiful place for a couple of months." Here's what I am pretty certain you would not do. You would not take your time to renovate the rental to your liking. And you would try to right size the amount of money that you spent on the rental versus the rest of your life. Like if somebody said to you, "Look, you have $100,000 dollars to spend on housing for the next 10 years of your life."
And that, depending on your housing tastes, may not seem like enough or may seem like a lot. But here's what you wouldn't do. You wouldn't take all $100,000 and put it into the three months of the coming summer. You would say, "I need to pace some of this. I need to keep some of this for another day." And Jesus is saying here, don't lay-up treasure here and now because the degree to which you lay up treasure here and now is the degree to which you are in essence banking on something that you know for certain will not last. Not saying that it's wrong to have treasury, he's saying that it's not smart to make that your ultimate treasure.
And then he says this, verse 20, "But store up for yourself treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal."
And so, Jesus offers an alternate, which is this idea of saying, "Lay up for yourself treasure." Now notice that Jesus' statement here is not take and get rid of treasure, and you'll never have treasure, it's lay up for yourself treasure in heaven. And so, what he's saying is you may not be able to take things with you when you die, but you can send it ahead. In other words, you can lay up, you can take something and say, "I'm going to use this for more than just the summer of rent. I'm going to use this for something greater." The same thought is echoed in First Timothy chapter six, verse 18 and 19. It says, "Command them." This speaking to people who are rich in this current world. And I believe that if you live in America in the 2000s, that you are rich by the world's standards. You may not feel rich compared to your neighbor, but by world standards, you qualify as rich.
"Command them, those who are rich, to do good and be rich in good deeds and to be generous and willing to share." And then he says this, "In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life." Jesus' teaching, lay up for yourself treasure, is echoed here by Paul. When he says, "In this way, they'll lay up for themselves treasure." And here's what he says. "It is to lay up treasure, being rich in good deeds and being generous and willing to share." In other words, the way that you and I can say, "I'm not going to simply take all that I have and invest it in a three month rental," is by saying, "I'm going to be rich in good deeds and I'm going to be generous with what I have. My stuff, my time, my talent, my treasure, my influence, whatever it is that I have, I'm willing to be generous with it, and in that way, I'm actually laying up for myself treasure in heaven."
But there's self-interest still. If you see it. It's not simply saying just forget it. It's like is saying, "Here's the ultimate insider tip." You know that there's coming a day when your life will end, and you can send ahead what you can't take with you. By investing it. Not just money again, but all of what we share, control, over in terms of resources. And then in Psalm chapter 49, when we read these words, 49 verse 16 and 17, we see this, it says, "Do not be overawed when others grow rich, when the splendor of their houses increase." And it says this, "For they will take nothing with them when they die, their splendor will not ascend with them." Now, Jesus basically has said the same thing the Psalm says, but the Plasm says it even more starkly.
He says, don't be impressed when somebody gets a brand new, huge house. And it's the thing when you walk in or drive by and you say, "Wow, would I love that." What he's saying is understand that house will go to somebody else. They will not take it with them. And in fact, Jesus' point here isn't don't have a big house. It's understanding that a big house is just a big house for now, that it is not something that does anything for you in eternity. And so, if we want to not drink the salt water of our world, one of the things we need to do is understand that we can't take earthly treasure with us. but here's the second thing that we need to hold closely and I'm just going to say that earthly treasure may cause spiritual blindness.
We see this in verses 21 through 23. Here's what Jesus says: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Now, if you're reading along in a Bible with me, you'll notice that this is actually part of the paragraph before. And then a new paragraph starts in verse 22, but the paragraphs are actually supplied by editors long after the fact. They're not an inspired break. And so, you can make the decision to say, where does verse 21 fit? I think it fits better with verse 22. I'll come to that in just a moment. But here's what is really striking to me about this statement. And that is we tend to agree that where our heart is, our treasure will be. We don't tend to think that where our treasure is, there our heart will be. But notice that Jesus says it that way. He says where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
In other words, what you decide to invest in your heart will follow. We tend to think it's the other way around. In other words, the more that my heart loves something, the more I'll value it. Not long ago, James Smith wrote a book, You Are What You Love. And he said, we are primarily not thinkers, we're lovers. And what he was referring to is that we love things and that's what drives our action. And here's what Jesus is saying: Your heart won't just be reflected in your actions, but your actions will actually lead your heart. Your decisions will lead your heart.
Let me give you an example. I mentioned furniture. So, years ago when we bought some new furniture, we bought this sofa. It was a big sofa that our whole family could sit on. And we put it in our biggest room in our house. And before that, we had some old furniture in there. And here's what happened with the old furniture. The kids would go downstairs, they'd eat some Cheez-Its or whatever they would eat and spill something on the sofa. We'd clean it up and we'd be like, "Oh, well, that happens." When we got the new sofa, do you know what happened? "No Cheez-Its on the sofa! No, don't drink that there! Drink it over here! Be careful!" And all of a sudden, because we had invested in a sofa, which is not the right word for a sofa, we had purchased a depreciating asset, which was a sofa. We had this sofa and all of a sudden it was now I treasure how and what we do with the sofa. Now, I'm not saying that being concerned to preserve your stuff is a bad thing.
What I'm saying is because I had spent money on a sofa, all of a sudden, I treasured that sofa more than I treasured the experience of those sitting on the sofa. And what happens in our heart is wherever we invest ourselves, our time, our money, our influence, that becomes what our heart values. That's what Jesus is saying. And the reason that I say this goes with verse 22, and this idea of spiritual blindness, is because this is the exact analogy Jesus makes. He says the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? Now that sounds a little cryptic, but here's what Jesus is just very simply doing.
He's taking the age-old image of light and dark and he's saying that when you see things that are dark, it means that internally there's something that's not right with you. But when you see things clearly with light, that there's a healthy eye or a good eye. And here's why this matters right here in this context and why I say this indicates that having a sense of spiritual blindness might come from treasuring the wrong thing. In other words, we may start to get our values twisted in this world when we overvalue earthly treasure. Because what will happen is, we'll start to have our heart follow that treasure. And all of a sudden, instead of seeing what matters, we'll start to say, "No, no, no. This is what I need." And our values and our value clarification will be a little challenging because we'll end up maybe with value confusion. And I think that's what Jesus is pointing out here. And that's why I say earthly treasure may cause spiritual blindness.
One of the things that was probably really positive about the coronavirus is that I think it helped a lot of people, a lot of families, to recognize that the pace at which they were living their lives was actually not a healthy pace. That they had prioritized a lot of things that didn't matter, and they didn't have as much family time as maybe they would like, or friend time, or personal time. And they were just running from thing to thing to thing and that busy-ness was driving their lives rather than intention. And one of the things that happened when all of a sudden we were forced to say, I have to be home night after night after night is to say, "Why do I run as hard as I run?" In other words, there was a spiritual blindness that came because of earthly treasure saying, "I have to have my kid in every top sports event, in every concert training thing, in every academic thing, or I need to be here and there."
And there's something that came from the clarity of saying, you're not going to have a chance to value those things right now. You're going to have to value something else. And what this really means is that the more we prize what God prizes, the more clearly, we will see. When we see and prioritize affluence, acclaim, convenience, it will often lead us to make choices that are detrimental. Be like drinking the salt water. And the way that we see clearly is by disciplining ourselves to put ourselves in a place where we're worshiping the God of the universe. This is one of the reasons that I believe in person worship matters. I'm not anti-virtual worship. Those of you who are virtually participating, I'm so glad you are, and that might be the right choice for you for this season.
But there comes a time where being with a group of people and proclaiming the greatness of God takes off our spiritual blinder and listening to the proclamation of the Bible in a clear and compelling way helps us to see clearly our own time of prayer and Bible study, Life Group, living and talking about things with others, serving, all help us to rearrange the way that we see things. And what it does is it helps us to understand what the scripture teaches. In Deuteronomy verse 18, we're told that we don't produce our own wealth. It's God who gives us the ability. Psalm 24 verse one tells us that everything in the earth is the Lord's. See, the way that we come to remember that is by putting ourselves in a place where God's word and people and worship is working on our heart in a consistent way. Otherwise, what we'll end up doing is we'll end up consistently losing track of it and figuratively speaking, drinking the salt water.
Randy Alcorn wrote a book years ago about it and he quoted a PBS television documentary called Affluenza. And here's what the program claimed about American habits. This is a few years back now. He said the average American shops six hours a week while spending only 40 minutes a week playing with his or her children. By age 20, the average American has seen over 1 million commercials. According to this Affluenza PBS documentary, recently more Americans declared bankruptcy than graduated from college and in 90% of divorce cases, arguments about money played a prominent role. And his point in quoting this, Randy Alcorn's point, was to say, "Here's what happens. We've so adopted the world's values with money that it's hard to see what matters most."
This is what Jesus said all these years ago. That where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. W.H. Vanderbilt said this, he said, "The care of $200 million is enough to kill anyone. There's no pleasure in it." We tend to think if I just had a little more, my life would be good. But sometimes the more you get, the more headache you have. John Jacob Astor said, "I'm the most miserable man on earth." These are people who've had huge fortunes. John D. Rockefeller said, "I've made many millions, but they've brought me no happiness." Andrew Carnegie said this, "Millionaires seldom smile." And Henry Ford said, "I was happier doing a mechanic's job."
The reason I read those quotes is because they remind us that sometimes we think if I just had more, if I just had more influence, more comfort, more convenience, more affluence, more whatever, then I would have enough, but it may cause spiritual blindness. So, Jesus teaches us that earthly treasure will not last. Verses 19 and 20. Then in verses 21 through 23, he teaches us that earthly treasure may cause spiritual blindness. And then finally, I believe Jesus teaches us this, and that is that earthly treasure may prevent us from serving God. Verse 24. "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other. Or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." Now notice what that says. It doesn't say you may not serve both God and money, or you will not serve both God and money, it says you cannot serve both God and money.
Now, certainly the Bible is not anti-money. It's not anti-having money. It's not anti-saving money. In fact, it instructs people to save money. The book of Proverbs makes it clear that saving money is a good personal discipline and having money is a blessing in our lives. And so, the Bible is not anti-money. But what it does say is that money is ultimately a rival God, a rival master. And the key is really the question of what is my master? And what this text says is that money will be at odds with God as your Lord and savior because it will drive you to choose things, to identify things, that you say are more important than the things that actually matter. And it's because we don't tend to understand that it won't last and that it may cause spiritual blindness. Now notice here, just the juxtaposition of these words. You will either love the one and hate the other, you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other.
And in a way those are just little snippets, little clues about how you know what your master is. And here's what I mean. If you find yourself, when it comes time to give money to anything, having a little bit of a gut check, like "I don't want to do that. I don't feel good about that." What that means is that there's a little bit inside you that's saying, "Ah, I value the money and what it does for me here and now more than I do laying up treasure for myself." When you're asked to serve or to do something, and you say, "You know what? No." Then you're valuing convenience more than you are treasuring, laying up treasure for yourself.
When your comfort is taken from you by somebody else's choices. The question is, "What am I valuing?" And you see how love, hate you cannot serve both together. Now let me just be clear. I don't believe that this text is merely teaching this idea of delayed gratification. That you say, "Let me take whatever it is that I might have that's good now and try to send it ahead and maybe one day I can enjoy it." Because eternal life in the Bible starts now. It starts with us coming to understand who Jesus is, and what he's done. And there isn't this sense of treasure in heaven, meaning that it's all only future. It means that there's a joy in it, even here and now if we understand what it means.
And the good news of what feels like Jesus saying, "Be careful, watch out. There's salt water all around you." Is actually this, and that is that heavenly treasure will last. It can't be taken from you. Think about that. There are things right now that you can do, that you can invest in, that will never be taken from you. I don't know about you, but just even thinking about the market and the election, there's a little bit of me that's like, "Eh, I'm a little nervous about what that all means."
The good news of heavenly treasure is there is no election in the future. There is no change of power. There is no person who can con you out of your money that will take away whatever you invest there. It is the safest, best investment ever. That's amazing. Heavenly treasure will help you see clearly. It will help you identify that what matters is not how much you accumulate for yourself here and now, but that there's a God who loves and cares deeply about you and that even though you are guilty of sin before a Holy God, that there is an eternity and love and a home for you in the future. And that when you believe and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, that is secure. Heavenly treasure will help you just say, that's what matters, and heavenly treasure will help you serve God first and foremost in your life.
Now I want to come back just for a moment to this phrase, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be." So, let me ask you, where's your treasure? This week? Now? What is it that you say, this has ultimate importance to me?
However you answer that question... And it isn't just what you think it is, it's what your actions are indicating. That is where your heart will be. You may work huge hours and you may say, "Oh, I hate it. I'm not really about it." But if that's the choice you make, then at some point, that is where your heart will go. It will say, "What I love is being identified with and the security and the status that working all these hours might give me." You might say, you know what I really love, is getting away on vacation and having some time for me, some me time. And that's what I'm all about, and what that may show is that anything that gets in the way of that becomes a threat. Something to dismiss. And so, for you, that becomes what your heart will love. What this text really means is that you can, in a sense, program what your heart will love by what it is you choose to make your biggest treasure.
I've been so encouraged by so many people that call Orchard Hill their church home in a time of uncertainty that have not just given to the church, but increased their giving to make sure that the church thrives through this time. Because what you're doing in many ways is, you're saying, "I have a bigger security than even my own bank account during this time." That's a tangible way to say, "Here's what I value. Here's what I treasure." And it happens with our time. It happens with our comfort, with our convenience. You can drive what your heart ultimately loves. Now I know that goes against our modern world because our modern world says your heart wants what your heart wants, and your heart will seek what your heart wants to seek.
Jesus says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." And he warns us against just blindly drinking salt water and saying, "This is going to satiate and satisfy me. Rather than saying there's something much greater that I want to be at the core of my life than just getting to the end and saying, I guess that was that. Jesus invites us to have and to lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven, where nothing can touch it.
Father, I thank you that you help us to see clearly sometimes what we can become blinded to. I pray that you would help me help all of those of us who call Orchard Hill our church home this week to see clearly. God in Wexford, the Strip District, Butler County, Online, and people watching later, I pray that we would see and that we would savor who Jesus is and know that knowing him as our Lord, our savior, is ultimately the greatest treasure we can have and whatever we commit to him, when this life is done, we'll never regret. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
