PAUL TRIPP MINISTRIES, INC.

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1 PAUL TRIPP MINISTRIES, INC. Investment Strategies December 16, 2007 Matthew 6:19-24 If you were asked, What was one of the greatest threats to Christianity? what would you say it is? If you were asked, What was a great obstacle to the work that God has called Tenth Church to do in this city? what would you say it was? If you were asked, What subject Christ spoke about almost more than any other topic? what would you say it was? There is, in fact, a relationship with all of these questions that I have asked you. Turn, if you would, back to that passage in Matthew 6. Perhaps there s no topic that Jesus discussed more in His ministry than the topic of money and possessions. Perhaps that s because Jesus knows something about the struggle of all of our hearts. I want to read for you again, beginning with verse 19 of Matthew 6: 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 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! No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he would to be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Matthew 6:19-24, ESV) In this passage, Christ lays before us three kingdom commands. The first is: Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. The second is: Don t be anxious; and the third is: Seek My Kingdom. Now, what I d like to do with you this evening is just look at the first of those commands, Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, or the negative, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Treasure is a wonderfully descriptive term. It s a wonderful way of getting at what moves and motivates you and me where the rubber meets the road in our everyday lives. What is a treasure? A treasure is something of assigned value. Not many treasures have intrinsic value. Most treasures have assigned value. If I would hold a dollar bill up in front of you, why is it worth one dollar? Well, it s not a dollar of ink or a dollar s worth of

2 paper. It is assigned value. But once we ve assigned that piece of paper that value, it takes on all kinds of influence in our lives. You will judge in ways the quality your life by how many of those you have. The number of those you have will determine where you live, may determine who you hang out with, may determine what kind of food you eat, may determine what you do in old age, may determine the quality of your healthcare. It becomes tremendously influential! What an interesting word, treasure something of value that you live for. Now there are, in this passage, three treasure principles, and I want to just consider them with you for a moment. Here s the first one. It s the assumed principle of the entire passage; here it is. Everybody lives for some kind of treasure. We don t live by instinct. We are value-oriented, value-driven human beings. We all live in pursuit of something. There is some bright golden dream that magnetizes you. We all live in pursuit of something in our lives. Perhaps for you, you are magnetized by the acceptance of others, and in ways you may not realize it; you are moved and motivated; you ride the roller coaster of how the people around you respond to you. You re hyper vigilant as you watch how they respond to you. And if you would watch the video of your life, you would say, This person is living for the acceptance of others. Maybe you live for power and control, and you re always trying to move yourself into positions of influence. You like to be a person of note; you like to be the center of attention; you like to have control over your world. If you watch the video of your life, you would see how you move yourself into places where you ll be in power and control. Maybe you live for success, and you re driven, and your life and schedules are phrenetic because no success is ever success enough for you, and so you re always careening from one success to the next success in that sort of workaholic way of living. Perhaps you live for the comforts of material possessions, and you work to surround yourself with all the accoutrements of life that would make you comfortable. Perhaps you live for pleasure, and you are attracted to the edible and experiential pleasures of the created world. Somehow, someway, all of us are living for something. Everyone lives for some kind of treasure. There s a second principle. You find it there in verse 21, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Here s the second principle: the thing that is your treasure will control your heart. Once that thing is in that place of treasure, it will control the desires, the thoughts, and the emotions of your heart. The way you interpret life will be through the lens of that thing that is your treasure. The thing that will make you happy is moving closer to your

3 treasure; the thing that will make you distressed and sad is moving away from your treasure; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And then there s a third principle. It s there in verse 24, No one can serve two masters, for 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 God and money. Everyone lives for some kind of treasure. The thing that is your treasure will control your heart. Third principle: and what controls your heart will control your behavior. You see, once that treasure is in possession of your heart, it will set the agenda for your words, your decisions, your actions, reactions, and responses. That s the spiritual dynamic that Christ is laying out in this passage. Everybody lives a treasure-oriented life. Everybody s heart is controlled by some kind of treasure, and that control then sets the agenda for the way that person lives. That is the inescapable reality of every human being s life. Now notice what Christ does, then, is divide the world of treasure into two kinds of treasure: earthly treasure and heavenly treasure--treasures that are of this earth, and because they re of this earth, are by necessity--temporary, and fleeting, and passing And the eternal treasures of the kingdom of God. Now, let me ask you the question, Which set of treasures do you live for? Now, what everyone here is going to answer is, Treasures in heaven. Well, of course! We re believers. We live for treasures in heaven. It seems logical, but perhaps it s not as logical as it seems. Look, if you would, at verse 22. It s a curious verse in the middle this passage that the discussion seems to make sense, and then all of a sudden, you hit 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 that darkness! Now if you re reading this passage, you hit that verse, you think, What in the world does this have to do with the topic? We re talking about treasure before verse 22; we re talking about treasure after verse 22, and then we have this discussion of the eye. Well, what sense does that make? Well, it fits perfectly here. Think about the metaphor. If your eyes see well as you enter a room, your eyes take in the light of that room, and your body lives in light. If you enter that same room, and your eyes are blind, it doesn t matter how much light is around you, you are incapable of seeing that light and incapable of taking it in. Now what is the point that Christ is making? Here it is: the material pleasures of this world, materialism, has a distinct and abiding ability to blind us. Isn t it an amazing

4 thing that no one ever thinks that he is materialistic? No one ever names himself as greedy. No one ever thinks he has a problem with desiring too much of the treasures of this earth. In all of my pastoral ministry, in all of my years of counseling, I ve never had anyone seek me out for the problem of greed. It s amazing! I ve never had anyone come and say, You know, my life is just so distorted by materialism. Could you please help me? In fact, the minute you hear a sermon on materialism, you re glad somebody else is there to hear it. You re quite pleased at the wisdom of God of putting them in the room. Think about it. Perhaps our answer that we live for treasures in heaven is too quick. The statistics here are shocking. The average, committed member to the church gives, how much do you think a year? Under $700! Twenty-three percent of regular attenders of the church of Jesus Christ give nothing. Less than twelve percent regularly tithe. Perhaps there is more of a war of treasure in our lives than we would ever have thought. We had a wonderful picture of the power of treasure to captivate the heart in my family growing up. My mom and dad were raised and then lived to Toledo, Ohio, and they moved from Toledo, Ohio to Southern California. Went one evening to an auction; my mom bought an old diamond ring at this auction for $175, just sort of a mad purchase, spontaneous. We went the next morning to have the ring evaluated at a member of the American Association of Gemologists. After looking at the ring for a while, the man came out and said, Ma am, I want to talk to you about your ring. It s really a very beautiful diamond, although it isn t up on prongs like they do nowadays - it s sort of buried into the setting - but the diamond is worth somewhere between $3,000 and $5000. Well, that s a pretty good return on investment. And then he said words that no one in my family will ever forget: But mam, what s valuable about the ring is not the diamond; it s the setting. It s a da Vinci setting, and it s worth $50,000. Now you just had a treasure reaction. My mom was telling me this on the phone, and I said to her as a son would in these moments, Did he offer to buy it? I was hoping some of the proceeds would come my way. She said, He did. He said he would write me a check right at that moment for $35,000. I said, You sold the ring, didn t you? She said, I did not; it s worth at least $53, Now you re understanding the concept of treasure. I was walking with my mom in a mall one day, and she was doing this with her hand. I thought maybe she had gotten mall palsy from over shopping. What it was was ring protection behavior. She was afraid to leave that ring in a bank, afraid to leave it at home, had it with her all the time.

5 If my mom would lose a pair of sneakers and that ring on the same day, which one do you think she d panic over? Which one do you think she would look for first? Now you re understanding the concept of treasure. Ask yourself this question this evening, What treasure really does orient your life? There are two irreconcilable lifestyles that Christ talks about here. First is treasure on earth. It s a lifestyle of accumulation. It s a lifestyle where I work to surround myself with all the things that I think will bring me comfort, and contentment, and satisfaction. It s a lifestyle focused on me. It s focused on my pleasure, my comfort, my ease, and I ravenously collect the things around me that I think will satisfy me. The problem with this lifestyle is those things never satisfy; there never ever is enough. The closet is never big enough. Lifestyle never lags behind paycheck; paycheck always chases lifestyle. It s a lifestyle where, if you are honest, you never say, Enough. I mean, you think about this; do you have more than you need? Do you? Why? Have those things been forced on you? No, don t give me more clothes, not another new couch, flat-screen television, no! Perhaps, materialism is a deeper disease in the church than we would ever think it is. Perhaps it s a greater obstacle to the work of God than we would ever think it is. Perhaps that s the reason Christ talks about this so much. I wish I could say that I m content with what I have, but I m so skilled at being discontent. I understand the concept of more. Is your enough ever enough? Do you actually have enough in your life? Does that concept actually exist in your life? How much of our energy, and our time, and our skill is invested in ways that have nothing to do with the Kingdom of God whatsoever? They only have to do with making this moment more comfortable for us. And all of those things that we invest in, they never last! They decay, and they oxidize, and they get eaten by bugs - they just don t last. And yet they re compelling, and magnetizing, and powerful. Now, Christ is not saying, It s wrong to have possessions. He s not saying, It s sin to invest in material things. He s saying, It s wrong for those things to be the treasure that orients your life. And, brothers and sisters, you cannot be honest about the condition of the church of Jesus Christ without saying that materialism is harming us. It s a lifestyle of personal, self- focused, never ending accumulation, and when there s where you look to feed your soul, you will never have enough because your soul will never be fed. Hard things to preach; hard things for this man to preach. What s the alternative lifestyle? It s a lifestyle to which you have been called. It s a lifestyle of freedom from the slavery to things that cannot and will not ever satisfy. If

6 laying up for yourselves treasures on earth is about accumulation, then laying up for yourselves treasures in heaven is about sacrifice. It s very interesting in Luke 12 when Luke records Christ doing the same teaching, he immediately follows with the shocking call to sell all your possessions and give them to the poor. A little bit of a hint in terms of what Christ understands that it means to live for treasures in heaven. Here it is: it s a life of willing investment, of willing sacrifice, of personal time, energy, and resources for the sake of the progress of the Kingdom of God; a life of a willing investment of personal time, energy, and resources for the sake of the Kingdom of God. You see, brothers and sisters, we have been welcomed to a better Kingdom. It s a Kingdom that will deeply satisfy your heart. It s a Kingdom that will lead you to a place of true contentment. It s a Kingdom that will give you the joy of investing in things that will not fade away, things of absolute eternal value. You could not make a better investment in your life. It is the thing for which we were given life and breath. What a sad thing it would be for us to be welcomed into the Kingdom of God, and yet be controlled by all the dissatisfying, materialistic pleasures of earth. What is your treasure? What do you live for? What gives you the deepest and most abiding satisfaction? What makes your good day a good day? What makes you sit in a chair and say, I am so thankful for my life? What brings sweet joy to your heart? What do you look to to satisfy you - earth-bound treasure or heaven-bound investment? Tonight, I think that all of us would do well in coming, once again, to our Savior, the One who has paid the penalty for all of our sin, the One who welcomes us by His grace, and say once more: Lord, I spend so much of my time in the pursuit of all the wrong treasure. Lord, I ve tried to find satisfaction in the things of this earth, satisfaction that I only will ever find in You. Lord, I have replacement messiahs in my life, and I come to You one more time, and I say, Won t you forgive me, and won t You deliver me; and won t You help me to know, maybe more fully and more deeply than I ve ever known before, the true joys of the true treasures of the Kingdom of God? I m tired of being dominated by the treasures of this earth. I see it in myself; I m tired of drinking from dry wells. I m tired of serving false gods. I place my heart before You, and I say, You take it, You own it, You control it, You use me as you will. I want to live for the Kingdom of God. But there s a war, Lord, in my heart, please help me, please forgive me, please deliver me that I may find my treasure in You. Let s Pray: Thank you, Lord, for the power of the passage that we looked at. Thank you for the way it is a mirror to us, revealing to us, once more, the struggle that in some ways, in all of our lives, and as we recognize our materialism because of Your grace, we

7 don t run from You, we run to You once more for Your forgiveness, once more for Your enablement, once more for Your deliverance, that we may love and live for Your Kingdom and Your righteousness. In Jesus s name, Amen Paul Tripp Ministries