This is my sermon outline for the sermon this week, you can follow along and have follow up notes. I hope this can be of use to you.

 

What does the Scripture say?

19 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

22 "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 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!

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.

What does the Scripture Mean?

V 19-21. I believe the Scripture is saying that we as humans take too seriously the things of Earth. Not that the things on Earth are wrong, but we idolize, store, harbor, and take these things way too far in their heart. They love the things of this world to a bad extent, and Christians don’t strive towards the goal of heaven. Hebrews 12:1-3 calls it the race of faith. We are running a race to get to the end, which is Christ Jesus. We want to run this race of faith never losing sight of Christ, which means we cast down that which holds us up. Watching television is perfectly fine, so is listening to music, but when we hold these things too close to our heart and idolize them we lose sight of Christ, and when that happens, we are to cast these down, because like all things, television, iPods, Zune’s, the internet, and computers will pass away. We can use them, they are God given blessings, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, not temporal things which will pass away.

V 22-23. I struggled with this text a lot. It occupied a lot of my mind and I even had to read a few commentaries and find some from some well respected friends of mine. It perplexes me to some extent and I am never quite satisfied in my answer. When Jesus says “The eye is the lamp of the body,” what exactly does He mean? My answer is no where near seminary grade, but this is the best I can do. Your eyes in this metaphor, are simply your eyes. Your eyes are going to see everything, spiritual and worldly. When Jesus says “If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,” I do believe that He is saying that if your eye is spiritually healthy, your eye is going to see light; your eye is going to see things for what they are. In my opinion, He is saying a spiritually healthy eye will set their eyes upon heavenly things as their treasure, and not the things of the Earth which are temporal and like all things will pass. But if our eyes are bad we will not see the light, we will be blinded to it. We will be kept blind to the things of heaven and we will see and seek the things of the Earth, which will lead to certain [spiritual] death. He then finishes the thought by saying that if the “light” in you is “darkness” how great and immense is this darkness?

Remember that the context is things of heaven and things of Earth previously, and shortly after comes a discussion about money, but is generalized around idolatry, in my opinion.

If our eyes are spiritually healthy, may we look upon heavenly things, and only use the things of the Earth as mean to survive and enjoy ourselves as we pass through in this life. Earth is not our home, heaven is our home. We are simply passing through a lifetime of eighty or so years to be awoken to our Lord and Savior simply say “Well done, good and faithful servant,” the way I believe Paul and all the disciples and apostles apart from Judas [who went to hell] were. What a great privilege, that we are able to serve Christ as Lord, dedicate our lives to Him, set our mind on spiritual things, overcome the world, and open our new spiritual eyes with our new spiritual body hearing “Well done good and faithful servant.”

V 24. This portion is very true regarding our lives as Christians. I can expect that some of you might have to think a bit on this, but all of our actions are motivated by something. All of our predispositions are going to influence what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. What I mean by this is that we are always serving something. We can not seek to rob anyone or do injustice while doing it for God’s glory, that’s not possible. We can not love money and love Christ first. No matter what when we do things that are not for Christ’s glorification which should be our primary concern, we are worshiping something other than Christ, and I say this in confidence. We all have a proclivity to idolize things, which consequentially demonizes other things. If you idolize Calvinism, you demonize Arminianism, if you idolize dispensationalism, you demonize covenant theology. There are a lot of things that exist that are going to take the place as an idol in your heart, and these things are going to fight to take the place as Christ not only as Savior but also as Lord. When you become a Christian, it must be that Christ is your Lord and Savior. He can not be one without being the other, it has to be your subjection to Christ. And whether intentional or not, there are going to be things that are going to take that place of Christ as Lord and Savior. This can be a relationship, sex, money, alcohol, your spouse, your job, your car, your house, and essentially anything that isn’t for the glory of God.

If you would like a further explanation of idolization and how things take the place of Christ in our lives, read my blog on “Man Desiring God” which will touch into it more.

What is my hook?

I always need to make a way for everyone to remember these things, and this one has nothing in particular I can say to make you remember it upon sight. This is a conscious effort that must be put forth on your behalf as a believer that we must not seek to harbor things on Earth, but seek and delight in the things in heaven. The Father is good and perfect in His blessings, the book of James tells us. You must continually examine yourself multiple times a day, dozens of times a day, that you are not seeking selfishness or pride, which all sin can be rooted to its deepest core in.

Why do we resist this truth?

I believe that we resist this truth because we live in a society with television advertisements that tell us to “release our inner goddess,” and that we should splurge, that because bad things happen, we are entitled to treating ourselves to sin and evil things of the nature. What I’m not saying is that we can’t drink alcohol or enjoy the things God has blessed us with. What I am saying is that we can, and do take these things too far. Society wants you to live for yourself, live for the moment, just don’t live for any religion or God. That is what society is portraying, and you can see it on television. All you have to do is watch MTV or VH1 or an episode of “Cribs” or “Teen Cribs” and see that people live selfish self-centered lives and harbor the things of this life to only find ruin, misery, and fake friends. As much as I’d rather not blow my testimony by quoting Fight Club, Tyler Durden in the book makes the excellent and simple statement by asking the question “Well then, what are we?” and was replied to with “Consumers.”

The world makes us consumers, and we live our lives consumed by our stringed green stripe patterns, our yin-yang coffee tables, and our clothes collection which are always constantly “near completion.”

Why does this matter?

This matters because we should have one primary focus, and that should be the glory of God. And the glory of God is expressed through our enjoyment of His common grace towards us, through the spreading of the Gospel, through or worship of Him, but not through our worship and obsession of His things which He has given to us, that we might enjoy Him more.

I don’t know about you, but I personally enjoy reading my Bible in a large chair rather than a rock, and I enjoy learning about modern culture by watching House M.D. on a sofa rather than hitting a wheel down a hill with a stick. Neither of the two are bad, but they can be when we obsess over them and let them take place over God, which will become idolatry and cause certain ruin in our lives.

How is Jesus the Hero/Savior?

Jesus is truly the Hero and Savior in this situation. The fact that we have the ability to call God Father and bring Him worship is a gift, the fact that we truly are called Sons of our Father in Heaven by His act of saving us from sin and His wrath. Jesus’ penal substitutionary death upon the cross makes Him our Savior, and we respond by worshiping Him and not the things of the world, and look forward to spending eternity in the presence of Him.

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