Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
So we'll just get right into this. Our verses today, the verses that we're gonna be looking at, they are very much a continuation of what we discussed last week. So last week we looked at verses 19 through 21, and this is going to build on that directly.
But first I want to begin on a slightly different topic, though it is a topic that's gonna lead us back to where we're headed today with these verses. And I want to do that first by making what I think is a painfully obvious statement.
And a painfully obvious statement that I know I've made before, but I'm also aware that oftentimes we have to repeat things before they can fully sink in. Everything that we do here is to be grounded in, focused on, centered in, and filtered through the Word of God.
This follows the Reformation principle of sola scriptura. That's Latin for scripture alone. And what this means is that the Bible is the sole source of authority and practice for Christian faith. If it's not in the Bible, it shouldn't be in our church, where it comes to traditions, practices, principles.
And I say Reformation principle in case you don't know what the Reformation is. The Reformation is the time in roughly the 1500s, if we can center it on a certain period where the Protestant church broke away from the Catholic church for this very reason, for the reason that the Catholic church was built more on traditions and more on man-made things than it was on the Word of scripture, which is why scripture alone was such an important principle for the Reformation.
And why is this? Why do I say that we build everything on the foundation of God's Word? Aren't there useful aspects of our culture that we could bring in to benefit the church? Principles from entertainment, business practices, social values?
Well, I would say no, no, and no, because if they don't align with scripture, they don't belong in our church. Now, this gets a little hazy when we talk about something like a microphone, for example, which is nowhere in scripture, but that's hardly a religious practice.
So those are the things that I'm talking about. If we talk about our values or we talk about the things that we do in a service, soulless scripture, scripture alone. But in another answer to why this is and why we rely fully on the Word of God, I wanna refer you to another Reformation principle.
There's five of them. We're gonna look at two today, just briefly. And that one is soli deo gloria. Which means for the glory of God alone. And this could be our mission statement and probably should be our mission statement as a church.
And if you'll notice, this tracks perfectly with what we've been talking about for the last several weeks as we talk about our religious practices. They're to be for the glory of God alone. We do what we do for the glory of God alone, not for my glory, not for our collective glory as Mount Zion Community Church, not for my satisfaction, not for your satisfaction, but that we would do all things for God's glory.
And if you consider some of the words of scripture, we pursue God's glory, because we are God's church with the goal of hearing well done, good and faithful servant. Because the other alternative, and there's really only two, is depart from me, I never knew you.
And there are plenty of churches that will hear that. But there's something else as we consider this idea of standing or basing everything that we do on what is in God's word. And it directly impacts the preaching.
And it directly impacts the pulpit of every church that truly claims to preach the word of God or that claims to preach the word of God truly. You see, here's the thing. It's one thing to have a doctrinal statement on your website or to have bylaws with what your church says they believe, and we have that.
We say on our website and in our doctrinal statement that we believe and teach that God's word is inspired and inerrant, and we do. That means that we hold God's word as the absolute standard of truth.
That's part of the reason for this. And truth is not subjective. Truth is not internal. It's not based on your feelings or your emotions or your desires. The only thing that we can say that is objective truth is what's contained in God's word.
And anything beyond that, anything outside of that, anything above or below that or other than that is not truth. It's a lie. It's deception. And this includes our feelings. Should our feelings, even things that we deeply, deeply emotionally feel, should they ever come in conflict with what God's word says, know that those feelings are not reality.
Now, they are reality in that you had them and they existed, but that doesn't make them true. Now, you'd be hard-pressed to find a church that doesn't say stuff like that, at least on their website, at least on their doctrinal statement.
But if you listen to what comes out of the pulpit, sometimes you'll find a different story. Because sometimes what people want when they come to church is actually not God's word. They don't want what God's word says.
They want other things. Like perhaps they wanna be encouraged or they wanna be entertained. Let's talk about entertained first. Some people wanna come in and they want to hear a preacher tell some amusing, engaging, relatable stories, tell a couple of jokes, have a good laugh together.
And then, again, take some encouraging principles, make you feel good about yourself so when you walk out the door, you have a little lift in your step. But I will tell you this, that actually disrespects God's word in a lot of cases because that's not the reason that we gather, to satisfy our emotional needs.
And the preacher seeking your approval by being entertaining is not serving for the glory of God. And I said encouraging as well. Some people wanna be encouraged. I think we all wanna be encouraged. We don't wanna be beat down all the time like it probably feels like I'm doing to you right this very second.
We wanna be encouraged, but we don't wanna be encouraged the way the Bible says it. We wanna be encouraged by seven steps to having a better marriage or five ways that you can be happier now. Live your best life now, that whole kind of thing, whatever it is.
But those ways to be happier, to live a better life, they're in the Bible already and I've already preached on them. They're the Beatitudes. These are the principles for your life. These are the principles that will bring you the only kind of enduring happiness and encouragement that actually means anything.
And sometimes we want these practical, actionable steps that we can take. I wanna step by step answer to my question that I can walk out the door with every single Sunday to lead me right onto heaven.
And sometimes that's offered. Again, those steps to happiness, those steps to a better marriage, those steps to raising godly children. But here's the thing, that charming, encouraging homespun down to earth wisdom that's only loosely related, if not at all related to the Bible can actually be dangerous for you.
Right, and I know that sounds crazy. You're like, but it made me feel good. So let me tell you a little story to illustrate this point. And this is a real life story and it's from a real life sermon that Amy heard when she was younger.
She said her best guess was about 35 years ago. So while I thought that had to be before she was born, she assures me that she is older than that, even if she doesn't look like it at all. So about 35 years ago, she probably would have been somewhere in the general age of a student.
Now, let me give you a caveat here. I didn't hear this sermon and I have no doubt that it was well-intentioned and there's certainly a chance that it could have been thoroughly biblical. But what Amy walked away from that sermon with was absolutely not biblical.
Here's the message that she has carried with her for multiple decades, even up to earlier this week. And we talked about it and I did ask if I could share this story because it's difficult and it's challenging.
And please note, I'm gonna tell you what she took away, but I'm not telling you so that you'll take it home with you. Please know that this is a cautionary tale. This is not advice. So here's what the takeaway of the sermon was.
To be happy, you need three things. Something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. This was the content of the sermon, as I was told. Now on the surface, all of that stuff sounds pretty good because guess what?
That's actionable advice. You can take that home with you. You can hang on to it and chew on it all week long. You can assess your life and you can say, I'm not happy right now. Do I have something to do?
Do I have someone to love? Do I have something to look forward to? If any one of those things is missing from your life, well, you can fix it. You can do the work to fix it. But let's break this idea down biblically.
The first question I would ask you is if you can show me a verse that tells you that happiness should be your goal in life. And I would say that you can't. Now that doesn't mean that the concept of happiness or particularly the concept of joy is not in Scripture because it absolutely is.
So let's look at some examples. Romans 15, 13. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. The first half of Psalm 16, 11 says this, referring to God, of course, in your presence is fullness of joy.
Paul writes in Philippians 4, 4, a verse we all know, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. So we see these concepts of joy, but let's take it one step further. Let's look at another verse.
Here's one that doesn't show up in this model. James 1, 2. Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials. There's not a one of us that trials make us happy. Sometimes the outcome does because we're strengthened.
We're strengthened in our faith. We're sanctified. But during the trial, it is not joy and it is not happiness. And when we consider our Christian life, again, it's not all drudgery, don't get me wrong, but the idea that happiness at all costs is the thing that we should seek is unbiblical.
Matthew 16, 24, then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. So God's word has a different take on happiness than most of us do.
And I'll tell you why later. But just note that our ideas of happiness are often based on our subjective feelings. Our ideas of happiness are not based on objective truth. And what about those three things that you need to have in your life to be happy?
If you think about even just the sermon last week, we can classify those things under their normal surface understanding in one category. Each and every one of those things amounts to storing up earthly treasures.
Something to do. Is it your job? Is it a hobby? Is it a sport? Someone to love. Your spouse, a child, a parent, a friend. Not unbiblical, obviously, but can easily become a stumbling block if the priorities are wrong.
Something to look forward to. A vacation, a wedding, a new job, a raise, the day that you can afford a new house or a new car. All of those things are earthly treasure. But there's a further danger to this idea.
You can look at your life, realize that one of these things is missing, and you can make yourself unhappy over it. Perhaps you don't have a spouse. Perhaps you had one and you no longer have one for whatever reason.
Maybe you don't have something to do. You're unemployed and you're looking for a job. Maybe there's nothing to look forward to. You don't have a vacation on the horizon. Or while you're on your vacation, all you can think about is that you have nothing to look forward to after your vacation is over.
It can be a devastating spiral, but the point is, none of these things are leading you closer to God, and none of these things are leading you to what is actually going to make you happy on a more permanent basis.
So let's look briefly at how we can use God's word to redeem this message. This was something that I thought about a lot too. And again, let me not slander this pastor from however long ago. Perhaps this was the point.
But let's look at something to do. Matthew 28, 19 through 20. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. There's something to do, the Great Commission. What about someone to love? Matthew 22, 37 through 40. And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets. And finally, turn all the way to the end of our Bibles for something to look forward to.
Revelation 21, verses one through four. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and he will dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be among them. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will no longer be any death.
There will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain. The first things have passed away. There's something to look forward to. Now, ultimately, my point here is that the words that come from a pulpit are far more important than the words that are on a church's website.
They're far more important than the words that are in a church's bylaws. Because the words that come out of a pulpit have this implicit authority. It's granted to anyone who stands in a pulpit and preaches God's word, because they're presumed to be related to God's word.
And these words, not the words of man, although they can, but the words of God have the power to influence people and to stick with people, and sometimes providing guidance that will stick with somebody for decades.
But if that advice is not biblical, you could be setting up a person to focus on the wrong things, things that lead them away from God. Imagine focusing on the things that you don't have to try to be happy, and ignoring the things that you do have, and the things that have already been promised to you, because they're already done, like what we just read about.
And that's why I try to be careful not to bring too many personal stories or anecdotes in, not because I'm hiding things, but because you knowing me, based on what I say here, is far less important than you knowing God.
And any advice that I would have, or anyone would have for you on how to live a better life, so far as it's not in the Bible, is not worth anything to you. You could read Tony Robbins, or whatever. So what we do here is far more, or far too important to your eternal life, to risk being cute, or funny, or to try to seem wise based on something that I've made up.
Now, how does all this relate to our scripture? Well, you'll see in just a little bit. So let's move into our passage for today. We're looking at Matthew chapter six, verses 22 through 24. The eye is the lamp of the body.
So then if your eye is clear, 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 that is 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 will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God in wealth. So let's consider verses 22 and 23 first.
Those two go together. In some ways, this verse provides us a little bit of a challenge because of our understanding here that we have in the English translation. And on the surface level, which we don't want to ignore, because obviously the surface level is part of what we have to consider, we know that the eye is what provides access to the rest of the body.
What you see gives information to your brain. What you see gives information to the rest of your body too, particularly your heart, if you think about the stuff that we've talked about for the last couple of weeks.
Now we're naturally going to want to look at or to focus on the things that we desire. But unfortunately, some of the things that we can look at are corrupting. Some of the things that we look at bring that darkness into our lives that Jesus talks about.
Now it could be as dark as something like pornography, which is clearly destroying your mind and clearly destroying your soul. But it could be something less obviously evil, like obsessing on those material possessions that we want so bad.
The car, the house, the whatever. Again, I can't give all the examples because they're not all gonna apply to everybody and you'll say, well, I've got a car and a house and I'm good to go, but there's something else you want.
Commentator Chris Miller says this, Jesus switches metaphors from the heart to the eye, but the message is the same. What we love and what we see determine the directions of our lives. Your eyes will influence your heart and your heart will influence your eyes.
All these things go together. They're completely inseparable. And Jesus says that if the eye is clear, then your whole body will be full of light. So now remember, we're also speaking metaphorically. But to be clear, the eye has to be focused.
It has to be free of debris. And what does that mean? That doesn't make any sense. Well, it does make sense if you've ever had even the smallest little eyelash in your eye. It's hard to see. But scripturally speaking, Psalm 101 .3 says this, I will set no vile thing before my eyes.
And Psalm 119 .37 says, cause my eyes to turn away from looking at worthlessness and revive me in your ways. And Paul writes in Ephesians 1 .18, so that you, the eyes of your heart, having been enlightened, will know what is the hope of his calling.
Again, what we focus on informs our heart. What we focus on influences the direction that we take in our life. And the eye is the metaphor for this. Are we looking at scripture or are we looking at something in the world that we have to have?
And speaking of the eyes and speaking of Paul from his own life, we see how the eyes are capable of completely blocking or blinding us to the things of God. And at the same time, the eyes are also capable of allowing them in.
Acts 9 .18 tells us this story of Paul's conversion. But for our specific example, it uses these words. And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales. And he regained his sight and he rose up and was baptized.
So this metaphorical idea of the eyes, Paul was literally blinded. And when he regained his sight, he was able to see God. If we look back to our sermon from last week, or at least at the concept, William Hendrickson says, piling up earthly treasure blurs our vision.
So look, these things are tied so closely together. If we pile up earthly treasure, maybe we talk about something so high that we can't see over it. Or even if it's not something so high that we can't see over it, because we aren't capable of piling up earthly treasures high enough to see over it, we're still so focused on that one little bit that we have that it's all that we can look at.
We see what's down here and we ignore everything else that's all the way around us. And when anything blocks, blurs, or obscures our spiritual vision, then as Jesus said, our whole body will be full of darkness.
And if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? If you are filling your vision with things of the world, you will not be able to look at or to the things of God. The things of the world will continue to pull at your heart, to capture your heart, to distract your heart from God, and you'll miss out.
So we picture this verse about the eye, representing how we look at everything in the world. It can either bring light into your heart, soul, and spirit, or it can bring darkness into your heart and soul and spirit.
So you have to choose wisely. You have to choose carefully. You have to be discerning in what you do, what you look at, and what you desire. Now, as we move to verse 24, we come to a verse that's probably familiar to each and every one of us.
Outside of the verse that tells us the love of money is the root of all evil, this is probably one of the most recognizable verses that we have that discusses the idea of money. And it was almost a challenge to discuss all the concepts that came before without talking specifically about money, because money was always kind of in the background there.
Because everybody, we all know that we need money. But for some people, it becomes an obsession. We have to get more and more of it. We will literally work to do anything just to have money. So money is essential for us.
And it's essential for a lot of those earthly treasures that we want to stockpile. And as we've done with the other verses of this section, let's start on the surface considering the plainly obvious message.
And then we can move a little bit deeper. And the plainly obvious message here on a literal level is that you cannot make stockpiling as much money as possible your goal and still dedicate your life to God at the same time.
Your pursuit of earthly treasure will crowd out everything. It will crowd out the time. It will crowd out the energy. It will crowd out the effort that could otherwise be dedicated to God. Work consumes time, consumes the time that we have for personal devotions, for scripture reading and prayer.
That time all of a sudden becomes devoted to working on business or whatever is making the most money. For some people, the time on Sunday, the Lord's day will now be devoted to work. I have had friends in the past who own businesses and a business in particular that people went to to eat food.
Sometimes we call it a restaurant. Once that business was established, those friends stopped going to church because people wanted to eat out on Sundays. So obviously they couldn't sacrifice the income that was going to be made from the time that they were opening their restaurant on Sundays.
To go to church.
And we'll see people make a lot of excuses, all kinds of excuses for that. Well, I have more money to give to the church if I just skip church and run my restaurant so that I can make money. But that's not what it's about.
And if this is your goal, even your church membership can be corrupted as you choose your church based on potential business opportunities that exist in that church. And you start to look at your brothers and sisters in Christ as nothing more than future customers or clients or voters.
And I know that anyone that has this mindset probably wouldn't listen anyway, but my advice would be, don't even bother going. If that's your goal for going to church, your motivations, if they're that impure, you're doing more harm than good to your eternal future.
And I would say the same thing to churches who are afraid to speak the truth to people who give a lot of money for fear of losing their tithes and their offerings. That's the same sin. That's the same stockpiling earthly treasures to try to please people so that they'll give you more money or to try to maintain people by compromising the truth so that they won't take their tithes to the church down the street.
So it cuts both ways. Now, as we go back to this verse, don't miss the words that our Lord Jesus Christ uses here. He says, you cannot serve two, what? Masters. And make no mistake that God is your master.
Jesus Christ is your Lord. 1 Corinthians 6, 20, and 7, 23 both say this. They both say you were bought with a price and that price was Christ's blood. This makes us slaves of Christ. So you can be a slave of Christ, or a slave of God who is a good and loving master.
Or you can make the choice to serve another master. In this case, you can make the choice to serve money. And I'll confess, you might have a pretty interesting life, but that will be the end of it. And we'll talk more about that in just a couple of minutes as well.
Now, Paul reminds us of this concept in Romans 6 .22. I forgot to bookmark that one. He tells us, or he tells not us, he tells the Romans. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit, leading to sanctification and the end, eternal life.
Serving any other master is sin, make no mistake about it. It's not just a choice, it is sin. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord, to finish that verse.
Ironically, the greatest freedom comes from being a slave to Christ. And the greatest bondage comes from being a slave to anything else, as I just said. Because being a slave to anything else ultimately is making you a slave to sin.
But we're getting to an even larger message now if we go back and we consider this entire section as a whole. So now we're talking about verses 19 through 24. We really think that these worldly treasures, these worldly pursuits that we have, we think they're not a big deal.
What we think we can do is that we can just dabble in them. We think we can just do whatever our worldly desire is for just a little while, and then we can come back to God. We think that we can ignore God for a few months or a few years or however long it takes to meet our goal.
Well, our kids are just gonna be kids for a little while. We can skip church while they're young and let them play soccer, football, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, gymnastics, whatever. And then when they're grown, we'll go back to church and they'll go back to church.
Well, we already talked about that last week, so we don't have to beat that dead horse anymore right now. The point is what that shows is exactly how divided our heart is. Simply the idea that we think we can come back to God whenever we want is a conceit that should have no place in the life of a Christian.
James 4, 14 says, "'Yet you do not know what your life will be tomorrow. "'You are a vapor that comes for a little while, "'then vanishes quickly.'". So we cannot split our loyalty. We cannot serve two masters.
J .C. Ryle says, "'Singleness of purpose is one great secret "'of spiritual prosperity.'". And we can't afford to underestimate the powerful grip that our worldly desires have on us. And we all have our worldly desires, but they don't just have this grip on some vague, hazy concept of us.
They have a grip on our whole being. They have a grip on everything that we are. And that's what Jesus is telling us. You are now a slave to that. You are a slave to that in your heart and your mind and your will.
Your heart, verse 21. Your mind, verses 22 and 23. And your will, verse 24 of this chapter six that we're looking at. And then there's an aspect of our nature as people that just makes it more likely to start drifting off in the direction of worldly living.
Once we think that we can dabble, once we divide our heart just a little bit. And of course, that aspect that's gonna pull us all the way to the other side is the sin that's in our nature. And make no mistake, this is another danger faced by preachers.
This example is a little different. But when I give illustrations, when I talk about sports, or when I talk about business or money, if those examples don't apply to you, you might think, awesome, I'm good.
But that's not the case. Because just because I didn't list your worldly desire doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. And guess what? We all have them. We all have something that is capable of pulling us away from God.
None of us are exceptions because we're all sinful. And even good, godly gifts can be corrupted by sin. Even the things that God has given us for our joy, our happiness. Now, as we demonstrate the effect of sin in our lives, what we're gonna do is consider a number of things.
And you'll see those on your outline. And the headings might not make sense, but hopefully they will when we get through this. So first, we have to consider how God has created us. And this is important.
We have to consider how God has created us, and then how Jesus has ordered these teachings. Because remember, these things are never random. He didn't just randomly pick and choose an aspect of his teaching to put in a certain place.
Again, we're talking about 19 through 24 now. And here's what I would suggest to you and why this heading is called understanding. I would suggest to you that God created us to be directed by our minds and our understanding.
Now, the implication of that is that we were not created to be directed by our feelings or our desires. Consider Genesis chapter two, verses 16 and 17. I'm not gonna read it, I'll just tell you what happened.
This is where God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, why is this important? Because he gave them instructions. Actually, that's a good point too. He gave them specific instructions.
He directed them with instructions to be understood by their mind, not understood by their eyes, what their eyes saw and what their heart desired. Because if that was how we were supposed to live, well, then eating from that tree would have been perfectly fine.
But God was asking them to use their minds. He didn't just leave them to a general feeling about what they wanted to do. But beyond that, we have passages like Romans 12 too, which are much more specific.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And this is also why we have scripture. We have scripture not to generate emotions in us. We have scripture to give us specific instructions that we can read and understand with our mind and allow to direct our lives.
Christianity is not made up of a series of subjective feelings or following your heart. Christianity is made up of the descriptions and prescriptions, which that's a commercial for our evening service, which is what we're gonna talk about, that are in scripture.
Specific commands, or like I said at the start, if your feelings conflict with the commands of scripture, they are ungodly. You have to find a way around them. But sin corrupts that entire order, starting with the mind, moving to your heart, because God did give us emotions.
God did give us feelings. But you've gotta process it through your brain first. You can't let the feelings lead the mind, because you will wind up always in the wrong place, because sin corrupts that entire order.
And that's why Jesus addresses the heart first in verses 19 through 21, because the heart is where sin has the greatest opportunity to disrupt our rational thought, just like in the sermon that I mentioned earlier.
A list of things that you need to have to be happy is purely an appeal to the heart. It's not an appeal to the mind, and it's not an appeal to scripture. And we go wrong when we look externally to the world for our desires and our affections, as opposed to the word of God.
And that leads us to our next point, spiritual blindness, still on the topic of sin. Sin blinds us to the important realities that we see. We see this in verses like 2 Corinthians 4, verses three through four, which talks about sin veiling the eyes of those who are perishing.
But the frightening part of that is God allows it. If you've hardened your heart enough, God will allow that. And that's what Jesus is talking about in verse 22 and 23 with the eye. Sin blinds the eye, so no light is allowed to come into your heart, and then it's all darkness.
Now, when we allow our heart to lead instead of our eye, instead of our mind, and to lead us in the direction of our worldly desires, whether they're material desires or experiential desires or whatever the desires are, it blinds us to the true purpose of our lives before God.
We place all the value on things that are deteriorating. And then this blindness causes us to miss the real point. I think about the things that so many of us focus on that will eventually go away. Our looks, our health, our vitality, our strength, our money, our possessions, our jobs, our businesses, all of it will eventually go away.
But sin blinds us to the relative value of things. Sin makes us think that these things are more important than what we are doing right now, which is looking at the Word of God. Think about the difference between time and eternity.
Sin blinds us to that. Sin blinds us to the value of light versus darkness. Sin blinds us to the reality of the difference between God and us. But ultimately, what sin really does, which is really devious, is it blinds you to the fact that you can't mix these two things.
You can't mix your worldly desires and following God. We see that in verse 24. You can't serve two masters. You can't serve money and God. You can't decide to dedicate all your time to your kids' sports or your own sports just for now, but also dedicate that time to God.
You have to be clear on your priorities. And always remember what I said before. Your actions will reveal your priorities.
Far more than your word.
The pulpit will reveal the church's priorities far more than the website. What you do will reveal your priorities far more than what you say. And for this reason, going back to the church, and this is important for everyone to understand too, is that we can't compromise even the smallest letter or stroke of God's Word to try and attract people who don't believe in God's Word.
We can't compromise the message of the church to appeal to the feelings of people who don't believe in God. Because then we get sermons about how to be happy or sermons about how not to worry. And at the risk of belaboring this point, those are all appeals to the heart and they're all appeals to feeling and they all lead people away from God.
And the next heading I have is slavery, but I also euphemized it a little bit here on the outline. So the next thing that sin does in our life is that once it has driven us to chase after our heart's desires, once it's blinded us to our understanding of better spiritual things, it enslaves us to those desires.
This is moving us further into the world. And as we're blind and our eyes are veiled to our true spiritual condition, and we are unable to see the true lack and value of these worldly things, or the worldly pursuits that are compromising our eternal life.
And seeing no better option because we are now blind to it, because we haven't taken the time to read God's word, because it gets in the way of the time that we need to dedicate to something that we think is more important.
All we have is that thing. And whatever this pursuit is for you, whatever this desire is for you, it becomes your master and you are its slave. But what comes after this is probably the most serious. And if we're not careful, the most enduring.
Once sin has corrupted our lives and our desires and our vision and all the ways that we've talked about up to this point, it hardens our heart to the point that we are so excited about our earthly treasures that we pile those up and pile those up for our whole life.
But in the end of our lives, we have absolutely nothing. Now I talked about our hearts being hardened. And what I mean is what Paul is writing about in Romans 1 24. This is the effect of sin. Therefore God gave them over to the lust of their hearts, to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
That's speaking about a very specific issue, homosexuality, but it applies to everything. If you insist on persisting in your sin, eventually you'll be given over to it. Now, when I say that sin ruins man, what do I mean?
Sometimes it's hard to see past what's going on right now. It's hard to see past our lives. And we're going to Luke chapter 16 right now. If you want to turn there. It's hard to see past the things that are most immediate, the things that are most gratifying to our bodies and our minds and our wallets and our feelings right now.
But when I say that sin ruins us, this is what I'm talking about. We have this parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and we're going to read the whole thing. Now there was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day.
But a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs, which were falling from the rich man's table. Besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores.
Now it happened that the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.
And he cried out and said, "'Father Abraham, have mercy on me "'and send Lazarus so that he may dip "'the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, "'for I am in agony in this flame.'. But Abraham said, "'Child, remember that during your life "'you received your good things, "'and likewise Lazarus' bad things.
"'But now he is being comforted here and you are in agony. "'And besides all this, between us and you, "'there is a great chasm fixed, "'so that those who wish to come over from here to you "'are not able, and none may cross over from there to us.'.
And he said, "'Then I am asking you, Father, "'that you send him to my father's house, "'for I have five brothers, "'in order that he may warn them, "'so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'.
But Abraham said, "'They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.'. But he said, "'No, Father Abraham, "'but if someone goes to them from the dead, "'they will repent.'. But he said to them, "'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, "'they will not be persuaded, "'even if someone rises from the dead.'".
So what we see in this parable of Jesus is exactly what we've been talking about. We see a rich man who dedicated his life to piling up all the good things that he wanted. He lives a wonderful life while this beggar at the gate lived a terrible life.
And in the end, he found himself in hell. Not only in hell, but he was begging Abraham to allow someone to go tell his brother so they wouldn't make the same mistake. Now, it's too late. It is too late for him.
But what does Abraham say?
He's like,.
We're not gonna send somebody from the dead. You already have the scriptures to tell you this. You have now been told this very lesson in the words of Jesus, not in the words of me. So the end state of sin, dragging us in the wrong direction, stockpiling earthly treasures and neglecting our salvation because of our blinded eyes and corrupt mind and heart is eternal punishment.
It's hell. So let's bring this all together now. Having had all this information, all of what we've talked about today, what do you do with it? Number one, lead with your mind. Listen to the words of Paul in Romans 6, 17.
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were given over. It's the teaching, it's not the heart. The teaching comes into your mind and it goes to your heart.
1 John 4, 1 tells us to test the spirits. This doesn't just mean prophecy, tongues, whatever. It means test everything that you're given. Make sure that it's true. The heart obeyed because the mind processed the teaching.
Martin Lloyd-Jones says this, "'Truth must be received with the mind "'and the Holy Spirit enables the mind to become clear.'". That is conversion. That is what happens as a result of regeneration. The objective words of truth, not subjective feelings are essential for salvation.
So lead with your mind. Number two, on the topic of your mind, read your Bible well. This is the only way that you can get that truth into you. I can tell you all these things. You will hear God's word from this pulpit, but that's only for 45 to 65 minutes a week.
And believe it or not, you need a lot more than that, a lot more. And you have to get it on a regular basis from God's word because the pull of the world is so strong that it will jerk you away like a riptide if you're not clinging on to something far more stable.
Number three, confess your sin to God. Once again, if you dedicate your life to stockpiling earthly treasure, you will one day face judgment and it will not be pleasant. You will not find yourself in heaven no matter how many times you attended church.
And guess what? If your life is focused on earthly treasure, you can expect to hear those words, depart from me, I never knew you. And you probably already know if this is you. So if it is, I suggest that you address it today.
How do we do this? Confess to God in prayer that you have been storing up treasures on earth and repent of storing up treasures on earth. Repent of prioritizing work over church. Repent of prioritizing your phone over the Bible.
Repent of prioritizing anything that takes you away from God. Release yourself from the chains of whatever is enslaving you and submit to God as your master. So if you're in this situation, your prayers, those prayers for earthly things, if you ever bothered to pray it, I bet they've never been answered.
They've been heard, but they've been ignored because they weren't the will of God. They were you trying to build up your kingdom here. You probably didn't even know it, but God was not giving you those things for your own protection.
I wanna close with one more piece of scripture. 1 John 5, 14 through 15. And this is the confidence which we have before him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked for him.
If you go to God in a spirit of repentance for whatever it is that you're chasing after, God will answer that prayer. That is your only path to salvation. Go to God in confession and repentance. Let's pray.
Father, thank you once again for the solid, enduring, unchanging words of truth that we have in your holy scripture. These are a gift to us for our salvation if we'll only take them and use them in the way that you intended.
God, help us come to your word with a true spirit of belief, with a humble heart, with a reliance on you, a desire to obey and a willingness to put in the work. God, you've given us everything that we need.
We know that your scripture is perfect, it's inerrant, and it's sufficient for all things to salvation. I pray that if we have hearts here that are taking over the bodies of people, if we have hearts and desires that are the ones leading folks in this congregation, that you would help us to renew our minds to the word of scripture.
God, through the power of your holy spirit, direct us in the way that you would have us go. Lord, we thank you again for your word. We thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus, which makes our salvation possible.
And we love you and we pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.
