The Christian and his Treasure

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Please enjoy the following sermon. So there is a story that's told from the life of John Wesley that has often made its rounds.

And as the story goes, this is what happened. An industrious farmer was invited to go hear

Wesley preach. And going there, he ended up like many of the hearers that went to hear

Wesley preach, sitting in his seat, entranced by this man's powerful,

God -ordained oratory, God -empowered oratory. And on this occasion, as Wesley preached, he was preaching on the theme of money.

And so the farmer sitting there in his seat, he listened as Wesley introduced the text. And as he got into his first point, his first point was this.

He said to the congregation in front of him, he said, get all that you can.

And as this farmer listened, he really enjoyed this preaching. He nudged his neighbor, in fact, and even said aloud, he said, this is very strange preaching.

I have never heard preaching like this. This is very good. And in this point,

Wesley, as he fleshed out the passage, he talked about the value of industry and of activity and of purposeful living, of working diligently and getting all that you can.

And then as Wesley went on, he got to his second point. As he introduced number two, he said, not only get all that you can, but save all that you can.

And he was really beginning to win this farmer's heart. The man rubbed together his rough hands and he said, surely

I have done all of this from my youth to get and to save all that I can. But then

Wesley came to his third and final point, not only get all that you can, not only save all that you can, but then he went on to this and give all that you can.

And the farmer, his shoulders dropped, he looked down and he said, oh dear, he has gone and spoiled it all.

Now, when we hear stories like this, we tend to feel, I think, at least two kind of conflicting emotions.

On one hand, we feel a measure of disappointment. Here we see a man that was confronted by really constructive, true, sound biblical counsel that would have, had he heeded it, certainly helped in freeing him from the love of money and material things.

It certainly would have made for him, secured for him a happy future in eternity.

But alas, he would not have it. And we don't know the end of this story, but all we see is a near perfect depiction of the tight -fisted and miserly nature of the fallen human heart.

What became of this man, we don't know. When we hear stories like this, we certainly feel some of that.

And on the other hand, and I heard it here in this room, we all kind of chuckle, if not inside, outside.

Because this is exactly what we would find a man or expect a man to do in this very situation.

And the reason why this is, is because, and the reason why there's some humor in it, is because whether we like it or not, we can all relate to it.

That it is disappointing on one hand, and yet it is fully relatable. When it comes to our shared human experience,

I think that we're all sufferers of the same fallen condition. And frankly speaking, this condition affects us whether we are believers or not.

That we certainly like to get all that we can. If we're especially self -disciplined, we will aim to save all that we can.

I mean, that's something that's drilled into us from our childhood. But there is something inside each and every one of us, in every one of you, that recoils to some degree when you are called to give all that you can.

Not just to give of your surplus, but to get it, to save it, and to give it all.

And then the reality is that what ends up happening is because of our tainted dispositions, we don't really like the idea of taking that which we feel at least belongs to us, that which we can use for our own comfort and enjoyment, and then simply giving it away freely without any strings attached.

Even when it is attached scripturally to God's promises of eternal blessings for our stewardship and generosity of temporal things.

The reality is, I think, that whether you're a Christian or not, we all have a stuff problem.

Our brother spoke on this last week to some degree. Our pursuit of stuff.

And I think that we can all agree that we know that the stuff that we own is just stuff.

If the Lord should tarry in 50 years, or 70 years, or who knows, by reason of strength, 100 years.

At some point, all of your stuff is going to end up likely in a landfill on the other side of the

Henday, because it's just stuff. And yet we are all attached to some degree or another to our stuff.

And our unwillingness, when we consider within us this unwillingness to give and to part with our material possessions and our stuff.

What it actually reveals in us, in each one of us, is a tragic misunderstanding.

Not only a misunderstanding about money, or wealth, or material things, but a tragic misunderstanding about the nature of our

God, and the nature of eternity. And as we arrive today at these final five verses in 1

Timothy, what we learn in this passage, it probably won't come as any surprise to you, is that we are all, because of our sinful disposition, because of who we are, where we live, what we accumulate, we are all inclined to holding unbiblical and unhelpful views about wealth, about money, about material possessions, about stuff.

We're all inclined to a variety of sinful propensities in this regard.

But what this text also shows us is that the very God who graciously and effectually called us to himself out of the world, that this very

God also calls us out of this foolish and unbiblical way of thinking.

And he offers us a truly excellent way forward. But the key to our obedience in this respect is not sheer willpower.

It's not dogged persistence to do better, but rather it is possessing a biblical understanding of our

God and of the future that he has prepared for his people. This afternoon, what

I want to do, brothers and sisters, is to take us, and we're going to seek today to have a reformation, a reformation of mind as it relates to what we do with the things, not the things that we own, but the things that we steward, the things that the

Lord has given us, the money and the wealth, the time, the resources, everything that we have.

Because we hear stories like that farmer, and we're disturbed by it, and we laugh a little bit at it.

But the reality is we're not all that unlike that farmer. The Lord tells us to get and to save and to give.

And we excel at the first, some of us excel at the second, and very few of us excel at the third.

And so I want to put this before us today, how it is that the Christian deals with his treasure.

And we'll flesh this out in full detail as we go. Now, as we are in our text today,

I want to look at three verses. We read five, verses 19, 20, and 21.

We, sorry, 20 and 21. We have looked at in great detail all through the letter.

I will touch on it briefly, but we're going to look at verses 17, 18, and 19. And as we do,

I want to put three truths before us, that there is a godless propensity of the rich that we must look for, the godless propensities of the rich.

We will look at the godly alternative, and then we'll look at the glorious result. So the first point that we'll consider is this, the godless propensities of the rich.

And we see this in verse 17. We'll read it again. At least verse 17a,

Paul writes, as for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God.

As Paul writes these final words of instruction to Timothy, he begins by acknowledging the faulty inclinations of those who possess wealth.

And this is something that every single one of us must grapple with.

Because we are all afflicted by indwelling and remaining sin, and because, as I alluded to a moment ago, we live where we live, and we do possess, relatively speaking, material wealth, we must recognize that we are all inclined to an unbiblical view of money, that if left unchecked, will always, always, always lead us away from God, rather than to God.

We will always drift apart if left unchecked. And as we begin, it's helpful for us to understand, looking here at Paul and Timothy's context, to understand the socioeconomic climate of Ephesus at the time that this letter was written.

As we've already heard in the course of our study, Ephesus was a major center in the

Roman world. It was the de facto capital of the Roman province of Asia, with the governor living there in Ephesus.

Ephesus was a major military center that served as the Roman proconsul's headquarters in the region.

It was a religious hub for hundreds of thousands of worshipers of the Greek goddess

Artemis, or as she became known to the Romans, Diana. And if that wasn't enough, to add to all of this,

Ephesus was an incredibly wealthy city. It was located at a critical trade route that bridged the land and the sea.

In fact, Ephesus was, at that time, the most accessible city in the province in Asia, with well -maintained

Roman roads and several ports that led to the Aegean Sea in the northern

Mediterranean. And at the same time, it was a center of thriving commerce.

One ancient geographer, a man named Strabo, called it the market of Asia. And so if you were to visit

Ephesus in the first century, you would see for yourself that this opulence was proudly expressed in all of its infrastructure, in everything that the city had become.

For instance, going through the city, you would find a massive amphitheater that was able to hold up to 25 ,000 people.

That was 10 % of the city's population. Now to put that into perspective, I don't know about you, but one of the radio stations

I listen to from time to time, they're always going on about how we have the best arena. We're really proud of our arena.

Well, here Ephesus had its own arena, an amphitheater, that seated more people than our arena, and all of that before the invention of the crane or the truck or any kind of modern machinery.

There were in Ephesus, if you were to go along and look up into the hills, these buildings that were known as the hanging houses, as they were called.

And they would be hung over the edges of impressive terraces carved into the hills.

And as you would look at them, there would be these vibrant, colorful mosaics painted on all of the houses, kind of like the modern day river bend or something like that, right?

Where you go and you look at the houses and go, these are incredible. And then if you were to continue, there was a famous road that joined the

Celsus Library with the great theater, a central road in the city that was paved not with concrete, not with bricks, not with stones like other

Roman cities, but paved with polished marble that sometimes measured meters long, pounded into the ground, which made a slippery and perfectly pristine roadway.

And then we've heard much about the famous temple to Artemis with its 60 -foot -high pillars.

I believe there were 116 of them, or it'd take two or three of us holding hands to to go around the circumference of the pillars.

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world. And it was constructed not only with the wealth of the people in the city, but all of the

Oriental kings in the surrounding regions. And it served almost as what we might call the

Bank of Canada, or the United States Treasury, or some kind of national bank where everyone would come, they would bring their material wealth and deposit it at the temple where it would be held safe or held in safekeeping.

And so in short, Ephesus was a tremendously wealthy city, not unlike many major western cities in the world today.

And I would even suggest not even all that dissimilar to the city of Edmonton. The makeup in the church, of the church in Ephesus, was probably similar to our church in many ways.

That in some cases there were those who were well -to -do and they had resources at their disposal.

There were those who had to get by with less, and yet they all lived in a city that was characterized by relative affluence and opportunity.

They lived in a place that was inclined to wealth, that was inclined to the accumulation of riches.

And as Paul comes then to us with these final instructions, he comes with an interesting tone.

He doesn't come, and we need to pay attention to this because there are some in the church today who would contest this, but I want you to see it with me.

He doesn't come with an outright condemnation of wealth, does he? He spoke, as we see in 1

Timothy 6, 10, about how not money is the root of all evil, but the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

So he doesn't come with an outright condemnation of wealth. He doesn't deliver an eat -the -rich kind of communist manifesto.

But in the words of one observer, he comes with a warning that is, this is in quotes, notable for its positive and measured tone.

But Paul understood that wealth could be, in some cases, a gift from the

Lord. And yet it wasn't the wealth that was bad. It was the love of this wealth.

And as he comes to warn us, then, about the dangers that accompany wealth, he comes both to warn and to exhort us to a better form of stewardship than we might otherwise be inclined to.

And as he unpacks this, he shows us two different dangers, two ever -present threats that are on the horizon.

And what are these? We see them in verse 17, that for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be, one, haughty, or two, to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches.

Now, when it comes to haughtiness, here in verse 17, we're charged not to be haughty as a result of our wealth.

But what does that mean? What does it mean to be haughty? It means to be proud.

It means to be arrogant. It means to have an inflated view of oneself. And this is a very real threat.

It is a very real threat for those who grow accustomed to having money. John MacArthur commenting on this, he says, riches and pride often go together, and the wealthier a person is, the more tempted he is to be proud.

Another brother, John Stott, he comments as well, he says, wealth often gives birth to vanity.

It tends to make people feel self -important and so contemptuous of others.

And it's remarkable how really true this principle is. This is why when we meet someone,

I want you to think about this, when we meet someone who is wealthy and simultaneously humble, we're almost always pleasantly surprised, right?

When we see a man who is especially wealthy in the world, and he doesn't just give for the sake of tax purposes, but he is an approachable man who people can interact with, and he is legitimately generous as far as we can perceive, that it is a surprise to us.

It is a shock to us. It is almost always impossible for the two, for wealth and humility to exist together.

They are like oil and water. And we find this, in fact, a picture of this all throughout the

Bible. For those of you who are doing our Bible in a year reading plan, we just got back into Proverbs.

I'm a couple of days ahead, so I don't know what day you would have read it, but Proverbs 18 is a perfect example where we find a number of texts or little tidbits that speak to this.

And in Proverbs 18 .23, we read this, the poor use entreaties, but the rich answer roughly.

And why is it? Well, because the poor know their humble estate. They know that they have to ask, and they have to ask nicely for everything.

And the rich, they don't feel that they need anything. And so because I don't need anything from you, I don't need to give you any respect.

I am more than you. I am better than you. I am above you. My station is higher than yours.

Or in Proverbs 28, where we read, a rich man is wise in his own eyes.

This is something we need to understand that wealth, the love of wealth, the infatuation with wealth, it begins to distort our perception of ourselves so that we become bigger in our eyes than we actually are.

And what it does is then it leads to the second vice that Paul identifies in verse 17, that is a misplaced hope.

The Proverbs, interestingly enough, speak to this as well. Another from Proverbs 18 in verse 10, where we read, the name of the

Lord is a strong tower. The righteous man runs into it and is safe.

But a rich man's wealth is his strong city and like a high wall in his imagination, that he begins to deceive himself into thinking that, well, that man has

God, I have my wealth. But it is nothing other than a facade. Now, the interesting thing about our wealth is that it not only obscures our perception of ourselves, making us proud and arrogant, but it obscures our perception of our supreme need for God.

You see, wealth has a way of unhitching people from reality and insulating them from recognizing their real, utter, and continual dependence upon their maker.

And if we want to look for an example, we don't need to look any further than perhaps somewhere on the battlefield.

I'm mindful of a saying, some of you have served in the military, you've probably heard this before, that there are no atheists in foxholes.

That in the desperation of war, men have a tendency to look beyond themselves to God because they know just how helpless they actually are.

That in that moment, as they're in that foxhole, and they hear the bombs going off around them, they realize,

I am not God, I am not sufficient, I need something stronger than myself. But isn't it interesting that atheism seems to have found a habitable climate in our comfortable, affluent Western world?

And why is this? It is because our culture, with its belly filled and its checkbooks balanced, has slid into a self -deluded state and now believes that we're able to make it on our own.

You know, you can go to poor and impoverished countries, they might not have anything, but I guarantee you, they will have some form of deity.

Because sometimes that's all they have. It might not be the right

God, but they have something. And I think that we in the

West, we need to see this, have fallen into the same condemnable state that we read about in passages like Hosea 13 in verse 6.

In Hosea 13 .6, we find something interesting. God charges the nation with this.

He says, but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up, therefore they forgot me.

So what we find then is that we are living in the very world that Paul is warning about.

We're living in the very place that Paul is warning against, that it's possible to have wealth and in your wealth, to become proud and arrogant and boastful and to misplace your hope.

And our culture has most certainly misplaced its hope to the point that we no longer trust in God, but we trust in ourselves.

We trust in our jobs and our paychecks, our insurance, our savings, our retirement, our investments, whatever it might be.

Sure, we love to admire those men who lived by faith in centuries past, but we are always maneuvering, always pivoting, seeking to protect our assets and to protect ourselves by what?

It's always by our material wealth. That's why our culture says, as long as you have health and wealth, you'll have happiness, right?

And I want to ask you, brothers and sisters, how much have you been discipled by our culture in this respect?

That when you have more money in the bank account, you feel more secure. And when you have less money in the bank account, you feel less secure.

When your job is at a place where things are looking precarious, and you wonder to yourself, am

I going to have a job next week? And rather than being rock solid and trusting in our rock solid

God, maybe it's a better way to put it, having trust in our rock solid God, you begin to waver and fear and become anxious.

What has happened, I think, that many of us, and many of us in the church, is that little by little, our hope has been displaced from God to other lesser mechanisms.

And what this does, and you need to recognize the cost of this, is that it gives birth not only to pride and delusional thoughts of self -sufficiency, but ultimately self -destructive behavior.

And we see this, it's replete in scripture. I was thinking about King Nebuchadnezzar earlier today.

We read about him in Daniel chapter four. In Daniel four, he was walking along his rooftop palace.

Maybe he was looking at one of his wonders of the ancient world, the hanging gardens of Babylon.

But as he was there, considering his power, his success, his military might, and his riches, Daniel 4 .30

recounts what he said. He said, is this not great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?

And what did God do to him? What did God do to Nebuchadnezzar? But he drove him into the wild, so that he ended up eating grass like an ox, and we're told that his hair was long like eagle feathers, and his fingers like a bird's talons.

Just a disgusting image of a man, utterly humiliated. Why? Because he had set his hope on riches, and it had made him mad.

We find other examples of it in Second Chronicles 26, where King Uzziah of Judah, we're told of him, it says, but when he was strong, he grew proud.

Then what? When he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction.

We see it, our brother has been preaching through the book of Esther. We see it in Haman. He hangs these gallows.

Oh, he knows that he's going to get Mordecai on those gallows. And alas, who ends up on the gallows but Haman?

We see it in Herod Agrippa in Acts 12, when the people applauded him and said, the voice, not the voice of a

God, sorry, not the voice of a man, but it's the voice of a God. And he received glory from the people.

And what happened? He died. He was eaten from the inside out. Now we look at these things, and we say, but these are all unbelievers.

This could never possibly happen to us. But then I want to take you to a place like Revelation chapter three.

What did the church in Laodicea say? It's interesting, a church that's just a hundred miles from Ephesus.

They were even more wealthy than the Ephesians. The Lord Jesus says of them, for you say,

I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

So that in their wealth, even these believers had grown lukewarm and worthy of being spat out of the mouth of Christ.

All this to say, brothers and sisters, make no mistake about it, that the love of money and dependence upon human wealth is the enemy of the kind of faith that pleases

God. And we're living in a world that is constantly discipling us to think like itself, that is constantly discipling us to become more and more enamored, to place our hope and trust and confidence in these material things rather than in God.

But Paul, we've seen this, haven't we? In recent weeks, we see it all the time. He doesn't just address issues from the negative perspective, but he also provides us a positive, not just a prohibition, but a command.

And we see this in the second part of verse 17b. So we have the godless, what's the word

I'm looking for here? We've got our godless predispositions or propensities, but then there is also the godly alternative.

And we read this in verse 17b. It says, nor set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

And he goes on in verse 18. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.

Now what Paul does here is he offers us a necessary alternative. If I came before you today, it would be spiritual malpractice.

If I said, don't trust in money, don't trust in money, just repeat it. Don't trust in money. If I said, don't trust, don't trust, don't trust, and I did not give you a positive directive.

If I did not give you something not only to put off, but then to put on. Something to put away and then something to pursue.

We must direct our hope and our trust, not only away from money, but toward a worthy object.

That is the only thing that will cure us from our predisposition, our inclination to well.

And Paul sets out this only object of our hope when he says this, set your hope on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

Isn't it interesting the language there? He's talking about the danger of riches. And then he says, but trust in God who richly provides everything that you need for your enjoyment.

Now watch this. The reality is that every hope that is set on wealth or material possessions, it will ultimately perish.

Jesus taught in Matthew 619, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.

Commenting on the uncertainty of riches, John Gill, he's looking at this and he writes, these uncertain riches are here today and gone tomorrow.

No man that is possessed of them can be sure of them a moment. They make themselves wings and flee away.

He that gives them can take them away at pleasure. And then I'm going to skip over something of what he says, but he goes on.

He says, we should always trust in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.

Almost every word carries in it an argument or reason why he should be trusted.

Because he is God, not a creature, the living God. He has life in himself essentially and originally.

He is the author, the giver, the maintainer of life in others and who always is, ever continues unchangeably the same and giveth all things.

Every good gift comes from him. All the gifts of nature and bounties of providence as he gives, he can take away and therefore he only should be regarded.

Now, how might our lives look different? Think about this for a moment. How would your life look different if you said to yourself, with God's help, by God's grace,

I will put away trust in my paycheck, in my job, in my bank account, in my investments, whatever it might be.

I'm not talking about being an unwise steward, but I will not put my trust in these things, but I will put my trust in God alone.

How differently might your life look if you believed what Hudson Taylor said, that God's will done

God's way will never lack God's supply. What obedience or service,

I ask you, do you deny our God? Because you're constantly asking the what if questions.

Well, what if I do that, but then I lose my job? Well, what if I share the gospel with my coworkers and then they fire me the next day?

Well, what if I go and serve the Lord in this way? How will I be paid? Whatever it might be.

And I must say, in this case, at least in recent history,

I can speak from experience that we should never, ever, ever let our trust in material things dissuade us from doing those things that God would have us to do.

I remember it was about this time last year, I think it was a month earlier than this, where I woke up,

I had been for months considering what we were going to do with this church.

As the church was beginning to grow beyond the capacity for Sam and I to shepherd this church adequately,

I would look with great discouragement, and not many of you knew this perhaps, but I would look at the church and think about how poorly, how inadequately shepherded this church was.

That there were people who needed time and attention, who needed counsel, who needed visitation in the evenings.

You needed more sound sermons that were better prepared and not cooked up on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

And I remember looking at the church and thinking, what are we ever going to do? We're at this place where a small church, our church needs a vocational shepherd, and alas, we have no ability to meet the needs of that shepherd.

And then one day, I think it was March of last year,

I woke up at five in the morning, and I thought, just what

I said from Hudson Taylor, that this is exactly what the church needs, and that's exactly what the church needed.

And we see that the need is there, and that the Lord himself has ordained this in his word. It's not like, you know,

I want to have a Lamborghini, I'm going to trust God for it. It's like God wants his people shepherded.

He wants his word preached. He wants capable, faithful leadership in the church. He even calls those who preach the gospel to make their living by the gospel.

If this is what God is commanding us to do, then we should seek to do it and trust that he will provide.

And I laid in bed, and I was praying about this very thing, and then, and I'm not a burning in the bosom kind of guy, but I just became overcome with a sense of peace that God will provide.

And I texted our brothers, Sam and Alex, that morning, and I said, I'm ready. We're going to do this.

I'm going to leave my job, Lord willing, and we're going to do A, B, C, and D with God's help. And we don't know exactly how it's going to work, but we are going to trust in God because this is what

God says, and this is what we will do. And I don't think that it was presumption. It was seeking simply to understand that we're almost there.

This is what God commands. I trust he can meet our needs. And we came together as a church at that members meeting.

Many of you are there. And I remember our brother Bernie, who's a numbers guy. He said, I just don't see it in the numbers.

I don't see how this is going to work. And that's not a lack of faith on his part. That's just him making that observation.

And I said, we have to trust that the Lord will provide. And what have we seen over the last year? I seriously thought that what's going to happen perhaps is that I will leave my job, which was a good paying job with good benefits and a good schedule.

And when you work for the government, they say, the only way you can lose your job is if you kill somebody. And so I'm leaving this job and I'm going to go into the great unknown.

And what have we seen? And many of you took that step of faith with us. And what have we seen that God always has met our needs?

I expected that our bank account might just be depleted and depleted and depleted until eventually the church says,

Shane, you got to go look for that job. And maybe one day that will happen. But what have we seen?

But it's like the Lord has brought people out of the woodwork to meet the needs that were in front of us.

So the bank balance today is much larger than the day when we started this whole journey. And we've seen the

Lord building these things, building his church and providing stability. And some might say, well, what if tomorrow you need to go and find work?

I will say, then I know that the Lord will provide because I've seen him provide. And how many of us have put ourselves in a position, not just to do that which is comfortable, but to say, this is what

God commands. I will do it and I will trust that he will provide and put us in a position where the

Lord will provide because he says he will provide. One of the commentators looking at this passage, he says, the wealthy, that's you and I, therefore need to learn how to live with their eye on God more than their eye on their wealth.

Psalm 84 tells us, for the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor.

No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. You might not have everything that you want, but we trust you will always have what you need.

And then what Paul does is he takes us then to a, not only a call of action, but a state of being.

That we're not only to be rich, but we're to be rich in something else. He says, they are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.

And what I wanted to undo or do is unpack some of that. What does it mean to do good?

Well, we see an example of it in first Timothy chapter five and verse 10, if you look there with me, that there were those widows who had a reputation for good works.

If she has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted and has devoted herself to every good work.

But Paul doesn't just tell us to do good, but to be rich in good works.

For the wealthy to add to their wealth in their actions. And this is something we need to recognize that we,

I think that a lot of us living in modern Western society, I remember one of my mechanics teachers telling me this.

He said, every new invention is created to facilitate human laziness, right?

That the flushing toilet ultimately is to facilitate our desire to not leave the house or the en suite, to not even leave our bedroom, right?

Everything that we do is to facilitate our comfort and our luxury in this life.

And our affluence drives us in this way. But what Paul is telling us to do is not to seek that which is easy and that which is most comfortable and that which is along the path of least resistance.

But to do and to be rich in good works.

To do good things, hard things even. Not to be like those who are in the, we read

God condemning this hard attitude in the book of Amos, in Amos chapter six and verse four, where he says, woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall.

We read about that in Amos that they migrated between their winter houses and their summer houses ornately fashioned in ivory.

God does not look at that. He is not impressed by that. But what are we told?

Titus three, eight. The saying is trustworthy. I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful, what?

To devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.

You want to look for true profit? It's not found in dollars. It's found in deeds.

It's found in looking for opportunities to serve one another and to serve our great

God. In John chapter six and verse 27, we read, do not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give to you.

For on him, God the father has set his seal. How many of us,

I mean, I keep asking these questions, how many of us forgo untold blessings because we're always seeking to work for things that we get paid for rather than working for things that do good to other people, our brothers and sisters in Christ and our neighbors, the church, other churches, and to serve the

Lord. I think of one brother, Richard Baxter, a

Puritan, who he decided as he was ministering to his congregation, I believe it was

Kitterminster, and he realized this church needs another shepherd. And he said, well, we're not going to ask the church to give more.

I will just give up half my salary. And with that, we'll hire another brother who can serve likewise.

And I just think, and I ask, and I pose it to you, are we as eager to serve understanding that the

Lord sees all that we do? Are we as eager to serve the Lord as we are for a paycheck before our employers?

Or do we see that on two different tiers? I get paid, and then whatever's left over, that's what

I'll do. But Paul goes on, not just to do good works, not just to be engaged in this good working, but then to be rich in good works,

I should say, but then he calls us to be generous and ready to share. Throughout the

Bible, what we find is that there's always evidence that if not all of the congregations, many of the congregations that the apostles interacted with were socially diverse churches.

They were the rich, and they were the poor. There were those who owned houses that were big enough that the whole church could meet in the house, to that church that meets in this house.

There were those who were slaves. And we know from our study of slaves that slaves could not own any property whatsoever.

And so you have people owning great degrees of property and some no property whatsoever. And yet what

Paul does here is he counsels us, we are all to be generous, ready to share.

And I'm not going to take us through a study of giving and generosity throughout the scriptures, but I want you to just think.

We'll hit some of the bold highlights at how much of the Bible is devoted to the task of giving.

When you read through the Old Testament, how much of the

Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible is devoted to the offerings.

The offerings, this offering, and that offering, this offering in this circumstance, that offering in this circumstance.

If you're wealthy, this many lambs. If you're not, this many pigeons. Whatever it is, you're giving, giving, giving, giving, giving to the

Lord. We follow it, this thread all through the scriptures.

We see it at the end of the Old Testament in Malachi. We see it in the

New Testament, in the Gospels. We see pictures of women like the widow who gave her might, her one penny, and not from her surplus, but everything that she had to live on.

We read in the Gospel of Luke in chapter 33, where the Lord Jesus says, sell your possessions and give to the needy.

Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with treasure in heaven that does not fail.

Where no thief approaches and no moth destroys, where your treasure is, your heart will be also.

Or in 2 Corinthians 9, where Paul says, the point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Or in Acts 20, to share one more, in all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember the words of the

Lord Jesus, how he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.

So much of the Bible is devoted to this idea of giving. And yet so many of us, if we're honest with ourselves, we struggle with this giving.

We want to give from our surplus. We don't want to give from that which we need to live on.

We want to give from the cream, the little bit on the top that's extra. And I'm sure that all of us can think of examples of this in our lives.

I think of the story of Keith Green. Some of you've heard this before. When he first became a believer, the

Lord saved him out of the music world. And he wrote his first offering. And he said that he wept as he wrote the check out to the church when he gave his first offering.

We sang the song today, take my life and let it be. And one man tells a story how he was singing that song, not a mite would

I withhold. And he watched a man that it was the operatory song. And he was going through looking for the smallest denomination of bill that he could give as he was singing those lyrics.

They were all inclined to give sometimes as little as we possibly can.

And yet, what God calls us to is far more to be generous and to give liberally.

And that's not just giving to the church, but that's seeing a missionary who's looking for support and saying,

I think I can probably I can probably eke out X number of dollars so that that gospel could go to China or Morocco or Zimbabwe or whatever, someplace in the 1040 window.

It's giving to our brothers and sisters in need, whatever that might look like. And Paul uses this word or this phrase ready to share, meaning to share freely, liberally.

It is to have an open handedness about our posture. And we see a passage again in Proverbs 21 that speaks to this, where it says the desire of the sluggard kills him for his hand refuses to labor.

All day long he craves and craves. That's the sluggard. But the righteous gives and does not hold back.

That's why we see passages like Matthew 25, where the sheep are separated from the goats.

And one of the characteristics of the believers is this, that they were a giving people, that they went to the prisons, they helped those in need.

It's a call then to radical generosity with both our time and our wealth, realizing in the end that ultimately neither of it belongs to us, but it belongs to the

Lord. I'll say this, our lives should make no sense in the eyes of the world.

People should look, your unbelieving friends and family and neighbors should look at the way that you spend your life and say, it's weird.

I don't know how to make sense of that kind of life. And I wonder if we were examined closely by our neighbors, if people would think it's weird.

I remember having the conversation with my wife, we were dating at the time, and she said, I want to give 10 % to the church.

I said, that's crazy. I'm never going to do that. And I remember coming to her at one point and saying,

Lord, not Lord, Nicole, we need to give more. We need to give more still. There's an illustration of this in the life of William Borden.

There's a great book, his biography, the William Borden of Yale. And there's another book

I'll commend. It's called The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn. It's a little book.

You can probably read it in about two hours tops. It's fantastic. And Randy Alcorn tells the story of visiting the tomb of William Borden.

He went to Egypt. He was in Cairo. And while he was there, they went to William Borden's tomb and they were looking at it.

And the story of William Borden in short was this, that he was a very wealthy man. He was well -educated.

He was in a position to do great things with his life. And one of the things to speak to his wealth, if I understand it correctly, is that his parents took him on a journey around the world as a teenager.

And he realized the great need for the gospel that existed around the world. And so he wanted to bring the gospel to those who were in the darkness and in the bondages of Islam.

And so he was preparing to go. He made his way to Cairo and he died at just the age of 25 years old.

He gave all that he could. He gave his own life in service of his Christ.

And Randy Alcorn wiped off the dust from this tomb, this unknown tomb in Cairo.

Everybody walks by it. They pay no attention to it. And emblazoned on his tomb, it said

William Borden, 1887 to 1913. And the quote there read, apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.

Is there an explanation for your life, worldly speaking? Or are you a person where people look at you and say, apart from Christ, there is no explanation for this kind of generosity.

Apart from Christ, there is no explanation for the fact that this man, this woman, they give their hours, their lives to these people.

Another man who was called Samuel, or his name was Samuel Zwemer. He was called the apostle to Islam.

There's a quote of his in William Borden's biography. He says this, who is there tonight?

I'll say it this afternoon. Who is there this afternoon? Who can always see the shadow of the cross falling upon his bank account?

Who is there who has the mark of the nails and the print of the spear in his plans and life, his love and devotion and daily program of intercession?

Who is there who has heard the word of Jesus and is quietly, obediently every day as he has told you and me, taking up his cross to follow him?

Who is here today that this describes? Then we see finally the glorious result.

So we've looked at our sinful propensities, the godly alternative, the glorious result in verse 19.

We're to be generous. We're ready to share. Verse 19, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

We see Paul here working with the words of our Lord Jesus, who in Matthew 6 20 said, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither rust, neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

R .C. Sproul says on this, he says the financial wealth of prosperous Christians is not merely for their personal consumption.

It's not just there for you to consume, but provides resources for them to amass eternal riches through generous sharing with others.

Have you ever thought that the Lord has put you in Canada in the 21st century, not so that you can consume every good thing that is before you, but so that you can take all of the things that he gives you to steward in this life and to amass eternal riches forever.

Here Paul provides then a remarkable incentive to maintain a godly view of money and wealth, to do good, to be good, to be rich in good works, to be generous.

As I've stated in my introduction, it has nothing to do, it has nothing to do with the grin and bear it kind of obedience that we might imagine in our minds, but it is understanding our

God and the future he has prepared for his people. The reason why we consume and we hoard things is because we do not have eternity stamped on our eyeballs like we so often ask.

We have this world stamped on our eyeballs. And we might think it is almost unbelievable, but it's true because God tells us that he has not only saved us to himself, to come to him and to pass through fire as it were, but that we can actually serve him with joy in this life and amass treasures for eternity.

We think, don't we? We think long and hard about our investments. You can get apps now where you can track it.

You can track your gains and losses every single day. I made 20 bucks. I lost 20 bucks.

I'm up $100 today. We're always strategizing and pivoting, but how much time, how much effort do you put as much effort into thinking about the reality that God has prepared an eternity of eternities for us to dwell in, and we can actually take things, send things ahead of us there.

It's not clothes. It's not cars. It's not houses. To be perfectly candid,

I'm not exactly sure what it is except that God tells us that it's going to be there. And it brings then a whole new meaning to that expression, save all that you can.

There's a quote from Jim Elliott who gave his life trying to reach the Alcas with the gospel in the mid -50s.

I believe it was 1957. He said, he is no fool who trades that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

Everything you own right now is going to end up in a landfill sometime somewhere outside of the hand.

But everything that you give, your time, your money, your energy, your life, you're sending it ahead not to a landfill, but to glory in the presence of God.

That's why God says, whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord and he will repay him his deed.

How can this be that when we think about this, when we come to God with nothing but a sin debt, a filthy, wretched, full, unpayable, massive sin debt, how is it that somehow the

Lord is going to see these pitiful little things that we do and repay us?

I'll tell you why. We read it in Corinthians in 2nd Corinthians 8.

We see grace in our passage. Listen to this. For you know the grace of our

Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

That when we are rich in good works and generous and ready to share, parting with this pitiful stuff that clings so closely to us, do you know what we're doing?

We're believing the gospel. We're believing that Christ laid down his life that we might store up treasure in heaven, not filthy garments in hell, but every good thing in the eternal presence of God our

King, Christ our King and Lord. And I'll tell you something.

The truth to real satisfaction, the key to real satisfaction in this life is not finding satisfaction.

It's not finding our life. It is finding our treasure in Christ where he is.

I want you to turn with me for a moment. Let's go together to Matthew chapter 13 and verse 44.

And I want to be kind to a brother who preached this. I know that he is a brother in the

Lord, but I want to read something and I want to preach something that speaks,

I think, to this. In Matthew 13, 44, I once heard a brother,

I will tell you a dear brother, a man of dispensational persuasions, and that colored his view of this text.

But it reads like this. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up.

Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

I heard my brother, he is a brother, reading this and saying, what a joy.

Israel, the nation of Israel is the treasure. God found her. He enjoyed her for a moment.

He buried her. He went and sold everything. He's coming back to Israel. Let me tell you,

I wanted to die in my seat. I wanted to say, it's not Israel that's the treasure. It is Christ who is the treasure.

And we sell everything. We part with everything. Anything that gets between me and that treasure must be gone.

Christ is that treasure. And if I am to find satisfaction in this life and in the life to come, it must be found in Christ.

This is the secret then, brothers and sisters. It's the same secret that we saw when we were looking at contentment.

It's not found in getting that one last thing, right? It's always once I get that one last thing, then it'll be good, right?

This is the last thing. I'm going to get that, and then I'll be satisfied. You will never be satisfied so long as you were looking anywhere other than Christ to be satisfied.

And then Paul ends this beautiful letter with a pithy, pithy last line, right at the end of verse 21, grace be with you.

And I prayed it at the beginning. It's not just grace be to you, Timothy. It's grace be to all of you.

It is you in the plural. Brothers and sisters, may the

Lord give you grace to get all that you can, so that you can save all that you can, so that you can give all that you can.

Let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

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