The Greatest Sermon on Generosity Ever Given

Good morning Summit. My name is Andre. I've been a member of the Summit for the last 12 years. I have married to my beautiful wife, Caitlyn, and we have a 50-month-old boy named Luca. I have served at Summit through various ministries like Summit Kids and the middle school ministry. I am currently part of a small group and a men's discipleship group called Manier. Over the years, this has been impactful for me because of community being able to be poured into, have accountability, and encouragement and prayers, and be able to walk side by side with people. Today's message is in Matthew 6, 19, 324. Read with me. Do not lay up for yourselves, treasures on earth. Where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves, treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, where he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. This is the word of God for the people of God. You may be seated. Well, so my family, good morning. Before we jump into this morning's message, I want to let you know about a very important event that is happening next Friday, Friday the 13th. It is our quarterly night of prayer and worship. And where else would you want to be on Friday the 13th, except for in the house of God for a night of prayer and worship? Amen. God has been calling this church for the last couple of years. He's been calling us back to prayer. I do tell you this a lot, that every single spiritual awakening in history that has ever happened, ever, came when God's people got serious about prayer. And we want that kind of awakening here. We want that kind of awakening here. If you've been to one of these prayer meetings before, you do not need me to tell you how powerful these are. It's an hour and 15 minutes or so where we worship together. And then we try to give the spirit some space to do what only the spirit can do for him to really speak. And then we pray. I'm telling you the time just flies by. It really does. At this last one, we had people come to faith in Christ during the prayer meeting. And so I want to ask you to make this a priority. College students, high school students, I am talking to you too. Your campus pastor will give you all the details at the end of the service. All right. Matthew chapter 6, if you got your Bibles this week in and you have not already opened there, Matthew 6, one of the

reasons I like to preach systematically through the Bible is that it allows, in a sense, it allows God to choose the subjects of the sermons instead of me. See, if I'm just picking out topics that I enjoy preaching about, then inevitably I will gravitate back to the same, you know, five or six hobby horses of mine, or even worse, even worse, I will try to discern what you want to hear, and then I will just preach that. But when I preach systematically through the Bible, it allows God to choose what we hear. And I think that's especially important on a weekend like this one, because Matthew 6 is all about money, which might qualify as one of the least popular subjects for us to talk about in church. And yet right in the middle of the most important sermon ever preached in history, Jesus devoted an entire section, almost the entire middle third of the sermon. He devotes that to money, and then he says something in verse 24 that is one of the most dramatic things that he ever said about anything. Verse 24, take a look at it again. Nobody can serve to masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one, and he will despise the other. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you cannot serve God and money. Y'all, that is the strongest statement Jesus ever made about any category of sin. Jesus never said, for example, you cannot serve God and sex. He never says you cannot serve God and hatred. That is not to lessen the evil of those kinds of sins, simply that there is something uniquely powerful about the destructive power of money. Why? Why do you think that is? and warned about most. Jesus talked about money more than He talked about prayer and faith combined. He talked about money more than He talked about heaven and hell combined. Jesus talked about money three times more than He talked about love and seven times more than He talked about prayer. More than 40% of Jesus' teachings focus on money. So when somebody says to me, "Pastor, I wish you wouldn't talk about money. How does we should talk about Jesus?" I always want to say, I'm not sure you've ever really paid that much attention to Jesus. If I've preached on money as often as Jesus did, it would be every third sermon. Just say it. So send your emails to Him, okay? And y'all know, it's not like Jesus was doing that because He needed money.

He didn't. I mean, just think about His life when Peter discovers they owe us some back taxes. What's Jesus do? He doesn't preach a sermon on money. He sends Peter out to catch a fish, and when Peter catches the fish, he finds a gold coin in its mouth, worth enough to cover the entire tax debt. Jesus is at a party where the wine runs out. So he turns ordinary tap water into the finest wine anybody's ever tasted. Imagine how much your food bill would drop if you could do that. The point is Jesus doesn't need you to spot Him a couple of bucks. Jesus was never, not one time, ever worried about how He was going to fund His life in ministry. So why do you think He preached so often about greed and why would He devote the largest part of the most important sermon He ever preached, the sermon on the Mount? Why would He devote that to money? And why would He make such a dramatic statement as this one right here in verse 24? Those are great questions. I want you to remember that the theme of the sermon on the Mount is what a genuine relationship with God looks like. And throughout this sermon, Jesus shows us, this is like the running theme of the sermon. He shows us the difference between religiosity and a genuine love for God. In the sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks a lot about money because, here it is, because Jesus saw money as the primary competitor to God in our lives. And verses 19 through verse 24, the passage that we read, Jesus makes three points about money. Each one builds on the one before and each one gets stronger than the one before. The first one is going to be like a jab, the second one is going to be like a right hook, and the third one is going to be like a roundhouse kick to the throat. And I'm not going to demonstrate that one for you. Here is Jesus' progression.

He says verses 19 and 20, number one, you've got to do the math. Number two, you've got to check your vision, and then number three, you've got to choose your master. Okay? Here we go. Here we go. Number one, do the math. Again, go back to verse 19. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth because malt and rust can destroy them and thieves can break in and steal them. But instead, you need to lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven because they are neither malch nor rust can destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal your treasure there. All in one sense, that is just straightforward, undeniable, plain logic, right? If eternity is real, if it's real, it makes sense that you lay up treasures there where you can enjoy them eternally rather than hear where they rust and they break and they fade away and you can't take them with you more than the short little life you live here on earth. Financial advisors tell you that when you are coming out with a plan for saving, when you were setting a budget, they say, don't just think 30 days ahead, think 30 years ahead. Jesus would simply say, yeah, you should also think 30,000 years ahead and that just makes sense. Again, just straightforward logic. Francis Chan did this illustration years ago, I've always, I've always loved, he took something like this, a rope like this, he said, I want you to let this rope. I want you to let this represent your life. We'll let this green part here represent your birth. We'll let this blue represent here the time when you first went to school, grade school. We'll say that black here represents your first breakup, it was a hard time. We'll say yellow represents your high school graduation. This red spot here will be your college years.

This first pink one, that'll be your marriage, if you got married, then then your first kid here pink. And we'll say the rest of this red right here represents the middle part of your life in which nothing significant happens. then you'll get to black here. We'll say this represents retirement. Okay? Just a little summary of your life. Maybe, maybe by doing all the right things, all the right, maybe by exercising, by eating kale, by using a standing desk, avoiding gluten, rubbing yourself down with unicorn oil each night or whatever the latest social media trend is. Maybe you can add another centimeter or two to the colored part of this rope, but y'all, that's all. That's all that you could add if you do everything right. If what the Bible says about eternity is true, then your life is not really this at all when you really see your life from the perspective of eternity. It's actually gonna look something more like this here. And I could stand up here and just keep doing this, literally all day long to represent our lives in eternity. And what Jesus is simply saying is, how could you possibly think that wisdom would be to live as if this part here is the only part that matters? It's just straightforward logic, right? The problem is that most of us don't really fully consciously believe

in the reality of eternity. I mean, we give mental assent to it. Of course we do. But I mean, believing it so strongly that we do radical things with our money right now. And I know that because I'm like that. Y'all listen, the hardest part of me giving personally is this quiet little doubt that I still have. Is this all really true? What if I walk away from a bunch of stuff right now? A bunch of stuff I can see and feel and enjoy now? And I give it away for something invisible and ultimately it's not worth it. 'Cause see the stuff that money can buy for me right now, it feels real, it feels tangible right now. That vacation is real. That nice car is real. Those nice clothes are real. And to ask me to walk away from things I can enjoy and touch with my hands now and experience now so that I can lay up treasures in some nebulous invisible future that I can't see or feel yet, honestly that's hard for me. But here's the verse God has really been using in my life. Over the last year, this is like my theme verse for the year. I memorized this verse when I was six years old, but it is taking me, hold on my now. It's taking me 32 years to figure out what this verse means. That joke never gets old, it never gets old, okay?

He reads 11, six, without faith it is impossible to please God, no matter how much you know, no matter how much you come to church, without faith it is impossible to believe God. Well what is faith exactly? Faith is the belief that he is. And it is also the belief that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. This is a requirement if you are going to live a life that pleases God. You've got to believe that an invisible God is real even though you can't see him and you got to believe that if you give your life to him ultimately it is all worth it. And I know that seems basic, but I'm telling you it's just hard for me. Living, really living, really living with my energy and my money and your attention as if eternity is real and it's close by and that's really what matters. Of course I believe it, of course. But for me it's a little like that famous story where the magician William Blonden puts a tight rope, stretches a tight rope across Niagara Falls and walks back and forth across it several times before cheering crowder, but like you're awesome you're amazing each time he makes it a little bit harder. You know he balances something on his head then he puts something on his back and then after all these successful trips for the grand finale of his performance

he brings out a wheelbarrow and he's like, who thinks I can push this wheelbarrow across the tight rope and everybody in the crowd raises their hands and they're like, you can do it. But then William Blonden says, okay, okay, then who's willing to get in the wheelbarrow and ride along as I push it. And everybody's like, putting a hand down. That is me with my money. I believe Lord. I do believe, I believe. I'm going to heaven when I die and God says, okay, then get in the wheelbarrow. And I'm like, here's the question. If somebody studied your spending what would they conclude you believe about eternity? I'm not asking you what your mouth says you believe about eternity because words are cheap. I'm asking what does your spending say about what you believe about eternity? Because of what your mouth says and what your spending says disagree about what you believe. Your spending is a much more reliable indicator of what you actually, practically believe. Number two, Jesus says, "Check your vision." Let's start with verse 21, Jesus says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." I used to read verse 21, "As if it were just a conclusion to verses 19 and 20." Jesus explains in verses 19 to 20, "Why a heavenly treasure is a better investment than

an earthly one, and then he ties it off with a nice little bow for where your treasure is, that your heart will be also precious moments, isn't this awesome and we move on." But this verse is actually a bridge into what Jesus says next. You see, in verses 22 and 23, the verses right after this one, Jesus is going to go from discussing what is going to happen with your earthly treasure, namely that it's all going to fade away. He's going to go from that to warning you, listen, to what your earthly treasure is doing to your heart right now. In verses 19 and 20, he is warning you that earthly treasure is going to disappear and he is telling you it's a stupid thing for you to build your life on. But in verses 22 and 23, he says, "Hey, it's also corrupting your heart right now because in the Sermon on the Mount, that's his biggest concern." His biggest concern is not what kind of investments you're making, his biggest concerns is what your earthly treasure is doing to your love for God. In the Sermon on the Mount, that's his theme. He keeps coming back to talk about the heart. And so in verse 21, this bridge verse, he is telling you that where you put your treasure actually determines the shape of your heart. Think of your money like a magnet and your heart's affections like iron filings. So that wherever you move the magnet, the finelings follow. You've experienced this in so many ways, right? Put money into a stock and suddenly you are checking how that company is doing. Yesterday, you barely knew that company existed, but today, right, you're reading about its quarterly earnings over breakfast. Why? Because you put your treasure there and so your concern followed. Jesus says something similar happens spiritually. When you invest in God's kingdom, your heart begins moving in that direction. You see, your money doesn't simply reveal what you love. Your money helps shape what you love.

That is why Jesus talks so much about money in this sermon and throughout his whole ministry. In verses 22 and 23, he's going to drive the point even deeper by switching to a new metaphor. The eye, he says, the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body is going to be full of darkness. And if the light that is in you is actually darkness, how great is that darkness? You know, at first, these verses seem a little bit like a random interruption. And Jesus has been talking about where you lay up treasure and he's talking about what you love. And then suddenly he starts talking about your eyes. Your eyes are healthy. Your whole body will be full of light. It's bad. Your whole body is full of darkness. What does that got to do with money? Well, think about what your eyes do for the rest of your body. You get up in the middle of the night, you turn on a light. And with that light, your eyes show your feet where to step. They show your hands what to reach for. They show you where that corner of the furniture is that is just waiting to destroy your pinky toe and make you lose your salvation. Your whole body, even your emotional equilibrium, benefits from your eyes being able to see but if your eyes are not working, if you have a dark eye, so to speak, every light in the house could be on and you would still stumble around and hurt yourself. Jesus says a love of money does the same thing to you spiritually. When money distorts your vision, it affects every part of your life. By the way, this metaphor comes straight out of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 28 says a stingy man, literally in Hebrew, a man whose eye is evil, that's what it says.

A man whose eye is evil hastens after wealth and does not know that true poverty will come upon him. When you've got a bad eye in regards to money, in other words, when money is really important to you, it begins to affect every decision that you make. For example, you are considering a new job that pays more than your current job and you know that extra $10,000 bump would be really nice next year, but it's going to leave you significantly less available to your family. It's going to leave you much less able to lead in the ministries that you enjoy at church, but right now, honestly, that does not matter because the salary is bigger and that feels like everything right now, so you keep calling this a better opportunity. You keep saying it is better for your family. but you think she just doesn't get it. She actually does get it. Your eye is just gone bad. Most of the time when somebody gets involved in some kind of fraud or financial malfeasance, it's not because they were an inherently dishonest person. It's just that getting this financial bump or securing that profit margin seems so important to them. They felt like they had to bend the rules. They had to bend those numbers or twist those facts. Jesus gives this warning if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? In other words, if your heart toward money is off, every decision you make is going to be wrong. And the scariest part is all those decisions are gonna feel so right. You're gonna call greed. You're gonna call that being responsible. You're gonna call envy.

You're gonna call that wanting the best for my family. You're gonna postpone obedience to God with the excuse, well, I'm just waiting for a bee to be in a better financial position. And I'm sure God understands that I just can't do this right now. There's some of you who will excuse unethical or unkind business practices with, well, you know, business is cutthroat and you just gotta be willing to get your hands dirty if you're gonna succeed in this world or you're gonna keep your family out of church two or three times a month because, yeah, well, we bought a beach house because that's essential to the good life. And now that we own that beach house, we really need to use it. My point is when your eye toward money is dark, you're gonna start to make lots and lots and lots and lots of bad decisions, but they will all feel so right. Long before you got a spending problem, long before you got to stay it out of church problem, you got an eye and a heart problem. Here's the question. Has money become so important to you that it colors how you see everything else? And that leads us to Jesus' third point, his round house kicked to the throat, so to speak, verse 24. Choose your master

because you cannot serve God and money again. Jesus doesn't say that about any other category of sin. He doesn't just say it's difficult to serve God and money. He says it's impossible to serve God and money. If you love the one, he says you will hate the other. You will hate the other. Do you love money? Do you love making it? Do you love having it? Do you love the power that it brings? If so, then your soul is in danger. Now, let's just ask why. Why is money such a uniquely powerful competitor to God? I was listening to a talk years ago by a Christian journalist named Andy Crouch. Andy Crouch was given a talk on this passage, Matthew 6, and he said that money is a uniquely powerful competitor to God because money gives you a kind of power that almost nothing else in life can't. By power, I mean the ability to control your life, the ability to obtain what you want, the ability to manipulate an outcome. There are lots of things in our lives that give us power. Our talents, our looks, our popularity, all those are kinds of power. But money has three qualities, he says, that most other kinds of earthly power do not. First, Andy Crouch said, money is fungible. There's your SAT word for the week.

I was actually gonna change this to a more recognizable word, but then I thought, you know, some, some at high school student is gonna take the SAT this month, and he or she is going to see this word, and they're gonna get it right because they heard it in a sermon, and it's gonna put you over the bar to get you into the college of your choice, and then you're gonna get a job and get super rich, and I want you to remember this moment right here, that it all comes back to me teaching you the word fungible, okay? Fungible is a word that means you can exchange money for all sorts of things. See, you can turn money in almost anything, right? You can immediately turn money into comfort, convenience, experiences, access, help getting stuff done, other kinds of power, tag your talent, your personality, your looks. You can't do that quite as easily with those things, but you can take money and transform it immediately into whatever you need. Whatever you're afraid of, money offers you protection from it. Whatever you're longing for, money offers you a path to get it. That is why the allure of money can get its hooks and almost anybody, 'cause whatever you want to be different in your life,

money offers you the chance to get it. Second, Andy Crouch says money is countable. It's hard to count and measure other kinds of power. Influence is a kind of power. How do you measure how much influence you actually have? but it's hard to know exactly how much influence you really have. How do you know how talented you are? It's hard to get an exact measurement of that kind of power. But your bank account gives you an exact number down to a decimal point with two hundredths of the amount of the power of your money. Most of you can pull up your accounts on your phone right now, and you can compare where you are this year to where you were last year, and you can watch it rise or fall by the seconds. Third, Kraut says, money is storable. Other kinds of power, you cannot store away. You can't store time, for example. If you're talented or you're good looking, again, those are kinds of power that you can't store those away. Money, however, you can store, and it will even grow as you store it. And so for most of us, money becomes the preferred thing to rest on for the future. You may not know what tomorrow holds, but by golly, you can look at that account

and think whatever happens tomorrow, I got this, fungible, countable, storeable. That is why money is such a deceptive replacement for God. You see, money whispers to your soul. With enough of me, you won't have to depend on anything. And eventually, of course, that starts to include God. You may still believe in God. You may still come to church, but deep down when you think about what makes your life good, when you think about what makes your future secure, you're looking to a number, not a savior. And that brings us to maybe the scariest inside of all. And verse 24, when Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and money." Most of our translations here say money. The scholars point out there's a weird way this is written in the original Greek manuscripts. So for all of you that have your Greek manuscript open, right now you're gonna see this. You see this word, money. And this word only is written not in Greek, but in Aramaic. Everything around is written in Greek, except for this word. Jesus spoke in Aramaic because that was the language of first century Israel, but the apostles wrote the New Testament in Greek because that was the common language of the Roman Empire. So as Jesus is speaking in Aramaic, they're writing along, translating Jesus's words into Greek.

But then suddenly they just use the Aramaic word for money. The Aramaic word for money is mammon. Instead of the Greek word for money, which is our gyrion. Question, when somebody is translating something, when do they usually leave a word untranslated? When it's a proper name. I remember being in Germany and watching the news over there. And I could not understand a word they were saying. I just knew that they were mad. And all I can hear with that, that, that, that, United States, that, that, that, that Donald Trump. (audience laughs) Proper nouns in an American accent. Bible writers left the word Jesus used for money untranslated because they understood Jesus was not naming an object. He was talking about a personalized power. Jesus recognized that there is a personal demonic power that often attaches itself to money. It's not that money itself is evil, but the enemy attaches it to himself to it in an unusual way and he uses it like nothing else in the world to draw human beings away from dependence on God. That is the spiritual battle Jesus is exposing. Which, if you'll let me really be your pastor for a minute, some of you are quite wealthy. In fact, by the world standards, most everybody in this church is. And being wealthy can be a wonderful blessing from God. You should receive it as a blessing. I do not resent it.

You should not feel guilty about it, but it should scare you. And honestly, if it does not scare you, if it does not scare you to death, you're in deep trouble. Think of money like a firearm. The worst possible thing you can do with a firearm they say is not respected. I'm just kidding. I would not bring a firearm in here as an illustration because I respect it, I respect its power. Not respecting how they say is where the majority of accidental gun deaths come from. People lose their respect for its destructive power and they get careless with it. They don't double check to make sure the chamber is empty or make sure that it's locked on it. My concern is that some of you who have a lot of money aren't concerned at all about it. You're raising your kids in what Jesus says is the most inhospitable environment possible to genuine faith and a genuine love for God. And you don't think twice about it. Imagine if you had a 10 year old boy in your house and later on everywhere were porn magazines. Or constantly playing on your TV was racist, bigoted commentary. And you were like, who cares, he'll be fine. No responsible parent in here would do that. And yet you got something even more toxic than any of those things around your kids

and you don't even think twice about it. In fact, do you encourage it? You get up every day thinking about it. It's the one thing you most desire for your kids, the one thing you're trying to ensure about their future, what you try to use to motivate them to do well in school today, even the stuff you buy for them, their clothes or their car, you are trying to instill in them that they belong to the upper echelon of society. Parents, honest question for you, do you love money? If so, it is squeezing out your love for God and it is all but extinguishing it in your children. It's being rich something that you love. And please do not be one of these obnoxious rich people. He says, I don't really care about money. While you got millions in the bank and you own the nicest version of everything, you have the luxury of not caring about money because you have so much of it. The question for you is could life be good for you if you didn't have any of that money and what demonstrations of that are you giving to your kids? Do they see you doing without some of the nicer things because your kingdom is not here, it's there. And if you're not rich, it's being rich something that you really desire, something you get up every day thinking about and every day working toward. If so, that means you probably love money,

which means you're having real trouble loving God and you're gonna make some colossally bad decisions. You know what Jesus said in this sermon is not just scary, it is devastating. And I know at this point some of you are like, okay, okay, okay pastor, I'm with you. But what am I supposed to do now? What am I supposed to actually do? You're like, I can't just give it all away, right? Or is that what Jesus is saying? Is he saying the poor is better? No, no, no, no. The goal is not to have as little money as possible. The goal is for money to serve your love for God instead of it becoming the thing that you serve. The word Jesus uses for serve right here, in Greek, in verse 24 is a religious word. It actually is communicating worship. Money is supposed to be only your servants, never the God that you serve in worship. And there are two practical things that Jesus points us to in this sermon that will keep you from serving money. They are hidden in plain sight. Once I show them to you, you'll always see them when you read this passage. The first is practice generosity. The second one is remember my generosity, Jesus says. Number one, practice generosity. When she go back to the very beginning, verse 19,

because Jesus gives us a really practical instruction. Verse 19, don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. He didn't say don't love them, he said don't, he's not so money in motion, he's talking about an action. Don't lay up treasures on earth. But instead, I don't want you to lay up treasures in heaven. Again, that's action, because where your treasury is your heart's gonna follow that. What does he say? Giving is a way of training your heart to love heaven. Notice that Jesus doesn't say here, hey, ask God by the power of the Holy Spirit, the renewing power of regeneration to give you a heart that loves heaven more than earth. You should do that, of course you should do that. But Jesus gives you something even more practical that will lead to that change. Give, he says, give, give generously, give radically, and that will transform your heart. Not pray for a heart to give, and then be generous when you feel like it, but give even when you don't feel like it and that will produce in you a heart that does feel like it. There are two important biblical words that we use around here at Summit Church to describe the obedience of giving. But before I give them to you, let me say something. To those of you who may find some of this difficult to hear because you've seen a pastor use giving to manipulate people or to enrich himself,

maybe that happened to you in a church you trusted. And so now whenever a pastor talks about money, your guard goes up, and honestly, I understand why. If that is where you are, here's what I'm asking. Listen to me for the next 30 seconds. I urge you without apology, practice generosity. I need you to obey what I'm going to tell you 'cause it doesn't come from me, it comes from Jesus. And if you're gonna follow Jesus, you have to do this. But if church hurt is an obstacle to you giving, then give somewhere else. Give to something you trust. You cannot follow Jesus without being radically generous. You can't. And I do not want your understandable hesitation about trusting the church to keep you from experiencing what God wants to do in your heart. Listen, we will be fine without your money. We will be fine. God will take care of us. He always does. Your soul is what I'm worried about here. Now, I will say that this is the church God has led you to. I sincerely hope that over time, we will earn your trust, and I hope that you will want to give here. But in the meantime, for the sake of your heart and the sake of your what with God, give somewhere else, even if it's not here, okay? Deal? Deal? Okay. Here's the two words we use.

Give you a word number one, type. Type literally means the first 10%. The Bible teaches that the first 10% of what God gives to us should be given back to him and recognition that all of it ultimately comes from him. Write this down. Tithing is more about lordship than it is about generosity. See, whenever this is interesting, whenever Scripture talks about the tithe, it doesn't usually use the language of give. Rather, it uses the word bring. We should bring the tithe back to God, not give it to him. You say, well, what's the difference? When you give something to someone, the implication is that it's yours, and you're sharing it with him. That is not the language you use if you're returning something to somebody that belonged to them the whole time. If I borrow your car and later you say, hey, I'd let my car back, I don't say, well, you know what? Maybe I'll come by later and maybe I'll give you this car. You'd say, thank you, pastor, but you cannot give that car to me. It already belongs to me. I want you to bring it back to my house tonight. Make sense? Sometimes people say to me, well, oh, pastor, you know, tithe isn't taught in the New Testament. That's part of the law. We're no longer under the law. We're under grace. They've suddenly become a Bible scholar on this one issue. The tithe, giving God the first fruits of all that he gives you, actually precedes the law by hundreds of years. We see it present in the story of Cain and Abel.

Genesis 14 tells us that Abraham tithe on everything God gave him, and Abraham preceded the law by several hundred years. Jesus personally commended the tithe in Matthew 23, 23. I guess he didn't understand the grace, law, distinction. The tithe was always given to whatever institution represented God's headquarters on earth. In the Old Testament, those headquarters were the temple, so Jewish believers brought their tithe to the temple. In the book of Acts, as the church is being formed, the apostles are the headquarters of the church. So people lay their offerings at the apostles' feet. In the New Testament, it is your local church, the local headquarters that God has set up. That becomes the primary place that you give. People say to me, why tithe to this or that ministry or how tithe to this charity? You should give to this or that charity. You should. But the tithe is supposed to go to God's central institution on earth, which in our day is the local church. To be clear, I think you should give to other charities and ministries. Veronica and I give to a bunch of them, but that is not the tithe. By the way, I've told you this. My desire is that this church would be your favorite and most effective charity. I've told you, about 35% of our churches budget goes toward missions and community impact and leadership development. Things like translating the Bible that I held up in front of you last weekend, helping people in the triangle rebuild their lives after they get out of prison, caring for foster kids, engaging poverty, raising up new leaders, sending out missionaries and church planners, obtaining new facilities to better reach the triangle. I see part of my job here at this church being to investigate the best partner ministries for all those purposes and to make sure that we are investing wisely in those ministries on your behalf.

That's where a lot of that 35% goes. I want you to think of this church a little like I think about my financial planner. I do not know enough about stocks to evaluate every investment, so I rely on somebody who studies them for a living, and I give my money to him and he invested for me. In a similar way, our team here, we study various ministry opportunities. We get to know the leaders of those ministries. We evaluate the work so that we can direct your giving where it can make a lasting kingdom impact. There's so much money that is given by the people of God, it is given into things that do not have eternal impact. They make no eternal difference at all. Our job is to study that and say this is the best one to make a kingdom impact. That is why I often say you're not just giving to this church, you're giving through this church to the work of God. Make your local church your favorite charity and make it your first priority in giving because it's where I think you can get the best E-R-O-I, eternal return on investment for your giving. That brings me to the second word. Stewardship. Stewardship. If tithing is about lordship, stewardship is about arranging your life according to kingdom values. Stewardship means setting up your rest of your budget after the 10% and the same way Jesus would set his up if he had what you had. I mean, you know this, right? Jesus is not just lord of the first 10% of your budget. He's lord of all of it.

Which means you gotta look at your whole budget not just the first 10% and ask, what does Jesus want me to do with all of this and does what I'm doing with all of this reflect somebody who really loves what Jesus loves. Bringing the first 10% back to God, that's just obedience. Being a wise steward with the rest of your resources means becoming more and more like Jesus and doing with your resources what Jesus would do if he had what you have. Does that make sense? That distinction not just drew. And that brings me to the second thing that Jesus uses in this sermon to change our heart. Again, it's hiding in plain sight. Remember my generosity. So you gotta read this whole passage in the light of the one who's giving it. Because that's gonna change your heart as much as anything else. The one who warned us about the power of money is the one who divested himself of the riches of heaven so that he could save us from hell. Jesus did not give you a percentage of himself. He didn't just tithe his blood. He poured out all of it. He entered into our poverty. He bore our sin. He opened up his father's kingdom to us. And so when he calls you to open your hands back to him,

you gotta remember how he first opened his for you. Paul says it this way in second Corinthians eight, nine. Remember, I'll remember the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor. So that you by his poverty might become unspeakably rich that although Jesus had all the riches of heaven, though he could have been crazy wealthy on earth, he amassed no treasures here. The Gospel writer Luke tells us he didn't even own a home. He didn't have a permanent place to lay his head, but he poured out his whole life to lay up treasures in heaven. By the way, what were those treasures in heaven? What were the treasures in heaven that Jesus left for? You think it was streets of gold, he was laying up for himself? Did his treasure was a mansion he was trying to build in heaven? No, he had all that before he left. What was the one thing that he left heaven to obtain, that he did not already have when he was there? What was his one treasure he came seeking? You, you were his treasure in heaven. Jesus did not go through the cross to obtain streets of gold. He went through the cross to have you. So when Jesus tells you to lay up treasures in heaven, he's talking about you using your treasures to see others come to Jesus like he used his treasure to get you. So here's the question, what is your treasure? I want you to imagine being in heaven 10,000 years,

somewhere represented by this rope, 10, 20, 30,000 years, and you got to know somebody up there who came to Christ because of one of your sacrifices you gave. You gave, you went on a mission trip, we were, you were able to use, we were able to use that money to do something that reached somebody for Jesus. Maybe it was right here in the triangle, maybe it was on one of our college campuses, maybe it was overseas, maybe it was in the prisons. I want you to imagine after 10,000 years how much you were going to love that person that you've got to know in heaven. 'Cause you know up there, you're going to love them with Jesus like love, which means you'll love them more than you've ever loved than anybody on earth. Here's the question, do you feel like at that point, wherever we are on this rope, you feel like at this point, you're going to regret having sacrificed some of your earthly treasures here, not a little tiny part of the rope so that they could be and have them with you forever. Friend, you were Jesus's treasure. Make somebody else yours. This past week, Wednesday night, I spoke at our Summit College United, it was right here in this room. Over 1500 students from all these local college campuses packed in here and I talked about places around the world

that needed to hear the gospel. I actually put up a map and showed them places. Middle East, Russia, China. Well, there was a guy here from UNC Chapel Hill. He came to UNC as an unbeliever. He's a freshman this year. Our college team connected with him during Fresh 10, which is this big outreach we do at the beginning of the year to incoming freshmen. This guy's not a believer. College leaders have been sharing the gospel with him. They've been walking alongside in this whole semester. Just a couple of days before SC United on Wednesday, just a couple of days, he finally surrendered his life to Jesus. SC United, listen, was one of the, that's what it's worth clapping about, but it's not even the best part of the story. So, clap a lot in a minute, okay? SC United was one of the, maybe the first large Christian gathering that he had ever gone to. He hadn't yet come to this church. He just came to SC United. This room full of college students worshiping their faces off. It's his first experience. At the end of the evening, I invite the students to stand up ones that were sensing God's call

to take the gospel to the nations. This young man stands up for the back right over here. He's weeping. He explained that he wanted to give his life to help other people hear the gospel because for much of my own life, he said, I've lived without hope. Now that he had found hope in Jesus, he wanted other people to have the same opportunity from lost to labor, from mission field to missionary summit. That's what I want to give my money to, amen? Now, it was when you put your hands together because that's my treasure, what's yours? Jesus's instructions in this chapter practice generosity. Remember my generosity. If I could at all of our campuses, would you bow your heads with me? We've come to that portion of the sermon where I can't tell you what to do. This is not what I tell you to do. It's what the Holy Spirit is gonna tell you to do. But here's the question you're needing to ask yourself, what changes do you need to make? For some of you, the change is beginning to tithe. Maybe like, I don't know how to do that or I can't afford to get the full 10%. That's okay. Start somewhere, start somewhere, start with 5%

and work your way there. The path to trusting God always starts with small steps. That first step is so important to start today. Others of you need to do what I've done like where you've said, I said a recurring tithe every month. It's literally one of the first things to come out of my check each month. I do that because I wanna show God that I trust Him first. I want it to be automatic so I don't forget about it. And also so that I'm not tempted to spend it on something else or get scared at a tight month and hold on to it in unbelief. Yo, I've done this since I was in college and it is amazing how God always provides everything I need. When I honor Him, He honors me and He'll do the same for you. Listen, for others of you, God has blessed you in a way that you really need to give way beyond the tithe. Maybe you got some stored resource, you got some account, some a mass possession, you got multiple versions of something, you got closets full of stuff that you honestly, it's just laying up treasures for moth and rust. And what you need to do is you need to take some of those things and leverage them for treasures in heaven. Don't die with a lot of money in your pocket. That is so wasted, invested in the kingdom of God now. If you trust us, invest it here. Next week I'll tell you about some exciting things that God has ahead for us, we believe.

Here's the question though, what's He telling you to do? I just want you to pray and listen to the Holy Spirit and then our worship teams will come. Father, I pray, Holy Spirit come. You speak, give us ears to hear, courage to obey and pray in Jesus' name. You keep your heads bowed for just a moment. Our worship teams will come in a moment and they'll lead us to respond. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music)