November 17, 2013 Providence TREASURE LIKE NOTHING YOU VE EVER SEEN Luke 12:13-21 INTRODUCTION: One of the great classics in all literature is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Without going into the full story, a pivotal point in the plot comes when the main character, Edmond Dantes, follows a treasure map given to him in prison by his mentor and friend. What he found was beyond belief so much treasure that it would be impossible for him to ever spend it all. Part of the fascination of the book is the way our imaginations run away from us, considering what we could do with such massive wealth! Several years ago, I was approached by a man who was facing the possibility of gaining a massive amount of wealth. He asked if I would help him give large portions of it away. Of course I was understandably skeptical but listened to his appeal and agreed to help when the time came. To set your mind at ease, that time never came!! Oddly enough, another gentleman approached me a year or so after the first and asked essentially the same question of me. Again, nothing ever came of it in terms of earthly wealth. But what did happen was that I was forced to think about that kind of wealth compared to the riches of the grace of Jesus Christ. Why would I get more excited about a finite amount of earthly riches when I am promised the unlimited abundance of heaven through Christ? I concluded that most of us do not have the capacity to think well about things that have eternal value. We have been so brainwashed into thinking only of what this world has to offer that we struggle to place God s treasure above earthly ones. THESIS: In order to realize the great fullness of life in Christ, we must come to believe the truth that treasures in heaven are really better than treasures on earth. I. UPSIDE-DOWN LIVING: EVIDENCE OF INVERTED VALUES --Hearts that treasure earthly possessions more than eternal promise find little satisfaction and no contentment. ILLUS: Our values have been turned upside down. It is if someone had switched the price tags in our lives! Last week in the news, in Connecticut, a man named Rabbi Noah Muroff bought a desk for $200 off Craigs list. When they got it to his office, they found a plastic bag attached to one of the drawers with $98k in it! No one would have known had they chosen to keep it. But he and his wife called the seller of the desk and told them of their discovery and returned the money! When asked why he did it, Rabbi Muroff said, The most important thing in life is to be honest! The reason the story was on the news is that honesty is not the most important thing for many that value has often been pushed aside by the upside-down values of a world that only lives for the here and now. Consider how things might be different if certain values were switched: Teachers would be paid more than entertainers and athletes character would be treasure more than fame honesty and integrity would be more desirable than winning a task done with excellence would be more satisfying than the money it brings. --Even among followers of Christ, the fact that we were not made for this world does not influence our actions the way it should! A. DISCONTENTMENT FUELS OUR AMBITIONS --If you ask most people what they want to do with their lives, the answers will typically be filled with ambitions for what they can accumulate for themselves here in this world. --People want good jobs nice homes new cars prestigious educations some desire fame others prefer ease and leisure good health and long life these are normal aspirations, even among those who have been called to follow and live for Jesus Christ.
2 1Tim. 6:9-10 But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith, and pierced themselves with many a pang. --Scripture is full of warnings about living for the wrong goals and selling out to get the riches of this world. B. GREED CONTROLS OUR FOCUS. Luke 12:15 And He said to them, Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed [covetousness - pleonexiva"]; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions. --When our worlds revolve around and are even defined by the accumlations and accomplishments of an earthly nature, we will never be satisfied the word enough will have no meaning! pleonexiva" -- speaks of a craving, a selfish pursuit, a love of having and leveraging possessions to gain power, prestige and pleasure; a general dissatisfaction with what one has that cries our Give me more! I want more! --You were created for better than this petty, temporal, empty drive to gain what will eventually fade, fail or fall! Mark 4:19 and the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. --Jesus explained that we were created for eternity and as a result it is impossible for temporal possessions and positions to bring contentment only by investing in what lasts forever will we turn our eyes to live for what God values. --It is not that what God created here on earth is bad it is that those things simply will not last! Prov. 23:4-5 Do not weary yourself to gain wealth, cease from your consideration of it. 5 When you set your eyes on it, it is gone. For wealth certainly makes itself wings, like an eagle that flies toward the heavens. ILLUS: During the Civil War, the southern states had established their own currency. Many had accumulated wealth in confederate bills only to see it all disappear when the money no longer had value after the war ended. When my grandfather died, we cleaned out his office and found in an old file a $10k bill US currency! Where and how he got hold of it, I have no idea. But as excited as we were, we also suspected what we found out later it was no longer valid currency! Rats!! Years ago while in Zimbabwe, I had exchanged some money to use while there. I still have some of it in fact, on my desk I have about 10 bills, face value of $100k a million dollars! But as inflation took its toll, the bank could not keep up as the currency printing became an act of absurdity I now have here a 100 billion dollar bill!! All of the scramble to amass great wealth in this world will one day be just as worthless as these pieces of paper with numbers on them! --Therefore, to spend out lives in the pursuit and accumulation of things that will one day lost all value makes little sense when the treasures of heaven are valid now and forever!! C. THE GOOD BECOMES ENEMY OF THE BEST --But for all the more dramatic examples of setting our hearts on those things destined for destruction in this world, a much more subtle enemy threatens our love for what God loves. --Rather than a few major pursuits that compete for our affections and rise to the top of our values, it is more likely that it is a thousand small practices we seldom consider to be threats at all!
3 JOHN PIPER: The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife. The greatest adversary of love to God is not His enemies, but His gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable. (Hunger for God, p.14) --The only cure is to have a heart set on fire for Jesus Christ and to allow what He loves and values most to set the agenda for your life s most passionate pursuits! II. ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE: PROOF OF TRANSFORMED HEARTS --Something in our human existence makes it very difficult for us to imagine that there is something more valuable than what we can see and touch what we can accumulate and increase. Matt. 13:44-46 The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field. 45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, 46 and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it. --Until we are committed to life in His kingdom, and His Spirit calls the shots in our lives, we cannot see the truth and fully appreciate what He has prepared for us. We cannot appreciate the value of our eternal treasure until our eyes have been opened to see the glorious beauty of Jesus Christ. We cannot understand the worth of the riches of His grace until our hearts have been liberated from earthly limitations to welcome true freedom in Jesus Christ. A. WE MUST NO LONGER BE FOOLED BY FALSE REALITIES --What appears to be sensible to people that know of nothing to come beyond this world, reality seems to be determined by sight and not by faith. --For those who are citizens of heaven by faith in Jesus Christ, the true reality far outshines the perceived reality that this world is all that there is! --Don t be fooled into thinking of reality only in terms of what you can see, but give yourself to a lifetime of growing in your understanding that only what lasts forever is worth giving your life to it! B. WE MUST REDEFINE OUR IDEAS ABOUT RICHES AND WEALTH IN LIGHT OF GOD S GENEROSITY Col. 2:2-3 that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. ILLUS: Who is richer the man with vast holdings and large bank accounts who is consumed by guarding what he has and gaining more, OR the man who has his family s love and respect, good health and a life of godly contentment? We all know how we are supposed to answer that question, but until our view of reality has been radically transformed by Jesus Christ we may answer well with our words but continue to act on the basis of upsidedown values!
4 --Does our idea about riches remain attached to earthly possessions, or can we allow our affections to become attached to the riches of His grace, the treasures of His abundance and the wealth of a life well-lived? ILLUS: A man recently told me about a conversation he had with a seasoned veteran of the faith about leaving a legacy for his children! He was expressing his concern about some financial challenges that threatened to undermine all his efforts to leave an inheritance to his children s children as it says in Proverbs 13:22: A good man leaves an inheritance to his children s children, and the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous. The older man calmly reassured him, An inheritance from the Lord does not necessarily mean wordly possessions. Is the inheritance you have in mind being cultivated with eternal investments or worldly possessions? --When we begin to see life from an eternal perspective, we will know that we have been transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). III. JOYOUS GENEROSITY: INVESTING IN LASTING TREASURE --Sending our treasure on ahead of us seems counter-intuitive until we recognize the eternal value of what God has given us, versus the diminishing and questionable value of what this world offers us. A. YOU CAN T TAKE IT WITH YOU, BUT YOU CAN SEND IT ON AHEAD! Matt. 6:19-21 Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. C. S. LEWIS: Charity giving is an essential part of Christian morality. I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. --In order to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven, we all need to learn to treasure what God treasures and then devote ourselves to the fervent pursuit of those things! 1. Treasure in heaven must become as real to us as bank accounts on earth. --We must seek first His kngdom and then trust Him to provide for all our needs. --When that happens, we will be confident that giving will never hurt us but will instead shape our hearts to be more like the heart of our Great and Generous God! 2. Laying up treasures in heaven includes much more than just giving away earthly goods. --Whether that treasure is simple word of encouragement to an insecure soul a small gift to a homeless beggar or an act of significant service by which you take the low place on behalf of another these things reflect the heart and character of our Generous Savior, Jesus Christ! --While others are out amassing their fortunes and pursuing their futile earthly dreams, you can store up for yourself a great treasure in the home for which you are bound! Philippians 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven
5 B. YOU CANNOT FIND TRUE SATISFACTION APART FROM GOD --Only what He gives can bring satisfaction to the deepest longings of our hearts. --And only when we choose to imitate Him in His generosity will we find the sweet joy that He has always known in the way He freely and cheerfully gives what is good and lasting! Psa. 65:4 Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple! CONCLUSION: A true test that shows whether we have the transformed heart of a follower of Jesus Christ is whether we are becoming more generous and are more convinced that heavenly treasure does outshine earthly riches. When I got more excited about getting to help someone spend millions of dollars for the glory of God than I was about the riches of knowing and understanding and loving Him, I realized that I have a long way to go. This world is not my home. Therefore, my spending habits, my thought processes and my priorities should show that I understand that. Take Aways: 1. In order to place your values in proper perspective, keep seeking the things above where Christ sits enthroned over all things. 2. The best way to overcome greed and materialism is to practice generous giving. 3. Look at how you are investing your life and money and see how much or how little is committed to that which has eternal value then determine to emphasize what matters most! Do we really mean it when we say we would rather have Jesus than anything this world has to offer? Psa. 73:25-26 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. As we close this morning, let s sing an old hymn that should express very well what we should like to say! I d rather have Jesus than anything THESIS: In order to realize the great fullness of life in Christ, we must come to believe the truth that treasures in heaven are really better than treasures on earth that Jesus is better than anything this world can give! November 17, 2013 Providence Baptist Church David Horner, 2013 Sermon outlines are copyrighted in the event of future publication. They may be used for preaching and teaching purposes but may not be published or sold.