Kingdom First Thinking

So as I said, turn to Matthew chapter 6 if you have your Bible and I hope you
do. It is good to be back. We had time with our family over the holidays and then
last Sunday I went to Searcy, Arkansas and preached there at Grace Point Church in
Searcy. Grace Point is a sibling church or a cousin church with us. They are,
like we are, a part of an organization called the Great Commission Collective, which
is a church planting organization, and so we are aligned with them,
and it was great to be with their people. They're in their first year as a church,
so they met in a school cafeteria and had to do the setup and the tear -down,
and I've been through those seasons of a church, and it's a sweet season, and it
was great to be with those people and glad to be able to serve them in that way.
Their pastor, Doug Grimes, who is a friend of mine, is going to be here in
February and is going to preach for us so that we can get to know not only him,
but that church and the work that God is doing through the Great Commission
Collective. I just want to thank Rick Turner or Rick Tarter and Matt Gurney for
preaching while I was gone over the last couple of weeks and bringing us into the
new year. And this morning, we are holding off on returning to our study in the
book of Ephesians. For those of you you are visiting or new to the church. Our
pattern here at Redeemer is to go through books of the Bible verse by verse and
understand what God is saying to us. And we started last fall in the book of
Ephesians and paused at Christmastime. And we're going to continue that pause for
another couple of weeks because I have been asked by the elders at the church to
spend a few weeks preaching on the subject of giving and stewardship and generosity,
which is why you see this up on this slide. This is something we've not talked
about a whole lot in our 18 years as a church. If you're a regular here,
you know that it's not been our pattern to address financial issues very often. We
don't pass an offering plate during the sermon. We have trusted God to provide for
us through the years, and he has faithfully done that, and we rejoice in that. So
we've stayed pretty low -key about that. But this is a subject that needs to be
addressed, and in the life of our church, there's a reason why we want to address
it now. I told you back before Christmas, our church has a financial deadline that
is approaching here in a few weeks. In February, the loan that we have on this
property, that we took out seven years ago, that loan is going to come due, and
we're going to have to refinance that loan. Let me just give you some quick
business, so those of you who are visitors, just bear with us for some family
business here for a second. When we started construction of this church back in
February of 2019, we took out a loan. We were able to buy the land,
and we were able to put down money on this building. We took out a loan for $1 .5
million. It was secured for us at a 2 .9 % interest rate,
which sounds wonderful and has been wonderful over the last seven years. Our monthly
payments on that have been about $7 ,200 a month in rough terms, and over the last
seven years, we have paid off $400 ,000 of that $1 .5 million loan that we've had.
Now, we are getting ready to refinance the remaining $1 .1 million of that, and
interest rates are up, right? So our current rate that we're able to
much of that loan balance as possible. If Redeemer is your church home, if Redeemer
has ministered to you in some way over the last however many years, we're asking if
you would help make it possible for us to pay off as much of the loan as possible
before we sign the papers with the bank in February. So before we're done this
morning, I'm going to talk about a specific way that we're going to ask you to get
involved in this and how you might be able to help. But over the next three weeks,
I want to talk about what the Bible has to say about how we handle money,
effectively, wisely, and in a way that is honoring to the Lord. And we're going to
really look at three themes this week, next week, and the following week, and the
three themes are in this slide. This morning, we're going to look at what it means
to have a kingdom mindset when it comes to our resources. Next week, We're going to
look at how God has called us to be shrewd as stewards, faithfully exercising
stewardship over the resources that he's given us. And then the final week, in two
weeks, we're going to talk about what the Bible says to us as Christians about
being cheerfully generous people, because the Bible does speak to that. So this
morning I want us to talk and think about being kingdom first when it comes to our
lives and our resources. Next week I'll talk about being good stewards and then
we'll talk about how generosity reflects the character and nature of God.
The passage we're going to look at this morning is in the middle of the sermon on
the Mount. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus is talking about the priority for his
followers to cultivate kingdom -first thinking and a kingdom -first way of life.
So I want us to read the passage together, and before we do that, let's pray.
Again, Lord, we are glad to be able to come to you as we come now to your word,
and we come dependently. We come asking that you would be our teacher, and that you
would soften our hearts to hear what your spirit would say to us through your word.
Help me to be clear and accurate in the presentation of your word. And Lord,
help us as we listen, not just to be hearers of your word, but to be doers as
well. We ask all of this in your name. Amen.
Follow along with me as I read, Matthew chapter 6, beginning at verse 19. This is
the word of God for the people of God. The Bible says, 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
is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters,
or either he will hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one
and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. What you will eat and
what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on, is not life more
than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.
They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds
them, are you not of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious
can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, and
yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is
thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh,
you of little faith. Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, what shall we eat,
or what shall we drink, or what shall we air? For the Gentiles seek after all
these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all, But seek first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added to
you. Amen. May God bless this reading of His word. The grass withers and the flower
fades, but the word of our God will last forever. Now, it would be easy and
accurate for us to sum up this whole passage just by looking at the first half of
verse 19 and all of verse 33. This passage says, do not lay up for yourself
treasures on earth, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all
these things will be added unto you. Right there, you pretty much have a summation
of what Jesus is saying in these verses. Don't make earthly treasures and wealth
accumulation the priority of your life, make advancing God's kingdom in our world
your priority, have a kingdom -first perspective about your life.
In fact, I'm going to call it a K -1 mindset or a K -1 perspective. Kingdom first,
just K -1. And we could say, okay, that's the big idea. We got the message.
We can just pray and go home, but Jesus had more to say on this subject, so I
think it would be worth it for us to spend some time looking more carefully at
what he has to say. Here's how I'm going to break down the passage this morning.
Versus 19 to 24 are aimed specifically at the wealthy, where Jesus is talking to
those who have plenty of money and stuff, and he's specifically saying to them three
things. He's saying to have a kingdom -first mindset means we accumulate what is
eternal instead of what is temporal. We accumulate the eternal.
A kingdom first mindset in verses 22 and 23 means we focus on what is eternal.
And in verse 24, a kingdom first mindset means we love or have affection for what
is eternal. So that's what Jesus has to say to those who have a bunch of stuff,
to those who are poor, which was the majority of the audience to whom Jesus was
speaking in the sermon on the Mount. His message to them is to have a kingdom
-first mindset means you trust God to provide what is temporal while you pay
attention to what is eternal.
And it can all be summarized in the idea that a kingdom -first mindset means we
prioritize the eternal in our lives. So that's how Jesus makes these key points,
and that's what I want us to look at. So let's go back first to what Jesus has
to say to the wealthy, and it starts with a kingdom -first mindset means we
accumulate that which is eternal. So he says, don't lay up for yourself treasures on
earth. Moth and rust can destroy those things, thieves can break in and steal,
but instead lay up for yourself treasures in heaven where those things won't happened
where your treasure is, your heart will be also. He's juxtaposing here, treasures on
earth and treasures in heaven. And the reason that Jesus says we should seek to
accumulate heavenly treasure over earthly treasure is because what our focus is on
and what our attention is given to in this life is what will have our heart. What
you're focused on is where your heart will gravitate. Where your eyes look,
your heart will follow.
There's a guy in Atlanta who's named Bob Slack, who's a good picture of someone who
spent his life laying up treasures on Earth. Bob Slack was 52 back in the year
2000 when he died of a heart attack. He lived in the Atlanta of a buckhead,
and he left in a state that was worth tens of millions of dollars. And his family
hired an auctioneer to auction off all of his possessions, and the auctioneer said
he was an accumulator. And then he said, an accumulator is a collector who's gone
nuts. And that describes Bob Slack. When the auction was held in the spring of
2022, The auctioneer said this was the largest auction of art in the United States
that particular year and the largest art auction that had ever been held in the
South. Bob Slack had in his home more than 700 paintings,
including original works by artists like Winslow Homer and Norman Rockwell,
Mary Cassatt, and John Singer Sargent. But the paintings he had, these 700 paintings,
were not on display on the walls of his home. They were stacked under the eaves in
the attic of his house. In fact, throughout his house, every cubbyhole in his three
-story house was filled with paintings or other boxes full of collections,
memorabilia, art objects. One of the things he liked to collect was old mechanical
banks. Do you remember the mechanical banks where you'd put a coin in or do
something? So I think they'd look like this. Yeah, you remember these? When you were
a kid, you'd put a coin here and then the woodcutter would do something or throw
it into the... Anyway, he had 300 of those. He also collected pieces of highly
collected vaseline glass, which has a yellowish green glass, it contains uranium,
and it glows under UV light. All of the artwork that was stored in his house had
signs on it that said, do not sell. He was a collector,
but two years after his death, it was put up for auction. He had several children,
interestingly enough. One of his sons was his heir. He rarely spoke with his father,
and the auctioneer said it's a very sad story. The son doesn't give a hoot about
any of this stuff in the house. He just wants it all gone. Now,
Bob Slack is an extreme example of somebody who stored up treasures on earth, who
found delight in it. It occupied his time, it occupied his thinking. He loved to go
and look at art. He bid on the art. He had it shipped home. He stored it. His
art and his collection was his whole life. His eyes were focused on it. His heart
was drawn there. It's where his treasure was. The issue that Jesus is pointing to
in the sermon on the mount is not an issue of how much stuff you store up.
It's the issue he highlights in verse 21. It's the issue of where's your heart.
It's not wrong to be a collector of things. It's a question of, does your
collection own you, or do you own it? Does it have your heart? What are you
thinking about all the time? Where does your money go? What are you giving yourself
to? What occupies your interest? What do you love? Are you expecting that your money
and your stuff, however you're using it, whatever you're spending it on, are you
expecting that it will fill places in your life and that it will serve needs in
your life that God himself is designed to serve? Jesus said it would be a mistake,
a fatal mistake, to think that your soul can be satisfied with money and stuff.
If you think that accumulating money and stuff will bring you happiness,
joy, peace, contentment, just look at the rich people you know who are struggling.
Can't keep a relationship together, aren't happy, angry.
It's interesting in the original language in this text, what it says is do not
That word, it's not, do not store up. Do not treasure treasures is what it says.
And that's the point. Don't invest your heart, your soul in things that are going
to rot and rust and do not have eternal value. Keep that in perspective.
Where your money goes is a pretty good indication of where your heart is and it
points to where your heart is headed because your heart follows where your money
goes. I think it's interesting that Jesus doesn't say, where your heart is, there
your treasure will be. He says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
So your heart follows your treasure. You see something, you like it,
you invest in it, and then your heart moves in that direction.
If you wonder if that's true, just ask the people at Fanduel or Graff Kings,
these online betting sites. They incentivize your first bet because they know that if
they can get a little of your treasure in there, your heart will follow. It won't
be your last bet. So having a kingdom first mindset, a K -1 mindset means we say
that eternal stuff matters more than temporal stuff. That focusing on what's eternal
should have a higher priority in our lives, then focusing on what is temporal,
excuse me. There are two things that are going to last forever in this life. The
souls of men and women, your soul, my soul, and the Word of God. Everything else
is going to go away.
So how much time, effort, and energy do you want to put in something that's going
to be gone tomorrow? When this passage talks about storing up treasure in heaven,
it's saying we should be focusing our soul, our heart and mind on our soul,
on the soul of others, and on God's word. That's what will matter to you in
heaven.
Your collection that you're proud of, or whatever it is that you're invested in
today, when you get to heaven, you're not going to go, oh gee, I wish I had my
mechanical bank collection here with me.
To be rich in good works, to be generous, and to be ready to share.
Thus, storing up treasure for themselves is a good foundation for the future so that
they may take hold of what is truly life. You want to store up treasures in
heaven? Here's how you do it. Do good, be rich in good works, be generous and
ready to share,
as opposed to being self -focused and self -oriented and acquiring and accumulating
more stuff for yourself. This passage is about investing your time, your talent,
and your treasure with a kingdom -first mindset. You make the kingdom your focus. And
let me just say here,
you may wonder, is this passage saying that it's wrong or sinful for Christians to
have a savings account, or to have a life insurance policy, or to have an
investment account where you're setting aside money for retirement. Is this passage,
are you storing up treasure on earth by doing that? No, because there are other
places in Scripture that speak directly to that. In Proverbs 6, interestingly,
the writer of Proverbs says we should look to the ant as a good example of how we
should function. Go to the ant, oh sluggard. Now, a sluggard is a lazy person,
and he's saying, ants are industrious. So if you're a lazy person, look at what the
ant is doing. Consider his ways and be wise. Without having any chief officer or
ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. She's
storing up. She's accumulating. She knows winter is coming. She's getting everything
ready so she can get through the winter. That's not wrong. In fact, be industrious
to do that. That's a biblical principle.
First Timothy 5, Paul famously says to Timothy, if anyone does not provide for his
relatives, and especially for members of his household, he's denied the faith and is
worse than an unbeliever. providing for our families, providing for our own needs,
is not a sinful pattern. Planning appropriately for the future and setting aside
resources for the future is not a sinful pattern. The question is, what has your
heart? Where is your focus? What are you trusting in? John MacArthur said this
helpfully, I think. He said, it is not wrong to accumulate money and possessions to
invest in divine causes and in God's purposes. God's purposes are these. To care for
our own family, our church family, those who are not of the family of God but have
need and for his causes around the world. These are needful uses of what God gives
to us. But to selfishly stockpile treasures for ourselves with greed and covetousness
is not what the Lord wants. So we have to look at your retirement account,
your savings account, whatever you're doing, and just say, does it have my heart?
How would I feel if it was gone for some reason? And am I being greedy or
covetous, or am I seeking to be generous with what God has given me? Again,
the key issue is the issue of the heart. What's your heart focused on? kingdom
things, kingdom priorities, or earthly things, money and stuff, or God's word and the
needs of people. What your heart is ultimately focused on is a reality or an
indicator of the reality of your spiritual condition. Let me say that again.
What your heart is focused on is an indicator of the reality of your spiritual
condition. One writer said it this way. He said, a loving, joyful, liberal giving to
the Lord's work is an acid test of a spiritual heart pleasing to God. And again,
John MacArthur, this was helpful. I thought he said it is characteristic of a
believer that his treasure is in heaven. When I examine my life and don't see the
desire to invest in eternity and in God's causes, to be unselfish about it, giving
more and more to God's work and freely dispensing it with joy in my heart, I
should question then the legitimacy of my claim to be a believer. Now,
that's pretty sobering, right? If you don't have a kingdom first mindset, if you're
not anxiously, actively seeking to advance the cause of Christ with your time,
your talent, and your resources, you have to ask the question, what are you focused
on? What does matter to you? What are your priorities? Ultimately,
money and stuff competes with God for our allegiance. Money and stuff seeks to
displace God from his position of rulership.
Money and stuff can become a pretty easy idol in our lives. To love money and
stuff is to be an idolater. If you believe that money and stuff will satisfy you
more than God can, you're in dangerous territory. Now, I've spent a lot of time
here on this first point because this is where most of us are. We live, most of
us as rich people in our world. We live with more possessions and more financial
resources than most of the world's population. the poorest among us here have more
money and stuff than wealthy people in other countries in a lot of cases.
So the key question here is again, do you have a kingdom first, a K -1 mindset
when it comes to your money and your stuff? And consider for a minute, let's just
set aside the essentials of life, food and clothing, shelter, the stuff Jesus talks
about later in this passage. And let's ask this question. After your basic needs are
met, you've got some amount of money after that. What's your focus with that?
You've met your needs, you're caring for your family. What's your focus with that
remaining amount? How much of what's left are you investing in eternal things versus
investing in temporal things or your own enjoyment? Now I told you we spent time
with our family over the break. We went to the beach together. It took some money
to go to the beach. We had to invest money to get the family together and to go
to the beach. And some people might look at that and say, well, here you are
talking about having a kingdom -first mindset. You just spent a bunch of money to
take your family to the beach, so what's that all about? Well, those are good
questions to ask. So questions we have to wrestle with when we make decisions like
that about how we're going to invest our money. Here's what I'll tell you about
that. I said, as far as I can tell it, it's not a sin for us to go take a week
at the beach and spend it with our family and build a stronger family bond and
relationship. That's what we were seeking to do. We were seeking to invest in the
lives of our children and our grandchildren and seeking to make spiritual deposits
there while we were there. And so I looked at the time at the beach more as an
investment in family than in my own leisure and pleasure. In fact, if I'd wanted
leisure and pleasure, we'd gone to the beach without our kids, right? We'd have just
gone and relaxed. That was not the focus. And I'll tell you this as well.
As I look back on 2025, Marianne and I have purposed to and been able to invest a
lot more in kingdom resources over the past year than it cost us to go to the
beach. We've been purposeful and intentional and aggressive about that. So I'm
suggesting that each of us before the Lord, we've got to wrestle with where our
heart is when it comes to money and stuff. And I think the issue is when you get
past the essentials, do you have a kingdom first mindset about how you're going to
invest your life, your time, your talent, and your treasure. And in our text this
morning, Jesus is saying, focus on the eternal. It's what you're going to care about
in the end. It's what matters. It's what lasts. Actually, this sounds a little
cryptic when you get to verses 22 and 23, the next portion of this passage. Jesus
talks about the eye being the lamp of the body. And let me just summarize what
he's saying in these verses. He's using our eye or our physical sight as a metaphor
for what we're focused on, what we're looking at, what we're paying attention to.
Remember, people in Jesus Day did not have eyeglasses. Eyeglasses didn't come around
for about another 1 ,200 years. So you started losing your eyesight in Jesus Day.
Your eyes started going bad. That was just tough. Things got blurry. You just had
to figure out how to live with that. And if it got too blurry and too dark, you
just spent your time stumbling. So the point here that Jesus is making when he
talks about the eye being the lamp of the body, he's saying what you're focused on
and what you're looking at clearly and with a spotlight on it, that's going to
determine the health of your whole body.
If your vision is clouded or if your vision, if you're seeing double, you're going
to stumble.
Interestingly, in verse 23, the Greek word that's translated healthy, where it says
if your eye is healthy, that Greek word is translated elsewhere as generous.
If your eye is generous.
So what Jesus is saying is, if your heart, which is represented here by what you
are looking at, where your vision is, if your heart is generous, your whole
spiritual life will be flooded with spiritual understanding. You will grow spiritually
through your generosity. If you have the right focus, the right vision, you will see
clearly what is important, what's valuable when it comes to your resources. But if
your focus or your vision is cloudy or it's not where it should be, if your
financial priorities are out of focus, your whole life's going to be affected by
that. Where you set your heart, again, is the critical issue in your life.
If your heart's toward God and toward eternal things, you have a kingdom -first
mindset, your entire spiritual being will be enlightened. But if your heart is hard
toward the Lord and you're focused on the material things and the treasure of this
world, it's going to blind you when it comes to your spiritual perception. You're
not going to see God in his ways and his purposes as clearly as you should. So
focus your eyes, your heart, your life on what's eternal, not what's on temporal.
That's what verses 22 and 23 are saying. And then in verse 24, he says to the
rich people that this is the definitive statement about being kingdom first. He says
no one can serve two masters. You'll either hate the one and of the other, be
devoted to one and despise the other, you cannot serve God and money. The word
serve in this passage is the word that means to come under the command of.
It's the verb form of a word that we've heard before, the word doulas, which means
slave or bond servant. So he's saying, do not make yourself a slave or a bond
servant to money, make yourself a slave or a bond servant to God. When we hear
people talking in our day about working for the almighty dollar, you've heard that
expression, right? That still gets used. Yeah, working for the almighty dollar. Well,
that's clearly setting money in the place where God belongs. We call it the almighty
dollar because we're saying it's what matters most. What has first place in your
thinking, your financial situation, or God in his priorities.
It's easy to see why money can become an idol for so many of us. Money and God
have a lot of properties in common. If you thought about this, money comes to you
and says, I will keep you safe and secure. You don't have to worry about things. I
got you covered. Money says, I can make you powerful. Money says,
I can make you significant, give you worth and value among your peers. Money says,
I can put you in control of your life.
But I like what Tim Keller says. He says, the biggest savings account in the world
cannot stop cancer. It cannot stop traffic accidents. It cannot stop broken hearts.
It cannot give you any of these things that only God can give you. He's the only
security you have. He's the only significance you can have. He's the only love you
can get that you can't lose.
God doesn't want you to have a kingdom -first mindset because he needs your
resources. It's not because he wants to be served for his sake.
He wants you to have a kingdom first mindset because you will be served by having
that mindset. It will bring you life and joy and security and hope and peace if
your heart and mind are fixed on him. So how can you tell if you're serving money
instead of serving God, how can you tell if money has become an idol in your life?
Let me give you some ways to diagnose this. You can tell money has become an idol
in your life when it absorbs your heart and your mind more than God. More time,
effort, interest, put into managing, accumulating, acquiring wealth.
Now, I know when I say that, I'm thinking to myself, well, you know, you've got to
put in your 40, 50 hours of work, whatever you're spending it. So you're supposed
to have that much. Now, when I'm at work, when you're at work, you can still have
a kingdom first mindset. You can still be saying, Lord, how can you use me in this
situation? The wealth accumulation, the question is not, am I spending 40 hours a
week working? The question is, are you doing it for money, or are you doing it
because this is what God's called you to, to serve him, provide appropriately for
your family, and then acquire wealth to give to other purposes. Here's another sign
that money has become an idol in your life, when it becomes your ultimate source of
security or identity,
when it dictates the purpose of your life,
when it becomes your source of anxiety, if it's what makes you anxious,
or when you're unwilling to let it go for God's glory.
You want to know how you can tell if money's an issue?
How tightly do you hold to it?
Signs that it's become an idol include this. Making money becomes your primary focus.
Your security is based primarily on your financial status. You find great joy or
value or worth in your possessions. You worry a lot about your finances, and you
prioritize spending on stuff over investing in God's kingdom. Kingdom first thinking
when it comes to money often requires constant recalibration. I have to do this all
the time. I have to take my eyes off of this and focus on what matters.
This is not something you do once and then it's done. This is a daily resetting of
your mind on kingdom priorities. And the Bible again is not telling us to ignore
our financial situation or pay no attention to money. It's saying make sure money
has its proper
Don't allow yourself to become anxious or worried about whether God's going to
provide. If you become anxious or worried about God's provision in your life, you
need to counsel your own soul about who God is, about what he's done for you in
the past, about how he has cared for his people throughout history, about the
promises he's made and say, I will trust in you. I will wait for you, Lord.
Now, Honestly, the people who first heard Jesus say these words 2 ,000 years ago had
a whole lot more to be worried about when it comes to money or when it comes to
food and clothing and shelter than we do. We worry, but think about them. They were
entirely dependent on climate and agriculture to determine how much food they were
going to have. Anybody here have been through a seven -year famine where you might
have a little grain to eat one day, or you might have to travel to Egypt to see
if you can get some more? These people lived on the edge of the desert. They were
totally dependent on how God was going to care for them to provide for their needs.
We don't usually worry about what will I eat or drink today other than what
restaurant do I want to go to after church. These people didn't have grocery stores
to go to. They didn't have a restaurant to visit. They didn't have tap water. They
didn't go to Belk to buy something on sale or Dillards or Walmart for their
clothing. These were people who instead had a long history of seeing how God had
provided for them in the midst of desperate situations. They told the stories about
manna in the wilderness that fed people for 40 years, supernaturally. They reminded
one another of how Moses struck the rock and the water came out and the people
were quenched. Their thirst was quenched in the desert, even though Moses got
punished for it, right? They reminded themselves of the story of the oil that was
running low in the lamps or the widow whose grain supply would not last another
meal and how God miraculously provided for them. They knew that one of the names
for God given to them in the Old Testament in Genesis 22 is Jehovah Jira,
which means the Lord our provider.
So when they come to these verses, Jesus is reminding them saying, I know it's easy
to become anxious about where am I going to get food from today, especially if the
cupboard is bare. And for many of them that was it. But he said, have you not
seen God provide? Do you not see how God provides for all of his creation?
He will provide for you.
Now let me just say a word about what you should not read into this passage. What
you should not take away from this passage. This passage is not teaching you to be
passive when it comes to your physical needs being met. God is not saying,
don't worry about it, just sit back, do nothing, just trust the Lord, he will
provide, you don't have to do anything. In fact, Jesus first says, consider the
birds. Well, the birds don't just sit in their nest every day and go, where's the
worm, God? No, the birds fly to get the food.
The ants go and store up for the winter. So when he says, consider the birds,
he's saying, yes, be intentional, be purposeful, be industrious, work for these
things, but trust God to provide in the process. In Second Thessalonians,
Paul was writing to the church in Thessalonica, and he said, when we were with you,
we would give you this command. If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.
For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy
bodies. Now, such persons, we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do
their work quietly and earn their own living. So you have to take that passage and
lay it against Matthew 6, where he says, don't worry about being provided for, but
work hard. Be industrious. Pay attention. You have a responsibility here.
And stop and consider this. God has already provided for our deepest need, which is
our spiritual need, the need of our soul. And he did it at great cost to himself
when he offered his son on our behalf so that our sins can be forgiven,
so that we can be with him to ransom us. If God is committed to caring for our
spiritual needs, will we not be able to trust him for our physical needs?
To the rich, Jesus says, don't hoard, don't make money more important than it is,
don't make it an idol to the poor, he says, when you become anxious or worried
about your stuff, counsel your own soul, God's got you. He'll take care of you.
Work hard. Trust him to provide. And then the summary statement in verse 33 is what
we've been saying all along. K -1, kingdom -first mindset. So what does it mean to
seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness? Here's what it means. It means
that you seek for Christ's to rule and reign, for his rule and reign to be evident
in your life. You want his reign and rule to be manifest in the local church.
You seek for Christ's reign and rule to spread throughout the earth, and you seek
for his reign and rule to come in its fullness.
You can be busy about stuff, but don't make that the focus of your life.
Again, the passage is not saying don't work. It means do what God's called you to
do. He'll take care of your needs. He won't take care of your grids, as some has
said. God will meet your needs, not your greeds.
There are two positive commands in this passage. Store up treasure in heaven,
seek first the kingdom.
Both commands are both to the rich and to the poor. Same idea. While you're living
on earth, you should have a different value system than everybody else. Let me just
ask you a little thought experiment here. If I came to you today and I said, God,
God's giving you a choice. You're in charge of what's going to happen on the earth
for the next 10 years. Okay? And you get to pick. Option number one is God's going
to bring a spiritual renewal and revival throughout the earth. It's going to be
widespread and many people are going to be saved, but it's going to involve economic
hardship and you're going to go through a time that it's going to be worse than
the Great Depression was here in the United States back in the 30s. That's option
one. Option two is life goes on pretty much the way it is, both spiritually and
economically. You keep your house, you keep your bank account, you've got all of
that, and the spiritual conditional stay just about like it is today. You get to
pick, which do you want?
Anybody else here going, is there an option C I could choose? Right? That feels
like a difficult binary to accept. But the question is,
what really matters?
Are you, do you have a kingdom -first mindset and priority? And as that's showing up
in every aspect of your life, including how you handle your money and your
resources.
So having looked at this text, I want to come back to a practical measure as it
relates to our situation as a church and paying down our loan. And I'm going to
ask Curtis Thomas to come up and join me here for a minute. I was a few months
ago, come on up, Curtis. A few months ago, I was talking to Curtis, and I was
just getting, I was asking for his wisdom on resources and the refinancing and
saying how should we do this and any thoughts on a banker and he said well you
know let me tell you about something we did at the bible church when i was on
staff there this was back in the 1990s maybe it's something we should consider doing
here so step over here and would you share with them what you shared with me about
buying the land out on highway 10 for the bible sure some of you know that i was
on staff at the bible church of Little Rock in the 90s and 80s and 90s.
And during that time, Steve Lawson was the senior pastor. And we were growing quite
quickly. And so we recognized the need to relocate. We could not,
we were landlocked and we also couldn't add any parking. So Steve asked me if I
would go out and try to find a location for the new building. So I traveled around
Western Little Rock and found 17 locations and then narrowed down to seven.
There were 25 of us, staff members, elders, and deacons.
So I gathered up all 25 and we rented a couple of vans and I took them all
around and showed them the seven locations that I had summarized.
We got back to the building, and I didn't tell them which one I preferred, but it
was one on Highway 10 where they're now located out next to Walmart.
There was nothing out there. It was just a two -lane road at that time, and
subsequently when we bought it, the members kept on, Why are we building so far
out? And I tell them, just wait. It'll come to it. That's the main thoroughfare.
Well, anyway, we got back to the building, and 23 of the 25 voted the number one
place. One of them had it one A and one had one B.
Anyway, so we felt that was consensus. And Steve turned to me and said,
go buy it and buy it this week. Well, I made five offers and counter offers during
the week. My last offer was to expire at midnight on a Saturday night.
At 1145, they called and accepted our offer. So I called Steve and woke him up and
said, Steve, we bought the property that we all wanted.
And his next statement was, well, how are we going to pay for it? We don't have
any money.
And I said, Steve, you told me to go buy it. I bought it. We got it under
contract. So we put our heads together trying to figure out how we can come up
with the money. The church was broke. And so we decided on a Sunday night,
About a month or two later, we would ask everybody in the church to come give what
they could so that we could buy that property.
And so we told them, if you don't have money, which was a lot of case for a lot
of folks, there's got to be something you can give.
And some of them gave land. One gave a title of a car.
one gave to a title of a motorcycle,
people gave jewelry, and even the kids gave part of their savings banks,
their little piggy banks. And so we were able to buy that property. We actually
bought the property for 47 cents a foot. About a month ago,
property next to it sold for $25 a foot. So the Lord took care of us. But anyway,
when we put a big bowl up at the front on that Sunday night, and people came and
put their money and their deeds, and a lot of people put in jewelry,
gold and silver. And so it was my responsibility to sell all of that. So I went
around for the next month or so selling all of those contents, selling the land,
selling the motorcycle, selling the jewelry, and we had several pieces of jewelry
left, and I went around a seven different jewelry stores trying to sell it,
and nobody would make an offer on it. But I'd ask them, why is nobody interested
in this particular jewelry? And the answer was, well, it's just costume jewelry
bought at Walmart or Kmart or something like that. But anyway, we raise enough money
to pay down on the property. And the property, they're building out there,
and the land is now completely debt -free.
So we need the money to pay our debt down.
Josh Malone, Josh, made your hand back there. Josh Malone got that 2 .95 interest
rate for us several years ago, and he's gotten a really good rate for us this
year, but it's going to be about double what the church has been paying, and the
church really cannot afford that. So we're asking, I don't know what date you all
said. I'll fill everybody in here on that, But Curtis came to me and said,
Let me add one more. Yeah, sure, of course. I made a list just a suggestive list
for you to be thinking about if you don't have money that you can help at this
time, think about maybe giving a stock. And when you give stock, if it's
appreciated, that keeps you from having to pay income tax on it. Or maybe an IRA
distribution. If you give your IRA, you don't have to pay tax on the money you've
made on that. Maybe a bond, maybe anything of value of gold or silver,
maybe a ring or a watch or earrings or a necklace or some sort of broach or
whatever.
Not the Walmart stuff, though. You can keep that. Hang on it over. Or Maybe if
you're a hunter or a fisherman, maybe you've got some valuable material items you
want to give. Anyway, if you have a gun, don't bring it in the church.
And we can turn that into cash and pay down on the loan. We're not going to go
under. I know that, but it would be very helpful if you give whatever you can. So
what we're going to do, Curtis said, think about doing this. doing this. Thank you,
Curtis. Think about doing this for us as a church. I talked with the elders about
it. And two weeks from this morning, as you're leaving, there's going to be a
bucket there. And it'll be an opportunity for you to put in the bucket, whatever
you want to put in, whether it's, again, no costume jewelry, no guns, but you can
put in whatever else you think that is of value. Now, this is not something you
would be taking to goodwill otherwise, okay? We're not just doing a random collection
of those kinds of resources. But if you've got things that are of value that you
can give, or if you just want to write a check and give cash or stock, you can
put a note in that basket and say, here's what I'm going to do. And we just want
to see what the Lord might do in this situation.
So you've got two weeks as a family, talk together as a family about what you
might be able to give. and my challenge to
saying, do double that. I'm just saying when you come up, because the first thing
that comes to mind for me is what's maybe not so painful.
And then when I stop and think, well, what would double that feel like? And so
I'll just challenge you to do that. So two weeks from this morning as you leave
the church, there'll be a bucket there. You can drop your stuff in. Some of you're
going, we're going to go visit another church in two weeks. So we don't have, to,
no, if you want to do this ahead of time, you don't have to wait until then, if
you're not going to be here on that Sunday for some reason and you want to get in
touch with us and let us know what you're doing, but I would like to think that
everybody here who calls Redeemer your home would say, I want to do something. And
if you're something is $10, praise the Lord for your $10. Jesus commended the widow
who gave two mites. Praise the Lord for that. but I'd like everybody to say, I'd
like to see what God's going to do. And I have to tell you, as I've been thinking
about this, I have thought, $1 .1 million,
I don't think we can raise $1 .1 million. I don't think we can do that.
I look at you guys. I don't think we can pull it up and do that. And God says,
well, keep asking me for that, okay? So that's what I'm doing. I'm not saying
that's what I think's going to happen. I'm just saying that's what I'd love to see
happen. I would love for this building to be paid off and for us to be operating
with money going elsewhere rather than toward a mortgage on a building. So I'm going
to ask you to pray about that and join me and ask God to provide for us as a
church. Help us save tens of thousands of dollars going forward on what would be
interest payments for the church. If you've got questions, come see me or come see
the elders. Okay, you know the big point, kingdom first thinking, how you apply that
in our situation. We'll leave that between you and the Lord. Let's just pray
together this morning. Father, we thank you for your word for its clarity. We thank
you for your love for us. We thank you that you provide for us faithfully and
generously. Lord, I thank you that throughout my life,
you have cared for my needs, even in those times when I've felt financial pressure
and stress, you have been there, and you have always cared for those needs.
And so Lord, I pray that each of us here this morning would leave today with a
fresh reminder that our mind needs to be set on you, set on eternity,
set on the kingdom set on what really matters. And then when it comes to our time,
our resources, our talent, our treasure,
that all of that we would think, how can we use this to advance the kingdom while
we continue to take care of our own needs in the process? Lord,
thank you for these friends and the opportunity to address these issues with them.
We pray these things in your name. Amen.