Open:

Good morning Lake Avenue Church, I am so happy to be back with you today.  I am grateful for both Pastor Chuck and Pastor Greg for so faithfully teaching while I was away. I am also very grateful for your prayers and support for myself and my family these past 2 weeks.  And for those same prayers and support for Pastor Scott and Steve S. and their families.  Please continue to keep Pastor Scott in your prayers as the trip continues on for him.

I will share more in coming weeks, but in short – what an amazing God we have.  And whether you know this or not, God has built quite an amazing church body here.  Spending time with our International Staff and seeing the kinds of places and people that LAC is committed to is overwhelming.  From Europe, to Asia, to Africa – we have been invited as a church family into some amazing and unique places for the name and Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The Turkana Valley and the Turkana people have a 50-year history with LAC.  From Ray and Jill Davis, Randy and Edie Nelson, and Greg and Mindy Yost – this is a community and a people who we have had a long-standing commitment to.  In fact when many of you found out that I was going to Turkana you let me know that you’ve been praying for that part of the world in that group of people for over 30 and 40 years. I can’t tell you the look on some of the faces when I communicated that that to them and how they broke out in applause in every venue I shared.

Let me share one picture from where we were a week ago.

(Picture from last week in Turkana)

I had the privilege to participate in the worship service with this beautiful group of people and the pastor invited me to share the word that morning. My translator, Isaac was someone who grew up in that village and because of his close relationship with the Nelson family was able to go to university and eventually received a Master’s degree and now lives in Nairobi advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ. He traveled with us from Nairobi to the Turkana Valley and was able to see his mother and father and his entire extended family.  He and I shared several moments together hearing his testimony of how his life has been changed because of the gospel of Jesus brought to him through the Nelsons and how grateful he was that our church played a small part in their sending.

Transition:

So -  I want to say to you this morning before we talk about money and generosity… That you are a generous church. We have a generous legacy… And we also have been invited by God to be generous in the present.  Your giving helps support those who bring the gospel to several people and people groups. And as I shared with you last week on the video, we sense that God is inviting us to continue to have a generous relationship with the people of Turkana.  We will allow that story to be told in coming weeks but for now I’m asking you and also be aware that 6 km is the average walk taken by the majority of this world who does not have access to clean drinking water to receive their daily water. On May 16 our hope is to walk 6K as a church family and to also into invite the larger Pasadena community to walk 6K with us and in doing so we are going to be able to help many children and women not have to make that walk anymore.

Series Rational:

As you were so amazingly taught last week by Pastor Greg, these next few weeks we are looking at the teaching of Jesus in the sermon on the Mount and asking the question how our lives are to be aligned with the kind of life Jesus calls us to throughout this sermon.

For me, the sermon on the mount is one of the clearest areas in the teachings of Jesus where I see his humanity.  Throughout these teachings, I see a Jesus very familiar with what it means to be human, the trappings, the propensities, the ways in which we are not aligned with the kingdom of God and the way of living as followers of Jesus.  He gets us.  He speaks to us as one of us.

And here we go, week one and we are going to talk about money and generosity.  Jesus knows that money might be the single biggest barrier to living an aligned life. The way we view money, the way in which we attach ourselves to money and things can be a barrier to the freedom that Jesus provides. 

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Would you please stand for the reading of God’s Word?

Text:

Matthew 6:1-4

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others

to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from

your Father in heaven.

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Matthew 6:19-24

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths do not destroy, 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. If your eyes are healthy,

your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy,

your whole body will be full of darkness.

If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Sermon Body:

3 Acts of Jewish Piety, Giving, Prayer, and Fasting.  Jesus will go into these and reframe them for what sincere righteousness looks like.  We will look at 2 of them next week, but for today, let’s explore why Jesus is teaching on these, what his main concern is, and how he calls us to live aligned. 

• Our Audience (1-4)

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others

to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from

your Father in heaven.

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

• He gets us, doesn’t he?
• To be concerned with our reputation with others versus our obedience to God.
• To self-promote or to be more focused what our “giving” will lead to in how others think about us
• Giving for others to notice rather than God – when we do this we get the “audience” wrong.
• Note that Jesus says WHEN you give, and not IF you give… assumes giving.
• Not a modern idea, and way of living that God has always intended for his people…
• It is in our giving we acknowledge God – get the audience right, the audience of one.
• If we do not have the audience right, we end up being Pharisees…
• We are called to give… and give to God. The only audience we are giving for.

Story: 

• Our Attention (19-21)

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

• Another place Jesus shows he understands our humanity
• Since Genesis, we have been caught up in building our own kingdoms
• Trappings of things, possessions, and property – not because they in and of themselves are bad – but that they end up competing for our attention.
• “store up” – time, focus, and energy for things that will not last
• Jesus is calling us to have our attention toward heaven, toward the spiritual reality and to not be consumed by possessions and the energy that goes into getting them, preserving them, and protecting them.
• When our stuff owns us versus us owning our stuff, using our stuff for God.
• What we treasure is where our hearts are… where our minds are… they are connected says Jesus.

Story: House Isn’t Ready

• Our Attitude (22-23)

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,

your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy,

your whole body will be full of darkness.

If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

• Messianic friends are helpful to me here because many times we can read these next verses as an entirely new teaching disconnected from any previous teaching about money and possessions.
• Good/bad Eyes is a Jewish figure of speech: contrasting being generous and being stingy.
• Having good eyes means being a generous person, using sight to see the needs.
• Having bad eyes means being stingy, looking away or down to the needs in front of you.
• Jesus is teaching us to have lives and attitudes that are GENEROUS. To look up, look around, and respond to what we see.
• Jesus often says “those who eyes to see”, eyes are very important to obedience!
• Ancient world not all that different than ours, because the biggest barrier to being generous is our own vision, our own self.
• Do you see how all this is connected? Get your audience right, don’t give all your time and attention to your own earthly kingdom and stuff – have margin, so that when you see a need in front of you – you can respond. You can have good eyes. 
• Interesting, I read this as a lifestyle and not a single act… meaning, get your giving right to God, your regular giving… know who you are giving too... and then, live in such a way that you can still see around you and respond to other’s needs… don’t be consumed with stuff and yourself.

Story: Never Have Enough

3 Application Questions:

• How do you view “your” giving?
  • Who are you giving to? Who is your audience?
    • IRS
    • Church Leaders
    • Yourself?
    • “vote and quote with our wallets”
  • Time to get the audience correct
  • The problem of the personal pronoun: Me and Mine can skew the audience question.

• What are you dreaming about? Why?
  • Materialistic Culture: Moth and Rust is real. What gets your attention?
  • It is about attention and priority – time?
  • Storage Unit Service Advertisement: we might just have a moth and rust problem around us.
  • Do you hear the invitation toward “treasures in heaven”?

• Do you view the glass half full or half empty?
  • Abundance or Scarcity Mindset?
  • Turkana: first thing they said in our meeting was their concern for the other tribes and villages around them..
  • We have much to learn from them, we suffer from scarcity syndrome.

Conclusion:

Living Life Aligned messes with all of our lives… especially our money.  Jesus is messing with your money.  He understands us, what it is to be human.  He understands the power and pull of money.  The desire we have for others to see and know that we give, the tension is building our lives around things that will not go with us beyond this life.  And he understands our tendency to have bad eyes… eyes that only go out so far... AND JESUS teaches us in this place, teaches us that alignment can happen… we can get our audience right.  We can direct our attention on treasures of heaven.  We can have attitudes of generosity – and in doing so, live lives as Jesus lived.  Amen.

Communion Framing…