The Sermon addresses Matthew 6:19-24, arguing that the Pharisees' chief sin was hypocrisy masking worldliness rather than legalism. Defining worldliness via 1 John 2:15-17 as loving fleshly desires, the speaker explains the "eye" determines one's final destination; a bad eye leads to darkness. While earthly treasures like Bitcoin or real estate are permissible for Christ's glory, making them the ultimate aim corrupts the soul. Ultimately, listeners must reject hypocritical religious appearances and choose Christ as their infinite, eternal treasure to avoid spiritual ruin. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Hypocrisy as Worldliness00:14:55
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Our text for today is the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 6, verses 19 through 24.
Again, that's the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 6, verses 19 through 24.
We are continuing our series through the Gospel of Matthew.
If you were with us last week, we paused for a sermon in relation to Christmas.
But we also used the Gospel of Matthew in order to accomplish that.
Today we continue our series.
I'm going to read our text in its entirety.
When I finish reading the text, I'm going to say, This is the word of the Lord, at which point I would appreciate very much if you would respond by saying, Thanks be to God.
Again, one final time, our text is the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 6, verses 19 through 24.
The Bible says this Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure 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.
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 that darkness?
No one can serve two masters, for he either will hate the one and love the other, Or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and money.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated.
We'll go ahead and dive right in.
I've been utilizing primarily for this series Matthew Henry, a late great Puritan commentator.
His commentary has been helpful thus far through the gospel, according to Matthew, in relation to our text today and kind of from the outset and further outlining.
The problem, as Christ puts it, as he sees it, with the religious Jewish rulers of that day, Matthew Henry says the following Worldliness is as common and as fatal a symptom of hypocrisy as any other.
For by no sin can Satan have a surer and faster hold of the soul under the cloak of a visible and passable profession of religion.
Than by this.
And therefore, Christ, having warned us against coveting the praise of men, he now proceeds next to warn us against coveting the wealth of the world, lest we be as the hypocrites are and do as they do.
The fundamental error they are guilty of is this that they choose the world for their reward.
What we've been seeing again and again.
Throughout the Gospel according to Matthew, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, that is Matthew chapter 5, 6, and soon to be chapter 7, is that the fundamental problem, as I've said again and again, of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the lawyers, the scribes, all the religious rulers of Christ's day, the fundamental problem that Christ says, the chief, you know, principal word that he uses to describe this crowd is hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy.
And that's important for us to understand because it kind of flies in the face of the more modern, recent conception that many American evangelicals have when they try to articulate the problem with the religious rulers of Jesus' day.
When they describe the religious rulers of Jesus' day, modern evangelicals, what they often will say is that they were legalists.
You've heard me articulate this point again and again.
And so, then, what do American modern Christians seek to avoid at all costs?
What do we indict as the most severe and terrible immoral charge that anyone could ever be guilty of?
Well, being a Pharisee.
And what is that?
Being a legalist.
In other words, because legalism has often been hijacked and given a definition that legalism was never meant to have, it's Improperly defined.
In other words, what many American Christians today say is this the worst thing that you could possibly do is care a great deal about the holiness of God and seek to obey Him.
That's pretty much where we're at as the American church today in modern times.
If you really get down to it, whether it be from the pulpit with the pastor or whether it be the congregants and just your average Christian, that's pretty much what it comes down to again and again and again.
Is that everyone is terrified of being what they perceive to be a Pharisee.
And for them, in their mind, what is a Pharisee?
A legalist.
And for them, what is legalism?
Well, legalism is being diligent, any diligence, vigilance whatsoever, any discipline whatsoever applied toward the aim of obeying the law of God.
In other words, You could say, at least at some degree, and I would argue a great degree, that many modern American Christians think that the worst thing a Christian can do is try to be a Christian.
That's pretty much, if you're wondering where are we at?
Where's the discourse?
Where have we landed?
You know, if you're putting your fingers on the pulse of the American church, if you're doing a litmus test and trying, you know, if the American church was going to get a physical, see, just, you know, where are vital signs?
What's our cholesterol?
How are we doing?
Well, the accurate analysis would come back and say the American church has determined that the worst thing a Christian can do is seek to be a Christian.
So, how are we doing?
Not great.
Not great.
Not too good.
But notice, that's not what Jesus says.
All throughout the Gospel of Matthew, if you said, well, it feels like, Joel, there's some repetitive themes.
Uh huh.
Yeah, the Bible is often repetitive.
Especially one book of the Bible.
Jesus is making the same point again and again and again.
Now, each time he's further fleshing it out and perhaps adding some new applications.
But the headline, the 30,000 foot view, the major theme is this Jesus is decrying, he's denouncing, he's indicting and accusing the religious rulers of his day for one primary failure, one chief sin.
And it is the sin of hypocrisy.
Hypocrites.
The main problem with the Pharisees was not legalism, and it certainly wasn't legalism as defined by American Christians in modern times, because American Christians in modern times call everything legalism.
Everything.
The fact that you're in church right now, in between Christmas and New Year's, Is going to be described by, I would argue, the majority of Christians in America as legalism.
If you don't fill your home with Hollywood filth, you're a legalist.
If your wife and daughters wear any kind of dress or skirt that even comes close to the knee, not even below, but just close to the knee, Legalist.
I mean, you don't have to.
If you offer to God half, just half of the obedience that every single serious Christian in the world, in every century, until 15 minutes ago, offered to God, you will be called and labeled a legalist.
Legalism is not.
Our problem.
There is not an epidemic of legalism in the Western church today.
That's not the problem.
And it wasn't the chief problem in the day of Jesus either.
The thing that Jesus continues to denounce is hypocrisy.
And at this point, I have to slightly disagree with Matthew Henry.
He says in this first line, Worldliness is as common and as fatal a symptom of hypocrisy as any other.
I think it's the opposite.
I don't think that worldliness, and we'll define worldliness here in just a moment from the scripture, but I don't believe that worldliness is the symptom of hypocrisy.
I think that hypocrisy is the cover for worldliness.
The reason the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious rulers were hypocrites. Is because they utilized hypocrisy in order to mask their worldly desires.
And this is what Jesus gets at in the Sermon on the Mount in our particular text today, Matthew 6 19 through 24.
He talks about the heart.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
What is it that you trust, and what is it that you treasure?
Where do you place your hope?
What is the aim, the focal point of all your heart's affections?
What is it that you love more than anything else?
Because your chief aim, your chief desire, that will then be the rudder, the direction that guides all of your other actions.
That's what Jesus is getting at in the latter half of our text today when he talks about the eye and the body.
He says, If the eye is good, then the whole body will be full of light.
But if the eye is bad, then the whole body will be filled with darkness.
And if the whole body is filled with darkness, how great!
Is that darkness?
This is what Christ is saying.
So I'm going to skip forward and then I'll come back and say a few more words about worldliness and hypocrisy.
But to illustrate that, this element of worldliness and then hypocrisy running cover for worldliness, not worldliness as a symptom of hypocrisy, but hypocrisy being the cover play to justify worldliness,
in order to get back to that point, which I think is the primary point of our text today, and really the primary point of the whole Sermon on the Mount, and arguably, The first half of the gospel, according to Matthew, in order to make all those primary points, let me first look at the latter half of our text and talk about the eye and the body and light and darkness, these kinds of things.
Okay, using another quote, this is towards the bottom of your notes if you have them, another quote from Matthew Henry talking about the eye.
He says this The eye, that is, the aims and intentions, by the eye we set our end before us.
So, what he's saying is this.
Remember when you're first learning how to drive a car.
And one of the things that you were probably told by your dad or driving instructor, whoever that was, is when you're first learning how to drive, it's tempting to focus on all the things that you're not supposed to run into.
That seems logical, right?
It's tempting to, you know, the first time you're merging onto the highway and you're in a lane, let's say you're in the far left or the far right, and there's a medium.
Right beside you.
If you're a brand new driver, then you're probably looking at this concrete barrier two feet away from the side of your vehicle, and a lot of your thought process in that moment is don't run into the concrete wall, don't run into the concrete wall, don't run into, and you're looking at the wall and you're looking.
But that's not actually, ironically, that's not particularly helpful.
What is helpful is to focus your eye.
Not on the things to your left and your right that you're supposed to avoid, but to focus your eye further out and straight ahead.
The thing that you're actually aiming at.
So when you're driving, even if it's not the concrete barrier, but just if it's the lines on the road, the best way to drive is to look not at the line on the right or the line on the left, but in between the lines and further out.
Focus Your Eye Straight Ahead00:04:22
To look up, out, ahead.
And in the center, in the middle, straight ahead.
Don't look at the things you're avoiding.
Look at the thing that you're aiming toward.
That's the point that Jesus is making when he talks about the eye.
The eye, in biblical terms, is similar to the heart, not similar in the way that it's defined, but similar in the sense that the heart is spoken of in Scripture in at least three or four different ways.
The heart, one way that the heart is spoken of is that the heart is kind of the center seat of a person, of the self, in which the greatest affection or desire is seated.
The heart is the center of desire, the center of affection.
Another way that the heart is spoken of is as the HQ.
Like the headquarters, the cockpit of a person.
You can have a large plane, and there's all these different seats, and then there's places to stow away luggage below.
But a plane, as large as it is, the cockpit, by relation, is relatively small.
But all the controls are located there.
And the heart is spoken in biblical terms as the chief seat of desire and affection.
It's also spoken of as.
As the steering wheel, the place of directing.
The heart directs a person.
And so, too, in biblical language, the eye is spoken of in different capacities, in different ways.
But in the context of our passage today, the eye is being spoken of as kind of like the heart in terms of the decision maker, the deciding factor.
Well, the eye is being spoken of in that light in our text today.
And in terms of decision, more particularly, More specifically, it's the I is responsible for deciding on the chief aims or goals or destination of a person.
That's the way this term, the I, is being used in our text today.
What is the I?
It's the part of the person that determines what is most important.
What are the goals?
What are the ambitions?
The aims?
The destination?
Okay, so with that definition in mind, because that is, I think, the right definition of the eye, at least in our context, our passage today, with that established, now let's go back and look at the text.
This is now in verse 22.
The eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eye is good or healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
What's being said is this.
If the eye is good, aka the eye has made a good and right decision, determination of the end goal, what it is you're working toward, then the body will all of its actions, the movement of the hands and the arms and the feet and the legs, every action of the body will be in service of the determination of the eye.
If the eye makes a good determination, the end goal, then the body will make good actions and movements, steps toward that end goal.
If my eye is good and therefore fixes itself on those things which God considers to be good, His glory, then my body in my day to day life, in my actions, in my words, my speech, even my thoughts of my mind, all these things will be good because they're being good.
The End Determines the Beginning00:03:15
Oriented and directed by the right chief end.
That's why the Westminster Catechism begins with the first question What is the chief end of man?
This isn't backwards.
It's not misplaced.
Why are you talking about the end in the beginning with the very first question?
Well, because the end determines the beginning.
The end, where we're going, like, I can't even, this happens all the time with me and my wife.
My wife is much better at directions than I am.
Much better.
Because I'm always thinking about something.
And it's not directions.
And so my wife is often having to direct to me.
I'm driving, doing my job, I'm driving.
Okay, there was a time early in our marriage where I was not driving.
And I had to repent of that for being effeminate.
And I was like, because I was like, it's a motorized vehicle.
It's not like I'm.
It's not a horse and buggy, and I'm replacing the horse with my wife, you know, and putting a yoke around.
It's not like it doesn't require any physical exertion.
The wife can drive.
And then I had some good men in my life say, mm-mm, it's the principle the man drives.
And part of it, and I think it actually is a good principle, I don't think it's arbitrary.
Part of it is taking responsibility for the physical safety of the family.
So it's not like I'm not carrying the family on my back in a literal sense.
So it's not the physical strength, but it's the physical and.
Not strength, but responsibility.
Like if something crazy happens, deer runs into the road, I want to be the guy who has to make that call, deer or kids.
Because I can make that call really well.
Really well.
I've already thought about it.
I've got a plan.
We're headlining the deer.
The deer's gone.
And then, you know, if I can, we're putting the deer in the back of the van and taking it to maybe Brad's house or something, and we're going to try to get it processed and get our bang for it.
For Buck, you know, because we're going to have to pay for the van, but we get some free venison and we'll call it a day.
So, anyways, but my point is, my wife still, she just, I feel like, I don't know, she just, I don't know if it's like some kind of witchcraft and she just knows the stars and astrology.
Like she could be anywhere.
And she's like, that's north and that's west.
And, you know, and I'm like, and I'm effeminate.
You know, it's convicted.
I'm like, how do you know these things?
And I don't.
Although my son, who's two, this is really encouraging.
And this sense, I think he's following after the suit of his mother, and praise God.
He has, like, we'll just, he'll be like this way.
He knows, he's been in the car enough, he'll know the way.
So before I even put on the turning signal.
And there's been a couple times where it's not just him confirming the right direction, but there's a couple times where he's informing Father of the right direction because he remembers it and I don't.
So, anyways, all that being said, here's the point.
Here's the point.
A Healthy Eye Brings Light00:06:12
The first thing when you're on a journey, when you're going somewhere, the first thing that you have to determine is where are you going?
Where's the final destination?
And that final destination sets A all the way through Y. Z sets A through Y.
And so when I'm pulling out of the driveway, the first question that I ask my wife is left or right?
Just out of the driveway.
Just out of the driveway.
Left or right?
And my wife makes that determination by knowing the final destination, which sometimes I don't even know that.
I just.
I knew that I needed to be in the van by a certain time, and here I am.
I'm in the van.
And I don't even always know where we're going.
But we're going somewhere, and she knows where we're going, and it's her knowledge of where we're going, the final destination, that allows her to determine left or right out of the driveway.
In other words, the very first decision is determined and dictated by the last decision, by the final decision.
That's what's being said in the latter portion of our text, verses 22 all the way to the end.
Let me read it once more 22 and 23.
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 will be full of darkness.
If then the light in you is darkness, because you have a bad eye, and the bad dark eye has now poisoned the whole body, the whole body is now darkness.
Dark hands, and dark arms, and dark feet, and dark legs.
Everything is blind.
Everything is poisoned.
Everything is corrupted.
Then, how great is that darkness?
How great is it?
It is a total darkness.
It is an all encompassing darkness.
In other words, what's being said is this you can't have bad eyes, but have a healthy body.
And you can't even have bad eyes and expect that the bad eye would pollute and corrupt only certain portions of your body, but that at least some portion of your body might still be preserved and remain healthy.
No, if the eye is bad, Then every part of the body will follow suit.
And in this context, what is the eye?
What is its chief function?
The eye is the instrument that decides the final destination, where the person is going.
The eye is the portion of a person that answers the question what is the chief end of man?
And if that question is answered properly, because the eye is good, And filled with light and can see clearly to clearly ascertain what the chief of man actually is, then the whole rest of the body will be oriented in that proper direction.
The hands will be doing good things, the feet will be going in a good direction.
Everything will be healthy if the eye is healthy, but the eye, if it is blind, And dark, and it answers that final question about the final destination and the chief end and the aim and the goal incorrectly, then the whole body will be set going the wrong direction.
If you're driving and you type in the wrong address, that's your final destination, the coordinates for where you're supposed to land, where you're supposed to end up.
If you type that in wrong, Than every other decision along the way, all the way, potentially all the way to the first decision of pulling out of the driveway left or pulling out of the driveway right.
All of those other decisions have the potential and the great likelihood of being wrong.
Why?
Because the last decision was wrong.
The last decision was wrong.
So back to this quote with Matthew Henry.
The eye, that is, the aims, intentions, the destination, the final goal, all of that, that's what is meant by the eye.
If the eye, by which we set our end before us and the mark that we shoot at, the place that we go to, we keep that in view and direct our motion accordingly.
And if it's bad, we're going to be in trouble.
In everything we do in religion, there is something or other that we have in our eye.
Now, if our eye be good, pure, healthy, seen clearly, if we aim honestly, if we fix right ends, if the destination is the right destination, and we move rightly towards them, if we aim purely and only at the glory of God and seek His honor and favor and direction all entirely to Him, Then the eye is good, healthy, pure, full of light.
Paul's, the Apostle Paul, his eye was good when he said, To me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Paul had the proper end in mind, he had a good eye fixed on the ultimate and final good thing.
And if we be right here, With the final determination, then the whole body will be full of light.
That is to say, all the actions will be regular and gracious and pleasing to God and comfortable to ourselves.
The True Cost of Discipleship00:12:34
Because that which is pleasing to God, that brings Him glory, is also that which is good to man.
Doesn't mean comfortable in every moment and the practical sense of comfort.
Life involves suffering.
It involves challenges.
It involves difficulty.
But make no mistake, that which God has determined to be morally right is not arbitrary.
That determination on God's part was not random.
He determines things that are good because they ultimately extend from His good character and nature.
And that which aligns with God's goodness is also good for God's creatures.
God made the world, it's His world.
God made mankind.
You are His creature.
And that which is good, according to him, is that which brings him glory, but also which brings us joy.
What will bring you joy is obedience to God.
In that sense, on the part of the Christian, there's actually no such thing as a sacrifice.
Not in an ultimate sense.
Jesus is clear, the Bible is clear, there is a cost to discipleship.
But even in the cost, You're paying a cost in order to get something of far greater value in return.
Right?
What is the cost of discipleship?
Well, it's a man.
Let me just give an example.
This is strictly hypothetical, it's just off the top of my head.
But let's just imagine that a man went and sold everything that he had in order to buy a field.
Well, that would be a cost of discipleship.
Your full portfolio, liquidating every asset.
Down to the used car, even the furniture up on Craigslist.
Let's be serious Facebook Marketplace.
All right, maybe you can get a little bit more money.
But, like, here goes the house, the 401k, everything.
Even the Bitcoin.
It's all gone.
I sacrificed for Jesus.
Are you sure about that?
It's a cost, yeah.
But when you liquidated every single asset, you did so in order to purchase something.
And what did you purchase?
A field.
And why did you purchase that particular field?
Because there's a treasure buried in that field.
Your whole portfolio, the treasure, which one has more value?
The whole point of the parable is that the guy gives up everything he owns, and in the minds of all his peers, it looks like a sacrifice.
But in his mind, the very reason he's willing to do so is because it's no sacrifice at all.
It's the easiest decision that he could possibly make.
All of his wealth and all of his possessions, in comparison to what he's getting, is a drop in the bucket.
It pales in comparison.
Or another example, and just for the record, in case you didn't get it, I was being facetious.
That's a parable in the Bible, it's not a random example.
It's literally the way that Jesus describes the Christian life.
Another example that Jesus uses is the pearl of great price.
Same thing willing to sell everything you have in order to purchase something that is of infinitely more value.
Infinitely more value.
So there is a cost to discipleship.
But the only real and genuine terms, the only bona fide sacrifice that we really have in this whole gospel narrative of Scripture is on God's part, not man's.
The sacrifice is the blood of Jesus.
The sacrifice is not your commitment to following Jesus.
The sacrifice is Is Jesus' commitment at the cost of his own life to save you from your sin?
That was the sacrifice.
And why can that be rightly described as a sacrifice?
Well, because the trade was God for you.
It's a sacrifice because, brothers and sisters, that was a bad trade.
Jesus is worth more than you.
His blood is far more precious than you.
But God did it because even while we were yet sinners, God still loved us.
He didn't die for us so that He could love us.
He died for us so that we could be lovely, but He died for us to make us lovely because we were already pre loved.
But He did not love you because of your innate value.
Or because you were a good trade, because you were more valuable than his son.
Now, he did it for his glory and he did it for your good.
He did it as an act of sacrificial love.
And our decision to follow God, which of course in the macro is a decision that God first makes, we love because he first loved us.
God first has to cause us to be made.
Spiritually alive and give us spiritual eyes to see, spiritual ears to hear, and new hearts that are softened and malleable and receptive to the things of God that actually desire God.
No man makes this decision on his own.
But if God does that, and then we inevitably respond with love for God, with new natures and new hearts, and we determine to follow after the things of God, and to take upon ourselves willingly the cost of discipleship, if we do all these things, then it is a cost, but it is not a sacrifice.
It can't ever rightly be described as a sacrifice because everything we pay.
Ultimately, it pales in comparison to that which we eternally gain.
If you lose every dime but gain Christ, then you've gained more.
If you lose wife or husband, daughter or son, mother or father, even family, but gain Christ, then you've gained infinitely more.
And everything in our passage is about that.
It's about rightly determining the chief end of man, the ultimate aim, the true treasure of our hearts, and having good eyes,
the instrument described in our text for determining what that chief end of man is, what that treasure actually should be, and then having set the final coordinates in place by having a good eye to make that final determination, then everything else.
Every other part of the body, the daily decisions of life, the actions of our hands and feet, the words of our mouths, the thoughts of our minds, everything else will fall into place.
It's a domino effect.
Everything else will follow suit.
So, how do I live good tomorrow?
How do I make good decisions in the small things?
It's by first determining the big thing, not just the big things.
No, I'm talking about numero uno.
The big one.
The ultimate determination.
And that ultimate determination is ultimately this you can have all this work.
Give me Jesus.
As for me in my house, we'll take Jesus.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And on earth, there is none that I desire beside you.
You are my portion and the strength of my heart forever.
Give me Jesus.
Others may be satisfied with this or with that, but as for me, I want Jesus.
And the problem with others is not that they aim too high, but ultimately that they have set their aim far too low.
That they could be satisfied by worldly status or worldly comforts, that they could be so easily contented in such petty things, that they have forfeited the greatest and most valuable possession in all of the universe, and that is Jesus.
At the end of the day, a good eye is simply a person who has the faculty.
Of making a good determination.
And that determination is first and foremost, what will bring God the most glory?
But secondly, what will bring me the most joy?
And in determining joy, there are two factors, two primary factors that you should consider.
One is what joy is the highest.
Secondly, which joy has the longest duration?
What will be the maximum joy that will sustain?
And continue for the maximum duration.
I want the most joy for the longest period of time.
In life, there are certain joys that are small but ongoing.
There are other joys that we would describe with words such as ecstasy, that are high joys but short lived.
But there is one joy that is infinite in degree and eternal in duration.
And that should be our treasure.
And where your treasure is, your heart will be also.
The eye, if it's good, if it sees clearly, it will make the right calculation of the chief end, of the right treasure, highest value, longest duration, who is Christ.
And if the eye is good and makes that right determination, then everything else about the person's life will be good.
When you sin, brothers and sisters, on a Tuesday afternoon, it's because in that moment you've lost sight of Christ.
In that moment you've lost sight of the final destination.
In that moment you have determined that momentary pleasures that are fleeting in this world are of more substance and more concern and more value.
Than God's glory, and ironically, your own eternal and infinite joy.
That's what ultimately has occurred.
It's not that you've made a wrong temporary decision despite making the right final decision.
No, you made the wrong temporary decision precisely because in that moment you lost the wrong final decision.
The final calculation was.
Corrupted for a moment.
It was tweaked for a moment.
The coordinates in the GPS got switched for a moment.
When Faith Gets Distracted00:04:04
And so the momentary decision, you started to veer left when you should have been veering right because the final destination got shifted.
For a moment, you stopped operating in faith, you stopped looking ahead, you got distracted.
You made something else your chief aim, your chief desire.
So, all that back to the Pharisees will land the plane and be done.
The problem with the Pharisees is not legalism.
Is legalism an actual thing?
Is it a biblical term?
Yes, it is.
The American church is in zero danger of committing it.
Zero.
If a hundred years go by and everybody in the American church gets really serious about holiness, and I happen to be still alive, Which I won't, but if I was, then I might preach a sermon or two against the dangers of legalism.
But I'm not going to do that because that's how we got here.
Part of the reason that we're off the rails is because every footnote becomes the headline, and every headline is made the footnote.
You look at something and you say, it would be like, Again, using a doctor and using health, physical health, that's the analogy, the illustration in our text today with the eye and the body, all these things.
It would be like going to the doctor and saying, you know, like, I just, I'm often out of breath.
My cholesterol is high.
I have this problem and that problem and all these different things.
And let's say in this particular scenario, the individual, the patient, weighs 500 pounds.
And then the doctor, you know, says, Well, I've noticed that you have a suspicious looking mole on your left shoulder.
And that's a serious concern.
And I think we need to schedule you for surgery right away.
We hear what you're saying.
We really need to take care of this mole situation.
Well, I mean, you should respond by saying, You're an idiot.
And he could respond by saying, Well, I told you I'm a doctor.
Right?
Should have known.
It's a foregone conclusion at this point.
In other words, the main problem is the main problem, and that's what needs to be treated.
You need to lose some weight.
That's the issue, not the mole on your left shoulder.
The thing that is endangering your very life is your weight.
Right now, legalism is not.
The primary danger for the American evangelical church is worldliness.
Now, that one, that's a contender.
There are a few.
I'm not saying it's the only one, but it's a big one.
Worldliness.
Now, I said I would define worldliness in biblical terms.
Let me do that briefly.
1 John 2, verse 15 through 17, multiple texts in Scripture define worldliness.
This is perhaps one of the most clear.
Do not love the world or the things in the world.
Okay?
What is worldliness?
It's to love the world.
And to break that down further with a little bit more specificity, what are ways to love the world?
There's at least three primary ways.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
And the world, this perfectly correlates with our text, Matthew 6 19 through 24.
Investing in What Cannot Shake00:05:48
The world, why is it a bad choice to focus on the world?
One of the reasons is because it is.
Passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Maximum joy in terms of degree and maximum duration of joy, it's eternal.
You want to make the best decision that first and foremost brings God the most glory, but secondarily does the most good for you, produces the highest degree of joy and the longest duration of joy, then don't choose the world.
And one of the reasons why is because it's passing away or put.
In other terms, back to our primary text, Jesus literally says when he's speaking about not making wrong determinations of where to allocate your chief primary treasure, what's one of the reasons that he gives for not making worldly things your chief treasure?
Because moth eats it, rust corrodes it.
There are corruptions within, and thieves break in and steal corruptions without.
There is no earthly treasure.
Again, do not conclude from this I should be a pietist.
I should be poor because it's holy.
That might be what you're saying, but let me just be clear.
What you mean is I should be poor because it's holy.
No, what you mean is I'd like to not work because I'm lazy.
That's what you mean.
So don't fool yourself.
I'm a super spiritual guru and I've really mastered Zen and I don't call it that.
I've given it a Christian term.
No, you're just.
You're just a Buddhist who uses Christian language and likes Buddhism because you can be fat and lazy, because those are two chief virtues of Buddhism.
And if you want evidence, look at a statue of Buddha.
Okay, so no, don't do that.
Don't use this sermon to be a pietist.
Pursue worldly resources, but for what aim?
So, I'm going left out of the driveway.
I'm going to buy a house instead of renting.
But why?
Because I'm going to this final destination.
I'm going to go right on this street, where I'm starting my own business and I'm investing in these investments.
But why?
Because I'm ultimately going here.
See, that's the thing.
That's the whole point of the text.
It's not to say don't accrue worldly resources, that means worldly in the sense of temporal, earthly resources.
The whole thing is your chief end.
Your final aim, your ultimate desire, let that be Christ.
Because that's a treasure that can't have any corruption from within no rust, no moth, no decay, and there is zero corruption from without.
No thief can break in and steal or destroy.
Every other worldly resource, it should, with a good sense of masculine Christian ambition, every good temporal earthly resource should be rightly pursued.
It should be.
But it should not be the source of your ultimate trust and treasure.
Bitcoin.
I like it.
But quantum mechanics could eventually hack Bitcoin.
Here's my point every single thing that people thought, this is secure, this will never fall.
Everything in this world has been or will be shaken so that that which cannot be shaken might remain.
There's only one thing that can't be shaken, and it's Christ.
That doesn't mean, well, I won't invest in anything because everything can be shaken.
Yeah, everything can be shaken.
Banks can be shaken.
It's like, well, I won't invest in anything.
I'll just have cash.
That's an investment.
It's not money, cash, and then investment opportunities.
No, it's wealth.
And then cash, the American dollar, is just one investment, and it's a poor one.
You can invest in companies.
You can invest in currency.
Cash is an investment.
You're betting on the American dollar.
And that one, there's a lot of moth and a lot of rust.
That bad boy is shrinking fast.
Okay?
So everything can be torn up.
That doesn't mean, so I'm going to be a do nothing guy.
No.
There's another parable that talks about that guy.
Remember the guy who takes the talent, an earthly temporal treasure, resource that the master gave him, and because he doesn't want moth and rust and these kinds of things to destroy, he wants to make a good investment, but he's scared because all the investments look bad, stock market looks bad, think cryptocurrency is a scam, don't like this, don't like that, so he buries it.
And he's the good guy in the story.
No, he's the guy who gets the sharpest rebuke.
You've got to invest in something, you've got to do something, you've got to accrue and work.
With something.
The solution is the final aim.
What is it all for?
Solving Problems with Final Aim00:06:52
And if it is all for Christ, His glory, and the good of His people, then which direction you pull out of the driveway, you'll be okay.
Which direction do I turn on the next street, you'll be okay.
It all flows downstream.
First, determine the end.
And the problem with the Pharisees and the religious rulers of Jesus' day was this not that they were legalists, they were hypocrites.
And they were hypocrites, meaning plain pretend, pretending something that was not.
They were hypocrites because they were worldly.
And what is worldliness, as we already defined?
It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
What has Jesus been talking about in the Sermon on the Mount?
The first thing that he's been talking about that we spent weeks on is the boastful pride of life.
AKA praise of men.
Don't pray like the hypocrites, the Pharisees, the Sadducees on street corners in order to be praised by men.
For I tell you the truth, they have already received their reward in full.
In other words, that's it.
They got a momentary, fleeting, worldly reward, and they will have no eternal reward of maximum degree and eternal duration.
They missed out on that because their treasure was here on earth, their ultimate treasure was on earth.
Now, the Proverbs speak about having a good reputation with men.
That's not inherently a bad thing.
We should seek to have a good reputation.
We should seek worldly treasures in the earthly, temporal sense, all these things.
But the only question that matters is this why?
To what end?
For what purpose?
For Christ.
For Christ.
The Pharisees were hypocrites because their religious hypocrisy was a veil that covered their worldly desires.
The chief sin of the Pharisees was that they actually loved the things of the world more than God.
The problem with the Pharisees was not that they were too religious.
The problem with the Pharisees is not that they were too legalistic, that they cared too much about obedience to God or too much about honoring God.
That was not the problem with the Pharisees.
The problem with the Pharisees is that they did not care about those things at all.
Not that they cared for them too much, they didn't care about those things at all.
They used the appearance, the mere appearance of these religious endeavors as a veil to cloak their true desire of heart, what they actually cared about, which was the world.
The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
When they fasted, they would make themselves look gaunt so that everybody knew they were fasting, they would be putting on eyeshadow.
To look just a little bit more holy.
When they prayed, it would be long and loud and public.
When they gave, they literally would announce it with trumpets.
Jesus isn't even being hyperbolic when he said, Do not announce it with trumpets like the hypocrites do.
They would literally be, I'm generous.
So all that we've been seeing in Matthew chapter 6 is what?
I'm sorry, boastful pride of life, which is one of the three primary elements of worldliness.
And it's what the Pharisees loved.
Their hypocrisy was just a veil to get what they loved.
They loved the praise of men, the boastful pride of life.
Now we're moving on to material, not just praise of men, man's approval, boastful pride of life, one of three elements of worldliness.
Now Jesus is just shifting gears and talking about the other two lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes.
What would fall into those categories?
I don't know.
Money, worldly things, comforts, money, wealth.
The Pharisees loved that.
They don't use that as a means to glorifying me because they ultimately love me.
No, they actually love that.
That is their final destination.
Their eye is bad.
They typed in on the GPS.
They're not just doing it on the journey.
They literally typed in as their final destination on the GPS 20 years of monetary wealth.
And so that's what they'll get.
They set their sights not too high, but far too low.
They'll get the reward.
They'll get it in full and then it'll be gone.
And they have forfeited everything else.
Do not be like them.
And how does he end the passage?
You cannot serve.
Again, that's final destination language, that's ultimate language, end, chief end language.
You cannot serve, be slave of both God and money.
You can acquire money.
You can use money.
You cannot serve money.
To serve money is to position yourself as slave to money as God, as master.
That's what you can't do.
And that is precisely what the Jewish religious leaders in Jesus' day had done.
Jesus' indictment of the Pharisees is not, you legalist.
You hypocrites.
And the hypocrisy, Shakespearean type of word, play acting, wearing a mask on stage, pretending to be someone else that you are not, the hypocrisy was in service of worldliness.
Worldly desires, caring nothing for the things of God, but only for temporary pleasure.
Worldliness was the problem.
Hypocrisy was the tool.
And legalism.
Doesn't even make the top 100 problems.
And neither does it make the top 100 problems today in the American church.
So stop talking about it.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word.
Bless it to your people.
Help us not to be worldly.
To be ambitious, yes, but worldly, no.
Let our chief aim be Christ, that He would be our treasure and that He would have our heart, so that we would not therefore be tempted to be hypocrites because we'd have nothing to hide.