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May 12, 2019

The whole heart is not short-changed

The whole heart is not short-changed

Passage: Matthew 6:19-24

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: The Highest Good

Keywords: church, highest good, love of money, money, mothers, sacrifice, sermon, sermon on the mount, treasure, worship, grace mills river

In many cases, our mothers may be the most potent picture of sacrifice we know. To bear us, nourish us, protect us is to demonstrate what it means to be treasured. If what we treasure reveals our heart, what does it take for our hearts to treasure what God does?

Order of Worship

Pre-Service Text: Psalm 51:10
Call To Worship: 1 Chronicles 16:8-13, 34
Old Testament Reading: 1 Samuel 16:1-7
Sermon: The whole heart is not short-changed
Central Text: Matthew 6:19-24
Benediction: Ephesians 3:20-21
Post-Service Text: Hebrews 13:5

Sermon Notes

Readings & Scripture

Pre-Service Text: Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.

Call To Worship: 1 Chronicles 16:8-13, 34
LEADER: Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name;
make known his deeds among the peoples!
Sing to him, sing praises to him;
tell of all his wondrous works!

ALL: Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!

LEADER: Seek the Lord and his strength;
seek his presence continually!
Remember the wondrous works that he has done,
his miracles and the judgments he uttered

ALL: Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever!

Old Testament Reading: 1 Samuel 16:1-7
1 The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” 2 And Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’3 And invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. And you shall anoint for me him whom I declare to you.” 4 Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, “Do you come peaceably?” 5 And he said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. 6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord's anointed is before him.” 7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Central Text: Matthew 6:19-24
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 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, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Benediction: Ephesians 3:20-21
20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Post-Service Text: Hebrews 13:5
5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Related Scripture

  • Psalm 37:16-17, 34-36
  • Proverbs 30:8
  • Ecclesiastes 5:10
  • Luke 12:20-21, 33
  • Luke 18:22
  • 1 Timothy 6:6-10
  • 1 Timothy 6:17-19
  • Philippians 4:5b-7
  • Hebrews 13:5

Discussion Questions & Applications:

  1. What’s your earliest memory of something you wouldn’t let out of your sight--what you treasured? What was it and why?
  2. What are various reasons we treasure anything? Why do we end up treasuring things that perhaps don’t warrant that kind of devotion?
  3. How does Jesus’s response to Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-10) differ with the one to the rich, young ruler (Mt 19:16-22)? Both had great possessions. Why do you think there was a difference in what he said to each?
  4. Why does the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus prove how the Lord treasures those for whom Christ died?

Quotes

  • We were made to have a master. - Sinclair Ferguson
  • The more you get the more you will want. - Augustine
  • No amount of money ever bought a second of time. - Tony Stark
  • Perhaps nothing so quickly tells us a person’s relation with God as a person’s relation with money and possessions. - F.D. Bruner
  • Nothing so trains men to be fond of riches as the fondness for glory. - Chrysostom
  • If God sees that heart corroded with the rust of cares, riddled into caverns and films by the worms of ambitions and greed, then your heart is as God sees it, for God sees things as they are. And one day you will be compelled to see, nay, To feel your heart as God sees it. - George MacDonald
  • Nor does the lesson apply to those only who worship Mammon….It applies to those equally who in any way worship the transitory; who seek the praise of men more than the praise of God; who would make a show in the world by wealth, by taste, by intellect, by power, by art, by genius of any kind, and so would gather golden opinions to be treasured in a storehouse of earth. - George MacDonald
  • “When you see him dying to make you his treasure, that will make him yours.” - Timothy J. Keller (Counterfeit Gods)

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