Sermon On The Amount Series

Next Sunday is the Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs playing for the first time in over 50 years! I’m looking forward to a great game, but also to some great commercials like this Chevy commercial shown during Super Bowl 46 in 2012 (show Chevy Happy Grad: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np0giKknx0U)

In it, the parents of a high school graduate blindfold him and take him outside to see the gift they had given him for graduation. It’s a mini refrigerator, but all he sees is a yellow Chevy sportscar sitting in the street behind the refrigerator. The graduate thinks his parents got him a new car for graduation, and he gets all excited about it, until the real owner of the car gets in and drives it away.

The commercial ends with the graduate yelling, “Hey, he stole my car!”

Some people have the same reaction to money, which doesn’t belong to them anyway. The Bible says, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1, NIV). That includes your money.

So what does God want you to do with HIS money? What does God want you to do with the resources He has assigned you to manage on His behalf? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Matthew 6, Matthew 6, where Jesus tells us what to do with the money God has entrusted to you.

Matthew 6:19-20 “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. (ESV)

Jesus is very clear here. He says, first of all...

STORE GOD’S MONEY IN THE RIGHT PLACE.

Put God’s money in heaven, not on earth. Invest His resources in in heavenly ventures, not earthy ones.

Don’t hoard what God gives to you, because hoarded wealth is ruined wealth. Moth, rust, and thieves will take it all away. For some people, their wealth is in their fancy clothes, but those clothes are susceptible to moths. For other people their wealth is in their crops. It’s the corn and the grain they have stored away in big silos, but those crops are susceptible to worms, rats, and mice. The word for “rust” literally means “eating away,” which describes the vermin that pollute and devour those crops. Then there are those whose wealth is in their gold coins, which they store in a safe in their own homes. But as secure as that sounds, that wealth is susceptible to thieves who “break in and steal.” Literally, they “dig through” and take the coins. You see, in Jesus’ day, many people built their houses with nothing stronger than baked clay, which made it easy for burglars to dig through the outer wall and take whatever valuables they find.

Now, whether your wealth is in any of these things, Jesus point is clear. Wealth stored anywhere on earth is temporary – here today and gone tomorrow.

Art experts estimate that Pablo Picasso produced about 13,500 paintings or designs, 100,000 prints or engravings, 34,000 book illustrations, and 300 sculptures or ceramics. However, one painting stands out among the rest.

The painting is titled The Dream, and Picasso completed it in 1932. In 1997, at an art auction at Christie's in New York City, Steve Wynn purchased the painting for 47 million dollars. Then, less than a decade later, in 2006, he completed a deal to sell the painting for $139 million – triple what he paid for it. The transaction would have set a record for the sale of a piece of art.

It WOULD have, but just after completing the deal, Wynn, who was standing close to the painting, turned and inadvertently put his elbow through the Picasso, leaving a six-inch hole in the middle of the masterpiece. The effect on the sale price was immediate. Even more quickly than it had come, the record-breaking $139 million sale evaporated. (“Vegas Tycoon Pokes Hole in a Picasso,” CBSnews.com, 10-18-06; www.PreachingToday.com)

“Easy come, easy go” – and so it is with all wealth stored anywhere on this earth. It is only temporary.

Billionaire H. Ross Perot once put it this way: “Guys, just remember, if you get real lucky, if you make a lot of money, if you go out and buy a lot of stuff—it's gonna break. You got your biggest, fanciest mansion in the world. It has air conditioning. It's got a pool. Just think of all the pumps that are going to go out. Or go to a yacht basin any place in the world. Nobody is smiling, and I'll tell you why. Something broke that morning. The generator's out; the microwave oven doesn't work... Things just don't mean happiness." (Jim Long, Wheaton, Illinois, Leadership, Vol. 11, no. 2; www.PreachingToday.com)