Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - You Might Be Greedy | New Testament | Matthew 6

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Do you have too much stuff? Is it time for you to give away some of your belongings? Keith looks at Matthew 6 to discuss how greed can leave you spiritually blinded. So, do you own stuff or does your stuff own you? Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in 2023. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Matthew 6

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. We all know that we have more stuff than ever, but how do you get your head around exactly how much stuff we have? The average size of the American home has nearly tripled in size over the last 50 years, and still the United States has five times more storage units than Starbucks. Five times. We dream of having stuff.

then we buy the stuff, then we insure the stuff, then we find a place to store the stuff. When you see all the stuff we have and how devoted to it we are, it makes you wonder, do we own stuff or does our stuff own us? I've always heard that you never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul, and then I came across a picture of a hearse pulling a U-Haul, because evidently we're trying to take our stuff with us. Let me tell you about two tombs that you can find in Egypt, and they explain two different approaches to stuff. The first tomb is of William Borden. He lived from 1887 to 1913. He was a graduate of Yale University and the heir of great wealth. He decided that he wanted to become a missionary to Muslims. So even though he had great wealth, he refused to buy a car.

He gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars to missions. And then on his way to the mission field, he died of spinal meningitis at age 25 in Egypt. On his tombstone, it reads, apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life. In other words, Jesus is the only reason a person would give away their wealth instead of enjoying it.

The other tomb in Egypt belongs to King Tut. He was the Pharaoh and died at age 17. He was buried with gold chariots, thousands of gold artifacts, and even buried in a gold. gold coffin. The ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife in which you could take your earthly treasures with you. So King Tut's riches stayed with him for 3,000 years until Howard Carter discovered the burial chamber in 1922. Both William Borden and King Tut died young. Both had great wealth. Borden gave

his wealth away. King Tut held onto his wealth believing he could take it with him. Jesus says this in Matthew 6. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. 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.

So you hear in those verses, two treasures, two visions, and two masters. Let's start with the vision. A healthy light takes in light that allows you to avoid obstacles. If your eye is not working properly, your whole body is in darkness. Even if the whole room is flooded with light, without a healthy eye, you won't be able to see. Jesus is saying that greed, which is here called a love for earthly treasure, has the peculiar effect of blinding you spiritually, of making your eye unhealthy, of distorting the way you see things, including yourself. What that means is that greed has the power to blind you to greed. That might explain why most people are sure that they're not greedy and materialistic. We have an unprecedented amount of stuff, but none of us are greedy.

Maybe others are. Luke 12, Jesus says, watch out. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Jesus has to tell us to watch out and be on our guard because greed hides itself. Over the years as a pastor, I've had people come into my office and talk to me about all kinds of problems, but I don't remember anybody ever coming to me to confess the sin of greed. Why? Is that because none of us are greedy? No, it's because the sin of greed blinds us to the sin of greed. If you say greed, which again is just the love of earthly treasures, that's not a problem for me. Well, to be frank, that's a really bad sign. A symptom of this sin is thinking, I'm sure it's not true of me. Jesus is saying, watch out. This is a sin of the

eye. It darkens your eyes so that you can't see clearly. Jesus also tells us, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Is that because earthly treasures are bad? No, it's because they won't last. Proverbs 23-5. Cast but a glance at riches and they're gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. The next time you buy something cool, imagine it's sprouting wings and flying off, because sooner or later it will. Sooner or later, it'll disappear. When you, When Jesus warns us to not store up treasures on earth, it's not because wealth might be lost, it's because wealth will always be lost. Either it leaves us while we live or it leaves us when we die.

But there are no other options. Matthew 620, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. If you stopped reading too soon, you would have thought Jesus was against storing up treasures for ourselves. That's not it at all. In fact, he commands us to do so.

Jesus wants us to store up treasures. He's just telling us to stop storing them up in the wrong place and start storing them up in the right place. And according to Jesus, the right place to store up treasures is heaven, not earth, because storing up earthly treasures is, well, just to be blunt, dumb. 1 Timothy 6, Paul says, for we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it. So you can't take your riches with you, but you can't send them ahead of you. whatever treasures we store up on earth will be left behind when we leave whatever treasures we store up in heaven will be waiting for us when we arrive financial planners often ask what's your time horizon they don't want us to think about investments as something that pays off in three months or even three years they want us to have a long-term view maybe more like 30 years

jesus is the ultimate investment counselor and he takes it even further he says don't ask how your investment will pay off in 30 years Ask how we'll be paying off in 30,000 years. See, I can spend my life investing in things that will not last when I leave, or I can spend my life investing in treasures that never perish, spoil, or fade. How long is your time horizon? We spend a lot of time thinking about our future, but not far enough out. I think of it in terms of a dot and a line. Our lives have two faces, one a dot and the other line.

Our present life on Earth is the dot. It begins and it ends. It's brief. Maybe 70 or 80 years. But from that dot extends a line that goes on forever. That line is eternity, which Christians will spend with Jesus. Right now we're living in the dot. We're living in those 70 or 80 years. But what are we living for? The short-sided person lives for now. They live for the dot. The person with God's perspective lives in light of eternity. They live for the line. The person who lives for the dot lives for treasures on earth that rust and rot. The person who lives for the line, they live for treasures in heaven that will last forever. One way we lay up treasures in heaven is by giving our money away to further God's kingdom. Everyone parts with their money. The only question is when. We have no choice but to part with it later when we die.

But we do have a choice whether to part with it now in giving it away to advance what God is doing. we can keep our earthly treasures for the moment, and we may derive some temporary enjoyment for them, but if we give them away, we'll enjoy eternal treasures that will never be taken away from us. Thanks for listening. We've created a plan to help you read through the New Testament this year. This reading plan is the same one we're going to be using on TMBT,

so you can read a chapter and then listen to an episode on the chapter that you just read. The link to the PDF is in the show notes.