Seven Deadly Sins: Greed - Jon Tyson

We'll get a folks, thanks for joining us for the Church of the City, New York podcast. It's such a joy to have you here. This time of year our whole church is beginning to look back and remember what it is that God has done and look forward to what He has for us in the future. And one of the most surprising things that's happened this year is the realization of how many folks like yourself are tuning in each week as a part of our online family. Our podcast audience has grown remarkably this past year and so we wanted to take a moment to say thank you for trusting us with your theological development and spiritual formation every week. We consider it an honor to be able to share what God's doing in our church through our church into your world and we just wanted to take a moment to let you know this really matters to us. It is not just a podcast we put on. It is a joy to know that we're walking alongside you and helping being a part of equipping you for where you are. We're also starting our Christmas offering. It's a vision offering called Living the Liturgy and it really is designed to help us bring more theological resources like this into your life and also fuel our ministry here in New York. So if we've touched you in any way you can sit yourself like a stakeholder or a shareholder and what we're doing here in New York we would love to be able to partner with you. You can go to church.nyc/give to find out more details about that but we did want to take a moment just to say thank you for being with us and it is really an honor to share God's Word with you every week. Okay, let's get back to the podcast. Our teaching text today comes from Luke chapter 12 verses 13 through 21. Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" Then he said to them, "Watch out. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions." And he told them this parable, "The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'" Then he said, "This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones and there I will store my surplus grain." And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy. Eat, drink, and be merry." But God said to him, "You fool. This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God." This is the Word of the Lord. You may be seated. I want to start with a question today. "Are all sins equal in the sight of God? Are some sins worse than others? And if they are, which sins are the worst sins?" This is important to ask, because we're about to start a series in the seven deadly sins. And when you put the Word deadly in the title, you're implying that these are serious sins. And so we're going to wrestle with these sins and the way that they impact us in the modern world. Now, I've got to be honest with you. People don't like coming to church for eight weeks in a row and talking about sin. You want to hear an eight week series on the love of God in Christ. But I want to say this when we look around our world today, our world is absolutely riddled with the effects of sin, but no one wants to talk about it. What is trauma? Trauma is what happens to people when they are sinned against. What is abuse? Abuse is what happens when people are sinned against. What is injustice, injustice is what happens when people or communities are sinned against. We love talking about all of these things, but we don't want to deal with the source of them. And so we think it is important that we talk about sin. Charles Spurgeon said this, "The worst evils that have ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church." The church is so filled with scandals, so much hypocrisy that we feel like we don't want to treat the wound of sin lightly. We want to lean into this. We're doing this for Lent. Lent is historically the part of the church calendar leading up to Weester that celebrates Jesus in the wilderness resisting temptation. And the wilderness in the Bible is viewed as a gift. It's viewed as a place of formation. It's viewed as a place of revelation. It's viewed as a place of dependence upon God. Not comfortable, but beautiful. Not enjoyable, but formative. And so we are going to be looking through these seven deadly sins. Now, the reason that you may have heard, maybe you grew up Catholic, you've heard about the seven deadly sins. Maybe you're like, hang on, you actually said, "I'm stuck." You said, "We're going to spend eight weeks talking through sin." Yes. The seven deadly sins were first thought up. They were listed as the eight evil thoughts by Evagreus, who was a monk. He fled the cities, a lot of the desert fathers. You may have heard of the desert fathers. These were folks who after Constantine Christianized the Empire, remember Christianity? One point was illegal. It was persecuted and then Constantine has this vision by this sign, you shall conquer. He ends up becoming a Christian and then after the edict of Milan, Christianizing, the beginning of Christendom, the Roman Empire. So he superimposed a structure over the church that was the same as the structure of Rome. And Christianity went from a persecuted minority that was remarkably potent to a luxurious majority that was easily corrupted. And so young reformers, not that different than yourselves, took off to the desert in protest to flee the corruption of the church, the licentiousness, and the death of Roman culture. So these became known as the desert fathers and mothers and they went out, many of them into Egypt, in the middle of nowhere living in caves and these little huts, St. Anthony who lived there for 20 or 30 years, that really hanging out with anyone. And they had such a potent spirituality that people started fleeing the cities and gathering around them. But you know what they realized, something called, even though they fled the city where the sin was, they found they didn't get away from the sin because the sin wasn't in the city, the sin was in their hearts. Because they had to confront within themselves, not just a cultural war with what's wrong out there, but an inner war of what's wrong in the heart. And you've probably experienced this, there's probably things in our world that you hate. But there's probably things in your own heart that you can't believe you still do. And so the seven deadly sins are a confrontation with the state of the human heart. So we've got some bangers coming up folks, we've got last, I'll be teaching on that in about two weeks, last gluttony, I skipped that one, gree, someone else on that, greeed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride, and tonight we are going to open by talking about greeed. Now the church has a, as I mentioned last week, a bad reputation around resources. And we're at a moment right now where the church is in crisis, it doesn't matter if you're a perspiterian or a panocostal, doesn't matter if you're a reformed or a part of the prayer movement, there is scandals in the church because of sin. Charles Spurgeon said this, the worst evil that ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church. And so the reasons so many young people are leaving the church today, they're disgusted by the integrity of the church. Well I want to say this, this is your chance to move from cultural disgust to what's happening to personal discipleship, to being a part of the solution. That's what we're going to talk about. So tonight we're going to talk about greeed. Jesus wants to save your soul. And part of the way he wants to do that is by saving you from your stuff. Jesus says that greeed is one of the primary things that blocks people from entering. The life that is truly life. Now I want to give credit, but credit is due, a lot of the resources from tonight's talk come from these two books, okay? And then secondarily glittering vices, glittering vices are an incredible book. And so a lot of my thoughts on greeed have been formed, and I want to encourage you, we're going through, these are remarkable books. So as we're going through the seven deadly sins you may want to consider these as supplemental reading. I want to open by talking about a guru and a disciple. Like Buchanan tells a story to illustrate the ways we rationalize an accumulation of lifestyle. There's an Indian parable on which a guru had a disciple that he was so pleased with, he was making such great spiritual progress that he just left him on his own, he's like, you're good, you got it, keep going. The man lives in a little mud hut. He lives simply begging for his food. This morning after his devotions that a disciple would wash his loincloth and hang it out to dry. One day he came back to discover the loincloth was torn and eaten by rats. He begged the villagers for another and they gave it to him. But the rats ate that one too. So we got himself a cat, and that took care of the rats, but now when he begged for his food, he had to beg for a bowl of milk for his cat as well. Well, this won't do we thought. So he said, I'm gonna get a cow to provide milk for the cat. So we got a cow, but then he found he had to beg for fodder to feed the cow. And so he said, this won't do why there. So he said, I'm gonna have to grow some crops. So he began to till the ground around his hut. But soon he found he had no time for contemplation. So he hired workers to tend his farm. But overseeing the laborers became a chore. So we needed a partner. So we got married to share the workload. Now after time, with all of this work, the disciple became the wealthiest man in the village. The guru was traveling by the hay and he stopped in. He was confused. He was shocked to see that once, whether it was a simple mud heart, they're now loomed to palace around a biobaster state and crops worked by many laborers. So we asked the disciple, what is the meaning of this? And the disciple replied, you would not believe it. But there was no other way I could take care of my loincloth other than this. Now you're sitting here saying, that would never happen to me. I mean, that's so obvious. I knew that parable was going before you started. The challenge is, is that that parable is American life. That parable has happened to you without your choice. Michael Easter in this incredible book, if you haven't read this book. What are you doing with your life? This book's incredible. Absolutely worth your time on how algorithms and culture taps in to a scarcity loop that makes us overconsuming every area of life. And in his chapter on possessions, he shows how modern machinery has impacted the way we live, how clothing and stuff we possess and clothes have accumulated at a breathtaking level. Let me give an example on our clothes. At the founding of the United States, so your man was just wrestling with a loincloth, we're wrestling with outfits. At the founding of the United States, American men and women had an average of three outfits. Even the richest people didn't need walk-in closets. Thomas Jefferson's wife Martha had a scandalous, scandalous, 17 outfits. Today, the average American purchases 37 items of clothing each year. One study found we now own 107 items of clothing. The study detailed how we feel about these 107 items. It's discovered this is so true. We consider 21% of those clothes unwearable with nothing to wear. We think 50% of the items aren't great. They're either too tight or too loose. Then we have an average of 12% we've never worn. And that leaves us with a Martha Jefferson S 10%, 11 items that we regularly wear. The EPA says we throw away about 68 pounds of clothing in textiles per person per year. What about our items? Mary Oliver wrote a poem, it's called "I Own A House." Says this "I Own A House" small but comfortable. In it is a bad, a desk, a telephone, and so forth. You know how it is in these two words. Things collect. Boy, do things collect. The average American home contains about 10,000 pounds of stuff. That's spread from 10,000 to 50,000 items per home. The Wall Street Journal found Americans now spend 1.2 trillion annually on stuff we don't need. We have second-hand consumers and bleeding into the light of our pets. Our pets are suffering with overconsumption. The dog clothing industry alone is projected to be worth $16.6 billion in the next few years. Houses, the average home has grown 75% since 1910. It's now roughly 2,500 square feet in some cities, homes are tripled in size. But homes are not enough for the things that we've collected. There are now more self-storage units in the United States than McDonald's Burger King, Starbucks, and Walmart. Combined. Why do we keep collecting stuff? UCLA scientists say, upon their research of why we collect, is that there's no governor in our spending. See, when you eat, at some point you're like, "I gotta tap out, I'm done." When you drink, at some point you tap out, you're done, but there's no tapping out mechanism for purchases. And with algorithms, here was Amazon's genius strategy. Sell it cheaper than everybody, bankrupt them all, then turn the stores we used to buy it from, in warehouses to ship more stuff to them. The greatest breakthrough and worst thing that's ever happened is one click purchasing. Satan and his demons gathered together in hell and said, "How can we corrupt a generation of Americans?" And someone said, "Materialism." I said, "That'll never work. It's too obvious." Someone else came along and they said, "We could, just someone said, "I've got a stop at brainstorming. "I've got a one click." And they were like, "Release it in the world." Imagine Christians from other generations coming to our lives and saying, "You guys are disciples of Jesus." Looking at our lives and going, "What's the meaning of this?" And you say, "You never believe this. There's no other way." We could live our lives. Now, some of you at this point, you got a little resistance in your spirit. You're like, "Ha-ha." Okay, so I want to say this to you. I just want to remind you that you who are not, if you who, I just have a free heart, not entrapped by any sort of money, you probably hauded toilet paper during the pandemic. You probably still have some stashed away just in case, okay? Jesus warns us that this is deadly and it can kill us. Greed is a deadly sin. So, Jesus warning against greed. This is the teaching text tonight. There's a situation, a context, and a story. Now, if you look through Luke 12, one of the things you realize in the whole chapter, Jesus is in the middle of teaching and he's giving a beautiful exposition on life in the kingdom of God, the urgency of living in the kingdom of God, what life in the kingdom of God looks like. And in the middle of a sermon, someone yells out, "Yo teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." And Jesus replied, "Man, who would point at me "a judge or an arbiter between you?" So I want you to imagine the middle of this church service right now and then someone stood up and was like, "Excuse me, John, excuse me. "I'm in a dispute with my landlord. "I got a rent stabilized place right now. "It's in the East Village. "I didn't know about it, just found it about it. "I'm in a fight with my neighbor." And if someone just got up right now, I would say, "Yo, yo, yo, not the time, not the place. "We're doing church right here, this is God's word." So I'm not your landlord, mate. I don't understand, like I don't know your rent, talk to Paul Ann, I don't understand your rent stipulations of what happens here in New York, okay? And so Jesus is interrupted, but Jesus realizes this man is in the middle of a kingdom revelation and all he cares about is himself. So Jesus launches into a very hard parable that's a story, the ground of a certain rich man yielded and abundant harvest. He thinks to himself, "What shall I do?" I have no place to store my crops. He says, "Ah, here's what I'll do. "Ted on my barns, build bigger ones "and store my surplus grain in them." And I've said to myself, you've got plenty of grain laid out for years. Take life easy, eat, drink, be merry. But God's system, you fool. This very night your life will be demanded from you that who get what you've prepared for yourself. And this is how it will be with whoever stores up things for hood themselves, but is not rich towards a God. Jesus uses this man's greed in the middle of a sermon to preach a sermon, warning everybody listening about the danger of greed. Watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Watch out is a strong word. When Jesus is telling you to watch out, you should listen to him. He knows what he is talking about. And he says, "Watch out, this is a strong word. "Stand, stand your ground, be on your guard, "pay attention, there is a threat to you." Here's what I want you to see. Greed is not an event. You don't do a greed event. How's your week going on up out? I did a greed event. You become greedy. This is a condition that you're infected with. You know what dropsy is? I think we call it a demon now. It's where fluid gets stuck in the body. It doesn't pass through you and all your soft tissues. Almost like you're going to explode. And this is what greed is. Its resources get stuck in our lives and they don't flow through us. And it's like we get stuck. How does this work? Well, greed always, it's about the attention of where greed focuses. Greed always looks up at envy. Man, if I could just get another 20k a year. Actually, actually, let's round it up to 100, okay? If I could just get another 20k a year, then I could really live the life God's called me to a New York City. Let's look it up with envy. We can look around with comparison. It's not fair. I work harder than them, or you see everybody as a threat or a commodity to be exploited. Everybody's a threat to your prosperity. Nobody ever looks down as like, "Dear Lord, thank you for what you've done for me. Thank you for how far you've brought me. Thank you for that you've provided for me." It's always comparison and it's always envy, greed and agree, because a strong desire to acquire more and more material possessions or possess things more than other people have irrespective of need. Thomas Aquinas calls it this, "An immoderate love of possessing." Pleasure wants an experience, greed wants to contain it, to hold it. Dante depicted the greedy as being chained to the ground with their backs turned to heaven and their eyes fixed on the earth. And some of you, this is your LinkedIn profile. It will be chained to employer back away from God, eyes on corporate earnings. This is what happens in our hearts, but if this is tragic, Jesus is warning against the damage it does. One Timothy 6, godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into the world or we could take nothing out of it. If we have food and clothing, we'll be content with that. Those who want to get rich, fall into temptation and a trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. Do you know anyone who used to be in church with you, used to be in your small group, used to be around? They just sort of drifted where they go, eager for money, wander from the faith, get in relationships with the wrong people, give their time to the wrong community, give their energy and affection to the wrong things, pierce themselves with many griefs. It affects our relationships the way we view each other, look at James 4. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire, but you don't have, so you kill. You cover, but you can't get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You don't have, because you don't ask. And when you ask, you don't receive, because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God, therefore anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. So I want to say this. My assumption about you, if you're a follower of Jesus, is that you don't want to be greedy. My assumption is that God has given you a new covenant, hard and in that heart, the deepest desire you have is to please God and to be generous like him. So my assumption is that your heart is good, not that your heart is greedy, but my assumption is you have to be on your guard, because that can be corrupted. And so Jesus is warning against something that can happen to you, be on your guard against all sorts of greed. Why? Jesus says this, because greed is foolish. Now what I love about this passage, this is, this is, it's almost like Jesus really knows what he's talking about here. This, and Jesus gives us a psychological analysis of the inner reasoning and thinking of greed. Look what it says, the ground of a certain rich man, yielded an abundant harvest. And he thinks to himself, "And now we're getting the internal voice of greed. What shall I do?" Man, I've just had this abundant harvest. Ah, here's what I'll do, tear down my barns, build bigger ones, store my grain. And I'll say to myself, like a little self, yourself, here's what I'm going to say to you, you've plenty of grain laid up, take life easy, eat, drink, be merry. No, here's what, so here's why greed is foolish. Now what, has no reference point of God in the inner reasoning. Listen, how many of you chose to be here? And I don't mean be here tonight, I mean, to be alive on planet earth. Anybody choose to be born here now? Nope. Didn't have much say in that, did you? Sort of, all the work was done on your behalf and you just showed up. We have so little control in our lives. So much of what makes our lives our lives is a sovereign gift of God aimed at you. So to try and then build a life independent, like you've come up with it at all, is a form of idolatry. So there's no reference point for God, for an example, they're in an agrarian society. He has an abundant harvest and he doesn't go, "Lord, thanks for the weather, appreciate that." He's just like, "Look man, I earn this, it's mine, I got this, I'm going to do what I want with it." Second thing, he has no concern for others. So he's responses like, you know what, you've, I've talked about the socioeconomic dynamics of people in the time of Jesus, particularly the city of Jerusalem. It was ruthless. These people were taxed into oblivion, they were taxed by Rome, they were taxed by Herod the Great, they were taxed by the Pharisees and the religious system, they were taxed by local leaders. Some commentators say that when they got what was left after all the taxation, it was 13% of their income, it's almost like living in Canada, like the level of taxation, extraordinary. And so there were people, very few people, owned their ancient land, and so the city was run by elites who were all of Herod's friends who moved in, took all the best places, and the people that used to own farms now became day laborers on their own property. And so this man who has his bumper crop doesn't think, "How do I alleviate the sufferings of my friends?" How foolish to tear down and build bigger barns. James Twitch will say this, he calls luxury and ever escalating category of things that are totally unnecessary and ever escalating category of things that are totally unnecessary. So all of us will have to answer the question, because this is the question he asks himself, ready? What shall I do? I just got cashed up. What shall I do? He doesn't have God or generosity or compassion as a reference point in his framework for life. But he's also forgotten something else in his overconfidence, that he's not in control of his life. He's radically underestimated the sovereignty of God in his life, and then he dies. God says, "You fool, this very night life will be demanded of you, then who will get what you have prepared for yourself, a lifetime of work only to give it to your kids who didn't earn it?" We think we have all the time in the world, but we don't. The temporary nature of life, our obligation to others, and our biblical responsibility to stew it, what God has given us, is the key to life. But this man's a fool, because none of these things are part of his inner life. Jesus wants us to understand the nature of true wealth. He says life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. He says that it's possible for you to be rich towards God. You can be impoverished towards God, or you can be rich towards God. And so how do we do this? It's about our appropriate interaction with the resources God gives us. One of the problem with greed is it is an inappropriate attachment and affection for things. Aristotle says when he was talking about the nature of philosophy, it belongs to the wise man to order. So the goal of wisdom is to ascertain what something's truly worth and to value it and to order your life appropriately to the degree of the value it actually contains. And then Thomas Aquinas says, "order things rightly and govern them well." That's the heart of a godly life. Doing things rightly govern them well. Most of the Christian life, the key to the Christian life is getting things in order. Seek first the kingdom of God, then you get it added. Love the Lord you got with all your heart, you love Him first and other things second. Disordered love leads to a disordered life. Social psychologists tell us that there's so much research on happiness, like 50% of its biological, by the way. You don't even have a control of our half of it's just like genetic. But the rest of it, we have a real role in. And a lot of this, the research is clear on that 50%, there's four main things that help you become happy. Number one, good relationships with others. Strong religious ties, three meaningful activity and four, agency personal control. And when you look at how this aligns with our faith, very clear, love our neighbors as we're commanded, be in relationships, reciprocal life-giving, sacrificial relationships. Love of God, a rooted deep personal faith, corporate and spiritual works of mercy, which means we do things that are meaningful with our lives and that we exert authentic freedom by doing good and avoiding evil, becoming holy and growing in our lives. These are the things that lead to life. It's almost like God knew what life was about. You live in a world that is going to corrupt you and seduce you to give into greed. Jesus warns against it and calls it foolish. So this makes us ask then, how do we determine if we've gotten a greed in our hearts? How do we root greed? out of our hearts. Now, the problem is, last of some of you are like, I like last week's talk better, I want to be a gospel patron, like that felt really empowering. This feels like really hard, okay? This can make you defensive. I understand that. A lot of times you're like, well, how much can I have? A lot of times I'm like, well, are you telling me, are you telling me that I can't live my life? Hey, yo, yo, I'm not telling you anything, calm down. I just want to say, pay attention to what's happening in your heart. Don't, here's the number one thing you don't want to do, okay? Justify, justify what's happening in your heart. You don't want to do that. Anytime people came to Jesus and tried to justify, Jesus launches into stories that do not end well for them, okay? So, you've got the rich young ruler, does not end well. You've got another guy wanting to justify himself. That's where we get the story of the good Samaritan, okay? So, I think it's important that we just have an open heart. Hebrews 13 says, keep your lives free from the love of money. Be content with what you have, why? Because you have what you truly need, which is Christ's presence with you. I'll never leave you off a sacred. The Lord is your helper. What can anyone really do to you? Colossians three, put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. But why do we get defensive? I think three reasons I've discerned my own heart, okay? First one is entitlement. I earned this man, is man. I don't have a trust fund. I would not oppose to one theoretically, but just don't have one. I like I've earned this, everything I've got I've earned. Man, I've worked for this. Second on poverty, you ever been poor? I've been poor. Being poor sucks. Poverty robs people of nobility. There's so many people with so many times I see the creativity amongst people that do, the phrase underprivileged, under-resourced communities. You see the talent there without access to opportunity. Makes you want to weep. I hate what poverty does to people. But we can overreact. Most a lot of wealthy people have fought poverty and they've overcompensated out of a need for security. Offer this one happens in New York, status. I want to be seen as competent, successful. Money gives me access to people I value. Now, this is, listen, there's a lot of young folks here. Glad you're here. Many of you, not all some are grown up and you're gonna marry and you're gonna have kids. And let me tell you, that's when it gets vicious in New York, vicious. If your kids don't go to the right school, I never forget my son Nate, who are the playground in the upper west side and we can just tell, they can smell us fresh meat. Here we go. New to the playground in the upper west side. Oh, hey guys. And the whole thing is like, what kind of garden are you putting your kids in? Oh, I don't know, man, like Pierce 96. I'm like, oh, I mean, oh, oh. I mean, you could. I mean, I guess you could. And my wife doesn't take this stuff very well. And this one lady felt obligated to tell us that we put them in a public, that public school, that we weren't gonna get into the right middle school or high school. I was gonna greatly inhibit our chance of getting our children into one of the IVs. And that was really worth reconsidering. Status in New York. Not for money to pay to have a membership at the club. Be with the people, go to the right place in the summer. Be seen as one of them, whether right things, this stuff gets in us. And so when someone pushes you and said, hey, have you really prayed that through? You good? Something in your heart can go, oh gosh, I don't know. So we have to guard against greed. We've got to see if that's not in our hearts. A lot of times we've got deficits from our childhood. I've talked about these before, maslow gaps. There's just things that we, and you know what, this is like even on a small level. You grew up and your parents wouldn't let you have something. Like as soon as I get a job, I'm gonna buy 50 of those things, watch me. Anybody ever do that, honestly, let's say it's church. If you have, of course you have. You're like, wow, let me just go ahead and just get some of that. I think one of the worst ways that, or one of the things we've got to investigate the most is our imaginations. Everybody's trying to answer the question, what is the good life? Like what's the good life? When you imagine like this, I'm living it, man. I'm living the dream. When you imagine living your dream, what is that dream? Modern advertising is not helping us have a biblical dream, okay? It just gets in there. We start asking ourselves question. We do brand purchases. Like what does this say about me? Well listen, I went through, I've experienced this recently, okay. I had to buy a new car. It was at a 2013 Honda Pilot, okay? We'd driven the wheels off this thing. I have 213,000 miles. I would have kept going for another 100,000, but like everything was breaking. Like every night, the alarm would go off, like four times a night. I had to disconnect the battery. Everyone's screaming at me. It's a bad situation, okay? And I was just like, just like ask the question like, I'm 47 years old. I'm not a kid and I'm not broke. What sort of car does a 47 year old man like myself deserve to drive? I'm from Australia, which is sort of British. And I was studying taxes and realized every car over 6,000 pounds is a tax ride off, so I could get a Range Rover and functionally ride it off as a business expense. And honestly, don't you wanna see your pastor roll in with a little Range Rover, save it God's money as a tax benefit? (audience laughing) Yeah. Oh, I just thought, that would be a scandal. Like, not a big one, but if I rolled up, you'd be like, yo, someone's living a litigy right there. You're boys living that litigy. You know what I got? Another used Honda Pilot. And you know when I roll up, you don't even notice it. It just looks like an older Uber. (audience laughing) But I'm gonna be honest with you. Gets in your imagination. Listen, I think everybody needs to have filters on their devices so they don't look at inappropriate material. I don't trust anybody, I don't trust myself. But I wanna say there's some of you need filters for Zillow. You need a Zillow filter. Some of you up late at night, upper west side, two bedroom, duplex, press range, categorizing. I'll be a bet, I'll be a bet soon honey. I'm just seeking God for our future. (audience laughing) Nothing wrong with the Zillow, I love it. Here's the thing, if all your dream, if all of your imagination is getting caught up in her, we've got a guard against that. It gets in our affections. St. John Climacus, he talked about how sinful passions get into our soul. Watch this, this is insightful. This is not his language, I sort of modernized it. Here's how Greek gets into our lives. It starts with temptation, moves to rationalization. Then we give in, then we enjoy. Then we get attached to it, and then it becomes a stronghold. And if you talk to anybody who's really been a captured by greed, they start by getting tempted, then they start, the self talk, or I shall say to myself, then you give in, then you enjoy, then it's an attachment, then it's a passion, it's hard to break. And so you know the best way to deal with this? Don't give in to the temptation. Guard your mind. This is ultimately how lifestyle creep happens when you get older. And so we've got a guard, our vision, our life perspective against greed, and we've got to have a vision of true wealth. And a lot of people have a vision of the life they want, but they have no idea what to do inside the kingdom of God. And God wants to reverse that. He wants you to be agnostic for the most part and open to whatever he has, this is the book of James. Don't say, we're going to go here and there and get cashed up into, you don't even know about your life, it's a mist, but he says seek first the kingdom of God. You should have total clarity on God's kingdom vision for your life and an openness to whatever happens in the rest of it. Jesus is going to say, the kingdom's so good, it's like a pure, great price you get with everything else for. It's like a treasure, and he joyfully sold all he had to get it. It's like Mary breaking that bottle. They said that was about a year's worth of income. And she's like, Jesus, you're worth it. So how do we make sure that any greed in our heart gets pushed out? So this is the last part of my sermon. This is on how to fight greed. So I said this last week, but I want to just double down on it in case you missed it. Money is central and not incidental to your spiritual formation. You cannot be godly and growing in sanctification and really walking with Jesus and be bad at money. He will highlight this to you. Money is central, not incidental. Look at what Jesus says. Whoever can be trusted with little can be trusted with much and whoever is dishonest with very little will be dishonest with much. So if you've been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, if you've not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you've not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? No one can serve two masters, either you hate one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can't serve God in money and then this is what it says in the next verse, not shows on the screen. The Pharisees who loved money heard all this and sneered at Jesus. God wants to use our finances to form us. And this means we ask totally different questions rather than how much do I have to give. We ask questions like this. If I keep handling possessions like this for the next 10 or 20 years, what sort of character will I develop and what sort of person will I become? Will this lead to me becoming more or less like Jesus? So getting this vision of being formed in a way generous person out of a heart of greed is very important now. The church fathers tended to talk about two ways that we get greed out of our life. The first thing they talked about was warfare. The second thing was medicine. It says, you've got to go to war against greed and then you've got to treat it with medicines. So let's talk about war against greed. To warfare in its simplest essence is living in the opposite spirit of something. So we can sometimes make it too complicated, binding and losing and listen, just live in the opposite spirit of whatever is ungodly. I think the Catholics have known this, that's why they take the vows, the Trinity of evil sex money power and so what's their response? It's like a poverty, it's servanthood obedience, it's chastity, they're just like they're trying to war against what it is. I think that may be going to touch too far and not accessible for the majority of people. So I'm just going to stick with servanthood and generosity and faithfulness in your sexuality, but that is still pushing back and fighting against this. So warfare, number one, financial repentance. Repentance looks like something. Repentance isn't just an idea in your mind. It's embodied and shows up in our life. Look what happened with Zakias. Zakias is a chief tax collector and Jesus says I want to come to your house today and he says he stands up and says to the Lord, so no one tells him, this is his instinct upon encountering Jesus. Look Lord, here and now I give half my possessions to the poor and if I've cheated anybody out of anything, I'll pay back four times the amount. And Jesus says, no, you don't need to do that man. Repentance is about the state of your heart, you're good, just don't be greedy and keep it all. Now he's like today, Salvation's Company, this man's house, this man, Tuesday, son of Abraham. So I just want to say this. If you've made money illegally, there should be some sort of financial repentance. If you're sitting on money and you have an uneasy conscious on it, you should do something about that. Here's, I can't tell you what to do, but here's what, here's my recommendation. Find a nonprofit you love and make a huge anonymous donation to it. Don't put your name on it so you get credit and all that's just like, do something before the Lord that says, I want to break free from this. Okay? Number two, radical class distinction. I don't think Christians, for the most part, should be poor. In fact, I think part of the church's role is to alleviate and help the poor. I believe that God blesses people with the ability to make money. Romans 12 says you have the gift of giving, give generously, it's an assumption that you have got something to give. But I do believe this, if God calls you to be a millionaire, a billionaire, or a kid struggling with college debt, wherever you are on the spectrum, there should be something about whatever class you find yourself in that makes people that don't know Jesus go, why do you give like that? There should be something about that. Again, I touched on this last week, but I'd like to bring clip statement back. Look at what he says. I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, et cetera, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we're probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. This is where you can't really judge someone. You may look at someone and think, how could they? But you don't know what their friends are doing. They may be a sign and a wonder amongst their economic class. So it's not up to you to judge other people. One could, then, force has judged nothing before the appointed time. And so you can't walk around telling people how to live before the Lord. But then you can't get greedy yourself and think, well, here's what it is. There should be things, no matter how much money you have, that you say we cannot do that because we're giving. Radical class distinction is a freeing vision, regardless of how much God has blessed you with. Next one, financial transparency. Is there anybody outside of your family that knows how much you make and how much you give? Do you imagine that? Imagine that others had access to your financial records, spending habits, investment, portfolios, savings, checkbook, registers, credit card bills, tax returns receipts, cash flow, and giving. They know nothing about you. What sort of judgments would they make about your character, what you love, what you value, what you see as excess, where you see the deficiencies, what your ideals, and how you view yourself. Do you have the courage to do that? Every year I talk with my best mate about how much money I make. Every year it's like, it's checking in, bro, what you don't know what's up. You get confirmation bias in your own family, everything's hard, like you get that. We need everything. You need some outside perspective to sort of orient you. How about this one? Giving and sharing. There's something powerful and sharing. If we forget about this, in Acts chapter 4 it talks about what the grace of God can do. Here's what it says. And the grace of God was so powerfully at work amongst them. What's the next statement? Anyone know? None of them considered any of their possessions their own. Grace was so powerful, it did what communism could not do by force. We need people care about others and want to share everything they had. And the phrase is so that there was no needy person among them. Can you imagine that just being in a room you're like, what do you need? And it was like, bro, I got you and everybody had what they needed? That's what grace does. And so this is a form of warfare. The grace of God has to war against selfishness in the heart. But then we also need medicine. We need a treatment, we need to get a war, but then we need to treat it with some medicine. First one's gratitude. Researchers tell us that you cannot be grateful and anxious in your mind at the same time. Gratitude, that's why everybody in the world is talking about gratitude. You know, if you do a gratitude journal, if you do it every day in 10 weeks, you'll be 20% happier and that doesn't have anything to do with Jesus, that's just like how powerful gratitude is. We take life agrarna, don't we? We are like this rich fool. We think we have forever. I grew up and people would say in church all the time, look, aren't you grateful you've got growth in your lungs this morning and I was like, you got to do better than that. Those one-liners do not work on me. But I had friends die two of them in December. And this week, a friend of mine has cancer and he's got little kids and it's heavy. And I was like, you know what, man? Maybe there's something about having another day. We could go to the hospital around the corner here and we could ask people who are on their deathbed, what would you exchange for another week with someone you love and they'd say, through everything I own, like we lose perspective, our lives are a mystery of vapor. We should be grateful for the gifts that are in our lives. We should slowly cultivate gratitude for what has been given to us. Next, it's similar, but it's a little more intentional, like this word, savoring. You ever had a dessert, you're eating a meal and you're so distracted, you're like, where do my dessert go? And it's like, homeboy, you just ate it. You've even tasted, how many of you this past week ate a meal, at work, stressed out and it was gone and you've sort of forgot what you ate. Not even present. Let me savor that, let me, let me savor that, close your eyes, taste the flavors. I do this every morning when I have my chemics. I've got a coffee subscription, you know, like all the followers of the Lord Jesus. Christ. I have us. And from Madcap Coffee, it's actually a gift from Pastor Lee Cummings in Michigan. And I just bless him in the name of Jesus right now. It sends me two pounds a month. And I honestly, I sit there and I'm just like, "What notes can I taste here?" Oh, is that? Oh, I taste like a light caramel. I'm tasting bitter orange. I mean, I just let it wash over me. And we've got to learn to save for the goodness of God. We're so busy. Time exists. So we don't experience everything all at once. We space it out. Be grateful. Mark these moments. Save for what God's given us. Isn't it amazing? Like, when you're singing, you're like, "I just want to date someone." When you date someone, it's like, "I just want to get engaged." You're getting engaged. Like, "I just want to get married." You're getting engaged. "I just want to have you to have the kids." You're just like, "I just want the kids to grow up and drive me crazy." They're graphing you like, "I want to be an empty nest and an empty nest." And then next thing you know, you're like, "Gosh, where do the kids go? Where do my life go?" We just always want to be in the next season, never present, learning to save her. And then lastly, I think this one, it's obvious, but the power of contentment, Paul called this the secret. Christians have conquered the world through the gift of contentment. Richard Foster wrote a wonderful book called The Freedom of Simplicity. I hardly commend this book to you. He's got some really good ideas on contentment. He talks about the idea of capping your lifestyle. He says, "You make a certain amount. You just choose everything over this. We're giving it away." So, in advance, you think about the causes and things God's put on your heart and anything over a certain amount. You give away. The problem in New York is like, "Yes, as soon as I make 1.4 Mill, I'll give it every Lord. I'll give everything over it." No, you've got to learn to be generous now. But he's got all these contrarian ideas on being content. One of them is like by expensive things and look after them for long periods of time, rather than buying cheap consumer goods you can nothing for. Here's a little list of some of the things he talks about. By things for their youthfulness, rather than their status, Honda Pilot, reject anything that is producing an addiction in you. Reject anything, producing an addiction in you. Develop a habit of giving things away. Refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry. Learn to enjoy things without owning them. Develop a deeper appreciation for the creation. Look with healthy skepticism at all. Buy now. Pay later schemes. Obey Jesus' instructions about playing on a speech, particularly in how you make money. Reject anything that breeds the oppression of others. Shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the kingdom of God. You know what you get? This is not because things are bad. This is so you can be truly free and experience the life that is truly life. Jesus is not trying to oppress you. Jesus is trying to liberate you. Jesus wants you to have a free heart. He wants you to walk around. Listen, I'm an old school penicoster. Let me tell you all the teaching I money I got when I was young. You ready? If God can get it through you, God can get it to you. That'll preach. He'll provide. How about this classic? God's will. God's bill. I've been living on that for 30 years. God, you're up. This is your church. Not mine. You're up. Your will. Your bill. It's just a contentment. It's a trust because here's the thing. A lot of the time are great. We have a terrifying fear in here's what it is. He's not going to provide. I can't trust the nature of my Father. I can't trust his heart. He's not good. He doesn't have me. There's no everlasting arms underneath me. I got to do this myself and that Satan's great plan is to put you in a place of striving and laboring independently of God and God's hardest to say work with me. Work with me. Seek first, everything you need will be given to you. Your Father knows what you need before you ask. Be content. Trust me. He wants you to be free. He wants you to have a true wealth. You know the rich young ruler remember him from last week. You know what it says when he walks away with an idol and he's hardy won't give up. It doesn't say and Jesus was angry with him. You know what it says? Jesus was sad for him. And that's Jesus heart really. He doesn't look at people how you wicked. He's like man I'm so sorry for you. I'm so grieved for you. I'm saddened how hard you work for what doesn't matter. I'm sad for how insecure it must be to put all your hope in things that are so uncertain. I'm sorry that your relationships are thinning you and neglecting those that love you much so you can have a bunch more possessions and work out. I'm sorry for your relationships. And so Jesus invited him to have true wealth and he invites you to have true wealth. Don't store up for yourselves. Treasures on earth. We're moths and vermin destroy with the markets insecure where it's going up and down where things change all the time. Store up for yourself treasures in heaven. We're moths and vermin don't destroy where thieves don't break in and steal where your treasure is. They are hard. So here's what God says. He's inviting you to store up. I think Randy Fraser calls this. You can't take it with you but you can send it ahead. You can get ahead of this thing. I love that vision rich towards God and rich towards others. So how's your heart tonight? You're good. You feel greed. Have its hands around you. A throat choking out the life of God in you. Would you feel free? Oh breathing deeply of the grace of God in a liberated heart. I'm going to take contentment is infectious. You find someone who's content. You're like, what do you have? And he's like, this man, I'm onto something here. So I just I want to invite you to get liberated from the spirit of greed tonight and find freedom in Jesus. Maybe you're here and you're wrestling with fear. I can't trust him. He's not going to come through. It's all up to me. Maybe you've got family baggage pressure from your family. I immigrated to this country. You better pay me back. You better be a winner. You need to get cashed out. You feel this pressure on your life to pay people back. Listen, in your heart, God wants you to be free. So can I just say if you need to be delivered from fear tonight? Do you want, would anyone want to get delivered from a spirit of fear and their finances to not be free? Anybody want to get delivered from a spirit of greed and maman is choking out the work of God in their life. Anybody want to be delivered from financial anxiety and relying on human markets and not trusting in the economy of God. We need a generation in New Yorkers not controlled by the fears of regular New York and dominated by the spirit of maman. And if we could get a couple hundred of those, let loose in a city like this, they could really be sold at light. So, I want to invite you to stand to your feet. We're going to respond tonight. So if you've got any fear in your heart about finances, honestly, I just don't trust God's going to provide for me. Like, I know in my mind he should, but I struggle in my heart to surrender to him. I'd love to be able to pray for you. If you've got greed in your heart and it's got a grip on you and you don't know how to get it out, man, you just feel enslaved to it. You don't know how to get it out. And you need deliverance from a spirit of greed tonight. And maybe you're here and you're like, I'm actually doing good. I just want to pray that God will bless me to be more generous. Like I say, I want to ask, I feel like my heart's in a good spot. And I want to pray for favor to be generous. And I'd love to be able to pray for you. So if any prayer for anything, everyone head out, would you just put your hands out in front of you if any of those things feels particularly relevant for you? And we're just going to invite the Holy Spirit to come and to move amongst us. Holy Spirit, we just want to invite your presence to come now in the name of Jesus. And I pray that you would search every heart here, Lord. And you would expose, make us aware of all of our relationship to money and stuff. Lord, how our parents raised us all their wisdom, all their foolishness, all their pressure, all the things we've been told. Lord, we just bring all of this before you and invite you into it. Lord, we invite you into our college debt. We invite you into credit card debt. Lord, we invite you to pressure in our jobs. Lord, we invite you to fear of being overlooked for promotions. Lord, we invite you into disappointing our parents because we're not doing the vocation that they moved to this country for us to do and they're disappointed with us. Lord, we just invite you to every area of our lives. It's connected to money and stuff. And Jesus, we say, we want you to be Lord of every area of our lives, Lord of our bank accounts, Lord of our investments, Lord of our savings, Lord of our debt, Lord, we just hand this over to you and we pray and surrender these things to you. And Lord, we just renounce right now a spirit of fear. If you're struggling with fear, just say that right now. I renounce a spirit of fear that has controlled my life. If you struggle with guilt and pressure, just say, I renounce ungodly pressure that does not come from the Lord. Maybe it's greed, just say, I renounce a spirit of mammon, I renounce a spirit of greed that seeks to control my life and rob me of kingdom fruit. Lord, we just turn away from these things in repentance. We surrender these things to you. And now in its place, Lord, we receive freedom. So if you feel like you're in bondage, just say right now, Holy Spirit, I receive freedom. I receive deliverance from mammon. I receive your power in my heart and in my life. I receive grace. I receive peace where there was pressure. I receive abundance where there was anxiety. I receive your favor where there was fear in my life, Lord God. I just open my heart and I invite you in. And Lord, I take you at your word that you say, if I seek first your kingdom, everything I need will be added. Lord, rightly order my heart. Shape my imagination. Help me to trust you, Lord. I want to live a life that's worthy of you that pleases you. So Father, we just thank you that you are committed to shaping us into the image of Jesus in every area of our lives. And we give ourselves a overview of you with fresh surrender tonight. We pray this in Jesus' name, mammon.