The story of Hans the tailor is often told. He had quite a good reputation. He could design a suit to fit any body shape, no matter how disproportionate and imbalanced the person was. And so when an influential entrepreneur in a certain city needed a new suit he naturally went to Hans, requesting that his suit be tailor-made.
But the next week when he came to pick it up, the customer found that one sleeve was twisted this way and the other that way. The result was that one shoulder bulged out and the other caved in. The customer pulled and struggled until finally, wrenched and contorted, he managed to make his body fit the strange configuration of the suit. Not wanting to cause a scene he thanked the tailor, paid his money, and caught the bus for home.
A passenger on the bus, after surveying the businessman's odd appearance for some time, finally asked if Hans the tailor had made the suit. Receiving an affirmative reply he remarked, "Amazing! I knew that Hans was a good tailor, but I had no idea he could make a suit to fit perfectly someone as deformed as you."
The story of Hans the tailor is a kind of parable about our lives. It would seem that so many of us today have squeezed ourselves into a mold, or suit, that is utterly incompatible with the kind of life God created us to enjoy. We have squeezed ourselves into lifestyles that have left us all knotted and twisted up, contorted and uncomfortable and dissatisfied.
Our culture has a preoccupation with material things.
Quite specifically I am talking about our preoccupation with material things. We have so fixed our affections, thoughts, and energies on attaining the finest things this world has to offer, that we find ourselves inescapably shackled. We are quickly discovering that the lifestyle of consumption doesn't fit us as well as others have led us to believe it would.
Frank Minirth, Paul Meier, and Frank Arterburn, co-founders of the Minirth-Meier New Life Clinics, one of the largest mental health care providers in the United States, have detected a lifestyle trend throughout America. They say, "Most Americans live to spend. They organize their lives and careers around acquiring material possessions, creature comforts, and status symbols." They note that most of our discretionary spending goes toward luxuries and toys. And boy, do we adults ever have our toys! We have everything from computers, video equipment, and porting equipment to four-wheel-drive vehicles and powerboats. Yet with all this spending, people are as dissatisfied and unhappy as ever!
One of the most animated politicians to have taken the stage in recent years is Ross Perot. In Fortune Magazine billionaire Ross Perot had this to say. "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 base 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."
The promise of consumerism, happiness, has never materialized.
But back to Frank Minirth and Paul Meier of the New Life Clinic. They wrote a book titled We are Driven: The Compulsive Behaviors America Applauds. In that book they point out that materialism is an addiction that America applauds. We praise the person who is driven by materialism for pursuing the American dream. We buy millions of books, tapes, and videos that exalt the pursuit of wealth. We flock to financial seminars, workshops, and rallies that inflame our materialistic tendencies, and we give loud ovations to motivational speakers who specialize in the dream of wealth. We soak up hundreds of hours of media messages, messages that pressure us to pursue a higher standard of living, a standard of living that few, if any, of us will ever attain to. We mount up thousands of dollars of debt by spending more than we make, trying to achieve the standard of living that we have been led to believe is our right.
It is as if the end justifies the means. No cost is too great to pursue the goal of materialism, including isolation from family and friends, time away from one's spouse and children, extreme loneliness, mounting debt, sleepless nights, low involvement at church, an evaporating spiritual life, lack of exercise, and detachment from the needs of others. No cost is too great in the pursuit of materialism. In some cases we'll let a complete stranger raise our children just to support a lifestyle that is far beyond our means.
Too often we are willing to pay any price in order to achieve more and more. We'll forgo our spiritual development. We'll neglect our families. We'll abandon Christ's Church. We'll compromise our responsibilities.
Materialism, the mindless quest for more and more, is the one addiction America applauds.
Many of us here today are addicted to things in the worst possible way. Some of us have blurred the lines between our needs and our wants to the degree that we desperately crave anything and everything that tempts us. Many of us are living far beyond our means. We are proof of the adage that when a person's outgo exceeds his income, then his upkeep will be his downfall. For many of us, our buying habits are undisciplined. Our desires are restrained neither by common sense, income, or anything else. Some of us simply will not be held back from having whatever we want. We are at the mercy of our impulses. It is simply too easy to charge what we want on credit cards, indulging our desires immediately, with no need to pay until later.
In many cases we have had well-intentioned parents who wanted to give us all the things they never had. Few parents today are teaching their children that it is right, even normal, to do without the things they really want.
When I was in grade school my friends seemed to get everything they wanted. They always had the glistening white one hundred dollar Nike tennis shoes. They had snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, television and ATARI. They had name brand clothing. From my perspective they seemed to have it all. I, on the other hand, had a paper route. If I wanted one hundred dollar Nike tennis shoes, or name brand clothing, or a Nintendo, my parents told me to work and save for it. I got used to the idea of not getting everything I wanted. It wasn't so bad! My friends on the other hand, never learned that lesson, and they were never happy. They'd pout, they'd manipulate, they'd get angry, they'd obey their parents so long as the freebies were there, and they became spoiled brats. They never learned to seek fulfillment in anything except materialism. For the sake of our lives, the chains of materialism have to be broken.
Now as we turn to Matthew 6, Jesus dares us to set aside the old, enslaving garment of materialism to instead put on a new suit. This is a suit that fits us naturally and allows us to move about freely. This is a suit that allows us to become everything God intended us to become. In Matthew 6 Jesus touches on three areas of our lives where we need to experience freedom from materialism.
We need to be freed from an enslaved heart.
In Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV) Jesus says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, when moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
This last week, not unlike many weeks, the stock market took a pretty rough ride. The mounting tensions and violence in Israel, the low oil supplies, high gas prices, the cowardly terrorist attacks on an American destroyer, and the fallout between Ford Motor company and Bridgestone/Firestone all worked together to make the stock market unstable. All of this and more sent the market on a roller coaster ride. This week many investors were taught about the instability of investments in what many say is the strongest economy the world has ever known!
Jesus has been warning us about the instability of earthly treasures for centuries. The threat of moths and rust and thieves continually threaten our earthly treasures. In Jesus' day, author John Stott points out that, "moths would get into people's clothes, rats and mice would eat stored grain, worms would take whatever they put under ground, and thieves would continually break into peoples' homes and take whatever they kept there. Virtually nothing was safe in the ancient world." And for us modern folk, things aren't that much different. Today we protect our treasures with insecticides, rat poison, mouse-traps, rustproof paints, burglar alarms, insurance policies, you name it. Even though we manage to preserve some of it through this life, we take none of it with us beyond the grave.
Matthew 6:19-21 is really a warning about earthly treasure. Jesus acknowledges that all of our earthly investments in time will surely be lost. The work of our hands, our treasure, will all fade like the words on our gravestone. Jesus also acknowledges that our hearts will follow, like a tail on a dog, that which we treasure. "...where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Jesus is not telling us all this stuff to depress us. He is telling us so that we will start investing in something worthwhile, in heavenly treasures. Heavenly treasures are the securest investments we could ever make. Our heavenly treasures will never disappoint us because they are under God's care. Most importantly, storing up heavenly treasures is a eternal life insurance policy. If you're storing up heavenly treasures, you can be sure your heart is in right place.
Jesus dares us to free our hearts from an attachment to earthly treasures by investing in heavenly treasures. Heavenlytreasures will stand up forall of eternity.
We need to be freed from an enslaved mind.
In Matthew 6:22-23 (NIV) Jesus says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"
Warren Wiersbe says that God often uses the word "eye" to represent the attitudes of our minds. He says that, "if the eye is properly focused on the light, the body can function properly in its movements. But if the eye is out of focus and seeing doubt, it results in unsteady movements." If our aim in life is to get material gain, it will mean darkness within. But if our aim in life is to glorify God, it will mean light and joy and peace.
In a commencement speech given on May 15, 2000 at Emerson College in Boston, multi-billionaire Ted Turner talked about success. This is what he said. "Success is all relative. I sit down and say, 'I've only got ten billion, but Bill Gates has one hundred billion. I feel like I am a complete failure in life.' So billions won't make you happy if you're worried about someone who's got more than you, so don't let yourself get caught in the trap of measuring your success by how much material success you have."
Even Ted Turner understands the importance of a right mental focus. A mind enslaved to materialism will feel like a failure, no matter how much it has. A mind enslaved to materialism will never have enough. It will constantly worry and it will be filled with envy, malice, idolatry, covetousness, and other evils. It will always crave more and more, while at the same time growing less and less fulfilled.
There is no darkness as dark as empty materialism. Jesus offers us an invitation to free our minds from the darkness of materialism and to instead focus on the light of his kingdom. In Colossians 3:1-3 (NIV) Paul says, "Since, then, you have raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."
Why drag our minds through the muck and mire of this earth, focusing on what we don't have, when we could instead focus our hearts toward heaven, focusing on all that God has given us in Christ Jesus? Materialism makes us forget about everything God's given us in Christ.
We need to be freed from an enslaved body.
In Matthew 6:24 (NIV)Jesus says, "No one can serve two masters. 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 both God and Money."
Last week I was reading about a tribe of people in Africa that had a unique way of asking each other who their God was. They would ask each other, "Who do you serve? Who do you serve?" So let me ask, who is your God? Who do you serve? Jesus says that no one can serve two masters. We cannot serve both God and money. We cannot be a slave to our materialistic desires and at the same time claim to be a slave of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Think about all the ways serving our material desires short-circuits our service to God. God wants marriages to be strong, but we get so caught up in working to get ahead that we can barely find time to just love our spouses. God wants parents to raise their kids in the faith, but our obsession with the American dream leaves them home alone at night, without spiritual guidance. God wants us to take care of the needs of the poor and elderly and downtrodden, but we have become so tight-fisted with our money that we struggle to share it, even with our family members who may be in need. God wants us to build his Church and reach the world for Christ, but so often we wait on someone else to fund the mission of the Church, all the while reasoning, "I can't afford to give to God right now."
There is an old adage that says, "When a person's outgo exceeds his income, then his upkeep will be his downfall." God doesn't want us to be so consumed with the upkeep of our "stuff" that we fail to make a substantive contribution to his kingdom through service. God created us with one intention in mind. We were created to serve our creator. God did not create us to serve the created order or the material things of this world.
God's will is that we free our hearts, minds, and bodies from an attachment to material things and instead live as kingdom citizens who have heavenly treasures. It's time for us to trade in our old enslaving garments of materialism. Instead we need to take on the garments God has prepared for us, garments that give us the freedom and maneuverability to become all God intended for us to become.
There is a story about a two bounty hunters named Sam and Jed who sought to get rich quickly by capturing live wolves valued at five thousand dollars each. Day and night they scoured the mountains and forests looking for their valuable prey. Exhausted one night, they fell asleep dreaming of their potential fortune. Suddenly, Sam awoke to see that they were surrounded by about fifty wolves, each with flaming eyes and bared teeth. Sam enthusiastically nudged his friend, "Jed, wake up! We're rich!!"
Friends, we can gain all the riches of earth and not be any better off in death. Do not fail to invest in your eternal destiny while you still have opportunity.