Simplicity of a Carefree Life

Welcome to the retreat. The goal of this retreat is twofold – give you guys some much needed retreating away from the busyness of life; secondly, to give you a chance to envision a better you. This sermon is entitled: The Simplicity of the Carefree Life. This is where we start our journey of reflection, by looking at our past lives and then moving forward, toward a trajectory aimed for where we were created to be. Let’s start. Matthew 6:19-24.

19?“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.

22?“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! 24?“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.

The life of discipleship can only be maintained so long as nothing is allowed to come between Christ and ourselves—neither the law, nor personal piety, nor even the world. The disciple always looks only to his master, never to Christ and the law, Christ and religion, Christ and the world. He avoids all such notions like the plague. Only by following Christ alone can he preserve a single eye.

V19 – worldly possessions tend to turn the hearts of the disciples away from Jesus, begging the question: what are we really devoted to? Are our hearts set on earthly goods? Or are we trying to combine devotion to both earthly goods and loyalty with Christ? [I just skipped verse 20 and 21 and I’ll get back to it].

V22 – this is a parallel that Jesus is making with verse 19. He’s saying that we tend to see what we want. If what we want is good, then we’ll make the decisions necessary for that good. However, if what we see and want is bad, then we’ll make those decisions accordingly as well. In reality, what we want could seem good, but it has a shelf life. The shelf life is determined by how moth and rust destroy that potentially ideal and good thing that we see.

What I’m saying is that what we see, if it is earthly is a fleeting feeling. There is nothing there that will be more than garbage a few days, months or years later. So people get choked up with the cares, riches and pleasures of this life for the fleeting moments of now without having seen the longevity of things and that’s because our eyes aren’t healthy and are dim. The conclusion then must be this: EARTHLY GOODS ARE GIVEN TO BE USED, NOT TO BE COLLECTED.

V21 – let’s go back to verse 21 which says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Let me translate that statement. Explicitly put, Matthew is saying, “where our treasure is, there is our trust, our security, our consolation and our God.” So hoarding anything is idolatry. (I’m not arguing for frivolously spending your money and not saving).

I’m asking you today, over the past year, where do we draw the line between legitimate use and unlawful accumulation of our stuff? I understand that our treasure may be small and inconspicuous, but its size is immaterial because it really all depends on our hearts. Where is your heart? I know this is something none of us, or very few of us want to think about, so I’m going to lay it down for you. Everything hindering us from loving God above all things and acts as a barrier between ourselves and our obedience to Jesus is our treasure and the place where our heart is.

 V20 – Now, I want to step back one verse further. [If you didn’t notice what we’re doing here, let me explain how we’re deconstructing this statement of Jesus for the purposes of our edification and application]. Jesus says, “make the treasures in heaven what you see.” He isn’t saying that the one great treasure of himself; but the literal sense of the word “treasures” with an “s” is what we should be aiming to accumulate. He says that it is these “treasures” that are not corruptible and/or fleeting.

This is what we’re aiming to find here at this retreat. These are things that we’re looking to see going on into 2014. I want to make it extremely clear that there are treasures that we shall accumulate by focusing our eyes and seeing these things of heaven. Before I get into my understanding of these treasures, let’s go to verse 24 because we’re going to hit back on this subject soon after.

V24 – “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other…” Our hearts only have room for only one (1) all-embracing devotion and we can only cleave to one Lord. Every other competitor must be hated. There is no alternative—we either love God or hate him. We can’t love both because they are dichotomous. Trying to love both by loving both world and God always results in hating God.

I wanted to say this, not as a hardliner for conservativism or religiousity because I stated earlier that people enslave themselves to religion and that fights with Christ in our eyes and hearts as well. I say this because Jesus says it to point out the complexity that our lives are actually mixed within. Plainly put, this is something all of us wrestle with, which probably causes anxiety (the opposite of carefree) and if we aren’t anxious, we’re just really too dull to realize that this is an issue all living, breathing people must deal with intentionally or we’re looking at the wrong things! Let’s go to verse 25.

25?“Therefore I tell you,?do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26?Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.?Are you not of more value than they??27?And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his?span of life??28?And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29?yet I tell you,?even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.?30?But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you,?O you of little faith? 31?Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’?32?For?the Gentiles seek after all these things, and?your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.?33?But?seek first?the kingdom of God and his righteousness,?and all these things will be added to you. 34?“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. [Read verses 25-32 straight, then stop].

Jesus tells us to be carefree in verse 25. Then he gives us reasons why we should be carefree in verses 26 through 29. Then he mocks anybody who worries about the necessities of life as having “little faith.” Jesus was sarcastic before sarcasm was a thing. Then he flips that sarcasm into a challenge for those of us who thing we are “faithful enough” as not to be anxious. But nobody in their right mind is THAT faithful, as not to worry about anything in a carefree life. Therefore the conclusion of all this is that even caring not to care is a form of anxiety and therefore a failure of faith. – Truly a no win situation. I love the situation that places us in. It’s an existential dilemma if an atheist can understand one.

V34 – “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” I want to go to this statement because it is the key to unlocking a simplicity of carefree living in our lives.

V32 – “God knows you need all these things.” What a statement, after throwing us into a loop saying that we can’t even pretend not to worry; Jesus says that he knows you worry so our lives will never actually be carefree. Let’s go to verse 33.

V33 – “But?seek first?the kingdom of God and his righteousness,?and all these things will be added to you.” Anxiety for food and clothing is clearly not the same thing as anxiety for the kingdom of God, which is also where your treasures are.

Isn’t Jesus just diverting our anxiety to something bigger than ourselves? He demands that we be bigger than what we are now, if what we are now is nothing more than a bunch of fleeting things with no effect anywhere but with our own selves.

None of us have families so you won’t make an argument like this, but I know that you will try to make this argument of if we focus on ourselves, we are taking care of our friends and houses are built in the kingdom of heaven because it is through our worldly cares that the kingdom of God is realized. But that’s a silly notion the more you think about it, so stop thinking about it.

Taking us back to our original thought of laying up treasures in heaven for our lives, we must think about two things now because we have to make a logical connection between where exactly is heaven, according to Jesus’ statement—you can’t seek first a kingdom if it’s nothing more than a pie in the sky; and moreover, what are these treasures that we should be storing for and how do we get them?

I want to say that based on Jesus’ statement heaven is here and now as well as later because that’s the only way we can seek it first. If it were any other way, Jesus would have told us to seek it later. But he makes it an action now. So heaven is here and now. The treasures in heaven, because the kingdom of God is here and now must also be something tangible and not some fruity religious motif. As such, this is our anxiety. The simplicity of our lives comes when we are searching for these treasures and that is the only thing we see in a mad-blind pursuit. If this was the only thing we would chase, how simple and carefree would our lives be? We would only have to find satisfaction searching for these treasures in life and life would be so much more simple than trying to serve two masters.

[you should consider this in your groups later tonight, I want you all to read Matt 5:1-12 and understand what the word, “bless” means—then ask yourselves what treasures should you be looking for in 2014 and make a plan on how to obtain them].

Let’s sing this song. I want to take some time right now to pray individually about how we can make our lives simpler, how we can live more carefree. If you haven’t prayed in a long time, this might be the time you start praying.