Breaking the Spirit of Mammon | The Blessed Life: Week 4

00:00:00

Welcome to Crossroads.

00:00:01

My name is Lena Schuler, I'm the Crossroads Anywhere Community Pastor.

00:00:05

We're so glad to have you as part of our church today

00:00:08

from anywhere you might be joining us from.

00:00:10

We're in a series right now called The Blessed Life.

00:00:13

And I have just been so blessed by this series.

00:00:17

I've really been energized by it.

00:00:19

And I hope that you have been too.

00:00:22

And today is actually a really special day for our church

00:00:25

because we have baptisms happening in all of our locations

00:00:28

and across many of our communities in the country.

00:00:31

People who have decided to publicly declare their faith in Jesus.

00:00:34

And so more of that to come and a little bit.

00:00:37

We'll hear more context for that.

00:00:39

And we'll actually get to see people who are being baptized in one of our locations today.

00:00:45

If you would like to be baptized,

00:00:46

you can chat with us on the Crossroads Web site, Crossroads.net.

00:00:50

And we would love to get you connected to other people near you

00:00:54

in order for you to be baptized.

00:00:56

Right now, we're going to spend some time worshipping together.

00:00:59

So why don't you turn the volume up and sing with us as we worship.

00:05:06

Well, we're going to do something special this weekend

00:05:08

at all of our different sites and all the services.

00:05:11

We're having people get baptized.

00:05:13

Yeah.

00:05:14

What does that mean?

00:05:15

A major theme throughout the entire Bible

00:05:18

we're going to talk about a little bit later

00:05:19

is the theme of freedom, going from bondage into freedom,

00:05:23

going from slavery and going into life.

00:05:27

And baptism recognizes that all of us by nature

00:05:31

are enslaved to our own lust, our own passions, our own sin.

00:05:34

And Jesus is the one who sets us free.

00:05:37

Jesus goes up on the Cross and He dies for all of my sins,

00:05:40

are transferred to his account while He's on a Cross.

00:05:43

And all of His righteousness is transferred to my account

00:05:46

or your account whenever you receive Him.

00:05:48

And so someone gets baptized when they have received Christ

00:05:52

and they go into what's known as a watery grave,

00:05:55

just as Jesus was placed in a grave

00:05:57

and then came back with power three days later.

00:06:00

So too, we go voluntarily inside the watery grave

00:06:04

and we come back out.

00:06:05

We come out with a new sense of power.

00:06:08

This is what baptism is.

00:06:10

This is what's happening in all the lives that you're going to see today.

00:06:13

And we're gonna hear one story of a woman who was,

00:06:16

gosh, who just four weeks ago,

00:06:17

like zero church engagement or God engagement at all.

00:06:20

And just happened to pop in a Crossroads.

00:06:23

Let's listen to her story.

00:06:27

- My husband and I have spotted Crossroads Eastgate.

00:06:30

And I asked him if he would like to check it out with me.

00:06:34

It really surprised him because I've never asked to go to church.

00:06:38

I don't know what is that drew me there.

00:06:40

I have to say it was Jesus.

00:06:44

Like, I have a crazy need to be there and I have no idea why.

00:06:48

So we went the following Saturday to our first service

00:06:51

and that was a communion service.

00:06:54

The communion was completely bizarre, totally foreign and awkward.

00:06:58

Awkward and wonderful all at the same time.

00:07:02

I mean, there were so many emotions, like so many emotions

00:07:06

I think because I've been so bad and I have so much sin

00:07:12

and I didn't live my life right at all,

00:07:14

I feel like I was really releasing a lot of sin and a lot of sorrow.

00:07:23

That was that was the moment that made me want to come back for more.

00:07:29

It just blew my mind that it was really lifted up off me

00:07:34

because I didn't think that was possible.

00:07:37

I want to get baptized because I think it will be a amazing start

00:07:43

to acceptance I'll find in myself will be something

00:07:46

I can't even comprehend right now.

00:07:48

That God I was so scared of is the one that sets me free.

00:07:52

What?

00:07:53

I want more of that knowledge and freedom of walking with Jesus.

00:07:58

I mean I couldn't ask for anything better than that.

00:08:00

You know?

00:14:07

- As a church, we believe that we are meant to care for people in need.

00:14:12

We believe that part of being a representation of Jesus

00:14:17

means that we are a blessing to our local communities,

00:14:20

to families and individuals and organizations right near us.

00:14:24

And so this is going to be the 24th year that as a church

00:14:28

we've participated in the Thanksgiving food drive.

00:14:31

And so if that's something you want to do,

00:14:33

if you recognize, man, God has blessed me

00:14:36

and I want to be a blessing to other people

00:14:38

in the midst of this holiday season,

00:14:40

we would love for you to participate in the Thanksgiving food drive.

00:14:44

If you live near a Crossroads location,

00:14:46

you can head to one of those locations and pick up a box and a list

00:14:51

and do the Thanksgiving food drive with your local community.

00:14:54

And if you don't live near Crossroads location,

00:14:57

then you can still participate in the Thanksgiving food drive.

00:14:59

It's actually really simple.

00:15:01

First you pick an organization or a family

00:15:05

that needs a Thanksgiving meal this year.

00:15:07

Second, you contact them and say, "I'd like to give you a meal."

00:15:12

Third, you buy a box.

00:15:14

Fourth, you fill the box with a list of foods

00:15:18

that we actually have for you on the Crossroads Web site.

00:15:21

And then fifth, you actually get to deliver that box to them

00:15:25

so that they get to have a fantastic Thanksgiving experience

00:15:30

around a table with great food and friends and family.

00:15:34

And so we would love to have you as part of this.

00:15:37

There will be over 14,000 families around the country

00:15:41

that will get to partake in a better Thanksgiving experience

00:15:46

because of generous and loving people

00:15:48

that are part of the Crossroads community.

00:15:50

And you could be one of those people.

00:15:51

So we'd love to help you do this and celebrate that you're doing this.

00:15:55

And so you can click on the chat button on the Crossroads Web site

00:15:58

and we'll get you started in the Thanksgiving food drive.

00:16:02

And, you know, one of the other things that we do as a church is we go.

00:16:07

And I want you to get to experience another culture,

00:16:10

another group of people, and go on an adventure.

00:16:24

- A Go Trip is about going.

00:16:29

Going outside your comfort zone.

00:16:32

Going to a new place.

00:16:35

Going beyond normal.

00:16:37

Going where you want to go instead of where you've been.

00:16:42

Your normal life is getting you as far as you can go.

00:16:46

And where are you going right now?

00:16:47

You're going the way of normal.

00:16:50

If you want to go further than you are right now,

00:16:53

you have to go outside of what you're comfortable with.

00:16:57

That is the role of Go Trips, they're beyond normal.

00:17:02

They stretch you, they push you, they give you actual capacity.

00:17:07

Muscles you didn't have beforehand

00:17:10

that now can take your normal life beyond the normal

00:17:15

and you get to help people.

00:17:17

You get to take on actual physical problems

00:17:20

and make a difference in somebody else's life

00:17:23

and the trajectory of their family and their village.

00:17:27

People you encounter will be changed because you stepped out

00:17:31

and you went on a Go Trip.

00:17:34

Let's Go.

00:17:37

- You could go somewhere in 2020.

00:17:40

We have trips happening all over the world.

00:17:43

In Bolivia, South Africa, India, New Orleans and more.

00:17:48

You know, I came back from South Africa a few years ago different.

00:17:52

I came back a different person with all kinds of amazing memories

00:17:58

and just feeling more adventurous and closer to God.

00:18:02

And I want that for you.

00:18:03

And I want you to make new friends in the midst of this, too.

00:18:07

And so if you want to sign up for a Go Trip,

00:18:09

don't let money be the reason that you don't do this.

00:18:12

You would be surprised at how God shows up

00:18:16

and the ways that you might end up being blessed in the midst of this.

00:18:21

And if you're looking for a way to meet other people from your church,

00:18:25

you're looking for a way to involve your friends

00:18:27

in something that's part of the church.

00:18:29

A Go Trip might just be the right thing for you.

00:18:32

So you can head to Crossroads.net/go

00:18:35

to see all of the trips that are happening in 2020

00:18:38

and actually sign up to go somewhere.

00:18:41

As a team we go and as a team we give.

00:18:45

And if you are new to Crossroads,

00:18:47

you're just joining us on Crossroads Anywhere,

00:18:50

we are so glad to have you.

00:18:52

No pressure at all here.

00:18:54

But if you're part of the team and you want to give,

00:18:56

you can do that by heading to Crossroads.net/give.

00:19:00

And in the midst of this Blessed Life series,

00:19:02

we've been talking about how God blesses us.

00:19:05

Sometimes He blesses us financially

00:19:07

and other times He blesses us in completely different ways.

00:19:13

- From a young age, my mom taught me that tithing is just what you do.

00:19:18

You just take 10 percent off the top.

00:19:20

You tithe that and then 90 percent is yours.

00:19:24

And I was always doing that.

00:19:25

And it started to become kind of dry for me because

00:19:28

it was just something I did, it was just obedience thing.

00:19:31

And after doing that for some time,

00:19:34

we did the Obsessed Journey here at Crossroads.

00:19:36

And I believe it was March of 2018.

00:19:40

And the Obsessed Journey showed me,

00:19:44

"I don't know if I totally trust you with my money, God.

00:19:46

I'm doing this, you know, 10 percent.

00:19:48

It's cool.

00:19:49

I'll give it to you."

00:19:51

My dad has not been in my family for quite some time,

00:19:55

and seeing God as a father has been kind of a difficult thing for me.

00:19:59

After doing that journey, we had to open our finances

00:20:04

and kind of ask some type of questions within our small groups

00:20:06

and ask the Lord, "What is an uncomfortable amount

00:20:10

for me to start giving?"

00:20:12

God asked me for 20 percent gross.

00:20:16

I said, "How about 15?

00:20:20

How about 15?

00:20:21

Meet me in the middle and we'll just do 15."

00:20:26

God said, no, thanks.

00:20:28

He asked for 20 percent.

00:20:30

And so I just said, "That makes me uncomfortable."

00:20:34

But I said, OK.

00:20:36

I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

00:20:38

It didn't feel good in the beginning.

00:20:39

I lived paycheck to paycheck and I grew every single day.

00:20:44

I kind of started to trust God a lot more because

00:20:48

it wasn't just I'll trust Him in prayer.

00:20:51

It was I'm going to take action.

00:20:53

I'll trust Him with my money.

00:20:54

I'll put my money where my mouth is.

00:20:56

What I saw was that in the midst of God asking more of me,

00:21:02

I saw the Lord double what I was making in a year.

00:21:09

It was not one paycheck.

00:21:11

It was not all of a sudden.

00:21:14

It was just these incremental gains.

00:21:17

He used my relationships and my money in much more effective ways

00:21:23

than I could have ever thought to use them myself.

00:21:26

Whether it was a smaller car payment,

00:21:29

because I was able to refinance it or get a cheaper vehicle.

00:21:32

Whether it was moving into a place that was a little bit less expensive

00:21:36

and finding a roommate to share the place.

00:21:39

Bringing people into my life as coaches and mentors.

00:21:43

I've just seen God really come through.

00:21:45

And not just a finding a check on the ground kind of way,

00:21:49

winning the lottery kind of way, but a lot more practical,

00:21:53

a lot more day to day learning.

00:21:56

Finding people that can guide me and coach me in specific ways.

00:22:01

I've seen God really orchestrate my life

00:22:05

once I've started to be obedient.

00:22:07

Tithing for me was an entry point into the generous life,

00:22:13

that once I was kind of fulfilling the obligation of tithing

00:22:18

to give the 10 percent that it changed the way I looked at money,

00:22:23

that money lost its weight in only being a servant to myself.

00:22:29

And I've seen God come through as a good Father.

00:22:35

- I want to go relatively deep today.

00:22:38

Can we do that today?

00:22:39

Can we do that?

00:22:41

It doesn't matter if you want to or not?

00:22:42

I'm going to do it anyway.

00:22:44

I'm going to give us a big, big little macro over the whole Bible.

00:22:47

A macro thing of the message of the Bible,

00:22:51

which is about us being in slavery

00:22:53

and then us being free.

00:22:55

Or us being oppressed and then us having liberty.

00:23:00

This is a theme that goes throughout the whole Bible,

00:23:02

Old Testament and New Testament.

00:23:05

And it's a theme that's regularly understood for those who are blessed.

00:23:08

The blessed life is when there is a zone, you understand the zone

00:23:12

like a rainforest, and you understand that in this place

00:23:17

there's moisture, there's vitality, there is growth.

00:23:21

And when we get outside of the place where God dwells,

00:23:26

the blessings don't come as quickly

00:23:29

because we're outside of where that zone is.

00:23:31

The blessed life is understanding where God wants us,

00:23:33

where God is, and doing what we need to do

00:23:37

to experience all that He has for us

00:23:39

I'm going to pray about that before we go any further today.

00:23:42

So God help me to be clear today.

00:23:45

Help me to be helpful.

00:23:46

Help me to help all of us see You

00:23:50

and Your amazing weighty character in new ways,

00:23:54

ways that we haven't seen before,

00:23:56

in ways that could totally change our life right here and now.

00:24:00

Thanks, God, for just the privilege of talking about weighty concepts,

00:24:05

amazing concepts that are going to happen today.

00:24:07

I pray these things according to the character and identity of Jesus.

00:24:12

Amen.

00:24:16

So the Bible is a very complex book.

00:24:19

We have Old Testament.

00:24:21

We have New Testament.

00:24:22

And themes go through Old and New Testaments.

00:24:25

Some things in the Old Testament, the Testament before Jesus came around

00:24:28

that are not relevant for us.

00:24:30

Other things that are in the Old Testament

00:24:32

are giving us a precursor, a preparation

00:24:35

for all that would be experienced in the New Testament and today.

00:24:38

One of them is the understanding of slavery to freedom.

00:24:43

So in the Old Testament, we have a common theme of slavery

00:24:46

in the nation of Israel.

00:24:47

They're enslaved to the nation of Egypt.

00:24:51

And while in slavery, God comes to an emancipator.

00:24:54

His name is Moses.

00:24:56

He is going to be the savior, if you will,

00:24:59

of the nation of Israel.

00:25:01

And he is going to lead them out of slavery.

00:25:04

And all kind of weird spiritual stuff was happening

00:25:07

because there's a spiritual realm that's operating

00:25:10

throughout the world and all time.

00:25:13

And we see glimpses of this as Moses

00:25:16

is trying to bring the nation of Israel to freedom.

00:25:18

He sees the burning bush and an angel talks with Moses.

00:25:22

God gives him the ability to do supernatural things

00:25:25

like take a staff, throw it on the ground

00:25:27

and it turns into a snake to try to impress Pharaoh,

00:25:30

who's the leader of the Egyptians.

00:25:32

He gives Moses the ability to take his hand,

00:25:34

put it into his coat, pull it out, it's got leprosy.

00:25:37

Put it back in and put out, it's healed.

00:25:39

And he does these things to try to get Pharaoh's attention

00:25:42

that the God who is is about to do something.

00:25:45

And through these spiritual things, like there's magicians

00:25:48

and spiritualists are trying to replicate these things.

00:25:51

It's an incredibly spiritual story.

00:25:52

On the surface, it looks like an emancipation story,

00:25:55

but it's really a spiritual realm story.

00:25:58

And Moses takes the nation of Israel across the Red Sea and into freedom.

00:26:04

Moses is a prefigure,

00:26:08

or also known the theological circles as a type of Jesus.

00:26:13

Jesus is the Savior, the emancipator for the entire world

00:26:18

in the way that Moses was the savior, emancipator

00:26:21

for the nation of Israel.

00:26:23

And when we understand this,

00:26:25

all of Jesus teachings start to make sense

00:26:27

because what He's trying do is He's trying to emancipate you and I.

00:26:29

He's trying to get us out of our hangups.

00:26:31

He's trying to get us out of our enslavement.

00:26:33

He's trying to get us out of our petty preoccupations.

00:26:37

He's trying to get us out of our addictions.

00:26:39

He's trying to get us out of our our futility in our mind,

00:26:42

thinking that we can live our life without the Creator who made us.

00:26:47

All of His teachings, all His miracles are for this.

00:26:50

So in the Book of Luke 16:9 and following,

00:26:53

I"m going to read it you, Jesus is going to talk about mammon.

00:26:57

No, not gluten, mammon.

00:26:59

I mean, there's those two entirely different things.

00:27:02

We're going to talk about mammon.

00:27:04

And a lot of times when we read these verses

00:27:06

or different translations,

00:27:07

they insert the word money in for mammon.

00:27:10

They're very close, but not the same.

00:27:12

Let's just listen to what Jesus says as He uses this word mammon.

00:27:16

Here he says:.

00:28:00

You cannot serve God and mammon.

00:28:02

Jesus is saying it's not possible.

00:28:05

If you want God, you can't have mammon in the center of your life.

00:28:08

If you want the weightiness of God,

00:28:10

you can't want the weightiness of men.

00:28:12

What? Okay fine, Brian.

00:28:13

What is this? gluten mammon thing?

00:28:15

Is this some new diet?

00:28:16

Mammon is a spirit.

00:28:19

Mammon is a spirit.

00:28:20

This is the only time,

00:28:22

Jesus is the only one who uses the word mammon in the entire Bible.

00:28:26

It's like He's putting a name on something.

00:28:29

There's all kinds of theories as to what exactly mammon is.

00:28:33

It's an Aramaic word.

00:28:34

Some say it traces to an Aramaic word, which means riches.

00:28:39

Others look at it at mammon being, quote, unquote, the thing you trust in.

00:28:45

Mammon is a thing you trust in.

00:28:47

But Mammon is a spirit.

00:28:49

It is an entity.

00:28:50

It has the personality.

00:28:52

And to understand Jesus words, we have to see it this way,

00:28:56

that it's not just some currency.

00:29:00

It's something that wants to have a power over us.

00:29:03

And could we just say that while money isn't exactly mammon,

00:29:07

money has a power over us.

00:29:09

Do we think it's really accidental that we put

00:29:13

on our dollar bills and our currency "in God we trust"?

00:29:17

Of course, it's in God we trust,

00:29:19

and mammon says our almighty dollar

00:29:21

is the almighty God of our life,

00:29:24

because money dictates my happiness for many of us.

00:29:27

Money dictates my security.

00:29:28

Money dictates my friendship choices.

00:29:32

How many of us have friends and economic classes above us or beneath us?

00:29:37

Normally it's just right where we are.

00:29:39

How many of us have bad attitudes about people

00:29:41

who have less money than us,

00:29:43

we think they made bad decisions

00:29:44

and therefore they're just not very smart?

00:29:46

Or how many of us have a bad attitude about people

00:29:47

that have more money than us who we assume

00:29:49

they have no character and they've cheated

00:29:52

or twisted things to get where they are?

00:29:54

Why do we think these things?

00:29:56

Because mammon messes with us,

00:29:59

and Jesus coming, is it a spirit, it's an entity.

00:30:04

Just like there were entities, spiritual entities,

00:30:07

way back with Moses.

00:30:08

So today there are entities that are trying to enslave us,

00:30:12

trying to keep us from having the life that God wants.

00:30:15

When we look the prosperity gospel, which is just awful,

00:30:18

this idea that the prosperity gospel,

00:30:20

this idea that God wants everyone to have money and health

00:30:24

and everyone will have money in health,

00:30:26

if you're just blessed by God.

00:30:27

And the way you get that is by giving money to somebody.

00:30:31

This is mammon speaking to certain preachers

00:30:35

to manipulate and twist.

00:30:37

There are amazing godly people all over the world

00:30:40

and all through all of creation and all of history

00:30:44

who have had not health nor had wealth,

00:30:46

yet walked very, very close with God.

00:30:49

But mammon deludes some of us into believing

00:30:51

that we can control God by giving us certain things

00:30:55

if only we give more money away.

00:30:57

it doesn't work that way.

00:31:00

The Antichrist in the Book of Revelation

00:31:03

is seen not as bringing nuclear wars.

00:31:05

The Antichrist is seeing as controlling currency

00:31:09

and causing us to be afraid about whether or not

00:31:11

we will be able to buy and sell thing,

00:31:15

that's because mammon is a liar.

00:31:17

It's a spiritual entity, the personality that actually lies.

00:31:20

And how I know that is this:

00:31:22

we believe that money is going to solve our problems.

00:31:25

We believe that money can make me happy.

00:31:27

We believe that money can bring me joy.

00:31:30

Realize that of all the people Jesus interacted with

00:31:34

who had hang-ups and addictions and issues

00:31:39

and all kinds of maladies and all kind of loneliness,.

00:31:42

he never once said, "Dud, you just need some more money.

00:31:46

You just need some Ben Franklin's. That's what you need.

00:31:48

You you need something -- That's all you need.

00:31:50

Oh, I see your problem.

00:31:52

Oh, I see.

00:31:53

Oh, I'm going to get you some more money.".

00:31:54

Money is never the ultimate solution to our lack of joy in our lives.

00:32:01

Money is never the solution to a marriage being broken.

00:32:05

It may contribute to it, maybe help,

00:32:07

but it is never the ultimate solution.

00:32:09

Money is never the thing that fixes our self-esteem problem.

00:32:14

It never is.

00:32:17

Money is never the thing that makes us feel great about where our life is going.

00:32:23

Money is never the thing that gives me peace

00:32:26

because there's all kinds of very rich people just recently,

00:32:30

very rich people, Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, on and on,

00:32:33

who had a lot of mammon and they didn't have peace

00:32:38

and they ended their life.

00:32:41

There is a spirit that rests on money.

00:32:46

It's not, as Adam Smith, one of the founders of capitalism, says:

00:32:53

It is not a neutral medium of exchange.

00:32:56

This table is a neutral thing.

00:32:58

It's never gonna make me do something, man,

00:33:00

but money will make me want to compromise my values

00:33:04

or think about compromising my values.

00:33:06

Why is that? It's because there's a spirit of mammon on money.

00:33:10

It's personal. It's manipulative.

00:33:13

Mammon is used or it uses us.

00:33:18

We either use mammon or it uses us.

00:33:23

You probably heard of that phrase: money is the root of all evil.

00:33:26

It's not money is not the root of all evil.

00:33:30

The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil is what the Bible says.

00:33:33

Here's exactly what it says:

00:33:46

So for many people, the love of it, the wanting of it,

00:33:50

causes us to pierce ourselves with sorrows.

00:33:53

Why?

00:33:54

Because we talked, we're out of the blessed zone.

00:33:57

When we're not operating in the blessed zone,

00:33:59

we can't experience all of God.

00:34:02

The tithe, as we've talked, returning to God 10 percent of what it is.

00:34:06

Which is really again, amazing.

00:34:08

No investor continues to give any entity money

00:34:11

and only once a one time 10 percent payment on it.

00:34:14

Nobody ever. No investor would ever, ever, ever, ever do that.

00:34:18

But God says, I'm giving you the ability to have this money.

00:34:20

I'm giving this money and I want you to return it to me.

00:34:24

Return the first 10 to me.

00:34:25

It's not even give it to me.

00:34:27

Return it to me. Why?

00:34:28

Because God says that thing right there,

00:34:30

that's like mine.

00:34:32

And I'm giving it to you and I want you to return it.

00:34:34

And when we don't return that, those of us who are Christians,

00:34:38

those of us who say we possess the Holy Spirit,

00:34:41

when we don't do that what we're saying is money actually owns me

00:34:46

because money is using me.

00:34:48

And we end up piercing ourselves with all sorts of woes.

00:34:53

You know something doesn't own you when you can release it.

00:35:00

When you can't release something, it owns you.

00:35:03

When you can't break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend,

00:35:06

it's dysfunctional maybe.

00:35:09

They own you.

00:35:10

But when you can release something, it gives you freedom.

00:35:15

I don't know why God says 10 percent,

00:35:17

He just says it over and over and over and over again all over the Bible.

00:35:20

I spent a whole week talking about that.

00:35:21

I don't know why. I know why.

00:35:23

What's the magical thing on 10 precent?

00:35:24

I don't know why.

00:35:25

Maybe it's just that God knows that we need the regular test,

00:35:31

the regular habit of, "Okay, I just got this money.

00:35:34

Oh, but it doesn't own me.

00:35:35

And just to prove it to myself and the mammon, I'm going to release it."

00:35:40

We either use mammon or it uses us.

00:35:41

We can use mammon by blessing people.

00:35:43

You can use mammon by building into our future.

00:35:45

We can use mammon by pushing God's agenda forward.

00:35:48

We can use mammon by doing things for a rainy day.

00:35:52

We can use mammon, but to be clear, if we're not using it

00:35:56

and the way we use it is releasing it, it's using us.

00:36:00

Mammon is on all kinds of things, even on Halloween candy.

00:36:04

I don't know if you saw this recent video that went viral.

00:36:07

It appropriately went viral.

00:36:09

And if you haven't seen it or if you have seen it,

00:36:11

you're going to enjoy seeing it again.

00:36:13

Watch how one little guy stands against the spirit of mammon that is selfish.

00:36:30

- Oh, no, there ain't no more candy. - Oh, that is really nice, Jackson.

00:36:36

- Here's some more.

00:36:39

There you go.

00:36:41

- For the next kids.

00:36:48

- That is a kid who's got a good heart right there.

00:36:52

We said all along money is a matter of the heart.

00:36:55

Giving is a matter of the heart.

00:36:57

And whenever we give, when we tithe,

00:37:00

it's going to be some combination of our faith and our math.

00:37:04

Our faith and our math.

00:37:06

Not everyone can go to 10 percent right away

00:37:08

because of a whole bunch of things.

00:37:10

But all of us have to be moving that way

00:37:13

if we want to get into the zone.

00:37:15

If we want to get into the blessed life,

00:37:17

we have to return to God what is His.

00:37:19

There's a measure of faith and math.

00:37:22

There's a progression that we have to go to.

00:37:24

And the only ones of us who will ever want to do that

00:37:28

are those of us who want to use mammon.

00:37:30

And the only ones who are closed to that

00:37:32

are the ones who are being used by madmen.

00:37:34

Because mammon will always tell us you can't do it.

00:37:37

Mammon will always tell us God won't be faithful.

00:37:39

Mammon will always tell us this is crazy talk.

00:37:44

It always does.

00:37:45

This mammon and he's very consistent with all of us

00:37:48

because mammon is not a neutral medium of exchange.

00:37:53

It's a personal, spiritual, lying entity

00:37:57

that wants to keep you and I from experiencing our God.

00:38:01

Jesus says:.

00:38:10

Jesus says we're all going to fail,

00:38:11

we're all going to die at some point.

00:38:13

And when you die, there's gonna be people

00:38:14

based on what you did with Mammon,

00:38:16

you're going to make friends in the next life.

00:38:19

People you have brought to Christ,

00:38:21

who you have funded for a missionary,

00:38:23

people who you have fed and extended their life.

00:38:26

They're going to welcome you.

00:38:27

You can use your mammon or it uses you.

00:38:30

You can use your mammon for internal purposes

00:38:33

to actually buy yourself a welcoming committee,

00:38:36

to buy yourself friends.

00:38:38

Third thing he says is that small, small beginnings

00:38:43

turn into larger outcomes.

00:38:46

Small beginnings turn into larger outcomes.

00:38:50

He says:.

00:39:06

God looks down and before He makes a further investment in your life,

00:39:10

because that's what God does, He makes investments.

00:39:12

Before God makes investments in our lives,

00:39:14

He looks to see the return of the last investment we make.

00:39:19

And if the return on the last investment wasn't up to where He wants it,

00:39:24

He's not apt to make investment.

00:39:26

Investment language, Jesus uses again and again and again

00:39:30

and again and again and again. Use it again.

00:39:32

We understand that kind of language because we realize,

00:39:35

"Oh, I just -- that company, they're not having any return.

00:39:39

But I just like the logo and colors, so I'm just gonna keep putting.".

00:39:45

No, it doesn't work that way.

00:39:46

You want to see return.

00:39:47

And Jesus says this is how God is.

00:39:49

And it starts really, really small.

00:39:51

You don't make a big massive investment in something

00:39:53

that hasn't exhibited level of performance.

00:39:56

No matter how much money I've made,

00:39:58

as long as I've been tithing,

00:40:00

it's been very, very difficult tithe.

00:40:02

It was incredibly difficult to tithe on minimum wage at $3.35

00:40:05

an hour.

00:40:06

Incredibly, incredibly difficult because that it's unbelieve--

00:40:12

And I will tell you, making way, way, way, way, way,

00:40:16

way more than I am, I have plenty of money, thank you very much.

00:40:19

Crossroads is very generous with me.

00:40:20

Plenty of money and I have different revenue streams that come to me.

00:40:25

I would just tell you, it's just as difficult when you have more money

00:40:30

because the numbers are larger.

00:40:32

You're like, "Oh, my gosh, that amount of money.

00:40:34

Oh, my goodness."

00:40:36

It is never easy for anybody to be a blessing to anybody.

00:40:41

It is never easy.

00:40:42

It's never easy to give and return to God 10 percent.

00:40:47

It isn't.

00:40:50

And that's why whatever financial patterns you have,

00:40:53

when you have less, unless the Spirit of God intercedes,

00:40:58

whatever patterns you have, when you have less,

00:41:02

mammon will have you have those patterns when you have more.

00:41:06

People very rarely change, even though God is a God of change.

00:41:11

So when you spend to zero when you have minimum wage,

00:41:15

when you make $250,000 a year

00:41:18

and financial manager tell you this, you still spend to zero.

00:41:23

"Where did the money go?"

00:41:24

When you save when you're a minimum wage

00:41:27

and when you're getting more, you save.

00:41:30

When you tithe when you're here, you tithe when you're over here.

00:41:35

And God is the one who changes,

00:41:37

but mammon is always telling us we're in a unique situation

00:41:42

and this just has to be the way it is for this season.

00:41:44

When reality that season always goes on

00:41:47

because mammon always deludes us and has one goal,

00:41:51

and that is to keep us away from God.

00:41:53

Because mammon wants all the attention.

00:41:55

Mammon wants to be the weightiest thing that our life revolves around,

00:42:00

instead of God being the weighty thing that our life revolves around.

00:42:08

I had to say this earlier.

00:42:09

I've tried to say this every weekend and I forgot, sorry.

00:42:12

We're not in the middle of a campaign, by the way.

00:42:15

We have no campaign coming up,

00:42:19

not the next two weeks or whatever, however long the series.

00:42:21

There's not gonna be a card you have to fill out

00:42:23

and like come forward and drop it.

00:42:25

None of that's happening at all.

00:42:27

We've done those things before.

00:42:28

We've done campaigns before.

00:42:29

God is -- just to give you a peek behind the curtain here.

00:42:32

God has really blessed our church.

00:42:34

Can we just give God a hand, thank Him for blessing us?

00:42:36

[applause]

00:42:37

God has blessed our church in a huge way.

00:42:40

He's given us opportunities and people and experiences

00:42:43

and recently He's just blessed us.

00:42:46

One of the ways He's blessed us is through campaigns.

00:42:49

Campaigns is how we've been able

00:42:51

to have building structures in different states

00:42:55

and have CityLink to help people who are in poverty

00:42:57

and feed people every day

00:42:59

and have structures for people were hurting in Nicaragua

00:43:02

and Bolivia.

00:43:03

All these things have come out of out of campaigns.

00:43:07

God has blessed us with them.

00:43:09

And while He's blessed us, I will just tell you,

00:43:13

part of why campaigns have gone really well with us

00:43:16

is that we've outsmarted mammon.

00:43:20

We understand how mammon makes us think

00:43:22

and we come against those things.

00:43:24

And that's why we're not doing any of the campaign playbook

00:43:28

during this series, because it's not a campaign.

00:43:30

We understand how mammon works.

00:43:32

Mammon says, "Well, you don't know what they're doing with that money.

00:43:36

Who knows how many, they're mismanaging their IT accounts

00:43:40

or how much Brian Tome gets."

00:43:42

So we go a campaign, here's the defined projects over here.

00:43:45

"Oh, oh, I understand these are the things.

00:43:47

I can forget about that."

00:43:48

We're over here and we're like, "Well, I don't -- I can't --

00:43:52

I can't really afford to do what I do.

00:43:54

I'm not all excited about the normal ministry of Crossroads,

00:43:57

but oh, oh, oh, oh, feeding some people over here and doing--

00:44:01

oh, I'm really excited about that.

00:44:02

Over here one of things is, well, I don't know.

00:44:04

Brian Town, what does he do?

00:44:06

Whenever I've done campaigns, I've told you what I give.

00:44:09

And I'm not telling you this time

00:44:10

because that's a tool I've used to try to loosen you up

00:44:13

to help you understand, I give and I'm walking my talk.

00:44:16

But I'm not telling you how much this time

00:44:18

because it's not about me this time.

00:44:21

It's not about Crossroads.

00:44:22

It's not about campaign.

00:44:24

It's about you.

00:44:25

Isn't it great when someone tells you it's about you?

00:44:28

It's about you and your walk with God.

00:44:31

It's about you in your spiritual maturity.

00:44:35

It's about you and how much you want the blessings of God.

00:44:39

It's about you and your choice to have yourself marked

00:44:45

as somebody who has a spirital to weightiness about them

00:44:49

and honors God and honors His ways.

00:44:53

And this idea of little things lead to big things,

00:44:57

we've gotten to where we are not just because the blessing of God.

00:45:00

We've gotten to where we are

00:45:02

because of managing the little things that we have

00:45:04

and God has seen fit to keep throwing things our way.

00:45:08

In the early days of Crossroads, and I do mean literal days,

00:45:12

like the literal days that Crossroads had started.

00:45:14

I want to say maybe a month or two in in 1996.

00:45:19

We knew of a ministry here in Cincinnati

00:45:22

where I'm preaching right now, that did a great job with people in poverty.

00:45:25

And we're like, we need to just make a commitment to this place.

00:45:28

We we a commitment.

00:45:29

And we found out that we were actually

00:45:31

the largest church giver of this ministry.

00:45:34

And our church at that point was, I don't know,

00:45:37

300 people on a weekend or something like that.

00:45:40

And it was really a stretch.

00:45:42

It was a huge stretch for us.

00:45:43

Like that, we're going to commit this.

00:45:45

I think we had three staff members at the time or something that.

00:45:47

So making a commitment like that, it was a huge, huge thing.

00:45:51

Brian Wells, one of our early people at Crossroads,

00:45:54

actually at Crossroads before me, still on our board.

00:45:58

He handed out to our staff of three $100,000 Bars.

00:46:01

Remember those bars? They were amazing.

00:46:03

Do they still make $100,000 Bars?

00:46:06

He handed out those bars and everyone was afraid to eat that bar.

00:46:10

The reason why we didn't want to eat the bar

00:46:12

is we don't want to ruin it

00:46:13

because he bought that bar the day after somebody --

00:46:16

The day after we made the decision as a board

00:46:19

to bless this ministry with money

00:46:21

we weren't sure how we're going to get

00:46:23

and we got an anonymous $100,000 check.

00:46:26

And we remembered the goodness of God.

00:46:31

And I know decisions like way back when

00:46:34

prepared us for this.

00:46:36

And this prepared us for this.

00:46:38

And this prepared, because God's looking to see can we handle more?

00:46:43

He's looking to see what we want our life to revolve around.

00:46:46

He's looking to see who we really love.

00:46:50

See, how we use mammon indicates how much God uses us.

00:46:55

I don't know if you ever heard anybody say that clearly,

00:46:56

but Jesus says this.

00:46:57

How you use mammon will indicate how much God uses you.

00:47:03

You can have the American dream

00:47:05

and you can you can beat your neighbor with having more toys when you die

00:47:08

and all that stuff.

00:47:09

And that means nothing about how much God is using you,

00:47:12

how welcoming God is going to be in the next life.

00:47:14

That means nothing related to sensing the blessings of God.

00:47:19

People can have plenty of toys and plenty of digits

00:47:23

and not the blessings of God.

00:47:24

Jesus says this:se, whose?

00:47:38

In other words, what's another man's?

00:47:39

Another man's is what God's is, which is when he reserves a tenth.

00:47:46

Now, the nation of Israel was tying into all of these truths.

00:47:51

And I'm going to go through one of the more weighty passages in the Bible in like 10 minutes.

00:47:56

Do you believe I can? Do you believe?

00:47:57

Do you believe?

00:47:58

All right. Here we go.

00:48:00

Exodus 32,.

00:48:02

Exodus 32, we have the nation of Israel

00:48:05

who comes out of bondage to Egypt.

00:48:09

They come into a fresh place, the new place.

00:48:12

And things are stressful.

00:48:13

Sometimes when you have freedom, things are stressful.

00:48:15

They had somebody feeding them back here in bondage.

00:48:18

Now they've got to fend for themselves.

00:48:20

They've got to trust for God to drop manna out of the sky and all kinds of stuff.

00:48:23

There's actually a lot of tension when you're in freedom.

00:48:26

There really is.

00:48:27

It's not like God sets us free and, woo-hoo, it's easy.

00:48:30

No, there's tension because spiritual growth

00:48:33

always has a level of tension to it,

00:48:35

just like physical growth and mental growth

00:48:38

has a level of of tension to it.

00:48:41

So God brings Moses up on the mountain where Moses

00:48:45

is going to get the tablets and the law and all these things.

00:48:47

And here's what happens.

00:49:06

He's very funny.

00:49:08

No matter, no matter how poor you think you are,

00:49:12

someday someone's going to say,

00:49:13

"You know, as far as this guy, Moses,

00:49:16

this guy, whatever happened, I don't know."

00:49:17

Some day people around Crossroads will go,

00:49:22

"As for this guy, Brian Tome, whoever he was,

00:49:24

whatever's become of him, let's move on to something else.".

00:49:27

Same with you. I don't care if you started a business

00:49:29

or don't care if you've got a family of gazillion

00:49:32

or I don't care, I don't care what you've done.

00:49:35

There's coming a day far sooner than you think,

00:49:37

where you would be irrelevant and people are like, "Yeah, well, whatever."

00:49:40

People are about the now, not of the past.

00:49:43

This is the way it's happening with Moses.

00:49:45

So he's got this sidekick, Aaron, who tries to appease the masses

00:49:49

who are not liking this discomfort.

00:49:50

So Aaron said to them:.

00:50:16

Wow.

00:50:19

These folks have seen the real God miraculously deliver them,

00:50:24

the real God bring plagues on their enemies,

00:50:26

the real God part the waters, the real God feed them.

00:50:32

How short their memory is that they start feeling a little skittish

00:50:38

and they create their own god, a golden calf.

00:50:42

And they actually say it was this thing

00:50:45

that brought me to where I am today.

00:50:47

See, that's what mammon does.

00:50:49

Mammon makes us forget about the true past.

00:50:53

Mammon makes us forget about the real God.

00:50:56

Mammon is always drawing us to itself, in this case, the gold, the gold calf.

00:51:01

And here's how even more insidious this is.

00:51:04

These people were just released from slavery.

00:51:06

Do you know any slaves that have jewelry?

00:51:09

You know any slaves that have Tiffany's and Saks Fifth Avenue

00:51:12

and David Erman?

00:51:14

Do you know anyone who does?

00:51:16

How did these slaves have gold to be able to melt it down

00:51:22

into a golden calf?

00:51:23

They have it because God bless them.

00:51:26

He blessed them where they were able to plunder the Egyptians

00:51:31

and all of their jewelry and fine minerals before they left.

00:51:36

They actually went up to them and just ask them for it

00:51:39

It was like a haze came over the Egyptians.

00:51:42

So the very thing that God has blessed them with

00:51:47

is now the very thing that's pulling them away from God.

00:51:50

Crazy thing for a lot of us.

00:51:52

The very thing God blesses you with, a living, a livelihood, a whatever.

00:51:57

If we are not careful.

00:51:58

we will use that thing

00:52:00

to distract us from God and pull us away from God.

00:52:04

And this is what happens with a nation of Israel

00:52:07

in this awful chapter of their history, which I'm telling you.

00:52:10

I'm telling us today, because this is still happening today.

00:52:14

With God's people this is still happening today.

00:52:17

Taking the blessings of God and keeping them for ourselves.

00:52:21

And not only keeping them for ourselves,

00:52:23

but actually making a false God and worshipping it.

00:52:29

So God and Moses are still up on the mountain.

00:52:32

God finds out about this.

00:52:34

He knows this is not good.

00:52:35

God gets really, really angry.

00:52:37

I'll pick this up at verse 9.

00:52:57

One of the things I love about God

00:52:58

and love about what the Bible says about God

00:53:00

is it gives us a very wide range of emotions that God displays.

00:53:05

You can't put God in an emotional box.

00:53:07

He's incredibly joyful, his incredibly loving.

00:53:10

We see this in Jesus.

00:53:11

He's is incredibly generous, and He can be incredibly intense.

00:53:19

And this is one of those times, he's like,

00:53:21

"I can not believe what I'm seeing."

00:53:24

And he just process out loud to Moses,

00:53:28

"Moses, I'm about to start fresh with you.

00:53:30

Wipe them all out. We'll start fresh with you.

00:53:31

This is a stiff necked people."

00:53:33

You do not want God, friends, to think that you are stiff necked.

00:53:36

Stiff necked means, "I have my beliefs.

00:53:39

I'm going here towards the way of mammon.

00:53:40

And I just can't change.

00:53:42

I can't move.

00:53:43

I don't care. I don't care what the preacher guy says.

00:53:46

I don't care what the Bible says.

00:53:48

I know what --"

00:53:49

When we're like this, we're asking God to literally break our neck.

00:53:54

We're asking Him to take drastic measures

00:53:57

because He loves you more than you love your own ways.

00:54:02

And He's about to invoke some discipline on his people in this situation.

00:54:08

So Moses comes down, I'm jumping forward to verse 19.

00:54:17

Now Moses is hot.

00:54:19

Now he's ticked off.

00:54:24

He's got a little bit of anger management issue here.

00:54:27

God has blessed him with writing on tablets and he smashes them.

00:54:43

Now, what is going on here?

00:54:46

I understand the anger management thing.

00:54:48

I understand that one. But wait a minute, whoa.

00:54:50

He takes it and he grounds it down.

00:54:54

And then he stirs up and water like a gold Ovaltine he makes.

00:55:00

And then everyone's got to drink it.

00:55:01

What's going on there?

00:55:02

I told you here that there's things that are

00:55:03

in the Old Testament that that translate to today,

00:55:06

that the trickle over.

00:55:07

Here's what's happening.

00:55:10

The plunder that God blessed them with

00:55:15

that they are now serving mammon, they are serving it,

00:55:18

and they're not serving God is ground down to water.

00:55:22

And why would they be all this water?

00:55:24

Why put it in water?

00:55:26

I'm going to use this word intentionally

00:55:28

because all the blessings of God, they're pissing them away.

00:55:34

The blessings that God had given them and brought in,

00:55:38

they now consume it and it's (sound effect).

00:55:40

That's what we are, we're consumers.

00:55:41

Gosh, we're not even citizens anymore in America.

00:55:44

We're American consumers because mammon just expects us to consume.

00:55:49

We're expected to keep the economy rolling

00:55:51

and keep spending like everybody else does

00:55:53

and keep riding it.

00:55:54

We're defined by our consumption.

00:55:58

And we pee it away.

00:56:00

And many of us can never get ahead,

00:56:02

not just because of mammon is using us

00:56:06

and we're refusing to release mammon

00:56:08

to go back to the God who gave it to us.

00:56:11

But we just can't control, my kids say this.

00:56:14

They say, "Dad, I don't know that if it's God blesses me

00:56:18

with more because I tithe 10 percent

00:56:20

or if I'm just more cognizant of what to do with the 90 percent.

00:56:24

Maybe I'm a better manager of the 90 percent."

00:56:29

You either get ahold of mammon or mammon gets a hold of you.

00:56:32

And here God gives us an example of what happens

00:56:35

and what many of us are experiencing

00:56:37

when we take the blessings of God

00:56:40

and we don't use them the way God has told us to use them.

00:56:48

I'll jump ahead down to verse 19,

00:56:50

there's a day of reckoning I don't have time to get into.

00:56:52

It's pretty intense.

00:56:53

And the tribe of the Levites are part of this day of reckoning

00:56:57

with the nation of Israel.

00:56:58

And then God sees what happens with the Levites

00:57:01

and how they've been different.

00:57:02

And here's what says:.

00:57:15

The Levites become the Old Testament priests.

00:57:17

The Levites get to be the ones who are actually inside the temple,

00:57:23

experiencing the presence of God in the Holy of Holies.

00:57:27

They actually get to live off the tithes of the rest of the nation of Israel.

00:57:31

They're bringing to the temple and they do this,

00:57:33

they're able to do this because

00:57:35

they're getting the blessing of God

00:57:38

because they're coming against mammon.

00:57:40

They're coming against anything that isn't God.

00:57:46

I have to tell you, I know all of us in here,

00:57:49

God has blessed you.

00:57:50

There are things that God has brought your way and He is testing you

00:57:54

and He's testing me to see what we will do with what He has given us

00:58:01

and whether what He has given us becomes our golden calf.

00:58:05

And by the way, our golden calf could be money.

00:58:07

Our golden calf could also be our body.

00:58:09

Our golden calf could also be our family.

00:58:11

Our golden calf could also be our country.

00:58:13

It is anything that we worship

00:58:16

and we put the most weight to, instead of the one true God.

00:58:20

And we know that it's God when we're able to return to Him.

00:58:26

Your dad wants to bless you, I'm going to tell you that right now.

00:58:29

He wants to bless you.

00:58:32

And He needs to know that He can bless you more.

00:58:35

This is the story that Jesus gives us

00:58:39

and it's the story of the nation of Israel.

00:58:43

And I want to just seal this in our minds for a moment.

00:58:45

Let's just sit for a moment.

00:58:46

I've said some heavy stuff today, have I not, heavy?

00:58:49

Let's all just exhale right now.

00:58:53

OK. Let's just close out our time just with a moment of silence.

00:58:57

And just see if God says anything to us.

00:58:58

Take your hands and just put him face up on your on your palm.

00:59:02

It's a universal receive sign.

00:59:03

God, would You seal something for us

00:59:07

if there's something that has been said today

00:59:09

You want to stick with us in our brain.

00:59:14

Hear our thoughts as we try to hear Yours.

00:59:31

- I hope that you get to experience The Blessed Life this week.

00:59:36

And, you know, if you want prayer right now,

00:59:39

we have staff and volunteers that would love to pray for you over chat.

00:59:43

You can head to Crossroads.net,

00:59:44

click on that chat box

00:59:46

and give us your name and what you want prayer for.

00:59:49

And we have someone that will pray for you right now.

00:59:52

I hope you have an awesome week

00:59:54

and we'll see you back next week for another week of The Blessed Life.

	Worship	1:05
	Community Life	14:06
	Message	22:34

Recent Series