We live in a nation that was founded on three aspirational ideas, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Every person you know in this city and far beyond is chasing after their vision of a happy life. Now, of course, we all have different strategies for happiness, right? A lot of people are chasing after more money, but for others, it's not that per se. It's success or it's fame or it's beauty or it's physical fitness. You people are crazy. Or it's, you know, exploring the outdoors care or whatever it is. But we're all trying to find a route up the same basic mountain to a happy life. And yet, in an ironic twist, the U .S. is one of the most unhappy nations in the world. It turns out that many of the things we think will make us happy do not. Our intuitions, our authentic desires about what will make for a happy life turn out to be radically miscalibrated. And the good life, as philosophers have long called it, is often found in places that we simply do not expect.
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For years, and this betrays my like really wonky way of thinking about Jesus' teachings. But for years, I thought Jesus' teachings on money were right, but not very good. Meaning they were like, in my mind, they were right. They were like what the Bible says and the right moral thing to do. But they were certainly not like the pathway to a happy life. I could not have been more wrong.
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If you take just an objective look at the empirical evidence, it is very clear that the Western formula of more money equals more happiness is simply not true. Rather, it is the Jesus teaching of more generosity equals more happiness that is the pathway to a happy life.
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That's the power of culture, that's the power of living in a place like LA, not the questions that it gets you to ask, but the questions you never even think to ask in the first place. You just assume more money equals more happiness. With the result that the lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic. It has completely lost touch with reality.
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A key task of our discipleship to Jesus is discovering the joy of living a generous life.
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There are many different expressions of generosity. There is generosity of money. There's generosity of time. There's generosity of relationship where you open your life or your family or your dining room table to people that don't have family. There's generosity of gifting where you use kind of what God made you, your superpowers for the kingdom of God. There's generosity of platform or influence or power where you give stuff away. It's all very beautiful. And the main thing you have to give in this season of your life may not be money. It may be something else, your time or whatever. But this practice will focus on generosity of money in part because the limitations of time, but really because while generosity is far more than just the giving of our money, it is certainly not less.
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And now we store up things like numbers on a bank account, or certificates on a wall, or shares in a company, or collections of whatever it is for you. And we think that's more sophisticated, but what if it's just a different version of the same childish impulse? My point is, Jesus is naming this impulse that in some version is in all of us from birth.
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For Jesus the problem isn't that we want to store up treasure it's that we want to store it up in the wrong place on earth rather than in heaven now this is very important and this will be tricky if you grew up in the western church but heaven here does not mean the place with cupid up in the clouds where you go when you die that doesn't even exist by the way in real life but that's not he's not referring to the place you go when you die heaven was a first century way of saying in god and in what god is doing on earth don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth in this way or that way store up for yourselves treasures in god and in what he is doing here and now and into eternity.
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Notice that for Jesus money is ultimately about the heart it is about the integrity of our inner being and one of his central insights is that our heart follows our money now we often think it's the opposite our money follows our heart meaning we we spend money on whatever it is that we love and we care about and that's true but Jesus is saying this dynamic works both ways we also fall in love with and worry about and obsess over what we spend our money on.
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When we store up treasures on earth our hearts are racked by one of two primal emotions either fear because we know some deep limbic part of our brain knows we could lose it all in a moment all it takes is the company goes belly up or the economy goes south or ai takes over the world and you know sarah connor's our only hope whatever it is it doesn't take that much wealth surely makes itself wings and flies away as it is written in the hebrew wisdom literature or by greed because we just never feel like we have enough no matter how much we get we always want a little bit more.
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If you have an abundance mindset, you look out at the world and you see a world of abundance. You see God as your Father and your provider and all of life is a gift. This is our Father's world, and it is teeming with more than enough for everyone. I mean, the fruit literally grows on trees. Food is just out there in the world. The rain, just the water, not here, but around the rest of the world comes out of the sky. You look around and you say with Jesus, look at the birds of the air. They're not stressed out. They have no money manager. They're not even responsible enough to save for retirement. And yet your heavenly Father feeds them. As a result, you live with gratitude toward God and generosity toward your neighbor. You receive and you give joyfully.
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But if you have a scarcity mindset, you look out the world, the same world, but you interpret the data points very differently. You see a world of lack. You may not even believe there is a Father provider or you may believe in like that kind of prefrontal cortex part of your brain where you're like, I'm a Christian. I believe that God is my Father. But you don't believe, not in your gut, not in the part of you that has nothing to do with the right answer, the real, deep, true part of you. You don't actually believe that God is your Father and your provider. You actually believe, if you were pressed, that you're on your own.
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If we come to trust Jesus' vision of abundance and God as our Father and provider, then all of a sudden, Jesus' teachings on money start to make sense. Don't worry about tomorrow, sufficient for the day is its own problem. I am a neurotic, long -range planner, control freak. My favorite saying right now, I overheard somebody say this at a coffee shop a few weeks ago. This gal was on the phone. I wasn't trying to listen. I was just behind her in line and I had nothing else to do. And she said, oh, that's a tomorrow problem. I was like, that's my new favorite saying of all time. That's a tomorrow problem, said the control freak, neurotic mess that I am. But that makes sense. That's a tomorrow problem. Don't worry about that. That's for tomorrow. Today we have all that we need. Seek first the kingdom. All these other things will be added to you.
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If we don't believe Jesus' vision, if we don't believe there's more than enough, God is my father, provide all of that, then frankly, we read Jesus' teachings on money, and let's be honest, he sounds unhinged. No, I'm serious. I mean, he sounds unwell. Can't say crazy anymore. He sounds unwell. And his teachings sound not only foolish, but dangerous. And we are enslaved by fear and by greed, which is why Jesus goes on to say, last line, look at 24, 24, no one can serve two masters.
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We want so badly to believe that money is neutral, that it's not good or evil. It's just, you'll hear that a lot in Christian circles. Like it's not, it's just about the heart. It's not about how much I have or how, it's just about the heart, which is technically true and absolute. As Gen Z would say, that's cap. That's just, that's ridiculous. It's about way more than just the heart. Yes, it's true that money is not necessarily good or evil, but what's missing in that diagnosis is money is powerful. It's like saying nuclear energy isn't good or evil. Yeah, just, it's just about the heart. Yeah. And the level of concrete around the power. All right. It's about more than that. It's powerful.
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A biblical theology of generosity does not start with tithing or even Jesus' teachings on generosity to the poor. It starts before time and space, and if you hear nothing else today, hear this, with who God is in his essence. God is, in the language of Jesus, our Father. My kids don't worry about rent or groceries or medical bills because they have a father and mother who provide for them. Jesus said we don't have to worry about what we will eat or drink or wear because God is our Father. And not only is God our Father, but he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is a family of self -giving, other -centered, joyful, sacrificial, generous love. Generosity is not something that God does. It's not a practice or a discipline or a behavior for him. Generosity is who he is in the fabric of his being, in his inner essence. God is giving, loving, blessing, sacrificing, and doing all of it joyfully with a smile on his face. That's who God is.
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Generosity is woven through the library of Scripture. Scripture, from page one, where we read the word give over and over again. I give you every seed -bearing plant for food. Again, this is called a banana. It grows on trees. You're going to eat one five mornings a week. It's absolutely fantastic. From the beginning, he is just, read the Old Testament. Read the story of God. He's just giving, blessing, pouring out love, provision, protection. I mean, get to the story of Jesus. Everywhere Jesus goes, there's abundance, right? Oh, you have a few loaves, you have a few fish, food for everyone. And there's leftovers afterward. There's sick people are healed. Demonized people are set free. There's just abundance. Everywhere Jesus goes, the kingdom goes. And when the kingdom comes, there is more than enough for everyone.
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If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area of his life or her life. That's right in line with what Jesus is saying here in Matthew 6. Get your relationship to money right, and it will set your heart free. And think about this, if you apprentice under Jesus, if you follow Jesus for any length of time, it should significantly change your relationship to money. If that hasn't happened yet, if your relationship to money is not really any different than your secular friends or neighbors or family, then just to give you a heads up, that's on the docket for yourself. spiritual journey and you will get stuck in your spiritual journey and you will stall out until this core aspect of flourishing in the kingdom of God begins to enter not just your mind but your heart, your body, and your life.
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Generosity isn't just about our behavior it's about our inner nature it's about becoming generous people that is the end goal.
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Practicing generosity will make you into a more generous free joyful happy person and that's the beauty of practice you know I can't and I doubt you can either flip an imaginary switch in my heart and remove all fear and greed like oh fear and greed that's kind of sucky let's not do that anymore done I if that I first off church would be like three minutes long every week we'd be like all right this week get rid of fear cool next week you'd be like all right get rid of greed cool Week after that, no more lust, everybody. Got it. Great. Done. Within like easy tops a year, we'd be like, done. Let's just hang out now. Golf or whatever it is that you do. I can't flip a switch and remove this stuff out of my heart. I mean, there's deep, deep structures of attachment and psychological language that go deep into my epigenetic code. Right. They go back to like great grandparents and the depression. And like there's stuff in me that money is deeply tied to. But you know what I can do? I can sponsor a child. I can buy somebody lunch when we're together. I can give to my church. I can do simple things like this. And as I practice generosity and make space for God to move in my heart, he can do in me what I simply cannot through good intentions, desire, willpower, or even habits.
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Generosity is a practice by which we index our heart from a scarcity mentality to the abundance. mentality of Jesus from fear of lack to trust in God as our father provider from worry over our future to peace whatever comes from the endless desire for more to the enjoyment of what we have from grasping to gratitude and from misery to joy the practice of generosity can do all of this and more in your heart or really the spirit through the practice of generosity.
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When you act like God, you get to feel like God. And when you act generous like God is generous, you get to feel, just you get to touch emotionally, a little bit of the joy that is at the heart of who God is.
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Most people I know who have discovered the joy of living a generous life never turn back. It changes who they are at the core. Instead, they become increasingly radicalized to the way of Jesus and deeply happy. And that is my prayer for you in the coming month, that you tap into the joy at the heart of God. You change not just behavior, but you allow God to change, to free, to bless, to make happy the deepest members of your being. This will cost you very literally. But you will get back far more than you give away because there is more joy in giving than in receiving.
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