Shane Hughes 10-19-25

Fantastic. Reed, I have words to share about our mustache mayhem. Not all of us have that Henry Cavill Superman mustache. Some of us on staff were told we look like Wilford Brimley and our wives would not like to kiss Wilford Brimley. Others of us have mustache hair color that perfectly matches our face.

So we just look blurry. That's all it is.

But you and Robert, dark, bold mustaches.

All right, that's it for that. My name is Shane Hughes. I am a minister here at Highland. And if today, if you're brand new, this is your first visit, I'm just going to be blunt with you. We're talking about giving, so come back next week, because next week we're also talking about giving.

And. And after that, we're going to do something else. So just hang with us for three weeks. I'm actually not that embarrassed nor ashamed to talk about this. I think this is something that's very important for our church to consider, and it's something very important for your own spiritual health and development.

And so we come to this text in Matthew, chapter six, and all right, this one actually is. It's pretty simple, right? Jesus is pretty clear. This is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus is talking about money. The reality is he's going to be talking about money for most of the end of the Sermon on the Mount, because after this one, he's going to talk about serving God and serving mammon.

You can't do both at the same time. After that, he's going to talk about anxiety and worry. And that's what you get when you worship mammon. The. The benefit of worshiping mammon is you're always afraid you're going to lose what you don't have.

And after that, he continues to talk about money. In fact, if you look at the book of Luke and. Or the book of Matthew, Jesus spends a lot of his preaching career talking about money. I think if I preached about money as much as Jesus did, I might not have a job here. Take that, what it is.

But it's pretty simple, right? Jesus is clear. Don't put your treasure here, store it there. So instead of buying an Xbox or a new phone that's just going to be obsolete in 18 months, or buying a handbag that's just going to get, you know, drinks spilled on it, or buying a larger TV that you're just going to need a bigger one later. Spend your money on things that will last forever.

It's pretty simple. Growing up in the place that I did. At the time, I did. We called that stars in your crown. That was what you were going to do.

That somehow by doing good things and putting your resources in the right places, you would get like better real estate in heaven somehow. Except the Sermon on the Mount is not about some sort of spiritual 401k. That's not how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. That's not the prayer that we prayed together. The prayer that we prayed together is, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I think Jesus is less concerned about you storing up treasure someplace in heaven that you might get to visit one day. As much as Jesus is interested in heaven, breaking into earth and breaking his kingdom all around us. And when we have the eyes to see what God is doing and we have the will to participate in what God does in the church and in other places, what we see is God's heaven crashing into our earth.

The kingdom that Jesus promises is not that when you die, that we follow the Sermon on the Mount more diligently, but rather it's that we get to see the unbreaking in that community now. Not then, now.

So what does it mean to store your treasure in heaven? So what is it? It's the proper location for your treasure. It does things. It does important things to you and it does important things to those around you.

And what Jesus wants you to know is one of the most important things it does, is it sets you free from worry. I got to work in the Bronx for a while at a church plant. It was kind of a house, church movement, but there were no houses because we were in the Bronx. It was kind of like a third story apartment, church plant. And one of the guys that was with us in the church fund, he had lived in the Bronx his whole life.

And for the first time in his life, he had bought a new car, a brand new car. He had never owned a car before. In fact, he didn't even have a driver's license until he bought this car. And the reason he bought it was because it was going to shave like 90 minutes off of his commute because he wouldn't have to take the bus to the subway, subway to his office and back. And.

And so he thought, I'm going to have more time to spend with my kids. But that's not exactly what happened. If you spent any time in the Bronx, then you know that every car, whether it's just some like Honda Accord or a Mercedes Benz, they all have dinks and dens from getting bumped by Other cars in the street that I lived on when I was there, nobody set their parking brake because the car behind you might have to just gently push your car up and out of the way so that they could get out. And sometimes you would see three or four cars. They were all just, like, chained together like railroad cars because somebody needed a little bit more space.

So every car is going to have some dinks and dins right off the top. And our friend, he became worried that it might be stolen. He became worried that it would get dinged and that the paint job would be ruined. And the problem that he had really was that he lived on a block with eight apartment buildings. They were all at least six or more stories tall.

We guess there were probably, like 2,500 people living on his block. And there were about 80 spaces for cars. So you can do the math. Like, there's odds that you're not going to get a spot. And so he spent a lot of time driving around his neighborhood just to find a place to park.

There was one time when he showed up to house church, and. And we're like, hey, man, how is it, like, to drive your new car to church? Right. This is pretty awesome. He's like, no, I took the bus.

We said, why? He said, well, I had this really great spot right in front of my building, so I wasn't about to move my car. He didn't use his car because he found a good spot.

And he ended up getting so frustrated. But by the end of the summer, he ended up renting a reserved parking space in a parking garage. There was, like, a mile and a half away from his house. And that was the only way he could get peace of mind. It was the only way that he wouldn't have to worry.

He didn't have to deal with the hassle. He didn't have to mess with all of it. He was in a. He was in a parking garage a mile and a half from his house. He paid $600 a month just to park his car there.

And now his commute involved taking a bus to his car so that he could take his car to work.

And I wonder, wouldn't it be better just not to have to worry?

Jesus talks about moths and rust and thieves. I love this line. Rust never sleeps. Rust never sleeps. I guess if you were going to say this in Abilene, you would say something like, the ground that is going to grind your foundation into dust never sleeps, right?

Like, there's something always going to ruin it. And this is true. Like, we'll go from east coast to the West Coast. Let's talk about the Golden Gate Gate Bridge. As soon as they finish the Golden Gate Bridge, they immediately began maintenance on it.

And there is a team that has been working there ever since it was built. And their job is very simple. They have these lifts that go up and down those long steel girders. And their job every day is to scrape the paint off the girder and then to repaint it, that beautiful kind of orangish reddish color there, right? And that's their job.

They work their way from one side of the bridge to the other side. And as soon as they're done, they go back to the beginning and they start over. Why are they doing this? Why do they spend all of this money to scrape it off the paint, just to add more paint? Well, it's because the salt air that makes sourdough taste so good in San Francisco is trying to eat that bridge, right?

It's trying to grind it into the ground.

Where your treasure is, your heart is too, because moths get into closets. It's the places where you store your treasure. It's the place where you think your treasure is secure. And then all of a sudden, you open your closet and your winter coat that you've been saving all. All year, we won't need it for another 10 weeks.

But, you know, when you open that door, it's. It's ruined. Clothing was the most expensive thing that most people that lived in Israel in the first century would ever own. And so MA not only destroyed their ability to wear clothes, it destroyed their financial security.

And so right after this text, where Jesus talks about where your treasure is, your heart will be. Also, Jesus talks about the quality of your eyesight. And he says, when you have good eyes, you have light in your body. But when you have dark eyes, bad eyes, you have darkness in your body. Bad eyesight, Bad body.

Good eyesight, good body. And we could all entertain ourselves today for just a moment by turning off the light so that I can't see. And you would. Oh, good timing. And you would find out right with the moment when I hit the edge of this platform, right?

Because it would be a thud and a scream. When I have bad eyesight and I can't see, there is disaster that's going to. We didn't plan that, but good timing. Way to go.

It's not. Jesus isn't talking about bad eyesight. He's actually still talking about money. Here's why. Because right before this, he says, where your treasure is, there Your heart is also.

Then he talks about good eyesight and bad eyesight and then promptly he talks about serving God or serving mammon. He was talking about money. Then he's talking about money. He's still talking about money. What he's talking about with eyesight is how greed makes us blind.

Greed is one of those squirrely sins, one of those squirrely temptations that you don't always realize you're doing it when it happens. And so I want us to think together for just a few minutes about the way greed might affect us. And then we're going to come back to this text and ask a couple of questions. I think the first thing that greed does is we don't even realize the materialism and the consumerism that we have in our lives. That's what greed does.

And this is how, you know, maybe this has happened to you, maybe this has never happened to you. There was a moment when you got a raise or you got a promotion, or you just got more money somehow, right? And you thought to yourself, yes, now I'm going to be able to save, now I'm going to be able to be more generous, now I'm going to be able to give more to others as they have need. But what you notice is after six months, whatever it was, that extra money that you received, it's just been eaten up by your life, right? Things come up or you just kind of spend a little bit more.

Lifestyle creep kind of eats the raises and then the promotions and then you end up, a year later, you're further in debt than you were before, the extra is gone.

And then you wonder a year later, like, how did I ever live on that past amount before? Because now I need this much to survive. It's like a treadmill that keeps spinning faster and faster, but we just can't get off. And I can't tell you the number of people who look like they have it together, who look like they are successful in their career, but inwardly they are miserable because every morning they wake up and they want to quit on the daily, but they can't because their life is tied to consumer habits and their high paycheck has become handcuffs.

And so I think one of the questions that we need to ask ourselves is, does my wealth make me more generous?

And if it doesn't, I wonder why.

And I'm not just talking about people that have a lot of money or people that have a medium sized amount of money. I'm talking about everybody does the raise, does the promotion, does the excess. However Wide it is. Whatever that margin is, does it make us more generous? And if not, it wants me to ask the question why?

I think the question that I would like you to get out of this table, text, out of this moment today is to ask yourself at your kitchen table, you sit down with that person that you trust, you sit down with that spouse or the family that you're in, whoever it is, that trusted advisor, and ask yourself the question, am I as generous as I would like to be? And if I'm not, why not? Am I as generous as I would like to be?

So we don't realize the materialism and the consumerism that we have. That's what greed does. It blinds us. The other way it blinds us is because we see somebody else that has more, they make more money or they have more ability and decide what happens to us is we decide that they are wealthy, not us. And so we're fine in our pursuit.

We couldn't be greedy because we're not the richest. We couldn't be greedy because we don't spend as extravagantly as somebody else. And here is the reality. Most of us in our lives, almost all of us in our lives are going to encounter people that make way more money than we ever will. It's just the reality of the world that we live in.

There's going to be somebody else that is wealthier than you, except for like one person, whoever that is, richest person in the world, they're the richest ones, they win. Give them a Burger King crown, who cares, right? But everybody else is going to see somebody that makes more money than them, and they're going to justify whatever it is they do because they're not the wealthiest.

And so the question to ask there is, do you find yourself justifying your status because somebody else makes more?

And I think sometimes that justification can make you miserable. It robs joy from you, it steals something from you to. Because you're justifying your own inability to be generous. And so if that's so, I just wonder why greed makes us blind to our own consumerism. We compare ourselves unfairly with others and there's always going to be somebody that has more wealth than you do.

I think the third thing it does is it causes us to ignore our own spiritual struggle.

In some ways, I think greed is like high blood pressure for your soul. You don't realize you have it. There's no apparent symptoms of it until it just kills you, until it ruins your heart. This is what I mean. I don't think adultery, for instance, is not the kind of sin you can commit and then not realize it.

Like, whoa, you're not my wife. Like, that doesn't happen. Right? That's. That's.

You're not my spouse there. But there is a level of intentionality there. You're making some choices that get you there. But I think greed, because it blinds us to our own choices, we always don't always see when we've kind of fallen into it. I talked to several minister friends this week, ones that are older than me, ones that are younger than me.

And I asked them all the same question. I said, has anybody ever come to your office to confess the sin of greed? All of them. All of them said, no. People have come to talk about pride or lust, adultery, anger, but never greed.

And I wonder why. I think sometimes greed tempts us to ignore our own spiritual struggle. And we're going to get there by the end of the sermon. But I want to give you a little preview. Generosity is the antidote to greed.

I want you to give in such a way that it feels good when it feels good to give something away. This week at our house, we were kind of in a purge mode where we were just getting rid of a lot of stuff that we realized this is in closets and we don't need it anymore. It's time to get rid of this stuff. And that felt good. It felt good to empty things out, to have, like, a clean slate again.

The top of my dresser is clean for the first time in the seven years that I've been here. And that felt really good. When you give money to someone else, when you give out of generosity, it feels amazing. And I want you to give to the point where it's almost hard, where it's almost. It costs you just a little bit.

I don't want you to give to the point that it hurts. I want you to give to the point that it feels good because it allows you this space to ask yourself the question, has money or status or whatever it is, career, prestige, is this my treasure?

How do we get to the place where we're radically generous? How do we get to the place where the chains around money are broken? Because Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart is also. And I think that's an interesting way to put it, because it's not what I would expect Jesus to say. I would expect Jesus to say the very opposite.

I would expect Jesus to say, where your heart is, that's where you find your treasure. What you value the most, what you care about, the Most, that's where you're going to spend your resources. But that's not what Jesus says. Jesus seems to say that your treasure, whatever it is, tends to bend your heart toward it. When we possess something valuable, it bends the trajectory of our hearts and.

And because it becomes our security. If you want to know if this is true, just look at, like, American cities. And I want you to note how people that already own houses that are valuable tend to vote against zoning laws that would allow others to own houses because they're concerned it's going to lower the value of their own property. Their house and the equity in it has become their security. And they're unintentionally kind of lifting the ladder behind them because they're already in the house.

It just happens. And I think it happens because when things become our security, they begin to be the things that tell us that we matter. Right? If there's something valuable and I have it, then I'm worth it. Everyone has this tendency, but it tends to express itself in different places.

Because I have a good career, because I have a good family, because I have a large 401k, because I have power or prestige or connectedness, we all have it. And being oblivious to what it is is part of greed's blinding.

It's kind of like Tolkien's in the Lord of the Rings, right? Nearly everyone that touches the Ring of Power ends up calling it my precious. It ends up becoming the treasure. Almost everyone that has it. In Gollum or Smeagol, he.

He becomes obsessed with it. It becomes his life force. But there's this moment in the movies, when you watch the movies, where it flickers over Bilbo's face. And there's this moment where it's. It's beautiful because it's so well directed.

You see Smeagol in. In Bilbo's face. And Gandalf immediately removes the ring from his possession. Gandalf sees it, too, and says, okay, this has gone too far. Far.

Frodo and Samwise are the only two characters in the Lord of the Rings that when they touch it, they don't call it my precious. But we know that Frodo at the end cannot throw the ring into the fire, right? In Mount Doom, he fails in his task and. And Samwise in the book. It's not in the movie, but in the book, Samwise carries Frodo and carries the ring up Mountain Doom.

And the entire time he has this fantasy in his head all about what he could do with the power of the Ring. Which is to create a beautiful forested garden in Mordor. It's a vision that's whispering in his ear. With this kind of power, you could do something important.

It doesn't matter how much it costs, but every treasure is going to bend your heart toward it. And every treasure, every treasure. But Jesus insists that it cost you something to keep it. 600amonth for the parking space, whatever it is. The good news, the gospel, is that only Jesus offers his life so you might have the treasure of heaven freely.

And we see this reaction in Jesus ministry. The young, rich, young ruler. The young ruler walks away, and he's despondent because his imagination is too small to see what his life would look like by trusting the real thing instead of his money. Zacchaeus, on the other hand, is able to leap for joy when the shackles come off. And he's able to give to others more generously than he stole from them.

And here's the reality about Jesus. The Jesus has ultimate power as the Lord of the universe, and Jesus has ultimate security as the Son of God. There is no person that has better treasure than Jesus, but Jesus gives it all away. And in Philippians 2, we know that he becomes human. Not only human, becomes a servant, not only a servant, but dies a slave's death on the cross.

And in his crucifixion, he is humiliated and he is shamed. Why does the Lord of the universe do that? Well, Paul says in Ephesians that he gives his life as a ransom for many.

Jesus looked at us. Jesus looked at you and said, even if everything is taken from me, if I have them, it'll be worth it. I mean, God calls you his treasure. You are God's treasure. You are worth ultimate cost.

You're worth everything else to God. And I think in some ways, simply unknowing that can unlock the stranglehold that greed might have on your soul. God made you his treasure. And when you make God your treasure, it centers your heart on God, and that can set you free. So if you want to know where that lies, maybe.

Maybe this is the test. If you want to know what it feels like to be set free from greed, maybe this is the test. Examine how you feel around people that have more than you. Rich people, wealthy people, doesn't matter where you're at, there's somebody above you. How do you feel about them?

I mean, if you feel disdain about them and their stuff, if you feel that makes you feel superior to them, right. You're better than they are because they have stuff. And you don't. Or if you envy them and you envy their access. And when they invite you into their circle, it makes you feel special.

That means you might feel inferior to them. So it doesn't really matter if you despise them or pity them. All it means is that money or that mammon still has power over you. It doesn't say anything about them. It says everything about me.

And the reality is that gospel sets us free from that. The gospel tells us we are more loved than we could possibly ever know. And nothing we do will ever make God love us more or less, because God's love is already complete. You can't lose it, you can't earn it. It is complete.

And when we find our footing in the gospel, we can love people that have more than us and not worry about ourselves comparing ourselves to them. And we can respect others that have less than us, because wealth is no longer the barrier. And the result is when you can live into that space is that you get generous. You have a good eye, because you're looking for ways to give to others, whether they have more than you or they have less than you. And this is a place that you can be as a Christian now, first didn't really know what to do with this idea, so maybe it's a bad idea.

I'm going to do it anyway. Let's just see how it lands. I think this is the one place your generosity is the one place as a Christian, you get to be promiscuous.

You can give to anybody. You can share with anybody. You can treat them and respect them because their human dignity comes from God, not from their worth or your appraisal of their worth. In fact, I would argue early Christians were very promiscuous with their giving. And so are we when we give our time and our talent and our treasure.

I mean, wouldn't you rather live on that street where all your neighbors are promiscuous and giving to one another? I went to Walmart yesterday, and I was walking through the entrance, and I'm sure, as you've seen in every store you've ever been in, it's Halloween season. And I was just noticing the prices of the candy. And I felt for a minute like that old man. I'm like, I remember when candy was cheaper, right?

It's really expensive this year. It's like 30 bucks for what used to cost 15. And now I feel old and. And I went over there and I looked, and that $30 big thing of candy, it's mostly like gum and skittles and nobody likes those anyway. And so, like, $30 for the worst kinds.

And I thought to myself, like, this is a hard year.

And candy's super expensive. Everything's more expensive. I wonder if there's going to be less porch lights on this year just because there's families that have to make choices, and they're just. They're just not going to do it this year. They're going to turn the light off and move on.

Now, I'm not advocating for Halloween. I think you can understand where the metaphor leaves. Wouldn't you rather live on a street where we are generous to one another? Wouldn't you rather be in a place where our hearts are guided not by the stinginess or the miserliness or the feel of lack, but rather, we know where our treasure is and that stability shapes us and forms us in meaningful ways.

This church is that street. As we encourage one another to live without fear. Fear and without worry, and toward the generosity of the goodness of God, would you please stand for our benediction?

I think perhaps the hardest thing in American culture is to learn to live with less. It is to learn to be generous. But the powerful secret of the kingdom is that when you are generous, when you give it away, you find so much more than you ever thought you lost. So this week, may you have that hard conversation, that thoughtful conversation of, am I as generous as I want to be? And if not, why not?

May you be filled with God's spirit and go in peace.