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***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.

Speaker: Exodus 16 verses 11 through 21 and Matthew 6 verses 25 through 34.

The first passage, the book of Exodus, 16th chapter verse 11 through 21. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel. Speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread. And ye shall know that I am the Lord your God. And it came to pass that at even the quails came up and covered the camp. And in the morning the dew lay round about the host. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness they lay a small round thing, as small as the hoarfrost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna, for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat. This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded. Gather of it every man according to his eating. An omer for every man according to the number of your persons. Take ye every man for them which are in his tents. And the children of Israel did so, and gathered some more, some less. And when they did meet it with an omer, he that gathereth much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack. They gathered every man according to his eating. And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning. Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses, but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank. And Moses was wroth with them, and they gathered it every morning, and every man according to his eating. And when the sun waxed hot, it melted.

And then the sixth chapter of Matthew, reading from verse 25 through 34, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap. Nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Dallas: Thank you, Greg, for blessing us once again with your music.

Because some have asked, let me just say that I will continue to be here and speak through the 18th of June, depending, of course, upon the requirements which your pulpit committee and leaders may feel to hear other people, because that is certainly first on your agenda. But that will be the last time I will be with you. And in the evenings, I would like to be speaking again insofar as we do have meetings and there is time on the theme, what happened in Acts? What happened in Acts? And if you intend to come this evening and can take time to give the thoughtful reading to the first chapter of the book of Acts, I think that might help us in our messages if you have prepared in that way.

Now this morning, I’m speaking to you on the theme of the kingdom use of material goods. And if you wish another title for it, you can call it, how to make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.

And I want to read to you two texts, first of all, from 1 Timothy, the sixth chapter and the 17th through the 19th verses. And then Luke 16, 9, first of all, in Timothy. Paul here is charging his young protege in the ministry as to how he is to conduct himself and on some of the things which is to speak to those who are hearing him. And in particular, he says now in the 17th verse, charge them that are rich, them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy, that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.

And now Luke 16, this is after having told the parable of the unjust steward, and the Lord is making an application of it, trying to explain to his hearers what he has in mind. And to give you this one verse, I’ll return to both of these passages as I go into the message for today. But the ninth verse of the 16th chapter, where the Lord says, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, and we might add under our breath, and you will fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

Now may the Lord send forth his word into our midst today and anoint our ears and our tongues that we might speak and hear those things which would change our lives in conformity with his kingdom.

The Lord Jesus came into the world and read his commission to those in his hometown when he said, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

And as in the days of his flesh he went about amongst men, he observed the burdens which they bore. He came to lift their burdens, and he had to understand what those burdens were. And as he observed, he saw and he spoke many times about the greatest burden, one of the greatest burdens which they bore. And that burden was nothing other than providing for themselves against tomorrow.

You may recall in the story in Genesis when God comes walking in the garden to speak to those whom he had created and given a charge, and they had sinned against him and started to take care of themselves because they weren’t sure God was going to take care of them. God said to Adam, why did you hide? And Adam said, because we were naked. And God said to them a curious thing, I don’t know if you’ve ever reflected on it, but he said to them, who told thee thou wast naked? I want you to understand that the nakedness that is referred to here is not that which is clear when we have our clothes off. If Adam and Eve had been concerned only with that nakedness, they would have been able to find that out simply by looking. The Lord would never have needed to ask, who told you you were naked? Those of you who have dreams about going somewhere without your shirt, understand very readily how you tell that you don’t have your shirt on. The nakedness here in question is something much more profound. It is that awful vulnerability which man assumed when he mistrusted God and said to Satan, in effect, you’re right, he may not take care of me. He may not be watching out for me, I’d better watch out for myself, I’d better take things into my own hands. I’d better eat of the tree which is forbidden so that I might know good and evil.

The great burden of provision, as Jesus looked about him, he saw those who were broken by the effort to attain riches or provision for the tomorrow. Paul in that very same passage from which we read a moment ago, just a few verses before, speaks of those who will be rich in verse nine, that is those who are not rich but want to be. And he says, they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drowned men in destruction and perdition for the love of money, not money, but the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

And Jesus saw that and he realized how people were broken by the effort to get riches. And then he looked also and he saw how people were broken by the failure to get riches for in his day, it was regarded as a mark of God’s displeasure if you were poor. And those who fail could not but feel that God somehow was not on their side. And you remember the story of the rich young ruler and how Jesus says, how hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of God and his disciples, his apostles are astonished. They say, if a rich man is not going to be saved, Lord, who will be? Because they thought that the richness which the rich man enjoyed was a mark of his favor from God.

And Jesus looked upon people who had failed and were broken by the failure, discouraged and disheartened. And he looked on the destruction also wrought by those who had gotten riches and who were trying to hold on to them and that was the case of the rich young ruler, was it not? This young man came to Jesus and professed how righteous he was and he was. By the standards of that day, he was an exceedingly righteous man. Very few other people could honestly say, yes, I’ve kept all of these commandments from my youth up and Jesus went to the heart of the man and he said to him, sell everything you have and follow me. The scripture says the young man turned away sorrowful for he had great riches. The problem was the great riches had him. Not that he had great riches. There’s nothing wrong with having riches, but when the riches come to have you and instead of being your servant, they become your master, then there’s something wrong. And Jesus’ line of questioning with the young man showed the spiritual destructiveness for those who have riches.

In the 18th chapter or it’s the 13th chapter of Matthew, we find Jesus in his great parables of the kingdom teaching about the things that caused the word of the kingdom to not be effective. And in the 22nd verse of that 13th chapter, we see, he also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word and cares and the care of this world. Notice it isn’t the cares of this world. You see, the rich person is the one who does not have the cares of this world in a certain way. He has the charge of this world. He has the care for this world and the deceitfulness of riches. Riches are deceitful and they are deceitful in a very simple way, which Paul points out in the passage we read from 1 Timothy 6. They lead us to trust in them.

Now that’s the question before us this morning. What are we trusting in? It is an unfortunate fact, the mere fact that we have come to trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the justification of our souls before God does not mean that we have learned to trust him with anything else. Very commonly a person who comes to trust in Christ is obsessed simply with the issue of his sins and the light has not penetrated in his mind to the point to where he realizes that the issue is not will he trust the Lord with his soul for salvation, but will he trust the Lord in everything.

And if we’re not well taught in the scriptures and especially if we’re not led to look at the teachings of Christ on this matter and to understand that it is through the saving power of his word that he delivers us from the bondage of this world and of sin, we’re apt to go through all of our lives carrying the world on our back like Atlas. That’s what Jesus saw you see. He saw people doing that. He saw people not only carrying the world of today, but carrying the world of tomorrow on their back. And he tried to teach them by a negative and by a positive word how to be free of this awful soul-crushing burden of treasures.

Now when he speaks of treasures, he’s not speaking necessarily of what that word might connotate for us as we commonly use it. He’s not speaking of great riches. If you look at a little child of three or four years old, you will find that every such child has treasures. And when you begin to find what they are, you may be astonished. For they may be, for example, a button or a thimble or a little stick which they’ve been playing with in a piece of string. And that’s their treasure. And when the Lord is speaking here now as we come to Matthew 6 and these instructions, when he’s speaking of treasures, he’s not necessarily speaking of great riches. He’s talking about the things that we trust in and that we delight in. And that is the burden which people carry. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous it may look to someone else. If it’s your treasure, it’s your treasure. And the Lord is saying to every person, no matter what that treasure may be, you have to be very careful about it or it will crush you. It will disappoint you. It will make your life difficult. And you will not be able to live in the kingdom of God in that freedom and power and purity which your soul longs after.

So let’s look now in the 19th verse of the sixth chapter of Matthew of the twofold instruction, the negative and the positive. First of all, he says in the 19th verse, lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. That’s the negative teaching. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth. Now don’t, I hope you will not say, therefore, we should never have any food in the house. We should never have a savings account. The point is, lay not up treasures for yourselves, for yourselves, for yourselves.

Paul, in that awful indictment which he writes in 2 Timothy, says that in the latter of times men shall be lovers of their own selves, you see. He’s talking about trying to secure ourselves by means of earthly things. He’s not talking about owning things, and you can’t solve this problem by getting rid of everything you own. Many people have tried that, but you can get rid of everything you own and still treasure them in your heart, and if so, you’re still caught.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor where thieves break through and steal.

Now here we have Jesus’ whole teachings, and I want to just spend my remaining moments explaining to you, first of all, the insight upon which this rests. Jesus, when he teaches us, gives commandments, but he never gives arbitrary commandments. And the saving power of his commandments comes to you, not when you simply understand that because he is your Lord, you should obey him, but because he is your teacher and your master and your friend, he’s telling you what’s good for you. And when he gives you a command, he wants to impart the insight upon which it is based so that your soul can see, and you will say in the depths of your being, it is good and it is right that it should be so. And the goodness of his commandments is what is had in mind when, as the psalmist says, the entrance of thy word giveth life, wherewithal shall a young person cleanse their way by giving heed unto the word of the Lord. And when in Psalm 107 and verse 20, speaking of the troubled condition of certain people, the psalmist says, and he sent his word and healed them. He’s talking about that word of insight which enters into the depths of the soul and creates a new mind, and that’s what Jesus imparts, you see. He doesn’t just say, don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, he tells you why.

Look at the reasons. There are four reasons here, and I’m very concerned that you come to an understanding of these, and I didn’t get to look at the bulletin this morning, but I understand the office has prepared an outline of these reasons and that you have that in your hand.

The first reason why we’re not to lay up treasures upon the earth is because the earth is an uncertain place. There is no hiding place down here that will keep them safe. If you look at what he says here in the 19th verse, where moth and rust are corrupt, you will have to understand that the primary means of storing up treasures was to put them in some particular form, in particular in the form of metal and cloth. These were two of the great treasures which were used as money or a kind of money in those days. So that if you had a treasure of this sort, you might try to hide it. And if you had a marvelous garment that was worth a whole lot of money, you might try to hide it. And you leave it there a little while and you come back and what you find is that the maul have found it. Or you store it up in the form of metal and you leave it there for a while and you come back and you find that the rust has eaten it up. Or alternatively, you come there and you find that thieves have broken through and have stolen.

Now, you may think that today you have a way around this. You may say, for example, I have a bank that keeps my money. Well, it may come as a surprise to you, but probably there isn’t anything in your bank that looks like money that belongs to you. If you have a safety deposit box, perhaps there’s some money in that if you put it in there. But if you just put it in an ordinary savings account, you know what your money is? Your money probably consists of a number of little electronic devices buried in some brain of some computer somewhere. You’d better hope that a moth doesn’t get to that. The rust doesn’t break through or steal because that’s where your money is. They’re not keeping your money for you. And that money that resides there is constantly losing its value where inflation does break through and steal, right?

And you may think I’ve got a great insurance company, but a friend of mine found to his dismay the other day that insurance companies go broke. He had an automobile accident that wiped out his car and tried to contact his company and his company no longer existed. Now you say, but after all, there is a thing called the United States government, right? I’ll say no more. The truth of the matter is we have a very convenient set of initials for the United States government, U.S. The United States government is us, that’s who it is. And as our business dealings proceed, that’s our government. And as our money cheapens, that’s our government. As our greed grows, and as our interest increases, interest payments increase, and as usually becomes the dominant force of the day, that’s us. And the United States government is not some god standing somewhere above it all who can bail us out when we get in trouble. The United States government is us, and if we’re in trouble, it’s in trouble. There’s no hiding place down here. Jesus said, don’t lay up your treasures on earth. Paul said, trust in God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. He is our governor. The government is on his shoulders, and we live in the kingdom of heaven. And as Peter said in one occasion, we had better obey God than men. We also had better trust in God than in men. The Old Testament says, cursed be the man who trusts in the arm of the flesh.

And Jesus said again, the second reason, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And he’s calling attention to the fact that when we fix our mind upon something as our treasure, it obsesses our whole life. Our whole mind is fixed around it. There used to be a commercial for a savings and loan company about visiting your money. You may remember that commercial. If that’s where your treasure is, your mind is going to constantly be there. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And as Vance Havner says, your feet are going to get around there pretty frequently also. And if your treasure is in a house, if your treasure is in educational diplomas, if your treasure is in any kind of thing that is on this earth, your mind is not going to be ungone. You’re going to be double-minded at best.

And Jesus illustrates what he’s talking about here with some words which often puzzle people. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. What’s he talking about? He’s saying just this. Suppose you’ve got bad sight. Does it only affect your eyes? No, it doesn’t only affect your eyes. You get your shins beat up from kicking chairs and falling down stairs. You find yourself restricted and limited in what you can undertake and what you can do because you’ve got bad eyes. Now if you’ve got your life focused upon material goods, Jesus is saying there is a similar truth about all of us. We stumble in broad daylight, as Isaiah says. We cannot find our way about because we are trusting and looking at the wrong thing. Jesus stood forth as the light of the world and he said, he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life. And again earlier in the Gospel of John we read, in him was life and this life was the light of men. It is only as we turn our lives and our minds and focus it upon him that everything else comes in perspective and we’re not constantly running up against the sorrows of life and bruising ourselves and hurting others because our minds are in the right place. Our eye is not evil. Our whole life is full of light.

The third reason which he gives is found in the 24th verse. No man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Now he doesn’t say you cannot have God and mammon. He says you cannot serve God and mammon. And the way to make to ourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness is to use everything we have for the glory of God. That great servant of Christ, David Livingston, used to say, I value nothing I have except in its relation to the kingdom of God. You can have mammon. You cannot serve it and serve God. You’ll be double-minded. And as James says in James 1-8, a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways and that goes for you ladies too.

If we have our minds fixed upon our house, our car, all of the comforts, all of the things which we might as housewives and mothers and those who’d like to be known for the shepherding of material goods, how are we doing that? If we’re doing it to further the kingdom of God, that’s great. But if it becomes an end in itself, we have become double-minded and we cannot serve mammon and God. It’s true of us as we work in our jobs. It’s true every part of our lives. It is true of our nation.

One of the greatest frauds in the way of a statement that has ever been perpetrated upon the United States is that statement by one of our presidents, the business of America is business. God help us is all you can say to that. The business of America may be business, but if it is, we have turned away from any hope and possibility of fulfilling our destiny as a people before God. The business of America must be to serve God and to advance his kingdom. And if it is so, then praise God for the business and praise God for the oil and praise God for the riches and the opportunity and the power if it is exercised for that end. And if our own national egoism and pride of place in the world becomes the end, then we’re lost.

And the fourth reason which Jesus gives for not laying apart treasures upon earth is that provision is already made. Now just want to read these verses again, skipping some of them that Cal has already read for us in the scripture reading. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life. What you shall eat, what you shall put on is not life more than meat and the body more than raiment. Behold the fowls of the air, and then again behold the lilies of the field. Now you’re not a lily, I can tell that by looking at you. And you’re not a fowl, you’re not a bird. But you see the whole point of this passage is just as there is an order in the kingdom of God in which provision is made for you, there is an order for the bird and an order for the lily. And depending upon what you are and where you are, God has provision for you from day to day.

The response to this is very simple, not that we should not make provision, it is not talking about that. And if one of you mothers enjoying Mother’s Day goes home and says to your husband now, it says we’re to take no thought about lunch, therefore I haven’t. That will not be quite on it. He’s not talking about that, he’s talking about anxious concern for provision which depends upon my own doings. And he’s saying don’t do that, put first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else you need will be added.

Now you see, dear friends, it’s great to talk about faith. It’s great to talk about our commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s great to talk about our reliance upon him to save our souls. But are you trusting him for your automobile, for your house? Are you trusting him for your income? The little child that bellies up to the breakfast table and expects breakfast, see, suppose your little child started in hoarding cornflakes. And you say to the little child, why are you doing this? I’m not sure about you, mother. I’m not sure about you, father. I think I’d better keep a little stash for myself, please.

Compress your faith in the providing God who is all sufficient day by day as you live before your children. One of the hard things about Mother’s Day is, if you know mothers, you know how badly they feel, they fail in so many ways. And if you know mothers, it’s only because they probably have. And fathers, too. But you see, if in the midst of all of our failures we continue to confess our faith in Christ and show our reliance upon him, then we inject into the lives of that family and those children around us a similar confidence so that they know they’ve had an example of someone who is able to commit tomorrow to the Lord. And as they have seen that example, that faith will be imparted to them. You cannot save your children by preaching the Gospel at them unless you live before them in faith. And we fail to do that as parents. And as we do so, there’s nothing in this world for us to do but simply to own it and keep confessing our faith and ask God to teach us and help us to grow into more faith.

Until we know the unwisdom of borrowing evil from tomorrow. This passage ends with this lovely statement of Jesus, Riley said, no doubt, take therefore no thought for the tomorrow, for the tomorrow shall take thought of the things of itself because God is in that tomorrow. I’m not confident about tomorrow because I have put something in tomorrow because I can put nothing in tomorrow. I’m confident about tomorrow if I am only because as I walk toward tomorrow I know that the God of today is in tomorrow. And because of that, I don’t borrow evil from tomorrow to make up enough for today. For the things of itself, he says, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. There’s enough evil in today for today. We don’t need to borrow some from tomorrow, so we’ll have enough to make out.

As we do so, we are set free to lay up treasures in heaven. Paul tells us in that verse in 1 Timothy 6 how to lay up treasures in heaven. That they do good works, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on eternal life. How do you send up treasures to heaven, dear friend? There isn’t a mailman that runs to heaven. So far as I know, you can’t address an envelope and send along a postal money order. In order to send treasures to heaven, you have to find out what is going there. May I ask you what is going there? Other people are going there, dear friend. And if you want to lay up treasures in heaven, you will lay your treasures in the other people who are going there, and then when they get there, your treasures will be there.

You lay up those treasures again by the confession of your faith, wherever you may be, by word and deed and spirit, the confession of your faith in the loving God who sent His Son, and who founded a kingdom in which we can live now, and by the testimony and expression of the power of that kingdom and the truth of that kingdom. And then as you live in that, you also, you give, you impart, as the old English says, you communicate, you have things in common, you share. And as you do so, you change the lives of people and they become different. And then as they go to heaven, your treasure goes with them.

Let’s bow together. We’re going to have an invitation in a few moments. We’re going to invite those who would like to come, who wish to say, I want to know, I want to know the reality of all of this, or who wish to have some counseling with those who are here in this church to help them to come forward. But before we do, I want us just simply to spend a few moments in prayer and search our hearts. And may I lead your thoughts by just saying, am I trusting in material goods and in my power to store up and provide tomorrow? Or perhaps we could ask, is my chief delight in those things which are treasures on the earth, not in the treasures which are laid up in heaven? If so, we’re trusting in the wrong things. It doesn’t matter whether we are deacon or preacher. It doesn’t matter what we are. It may be that in the silence of this moment, you need to say in your heart, oh God, I’ve been wrong, make me right.

Lord Jesus Christ, we ask you to meet every heart and every condition. Set us free from the bondage of material goods and lift those burdens and heal the bruises which are connected with our failures and with our successes in these ways. For thy glory, for thy name’s sake, amen.

Let’s turn to 3, 7 to 3.