When you’re sick, when something’s hurting, what you desperately want to do is to get better and stop the pain. And at that point, there is a huge risk. The risk is, that you throw an aspirin or two at the symptom, rather than dealing with the disease.    

One of the things that I’ve noticed in over ten years of producing this program is that responses to the various series and messages vary greatly. Now, there’s a couple of ways of explaining that, perhaps Berni’s having a bad day or a bad week, and somehow the messages didn’t really connect … that’s a definite possibility. Over 2500 episodes of the program.

But the other possibility is that not everything I talk about is not what you want to hear. And if that’s the case I’m not the only preacher over the last couple of thousand years who’s had that problem. In fact at one point the things that Jesus said to the crowds were so unpalatable that they left him in droves. John chapter 6, verse 65-66:

And Jesus said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father. Because of this many of His disciples turned back and no longer went about with Him.”

Hmm …What I’ve noticed is that when I talk about something that has a strong felt need for many people we get a huge response. Asking for the free booklet that goes with the series, requesting prayer, sharing hurts. And most often those sorts of messages delve into difficulties in relationships, or low self-esteem, fear the need for faith to overcome adversity. The things that universally create challenges and trials in our lives. I wonder if that isn’t in our rush to end our pain and suffering, we want some sort of quick fix, a bandaid, an aspirin. Something to treat the symptom.

Yet more often than not those aches and pains that we experience in day to day life they’re merely symptoms of other deeper underlying causes. Jesus actually talks a lot about those causes, those underlying diseases. And yet, let me tell you, in those series and messages on this program, where we delve deeper, where we hear things from God that we may not want to hear, without fail the listener response is sharply lower. Hmm …

Could it be that we’re more interested in that quick fix to the symptoms than dealing with the underlying disease? That certainly seems to be where medicine’s heading these days – at least retail medicine when you go to see your local doctor. At least where I live, the family doctor’s practice role has all but disappeared, instead you go into one of these large practices now with multiple doctors, where you can no longer make an appointment. You just get the next available doctor. And they pop you on the assembly line and in you go to be processed.

More and more people go in and they ask the doctor for antibiotics or painkillers as though somehow it’s the patient’s role to self-diagnose and more and more fed by the slick marketing of the drug companies. The doctors are just writing out a prescription and off you go. Problem solved!

Never mind that the heavy use of antibiotics is leading to the development of so called superbugs that are completely resistant to any form of treatment. Never mind that perhaps there’s something deeper like diet or lifestyle or some hidden disease that’s causing the symptoms that you’re feeling. Never mind that the rates of obesity and metabolic syndrome, heart disease, stroke, diabetes are sky rocketing around the world. Just write the prescription and be done with it. Woo hoo!

“Berni, we don’t want to talk about the disease. Just give us something that’ll provide a quick fix to my problems. A band-aid … and … an aspirin.” Now maybe that sounds a little bit harsh, but are you getting the picture?

I was watching a video recently, an amazing video on YouTube of an apostolic minster who was asked to address the United Nations General Assembly. Now this man Reverend Lee Stone King had died of a massive heart attack at Sydney airport of all places. He’d been pronounced dead. And yet in the ambulance on the way to the hospital he came back to life. The paramedics were completely astounded! The blood had already started to coagulate in his extremities, he had no oxygen to the brain for over 45 minutes. You know just 6 minutes and the brain starts to die.

And this man who’d experienced a resurrection – literally, spoke to the delegates of the United Nations National Assembly. And he said to them, “People, if you want to end violence, if you want to end the suffering, if you want to deal with the terrible problems and the atrocities going on in this world then the only answer is this. Acts chapter 2, verse 38:

Repent and be baptised every one of you. In the name of Jesus Christ. So that your sins may be forgiven. And that you’ll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’.”

And you’ll see, right there is the treatment for the disease that’s causing your aches and pains, your distresses and fears. But like Jesus, if I start talking about that sort of radical treatment no doubt people will turn off the radio. No doubt people will walk away as they turned away from Jesus there in John chapter 6, verse 66.

But listen to me. At the end of the day if we want the life that Jesus promises we need more than an aspirin. We need more than a handful of shallowness … we need to dive deep down to the root cause.

One of the funniest signs I’ve seen in a long time on Facebook of course, reads like this, ‘Everything happens for a reason and sometimes that reason is that you’re stupid and you made bad decisions’. I do stupid things that cause pain and so do you. Well, we have wrong ways of thinking and seeing, we all get caught up in ourselves and forget God and forget others. It’s so easy in this day and age with the barrage of lies that cover our lives and penetrate our hearts to end up in pain because we’ve headed off in the wrong direction.

But listen to me. Jesus speaks and Jesus heals. And if we want healing in our lives, then we need to listen to Jesus speak and experience the power of his healing touch.

That’s what this series of messages over the next few weeks is all about. That’s why I’ve called it ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’. Because I believe that Jesus wants to bring some serious healing into your life. And when we actually take the time to listen, I mean really listen to what Jesus has to say about the maladies that afflict our lives, it just blows you away. That’s what the crowds experienced that followed him around. Matthew chapter 7, verse 28-29:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things the crowds were astounded at His teaching for He taught them as one having authority not as their scribes.

I’ve got a friend who carries rather a lot more weight than he should. Ah … a lot more. I’ve spoken to him many times about the amount of sugar and refined carbohydrates that he eats, and yet to no avail. I know that if he turns away from the sugar and the refined carbohydrates the weight will just fall off him. He’s older than me, he’s in his 60’s. He has high blood pressure, high blood sugar. And he’s just an absolute monte for a heart attack or a stroke. And yet nothing changes. I can’t badger him into it. He has to decide for himself. So why doesn’t he change? He’s not a bad person, he’s a great guy. And frankly I’d like him around for many more years to come. So … why doesn’t he change? The same reason that you and I just cling onto the things in our lives that are robbing us of life itself.

There’s one thing that I have to share with you that can give you the power to change; the things that astounded those people, the words of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus. Because it comes with authority from God. It cuts to the heart of what’s going on in us. And it carries with it, the power of God to make the changes in your life that you don’t have the power to make. My words can’t do that. But Jesus’ words can. Because He is the Word of God. ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’. Are you ready for that sort of power in your life?

We sometimes behave as though there’s a hierarchy of sins. Deep down we believe that some sins are worse than others, even though in God’s eyes, there’s no such thing as a small sin. But there’s one sin, that’s bigger than almost any other, not because it’s any worse in God’s eyes, but because it spawns much of the evil in our lives. And that sin … is pride.  

I was at a Christian leaders conference recently and one of the speakers there – Joel Dickson was his name – spoke about communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ. But he came at that subject from a unique perspective, he looked at it through the prism of humility.

Now humility’s a funny thing, because the moment you think you’re humble you’re not. And the moment you talk about being humble you’re definitely not. The point he was making, was that beating people over the head with the so called ‘Good News’ ain’t going to do it no? Instead he said, humility is beautiful and it’s attractive.

I sat and thought about that for a while and I realised he’s absolutely right. Humility is beautiful, it is! And it’s perhaps the most attractive form of love that you and I can have. See, Jesus humbled himself on that cross. Philippians chapter 2, verses 5-8:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.

It … it’s worth pausing on those two phrases – emptied Himself, and humbled Himself. Literally, he laid his reputation, his life, his deity aside. He poured himself out, literally emptied himself of everything he was or had. And to humble yourself means to make yourself low. When you think about it Jesus the Son of God, the Creator of the universe had to come a long way down to make himself low. Not just taking the form of a man, but then allowing Himself to be nailed to that cross. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Hmm …

Let’s go back to something that Jesus said about pride and humility. Although in this case, He comes at it from the opposite direction. Let’s go to Matthew chapter 7 beginning in verse 1:

Jesus said, “Do not judge so that you may not be judged. For with a judgement that you make you will be judged, and the measure that you give, will be the measure that you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye; while the log is in your own eye?’ You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.”

As I said earlier one of the greatest evils in our lives is pride, because it spawns so much more sin in us and through us. And the way that pride manifests itself often … is through judgement of others. Let me ask you, when was the last time you judged someone? Maybe you grumbled about them, either verbally or in your heart, maybe you murmured about them, spread rumours about them. Perhaps you’ve written them off as a loser or an idiot. Maybe you’ve argued with them and your relationship with them is broken. Put that way, and that chances are it’s not all that long ago that you judged someone.

Now, one of the reasons – in fact the reason, that what we’re talking about here is so incredibly powerful, is that we’re talking about the very words of Jesus. And the words of Jesus have the power to heal and to transform your life and mine, in a way that nothing else and no one else can. And this passage comes in the middle of a real purple patch of teaching from Jesus early on in the book of Matthew in the New Testament.

His solution to many if not most of your relationship problems – do not judge. Now this is easy to say but it’s a whole bunch harder to do, which is why He goes on and gives us a couple of clear reasons why not to judge. And there’s a lot of power in those reasons.

Firstly, don’t judge because with the measure that you judge you will be judged. By God and by other people. The judgement is the opposite of humility, judgement comes out of pride and that’s His second point. How come you can see the speck in your neighbour’s eye and you haven’t noticed the log in your own eye? First get that log out of your own eye, so that you can see clearly enough and help the neighbour with the speck in his. Totally! There’s the great leveller; the realisation that you and I have our blind spots and our weaknesses – and we do right? Who … who appointed you and me judge, jury and executioner?

Now this point; I want you to take a look at the sharp contrast between the Jesus that we read about in Philippians chapter 2, the One who emptied Himself, the one who humbled Himself, the one that we’re supposed to be like; and the person with the log in their eye, and that would be you and me.

Jesus had and has every right to judge. He’s God. And He’s perfect unlike you and me. And yet, unlike you and me instead of judging, He dies for the very sinners who prance around in pride as though we’re perfect, when in reality we know we aren’t. When we criticise, and we grumble, and we complain … all acts of pride. Wake up! Wh … what’s the matter with you?

That’s what Jesus is saying. Because that pride is a burden too heavy to carry. That pride becomes so incredibly heavy that carrying it around day after day drains the strength … the very life out of you. Which is why Jesus also says in Matthew chapter 11 verses 28-29:

All you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, come to Me, and I’ll give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you’ll find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.

One of the symptoms that many people in this world experience, is the exhaustion and the stress that come from carrying the burden of pride around with them day after day. And you know that feeling, when you carry something heavy around, the longer you carry it the heavier it gets. The more it hurts, and the more the pain screams out at you, “Stop this!” And the answer, the solution to that pain, is not to take an aspirin. The answer is to get rid of the load, the answer is not to treat the symptoms, the answer is to deal with the cause and lay down the load.

Be honest. Is pride doing you in? Is pride and prejudice, is the sin of judgement doing you in? Robbing you of life, causing you pain? Because if it is, it’s time to bring it to Jesus who is lowly and humble of heart. This Jesus who emptied Himself, and humbled Himself to die for your sins.

See, that’s the Jesus who’s ready and waiting to take this load off you, to guide you to a better place. To heal you of the sin and the judgement … and the pride. That’s why there’s so much power in the words of Jesus. Because He’s not just about the talk, He’s about the action. He will forgive you, He will send His Spirit to set you free. He will give you the power to live a different way.

And that … that all starts here and now. All it needs is for you and me to stump up to Jesus and say, “Yeah, that’s me. That’s what I’ve been struggling with, and I’ve been too proud to admit it. But today I want to be free, Jesus help me.”

And that step of humility is a step into the healing power of Jesus. It’s no coincidence that we’re together today you know … it really isn’t. Jesus speaks and Jesus heals. And today we’ve heard him speak, so I’m believing that from this moment on there is going to be some serious healing in your life. Some … some serious Holy Spirit power in your life, some serious freedom in your life, in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.

You know what they say … if all else fails, pray. And frankly, that’s how many people treat prayer. And yes, God will show up in a crisis. But the most powerful form of prayer is pre-emptive prayer. The sort of prayer we pray ahead of time. And that’s the sort of prayer we’re going to chat about today on the program. Powerful prayer. Pre-emptive prayer.

My kids are all grown up now, but … but I remember when they were young. Christmas morning they’d get a bike or some present that needed to be assembled or put together. And I have to tell you, my mechanical skills are not all that good, in fact they’re shocking. I can make a piano sing, I can do a whole lot of other things, but putting things together it’s just not my gig.

So I would dread Christmas mornings where there was something to put together. I’d always muck it up; I’d get cranky with it, whatever it was and eventually with steam coming out of my ears my lovely wife would say, “Well darling, why don’t you read the instructions?” Read the instructions, what? … Urggh, I guess.

If all else fails, read the instructions. I’m sure there’s many a dad who’s been there, done that and got the t-shirt. Reading the instruction was a matter of last resort, it’s something you only did when everything else including your personal mechanical brilliance had failed. And that, as I said is how many people treat prayer.

Don’t know where you’re at, whether you believe in Jesus or whether prayer is something that, well … honestly, really only happens for you in the worst of circumstances, as an absolute last resort. But prayer is often just that.

I remember a chaplain in the army when I was an army officer telling me that there were no atheists in fox holes. And that’s true; when the bullets are flying the bombs are going off around us well that’s enough to drive anyone to prayer.

But pre-emptive action is always better than remedial action. Let me say that again, pre-emptive action is always better than remedial action. It’s … it’s better not to drink or drive than to be in rehabilitation after a car accident, right? It’s better to get your diet and exercise sorted out rather than to be on life support in hospital following a heart attack, no matter how good the hospital happens to be.

Well, actually the same is true about prayer. It’s exactly what Jesus taught and truly, if you want a better life, if you want a life with more peace and power, joy and love, then pre-emptive prayer is exactly what you’ve been looking for.

I know, I know. Prayer isn’t as popular as talking about better relationships for instance. But then with pre-emptive prayer truly you are going to have better relationships. There’s a young boy who had a demon, his father brought him to the disciples at a time when Jesus was busy somewhere else. The disciples … they tried to cast the demon out, but to no avail. Jesus comes along and casts the demon out, in an instant. Let’s pick it up, Mark chapter 9 verses 28-29:

When he had entered the house his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast it out? And he said to them this kind can come out only through prayer and fasting.

Now just think about that for a moment. They’re out there, dad brings his son along who’s convulsing and carrying on and … and manifesting demons. When do you have time for prayer and fasting in all of that? The answer is you don’t. It’s something you had to do beforehand, pre-emptively. Because of your earnest prayer beforehand you would already be in that place where you have the power to do what’s needed.

There’s no other way of interpreting what Jesus said here to the disciples. This is how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Matthew chapter 6 verses 6-13:

And whenever you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites, see they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by others. But truly I tell you, they have received their reward! Whenever you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

When you pray do not heap up empty phrases the Gentiles do, for they think they’ll be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father in heaven knows what you need even before you ask Him. Pray then this way.

‘Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. And give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and do not bring us into the time of trial but rescue us from the evil one.’

Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to go through that in detail. In fact, I’ve written a whole book called ‘Unlocking the Power of Prayer’ just about this one prayer.

But see how it’s a prayer of humility? A prayer about God’s name being lifted up, His kingdom coming, His will being done – and just one request for ourselves, enough food to eat for today. And then an exhortation to forgive – we’ll … we’ll talk more about that on the program tomorrow – and a request for protection from the enemy. It’s a prayer that’s more about God than it is about us. It’s a form of prayer that has the power to change our hearts and transform our lives to get the focus off us and back onto God.

Just stand back from it for a minute and compare that to how you normally pray. It’s a sobering comparison isn’t it? Because more often than not our prayer is a shopping list of stuff for us … what we want. Sure, we might pray for other people or a country following a natural disaster but mostly we pray for ourselves, just reinforcing our selfishness.

Imagine how different your perspective on life would be if most of your prayer was about God and His will. A person who prays like that is the sort of person that can step in at a moment’s notice and cast that demon out of that boy because they’re filled with the power of God, because their life is surrendered to God, because their heart is aching to see His will done on this earth. And their eyes are open, looking around to see what God’s up to and how they can be involved for Him and not for them.

Do you see? Do you see how incredibly different your life could be? I know just how difficult it is to find time to pray like that, believe you me, I know. I have just as many distractions in my life as you have in yours, and … and probably then some. One of the greatest distractions that can keep me from praying is the ministry I’m involved in. That may sound a little bit odd, a little bit surprising, but it’s true. I can work so hard for God, that I forget to be with God and the power that comes from Christlike Christ taught prayer drains out of me. And before I know it, I’m going it alone and then I wonder why I’m so tired … doh.

Notice what Jesus said about prayer? Get away on your own, get into your room, shut the door, be with your Father in secret, shut off all your electronic gadgets, disconnect from social media and from email, and get alone with God. And then, call His will down upon this earth and down upon your life and just see what God will do. And when you walk into a tough ministry situation as those disciples did, you’ll already have the power, you’ll already have the wisdom, you’ll already have the spiritual discernment, you’ll already have everything you need to serve God in that place because you called it down, and He poured it out through your prayer ahead of time.

You want answers, you want power, you want God to solve some of the problems in your life? You want healing? Do you want someone who needs Jesus to find Jesus? The single most powerful thing that you can ever do is to pray as Jesus taught. Yes, miraculous healings are nice, sure they are. But there’s way, way more healing in daily, open, heartfelt prayer than you’ll ever find out there. And there are more miracles wrought in that prayer room than you’ll ever see performed out there. And there were you and I thinking that prayer was a thing of last resort. Huh … really?

Forgiving someone who’s hurt you is one of the hardest of all things to do. Forgiveness is incredibly important, in order to get on with your life, but nevertheless, it’s difficult to achieve. Unless, that is, you do it Jesus’ way. 

Whenever I talk about forgiveness on the program I … I get a big response from people who are listening, much of it telling me about the terrible things that have happened to them and … and how difficult it is to forgive. And it’s true, when someone’s hurt you deeply it’s incredibly hard to forgive. Some of the stories that people share they’re enough to make your heart break.

The question that I’m asked over and over again though is this, “Ok, we know we’re supposed to forgive, but how do we actually forgive other people? I mean how, I know that I should, I just don’t know how?” And that – I have to tell you – is a really good question.

I’ve had a couple of people in my life who hurt me incredibly deeply through serious betrayal. It’s a couple of decades ago now, but it was such a deep hurt that if I hadn’t learned how to forgive them, it would still be eating away at me like a cancer today. And that’s why today we’re going to talk about how to forgive. Not through anything clever I’ve come up with, but through what Jesus has to say.

And that’s what this series of messages ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’ is all about. You may remember a few days ago on the program we had a look at this scripture verse Matthew chapter 7 verses 28-29:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

There’s something powerful and healing about Jesus speaking directly into your life. That’s why we’re spending this time in what I call the purple patch of teaching in the first few chapters of Matthew’s gospel, because I know, that Jesus wants to bring some healing into your life through what He has to say.

Yep, there are some amazing miracles in chapter 8 and we’ll talk about a few of those at the end of this series but my observation is, that when Jesus speaks into your heart, when the Holy Spirit takes God’s Word and writes it on your heart, there are more miracles that happen through that, than we ever see at a healing service, amen?

And … and if we can get Jesus’ plan for getting forgiveness happening in your heart, hey that’s a miracle. It’s a miracle that sets you free from the hurts of the past; it’s a miracle that I’ve experienced in my life.

Max, my producer here in the studio and I, a few years ago, were sitting down for a cup of tea after one of our sessions together. And he knows some of the terrible things that have happened to me in the past, and he said something along these lines, he said, “It’s amazing how completely God has set you free from those things.” Do you know what? I really hadn’t thought of it that way, but what he said is absolutely true. And with all my heart I believe it’s because I get to spend a lot of time in God’s Word to do what I do. And God’s Word has taken root in my heart and sprouted and set me free.

I’m amazed how we go chasing after help for our troubles here, and there, and everywhere else, as though somehow an aspirin and a bandaid are going to help the deep hurts in our hearts. If … if you want to pull out a weed in your garden you take it out by its roots, yeah? Well it’s the same with the hurts in our lives. There are plenty of people out there who will pander to your symptoms but only Jesus will heal your diseases. Here’s what Jesus said about forgiveness. Matthew chapter 6 verses 9-14:

Pray, then, in this way, ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us, and don’t bring us into a time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.’ For if you forgive others their trespasses your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you don’t forgive others neither will your Father forgive you.’

I want you to notice something about this teaching, about forgiveness. It comes in the context of what? Of prayer! And that … that is the key to experiencing forgiveness. Finally being able to forgive someone for what they did to you, and being set free from the burden of their wrong towards you. And unless you’re set free, you’re going to allow them to keep on hurting you.

That’s why forgiveness is so important and actually, this is Jesus saying this, not me. God forgiving you is conditional on you forgiving others, and the way you do that is to pray for them. Again, here it is Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 verses 43-45:

‘You’ve heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, He sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.’

Let me tell you something. The more you pray for the people who hurt you, the more God will set you free from the un-forgiveness. The more you pray for the people who have hurt you, the more the pain goes away, the more your life comes back, and the more you are able to forgive them.

Look, it may not happen overnight, but it will happen. Forgiveness, is when in our hearts we give up the right to punish those who have hurt us or … or to get recompense or even an apology from them.

I’ve heard it said you can’t forgive someone unless they ask you for forgiveness, but that’s not true. Jesus went and died on the cross for you before you ever asked for His forgiveness. Pray for your enemies and if you can, bless them. Keep doing that faithfully and Jesus will do something for you that you, yourself, cannot do. He’ll bring healing and forgiveness into your heart. He will set you free! And when He sets you free, you’ll be free indeed. You see, it’s the Jesus plan and it actually works.

Maybe … maybe you’re thinking, “Berni it sounds too simple.” Well in my experience it wasn’t simple at all. The two people who betrayed me terribly, I regularly pray for their salvation and for God’s blessing in their lives. Now, see it’s almost 20 years on, and I’m still praying that, because you know what, that’s what Jesus taught me to pray. And that’s how healing came to my heart.

It’s completely counter intuitive … I mean really it is! But I’ve never found any other way to conjure up a sense of forgiveness in my heart for people who’ve hurt me. As strong as I am, I’ve never been able to find the strength to forgive those people who’ve hurt me so deeply. The deeper the hurt, the harder it is to forgive.

Some forgiving is easy. I love my wife dearly and as wonderful as she is she’s not perfect … nor am I. So forgiving her takes no effort at all for me. But other forgiveness is hard, and for that forgiveness, you and I need Jesus. Jesus is the answer to un-forgiveness. Jesus is the power to forgive, and Jesus is the healing that you’ve been looking for all your life.

Yeah, look we can chase around looking for help in all sorts of places, when the only help that helps is closer than we ever imagined. Matthew chapter 18 verses 21-22:

Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘No no, I don’t say seven times but seventy-seven times.’

Ouch! Seventy-seven times? You know when someone hurts you the same way the third time or the fourth time, you’re ready to punch them out, right? You’re ready to be finished with them, you’re ready to reject them and to cut them off. Three or four times seems enormous, seven is a lot and Jesus is using hyperbole here, He’s saying not seven, but seventy-seven times. Try that in your own strength and let me know how you get on.

There are not all that many harder taskmasters in life than money. Money can become as addictive as heroin, and when that happens, our whole life becomes consumed with the desire to have more … and the more we have, the more we discover that money simply cannot fill that deep void within.

For many years of my life I was addicted to chocolate. There’s one particular brand here in Australia that most of the children of my generation grew up with – Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate. Now sure, you can buy fine Swiss chocolates like Lindt and others, but the staple chocolate, if I can call it that, of my generation was Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Still today, just as I sit here and think about and speak about it, things start happening in my brain. I … I can see the wrapper, I can smell the block of chocolate, I … I can taste that smooth, velvety, sweet taste as I put a few squares in my mouth. And … and it’s years since I’ve had a piece of that chocolate.

It turns out that chocolate is a mood altering food. When you eat chocolate, your brain increases its levels of the calming neurotransmitter serotonin, and it makes you feel better. On top of that, chocolate contains a compound called phenyl ethylamine, which acts like an amphetamine, stimulating the release of dopamine. And dopamine is your reward drug, it results in a mild anti-depressant effect and ends up prompting blissful emotions. So, that’s why often people who are feeling down or depressed will turn to chocolate, it’s a mood altering substance. It’s pretty amazing stuff!

You can see why people become chocoholics and I truly am a reforming chocoholic, I rarely touch the stuff these days. But the downside of all of that is that most chocolate is full of sugar. Eat too much of it and you come off that high very quickly, into a well documented, scientifically understood, sugar crash. Eat too much of it on a constant basis and you’ll end up with fatty liver, a precursor to dangerous and debilitating cirrhosis of the liver, high triglycerides in your blood, which are one of the best indicators of heart attack and stroke, and high insulin levels which will cause weight gain and ultimately diabetes.

So, why the science lesson on chocolate? Simply to make this point – inevitably something that promises everything, like chocolate, will have a downside. Too much of a good thing leads to bad things. And it is exactly the same with money, or at least our desire for money. Money is a mood altering compound.

Jesus had more to say about money, or more accurately, our desire for wealth than pretty much any other subject because He knew, and He knows, that wealth is even more addictive, and even more dangerous, than chocolate. Matthew chapter 6 beginning in verse 19:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust will consume, and where thieves will break in and steal. But instead, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth or rust consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.

Notice here how Jesus isn’t talking so much about money per se, but about treasures. The original Greek word used there, means a place in which good and precious things are laid up, a … a treasury, a storehouse, a repository. The best way to think of it in today’s terms is perhaps, someone who has precious jewellery.

I was in Dubai recently, and I saw an amazing necklace it must have had fifty or sixty, four or five carat diamonds in it. So I walked into the store and I asked how much … hmmm … about 5.8 million US dollars.

Now, if you owned that necklace I’m sure you’d have a safe in your house and you’d keep it locked away in that safe. So that safe would be your treasury, the place where you protect your wealth. So Jesus is using that picture here, not to talk about the necklace itself, not to talk about the money itself, but our attitude towards it. When our money becomes our treasure, it becomes something that we protect. Our life starts to revolve around it, and so your heart becomes tied up with it. And when your heart starts to crave for it, you want more and more, just like the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate I was talking about before.

So, why is this a problem? Surely there’s nothing inherently bad about money? No, not at all. The problem comes when our desire for money turns our heart away from God, and towards the pursuit of wealth. I personally have been there. I’ve got the t-shirt, and let me tell you it wasn’t a pretty time in my life. In fact, it almost led to my complete ruin and destruction.

God loves you, God loves me and he wants the best for us. His very best for us is Jesus, but wherever your treasure is, there your heart will also be. So in other words, you start storing up treasures for yourself in your heart, and your heart will grow hard, and cold, and strong, like the metal of that safe, to protect your treasures. And that’s why the very next thing that Jesus said on this is also true, Matthew chapter 6 verse 24:

No one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one, and love the other; or be devoted to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth.

In other words, you can’t be a dog with two masters, because if one says, “Stay” and the other says, “Go” which one are you going to obey? You cannot serve both God and wealth at the same time. Interesting again here, Jesus doesn’t use the word money, instead he talks about wealth. The Aramaic word is ‘mammon’ which means again, treasure, or riches, or storehouse. It carries with it the sense that the money has become more than just money, but instead it’s more like an idol – wealth personified if you will. In other words, the problem isn’t the money, it’s our desire for the money. Because the desire ends up being the guiding force of your life.

You see the problem, you can’t be a dog with two masters. You’ll either serve the one or the other, but not both. So, money ends up supplanting God in your life and there are consequences to that, I Timothy chapter 6 verses 9-10:

Those who want to be rich fall into temptation, and they’re trapped by many senseless and harmful desires, that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from their faith, and pierced themselves with many pains.

Speaking as someone who used to want to be rich, I can tell you that my desires were indeed harmful, that I was indeed plunged into ruin and destruction, I was indeed pierced with many pains, to the point where I almost took my own life. All for the love of money.

The thing with chocoholics, is that they don’t want to own up to their addiction. My Dad had diabetes, he always had some chocolate tucked away in a drawer somewhere that he was eating, hidden from the rest of us. Until eventually, it killed him.

And the thing with moneyholics, wealthholics, is that it’s exactly the same. Money is such a good thing, but we kid ourselves, we delude ourselves, and we go on pursuing it to our own destruction.

Right in the middle of his teaching about wealth and the desire for it. Jesus said this, ‘The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is healthy your whole body will be full of life. But if your eye is unhealthy your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness how great is the darkness.’

What He’s talking about is self-delusion. So, I’m going to put a challenge here before you right now. Is your desire for wealth drawing you away from God and ruining your life? Does retail therapy give you that dopamine hit, and make you feel better? Are you deluding yourself, kidding yourself, telling yourself you don’t have a problem but really you’re hiding this nasty little secret in your heart. A heart by the way which is starting to grow hard, and cold, towards God. Is that what’s happening in your life?