Matthew 6:19-21 - January 26, 2025

It was really nice to hear the choir again. It's been a while since I have heard the choir. I don't know if it happened while I was gone recently, but that's definitely something that I've missed. So thank you all very much for doing that.

I do wanna draw your attention before we get started to the fact that we put another handout in your bulletin with a quasi outline and the listing of a lot of the Scripture references that are gonna be part of the sermon today.

The Worldly Pull That Shapes Christian Priorities

You'll see there are quite a few of them. Quite a few of them. But what we're doing today is continuing on in this section of the Sermon on the Mount that deals with the relationship between the Christian and God, between the Christian and God, our Heavenly Father.

Now, you recall that we looked over the last several weeks at the last section, the section about Christians practicing their righteousness and our big takeaway was that our righteousness is to be practiced for God.

It's not to be practiced for the benefit, for the applause, for the approval of man in any way. But as a reminder to ourselves of how all these things are connected, you might notice if you stop to think about all that we've discussed over the last several months, what we've covered is heavily focused on keeping us as believers, as regenerate Christians, oriented Godward, oriented towards God in everything that we do in our lives.

There is no separation of any aspect of your life from God. Your work is not separate from God. Your hobbies are not separate from God. Your family, your money, none of it is separate from God. So all that we do is to orient ourselves towards God.

And again, let me remind you one more time that the Sermon on the Mount was preached to those who are Christians, to those who are believers. It's not a standard of living for people who don't count themselves as believers.

But if you do, if you claim salvation in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is your life. These are your standards. So we saw this in the very beginning with the Beatitudes, the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

This sets the tone for all that we see from there. And this continued with the idea of being salt and light in the world. And it even continued, the idea of being oriented toward God into the teachings of the six antitheses, those teachings that led us into the areas of study that we just looked at on giving prayer and fasting.

And now this still finds us looking at a concept that seems a little different, but ultimately it's not. But what I wanna draw your attention to is that there's a common thread that's running through every bit of this, every bit of what we've looked at so far.

It's a common thread that connects the reason for all these teachings and that gives them the importance that they have. And the common thread is the world. But even beyond that, the common thread is the Christian's relationship to the world.

If you look back at all the subjects that Jesus is teaching on, it always comes back to the influence of the world, or it comes back to our desire to be accepted by the world. And that desire to be accepted or that influence of the world is ultimately what corrupts what could otherwise be good and godly desires and drives.

Let me just think back to our teachings on the Beatitudes. We've all read the Beatitudes.

We all know them.

The words are familiar, but when we went deep into what they really mean, to really grasp the full meaning of each and every one of these things, we see a pattern of lifestyle or behavior that is to be present in the life of every Christian.

But within that pattern of behavior or lifestyle that is to be present, what we see is that those patterns and behaviors are very much at odds with the patterns and behaviors of the world, the patterns and behaviors that are accepted or applauded by the world.

And in many cases, they could be considered to be the polar opposite of the lifestyles that are accepted by the world. And what we find is that the influence of the world either pulls Christians away from the lifestyle of the Beatitudes, or at the very least, if it doesn't pull you away, it opens you up to some level of persecutions.

So you have to be prepared for both of those things. Part of the meaning of being salt and light, as we saw earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, is that you are profoundly different from the world. As a Christian, people should be able to look at you and know that you're not the same.

However, that desire to be seen as pious and holy, or the desire to appeal to man's standards and not God's standards, was what drove the Pharisees and the religious teachers to corrupt the teaching of the Mosaic law.

That same desire today still prompts religion for show. It prompts the public display of prayer, the public display of giving, and to a far lesser extent, the public display of fasting, just to name a few of those examples that Jesus has given us.

But we have to ask ourselves, why is that? What is it about the pull of the world that is so powerful that it could draw people who are professing Christians away from the things of God and into the things of the world?

We all live in the world, and that's part of it. And of course, we're supposed to be separate from the world, although that doesn't mean completely isolating ourselves. But simply being in the world is exposing us to something.

And Scripture tells us exactly what this is. If you read 1 John 5, 19, that verse says this, we know that we are of God and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. So obviously, we're referring to Satan as this tremendous influence in the world.

And Jesus refers to Satan as the ruler of this world. He says that in John 12, 31, and in John 14, 30. If we needed another example, we see Paul writing in Ephesians 2, 2, that when we were sinners, we once walked following the course of this world, but not only following the course of this world, but following the prince of the power of the air, which is another reference to Satan, by the way, in case that was weird language that you weren't familiar with.

And warnings about Satan are given to believers in various other places, too. 1 Peter 5, 8, be of sober spirit, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

And Ephesians 6, 12 reminds us of this, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

And I would pause briefly right there to tell you that if you're not familiar with the rest of the passage in Ephesians 6, 20 that talks about the armor of God, I think you should spend some time reading it.

The armor of God addresses the weapons and the tools that you have to fight against the influence of Satan in the world. And never doubt that it is a fight. It is a war, it is a battle, and you do need weapons because it's combat.

But if you haven't read the rest of that, it's roughly Ephesians 6, 10 through 20. Definitely look at that to learn how to equip yourself for this struggle. But here's something else. While some of those verses sound dramatic, we're talking about a cosmic struggle against evil, or we're talking about a roaring lion prowling around looking for someone to devour, I would suggest something to you.

And I would suggest to you that while that sounds very dramatic and it sounds very obvious, the way that this plays out in our lives, the way that the Christian slowly slips into worldliness is far more mundane, it's far more subtle.

It involves far more deception than the image of a roaring lion. And we'll talk about that soon. But another way Satan works is through unbelievers. And unbelievers are far more prevalent in society than those who truly hold to the word of God as their sole authority.

Scripture tells us about this as well. 2 Corinthians 4, three through four says, and even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this age has blinded minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

So we see scripture tells us that the eyes of unbelievers have been veiled and Satan takes full advantage of that. And again, the people in our society to whom the gospel is veiled are far greater in number than the people that are sitting in the pews of churches and far greater in number than the people who are sitting in the pews of churches that are actually preaching the Bible.

So it gets even worse from there. But these are the people that make up our society. These are the intellectuals, academics, scientists, doctors, teachers, professors, news broadcasters, politicians, actors, celebrities, although those might all fall into the same category in a lot of times.

But those people exert a tremendous amount of influence over our lives, like it or not. And whether we would want to admit it or not, those people exert a tremendous amount of influence on our society.

And I'm not making excuses for you. I'm just telling you what you're up against so that you understand the fight that you have on your hands. Because in every one of your lives, and it's probably happened for most of you already, there will come a point where you have to make a decision.

You have to make a decision to maintain your focus on the things of God, even when making that decision means that you have to give up everything that the world has to offer. And you have to be willing to give up everything that the world has to offer.

And that will certainly be another big theme of a message today. But as we look to scripture for all our examples, we find a model of this in the book of Joshua. And if you wanna turn to Joshua 24, we're gonna read some verses from there.

So if you're not familiar, Joshua was the leader that succeeded Moses, the leader of the Israelites. He led them to the promised land. So what we see in the story of Joshua is the story of God fulfilling his promise to his people.

Yet how quickly we all tend to forget what God has done. As soon as things get difficult, we forget whatever God has brought us through and we forget all the gifts that he's given us. And I think that we can say the Israelites were probably our prototype for this sort of behavior.

Joshua had to remind them of the graciousness of God because they were grumbling. They were starting to turn and worship other gods. But Joshua, as a godly leader, faced the people and then he issued them this challenge, this challenge that you are no doubt familiar with.

It's in Joshua 24. We'll read verses 14 and 15. And he says this, so now fear Yahweh and serve him in integrity and truth and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve Yahweh.

If it is evil in your sight to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you were living.

But as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh. But we have to understand something here. Everybody has heard, probably heard it said, for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. But it's not enough to have this cross-stitched or woodworked on your wall or to buy the poster from HomeGoods or whatever and put it up in your house that says, and for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

It's not enough to know the verse and hang it up if you don't back it up with the way that you live your life. So what does all this have to do with our passage for today? We're obviously in Matthew chapter six, looking at verses 19 through 21.

Treasure on Earth and Treasure in Heaven

What we're looking at today is Jesus addressing the issue of making worldly choices or choosing worldly priorities in your life. So let's look at these three verses and then we'll go a little deeper into the meaning and the implications of this.

So you can turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter six and we're gonna read verses 19 through 21 this morning. These verses say this, do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Now, undoubtedly, you have a pretty good idea, at least of the direction in which we're gonna be headed today.

Maybe you don't know exactly everything that we're gonna talk about, but you get the gist of it. Now, as we look at these verses, there is a very obvious application that pops out immediately. And that is related to money and material possessions.

As we read this, we can be absolutely sure that Jesus is cautioning against dedicating your life to amassing and acquiring wealth and tangible possessions. Money can certainly be one of those things that he is talking about.

But I will tell you this, I actually don't wanna spend too much time talking about money today because that's gonna be coming up very soon if you read just a couple verses down. So we're gonna talk specifically about money in a week or two.

But we can't ignore the plain emphasis on acquiring things. But not only that, we can't ignore the misplaced priorities that drive that emphasis on acquiring things. And misplaced priorities is gonna be the other significant big theme that we're talking about today.

Now, I realize that it can be easy to get buried in information when we start talking about the Greek, when we start getting into the original languages that scripture was written in. So if you look at your outline under Roman numeral two, capital letter A, I bolded it, I put the Greek word that's used there.

And the thing that's interesting about this, the thing that we have to talk about briefly is that there's context that goes along with this that we just can't get from our English translations. And that's the case with this word.

You'll notice that word looks very similar to the word thesaurus, yeah, which is essentially a treasury of words. And that's what this word means, is a treasures or a treasury. It could also be used to refer to a stockpile.

Now, this particular word in the Gospels, it's used twice here, but it's only used in one other place in the Gospels. And this is significant because those were records of the teaching of Jesus. Now, we're gonna look at this as well.

So you can turn to Luke 12, chapter 15 through 21, where we find the only other place where this word, this Greek word is used. So 15 to 21 is part of the parable of the rich fool. Jesus says, then he said to them, watch out and be on your guard against every form of greed.

For not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions. And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself saying, what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops?

Then he said, this is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come.

Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, you fool, this very night, your soul is required of you. And now who will own what you prepared? So the one who stores, and this is where the word is.

So the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich, so is the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. So you can think about that parable and how that relates to what we're talking about as we proceed this morning.

But it's directly related to our current subject. Now back to our passage in Matthew where Jesus is talking about not storing up treasures on earth like this rich fool did in Luke. A commentator named Craig Keener mentions that the people listening to Jesus would often have kept all of their monetary savings in strong boxes or safe.

So they would have kept all their money in their house, under their bed, under a floorboard, under the house somewhere. But consider how that might be problematic from a security perspective. And of course, Jesus addresses that in this verse where thieves break in and steal.

So we have the money issue. But further, Keener goes on to say that precious apparel was often also considered to be a treasure. Now, that might sound funny or it might not sound funny. I mean, a lot of people value their clothes.

But we see an example of this in the sin of Achan in Joshua 7 .21, so we're back to the book of Joshua. That verse says this. I saw among the spoil, and this is Achan speaking, I saw among the spoil a beautiful mantle from Shemar, and that is a garment, and 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold, 50 shekels in weight.

Then I coveted them and took them, and behold, they are concealed in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath it. So in this passage, we see everything that Jesus is talking about. We see the desire for clothes.

We see the desire for money. We see the sin that makes him want that enough to steal it and then to hide it underneath his tent. So all of this is going on in that verse, the whole range of issues, from desire to sin.

And also on that issue of precious apparel, like that mantle from Shemar, it was considered so special that people would pass clothing down to their descendants. And that probably doesn't sound funny because you can think maybe of a mother passing a wedding dress down to her daughter.

That's a precious form of apparel or something along those lines. And even poor people had garments that they would pass down. But just like storing all your money underneath your house or underneath your bed, it's just not as simple as keeping stuff like that for long periods of time and keeping it safe from a variety of threats.

A lot of you know that my family lives in a house that my grandparents used to live in. So I was familiar with that house for a long time, grew up going there. And there's a coat closet in the living room where we have all our coats now.

But when my grandparents lived there, every once in a while, I would go to that closet and I would open it up and it would smell weird. Maybe you remember this with your grandparents or your parents, or maybe you have this now, right?

But what was the smell? Mothballs, exactly. So my grandparents, they have all these coats, they're probably all made of real wool because they had real stuff then. And they had to put these smelly mothballs in there so that moth would not destroy these possessions.

Now, what Jesus is doing here in this passage is simply stating the obvious. In the pursuit of piling up earthly treasures, you are creating twice as much work for yourself because not only do you have to acquire those treasures, but you have to protect them and clean them.

That's right, because we also talked about rust, right? There's rust, you gotta clean the clothes, get the mothball smell out of them so people don't look at you funny when you wear it. But you have to protect your safe full of money from thieves.

You have to protect your precious apparel from being eaten by bugs. And this is another preview of topics that'll be coming up very soon, but you know what else happens when you focus so much on this stuff?

When you focus so much on acquiring and protecting these things? For most people, it produces anxiety. So now we have the work of getting it, the work of keeping it safe, and then on top of all that, the anxiety of doing all those things together.

Because no matter what, there's no true peace, there's no true comfort, and there's no true security in any of these earthly things that you can acquire. We like them, we need them, in some cases, we don't need all of them, but there's no permanent lasting peace.

And why is this? Because all this stuff is still fleeting, all this stuff is still earthly. Isaiah 48 says this, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. The word of our God stands forever.

Now contrast this with any physical item that you can think of. Despite your best and your most diligent efforts, it will eventually deteriorate. I know we have people here that build stuff, I know we have people here that work on cars, I know we have people here that do all kinds of other things.

You can work as hard as you can and do your best work, and eventually it doesn't matter, that stuff is still gonna deteriorate. And if you don't work hard on it, it's gonna deteriorate even faster. So it's only through your own efforts that it won't just go to waste completely.

And it doesn't matter if it's a house, if it's clothing, if it's cars, tools, instruments, furniture, whatever you can think of. So we have this warning about storing up treasures on earth. And the warning really is about the motivation and the drive and the purpose of your heart that leads you to want to have all of these things.

So there's an obvious surface level application here. But like so many of these biblical principles, there is a level below the surface. Because as we consider the idea of just accumulating stuff or just accumulating money, it can be easy based on that interpretation to make a couple of mistakes.

Now, the first mistake is this. The first mistake is to assume that Jesus is teaching that poverty is a virtue. Here I am railing on about how you shouldn't be focused on acquiring possessions, right?

But don't mistake the fact that Jesus never teaches us that being poor means you are more godly than someone else. It is not your level of material possessions that results in this.

It is your heart.

And I know where this comes from. I've had conversations with people. We have the parable of the rich young ruler who was told to give up all his possessions. And it would seem that Jesus is telling everyone not to have stuff.

But as I've discussed with other people before, that was for the rich young ruler because it was his possessions that were preventing him from being able to enter the kingdom of God, specifically his circumstance.

But if you wanna take a simplistic reading, then you also have to explain other biblical accounts of godly people who were wealthy. Abraham was very wealthy. You know who else was wealthy? Was Job. Job was wealthy.

Job lost everything. But after he was tested, do you remember what happens? Look at Job 42. We're gonna look at it now. So you can look at it or listen to it. Job 42, starting in verse 12. And Yahweh blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.

And he had 14 ,000 sheep and 6 ,000 camels and 1 ,000 pairs of oxen and 1 ,000 female donkeys. That's a lot of stuff. So Job, Job after his testing and his ruin was restored to even more than he had before.

And here's the other thing. There's no inherent problem with working to support your family. There's no inherent problem with working to build a business. Especially when you do these things in a responsible, God-honoring manner.

But as we've seen throughout the Sermon on the Mount, all of these things come down to an issue of your heart. And we'll look at that more in just a moment. But I said there were two errors. And the other error is thinking that just because you are not focused on material possessions, that you're still good.

You don't have to be focused on being rich to have wrong desires in your heart. And sometimes these don't manifest themselves in wealth. Because there are other ways, back to the idea of worldliness, there are other ways that a worldly mindset manifests itself.

And this is in your time, your desires, and your priorities. So J .C. Ryle had this to say about worldliness. Worldliness is one of the greatest dangers that beset a person's soul. It is no wonder that we find our Lord speaking strongly about it.

It is a subtle, misleading, apparently reasonable enemy. It seems so innocent to pay close attention to our business. It seems so harmless to seek our happiness in this world, so long as we keep clean of open sins.

Yet here is a rock on which many make shipwreck to all eternity. They lay up treasure on earth and forget to lay up treasure in heaven. May we all remember this. Where are our hearts? What do we love best?

Are our chief affections on things in earth or things in heaven? Life or death depends on the answer we give to these questions. If our treasure is earthly, our hearts will be earthly also. And where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So what are we talking about here? I can tell you that even if you aren't a materialistic person, it's still possible for you to have a heart that's divided. A heart that is not pure, as we mentioned in the Beatitudes.

As we look back at this passage in Matthew 6, Martin Lloyd-Jones says this, our Lord is dealing here with people who get their main or even total satisfaction in this life from things that belong to this world only.

And in case that doesn't make sense, I'll give you a couple of examples to show you what we're talking about. And I'll start with one that hopefully won't confront any of you. Martin Lloyd-Jones also says this, many a preacher has been ruined by his congregation.

That's a pretty wild statement, right? But it's true. And what he means by this is that it is very easy to get addicted to praise and kind words, to get addicted to people coming up to you after the service every Sunday and saying, I really liked your sermon.

That was a really great sermon. Thank you for your sermon. And I'm not saying any of those things are bad. Like I said, it's not the compliment that's the problem. It's the preacher that becomes the problem.

Because what he does is that over time, he can desire those compliments so much that he will tailor his preaching in such a way that he receives them. And what that means is that he will stop saying things that might potentially offend people and will just continue to say easy things, things that we can all agree on.

They're in the Bible, so it's not unbiblical, but it's not the whole picture. And we start avoiding topics that people don't like or speaking in that just safe, bland way that pleases people. This is a prime example of storing up earthly treasures.

That praise, that desire to be liked is your earthly treasure. But that preacher is doing that at the expense of heavenly treasure. And heavenly treasure is the approval of God. And while the congregation may love everything that the preacher says, I tell you, that preacher is preaching himself straight to hell, straight to hell.

And all the while, it's a really smooth, fun ride, right? Because everybody loves you. And then you wake up in the wrong place. But now let's consider the idea of moth and rust destroying in a slightly more metaphorical sense.

Worldliness, Misplaced Praise, and the Aging Body

So one of the things that I hear a lot from people here in this congregation is that it's no fun getting old.

See?

Right here on the second pew. And from the context, I mean, I don't get it. From the context, I can surmise that this is somehow related to the fact that our bodies naturally start to deteriorate over time.

They deteriorate from use, right? It's just something that happens. And when I say I can't understand, I'm lying. I'm lying because my knee hurts right now,.

Even a little bit.

And some people deteriorate slower than others. And what's really ironic about that is that using your body is both the cause of the deterioration and really the only way to prevent it. So you're sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

But in all seriousness, what does this mean for us? It means that placing an excessive emphasis on anything that you can do with your body is building up treasures on earth, not treasures in heaven. Now, this could be related to your job, but more commonly, the place that I see this having the worst, most pervasive effect on worldliness and on the individual Christian's relationship to God is in sports, and youth sports in particular, but not just youth sports.

And as I begin to talk about this, I do wanna say something. I have nothing against sports. I think sports are valuable. We spent all day yesterday at basketball courts with Parker and Avery, and Mallory went to gymnastics.

So, you know, the kids play sports, and I think they have a tremendous amount of value to a point. Now, before we talk about youth, believe it or not, as a younger adult, I used to do stuff like running, biking, triathlons.

I did all that stuff. I participated in some organized events. But a lot of times, those events took places on weekends, and sometimes they were on Saturdays, but guess what? Sometimes they were on Sundays.

Sometimes they're starting Sunday morning, eight, nine, 10 o 'clock in the morning, right during church. And it's a very secular culture. And the reason I bring that up is because now we have all these adults that have gathered, and have chosen to participate in this event, this athletic event, instead of being at church, instead of gathering with the saints as we're commanded in the Bible.

So let's do a little thought experiment. Where does that habit come from? Now, the reasons that adults might not go to church are many, and they're varied. It's not the same for everyone. But I'll tell you this.

One place it starts is with parents who prioritize sports over church. Understand that as a parent, and as a Christian parent, if you justify skipping church to be at a game, you are very clearly telling your children with your actions where your priorities are.

And you're telling them that that sport is more important than church. Now, I'll say this too, from being a part of it. Our current youth sports culture is a cancer on our society. Yesterday, at a rec basketball game, I watched a mother come out of there, cussing and yelling about the amount of playing time that her child was getting.

Her coach was giving his son all the playing time, and her son was sitting on the bench, and she's not gonna stand for this. Now, I have also been, and again, so understand that some of the place that this comes from is because I have made the same mistakes.

And we'll talk about that in a second. Not the cussing and stuff like that, I promise you that, but the prioritization. I've been to events where parents wanna fight refs, and parents wanna fight coaches, and parents wanna fight each other over a 10-year-old soccer game.

And see, what happens is we get our kids in these things, and the second they show just a little bit of talent, just a little bit more ability than someone else, we think that our path is to push them harder, to push them to another level of competition, because, well, they might get a college scholarship, or they might make millions of dollars being a professional.

My friend down in Lynchburg has somebody that was a part of his soccer team who was a little bit better than the other kids, so instead of playing soccer for their travel team, they now travel from Lynchburg to Charlottesville to play for a travel team.

So they drive 90 minutes to go to practice. And this is what this culture does. Now, does this mean that being an athlete can't be honoring to God? It absolutely does not mean that. Please hear what I'm saying.

It doesn't mean that you can't play a sport and not be a Christian, but it does mean that you have to be very certain, and you have to be very careful of your motivations. And you have to truly count the cost involved in disobeying a command of Scripture that I mentioned earlier, it's Hebrews 10 .25.

Not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. So as parents, what you do with your kid matters. How you demonstrate your priorities in your life matters.

Proverbs 22 .6 tells us this, the wisdom of the Bible. Train up a child according to his way, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Now, part of the problem with somebody who has made some of these mistakes telling you this is that I also know all the excuses, because I've made the excuses too.

Oh, it's just one Sunday, it doesn't matter. It's just this one tournament that we'll go to. It's okay, we'll go to church the rest of the year. Or sports are good for developing teamwork, skills, resilience, et cetera.