Two Treasures

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 6:16-24

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Well, this morning, we're back in Matthew chapter 6, as we make our way toward the end of this chapter, we begin a new section here in verse 19 and 21, and really the next two messages that come from verses 19 to 24, we'll see is actually being connected as a unit.
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And so I've titled the message this morning, Two Treasures, and as we move forward, we'll see in the next message, there's two
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I's, a good I and a bad I, and then two masters. And so we see this theme, this tension, this morning, two treasures, and then two
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I's, two masters. This holds together verses 19 through 24. This morning, we'll be looking at verses 19 through 21.
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Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
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For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
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You can see in the tension between two treasures, treasures on earth, treasures in heaven, two
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I's, a good I or an evil I, two masters. A master that's good, that's worthy of service, the bad master that holds one in bondage, that as we saw even at the retreat, ultimately there are only two ways to live.
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Scripture, when you get to the Psalms or you look at the book of Proverbs, what we call the wisdom writings, it says in all the many ways that people may choose to live, all the ways that they establish themselves, the paths of work and relationships that they choose, doesn't matter how varied, how unique those paths may be, everyone's life essentially boils down to two ways.
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There are two ways to live. And as we said at the retreat, no one should think that somehow they're sitting at the fork in the road waiting to choose which of those two ways they want to live.
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You're born on one of those ways. You're born on the wrong way because of Adam's sin.
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So no one breaks out the plastic lawn chair and parks it right in front of the fork between the two paths and says, you know,
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I'm just going to kind of sit here and wait and really deliberate and think and about 20 years when I'm ready to go down the godly path,
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I guess I'll go down that path. That doesn't exist. You're either walking on the wrong path or you're walking on the path that leads to life.
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We see that held out in verses 19 through 24. Jesus, as we'll see in each of these passages, is drawing out this contrast, this tension, boiling it all down to the fact that there's ultimately two ways to live.
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There's ultimately two positions that your heart will be in. Ultimately two ways that you'll look and see the things in the world around you.
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Ultimately two masters, one of whom you must serve. Last week we were considering this matter of fasting and we spoke about having the mere appearance, which really is where we began chapter 6 in Matthew.
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Just having a pretense, a show before the eyes of men rather than having the appearance before God, which is to say having the awareness that I'm ever living before God.
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My desire is to appear before Him, to live for Him. And so that's the difference between the mere appearance of Christianity versus the substance of Christianity.
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And Jesus drew that out in talking about the way that Christians give, the way that Christians pray, the way that Christians fast in humility and devotion to their
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Father in heaven. These are all ways of getting at what it means to have the substance of faith, to have a real heart, a living faith in God.
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And that's especially where we're going this morning in verses 19 through 21. Jesus here in this passage will point to the importance of the heart as a means of revealing our spiritual condition.
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Let me say that again because it's vitally important. Jesus will point to the importance of the heart, and we'll define what
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He means by the heart when we get there, as the means to reveal our spiritual condition.
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In other words, which of the two ways are you on this morning? We're just going to work through this verse by verse.
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So we'll begin with verse 19 where Jesus describes treasures on earth. He says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal.
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Now what does Jesus mean by treasures on earth? Well, Matthew Henry, I think, puts it so well.
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He says, Christ, having warned against coveting the praise of men, proceeds next to warn us against coveting the wealth of the world.
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For those that were fasting and disfiguring themselves, for those that were making a big show out of the way that they were generous,
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Jesus says, well, they're only living for the sight of men, and if that's what they were living for, they have their reward in full.
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And so they were coveting the attention of men, and here Jesus is warning against coveting the wealth of the world.
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And Matthew Henry says, here we take heed, lest we become hypocrites as well. The fundamental error of the hypocrite is they choose the world as their reward.
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This is exactly what Jesus has established up to this point already in chapter 6. Here, he says, whatever fortune you may make, whatever riches you may covet, whatever in providence you are able to lay up for yourself, it's not going to last.
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As a famous preacher said of old, I've never seen a hearse followed by a U -Haul, all right?
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It doesn't go with you. Even if you were the pharaoh of Egypt and you're literally buried, surrounded by all of your treasure, what good is that to you?
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Now you're just in some vault in the MFA and we're all staring at you through Plexiglas. None of that treasure meant anything to you.
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Jesus is saying, it will not be preserved, it will not last, you cannot hold on to it.
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So don't live your life in a way that you're trying to grasp it. Now, in the ancient world, and every now and then
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I look at newsfeeds and these types of discoveries happen all of the time, twice a week.
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Some farmer in Yorkshire puts his plow into the ground and comes across some broken jar and in it is a coin hoard.
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And so in the ancient world, you didn't go to the first bank of Nazareth, you didn't have a
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Gaza credit union. If you wanted to preserve your wealth, you wouldn't put it into the obvious place like under your mattress, that's what 12 -year -olds do, all right?
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You found that perfect spot, you know, five steps away from a certain tree in a certain field and you dug it and then if you were out and collecting wheat and you had a stroke, no one knew it was there until about 2 ,000 years later, some
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Yorkshire farmer puts his plow in the ground and finds 3 ,000 silver coins or 200 gold coins.
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These are common discoveries. And Jesus is saying, essentially, whatever treasure you're able to lay up, you think of that parable where the servant buries the money that the master gave to him into the ground and he didn't make any interest on it but he preserved it.
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He says, look, I buried it and kept it hidden, no one stole from it and the master is upset because it wasn't invested, there was no return upon it.
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Jesus says, however you store up or lay up treasures for yourself, moth, rust, thieves will eventually get it.
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Something's going to get it. Something's going to get it. The only one that won't get it is you. Jesus is not teaching, by the way, that believers are to be careless about money.
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He's not saying, see, none of it matters, it's all an illusion. Money is meaningless. No. Jesus elsewhere, in the
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Scripture elsewhere teaches we ought to be good stewards of every earthly resource the Lord chooses to give to us.
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We view that stewardship as a certain way that God has entrusted us and so throughout Scripture we find the call of, for instance,
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Proverbs 21, the wise store up foods and oils, fools gulp theirs down.
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The idea of wisdom, being a good steward, knowing how to store, knowing how to invest, knowing how to preserve.
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Or the wisdom of Proverbs 6. I heard Proverbs 6 a lot as a young boy growing up when
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I didn't feel like mowing the lawn on a hot day after school and my dad would take me downstairs and say, son, look to the ant.
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That's what Proverbs 6 says. Don't be a sluggard. Get out and mow that lawn. Go to the ant, you sluggard.
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Consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no ruler, no overseer, but it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
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And so everywhere we see this godly desire, this godly pattern of being a good steward of whatever
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God has entrusted you. Some have more to store and to be wise about and steward than others.
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But we all have something to steward. We all have something that we are called to be wise with.
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So Jesus is not warning against the wise storing, but the foolish laying up as if it will never be taken from you.
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That's what Jesus is warning against. This desire, this striving as though the things that you can acquire and possess will somehow ultimately fulfill you.
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Somehow you will be satisfied in a way that can never be taken from you. Jesus says that's foolishness.
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Everything will be taken from you. In another way,
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He's warning against covetousness, which is idolatry, as the
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Scripture says. And covetousness, by the way, has a twin sister. Her name is discontentment.
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Here also, Jesus is warning against the things that we pursue, the things that we strive after, the things that we seek to grasp as though they could ultimately fulfill us, ultimately satisfy us.
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1 Timothy 6, Paul writes to this young minister and he says, godliness with contentment is great gain.
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Contentment is part of godliness. Godliness with contentment is great gain. The gain of the
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Christian's life is actually not striving after gain, it's being content. The loss of a
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Christian life is when you're striving after gain. Godliness with contentment is great gain.
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And here's what Paul says, here's what he explains. It's much like Matthew 6. We brought nothing into this world and we certainly can carry nothing out of it.
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Don't go into the grave with the Rolex, that doesn't do good for you. Pass that down to the grandson or the nephew or the fourth cousin.
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Someone's got to get that. Nothing you're buried with is of any use to you. We brought nothing into this world and it's certain we can carry nothing out, but having food and clothing with these things will be content.
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Where are we going in Matthew 6? Don't worry about what you'll eat or what you'll wear. Seek the kingdom first.
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These things will be added to you. Paul's living life in this way where he says, if I've got something in my stomach and something on my back, with these things
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I can be content. There's great gain in the godliness of that kind of contentment. It frees up my life entirely to consider what
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God puts before me and the people around me and the things that He calls me to do. But he warns
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Timothy, those who desire, notice these words, these are the things as we'll see in verse 21 that Jesus is driving home.
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He doesn't say, but those who are rich, no, those who desire to be, that's the issue.
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Those who desire, that's the issue, what the desire of the heart is. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation in a snare.
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And with many foolish and harmful lusts, men drown in destruction and perdition because the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
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Notice again, it's not money, it's the love of money. It's not being rich, it's the desire to be rich.
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These are the snares, the temptations in which most men drown and ruin themselves. Jesus is warning not to drown, not to get into the quicksand of this kind of false desire.
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The love of money, the desire to grasp things that must be peeled away from your fingers is a root of every kind of evil.
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He says, in fact, in this church, Timothy, you yourself have seen, some have strayed from the faith because of their greed.
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What began as a curiosity and a fascination, an enthrallment with the gospel that was being preached ended with a betrayal.
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Why? Because this covetousness, this grasping, this greed was never rooted out of the life.
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And you yourself know, Timothy, Paul says, they have pierced themselves with many sorrows.
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Many sorrows. Now, as Christians, we have to deal with wealth.
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We have to deal with the ways of the world. We have to deal with wealth because we need food, we need something to wear.
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But if we spend all of our days thinking about what we're going to eat and what we're going to wear, we'll never arrive at the exceeding righteousness that Jesus described at the end of chapter 5.
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The very lifestyle that Jesus requires of those who would follow Him. This is, again, the path that is narrow.
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Few find it. In other words, we'll never be able to live in light of the kingdom of God if we don't understand wisely and rightly how to deal with needs, provisions, ambitions, and desires in our lives.
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If we don't know what it means to actually chasten our ambitions and desires, to somehow minimize the way we hold onto and look at our possessions, we will fall short of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
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If, and this is where we're going in chapter 6, if, on the other hand, we recognize our
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Father's attention, His care for us, if we trust Him and we seek first His kingdom, we will not only have these things added to us, we will be able to live as truehearted disciples.
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There's only two ways to live. And so Jesus warns, essentially, Jesus warns against clinging to the things that crumble.
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Don't cling to the things that crumble. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.
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That's the command. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, which moths and rust can destroy, where thieves will break in and steal.
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The moths almost certainly connected to what you'll wear. I don't think I've ever had any cloth -eaten, moth -eaten clothing.
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I did grow up, though, with all sorts of cedar chests in our home. There's something, if you go into an old country store and you find a cedar chest, there's really nothing like it.
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You look like a weirdo on the security camera because you've got your head in the thing and you're just enjoying the smell so much.
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But the whole point is you get rid of those moths. Why? Because they're going to chew through the clothing you spent your whole life trying to put together.
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In the ancient world especially, clothing was a status symbol. It defined your place in society.
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It wasn't just a sort of flashy way of denoting your wealth, but it was a way of establishing your dignity, establishing even your identity in society.
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Jesus says if you're consumed by that, what's my place? What's my status? That's something that moths will eat.
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That's something that gets taken from you. Don't live for that. Rust, here, figuratively, it's almost literally the term brosis, just that which is eaten.
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It's hard to say if rust is really the best translation. It simply might be a boring insect, another type of devouring insect in view.
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There's overlap in Malachi with that kind of terminology. But certainly the idea of corrosion, of something being consumed is in view.
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Something being eaten away as rust does to precious metal.
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Thieves. The ancient world was replete with thieves. If you were traveling, by the way, it was very dangerous.
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In parts of the world today still, to travel in certain areas at certain times is incredibly dangerous. There's travel advisories.
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There's places that you cannot simply go. If you find travel footage and so on, every now and then you'll see some
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European with a GoPro camera and they're just happily walking down some alley in Brazil and all the locals are like, no, no, no, don't go down that alley.
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That's bad news. That's a lot like what the ancient world was like. Any alley was a potential danger.
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But here, the idea is that the thieves are digging into the home, digging into the place that you have secured your possession.
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And the idea is it's at a time you couldn't observe. You go to that vault, you've spent your whole life filling it and one morning you go and it's completely empty.
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You spent your whole life storing what was taken from you. Jesus is, of course, living in days where there's no ring cameras, right?
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There's no Mission Impossible red laser security system. It's basically mud brick and you just dig through and grab what you want out of the house.
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Just walk down the alley and punch through the wall and grab whatever's on the table. That's the ancient world.
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Jesus is essentially teaching that if your desire is to be full of earthly good, you'll find it eaten away.
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But if your hunger is for the kingdom and its righteousness, you will be full. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
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Psalm 39, verse 6 says, Surely every man walks about like a phantom. Surely they make an uproar for nothing.
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They amass riches, but they don't know who will gather them. That's the lament of the preacher in Ecclesiastes.
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I got it all and now someone will get it. I don't even know who they are. It all goes to them.
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Everything I built, everything I labored for, it just goes into their hands. They didn't even lift an elbow for it.
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I sweat and broke my back over it for decades. It just falls into their hands. Why do anything?
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It's part of the lament. What's the meaning of life? What's the meaning of work? What's the meaning of anything?
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It's all vanity. Or is it? That's kind of the prodding question of Ecclesiastes, which
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Lord willing, we'll get to. Elsewhere, Jesus says in Luke 18, and again, here, we don't really square with this kind of ethical challenge as we ought in the
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West. The early church grappled with this. They grappled with the teachings of Jesus in regard to wealth, the challenge of the
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Scriptures in regard to wealth. And Jesus in Luke 18, in light of the rich young ruler, says how hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.
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How hard it is. How hard it is for those who pile up treasure for themselves to enter the kingdom of God.
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It's hard because the whole testimony of Scripture begins with the fall. And what was the fall?
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It was man's original desire to possess that which did not belong to him. I have to obtain.
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I'm not fulfilled. I'm not satisfied until I get the thing that God forbade. I'll work.
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I'll grab. I'll seize. I'll control. That will be where I find my meaning, my lasting security, my hope.
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And so ever since then, this desire to possess, this desire to seize has taken on all of the cursed dimensions of sin.
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And we find it squarely condemned by all the prophets. You read the major prophets, the minor prophets, they're all condemning this materialistic way of grasping possessions and using that grasp to crush those who are poor and depressed.
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That's why Jesus comes and He preaches a gospel that is good news to the poor, to the have -nots, to the marginalized, to the hungry.
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And in light of that, He says it's so hard for those who aren't in that shape, physically, experientially, spiritually, to enter the kingdom.
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We find the same prophetic denunciation of, say,
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Zephaniah 1 or Proverbs 11 in James 5. James, written sort of as a wisdom writing and taking up into its vortex all of this prophetic language and symbolism, and in many ways keying into Matthew 6 in the beginning of chapter 5 where he says,
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Come now, those who are rich, weep and howl. These are the ones that are boasting and they're merry and they're glad.
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Look how well things have worked out. These are the bond villains petting white cats. This is great. We're on the yacht calling all of the shots.
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Things couldn't be better. And James says if you had a real perspective of life, you would be weeping and howling.
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Miseries are about to come upon you. And here's where James taps into the teaching of Jesus.
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Your riches have rotted. Your garments have become moth -eaten. Your gold and your silver are rusted and their rust is now a witness against you to consume your flesh.
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In these last days, you have stored up treasure. You see how James is interacting with this teaching of Jesus here?
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He's addressing those who haven't heard the warning of Jesus. Who haven't understood, I'm living in the wrong way,
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I'm on the wrong path, I need to get right with God and begin to enter in that way that is narrow that so few find.
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We could only describe the people that Jesus is warning against, the people that James is denouncing like a prophet of old, as those that Paul says have their belly as their gob.
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They don't live for anything higher than that. It's not the contentment of godliness.
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It's the contentment of my belly's full and I live my whole life so that my belly is full.
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My belly is my God. And Paul says their end is destruction.
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It's no different than James 5. It's no different than Matthew 6. Their end is destruction.
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They're on the wrong path because as Jesus says, they're not able to deny themselves and he says no one is able to come after me unless they deny themselves.
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The reason it's so hard for those who have riches and those who live with a desire to be rich to follow after Jesus is because with the confidence and possession of riches, there's rarely any need to ever deny yourself.
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You never have to say no. Everyone else has to say yes to you. You never have to deny yourself anything.
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That's why it's almost impossible to follow God because you cannot begin to follow God unless you deny yourself. Unless Jesus turns it up a notch, unless you pick up a cross and crucify yourself.
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Jesus says you can't follow me. This is not a problem, by the way, for the
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Jeff Bezos and the Bill Gates of the world. This is a problem for us. On the grand scale of civilization, our culture operates on almost purely materialistic terms.
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We are living in strange days where there's sort of a counter -current against that, but even 30 years ago, we came about as purely as a society as you could towards just abject materialism.
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That's all there is and that's all that matters. And even though we can see that and see what's wrong with that, we're still shaped by that in profound ways.
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And we ought to be like the Christians of old who wrestled and wondered at how can we meet the challenge and the warning of our
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Savior? How can we be unlike those whose
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God is their belly? Who Paul says they just have their mind on earthly things. It's not about the wealth, it's just the mind that is set on the earth.
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That's what Paul's essentially condemning. It's the same wrong way to live that's in view.
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It's an earthly mind. Spurgeon describes them as enemies of the cross in this way. He says, do they do anything for Christ?
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Nothing. He says 20 years, nothing. So what are they minding?
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What are they doing? He says, I don't know. I'm only sure that their mind is on earthly things, that's it.
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This is the catechism they go through every day, Spurgeon says. What am I going to eat? What am I going to drink?
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What am I going to wear? That's all they live for. Jesus says if that's all you're living for, if that's all that you're striving after, if that's the position of your heart and your
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God is your belly, your end will be destruction. And Christianity, it doesn't require a man to cast away the things that he's earned and worked for.
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There is some truth, as the Puritans would say, that the best way to lay up is to lay out.
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In other words, the best way to store up treasure in heaven is to hold things loosely and be generous toward others.
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Remember, that's where we begin in chapter six with charity and giving alms. But of course,
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Christianity does not require that we somehow take this vow of poverty and live with precious little possessions.
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It does not require even that we give away the fruits of our labor. There's a right to possession. There's a right to the fruit of the labor.
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Christianity is a bulwark against the claims of the state that seeks to separate man from the fruit of his labor in this way.
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Those who have faith recognize they're stepping in in a place that they ought not. God has ordained it such that the worker is worthy of his wages.
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Caesar comes in and says, those are my wages and I want my fat cut, even though I haven't lifted a finger for it.
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So Christianity doesn't require that we cast wealth away in a vow of poverty. It certainly does not expect us to give away the fruit of our labor, but it absolutely forbids that we delight ourselves and trust in gathering up treasure as though it will fulfill us, as though it won't be taken from us.
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That's what scripture roundly condemns. The one who, as it were, puts their heart in their treasure, their earthly possession.
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In other words, it is not wrong to possess things, but it is wrong for those things to possess us.
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That's what Jesus will say as we get toward verse 21. Have you seen,
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I've seen reports and pictures and videos, and it seems like this trend is growing for some reason.
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It's like the trend where if you go to Disney World nowadays, you find mostly 35 year olds with Mickey hats and there's no kids.
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Everyone's trying to have this Peter Pan approach to life where I'm just going to be a, you know, though I'm in my 40s,
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I'm going to be 13 again. I'm going to recapture my childhood and not grow up. And there's a part of that where there's men who spend vast sums of wealth collecting their childhood toys.
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There was a joke about, you know, kids watching these commercials about these toys that are being made.
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And of course, when a kid gets a toy, they tear open the box and they want to play with it. And then they have some 40 year old watching it and going, or just put it in a case.
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You know, just store that away so we can look at it. Recapture something of our youth. It's that kind of mindset.
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Let me possess and capture. And somehow this is fulfilling. Somehow this brings me back. This nostalgia, look at all the variations
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I can collect and store up. And at the end of the day, what was that all for? Jesus says, don't store up treasures on earth.
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Don't live for those things as though they possess you. Store up treasures in heaven.
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That's the second point. Verse 20, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. That's a command.
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Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
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Where neither moth nor rust can destroy, where neither thieves can break in and steal.
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Matthew, up to this point, by the way, he's more than any other gospel writer. He's constantly using this reference to heaven, this language of heaven.
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He is very concerned to show this tension between heaven and earth.
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Not that, there's all sorts of ways, just gets misconstrued and misused. He's most likely in many ways, like James seems to understand, pointing to the source of where everything that is good and right, where God's perfect will comes down to man.
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He's also introducing this eschatological tension between the way of life on earth and the way that God has desired life to be from heaven.
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And of course, the prayer that we ended with in the Lord's Prayer is that God's will on earth will be done as it's done in heaven, right?
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So the tension is there brought together. This contrast between what is done on earth and what is done in heaven is important.
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This contrast between riches on earth and riches in heaven is important. But remember, this is not a way of denouncing or rejecting possessions in the world.
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What did we see in Matthew 5? Jesus said, it's the meek who inherit the earth. So there is something physical.
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There's a dimension of possession and inheritance in the earth involving earthly things.
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We should not think that Jesus means something like, this world is not my home, I'm just passing through. That's poor theology.
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This world's not your home? I understand the heart behind that. I'm living as a pilgrim.
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I'm seeking the city whose builder and maker is God. Amen. But that doesn't mean you denounce or reject the world around you.
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This world is your inheritance. This world is not something arbitrary. This world is something groaning for redemption just like your flesh and bones.
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It too awaits the consummation of God's redemption where God resolves everything that was impacted by the curse.
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As far as the curse is found, that includes the earth that we're standing upon. The earth that we see and enjoy all around us.
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Seeking heavenly treasure does not entail the rejection of earthly good. It's really important we establish that.
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We end up not only impugning God's will in our lives, we also then become very poor stewards of the things that God supplies.
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We also become ignorant to the beauty of the world around us and to miss out the hope of that beauty that yearns within us.
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We also, in many ways, are no longer able to recognize the goodness of God first and foremost as creator.
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And so we just begin with him as redeemer. And when you begin at redemption rather than at creation, redemption is something that becomes very narrow.
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It gets boxed in and you're not able to make a real sense of what the Bible puts forth, right?
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So it's really important, again, seeking heavenly treasure does not entail rejecting earthly good.
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I feel close to God when I enjoy a cappuccino, right?
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Seeking heavenly treasure does not, I just praise God, I'm like, for most of human civilization, they never knew the bliss of this.
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You are good to have made me in the days of third wave coffee. Thank you, Lord, right?
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Aren't you glad to be born after the Aztecs, you know, understood what could be done with cocoa beans? Aren't you glad to be able to taste things like coffee and chocolate?
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God is good, amen. There's no argument for some kind of asceticism.
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In other words, as though holiness comes with denying yourself of the things that God has created. The goods that God has made so that we can be thankful to him, so that we can glorify him.
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I've shared this story before, but it just comes to mind, especially since we were at Monadnock a few weeks ago. But I used to go to Monadnock as a boy and we would have summer camps there quite often.
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And at one point, Tom Sparling, this kind of worship leader was up there and there's all these youth group kids all around.
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And he's going, he's kind of playing, you know, these chords on his acoustic guitar. And he's saying, just start shouting out things you're thankful for.
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Oh, I'm thankful for my family. Oh, I love my church and all these things. And I'm a wise guy, you know, immature.
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And I'm trying to impress my friends. And I'm like, thank you for French fries. And all of a sudden he stops the acoustic guitar.
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And he's like, who said that? Every, every face turns toward me. I'm beet red.
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And he's like, that is inappropriate to speak in that. And I was like, you know, shaking the rest of the service.
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In fact, the people that we went with from our church felt so bad for me. They were like patting my back for the rest of the night.
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And after Tom came up to me and, you know, the lesson had been learned in a lot of ways. But I, like the rich young ruler,
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I was working out a theological defense. And I'm like, are we not commanded to thank God for all things? I didn't have the right heart in that.
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And now I'm older. And I mean, if you go to the right restaurant, it's like, thank you for French fries,
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God. Thank you for everything. Whether we eat or we drink, we glorify
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God. That's the point. There's no place for asceticism. I'm not holy unless I eat gray oatmeal, you know, and wear something threadbare.
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That's not holy. Jesus, as will be clear in verse 21, he's not driving for some sort of asceticism.
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He's pressing at what the priorities are in our life. What are you living for? He's not charging us to live under a vow of poverty.
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He, in fact, would not want us to despise all the good things that God has given. He wants them to be enjoyed. A good father knows how to give good gifts to his children.
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This is what your heavenly father's like. We read, I read from 1 Timothy 6, 8 through 10, right?
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Where he's warning against the desire for riches that pierces men with sorrow, that drowns men in destruction.
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Well, you get to verse 17, and now he'll speak to those who are wealthy in the church. And he says, Timothy, command those who are rich in this present age, not to be haughty, not to trust in uncertain riches.
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You might be doing well this year. That may not be the case next year. But rather to trust in the living
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God who gives us richly all things to enjoy. He's saying, you can tell the rich, you know, as long as their heart's in the right place, enjoy the good things that you have.
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Enjoy them. We walk in a new life when we come to Christ.
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We have a new awareness. We have a new center. That center is one of acknowledging God with gratitude and humility.
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And so there's no need for some sort of ascetic life. There's no need to enter into a monastery and punish yourself.
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This is not the taste not, touch not, handle not ways of the Pharisees. No, we're surrounded by the same things we've always been surrounded by.
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That doesn't change. The difference is now I'm aware of it. It comes from the hand of God. Now I'm thankful for it.
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Thank you, Lord. I don't deserve these things. Now we're thoughtful about it. How can I use these things rightly?
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I don't want them to possess and drive me. I want to hold them loosely. I want to be generous with them. That's what happens when we understand
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God in our lives. The way the Puritans put it is this. Love the Lord and use the world.
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If you love the Lord, you'll use the world around you rightly. You'll use it thankfully. You'll use it as a wise steward.
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Love the Lord first and all these things will happen. The problem is when we have a desire to be rich, a desire to cling to the things that crumble, we end up loving the world and using the
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Lord. It gets inverted and goes upside down. So we're to love the
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Lord and use the world, not having our belly as our God, but having God as the source of everything that is good and everything that we enjoy being returned to Him with thanks and praise.
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Every experience that is pleasurable ought to have this sort of silver lining that it comes from God and it's anticipatory of better glories yet to come.
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Of course, God made humans with this desire to possess. Before the fall, this desire to possess was not a bad thing.
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When Adam saw Eve, he wanted to possess her. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, like come here.
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You know, it's like when you have your little two -year -old and you're like, I want to smother you. It's like I need somehow to, your cuteness is overwhelming to me.
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It's that desire to possess. That desire is not inherently wrong.
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The fall twisted and contorted it. It abused it and misused it. It separated it from God's intention.
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So now it's all wrong. It's not that the desire to possess is wrong. It's the ways we try to possess that go wrong.
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It's why we're trying to possess in the first place that is wrong. It's the things we try to possess that often can be wrong as well.
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Jesus says we're to unleash that kind of desire toward godliness. He's saying you have that desire to possess.
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Don't use it toward earthly things that get taken from you. Use that God -given desire to possess toward treasures in heaven, toward the kinds of qualities and things that can never be taken from you.
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Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. That's a positive command. He doesn't say never seek to possess.
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He says, possess the right things. Pursue the right things. Prioritize the right things that actually last.
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That's the point. Our needs, our weaknesses as creatures, not to mention the impact of the world, the flesh, and the evil one, make it very difficult to focus on God and not on our possessions.
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Jesus is calling for this radical reprioritization of heavenly treasure.
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What is heavenly treasure? What does it mean to lay up treasure in heaven? What does that even look like?
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Is there some spiritual account that racks up?
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Are there physical aspects, tangible aspects to this heavenly treasure? What are we talking about?
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Well, if we've established that whatever is not according to God's will in this fallen world ultimately passes from us.
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It's what John says in 1 John 2. The world is passing away, the lust of it, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.
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So what is not of the will of God is what passes away. What is of the will of God abides forever.
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What is the will of God then is an everlasting possession. These are the heavenly treasures. What is the will of God, even just in the context of the
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Sermon on the Mount? Well, we just could begin at the Beatitudes. To live in a way that's humble, to seek to have a heart that is pure, to live in a dependence upon God that looks like hunger and thirsting for righteousness, to show mercy to others, to be quick to forgive, to make peace, going the extra mile, willing to subject ourselves in love even to our enemies.
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It looks like being willing to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It looks like being the salt and the light of the earth, right?
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This is what it looks like to abide in the will of God. This is what it looks like to lay up treasures in heaven.
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That's why Paul can tell the believers in Colossians, set your minds on things above, not on things on the earth.
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He's not calling them out of the earth or away from the earth. In some ways, he's calling them to the earth, but with a heavenly mind.
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You're walking through the earth, and your eyes are forward and all around you, but in your inner man, you're looking up to God.
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You set your mind upward. Have your perspective upward, Godward. That's going to not take you out of the world.
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It's going to drive you into the world. Jesus was driven as a man of sorrows into the darkest places of human life, into the kind of threats and challenges that we can't even imagine.
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Seeing the full effect of sin, demonic darkness and captivity and bondage and disease and murderous intent, and he saw it all unfiltered.
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Why was he driven toward that? It was because he was looking to the will of his Father in heaven. He was heavenly minded.
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It didn't take him out of this world. It drove him into it. It drove him even to the point of death on the cross.
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So lastly, verse 21, Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
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Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. One thing to point out is in this passage, when
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Jesus is speaking to his disciples, he's speaking to them with plural pronouns. In the South, they'd say, all y 'all, right?
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Now, when all y 'all lay up treasures, all y 'all need to lay them up in heaven. That's the view.
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Here in verse 21, he shifts to the singular. It's just you. Now, that's an important shift.
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It's easy to miss, but it's a very important shift because Jesus is calling each and every disciple to this accountability.
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He's calling them to heed the warning as an individual. The call is going out not generally to the group, but to you, to you.
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Where is your treasure? Where your treasure is, each and every one of you.
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Where your treasure is, that's where your heart is. Jesus, as Robert Guellich points out, he's turning to the person now, no longer the treasure.
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It's been treasure, treasure, now it's the person. And the heart is the best way to speak of the person.
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The heart in the ancient mind, in the Hebrew mind, is the person's center. It's that from which every issue of life flows as Proverbs 4 says.
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Our heart is inevitably drawn to the things that we cherish, we value, we work toward. The things that energize us, motivate us, fulfill us, satisfy us.
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That's the heart. That's the headquarters. That's the seat of the effect, of the imagination, of the will.
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The heart comprehends all that is interior to man. All that is true of man. The heart being, as it were, the essence of man.
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And Jesus says, where your treasure is, that's where you are. Psalm 62 verse 10 puts it this way.
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If riches increase, don't set your heart on them. Don't redefine and re -approach life in light of those things.
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Don't let it change you. Don't let it form your person. Don't set your heart on it or toward it.
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In other words, don't be like the foolish man in Luke 12. Jesus gives this parable and he says, the ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully.
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And he thought within himself saying, what shall I do? I have no room to store my crops.
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So he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build greater. And I will store all my crops and all my goods.
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And I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods, laid up for many years.
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Take it easy. Drink, be merry. God said to him, fool, your life is required this very night.
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Whose will those things be then that you have laid up for yourself? And you see the issues here are the same as what
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Jesus is warning about in Matthew 6. This is not a man who's seeking to look to the ant and be a wise steward.
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In some ways when you first, and this is the beauty of Jesus parables, this man is us.
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It's almost like, what's the issue here? He would be a bad steward to let his crops just rot.
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It was a great harvest year. He needs to store them up. He needs to provide for his own household. He's worse than an infidel if he doesn't do that.
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Maybe he'll even be able to provide for his neighbors. He should build bigger barns. Is that not wise stewardship? Is that not the ways that we think, the ways that we operate?
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There's nothing wrong with that, right? Look at Proverbs 6. I will store up all my crops and my goods. Good stewardship.
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What Jesus is targeting in, in a way that is disarming to us, because we can see this seems very reasonable. But as Jesus constructs this parable, he's giving us this interior dimension of where this man's heart is.
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For example, you get the sense this man is full of himself. Full of himself.
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One of the ways that's done is he, he constantly reiterates the first person pronoun, I. The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully.
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He thought within himself, what shall I do? I have no room to store my crops. So he said,
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I will do this. I will pull down my barns. I will store all my goods. I will say to my soul, you have many good things.
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Eat, drink, take it easy. He's consumed with himself. He does not begin by saying,
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God has been very good to me. I have no need for bigger barns and all these excess crops.
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I'm amazed. I need to thank God. Maybe he supplied so much so that I will open my hands toward those who didn't have a good harvest this year.
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Maybe he wants me to, to be thoughtful in the way that Joseph was given great harvests for hard times that were coming.
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No matter what, I have to look to him and seek him in humility and gratitude. You don't get that from this man.
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He's full of himself. I'm going to build bigger and better and then take it easy. I've got my reward in full.
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There's nothing Godward about this man. And this is what the parable concludes. This is
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Jesus' own conclusion. In other words, his key to the parable. This is what it's like for all those who store up treasure for themselves, but are not rich toward God.
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That's the issue. The issue was this man was storing up treasure on the earth.
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He wasn't seeking to store treasure in heaven. And Jesus says, in other words, he was not rich toward God.
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There was nothing Godward about this experience of wealth. There was nothing Godward about his devotion, his work, his experience of provision.
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Where your treasure is, is where your heart is. That's what Jesus is saying in Luke 12.
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In other words, he's exposing every clinging idol. In so many words, in all of these passages, he's saying, what defines you?
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Where's your treasure? He's asking, what do you treasure above all?
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What's definitive for you? What's the heart of your life?
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When the rich young ruler comes to Jesus in Luke 18, and as we recognize,
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Jesus looks upon this young man. He loves him. He wants to guide him away from this wrong path.
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Seems like everything's going right. If anyone's on the right path, it's the rich young ruler. Jesus sees through that all.
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Maybe you're sitting here this morning, and everyone around you, everyone in your row, and everyone behind you staring at the nape of your neck, and everyone in front of you thinking about you and praying.
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If anyone's on the right path, it's them. And Jesus sees through it all. Wanting to pull this man off this wrong path and get him on the path that leads to life, he says, one thing you lack.
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It's like these Kung Fu masters in the old 70s films that, it's like the one finger touch, and then five steps later they die, right?
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For all the things that cannot be seen and discerned, Jesus finds the pressure point. The thing that will either make or break the rich young ruler.
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And he presses it. One thing. One way.
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One thing you lack. Sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
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You see what he's saying? This is qualities of the kingdom life, fulfillment of the Beatitudes, walking in light of the
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Sermon on the Mount. This is what it looks like to lay up treasure in heaven. He says, rich young ruler, I'm going to put my finger on the pressure point.
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You've got an issue in your life, and it's putting you in bondage toward death. Sell what you have, get rid of the possessions you're clinging to, lay up treasure in heaven.
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You asked me how you can have eternal life. I'm telling you, that's how. Jesus says, and this is what it all boils down to, though the pinpoint, the pressure point may be different for everyone in this room, but it all boils down to this.
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Jesus says to the rich young ruler, take up the cross and follow me. How did the rich young ruler respond?
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He was sad and he went away in sorrow because he had many possessions.
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That's the one thing I can't do. I study Torah day and night.
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I fast twice a week. I'm the pride of my community. I know all the commandments and I've kept them from my youth.
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I'll do anything you ask but that. And Jesus says, exactly right. That's why it's the one thing that you lack.
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It's the only thing that matters. It's the only thing that gets you on the right way to live. It's what the cross looks like for you if you would follow me.
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Jesus does not ask this of all his disciples. In other words, you can never universalize this command.
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As we've said, Scripture does not call for some uniform vow of poverty. He doesn't expect everyone who follows him to let go of all their earthly possessions and give them away to the poor.
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In fact, he rebukes Judas for the insinuation that ought to have been given to the poor.
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He's like, no, actually it was used well. Many of his closest disciples were wealthy and they retained their property.
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Peter retained his home in Capernaum. They seemed to retain his fishing business after Jesus was in the tomb.
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That's what they seemed to go back toward. Lazarus, Mary, Martha, they retained their property in Bethany.
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Jesus and his disciples returned there quite often. Jesus and his disciples were often supported by many who followed them along the way.
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Why does he use this approach? Why does he make this demand of this young man? It's because he knows the hearts of all men.
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He knows that this young man's problem is not murder. It's not theft. It's not adultery.
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He knows that this young man doesn't dishonor his parents. He knows the hidden struggle that's defining this man's life is he has a heart full of covetousness.
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And so this command, this one thing the man lacks, is a test, is a means of revealing his heart, of revealing his spiritual condition, that though he was curious about Jesus, it was a half -hearted curiosity.
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Though he asked, how can I get eternal life? He didn't actually want eternal life if it required bearing a cross.
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And so though Jesus loved him, though Jesus warned him of the way he had to go, when that young man turned away in sorrow,
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Jesus didn't stop him. I love you. Why will you perish?
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But if that's what you're intent on doing, I won't stop you. Jesus was looking at this young man's heart.
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He saw where this young man's treasure was. He had many possessions. Where your treasure is, that's where your heart is.
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So again, in verse 21, Jesus is asking this question, where is your treasure?
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What is your delight? What's the position, the orientation, the desire of your heart?
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Is your God your belly? Is your God your wealth? Is your God your status? Is your God your ambitions and hopes?
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Martin Luther said, whatever a man loves, that's his God. That's what he carries with him when he wakes up.
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It's what he carries with him through the day. It's what he sleeps upon when he goes to bed at night. It's what he wakes up with in joy.
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Whatever that is, that's his God. If you've seen the
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Lord of the Rings trilogy, the portrayal of Gollum and his ruinous obsession with the precious.
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The one thing he clings to, though, it was destroying every aspect of his life. God is the only thing that we can cling to.
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And the will of God is the only thing that we can cling to that will abide forever. The thing that actually enhances and fulfills our humanity rather than disfiguring us and ruining us.
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It's because God made us to love him, pursue him, treasure him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
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It's part and parcel of what it means to be human. We're made in his image. We're made for that very end. If we make anything else our treasure, we're not just robbing
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God of his due and his glory. We're disfiguring what it means to be an image bearer. We're actually destroying our own sense of humanity.
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Everything else goes awry in life as a result of that. Jesus reveals in verse 21 that everyone has a treasure.
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Everyone's treasure is definitive of their life. It's where their heart is. It's what they see as the supreme good.
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That desire to possess that was endued at creation. Jesus does not say is wrong.
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As we've said, he says it needs to be oriented toward God, a godly ambition, a godly desire to possess it.
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It's what C .S. Lewis said, you know, this desire for glory. It's not that our desire for heaven is too strong and we need to chasten it down so we can be of earthly good.
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It's too weak. Our desire for glory, our desire for the will of God to be revealed on earth as it is in heaven, it's too weak of a desire.
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The ways of our flesh and the world and the evil one, they cloud it and make it foggy. Jesus is cutting through all that fog and he's saying, where your treasure is, that's where you are.
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And that's as personal as we could possibly make it. All of this, not just these passages in verses 19 through 21, but even as we move our way to verse 24, even beyond that at the end of chapter six, you find that the two treasures, the two eyes, the two masters, all of this is driving toward the key, seek first the kingdom of God.
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This is what all these things are driving toward. This is what it looks like to seek first the kingdom of God. This is why you must seek first the kingdom of God.
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Jesus is calling his people, those who would take up their cross, deny themselves and follow him, to delight in God as their chief treasure, to view his kingdom as this pearl of great price that transcends the value of the world entire.
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In Jeremiah 9, the Lord says, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. Don't let the mighty man glory in his might.
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Don't even let the rich man glory in his riches. If anyone's going to glory, let them glory in this. They understand and know me.
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There's the one thing you can boast in, the one thing that you can glory in that won't destroy you. There's the one thing that will actually fulfill your life as a human.
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Bless your life, even in a fallen world. Make you not only Godward, but godly.
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And the Lord, when he receives that kind of delight, returns his delight tenfold, a hundredfold.
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Because he's not just the object of his people's delight, he's the cause of his people's delight. And so Jesus here in verse 21, he's making this personal shift.
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It's a single pronoun. He's looking at you. He's talking to you.
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The Savior is gazing into your retinas, down your optic fibers, down the neural pathways, toward the beating cardiac center of your life.
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And he's saying, what's your treasure? What's your treasure? What's your desire?
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What's your hope? What are you finding your rest in? What are you pursuing?
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What's the thing that having found it satisfies? What are you aiming and orienting your life toward?
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One way, Christian, that you can answer that is, what are your sorrows? Where are you feeling unfulfilled?
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Where is it not right? And if you just had these things, then it would be right. That reveals where your heart is, because that's what you're treasuring.
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It's not just the treasure you have, it's the treasure you want, where your treasure is. That's where you are.
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That's where your heart is. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be always.
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Do you hear these words? If we hear these words, these are challenging words.
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It's like the disciples. Every now and then, Jesus will say something, and they just respond, this is a hard saying. It's like, we don't even know how to ask a question about that.
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We're just going to say, okay, and keep walking. It's like, this is a hard saying. This isn't hard to understand, it's hard to accept.
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It's hard to pause and think about, what is the treasure in my life?
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How am I ordering and orienting my life that reveals my spiritual condition?
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Am I the fool whose soul is required and all the things I've spent my life about are peeled from me?
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Or am I the one who's defined by a love for God and a trust in God, so that I've laid up all of my hope and gain in Him?
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Jesus is pulling bare all the vanity, clearing all the pride, revealing all the false ways, all the hollow ambitions that come to us in life.
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I'm preaching this sermon to myself as much as anyone. It's like John Calvin said, our hearts are factories for idols.
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I'm amazed I've been following the Lord for decades, and I still see so many idols clinging to my life.
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I'm amazed. Jesus is exposing every clinging idol.
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The shepherd is driving his finger toward that pressure point that is definitive in your life.
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And he's saying, what is your chief delight? I was at the wedding on Friday.
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I was talking with Corey, and somehow we got on this topic talking about the sort of passing of the guard and how influential and important figures like Jaya Packer and R .C.
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Sproul and John Piper were, especially in the early 2000s. And for me, the
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Lord basically brought me to himself through the ministries and the teachings of these kinds of men.
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And I was, we were just reminiscing, you know, and I shared with him this, I said, you know, till I draw my last breath,
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I'll never forget. Because I said, I, you know, I cut my teeth on John Piper and his whole ministry desiring
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God. And I was working at the plastics factory, as I mentioned at the retreat, sitting at this big steel table with these big bins in front of me.
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And I'll never forget, I had my little ear pods in that always be falling out, and I'd be trying to stuff them in as I'm putting these pieces together.
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And John Piper was preaching from Psalm 73, and he got to verses 25 and 26, and I had never heard them before.
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And in a way that only John Piper could preach, he just preached those verses, read those verses where the
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Psalmist Asaph says, speaking to the Lord, who do I have in heaven but you?
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And on earth, there is none I desire besides you. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart.
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He's my portion forever. I had never heard those words before. I had my like hairnet and cloak and gloves on.
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I just burst into tears at that table. It was
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Jesus pressing a pressure point in my life. He had brought me to the place where I could finally sympathize with what
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Asaph was saying and how Asaph felt. You know, that was 20 years ago.
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Some days I'd give anything to go back to those days, to be honest. That's not how
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God works though. It's not how He always works. He reveals His majesty to Abraham and He says, follow me to Ur, and then
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He hides Himself for decades. He calls Isaiah into ministry and He says, come just get a taste of my glory as smoke fills the temple courts.
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And now you'll never see that again, but go and preach until the cities are in ruins. He gives you a taste, a moment, an encounter.
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And then He says, live by faith. Don't go chasing that sensation. Trust me and wait for me and look for me, live for me.
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Was that bliss in that moment such a pearl of price that you said, I don't want anything in this.
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Lord, just take me now to be with you. That's all I want. And then
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He hides Himself and His path is hard to find. And the world and your flesh and your ambitions and all that you imagine in this life begin to cloud out
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His appearance, begin to muzzle His voice in your life. And it's a mercy if you're here this morning and Jesus is saying to you, as His finger is pressing on the pressure point of your life, where's your treasure?
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God is always eliciting our faith, our pursuit for Him. You know, I mentioned Piper in his ministry, which he called
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Desiring God. I was thankful as a young man that he also wrote a book called When I Don't Desire God. That's the
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Christian life. This ever greater call to desire
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God and live toward God with the fleshly, earthly reality that we don't always desire
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God and we don't want to walk on His ways. And we dodge like Neo in the Matrix all the ways that God is trying to put
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His finger on the things that are defining and grabbing onto our lives. That's what
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I love about Asaph. It's why I wept when I first heard it. Because the same psalmist who says, there is no one on earth
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I desire besides You. There's nothing but You. Is the same
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Asaph who says, my heart, my flesh fails. You can't get one without the other.
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I'm sorry. I just don't believe someone truly desires God like that if that's not the next thing out of their mouth.
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I fail. When will God purify my heart forever? Those two things must be held together.
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I don't believe that you've really hungered and thirsted for righteousness. You're not really desired the presence and the beauty of the
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Lord. The desire to orient your whole life toward Him. If your next confession is not, my heart and this body of death ruin me.
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Which does not deter. It does not hinder your desire for God. It only enhances it.
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Why is it that Asaph could say, there's none I desire besides You? It's because he's gotten to a place in his life where he sees everything else is trying to pull and claw him away from the presence of God.
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But then the most beautiful part of Psalm 73, the very next words. I'm desiring
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You. That's a desire that came from You and returns to You. My flesh, my heart fails.
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But You are the strength of my heart. That's the music of Psalm 73.
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That's the sweetness of it. In the moment he sees his own heart failing, his own desires going astray, he recognizes the fact that I even feel this way towards You, Lord, shows that You are strengthening my heart.
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You are preserving my life before You. And for the one who turns away from the world, who reacts by going to the right path as a result of the pressure point, the one who turns away from their flesh in the path of the evil one, who desires
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God in spirit and in truth, for such is the Father seeking to worship Him, God Himself undertakes to be the very strength of their heart.
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Where is your chief treasure? That's where your heart is. And recognizing that there's all these false idols clouding and polluting your life, do you have this weak yet yearning voice toward God to say there's no one
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I desire but You? Does that make you see that this heart that is prone to have all sorts of false treasures and pleasures in your life is wayward from God?
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And do you begin to look in lamentation upon that like Asaph? Well, then the very next reality is the fact that I even feel this conviction, this remorse, this hope and desire for You shows
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You have strengthened my heart. And if that's the case, You will be my portion forever.
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Brothers and sisters, is your treasure, is your heart, is your life in the place that can bear that kind of praise?
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You're my treasure, God. My greatest hope in this life is
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You. There's none I desire beside You. I fail.
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My flesh drags. My heart goes astray. But that I even hear
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Your voice and feel this way, it shows me that You are the strength of my heart.
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It assures me that Your promise will be true. It tells me that You'll be my portion forever.
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Brothers and sisters, is this your treasure? If you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above.
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Where Christ is sitting at the right hand of the Father. Not on the things of the world.
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Of the earth. Do we hear Jesus saying, do we hear the challenge of verse 21?
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Do we hear not to forget about it over lasagna in about half an hour.
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But to actually hide it into our hearts. To actually let it bear down into our conscience. To hear it in a way that we actually turn and respond.
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We don't slink away in sorrow like the rich young ruler. We rather respond like Zacchaeus.
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Oh Lord, that You would come to me. That You would invite me. That You would call me. I let go of all the things
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I was clinging to. Look Lord, I do it freely. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
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Where neither moths consume nor rust destroys nor thieves break in and steal. Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.
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Because where Your treasure is, there Your heart will be also. Let's pray.
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Father, as we recount these things, I pray Your Word would have its effect. Let it bear down deep and bear fruit,
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Lord. May even young minds or old minds alike be struck this day with that all -penetrating question of where our treasure is.
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What we value, what we strive after. What holds for us the promise of satisfaction, of fulfillment, of happiness and glory.
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Lord, if it's not You, reveal that to us. So that we can get to the place of Asaph and understand the failure of our hearts and of our flesh are right.
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And in so doing, Lord, in repentance and faith, that You would become our chief treasure and that our heart would be fixed upon You.
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May that be the case for us as Your people here this morning. For it's not just the unbeliever who is being taught these things, but Lord, You are speaking to Your disciples.
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You are speaking to those that You are calling to follow You. May we not assume that You are our chief treasure.
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Guide us by Your own Spirit. Illuminate our lives. Convict even the darkest corners and recesses of our vain hopes.
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Turn back our knuckles and fingertips from the things that we cling to. And help us to see with godly wisdom everything in this life crumbles to dust.
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It's only Your will that abides forever. And may You help us by that same Spirit to walk in Your will in such a way that our lives correspond to storing up possessions everlasting in glory.
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We cannot do it apart from a new heart, apart from Your Spirit. And so we ask for these very things this day. Have Your will done in our lives.
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Have Your way with us, Lord, we pray. Make us humble, grateful, dutiful in all that You command.