Matthew 6:19-24 Where Do You Hold Your Treasure?

And this is what Jesus is going to get at here with us. Let's go to chapter 6 of Matthew, verse 19: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal." So, we've been talking about money, but treasures can be other things. So, when my wife and I got married 30 years ago, I'm a child of the 80s, and the coolest car on the road, of course, was Knight Rider. And so, I'm selling cars at Schofield Hyundai, I helped open the dealership there, and a black Pontiac Firebird with a spoiler came on the lot. "Baby, I gotta have it." Alright, I gotta have it, and it was my treasure until the paint started fading, and then I wrecked it on Douglas making a left turn, and then it wasn't a treasure; it was a burden, and I couldn't wait to get rid of the stupid thing, and to this day, thirty years later, we still talk about that car, right? The treasure became a burden.

Another example, I love this: my dad passed away six years ago, and the pride possession in the family is some ground in Matagorda County, Texas. You go, "Great, on the coast?" No, it's actually swamp ground. And so, yes, he passed on, my aunt, my mom, and I inherit this swamp ground, and I finally get an offer or two from somebody, "Hey, I'd like to buy your swamp ground." Yes! Until we research the title, the title was in my grandmother's name and had never been changed through probate to my dad's name and had never been changed beyond that. So, I was going to have to probate two wills to get legal title to my swamp ground so I could sell it. It would actually cost me more to retitle the asset than I would ever get from selling it. What somebody thought was a treasure became a burden.

After he passed away, we were going through the garage, and I was going through boxes of photos that nobody knew who these people were, and that's why they were out in the garage with the mice and the brown recluse spiders because they weren't really a treasure anymore. They were very meaningful to somebody along the way, but they lost their value as time went on. This is where Jesus is getting at: if you think about where we spend our energy and our efforts, the treasure that we're trying to accumulate generally is not a lasting treasure. That new house is wonderful until the basement floods, huh? Then it's a burden. My daughter, after she began driving and learning about car repair expenses, said, "Adulting is kind of hard because everybody's going after your wallet," right?

See, here's the thing: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal." And so the question is, what are you working so hard to keep? And once you've answered that question, the second question is, why? Because along the way, you find out somebody doesn't really want what you have.

Let's give you another practical example: the United States is one of the few places in the world where we have self-storage units full of treasure. If you don't believe me, watch Storage Wars, right? Full of treasure, brown recluse spiders, and mice. That's how valuable the treasure is. Why do we do that? Why do we, as a consumeristic society, hoard things? Because we've put too much value in the treasure, and ultimately, here's what happens: you don't get to keep the treasure anyway because your life comes to an end, and if you really are a student of finances, if you have enough treasure, Uncle Sam will take fifty-five percent of it. So you've worked all your life to accumulate stuff to give to the government. That's not a good feeling, right?