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

So here's the thing; He finishes up with this: "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." And here's the reality of this: when we think about it, it's a little hard for us to get our mind around this because we think, well, I can work for two people at the same time. Well, that's not the context He's coming from. In His day and age, slavery was commonplace, and if you were a slave, you were fully devoted, 100% to your master. You couldn't serve anybody else. The easy way for me to really kind of get my mind around this concept is if God is here and money's here, I can't give Him a hug without turning my back on the other one, right? There's no way for me to embrace money and God at the same time. I have to choose one or the other, and this is where Jesus is pushing us because where we're gonna go in this teaching next week is, He's going to talk to us about not being anxious for these things in the world, not being stressed out over the bills and the stuff, but looking for His kingdom first and letting God be the provision. See, the reality is, God owns it all anyway. It was never mine; it's His to give; it's His to take away, back to the open-handed principle.

But what we find is when we're faithful with the things He entrusts to us, invariably, He gives more, but it's not for me to hang on to. It's for me to do more lasting work. It's for things that will outlive me, things that will outlive my family, things that are eternal. So what I want us to consider today is this: where's your compass pointed? What meaning have you assigned to money? If freedom and security are what you've assigned to money, you've got an idol because those things were always meant to come from God, and when you put something in His place, what generally happens is it gets put to the test, so that your perspective shifts back to the proper perspective.

See, the real challenge of the Sermon on the Mount, what He's saying here, is that where you put your treasures, where you put your energy, is where your heart goes. You can't serve two things at once. It's been said that the greatest indicator of where your compass is pointed is your calendar and your checkbook. It'll show you very quickly what your priorities are. Maybe today is one of those days where you just need to open up your calendar and your checkbook and go, "Who am I serving? Where does my time and energy go? Where do my resources go? And am I making a lasting impact? Am I laying up treasures in heaven?"

I want to finish with this thought: as I said before, He's not saying don't accumulate; He's not saying don't invest; He's not saying money's a bad thing. What He's saying is money's a tool, and that's the scriptural principle of money. It's a tool. It allows me to do things for other people. It allows me to take the gospel to places it needs to go. It allows me to bless someone in need.