We are going through the series called Learning to Live Like Jesus. The series is focused on the extended passage of Jesus known as the Sermon on the Mount. It basically is contained in three chapters in the book of Matthew, 5, 6, and 7. We have gone through chapter 5 where Jesus gave us a pretty good outline of what it looks like to live as a citizen within the kingdom of God. As we began chapter 6, we looked at some of the obstacles to living within the kingdom of God that is here right now. The obstacle such as the need to be seen when you are performing spiritual practices such as service or prayer or even fasting. Today, we are going to look at another obstacle. The obstacle is focusing on earthly treasures at the expense of heavenly treasures. What I would like to do is what we have been doing all along, which is have somebody stand up and read the passage Matthew 6:19-24, ideally from the New International Version. (Scripture read here.)
As you can see from the opening line, this passage has to do with treasure. It begins by saying “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” Now we don’t know exactly what Jesus had in mind when he is talking about earthly treasures. Yet we can speculate what types of items that would be if he was speaking these words to us today. Already when we think about that trailer we know that it would probably include things like gold and silver and jewelry and artifacts. But it would also probably include things like our savings, our stock portfolios, our 401Ks. It would also include things like our cars and boats and motorcycles and household items such as computers and smartphones and clothes and even collectibles. These would all be considered earthly treasures. We know that the earthly treasures tend to change over time. The things we treasure change over seasons of our lives. Things that we may have treasured a few years ago we now consider junky. The good news is that we know that one man’s junk is another person’s treasure. It means that we have an ongoing market for collectible things and used things on websites like eBay and Craig’s list.
As a side note, a little plug for the flea market we are going to have this week. It is a Financial Peace University that some of you are graduates of thanks to Andrew. We have probably over 100 people that went through Financial Peace University. If you have graduated from Financial Peace, you are able to participate in the flea market with the only condition being you can’t take the money that you got from selling your stuff to buy somebody else’s stuff. That is the basic rule. If you are interested in that, there is some information about that in your bulletin.
The reality is that things change in value over time. But in the long run, all things end up pretty much being worthless, especially earthly things. That is why Jesus says “Don’t store up treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” We don’t have to worry too much about moths and rust nowadays, but we do have to worry about other ways that things end up depreciating. You buy a car new or used and within a few miles of driving off the lot, your car has probably depreciated a few hundred if not even a thousand dollars. We know that happens with technology such as computers. Nowadays it is six months or a year and your computer system might have become obsolete. Then you have the breakage of household items. Clothes go out of style. Unless you are like me who is perfectly satisfied wearing the same clothes I wore in high school if Debbie would let me. Things do lose their value. If we don’t have to worry about them losing their value through depreciation and rust and moths, we do have to worry about them getting stolen by thieves. That is why you have entire industries that have come around to protect our stuff. You have firewalls and virus protection to protect our computers and our data. You have credit cards that have chips in them to protect our credit. You have cameras and security systems to protect our stuff and our home. Even if we could somehow protect all of our stuff, even if we could protect our stuff from getting exposed to moths and rust and depreciation and breakage, the reality is when we cross over to the other side, wherever that other side is for you, all that stuff that you have stays on this side. You realize that right? It all stays here. If you don’t believe me, the apostle Paul tells it exactly to his friend Timothy when he writes “For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.” Someone once said you don’t see U-Hauls at a funeral home. You have to leave all your stuff. As far as you are concerned, your stuff has a big zero next to it once you leave this world. Everything. It doesn’t matter what it is. The implication is that it is kind of sad and kind of morbid when you think about it. After you die and all the potlucks happen what happens? The family gets together and they start splitting up your stuff. You get this. You get this. What they don’t like ends up in the trash. Or some of it ends up in an estate sale or a garage sale where you get pennies on the dollar for that stuff. It is sad. It is a sad but true reality. When you leave this world, everything remains here.
That is why Jesus says don’t get caught up in storing up treasures here on earth. It doesn’t last. Instead he says, “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” This is kind of a difficult passage to think about because, for one, we don’t always have a clear understanding of what heaven is and so we certainly don’t understand what treasures in heaven are. Depending on who you are, you may have a different perspective of heaven than somebody else. Some people think of heaven as this distant galaxy far away and when you die, somehow you sprout wings and you go off to that place. Other people believe heaven is just another dimension that is as close as your hand where there is a lot of activity going on there all the time and even right now. When you pass you just simply pass into that dimension that some refer to as the kingdom of God. Whatever you believe about heaven doesn’t really matter. What matters is the good news that because you know that in heaven things last eternally, you don’t have to focus on storing up stuff in heaven because you have this eternal spiritual lockbox available to you. It is as spacious as space itself and as timeless as all eternity.
You may say what kind of stuff do I get to put up there? The problem is Jesus doesn’t give us an example. He doesn’t tell us what kind of stuff it is, but we can probably be pretty certain that the types of treasures we are going to have in heaven are the types of things that Jesus treasured while he was on earth, which really boils down to anything that expresses love of God and love of others. We know that things that express love of God and love of others are often classified as good deeds and generosity. That is why Paul also writes to Timothy and says “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasures for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of life that is truly life.” So we know that good deeds and acts of service help us accrue treasure in heaven. Beyond that, I think it is anything that helps advance God and his plan to bring all his creation back to him. That could mean something as simple as sitting with a friend and having a cup of coffee and sharing faith with the person. Drawing that person closer into God. Or really just prayer and encouragement for someone who is hurting or some sort of forgiveness and reconciliation. Those would be classified as treasures that would be stored up in heaven. Jesus says don’t waste your time on this stuff on earth. Focus on the treasures that may be hidden but have this eternal, lasting value.
Jesus is concerned about the treasures that you are storing but not just because he is worried about whether or not they are going to last. What he is really worried about is the impact that the treasures can have on your inner life or what Jesus refers to as the heart. That is why he goes on and gives us a warning. He says “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The word heart just like heaven is very difficult for us to get our hands around because it is a spiritual term. When you think of heart, we know that he is not talking about the physical organ that pumps blood. Jesus is thinking about something in the spiritual realm. Specifically what some think he is referring to is the inner life that controls your decisions, your will, your affection. That is what they believe he is referring to. Some people call the heart the executive command center of your life. We know that people with a good heart or a healthy heart often make good decisions. When they encounter all sorts of situations in life, they generally respond in a good, positive way. When people with an unhealthy heart encounter different situations, they end up responding sometimes in a negative way. Proverbs 4:23 talks about the need to guard your heart because it is the wellspring of your life. The condition of your heart determines what is going to spring up and spring out of you. Jesus is very concerned with where you put your treasures, what your heart is focused on.
That could be the reason why he continues on by comparing our heart sight with our eyesight. He goes on to say “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” We don’t often think of the eye as a lamp, but really it kind of makes sense. The eye takes in light and helps you navigate your environment in a good way. Likewise a heart. What he seems to be saying is that a heart that is focused on the things of God will receive the light of Christ down deep into the inner person. Consequently, the person will make good choices. Whereas an unhealthy heart doesn’t take in light or takes in only a little light and so darkness pervades the inner person and really pervades every single area of his or her life. Thinking again about Martin Bayerle. He would be the first to admit probably that he was a little too focused on the sunken treasure. It affected his heart. It affected his family. It affected his finances. He spent time in prison. As a side note, I didn’t mention this in the first service, but if noticed in the video, he had a patch over his left eye. I just connected it to this passage. To me, in some sense, it is symbolic of not just a bad eye but really an unhealthy heart. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that an unhealthy heart can result in unhealthy decisions. Decisions that do affect your family and do affect your finances. And really in many ways affect your faith. Obviously, if you are focused on treasures on this earth, you may have a tendency to become a workaholic. Then you begin to affect those around you, your family, and you feel less close to your spouse. You may be focused on treasures so much that when you can’t get the income you need, all of a sudden you find yourself fudging your timesheet. Cheating on your timesheet. Cheating on your taxes. Which could, in the long run, really have a negative effect on your future. You can be so focused on finances that you say, you know what, I really can’t go to church today because I need to work. I can’t give in the offering plate because I have something else I have to pay for. The passage that Paul talks about is true. Money is the root of all evil, right? Wrong. It is not money that is the root of evil. Paul says “It is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” Wandered from the faith.
What we learn about these passages is that what you focus on, treasures in heaven or treasures on earth, has a shaping quality to your faith. Your sight on your treasures is either going to shape you more into the image of Christ, which again is the goal of this series that you begin to live like Christ, or it is going to draw you away from Christ. The reality is that when it comes to where we put our focus, everybody in this room, including me, could improve in that area because we live in America and we all have too much stuff. We all have way too much treasure. I read a couple statistics that just reminded me how wealthy we are. Americans have more disposable income than three-fourths of the people in the world. Over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. I don’t say that to make you feel guilty. I don’t think Jesus was saying that to make us feel guilty. Jesus was not telling us that we need to liquidate all of our stuff and become paupers. No, because that doesn’t make you holy any more than being rich makes you unholy. What he was concerned about is your perspective. That you have the right perspective on your stuff. That you have the right perspective on your wealth. The only way that you are going to do that is begin to practice a discipline. A discipline known as simplicity. We talk a lot about the spiritual disciplines around here. They are not something magical, mystical, or new age. Some people think they are too traditional or too Catholic. There is nothing magical about the spiritual disciplines. What they do is help create space in your life, particularly really in your soul, so God can come in and begin to do the work on your interior life to work on your heart. We emphasize disciplines around here such as prayer, Bible study, and worship. But as we saw in the last few weeks, we also talk about things like solitude and meditation and fasting. Those are all spiritual disciplines that create space so God can work in us. The spiritual discipline of simplicity is basically a very good way to help remove some of the excessive stuff in your life so that you can have space so God can work and you can start focusing on those treasures in heaven. It is more than cleaning out your closets and getting rid of stuff. That is part of it. It is more than that. If you just focus on doing the external act what happens is then you are engaging in what is known as legalism. You are making something law. God wants me to simplify, so I am going to start simplifying without having the right heart. You will eventually become a miserable and unhappy person when you are doing any of the disciplines because remember Jesus was always focused on the heart. Not the external but the internal.
That is why the definition that Richard Foster gives to simplicity is very good. It is spot on. He says “Simplicity is the inward reality of a single-hearted focus on God and his kingdom, which results in an outward lifestyle of modesty, generosity, unpretentiousness, and which disciplines our hunger for status, glamour, and luxury.” It is a single-hearted focus. It is a laser beam focus on God and his kingdom. You have to have that going on otherwise you are going to just be a frustrated Christian. You have to do both. Yes you have to practice lightening up your load. Practice simplicity. At the same time strengthen your relationship with God and his plan and his kingdom. Focusing on that. What will happen then is you will find something happening naturally. You will find that one day you will wake up and say I don’t seem to be that caught up in having things any more. You will have an unconcerned joy. You will realize that this is just stuff. God has given you a gift. That I can’t hang on to too tightly. I am okay with that. What will happen is you will see that your treasures on earth are beginning to shrink a little bit, but you will also understand that the treasures in heaven are growing. Growing and growing and growing.
In closing, what this all boils down to is who is your master in life? Who really has control of your life? It has to be either treasures or God. That is why I think Jesus actually closes with this little passage when he says “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” It is time to close but as we transition to this table that we call the communion table or the table of remembrance, as I thought about it I thought it is kind of neat that two little elements, a little piece of bread and a little glass of juice, insignificant material things, yet by taking them somehow expose the great treasure that we have in the kingdom of God. Expose the treasure that is the result of Christ coming to this earth, dying for our sins, raising on the third day. Those little elements that are so meaningless on this earth expose this great treasure of God. As we come here, we are reminded that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he broke the bread and said take this and eat this because this represents my body that has been broken for you. Then he gave the wine and said take this and drink this because this represents the blood that was shed for you. Remember that every time you take of this bread and you take of this juice, you proclaim my death until I come again. Let us pray.
