Treasure in Heaven
Morning Lent Prayer Worship | Week 2: Stripping Away | Day 9
Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV)
INTRODUCTION
I want you to do something with me this morning. I want you to close your eyes for just a moment and think about the one thing in your life that, if you lost it today, would shake you to your core. Not your faith. Not your salvation. I am talking about the thing you check on first when you wake up. The thing you insure, protect, refresh, and return to when life gets hard. The account balance. The house. The career title. The relationship. The reputation you have worked for years to build.
You know what I am talking about.
Now open your eyes, because what just came to mind? That is your treasure.
Church, we are nine days into this Lenten season, and Week 2 has one assignment: stripping away. Self-denial. Surrender. And I need you to understand this morning that you cannot strip away what you have not first identified. You cannot surrender what you refuse to name. So today, before we do anything else, we are going to name it. We are going to sit down at the table of God's Word, open the books, and do a spiritual audit.
Now I know some of you hear the word "audit" and your stomach drops. That is because an audit does not lie. An audit looks at the numbers and tells you exactly where your money went, where your time went, where your energy went. And that is precisely what Jesus is asking us to do in Matthew chapter 6.
We use the word "treasure" and we immediately picture gold coins, bank vaults, a pirate's chest on a sandy island somewhere. But beloved, treasure is not only money. Treasure is whatever you value most. Treasure is whatever gets your first thoughts in the morning and your last worries at night. Treasure is what you sacrifice for without being asked. It is what you defend without thinking twice. It is what you organize your schedule around. For some people, treasure is financial security. For others, it is social status, or the comfort of a certain lifestyle, or the approval of people whose opinions they have allowed to become more important than God's voice. For others still, it is a relationship they are clinging to with both hands because the thought of losing it feels like losing air.
All of that is treasure.
And Jesus, the Son of God, the one who made every atom in the universe, looked at the crowd on that mountainside and said something that was as direct then as it is right now. He said: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19-21.
That is the Word of the Lord. And this morning, through the power of the Holy Spirit, I want to take that Word and press it into every corner of your life.
1. Evaluating Our Earthly Attachments
Let us start with Matthew 6:19. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal."
I want you to look at that language for a moment, because Jesus was not being poetic for the sake of poetry. He was being precise. Moths, rust, and thieves. Three agents. Three methods. Three certainties.
Moths work silently. You do not hear them coming. You do not see them moving. You fold your best garment and put it in the closet, and when you pull it out months later, it is riddled with holes. The damage was happening the whole time, and you had no idea. That is what time does to earthly treasure. Quietly, invisibly, your investments age, your influence fades, your best years pass. The things you worked so hard to accumulate are deteriorating while you sleep.
Rust works from within. It does not attack from the outside; it starts at the core. And by the time you see rust on the surface, the damage inside is already significant. There is a kind of soul-rust that comes from placing all your hope in things that were never built to carry the weight of your deepest needs. When you ask a job to give you your identity, it starts rusting. When you ask a relationship to give you your worth, it starts rusting. Not because the job or the relationship is bad, but because they were not designed for that load.
And then there are thieves. Thieves do not announce themselves. They do not send a warning. They come suddenly, and they take what you thought was secure. One diagnosis. One economic collapse. One conversation that ends a career. One morning you wake up and something you were certain was permanent is simply gone.
Church, Jesus was not being pessimistic. He was being honest. He was telling you the truth about the nature of this world so that you would stop being shocked every time it proves true.
Now here is what I want you to feel the weight of. The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy: "For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it." 1 Timothy 6:7. You came in with nothing. You will leave with nothing. Every single thing you accumulate in between is borrowed. It is a stewardship, not an ownership. And yet we live as if we own it all, as if the accumulation is the point, as if the goal of life is to die with the most impressive balance sheet.
And do you know what that produces? Anxiety. Pure, grinding, sleepless anxiety.
Jesus made this connection deliberately. Earlier in the same chapter of Matthew, in Matthew 6:25-34, He spends an entire passage dealing with anxiety, telling the crowd not to worry about food, clothing, or tomorrow. And it is no accident that this teaching on anxiety comes right after this teaching on treasure. Because the more you store up on earth, the more you have to protect. The more you have to protect, the more you have to worry about losing. The anxiety in your life and the attachment in your life are almost always the same thing.
I want to ask you a pastoral question this morning, and I want you to sit with it honestly. What is it that keeps you up at night? What is the thing that grabs your chest when you think about it going wrong? In most cases, beloved, the answer to that question is your treasure. It is the thing you are storing up, the thing you are gripping with both hands, the thing you have decided you cannot live without. And Jesus is saying, gently but clearly: that thing will not hold. The moth is already working. The rust is already forming. The thief is always watching.
He is not asking you to stop caring about your life. He is asking you to stop building your life on a foundation that was never built to last.
Loosen your grip, church. Loosen your grip.
1. Investing in the Eternal
But Jesus did not stop at the warning. He moved immediately to the invitation. "But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." Matthew 6:20.
Notice that Jesus did not say "stop investing." He said invest differently. He did not say "want nothing." He said want the right things. This is not a call to passivity. This is a call to redirect your energy with greater wisdom and greater faith.
Now I need to be very clear about something, because this verse has been misread and misused. Jesus is not teaching you a transaction system with God. He is not saying: put money in the offering plate and God will multiply it back to you. That is not what this passage is about, and I refuse to preach it that way. What Jesus is teaching is that the way you use your resources, your time, your generosity, your attention, has the ability to produce results that outlast your life on this earth. When those resources are used in service of God's Kingdom, they leave a mark in eternity.
Peter described this inheritance in the first chapter of his first letter. He wrote: "...an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you." 1 Peter 1:4. Perish. Spoil. Fade. Those are the same forces Jesus named in Matthew 6:19 when He described what happens to earthly treasure. And Peter is saying: the inheritance God has prepared for you is immune to all three. Nothing destroys it. Nothing fades it. Nothing touches it. That is where you want to build.
But what does that look like practically? I am glad you asked.
In Matthew 25, Jesus painted one of the most concrete pictures of eternal investment that exists in all of Scripture. He described the final judgment, and He said to those on His right: "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." Matthew 25:34-36. And when they asked when they had done these things, He answered: "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40.
Church, that is the currency of heaven. Kindness toward a difficult person. Patience under pressure. Generosity toward someone who has nothing to give you in return. A prayer prayed for a stranger at 2 in the morning when nobody knows you are praying. A meal given without a photo for social media. A visit to someone in a hospital room who has no other visitors. These are the deposits that accumulate in a place where moths have no power and rust is unknown and thieves never come.
You want to know the difference between earthly investment and eternal investment? Earthly investment asks: what is my return? Eternal investment asks: whose life is better because I was here?
I want to give you a specific, practical challenge before we move into our final point. Before this day ends, I want you to make one eternal investment. One. It does not have to cost you money, though it might. It does not have to take an hour, though it could. Write a letter to someone who is struggling and tell them what they mean to you. Give a gift to someone in need with no expectation of recognition. Spend thirty minutes in intercessory prayer for someone whose name God puts on your heart right now. Do one thing today that has no earthly return, no social reward, no applause from any human audience. Do it for an audience of One, and know that in that moment you are sending treasure ahead to a place where nothing and no one can touch it.
That is eternal investing.
3. Aligning Our Hearts with His
And now we come to the verse that changes everything. "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:21.
Read that again. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Not: where your heart is, there your treasure will follow. He said it the other way around. And that sequence is everything.
We have a tendency, as human beings, to wait for our feelings to change before we change our behavior. We say: "When I feel more generous, I will give more. When I feel closer to God, I will pray more. When I feel passionate about serving, I will serve more." We are waiting for the heart to move first so that the treasure can follow. But Jesus flipped the formula. He said: move your treasure, and your heart will follow. Your affections chase your investment. Every time. Without exception.
Think about it in terms you already understand. When you start investing money in a business, you start caring deeply about that business. When you start giving hours to a project, you start feeling ownership over that project. When you start pouring your energy into a relationship, you start loving that person more deeply. Investment creates attachment. Where you put your resources, your emotional engagement follows.
This means something staggering for your spiritual life.
If you feel cold toward God right now, I am not here to shame you. I am here to ask you one question: where is your treasure? Because Proverbs 4:23 tells us: "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." Everything flows from the heart. But the heart is shaped by where you invest. If you feel distant from God, check your investment portfolio. Are you investing your time in His Word? Are you investing your generosity in His work? Are you investing your energy in Kingdom things? Because if those investments have dried up, your heart will feel the distance.
This is what the apostle Paul called it in Colossians 3:1-2: "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, not on earthly things." Set your hearts. That is an active verb. That is a decision. Paul was not saying "wait to feel heavenly-minded." He was saying: set your attention, set your investment, set your treasure on things above, and your heart will align with the direction you are pointing it.
Beloved, I call this spiritual heart surgery. And I know surgery sounds frightening. But here is the good news about this procedure: the Great Physician does not start with your emotions. He starts with your actions. He does not say "feel differently and then live differently." He says "live differently, and watch your feelings follow." Move your treasure, and your heart will chase it.
If you want to love God more, give more to His work. If you want to feel the fire of the Spirit again, start investing your time in the things of the Spirit again. If you want a heart that is warm and alive and full, start sending your treasure to the place where warmth and life and fullness are stored.
The surgery does not begin with a feeling. It begins with a decision. A declaration. A movement. And it begins today.
CONCLUSION
Church, we have traveled through three movements this morning, and I want to bring you back to the single place where they all converge.
You came into this world with nothing. You will leave with nothing. But between those two moments, you have been given time, energy, money, relationships, influence, and attention. You have been given a life full of resources. And every single day, you are making a decision about where those resources go.
We are nine days into a season of stripping away. And stripping away is not about becoming empty for the sake of emptiness. It is about removing what is filling the space that belongs to God. It is about loosening the grip on the earthly things that are decaying anyway, so that your hands are free to reach toward the eternal things that will never decay.
You cannot take earthly treasure with you. That is not a threat; it is a fact. But here is the glory of what Jesus is offering you this morning: you can send it ahead. You can make investments today that are already waiting for you on the other side of eternity. Every act of generosity, every prayer, every sacrifice made in love for God and for people, is a deposit in a place where nothing destroys, nothing fades, nothing is stolen.
Where is your treasure this morning? Where did you put it this week? Where has it been sitting for the last year, for the last decade? And more urgently, where do you want your heart to be? Because whatever direction you want your heart to move, that is the direction you need to move your treasure.
This Lenten season is your invitation. Strip it away. Surrender it. Loosen your grip on the temporary and tighten your grip on the eternal. Do not wait to feel ready. Move your treasure first, and your heart will follow.
Let us pray together. Speak these words out loud with me.
Father, I open my hands this morning. Everything I have been holding tightly, I place before You. I name the earthly things I have treated as eternal. I release the securities I have built on foundations that do not last. I choose today to invest in what You value. I am moving my treasure. I am setting my heart on things above. I am not going home the same way I came in. Strip away what does not belong, and fill every empty space with more of You. In the name of Jesus, amen.
--------------------------------------
NOTE:
Your feedback matters!
If this message resonates with you, please take a moment to rate it on Sermon Central. Ratings help me know what's working and inspire me to keep creating fresh content.
Here's how to rate:
Look for the star rating system above the sermon text. Click the number of stars that reflects your experience (5 being the highest).
Thank you for your time and support!
In addition to ratings, feel free to leave a comment to share what impacted you or ask questions.
Blessings,
Pastor JM Raja Lawrence
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
email: lawrencejmr@gmail.com
Mobile: +91 9933250072
* If you need This Sermon in Tamil with my other personal Notes, please email me, and I will send it to you in a PDF Format. Thank You.
