“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. 23 “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
In the George Eliot classic, Silas Marner, the title character is a miserly recluse who happens to be the only weaver in a small village. His reclusion and bitter demeanor as a result of earlier dark events in his life cause the village people to view Silas with suspicion and even fear. But since he is the only weaver in town they tolerate him and give him their business and the combination of his steady work and hermitic lifestyle make him a wealthy man.
Silas hides his gold in bags under his floor and each evening he takes them out to count his gold pieces, since he sees them as his only companions and the counting of them gives him comfort.
Now of course I cannot relate the entire story here, but Silas’ money is stolen leaving him a broken and despairing man. In his agitated state he develops an almost subconscious habit of going to his door and looking out as though in hopes of seeing someone coming down the road to return his precious gold.
Now Silas has a condition that is unexamined and undiagnosed which even he is not aware of. Now days we call them petite mal seizures. The victim will suddenly go rigid in their standing or sitting position perhaps for minutes, and when they come out of the seizure they are not aware that any time has passed at all.
So one evening when Silas opens his door to look out he is suddenly taken by one of these seizures and in the midst of his trance a small girl whose mother has died somewhere out in the cold finds her way to his door, walks in past him and lies down in front of the fire and goes to sleep.
When Silas comes to again, unaware that even a second has passed, he closes the door. When he turns around he sees what he thinks is his gold reflecting the light of the fire in the hearth. He bends to touch it and finds it is the gold tresses of a little girl’s head.
Silas ends up raising the girl who he names Eppie, at first because he thinks that somehow his gold has turned into the little golden-haired girl and he hopes she will turn back to his gold. As time goes by however he grows to love her as a daughter and raises her as such.
Late in the story, when Eppie has grown to a gracious and beautiful young woman, Silas’ gold is found and returned to him but it means nothing to him anymore compared to the love of his darling Eppie. In fact he comments that by divine plan his gold has been in safekeeping to be returned for her own use at the proper time.
At the end of the story Marner is a redeemed man, loved by the villagers, once again abiding in the faith in God that he had once denounced, and the story concludes with the wedding of Eppie which is attended by the entire village including a contented and fulfilled old Silas Marner.
That is a very briefed-down version of that story, and I recommend it to you if you have never read it. It is not a big book but it’s a great read and young people especially have a great deal to profit in the reading of it.
The reason I give you this ‘Cliff Notes’ version of “Silas Marner” today is because of its similarity in focus to our passage of study.
Eliot’s story has an obvious message, that human relationships and shared love far exceeds in value, and ultimately outlasts, monetary wealth and gain.
Then there is an underlying message, a more pressing one, that our pursuits and priorities in life bring to light the condition of our heart.
WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS
Back up for a moment and glance through chapter 6 of Matthew’s gospel to this point.
Remember that Jesus has begun by warning against the display of religious demonstration for the sake of gaining the acclaim of men.
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them…”, He said, then contrasted public alms-giving with secret acts of charity known only to God.
Then He talked about the value of private prayer. Now I didn’t go into this last week but I should clarify here that this is not in any way a condemnation of corporate prayer among believers gathered for worship.
There is a place for public prayer, in the leading of worship, when believers are gathered to pray for specific causes and to agree with one another in their supplications and petitions and intercessions.
The warning is strictly against open and public display of false piety for the sake of being seen as religiously devoted.
Then Jesus talked about times of fasting and the need to keep it between us and God, not go around looking beat up so people will marvel at our willingness to suffer.
You may remember we saw that in each case Jesus promised that our heavenly Father had rewards stored up for true spiritual worship and deeds done in righteousness.
So now we come to verse 19 and with those things in mind we realize that He hasn’t changed His course.
Yes, there is certainly the obvious message in His wording here that worldly monetary gain must not be the priority of our hearts, just like the surface message of “Silas Marner”. But let’s not miss the point that He is still talking about the destructive error of wishing to receive the applause of men and the approval of the world.
There is no place in scripture that denounces or condemns the pursuit of prosperity or the use of the materials God has created and provided for our use; including food, clothing or precious metals.
Jesus does warn against the evil prioritization of worldly wealth. In Matthew 19 you’ll find the familiar passage about the improper emphasis on riches being an obstacle to getting into heaven, and there Jesus uses the illustration of the camel going through the eye of a needle.
To his spiritual son, Timothy, Paul wrote this admonition:
“Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. 18 Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.” I Tim 6:17-19
So yes, there is the element in chapter 6:19-20 of warning against holding to worldly wealth too dearly. I just want to go a little deeper than that as I believe Jesus was intending a much deeper message than that; especially if kept in context of what He has been saying.
The word ‘treasure’ has much wider connotation than just meaning money.
That just makes sense if you think about it. Some people are never even tempted to love money for itself. For some people money is just a necessary evil to survive in a world that operates on supply and demand; bartering and trading.
So if Jesus was only talking about the love of riches here a lot of us could go for lunch and come back when He changes His subject.
The fact is, that while there are some who have no struggle with that particular evil, the truth remains that every last one of us is constantly in danger of being enticed and drawn away by some worldly desire of some kind.
It is in the fallen nature of mankind that the world, as long as the man or woman is in the world, will have some attraction and that must be constantly guarded against; whether it is material wealth, sexual pleasure, political or social clout, or any of the natural and otherwise normal things in our lives that if raised to an idolatrous level become our treasure. By that I mean, our spouse, our children, our homes, our occupations, and so on.
Someone has said that a boat in the water is fine and good as long as progress is being made toward an intended destination. But water in the boat is not good, and the more the boat takes in the slower the progress becomes until it ceases forward movement altogether and finally sinks.
We are in the world, Christians, but we must constantly be on guard against the world getting too much into us.
HEAVENLY TREASURES
Now as He goes on Jesus says to ‘lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven’. He does not say what those treasures are. The important thing for us to know and consider for our good is that no worldly treasure will last and no heavenly treasure will be lost.
No worldly treasure will last; no heavenly treasure will be lost.
There is no corruption in heaven, there is no thievery in heaven, there is nothing temporal in heaven. All there, is spiritual and eternal and Godly in nature and worth.
And here is where He gets down to the matter of the heart. “…for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”. (vs 21)
It always comes back to this. God is always concerned first with our heart.
The bible is full of references to the heart of man and God’s knowledge of men’s hearts. Remember the Lord’s words to Samuel as he set to the task of choosing a king for Israel:
“God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” I Sam 16:7b
In Mark 3:5 we’re told that Jesus is grieved at the hardness of heart that puts legalism and tradition before compassion.
In John 2:23-25 the gospel writer records:
“Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, beholding His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man.” At this point the Amplified version says in parenthesis, “He could read men’s hearts”.
God deals directly with the heart because although the sinful heart of man is deceptive and even we are fooled by it, it does not deceive God and by it He knows us more intimately than we ever know ourselves.
“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Heb 4:12
Jesus is telling us then that we must make a conscious and deliberate effort to refocus our attentions and intentions on heavenly things and away from worldly things so that our hearts will be drawn away to the spiritual and heavenly and from the lures of the world and this earthly life.
THE EYE IS THE LAMP
Now in verses 22 and 23 Jesus says something that can be confusing if taken by itself and out of context. What is all this ‘if your eye is clear’ and ‘if your eye is bad’ stuff anyway?
You’ve heard the adage that the eye is the window to the soul. That is not what Jesus is talking about. That saying refers to the observation of someone else looking into your eyes and reading there if they are perceptive enough, what you are thinking as opposed to what you might be saying. A good crime investigator learns to do that with suspects he is interrogating. A husband or wife who knows their spouse well can look in their eyes and judge their mood, whether they’re in pain, whether their thoughts are far from the activity that presently employs their members.
But Jesus was talking about something quite different. Remember, He is not changing course here; He is continuing the thought of priorities and the focus of the heart.
He is talking about the way we look at things and whether we are viewing things in a spiritual light or according to the darkness of this world.
If the eye is clear we will have the light of truth in us and set our mind on things above. If the eye is full of darkness our understanding will be full of the darkness of this world and we will therefore set our mind on the temporal things and desires that lure us.
In His discourse with Nicodemus Jesus pronounced this verdict on mankind:
“…this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.” Jn 3:19
The mind of the fallen nature is clouded and tinted and tainted and cannot discern clearly. It cannot see beyond the here and now and will therefore seek its treasures in the present and justify its actions to itself.
Jacquelynn was telling me about someone she was with in a restaurant that serves a special sauce which is in bottles on the tables. This acquaintance of hers said, ‘Oh, mom told me we’re almost out of this and to get more’, and she put the bottle in her purse.
Jacq expressed surprise and told the girl she wasn’t supposed to take that and the girl shrugged it off and said, ‘Oh, they expect it’, justifying her theft by the assumption that the restaurant management expects a certain percentage of theft of their bottles of special sauce.
Now that same person would probably be horrified at the prospect of being accused of robbing a bank or snatching a purse from a little old lady. But stealing is stealing.
Just a minor example of what I’m talking about. Jesus is saying here that if the light that is in us is His light and we see things in that light it will expose the dark corners of this evil world so that we see them for what they really are and seek instead to have treasures not of this world but of the eternal kind that are stored in heaven for us.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WORD ‘SERVE’
Verse 24 takes us into the realm of the will. Jesus talked about the heart first, as I said, because that is always His first concern; the affections, desires, motivations, etc.
Then He talked about our minds and how we were gauging and valuing things through the clear eye or the clouded eye.
Now He talks about our actions that are the end product of the first two.
This might remind you of another place in scripture that talks about the digression of the fallen nature into sin.
“But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. 15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” James 1:14-15
The awful sinfulness of sin is that it enslaves men. Men think they are free but they are not. The very things God has given mankind for his enjoyment and sustenance, sin turns into idols so that men actually bow down and worship them. The things we are given to control in the end control us.
We all serve something. Those who do not serve Christ may even serve many things. After all, since nothing of this world and the flesh can hope to fill the void left in the life when God is excluded, a person is left to ‘dance as fast as he can’, so to speak, trying to fill that void.
But as Jesus said, rust and moth corrupt, thief breaks in and steals. Those can be taken metaphorically as well as literally. We worship an ideal, it fails us or we fail it or circumstances change and take the value from that ideal.
We work hard and long toward a goal and find when we reach the top that it wasn’t worth the climb.
We strive for a lifetime in work that is only sometimes fulfilling and satisfying and just when we’ve come to the end of it and amassed enough money to relax and take the trips we’ve always dreamed of we come back from the doctor with news that in one hour’s time has changed everything.
We live for the approval of men as a politician or a man of some public service business and in the end there are few if any who really have any respect for us at all because in our pursuit of acclaim we’ve only proven ourselves to be without character and conviction.
Someone said if you think you’re important and indispensable just remember that 30 minutes after your funeral your family will be cracking jokes over a casserole.
Jesus said that we will serve some master and the very word ‘serve’ indicates this is by our will that we will serve. We make a choice and even as Christians we make a daily choice to with clarity and singleness of eye serve Christ, or in darkness and with clouded eye (mind) to serve some part of self and worldliness.
Friends, the most intrinsically innocent and valuable thing in your life, I don’t care if it is the person you love the most or the occupation you’ve pursued or the home you’ve labored over until everything is exactly as you dreamed it, or the obsessive care of your physical body, no matter what it is, if it is put before Christ it immediately becomes a demonic influence in your life. You are serving it, you are idolizing it, it is your master, it will destroy you.
Sin is a hard taskmaster; sin has no conscience, no mercy, gives no breaks. Its fruit is death and when you serve that which is less than Christ that is the only fruit your life will bear and that is not fruit fit for the kingdom of heaven.
Now I can’t bring any real conclusion to this because this is part 1. Next week we’ll talk about Treasures part 2.
For now let me just recap for the full picture.
Jesus has been talking about false religion and false piety. Doing acts of religious exercise in order to be seen of men which, if so done, brings its own temporary and quickly passing reward.
He exhorts us to store up our treasures in heaven which are established there for us as we serve God in spirit and in truth and our religious and charitable duties toward men are by the leading of His Spirit.
He has taught here that our heart must be His, and our mind must be His and our will must be His, because if they are not His they will be mastered by something else. In the end, and as I’ve said in the recent past, you cannot serve two masters, but you will serve one.
If you can let all that you love in this life pass quickly by your mind’s eye, categorize it as such in a file marked ‘the world and self’, then compare it to the One who came from heaven and spread out His hands to die for you. Which one will master you?
When Paul said what he did in Galatians 2:20 he spoke that which is true of every born again believer in Jesus.
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me.”
If we understand that what Paul said is in God’s economy true of every one of us, then there can only be one choice. Serve the One who gives to all, life and breath and all things.
Near the end of ‘Silas Marner’ Eppie’s biological father, Godfrey Cass, came to Marner’s home to claim his now grown daughter. When she was found as a toddler Godfrey knew who she was but kept silent about her origin because there was a young maiden in the village he wanted to marry. Now he wanted to take her away because he felt that with his money and high place in society he could give her better schooling and worldly comfort than Silas could afford.
Ultimately, following some debate between the two men, Silas humbled himself and left the decision to Eppie.
It was now her opportunity and left entirely to her to choose her father of the flesh, or the one who redeemed her and who she had come to love and call ‘Daddy’.
In her response Eppie said this:
“…I should have no delight i’ life any more if I was forced to go away from my father, and knew he was sitting at home, a-thinking of me and feeling lone. We’ve been used to be happy together every day, and I can’t think o’ no happiness without him. And he says he’d nobody i’ the world till I was sent to him, and he’d have nothing when I was gone. And he’s took care of me and loved me from the first, and I’ll cleave to him as long as he lives, and nobody shall ever come between him and me.”
I wish I could do more than read the words of Jesus. I wish I could do more than read them to you.
How wonderful would it be to sit on that hillside and hear the passion in His voice? How wonderful to understand, not just by His words but His facial expression and the loving care in His tone, that these are not just instructions for living we have here; not just a blueprint for successful religious practice.
He was sent to relate to us the heart of a Father in heaven who loved us from the first; who sent His only Son into the world to die so that He might hear us proclaim, “I’ll cleave to him as long as he lives, and nobody shall ever come between him and me”.
Treasure in heaven? With certainty! Jesus promised! But I have to wonder what treasure could be worth waiting for to match just seeing His smile and taking His hand?
