Treasures In Heaven (Or Earth) Series

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.