Matthew 6:19-24
Good Morning Main Street Church! You may have a seat, it is good to be with you all this morning on the Sunday AFTER Easter, and a while ago I said that the Sunday after Christmas is youth pastor Sunday, but the Sunday after Easter might also be Youth Pastor Sunday so either way welcome in, if you are new here my name is Jack and I am excited to jump back into the sermon on the mount today on our last Sunday of two services for the summer. I am excited next week to gather as one body at 10:30am and Mr. Anthony Higgins is going to be preaching next Sunday too so, exciting things are coming up!
But, I want to start off this morning by saying that decisions are hard and we make a lot of them. Think just about your morning today, you decided to either hit snooze on your alarm clock or spring out of bed because you were just so excited to get to Main Street Church and hear Jack Morgan preach.
You had to decide on what to eat for breakfast, was it making avocado toast, popping a frozen Eggo waffle in the toaster or skipping breakfast, because you hit snooze again. SO many decisions everyday, studies have shown that humans make around 35,000 decisions every day.
And out of these 35,000 choices that we are making everyday, God presents us with the fundamental choice that will impact almost every single one of our other choices and that choice is are we going to serve God or the World, now hopefully, most of you, are going to say that’s a pretty easy choice and obvious answer Jack, I am going to serve God, which is awesome, I hope that is the reaction that most of us have,
However, my prayer for us today is that we can take an honest look at ourselves in the mirror and think about where we have been serving the world instead of God and remember the great promise and reward our God has for us that serve him. Let me pray and we will get started.
If you were with us on Easter and the couple weeks before you’ll remember that we have been in a little bit of a break from the sermon on the mount but we are jumping back in this week and next week in Matthew 6 today will be 19-24 and next week 25-34.
Recap
But to jog our memories a bit on the Sermon on the Mount we started in Matthew 5 in the first half Jesus talking about what his kingdom people look like and the traits they should have. Matthew 5:17–20 we see Jesus the Fulfillment of God’s Kingdom & The King and then in Matthew 5:21–48 The Heart of the Kingdom of God which includes topics like anger, lust and divorce. When we flipped to chapter 6 these first three sections were on Matthew 6:1–18 A Sincere Kingdom, Giving, Praying and Fasting.
And now we enter the second half of chapter 6 which talks about laying up our treasures in heaven and next week, anxiousness.
I want to give a little preview of where we are headed today. Like I said before, we are going to be faced with the decision on whether or not we are going to live our lives for Jesus or for the world and in the sermon on the mount Jesus JUST gave us a list of things that are of lasting value. Suffering for his sake, loving enemies, gifts to the poor, real prayer, humble fasting. These are things he wants us to do to live for him!
We are going to have challenging questions to ask ourselves today and I encourage all of you to be honest with yourself because I guarantee we all fail at this in one way or another.
But the good news is despite our failures, God, in his mercy towards us gave us his son and the holy spirit so that we are not left to struggle and figure it out on our own AND best of all we do not have to be perfect because Jesus was perfect and died in our place
So let's dive in, I am going to read our text today, verses 19-24
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[e] destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, 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 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 the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
(Matthew 6:19-24)
We’re going to break up this section and start with just the first two verses, 19-20 and The first thing to notice is that there is a clear command from Jesus to pursue HEAVENLY treasures over earthly treasures.
Well to start, what is a treasure? We often think of treasure as the buried treasure that people are trying to find in the goonies, national treasure or indiana jones. Wealth beyond our wildest dreams and people, as we see in those movies will do some crazy things for a lot of money.
But treasures in this context is not just about money, treasures here are things that we value or pursue and things that we cherish.
Money is certainly one but we can also think about our physical appearance, our pride, our career, our house, intellect, reputation. All of these things can be taken away from you and are temporary. They feel big in the moment but in the long run don’t matter.
These are Earthly treasures, have no lasting value, like it says in verse 19, they can be destroyed by moth and rust and be stolen or taken away. Substitutes never satisfy
We are going to constantly live in this tension of being wise stewards with our money and wanting to do everything we can to provide for ourselves or for your families versus valuing money over God.
Wanting to work hard and provide for your family or others around you is not a bad thing at all!! But I do think it is more of a slippery slope than we realize.
Jesus is once again trying to remind us here that choosing earthly treasures over him is a bad idea because they are temporary and he is not.
He says in verse 20 to instead put our treasures in heaven! Well what does that mean? To value the things that God values because those are things of lasting and eternal value.
What you treasure, shows what you value and where your heart is. That is verse 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
We show what we value a couple different ways:
We show it by how we spend our time
How we spend our money
What our thoughts are - especially when we are alone
Start asking yourself right now, what truly occupies your heart?
If you take notes, write it down, if you aren’t totally paying attention, wake up and ask yourself honestly the question, what truly occupies my heart?
Because I think the beauty of this question is that you can lie and change your answer if I asked to share it out loud but truly between you and God only you two know the answer to this question.
The good news is that there are many things that we can do and that most of us probably already do that have eternal value, for example, some things that are of eternal value:
First of all we are pursuing the Lord! None of this is able to happen if we are not working on our walk with the Lord
Tithing and giving to your local church
Serving in youth or children's ministry
Being involved or leading a GC
Volunteering or giving to Love INC, Inspire ID, CRU, Homeless shelters and many other things
Prayerfully, financially and volunteering at things and many more are of eternal value.
To be rich in God is valuing God over money (or possessions), to treasure God above all else. It is not about what we posses, money, toys, knowledge, good physical appearance but what possess our hearts.
I love Matthew 10:42 here that says
And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”
(Matthew 10:42)
We do these things not to earn our reward but because we are disciples of Jesus! And as we are trying to be more and more like him, we follow the commands he has given us.
Jesus had a parables on this same subject, that comes in Luke 12, the parable of the rich fool.
And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
(Luke 12:17-21)
We see here again that Jesus is telling us that we cannot be rich towards God and keep all of our money and possessions to ourselves. It doesn't work like that!! And I know this because I feel like I catch myself doing this often, and it always breaks my heart when I realize I’m doing it. It's also happened a lot more recently with a fiance that I share these feelings with often.
I am sure some of you can relate to the feeling of,
okay if I just have this much saved up then I will be good to go, then I can really start giving and tithing the amount I want to but I’ve got to make sure me and my family are taken care of first
Oh once I get that amount in my retirement account or get the new car or the bigger house.
But verse 21 again, there it is For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. I love this quote from a commentary I was reading, it says
One of the basic and fundamental truths of the Christian faith is that our heart, who we really are on the inside, should belong to God. He created us and in Christ He has redeemed us, purchasing us with the precious blood of His Son. To love anyone or anything, to treasure anyone or anything, more than Jesus is nothing less than spiritual adultery. It is idolatry of the heart
This is something that our gospel care class is learning about right now, we have some really cool classes here at main street, a really good opportunity for us to learn more together as a body. keep an eye out for more to come!
One of my prayers for us this morning is that we remember that our hearts should belong to God and that we should not treasure anything more than him.
Pursue the light (good) over darkness (evil) - 22-23
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, 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 in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Jesus after just telling us to put our treasures in heaven instead of on Earth because Heavenly treasures are eternal and cannot be taken away, says that in order to do that we need to pursue the light over darkness. I know this would fit better next week on may the 4th but Star Wars is actually helpful here, light = good and darkness = bad. A very practical answer to the question how do we store our treasures in heaven instead of earth… pursue the light.
Let’s go to John 3:19-21
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
(John 3:19-21)
Our works and how we live our lives is a clear indication of where our treasures are being stored.
We are either in Christ and his light is being shown on us or we are in darkness.
Jesus chooses to use the example of the eyes in this section, the eye is the lamp of the body and if your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light, - Light is also a person, Jesus is the light! Not just the good things we purse but the PERSON we purse
Well eyes let light into the body and some people think that “good eyes” here mean that people are generous with their money, Proverbs 22:9 helps with that view.
Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.
(Proverbs 22:9)
Which makes sense that Jesus could be saying that we should give generously and not be slaves to our money
However most people believe it means to have a “fixed, single devotion”
The good [healthy] eye is one whose focus is fixed on God and whose vision is not blurred by focusing on two objects at the same time, God and possessions. . . . In this adjective the themes of generosity toward others and single hearted devotion to God coalesce to define the disciples’ proper view of possessions and riches.
(Quarles Sermon, 249)
It’s not that all worldly possessions or desires are bad, not at all. God is not saying to not buy a house or save up for college or buy a car but it’s that it cannot be our singular focus.
Our focus should be on the Lord, knowing him more, getting closer and closer to him so that the desires of our hearts become more aligned with his.
If your eye is bad, if your perspective and desires are bad then you will be full of darkness, You will not see things as they truly are, You will see, but see wrongly.
I had an old friend this week reach out to me, it’s a guy I have been friends with for years, we went to school together from 1st grade through high school. We had a group of 4 of us that did almost everything together in elementary school. Our parents became very close friends, still friends to this day, we would go on camping trips together.
His parents got divorced after we graduated high school, we saw less and less of each other and a few years ago, one of the guys in our group reached out and said hey let’s all get together and our one friend sent this long long text back and basically said I don’t want to be friends with you three anymore, you were mean to me all growing up, we were never real friends and a bunch more.
We were stunned, shocked, for the last few years we’ve talked about it now and then, wondered how he was doing and on Tuesday I got a random text from him to our group and he told us how sorry he was for saying those things, how he was mad at the world and his parents and he took it out on us and that he wanted another chance at our friendship.
I thought first of all that is so cool that he did that. It takes some guts to admit that you were that wrong and to ask for our friendship again, I was really proud of him.
But I also thought that applied well to these verses 22 & 23 because dang when our judgement is skewed and our perspective is off, we can do some crazy things, things that we regret right away or that we wouldn’t normally do in the right perspective.
I hope that we can keep our focus on God and things of eternal value and pursue light over darkness.
The last verse in this section, verse 24 says
“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
(Matthew 6:24)
We can only serve one God. Jesus is telling us here too that we are made to serve a master. As independent Americans we don’t like that we are made to serve a master. I think this is important to understand because this is why this point is stressed so heavily. If we aren’t actively pursuing and serving God then we are serving something else, most likely money.
I love the challenge we get in Luke 14:26
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
(Luke 14:26)
This is not a light call. To follow Jesus is to give up everything and devote it all to him.
Divided loyalty is not possible in the kingdom of God, I love this quote from Charles Spurgeon
God and the world will never agree, and however much we may attempt it, we shall never be able to serve both. . . . You can live for this world, or you can live for the next; but to live equally for both is impossible.
(Exposition,38) Charles Spurgeon
It again is not about what or how much you have… its about what controls your heart. The more we love money, the less we love God and Jesus is trying to help us understand that loving and following him in far far greater than the temporary value money brings.
The good news is that Jesus is absolutely worth following and giving everything up for!
Like the man in Matthew 13:44
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
(Matthew 13:44)
In his joy, went and sold everything that he had to purse the kingdom of God.
I heard a friend say once that earthly treasures are like a bouquet of flowers, beautiful and enticing but eventually will wither away and lose their beauty.
What Jesus did on the cross is worth more than any amount of earthly treasures. And when we put our faith and our treasures in him, we will join him in heaven.
Our reward in Heaven
We’ve brought up heaven a lot today and I wanted to touch on that for a little here.
I think we can tend to not give heaven enough thought. Maybe because it is so big and mysterious and we don’t know what it’s like so why imagine what it will be like. We don’t give heaven enough credit for how AMAZING it will be!
Listen to some of these verses:
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
(1 Corinthians 2:9)
It is greater than we could possibly imagine!
Then the angel[a] showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life[b] with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
(Revelation 22:1-5)
We will be with God, face to face and will worship him forever! It will be like a city! There will be trees and fruit and we will have jobs and we will work without getting tired.
You make known to me the path of life in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
(Psalm 16:11)
I love that, there will be fullness of joy!
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place[a] of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,[b] and God himself will be with them as their God.[c]4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
(Revelation 21:1-5)
You have a treasure already there in heaven that is wayyyy better than what you are going to experience here
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said:
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
I hope that today we walk away yearning for the vast and endless sea, that we are excited about our future in heaven!! We aren’t going to be sitting up there on clouds, strumming our harps, bored.
No, we will have jobs and not the kind of jobs that we will be tired from and dread going to each day. We will be working to worship our God. It will be perfect and better than we could ever imagine! Best of all, we will be face to face with our God, we will see him and all his glory the way they were meant to be seen. We will not be disappointed and we should look forward to and be excited about our future with Christ in heaven more often!!
Conclusion
As we close today I want to remind us all that we have a very important decision to make, one that is more important than the 35,000 that we make every day. Who are we going to follow? Which master are we going to serve? Are we going to let God or the world store our treasures?
I hope that you are convinced that God is more than worthy of hearts.
I wanted to give us some practical things that we can do when we are asking ourselves how can I fix my eyes on eternity and treasure God above things of this world, 3 things:
Reflect on the gospel to realign your heart’s desires—spend time considering what Christ has done, we can use passages like Romans 5 and Psalm 13 to guide us. Sit, pray and meditate on what God has done for you in his son Jesus.
Intentionally talk about Jesus with someone who doesn’t know Him—sharing the gospel often deepens your own understanding and appreciation of it. If you are a follower of Christ, go share the gospel with those who do not know it
Take time to ask yourself and others challenging questions—are you genuinely chasing after Christ, or are you more focused on comfort and success? This is why it is important for us to be in community with other believers, ask yourself and each other that question and answer honestly
Tom Regan
Main Street, my encouragement for you today is to Pursue God over everything. Pursue God and eternal treasures over Earthly, temporary treasures.
I hope we are reminded also that our reward in heaven is much greater than we typically imagine. Impossible to fully comprehend but that Jesus promises that it will be great and worth it and he does not break his promises.
Not only do we get eternal rewards, we also receive these same rewards through the holy spirit today! Jesus is our treasure that we get to experience for eternity but we get the power of his holy spirit with us today!
As we close I want to leave us with 1 Timothy 6:17-19, Paul says to Timothy
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.
(1 Timothy 6:17-19)
So, we have a decision to make, are we going to serve God or the World? Are we going to lay up our treasures in heaven or in the world? I pray that we pursue the light, that we pursue Jesus. We are filled with what God has done for us in his son Jesus. We are reminded from last week what he did for us on Easter and filled with the holy spirit to do his work and share his word.
Benediction
Romans 11- Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
