When I was young my great dream was to be Ken Griffey Jr. I mean, I knew I couldn’t be him, but I wanted to be a major league center fielder. But while I was studying this passage all week I remembered something I forgot. Before wanting to be like Griffey I had wanted to be just like young Indiana Jones, the treasure hunter! Adventure, bravery, courage, and finding treasure was so intriguing to me. I would watch the movies, go get dressed up like him and wander all over the neighborhood I grew up in trying to find lost treasures of all kinds!
Much of the same heart is in this text today, and I’m glad to lead you through it.
Continuing on in our series on the Sermon on the Mount, we come to Matthew 6:19-24, which is all about living in such a way as to pursue treasure in heaven, not treasure on earth. This is not entirely new in the Sermon on the Mount.[1] Thus far in our trek through it we’ve already heard a lot about heavenly reward. We got a glimpse of it in the Beatitudes, as it displays the blessed life or the heavenly life we’re to live out regardless of what that brings us here in this life. We saw something of this reality in 6:4, that giving in secret brings heavenly reward. We saw it again in 6:6, that praying in secret brings heavenly reward. And we saw it in 6:18, that fasting in secret brings heavenly reward. Here in our text today the same theme of heavenly reward is present but now it’s presented in regard to possessions. The point here is not that earthly possessions are in themselves evil, but that heavenly treasure is so much better and higher. This means there’s a way of having stuff and owning stuff that binds our hearts to the earth and turns our hearts away from heaven. These kind of materialistic pursuits are absolutely opposed to the Christian life.[2] That’s the sin we’re to avoid in this text. The goodness we’re to pursue is found in amassing and storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven.
That’s the main point, but what does that mean? What does that look like? How do we think about our possessions…having possessions, saving other possessions, while we know our greatest possession(s) is in heaven? Jesus instructs us on all this and more here in our passage.
It easily divides into three sections, all of which state and reinforce the main point. So see first…
A Storing Up (v19-21)
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Right away in these first few verses the negative and positive call is clear. The negative thing to avoid is laying up for ourselves treasures on earth, while the positive thing to pursue is laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven. Both of these pursuits are all about acquisition. See that? Jesus only puts two options before us. We will either live to store up earthly treasure or heavenly treasure. In truth we are all of us treasure hunters, acquirers, going about life amassing possessions of various kinds. But what these possessions are and what they do to us in this life is of eternal importance. So let’s examine these two kinds of treasure.
Earthly treasures are, well, earthly. They are fleeting, temporary, short lived. We cannot take earthly treasures beyond the grave but must part with them on death. So earthly treasure, as its being used in this passage, means far more than money. Earthly treasures can be riches and wealth and gadgets and gizmos, but it can also be family, career, education, ambitions, goals, hopes, dreams, culture, country, personal standards or preferences, and the like. Jesus calls them treasures because we are prone to grab hold of them in a deep way and create an identity around them, find worth in them, and build a life on them. Whether these things are good or evil in themselves, they become tragic things for us when we see them as treasure. Why? Because if they’re sinful things they’ll deceive and destroy us, and if they’re good things we make ultimate they’ll disappoint and devastate us. They are after all, earthly.
This is the whole point of v19. Here Jesus warns us against living to acquire earthly treasures because they can all be lost. This is why He brings up moth, and rust, and thieves. We get the gist of this, but this language would’ve been a bit easier to immediately understand for Jesus’ first century audience. Back then the practice of banking was not only still developing, but it wasn’t trusted much at all.[3] And there weren’t air-conditioned storage units on every corner to safely store stuff in like today, so people commonly kept their stuff at home or at some other place they thought safe. But keeping stuff like this exposed their stuff to danger. Jesus first mentions moth, meaning the bug, and also meaning what the moth was known and viewed as in this culture, a symbol of destruction.[4] More literally speaking, moth and vermin of all kinds would often get into small spaces and ruin and destroy whatever they found. More symbolically, the eating of a moth was used in Job and Isaiah to refer to destruction and judgment, which is the true end of earthly treasures. Jesus then mentions rust, meaning the corroding or spoiling of a thing over time. James no doubt has this very passage in mind in his own letter, in James 5:1-2, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth eaten.”
So the point is simple and clear: by moth and rust many earthly treasures are eaten up. And if we’re not yet convinced, after these two, Jesus adds a third way earthly treasures can be destroyed, thieves. Yes moth and rust will eat away at earthly treasures, but sometimes before that can happen thieves break in and steal away what is dear to us. As it is today, burglary was common in the ancient world. But then it does seem a bit simpler because one could just burrow through a mud wall or a dirt floor and find what they’re looking for. So all in all, when it comes to earthly treasures Jesus wants us to know that they’re always in danger and very easily lost, so, living to store them up is the essence of foolishness.
Standing against all of this is v20 and the pursuit of heavenly treasure. This is as glorious as earthly treasure was horrid. The one defining quality about heavenly treasures is just that, it’s heavenly. It lasts forever, it endures, it’s eternal. It’s not this wonderful in and of itself, but rather because it has something of the beauty and glory of God about it, reflecting His great and eternal nature. As before, I believe this phrase heavenly treasure is not about money. That’s probably easier for us to understand since few of us would define money as a heavenly treasure and since we can’t take any of our money into heaven with us. So what is heavenly treasure referring to? I think it’s everything heavenly we enjoy in this life as well as all we can take with us beyond the grave.[5] It’s all the spiritual blessings we’ve acquired as well as all the spiritual realities given to us here in this life, that we’ll enjoy in the life to come. Everything from forgiveness of sins, redemption, the new birth, and eternal life, to godliness, maturity, and sanctification, to entering into the Master’s joy and the Kingdom He has prepared for us from the foundation of the world.[6] Jesus calls them treasures because that’s what they are. Treasures to the soul, treasures that we will enjoy for all eternity, treasures first given to us in the gospel, and treasures that have grown larger to us as we have grown in Christ. God would be deeply pleased if we held onto these treasures as tight as we can, creating our identity around them, finding worth in them, and building our lives on them. They are after all, heavenly.
This is the whole point of v20. Here Jesus tells us the glory of heavenly treasures is that they will never be lost, because moth, rust, and thieves can never get at them. The common sources of destruction and deterioration can’t ever touch any heavenly treasures, because they’re bound up with the Lord who will never be destroyed nor deteriorate.
These things are all summarized nicely for us in v21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Heart in this verse isn’t referring to the physical organ but rather to the central hub of our soul, the place from which all our affections and actions flow. Jesus means here that the treasures we choose display our hearts deepest reality. Or to use the words of this passage, what we choose to store up shows what are values and priorities are deep down.[7] So do not be surprised, the one who piles up earthly treasures will find his or her heart attached most deeply and most centrally to earthly concerns.[8] But, the one who piles up heavenly treasures will find his or her heart attached most deeply and most centrally to heavenly concerns.
Church, do you see the kindness of Jesus to us in this? Here He’s plainly telling us how to live wisely and not waste our lives. Here He’s saying our lives will be wasted if we spend them to accumulate earthly treasures, while our lives will be spent well if we spend them to accumulate heavenly treasures. I know people say you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, and I get that, and it makes great sense in certain areas of life. But in this regard, Church, all our eggs ought to be placed in the basket of heavenly treasure. Don’t let your lives and happiness and joy and identity and well being of soul depend on something that you can lose. Earthly treasures all come to an end, heavenly treasures last forever. So Church, tether yourself to Christ, and all that is to be had and enjoyed in Him, and you will have a very full life.
A Bright Eye (v22-23)
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 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!”
Here in these verses Jesus is really making the same point as before but now He uses the idea of the human body to drive His point home. This is all about our eye. It says so in the first sentence, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” What does this mean?[9] Some believe this means the eye is a kind of window of the soul, through which light enters the body, which is full of darkness. In this way the eye serves as an organ of illumination to a dark body. I think that’s a good beginning, but we can go further. Think of our awareness of light. Light in the body comes to us through the eye, which gives us the ability to see or not see light. If then the eye becomes a source of darkness to the body, that darkness in us will be great indeed. This gets more of what’s in view. But there is one additional step further to take. The eye is not just the window of the soul, and the medium through which light enters the body, we can also say the eye directs the whole body by pointing or focusing it on a direction to go. If our eye is healthy it’ll focus and point towards good things, if it is unhealthy it’ll focus and point us toward bad things. How crucial then is the eye!
Jesus is getting at how the eye effects the condition of our souls. We understand this. See this language of ‘the eye’ as what we choose to focus on or live for in this life. Is our eye focused on earthly treasures or is our eye focused on heavenly treasures? If our eye is healthy, that is if we focus on heavenly treasures, our whole body will be full of light. But if our eye is bad, that is if we focus on earthly treasures, our whole body will be full of darkness. And Jesus says that darkness will be great.
There’s a great lesson for us here about the nature of sin. So many people, sometimes we ourselves, have believed that a little dabble into sin here and a little dabble into sin there won’t be too bad for us. As long as we don’t dive in, surely we can dip a toe in every now and then. Is this true? Can we dabble in sin and remain unaffected? No, we cannot. Remember the eye is a window to the soul. If a window is clear and clean sunlight can come through that window and fill up the room behind it. If there are a few stains or blemishes on the window a little less light will come through, and the room will get a little darker. If enough time passes and that window remains uncleaned what was once a few stains and blemishes become many and less and less light will get through it until the time comes when only darkness fills the room. But by that time, you will have become so used to the darkness that it doesn’t bother you anymore and you might even have duped yourself into believing you’re not as dark as it seems, and that you really are walking and living in the light.
How mistaken and deceived we can be! Many Christians believe their soul is full of light and yet the inner rooms of their soul are dark. And not only so, if we were to take a light and shine into those rooms you know what we’d find? Earthly treasures stocked up all over the place like an episode of Hoarders. The dark truth is that many claim to live in the light when they’re in the dark, and that ought to sober us and prompt us to pause and consider ourselves. But the great hope is that Jesus doesn’t just clean the nastiest, grimiest, and darkest windows, He replaces them. This is part of the beauty of the new birth. John 3 says it, “Unless you’re born again you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Turn that around and see the glory, when you are born again you can finally see the Kingdom of God! Sinners once blind now behold the beauty of Christ, and from beholding Him we become filled with His light.
Church, once again a choice is before us. It was earthly vs. heavenly treasure before, now it’s light vs. dark. What will you choose?
A Glad Service (v24)
“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.”
Finally we see v24 here which sums everything up we’ve just seen. Notice right away the call to a single devotion. Jesus knows how prone we are in trying to live in contradiction. When Jesus says you cannot serve two masters He means it, its impossible. In the ancient world if a servant had two masters eventually the commands of those masters would come into conflict with one another. This would then force a choice to be made, because one could not follow two contradictory commands at the same time. The same principle is true with us about the realities we’ve seen throughout this passage. We might think we can store up earthly treasures and heavenly treasures at the same time. We might think we can have both dark and light in our eye and soul at the same time. But they contradict, they oppose, and conflict with one another. A choice must be made.
Jesus drives this idea home to us in the short last phrase of v24, “You cannot serve God and money.” Again, money could be in view here but it’s so much more. The Greek word for money is the word mammon. This word has a broad meaning, and refers to anything we would include in the category of ‘gain’ to us, anything we could trust in. So once again we’re back at the whole of our passage. A choice must be made in regard to treasure, whether it will be earthly or heavenly. And a choice must be made in regard to the eye, whether it is filled with light or dark. And here in v24 the call we must hear is clear: choose this day whom you will serve. Knowing, following, loving, and serving the Lord is no part time reality, Christ demands our fullest devotion.[10] Anything that competes with His sway in us, with our loyalty to Him, must be put aside. As hard a call as this is, it remains true. All who leave all else to follow Jesus, find life in Him to be a life of glad service.
Conclusion:
Church, how goes it with your soul? Many questions have been asked in today’s message. How are you answering them? Are you answering them? Where are you right now in soul? I’m not talking about how you think other people would answer this, I’m talking about you. Perhaps you’ve been trying to dance between two Masters for some time now and feel challenged or convicted about chasing earthly treasures, about dabbling in darkness, and desire to come back to a single devotion to the Lord. If that’s you, great! Repent and return to the Lord. Or perhaps you’ve been comforted today. Maybe things have been difficult, but you’ve kept your heart toward heavenly treasure and kept your eye on the light of the Lord, and feel at home in His service even though things have been hard. If that’s you, great! Keep on! Wherever you are, know this. There is no treasure like the Lord. There is no brighter light than the Lord’s light. And there is no greater gain than knowing and having the Lord Himself. Church, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.
[1] R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew – NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007) 257.
[2] John Stott, quote in Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew – PNTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992) 152.
[3] France, The Gospel of Matthew, 258.
[4] Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 – WBC (Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1993) 157.
[5] Craig Blomberg, NAC – Matthew (Nashville, TN: Broadman, 1992) 123.
[6] France, The Gospel of Matthew, 258.
[7] Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, 153.
[8] Hagner, Matthew 1-13, 158.
[9] France, The Gospel of Matthew, 260-261.
[10] Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, 156.
