Treasure Worth Seeking

Benjamin Hill

Life-Lessons from the Life-Giver • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

Matthew 6:19–24

Treasure

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Introduction

1. The Eternal Nature of God's Treasures.

Matthew 6:19–20 ESV

19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust 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.

Earthly Treasure will not last.

A well known phrase and proverb over the years says: You can't take it with you when you die.

What it is saying is that no matter what physical thing you value most, a car, wealth, popularity, career, house, etc, cannot and will not go with you when you die. It gets left here on earth. Someone else will get your stuff.

If you study Egyptian history, you know that they buried their dead with the person’s treasures. It was especially true of the pharaohs of Egypt. The pyramids which are gigantic royal tombs. Inside of the tombs treasures have been discovered.

Here are some examples of the gold treasure found inside the Pyramids in Egypt.

Why were they buried with all their stuff?

Ancient Egyptians were buried with their treasures because, it was believed that burying people with wealth would help them in the afterlife by helping them lead a luxurious and comfortable life in the afterlife.

They thought they could take their treasure with them. But, they couldn’t. Their tombs were robbed, their treasures destroyed or made brittle whether through natural aging or through the destructive hands of the robbers.

Just like these Egyptians couldn’t take their wealth with them in death. We cannot take our wealth and things with us either.

Heavenly Treasure is eternal.

Jesus tells us that, the treasure we should cherish most is an eternal treasure. Another aspect is that Jesus statement seems to indicate that “people often have a choice between activities that lead to greater earthly reward in the present (cf. vv. 2, 5, 16) and those that store up greater future reward in heaven. Elsewhere in the Gospels the consequences of making the wrong choice are shown to be eternally disastrous.

Mark 8:36 ESV

36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

You might be thinking this is great and all but how do we store treasure with God?

So glad you asked,

You must focus on having a relationship with Jesus

“You cannot reach the moral vision of God without a relationship…If you try to do what is right and avoid what is wrong, at best you will be self-righteous, and at worst you will fail and pretend not to fail and go underground with your struggles…We must start with simply wanting to be with Jesus.” —Matt Chandler

You love for spending time with Jesus (reading your bible, praying, worshipping the Lord, fellowshipping with a community of Christians) allows you to grow into being more like Christ.

You begin to focus on serving God and others through every aspect of your life.

Time

Money

Family

Thoughts

Activities

God gets only your best and never your leftovers.

When our focus shifts from treasures this world has to offer to the amazing love God has for us, we live differently and shift our focus to God’s desires and His pursuits instead of our own. And the treasure God has for us, such as an eternity with him forever, will never perish.

God’s gifts are like him, they will never cease to be.

We have seen “the eternal nature of God’s treasures. Now, let’s look at:

2. The Tale Our Treasure Tells.

Matthew 6:22–24 ESV

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.

Why does what we treasure matter?

Matthew 6:21 ESV

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

What we are pursuing, paints a picture of what we desire most in our lives. While this is not always the case, it is largely true.

A guy named John Wimber is famous for a quote he made some time ago that states,

“Show me where you spend your time, money and energy and I’ll tell you what you worship...”

What is so interesting about that, is that it ultimately holds true! Now, that doesn’t mean that we cannot have hobbies, go on vacations, have nice things. What it means is that we should give God our first energy, our first time of the day, and our first money we receive.

All the good gifts we get from God here on earth, belong to God. We are simply the stewards who get to use them for God’s glory. Do we give God our first and best of everything we have, say, do, and think, or does he get whatever is left in the tank at the end of the day?

Ultimately, if God is only getting our leftovers, we can know our hearts are not in the right place with the Lord because we are not longing to spend time with him like someone who loves God with all of their heart, mind, and soul should.

What we treasure we fix our gaze on and it impacts our soul.

Matthew 6:22–23 ESV

Before we get into this, let’s establish something right now. It is not necessarily bad to watch tv shows, movies, play video games, get nice clothes, get a nice phone, etc. But if you fixate your attention on material that is ungodly, you will drift away from the Lord. Yet, even worse if you are spending virtually no time with the Lord and you are taking in sinful behavior with your eyes and even ears, you will be full of darkness.

Can we kill the lights?

See it is dark in here. When all we are consuming is godless content. A follow of the Lord’s heart lose sight of the light of God. We lose direction. And, we end up making foolish mistakes and falling to the traps of the satan. We give into our flesh’s desires to sin.

Yet, when we spend quality time on a regular basis in God’s word, the light shines and the whole room is filled with the light. We can see clearly where God is leading and we hold onto that hope!

A greedy man, will have his sight set on one thing, collecting wealth and enjoying it. Yet, he is a foolish man because that greed to have more blinded his heart to God and his will and his treasure will not reward him.

Jesus speaks to this in

Luke 12:13–20 ESV

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 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?’

We cannot be fools! We must rest in the Lord and his power.

How we behave shows where our treasures lay.

Matthew 6:24 ESV

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.

The final aspect to understand where our treasures lay is through understanding who we are serving.

There is a huge difference in these two trains of thought. Listen to them:

I am working as hard as I can to get good grades because I want to get in a good school so I can have a great career in (you name the career).

I am working hard on having good grades because I want God to be able to use me however, he wants to use me in (you name the career) he has laid on my heart to pursue.

These two students are both working hard on doing as well as they can in the school work, but they are doing it from to radically different reason. The first does it for the sake of a career pursuit, their own earthly desires. The second is doing it for the purpose of being well equipped to serve God faithfully.

Here is the lens that will help you see which one of these is you, does your pursuit of good grades take away time from studying God’s word, worshipping God, gathering with the church, and spending time serving God and others?

If your answer is yes, it takes away from my time spent loving God, loving people, and serving him and others. Then there needs to be a priority shift in our lives.

This goes for everything we do! Who are we trying to please? Is it a parent, is it a coach, is it a teacher, is it ourselves, is it a friend, cousin, and the list goes on. But if that is anyone other than God, then we are missing the whole beauty of how much God loves us that he wants our full attention on him and pursuing a loving relationship spent with him and giving him our best.

Do you have that love and longing to spend time with Jesus?

That is where we must start. All of us have to start there, the greatest treasure in all of heaven is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. All the other blessing and treasure’s of the Lord flow out of that first giant step of faith of trusting in Jesus alone.

Will you place your trust in him?

We are about to go to breakout groups to discuss this a little further. But before we do, we have a couple of quick announcements:

Early Bird Camp registration starts on March 16th a week from today! It will run to March 24. Those that sign up that week camp will cost $250! Make sure to share that with your parents!