Matthew 6:19-34: Where's your heart?

Introduction

We’ve now reached the central portion of the Sermon on the Mount, and not only is it the middle of the sermon, but I think it is the heart of the sermon.

And guess what, it deals with the heart! In the previous section, Christ taught us that our acts of righteousness need to be performed for the right reasons. If this means doing them secretly, then so be it.

It’s almost like someone in the crowd heard this and said, “Lord, it sounds like you’re saying it’s all about the heart.” and I wonder if Jesus said, “Yes! You’re starting to get it now. So, let’s talk about the heart.”

Everything Jesus is about to teach us about the heart, and motives behind actions, I think can be summed up in verse 33: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”. If we can do that, our hearts, motives, and actions will always be right. Or as Jesus says, “then all these things will be added to you.”

19-24: Keep your eyes on the prize

Since Jesus wants us to consider the heart, or motive, behind our actions His first concern deals with the purity of that motive. Jesus is basically saying that you can either have good motives or bad motives, but you can’t have both.

James echoes this in James 4:8 “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

The Lord’s first illustration of this is by comparing our heart with treasure. He put’s it clearly: our treasure can either be in heaven i.e. we can treat others with love as our Father in heaven does....or our treasure can be on earth i.e. we treat others poorly for selfish or other unrighteous reasons.

Since Jesus says we need heavenly motives and not earthly motives, He now tells us how to do that: keeping our eyes on heaven. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness! Be like a horse and put on blinders so that all we see is Jesus!

The eye is the lamp to the body - what we are looking at, or consuming, will ultimately dictate where our heart is. So keep our eyes on heaven.

If you don’t keep your eyes on the heavenly, but instead on the earthly, well you’ll act “earthly” which is sinfully. “Your whole body will be full of darkness.”

Jesus could very well be using ‘light’ here as a metaphor for motive and intention. So “If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” is like saying, “If your motivation is bad, how much worse are your actions!”

We could ‘look good’ giving to the poor....but if we actually hate the poor and are only doing it so other people notice, that’s bad! Our motivation is all wrong. Christ wants us to help people because we love them.

James again seems to be alluding to the Lord’s teaching here when he says in James 3:14–18 “But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

Jesus really wants to hammer this point home: we cannot be double-minded. Our hearts cannot be split. There is no middle ground. We cannot serve God or ‘mammon’.

Mammon is traditionally translated as “money” - it was a slang word for profit or possessions. But I don’t think Jesus is referring to money. I think He’s using it to describe our earthly desires. Remember, this whole section has been comparing and contrasting heaven and earth, light and darkness. Jesus is essentially saying, “You can’t serve God and yourself.”

This idea of no middle ground is consistent with the Scriptures. God wants our whole hearts and nothing less. And whomever we enslaves ourselves to, we will act like.

Romans 6:16 “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?”

James 1:5–8 “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

James 4:8 “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

Revelation 3:15–16 ““ ‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

The message of this section can be summed up like this: if we are going to truly live and act righteously, loving God and loving our neighbors, being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, our hearts have to be in the right place. And for our hearts to be in the right place, our focus has to be on the right place. It has to be exclusively on God, His kingdom, and his righteousness.

25-34: Don’t let anything get in the way

Now that we know where our heart and mind need to be, the Lord now turns His attention to the things that could get in the way of this: life!

It’s often the most basic elements of life that distract us from the kingdom the most. And so Jesus says, “Don’t be anxious about life!”

Three key areas: food, drink, and clothes. When you really boil down our anxieties they often come down to the ‘basics’. We don’t share our food, because we’re scared we’ll go hungry. We don’t share our money because we’re afraid we won’t have enough. We don’t give to people in need because we’re afraid our own needs won’t be met.

And so the Lord just lays it out: in the case of food - look at the birds! They literally do nothing to produce their own food, and yet they never go hungry.

Any animal or pet illustrates this. Have you ever looked at your dog or cat and thought, “They wouldn’t survive without me.” Of course not! Our pets totally rely on us to feed and water them. And they don’t even seem to notice!

Jesus says it plainly: Are we not more valuable than animals? If even wild animals get fed, why wouldn’t our Heavenly Father make sure we are fed, too? We’re made in His Image, they aren’t!

In the case of clothing, or protection, the same applies. This time Jesus uses flowers as his illustration. Flowers, for all intents and purposes, do absolutely nothing. They grow and die, regularly. And yet, they produce some of the greatest beauty in all of creation.

I like how Jesus says they are even more beautiful than Solomon was. I have to wonder if Jesus gave a little wink wink there, since He was the only one standing there who had seen Solomon (and provided Solomon will all of his glory!)

If God gives such splendor to something as ‘worthless’ as grass. Why do we think He won’t provide for us, too?

Sandwiched between these two Jesus asks the question: “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to your life?” In the Greek it’s actually, “Who can add a single cubit to your stature.” I think Jesus is making us ask, “What do we really have control over in our life that is worth worrying about?”

I can’t control how tall I am, so why worry about it?

I can’t control how long I live, so why worry about it?

I can’t control if I get laid off tomorrow, so why worry about it?

It turns out, I can’t control a lot of things. So why worry about it?

And so the Lord tells us not to be anxious about anything, really. That’s what Gentiles do - unbelievers. They go to great lengths to control every aspect of their lives, because they are scared. They will do whatever it takes to protect themselves, even if it means hurting other people.

And that’s the heart of this. It’s not just that life is miserable when we don’t trust God, it’s that we often hurt other people, or at the least don’t help them, because we’re looking out for ourselves.

Jesus says don’t be like that. He says to be Children of God. Children trust their Father because He knows what we need.

And now comes the summary statement of this entire passage and perhaps the entire sermon: Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

This is the answer to everything Jesus has been saying!

“Lord, how do I put my treasure and my heart in heaven?” “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

“Lord, how do I keep my eye healthy and the light inside me from becoming darkness?” “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

“Lord, how do I only serve one master - God?” “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

“Lord how do I not be anxious about the every day burdens of life?” “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

I compare seeking first the kingdom to balancing a stick in the palm of your hand.

What happens if you watch the base of the stick? It will fall over ever single time.

The only way to balance the stick is to not watch the bottom (or your hand!) but to watch the top! If you watch the top of the stick, the hand and base will follow.

In the same way, when we keep our focus on the kingdom, our earthly lives will follow. We won’t worry about going hungry, or having a roof over our head, or losing our jobs, or whatever other anxiety may pop up. Those things may very well happen (see everything Paul experienced while seeking first the kingdom!), but if and when they do we trust that the Lord is in control.

This is why Jesus ends with a final reminder not to be anxious about even the future! This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do any kind of planning. The Lord himself collected a purse for his travels.

It’s all about the intent of the heart. Are we preparing out of fear? Or are we preparing out of faith? When we seek first the kingdom, even our day to day and future planning revolves around trusting God and His will.

James 4:13–15 “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.””

And again, the overall focus here is how this ultimately translates to our behavior and specifically loving others. If we’re scared we’ll lose our jobs, will we cheat other people to maintain it? If we’re scared the wrong person will get elected, will we treat their followers like trash? If we’re scared that the bills won’t get paid, will we go and steal from someone else?

Conclusion

The Lord Jesus wants nothing less than our full hearts. He wants our focus to be on Him and Him alone and He wants nothing to get in the way of it. Once He has it, He will radically change us from the inside out, totally transforming our lives and how we treat others. So in everything that you do, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.