Matthew 6 Verses 19 to 24 God or Wealth May 19, 2024

Matthew 6 Verses 19 to 24 God or Wealth May 19, 2024 Class Lesson 7

Sermon on the Mount Class Presentation Notes AAAAA

Background Scriptures:

Luke 12:15-21 (NKJV) 15 And He said to them, "Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses." 16 Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: "The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. 17 And he thought within himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?' 18 So he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry." ' 20 But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?' 21 So ishe who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

Luke 12:33-34 (NKJV) 33 Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 19:16-26 (NKJV) 16 Now behold, one came and said to Him, "Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" 17 So He said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is,God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments." 18 He said to Him, "Which ones?" Jesus said, "'You shall not murder,' 'You shall not commit adultery,' 'You shall not steal,' 'You shall not bear false witness,' 19 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' " 20 The young man said to Him, "All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?" 21 Jesus said to him, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." 22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. 23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." 25 When His disciples heard it,they were greatly astonished, saying, "Who then can be saved?" 26 But Jesus looked at themand said to them, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

Main Idea:

A foolish person focuses on accumulating wealth that will perish while neglecting the treasure that lasts forever.

Study Aim:

Because we are constantly surrounded by the lure of possessions, we must commit ourselves to filling our minds with godly impulses.

Create Interest:

· Jim Elliot, a missionary who gave his life to take the gospel to the Auca Indians, was slain there by the Amazons with a spear. He was a fine young missionary who died in the prime of his life. He wrote these immortal words in the flyleaf of his Bible: “No man is a fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”That’s a pretty good philosophy. You see, He’s talking about treasure in heaven. That’s what our Lord is talking about.[1]

Lesson in Historical Context:

· In Matthew 6:1–8 and 16–18, Jesus emphasized that outward expressions of righteousness were to be driven by an inward condition of being in right relationship with God.

o Disciples do not give, pray, or fast for the plaudits of others, which will soon fade. Rather, they are driven by a deep, abiding, heart-felt devotion to the Lord and a desire to please Him.

o Followers of Jesus are focused on kingdom values not worldly values; the eternal not the temporal; God… not self.

o Disciples give undivided allegiance to God. That is the emphasis of the verses for this session.

· In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is dealing with the issue of our priorities and the focus of our lives by dealing with the issue of what we treasure in our lives and place first.

o Something is always going to be first in your life. God’s challenge in this section is to put Him first and invest in heavenly treasures. A key theme of Scripture is to put God first in your life with all that He has given to you.[2]

· The common denominator in the sayings in Matthew 6:19–24 is Jesus’ call for total allegiance. See what we should do to execute this allegiance.

o A disciple of Jesus will choose to invest in heavenly treasures over earthly treasures.

o He or she will have a sound, healthy perspective on life that comes from living in the light of God’s revelation rather than a perspective marked by darkness, a symbol of Satan and evil.

o Finally, a disciple, as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, gladly serves the Lord God rather than being controlled by material possessions.[3]

Bible Study: Let’s open God’s word and receive His message for us today.

Matthew 6:19-21 (NKJV) 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. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Jesus calls up three pictures from the three great sources of wealth in Palestine.

· He tells men to avoid the things that the moth can destroy. In the east, part of a man’s wealth often consisted in fine and elaborate clothes. When Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, wished to make some forbidden profit out of Naaman, after his master had cured him, he asked him for a talent of silver and two festal garments (2 Kings 5:22). One of the things which tempted Achan to sin was a beautiful mantle from Shinar (Joshua 7:21).

o But such things were foolish things to set the heart upon, for the moths might get at them, when they were stored away, and all their beauty and their value be destroyed.

§ There was no permanence about possessions like that.

· He tells men to avoid the things that rust can destroy. The word translated rust is brosis. It literally means an eating away, but it is nowhere else used to mean rust. Brōsis was used by Matthew to indicate the corrosive, consuming action which the elements of nature exercise over things on earth. Many English translators have used the word “rust” as the meaning of brōsis in Matthew 6:19, 20. Finally in 1 Corinthians 8:4 brōsis means “the act of eating food.”[4]

o Most likely the picture is this.In the east many a man’s wealth consisted of the corn and the grain that he had stored away in his great barns. But into that corn and grain there could come the worms and the rats and the mice, until the store was polluted and destroyed.

o Probably, the reference is to the way in which rats, and mice, and worms, and other vermin, could get into a granary and eat away the grain.

§ There was no permanence about possessions like that.

· Vs. 20c he tells men to avoid the treasures which thieves can steal by digging through. The word which is used for to dig through—the RSV has break in—is diorussein .

o Since houses were normally made of mud brick or baked clay, it was relatively easy for a thief to dig through (dioryssō; niv, break in) and stealpossessions. Very little protection existed in the ancient world; this highly contrasts the security of treasures laid up in heaven.[5]

§ There is no permanency about a treasure which is at the mercy of any enterprising thief.

Jesus warns men against three kinds of pleasures and possessions.

· He warns them against the pleasures which will wear out like an old suit of clothes. The finest garment in the world, moths or no moths, will in the end disintegrate. All purely physical pleasures have a way of wearing out. At each successive enjoyment of them the thrill becomes less thrilling. It requires more of them to produce the same effect. They are like a drug which loses its initial potency, and which becomes increasingly less effective.

o A man is a foolish man who finds his pleasures in things which are bound to offer diminishing returns.

· He warns against the pleasures which can be eroded away.The grain store is the inevitable prey of the marauding rats and mice who nibble and gnaw away the grain. There are certain pleasures which inevitably lose their attraction as a man grows older. It may be that he is physically less able to enjoy them; it may be that as his mind matures, they cease in any sense to satisfy him.

o In life a man should never give his heart to the joys the years can take away; he should find his delight in the things whose thrill time is powerless to erode.

· He warns against the pleasures which can be stolen away. All material things are like that; not one of them is secure; and if a man builds his happiness on them, he is building on a most insecure basis.

o Suppose a man arranges his life in such a way that his happiness depends on his possession of money; suppose a crash comes and he wakes up to find his money gone; then, with his wealth, his happiness has gone.

§ Anyone whose happiness depends on things like that is doomed to disappointment.

o Any man whose treasure is in things is bound to lose his treasure, for in things there is no permanence, and nothing will last forever. [6]

Thought to soak on before moving on:

· Treasures built here on earth are subject to decay (moth destroys cloth and rustdestroys metal/vermin and worms eat stored food; cf. James 5:2–3) or theft, whereas treasures deposited in heaven can never be lost.[7]

o James 5:1-3 (NKJV) 1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.

· Jesus also spoke of the abundance of the heart’s “storehouse.” “The good treasure of the heart” is shared by the good person (Matthew 12:35; cf. 13:52).

o The ungodly man, however, has a treasure of malice laid up in his heart (Matthew 12:35); therefore, he will receive his reward of God’s wrath (Romans 2:5).

o Paul considered the transcendent power of God residing in the believer to be a rich treasure stored in a fragile earthly container (2 Corinthians 4:7).

§ He stated that in Christ “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).[8]

· Vs. 21: Jesus here sets forth a very significant principle: where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

o If you encourage a man to give to the Lord’s work, you are helping to tie him to heaven. Even soliciting a sinner to contribute to a special project of the church may lead to his making a decision about accepting Christ as His Lord and Savior.

o Thus, we give people a definite service when we give them a chance to make their offerings to the Lord.

§ Where their value in things goes, there also their hearts will go.[9]

· So, what does it mean to lay up treasures in heaven? It means to use all that we have for the glory of God

o It means to “hang loose” when it comes to the material things of life.

o It also means measuring life by the true riches of the kingdom and not by the false riches of this world.

What are some lasting truths from Matthew 6:19–21?

· The possessions of this world are temporal; the things of God are eternal.

· We will be driven to invest ourselves in whatever is at the center of our being, that which is most important to us.

· Our attitude toward possessions becomes a measure of the depth of our discipleship.

Matthew 6:22-23 (NKJV) 22 "The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

· Wealth not only enslaves the heart, but it also enslaves the mind(Matt. 6:22–23). God’s Word often uses the eye to represent the attitudes of the mind.

o If the eye is properly focused on the light, the body can function properly in its movements. But if the eye is out of focus and seeing double, it results in unsteady movements. It is most difficult to make progress while trying to look in two directions at the same time.

§ If our aim in life is to get material gain, it will mean darkness within.

o But if our outlook is to serve and glorify God, there will be light within.

§ If what should be light is really darkness, then we are being controlled by darkness; and outlook determines outcome.[10]

As I studied this lesson it appeared to me that Jesus is calling our attention to priorities. A trusted source and clear thinker submits the following to gather our thoughts and give us something we can chew on as we go our way. Let’s hear from Tom Wright.

· The opening paragraph picks up the same theme that we found in the earlier passages about money and prayer. Jesus assumes that his followers are going to fast from time to time, as part of their prayer and devotion to God. Later on (9:14–15) he explains that this won’t be the right thing to do while he is there with them, but hints that it will be once he’s gone. But the question is, how?

o The current practice of Jesus’ day seems to have been to advertise one’s fasting by letting your hair (and beard) go tangled, and by smearing ashes on your face. That’s just playacting, Jesus declares. It’s putting on a mask.

o Real fasting is between you and God, not something you do to show off. So do what you normally do to your head and face—wash, comb, sort yourself out in the usual way (in his culture that included anointing with oil, and that’s what this passage literally means).

o The important point, here and all through, is the question: is your eye fixed on God, or on someone (or something) else?

§ What is your priority?

· The three little sayings which follow all make the same point.

o First, Jesus points out the difference between two sorts of treasure. As with other references to heaven and earth, we shouldn’t imagine he means ‘don’t worry about this life—get ready for the next one’.

§ ‘Heaven’ here is where God is right now, and where, if you learn to love and serve God right now, you will have treasure in the present, not just in the future. Discuss

§ Of course, Jesus (like almost all Jews of his day) believed that after death God would have a wonderful future in store for his faithful people; but they didn’t normally refer to that future as ‘heaven’.

§ Jesus wanted his followers to establish heavenly treasure right now, treasure which they could enjoy in the present as well as the future, treasure that wasn’t subject to the problems that face all earthly hoards. Soak on this and discuss😊.

§ How can one do this? Well, the whole chapter so far gives us the clue.

📷 Learn to live in the presence of the loving father.

📷 Learn to do everything for him and him alone. Get your priorities right.

o Second, make sure your lamp is shedding light, not darkness. This is a tricky little saying. What does Jesus mean by saying that the eye is the lamp of the body?

§ First, he means that we must, as we say, ‘keep our eyes fixed on God’. Since we can’t actually see God, that is picture-language, but we know what he means.

§ Second, though, I think Jesus literally meant that we should take care what we actually look at. Where do your eyes naturally get drawn to? Are you in control of them, or do they take you—and your mind and heart—wherever they want?

§ Third, the eyes are like the headlights of a car. Supposing you’re driving along a dark road at night, and you try to switch the lights on—and nothing happens! You suddenly realize just how dark it really is. That’s what it’s like, Jesus is saying, if your eyes are not on God, and if instead they are following whatever eye-catching, pretty thing happens to take their fancy.

o Priorities again. Are your eyes leading you in the right direction, and showing you the road ahead?

Thoughts to Soak On:

· There is the good heart. It is just like a good eye. Note that the eye is a gate that gives entrance to the mind of man. What man looks at is what he thinks about, and what he thinks about is what he actually becomes (see Pr. 23:7). If a man focuses upon Jesus Christ, who is the Light of the world (Jn. 8:12), then his mind and heart will be full of light.[11]

Matthew 6:24 (NKJV) 24 "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

· Third from the “three little sayings which follow all make the same point”.

o You can’t serve God and … mammon, say the older translations.

§ Mamōnas(Greek word) appears four times in the New Testament, each on the lips of Jesus. In the parallel passages of Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13

§ “mammon” is personified as something to “serve, be enslaved to” instead of serving God”. The other texts appear in Luke’s Gospel in the same context (16:9, 11). The overall understanding of mamōnas is that it represents the materialistic wealth of the world. Such “security” is not to be trusted, for in the judgment it will offer no comfort.[12]

o ‘Mammon’ was a way of referring to property and wealth in general, almost as though it were a god—which is precisely Jesus’ point here.

§ We make the same point by saying things like ‘The Almighty Dollar’ (dangerously like ‘Almighty God’).

§ We joke about money because we are all too aware of its power: ‘Money talks,’ says the comedian, ‘but what it mostly says to me is, “Good-bye!”.’

§ But what Jesus is saying is that money gives orders. It bosses you around. If you have your priorities right, there is only one boss, and that is God himself.

· Sort your priorities out. When you look back at your life in two, five, ten, fifteen years’ time, will you be glad you put first things first?[13]

What are some lasting truths that come from Matthew 6:24?

· A person can live under the dictates of only one master—God or the system of world values.

· Neither master is open to compromise.

· A citizen of God’s kingdom will give undivided loyalty to Christ as King.

· A true disciple of Jesus trusts God; he believes God will provide for his every need, even if in ways he least expects. Moreover, a true disciple is convinced that his value to God, the meaning of life, the purpose for being, the joy in living, and his ultimate security reside in exercising unwavering trust in God and His truth, not in the things of this age or this earth.

Thoughts in Closing to soak on as you go your way

· Whether you have a little or a lot of the things of this world, how satisfied are you that you are living in a way that indicates you are investing in eternal treasures?

· What changes do you need to make to keep a godly focus on life, whereby you do not become a victim of a system of materialism?

· Who is the master of your life?

· What evidence do you point to as support for your answer?

· Would others who observe you agree with you and accept your assessment?

Prayer of Commitment

· Lord, I know the things of earth will dim and lose their value; therefore, I reaffirm my desire to live for Jesus and to invest my life in the things of heaven that will last for eternity. Amen[14]

[1]Adrian Rogers, “Make Sure You Get the Real Thing,” in Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust, 2017), Mt 6:19–24. [2]Rod Mattoon, Treasures from the Sermon on the Mount, vol. 2, Treasures from Scripture Series (Springfield, IL: Rod Mattoon, 2007), 130–131. [3]Ronald K. Brown, Bible Studies for Life, Summer 2016, Herschel Hobbs Commentary (LifeWay Christian Resources, 2016), 28–29. [4]Thoralf Gilbrant, “Βρῶσις,” The New Testament Greek-English Dictionary, The Complete Biblical Library (WORDsearch, 1991). [5]Robert H. Mounce, Matthew, Understanding the Bible Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), 59. [6]William Barclay, ed., The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 1, The Daily Study Bible Series (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster John Knox Press, 1976), 239–241. [7]Louis A. Barbieri Jr., “Matthew,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 33. [8]Thoralf Gilbrant, “Θησαυρός,” The New Testament Greek-English Dictionary, The Complete Biblical Library (WORDsearch, 1991). [9]Ralph Earle, “The Gospel according to Matthew,” in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Beacon Bible Commentary (Beacon Hill Press, 1964), Mt 6:19–21. [10]Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 28. [11]Leadership Ministries Worldwide, The Gospel according to Matthew: Chapters 1:1–16:12, vol. 1, The Preacher’s Outline & Sermon Bible (Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide, 2004), 134. [12]Thoralf Gilbrant, “Μαμμωνᾶς,” The New Testament Greek-English Dictionary, The Complete Biblical Library (WORDsearch, 1991). [13]Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-15 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 62–64. [14]Ronald K. Brown, Bible Studies for Life, Summer 2016, Herschel Hobbs Commentary (LifeWay Christian Resources, 2016), 34–37.