Treasure in Heaven

Layout:

-intro Expostory teaching -Explicit & implicit meaning -Heart -Mind -Will Preach & Application - Paradigm Shift

Intro: Good morning, etc.

If you don’t live under a rock, you’ll know this week is Game I of the origin series. One of the big talking points coming out of the team selections is surrounding a player called Terrell May. If you’re not a footy fan and you only kind of know origin. Queensland and NSW pick squads of 20 men out of a comp of almost 600 players, there is eligibility criteria of course, not a notable feat to be chosen. Terrell, on paper, is the second best front rower in the entire comp. His stats are huge, he can play a full 80 minute game… and he didn’t get picked. Right before the team announcement, he is live streaming a gaming session with his mate and he says to his mate- “you know that Blues Jersey I got you, you can throw it in the bin”, meaning he hadn’t been picked. Now, we all know- that attitude sucks. It was later leaked that the selectors had called his previous club, the Roosters, a club full of Blues players and coaches, past and present and they told the selectors- don’t pick this bloke! His antics, on and off the field just aren’t good enough.

This story is a great example to how “ticking the boxes” doesn’t equal a result. The boiling pot that Origin is has taught many footy fans, that skill and talent don’t override character.

One of the greatest examples of this comes from,

Matthew 19:16–24 ESV

And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

This rich young man, ticked the boxes. On paper, he was a good, religious person. But when Jesus pressed him to sell his possessions, Jesus was testing to see the measure of his character, to find where his loyalties truly lay. Was his obedience to the Law and to God for God, or for himself?

If you missed the last few weeks, Jesus pressed the same idea with the use of the spiritual disciplines. He taught through giving, prayer and fasting and asked the question of the religious leads- do you do this for God or do you do it for yourself? Do you do it just to tick the boxes or gain status and prestige? And so Jesus He called them hypocrites. Today, in our context a hyporite is someone who is fake or pretends to be something they’re not. But in Jesus’ day, a hypocrite was a paid and professional actor. These actors would literally carry masks called “personas” and enact different characters with each mask whilst on stage. Jesus is accusing religious people as pretending to be something that they are not. As people putting on a certain ‘persona’ that’ll best benefit them in a specific situation.

That’s one of the over-arching themes of the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is not interested in your feigned external religious obedience if your inner life is still in rebellion to him. He isn’t pleased by it, infact, in revelation He calls that type of religion as being ‘lukewarm’, and gives the terrifying warning he’ll spit the hypocrites out of His mouth. So, as with the Rich Young ruler, Jesus expresses His desire, and a warning, in Matthew 6 for the need of inner transformation, rather than outward conformity.

Like most of Jesus teachings, there is a clear explicit meaning that is usually apparent at first reading, then a deeper, implicit meaning as His listeners dwell on it. The explicit meaning for our text is that materialism is antithetical to following God. Materialism, from the oxford dictionary is; “a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values”. A pursuit and accumulation of wealth and possessions, at the cost of obedience to Jesus.

Jesus is not advocating poverty as perfect religion, nor is he claiming wealth to be inherently evil. Rather, those who pursue wealth and material possessions will find themselves shackled by the objects of their pursuit.

Jesus’ teaching on wealth is like so many others- not so much a reprimand, but an invitation to freedom. Freedom is found from turning away from the things of the world, which so easily consume us. Once consumed by the world, we stop percieving them rightly- as things to be used in glorifying the LORD, but instead as things to be worshipped as God. This is the implicit meaning, an outward resistance to materialism if only ever mounted by an inward transformation. Jesus begins wtih the heart;

Matthew 6:19–21 ESV

“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.

Heart - v 19-21

Heart is used a number of different ways in the bible but the best way to interpret heart here is your deep, inner desires. The disposition of your very nature, what you want and what you lay value to. In our natural, fallen state we want the things of this world- success, fame, fortune, comfort and satisfaction. So we “lay up treasures” to meet that desire. Jesus warns us though, perhaps another measure of what we call His ‘severe mercy’, against pursuing the things of the world. The things of this world are temporary, finite and fickle. They will fail you! Warren Wiersbe writes,

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Five: The King’s Principles: True Worship (Matthew 6)

If the heart loves material things, and puts earthly gain above heavenly investments, then the result can only be a tragic loss. The treasures of earth may be used for God. But if we gather material things for ourselves, we will lose them; and we will lose our hearts with them. Instead of spiritual enrichment, we will experience impoverishment.

Rather, Jesus says, pursue the things of the Kingdom, things in Heaven, lay your treasure there. What does this mean though? Firstly, that the things of this world aren’t treasures at all. Secondly, the things of the world ought to be primarily used for ther glory of God. Rather than pursuing the things of the world as if they are God. Thirdly, the idea of laying up treasure sounds to me like depositing into a bank or storing in a warehouse. What wealth is deposited in them, is what we can lean on in times of need. What is stored in you heart? When you find yourself in hardship, what do you turn to? Wordly treasures can compensate for a time- netflix, UberEats, alcohol or even our jobs, but they are temporary.

Rather store your treasures in Heaven, if your heart flees to prayer and the scripture in hardship, you will find comfort and care in the arms of the Saviour. Draw your heart from the things of the world and then set your mind on the Kingdom too.

Mind - v 22-23

Matthew 6:22–23 ESV

“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!

“The Eye” is often used to talk about the attitudes of your mind. In a basic way, when you’re focused on something your eyes are focused on it. Someone who is “distant” is often looking away, into the distance, not focused on what is happening around them.

In our modern culture, people are considered to be, deep down, good people who occasionally do bad things- and often because something abd was done to them (they’re victims). Whereas, Jesis is operating on a different framwork; that the deep, inner life of people is inherently full of darkness. Think about it- when people get pushed, things get hard, or tense, or they run out of options- do nice remarks and warm vibes being emitting from th e person! Not at all! When the filters and degree of self-control instilled by our parents the schooling get overwhelmed- the darkest partys of us get revealed! We need light, external to us, to enter into our inner lives! If no light is entering a person- how great is the darkness within! This darkness is sin, and we need the Light!

But there is another layer to it. Jesus also uses the phrase “if your eye is bad”. For the Hebrews, this is a common idiom used in their culture. Someone with a ‘good eye’ is considered a generous person. Someone with a ‘bad eye’ is usally self-concerned.

Proverbs 23:6–7 “Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy (bad eye); do not desire his delicacies, for he is like one who is inwardly calculating. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you.”

The Hebrew word ra’yin literally means bad eye. It is interrpreted as stingy (not generous) due to the cultural idiom and context of the verse. Notcie the connection here as well. Someone who is has a bad eye, is considered to be inwardly calculating. In other words, you can see the inner working of someone’s mind if they are a selfish or stingy person. Jesus equates selfishness with our darkness. Whilst he uses this ‘bad eye’ idiom, he doesn’t use the obvious alternate phrase ‘good eye’. Instead, Jesus says the opposite of a bad eye is a healthy eye. The Greek word he uses is haplous, meaning healthy, single, sincere or clear.

This is the big idea- Jesus is calling his followers to have hearts for his Kingdom, and a mind focused on it too. Haplous, has an opposite, diplous, meaning double. So in this context, it’s a double minded person, someone with one foot in Jesus’ Kingdom, the other in the world. Where our eyes wonder, our body usually followers. Distracted eyes cause people to wander off the path. A person who is distracted by the pursuit of wealth in particular, is someone who can be shackled and taken out from the Way of the King. What is our way to fight this? To have a healthy, good eyes- to be generous! Do not hold tightly to your wealth lest it hold tightly on to you. Do not hold our wealth as ours but as given to us, entrusted to us by the King. “Hold loose” the things of the world and rather cling to the cross, eyes fixed on the Way of the King.

A heart set on God and a mind focused too, will allow our will to follow.

Will - v 24

Matthew 6:24 ESV

“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, materialism can enslave the will. You cannot serve two masters. This is perhaps is the most straightforward of Jesus teachings in our passage. It serves us in helping us know: you can love God and have money, you cannot love God and love money though. Money as a master shackles you and demands your devotion, where you ought to be only devoted to God.

1 Timothy 6:9 ESV

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

And so, Jesus calls us to be weary of materialism, and offers three teachings on protecting our hearts, mind and will to be devoted to Him and His Kingdom. It presents a striking resemblance to His teaching on the Great Commandment

Matthew 22:34–40 ESV

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

It’s a summary of the Law of Jesus’ upside-down Kingdom. It’s a couple of lines but they are hard lines to fulfill. Who of us can claim to love the Lord with all our heart, mind and soul? Are all our desires for His glory? Do we make all of our decisions, fashioned to bring Him glory? Do we spend our money with His glory in mind? No! None of us do! I certainly don’t, and I certainly don’t stand before you as some embodiment of perfect christian life and obedience! Even if I could tick the boxes, I wonder if I’d do it all for God or for myself. Do we all follow Jesus, for Jesus, or for ourselves?

Instead we look to Jesus, the only one who could, the only One who can- our greatest treasure in Heaven.

Our hearts and minds are clouded in darkness. Our will is driven by selfish desires, shackled by the things of this world. We try to compensate by ticking the boxes and in our arrogance consider opurselves as worthy. As our sins ‘not so bad’. Jesus is the only one worthy. He lived a life of obedience that we could not, He worshipped God are glorified Him ways we couldn’t. And when we were dead in ours, rebels against His will, it was then He died for us on the cross, as we stood by and cried, ‘crucify Him!’

If you are new to church, exploring faith or just open to God. Know this, He offers us freedom from our lives as a substitute for our sins. You and I drink from the same cup of this world: we all experience different degrees of suffering and hardship, we all struggle with the same turmoil of our inner lives. We all grapple with the same questions in the quiet and the same struggles when no one else is around. But Jesus offers you new life.

And so, church, I implore you. Those who are now living new lives ought not to live like they’re stuck in the old one. We live a life not our own, but a life that has been entrusted to us. We have our treasure in heaven are we not going to live lives that honour Him? Hold loose the things of this world, and cling tightly to the cross.

I’m going to invite you to pray with me, as one body of belivers. What are things of your life that you cling to that you give the title, of mine? What are the reasures of this world, that perhaps cling too tightly to you? I invite you to pray with me, a prayer of repentance.

When self-seeking and self-promoting people are freed to live for God and for others. This is the crux of what we call sin. Sin is self-obsession. Living for ourselves, often at the expense of others, doing what we want to do, when we want to do it. We have turned away from God and consider our own self, our own concience as the foremost authority on what is good and right. Jesus life and death on the cross paid the price of our sin, such as the brokenness in our lives and the world, and paved the way to new life.

If you have faith in Jesus, He invites you into this new life of distinctiveness from the world. Part of this distinctiveness is a paradign shift. A new way of looking at the world, of valuing and prioritising things and decisions.

Paradigm Shift

Does your paradigm align with Jesus’? Is your heart set on investing in the Kingdom? Is the desires of your heart satisfied in prayer and reading of God’s word? Is your mind focused on what God is calling you to do? Are your eyes on the work prepared before you? Who is your master? Are your loyalties divided, or singular and clear? Each of responses would be varied across all these questions, so let me share a short story:

A friend of mine recently was offered a choice- work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, or work 4 larger days and have a day off. They chose to have the day off, ecstatic to have a spare day, and to avoid the usually events across the weekend, they opted for Friday to be their Sabbath- an uninterrupted day for rest. Then, they prayed about it. Very risky. And sensed a leading from God to instead, invest their ‘spare’ day into the Kingdom. Since that decision, this person has become heavily involved a couple exisitng ministries as well as pioneering a new one.

This paradigm shift should see every follower of Jesus change from a mindset of mine to His. That God was the originator of all things has given us all that we have. None of it is ours. It all belongs to Him, so when was the last time you asked Him what He’d like you to do with it? If someone was to flick through your calender, scroll through your bank statements who might they say is your master? If you don’t like your answer to those questions- you’re certainly not alone.

All of us who follow Jesus, on the day we professed faith in Him, were justified by Him. Meaning he has forgiven all of our sins- past, present and future. We are now embarked on a journey, of unlearning our self-centredness, and learning how to instead live for Him and for others. So what would it look like for you, to prioritise your time for Jesus? Maybe it means being more consistant coming to church, or making time each day to pray and read your bible. Would you be considered to have a “good-eye”? Are you generous, do you tithe and support the work of this church? Do you make time each week to host people at your kitchen table, or meet someone in a coffee shop? If you do none of, it could be overwhelming, so pick one and go for it, but bit by bit, let us all submit our time and resources to the one we should call Master.

Prayer of repentance.

The application for each of us may vary, so here are a couple options:

Prioritise God. Prioritising someone shows your value for them.

Prioritise church. Just as treasures show our hearts, our calenders show our values. Coming to church each week grows your sense of community and connection to the Kingdom here in Ipswich. Regular attendance to a service and a life group helps to fix your mind on God.

Tithe. Tithing is financially supporting the work of the church. Not only do we need money to keep the lights on, but as our collective giving increase, so to does our capacity for ministry, vision, growth and the staffing to accomplish it.

Tithe your time (serve).

Rich Young Ruler: One of Jesus’ most famous teachings on this, is when a rich young man asks Jesus about how to enter eternal life, Jesus says to Him Mt 19:24

Matthew 19:21 ESV

Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Jesus challenged the young man to see where his loyalty lay. The man was a Jew, he kept the law, you could say he was above reproach- he ticked the boxes. But when given the choice: follow me but lose your wealth, it showed where his heart was. He was wealthy yes, but he was also shackled by it. It controlled him, he was a slave to his own money. And so Jesus finishes his teaching in MATTHEW 6 with: you cannot serve two masters, you cannot serve both God and money. That’s the explicit meaning, love for money and wealth are corrosive to your faith. The implicit meaning is that theme threaded throughout the Sermon on the Mount, is the transformation of you inner life, your soul to becoming distinct as a follower of Jesus. As you can see in your bibles there is essentially three lines Jesus delivers, each punching at a different part of our souls. Let’s look at the first one, Matthew 6:19–21 ““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.”

Hypocrites:

We’ve just finished a sort of mini series within the sermon on the mount. Jesus addresses three key areas of a Christian’s life: giving, prayer and fasting. As Pastor Brad mentioned last week, each of these topics first address the actions of the leaders of Jesus day. The leaders should be promoting these things, God’s peeople should be living them out in their daily walk as modes of trusting in God. However, they made sure that when they did these things- people knew about it. They prayed private prayers on street corners, sounded trumpets when they enacted gifts of generosity and made a physically demonstration when they were fasting. They looked to receive the praise of people as their reward rather than the reward in private from their heavenly father. For this reason Jesus calls them hypocrites.

Now we know what hypocrites are, people who say one thing and do another. Another definition could be, a hypocrite is a fake, a fake person. Their words and actions aren’t genuine or authentic, they feel hollow and without truth. Now, in Jesus time, there were people were called a Hypocrite as a title. They were the paid and professional actors.

Most theatres today have this iconic emblem of two masks with the ribbon. This emblem became synonymous with the theatre during the renaissance as many creatives had a love affair with ancient greco-roman culture. These masks, known as a ‘persona’, are the masks worn by these actors of Jesus day. So when Jesus calls them hypocrites, that’s the image his hearers and followers then have. These supposedly good, religious people are being called out by Jesus, as pretending to be something that they are not. As people putting on a certain ‘persona’ that’ll best benefit them in a specific situation. Jesus isn’t concerned that you can play the part, but that you can be whom He made you to be. That you would be His representative, a conduit and extension of His grace, love and presence in this world. Jesus continues to drive this home to His listener’s with today’s text.