Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

How can we learn to love gazing upon Jesus, and planning our lives for an eternity with him, rather than to look at our treasures on earth with such devotion?

In Matthew 6, Jesus isn’t speaking against possessions, things like money, clothing and food. Instead, he is warning us about how a preoccupation with these things will bring about our ruin.

Trust Jesus (when he asks hard questions)

Jesus will give us some hard hitting questions today. His eternal words will challenge us, and force us to look at our lives from heaven’s viewpoint. But I want for you to trust Jesus as we go through this process together.

Jesus lived out perfect obedience. I believe that he lived out an abundant life. He knows happiness and joy in its fullest state, and he offers abundant life to each of us.

Will you demonstrate your trust in Jesus? Trust him in this proces. Trust him that he loves you, that these questions are for your good. They are to bless you, and save you from ruin.

Lets pray that God will give us His grace that we would trust him with all of our hearts and all of our minds this morning.

Here are the words of the Son of God, spoken to those who want to be disiplces, as he continues to teach them about what it is like to live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

Matthew 6:19–24 HCSB

“Don’t collect for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness—how deep is that darkness! “No one can be a slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves of God and of money.

$1,000 today or $10,000,000 in a year?

What if I had to cheques to offer you, and you could only pick one?

$1,000 today OR

$10,000,000 in a year.

Instant Gratification

Instant Gratification isn’t just a problem for kids. We all suffer from the allure of instant Gratification.

Even though the wise decision is to forgo the $1,000 now, we are surrounded by a culture that values the temporary over the eternal.

Our hearts are conditioned to see the treasures of this earth and be drawn towards them. We can’t see heaven clearly enough, we can’t see the glory that is waiting, and so we jump at the $1,000, storing up our treasure in the wrong place.

We enter into a spiritual darkness, building up justifications for why riches on earth are necessary. Jesus brings us truth.

Matthew 6:19 HCSB

“Don’t collect for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.

Jesus taught this sermon in first century Israel. If you lived then there two different ways to show your riches.

Clothing and Treasure

Moth - A Symbol of Earthly Destruction

when you hear the word Moth, you might think of a nice piece of clothing being ruined as the result of a moth eating a part of it.

Wealth was shown through beautiful clothing, (then and now). Its very dissapointing to find a hole in your favourite sweater.

For me, the incompetent dryer has replaced the moth.

nice clothes go in, and where do the holes come from?

Thieves

If you trust wikipedia, then the first bank was established in 1397 by Giovani Medici.

First century, the bank looked like a hole in your floor that you put your money into.

“Breaking In” was what thieves did. Right through the mud walls, etc.

Don’t store Treasure where it will surely be lost.

Jesus point is clear, all treasure gained on earth will be lost.

You will either have it destroyed or stolen. Or the same thing will happen to you that happened to John D. Rockefeller. You will die.

John D Rockefeller was one of the richest men that our world has known. When he died, curiosity got the better of one person who asked his accountant, “How much money did he leave”. The answer is perfect for us today,

“He left all of it”.

When noone buys your stuff at the garage sale.

Last summer I had a garge sale, and has a result, I’ve pledged to never have one again.

I have all of the stuff that it would seem nobody else wants.

I look around, and realize that weather its one month or 40 years from now, everything that I own is headed to a landfill.

Jesus says, why do you care so much about this stuff? Wouldn’t it be better if you could store up treasure in a place where theives don’t exist, and where what is good is eternal?

Matthew 6:20 HCSB

But collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal.

God has created us to chase after incentives.

Communism, which denies God, failes people in large part because it removes incentives. You aren’t working for your wage, instead you work for the good of everyone.

But we are created to work towards goals, and Jesus our creator is asking us to work towards eternal rewards.

Revelation 22:12 HCSB

“Look! I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me to repay each person according to what he has done.

Just earlier in this sermon

GIVE, PRAY, FAST in Secret

your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

In fact, because this passage follows those instructions we can easily connect the two. When we are charitable towards the poor, that is a concrete way of storing treasure in heaven.

Its not merely a question of ultimate rewards. Its a question of what motivates us.

Matthew 6:21 HCSB

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

Treasure Marker

Its very hard to walk in a straight line when you are looking at your feet.

Instead, have a marker in the distance, keep your eyes fixed on the marker, and you will walk in a straight line towards it.

Jesus is teaching us that Treasure is our Marker that we are walking towards.

Are you living for a promotion? Is your priority to afford a new house, car. Is retiring with a certain amount of wealth your main priority?

You can tell because whatever your treasure is, that is what you are moving towards. That is what is pulling at your heart.

Where are you pulled?

Show me your treasure, and I’ll show you where your heart is.

- Tom Wright

We all want to be pulled towards heaven. We all want for our treasure to outlast this earth and live on for eternity.

What rewards are you looking at when you walk through this life?

This passage is about so much more than Rewards, its about the condition of our souls. Gaining a proper perspective on our finances is important, but doing the right things with the wrong motivations is a trap that we don’t want to fall into.

Jesus starts in on motiviations and perspectives in the following verses.

Matthew 6:22 HCSB

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.

This metaphor takes a little bit of work for us to understand. It has to do with seeing, how you see the world, and more specifically, how you see your treasures.

The metaphor compares the eye to a lamp, which gives light to the body. Imagine a lamp in the middle of a room thats casting a light.

Now, add to that the ancient way of thinking about light.

Light = Revelation & Purity

An enlightened person is someone who has a good understanding of what is going on. As Christians, we would agree that somebody who is able to see the world, its people and the things of this world from God’s perspective are the ones who live by what He has revealed.

What’s more, a person who lives according to this truth is a person who is pure. They shine, because they have God’s truth and they live with his Love.

You could say that these people don’t only have a bright way of thinking, and living, but that they shine with God’s goodness. They give off a light that points people to God, who is the source of light.

How do you see the world? Is it by the light of God’s truth? Is it with a pure heart? If so, its only by the grace of God.

There is another way of seeing the world though.

Matthew 6:23 HCSB

But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness—how deep is that darkness!

If that lamp that is shining in the middle of the room fails to shine, where will the light come from. How will know what is up and what is down. How will you make decisions with clarity, conviction and truth. Worse yet, will you know that the lamp isn’t shining.

I want to remind you that Jesus was teaching his disciples a way of living in the Kingdom of Heaven that was very different than what the Pharisees had taught.

The Pharisees were self proclaimed experts in the law of Moses. They felt it was their duty to uphold the law, and even add many clarifying laws for the righteousness of Israel. Ultimately, it was the Pharisees who conspired to have Jesus crucified.

The Pharisees suffered from this darkness that Jesus is talking about here. And they seemed to be completely unaware of their spiritual condition.

they believed that God material blessed the ones that he loved, that wealth was a sign of God’s love.

they were intent on collecting treasure on earth, but they were decieved, as they considered themselves to be righteous.

The person whose perpectives are distored by materialism is blind to God’s truth.

-Craig S. Keener

This is the danger that I was talking about earlier. We all want to be collecting treasures for heaven. But what if we are like the Pharisees, thinking that we are in the right, blind to our own selfishness. Ignorant to the revelation of God. Seeing the speck in our neighbors eye, but missing the plank in our own eyes.

Materialism is a spiritual diseaese that causes a loss of vision.

When our decisions are affected and influenced by Money, and what Money can accomplish then we show where we have placed our trust.

Jesus doesn’t give us this teaching to say that money is bad, in the same that later on he isn’t saying that clothing is bad or that food is bad. He is giving us this teaching to show us that money can subtly rule our lives and the result is blindness to God’s truth. The problem is, that apart from God speaking to us, we are blind to our blindness.

ILLUSTRATION - The College Student

Let me paraphrase a story I read by Tom Wright.

There was a student who was having the time of his life. College was far more fun than anyone had told him. He was enjoying his role on the volleyball team, he was in a band, he was meeting some amazing people and he was finally popular. He was living the dream.

“What are your priorities” asked his tutor. “Because if you keep skipping classes and not handing in assignments, you are going to fail out”.

Talk about a reality check. Talk about a wake up call. It was time reevaluate why he was at college in the first place. He had a dream. He wanted to be a counsellor, and help people sort through their issues. He had wanted to see broken people become healthy people.

“Are you going to get work, because I think that you are going to have to rearrange your priorities if you want to pass your classes”.

In ten years, what decision will have been best for this student? How will he reach his goals?

The decision will be to prioritize the main things, and cut back on the extracurricular.

Some of us need a wake up call this morning. What are we spending our time doing? Where are we putting our best efforts? Where are we collecting our treasure?

Jesus puts it bluntly.

Matthew 6:24 HCSB

“No one can be a slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves of God and of money.

The point is well made. You are are devoted to God, or you are devoted to money. But its not both.

He has to say it so bluntly because we are so slow to hold on to this point. Money is no joke.

Money gives you orders. Money bosses you around. If money is your slave owner, you need help. Because you are living in a darkness, and the darkness will seem like light to you.

The kicker is that our heart follows after our treasures. And we can treasure things that aren’t valuable, things that aren’t worthy of our lives. But becuase they are our treasures, we are drawn towards them.

Its a passage about priority.

Two Calves.

Martin Lloyd Jones tells a story about a Farmer who had two calves born, a red and a white one.

he told his wife that he would keep the profits from one, and give the profits from the other to God.

What calf is God’s she asked him.

I haven’t decided, and it doesn’t really matter. I’m going to them equally, so its no big deal.

Several months later, he comes in from the fields with bad news, “The Lord’s calf died”.

But you hadn’t decided which ones was the Lord’s.

Yes I did, it was going to be the white one, and now that is the one that has died.

That’s how it goes sometimes. When push comes to shove, when its real dollars that we are leaving our bank account, we come up with reasons why those are our dollars.

Matthew Henry

There is a contrasting example for us though. There is famous Bible Commentator named Matthew Henry who was robbed. He came home from the ordeal and wrote these words in his diary.

Lord, I thank you

that I have never been robbed before;

that although they took my money, they spared my life;

that although they took everything, it wasn’t very much;

that it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.

When you look back over the last six months, have you been a slave to God or money?

You can’t go back and change that. But you can choose who you are going to serve today.

God AND Money?

Can you love God and Money? Can you be a slave to God and money?

IF you think that the answer is yes, if you are working out a way for the answer to be yes, then you are livng in darkness.

Jesus says we are slave to God or to money, its one or the other and its never both.

Choose, who do you want to serve.

If your choice is that you want to serve God, there are some that you can take to help avoid enslavement to money.

Guard what you look at.

Eyes are the lamp of the body. What are you gazing at? What captures your eyes? Ask God to help you discren what is good and decide to look that way.

Give in Secret

This really a cary over from Pastor Kent’s sermon about motiviation. “Why we do what we do matters”.

If you are giving in secret, it wont’ be so that people will be impressed. It wont be so that you can control others with your money.

In fact, the opposite will be true. You will disarm money’s power through generosity with no strings attached.

Think about heaven

That’s where we are collecting treasure. Our life on this earth is a vapor. Like a breath, we will be gone before we even know it.

But heaven is for ever, its eternal, and its good and wonderful.

Think about heaven, about being there with Christ. Consider the generous gift of GOd that you can be saved through Jesus Christ.

Realize that everything on this earth will fade away, don’t sell your soul for treasures that will ultimatly be destroyed. Heaven is for those who are in Jesus Christ. Be wise today, but live for eternity.

Relationship with Jesus

Jesus came from heaven and lived on this earth. He left behind the riches of heaven, so that he could serve us and save us and show us the amazing love of God.

Turn your eyes to Jesus. Put your trust in him. Repent of your sin, repent of your love of money, and trust him to save you.

What would you rather to look at? Jesus or Treasures? Whatever one you are looking at, the other will begin to fade away.

So,

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in his wonderful face

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of his glory and grace

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