Reflect God in Your Desires

One day in February of 2013, a couple known to the public only as John and Mary set off to take their dog for a walk along a trail on their property in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, near the area where the California Gold Rush of 1849 had taken place.

This was a trail they had walked many times before, and they’d even named the hill that it crossed Saddle Ridge because of an unusually shaped boulder along the way.

As they were walking, they passed a tree and noticed a rusty metal can poking up from the ground nearby.

Curious, the man dug the can out of the ground, and they began to carry it back home with them, commenting on the fact that it was so heavy and wondering what might be inside.

Before they could arrive back at home, the rusted lid of the can cracked open, and they could see the edge of a single gold coin inside.

They quickly found some hand tools and went back to the site to dig around and see what else they could find. Eventually, they found a total of eight rusty old cans, filled with a total of 1,427 gold coins with dates ranging from 1847 to 1894.

The treasure trove came to be known as the Saddle Ridge Hoard. The coins had a face value of $27,980, but the true value is much higher — $10 million or more, based on professional appraisals — because of the rarity and quality of the coins they found.

There were nearly 1,400 $20 gold coins in the hoard, including many rare Double-Eagles, several of which were graded as being the finest specimens of that coin ever found.

Additionally, there were fifty $10 gold coins and four $5 gold coins.

Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Don Kagin, the coin dealer John and Mary had hired to appraise and help sell their hoard of coins, and it was clear that he was still processing the enormity of this find: “You look at these coins, and you see history. They are the Gold Rush, murders in the mountains, buried treasures, the Wild West, everything of that time.” (https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Gold-Country-couple-discovers-10-million-in-5266314.php, accessed Sept. 4, 2021.)

There have been any number of theories about the origin of these coins. Who had collected them? Who had buried them? Why had he done so?

Nobody’s sure, and John and Mary’s lawyers are probably still dealing with all the lawsuits that have been filed by people claiming they were buried for them by a long-lost uncle.

But the prevailing theory is that they were buried by someone — perhaps someone in the mining industry in that area — who didn’t trust banks to protect his money. So he buried them below a tree, 10 paces from a distinctive rock where it would be easy for him to remember his treasure and retrieve it one day.

Except he never did. All of that wealth — and, adjusted for inflation, it would have amounted to more than $888,000 in today’s terms — accounted for exactly nothing in that person’s life. To him, it was literally as worthless as if he had never found it.

And I think that’s a great picture of what Jesus talks about in today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount. You’ll find it in Matthew, chapter 6, beginning in verse 19.

Matthew 6:19–24 NASB95

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, 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 that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Now, I think it was last week that I told you that my outline of the Sermon on the Mount differs from any I have been able to find among the many commentaries on this well-known address by Jesus.

Nearly all of the commentators I have found have set a major division between verses 18 and 19 of this chapter, separating these two parts of chapter 6 into one that deals with how we are to practice righteousness before God and the second dealing with how we are to practice righteousness before men.

Now, these commentators are far more learned than I am, and their division makes a lot of sense, so I want to start today by breaking this passage down they way most of them have done, and that’s by taking Jesus’ words at face value, which is always a good place to start when we’re looking at Scripture, anyway.

So, at face value, what’s Jesus talking about in this passage that we just read?

Money. When He talks about storing up treasures for yourselves on earth, Jesus is talking about money. That’s clear from the closing statement in verse 24, when He says “You cannot serve God and wealth.”

If you have the King James version, that word that’s translated as “wealth” appears as “mammon,” which was an Aramaic word that had originally meant “food, maintenance, or provisions” and by the time of Jesus, had come to mean “worldly wealth.”

So the idea from the last part of verse 24 is this: Where does your confidence lie? Is it in God as your provider or is it in the treasures that you’ve set aside for yourself, perhaps in a bank somewhere or maybe even in some old tin cans that you’ve buried on your property.

Taking what Jesus says in this passage at face value, we see Him warning against putting your confidence — your faith — in earthly things that don’t last.

Take, for example, the story of Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson. In 2002, he acquired a 45-percent stake in one of the three largest banks in Iceland, and by 2008, he was the second-richest man in that nation, with a total wealth of $1.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

It’s been 13 years since 2008, and you may have forgotten it by now, but that was also the year of the worldwide banking crisis.

The crisis hit Iceland hard, and all three of its major banks defaulted on their loans, causing major economic and political unrest there for the next three years.

After the banking crash, Gudmundsson lost his position as chairman of the bank, and he declared personal bankruptcy just a year later.

In the span of just a year, this man went from billionaire to broke.

Maybe you read the story recently about Brett Butler the comedian and star of the popular ‘90s sitcom Grace Under Fire, who is the beneficiary of a GoFundMe campaign aimed at raising $20,000 to help pay six months in back rent and get her back on her feet.

Or perhaps you’ve heard or read some of the many stories of lottery winners who suddenly came into many millions of dollars and soon found themselves with even less than they had before they won the big payout.

The point here is not to poke fun at or to ridicule these people. Their stories are sad and even pitiful. The point is that the fall from wealth to poverty can come with one natural disaster, one major health crisis, one case of identity theft, one stock market crash, one banking crisis, or one series of bad decisions.

Putting your confidence or your faith in material things like your bank account is a dangerous game.

And the truth is that material treasures don’t bring happiness, but rather worry and heartache and even misery.

I think of that miner who might have buried those coins in California. How he must have worried that someone would find them and steal them! How he must have lived so that nobody would suspect he had a hidden cache of gold worth nearly a million dollars.

But we don’t have to wonder about this. Listen to what the millionaires have said about their money:

• I have made many millions, but they have brought me no happiness.— John D. Rockefeller

• The care of $200,000,000 is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it.— William Vanderbilt

• I am the most miserable man on earth.— John Jacob Astor

• What can I say? I only know I am desolate.— J. Paul Getty

• I was happier when doing a mechanic’s job.— Henry Ford

• Millionaires seldom smile.— Andrew Carnegie

[Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 575.]

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” That’s what Jesus said about wealth. “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.”

What joy can a person derive from serving the master of wealth? There is never enough, and there is always the chance that you’ll lose it all.

How much better for a subject of the Kingdom of Heaven to serve GOD wholeheartedly — to fix his eye on the light of Christ in the knowledge that all good things come from the Father, anyway, and knowing that the treasures God has set aside for you will never decay, never rot, never rust or be stolen.

If you as a Christian have your eyes fixed on the things of the Kingdom of Heaven — if your heart is devoted to Jesus Christ and His righteousness — then you will be blessed with satisfaction.

Remember the beatitudes? “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. You might remember that when we studied the beatitudes, I said this word that’s translated as “satisfied” had the sense of being filled with food.

This is the opposite of what we see in people who are obsessed with money and status. For them, there is never enough.

They’re always checking the stock market to see how their investments are doing. They’re always looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme. They’re always thinking about the next house or the next boat or whatever other material possession will elevate them in the eyes of the world. There is never any satisfaction.

Now, I’m not saying here that money is evil. What the Bible tells us is that “the LOVE of money is a root of all sorts of evil.”

“To ‘lay up treasure on earth’ does not mean being provident ([by] making sensible provision for the future) but being covetous (like misers who hoard and materialists who always want more).” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 155.]

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” What preoccupies you? Are you preoccupied with wealth and other things of this earth?

Or are you preoccupied with God and with His Son, Jesus, who laid down the treasures of heaven, “taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men” so He could “humble Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross”?

Throughout this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus used the Pharisees as negative examples. Remember, He said that “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

And, calling them hypocrites, He described their very public acts of righteousness, designed to be seen by others, and He said, “Don’t be like them.”

Luke writes that the Pharisees were “lovers of money,” and that Jesus said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts.” God knew that their hearts were directed toward money and status and power and not toward Him.

And that brings me to my own interpretation of today’s passage, and this interpretation comes from remembering one bedrock principle of biblical analysis that some of you will recognize from Wednesday’s Zoom Bible study.

Here it is. Lean in and listen closely. Verse 19 follows verse 18. Let me say it again. Verse 19 follows verse 18.

Now, what that means is that, even though we picked up today’s study in verse 19, we still have to look at the context in which today’s passage appears in order to understand it fully.

So, let me take you back through what we’ve studied so far to give you that context. Remember that the beatitudes showed us the marks of a Christian and the mindset of a Christian. And then, in a transitional passage of introduction, Jesus talked about the righteous character of a Christian and its source, which is God.

And then, beginning in Chapter 5, verse 21, He began to lay out the ways that righteousness should look in the lives of believers.

In short, they should reflect the righteous character of God. He talked about reflecting God in their hearts, reflecting God in their relationships, reflecting God in their public worship, reflecting God in their forgiveness, and reflecting God in their private devotion.

“You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus said back at the end of Chapter 5.

I think that today’s passage shows Jesus telling us to reflect God in our desires, and I think they key to seeing that is found back in the first part of Chapter 6.

Regarding giving to the poor, Jesus said to do it in secret, and “your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”

Regarding prayer, Jesus said to do it in secret — or at least not ostentatiously — and “your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”

Regarding fasting, in verse 18, Jesus said to do it in secret, and “your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”

Now, remember, verse 19 follows verse 18, right? And I don’t see any evidence here that Jesus is changing the subject.

Instead, what I see is Him using the contrasting ideas of “treasures on earth” and “treasures in heaven” to drive home the point that He was making in the first part of this chapter — that the heavenly rewards that come from reflecting God’s character in our public worship, in our forgiveness, and in our private devotion are treasures that will last, as opposed to earthly treasures that have no eternal significance and are subject to being lost even as we try to hold onto them.

Jesus calls those who have followed Him in faith to reflect the Father in their desires — to want the things that He wants.

And what does God want? Well, among the things He wants is for us to give to the poor because we love them and not because we’re looking for recognition.

He wants us to come to Him in prayer because we desire to be in close communion and fellowship with Him as our Father. He wants us to forgive others as we have been forgiven.

He wants us to bring our bodies under submission to Him and to understand that we depend upon Him completely, even by fasting if necessary.

And Jesus promises rewards in heaven for reflecting the character of God in these ways. I don’t know what the rewards are, but that sounds a lot like treasure to me.

“Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal.”

Certainly, there is a principle here about money and material things that applies to your life as a Christian, but I think the greater point that Jesus was making is in the contrast between reflecting the character of God and reflecting the character of the world, whether that’s the character of materialism or the character of religion done for show.

And that last thing is something that often trips us up.

Remember the beatitude? “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

In other words, blessed are those who are genuine and transparent and do not put on a mask for the world to see.

That’s what Jesus accused the Pharisees of doing. He called them hypocrites. Remember what that word meant? It came from Greek theatre, and it described an actor wearing a mask in front of the audience so he would look like someone he was not.

It’s not all that hard to play the part of a Christian. Go to church once a week, be nice to other people, get all up in arms about the state of society, talk a lot about justice and love.

What’s a lot harder — and what Jesus calls His followers to do — is to actually BE what we ARE. To go to church seeking an encounter with your risen Savior. To be forgiving, because we have been forgiven. To be gracious because we have received grace. To seek justice because we have been justified. To be loving because we are loved.

So there’s your application if you are a believer: BE what you ARE. Be forgiving. Be gracious. Seek justice. Be loving. Reflect the character of God in the very desires of your heart. God rewards these things.

But ACTING like a Christian doesn’t get you rewards in heaven. In fact, if you’re acting like a Christian without having a relationship with Christ, then heaven isn’t even a part of the equation for you.

And I believe we will be shocked when we get to heaven and find out how many people we knew who acted like Christians but are not there, because they never really knew the Christ whose name they used.

Perhaps that describes you. Perhaps you’ve been someone who has called yourself a Christian for years, but now you’re beginning to recognize that your life doesn’t reflect the character of Christ — that maybe it never has, that maybe the transformative message of the gospel never really changed you.

Maybe you have begun to realize that your heart is directed toward the things of this world, that your eyes are peering into darkness, rather than light.

If that describes you, then let me tell you something: Jesus came for you. He left heaven, was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life as a man, and then died on a cross, bearing your sins and those of the world, and taking the just punishment that we all deserve for our rebellion against God.

And He did all this so that you could be saved. He did all this so that we would not have to suffer eternal separation from the God who made us to be in fellowship with Him. And when God raised His Son from the dead, He showed that He would keep His promise to raise those who follow Jesus in faith unto eternal life.

This life can be yours. You can be a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, experiencing the joy of fellowship with God in Christ even here on earth.

But first you must admit that you are a sinner — that you have rebelled against God in small ways and big ways by failing to achieve His perfect righteousness.

You must recognize that there’s nothing you can do to earn God’s forgiveness; it’s a gift given at the cross that you must choose whether to accept by putting your faith in Jesus as the one who sacrificed Himself on your behalf and the only one with the power to save you from eternal condemnation in hell.

“What must I do to be saved?” the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” It’s that simple, but it will not be easy.

All of your treasures on earth are as nothing compared to the glory of God. And you can partake in that glory as a follower of Christ. But you’ll have to choose between this kingdom and that one. You’ll have to choose between your treasures here and the treasure there.

If you would like to talk to me about this, please come and see me during our last song.