Matthew 6: 19-24
19"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
24"No one can serve two masters. 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 both God and Money.
19Μὴ θησαυρίζετε ὑμῖν θησαυροὺς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, ὅπου σὴς καὶ βρῶσις ἀφανίζει, καὶ ὅπου κλέπται διορύσσουσιν καὶ κλέπτουσιν: 20θησαυρίζετε δὲ ὑμῖν θησαυροὺς ἐν οὐρανῷ, ὅπου οὔτε σὴς οὔτε βρῶσις ἀφανίζει, καὶ ὅπου κλέπται οὐ διορύσσουσιν οὐδὲ κλέπτουσιν: 21ὅπου γάρ ἐστιν ὁ θησαυρός σου, ἐκεῖ ἔσται καὶ ἡ καρδία σου. 22Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός. ἐὰν οὖν ᾖ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου ἁπλοῦς, ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου φωτεινὸν ἔσται: 23ἐὰν δὲ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου πονηρὸς ᾖ, ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου σκοτεινὸν ἔσται. εἰ οὖν τὸ φῶς τὸ ἐν σοὶ σκότος ἐστίν, τὸ σκότος πόσον. 24Οὐδεὶς δύναται δυσὶ κυρίοις δουλεύειν: ἢ γὰρ τὸν ἕνα μισήσει καὶ τὸν ἕτερον ἀγαπήσει, ἢ ἑνὸς ἀνθέξεται καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου καταφρονήσει: οὐ δύνασθε θεῷ δουλεύειν καὶ μαμωνᾷ.
Introduction:
A pastor was invited to dinner in the home of a very wealthy man. After the meal, the host led the pastor outside to a place where they could get a good view of the surrounding area. Pointing to the oil wells that dotted the landscape, the man said, ’twenty-five years ago I had nothing. Now, as far as you can see, it’s all mine.” Looking in the opposite direction at his endless fields of grain and corn, he said, ’that’s all mine.” Turning east he pointed to these huge herds of cattle and said, and those, those are all mine too.
Then pointing to the west to a beautiful forest, he exclaimed, ’that too my property.
Then He paused waiting for the pastor to compliment him on his wonderful success. The pastor, however, sensing what this man rich man really needed, placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and pointed up to heaven and asked "How much do you have in that direction"?
Treasure . . . we all have it, don’t we? We all want treasure of some sort. We all have something or some “things” that we consider very valuable. Our treasure.
Pirates, in the movies at least, always bury their treasure on some deserted island. They would then take a map and mark on that map where they buried their treasure and what would they use . . . . An x always marks the treasure, right?
The question I want us to consider today is this. If we were to draw out your life like a big map and spread it out on the table with everything on there, your whole life, where would we put the X?
Sermon
A husband was on a business trip and decided to buy a gift to bring home to his wife to show her how much he missed her.
The lady at the cosmetics counter showed him a bottle of perfume for $75, but the man thought that was a bit expensive. So the clerk pulled out a smaller bottle of the same perfume, which cost only $50.
Again, the man explained that this was a bit too much money. The clerk, trying to conceal her frustration, showed him the smallest bottle available, priced at $20.
The man shook his head and said, “I think I’d like you to show me something really cheap.”
So she reached under the counter and showed him a mirror.
In today’s scripture, Jesus illustrates probably the most common struggle for all people, not just Christians, the struggle for our hearts. Money is definitely important. God is definitely important. But which one is more important? Of course, we know the easy answer. But there is often a hard, hard answer to this question, too. One that every one of us struggles with. And one that we are not safe from just because we don’t see ourselves as rich. You don’t have to have much money at all to still worship money and to covet more. Remember Sergeant Bilko? The Phil Silvers show, also called You’ll Never Get Rich. Sergeant Bilko never had any money, did he? In fact, he was always losing money but money was absolutely, positively the center of his life.
We all desire what Jesus calls treasure. As I said last week, money is important and the things that it can do for us are good and desirable. Going out to dinner is excellent. Going on vacations is very nice. New cars, new clothes, new toys. But making money the center of our existence or allowing the pursuit of material wealth to be the god of our lives can be dangerous game to play. Jesus tells us. No, he warns us in Matthew 16, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet to lose his soul?” And in Matthew 19 He says that is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.
Did you know that one out of every ten verses in the gospels is about money? 2000 verses in the New Testament are about money. 16 of Jesus’ 38 parables are about . . .money. John Piper writes that “The reason money is so crucial for Jesus is that across all cultures and all ages it represents the alternative to God as the treasure of our hearts, and therefore the object of our worship. ”: (John Piper: What Jesus Demands from the World. Crossway Books. Wheaton, Ill. 2006. p. 273).
Yes, it is possible to love money and the things it does for us more than we love God. It is very possible and sadly when that happens, you are making withdrawals from your heavenly account, not deposits.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that Jesus recognized in us a natural desire for treasure, a natural desire for gain. Being created by God, that would certainly be something that God wanted us to have and so God provides for us a way to create treasure. What happens though is that we attempt to satisfy this desire with a cheap imitation. God offers eternal, spiritual treasure immune from loss yet we are more than willing to substitute earthly treasure, treasure that is subject to depreciation, inflation, taxation, not to mention Bernie Madoff.
Through faith in Christ, we have an opportunity to invest in something far greater than anything we can imagine. God is looking for a group of investors. People willing to get excited about an opportunity. Investors who are willing to take what God has given them to start with and to put those resources into building the Kingdom of God.
In Matthew 13, Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field that a man finds and then hides again. He then goes and sells all he has so that he can buy that field and own the treasure that is buried there. This sounds strange but there weren’t any banks back then so people would literally bury their valuables in order to protect them. According to a very good source, there was treasure buried everywhere in Israel because so many people would die without revealing where their valuables were hidden. The point Jesus was making was that the Kingdom of God was worth the investment.
A missionary asked a new convert, “Pablo, if you had a hundred sheep, would you give fifty of them to the Lord’s work?”
“You know I would gladly give them,” he replied.
“Pablo, if you had fifty cows, would you give twenty-five to the Lord’s work?”
“Of course, I would be more than happy to do that,” came the reply.
Once again the missionary asked, “Pablo, if you had two pigs, would you give one of them to the Lord’s work?”
“That’s not fair!” Pablo said, “You know I have two pigs.”
Then Jesus says a very strange thing. He starts talking about eyes. Good eyes, bad eyes. He says the eye is the lamp of the body and if it’s working the way it’s supposed to, your whole body will be full of light. If your eye is not working, your whole body will be filled with darkness. This is not such an odd description. Your eyes let light into your body. Close your eyes. What do you see? It’s dark when your eyes are closed, isn’t it? Open them, now what do you see? We describe some people as seeing through rose-colored glasses. These are people who do not see the world as it really is, right. Well, in this case, Jesus is referring to people who see the world through green colored glasses. Their God is money. Their Bible is a checkbook. And their church is a bank. And as Jesus says, the light within them is darkness and how great is that darkness.
How many ways will Jesus use to make his point that when owning things is the focus of your life, then those things often own you? He says that, “No one can serve two masters”. He does not leave room for middle ground here. It is an either/or situation. Jesus says that the man who tries to serve two masters will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. This master is always going to be interfering in what that master wants. And vice versa. I think Jesus adds this part because Church for a lot of people is simply a way to hedge all their bets. Going to church can be something we do because we all know deep down, that we really can’t take it with us and we really need to do something about eternity but that step of simply trusting God and His love is just too much for us to take. Church to many people is just part of a well ordered life and Jesus wants to make certain that his followers know that in the end, God will have none of it. God will not be a part of that kind of charade. The old testament describes God as a jealous God because He wants our whole attention and he will not suffer just being a part of our lives. God wants our whole devotion.
When the map of your life is rolled out, where will the x that marks your treasure fall? You get to choose. It’s not a matter of fate. It’s not a matter of DNA. You choose.
It’s not really about money. It’s really about the God that you trust in. It’s about whether you believe in a God who loves you and cares for you and cherishes you or whether your God lives in a piggy bank. Will money die for you? Will money hang on a cross for you out of love?
You know, somehow if God’s life could be rolled out like a map and you could see where God’s X marks the spot of his treasure, you would see it marked right on you. Only His X is shaped like that [point to the cross] You are what is important to God. You are God’s treasure.
Struggling with money and materialism? That’s okay, we all do but God understands. He died so that we could win that struggle. But He wants us to pray about it. He wants us to work at it. He wants us to love Him more. He wants us to work at returning the devotion to Him that He has for us. God will help us let go of our materialistic ways while we build up our treasure in heaven. God knows that most people can’t change overnight but we can change. God is building His kingdom here and now and He wants us to be on the construction team working with Him. Where is your treasure? Where is your heart? X Marks the spot.
