By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
We are continuing in our series on the Sermon On the Mount by Jesus as recorded in Matthew chapters 5-7. This entire series reminds us that we serve Christ in an upside down Kingdom where his values are almost completely opposed to the worlds.
Today, our verses come from Matt 6:19-24. Verses 19-21 are pretty easy to read and understand. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”
“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
In the times of Jesus, there were no stock markets or even banks as we know them. Much of the value a family had accumulated was in livestock and clothing while the cash they had was kept in the wall of the house for most people.
At night it was actually possible to dig through the outside wall of a house into the area set aside as the safe and remove the money from the outside. And we all know about rustlers and illnesses like today’s bird flu and what they can do to livestock.
It’s the moths that surprise us until we understand that garments could be very ornate. Sewn with gold thread and with jewels as ornaments, and made with fabric that was very special, they could be excessively costly. But a few moths could destroy their value.
So, Jesus’s question was why work for something that can be so easily taken away when you could work for treasures that will last forever?
The value of the treasures in heaven far outweigh the value of what man can accumulate here and those treasurers will never be stolen or lost.
The last of the verse is the summation of what he was teaching. Our heart follows our treasures. We do what is most important to us.
If our security is in treasures here on earth, then we will show the most concern for them even though they are just as temporary today as 2000 years ago.
Stock markets crash, banks close, our bodies succumb to cancer, our relationships fail. Nothing on earth is permanent, even earth itself will be replaced someday.
But heaven will never pass away. God is eternal. What we invest in Him and his Kingdom will last eternally.
So, take care with what you have been given to steward on earth but don’t be blind to the fact that it will all pass away. True value is only found in the things of God.
Verses 22-23 seem kind of out of place ““The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”.
What the verses are telling us is that if we focus our lives on things that will not lead to heavenly worth, we will waste the life we were given because we spent it focusing on the wrong things. God wants our complete life and heart focused on him and His Kingdom above all else.
Verse 24 makes more sense when seen in that light. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
Here I think we can equate the word “serve” to “worship” and “money” to any idol we set up before God be it our family, our health, our jobs, or our wealth.
We can worship the world’s values or the Kingdom’s. We can’t straddle both without falling in and losing everything.
God’s values and calling are almost the direct opposite of the worlds. If we go after one, we will possibly lose the other.
So, our choice is to decide who we will follow: God or money or anything else? Following God may mean that you have less in this world but much more in the Kingdom to come.
Conversely, following money or any other idol might even keep you out of the Kingdom to come. It is impossible to do both. God is a jealous God and expects his followers to put Him first in their lives.
Anything we set before Him we have turned into a god which is an idol. Ex. 20:3-5a “You shall have no other gods before me.”
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…”
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.