12 How to Choose the Right Treasure

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the 12th episode in a companion series to my book, Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Today, we'll be studying Matthew chapter 6, verses 16 through 24, which is one of the book's Seek For Yourself passages from chapter 12. If you're reading along, read chapter 12 before you listen to this podcast. And if you don't have the book, don't worry, just keep on listening. Have you ever noticed that you can look faithful on the outside and still be building your whole life around the wrong treasure? When approval, security, success, or money start feeling like things you just can't live without, you may be serving the wrong master. In this episode, we'll find out how Jesus exposes what your heart is really chasing and how to find the one treasure you can never lose. Thanks so much for listening. Today we're going back to the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew, which is one of my favorite sections of his gospel. First, let me give you a bit of background. The entire Sermon on the Mount is about one topic, and that is who will be accepted by God and enter the kingdom of heaven. In the first section, the Beatitudes, Jesus told us who the blessed and fortunate ones are, and those people are blessed or fortunate because they will inherit a place in the kingdom of God. Then in the next section, which is called the Antitheses, Jesus explained how your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven. In other words, to receive the reward of heaven, you must seek God in a different way than the Pharisees sought him. And he gave several examples to explain that. The passage we're looking at today is in the third section of the sermon. And Jesus is approaching this same question, who will enter the kingdom of heaven from a new angle? In this third section, Jesus challenges those who are worldly. And by worldly, I don't mean having too many material possessions. It means being too concerned with the things of this world, counting this world more valuable than entering heaven. Jesus began this section by saying in Matthew 6.1, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. And then he gave three parallel examples of how hypocrites perform their religious practices. And in each case he repeats the statement, the hypocrites have their reward in full. They already have what they're looking for. They're looking for a reward here on earth and they get it. They perform these religious practices supposedly to please and obey God, but in reality, their real goal is to gain the approval of their peers. So they practice their religion to look good before others, and that is the reward they get. And they are worldly because they are more concerned about the rewards of this world than about what God has promised in the next. And the section we're looking at today falls in this section on worldliness. We're going to pick up the sermon in Matthew six verses 19 through 24. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rest 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. 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? 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 money. So in this little section, Jesus gives us three distinct metaphors. We have treasures on earth versus treasures in heaven. We have the eye being the lamp of the body, and we have this idea of serving two masters. And these three ideas are related. We're going to look at each one of them in turn and then talk about how they paint the whole picture. So let's start with treasures. This is Matthew 6, 19 through 21 again. 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. So let's talk about this word treasure. That's a very religious, very Bible-sounding word. It's not one we use often in daily conversation, but the concept in the New Testament is deeply important. Every human being on the planet is looking for ways to make their life good. We all want security, we all want health, we want love and happiness, we want to feel necessary and needed. We want rest. We want pleasure. We want all kinds of things. And we want all those things that make life good. That's our treasure. Our treasure is everything that we keep, everything that we cling to and count on to bring goodness into our lives. We don't want to let it go. We want to hoard it. We want to keep it because this is something that brings goodness into our lives. That's what our treasure is. So it does include wealth, financial wealth, but it includes a whole lot more than that. Now, the desire for a good life is not a bad thing. Wanting a good life is a very basic human need. It's something God built into us, it's inevitable. We are going to seek for that which brings goodness into our lives, and that's our treasure. And that can be a big bank account. There's no doubt that wealth can solve a lot of problems and bring a lot of goodness to our lives. But I think Jesus has more in mind than just financial wealth. It's all the things that I'm seeking: fame, fortune, prosperity, friendships, health, romance, all those things that I seek and would hold on to to make my life good. Now, wealth may be at the top of that list because wealth brings a whole bunch of other good stuff with it. People tend to like rich people. So riches can bring friends. Riches can bring pleasure because you can afford to experience things and buy things and do things. Wealth can bring the approval of your peers. It can bring a sense of security and safety. It can bring a feeling of self-satisfaction of look what I've accomplished. So wealth is definitely part of the picture, but the treasure Jesus is talking about is more than gold and silver. I think he's including all the good things this world has to offer. Some of those money can bring, but some it doesn't. So our treasure is our wealth plus everything that we keep and cling to and count on to bring goodness into our lives. And the question on the table is: are we choosing our treasure wisely or foolishly? What sort of treasure should you be counting on and looking for? And the first issue Jesus raises is reliability. Can you keep the treasure that you're hoarding? If your treasure is something you cannot keep, especially when there is another treasure you could choose that you cannot lose, then you're making a foolish choice. And to explain this, Jesus uses a poetic symmetrical contrast. 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 destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. So the contrast is between a treasure you cannot keep and a treasure you cannot lose. Moths and rust and thieves represent the fundamental problem with the treasures of this world. You can't keep them. Everything in this world is going to go away. They are stolen, they are broken, or they are destroyed. Now Jesus doesn't mention the biggest thief of all here, but I think it's very much in the background, and that is death. Death is the moth that eats everything, the rust that corrupts everything, and the thief that ultimately steals everything we have. We cannot keep the treasures of this world, even for long in this world, and ultimately we will lose them all to death. Now the Old Testament explored this point often. There's a number of passages which talk about the futility of relying on the riches of the world. Probably the most well-known among those is the book of Ecclesiastes. In that book, Solomon speaks repeatedly of vanity and chasing after the wind. We try to hoard the various good things in life, but in the end it's like chasing the wind. It just they go away, we lose them. All we have left is a handful of air, as if I'd gone chasing the wind and came up with nothing. Well, Jesus is taking this one step further, and he reminds us there's an alternative. There's something else you can seek that does not decay, does not corrode, and cannot be stolen, and will not be lost to death, and that is the treasure that we store up in heaven. So what does it mean to store up treasure in heaven? The picture is not that when we die we go to heaven and receive some kind of a treasure chest. Our treasure is not stored in some kind of heavenly bank vault such that when we die we go to this place and we receive a big safety deposit box or a bank account or something. That's not the picture he's painting. The picture is that we receive this treasure when Jesus comes again. When Jesus returns, he resurrects his people to eternal life and we join him in his kingdom. And this kingdom is wonderful and glorious because in this kingdom, God's rule is fully realized over all creation, over all the universe, because Jesus has conquered sin and vanquished death. There are no more tears, no more crying, no more tragedy, no more loss, sorrow, sin, or death. And we should want life in that kingdom. So the treasure we should truly want is resurrected eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. Peter put it this way: this is 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 13. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So he doesn't say fix your hope completely on what you will receive when you die and go to heaven. Rather, he says, fix your hope on what you will receive when Jesus is returned and revealed in glory. To store up treasure in heaven doesn't mean we put treasure in a heavenly bank account so that when we die we can get it. Rather, we entrust our treasure to God. We know that we will lose any treasure gathered in this world. Therefore, we entrust our hope, our joy, our future to God. Instead of investing our lives in the things of this world, we invest our lives in the promises of God. We hope and we count on the things God has promised, and we look forward to the day when Jesus will return and bring our treasure with him. So we fix our hope, we fix our goal on the things that God has promised in the future concerning his Messiah and how he will establish his kingdom. Everything that's prayed for in the Lord's Prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, that's what we fix our hope on. We fix our hope on the holiness God will bring to his world and his people. So that's Jesus' first point. Store up treasure that endures. Store up a treasure that can't be stolen, broken, or lost, and that you cannot lose to death. Then he gives a second reason why we should store up treasure in heaven and not on earth. And this one I think takes a little thinking about. He says, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. This warning I think it was particularly important for the Pharisees of Jesus' day. Jesus repeatedly calls them hypocrites. They claim that their hearts are set on God, but their lives and their actions show that their hearts are set on the things of this world. To them, the most important thing is to be admired by their peers and to be treated like important people who have wealth and financial security. And Jesus says, it doesn't work that way. You can't tell me that your heart is set on the things of God when your actions say you want the things of this world. If the things you want most are the things this life, this earthly life can give you, then you're wrong about your heart belonging to God. Your heart is with your treasure here on earth. That's the thing you're seeking and counting on. To give your heart to God includes believing that His treasure and His promises are better than what this world offers. We can see then that to choose the right treasure requires understanding. You have to be able to look at the treasures of this world and recognize, even though there may be good things among them, they are nothing in comparison to the promises of God. You have to be able to see what is really true and what is a lie. What is true about what this world offers and what is true about what God has promised, and which one is most valuable. If you lack that understanding, if you can't evaluate the treasures wisely, then you will end up giving your heart to the wrong treasure. And that's the point Jesus makes with his next little metaphor. Let's look at 22 and 23. 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? Let's think about his metaphor here. If you close your eyes, you're in darkness. You can't see anything. You have lost access to the world around you. You can still hear and feel things, but fundamentally you're in the dark. You're locked in yourself and you can't see things outside yourself. When you open your eyes, light comes flooding in. You are no longer shut off from the world around you. You can see and look around. So your eye is like a lamp because your eye is the part of the body that brings light to you. Significantly here, light helps me understand the world out there. Part of the point of having light and having eyes is so I can understand and navigate this world. I can avoid bumping into things, I can learn from facial expressions, I can read, I can watch, I can see colors and patterns. So if something is wrong with your eyes, if you're blind such that when you open your eyes, the light can't break through, then you're trapped in darkness. You can't understand the world around you in the same way. Now, obviously, this is a metaphor. Jesus is not interested in physical light and physical blindness. He's speaking metaphorically. As is often the case, the image of light is the image of understanding. Light brings me knowledge. Light brings me information so I can learn. Light gives me understanding of the world around me. That's what light is meant to do. But what if light doesn't do that? What if you think you have understanding, but you don't? What if your eyes are open and you think you see? You think you know what you're looking at and you think you're evaluating it all accurately, but in fact you're wrong. Well, what then? You have your eyes open and the physical light is coming in, but you are still in the dark because you don't understand what you're looking at, and that is a terrible place to be, because you think you see and understand, but in fact you're blind. That's why Jesus says, if then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? The physically blind person can say, I have no light, I cannot see. I need help because I can't see what's in front of me. But the blind fool says, Oh, I can see clearly, but in reality, he doesn't see anything at all because he doesn't understand what he's looking at. So it may be unfortunate to be blind, but it is infinitely worse to be blind but think you see perfectly. And that's a very graphic picture of a profound truth. In fact, I think it's one of the most important truths of human existence. Think about all the admonitions in Scripture to believe and have faith, and all the places scripture says things like, wake up, open your eyes, be alert. Knowledge is not passive. Knowledge does not just happen to us. We have to be willing to believe it. Our knowledge is in part dependent on what we want to think is true. So information comes to us all day long. We get all kinds of information, but how we understand that information depends in part on what we want to be true. Some things we will automatically accept as true and others we will reject. And if you don't believe me, just compare two different news sources, one liberal and one conservative. They will look at the same facts and come to very different conclusions because of what they want to believe is true. So the Pharisees were religious men who claimed to believe in God, but their religious understanding was shaped by their metaphorical eye, by what they wanted to believe. Ultimately, they wanted the treasure of this world, so their religious lives reflected that desire, and they understood the scripture to support that desire. They thought they were seeing clearly, but in fact, they were choosing what is temporary over what is eternal. The light that was in them, the understanding they thought they had was in fact darkness, and how great is the darkness. Now I think Jesus is drawing on some well-known imagery from the Old Testament. We find this in Isaiah 6 9. This is from Isaiah's call to be a prophet. I'll read six, chapter six, verses eight through ten. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am, send me. And he said, Go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Now there's a lot we could talk about with that passage, but I just want to point out that Jesus is using the same imagery. Some people are going to look with their eyes, but they aren't really going to see. Some people are going to hear with their ears, but they won't understand what they're hearing. Why do they see and hear without understanding? Because their metaphorical eye and their metaphorical ear are not healthy. They're not clear. They don't see and understand because of the kinds of people they are, because of what they want to believe is true, they will not see what is right in front of them. And I suspect Jesus' language in Matthew is echoing this metaphor that we see in Isaiah. We also see this metaphor in other places, for instance, Proverbs 28-22. I'm going to read the New American Standard Version because I think it's a little more clear. A man with an evil eye hastens after wealth and does not know that want will come upon him. Now that's very similar to our section in Matthew. This man is chasing after wealth, but he's going to lose it and fall into great need. His eye is bad, it's evil. His vision has been distorted because he doesn't recognize that wealth is fleeting, it's temporary. He doesn't see wealth for what it is and realize that ultimately he's going to lose it and then need will come upon him. Well, that's the same kind of point Jesus is making in Matthew 6. Now, he uses this image in a number of places. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man who then gets grief from the leaders of the synagogue because they don't want this blind man telling people that Jesus healed him. Ultimately, the leaders cast the formerly blind man out of the synagogue. And after hearing this turn of events, Jesus comes to him and says, Says this, this is in nine thirty-nine through forty-one. And Jesus said, For judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind. Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things and said to him, Are we also blind? Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would have no guilt, but now that you say we see, your guilt remains. Now that's a very interesting little discussion. Here again, seeing is understanding. Jesus starts with one of his classic inversion statements, for judgment, I came into the world that those who are blind may see, and those who see may become blind. And then he tells the Pharisees, if you were blind, you would have no sin, but you claim to see, so your sin remains. What he's saying there is, if you Pharisees had admitted that you don't understand, that you don't see properly, and asked me, Jesus, to teach you, then you would be forgiven and you would have no guilt. But instead, the Pharisees claim to see, they claim to know and understand everything, they claim to understand perfectly what's going on, and that's why they kicked this guy out of the synagogue, because he's associated with Jesus, and they have already concluded that Jesus is a heretic, and that is their perfect understanding. So they have looked and think they have understood what they're looking at, but Jesus says you're blind, you don't see at all. Your sin remains because you are stubbornly holding on to your ignorance. You see, and yet you do not see. You think you see, but you're blind. And of course, there's the phrase Jesus often uses, he who has ears to hear, let him hear, he who has eyes to see, let him see. Jesus describes the people of God as those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. The people of God have metaphorically clean and healthy eyes, such that when they look, they see and understand, and when they hear the truth, they recognize it as truth. They look at Jesus, they look at what is teaching, and they say, He speaks truth, I need him. They look at the promises of God and say, That is what I most truly need. And they look at the riches of the world around them and say, that is shifting sand and it's not going to last. Well, that brings us to our third metaphor in this passage, 624. 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 money. Your translation may have you cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon is just the Aramaic word for wealth. Let's start by asking in what sense can wealth be our master and we be its servants? This is a metaphor. God is a person, he can command us, and we would do well to follow what he says. That makes sense. But in what sense is wealth our master? Wealth is not a person. Wealth can't give commands or instructions. So, in what sense is wealth our master? Well, think about the lives of servants at the time of Jesus. Things go well for servants who do what their master wants. Servants who thwart the will of their masters receive punishment. Servants who do the will of their masters receive good treatment. And in this world, wealth can behave like a master in that way. Wealth has its rewards and wealth has its punishments. In this world, if you want to be blessed by wealth, if you want wealth to metaphorically treat you well, then you have to play by the rules. Now, I probably don't need to spell those rules out for you. They run the gamut. Wealth requires your time. It requires sacrifices to climb the corporate ladder. It requires kissing up to the right bosses and backstabbing the other bosses. It requires working long hours and so forth. Well, God also has his quote-unquote rules, so to speak. And we must trust him to keep his promises and we conduct our lives in ways that he has said is right, such as acting with generosity, kindness, mercy, and compassion. To be blessed by our master, then we have to serve him well. We have to do what he requires of us. The pursuit of wealth will require a certain list of things, and the pursuit of God requires other things. So that brings us to the second question. Well, why can't we serve two masters? Why can't we serve both God and wealth? As is often pointed out, many people have two part-time jobs. That's not a problem. There are many ways and circumstances where you can hold down two jobs and thus have two masters. For example, many people work part-time in the government and part-time in the private sector. And in that situation, it may not be a problem. You can serve two masters. One employer wants one thing over here, and the other employer wants something different over there. But there will come a conflict of interest. What if in your government job you set the regulations and requirements for operating wineries? And in your other job, you run a winery. Well, now you have a conflict of interest. You can't serve both of those masters. Eventually you're going to have to make a decision that will either harm your business and help the government, or help your business and harm the government. You'll have to make a choice. That's the concept behind hating one master and loving the other. Jesus is not concerned with how you feel about your masters, he's concerned with how you treat them. Eventually, you will have to act, and your actions will harm one and help the other, or vice versa. So the one you harm is the one you hate, and the one you help is the one you love. The image of hate and love is whether you are working for or against them. As we've seen, loving your neighbor is working for their good. It has nothing to do with how you feel about them, but it has everything to do with how you treat them. It's the same idea here. Hating the one and loving the other is how you act, how you treat them. It's just a way of saying you can't keep both of them happy. You can't do what both of them require. You're going to end up thwarting one to help the other. Inevitably, sooner or later, there will be a conflict of interest between seeking wealth and serving God. Now, just as an aside, there's nothing wrong with working for a living. And Thessalonians, Paul insists that people work for a living. Working and being self-reliant is a good thing, and it's a valid way we can love our neighbors. But true believers are learning to value the will of God and the promises of God more than they value the treasures of this world. Sooner or later we'll face a situation where we must choose. Are we going to hold on to the promises of God and let go of the things of the world or vice versa? That's the problem with the Pharisees. They talk about the will of God, they talk about serving God, but they had their hearts set on the riches of this world, not just money, but all the things the world could give them, like fame and fortune. They talk about the importance of obeying God's law, but if you look at how they live their lives, they seem more intent on bending that law to help themselves prosper. So given a choice between serving God and prospering in this world, they chose what the world offered every time. All right, so let's put all this together. Jesus gives us these three metaphors: treasures of earth versus treasures in heaven. The eye is the lamp of the body and not serving two masters. And remember, this section comes in the context of Jesus' warning about the teaching and example of the Pharisees and stating that you have to seek God differently than they do, that your righteousness must exceed theirs to enter the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees were very religious people. They talked about doing the will of God a lot. They studied the scriptures, they read the Bible, but they didn't have the eyes to see. They were blinded by the riches of the world, and they set their hearts on this world. So they had lost sight of the fact that the riches of this world are going to fail them. And they ignore the conflict of interest between seeking God and seeking the world because they think they can have it all. They think they can have everything good in this world and still be acceptable to God. And they created a way of reading and understanding the Old Testament law such that they could make a show of obeying it while dodging its true requirements. And Jesus warns his listeners, don't follow their example. If you want true blessing, you have to have healthy eyes that see clearly. You have to see and understand what is truly valuable. The true blessing is to remember and act on the fact that worldly riches are going to fail in the end, and that true blessing is to follow God even when that conflicts with the promises of this world. We are fundamentally designed to worship someone or something, or to use Jesus' metaphor here, to serve a master. We will serve something or someone. It might be fame, fortune, it might be our spouse, it might be beauty or political cause or success, but we all worship something. We all serve something. The God who created you wants you to worship Him and to love Him, and He wants to love you back. You see, Jesus is all about redeeming the lost. The Bible tells us our sins are worse than we think, but we are loved by God more than we can imagine. Every one of us has secretly thought, I wish someone would love me for me. Every one of us envies what someone else has or covets someone else's seemingly perfect spouse or beautiful body or above every children or success of some kind. Everyone fears they don't measure up to their neighbors. And we should expect this because the treasures of this life are never completely fulfilling. The good news of the gospel is that God loves you, not because you have it all together, not because you have it made, but because you were made for a relationship with Him. You can't keep the treasures of this world and they won't solve your biggest problems. But you can keep the treasures of heaven and they will solve your biggest problem. And when you have the eyes to see that, that's an easy choice to make.com slash Start Strong Podcast 12. You can listen to all the episodes in this series at wednesdayintheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads. Just free, trustworthy resources to help you grow in your understanding of scripture. If this podcast has blessed you, please consider following it on your favorite podcast platform. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. If you're reading along in the Start Strong Book, please read chapter 15 before the next episode. And I would be most grateful if you would leave me a positive review on Amazon or Goodreads. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coast. You can hear more of Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you so much for listening today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.