Gospel of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 6, beginning in verse 19. This is Jesus talking in every word of this. 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. 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 that darkness? No one can serve two masters, or either he will hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money, the Word of the Lord. From time to time you'll read interpreters that say, this is not about money, it's about money. I'm afraid it's about money. I'm afraid that what we have here is the Lord talking really, clearly about some things that are really, really basic. Now in context, we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount since back in the Fall, and what we have here are a series of do not sayings. In fact, we've seen a few of them already, let me look back in the text, it says, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. I do not heap up empty words, I do not pray like the Gentiles, I do not look gloomy when you're fasting, and then he says, do not lay up for yourselves, treasures on earth, and it gives a reason for it, because moth and rust corrupts and destroys. Actually, the word therefor destroy is it, it completely eliminates it, evaporates it, it pulverizes it, in fact, it ends up just disappearing on you, but rather, and then he gives the positive, using the exact same words, in parallelism, lay up for yourselves, treasures in heaven, where the moth and the rust do not destroy, and thieves do not break through and steal. And then he talks at the very end about telling us, you cannot, he didn't say do not, he just said, you cannot serve two masters, either you will be devoted to the one, and you will ignore the other, or you will love the one and despise the other. No one can serve two masters, but in the middle of that particular injunction the Lord's giving us about treasure, he says, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So once again, our Lord is talking about our heart. He doesn't seem to ever get away from that. I don't think there's anything more important to us in life than the guarding, the reading, the care and the protection of our heart, the heart in scripture, even in both testaments are not just the organ within the body that pumps the blood, but the heart in the Old Testament and in the New is that term that talks about the genuine real true self. It is the real you, it's that part of you that thinks, that is aware, it's that part of you that feels and has affections and is sensitive and sensible, and it's that part of you that is volitional, that chooses, that decides, and that moves into action. So once again, the Lord is talking about our heart, there's no doubt about that. In fact, he even expands on a little bit using some kind of some proverbial and metaphorical language that's not easy to catch right away, and I had to do a little extra study on this particular one, verse 22, the eye is the lamp of the body, for if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. 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? What does that mean? I wasn't really sure or wrestled with it a little bit, had to look up a few things. And essentially Jesus is using language that is a little bit kin to the philosophical language of his day. There's similar passage to this in Plato and some other places, but what Jesus is saying is that this is the seat of your understanding. The eye is that which gives you your view, your viewpoint. The contrast between darkness and light is a common contrast in Greek thought, and even in biblical thought as well, and as it's brought into the especially John in his gospel, contrast the light, the force with the darkness or with the abyss and with the murky. And it's the capacity to see, the capacity to understand. You see what the Lord is saying that it is our mind, it's our heart, it's our essential self that has to be worked on, that has to be adjusted, that has to be right. And it is our view of things, this theme has shown up several times in the sermon. And Jesus gets right down to it, has a man or as a person thinks in his heart, so is he. And that condition of the heart, working itself out in behavior, that belief, behavior, access is where the Lord works on us, and tries to get us to enlighten, brighten, inform our understanding so that it might influence, affect our behavior, and he's on it. He's right on that theme at this point, he's not moving away from it at all. This is just a little different language than we've seen in other places, but Jesus is tell us when you get your heart right, then behave your follows, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. So he uses terms of affection like hate and love with respect to the two masters, God and money. Oh yeah, this is about money. It's about money. Our heart has to be right toward money. We have to understand our treasure. And something helps a lot, I think, in understanding this, and I'm not one to critique translations very often, but I don't know how they could have really translated any better, given the flow of the English language. A literal, more literal rendering of verse 19, it's helpful to know that the same word is used for the verb as is the noun. It's the same word that you use, the same basic root word. And I guess if we would be literally, what Jesus would be saying to us, do not treasure to yourselves, treasures, do you hear that? Do not treasure. And then that is the heart, it's the affections, it's the love, it's that which we're devoted to, it's that which we value, it's that which we strive for, it's our highest goal and good. Jesus said, do not treasure to yourself, treasures on earth, could be in clearer. He's going to tell us, you can't serve God in money, and he says, do not treasure to yourself, treasures on earth. I think the toughest thing we have to do as Christians is to deal with the lofty, the heavenly, and sometimes ethereal and esoteric things of the spirit, and see how that works its way down into our flesh and into our hands and into our feet and into our mouths and into the things that we speak and do in daily living. That's your struggle. Each one of you has to do that for yourself. Each one of us has to hear the Word of the Lord seeking humbly to be obedient to it. But then we've got to work it out with fear and trembling. We have to work it out in what that means in our lives. Now we may look to help, to mentors. We may look for help with people who are willing to give us lists of do's and don'ts. There are plenty of people, and I've been plenty of people in the Christian faith that's willing to give us a commandment structure that are giving us taboos, do's and don'ts. I grew up in a strict fundamentalist family, and by the way, I wouldn't take anything for that. I think it was helpful to me when I was a teenager to have the law hammered into me, don't smoke, don't drink, don't cuss, don't chew, and don't go with girls that do. That helped me because I, for all practical purposes, didn't do any of that, and it worked out well for me. But that's not the essence of the Christian faith. The Christian faith is having a master, a Lord. Someone who has loved you and does love you and has given himself for you and who daily, daily, indwells you by his spirit and calls upon you to walk in step with that spirit and his leading and his guiding, a master, a Lord, that you can love and be devoted to. And so you have to decide whether you're going to be devoted and you're going to have that love and that mastery over you, which is material, money, man, it's called in the old text. Because that material, money and all that it buys, money as a construct and money as an ideal, as well as money as an immediate expendable item, because most of us, money is not that big a deal. You take those little lousy dollar bills that are in your wallet right now, which you're losing value every day. It's not that piece of paper. It's what it'll buy for you. It's what it'll acquire for you. It's what it'll get for you. That's what you're looking for, isn't it? You're looking for the relief. You're looking for the pleasure. You're looking for the peace of mind. You're looking for the security. And so if you're fixed on that, if that's your mind, if that's where your eye of your soul, your mind's eye and your soul and your viewpoint is fixated, then it orders your life. It orders your life. It structures your life. It builds your value system. So the key thing we've got to get due is we've got to find out who is our master. Is it the one who loved us and gave himself for us or is it material things? Is it this world? One of the interesting little glimpses into the life of the patriarchs is talks about how they looked for something that's heavenly, something that was beyond this plane, this sphere. Said Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. God told Abraham about the seed. The seed is Christ, therefore God told Abraham about Christ. Abraham believed in Christ and it was counted to him for righteousness. But then it talks about Abraham's sojourn, Abraham's sojourned about 100 years following the fertile crescent from the earth of the Caldys, all the way up to the Freites Valley down through Canaan, in Egypt back again, about 100 years he followed the Lord sojourning and he had great wealth. He had immense wealth. In fact, he had the kind of wealth where he had to actually have what fastful lords and underlings to tend to it. He had the kind of wealth that influenced him to be the leader, basically the suzerain, the great sovereign over 10 kings. We're talking about a wealthy, wealthy man, we're talking about money, we're talking about money this morning. He had a wealthy, wealthy estate and yet the Bible says he sought a city to come. Remember that? In the book of Hebrews? He sought a city to come whose builder and maker was even Abraham with all of his wealth, immense wealth and the father of many nations and the friend of God and the example of our faith had a perspective beyond his camels and his donkeys and his possessions. He was his eye, the eye of his soul, shown brightly with celestial light. He saw a beacon, he saw a light, he saw something that was otherworldly, that was beyond it. He saw heaven, he sought a city to come. That's what his eye of his soul was tuned to was that city to come, which is to say he was concerned with heavenly matters, spiritual matters. He was concerned with that which God was concerned. Now that takes some wisdom, doesn't it, takes some maturity. We can't lay that out so easily in black and white. Each one of us is born into a circumstances of life. We're sovereignly given our estate in life. Some of us were born to wealth, some of us weren't, some of us were born to great talent and opportunity, some weren't. In this particular culture, we're starting to really make a very big deal out of people's station in life. We're becoming much more class conscious now than American culture than we've ever done before, I think. And we're thinking in terms of the government and the tax structure and all of these sorts of things in terms of class and wealth and station in life. But the Lord is urging us to do, calling upon us to do as His disciples, as His people, is to get our eyes up off that, get that perspective toward the heavenly. Rather not to yourselves, treasures on earth, but treasure, value, love, devote yourself to spiritual things that which is heavenly, treasures in heaven. I think I'm done preaching and I really probably ought to be done talking to Him. That's one of the rules of preaching that I try to hold to when you're through preaching quick talking. But I read something this morning that I just have to share with you. I think it's very helpful, it's so basic, it's so basic. But right, Dr. DeMartin Lloyd-Jones and his commentary and his series of sermons actually and lectures on the sermon on the Mount, right here in this passage on God in Maman, inserted a chapter or a lecture about sin. And I wondered why in the world it was in there to start with, but why in the world he put it in that spot? It wasn't in the text particularly, but he kind of picked up on that word darkness that was found here in this text and he talked about sin. And it hit me right in the heart and it's very simple, it's true, we all know, but let's be reminded this morning, sin blinds us. It blinds us. It has a glimmer and it has a sheen and it has a sparkle to it that makes us think it's important. It's worthy, we need to pursue it. The Bible speaks about the pleasures of sin and it would be absolutely unrealistic to deny that sin has its pleasures, but it says the pleasures of sin for a season. Just for a while, sin blinds us. It makes it where we lose our perspective instead of seeing that which is eternal and that which is real and that which is heavenly. And having our eyes on treasures in heaven, something sparkles around us and something gets our attention and distracts us and we never get back to sin blinds us, but then sin enslaves us. There's a throldum that goes right for our throats and grips us and holds us and keeps us away from God and keeps us away from the things of God and keeps us from a life of devotion and pulls us into a way of thinking and a style of life that then thirdly ruins us. Sin will ruin us. It does. The ruin of sin is seen in each of our lives, but it's seen in the society and the culture at large, the corruption, the violence, the anger, the bitterness, hostilities between people, in families, in societal structures and internationally, sin has ruined God's good creation. And that's why when we get right down to it, there's nothing more important for us this morning than the gospel, which deals directly with sin. Sin has separated between you and your God and has hid his face from you and he will not hear you. Sin just takes us further that we really want to go and it leaves us longer than we want to stay there and cost us more than we want to pay. Start with the deepest part of your heart this morning and ask God to shine the purifying light of the gospel into your heart. Pray for repentance, pray for forgiveness, pray for restoration, pray for change, transformation, and then look beyond yourself. Don't spend your whole spiritual life staring at your theological navel. Get up, move out, and do the works of heaven. Do the works that the Lord has called us to do. May God have mercy upon us, may God bless us. You can't serve two masters. You'll love one and you'll despise the other. Let me recommend you love the Lord. You'll hate the one. You'll ignore that the other. Come rally, revive to your love and devotion to Jesus Christ and thus lay up treasures and treasure to yourself those treasures in heaven. Father we ask this morning that you would come to us a little gathered flock here this morning hungry to hear your word and to feel and to know that you are at work within us and that you are at work among us. Send us forth, Lord, beyond ourselves to the ministry and the work that you have for us. In Christ's name we pray, amen.