What Would Jesus Say About Treasures?

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

There was this fellow raised in the back hills of Appalacha, so far into the sticks that he never in his life had seen a big city, to say nothing of some of the modern inventions, and neon lights.  He married a gal like himself and they spent all of their married years in the back woods.  They had one son, of course, named Junior.  Now this fellow was relatively happy with this life but as the years went by he began to get a little restless.  He began to think that something was missing here but he didn’t know what it was.  By the time that Junior reached his sixteenth year, this fellow decided he was going to have a look at the outside world.  All his life he had heard about the big city.  So he planned that he would go and would have some fun there; and he and his family would go to the city and stay in one of those big hotels he’d heard about.  Well after a couple years of saving up, they set off for the big city.  As they approached the outskirts of the city, papa began to get a little nervous.  He said “Mama, when we pull up to the hotel, you stay in the truck while Junior and I go look around.  We’ll come back and get you, O.K.?”  She readily agreed.  Flashing neon lights and uniformed doormen greeted them as they pulled up.  Mama stayed in the truck as papa and Junior walked wide-eyed toward the lobby.  Neither could believe their eyes.  When they stepped on the mat the doors opened all by themselves.  Inside they stood like statues staring at their first chandelier either one of they had ever seen, three stories high.  While they both stood silent watching one breath-taking scene after another, one thing caught their attention.  It was a little room with doors that slide opened and shut from the center.  People would walk up, push a button and then lights would flicker over the top of the doors.  Then the doors would suddenly open and people would walk out of this little room.  By now papa and Junior were totally transfixed.  Just then a little wrinkled old lady with a cane shuffled up to the door all by herself.  She pushed the button and waited and soon the doors opened and she hobbled into the little room.  No one else stepped in with her, so the doors shut.  No more than thirty seconds past when the doors opened again and out stepped a fabulously attractive young woman in her twenties, a real knockout.  As she stepped out, papa nudged his boy and said, “Junior, I think I found out what I’d been-a-wantin’.  Go get mama.”  (Laughter)  That’s one of my favorite stories.  All of which is to say that all of us have desires, God-given desires.  But many times our desires go astray.  That’s kind of the subject of today’s lesson.  I’ve been preaching through a series of sermons called What Would Jesus Say About…..  and today it is about Treasures.  Next week will be about Worry.  The idea of treasures gets at this idea of desire in what we want most out of life.  Listen to the word of God as it comes to us from Matthew 6:19-24.  Jesus says,

“Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, 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.  If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.  But 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!

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.”

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Would you pray with me?

As always Lord, we come and just ask that you be with us, and that your Spirit would be moving in our hearts and minds as we hear your word preached.  Say what it says to us; reach deeply down into what we believe and who we are.  We pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

If there were a real live genie and this genie gave you three wishes, for what would you wish?  There are all kinds of possibilities.  If you’re like me you might wish that you could eat all of the Peach Breyer’s Ice Cream you could stand without getting sick, forever, without getting fat.  For some of us it would be for health and happiness of ourselves, our friends and our family.  For others it might be the winning number of Lotto, especially when it got up to two-hundred million.  For others it would be success in everything that you do; all kinds of things.  And asking the question this way, I think, gets at what Jesus is talking about.  What are your treasures?  What do you want most in life?  I suspect if we were to ask these questions and wishes that, I really doubt, actually, that many of us would wish something having to do with God and our relationship with Him; and that’s sad, because what Jesus is trying to say to us as His people, that our desires, our greatest desire, our greatest one, ought to be God.  It begins in the bible very early on when God talks to Abraham and says “I am your shield and your very great reward.”  No one at that time thought about God being a reward; they were all afraid of Him.  But God says to Abraham, “I am your reward.”  Nothing else; everything else is peripheral.  Jesus tells a couple of parables that talk about the same thing.  He says “The kingdom of God is like a woman who loses a coin in her house and she spends all day looking for it.  She tears apart the house to find that coin, that most valuable thing.  That’s what God’s kingdom is like.”  “Or like a man who knows there is a treasure in a field so he sells everything he has and he buys that field so that he can have that treasure.  That’s what the kingdom of God is like,” He says.  Of course, Jesus really does make it easy, he says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul.”  Truthfully if we were to examine ourselves, we would have to say which of us really loves God even for a couple minutes, much less with all our heart. 

What Jesus is saying is desire is good; but there are ways that our desires get poisoned.  It has to do first with treasures.  He says “The way you follow me, the way that you please me is to do some thinking; and the first kind of thinking we need to do is to ask ourselves that question “What are our treasures?”  What do we want the most?  I want to help you get your arms around this just for a minute.  If we were to look at our lives, particularly how we spend our time and how we write our checks, we would discover, maybe, what our desires really are.  I mean, think of your life.  Think of what you do in your early married life.  What do you do?  Well you spend thousand of hours and thousands of dollars trying to help our children be successful.  You want your child to be successful.  So you send them to school for hundreds of hours a year; or in the afternoon you take them to whatever sport you can, whether it’s soccer, or hockey, or football; or whatever lessons you can.  Now I’m not saying that any of that is wrong, I’m not.  But we spend hours upon hours upon hours helping our kids be successful in this world and how many hours do we spend helping them be spiritually successful?  Where are our treasures?  Even in our own lives, how many hours do we spend working, or preparing to work, or what kind of money we spend?  What kind of money do we spend on our fun, or all our stuff, our extra houses?  You know I’ve discovered something about stuff.  The more I have the more work I have to do.  Last summer I spent ten full days, ten hour days, just painting the outside of my house.  You have to do it.  It’s O.K.  Nothing wrong with that, just time, stuff.  The more stuff I’ve got, the more I’ve got to work on it.  Where’s my heart? Even when we get older, we spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars on medical bills, maybe just for a few minutes, or a few hours, or a few days, or maybe a couple of extra years to live here.  I’m not saying it’s wrong; but it’s a way to think.  Jesus asked “Where’s your treasure? For where your treasure is, there your heart is.”  How are we to understand how to make choices?

Jesus gives us at least one hint.  He says “Store up for yourselves, treasure in heaven, rather than on earth where moth and rust destroy.”  Have an eternal perspective.  Now most people I find are just struggling to get through the week, much less think about eternity.  But we need to think in broader terms.  You know we must not be like the story of the man who got a prognosis that he only had a year to live so he sold everything he had and lived it up for a year; and then come to find out that the doctor was wrong.  “You’re going to live a long time.” He had nothing left to give.  Or the old story about the rich guy who went to heaven with a group of people.  They were running around looking at the mansions that people were going to live in.  When they got to his house, it was a little shack.  He said, “Where’s my mansion?”  And the angel said “We did the best we could with the stuff you sent up.”  We live like that.  We’re that guy.  We are.  And Jesus is encouraging us, saying “Examine yourself.”  Not to beat yourself up, but just say, “Where are your priorities?  Where is your treasure?”

He also asks us, very pointedly, to watch out what we look at.  That’s what He means by this little curious statement.  He says, “The eyes are the lamp of the body.”  Well it really is true.  The eyes are the conduit into our soul.  What we see winds up in here and that’s what we think about.  You know, I think our generation, more than any, and sometime we say that kind of blasé, in a blasé way, our generation sees more images, has more temptation than anyone before.  All we have to do is turn on the T.V. and just the first hour we see all kinds of temptations for wealth and sex and this and that and the other.  You name it, it’s there on T.V.  If it’s not explicit, it’s implicit.  All kinds of things to distract us from what we should be thinking about.  I’m not saying we need to be prudish, but we need to be prudent about what we look at.  For some folks it is a different temptation.   Some folks are tempted by this and others are tempted by that.  We have to know ourselves.  We have to be careful for “the eyes are the lamp of the body.” Jesus is really talking about the tenth commandment, covetousness.  Covetousness is so easy to do and it’s not just about wanting the other person’s spouse, or his things.  We could covet after that car or that boat or that thing or that person, all kinds of distractions.  Jesus is simply saying “Be careful.”  Careful.

The third thing he asks is probably the most pointed of all and that is “Who is your master?”  Who’s the boss?  Now for Americans, those are sometimes fighting words.  We pride ourselves on being free people, and we are.  The greatest nation on earth, I believe; because of the philosophy it has been founded on.  However, from biblical perspective, you and I have been made to serve.  We are creatures and not creators.  We will always serve something or some thing.  I think all we have to do is look at human history and see that.  Look at our own lives.  And Jesus says. “Don’t serve other things.  Don’t let anything else be your master, particularly, money.”   You see money is one of the most god-like things.  It can give the illusion that it can actually take care of you; the illusion of filling your belly; the illusion of putting clothes on your back.  Certainly it does that, but to some degree, it’s an illusion; or security, “If I had enough money in the bank.”  You know the funny thing I’ve heard about having a lot of money, especially people who do win the lottery or have a whole bunch of money, you know, they say they’re never satisfied.  I had a friend who was kind of a playboy type.  He used to run around with all kinds of people and he said, “You know the weird thing about it is the more I get the more I want”; because we’re insatiable.  The human nature is insatiable and nothing ever satisfies, except God Himself.  God has rigged it for that.  So we have to be careful.  To get our arms around this, we just simply have to ask ourselves a few questions.  We say, “Well, just how long could I do without food anyway?”  How many of you could do without food for three days?  You know I find myself, I say “I’m not going to eat”, and before I know it I’m opening the refrigerator and I’m going “Oh! Oh!  O.K.”  Have you ever done that?  I’ve done it.  I do it all the time.  Or turning on the T.V., some of us are addicted.  I know I walk by it and go “Here’s the clicker.  O.K.”, even if I don’t need to watch anything.  Those are just small things but there are other things which grab at our soul, in particularly money.  I have found over the years that with myself, and others, that money is the most touchy of subjects.  You can talk to the most mild-mannered person but if the subject of money comes up, there’s a certain emotion that comes out.  “How dare you ask me about that?”  “How dare you ask me to give?”  “What do you mean?” and on and on it goes.  It’s a touchy subject.  Our heart is often right here, in the wallet or in the purse.

Jesus says “You can’t serve two masters,” whatever it is.  You know when I was a kid, we used to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag every day; and I look at what we need to do, similarly.  To some degree being a Christian means pledging allegiance to the Lord every day, saying, “You’re the God and I’m not.”  Every day, because the temptations are myriad to have something else be our god and it’s easy to fall into.  Jesus is simply encouraging us, again.  Watch out!  Ask yourself again where your treasure is, because there’s your heart.  What do you wish for?  What do you want most in life?  Ask yourself what you’re looking at.  Be careful.  Be prudent.  And in the end, who are you really serving?  Be honest about it.  God knows.  You may think you’re hiding it, but you’re not.  Ask yourself very carefully who you’re serving.  “Choose… this day whom you will serve” says Joshua.  Choose every day.  That includes all of us because again the temptations, Jesus says, are just myriad to do something else. 

In the end, God is our reward.  The relationship we have with Jesus Christ is the greatest reward.  Nothing else will matter.  A good way to live is just to know that life is temporary and one day we will be with Him.  I’ll close with this story, one told by Chuck Swindoll who told of a preacher friend of his who was doing some messages across the country.  He went to this place but his luggage didn’t show up. So he needed a couple of suits.  He went to a thrift shop and found a couple of really nice looking suits and the guy said, “They’re great suits but I have to let you know they were used in the funeral home.  Couple of stiffs wore them but they’re O.K.”  The guy said, “That’s fine.”  Well he put the suit on and he went to the service; and, you know, he had a habit of putting his hands in the pockets; and lo and behold, the suit didn’t have pockets.  He had to clip his keys to his belt.  He says, “You know, it dawned on me why that would be true, because dead people don’t need pockets.  And I preached and lived all the better for it.”

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Let us pray.

Father, Give us an eternal perspective.  Thank you that you love us so much and you know all about us and our temptations and how we fail to have our hearts in the right place; how we fail to keep you as master.  We thank you that we live by grace Lord; and just help us to know that you are our reward, that you are our Lord, and that you are our all in all. We do pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.