May I simply explain to visiting friends that
we are currently meditating during morning worship in
the Sermon on the Mount.
And we are going to pursue the theme
this morning, looking at the passage that begins
with verse 19 in chapter 6.
I don't think there is need to read
the passage again, it has been read for
us, but we shall be referring to it
in detail as we continue.
One of the main thrusts of these great
chapters in the New Testament was put by
our Lord in terms of His demand for
a quality of righteousness in His servants, in
His followers, a quality of righteousness that exceeds
that of the scribes and Pharisees of His
day.
In other words, He was seeking then and
is seeking today for a righteousness that excels.
One of the predominating principles in our Lord's
teaching concerning this righteousness is this, it can
only be discovered, it can only be produced,
insofar as God personally, directly influences our lives.
There is a danger of our producing something
which is but a sham, but a shadow
of the truth.
And we have been looking at three of
them recently, the reference to almsgiving, to prayer,
and though we didn't say very much about
the third, about fasting, we have been looking
at these three.
And our Lord's warning is this, He told
His disciples there before Him, and He tells
us through the word recorded, these aspects of
the righteousness that He seeks in His followers,
these aspects are not to be produced by
trying to please men, by giving of our
alms in order to bring the adulation of
our fellow creatures, by praying to please the
tingling ears of men, or by fasting in
order to show men that we are really
a very good godly lot of people.
The quality of righteousness that our Lord is
seeking is rather that righteousness that is wrought
largely in private with God.
It is God Himself embossing upon His people
the mark of His image, the evidence of
His own likeness, imparting His spirit with its
fruit, and its gifts, and its accompaniments, and
doing both in us and for us what
is necessary, that we should be changed from
one degree of glory to another, to quote
a Pauline reference.
But the overriding principle is this, in order
to produce this righteousness, you and I must
be in direct contact with and communion with
God, so that we can afford to go
away to our closet, to our private rooms,
close the door, and where nobody sees, there,
God and ourselves, we have dealings with Him,
He has dealings with us.
And it is out of that, says Jesus,
that this quality of righteousness is really produced.
Now, a very important question emerges soon as
you continue to consider this theme.
How does this happen?
How can it happen?
Our Lord warns us in the lesson we
were looking at last week against hypocrisy, against
pretending to be or to do what we
are not, what we are not doing.
How can we avoid that?
How can we produce this genuine quality of
righteousness?
Now, in the second half of chapter six,
we have two keys, and I propose looking
at them, the first this morning, and the
second two weeks hence in the will of
God.
In the first place, verses 19 to 24,
the verses before us today, the honest pursuit
of righteousness demands an unqualified acceptance of kingdom
demands.
If you and I are to produce this
kind of righteousness, then we must, without any
equivocation, be prepared to provide what God the
King requires of us, what His Son came
to declare and to demand of us.
Without that, we are in danger of being
hypocrites at best, or of doing nothing that
is pleasing to God.
And then in the second half, the second
part of the second half of chapter six,
verses 25 to 35, there follows on something
which is very important.
Following the acceptance of the kingdom demands, we
should reflect an unruffled confidence in God as
we seek first of all His kingdom and
His righteousness, believing that all things necessary will
be provided for us.
Now we're looking at the first of these
today.
We begin by considering the prohibition and the
command that we have in verse 19.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on
earth.
Then instead of that, says Jesus, but lay
up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
There's a prohibition and a command.
There are two sides of the one and
the same coin in our Lord's teaching.
We may change our metaphors or use them
in that way.
A prohibition and a command.
Don't do this, but rather do that.
Now our Lord Jesus Christ of course, being
the incarnate Son of God, was altogether set
against that narrow view of life which thinks
of it only in terms of the here
and now and of the present time.
If you think of life only in terms
of the present time and of the present
age, you're out of focus, says Jesus, all
the while.
Man was not made for 60, 70 years
on earth, then period.
Any more than birds were made to be
in cages.
Man was not made to be encased within
a couple of years and to perish.
Man was made for eternity.
God set eternity in our hearts.
And those who try to talk of life
as if it were all contained within the
few brief years of our human span, they
do us a great disservice.
That is hardly the narthex, the entrance, the
vestibule to life as biblically envisaged.
When Jesus speaks of life, he speaks of
it against the back cloth, against the canvas
of eternity.
Men and women, whether you and I realize
it as we ought to, you and I
are going to live beyond death.
You and I are going to live beyond
our funeral day.
And we have to prepare accordingly.
And our Lord Jesus Christ everywhere calls men
and women to come to terms with this.
It's a disastrous philosophy on many counts.
I can't pursue that thought this morning, but
it is a disastrous philosophy.
And especially when people try to bolster it
with scripture, they certainly move away from the
Christian tenet, properly so called.
This present life is important.
It has a very particular importance.
But it is not all.
Eternity needs to be considered.
Now says Jesus, you and I are not
only living for the present, we are living
for eternity.
And what is more, we must make quite
sure that we do not lay up our
treasures in this scene of the present life.
There's a very real danger for us, says
our Lord Jesus Christ, if we go through
our present life laying up our treasures all
confined within the scene of the present.
Now the first question that comes to us
there is this, what did our Lord mean
by treasures?
And we need to be clear about this.
Well if you look at the passage, I
think you have the key.
The reference to moth, or moths and rust,
and to thieves, I think sells the past,
tells us immediately what it's all about.
I would suggest that Jesus had such things
in mind as clothes, which moths love to
destroy, utensils which easily rust, and particularly silver
and gold, they also of course, pardon me,
among others are what thieves are out for.
So our Lord Jesus is saying something here
which really has never been popular in any
age.
What he's saying is this, don't lay up
your treasures in wardrobes or in utensils of
silver or gold or copper or any other
kind.
It's really foolish.
I think of course that this is just
a synonym for material things in general, and
I'm sure you will agree with that.
But the question is this, assuming that that's
what is implied by treasure, I don't know
what else it could be, how can we
lay up treasures in heaven?
We are very material, we live in a
material universe.
We know what it is to lay up
our treasures here.
We can't often do it perhaps, and we
can't do it as much as some of
us would like to do it, maybe.
But how do we lay up treasures in
heaven?
You notice the background here is the kingdom
of heaven, the rule of heaven, the reign
of heaven, and ultimately the region of the
heavenly rule.
That's in the background here.
But how can anybody like you and me
so much in the flesh lay up treasures
in heaven that we don't see?
Well the answer of course is not as
difficult as might at first appear.
The point is we lay up treasures in
heaven when we use the treasures we have
in order to serve the purpose of the
heavenlies and of the kingdom of heaven.
When you employ your earthly treasures for heavenly
use, when you invest what you have in
material terms to spiritual and godly ends, then
this is exactly what you're doing.
You're laying up treasures in heaven.
An Italian was shipwrecked many years ago at
sea and picked up by a ship down
for Brazil.
A gospel tract written by a Baptist missionary
fell into his hands and it led him
to the first Baptist church in Rio de
Janeiro, where he was converted to Christ.
He became a missionary to Italians in the
United States of America.
During a deputation tour in Missouri, he spoke
of his conversion and a number of other
things, and everybody was listening intently, but one
farmer's wife, very especially, not commonly known to
intrude in a meeting, she put her hand
up halfway through and she says, please tell
me a few more facts about this tract
that you read.
And the gentleman explained a little more about
it, who had published it, about the Baptist
minister who was responsible for it.
Praise the Lord, she said, I gave of
my attempt to publish that tract and I
didn't know anything about it till now, about
its success until now.
See, that's what it is to lay up
treasure in heaven.
She'd never seen the man, she wasn't there,
she wasn't on high seas when he was
in danger, but the Word of God she
had provided in part, and so her treasures
had been used in the employ of the
sovereign King and Savior Jesus Christ.
Now, says Jesus, this is the only way
really to protect yourself against hypocrisy on the
one hand, that's a negative side, on the
positive side to produce the quality of righteousness
which is greater than the righteousness of the
Pharisees and the scribes.
What is it?
It is first of all not to lay
up yourselves treasures here upon earth, but rather
in heaven.
See my friends, this needs to be told
again this morning, because the current philosophy, the
current understanding is really this, that the whole
meaning of life is to get as rich
as you can in this present time and
hold it and keep it for yourself.
Jesus gives the lie to it, and he
says what God gives you, employ it for
the kingdom of God, invest it in the
kingdom of God, and you're laying up treasures
in heaven.
Now, that's the command, and there's the prohibition.
Let's come to the next thing, some reasons
for the prohibition and the command.
Why did Jesus say that?
Why not lay up treasures on earth?
Why lay up our treasures in heaven?
Oh, our blessed Savior has a way of
answering our questions if we are prepared for
them.
And if you really want to know this
morning why this should take place, Jesus has
the answer for you.
You can switch off.
I'm sure some of us will be tempted,
but the Lord has got the answer for
you and for me if we take it,
and if we don't take it, we shall
be eternally impoverished.
Eager to get this message across, Jesus enlarges
upon the subject, first arguing, now he argues
from two points here, first arguing from the
point of view of the safety of the
treasures themselves.
And what he says is, your treasures are
not safe upon earth anyway, they're only safe
in heaven.
And then the second way he argues is
from the safety and the well-being of
your own person.
If you hoard up treasures here upon earth,
those treasures that become to mean so much
to you will influence you as a person,
and they can so influence you as a
person that you become incapable of being the
man or the woman who knows righteousness greater
than the righteousness of the scribes and the
Pharisees.
You see, that's the background to such daring
utterances of Jesus as that when he said
that it is more difficult for a rich
man to enter the kingdom of heaven than
for a camel to squeeze through the eye
of a needle.
Now we don't say a lot about that
today.
It's as difficult as that, but with God
he says it is possible of course.
You can deflate the camel and you can
bring him down to size, but you see
it's very difficult to bring a rich man
or a rich woman down to size to
enter the straight gates and walk the narrow
way and the humble road of the cross.
So this message is not one which is
greatly loved, but it is absolutely vital to
our Christian faith.
Now let me try and represent our Lord's
teaching as best and as brief as I
can.
First of all, the argument based upon the
safety of our possessions.
I'm going to let you brood more on
these words than I'm going to say, because
certain things don't need to be said, they're
so evident.
The first thing to say, however, is this.
Your treasures and mine are not safe on
earth.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on
earth where moth and rust destroy and where
thieves break through and steal.
They're not safe here.
It's a fool's game really.
In biblical usage, the moth is described as
devouring houses and human lives even in the
book of Job.
But of course, as I've indicated earlier, the
speciality of the moth is to devour through
devour clothes.
Some of you ladies and gentlemen will know
that.
Something you've stored away for the winter and
you go to take it out in the
springtime or the summer or vice versa and
you find, oh my, moths have been using
our wardrobes as their dining room.
And there they are and they wreak havoc.
I don't think that those of us who
don't read the Old Testament, and there are
so many people who don't, who are not
familiar with the Old Testament, realize that many
of these pictures, as here in the Sermon
on the Mount, probably come from the Old
Testament.
You see the prophets said the same things,
almost identically the same things, not quite, but
they said something similar.
And in Isaiah chapter 3 verses 22 and
23, the prophet Isaiah is really trying to
persuade the women of Jerusalem to see that
you do not, you do not become important
because of the clothes you wear.
And he talks to them about their fine
robes and their capes and their cloaks and
their purses and their mirrors and their linen
garments and their tiaras and their shawls.
You know, that's way back in the book
of Isaiah.
Such clothing may well be symbolic of worldly
treasure.
Jesus says they are not safe here upon
earth.
They're too easily destroyed and you're wasting your
money and you're wasting your time and you're
living in a fool's paradise.
If you think that your importance in part
or in whole resides in a quality of
clothes you wear.
If we take a passage from James chapter
5 and verses 1 to 6, dealing with
this general subject as our key, then the
rust very particularly is said to devour both
gold and silver.
James says your garments are moth-eaten, your
gold and your silver is rusted, and their
rust will be evidence against you.
James is taking our Lord's argument a step
further.
Not only, not only is your gold rusted
and your silver rusted, but the very rusted
gold and rusted silver will be an argument
against you in the day of judgment that
you've not used what God gave you for
the purpose for which he gave them.
That's serious.
Earth is no safe place then for your
gold and silver any more than for your
wardrobe, extensive though it may be.
There's too much rust around, too many moths
around for these things.
Moreover, thieves covet and eventually steal anything that
has material value, whether it's a garment or
is maybe capable of being exchanged into money,
whatever it is, there are thieves around.
We have them.
We have to be careful, you know, that
those doors are watched when you are worshipping.
It's all right as someone on duty, that
we're not safe on the Lord's day here.
And whenever we open these doors, there are
thieves around.
I don't want to frighten anybody, but don't
leave valuables in your pockets.
Someone's on guard.
But wherever you are, your car's not safe.
On the street, your home is not safe.
I tell you a little secret.
We went for, I'm sure, the first six
years of our sojourn here in Canada.
I don't think we ever locked the back
door, but then we learned it was best
to do it.
And we've discovered since it's necessary to lock
the doors, haven't you?
But listen, even if the thieves don't catch
up with you, there is a thief that
will rob you of all your gold and
your silver and your garments.
That's death.
Death is the great disrober.
It takes the most magnificent garment of you.
Or if you take it with you to
the grave, it'll become but dust.
Like Tutankhamun of Egypt, you may take your
very desk or your very very throne with
you into your vaulted grave.
But my friend, it can do you no
good if you would have it serve the
purpose of God for you to produce the
kind of righteousness that Jesus is after and
God requires of us.
Then employ all those things in order to
lay up treasures in hell.
That's what he said.
The second thing to say is this.
Your treasures and mine are, however, safe in
heaven.
Whatever you invest in the kingdom of heaven,
you will never, never lose.
The capital will be safe.
I don't know much about money matters, but
I think I'm saying it the right way
now, aren't I, son?
Yeah, the capital will be safe and so
will the dividends be greater and whatnot.
You'll do better.
Lay up your treasures in heaven and God
will be no man's debtor.
Spiritually, you will grow.
Spiritually, you will know his peace and his
grace and fellowship with him that is not
possible otherwise.
The second thing, Jesus' second argument is based
upon the well-being of our persons, ourselves,
verses 21 to 24.
Now at this point, Jesus introduces three reasons
why we should not live for the present
life and lay up our treasures on earth.
That on the score of its adverse effects
upon our persons.
Let me briefly refer to them.
Treasures laid up on earth tend to distract
the heart's affection and this is fatal to
one's relationship with God.
The crucial word is verse 21.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also.
Now you and I know that, don't we?
What's precious to you?
A person?
A thing?
You're always thinking of that person.
You're always thinking of that thing.
Of course you are.
You're dreaming about them because what is precious
to you, what you think is really precious,
steals your heart and your heart follows your
treasure and where your treasure is, there will
your heart be.
There will your heart be.
Earthly treasures have an unusual capacity of stealing
our hearts away from God and his will
and his kingdom and his rule and his
purpose and his righteousness, of stealing our hearts
away from God to lesser things.
Haven't you found that out?
You see, when you're in process of getting
rich, you're never satisfied.
I have known people and they've said that
when they get their first quarter million, oh
my, that'll be marvelous.
But when they get their first quarter million,
they want a second.
And when they get a second, they want
a third.
Well, you know, it's like that.
You just get drunk on it and you
think more and more of it.
And you see, as you do that, it
diverts your soul from God, the only true
object of worship, the giver of life.
Scripture abounds in examples of this.
I can't go after them.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also.
So if your treasures are on earth, your
heart will be on earth.
They are treasures in heaven.
And your heart will be there.
And you'll become more and more heavenly minded
in the true sense of the term.
Treasures laid up on earth tend to distort
not only your affection, your heart's affection, but
treasures laid up on earth also tend to
distort your eye's vision.
Verses 22 and 23, the eye is the
lamp of the body.
Now, this is a difficult passage to translate.
And I cannot be dogmatic and I'm not
attempting to be.
But the picture would seem to be something
like this.
Light gets into the body via the eye
and possibly into the soul from what we
see, look at.
Maybe that thought is there too.
But the point is, anyway, the condition of
a window can either distort the incoming light
or, in extreme cases, stop it altogether.
Dirty windows keep out light.
Windows with shutters leave no light in.
And you know there is something about material
prosperity that all too easily makes us blind
to the world of the Spirit.
Now, this is awful and we don't realize
it, brothers and sisters.
Let me tell you a little illustration I
heard of a Christian friend who was visiting
in New York.
And he was a dear man of God
and very, very determined to speak of his
Lord wherever he went.
This part of the afternoon, he was visiting
a Jewish friend of his.
They were up on the seventh or seventeenth
floor, I don't quite remember, of this particular
block.
And they'd been talking about spiritual things and
they were looking out through the window.
And this good man turned to his Jewish
friend and he says, Samuel, he says, what
do you see down there?
What do you mean, he says, by asking
me what I see down there?
It's evident, isn't it?
Crowds of foolish people, he says, milling around
the street.
I don't know where they're all going to.
I don't know what they're all doing.
Ha ha, he said.
Now he says, will you do what I
ask you?
Don't ask any questions.
And he brought out a little mirror from
his pocket.
And he held a mirror in front of
him and he said, what do you see
now, Samuel?
Yes, stupid man, he says, it's a mirror.
I can only see myself.
Well, that's funny, he says.
A mirror is a glass and the window
is a glass.
What's the difference between the mirror and the
glass?
Shall I tell you, he says, behind the
glass in the mirror there is one little
coating of silver.
And that one coating of silver means you
don't see anybody else.
You only see yourself.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, there is something
insidious about material things.
Oh, they can be used.
And I salute men and women who master
all this area for the glory of God.
And we are privileged to know such people.
But it's a dangerous commodity to handle.
It can make you blind to men and
women in their lostness, in their need, utterly
blind so that you're careless and you do
nothing and you live as if all was
well.
You don't see only a reflection of yourself.
And lastly, treasures laid up on earth tend
to destroy a person's devotion to God as
God.
You know, there is a kind of devotion
to God which is no devotion to God
at all, but to the God of our
own imagination.
The God that we have made after our
own image and we serve him.
Sometimes we serve him very well.
I'm not talking about that God with a
small g.
Treasures laid up on earth tend to destroy
a person's devotion to God as God, the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Listen, 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 or
mammon.
Now literally, what our Lord said is this,
no one is able to give slave service
to two Lords.
You see, he is talking about a particular
kind of service that we owe to God.
What is the kind of service we owe
to God?
Well, occasionally to salute him on the Lord's
day morning and say, thank you Lord, you've
been with me another week.
I'll go to church this morning and I'll
sing with the people and I'll listen to
what the fellow in the pulpit's got to
say, and I may put something in the
collection.
Thank you Lord, I've done my bit for
a week, but now goodbye till we meet
again next Sunday, if it's convenient.
No, that's not the kind of mastery that
God requires of us.
He requires what the scriptures really mean to
be slave service.
He is total master, absolute master.
He's our creator, he's our sustainer, he's our
redeemer, he's the one to whom we are
answerable, he is the Lord in truth, and
he demands of us a service that corresponds
to that.
Now the point is this, you can't give
that kind of service to God and anybody
else, because God won't share it with anybody
else.
And the awful thing about material prosperity is
this, it wants me to serve it.
It devours my time, it devours my thinking,
it devours all of me, and I think
about it all the time, and I'm planning,
and I'm scheming, and you see it's challenging
the right of God to the kind and
quality of rule that he requires of my
life, and that's where it becomes dangerous.
Now where do we come when I'm concluding?
Jesus has enforced his prohibition and command by
telling us that laying up treasures upon earth
can distract the heart's affection, disturb the eye's
vision, and destroy our true devotion of God.
So we've got to make a choice.
You see, the Christian life is not a
matter of making one choice at the beginning,
as if you were jumping over a hurdle,
and you got into the kingdom territory, now
all is free, there are no need, there's
no need to make any more choices, there
are no more crosses, far, far from it.
Oh, there is an initial hurdle that you
have to jump over, there is a wicked
gate through which you and I must press,
but you know there are struggles, and trials,
and temptations, and alternatives before us as long
as we live in the flesh, and we've
got to be decided in our minds who's
our master, who are we serving, are we
serving to please ourselves, are we serving to
please men, or are we the absolute servants,
the utter servants of the living God.
Now the way to produce the righteousness which
is greater than the righteousness of the Pharisees
and of the scribes is along this route.
You'll never become a hypocrite if you're walking
this route sincerely.
On the contrary, you will become what God
made you to be and redeemed you to
make it possible.
Brothers and sisters, is this the route we're
walking?
May the God of all grace grant us
at this time in his house to reassess
our scale of values and to see that
to spend our time in laying up treasures
upon earth for the sake of laying up
treasures upon earth is utterly wrong.
What treasures we have and are given to
us are given us in order to be
exchanged into another currency, and that currency is
such that they may all be used to
lay up treasure that will await us when
we see the King in his glory.
Let us pray.
Lord God Almighty, our Father, we confess our
sins before you, and they're not only sins
of actions, deeds performed by us, but we
confess what is deeper than that.
We have developed attitudes, and we are persuaded
before your word so often wrong, and that
especially in this matter of laying up treasures
upon earth.
Forgive us, our Lord, any of us and
each of us, to whom this has become
the be-all, end-all of existence, and
enable us to see that in the light
of eternity, you have a different plan altogether.
Lord, grant us the grace to be investing
our money, our silver, our gold, whatever we
have with our lives, our service, our gifts
in the service of the one who died
for our redemption and for your glory, our
Heavenly Father, in the extension of your kingdom.
Hear us in Jesus' precious name.
Amen.