Hope Church LV Sermons
Security :: Treasure in Heaven
How can I feel safe? Where can I go for help? Does God genuinely care about me? Is security really possible? Where can I go to find the answers? Over the past three years, our city has experienced some extreme difficulty. And it's affected, I'm sure, every person in this room in some way, shape or form. Some of those statistics that were just in that video were overwhelming. To think about that taking place right here in our city where we live and that we're a part of. And one thing that has happened as a result of our economy and all that's transpired over the past three years is people have begun to ask some very serious and some very major questions. I'm sure you have as I have. Begin to ask some questions that are just difficult. But there is something that is more important than the questions that we're asking. And that is where we are looking for the answers to those questions. We believe in hope that the Word of God is our ultimate source of wisdom and truth. And regardless of our situation, of our circumstance or what we're walking through, that the Word of God speaks to the heart of every issue that we navigate through on the earth, even when it comes to a difficult time that we've been walking through and that we are walking through, the Word of God speaks to the heart of the issue. And we believe in hope we are dependent on the Word of God. And one of the ways that expresses itself is that as we preach and teach here at Hope, we teach verse by verse through the Bible. We are committed to studying expositionally through God's Word. We believe it's sufficient without our opinion, without our idea, without our interpretation. The Word of God is enough and currently we're studying through a section of Scripture called the Sermon on the Mount. It is referred to as the greatest sermon ever preached. Jesus was with His disciples and He sat down on the side of the hill and began to talk to them about the way of life, what He was calling them to as His followers. Many scholars and theologians have said that the Sermon on the Mount is the most influential teaching in history. And currently we're studying through that section of Scripture. And in just a moment we're going to jump into a brand new series called Security in which we're going to be talking over the next four weeks about topics like treasure and wealth and worry. But before we do that, I want to give us a little bit of a context to draw from before we look at the Word of God this morning. Because I'm sure for many of us we're not totally familiar with the Sermon on the Mount. And as Jesus teaches through Matthew's Gospel in chapters 5, 6, and 7, there are some overarching principles that saturate these three chapters of Scripture. And so before we look at our text this morning, I want to give you those four principles so that they can serve as a filter for us as we read and study the Word of God this morning. So here's the first key principle that we find saturated throughout Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. First of all, this sermon reveals our desperate need for a relationship with God. As you read throughout these chapters you will see Jesus indicating to his disciples their absolute desperate need for a relationship with God. He doesn't show up and say, "Here's a new religion." He doesn't show up and say, "Here's a list of stuff you need to figure out." He says, "You've been invited and you desperately need a relationship in which you are the child and God is your heavenly Father." And that is all throughout this sermon. Another key principle, a big idea that is found within this sermon, is that it provides clear instruction explaining the life Christ desires to live through us. Over and over again, you will hear Jesus communicating. Listen, what I'm calling you to do, you can't do on your own. Christianity following Jesus is supernatural. It's not his followers giving it their best effort to live the life he's called them to. Jesus says it's supernatural. And as you press into me, Jesus says he will live his life through us to accomplish his ministry and his mission. And that is throughout the Sermon on the Mount. The third big idea that we see throughout this message is that it demonstrates the radically different life of a Jesus follower. As Jesus shared these principles with his disciples 2,000 years ago, it was radical. It was not the message of the day. It was not what the culture was communicating. It was different. And for us today, as we read these verses, the same thing's true. It's radical. It's not the message of our culture. It's not the teaching of our day. It is different. The life he calls us to is radical. Here's the fourth and final kind of big idea that I want to serve as a filter for us as we look at the Word this morning. Lastly, in this sermon, Jesus invites us into a life of true happiness. Over and over, he says, listen, if you'll follow this teaching, if you'll believe in me, I'll make your life whole. I'll make it full with joy, with happiness, with pleasure. I will fill you internally with great joy and happiness. And those are the things that as we study through this sermon, as we have over the past year and we continue to study it, we see those principles over and over and over. In this morning, we are jumping back into the study in Matthew chapter 6. And in just a moment, I'm going to read for us verses 19, 20, and 21. And there is a common theme in the passage of Scripture that we're going to be studying for the next month. And that theme is security. The word secure in the dictionary means this. To be kept safe or defended from danger or injury or loss. And as we think about our job or our financial picture or our relationships or our family, and we hold them up against that definition, all of us that want that to be true in our lives. We want our jobs to be secure. We want our families to be secure. We want our financial picture to be secure, to be defended from danger, injury or loss. We want that. Everyone wants security. And most people work very, very hard to obtain security. But sadly, few people ever really experience it and know what it is. So let's look this morning in Matthew chapter 6, and I'm going to read these three verses. If you don't have a Bible this morning, we're going to put this on the screen for you so that you can follow along with us. Verse 19 says this, "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 neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in or steal." Verse 21, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." What I want to do this morning as we unpack this text is ask three very, very simple questions that will open our eyes to the principles of Jesus in the area of security. Here's the first question for us. What is treasure? What is treasure as Jesus articulates in this passage? In three short verses, we see the word treasure three different times, meaning it is very, very important, but what is it? For me, as I think about treasure, my mind automatically goes to money. But here in this passage, Jesus is not specifically talking about money or any form of currency. This word treasure literally means a deposit. So Jesus here is conveying that we are to store up treasures, meaning we are to gather up, we are to amass deposits. The root of this phrase, store up treasures comes in the Greek language from the root word where we get our English word theosaurus. What is a theosaurus? It is a treasury of words. So for us to understand this passage, we must realize that Jesus here is saying, we are to gather up, we are to amass for ourselves, many deposits that form a treasury. We have a great picture of this in Matthew chapter 2 when the wise men, the Magi came to Jesus. The Bible says they opened up their treasury and began to distribute gifts. They began to distribute deposits. That's the essence of what Jesus is saying here when it comes to treasure. I want to give us a definition that will really help us get our mind around it as we study this passage together. Here's a definition of what treasure is. Treasure is the product of leveraging my earthly possessions for eternal purposes. That's treasure. Treasure is the product when you and I decide that we are going to leverage what we possess here on earth for eternal purposes. Here's what that means. That means your relationships, your money, your home, your car, your talents, your time. All of those things can be leveraged for something greater than you. They can be leveraged for eternal purposes. That's why God has entrusted them to us. He is designed and for us to leverage those resources, to leverage those things for anything other than eternal purposes is outside of God's design. For many of us, I'm sure we have a lot of possessions. But have you ever stopped to ask the question, God, why have you entrusted this to me? Well, He's given it to you, to leverage it. And to leverage it for something that's bigger than you, bigger than your kingdom, bigger than your name is to be leveraged for an eternal purpose. A.W. Tozer said this in some of his writings. He said, "Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality." I know for many people, we've never seen the things that we possess in this light. We've never understood that everything that we own has great potential to be leveraged for something that's bigger than us. And so when Jesus here says treasure, He's talking about us storing up, gathering up deposits that would count for eternal purposes. Here's the second question for us this morning, where should I store my treasure? If a treasure is a deposit, okay, where should I store up that deposit? Where should that be stored? Well, Jesus in this text gives us two very, very clear options. Now, obviously, He suggests one option much more than He suggests the other, but nonetheless, He gives two options of where you and I can store up our treasure or store up our deposits. And here's the first option. The first option is that I can leverage what God has given me for gain on earth. That's the first option. The first place you and I can store up our deposits, we can leverage what God has given us for gain on this earth, verse 19 says very clearly, treasures on earth. And here's what that is. That is things that you and I possess right now that we bring in and leverage for ourselves and for our enjoyment and only our enjoyment. That's what it means to leverage our possessions and store them here on this earth so that we enjoy them and no one else. Now, Jesus obviously says do not do this. And that word do not is the same heartbeat, the same language that is used with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when he says, listen, guys, don't eat of the tree. He's saying, don't hurt yourself. Don't cheapen what I've designed for you by doing that. It's not God withholding. It's not God leaving us out. It's God saying, listen, don't store up treasures on earth. Don't hurt yourself. But cheapen my design for you by gathering everything in close for yourself. Here's the problem. Naturally, that's what all of us want to do. Naturally, we want to get the stuff that we have and the stuff that we see that other people have that we want. We want to bring all that in really, really close for us to enjoy and only for us to enjoy. And it's interesting, the connotation in this language in the Greek is so cool because it's really the idea of bringing all the stuff that we've collected and laying it out horizontally and stockpiling it up and hoarding it up but never using it for any significant purpose. That's the idea here with storing things on earth. It's that we would bring all these things in and we would stack them up so that we could see them and so that we could enjoy them but they're never used for any significant purpose. They are hoarded up. There's a show that's out right now on the A&E network called Hoarders, exactly. And I've never actually seen the show but I have seen a couple commercials and this week I got on their website. And from what I understand, the idea of the show is that there are some people who for whatever reason have put all of these things in their house to the point that you really cannot even walk through their home because there is so much stuff just shoved in and stockpiled in to where they live. And the show comes in and they help these people. They help these people understand that there's an issue with hoarding all of these things up in your home. And then once they help the person, they actually clean up their house so that it's livable again. And this week I got on their website and I've actually brought a couple pictures to kind of show you guys exactly what happens in the show. And I want to show it to you in reverse order. I want to show you the home once it's been cleaned and then I'll show you what it looks like before the people on the show came and brought their assistance. So here's one picture. This one is of a kitchen. It's a nice kitchen. All the appliances, I'm sure it's a great place to eat, a place to cook. Well here's what it looked like originally. If piled up everywhere, you can't get to the fridge, you can't get to the sink. You cannot even walk through that kitchen because so many things have been stockpiled and hoarded up in that room and they're being used for no significant purpose. Here's another example. This one's of a bedroom. It's a nice place. You see the bed there. There's some things on the wall. There's a couple boxes. Well here's what it looked like before. Clothes are everywhere, items are just shoved everywhere. You can't walk through the room, you can't even see the bed. Stuff has been stored in there, stockpiled in there and it's not being used for anything significant. And I don't know if you like to show or don't like to show but here's what I do know. That's a great word picture of storing up things on earth. Let me ask you a question. Are you doing this? Now it probably is not as messy as these pictures. But if you found yourself in a way of life that is bringing things to yourself, storing things up here on earth that you are hoarding, that you are stockpiling in your life but you're not using them for any significant purpose. Jesus says don't do that and here's why. Cause all that stuff that we bring close to ourselves, it's going to be eaten, it's going to rust and it's going to be destroyed. It's not going to last. The things that we choose to leverage for our own purposes. The things that we choose to take that are earthly possessions and leverage for our own enjoyment. And just so we can have them, Jesus says those things are going to be destroyed. That's kind of a hard pill to swallow. Cause there's a lot of things in my life that I like. A lot of possessions that I have that I really, really enjoy but here's the reality. Everything that we have that we try to leverage for ourselves will either be destroyed or someone else is going to own it one day. Somebody else is going to live in our house, somebody else is going to drive my car, they're going to have my job, they're going to have my title, they're going to outwork me, they're going to do the things that I do and they're probably going to do it better. Everything that I try to pull in close to myself will either be destroyed or someone else will eventually own it. And that's tough. That's tough to realize, that's tough to think about but that is exactly what Jesus says here will happen. I know the antinim to the word generous, which is a word we say a lot here at Hope. The antinim, the opposite is the word tight, fist it. And I know for me and probably for you, that's very easy to do. To think about the things that God has entrusted in your life and my life, how easy it is to grip those things with a tight fist and say no, these are for me and only me and Jesus says here, don't do that. You're wasting it. It's not going to last. What you choose to hoard and stockpile for yourself here on this earth will not last and there is no security in those things. That's the first option of where we can store our treasure, but here's the second option that Jesus gives in verse 20. The second option is that I can leverage what God has given me for gain in heaven. Option number one is to leverage it for gain on earth. Option number two is to leverage it for gain in heaven. He says very quickly, listen, you can't take it with you, but you can invest it. Verse 20, he says treasures in heaven and here's what he says about those treasures. He says they're secure. He says, when you choose to leverage what God has entrusted to you here on earth, when you leverage those for eternal purposes, they will be secure. The treasures that you lay up for yourselves in heaven, no one will ever touch those, no one will ever steal those, nothing will ever eat those, they will be there forever secure. There's a lot of different people who teach a lot of different things when it comes to understanding this promise of reward in heaven. Some people would say, Christian, your reward is in heaven. So you should have nothing on the earth. Sell everything, get rid of everything, you should be poor and have nothing. That's one extreme that people go to. There's another extreme that people go to. And that's the teaching that says, well, if you're a child of the king, you might as well live like it here. And you should amass every single thing that you possibly can and enjoy it here, just like you're going to enjoy it in heaven. And I would say both of those are very, very much out of balance. I want to read for you a quote by Martin Lloyd-Jones, who articulates what I believe should be our perspective and mindset as we leverage and think about the things today that God has entrusted to us. Here's what Martin Lloyd-Jones says. He says, I regard myself as one who has this great privilege of being a caretaker for God, a custodian and a steward. I do not cling to these things. They do not become the center of my life in existence. I do not live for them or dwell upon them constantly in my mind. They do not absorb my life. On the contrary, I hold them loosely. I am in a state of blessed detachment from them. I'm not governed by them, rather do I govern them. And as I do this, I am steadily securing and safely laying up for myself treasures in heaven. I don't know what God has given you. It may be much. It may be little. But all of us have equal opportunity to leverage what he has put in our hands. And as we do that unto him, it says we are securing for ourselves treasures in heaven. And the Bible gives us glimpses into what that's going to be. What those treasures in heaven are really going to look like. Luke chapter 19 says that authority will be a form of treasure in heaven. Matthew chapter 19 says that possessions will be a form of treasure in heaven. Psalm chapter 16 says that pleasure will be a form of treasures in heaven. And that's the way that God has designed it. He has designed it so that we could utilize what we have on earth for a greater purpose than ourselves. Randy Alcorn is a specialist in talking about generosity. And here's what he says in his book, The Treasure Principle, God keeps an account open for us in heaven. In every gift given for his glory is a deposit into that account. Not only God, not only others, but we are eternal beneficiaries for our giving. But isn't it wrong to be motivated by reward? If it were wrong, Christ wouldn't offer it to us as motivation. Reward is his idea, not ours. Our instinct is to give to those who will give us something in return, but Jesus told us to give to the poor, to the crippled, to the lame, the blind, although they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. If we give to those who can't reward us, Christ guarantees he will personally reward us in heaven. That's the idea. That's the picture of us living, not for this world, leveraging not for this world, but for heaven. And here's what that means. That means that as you and I begin to apply these principles. As we begin to understand what it looks like to leverage our earthly possessions for gain in heaven, God is going to lead us to do some things that we're not necessarily comfortable with. Things that naturally we wouldn't gravitate to. God is going to lead us as his church to serve and give and invest in people who we don't like, people who don't look like us, people that don't go where we go, who don't act like we act, who don't smell like we smell, who don't enjoy what we enjoy and who don't live in the part of the world that we live in. And as I think about that, there's a part of me that's kind of uncomfortable. There's a part of me that to say, God, whatever you want to leverage my resources for, I'm good. Just show me, God, I want to do it. But here's the Trump card for me that gets me past my insecurities, that gets me past the things I'm comfortable with. Here's the deal. We are the church representing the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We're not the Boy Scouts, we're not the Salvation Army, though those are great organizations. We are the church. We are to be agents of change, agents of hope in a dark and a deprived world. And as we operate through our lives, we should be representing, we should be the hands and the feet of Jesus. If there is anyone who should be passionate about seeing our communities transformed, about lives being changed, about people encountering the living God, it should be the church. And as he begins to press his life out through us, we'll begin to be passionate about the things God is passionate about. We'll begin to love what he loves, be broken over the things he's broken over, and we will be a physical representation of his life on the earth as his church. So in those moments, when you're just kind of, what should I do? I want you to remember something. You're a part of the church. The light of the world, the salt of the earth, the children of God, the people of grace, the people of hope, followers of Jesus Christ. And we should represent him and demonstrate his life to the world on a day in and day out basis. And part of that is seeing everything in your life, everything you possess as an opportunity and a potential to be leveraged for something bigger than you and bigger than how you feel, but to leverage it for the sake of eternity. But there's a huge obstacle that we all face, a huge obstacle. Here's the problem. Here's why we have a hard time really getting fired up about being the church, a hard time getting fired up about treasures in heaven. We don't think about heaven that much. We just don't. We've got our comfortable world going on, and I know we all hit barriers and our weeks are crazy and our schedules are crazy. But the Bible gives us clear instruction that we are to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things. That's important. That is in the present act of tense meaning we are to continually be thinking about heaven. And once that happens, once you and I begin to really occupy our minds with the things of heaven, our motivations change, and how we see our possessions change. We are to be occupied with things of heaven. Let me ask you a couple of evaluation questions. Are you consistently occupying your mind with things of earth or things of heaven? Is your life focused on obtaining things for enjoyment here or investing in things to come? Would the people around you say you are more passionate about the things of earth or the things of heaven? What do you possess right now that is being leveraged for gain in heaven? If you ever have the opportunity to go spend some time with the persecuted church on the other side of the world, one of the main things they want to talk about is heaven. Life's tough for them here, and they spend moment by moment by moment reminding themselves that where we are is temporary. There's a better day coming. We're headed somewhere. God is setting up for us a place called heaven where we will spend eternity worshiping Him. Our problem is we're not thinking about that that much. I want to challenge you. Put practices in your life that force you not to think about this world, not to focus on the struggles or the issues or the comforts of this world, but allow you to occupy your mind with the things of heaven Jesus says if you've got to choose and you do have to choose where to store your treasure, store it for gain in heaven. Third question for us this morning. Why is this a big deal? These teachings of Jesus from Matthew chapter 6, when he talks about storing on earth verses storing in heaven, why are these things a big deal? Well, I believe verse 21 makes it very clear while these things are a big deal. Jesus says for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. John MacArthur in his commentary says Jesus goes on to point out that a person's most cherished possession and his deepest motives and desires are inseparable. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. They will either both be earthly or they'll both be heavenly. It is impossible to have one on earth and one in heaven. You see if I want to know you really and what you're treasuring, what you're living for, I don't need to ask you to tell me, here's what I need to do. I need to look at your calendar. I need to look at your bank account. I need to look at the things that you are building your life around because that will reveal what you're living for. That will reveal either that you are storing up, you are hoarding up things for yourself or you are leveraging the things in your life for the next world. That'll tell the tale because our deepest motivations and our treasure are always in the exact same place. As we close today, I want to give you two reasons why, verse 21, the teaching that Jesus gives us here is so vital, it's so important to listen to what God's Word says in this area. If we're ever going to understand real, true security, here's the first reason we need to pay attention in this series over the next weeks as we dig in, why this needs to be a priority to be a part of. First of all, I have an incredible opportunity to invest my life in what matters. You and I have been given, we've been privileged enough to receive an incredible chance to spend our one life, our one shot, our one opportunity on something that truly that really does matter. But I would imagine across this room, there are a lot of people and you're wasting it. You're wasting the chance to leverage what you have on earth for it to count in heaven. Yesterday morning I was running and when I run, I put in some headphones and I was listening to a song that we sing here at Hope. And some of the lyrics in the song say this, "Freedom's calling, chains are falling, hope is dawning bright and true. Day is breaking, night is quaking, God is making all things new." And for me, when I hear that phrase, "All things new," my mind just goes to heaven. I don't know what you think about, but that's what I think about. And I begin to think about the moment when Jesus returns and he calls us home and we're in the presence of God, seeing the glory of God. We have new bodies, there is worship going on. We see Jesus for all that he is and his glory is restored and we have that moment when we think about, "What did I spend my life on when I was in the world?" Because there are many people who, yes, they have a relationship with God, yes, you are a Christian, but you know as well as I do that you are wasting your life here on earth. You are trying to leverage everything you get your hands on for you. You're investing into your small, little, minute kingdom that is going to count for your time here on earth rather than leveraging it for eternity and trusting that God will use it and take care of you in the process. The first reason we should take this stuff serious because we have an opportunity for our life to count and we just have one chance, one life. And for me, I desire much for it to count for eternity. There's the second reason I believe we should take this serious because ultimately my security is dependent on God, not my possessions. Ultimately, when it all boils down, me being secure, you being secure in whatever facet of life is absolutely dependent on God, not on us. There are many people who believe that their possessions give them security. And they think at the very center of what it means to be secure is having the nice house and the car and the bank statement having the right number and all of the things around them and the devil has tricked them into believing into a false sense of security because there's no security in our possessions, real security is centered in who God is. And if you are leveraging your life, if you're leveraging your possessions for Him and storing up treasures in heaven, we're going to talk about this in a few weeks, but He promises to take care of you. He does. He said regardless of what the stock market is saying, what the bank account says, you're my child and I will take care of you because ultimately God is our source of security. Our security is dependent on Him, not the stuff that we have around us. Randy Alcorn also said this, God wants your heart. He isn't looking just for donors for His Kingdom. Members who stand outside the cause and dispassionately consider acts of philanthropy. He's looking for disciples immersed in the causes they give to. He wants people so filled with vision for eternity that they wouldn't dream of not investing their money, time and prayers where they will matter most. Everyone in this room has potential to leverage the things that God has entrusted to you. And only you know what they are, what God has put in your hands. Every one of us has the chance to leverage those things for treasure and heaven and glory to God. And in the process, we will experience what real security is about. But every one of us have to make the decision. We are either as we get older and closer to death every day. We are either moving away from our treasure on earth or we are moving toward our treasure in heaven. We have a chance to know security, to have our lives count for something that's bigger than us. And I hope and I pray that over the next weeks as we continue to dig into this teaching that we will find our ultimate treasure. It's not in ourselves, it's not in our stuff, but it is centered around the person of Jesus Christ. Let's pray this morning. I do not know how God is stirring in your heart this morning, but I want you to take a few moments and I want you to think about the things He's entrusted to you. I want you to think about the things God has put in your hands, the earthly possessions. I want to ask you the question, how are you leveraging them? How are you leveraging those things? Are you a person who is stockpiling them up for your enjoyment, but they're not being used for any significant purpose? Are you someone who understands that if it's really going to last, if it's really going to be secure, we're going to invest it? Just a moment, our team is going to lead us in a song just to respond this morning to the Word of God. And you may be here today and maybe you don't have a relationship with Jesus. You don't know what it means to have a relationship with God. We've had people in our other services who have come up and said, "I don't understand. I want to be saved." Maybe that's you. We're going to have some pastors and prayer volunteers around the room and they'd love just to talk to you about that. Talk to you about what it means to have a relationship with Jesus. For others of us, this is a great opportunity just to evaluate our lives, to hold our lives up to the light of the Word of God. And think about it, are we following His teachings? But as some of us in the next few moments pray and listen, some of us are going to sing. Whatever the next few moments of response looks like for us, God, would you just open us up to how we need to be conformed? God, this is so tough. Lord, none of us have figured it out. Lord, we pray that You would teach us, You would lead us, You would help us, You would show us what real security when it comes to our treasure is all about. You speak to the hearts of the people in this room and lead us God. 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