We're going to begin today in Acts chapter 3. Again, we've been looking at several of these first teachings in the book of Acts as the Christian message goes out. We've done that in the last several weeks. I wanted to come back to this again and remind us of Peter's second temple sermon. This is in Solomon's Portico. It's huge, big pillars. I think it's, Josephus tells us it takes five men to get all the way around these pillars. huge pillars, there's 70 of them that are supporting this huge roof called Sovereign's Portico. And so this is now the second time that the first time right outside the upper room, and now here in the temple, Peter is proclaiming the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And what I want you to note here is that that gospel includes a message about heaven. So we're going to pick up just in verse 17 and just read a few verses. And he's pointing back to messages to the prophets that yet will be fulfilled at the last day. So, just a few verses here in Acts 3, beginning at verse 17. Peter is speaking. And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets long ago. Moses said, The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him. It shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from among the peoples. And all the people, all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaimed these days." Peter goes on like this, but I want you to see that he's pointing out, particularly there in verse 21, heaven must receive Jesus for restoring old things. God had promised this to the prophets, and the apostles were looking forward to those things being fulfilled at the Second Coming of Christ. Then let's turn to Matthew Chapter 6. This will be our primary text for today. Matthew Chapter 6. will be verses 19 through 24. Matthew 6, beginning at verse 19. It says, 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, The air in your heart will be pulsing. 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 imbues darkness, how great is that darkness. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. This is the word of God. Do you treasure heaven? Do you treasure the place called heaven? And today I want to begin by thinking with you about the role of heaven in the life of a believer on Earth. And to do that, we need to go back into American history. In her book, North Star to Freedom, Gina Burrell vividly portrays the flight from slavery to freedom. Francis and the Underground Railroad. Numerous Reformed Presbyterians were involved in this effort of helping slaves to reach freedom. It truly is an American Exodus story, where slaves were very carefully taught how to find the North Star and then to follow the North Star at all costs. A freedom mechanic. in the North, so we must never stop. Burrell shares a hypothetical conversation between a mother and her nine-year-old son. And the mother says to her son, son, even if I get captured, you must always and just keep going on. That's where freedom is. That's where hope is. The biblical teaching of heaven serves in this way for Christians, orienting us in our struggles, comforting us in our sorrows in this sin-filled world. If you only hear one thing today, and I'll come back to this, you must remember heaven is not your default destination. No one goes to heaven because they got a little water sprinkled on their head. Tell Deacon, please. No one goes to heaven because they got five starts on their Sunday school chart from memory. No one goes to heaven because they're decent, moral people. Heaven is not your fall destination. So, sit at Jesus' feet today, and hear Him instruct us on heaven, and in particular, heavenly treasures. In our passage today, Jesus is teaching His disciples on the northwestern edge of the Sea of Galilee. Numerous people in our church have been to that location. You should talk to them about it. It's a beautiful and pastoral place. Upon a flat part of this area, in a lovely garden, there's a place called the Church of the Beatitudes. For indeed, this is, as near as we can tell, the location where Jesus gave his most famous sermon. contained in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and known as the Sermon on the Mount. Again, Jesus does not go into exhaustive detail today in this passage about heaven, I would argue because the prophets who had spoken before him had done that. We're going to look at some of those prophets in weeks to come. It's in this same chapter that Jesus gave us the very familiar Lord's Prayer, point out over there in verse 9 that we are taught to pray to our Father who is in heaven. Now Jesus is pressing us to set our hearts on things that will endure in heaven in a word that's teaching us to treasure heaven. So friends, I would ask you today to have in my mind that figure in the Lord of the Rings by the name of Dolg. Dolg has this very interesting love-hate relationship with numerous things over the course of the story. The issue today is not what is most worth treasuring. That's objective, factual. life, what do you treasure the most? What is your precious? We're going to be talking about heaven from a variety of dimensions. We're beginning today kind of in the middle of the Bible, we're beginning as we hear Jesus But I want you to know that what we're going to do from here today is jump back to the very beginning. And we're going to look at the progressive unfolding of the doctrine of heaven. In other words, we need to be good students of the Bible. Because God didn't simply drop the Bible as a whole out of heaven. So, here it is. And by the way, the Bible is not a systematic theology. It takes thought and care. It takes reflection and prayer to put together in one place the whole Bible's teaching on one topic. And that's why we want to take the time over the course of this summer to think carefully about a place that, so far as I know, none of us have ever been. I assure you, I have not been there. But there's nowhere I would rather go. So let's look at this passage today. First of all, we see that the lure is a lure for the treasures of this world. Jesus is preparing to make a shocking contrast between verses 19 and 20. But notice that what He counsels us to do is to forego the amassing of treasures on the earth. And Jesus is pointing out why this is a prudent decision. Because everything that you accumulate upon this earth is subject either to corruption or to theft. Think about the people who Amass great, great things. Can you imagine what it must be like? I can't, really can't even imagine. Being a really, really rich person. And having lots of money, and now you have to have a safe. But if you have a safe, you have to have a key, and a key can get stolen. So now you're going to use your fingerprint or your retinal scan, which I've always thought that was the dumbest thing to do. Because I don't want to lose one of my fingers trying to keep my stuff safe. from people who are very intent on taking my stuff. Friends, this is the dilemma of this world. If your precious is on the earth, as Jesus says, it is completely susceptible to moth and rust and thieves. James 5 verse 2 says, your riches have rotted. Your garments are moth-key. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. Friends, the riches of this world will stand as witnesses against many people on the Judgment Day. You have laid up treasure in the last days, James says, and yet the treasure that these particular people have selected are riches that now count against them, not as assets, but as liabilities, as their lives are laid in the judgment. A few verses later, in verse 19, James speaks of one who has given in to the allure of this world. It says, My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and then someone brings him back, then he goes on to describe this blessing. As we think about this North Star of Heaven, I want you to understand that that nine-year-old boy down in the Deep South, maybe in Alabama, who's preparing to run from slavery with his mother, has no idea what the North Star actually is. He's never been taught astronomy. He certainly never visited the star Polaris, and understanding how it's spatially related to the axis of the Earth at 22.5 degrees, creating fall and winter, and summer and spring. He doesn't understand anything about orbital mechanics. But what he knows is two things. Number one, how to find the gold star. And number two, to go with it. To follow the star. He doesn't understand international politics and how, because of the work of William Wilberforce, that now Canada has already forbidden slavery legally as part of the Commonwealth of Britain. He doesn't understand why on this side of the border, anyone, anywhere can capture him, turn him into the Israelis, and he will be sent right back to his plantation. But then as soon as he crosses that border, the laws change. There were thousands who became citizens of Canada as a result of following the Underground Railroad. It is hard to turn away from this world. It is difficult to cast yourself on the providence of God and to trust God that He will provide for all your needs. Well, your heart is in another place. What would have happened if that nine-year-old boy had said, but I like my men. I like my friends. Whatever the case may be, if his heart was not on the star, he wouldn't go anywhere. But there was a promise that was laid before him. The star. I want you to think today, I'm going to say this several times, Jesus is the person, heaven is the place. Again, my purpose today is not to get into what is heaven, where is heaven, all of those kinds of questions, but simply to ask us, are you treasuring heaven? Do you think about heaven? Have you studied systematically what the Bible teaches about heaven? Do you talk about heaven with your family, with your friends? This leads us to the second point this morning. That is the assurance of the treasures of the world to come. The assurance of the treasures of the world to come. Jesus exhorts his disciples He cuts them off. He counsels them against the things of this world. He says, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. But where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. I wonder if money were no object, time were no object, Where's the one place on the earth that you thought again and again, oh I'd love to go there. I saw a movie not too long ago and somebody was constantly thinking about it and had a little postcard they carried with them over their heart about the island of Fiji and the dream for years and then to go to Fiji. I have no interest in going to Fiji. But I bet that if we were all honest, there's one place. One place that when you're just kind of in neutral, just kind of, who do you think? Where does heaven fit in? Do you think about heaven? Do you talk about heaven? Are you preoccupied with heaven? The Holy Spirit has been given, the Apostle Paul tells us, as a down payment of spiritual treasures reserved for us in heaven. Ephesians 1.14 says we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. Even your laying hold of your inheritance in heaven will result in the praise of God. Deep under the city of Rome lie vials of an underground tomb. early Christians were martyred, who were martyred, were buried. Their tombs contain thought provoking inscriptions. Right on their tombstones, it says things like this. In Christ, Alexander is not dead, but lives. An anonymous one, the name is not even preserved, but one who lives with God. Another one says, he was taken up into his eternal home. One historian writes, quote, pictures on the catacomb walls portray heaven with beautiful landscapes, with children playing, with people feasting at banquets. The third century church father Cyprian said this, let us read the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us from this place and sets us free from the snares of the world, that restores us to paradise and the kingdom. Anyone who has been in foreign lands longs to return to his own native land. We regard paradise as our native land. Friends, do you see how again and again the Scriptures are assuring us, are reminding us, put our lives in perspective? This is part of the reason why the visible Church is so important. That, you know, little Hades and little Colin running around here, they get to watch as saints draw nearer and nearer to their eternal home. He's still six, I think. We talk about this every week after church. And I want you to think about it. Haze is not going to be six for very much longer. Haze is going to be seven. That's a big deal, isn't it? Yeah, now he's tracking it. All right. So what I want you to think about. Yeah, sorry, that's kind of overwhelming, isn't it? But I want you to think about the fact that David Hayes needs to love heaven. And that's Mom and Dad's job, number one. But also, it's all of us. And we need to remember and we need to talk about the saints who used to be here in the pews who are in heaven today. have gone before us and we have a greater stake in heaven because those who we loved here on earth are now beyond us. There's an assurance of that which we cannot see. Friends, if all you know how to do is use your eyeballs, you're going to miss it. You can't see heaven right now. The day is coming when you will see Now we need to understand heaven in legitimate ways. Come back tonight, we're going to answer the question, how do you know things? Or how do you specifically learn about heaven? Because there's a lot of bad ways that are being used today. This leads us to the third point, the assessment of the light we presently have. The assessment of the light we presently have. Notice that now Jesus is taking us to our eyes. The eyes will land on the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. Those of you who've had cataracts, this is one thing I can identify with. That is, your eyes are not particularly healthy. Your eyes begin to get cloudy. More and more it feels like you constantly have something rubbing your eyes. I remember I was actually scratching my glasses. I was cleaning them so often. I was like, there's got to be something on my glasses. Well, there was. glasses on the inside of my eyes. Mary Ingalls probably suffered from very severe cataracts. In the modern day, she could have been healed, but she lived in darkness for the rest of her life. Cataracts have been around since the fall into sin, and now we know how to deal with those. But if your eye is not healthy, Then light is not going into your body in the one place where light is supposed to go in. And the result is that you live in darkness. The light in you is darkness, my old friends. That's the darkest kind of darkness. Darkness you can't get out of. Darkness you cannot escape. So I would ask you, number one, is your eye healthy? That is, are your spiritual eyes open? Are they able to see heaven? I want to remind you, I don't have this verse down here, but in John chapter 3, Jesus makes a shocking statement. I was thinking about this earlier this week, in John chapter 3 and verse 3. Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. The light in whose darkness? You know all about the pop musicians on the radio top ten charts. You know all about whatever your area of expertise is, but do you know about the light of heaven? Are you living in the light of heaven, or are you in the darkness of this present world? A world that we all know, we believe. If you believe, you're talking in class this morning. If you believe that you have a soul, then your soul will last forever. Now, if you don't believe you have a soul, your soul will still last forever. It just won't be in heaven. There is nothing more important than understanding the bad news today is heaven is not your default destination. On what basis do you, Christian, believe that you will go into heaven? Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for sure If you died today and found yourself standing before the gates of heaven, and God were there and said, why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say? And would it be the right thing? Friends, treasure heaven. Study heaven. Talk about heaven. be preoccupied with heaven, find really good books. And by the way, there are very few and far between, but I'd love to recommend some to you. Good books on the subject of heaven. Do you have light coming into your mind and into your heart, your eyes? Are your eyes healthy or are they sick? And this leads us to the fourth point this morning, the alternative masters. What is your devotion? What is your rejection? Look at what Jesus says, again, so succinct. No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve, here according from the ESV, you cannot serve God and money. The Greek word here is mamon, probably has the connotation, could be speaking of money, more broadly the word is used to talk about possessions. You cannot serve man, possessions, the things of this present world. You have to make a choice. This is what the Gospel does, is it lays before us, along with the summons to believe, it lays before us the two paths. The path of Christ that leads to the place of heaven. The path of self-aggrandizement. The path of the absolutizing of feelings. If it feels right, then it must be right, because if you say it's right, friends, that does not lead to heaven. So I ask you today, what are your treasures? If you want to, down at the bottom, write a one, two, and three. And later on today, spend some time thinking about what are your top three treasures in this world? Identifying your own personal treasures will go a long way toward identifying where your heart is and therefore where your treasures are being deposited. One of the things in closing that I want us to ponder is that only certain kinds of treasures can be stored in heaven. You can't store a billion dollars in heaven. You can't store things of this world in heaven. How do you lay out for yourselves treasures in heaven? It involves having heavenly treasures. Heaven is a place. Heaven is a place that is very different from and very far away from this present world in which we live. Jesus says that he came down from heaven. That he came to bring us the words of heaven. He came in order that we might have eternal life. Lord, we pray that you would help us to live in the light of the fact that before we know it, it will be old and gray and we will depart from this world bringing nothing with us. Lord, help us to live in the light of eternity and not merely the light of our present perspective. Pray that you would break in upon us with your eternal birth. And Lord, that you would encourage us. This is the hard message today. But I pray, Lord, at least to come, that you would encourage us. That you would remind us of the glories that are ours. That, Lord, the present heaven is not our final destination. For truly, Lord, there is a future heaven. There is an eternal state that yet awaits. Lord, we pray that you would enable us to reach that blessed and glorious, that blissful state that is so clearly laid forth in the scriptures. Lord, help us to attain to the new heavens and new earth. We look forward and pray for the day of the restoration of all things, I pray, Lord, that you would help us to wait for, and indeed to hasten, the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when the next great chapter of world history will unfold. Lord, I pray that you would help us to be those who live in light of Heaven's glory, Lord, who know and think about people who are there, who dream about the conversations that we'll have, what day of the week Jesus might come back on, and what it will look like for Him to sit on His glorious white throne. Lord, what it will be like to live in creation where there is no more death, or dying, or pain. Lord, where there is no more injustice. Where there's no more useless advertising. Where there's no more aging. Where there's no more forgetfulness. A Lord where there is peace. Where there is fellowship. Where there is oneness. Where there is hope. Where there is continuous encouragement. The Lord is with you.