the gift of God that is given to you for you did not receive a spirit of fear, but you received a spirit of power and love and self-control. So I just wanted to remind myself of that this morning and remind you guys that if you see power and love and self-control in me, it's not me. You're seeing God at work in me. So I pray that he would work. I pray that he would open our eyes to see beautiful things in his word through this message. So please, the sermon text is found in Matthew chapter 6, verses 19 through 24. You see, there's some ESV Bibles, not study Bibles, under the chairs. So if you don't have a Bible, you can use one of these. You can find the sermon text on page number 761 if you're using one of these ESVs under the chairs. So Matthew 6, 19 through 24, page number 761 in your ESV Bible. Let's pray. Father God, I thank you for your grace. I thank you for your spirit. I thank you for your kingdom. Father, we pray that as we enter into the upcoming year, into 2019, that you would help us to be a people who treasure your kingdom, who lay up for ourselves not treasures on earth, but treasures in heaven. We pray that you would help us to desire the things that Jesus desired as he lived on this earth, and that we would model ourselves after him, that he did what the Father was willing. God, make us vessels who are acknowledging of our own weakness, but trusting that you will fulfill your promises and living a life of faith, which knows that you exist and knows that you reward those who seek you. So make us the people who seek you today, this week, this year. It's in your name we pray. Amen. I think every day we make investment choices. You think about the last thing that I do when I go to sleep. Sometimes I decide what time I'm gonna wake up in the morning. I need to decide, am I gonna wake up early? Am I gonna sleep in a little bit? How much do I want to sacrifice my sleep for what's important to me in the morning? It's an investment choice. What am I going to eat for breakfast? That's a pretty big investment choice. Am I going to have that big breakfast, everything I like, or am I going to make the healthy choice, sacrifice that nice big fattening breakfast for something on the healthier side? It's an investment choice. Am I going to And this is not a conscious one every day, but am I going to work? Even if you don't think about it, you choose to go to work as an investment choice. I'm going to put myself, do whatever this person wants me to do so that I can earn my paycheck. Am I going to have a hard conversation with someone? Or am I going to avoid that? Am I going to invest in that relationship? Heard about this. I don't know if you guys ever heard of vitamin water is doing a challenge right now and The challenge is to go a year without a smartphone or using a tablet and so you enter into the contest and I think January 8th they select a winner of the contest and that winner can go into a contract with vitamin water and And if they make it a whole year without going on the smartphone or an iPad, they win $100,000. And if they make it just six months, then they can win $10,000. And I had to ask myself, hey, do I want to do that? Actually, you can use the phone. They'll give you a 1996 dumb phone that you can use. And you can use a computer. But at the end of the contest, you have to take lie detector test, so you can't cheat. I think everybody would have to decide, would I want to go a year without the smartphone? You also have to be a daily user of the smartphone right now. I don't use that anyway. That's one of the requirements. Would you treasure the smartphone and being able to use that? Scary number of people would Or would you treasure the money and and and if you wanted to enter that contest you would have to make that choice what am I going to invest in and That's what Christ is calling us to do not for money versus a smartphone, but he's saying are you going to treasure the future of Treasures in in heaven or are you going to invest in what? The things of this earth have to offer to you. I Think it's a good time to reflect over the past year and think what have I been treasuring? What have I been investing? Myself into in other words, where have you been spending your time? Where have you been spending your money? Where have you been investing your skills in? And I think if you're like me, you look back and you see a mixed bag. I can definitely see a lot of times where I was investing and really trying to pile up things on this earth. Really trying to accumulate and it gets harder and harder now that we're homeowners and thinking about all the things we need to buy and all the things that we want to fill our house with and it just becomes so easy to have that tendency. So today we're going to look at three things. We're going to look at what does it mean to treasure God's kingdom? And then we want to look at why. Why do we want to treasure God's kingdom? And then thirdly, we want to look at how. How, practically speaking, how do we treasure God's kingdom better? So look with me. I'm going to read the passage again. And we'll look at what does it mean to treasure God's kingdom? Verse 19 in Matthew 6. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters, for 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 God and money." I want to look at the surrounding context, though, in terms of what Jesus is getting at for what it means to treasure God's kingdom. Think about what he's been saying ever since the beginning of this chapter in verse 1. Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you'll have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. And then he goes into three examples of you don't want to do something religious or spiritual just to be seen by someone. You want to be involved in those things in secret so that you'll receive a reward from your father. There's a contrast in what you are going for. If you're giving in public so that people can see you're giving, you're making sure that everybody can can see you slip that in the offering box or help that person. You're doing it for a temporary praise that you receive in the moment. And Jesus is saying, do it in secret because then the Father is going to reward you in heaven. There's a contrast in the treasures that you're seeking in the here and now or in the future. The same thing to do with prayer. Don't pray just to be seen by other people for your religious piety, but pray in secret, invest in secret, so that the Heavenly Father will reward you. And then thirdly, fasting. The hypocrites fast so that they can be seen by others, but you fast in secret. So he's teaching us, don't seek temporary praise but to seek an eternal reward. I don't think that earthly treasures are limited to the stuff, the money, the clothing, the things that we can acquire. They can be simply looking for the praise of other people and making that the most important thing for yourself. We want to pray. Jesus calls us to pray that God's kingdom would come. Our Father in heaven, when you pray, pray like this. Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. So Jesus wants us, as we pray, to have an orientation towards God's kingdom. To seek God's blessing or God's future rewards in our spiritual activity and in our prayers to seek his kingdom. Again, here in this passage, don't lay up yourselves treasures on earth, but treasures in heaven to have that focus. Later on in the chapter, verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So Jesus, again and again, is redirecting us to this heavenly spiritual kingdom. the kingdom of his father. He's calling us, in this passage, to invest in that kingdom, to treasure that kingdom, just as you would lay up treasures in a storehouse, or in a bank account, or a mutual fund. He's calling you to save up and invest your time, your money, and your energy in God's kingdom. And I think there's a certain irony in these verses, because he's teaching that it's more valuable for yourself to put God as your priority. But as you put God as your priority, you make those current sacrifices. And your life actually is harder, that the way is easy that leads to destruction, but it's difficult that leads to eternal life. So you make that investment choice. It's ironic because it's difficult now, but it bears more fruit in the future. We benefit more when we pursue God and make sacrifices for Him. So that is what it means to treasure God's kingdom. It's to prioritize God's kingdom, to invest in the future blessings that God has for us. And then we want to look at why. Why should we treasure God's kingdom? And this is a lot of what Jesus is teaching us in this passage. He's teaching us why. I couldn't help but to think that Jesus can be a little bit like a salesman at times. Not that he's selling something of Not that he's tricking you on the value of something, but he sees a value in investing in heaven, and he is making arguments in this passage for why you should do that. And the first reason, after reading verses 19 and 20, pretty much anybody could say. It's because the heavenly treasures don't go away. Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, 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. Anyone who's bought an appliance knows the dilemma. Do I get an appliance that is cheap, but might break in six months, or a year, or five years? Or do you spend more money for a better appliance, even a warranty on that appliance, making sure that you've got it covered? You have to make an investment choice. And the investment choice has to do with how long is this appliance going to last? Well, when it comes to a kingdom, and which kingdom we're going to treasure, it should be a pretty obvious choice. Yes, the heavenly kingdom might be a heavier investment. But compared to the suffering of this present time, how can you compare that with the glories of joys and riches and reward that is just not going to be going away? Your blessings in heaven will never grow old. Your clothing in heaven will never go bad. Your treasures in heaven will never get stolen. They'll never get eaten, which I think was more of a major concern in this day and age. Clothing was much more of a proprietary and valuable thing. You'd have to worry about it getting eaten because you couldn't just go to savers and pick up something for a buck or whatever They never lose value And I just had to stop and and it's it's so easy to brush over this. It's eternity I mean if you're if you're investing your whole life in and or or money or a retirement fund or anything that has to do with this earth it's going to be gone and in Maximum of hundred years or whatnot 500 years from now it's going to be long gone Thousand years from now it's going to be long long gone but it keeps on going and When you start to try to grasp what eternity really means, you begin to feel the force of the foolishness of seeking things here on Earth. It's just a blip. And Christ knew that on Earth. And that's what He was calling people to. Invest yourselves in something that's going to last. And He doesn't even mention the difference in quality. I mean, come on. We know the quality of the stuff here on earth. And it's not that good. Invest in treasure in heaven because the treasures in heaven last. And not only that, but where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Verse 21, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. I think we want our heart to be in the right place. I think we want our heart to be in line with God. And I think the difficulty is a lot of times it just isn't. A lot of times you just wake up and you don't feel like serving Him. You don't feel like doing His will. But Jesus is saying, as opposed to the way the world speaks and Hollywood speaks, don't follow your heart Choose your investment. Choose your treasure. When you take the time to say, I don't want to serve this person. I don't want to pray this prayer. But Jesus says that God exists, and that He's going to reward me, and that there's going to be blessing when I follow Him. And you make that investment, and you make that your treasure. Jesus says, where your treasure is, your heart's going to be there. Your heart's going to tag along, and it's going to be connected to what you're invested in. I know me and Emily like to watch Shark Tank. And a lot of times, these investors on Shark Tank, they make the same point a lot of times. They say someone offers a part of their business, 2.5% of their business, for $50,000. And they say, I'm not going to invest for 2.5, because I won't be invested enough in it. I'm not going to give you the time of day. I'm not going to make one phone call for you for that kind of money. They're not invested enough for them to even care about it. And I wonder, that's a lot of times how I get with God's kingdom. I'm not invested enough in my time, my money, and my energy to care about it. But Jesus says, if you make that choice to invest in that, your heart's going to follow. So it lasts longer, your heart will follow, And your treasure, what you are treasuring, determines whether or not you're filled with light or darkness. And this is where we get kind of an interesting picture. The I, in verse 22, the I is the lamp of the body. So if your I is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your I is bad, your whole body is full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, How great is the darkness? I'm gonna try to explain this without spending too much time on it. I think a good place to start is to talk about the eye in this picture. The eye is the lamp of the body, and this eye can be either good or bad. And I wanna read a few passages from the Old Testament that refer to having a bad or an evil eye, It's kind of a play on words. If you say that something's bad, it can mean it's evil, but it can also just mean it's broken or doesn't work. And that's kind of what this is getting at. Here, let me read Deuteronomy 15, 9. Deuteronomy 15, 9. lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart. And you say, it's the seventh year. The year of release is near. And your eye look grudgingly, or literally, your eye be evil towards your brother, your poor brother, and you give him nothing. And he cried to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. So this is referring to the seventh year where if you Lent out money to someone, then all that they owe to you in that seventh year would be gone. So if you're caring about this money and you're greedy towards this money, you're not going to want to lend it out right before that person is going to be just off the hook. So you have this evil eye towards this person. Proverbs 23, 6. Proverbs 23.6 Do not eat the bread of a stingy man, or in the Hebrew, my footnote says, whose eye is evil. Don't eat the bread of a man whose eye is evil. Do not desire his delicacies. And again in Proverbs 28.22, the stingy man or the man whose eye is evil, hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon him." So this seems to be a phrase that would come to mean someone who is greedy, someone who is in love with money and possessions, who finds their value there, who is unwilling to serve other people because that's what's important to them. To have a bad eye, an evil eye. I think that's what it means here. It makes the most sense in the context. The contrast would be between treasuring things on earth, treasuring things in heaven. So, if your treasure is things on earth, particularly money because it represents what this world can offer, you have a bad eye. You have an evil eye. You're focused on the wrong thing. And what Jesus is saying is that if you have that bad eye, here's what the Pharisees do. They have the bad eye. They're focused on what people can bring them. They're focused on what the world can bring them. But they think that they can please God at the same time. And Jesus is saying, their eye, the eye sheds light for the whole body. The eye is like a lamp. It's either on or it's off. It's either good or it's bad. It's working or it's not working. And if it's not working, that has implications for your whole body. You can't walk around and do things and function in the light if you don't see, if you don't see clearly. So he's saying, if you're focused on the things of this world, that has implications for everything that you do. Because if your eye is bad, how can anything you be good." So what you treasure determines whether or not you're in the light or in darkness is another reason to treasure God's kingdom. And fourthly, similar to that, not only does your treasure determine whether you're in light or darkness, but what you treasure determines whether or not you are serving God or money. No one can serve two masters, for 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 God and money." This is just one of those passages that you read and realize Jesus wasn't trying to make friends. I mean, to say that you can't love money without at the same time hating God, despising God. It doesn't get much stronger than that. And I think his listeners, his hearers, and the Pharisees would like to think of themselves as being right with God. So to hear that, you have to choose a treasure. Jesus is saying you should choose God you should choose To invest yourself in him. So how do we treasure God's kingdom? Similar to laying up treasures on earth We slowly accumulate When you're laying up treasures in a storehouse or a big barn it comes a little bit every day and Just add it up You make a purchase here. You take in some a harvest here you Add it up over the course of your lifetime You acquire more and more and more stuff. This is how the world works This is how laying up treasures on earth works, and I think it's similar process for treasuring heaven. Every day we make these choices. We make small choices to invest ourselves, our time, our money, and our energy in God's kingdom. We do this in the same way that we originally entered God's kingdom. We treasure God's kingdom in the same way that we originally entered God's kingdom. which is by grace through faith. We already are members of the kingdom. We already are children of the kingdom. And it's just, it's refreshing to, as I look back at my struggles with worldliness and bring that to confession, to know that it's by God's grace. I don't have to earn it. It's by God's grace that I'm in the kingdom. And he calls me to further invest myself in that kingdom, to store up treasures in that kingdom. And it's the same process of doing that. It's looking at God's Word and believing the promises that He has for me and seeking to obey Him. I'd like to Mentioned three possibilities three concrete possibilities within the context of Matthew 6 that you can treasure God's kingdom You can give to the needy in secret Jesus says that's a way you can Treasure my kingdom. That's a way if you're looking for a way to invest in God's kingdom. That's a way that Jesus says you can do it find when you see a poor person Support them when you see a need Fill it And don't do it just to be flashy, but but do it because you know that the father is watching To pray in secret And this is one of the things that will just blow your mind is the fact that God chooses to use prayer to impact people's lives And if he would choose to use a prayer to change someone's heart and to bring them into his kingdom, that has an eternal impact. That prayer, he could use that to have an eternal impact on someone's future. That's laying up treasure in heaven. Treasure for that other person. To be the difference of whether they hear the gospel or not. To be the difference of whether God works in their life or not. Just the thought just occurred to me right now Wouldn't it be sweet to get to heaven and to have a conversation with someone that God used you to work in their life? How grateful would they be to be there? and of course all the Thanksgiving points to God because he's the one who works in us to be able to bless others and then Mysteriously, he blesses us for blessing others, even though we did it by his strength and his grace Got to watch out for that. God often uses our acts of faith to make an eternal difference in other people's lives. So I'd like to close out this sermon in a good parallel passage, 1 Timothy chapter 6. Part of the reason I I want to refer to this passage is because It's not just about stuff versus not stuff acquiring stuff versus not acquiring stuff I Wish it was that simple But it's not like we saw before you can be involved in religious activities and still be treasuring things on earth And at the same time, you can purchase and invest in material things and be involved in God's plan. So it gets down to the heart and the motives. 1 Timothy chapter 6, beginning in verse 6. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content. Those who desire to be rich fall into a temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a route to all kinds of evils. It's through that craving that some have wandered from the faith and pierce themselves with many pangs. It's good to be aware that anyone and everyone is susceptible to the love of money and the desire for things of this world. They're right here in front of us. And don't treat it as a weak or sin that doesn't have any impact on you. It has a lot of impact on you. And it has just a way and a nature of drawing you away from God and putting you, as we saw in Matthew, against God. So we want to treat it as a sin. And if you haven't confessed for the love of money or for desiring to be rich, if you haven't confessed that sin, you can't think back on, like, I have a hard time thinking back before I really studied for this sermon of that being a regular pattern for my life. But why wouldn't it be? It should be. So to recognize the danger of that. And then continue on to the positive of what God calls us to do. As for you, oh man, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of eternal life. to which you were called, and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." And then, skipping down to verse 17, this is where we get some instruction for if you find yourself fortunate enough to have a lot of money, if you're rich, which I think a lot of people in America are. A lot of people wouldn't consider myself in this camp, but I would consider myself in this camp. I have an access to a lot of possessions. After this sermon, I can go buy a burger if I want to. I consider that rich. So if you're rich, what do you do? Do you sell everything that you have? Are you living in sin? As for the rich in this present age, I charge them not to be haughty. nor to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy, there to be good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, to be ready to share, thus storing up treasures for themselves as a good foundation for the future. so that they may take hold of what is truly life." And I've been encouraged to see that as a pattern at this church, that even if there is Even if we're I mean even though we're so blessed in America. I see just the generosity of spirit Among the members here, and I've been encouraged to see that I would encourage you to continue in that To continue to store up for yourselves treasures in heaven and then If you find yourself on the flip side of that where you're really scraping by I would encourage you to join us in two weeks because that's where Jesus talks about don't be anxious about food, clothing, things that are very easy to worry about, but being in God's kingdom has implications for those things as well. So, let's close in prayer and then song. Father God, we thank you for your kingdom. We thank you for making us your children. And God, I pray that if there is someone here who has not sought you, who does not know you, who does not serve you, I pray that you would open their eyes to see their need for you. I pray, Father, that nobody here would think that they're right in your sight unless they are confessing their sin and finding their hope in Jesus Christ alone and his death and his resurrection. We thank you for your grace and your many blessings to us. We pray that you would help us to have a good relationship with the stuff that we have and the material things that we interact with on a daily and weekly basis. And Father, I pray that you would give this church very much grace as we approach 2019. Help us to be a people who more and more invest ourselves into your kingdom. We thank you for these many blessings. We pray that your name would be honored. It's in your name we pray. Amen.