Text: Matthew 6:19–24
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
Tyrannical Treasures
Please turn with me to Matthew 6:19. If you’ve been with us, you remember that we are in that part of the gospel according to Matthew that records the longest unbroken teaching of the Lord Jesus in the entire Bible, The Sermon on the Mount. And I want to remind you of what it is that Matthew is doing in his account of the life and ministry of Jesus, because it is important to the section of the sermon on the mount we begin today.
Remember, Matthew is eager to show us that Jesus Christ is the culmination of the entire story of the Hebrew Bible. He shows us throughout his gospel that the coming of Jesus is the coming of true Israel, and that the coming of Jesus is the coming of Israel’s God.
And so Jesus ascends a mountain and gives his law with this sermon, like Moses. But in the section we begin today, Jesus also embodies the wisdom of Solomon’s Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, teaching us how to live wisely, even under the sun of a fallen world.
Look with me at Matthew 6:19, and we will read through verse 24. This is the Word of the Living God:
“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, 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.”
-Matthew 6:19–24
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word; may he write it on our hearts by faith.
Three Questions
This morning, we’ll approach this text, this teaching of the Lord, in three parts:
First, Jesus warns us against laying up perishable treasures, of being mastered by treasures, of putting our hearts in earthly treasures. So we’ll ask: Why not? And: What does that mean?
Then we’ll see how it is that we can know if we are ensnared by the mastery of mammon. If treasure can be a slaver, how do we see our chains? How do we know if we are enslaved to money? Jesus gives us a window into our own hearts that will help us.
Finally number three, Jesus doesn’t just give us something to avoid, but also something to do, namely, to lay up treasures in heaven. So our final question is simply: How do we do that? How do we lay up imperishable treasures?
Tyrannical Treasures
Let’s start with that first section. Again, Jesus warns us not to lay up treasures on earth, to be mastered by wealth, to put our hearts in perishable treasure. Let’s walk through his words here, and we’ll find out what he means by this and why it is a deadly peril. Jesus gives us three basic reasons why it is deadly to put your heart in storehouses of earthly treasure. First, he warns us that:
1. Earthly treasure is ephemeral, vulnerable, and untrustworthy, not eternal, imperishable, and lasting.
Look again at verses 19 and 20:
“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.”
-Matthew 6:19–20
The problem with putting your heart, your hope, in earthly treasures is that they are radically vulnerable. They’re not solid. You can’t depend on them in anything like an absolute sense.
Remember what the preachers tells us in Ecclesiastes 3:11, that God has set eternity in the hearts of man. What does that mean? It means that we were made, that our hearts were made—and by “heart,” I mean, and the Bible means the seat of our longings, desires, and motivations—to find their satisfaction in eternal things, ultimately in the only absolutely eternal thing, the fountainhead of all things: God himself.
Peter describes the whole gospel like this in the first half of 1 Peter 3:18, that “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”
Do you see it? The whole end of the gospel isn’t just to forgive us our sins, but to forgive us our sins in order to bring us to God. God is the point. He is what the gospel gets us: Not only cleansing, but cleansing for a purpose, namely, to bring humanity to the thing that God set in our hearts as our deepest longing, himself.
This is why it is so important to understand what Jesus is doing here in this teaching about money. The reason he grounds his warning against trusting in wealth—in created, earthly treasures—is because they are not eternal. They are not the thing our hearts were made to latch onto for our satisfaction.
And we need to know this, because we are basically convinced, most of the time, that they are. Money and the things money can get you has the strong illusion of permanence. Of strength. Of durability. Of the ability to grant contentment. Be honest. Don’t you think that? Don’t you find yourself thinking, “If I had money like ______, I’d be happy. I’d be set. If my stocks had performed like that guy.”
And what the Lord would have us see is that all of that is an illusion. It is vulnerable. Even if your wealth doesn’t seem to let you down in the next 50 years, you are going to die. And your wealth will get you nothing. And so number two, don’t trust in ephemeral wealth…
2. Because your heart will go with your treasure—either to corruption or to glory.
He says, verse 21,
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
-Matthew 6:21
Listen, greed is deadly. If your heart is wrapped up in earthly treasures, you will perish with it. But even before that, you will become a horror. Greed is at least as big a danger to you as lust, as pornography, as the things you probably are more aware of as far as dangers go.
I don’t have time to read all the passages warning us about the lure of money, but know this: The Scriptures overflow with such warnings. So much so that Paul even says that the love of money is the root of all evil. That’s the literal Greek of 1 Timothy 6:10, that the love of money is the root—not of all kinds of evil—but all evil.
Meaning, there is something at the root of the sin of loving money that is also the root of all sin. I think that root is the desire for autonomy from God, to be our own gods: To be our own protection, satisfaction, shield, reward. And money seems to offer that.
If you embrace this illusion, and bury your heart in your storehouses of treasure, of real estate, of money in your accounts, of gold and silver, or cryptocurrency, of stocks, of business investments—then you will perish with it. And you will become a horror along the way, unable to use your money to serve God and people, but instead worship it like a god and so become a slave.
That’s number three; that’s why all of this matters—and this is why it comes up, why money comes up so often in Jesus’ teaching—because we are to be free. It is because he loves us that he warns us against tyrannical treasures, against enslaving greed.
3. Because you are to be free.
This is a not-whether-but-which issue. Look at verse 23,
“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.”
-Matthew 6:23–24
Simple: It’s not whether you will be a slave, but only which master you will be a slave of: God or money. God or mammon, the god wealth.
What about the Proverbs?
Is wealth bad? Is saving, investing, and inheritance-leaving an evil? Because you’ve heard me say that you should be saving up and living wisely and leaving an inheritance. Proverbs 13:22 is one of the guiding passages of my life. It says, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.”
So the answer is no. Money is not evil. The love of money is evil. Money is not evil. Being mastered by money is evil. In fact, if you properly obey Proverbs 13:22, you will not love money. You will not use your money to serve your whims and pleasures, but you will make money your servant as you serve God. You will put a collar on it, and you will lead it. You will be mastered by Christ, and then you will not be mastered by idols.
Make your money bend the knee to Christ, and it will be your servant. Bend your knee to your money, and you will be it’s slave. In fact, there is a way of being mastered by money while actually having very little of it. Spend everything you have immediately on stuff you want, stuff you think will satisfy you, and you will be both poor and a slave.
Seeing Your Chains
If treasure can be a slaver, how do we see our chains? How do we know if we are enslaved to money? How do I know if I am mastered by it? Jesus gives us one of the defining characteristics of a slave of money in verses 22 and 23:
“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!”
-Matthew 6:22–23
On the surface, this is a confusing section, but it’s only confusing because we’re not first century Jews. Jesus is employing a very well known cultural idiom that would have been clear to all of his listeners, the idiom of the one with a bad eye. A parable Jesus tells later in Matthew 20 helps us understand the saying, what it means to have a bad eye. Turn there with me and we’ll take a look.
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.””
-Matthew 20:1–16
Now, that second to last sentence, translated in the ESV as “Or do you begrudge my generosity?” is literally in the Greek, “Is your eye bad because I am good?” A “bad eye” in Jewish expression is someone who is bitter and envious, who looks on someone else’s prospering, someone else’s blessing, a gift given by God to someone else and says, “That should be mine.”
Jesus is talking about the tenth commandment: You shalt not covet what your neighbor has. See how this middle part, verses 22 and 23, might seem disconnected from the first part of the text and the last part, but it’s actually very much on topic.
How do you know if wealth is a slaver? How do you know if you are mastered by mammon? Jesus answers: Is your eye bad? Are you a covetous man?
Imperishable Treasures
Now lastly, Jesus doesn’t just give us something to avoid, but also something to do: To lay up treasures in heaven. So our final question is simply: How do we do that? How do we lay up imperishable treasures?
Let me give you an illustration that was helpful for me in thinking about this aspect of Jesus’ teaching, an illustration that comes from our own fiscal world. Most of you are probably very familiar with the concept of inflation.
Inflation is what happens when a currency is devalued, when a currently loses its purchasing power. It can be slow and small, or it can be devastating and runaway. This is happening right now with the US dollar. It’s a fiat currency—meaning it’s not backed by an asset like gold or silver. It’s value is in the fiat, the decree, of the state.
But the state also keeps printing more of it when they need money—pulling new dollars out of thin air. And what that does essentially is to make every dollar that already exists less valuable. So a loaf of bread a year from now will probably cost you, based on the amount of printing that’s happened in the last 12 months, maybe 7% more dollars than it did today.
Not long ago, something like 2008, Zimbabwe’s currency went into hyperinflation—literally inflation rates of 79 million percent. That meant that virtually overnight, a loaf of bread cost 35 million dollars in their currency.
So what you can do to hedge yourself against inflation is to convert your income, your fiat money, into real, valuable things—which will hopefully hold their value against that dollar. So gold, silver, land, real estate, business investment, guns, ammo—this sounds like a good time, right? And so you don’t keep a big pile of money in a currency that’s slowly—or quickly!—becoming less and less valuable in terms of purchasing power.
You can think about Jesus’ instruction to us follows a similar pattern. If the storehouses you put your heart in are storehouses of stuff that is vulnerable to moth and rust and thieves, then your hope is not secure. It’s actually radically vulnerable and quickly loses what value it may have had.
And his point isn’t to try to become ascetics who have nothing and avoid possessions. That is impossible, and it would make much of the rest of Scripture’s teaching on money and material things nonsense. What we are to do instead of avoiding contact with material treasures is to use even those perishable, material treasures to store up imperishable, eternal treasures in heaven.
Storing up treasures in heaven is very straightforwardly just doing what Jesus has been teaching through this whole sermon:
The meek inherit the earth, so pursue Christlike meekness.
The persecuted are blessed, so embrace reviling for Christ’s sake.
Those who hunger for righteousness will be sated.
Peacemakers are blessed.
See what I mean? When you obey Christ and seek the Father’s blessing, you lay up treasures in heaven. So when you approach your money and your perishable, material stuff, this is good news. It means you can convert that perishable treasure into imperishable treasure by using it for the sake of God’s Kingdom and people.
Be generous with your money in the name of Christ, and you won’t be its slave. God and people are eternal, so relentlessly use the perishable things to serve God and your neighbor.
That’s why leaving an inheritance to your children’s children in Jesus’ name doesn’t contradict Jesus’ teaching. Who are you laying up treasure for? The kind of treasure vulnerable to moth and rust? Not you. For someone else. And if you also leave a legacy of faith and discipleship to your children and their children, then the wealth will continue to bless God and his people, since they will know how to handle it and not to worship it.
So give your money with a generous measure to serve your people, to serve the household of faith. Give your tithe, set your table with good food and invite your neighbor over. And set a watch over your heart for envy, for covetousness, for greed, and for the damnable love of money—because it is a subtle and crafty snare.