August 20, 2023
Matthew 6:19-24

The title of the sermon is “Anxiety Free Days, pt 1.”

We have been in Matthew for over four months being instructed by Jesus through the active and living word of God. Lastly, we were taught by Jesus to pray for daily bread. And now in this passage we shall be instructed by our Lord about investments and more broadly about the related truths that should govern our lives. Jesus uses compares and contrasts and illustrations here to focus the Church’s attention and actions on how to make our effort count by living lives of dependence. We need to apply careful consideration to live properly in the kingdom. Jesus is teaching us that living in the kingdom is not just living by a simply daily checkbox in public, “followed by relative indifference to kingdoms norms.” But instead, kingdom life involves continual repentance that gives up its will and actions in search of the greater will of another and living according to His kingdom commands. ¶ The second half of Matthew 6, bolsters what has been taught before and takes us steps further into the wisdom and knowledge of Jesus as Jesus commands His disciples to not only “shun hypocrisy” in Christian duty, but, “more positively,” progress into an “embracing” of these kingdom rules and values confidently and staunchly with unapologetic loyalty to God. (Carson, The Sermon …, 75) Therefore, we shall be taught about the relationship between discipleship and wealth as one of Jesus’ reoccurring themes as we move though Matthew’s account of the gospel.¹

The outline breaks down into three parts: 1 Saving , 2 Seeing, and 3 Seeking

Read Matthew 6:19-24

19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

• Jesus continues to answer the questions here of “How do we live properly to ensure we are rewarded in heaven?” and more importantly, “Are we responding to God in the ways He desires?”
• Verse 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
• This is a command.
• To store up treasure here is to disobey. These type of short independent commands are often over-looked. >>
• They are easy to understand but almost never highlighted.
• As I thought about this command, I thought how does this withhold love. COMMENT
  • All commands are based in love.
  • It withholds love from God and from people.
  • Stored wealth does not trust God for the future.
  • Stored wealth is the opposite of faith.
• We already know that we should trust God for our daily bread. To trust instead in treasure is sin.
• Jesus gives reasons here starting in verse 19b, where moth and rust destroy
• Every material thing man makes wastes away in part by bugs and corrosion. Termites love southern houses. Rust loves cars.
• And there is another reason and where thieves break in and steal,
• While our material things have value, they are susceptible to theft.
• The entire world system presents world wealth as legitimate but it’s a mirage. It is eaten by the elements, bugs and thieves.

ILLUSTRATION

• For almost 80 years the Great Depression went unrivaled. But in 2008, that changed in the “Crash of 2008” where trillions of investments were wiped off spreadsheets, otherwise known as people’s life savings. Then, President George W. Bush said to advisors, “Someday you guys are going to need to tell me how we ended up with a system like this.” >>
• President Bush, this is the world’s system. This is just one of the many reminders that this world cannot nor will it keep value in our money. In Jesus’ day it was the tax collectors, money changers and crooks. In our day a world filled with schemers, scammers, and crooks. But all of these have one thing in common: they are all thieves.
• It is a “poor bargain which exchanges” eternal wealth with a decaying wealth that has zero transfer value. (Carson, The Sermon …, 77)

20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

• We are to put our treasure where it is protected.
• Jesus will continue to instruct and warn the people of God to not live for this world’s brand of life. Later Jesus will articulate it through familiar phrases such as, “inheriting eternal life,” “entering our master’s joy,” and “inheriting the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (France, The Gospel of …, 258)
• But the often overlooked theme that goes with these phrases are the conditions and rules of obtaining a lasting inheritance.
• The condition taught here is “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
• I don’t pretend to know all of the reason of why the kingdom principles are often explained away, but they are. I don’t pretend to know all the reasons of why we often ignore so many the kingdom principles, but we often do.

Let’s look at another reasons given here for kingdom giving starting in verse 20b where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal

• There are no termites or thieves in heaven.
• Nothing can touch the treasure when given the right way: in secret, love, and faith.
• No corrupting force of any kind has an influence in heaven. Treasure given on this side of heaven is secure.
• Unlike the world’s schemes, treasure in heaven does not loose value and it pays the best dividends ever heard of. Every penny placed there in love, faith, and in secrecy is insured to pay off big.

Jesus shifts from reasons of a great future to the present. Verse 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

• There is a bigger implication than the treasure itself, and Carson said it best, “the things we treasure actually govern our lives.” “What we value tugs at our minds and emotions; it consumes our time with planning, day-dreaming, [maintenance], and effort …” (Carson, The Sermon …, 77)
• Our heart stays in tune with our assets.
• Why? Our money is our life in portable form. We trade money for the hours and hours of time and effort.

ILLUSTRATION

• Cobra kit cars.
• Heaven on earth.
• What we have spent our money on has not only our attention but our hearts.

APPLICATION

• So when we place our money in heaven, we are placing part of our lives in heaven.
• How do we place our lives in heaven?
  • Giving to the church.
  • Giving to reach the lost with the gospel.
  • Giving to the meet the needs of those praying for their daily food.
  • We find the kingdom ministry and works of God and join Him in it.
• When we invest properly, we have a grantee of future rewards Jesus is teaching us about in His Sermon.

TRANSITION
Now that we have seen how we are to invest and thereby save monies and assets into the kingdom. We will turn out attention to how we should be seeing.

22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 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!

• These verses are in the middle of money matters.
• 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. >>
• Jesus changes His preaching direction from a material investment motif to a holiness one. (cf. Carson, The Sermon …, 80)
• There has been some debate as to what Jesus meant by your “eye is the lamp of the body.” Because this “suggests the surprising notion that light is needed inside the body.” (France, The Gospel of …, 260)
• But to me, this seems to make metaphorical sense since are hearts are dark with sin.
  • The wickedness in our hearts is a constant competitor for the thoughts, efforts and affections of our days here.
  • We should be constantly be making efforts to put light into our lives through spiritual disciplines.
  • Part of this effort is making sure we have a vision, an eye, for God and His will on earth.

Jesus draws a CONCLUSION: 22b So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,

• The Greek work for the ESV “healthy” is only used by Jesus and recorded twice. Once in the Sermon on the Mount and the other in Sermon on the Plane in Luke. (See G573 in the Blueletter Lexicon)
• What does Jesus mean by healthy eyes?
• Healthy eyes = seems to be what we are taking into the senses, really our most important sense, seeing.
• Our eyes need to be what ESV chose –look at it in 22b –“healthy.”>>
• The Gk. for the ESV’s healthy literally mean “simple” or “single” as chosen by the KJV (Thayer); figuratively it means “clear” as chosen by NASB, Hart, BLB, et al.
  • Thayer’s lexicon had, for the word translated in the ESV “healthy” the definition of “single (in which there is nothing complicated or confused; without folds (cf. Trench, § lvi.)).” We even have an idiom that is fitting. If I said, “He has a lot of layers” … what would I mean? He’s a complicated man.
• These literal definitions help much to understand what Jesus is teaching. A “healthy eye” literally means an eye with a single vision; an eye that sees life also in an uncomplicated way; an eye that has a simple and clear vision of life. In other words a kingdom eye.

This is followed by Jesus’ caution: verse 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

• Bad eyes cause dark lives. Darkness is modified too: full of darkness!
• Are our eyes dark with a worldly vision or light filled with a kingdom vision?
• Jesus continued in verse 23b, If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
• This is more contrast here. where one expects light, one instead finds darkness.
• Darkness is most profound where light is expected.
• What is worst than a Christian who thinks he is living in light but instead is living in the darkness of self deception? >>

APPLICATION

• Remeber, these verses are in the middle of Jesus’ teaching on money (or assets) and confidence and hope and trust. Therefore, these verses must have that kind of treatment or we take them out of their context.
• Therefore, trusting in assets instead of God is darkness.
• This is obviously inappropriate for people of faith.
• So let’s ask the hard questions.
  • What are we trusting to take care of us today?
  • What has the majority of our attention?
  • What is the vision for your life?
  • How well do you understand what Jesus is teaching here?
  • Much of our life is traded for money. Where is our life invested?
  • Let’s show our bank accounts and we shall see what we are trusting in and whether our eyes are dark or full of light.
• Our life follows our gaze. If our gaze is on the Master we follow well. If we have any other gaze, the death of our moments and assets is here.
  • What our eyes want we live out.
• Young people, here is a caution for you: often, we Christians spend our younger days complicating our lives with a dark vision of life and with it its stuff; then we spend our older years trying to uncomplicated it by getting rid of the stuff. Choose more wisely.

Notes

^{Notes from above may not be in numerical order.}

¹ France, in his The Gospel of Matthew, noted Thomas E. Schmidt’s Hostility to Wealth in the Synoptic Gospels without reference to page(s), and to his own brief account in “God and Mammon,” EQ 51 (1979) 3-21.

Works Cited

Scripture quotations [unless otherwise noted] are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Click here to access the works cited web-page for this document, save those marked as “Notes” or “Other Works Cited”–if any. Most of these cited works correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of general background information and references, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with. ¶ Furthermore, there may be numbered notes that are URL linked; these are usually retained numbered notes from Thomas Constable’s, “Dr. Constable’s Expository (Bible Study) Notes.” These links are preserved “as is” at the time of this work’s formation and I usually include other citation information from Constable as well (e.g. authors’ names).

Other Works Cited

Note: All of the resources below were cited in at least one of the sermons in the Book of Matthew but not necessarily this one.

Augsburger, David. Dissident Discipleship. Brazos Press, 2006.

Blomberg, Craig L. Matthew. New American Commentary, vol. 22, ed. David S. Dockery, et al., Broadman Press, 1992. May be sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/matthew0000blom

________. Preaching the Parables: From Responsible Interpretation to Powerful Proclamation. Baker Academic, 2004. Sourced from archive.org.
(https://archive.org/details/preachingparable0000blom/page/82/mode/1up)

Bruce, Alexander Balmain. The Training of the Twelve. Ed., A.C. Armstrong and Son, reprint 1984, Kregel Publications, 1971 edition.

Carson, D. A. The Sermon on the Mount : an Evangelical of Matthew 5-7 Exposition. 1978, Baker Book House, fifth printing, 1989. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/sermononmounteva0000cars/page/54/mode/1up

_______. When Jesus confronts the world : an exposition of Matthew 8-10. Originally published by Inter-Varsity Press in 1988, Paternoster, 1995. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/whenjesusconfron0000cars/page/n3/mode/1up

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest. Our Daily Bread Publishing, web ver.

Davies, W. D. and Dale C. Allison, Jr. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. T. & T. Clark, 1988. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/criticalexegetic0001davi/page/n7/mode/1up

Evans, Craig A. The Bible Knowledge Background Commentary: Matthew-Luke. Victor, 2003. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/bibleknowledgeba00crai/mode/1up

France, R. T. The Gospel According to Matthew. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1985.

France, R. T. The Gospel of Matthew. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/gospelofmatthew0000fran/page/n6/mode/1up

Harrington, Daniel J . The Gospel of Matthew. Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 1, A Michael Glazier Book, Liturgical Press (publ.), 1991. Sourced from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/gospelofmatthew0000harr/mode/1up

Hendriksen, William. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke. Baker Book House, 1984.

Phillips, John. Exploring the Gospels: John. Loizeaux Brothers, 1988.

Plumptre, E. H. “Matthew.” Commentary for English Readers, Charles John Ellicott, Compiler/Editor, Lord Bishop of Gloucester Cassell and Company, Limited, 1905. Sourced from BiblePortal.com. Click here for a list of the authors of the CER.

Yancey, Philip. The Jesus I Never Knew. Zondervan, 1995.

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