In the sermon 'Laying Up Treasures in Heaven,' Scott Brown explores Matthew 6, emphasizing Jesus' teaching on the importance of focusing on heavenly treasures over earthly ones. The sermon delves into how our heart, eyes, and will influence where we lay our treasures, highlighting the dangers of earthly accumulation due to decay and theft. Brown discusses the futility of serving two masters—God and mammon—and stresses the need for faith and trust in God's provision, using examples like the birds of the air and lilies of the field. Practical applications are given for aligning our lives with the pursuit of heavenly treasures, encouraging believers to live lives marked by a focus on eternal values, rather than temporary material gains.

Matthew 6 19, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where month and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither month nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The lamp of the body is your eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body. What you will put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing.

Look at the birds of the air. For they neither sow nor reap or gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feed them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you, by worrying, can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil or spin.

And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry saying, What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear?

For after all these things, the Gentiles seek, for your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things, sufficient for the day its own trouble. O Lord, we give you thanks for today, Lord. We pray for Scott as he brings forth your word.

Help us Lord to hide your word in our hearts so we may not sin against you. In Jesus' name, Amen. The Lord Jesus is instructing His disciples on a hill, and in the same way that He is speaking to us in our church today, he's desiring to unify his disciples around a principle of treasure and the laying up of treasure. And when I read these words that Jesus is giving to his disciples, it just makes me think of what an amazing thing it would be for an entire church to be completely unified around this principle of laying out treasures in heaven. Imagine that.

Imagine an entire church bent on nothing else but the laying up of treasures in heaven. And that's what Jesus is doing with his disciples. He's speaking to them, you know, face to face in a very personal way to unify them around this great principle. And He's speaking to us in the same way that He's speaking to them. Now this whole chapter is about laying up treasures somewhere, either in heaven or on the earth.

And Jesus has been walking through a progression of thought to help His disciples understand what's driving them, why they're doing what they're doing, and so that they can know whether they're laying up treasures on earth or whether they're laying up treasures in heaven. All of chapter 6 is focused on this, and he's saying, you can give alms and lay up treasures on earth or in heaven, either way. You can pray, and even though you're doing a religious thing, you can be laying up treasures on the earth even by your praying or you can be laying up treasures in heaven. And the same thing with your fasting. You can be laying up treasures in heaven in your fasting or treasures upon the earth.

And what he's saying is that by your prayers, by your giving, by your fasting, you can lay up treasures in heaven or you can do those exact same things and do them for your own self, for your own glory. So Jesus is building this case. He begins with religious things and He's telling you how you can do religious things and build up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy." And so, he's been speaking about the secret prayers, secret fasting, secret giving. Even in the secrecy of your own heart, you can be laying up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroyed. And now he turns to things that are far more outward.

He turns to our physical material life, the things we acquire, the things that we give our minds to, our eyes to, our energies to. So he's begun with religious things, and then now he begins to deal with what you might call more temporal things. What you think about and what you do with the temporal things that God has given you, or that you've maybe acquired unrighteously. So this is the setting that Jesus is dealing with with his disciples. Now, this is an urgent matter which is so clearly understood by the number of imperatives that are in this text.

And this urgent matter, it takes us right to the heart of the Gospel. And the whole matter of no one can serve two masters, You're either serving one master or the other. That's the heart of the gospel. We're serving one master and we transfer our service to the other master, the Lord Jesus Christ. There is the master, the devil, who abuses his children.

And we have all been abused by this master. As we've served him, we've always lost. No one ever gains anything of any eternal value by serving that master. They might lay up treasures on this earth, but they will find at the end of their lives that they'll have absolutely nothing left. And so Jesus Christ is coming to bring the glory of the gospel that you can be delivered from this abusive, harmful master, the devil, by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, by trusting in His death and His resurrection, and being caught up to eternal life as a result.

So when Jesus is speaking of their two masters, He's bringing us to the heart of the gospel, the point in someone's life where they say, I cannot, I will not serve that master anymore. And I need a new master. I need the good shepherd to lead me. So this passage brings us into a number of things. And the first thing that Jesus reminds is that there are two kinds of treasure.

He says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. So he begins with a prohibition. He begins with a warning. So when Jesus is talking about treasures on earth, the first thing that he wants to do is he wants to damage your zeal for them. He's trying to reign on your parade over treasures on earth.

He's trying to qualify and put them in their proper perspective so that you'll know their relative importance. And so the first thing he says is, do not. And he does that to dampen our zeal for laying up treasures on the earth. And that's the first thing that we're confronted with. And so all of us are in pursuit of various kinds of treasures.

But the first thing that we need to understand is that Jesus Christ is dampening our zeal for the acquisition of treasures in heaven. Now what does he mean by treasure? Is this money? Is it a house? Well, the term that Jesus uses is actually a very broad term.

It does include a house or it does include cash, but it also includes anything else that one might place in high regard. So a treasure can be anything. You can treasure your reputation so much. You can treasure your family so much. You can treasure your nation so much.

You can treasure your education. There's so many things that we treasure in this life. We might treasure our looks and the way that we have decided to present ourselves to the world. And we treasure that so much so that If there's any variation, we can't go outside, we can't relate to people, we're embarrassed. So often you can find the trail to your treasure by what you're embarrassed about, what you worry about, what you work on, what you focus on, what causes you to labor.

You can find your treasure that way, and it's not necessarily money. There are many people who really don't care that much about money, but they care greatly about other things. Whenever you find someone who doesn't care about money, you always find them. They care about something greatly. There is treasure somewhere in someone's life.

So he begins with a prohibition, And then we have to understand what he means by treasure. He's not just talking about money. Do not lay up. And then these two words are so important to understand what Jesus is teaching for yourselves. Lay up treasures for yourselves.

Now we know that God does give treasure to some people. He does. In fact, the Bible says that He is the one that gives you the power to gain wealth. And so that may happen to you, but the question is, do you view it as for yourself? Is it your own?

Did you desire it for yourself for your own reputation, for your own comforts? Did you desire and get it for your own self-aggrandizement so that people would think well of you. And that's what Jesus has been dealing with all along. Don't give alms so people will think well of you. Don't pray so people will think well of you.

Don't fast so people will think well of you. There's an entirely different kingdom that is meant to be served. And so, he's identifying these kinds of treasures that his disciples need to be aware of. And so here we are, we are His disciples. And here the Lord Jesus is among us.

The voice of Jesus Christ is in His Church to dampen our zeal for the accumulation of various kinds of treasures for ourselves. And that's the key interpretive point, for ourselves. And so there's tremendous danger here for us. There are terrible traps because these things can engulf our whole lives and become the driving force of everything, of how we talk, how we look, how we spend our time. And Jesus is going to take us down to our innermost being, to the things that we worry about.

So he's laying before us this whole matter of treasure, so that we can think about what it is that we treasure. And are we laying up treasures for ourselves? Now, treasures can be neutral, like money can be neutral, But the problem is that we are not neutral. We have a sin nature. So, treasures in the hands of sinners is dangerous because we are handling these gifts of God, whether they be family, whether they be a nation, whether they be the wealth that God has allocated to us by His own sovereign hand, whatever it might be, we have to recognize that whatever we handle is dangerous for us to handle because of our sin nature.

It's not the thing that's dangerous. It's our love for it that is dangerous. And so Jesus is telling us here that these matters of treasure are lethal matters for us, because they can be so lethal that they would actually destroy our souls in hell. And so there are two kinds of treasure here. There are treasures on earth and there are treasures in heaven.

And so as we consider this as a church together, My big prayer for myself and for all of us is that somehow we can take steps forward in this area, that we would become more building treasures in heaven and less building treasures on the earth. I'm not confident if in a given day we can spend every minute of the day for treasures in heaven. But the Lord by His Spirit can bring us back. He can reel us in to see the world the way it really is. So that we wouldn't be the kind of people that we would end up having lived and done so much and thought so much and worked so much that we would have nothing left at the end of our lives.

That's what it means to have treasures on the earth and treasures in heaven. And so he begins to explain why. He's first warned us, he's spoken of the real issue that they are for ourselves. He says, and then he tells us why this is so important, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. And so he's coming and he's showing us the end of all things.

He's taking us sort of to the end of our lives and showing what it might be. That you've labored and you've talked and you've lived so much and at the very end you have nothing left to show for it." And here Jesus is desiring to save his disciples from living an irrelevant life, to get to the end and have it take their breath away, that they had done things for the wrong reasons. And notice there are three things that he identifies to help us understand what happens to treasures on earth. Moth, rust, and thieves. Those are the three things.

Moths, they come in from the outside and they eat it away. Rust actually becomes part of the object and eats it away from the inside in a sense. And then thieves, they come and they just take it all away. So Jesus is kind of giving an accelerating understanding of what he's talking about to help us understand what the world is really all about. Every single thing that you own, everything that you have, is decaying.

It will come to nothing. It will be eroded, corroded, eaten, and finally completely taken away. And so this is why Jesus would be so clear to dampen the zeal of His disciples for these things, because in the end they all are passing away. And So we have to think about our lives that way. Even our bodies are that way.

Our bodies are passing away. And some of you who are in your teens and 20s don't quite understand what that means. But it means that your bodies are going to be not as beautiful as they are now. And finally, when they lower you into the grave, if you die of old age anyway, there really won't be all that much beauty left physically. This is the way that God has designed the world.

And you better understand that really early in your life or you will spend your whole life wasting yourself on how you look, how you appear, and If you're working for those kinds of things, you'll find that there will be thousands and thousands of wasted hours in your life as you try to prop up the various things that have become your treasures. So here, Jesus is saying that they are eroding and corroding and being eaten and they will finally be stolen, which means that we shouldn't get too attached to them. We should not be, we should not worry about them too much Because they are on the way out and they will finally be destroyed. So in verse 20 he says, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. So there are things that don't pass away.

There are things that are eternal in the heavens. There are things that you can devote yourself to today that will last forever, and you will not be wasting your life. Now, that's an enormous encouragement, because if we were just left with decay and corruption, then what would we do? We would have to say, eat, drink, and marry, and be married for tomorrow we die. That's how we would have to live.

Well, and that's how most people do live. But here, we're actually given an alternative in order to lay up treasures in heaven. And so He's been speaking about how you lay up treasures in heaven already. You do it by your giving of alms. You do it by your prayers.

You do it by fasting so that you're setting the prisoners free, so that you're advancing the spread of the gospel, so that you're dealing properly with the poor. And you're casting your bread out on the waters, and it's multiplying, and it is eternal in its significance. So Jesus doesn't leave his disciples with the discouraging message that everything is going to destroy. He says, no, that there are treasures in heaven. So we are either at any given time laying up a one of two kinds of treasures, because there are only two kinds of treasure.

There's treasure on the earth and treasure in heaven. So this should be a principle that should just guide everything that we do. No matter where we are, no matter what we're doing, this is the most important question. Where am I laying out my treasure? And you can ask yourself that question at any given moment in the day or the night.

And so it's a wonderful help because Once you ask that question, then the Lord has submitted His Spirit to you to instruct you, to help you. He's given your word to know whether you're directed properly or misdirected. So we up, lay up treasures in heaven. And then he says in verse 21, For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. So Jesus now begins to go deeper in the matter to help us understand a principle about treasure.

And that is this. You can always know what your treasure is by examining your heart. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. It's wonderful to see the clarity that Jesus brings to us to help us understand. How can I know whether I'm laying up treasures on the earth or treasures in heaven?

And I can know by what my heart treasures. That's how you know. All of us can examine our hearts and say, what do I value the most? What is it that I worry about? What is it that I spend my days doing?

What are the things that I'm strategizing about? And do these things involve laying up treasures in heaven or on the earth. So Jesus comes and he explains that these two matters, the two kinds of treasures, can be determined by the heart. And notice Jesus doesn't stop with the heart, but he speaks of something that is connected to the heart, and that happens to be the eyes. So he speaks of two different kinds of eyes.

In the same way there are two kinds of treasures, There are also two kinds of eyes. So he says, the lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness." So there are two kinds of eyes.

There's the single eye and then there is the double eye. There's the good eye or the bad eye. So what Jesus is saying is that you can know whether you're laying up treasures on heaven or on earth, by the way that you use your eyes, by the things that delight your eyes, by the things that your eyes love. We're wired in such a way that our eyes always take us in a direction. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The same thing with your eyes. What your eyes love, you will gravitate toward, and this will be your treasure. The Bible has much to say about the eyes. Job said, Why does your heart carry you away, And what do your eyes wink at? Job connects the two, the eyes and the heart together.

They are intimately connected. Proverbs 22.9 says, �He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he gives bread to the poor." So there's a kind of an eye that is generous, and when it encounters the poor, it blesses the poor. And The eyes really lead us in our lives. Where our eyes go is where we go. We sort of, we cast our gaze to something and Our hearts follow it like that.

You know, those of you who have ever taken a tactical driving course or ridden a motorcycle for any amount of time know that it really matters where your eyes are focused. For example, if you're riding a motorcycle and you're going between two posts and you look at the post, you're most likely going to hit the post. So you have to note, you can't, you have to take the post in your peripheral vision and put your eyeballs dead center between the two posts and you're more likely to make it you know without having hit the posts and so Jesus is using this illustration of the eyes to help us understand that we know is true and so many other other kinds of lot of of experiences in our lives. So Jesus here is bringing these three different categories to us. There's the heart, he's spoken of that, and then the eyes, and then he moves, moves to the will.

But these things here, these are the fundamental driving forces in our lives. These are the things that make us really who we are. Our hearts, our eyes, and then we'll get to this in a minute, our will, who we are serving, what master we are serving. This really makes up who we are. And, you know, if you would know anything about life, you have to know two things.

You have to know yourself and how you're wired. And you have to know God. Those are the two things that man needs to know. And here Jesus is speaking of the eyes, and he's saying the lamp of The body is the eye. It matters so much where your eyes go.

We also know from Scripture it matters what your ears hear. It matters where your feet go. But your eyes are so defining. This is why the whole teaching of Scripture about images is so important to us. Images are enormously powerful to us.

We have to be very careful at the images that we look at, because they take our souls in a direction. You can't look at anything without having it affect your soul somehow. That's why Jesus said, if your right eye causes you to sin, cast it from you. You know, it's more profitable for you to lose your eye. I mean, it's more profitable.

He's speaking about profit. And so there are ways that we use our eyes that are either for our profit or for our demise. And so Jesus is just continuing to explain how important The eyes are, as he already has earlier when he gave the illustration regarding adultery about the eyes. And so these three forces in our lives, the way they interplay with one another, are so important for us to understand. You know, you who are raising children now, you must instruct your children on the power of the eyes upon the soul.

And not only that, but all of the senses are like windows into the soul. And so what he says here is that, he says, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So there's a way about our eyes, our vision, which is either good or bad. But if our vision is clouded, if there are all kinds of things in the way, then we won't be able to see. Our eyes will be bad.

You know, My mother is getting ready to have cataract surgery next month. And with a cataract, the lens of the eye becomes cloudy. And by God's grace, wisdom has been given to doctors to know how to remedy that problem by actually cutting away that cataract that's clouding the eye and then putting something clear on top of it. And it's a wonderful illustration of what happens to the transformed heart, where when a person is converted and turns to the Lord, their eyes see things that they never saw before. The goodness and beauty of things just became so unusually wonderful to them because their eyes began to see.

I remember that so well when I was first converted. I remember just walking outside and just looking at a leaf was so much more wonderful to me because I was seeing with new eyes. God had given me new eyes. And here, Jesus is arguing for the purity of eyesight so that we're aware of our eyes, The things that our eyes love and the things that our eyes are attracted to, those things really define who we are. And so this dramatic interplay that affects the soul is what Jesus is speaking about.

You know, what the eyes see, the heart loves. What the heart loves, the eyes want. What the eyes want, the will does. And what the will does, the eyes just wants more of. So there's this interplay of the heart and the eyes and the will that Jesus is instructing his disciples.

They have to be wise about the way that they're wired. Jesus is giving them a lesson about the way that they've been made and to unify them around this principle of laying up treasures that are in heaven. So let's move to this next matter of the will, beginning in verse 24, therefore no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Notice the central principle here is exposing the nature of the will. He says that he will hate one or the other, or he will be loyal to the one.

This is a matter of the will. How all these things actually activate the will, And then they make you do what you intend to do, all governed by your heart and your eyes. So he says no one can serve two masters. So again, in the same way that he has said There's two kinds of treasure, treasure in heaven and treasure on the earth, and there are two kinds of eyes. There are single eyes, totally dedicated eyes, and then there are eyes that are distracted by other things.

He now says there are two kinds of masters. And he continues this pattern throughout the gospel in different places as well. But he says, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one or love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. And remember that Jesus is speaking to his disciples and and he's and he's I believe he's speaking to a matter of sanctification, a matter of a matter of sanctification in the use of the eyes, the meditations of the heart, to help keep them from living in vain. And so he speaks of this disloyalty.

Now, he speaks of it in such harsh terms. We need to recognize that. That when we have slipped into building our treasures on the earth, we've actually done this right here. So it should shock us. Maybe it should shock us more than it does now when we find ourselves slipping into these moments where we are intentionally in our hearts laying up treasures on earth where Moth and Rus can destroy.

You know, Jesus is, I believe, trying to terrify his disciples with the truth to help them understand that there are only two kingdoms that are being served at any given moment, in order that they might flee to the only true and eternal kingdom. So he sets before them two kinds of masters. And he noticed the language that he uses. Well, there's the word serve, so that should tell us a lot. We do the bidding.

We are doing the business of that one master. And then he uses the term hating and loving. So they're serving and hating and loving. And so as we ask ourselves, am I building treasures on earth or am I building treasures in heaven? We have to ask ourselves the question that includes these three categories, the willing and the loving and the hating.

Those are the things that trip us up. Those are the things that cause us to sin. When our wills rise up and are moving in the wrong direction, it actually means that we are either loving or we are hating. We are hating the kingdom of God. So to lay up treasures on earth, while it might look so good, like you might be praying, you might be fasting, you might even be giving, you might even be working, but you can do that and still be hating your Father in heaven.

And so he's warning his disciples about this terrible reality that is upon us. And what he's saying here is that you cannot mix worldliness with godliness. They have nothing to do with one another. They have so little to do with one another that if you love one, you're hating the other and vice versa. There just is no middle ground at all.

And so Jesus is instructing his disciples about the whole matter of holiness and purity and single-mindedness with a single heart and a single eyes. And how this is the thing that he's trying to galvanize his disciples around, that they would love him completely and that nothing in the world could get in the way of their love for him at all. Nothing of their reputation, Nothing of their accumulation of wealth, nothing of their appearance, nothing at all, because everything is either loving or hating at a given moment. And so all of us, when we read this, we understand how short we fall in all these matters. And it helps us to understand just how depraved we are.

We are far worse off than we ever dreamed that we were, because in reality we are either loving or hating God at any given moment in our lives. And what that means is that Our need for salvation is so enormous. It's far more than we ever dreamed. Our sins are greater than we thought they were. And our need is far above what we ever dreamed it was.

And so there's only one way for us to be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven, and that is by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who became our righteousness for us, who took all of the punishment for our sins, because they are so great, they are so many, they are so daily. And so here, this is the heart of the gospel, that no man can serve two masters. He will either love the one or hate the other. And then he gives two kinds of different dispositions. Now, here again, remember what Jesus is talking about.

How do you know if you're laying up treasures on earth or treasures in heaven. Well, one way you can know is the way that you respond to the things that happen to you. Your very disposition shows you what kingdom you love the most. And so he says here, Therefore I say to you, Do not worry about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, or about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

So first of all, he says, therefore, notice, you know, Jesus is very logical. He's helping his disciples think sequentially about this. And now he says, therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. And so he's warning them about worry. When we're laying up treasures on the earth, we're worried about our treasures that are on the earth.

And He itemizes things about our lives, eating, drinking, and clothing. And he says, you know, life is actually way more than these things, but your Heavenly Father has already promised that He would give those to you, so you should not be worrying about those things. He's a good Father. He's promised to provide them for you already. You don't need to worry.

Why are you worrying about something that He's already devoted Himself to giving to you? And on top of that, Your life doesn't even consist of these things anyway, because your life is far more than that. There are treasures in heaven. That's what your life is all about. And Then he says, look at the birds of the air, and he gives an illustration.

And he gives a number of illustrations along the way between here and the time when he ends his discourse. But he gives the illustration of the birds of the air that neither do they sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them." So he talks about birds and how God feeds the birds. But if you've ever watched birds before, you know that they're constantly going about gathering food. They're not laying around waiting for food to show up. They're going after it.

And they're moving almost ceaselessly to gain food. But at the same time, while they're going to gain it, it's their heavenly Father that's feeding them. That's what Jesus is speaking about, His sovereign hand, in feeding His children. This is not an argument against work. It's actually an illustration how in the midst of our work, God feeds us.

And then he gives the reason why. He says, are you not worth much more than they? So set the birds aside. He feeds the birds. How much more will He feed you?

O you of little faith, as he says later. And so Jesus is comforting his disciples so that they don't waste their lives worrying about their daily bread or their clothing. Because life is more than that and also they are worth much more than the ones that He's already feeding. And so He's giving a natural illustration to help them understand. And then in verse 27, he says, and which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

So he's again saying, worry is such a waste anyway, because it doesn't change anything. Now, if there was a worry monitor here, if we could calculate the worries of everyone in this room, I think that we would find that needle just redlining it. When people come into a congregation like this, they come in with many worries and fears. All of us do. And here the Lord Jesus is trying to, as a body, as a church, to try to help us be a different kind of people than that, rather than a people worried about food and clothing and how God will provide for us that He would somehow free us from that.

He says it's totally useless. You are wasting your life, you're wasting your breath, You wife talking to your husband about this worry and that worry you husband ringing your hands about this eminent You know destruction that's hanging out there You know for you that is going to somehow destroy everything that you've worked for all of your life You are absolutely wasting your brain, your heart, your will, your breath, your time, everything. So just stop it. That's what Jesus is saying. Why are you worrying?

Are you not worth much more than they? And plus, it doesn't fix anything. Why? Because he's sovereign. Because he causes his reign to fall on the evil and the good.

He feeds the just and the unjust, and He is perfectly able to take care of you. I mean, think about this. How many years has He been taking care of you? Is there a track record? Has He proven Himself, like, over years?

How many minutes have you been alive? I mean, again, Jesus is saying all of these worries are completely useless. They're not worth anything. And they just distract you from laying up treasures in heaven. And so I wonder how much treasure in heaven is not there because we've been worrying about food and clothing.

Now, you know, you might say, well, I'm really not one of these rich people like those other people. Well, that may be your perspective about it. But I don't know if you read, two weeks ago, the U.S. Census Bureau actually released a report qualifying its position on poverty. And what they ended up saying was that while they've been claiming that there are 30 million or 40 million people in America who are in a state of poverty, that's actually not true.

Because all of those people, they say, they're living in housing, in modern housing, and these people have fallen into this classification, own two VCRs, and if they have children, they have Xboxes and all kinds of things like that. And they live in a modern kitchen with dishwashers and blenders and refrigerators and things like that. And they're not living in overcrowded conditions. And there's a list of about 50 things that the people who are at poverty stricken in America have. Their basic proposition was there actually aren't any people in America that fit poverty, at least not the food and clothing kind of poverty that's spoken of here.

So I'm just going to assume that all of us are enormously wealthy. We are the wealthiest of the world. If all you have to do is travel to another country and see it, We are absolutely the most wealthy people on the face of the planet, and at the same time worrying maybe more than all the other people on the face of the planet. Now what's that all about? Why are we doing that?

Why do we keep walking into this church every Sunday with all these worries hanging over our heads? Why are we doing that? Well, we don't understand God. Are you not worth much more than they? We don't understand how sovereign He really is.

That all of our worry can't add a cubit to our lifespan. You know, you're going to die on the day that God determines for you to die. There's nothing you can do about it. He will take you off the face of this earth the moment He desires it. So you can't add anything to your lifespan.

You know, you might actually think that you can do it through healthful living and things like that. And I don't want to make a big argument about that, but hey, the bottom line is this, when God's ready, I don't care how healthy are you, he's going to take you off this planet. I'm not arguing against a healthful life, eating right foods and exercising. That's not the argument I'm making. But the argument I am making is that all of your worry about these things cannot add a second to your lifespan.

So Jesus is just continuing to pile on these proofs of this, and then he adds another in verse 28. So why do you worry about clothing, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow? They neither toil nor spin. And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith?" So he gives this illustration of the lilies of the field, and the point is obvious, but at the very end of the sentence, he makes a statement that really helps us to understand what the real problem is.

Are you ready? Do you see it? O you of little faith. That's the problem. We have such a little view of God.

We have such a grandized view of the things of this world, and that's what it means to have little faith. We don't really trust God, like, that's consistent with His care, when he says, are you not worth much more than they? The problem really is a matter of faith. And so if you examine your heart and if you examine the gaze of your eyes and the motions of your will, then you should ask yourself, how is it that any of these things demonstrate a lack of faith? Because this is, this, this, he speaks that this is the heart of the matter, O you of little faith.

And then in verse 31, he says, Therefore, again, here's another interpretive key, as Jesus continues to make his argument and build it out and now finally he's coming down to summarize it. Therefore, do not worry saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For after all these things the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things." So, these are, you know, There are these two kinds of dispositions. There's faith and faithlessness. But also notice that he's also casting two other things in contrast, the Gentiles and you, the Gentiles.

All these things the Gentiles eagerly seek. So what he's saying is that when you're worrying like this, you're living like a Gentile. You're doing what the Gentiles do. Don't be like the Gentiles, because that's what They do. They're eagerly seeking all these things.

But you're different than the Gentiles. You have a different master. You have a different father. You have a different shepherd. You're not a Gentile.

You are a precious possession. You are what Paul in Ephesians says, His treasure. You are His treasure. And He is going to keep His treasure and take it with Him to heaven. So the Gentiles eagerly seek that.

So how often have you walked into your house and you've just talked like, thought like, lived like the Gentiles? Well, that's a futile way of life. That's a fast way to waste your life, is to live and think and speak and act and feel like the Gentiles. To respond like the Gentiles respond when they lose something. That's what worry is all about.

Worry usually happens when a dream doesn't come true or we're deprived of something we want, or we lose something. Have you lost anything and you're so worried about it? Have you lost it? Well, if you're worried about it, you're just living like the Gentiles. And your heart is telling you about your worldliness.

Your heart is telling you that your faith is little. And He's saying, oh, you of little faith, but come to me. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. You've been carrying the yoke of the world.

And it's a very raspy, unseasonable yoke. But God says, no, there's something far better. For after all these things the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knows." Let's just camp on that for a minute. Your heavenly Father knows. I mean, are you conscious of that, you know, even this morning, that He knows?

He knows everything about you. He knows your thoughts before you have them. He knows your steps before you take them. Like we read in Psalm 139, He's hemmed you in, behind and before. He's laid His hand upon you.

You can't go away from His Spirit. You can't escape Him because He knows. Your heavenly Father knows. Your heavenly Father knows. It's really enough for Him to know, because you might not know what's happening to you, but someone who does know is God.

This is why Jesus said to his disciples, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd leads his sheep. He lays his life down for his sheep. Do you think that, is it logical at all to worry when you think about you have a shepherd who has laid his life down for your greatest problem? Is it logical to worry about anything else in this life when you know that He is hung on a cross and taken all the wrath that you deserve?

Isn't it logical that he would take care of you. But here it says that he knows. He knows. He knows exactly how much money you have. He knows exactly how long your food supply will last.

But unfortunately, we have made such a god out of security that we worry about security and we have no business doing it. Our whole nation has made a god out of security. The whole insurance industry is based on it. Our whole government is based on the idol of security. And so we have been so baptized in this thinking, our minds have been so washed over and over again by this heretical doctrine of security that we are worried, even though we're absolutely the richest people on the face of the planet, we're still worrying.

Because we don't really believe that God knows. Our faith is faltering. Here we are together as a church family where our hearts desire so much to be reformed by God. Well, here's another area right here. You know, Scripture is sufficient to deal with your worry.

And here he's teaching us how to deal with it. And then in verse 33, as he finally brings it all together, But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." What are all these things? All the things that your Father knows you need. That's it. All these things that your Father knows that you need will be added unto you.

And if He deprives you of something, He does it for His own glory, for treasures in heaven, for more happiness this side of heaven. And so seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And then finally, the final therefore. Therefore, Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." You know, David said, I sought the Lord and He heard me and He delivered me from all of my fears.

And this is Jesus is preparing His disciples to deal with their fears, to deal with their deprivations, to deal with the times when they're hungry and the times when they'll finally be martyred, so that they would not be a people who had labored all their lives and laid up treasures on this earth where moth and rust destroyed and where thieves broke in and steal. So let's work on some applications here. First of all, how do you know? How do you know if you're laying up treasures on earth? And just to bring us back to it, we know by examining our hearts and our eyes and our will and our response.

That's how we know. Those things are designed to help us discern where our treasure is and where we're laying it up at a given moment. And so you would think Jesus would give you like a list of things, you know. These are the 10 things that are laying up treasures on earth and heaven. He's already said that you can lay up treasures on earth by praying and fasting and giving.

So it's not about being a religious person. It's something far deeper. It goes straight to your heart. It goes to where you are, sitting in your seat in the secret place, and you're saying, oh God, help me to see what my treasures are so that I can lay up treasures in heaven. So it's a matter, it really is a matter of prayer and crying out to God.

We're going to, you know, enter into the celebration of the Lord's table where we examine ourselves. That's part of this, to examine where we have strayed. You can start in this very room after we break up today. When we finish our time together as we're gathered as we are now, make it your aim to lay up treasures in heaven by making your conversation heavenward, by speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. It has to do with the very way that we interact together.

We, When we are finally gathered and can be together in conversation and relationship, we can be laying up treasures in heaven. What a blessing that is. In other words, we don't have to be just laying up treasures on the earth. We have an enormous opportunity right here when we're gathered. This is one of the beautiful things about the gathered church.

God has always gathered his people together in all times in history. He brings them together really to do basically the same things, to worship and to meditate on his word and to sharpen one other. This is what God has done. We are laying up treasures in heaven when we prayerfully are engaging one another for our own spiritual good. It happens every day.

You're laying up treasures in heaven when you're teaching your children. You're laying up treasures in heaven or on the earth when you're driving in the car. There's not a single square inch of the world in which treasure is not being laid up. And we cannot forget the prayings and the fastings and the givings that also lay out treasures in heaven that he's already explained. And so, you know, we're here before this passage of Scripture.

There are so many details and questions that we could deal with. But the thing that I want us as a church to really grapple with as we're together this morning is, are we a people who are bent on laying up treasures in heaven or on the earth? And my prayer is that God would help us to discern that individually, and that we would be a church that does nothing but lay up treasures in heaven. And this is our heart. This is the mark of our church.

When we gather together, this is the aroma that rises up to heaven, that His sons and His daughters are laying, are there amassing treasure in heaven. So that we wouldn't have this nice little church and get to the end of it and find that while we prayed and fasted and while we gave our alms and conversed with one another and met together that we were actually laying up treasures on earth and we had nothing left. What a tragedy that is. And yet what a kindness it is of God to show us what it means to waste your life so that you can avoid that and do something for the kingdom of heaven that will never, ever pass away. Let's pray.

Oh Lord, we're all aware how short we fall in these areas, and yet, oh God, that you would make us this kind of people laying up treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys Nor thieves break in and steal. Amen.