Where Your Treasure Is, There Your Heart Will Be Also

So this morning's text deals with the question generally of how to live like a Christian. We all live in this world and nothing is really as it should be. Not in our homes, not in our marriages, not with our kids, not at our workplace, not with our finances, not with our extended families, not with our health. Nothing's really as we would like it to be. There's no area of our life where we wouldn't say, you know, I think I could make this a little better. And so this morning, we're going to talk about how... how to negotiate that tension. One of the things that God gives us to help navigate that tension is new hearts. When we become Christians, Ezekiel tells us that he takes out our hearts of stone and he replaces them. He gives us hearts of flesh. He changes our desires and our affections. Not all at once. It's not like you flip a switch and it's all different. There are some things that change right away.

But he takes out a hard, callous heart that's unaware and uninterested in the things of God and replaces it with a soft and a tender heart that over years becomes more and more tender to the word of God, to the things of God. And this new heart growing and maturing is given to us sort of as a down payment or a surety to encourage us and to strengthen us to continue in our walk. And so the question before us this morning is, what helps do we have in this life beyond a new heart? that needs cultivation, and also what hindrances do we face in our walk with God. Our text this morning shows us how to cultivate and to shepherd our hearts through this life. And so my hope is that God will help us to store up our treasures in heaven and not here on earth. Would you please stand now as you read the word of the Lord? This is Matthew chapter 6, verses 19 to 21. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy.

and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now, up until this week when I've studied this or thought about this passage, I've often thought about it in terms of the rust and the moth and the thieves. being the problem. And they are a problem. And we're told that they exist here on earth, but that they don't exist in heaven. But as I was thinking and praying about this passage and what our needs were as a church, what would be helpful to us, and if this is a distraction to you, my daughter was sleeping on me, so it'll dry. I just noticed it. I don't know that the moth and the rust...

And the thieves are really the problem here, are really the focus of this text. I think actually the overarching theme or the thing that's being addressed is our hearts, but really what we're being taught is how to work with our hearts, how to address our hearts, how to cultivate them. And what this passage doesn't say is store up all of this treasure you've got on earth and spend your life fighting off the moths and the rust and keeping the thieves away. Rather, I think there's a difference. In the treasure. That there's earthly treasure and there's heavenly treasure. And this passage isn't telling us simply to take the treasure that we have on earth and store it somewhere else. Where we get a better protection policy. It's actually telling us that we're to leave aside one type of treasure in favor of another type of treasure. That earthly treasure and heavenly treasure are not the same thing. What's valuable here and now is not valuable in heaven.

And so what is valuable on earth? What are the things that we seek after? When we wake up in the morning, what is it that we're seeking to protect? What do we care not get torn up or stolen or ruined? The question we should have before us is, will this go with me to heaven, whatever this is? We should note that the things that are susceptible to attacks by moth or rust or thieves, are all things that can be taken away from us, all things that we can have and all things that we can lose, and that none of those things are we going to take with us into heaven. When Job was afflicted by the Lord, early, early on in the book of Job, his body was afflicted, his family was killed, his wealth was destroyed. The thing that I think any of us would admit would be the most fearful thing that could happen to us, to lose the things we've worked for and especially the people we've loved.

We'd say there'd be nothing more terrible than that, nothing more tragic. And Job's response to all of this happening is, naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And then right after that it says, in these words, Job didn't sin. He didn't sin with his lips. And so this thing that Job says here is very instructive and very helpful to us. It talks about treasures. Job had the sort of treasures. that we seek after. He had the sort of things that make up life on earth. And then they all got taken away. Then he lost all of them. And Job's response, at least at this time, was a good one. As he went on and as he sort of settled in what had happened, Job went from a good response to a bad response. But here in the beginning, we're instructed in how we should respond to adversity or what sort of backdrop or context we should have the things of this earth in.

I think the word that describes Job's response here regarding the treasures of this earth is humility. It's simply humility before the Lord. Job understood and professed here that earthly treasure is not the sort of thing that can be taken into heaven. If you listen to any songs about heaven or any songs about when we get there, that place, what are the treasures of that place in the music that you listen to or in the stories that you read? Isn't it all the treasures of heaven? Don't we all want to go to heaven so we can get back the stuff we lost here on earth? Is that the treasure of heaven though? We all go, no, we know it's not the treasure of heaven. And I go, okay, all right. Stay on that thought for a minute then because Jesus tells us to store up treasure in heaven. And if that's not the treasure, then we should be careful in how vigorously we pursue it and how adamant we are that we have to have it.

Now there's a danger in what I'm saying. I know some of you don't like it. I know at least my wife doesn't like when I talk like this. She just says, you don't appreciate anything about this world. And in one sense, you're right. In another sense, you're completely wrong. In one sense, she's right in that I'm not often surprised when bad things happen because of the way I grew up. But I also know how much, when you don't have something, how much you... want it and how much you will not let it go and how much you just are determined to exert yourself to have it. And I see that in myself and I see that as a danger and I see that as a hindrance to living a godly life. Because if we live like that, Jesus warns us that where our treasure is, that's where our heart will be. And I have in my mind that my treasure shouldn't be here on earth as much as I want it to be. And I think that you do too.

that we want our treasures to be here on earth, and we want them to be the same treasures of heaven. And whatever treasures of the earth that we didn't get here on earth, we expect to get those too when we get to heaven. But the treasures of the one are not like the treasures of the other. They don't translate. They're not worth the same thing here as they are there. When the rich man had to decide what to do with all of his excess wealth and all of his grain, his answer was, what I'll do is I'll build bigger barns to store up more of my wealth.

to provide for myself for the rest of my life. And Jesus warns us and calls him a fool. You fool, did you not know that tonight your soul will be required of you? And what Jesus is saying there is this man had no treasure in heaven. He had barns full of treasure on earth, but when he died, all that treasure stays. It's interesting what people think about the afterlife. The Egyptians, you know, when they would bury their pharaohs, what did they put in the tombs? They put in all the treasures of this world. And the body was there, but the Pharaoh wasn't anymore. And where did all of the treasure stay? It stayed in the tomb until the thieves broke in and stole it. Or until the rust or the moth ate it up. So what do you want to take with you when you get to heaven? What do you have here that you think you're going to carry with you? It's a hard question. It's a difficult question because...

You think, well, am I supposed to not want anything? Am I supposed to not care about this life? Am I supposed to just be uninterested in the provisions for myself or for my family or for my kids or my grandkids? No, that's not what I'm saying. All I mean to say is you have to attend to those things. To be told not to store your treasure up in heaven is not to say that you have to live without any acknowledgement that you have a world that you have to live in and you have people that you're responsible to provide for. These things are not in conflict.

The problem is not simply do you have things in this earth. The question is what is your heart's relationship to those things? Are they the things that make you happy? Are they the things that give you comfort? Are they the things that protect you? Scripture even tells us that wealth is a protection, that it's a hedge, that it protects us. But do we as Christians have no other protection besides the wealth of the world? You remember last week in my sermon where I was talking about fasting and praying, going together, and Ezra praying? We need protection. And so he prayed and asked the Lord to protect them. And the Lord heard his prayer and the Lord protected them as they went back into the land. And so whatever protections there are in this world, two things are true. One, they're not better protectors than the Lord himself. And two, they will not protect us from the Lord himself. We enter this world without anything. Perhaps our parents have things, or our aunts and our uncles or our grandparents.

But each one of us comes into this world without anything. And then we spend our lives accumulating those things. And I think the difficulty of getting older is the diminishing utility of the things of this world. You accumulate money so you can have time, but then the time is fraught with sickness and burdens and responsibilities and, Lord willing, grandchildren. And so you don't have the time to go and be free and live it up. I remember when we went to Florida a few years ago. It's a strange place, Florida. It's a beautiful place most of the time. It was this weird place where there's all these old people, and they're all wealthy. I mean, wealthy by my standards. The amount of supercars I saw driving around down in Florida, it's just incredible. They have Mercedes and Ferrari and Porsche dealerships. We have Ford and Chevy dealerships.

And then you go out to eat and you look at how expensive everything is and you're just like, I think the people who live here have a lot of money or more than me. And I'm left being like, why in old age is this what, where the old people congregate, why is this what life is like? Well, it's because these are the treasures of this world. These cars, these experiences, this beauty, the amount of energy that's spent accumulating that sort of wealth and then maintaining that sort of wealth. And then spending that sort of wealth is incredible. I think I've told you before that when we went out on a boat, we went fishing and we were the fishermen's out throwing his net and catching the bait. And we're in this little cove and there's this house. And he says, that's a $40 million property. And that's a brand new house. What happened was the people bought it. They tore down the previous multi-million dollar house so they could build a new multi-million dollar house on the property. And my mind just can't compute.

That sort of thing. But that's treasure on earth. That is the treasure of this earth. To go live in a beautiful place and to have all of your needs and your desires met. But what happens when they die? None of that do they get to take with them. They can hire nurses to come into their houses because they don't want to go into a retirement home or an assisted living. They can hire people to come in and facilitate their independence. But one day their death will come, and all of the pomp and all the circumstance and all the riches will be left aside, and there they'll be dying. And the question then will be, do you have any treasure in heaven? You've stored up your treasures here on earth, but they're going to stay here, and you're not. Have you stored up treasure where you're going, or has your heart been consumed by the pleasures of this life and these worlds? These are the treasures of earth.

Jesus warns us not to store our treasures up here on earth. One, because they keep our hearts away from him. And two, because you aren't going to bring them with you into heaven. Jesus tells us that in heaven, the last shall be first and the first shall be last. It'll be interesting to see the humble people that are reclining with Jesus, like Lazarus. He was with Abraham, but you understand. That we would have looked at and said, man, who wants to be like that? Who've lived humbly? who've sacrificed, who've loved sinners, who've loved God. And there they'll sit. Maybe they'll still have their crooked teeth and all the things that they didn't care to address in this world because they were loving God. It makes me think of Jim Striedelmeyer, those of you who know him, who's battling with cancer. And he's a pastor downtown Indy that we met when we first planted this church. He's Arminian. He's...

Delightful. Just delightful. And he's preparing to go home to meet with the Lord. And he's lived in the poorest, roughest part of Indy. I remember when I talked to him one time, and he had an old beat-up van. And he had stopped on the road on 10th Street downtown, right outside his church, because the tire was flat. And so this was life. They carried a pump to pump up the tire. that you plug into the cigarette lighter and you know those things take forever, right? So he left the car, he left the van outside and he's got to leave it running so that the pump will work to fill the tire so he can drive the rest of the mile home. So he goes in the building and then someone comes running into the building and they say, Jim, Jim, somebody stole your van. And they didn't unhook the pump. So he's running down the, van's going down the road with a flat tire and one of those little pumps, you know, down the road.

And Jim comes running out, and of course his van is gone. Now, we laugh because it's not our car. Jim laughed, and it was his car. And he just thought it was the funniest thing in the world that somebody would steal his van and take it down the road with a flat tire. And he knew it was the druggies. He knew it was. And his immediate response was just a laugh. I mean, a good belly laugh. If you know Jim, you know his laugh. And he just roared about these people stealing. So then he goes home. He calls his wife and says, Honey, you've got to come pick me up.

Somebody stole my van. And they both laugh. And so they go home. And this is a rough neighborhood. And Jim, they call the police. But of course, are the police going to be any help with this? No. Well, Jim knows where the drug houses are in his neighborhood. So he gets on his motorcycle. And he goes around and he finds his van like two blocks from his house. And he walks up to the guys and he says, you stole my van. Give me my van back. And he gets his van back. Because they're all strung out on drugs. And the last thing they want is for him to call the police and come. So he just goes and he gets his van.

You know, and they bring his van back home. And it's probably the sort of van that none of us would be happy to drive. But Jim just didn't love this world, just doesn't love this world, at least not in the ways that I love this world, and probably not in the ways that you love this world. He thought that was the funniest thing in the world. And he could tell you story after story after story of things like that happening to him. And I think there's a man who has treasure in heaven. Would that we would be like Jim Striedelmeyer. If we're to be like Jim Striedelmeyer in some way, we're first going to have to answer the question, of whether or not we can't store treasure up in both places. Because that's sort of the fallback position, right? It's like, well, okay, I'm not supposed to do this. Okay, well, but maybe I could diversify. If you do that, where will your heart be? Will your heart have one foot in heaven and one foot on earth? Instead of asking, are these things mutually exclusive or do I have to give up one to pursue the other? Let's reframe the question and let's ask it this way. Is there actually any possibility?

of you not wanting to store treasure up on earth. Like if there's a danger, that's the danger. And these halfway measures are really just ways of being able to keep on doing what we're doing. And so until it's actually a possibility that we would not be providing for ourselves and seeing that we're cared for, that our family has the thing, until that's actually the danger that we're facing, Our attention and our energy shouldn't be spent trying to thread that needle, but simply saying, you know, I think I love this world too much. And when I get so worked up about this thing getting broken or that thing going pot or getting stolen or rusting or whatever it is, we should be reminded that if our treasures were stored up in heaven, we wouldn't be so concerned about it. And so to answer the question that I said is not a good question, which is, are these things mutually exclusive? The answer is yes.

And that's the danger of it, is that you've already made them mutually exclusive. And they will remain mutually exclusive. You will either pursue the one or you'll pursue the other. But you will not pursue both. I've met men who have treasure in this world, but whose hearts aren't bound to it. And they're extraordinary men. The Bible tells us that those sort of men, that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. than for them to enter the kingdom of heaven because they have so much temptation. And yet I've met men who aren't beholden to their wealth or to their treasure. And so the point here is not to say you have to take a vow of poverty or you have to be without any interest in providing for yourself. The question really is, what do you love? What do you love? And so Jesus warns us, if you love the things of this world, if you store your treasure up here, you won't have any treasure in heaven when you get there.

because you'll have wasted your life pursuing and building the wrong things. We all have physical needs, and in some sense it's laughable that we're so concerned that they be met. Whoever hated his own flesh? I mean, this is how Paul argues to husbands. He uses husbands' care of their own body, and he says, like, treat your wife that way, because who's ever not taken care of their own needs? We will take care of our own needs, our own physical needs. Will we take care of our spiritual needs? And that's the danger. that we'll neglect that care, that we won't store treasure up in heaven. So if earthly treasure doesn't have value in heaven, what does have value in heaven? It's not money and power and influence and all the things that we want to have in heaven. You remember the disciples saying, who's going to be greatest among us in the kingdom of heaven? There's just these things that we have here on earth that we want to translate into the next life. What does have...

value in heaven. What are we supposed to be storing up there? Money? If you are, I don't know how to do it. Power and influence? Perhaps if that's the thing to store up in heaven, then we all should be washing feet and serving and caring for the weak and the lowly and the poor among us, making ourselves the least of these. Another way of asking the question, what has value in heaven, is what pleases God? The things that please God are the things that will tend toward treasure in heaven. So what pleases God? Well, Hebrews tells us in chapter 11 that without faith, it's impossible to please him. That there's a prerequisite to storing up treasure in heaven. That not everybody can store treasure up in heaven, but only those who have faith. The only people who will have treasure in heaven are those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, that God is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. And so if we're to have treasure in heaven,

We have to love God. That's the only way to have treasure in heaven. So what is faith? Well, there's a couple of ways you can find faith expressed in your life. One is that you have faith in Jesus Christ. But I think a more practical and a more tangible day-to-day type of faith is, do you have faith to do what God says every day? Do you have faith to confess your sins? Do you have faith to forgive other people's sins? Do you have faith to trust God's word? Do you have faith to speak God's word? Do you have faith to say no to yourself and your desires? Or are you faithless? This question of our faith is foundational. If we don't have faith, we can't please God. But if we have faith, then our lives will be marked by that faith and they'll look different. Differently than the world. Differently than those who don't have faith. Ezra took off and went back and said, we're going to rebuild this place. And he had faith. And he had fear. And so he prayed.

I don't want you to think that having faith is this easy thing or this perfect thing or that it's the sort of thing that it's either you have it and it's simple and easy or you just don't have it and it just doesn't exist. Most of the time, us living by faith is a dogfight. It's just hard. You're always teetering right on the edge of quitting, of saying this isn't worth it. I'm not going to do it. I don't want to do it. I can't do it. It's over. Your strength is gone. Your intellect is... Not helping. Your endurance, no more of it. And it's at that point, and not until that point, that you'll really have to exercise faith. Faith isn't the sort of thing that sits on a shelf and we go, oh, look at that. Isn't that a nice thing I've accumulated for myself? Faith is the sort of thing that gets worked out each day of your life. You husbands with your wives and your wives with your husbands and your children and your siblings with your parents and with your brothers and your sisters.

And you, who employees with your bosses. I mean, every single day you're faced with the question of whether you're going to do what you should do or whether you're going to do what you want to do. And the danger is the insidious lie that we face is that doing what God calls us to do is of no value. And Jesus here tells us, no, it is of value. It's just not valuable here on earth. You're not going to get the return for it now. Not in the way that you'd like it and not in the currency of this earth. Have you ever been given something and all you could do was say thank you? Like you didn't, like you wanted it, you needed it, whatever. Someone gave you something. And like you couldn't, oh, you know, it's not like, oh, we're going to go out for lunch and, oh, you're paying for lunch this time. Okay, I'll pay for it next time. Not that kind of thing. But like you had a need, you had a desire, you had whatever it was, and it was provided for you. And all you could do was probably cry and just say thank you. I don't know what else to say. That gift.

is the sort of gift that, if it's given in faith, stores up treasure in heaven. Jesus tells us to give to those who can't pass back, to provide for those who can't provide for themselves, to share, to see needs and to meet them, to go without the things we might like or desire for the sake of others having the things that they need. That takes faith. That's the sort of thing that stores up treasure in heaven. Do you ever wonder if God sees that stuff and is pleased by it? Or is it all really just, Kind of just offered out to the ether to be seen or to be repaid. And God does see it. And God does remember it. And God does bless it. And gives to you all that you need. Sometimes having faith, and many times I think having faith at least has the element of patience and waiting on the Lord. Time and again, you're going to spend your life. You'll either like it or you won't. You're going to spend so much of your life waiting.

for God to act. You'll pray, and you should, and then you'll wait. And you'll act, and then you'll wait. You'll wait for God to provide for you the thing that you need. And it takes faith to wait. You remember when Saul, Samuel sent Saul off to battle, and he says, go over there, get ready. I'm going to come in seven days. We're going to make sacrifice to the Lord, and then we'll go into battle. Well, Samuel was running late. So what did Saul do? Well, before he offered the sacrifices, he got scared. And he decided, we can't wait anymore. Now, he blamed it on the people. He says, all the people are getting scared, but they were only getting scared because he was getting scared. And so he decided, well, I've got to do this myself. And at what cost? The final straw, his kingdom was removed from him because of that behavior, because he wouldn't wait for God to provide for him. And this really is a message that's antithetical or contrary to the essence of being an American.

We're all just going to do it. We are just going to do it. And if it's going to happen, it's going to happen because we made it happen. And it's one of the things we despise most about people who don't have that same, what's the word? I don't want to call it drive. There's a good thing about it, but there's also a dangerous part about it. That mentality, the impetus, just this is how it is. This is what we do. This is how we go about life. We don't wait on God. We don't trust him to provide the way we should. And so as a result, we don't store any treasure up in heaven. And so when we don't know what we should do, it's helpful if we know what we shouldn't do. And those are two different things. Not knowing what you should do is not the same thing as knowing what you shouldn't do. When Jesus was preaching and the crowds deserted him and he came to the disciples and says, who do you guys say that I am? And Peter says, you're the son of God.

So whom else should we go to receive the words of life? You alone have them. There's lots of things Peter didn't know at that time, like that Jesus was going to be crucified. Peter's the guy whipping out his sword. Peter's the guy who's fighting, and he's the one who's trying to do all of this stuff. There's lots Peter didn't know, but there was one thing he did know, was that there was nowhere else he could go and get help, because Jesus was the Son of God. And so he's like, well, we're with you. I know that much. I know we've got to stay with you.

Whatever other happens, I know this much. I've got to stay with you. Peter's heart was with Jesus. And so where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. It's almost easier to talk about where our hearts are at and what we should be, what we love. It's easier to talk about it than to do something about it. This passage doesn't say, if your heart's in heaven, your treasure will be there as well. What he says is, where you put your treasure, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. He talks about our heart as though our heart is a following, something that follows, not something that leads. When it leads, it doesn't lead well. It leads us astray. Jeremiah tells us as much, that our hearts are deceitful and desperately sick. Proverbs 4.23 says, keep watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. In another passage, it says that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Our heart.

When it's given the reins and it's allowed to lead, it leads us into trouble. You might want to quibble and say, distinguish between your heart and your mind. And I'd say, if you think your mind is what helps you make decisions, then you don't know your heart. I don't care how logical you are, how systematic you are, how engineerish you are, how much reason and logic you think you know. If you think those are the ways you make decisions, then you're an idiot. Because as soon as you get upset about something, all that logic is gone. Because you're upset or you're scared or you're worried. If your heart leads you around, you will go astray. So how do we keep our hearts corralled? How do we keep them in line? How do we shepherd them? Well, what Jesus tells us here is that we need to give attention, not so much to our hearts, but to our treasure. If we'll pay attention to where our treasure is at, if we'll pay attention to our behavior and to doing the things that are pleasing to God and not pleasing to ourselves,

to our flesh, that is, then our hearts will follow. If you have a child and your child doesn't like to eat vegetables, what do you do? We just don't feed them vegetables. They just don't eat vegetables. If that's what you do, you're harming your child. You feed them vegetables. You say, oh, I see. We're going to be having this every night this week. And you think, and it's so mean, but it's not. What ends up happening with the child that you say, no, we're going to eat this? In time, they grow to acquire a taste for it. Or at least they stop grumbling and complaining and fighting and digging in their heels and pushing their head away when you're trying to feed them. They come to go along. They acquiesce. And oftentimes they do actually acquire a taste for it. I never knew it was that good. That was avocados for me as a kid. My mom hated avocados, so I never ate an avocado. Guacamole was just this awfulest imaginable thing.

Until I tried it. It's like, oh, I don't think avocados are as bad as everyone's been telling me. We should think of our hearts the same way. Our hearts have to be shepherded. And when they've gone astray, and when they're kind of dug in, and when they're kind of like, I don't know, we just don't want to go do it. We should just go, okay, but here's the thing. That's not acceptable. That's not acceptable behavior. Because it doesn't honor God. Because it tends toward storing our treasures up in earth instead of storing our treasures up in heaven. So we're not going to do that. We're going to do this other.

And we're not going to worry too much about whether we enjoy it at the beginning. We're just not going to worry too much about it. Your kids don't like the greens when you feed them to them at first in the beginning. And if you jumped on them at that moment and said, you're going to eat it, you're going to like it, you're going to smile, and you're going to have seconds. What good is that? If they'll eat it, praise them. Thank you. You did a good job. Next time, it'll be a little easier. And the next time, it'll be a little easier. And after a while, they'll be happy to eat whatever it was they weren't happy to eat. Their hearts toward that thing will have changed. And so there's a way of being too scrupulous with your heart or thinking that your heart is not as corrupt as it really is. It actually is hard to keep your heart intact and in line. It's forever wandering away, this way and that. You can spend your whole life chasing that down and never pay any attention to what leads your heart, which is where you're storing your treasure up.

So if you're going to store your treasure up in heaven, and if you want your heart to love the things of God, then pursue those things. And if you don't feel like it, or you're not good at it, or it's not particularly interesting to you, that's okay, provided that you do it anyway. And what you'll find is that you'll cultivate habits over time, and that God will change your heart. In fact, I think it's often the case that God uses this sort of... methodology to train our hearts. That we think going into it, there is no way I could enjoy this. There's no way that this will be good for me. There's no way I can be content with this. But if we'll do it, God is merciful to us in changing our hearts and lowering the pressures and the temptations and the difficulties of doing it. And what we want to get to eventually is a habit of storing our treasure up in heaven. You husbands think how hard it is to be patient with your wife. I mean, it's just hard.

I know your marriages. I know your wives drive you nuts. Guess what? You drive your wives nuts too, okay? But here we are, and you're supposed to be patient with your wife. You're supposed to live with her in an understanding way. And I hope you and your wife both know that we'll never get to perfect. And we may not even get to where your wife thinks you should be. But so what? She's not the judge of these things. If you want to grow in patience, then you have to actually start being patient because it pleases God. Because he delights in it when you do that. Your wives, the same thing. You want to submit to your husbands, right? No. None of you want to do that. None of you want to say, okay, honey, every fiber of my being disagrees, but okay. That's not a natural thing. That doesn't ever come about just by the passage of time. That takes discipline. That takes saying, you know what? God is honored and God's told me to do this. I'm going to trust what he says instead of what my heart says. And you'll either...

discipline yourself in that way. And that really is storing treasure up in heaven because that's making you more like God. Who's patient with us? Who's long-suffering with us? And over time, you'll find that following your husband will be easier than it used to be. But you have to get through this initial battle. And by this initial battle, I don't just mean one battle. I mean, there's a season, there's a time where it's just going to be hard. And those are the seasons that take faith. and perseverance and trusting in God to help us where our strength and our wisdom fails us. These are the things that tend to store treasure up in heaven. We can't see it. Your spouse may not appreciate it the way you think they should. I did what he said and he didn't even smile. Sorry, I mean, talk to my wife. She lives with it every day. To store treasure up in heaven is simply another way of saying that you'll serve God and do what he tells you to do because you love him. And so give to those who can't repay you.

Forgive those who haven't asked for forgiveness. Seek out repentance and ways to discipline your heart so that it doesn't lead you astray. Serve God is a theme from Matthew 6. Serve God in ways that only he sees. That there's no other place to get a reward except from God because he's the only one who sees it. Lay aside your constant concern about how you'll get along in this world. In a few weeks, later on in this same chapter of Matthew 6, Jesus says, don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will care for itself. Who by worry can add even an hour to his life? There are these things that just I think are well suited for us as Americans. We just like to worry about our comforts being taken away, all the while being more comfortable than anyone has ever been throughout all of history. And so when I say don't worry about tomorrow, when I say leave aside your worry about the cares of this world,

Living like a Christian will feel crazy to you at this point because we're so accustomed to having those things, to having ourselves surrounded with the comforts of this world. And we need to come to start at some point to see those in our lives. At some point we should be able to say, I think this may be a hindrance to me storing up treasure in heaven. Somewhere, at some time, we should see that. These are just some of the things that we should be considering as we think about this passage. It's only Christians who will store their treasure up in heaven. And to do that, we have to set aside our worldly concerns. You will not store treasure up in two places because you can't serve two masters. So store up the sort of treasure that's not susceptible to moths and to rust. Like what can a thief do to gratitude? What can the thief do to humble service to Jesus Christ? Like what can the thief do to it? They can't take that away. It can't be taken away. It can't be diminished.

This is what it means to live like a Christian. This is what it means to come and to bring our hearts to a place that love God. Seek him where he'll be found. If you're a Christian, you're going to go be with him in heaven. That's where he's at. Seek him so that your heart is up there with him so that when you get there, there's treasure for you there that you've stored up during this life. Let's pray.