Fighting Treasure with Treasure

Matthew 6:19-21 & 24

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth . . . but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. . . . For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. . . . No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

This passage is all about learning to love and serve God for himself, and in secret, rather than simply having an eye on the main chance, either to show off by being so religious or to store up wealth (62).

“Heaven” here is where God is right now, and where, if you learn to love and serve God right now, you will have treasure in the present, not just in the future. . . . How can we do this? . . . Learn to live in the presence of the loving father. Learn to do everything for him and him alone. Get your priorities right (63).

A. Orendorff

If “celebrity” is the religion of choice in America, then its pantheon is food, sex and money. There are, after all, few “gods” that hold the universal sway of wealth. “Mammon,” as it is sometime rendered, grips our hearts and captures our imaginations with an almost irresistible power and vigor. Of course, the tricky thing about money is you don’t have to have it to be owned by it. Being broke doesn’t insulate us from idolatry. So what does? A better treasure, Jesus says, a heavenly treasure, one that can’t be lost or depreciate or fade away or be stolen. In other words, you can’t fight earthly treasure with pious self-denial. The only way to fight treasure is with treasure. We must, as the Psalmist says, “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8). We need a visceral weapon against a visceral enemy. What we need is to see, to know, to experience on the heart the superior treasure of “knowing Christ Jesus” before we can count the rest of this life as loss, rubbish, nothingness and dung (Phil. 3:7-8).