Matthew 6:19-34
I. INTRODUCTION
A. WE ARE ALL ACTORS
This is my fourth sermon from the Sermon on the Mount – called the greatest sermon ever preached. As such it has many parts that have made it into our culture, but usually just as a caricature of the richness of what Jesus taught, and very few people have any idea of the flow of thought He expresses in it. It has been titled “The Manifesto of the King”, for in it Jesus describes what the
What was Jesus doing with these seemingly contradictory statements? This was the opening salvo of a manifesto designed to shake up the hearers to their very cores. It was like the doctor saying “you have one week to live” before beginning a more detailed diagnosis. The goal was to bring people into his kingdom. But it was not going to be easy, because (first of all) it was going to require a change in their hearts (which they, like we, were utterly unable to bring about themselves without divine help) and (secondly) to get them to that point He was going to have to smash all of the wrong, human ideas they had erected around themselves to (ultimately) protect themselves from that very need. He was talking to people just like us – self-righteous people, denying their own need for salvation by touting their good deeds (or at least lack of certain bad ones) and their religious good works. It is a natural state of the fallen human condition that deep down we not only see ourselves as beacons of virtue but that, really, we kind of think that God is lucky to have people like us.
In the face of all this (Jesus, after assuring the crowd who were assembled to hear him speak that He was not going to make up a new religion but exactly fulfill the one that they said they believed in) proceeded to do a full diagnosis of their condition. In the rest of chapter 5 He dismantled their self-righteousness by pointing out that even if they had some control over their outer actions, they still were sinners in their hearts. They might not have committed murder or adultery but they were angry and hateful to others and they “committed adultery in their hearts” when they looked lustfully at another. This was NOT the type of sermon that they were used to getting from their other rabbis, who mostly told them to follow the law and assured them how much better they were than others because they were religious and that they had the law that the gentiles did not have. Against that Jesus ended the chapter by saying that they were no better than the gentiles who did not have the law, and that the real standard was nothing like what they had set for themselves: “[Mat 5:48 ESV] You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Imagine what they were thinking by this point! But what is the next point people rest upon to “put God at their debt” and secure their own self-righteousness? If “good deeds” are not enough to cancel out our sin before God, what would those first-century Jews turn to? Religion. So (as we saw last week) Jesus then turned to that false pillar of assurance next, calling them by a Greek term which meant “actor” (one who wears a mask and/or pretends to be something other than he is) – hypocrite. They were still trusting in the outward, without being aware of the inward. Yes, they were doing “religious deeds”, but their chosen audience was wrong. They were working for the approval of men rather than God. They were giving to the poor, but making a big show of it. They were fasting, but making a big deal before others about how hard it was. They were praying, but it was
- repetitive, formulaic prayer, not talking with God but throwing lots of fancy words at Him
- used more like a magical incantation than communication
- centered on themselves and their wants rather than on God’s glory, will, and kingdom
- not done in faith of God’s goodness – not with any assurance that He was good and know what was best.
In all three of these cases Jesus gave the same formula: Those who do their good deeds in secret (before God, the audience of ONE, the only audience that matters) would get their reward from their “Father who sees in secret”. Those who did their deeds to be seen by men already “had their reward”. Again imagine how his audience might feel at this point. “Jesus! What are you saying? You are a religious teacher! You should be telling us how to “do religion” better! They must have seen his teaching, which was so at variance from what their other religious teachers told them, as confusing – as upsetting the status quo. But remember that Jesus said that he did not come to do away with the law, but to fulfill it. As king David had so eloquently expressed it in his great prayer of confession:
Psalm 51:9-17 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
We might join the people of Jesus’ day and say “But wait! I DO do my religious deeds for God. How can you say that I don’t! How dare you say that I don’t! Wouldn’t that make sense? We might point out “hey! I didn’t have to go to church this week. There’s a lot of cool things I could have been doing, but I chose to be religious and go to church!” But if we say so, we would be missing the point of Jesus’ criticism. Nonetheless, it stings. But, as anyone who has been saved by a surgeon knows, sometimes the doctor must cut us open to save us from sicknesses hidden inside us. He does not do this because he is a “negative” person, does he? He does not cut you with a scalpel because of hate for you? No, he does it with your welfare in mind. Jesus explains in the next section of his sermon why their religion was still not good enough when he talks about serving two masters. Let’s turn to the text for today, which will be the second half of Matthew, chapter 6 (starting at v19).
One more thing should be said in introduction before getting into the next verses. I titled this sermon “The Secret of Happiness” because at it’s heart the theme of this sermon is happiness. In fact, the word happy is repeated over and over at the very start of the sermon as Jesus introduces the character of the kingdom. Does your translation say “blessed” instead of “happy”? Either translation works, as the word translated there is an interesting one. Makarios comes from the word “macro” and was a word that the ancient Greeks used when describing their gods. “The blessed ones were the gods. They had achieved a state of happiness and contentment in life that was beyond all cares, labors, and even death. The blessed ones were beings who lived in some other world away from the cares and problems and worries of ordinary people. To be blessed, you had to be a god.” The word later was used for the dead, who were beyond the cares of this earth, and finally for the rich upper crust who, because of their great wealth and influence, seemed to be above (and immune to) the cares of the poor and downtrodden. But Jesus appropriates the word to describe members of his kingdom. THEY are the makarios ones. This matches what He said to his disciples after the Lord’s supper: “[John 14:27a] Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.” The world gets peace from circumstances. Our English word “happy” describes that, since it is derived from the root for “happen”. When things go well, just about everyone is “happy” and when things are quiet and uneventful they are “peaceful”. But when things go wrong, “happiness” and “peace” evaporate. In this section, Jesus now turns his evaluation of the broken human heart around and leads the people back to practical steps for real happiness. He does this by (as always) leading them back to an experiential, moment-by-moment relationship with God (rather than things) and to faith and trust in the Father’s ultimate goodness.
IIa True Security – The Right Place
One of the older maxims we all have heard is “you can’t take it with you”. A corollary of this is “you never see a U-haul behind a Hearse. Some have tried. The ancient Egyptian pharaohs filled their ornate tombs with golden treasure, food, and many servants, but the tombs have been raided and their goods (and their bodies) now reside in museums or in the caches of tomb looters. The millionaire who was buried in his fancy car is accomplishing nothing but ruining its nice upholstery with his decomposing body. And yet we continue to seek after the treasures of this earth to the exclusion of the heavenly. How stupid it must look to heaven, as we offer up the lame excuse “well, I’ll get around to God when I’m old”. Unfortunately the more we put off building up a treasure in heaven, the less we will want to do so. Jesus says why:
Matt 6:19-21 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.
In other words, each time you choose one or the other, you make a deposit in your heart. Just like a bank, your heart pays “interest” (see what I did there? J) and it is much harder to change direction after going in one direction for many years. Solomon, at the sad end of a life pursuing worldly treasures and pleasure, implores people to “remember your creator in the days of your youth”, because everything “under the sun” is “vanity and striving after wind”. John Piper introduces his book “Don’t waste your life” with the following anecdote [p45-46]
Jesus says three things here:
1. v19: don’t trust temporal/physical/earthly things because they are wholly unreliable – they will always let you down.
2. v20: trust in heavenly treasures because they are ultimately reliable. In the end, their trustworthiness is based on the trustworthiness of God himself, which is appreciated through faith in Him (remember Heb 11:6)
3. v21: we must do this because any other choice will rot our hearts.
IIb True Security – The Right Perspective
And, as we will see, we must be concerned about the state of our hearts (and our perspective on life) because it will determine our ultimate happiness, but in an eternal sense and even in a practical sense here in this life. Jesus continues:
Matt 6:22-23 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!
Here Jesus continues to shine a light directly into the human heart. (God knows us so well!) His meaning is clear: in the physical body the eyes are our windows to see the physical world. If we wear the proverbial “rose colored glasses” we will see the world differently than if we looked at it through very dark lenses. In the latter case the world would always look dark. But Jesus is not talking about the physical here, but in a metaphor. When our way of looking at the universe – our frame of reference is wrong and not God-honoring, we will draw all of the wrong conclusions. The word translated “bad” (if your eye is bad) can also be translated “evil”. Not living the life of faith, centered around God, is described by Jesus as having a “bad eye”. We sometimes use the term “he has a jaundiced eye” to describe the person (we all know someone like this – maybe ourselves?) who insists on seeing everything in a negative light. Maybe you even go out of your way to give them a compliment, but they can always find a way to turn it into a criticism. It is our natural tendency for all of us to do this about God. Whenever anything happens in our life we say “why did God let this happen??” or “if I was God I wouldn’t have done this!” The prophet Malachi talked about how much God hates this kind of talk:
Malachi 2:17 You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, "How have we wearied him?" By saying, "Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them." Or by asking, "Where is the God of justice?"
The opposite of this is again the wisdom of Hebrews 11:6. God often does not fill us in on his plans, but we know (or should know) that He is good, and that “his faithfulness endures forever”. We have the promise of Romans 8:28:
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
IIc True Security – Undivided Service
But why do we insist on seeing things wrong? Why do we have a jaundiced eye? Because, as Paul pointed out in Romans 1 – we “worship and serve the creature rather than the creator”. God gives us good gifts and we take them and love them rather than, or at least more than, the one who gave us the gifts. But God’s gifts to us are meant to draw us to Him and tell us about his goodness, not for us to take in exchange for Him! Even those who appreciate the giver must realize that loving God 90% and the gifts 10% is still an insult to God. He expects nothing less than 100%, and our love for things or even other people flow through and from our love for Him. In this He is glorified and nothing less will do. I love my wife so much I constantly have to make sure I am not loving her instead of the one who so lovingly gave her to me. I should love God more because of her, and if He should decide to take her home tomorrow and leave me here I hope to be able to thank Him for the years that we were given and love Him all the more.
Matt 6:24 "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.
Here Jesus boils down his argument to a simple dichotomy. In a way the entire challenge of the SOTM comes down to this statement. He asks the people listening to Him “who are you really serving?” There is no 50-50 service here. God will neither share us with the world nor abandon us to the world. But this is out of love. The world is a terrible master! If we trust in the things of this earth, what are we trusting in? Our own omnipotence? We aren’t omnipotent. Do we control the world? We are hurtling through empty space on an 8000 mile wide ball of rock with a paper-thin mass of air clinging to it because of gravity, riding tectonic plates over molten rock and orbiting a gigantic nuclear inferno that would swallow our entire planet if it could, with scarcely a burp. Do we trust our health? None of us will make it even to 150 years old. Even Jack Lalane, who at 88 years old regularly ran through muscle beach, saying “I have never felt better in my entire life” died of old age just a few years later. Many don’t live past infancy. We have created neither our physical strength or our mental proficiency, and, as one radio commentator used to point out “we will all die of our last illness”. So our health is a lousy lord. How about national security? How many previous civilizations with strong armies have fallen? (All of them) How about money? Can we rely on that for security? This gets to the heart of the rest of the chapter. Because money is the worst of all. Paul wrote “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”. Money is not evil in itself, but the love of money is always evil. Why? Why is loving money so dangerous to the soul?
- The love of it destroys us: [1Ti 6:9-10 ESV] 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
- It is unreliable. Solomon wrote [Proverbs 23:4-5] 4 Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. 5 When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.
- It is idolatry. The commandment says “You shall have no other Gods before me”. Some versions capitalize money (or Mammon) because in this case it is really being described as an alternate deity to worship and serve.
- It ultimately is our substitute for trusting God. We want money because it gives us a false sense of security (but really gives fear) and because we won’t have to trust God so much. Remember the “rich young ruler” who came to Jesus asking “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus knew his heart and his pride, so He played along, telling him several points of the law to keep, to which he replied that he had done all these things. Jesus then exposed his heart by saying “one thing you still lack – give all you have to the poor and come, follow me”. The offer was genuine, (it says that Jesus loved him) but the man went away sad. In the end he was not willing to trust that God could take care of him – he wanted riches and righteousness. If money had not been his master we would now know his name (maybe there would have been 13 apostles?) Jesus went on to say that it was hard for a rich man to enter the
IId True Security – Trusting God
Having laid the ground rules, Jesus now gets to the practical part of this section. Interestingly, the key word of this section is “worry”. Worry is the opposite of happiness, especially the concept described by “makarios” in ch5. Worry is our reward for trusting in this world rather than in God, because no matter how much we have, we know that we could lose it all in hundreds of different ways, and deep in our hearts we KNOW that it is stupid to love it. But we are just like a teenager who can’t wait to get out of his or her parents’ house so we can be “free”. At some level we trade true security for hardship so our hearts can be allowed to say “you’re not the boss of me!” (at least, quietly to itself).
Jesus, however, now paints a positive picture, not a negative one. The Savior now woos those living without trust in God. (We are all actually guilty in this area – admit it!) The one who says in chapter 7 “ask and you shall receive” expresses his love for us and offers us the life of joy and peace – if we will only stop submitting to the terrible mastery of “earthly things”. Three times he will say “Therefore, Do Not Be Anxious”!
Matt 6:25-30 25 "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious 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? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Jesus says not to worry about all of the physical things that we worry about – health, food, and clothing. In his first therefore (which means that it flows from the concepts he has just discussed) he tells us not to worry about these things:
- because they are not the main things in life. There are more important things that make life significant.
- because God loves you. This is an argument from the lesser to the greater: God cares for animals – if He does that how much more will he take care of you
- because you have no control over any of it – you can’t change your lifespan by wishing
- because if you had faith in Him you would know of his love and not be anxious.
Matt 6:31-32 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
Jesus repeats his command not to worry, this time limiting his talk to provisions for life, food and clothing. He points out that those who don’t know God are forced to spend all their lives worrying about these things because they have no hope. You, he says, should be different because
- God is your heavenly father (in chapter 7 Jesus talks about mere earthly fathers and asks whether a human father would give his hungry child a stone to eat when he is asked for bread? If a human father gives good gifts, how much more your heavenly father?
- God is not ignorant of your needs. As a matter of fact He knows what you need better than you do. “But I wanted a sports car and a big house with a Jacuzzi!” Think again about how you respond lovingly to a toddler’s refusal to eat anything but ice cream for all meals.
Matt 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God
I remember these being the words of a popular chorus in youth group years ago, and they are the culmination of the thoughts in this chapter. The key word of verses 32 and 33 is “seek”. The Gentiles seek after these things, but you only need to “seek” after one thing – the kingdom of God kingdom of God
Then Jesus gives his final “therefore”:
Matt 6:34 "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
This is not a promise that there will be no trouble! Only that God’s grace to handle trouble is only given out one day at a time. He does not give out the grace to handle tomorrow’s troubles until tomorrow. What does this mean? It means that if we worry about tomorrow’s troubles we are trying to get an advance of grace from God that he will not loan us. But that is not a bad thing – it is a source of comfort. Many people like to quote the adage “God will never give us more than we can handle”. But there is NOWHERE in the Bible that says this, and it is demonstrably false. God OFTEN gives us more trouble than we can handle. But, as James puts it:
James 4:6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
We get trouble to drive us back into the loving arms of God, where all the grace we need is there for each day’s troubles. We are not to worry about future days because they belong to God, and if we are seeking his kingdom and his righteousness, all that we need will be provided. God loves to be strong for us – he is glorified by this. Remember Paul and his “thorn in the flesh”, which God refused to remove from his life (though he prayed three times about it), saying
2 Cor 12:9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
To which Paul replied
“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
III. Conclusion
Interestingly, the Sermon on the Mount is also recorded in Luke chapter 6. The preceding section is not recorded in Luke’s account (which is a briefer summary of the sermon) but Jesus does repeat it later, in Luke chapter 12, in response to a man asking him for help:
Luke 12:13 Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."
As often happens, a family was in turmoil after the death of a parent. Someone unhappy with the disbursement of the family inheritance asks the visiting rabbi to intervene with his religious authority to try to get some of the money to which he felt entitled. Jesus not only refused to get involved in this petty squabble, but told a parable about trusting in things rather than seeking the kingdom of God
Luke 12:14-21 14 But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?" 15 And he said to them, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." 16 And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' 18 And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry."' 20 But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."
Where are you laying up treasure? Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. Be rich toward God! He is good, and knows what you need. Will you trust Him, or take Him for granted?
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