Jesus, Your Best Treasure: The Choice That Changes Your Life

Introduction

Sixth message in the Our Relationship with God series, this sermon is built on Matthew 6:19-24. The passage seems to be about masters, but Jesus is aiming deeper: he's talking about your desires. A good boss can make you want to go to work. A bad boss can poison your Sunday. In the world, you don't really choose your boss. But spiritually, your story is different, and the key is the realm of desire. Three things will be said: Jesus is the best treasure, he gives you good spiritual vision, and that lets you choose the best master.

Message outline

1. Jesus is the best treasure

Matthew 6:19-21: "Don't lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven... for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
An earthly treasure isn't a pirate's chest of buried coins. It's what you cherish, what you love most. Last Sunday, right after church, a man got out of a traffic jam in his Rolls-Royce and started wiping it down with a cloth while everyone else watched the lights ahead.
Earthly treasures aren't reserved for the rich. Dallas Willard said it well: even a homeless person has treasures they carry with them everywhere.
Even someone who thinks of themselves as non-materialistic has treasures: family, nature, rest, politics. Plenty of intangible things still become treasures.
How do you know something is your treasure? You think about it often, you pour your energy into it, your pleasure, your money. And above all, anger flares up when someone dares touch it.
Jesus invites you to another kind of treasure: something that can't be stolen, destroyed, or leave you. Like the whole Sermon on the Mount, this passage builds on what came before: prayer and fasting (Matthew 6:1-18). Treasure in heaven starts there, in prayer and fasting. It's the manna that comes down from heaven in the person of Jesus Christ.
Psalm 90:14: "Satisfy us early with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days." A choice, but also a moment of focus where you receive his presence like manna for the day.
The greatest treasure is the King himself: Jesus, who gave his life to redeem you, who took away all your shame. Then comes his kingdom, because the sermon opens with "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 5:3). It's an upside-down world that radically changes your perspective.
A treasure in heaven can be a conversation with a friend about Jesus for the first time. A moment when you understand something in the Word for the first time. An answered prayer. A mission work. Something that can never be taken away.

2. Your desire decides your life

Theologian James K. A. Smith insists on the importance of love: what we love drives us in life. Despite all our constraints, in reality you do what you want, you live your life the way you want. What steers your motivations is what you love most, what you picture as "the good life."
That's the whole basis of marketing: to sell a rug, you have to convince someone their life will be better with that rug, and that the price becomes trivial next to the good life it promises. The power of desire is enough to steer an entire life.
That's why Jesus asks you to stop and examine what's underneath: what excites you? Where is your heart carried toward? What is your treasure?
The apostle John echoes the same observation in 1 John 2:15-17: "Don't love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father's love isn't in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn't the Father's, but is the world's. The world is passing away with its lusts, but he who does God's will remains forever."
Instead of "desire," the text speaks of lust: that deep craving for something that doesn't belong to you. Lust of the flesh (what is sensual), of the eyes (what looks beautiful, what makes you feel good), pride of life. If all your love is poured into these things, the Father's love isn't in you, because all your love is directed elsewhere. And the tragedy is that everything in the world is passing away.

3. He gives you good spiritual vision

Matthew 6:22-23: "The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"
An unhealthy eye obviously isn't nearsightedness. Yet the picture still fits. Think of the kid in elementary school who can't follow the lessons, who gets moved to the front of the class, until the day the eye doctor gives him glasses. For the first time, he sees the board, and all his problems clear up.
The spiritual eye refers to your desire. Never forget: everything in the Sermon on the Mount builds on what came before. Jesus is tackling the same problem from another angle.
The apostle Paul describes it in Colossians 3:5: "Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry." All these things named go together with desire, and they land in idolatry.
If your vision of the good life is getting all your earthly treasures to the point that's where your heart is, then your spiritual vision is sick. That's why Jesus talks about great darkness: your whole life is steered in that direction.
On the other hand, if the eye is healthy, fixed on what is above, you have an entirely different direction for your life. Colossians 3:1-3: "If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."
Here we touch the very core of these heavenly treasures: the resurrection. Your hope as a Christian isn't in this world. Read the passages about the new Jerusalem: its streets are paved with gold, as if to say gold means nothing there. Picture someone who worshiped cement: "I need lots of cement in my life!" That's the folly of loving money, in the new Jerusalem.
What Jesus wants to bring out: in the resurrection, everything temporal will disappear. If your focus is guided by his love, your spiritual vision is corrected, and his Holy Spirit can work in you to produce what he's been aiming to produce all along. Your life was so full of other things, like a garden: before you can even plant, you have to pull the weeds.
This is also the work of the Holy Spirit working on your heart. Wonderfully, you have a Father in heaven who loves you, who is patient with you, who takes his time, who walks with you from A to Z through this process, and who always does quality work.

4. Choose the best master

Matthew 6:24: "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one and despise the other. You can't serve both God and Mammon."
When the Holy Spirit is in you, he corrects your spiritual vision and even gives you the ability to choose what is good and avoid what is evil. You can't choose your boss at work. But when God is your God, you can choose your master.
Why is money such a terrible master? At its base, money is neutral: it's a necessity in this life. But when it shifts from neutral to dominant, whether through a hunger for more or because the bills won't stop piling up, it becomes a fickle and harsh master.
Very practically, money doesn't pray for you, you're the one praying for money. Money can be stolen, mismanaged, used unjustly. Two people do the same job and one earns more than the other: that's unfair, that's fickle. The hope you place in money always feels hollow, even when you're winning. And why? Because of the resurrection: the moment you pass from this life to the next, all the gold will be nothing but paving stones. No long-term value. It's not the best choice.
Serving God is a far better investment for the long term. The Father sent his Son to redeem you from certain death, and that alone would have been enough. He poured out his love on you so you would become a child of God, and that alone would have been enough. But he goes further still: he equips you for his service with a power to do things that are recorded in eternity. He invests in you to make you better. And finally, he fills your life with the beauty of his presence, which touches everything in your life, even your trials. That's why you can say: he satisfies your soul. He is by far the best master. Amen.

Key takeaways

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also: the question in Matthew 6:21 isn't philosophical, it's diagnostic.
Your treasures aren't first and foremost material: family, nature, rest, politics, anything that triggers anger when touched is a treasure.
Your desire decides your life. What you call "the good life" steers all your motivations, like an inner marketing campaign.
The spiritual eye is your desire. If your vision of the good life stops at the earth, you're walking in great darkness, even while trying to be a good person.
You don't choose your boss at work. But when God is your God, you can choose your master, and money is a fickle master next to a Father who satisfies your soul.

Personal application

Try the anger test: what one thing, if taken from you today, would trigger a disproportionate reaction? That's one of your earthly treasures.
Where do you pour your energy, your money, your idle thoughts when no one's watching? Write it down honestly for seven days and compare it with Matthew 6:21.
What is your vision of "the good life"? Write it in one sentence, then reread 1 John 2:15-17 and Colossians 3:1-3. Where are the gaps?
Prayer and fasting (Matthew 6:5-18) are presented as the soil where heavenly treasures grow. What place do they actually have in your week?
This week, take a morning moment (Psalm 90:14) to receive God's goodness before your earthly desires take the wheel.

Scriptures cited

Frequently asked questions

What does Matthew 6:21, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also," mean?

Jesus is saying that your heart follows your treasure, not the other way around. In other words, your deepest desires reveal what you truly cherish. An earthly treasure isn't first and foremost money: it's whatever you love most (family, success, comfort, image), to the point of pouring your energy into it and getting angry when someone touches it. A treasure in heaven, by contrast, can never be stolen, destroyed, or leave you: it's Jesus himself, his kingdom, the lives touched by the gospel.

Why does Jesus talk about the eye right after talking about treasure?

Because the Sermon on the Mount builds on what came before. For Jesus, the eye symbolizes your desire. If your vision of "the good life" stops at earthly things, your spiritual eye is sick and your whole life walks in great darkness, even if you're otherwise a good person. If your eye is fixed on the things above (Colossians 3:1-3), your whole life takes a different direction, and the Holy Spirit can finally do his work in you.

Practically speaking, how do I serve God rather than money when I have bills to pay?

Money isn't evil in itself; it becomes dominant when it shifts from neutral to master, whether through a hunger for more or because you can't make ends meet. The way out isn't quitting your job, but deciding who your master is. Money doesn't pray for you, it can be stolen, it doesn't satisfy your soul, and it doesn't follow you into eternity. The Father, on the other hand, has redeemed you, adopted you, equips you for his service, and fills your life with his presence, even in trials. Refocus your desire on him every morning (Psalm 90:14), and let him progressively correct your vision.

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