If I say the word cryptic, what comes to mind? Cryptic. What? Unclear. Unclear.
I think everybody’s unclear on what to say to that question. Cryptic. When I looked it up in the dictionary, it was like a mystery or something that’s hard to see.
And it reminds me of something cryptic and then that name is tied to something called cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency, I have studied it and read about it and I have friends who invest in cryptocurrency or Bitcoin and some people really believe they understand it but where is it? It’s not like gold that you can grab. It’s not like just reaching in and grabbing a card or grabbing some cash.
It’s just out there. It’s just kind of a mystery on where it is somewhere online. It’s not backed by any central authority.
It works within the group. It was originally had a set amount and when that full amount is reached, then it’ll be hard to buy into it. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a man named Stefan Thomas who’s from Germany and he was one of the early Bitcoin developers and he created a video to teach people about Bitcoin.
That’s probably very necessary, especially about 15 years ago when he created it and in return for creating that, he received 7,002 Bitcoin for it and at that time, it was worth about $220 million and now it is actually worth $140 billion. Now unlike a lot of treasures, Bitcoin is, it’s kind of a mystery. Where is it? How does it get its value? How do we see it? We don’t see it on the New York Stock Exchange.
We don’t see any currency issued by the federal government. What is it? It’s an interesting kind of mystical treasure. Now some people would say the kingdom of heaven is like a hidden treasure too.
It’s a hidden treasure that we don’t see, we don’t understand, but Jesus in Matthew 6 really implores us to invest in the kingdom of heaven. Maybe you’ll get a street paver from it, a brick for the road in the kingdom of heaven and it’s a mystery when people see that and we invest our lives and our money and our actions into the kingdom of heaven. It’s somewhat of a mystery.
But Jesus says that we will be rewarded by our Father. Today is the last day of our series from the Sermon on the Mount, chapter six in Matthew. We talked about the importance of secrets, that sometimes things are just between us and God.
We don’t have to go tell everyone about everything between us and God. We talked about how our lives should be and our prayer life should be for an audience of one. It’s not necessarily for anyone else, but we need to have an audience of one whenever we pray, even if we pray publicly.
We have one person in the audience we pray to and that is God. Last year we walked through the, last week we walked through, seems like a while ago, we walked through the Lord’s Prayer and we saw a lot of core values of the faith in there too. Today we’re going to look at Matthew 6, 19 through 24 and we’re gonna see the core value of the hidden treasure that we have with God.
Will you stand as you are able and we’ll look at verses 19 through 24. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. 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. No one can serve new masters for either he will hate one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God, thanks be to God, amen. You may be seated. When I was in college at the team that won the football game of the state teams yesterday, okay, the marketing class I took, one of the things I’ll never forget from that marketing class was what is the most important thing to do with marketing? Which is still the case today.
It’s location. What’s the second most important thing? Location. What’s the third most important thing? Location.
I heard that a lot in college. Location, location, location. It’s like when we were looking at places for where we were gonna plant the church, location was a key part of that and how that worked.
Just like if somebody is going to put in a new Chick-fil-A, location is important. If somebody is going to put in a Lowe’s or a Home Depot, neighborhoods build up. When they put in a Lowe’s or a Home Depot, neighborhoods build up around those places and those become new and thriving areas.
Jesus said to us regarding our lives and our treasure, location is an important thing for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Now he says, do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moss or rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal. Moth, what’s the problem with a moth? What can a little moth do to your possessions? If you have fine clothing and a moth comes in, how’s your fine, oh, it becomes holy.
So maybe that’s a good thing. If you have rust, what he’s talking about there are the joy people have with precious metals and keeping them and how metal can rust. Or just if thieves break in and steal it, it’s something of value, earthly value.
Now, if we have instead treasures in heaven, how do you build up your treasure in heaven? It’s an interesting concept, it’s a little cryptic on how to do it and the world around you isn’t going to see it that well. Jesus said this in Matthew 13, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. The man found and covered it up.
Then in his joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. That field, it doesn’t say that field had some great land for producing crops. It doesn’t say that field had some great grassy areas for cattle or for sheep or for something else that could make money on that.
It says he found this treasure, this hidden treasure so he bought all the land around it and poured everything he had into that. And Jesus is saying that’s what we do. I mean, we’ve talked about this a lot throughout this series that the first and greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength.
Everything that is in you, we are to love God. So if we are gonna buy a field with treasure in it and spend everything on it, Jesus is saying our whole lives are supposed to be centered. God is supposed to be the center of everything.
Every dollar we spend, we give it to God. Every dollar we make, we give it to God. We trust in God with that and we build up treasures then that are in heaven and not necessarily on earth.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The location of your treasure tells us where your heart is. How much do you treasure God? How much is that treasure that we have in God a core value in your life? And where is that seen and how is that lived out? According to arkhaminfo.com, Stephan, who we know received the 7,002 Bitcoin, he’s pretty wealthy from that, except he lost his password.
He cannot find, you know, Bitcoin is a mystery in and of itself, let alone if you lose your password, it’s another mystery on how to get to that and he doesn’t have that and he wrote it down. He used something called Iron Key and Iron Key gives you 10 attempts at your password and after those 10 attempts, you’re cut off. Now, according to this article, he’s tried it eight times so he’s got two more tries or it’s going to cut him off.
Jesus goes on to say that the eye is the lamp of the body so if your eye is healthy, the whole body will be full of light but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness and he closes that by saying if the light in your darkness, in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? All that glitters is not necessarily gold or heavenly pavement. All that glitters is not necessarily what you need in your lives. When I was in, you know, a senior in high school and then on into college, I worked as a stock boy at a place called Gibson’s.
It’s kind of like a tiny, a smaller version of Kmart or something. There was an Ace Hardware in there. We built a lot of grills and slipper slides or swing sets and those kind of things and we stocked shelves and once a month, there would be in the paper in the Clay Center Dispatch which was the biggest newspaper volume you could ever imagine.
We had something in there called a tab that was a whole sheet in color of, what the specials were at Gibson’s. And so when there were new specials, it was up to the stock boys to take those boxes and empty the cans of peaches or whatever it was that were on sale and we would put them on an end cap and where in the store do you think we would put them? In the back, no special ever went in the front by the checkout stand. So in order to get to the special that brought you into the store, you had to walk by everything else.
Impulse buying was something that stores are really good at dealing with and now online stores are good with impulse buying. Oh, you like this? Here’s some other things you might like. Thank you, Amazon.
And they would come back and they would see other things. So instead of coming to the store to buy that one great special on the peaches, they would end up with a whole cart full of stuff because they would see everything on the way. Sometimes in our lives when Jesus says the light that comes into your eye either produces light in your body or darkness in your body and sometimes we see things that glitter and they distract us.
They distract us from our relationship with God. They distract us from what is most important and we forget about what we treasure and we go down other paths and other aisles in life and those things take our eyes off the true prize and our true prize is Jesus and what Christ has done for that. We’ve been singing about that all morning.
That those things that distract us and instead of looking right where we’re at, we just sink just like Peter when he took his eyes off of Jesus when they were out on the water. Finally, Jesus says no one can serve two masters for either he will hate one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
This weekend, Colin, my youngest, and I watched a movie and I bet a lot of you have seen this movie. It was called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Has anybody ever seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? This happened to be the newer one with Johnny Depp and we’re watching it and the thing that happens in the Chocolate Factory, all these kids are invited in and they’re supposed to go in and there are things they can do and there are things they aren’t supposed to do and all but Charlie does things they aren’t supposed to do like there’s a river of chocolate.
You can eat all the candy on the ground but that has to be sanitary so you can’t eat that and so a kid was eating out of the river of chocolate and then he got sucked up in the tube and they were done. Jesus in Matthew 6 says over and over, you know, where if you want, if you give to make yourself look good, if you pray to make yourself look good, he says if you stand on the street corner and tell people about Jesus just to make yourself look good, he said you’ve received your reward in full. Now in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as soon as he received his reward, that river tasted great.
How many of you ever drank out of a river of chocolate? See, you’re missing out. But that was the reward. That’s all he got.
I mean there was a greater reward in store for anyone who would be more selfless in the end but Jesus says there’s a greater reward in store when we take our whole lives and use our lives to love God, when we make following God a core value of our lives and our treasures are in heaven instead of here and we choose to serve God instead of money. I mean if we don’t choose to serve God, we end up serving someone or something and money can run everything in our lives but if we choose to serve God, it’s much different. In order to do that, when we’re searching for hidden treasure, we have to dig a little deeper.
You know that feeling of if I would’ve just dug a little deeper, I might’ve found that treasure. Sometimes it takes work to follow God. It takes more than what we see on the surface to find treasures that are built up in heaven.
We dig a little deeper and we can see that. Jesus said in Matthew 20, the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. The class that I’m teaching at Collins School on leadership and it’s really a lot about life skills.
This chapter two that happens to coincide really well with core values of faith is on character and one of the big emphasis of it is to have a servant’s heart. One of the greatest ways to build up treasures in heaven is to have a servant’s heart. If you wanna be like Jesus, you come to serve and not be served.
When we are served, we get the reward in full but when we serve others, we build up those treasures in heaven and we build up something that is of a sustaining value. Now, Bitcoin has made a lot of people rich in a short amount of time but the nature of it has many people locked out of their Bitcoin fortunes as a result of lost or forgotten keys. They have been forced to watch helpless as the price has risen and fallen sharply, unable to cash in.
Of the existing 8.5 million Bitcoin, around 20% of that appear to be lost. Or stranded wallets, there are millions and billions of dollars out there that are just lost. Now, just in case you’re wondering, the point of the sermon today, I don’t always have to stop and do this but the point of the sermon is not for me to say invest in Bitcoin.
The point of the sermon to say is sometimes it’s a mystery, sometimes we don’t understand the rewards we gain by following God, by trusting in Jesus, by taking our whole lives, our family, our households, everything we make, how we earn it, what we do with it and giving it to God and trusting in God and making sure that what we have is a servant’s heart in all that we do, that we serve the kingdom and God in what we do and it’s a mystery because we don’t always see the rewards for that. We don’t always see how that is paying off, we don’t always see how many lives it can impact if we trust everything we have and everything we are to God but when we build up those treasures in heaven, when our heart is with God, that is where our treasure is and when we put God before everything in our lives and trust that God will do amazing things when we step out in faith, our treasure in heaven is more vast, it won’t rust, it won’t get holes in it just because something has holes doesn’t mean it’s really holy and it won’t, can’t be stolen from us. Our faith and what God gives us can’t be stolen from us and we’ll be rich beyond anything we can ask or imagine with heavenly blessings.
Some of that we’ll see today, some of it we may not see for a long time but that’s where when we put our heart with God, we build up those treasures, let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you so much for all that you have blessed us with. We pray that we have a heart to serve, we have a heart to love and we trust you with everything, with our homes, with our lives, with our money and we ask that you would guide us and that we would put you first above everything and make that a core value of who we are in you and who we are in this world and that we could be excited about everything you have in store for us, especially the rewards and the treasure that we build up.
In Jesus’ name, amen.