[0:00] Our Lord Jesus, preaching on a mountainside, says these words, Matthew 6, verse 19, and we're going to read through to 24.
[0:14] He says, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.
[0:30] For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
[0:41] But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? No one can serve two masters.
[0:52] Either you will hate the one and love the other or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. This is the word of the Lord.
[1:06] Let's pray. Let's ask for God's help as we study this morning. Our gracious God, your word is truth.
[1:17] And we want to ask for mercy this morning as we come to this truth. Because the mercy we ask for is that you would take it and you would embed it in our hearts. so that we might not just know it and understand it with our heads, but we might believe it and build our lives upon it.
[1:33] Show us your Son. Show us the glory of the Gospel and let us be changed by what we see. We ask for Christ's sake and His glory. Amen. So with all the conferences going on and the traveling here and there for different things, we're taking a two-week break from our Doctrine of Worship series.
[1:52] We'll be back in that in two weeks' time. And so I actually wasn't scheduled to preach this Sunday, but then through a series of events ended up here. So I thought, well, what can we look at together? And I thought this sort of fits in in a roundabout way.
[2:04] You can be creative in a roundabout way and make it fit into the largest series we've been looking at in worship. We're going to talk about being good lovers this morning, not what you might think.
[2:18] How do you make your heart love something? How do you make your heart love something? I think in contemporary culture today, we have this rather naive notion that love is not really something that you choose or that you grow in yourself.
[2:35] Rather, it is something that just sort of happens to you. Like you're just walking down the street and now you love somebody. The romantic movies that we tend to watch sort of convey this idea that love is this unchosen thing that comes to you.
[2:47] You don't get to decide where you set your heart's affections. If you think about something like, and now this is really, really old, but something like Disney's Aladdin. Is there a live version of this one?
[3:00] I've only seen the cartoon version. But if you think back to the cartoon version, when Aladdin gets his hands on the magic lamp, he meets the genie for the first time. The genie lays out the ground rules for the wishes that he can make.
[3:16] You only get three wishes. You can't ask the genie to kill anybody. And you can't bring back somebody from the dead. And then thirdly, he can't make someone fall in love with you, he says.
[3:32] So just think about that. Think about what that's communicating. The near all-powerful genie who can grant you wishes beyond your wildest dreams can't change hearts.
[3:44] He can't control who you love or who loves you. Now, that kind of idea about love, that is just simply unchosen and it just happens to you, that's a bit of a problem for us Christians.
[3:56] And I'll tell you why. It's a problem because the Bible tells us that the greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so you might sit here this morning kind of going through the motions and go, well, what if I don't feel any love for God?
[4:13] And that can be very disconcerting. What if my affections for him are dull? Even if I sincerely believe in him at an intellectual level, I'm like, I'm sold. I understand the arguments for the existence of God and the resurrection and all that sort of stuff.
[4:27] I'm like, tick, I agree with that, but I'm feeling a bit dead and cold inside towards him. What if my heart is not moved? How do you make your heart love God?
[4:37] Now, you will be very happy to know that if that is something of your experience, that Jesus takes a decidedly different view to the genie. In the middle of Matthew's gospel here, Matthew chapter 6, Jesus brings up this issue of investing in real treasure.
[4:54] And he basically says, you can either store up treasure that decays, or what you can do is you can store up treasure that lasts forever. And then he says a really interesting thing, which I don't know if you noticed in verse 21.
[5:08] He says, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Now, according to our contemporary culture, that's backwards.
[5:22] That verse is a mistake. It should be swapped around. It should read, where your heart is, there your treasure will be also. But Jesus doesn't say that. He says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
[5:35] And then in the preceding two verses, he just said, you and I, what we can do is we can actually go and store up that treasure. We can store up different types of treasure. That is, we can actually affect the orientation of our hearts.
[5:48] That fixed part of us that not even powerful genies, fictitious genies are able to, can apparently influence, or we can influence that. Through where we locate our treasure in life.
[6:02] So I want to speak about that this morning. This is part of Jesus' famous sermon on the mount. And he puts three illustrations out there that we read that help us to see how we can get our hearts to love.
[6:13] He essentially says you've got to be able to distinguish between good and bad in three key areas. You have to be able to, number one, you have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad treasure.
[6:25] Number two, you have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad vision. And then number three, you have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad masters.
[6:36] So treasure, vision, masters. That's where we're going this morning. Here's the first one. You have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad treasure. Have a look at the first illustration Jesus gives us.
[6:48] It's down in verse 19. He says, The original word there for vermin is actually a word that means decay or compose.
[7:27] So in some translations, it's vermin. In some translations, they even have rust because it's got that decaying idea. But the big idea is that, well, it doesn't last. Leave it for a period of time and it's going to go away.
[7:39] It doesn't last. Now naturally, I think we read a passage like that and a verse like that and we think of material treasure. We think of houses and cars and clothes, money.
[7:50] But I think this can basically extend to almost anything that is temporal in nature that we might then go on to make our treasure. There are a lot of non-material things out there that can become treasure too.
[8:06] Like relationships, like status, like pleasure, like peace. All of those things are temporal. And all of those things can be taken from you.
[8:17] So relationships end. Status can be taken from you through failure. Pleasure is certainly very fleeting when we do find it. Peace can be shattered through conflict of all sorts of varieties.
[8:30] Now a lot of those, as you think about a list like that, a lot of those non-material things are good things to want in some measure. Which means that when Jesus is using a word like treasure here, he must have treasure in an ultimate sense in his mind.
[8:50] Your sort of treasure of treasures. The thing you value most, your highest value. And so I think bad treasure then in this context is really anything that you value as your treasure of treasures that is both temporal and can be taken away from you.
[9:07] Don't store up that kind of treasure, Jesus says. So if that's a bad then, well what is the good treasure? In verse 20, it's treasure in heaven.
[9:20] Where moths and vermin do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. By contrast then, this treasure must be eternal. Not temporal. It must be a treasure that can't be taken away from you by others.
[9:37] Now I can just leave it there and you say, well that doesn't really help me much. I need actual details. I can spell it out. What exactly does that mean? The Apostle Peter is really helpful to us here. So in his first letter in 1 Peter later on in the New Testament, he has a lot of allusions to this section of Matthew's Gospel, to the Sermon on the Mount.
[9:56] In 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 3 to 5, he writes this to his readers. He says, Praise be to the God and Father, our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.
[10:16] This inheritance is kept in heaven for you who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
[10:27] So he tells us that if you're a believer, if you've received this new birth that he's talking about, this living hope through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus by trusting in that, then he says, well then you've got an inheritance if that's you.
[10:45] And notice where this inheritance is. And this is what ties back to our passage. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you. Now surely that is our life everlasting with God in the new creation.
[11:04] It's that great blessing that as Christians we all hope in and we hold on to. The hope of living in resurrected bodies free from sin, free from pain, free from decay, from rust.
[11:14] Living in a world that is free from evil, free from suffering, free from entropy where everything just breaks down all the time. But the even bigger blessing in all of this is who you get to be with in this new body, in this new world.
[11:32] And that is you get to be with God. Unhindered by your own sin, you get to be in unbroken intimate relationship with the God who is the source of all good.
[11:45] The God who is the source of all beauty, all perfection. Everything good in this life that we desire and that we crave is found and really fulfilled in Him.
[11:58] And then what we get is we get complete access to Him. It's a hard thing to think about, but it's an incredible thought when you think about it. Now that's the inheritance.
[12:10] That's the treasure that's been kept in heaven for you. Now that treasure never decays. It never rusts. Moths and rats can't nibble away at it. Nobody can take it from you.
[12:22] A thief can't steal it. A stock market crash can't strip it away from you. A debilitating illness can't take it. Even to some extent you and your own sinful foolishness can't undo and forfeit it.
[12:36] Contemporary hymn writers Matt Boswell and Matt Puppa, they wrote a hymn about 15 years ago called How Rich a Treasure We Possess.
[12:48] And this kind of really captures this idea. So the first few words of the hymn go like this. How rich a treasure we possess in Jesus Christ our Lord. His blood our ransom and defense.
[13:01] His glory our reward. The sum of all created things are worthless in compare. For our inheritance is Him whose praise angels declare. Our treasure is our God in heaven.
[13:16] Now how do you store up that kind of treasure? You can't earn your salvation. Christ alone does that for you.
[13:29] That's kind of the basics of Christianity. That's what makes the treasure actually completely theft proof. So storing up treasure in heaven is not about earning this great salvation with God in eternity.
[13:43] Rather I think to store up this treasure in heaven is to plunge yourself into the ways of God in this present life now.
[13:55] Emphasis on that word now. It's to consume yourself with growing in the knowledge of God and the study of His word now. It is to consume yourself with growing in communion with God through prayer and worship now.
[14:09] It is to consume yourself with growing in obedience to God through love and good deeds. Now. It's to consume yourself now in the present with all of those things. All of those things are consistent with what you're going to be getting.
[14:22] But because that is off there and you're over here and Jesus is saying store treasure now. It must be well how do I bring something of that into the present and that's how I do it. I get more of God now through His word, through worship, through obedience.
[14:39] Store up treasure in heaven. Consume yourself with the things of God. And here's what's going to happen I think. I think your heart's going to change if you start doing that stuff. Even if you don't feel it at first.
[14:54] If you continually consume yourself with those things I think your heart, the internal wiring of your heart that you think and that the culture tells you can't be changed. That is going to start to change.
[15:07] And it's going to start to untangle itself, its grip on those temporal decaying treasures. And it's going to start to wrap its fingers around the eternal God. And you're going to wake up one day and go, you know what, I do love God.
[15:22] In my heart of hearts, I love God. Friends, in our very busy, frenetic city lives, we are consumed with pursuits of all sorts of temporal treasures.
[15:34] We're on this sort of like high speed treadmill. Some of you literally, people like me, not literally, but we're all in this high speed treadmill that runs from the bed to the gym to the office to some sort of social engagement.
[15:53] Back to the bed, exhausted, and then the whole process just repeats itself the next day. And then when we do get any spare moments, we lie around and we are fixated on our mobile devices.
[16:08] Our eyes are fixated on our mobile devices. We're consumed. And God, well, he gets the scraps. He gets the sort of leftovers that we might have available. If we're not completely exhausted by Sunday, then we come to church.
[16:23] If we haven't got a more pressing or more enticing social engagement in the week, then maybe we go to a city group and connect with some other believers. We're consumed with treasures that rot and decay.
[16:36] In fact, I've learned a new term recently. Apparently, when you lie in your bed all the time and scroll, doom scroll, it's called bed rotting. So you are literally rotting. Let us not then be surprised that our hearts are not deeply wound to our Creator when that is the treadmill that we're on.
[16:57] That we then feel kind of distant from Him. That we come in here on a Sunday and we kind of figure something's just going to click. And I'm going to have these warm fuzzies towards God. If your heart is not moved in love for God, then you have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad treasure.
[17:15] And then you have to get on with storing up the good, Jesus says. Now that is going to require discipline. It's going to require saying no to some things and yes to other things. It's going to require planning.
[17:27] You won't just sort of fall into this. It's going to require effort. We don't earn our salvation, but boy do we strive to live consistent with the salvation that has been earned for us.
[17:44] It's going to require commitment. But I'll tell you this. When that love of God starts to bubble up in your heart, it's going to be so very, very, very worth it.
[17:57] Every drop of sweat, every sacrifice that you might make in pursuit of storing up that treasure is going to be so worth it. Because you are at that point getting the treasure of treasures.
[18:09] You're getting something that none of these other temporary treasures can offer you. And so you have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad treasure. And then get on with storing up the good.
[18:19] So that's the first thing I want you to see. Here's the second thing. You have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad vision. Think about it this way. Imagine if we could see with clear, clear eyes the treasure that we actually have in heaven.
[18:38] Imagine if we could see that. If only we could sort of like put on the spiritual windscreen wipers and clear out all the grime of our sin and human imperfection that blocks our vision.
[18:51] If we just had that crystal, crystal clarity, we would know in that moment, if we could see it clearly, we would know in that moment without any shadow of a doubt that our treasure in heaven is infinitely, infinitely greater than any other treasure that we can possibly store up here on earth.
[19:05] And so that's exactly where Jesus goes then. It's our vision. That's where he goes next. Verse 22. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
[19:17] But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? Now he uses, actually, it took me quite a while to read this and try and figure out exactly what he's saying here.
[19:30] Because he uses a strange metaphor. But he basically describes the body like a room. And the lamp in the room that brings in the light is the eye.
[19:42] And so if the eye is good, if the lamp is large and bright in the room, which is the body, well, it's full of light. If the eye is bad or the lamp is small or the glass around the lamp is dirty and dull, well, then the body, which is the room, is full of darkness.
[19:57] Now, that word that's translated there, healthy or good, depending on your translation in verse 22, is a really tricky word, quite a complex word. It can mean singular.
[20:07] Singular. As in singular vision. Singleness of purpose. Undivided loyalty. And I think most likely here what it refers to is that singular vision.
[20:18] Jesus knows that we need to see, we need to have that singular heavenly vision. We need to see it clearly, because if we don't see it clearly, we're going to get sidetracked by lesser treasures.
[20:31] And do an exercise, simple exercise. Some of us spend a lot of time on soccer fields. Some of you don't, because you don't like the greatest sport on the planet, but that's okay. Go to a soccer field. Go to the one corner of the soccer field.
[20:45] Try and walk diagonally from the one corner to the other corner, but only look two meters in front of you. Cover the top of your eyes and only look two meters in front of you.
[20:57] Do you walk in a straight line to the other corner? Do you even get to the other corner? But do the same thing with the corner flags there. Walk from one corner flag and stare at the other corner flag and walk towards that one.
[21:10] Do you get to the other corner? Do you get to the other corner in a loop, or do you get there in a straight line? You get there in a straight line. You need the same thing.
[21:23] You set your vision on what's ahead here. That's what Paul is saying in Colossians chapter 3. Paul says, Since then you have been raised with Christ. Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
[21:34] Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
[21:46] You want to get to glory. You want to get to this great inheritance that we've spoken about in a straight line. Then set your heart and your mind on things above, he says. Where Christ is seated. Have this singular vision for Christ and the things of God.
[22:00] I think Jesus is pretty deliberate here using eye imagery. And the reason for that is that throughout the Bible, we get this constant sense that sin blinds the eyes of the heart.
[22:15] It's one of the drawbacks of sin. It's that it takes the eyes of our heart and it makes them dull. And it blinds them to the true realities of God. Things that we intellectually know to be true and that we're actually pretty convinced of, often don't grab hold of our heart.
[22:32] With quite the same strength that they grab hold of our intellect. And part of the reason for this is because sin has made the eyes of our heart dull. And blind to these realities.
[22:46] Because when you're off and you're chasing all these other temporal treasures, and you have your gaze set in all these other sorts of treasures, to the point that that inheritance in God that we spoke about starts to get demoted down the pecking order, that will necessarily involve in you engaging in some forms of sin in different ways.
[23:06] And the minute you start doing that, what it does is it has a knock-on effect and it starts to now dim your vision of where the true treasure is. It starts to dim your heart and where true reality is found.
[23:18] The glory of God. So take work, for example. We've talked about the frenetic pace here in the city, but take work. Working hard is not a sin.
[23:28] It's commended in parts of the Bible. In the book of Proverbs, it's commended. Laziness is spoken against. So working hard is not a sin. But when building your career becomes the treasure of treasures in your heart, when making a name for yourself in your career, building up that status through your career becomes your singular vision, then very quickly you can take something like working hard and turn it from a virtue into a vice where you're now overworking to the expense of other things in your life.
[24:03] Your health, your family, your friends, your praise and worship of God. And what you'll do is you'll find yourself justifying that overwork by saying, well, look, I'm just a good worker.
[24:14] You know, people don't work hard enough in this country. If everybody worked as hard as I did, then the economy would be in a much better shape. And so you will feed yourself all sorts of lies and you will justify what you're actually doing. I've got much better ethics around this than everybody else.
[24:28] But there's a subtle shift there from good to evil, from holiness to sin. And once that sin is there, the presence of that sin distorts your view of God's goodness and His glory.
[24:41] And so even though you intellectually believe that God is all good and all glorious, your heart stops feeling that it's true.
[24:53] Because sin has darkened your vision of that glory. Martin Lloyd-Jones, a great Welsh preacher, puts it this way. He says, Sin blinds the mind of man to things which are perfectly obvious.
[25:07] And so though they are so obvious, man in sin does not see them. Sin blinds us to the relative value of things. Take time and eternity.
[25:18] There is no comparison between the relative importance of time and eternity. Time is limited and eternity is endless and absolute. Yet do we live as realizing these relative values?
[25:30] Is it not a simple fact that we give ourselves to things that belong to time and entirely ignore the things that are eternal? Is it not true that all the things about which we bother so much belong to a very short span of time?
[25:44] And though we know that there are other things that are eternal and endless, we scarcely stop to think about them at all. That is the effect of sin. Relative values are not appreciated.
[25:56] You see what he's saying there? There are things that we know to be true. You know to be true. But sin blinds us to the force of their truthfulness and the impression it makes upon our hearts.
[26:13] I mean, if I stood here and we took a poll, we could get out some sort of fancy device and make it a blind poll. And there were two options on that poll. Option number A, a treasure that is eternal, that moth and vermin do not destroy.
[26:26] Or option number B, do you want a treasure that is temporal, that moth and vermin destroy? Boy, I guarantee you, we're getting 100% vote for option A.
[26:39] Nobody in their right mind is going, well, you know what, I really want something that's going to rust. That's what my heart is said on. I want something that's going to rust. Every single one of us is going to go for option A.
[26:53] And yet for some strange reason, we will all go out tomorrow morning and we will very quickly become consumed by lesser temporal treasures, decaying treasures.
[27:06] The reason for that is that sin has clouded our vision. And so Jesus says we need a singular vision unclouded by sin.
[27:20] John Owen is a famous 17th century theologian. He was famous for writing about mortifying sin, killing sin. He would say stuff like, be killing sin before it kills you.
[27:34] Put it to death. And that comes straight from the Apostle Paul. Colossians 3, put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature. As Christians, we kill sin for a bunch of different things.
[27:48] Like people shouldn't kill in general, but this is one place where you should kill. We kill sin because it has a bunch of really good benefits for us. And one of the really good benefits of killing sin, a very practical beneficial reason for killing sin, is that sin clouds out your vision of the glory of God.
[28:05] It dulls your view of that glorious treasure. And so to the extent that you kill it, the better you see, the more singular your vision. Imagine you go up the road here and you buy one of those exquisite houses at the top of Klufnek, at the top of Higgo Vale, where you've got this incredible view over the city skyline and Table Bay and you buy this fantastic house and it's got this large living area at the front with a window that's almost the size of half of that wall over there, looking out over this exquisite view, but the window is covered in dirt.
[28:40] What is the first thing you do when you move it? You clean that window so you can see the exquisite view. Friends, sin clouds our view of our exquisite heavenly treasure.
[28:57] Sin is stopping your heart from seeing what it really is. If we want to see that more clearly, if we want to have that singular gaze, if you want good eyes, then I think we need to be people of introspection, we need to be people of confession, we need to be people of repentance, we need to be killing sin, exposing it in our hearts, dragging it out, putting it at the feet of Jesus, and he will kill it and he will forgive us for it.
[29:24] So you have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad vision. Then the third and final thing. You have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad masters. Jesus is not done driving this point home.
[29:38] He's got three illustrations basically saying the same thing here. Have a look at verse 24. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
[29:52] You cannot serve both God and money. Now he uses pretty strong hyperbole here. Love, hate, to awaken the sense of tragedy in us of what having the wrong master govern our heart would be like.
[30:10] We're all mastered by all sorts of things. I'm not going to take time to make that case. It's a pretty easy case to make. I made it in other sermons. But we spend our whole life in service of masters. We invest our greatest energy, our greatest effort, where we apply our greatest concentration and commitment.
[30:26] That's where your greatest master is. Now Jesus says, if your greatest master is anything other than the creator God of the universe, then you're in trouble, he says. You're in big trouble.
[30:37] Hence the stark language. Now who is your master right now? Do you ever stop and ask yourself that question? Like really ask yourself that question.
[30:48] Who is my master? You stick with the example of money that Jesus raises over there. Is God your master or is money your master? Don Carson, who's a New Testament professor, has a really great little book on the Sermon on the Mount.
[31:06] And in that he gives an illustration to try and help us think through this little exercise, a mental exercise. He says, two jobs become available. And for most of us, the weightiest factor prompting us to select the one over the other will be the salary, not the opportunity presented by each option to serve the Lord.
[31:26] So just think about a scenario like that. Who of you, if presented with two jobs, would have the opportunity that the job affords you to better serve the Lord in obedience and holiness as a weightier consideration than the salary.
[31:49] Now hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that the salary consideration is unimportant. It is incredibly important. I'm just asking the question, what is the weightiest consideration here?
[32:01] If the weightiest consideration in your sort of crunch moments in life is not how that something, that opportunity, that decision, whatever it is, might further your devotion and obedience and holiness and worship of God, well then God might not be your master.
[32:26] That's a pretty shocking thing to say, but Jesus seems to be pushing us in that direction. When you last moved house or accommodation, when you last considered a new job, when you last considered a romantic relationship, when you last considered when to have children or where to send them to school, when you made those kinds of larger impactful decisions in life, what was your weightiest consideration?
[32:56] You answer those sorts of questions honestly and I think you'll know who your master is. And listen friends, you really, really, really, really, really want God to be your master.
[33:10] More than you actually know. You want Christ to be your master. For the simple fact that no other master that you can think of or that you can give yourself in obedience to, no other master is going to die for you when you fail in service of them.
[33:28] The reality is that every single other master in this world is an oppressive tyrant when you kind of do the scooby-doo thing and you pull the mask off at the end. Demanding service from you.
[33:40] Ruthlessly demanding service from you. With no guaranteed promise of granting you what you actually desire and need in the end. Your other masters are not going to die for you.
[33:52] No master is going to come and he's going to cover up over your imperfections and your flaws in totality. No other master is going to come along and forgive you completely and never hold your sins against you.
[34:05] Money comes along. The master of money comes along and the money says to us, work yourself to the bone. Work yourself to the bone and you might get there in the end but there's no guarantees on that.
[34:18] God comes and he says because of the work of my son Jesus. Because of the work that he's already done you will get me in the end and all the benefits that come with that.
[34:36] And that's guaranteed. No earthly master can give you that. No earthly master can provide you with eternal life, eternal peace, eternal joy, eternal contentment.
[34:46] No romantic relationship can give you that. No career can provide you with that. No amount of health and wealth can deliver you those things. But God in Christ gives you all of those things in the gospel.
[35:00] That is the treasure that is being kept in heaven for you. the God who freely by his grace offers us this eternal treasure comes and he asks us for our undivided attention.
[35:17] And yet we we daily like ignorant fools we give our devotion to masters that give us temporal fading rotting treasures. Carson in his little book he makes this striking comment he says it is a poor bargain which exchanges the eternal for the temporal regardless of how much tinsel is used to make the temporal more attractive.
[35:44] Friends we are chasing decaying treasures that are dressed up in a little bit of tinsel a little bit of shiny stuff to cover over the rest. We're fools. And it is this relentless pursuit of these lesser treasures that is clouding our hearts and massively diminishing our experience of God and his love.
[36:06] It's actually it's a form of spiritual masochism is what it is. We're inflicting spiritual pain on ourselves for some sort of temporal and fleeting enjoyment. And so I ask you as I ask myself this morning won't you repent with me this morning?
[36:24] Won't you repent of seeking the wrong treasure? Won't you repent of having an eye that constantly wanders off course? Won't you repent of devoting yourself to the wrong master? We have a master who forgives us completely the second that we turn in repentance.
[36:43] He puts our gaze back on track through the spectacle of his crucified son. Something that when we look at it when we truly look at it we can never take our eyes off. We can never look elsewhere.
[36:56] because you won't find love like that elsewhere. You won't get it anywhere else. That's the treasure of treasures that moths and vermin cannot destroy and that a thief can never ever ever take from us.
[37:17] Let's pray together. Father and our King we come repenting this morning because we know we have chased these temporal treasures.
[37:37] We know we have let our affections be moved onto the wrong things because we've stored up treasure in the wrong place so often. We know our eyes have wandered and we know we have put ourselves under false masters brutal masters who enslave us.
[37:52] And so I pray this morning through our repentance you might set us free that we might bring our sins before you confess them and that we might know the freedom that comes from forgiveness in our Lord Jesus Christ Lord.
[38:02] He is our gift and when we gaze upon him when we see him on that cross we know what true love is. We know where we want to look then. We know where we want to find our treasure and store treasure.
[38:15] We know which master we then want to serve. So let us see Christ with all clarity this morning with clear eyes that we might give ourselves to him.
[38:28] Father I pray for any person who's sitting here this morning who's never done that who has spent a life chasing temporal treasure who has been disillusioned by that broken down by that.
[38:41] I pray that in your great mercy you would bring them to a place of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ maybe for the first time. For the rest of us Lord help us to be on our guard. Help us to kill sin so that we might enjoy this treasure we might enjoy our vision of you.
[38:58] We might know the treasure that we really really have that we possess by faith. Help us Father we pray for Christ's sake. Amen.