Truth That Changes Lives

Greg: Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled The Religion of Jesus. Let's listen as JP gives us part one of Seeking First the Kingdom.

JP Jones: If you have your Bibles, would you open to Matthew chapter 6? In Matthew 6:33, the often-quoted verse says this: "But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you."

In the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived, Jesus is talking about God's kingdom and what it means to be a kingdom disciple. If you've been with us these past several weeks as we've been in this message, we've discovered that the teaching of Jesus is countercultural.

Jesus challenges the prevailing ideas of the religious system of His day and He also challenges the prevailing values of the culture. Jesus is teaching a message that's upside down to what religion teaches us and to what our culture values.

Last week in Matthew chapter 6, verses 1 to 18, Jesus is talking about practicing our righteousness, not to be seen by men, but to be seen by God. So He talked about the nature of inner righteousness in our spiritual connection with God and practicing spiritual discipline and living what would be an authentic religious life, not a hypocritical religious life.

Now Jesus turns the attention to the values of the culture. He challenges the mainstream position of the day and says that this righteousness, which is an internal affair—it's a righteousness of the heart—it's something that gets worked out in our ambitions and in our values and in our priorities.

In a recent commercial, I was just flipping channels and this commercial came on for the TV show "The Real Housewives of Orange County." In the commercial, the four housewives that are part of this TV show, they're kind of all standing there, and then it zooms in on one of them and she says this: "Money, boobs, and cars. Life's great."

That's the value of Orange County. That's the value that bombards us every day. That's the values that our children are being exposed to. That's the values that our neighbors are being sucked into. That's the value that you and I are wrestling with.

Jesus says this: "Store up your treasures in heaven and your reward will be great." The values of Jesus and His kingdom are completely countercultural to the values of this world. Jesus takes on religion and Jesus takes on this world. He says as disciples, as authentic kingdom disciples, we need to know the difference between phony righteousness and worldly materialism.

And Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 6, verses 19 to 34: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, 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. 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 both God and money."

"Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"

"So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Jesus is dealing with values, priorities, ambition. He's saying there is a value system that's presented to us by the pagans. The word is ethnos. It can mean the nations or it can mean the Gentiles. It can mean the non-Jewish people. In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, He's just contrasted the religious establishment. The ethnos—a good translation would be the pagans.

In other words, saying we're getting squeezed from both sides, gang. We're getting squeezed by people who are presenting to us a phony, hypocritical view of religion and we're getting squeezed by people who are buying into a materialistic lifestyle. Both of them miss the kingdom. What do I expect from you as My followers? Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

So in this discussion, Jesus gives us four questions to ask ourselves, to hold ourselves accountable, to hold one another accountable in the body of Christ to seeking first God's kingdom and God's righteousness. Here's the first one: Where's your treasure?

Where's your treasure? Because Jesus said, "Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

It's the command, "don't store up your treasure." It's a play on words because the Greek word for treasure is thesauros. You probably have a thesaurus at home. If you have kids who are writing English assignments, you have a thesaurus. Or if you have a computer with some programs on it, it might have a thesaurus. It's a treasure of words. The verb "to store up treasure" is thesaurizo.

In effect, Jesus is saying don't treasure your treasures on earth. Treasure your treasures in heaven. Because we love our treasures. Whatever they are, we love them and Jesus knew that. In fact, Jesus is saying there's nothing wrong with loving your treasures. The issue is what is it that you treasure? What is it that you treasure?

Because Jesus says, "Whatever you treasure, that's where your heart is." Whatever you treasure, that's where your heart is. So you can have heavenly treasure and your heart will be there, or you can have earthly treasure and your heart will be there. So treasure up your treasures in heaven.

Boy, Jesus just cuts right to the issue, doesn't He? And He reinforces something He's been doing throughout this whole sermon. The issue is the heart. It's not how much treasure you have. It's not even the degree of treasuring that you have of your treasure. It's what is it that you treasure?

Because that's where your heart is. Because that's the crux of the issue. Kingdom disciples have a changed heart and Jesus says, "I don't want anything to capture your heart other than Me. So store up your treasures in heaven." And Jesus throws in here what He does throughout this whole sermon: and if you do, you'll have a reward.

So it's like you get a double dip. You get God, you get Jesus, you get the fullness of your relationship with God, you get experiential righteousness right now, and you get a reward in heaven. So treasure your treasures in heaven, don't treasure your treasures on earth. Well, how do I work that out? How do I know what I'm treasuring?

Well, you know, they say good preaching is not telling us something new; it's just telling us what we already know but we're not doing anything about. You know what it means to treasure your treasure, but let me remind you.

What do you think about? What do you talk about? What do you pray about? What do you invest your time in? What do you spend your money on? That's your treasure. What do you think about? What do you talk about? What do you pray about? What do you invest your time in? What do you spend your money on? That's your treasure.

Oh man, that hurt. Come on, don't we all have to admit we store up treasures on earth? We store up treasures on earth. Jesus is saying, "Where your treasure is, there's where your heart is also." Part of our struggle is a divided heart.

We have a divided heart. We want to love God but we want all the stuff too. So we want to be folks who say: money, boobs, cars, and God—life's great. I'll tell you, and you know what I'm talking about. I love living here, I do.

But there are times when I just want to take my kids away and move to Idaho somewhere to protect them from the stuff they're getting bombarded with all the time. I mean, this is going to sound strange, but I think you know what I'm talking about. I don't want my kids to be Orange County Christians.

I don't want to be an Orange County Christian. I want to be a kingdom disciple. But it goes countercultural to some of the stuff I've let get into my heart. And Jesus understood that can happen at any age, in any county, in any time.

And so He says, "Where your treasure is, that's where your heart is also." And the heart is so important because Jeremiah says this in Jeremiah chapter 17: "This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He'll be like a bush in the wastelands; he'll not see the prosperity when it comes. He'll dwell in parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives."

"But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He'll be like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart, I examine the mind, and I reward a man according to his conduct and according to what his deeds deserve."

Proverbs reminds us, "Guard our hearts, for out of it flow the issues of life." And Jesus says to us here in the Sermon on the Mount, "I've already addressed with this whole issue of religious hypocrisy. Now I want to get to the nitty-gritty of the materialistic value system that you're getting bombarded with all the time. Guard your heart. And the way you need to guard your heart is store up treasure in heaven, because where your treasure is, that's where your heart is also."

So some of us need to just continue storing up treasures in heaven because that's what we have been doing and God is saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Others of us need to reevaluate where our treasure is and make some adjustments so that we store up treasure in heaven. And some of us need to make a drastic, radical change.

That's why Jesus told some would-be disciples: "Sell everything you have, give it all away and come follow Me," because that's the stuff that's going to take you straight to hell because you love it more than you love Me. So some of us maybe we need to downsize. We need to do something drastic because we need to shock our system.

It's kind of like, just like you, I kind of started the first of the year thinking, "Okay, I need to lose a little weight, get in shape." I'm pretty good at working out but I work out just so I can eat. That's kind of my system. And so every day I go into the gym and I walk in and I do the same thing: I stand on this scale and I put it where I used to do this—I put it where I wanted it to be and I got depressed.

So now I put it where I think it's going to be and I balance it out. And I basically decided just kind of trying to adjust my eating to healthy eating is not paying off in terms of losing any weight. So I'm going to have to do something drastic to drop a few pounds and then get on the consistent diet.

The drastic-ness is necessary to jumpstart my physical system to where I can then do something on a more manageable basis. You understand, you're nodding your head, you know what I'm talking about.

You know what some of us really need to do? We need to do something drastic with our treasure. We keep talking about increasing our giving to missions, we keep talking about giving more to the poor, we keep talking about being on a more biblically stewarded budget. It's just hard to kind of ease into it.

I don't know what that means. We got a missions kiosk out there though, if you want to stop by afterwards and talk to some of our missionaries and say, "I'm going to put this sermon into practice. Here's a gift to be used to help fulfill the Great Commission." Maybe that's it.

Jesus says, "Where your treasure is, that's where your heart is too." So the first question: where's my treasure? These don't get easier, by the way. Here's the second question: where are you putting your eyes?

That sounds funny, but it sounds funny because Jesus used a funny illustration. He says this in verse 22: "The eye is the lamp of the body, and if your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"

At first, it almost seems like a strange little saying, and then he gets on with the teaching about, you know, "you can't serve two masters; you'll hate the one and love the other, or you'll despise the one or be devoted to the other. You can't serve God and money." But it actually fits into the context between those two statements.

Jesus is using a kind of an Aramaic or Jewish way of discussing things, and the eye was like perceived metaphorically as the window into the soul or into the heart. So what you looked at became the conduit for the stuff getting into your heart.

And remember the heart's the issue because He says where your treasure is, your heart will be also. So in that same vein, He says where your eye is is what's going to fill your heart. If you're looking at the light, your heart's going to be filled up with light. If you're looking at the darkness, your heart's going to be filled up with darkness. So wherever your eye is, it's going to take your whole body.

It's kind of like when I played football, one of my football coaches told me that. I was playing as a linebacker. When an offensive lineman came out to try to block you, you attack his head. If you get his head, the body's going to go where the head is. So if a guy comes out to block you and you push down on his helmet and turns his head that way, he can't move his body this way; his body's going to go in the direction that his head is.

And so that was just kind of a technique. If you could get your hands out in front of you and get to a guy before he could block you and get his head moving in a certain way, then his whole body's going to go that way. Well, spiritually, wherever our eye is, that's going to fill up our whole body.

And so Jesus is saying, where are you putting your eyes? Because if you put your eyes on this material stuff and think that's where life is, that's what's going to fill your heart and then that's what you're going to treasure.

On the other hand, if you're putting your eyes on God's kingdom, then that's going to fill your heart and that's what you're going to treasure. It all ties together. So what are we putting our eyes on? What are we focusing on? What are we giving our attention to?

What are we prioritizing in our life? What are we thinking about? What are we praying about? What are we talking about? What are we investing our money in? What are we investing our time in? That's our treasure, that's our eye focus, that's our heart.

Is it the kingdom of God and His righteousness, which not only blesses you here but gets you a reward in heaven? Or is it this stuff? The word for money that He's going to talk about here in a moment, that's translated in NIV, is the word mammon.

It's an Aramaic word, mamona, which means riches, property, wealth. So where's our treasure? Because you treasure your treasure. Is it on mamona or is it on the kingdom of God and His righteousness? And where's your eyes? Where are they focused? Because that's the conduit into your heart.

That's why there's so many scriptures, by the way, that speak about our eyes, our focus, our attention, our mind. Hebrews 12:1 and 2 says, "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith."

And 2 Corinthians 4 says that we do not lose heart because we look not to the things that are seen, but we look to the things that are unseen. Because the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

And Colossians 3:1 and 2 says, "Since then you've been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth."

In 1 Peter 1:13 says, "Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your heart completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." All these commands about our eyes, our thoughts, our hearts, our focus, our attention. Jesus just says don't store up treasures on earth, store them up in heaven.

Greg: What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250.

For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, "Facing Goliath". Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. We're looking at the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived. And in this message, Jesus is explaining what it means to be a kingdom disciple. The message of Jesus is countercultural. It is an antithesis to what we hear both in religion and in secular culture.

Jesus has been contrasting His way with the way of the Pharisees. Jesus has been contrasting His brand of righteousness with the righteousness of religion. But in Matthew chapter 6, at the end of the chapter, Jesus contrasts His message with secular culture. Jesus says it comes down to what we treasure and what we seek after.

The follower of Jesus Christ will both treasure and seek after something different than the person outside of Christ. Within the secular culture, we are taught to treasure our treasures: wealth, materialism, stuff. We're taught to seek after prestige and comfort and peace.

Jesus says that's not the way with His disciples. We're to put our treasures in heaven and we're to seek first His kingdom. You see, the way of Jesus is in contrast not only to the way of religion, but the way of Jesus is in contrast to the way of this world.

In Romans chapter 12, verse 2, the Apostle Paul says this: "Stop being conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." If we would walk in the kingdom way of Jesus, we will no longer treasure what the world says to treasure. We will no longer seek after what the world says to seek after. Instead, we will stop being conformed to this world.

If that's your desire as a follower of Jesus Christ, I invite you to pray this prayer of commitment right now with me. Lord Jesus, I want You to be the Lord of my life. I want to put my treasures in heaven and I want to seek first Your kingdom. Change me from the inside out. In Jesus' name, amen.

Greg: We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com.

We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.