Watch our Livestream 10am Sundays at 10am on Sundays Give Online
“If you’re able, please stand.” Reading Matt. 6:19–24. “Thanks be to God.”
In John Steinbeck’s novel, The Pearl, he tells the story of a family, the father Kino, his wife Juana, and their infant son, Coyotito. Coyotito is stung by a scorpion. They are poor, so the doctor will not treat him. They pray and Kino takes his family heirloom canoe and goes searching for pearls. He finds the biggest one he or anyone in the village has ever seen. He yells as he finds it, and now the whole village knows. The doctor comes to treat their son, but the father Kino lets it slip where the pearl is located. Thieves come that night to steal it. Kino is beat up but saves the pearl. His wife says the pearl is evil, and they need to get rid of it. Kino goes to sell the pearl, but the traders all conspire to low-ball him. He knows what’s going on and decides to go to the capital instead. Again his wife says they should get rid of it. In anger he says he will handle it. Again thieves come, and this time he kills one in the process and drops the pearl, too. His wife finds it and brings it to him. That night villagers burn his house and destroy his family canoe. They flee to get to the capital. Thieves pursue them. Kino knows he needs to defend his family. In doing that, the thieves fire a gun and end up killing his infant son. In great sadness, he returns to the village carrying his dead boy. The final scene of the story is the couple standing on the shore, and Kino throws the pearl into the sea “with all his might.”
Did he own the pearl, or did the pearl own him? The story is powerful, because as a dad we can imagine how desperate we’d be and how willing to do about anything to save our child. But Kino eventually lost all perspective. The pearl was his treasure. The pearl was his master. He didn’t see the pearl or his family clearly. And ultimately, the pearl cost him dearly.
John Steinbeck is really illustrating what Jesus teaches us in our passage this morning: Do you own possessions, or do possessions own you? Jesus gives timeless wisdom about the things of this world and how we are to think of them.
The passage is in the Sermon on the Mount. Contained in the Gospel of Matthew. The tax collector Matthew was called by Jesus to become one of the 12 apostles. Part of Matthew’s ministry was writing this gospel a couple decades after Pentecost, in order to proclaim the Christ he believed in. So that all might believe.
Unique in Matthew is his record of this sermon early in Jesus’ ministry. A reminder from John Stott about the Sermon on the Mount:
Jesus did not give us an academic treatise calculated merely to stimulate the mind. I believe he meant his Sermon on the Mount to be obeyed. Indeed, if the church realistically accepted his standards and values as here set forth, and lived by them, it would be the alternative society he always intended it to be, and would offer to the world an authentic Christian counter-culture.
John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount[1]
The sermon series: “Living in the Kingdom.” Living in the kingdom involves the right perspective on the things of this world. The flow of the passage at this point. “Your Father who sees in secret” (Matt 6:1–18) in the passages before. But now a series of passages on worldly wealth: Matt. 6:19–21, 22–23, 24, 25–34. The application of these is much bigger than worldly wealth, but they do concern wealth.
The sermon: A right perspective on worldly wealth: (1) Building It, (2) Seeing It, (3) Owning It
Read Matt. 6:19–21.
What Jesus is NOT saying: Jesus is NOT saying that all possessions are bad. Or that making money through honest, hard work is bad. Or even that being wealthy is bad.
1 Timothy 4:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, 3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Tim 4:1–5)
And then a little later in 1 Timothy we get another important word on wealth and possessions:
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Tim 5:8)
“Household” here doesn’t mean your children only. In this passage, it means your parents and even grandparents. The social safety net in the Bible is not Social Security. It’s families and churches. A crucial part of wealth and possessions is taking care of your “household.”
What Jesus IS forbidding has to do with our hearts.
You can be as rich as Solomon and totally self-forgetful and generous in all the right ways.
And you can be poor as Lazarus and consumed with covetousness and selfishness.
Question to ask from these verses is not, where is your money? But, where is your treasure?
Where are the things that you “treasure”? The noun for “treasure” is the Greek thesaurus. You might remember what a “thesaurus” is. It’s a storehouse of words, a treasure chest of words.
What’s in your thesaurus? Your storehouse.
The probable allusion is to someone keeping treasure for themselves in a miserly, Scrooge-like fashion. Want to possess it. Keep it. Preserve it. Obsessiveness about it.
Jesus says to the one seeking some earthly prize for their security or treasure or meaning in life. To them he says, “Don’t do it! Don’t seek such earthly things. Seek for heavenly treasure!”
Why? His reasoning is simple—but it also requires faith.
It is simple: things on earth fade, decay, and get stolen.
But things in heaven? They endure forever!
That’s a simple idea. But it’s one that requires faith. It requires faith to say that these things all around us that can feel so permanent are actually only temporary. It is the things we can’t see that are eternal.
Peter speaks to this in 1 Peter 1:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Pet 1:3–5)
And the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:
We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor 4:18)
Because of that, build up your treasure in heaven, not on earth. But HOW? What is it we can build up wealth in a place we can’t see?
The Bible says we do that through doing good works and being godly people.
Listen to 1 Timothy 6:
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. (1 Tim 6:17–19)
When we “do good” and are “rich in good works,” we are “storing up treasure for ourselves as a good foundation for the future!” Paul has clearly heard of Jesus’ teaching and is echoing that teaching here.
“Good works”! Not worldliness. That’s how we gain true wealth, true treasure.
Jesus then speaks a truism that is both a powerful fact, and a proven motivator: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
As a powerful fact: Look at what a person spends their money on, and you will get a sense of their values, their priorities, their desires. A husband might be willing to spend a fortune on a new boat. But when it comes to spending on his wife or his children? He’s Ebenezer Scrooge. His “treasure” is in his boat and not his family, and that’s where his heart is.
Jesus’ statement is also a proven motivator: Where do you want your heart to be? Put your money there.
Read Matt. 6:22–23.
Now Jesus speaks of seeing. He’s speaking with a metaphor here. Just as your physical eyesight provides “light” for your whole body when your eyes are “healthy,” so your spiritual eyesight provides “light” for your whole life when it is “healthy.”
That word “healthy” when used of physical eyes, has to do with seeing clearly. You’re not seeing “double” but good “single” vision.
Good eyes are the way your whole body “sees” the world and acts in the world as you should. Last night was Game 7 of the World Series. The Dodgers won in the 11th inning. Many of those plays were amazing athletic feets. Incredible pitches, hits, throws to the catcher for an out, a double-play to end the game in the bottom of the 11th. But for all those athletic bodies to do all those things required that everyone of them had good eyes. For each of them, the “light” for their whole body was their eyes. If you blindfolded them, none of that could happen.
Jesus is using that idea.
Seeing clearly, having an accurate perception on things, having true vision, these are essential if you’re going to flourish.
He’s also using the idea of light and dark in our hearts and souls. “Seeing” accurately with our hearts and souls. Throughout the Bible, there’s a connection between our eyes and heart. You can hear this in Psalm 119:
My soul longs for your salvation; I hope in your word. (Ps 119:81)
My eyes long for your salvation and for the fulfillment of your righteous promise. (Ps 119:123)
“My soul longs” = “My eyes long.” This kind of eyesight Jesus is talking about. A deeper seeing. Seeing beneath the surface of things.
Connected to wealth, eyesight has to do with seeing things according to their true value.
In Luke 11:34–36, Luke includes these verses but the context isn’t speaking of wealth. So, we don’t want to see this principle as only related to wealth. But placed where it is in Matthew we know that it does relate to wealth.
Part of what Jesus is after is for us to see the true value of things. That’s part of “healthy” seeing. You see valuable things as valuable, and common things as common.
Recently I sold two things online: an electric guitar and an amplifier. A 1987 Fender American Standard Stratocaster and an early 2000s Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amplifier.
I posted the electric guitar and sold it in 7 minutes. Literally, 7 minutes. That told me that my “eyesight” was off. It was worth more than I thought it was. I saw it as having a certain value, but it had more value.
So, then I posted the amplifier. Didn’t want to make the same mistake, so I priced it I thought more properly. Higher than I would have. No action at all. I researched the price and adjusted it down a bit. Still, nothing. I lowered the price again. Still nothing. A guy offered me what I felt was a lowball offer: No way!
But after another day of absolutely no action, I realized I was just wrong. I thought the amp was worth MORE than it was really worth. At least, monetarily (it was a great amp!).
Life is filled with people and priorities and responsibilities of vary different values. The key is to see the value of all these different things accurately.
A classic example that fills many counseling offices and biographies and autobiographies is thinking our jobs have a lot MORE value than they really do. And we think of our spouse and children as having a lot LESS value than they really do.
Time tends to make this very clear. The older we get, the more our families matter. The more aware we are that we have either OVER-VALUED or UNDER-VALUED a whole set of things.
2-Question Test:
What is in your life right now that your seeing as valuable, but in the long-run isn’t?
What in your life right now are you seeing as NOT valuable, but in the long-run is?
“Seeing as valuable” means actively valuing it. Treating it as valuable.
Read Matt 6:24.
Jesus isn’t finished diagnosing our hearts on the topic of wealth. Our attitude toward wealth and the things of this world is a huge indicator of our spiritual maturity. Jesus keeps pressing the point.
Now Jesus uses the metaphor of slavery—a master and slave. If we think of “master” here in the modern sense of employer, we’ll miss what Jesus is saying. I can actually serve multiple employers. At least, sort of.
I can have two or even three part-time jobs and ultimately have two or even three employers. It might be challenging to hold down a couple or three jobs, but I could do it.
But with a master-slave relationship, it doesn’t work that way. A slave is bound to a master in a way that requires full allegiance. That’s almost the definition of what a slave is and what a master is.
As scholar R.T. France says on this verse, “‘Serve’ is literally ‘be a slave of’; a man could satisfactorily have two employers, but not two owners.”[2]
The idea of slavery reminds us that there’s something about wealth and this world that tries to “own” us. We start with a mentality that “posessions serve us, we don’t serve possessions.” But if we’re not careful, eventually the possssions start to own us, and we become slaves of possessions.
When it comes to possessions, the question is, who’s possing who? Are the possessions possessing us? Or we are possessing them?
Possessions can possess us through how much time we spend on them—buying and selling them, thinking about them, using them in purely selfish ways.
Even when we don’t have possessions, we can be owned by material things—coveting them, angry that we don’t have them, letting how much we don’t have and how much others have impact relationships.
We can be constantly evaluating our material wealth with someone else’s. There can be a self-centerdness, a self-absorption that gives away which “lord” really owns us.
Jesus’ words are sobering and biting in their truth: “You cannot serve God and money.”
We have a lot of ways we try and serve two masters:
But God demands an uncompromising lordship. He gets it all.
I remember hearing of a godly woman who died and had on her headstone, “I call you ‘Lord,’ because that is what I want you to be.”
We call Christ, “Lord.” We do that because he is Yahweh, the Lord of lords, and God over all.
But we also call him, “Lord,” as a statement about his place in our life. He’s the Master, I’m the slave. He’s the Lord, I’m the servant.
The Lord will allow no other to come before him in our lives. That’s why the 1st commandment is so powerful: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3).
In a sense that’s the only commandment we need. The rest is just filling out what that means.
God is working in our lives, so that this will be absolutely true.
As Isaiah 42 says,
I am the LORD; that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to carved idols. (Isa 42:8)
So often we’re faced with the question, Who am I serving?
With worldly wealth, am I owning it, or is it owning me? “You cannot serve God and mammon.”
God is calling us to handle worldly wealth rightly.
The Pearl and “the pearl of great price.” Remember Jesus’ words.
Jesus says,
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46 who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Matt 13:45–46)
In Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Kino gave almost everything he had for this pearl and it destroyed. Because it wasn’t “the pearl of great price.” It wasn’t Jesus!
Jesus is “the pearl of great price,” where when you give all to find it, the people and responsibilities in the rest of your life all become more fruitful and more blessed.
But when you treat something other than Jesus as “the pearl of great price,” it will end up destroying everything else.
Prayer and Closing Song
[1] John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, BST (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1978), 10.
[2] R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, TNTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 139.
Here are some other recent messages.
We are a church built on the Bible, guided and empowered by the Spirit, striving to make disciples, and pursuing holiness in the context of robust biblical relationships.
© 2025 Cornerstone Fellowship Church of Apex
