Matthew 6.19-21, Luke 12.33-34.
In Jesus’s
You’ll notice the three verses in Matthew I’m gonna point to today, don’t by themselves nail down precisely how we’re to stash our treasures in heaven. That, we actually have to pull from the parallel teaching in Luke: Give to charity. And if you know your Old Testament, you might remember this proverb:
Proverbs 19.17 KWL - Put the L
ORD in your debt: Be gracious to the poor.- He compensates you and gives peace to you.
- Put the L
Jesus’s first-century audience would’ve known that one… and Jesus’s 21st-century audience had better learn that one.
Matthew 6.19-21 KWL - 19 “Don’t hoard wealth for yourselves on earth, where moths and corrosion ruin it,
- where thieves dig for it and steal it.
- 20 Hoard wealth for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor corrosion ruins,
- where thieves don’t dig for it nor steal it:
- 21 Where’s your wealth? Your mind will be there too.
Luke 12.33-34 KWL - 33 “Sell your possessions and give to charity:
- Make yourselves a wallet which never wears out.
- Infallible wealth in the heavens, which a thief can’t come near, nor moth destroy.
- 34 “Where’s your wealth? Your minds will be there too.”
This passage has been greatly nullified by our culture. Y’see, we have banks and insurance. Nowadays, if our minds are on our money, it’s only because we worry we don’t have enough. Back then, it was based on the constant fear, Is my money secure? Because the ancients were responsible to secure their own wealth. Neither financial institutions, nor the government, would do it for ’em. Wasn’t their job. Wasn’t anyone’s job.
Americans tend to take property rights for granted. The ancients weren’t so naïve. If the king wanted your stuff, he’d have your stuff. Land, cattle, wives. You remember Abraham was regularly worried different kings would swipe his wife from him—’cause they did.
God mitigated this by having, “Don’t steal”
So if you had wealth, you had to secure it. Just like paranoid people do today. Better build a strongroom in your house, or find a clever way to disguise or hide it. Lots of people simply buried it in a hole in the ground, just like the worthless steward in Jesus’s story of the talents.
And even so, after all the precautions they took to make sure nobody could find or get at their wealth, the wealthy would worry. ’Cause any disaster could destroy it. Invading armies, or some covetous noble, could grab your land. Earthquakes could flatten your buildings. Determined looters, or even just a fire, could gut your house. Any possession could be lost. Easily.
It’s the very reason we invented insurance. Pay a little each month or year, and your possessions are protected and guaranteed? Brilliant. Now the only thing we need worry about is whether we have enough money.
So we need to climb into the first-century mindset about money before we can really understand Jesus. Imagine you’re in a really bad neighborhood, you’re not carrying a gun or taser or pepper spray, and for some crazy reason you’ve got $5,000 cash in your wallet. How secure are you gonna feel about that money?
Got that mental picture? Good. Now imagine having that worry all the time.