Where Is Your Treasure?

WEEKLY DEVOTIONAL BY PATRICE TSAGUE

Why does Jesus still warn against storing treasure on earth?
Is Jesus more concerned about our money or our hearts?
What changes when Heaven sets our financial priorities?

Where Is Your Treasure?

According to Jesus, Heaven is the safest place to preserve and protect our treasures. I can imagine a skeptic saying, “Well I’m not sure what you mean by Heaven, but it is understandable that in Jesus’ days there was no trust for the banking and financial system”. 

When Jesus walked the earth, the financial markets and controls were not developed to nearly the levels of sophistication, safety, and security that they are today. In today’s world, especially in developed countries, we are accustomed to trusting our banks and financial markets. This is due in part to an evolved economic system influenced by Judeo-Christian values that recognizes that without ethics in the marketplace, commerce cannot be effective nor efficient. 

Without trust and integrity in the market, there is no investor confidence. Today, governments go out of their way to put policies in place and make examples out of some of the violators to send a clear message to all of us that “our money is safe.” You would think that with all these measures in place, the words of Jesus in Matthew 6 would no longer be relevant in today’s world. But the reality is that all of this actually confirms the wisdom of Jesus’ words. 

No matter how advanced our culture and how sophisticated our economic systems, Earth will never be a safe place to protect our treasures. 

How then does one move their treasures from earth to heaven?

There are some people who have grown so distrusting of the markets that they have moved all of their money to either cash or converted it into personal possessions, due to the belief that our economic system is totally unsafe. The problem with this is that it is still on earth, where moth and rust can still destroy it, and where thieves can still break in and steal it. 

I also do not believe that Jesus was necessarily asking us to remove all our money from the financial systems, because in Matthew 25:27 the master said to the servant who was concerned about losing the one talent, “so you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest”. 

What did Jesus mean when He said, “lay up for yourself treasures in heaven?” It is impossible to move physical money to heaven, and even if we could, our money has no value in heaven. What we can and must do is “place our hearts in heaven” and allow heaven to direct the use of our money. Jesus was instructing us to take our focus off the things of earth, which have temporal value (able to be destroyed by moth and rust), and instead to focus on the things of heaven, which have eternal value. 

Furthermore, He was encouraging us to make our decisions based on the value system of heaven rather than using the temporal values of earth. He was less concerned about the “horizontal positioning” of our possessions and more concerned about the “vertical positioning” of our hearts.

Jesus concludes his discourse on heavenly versus earthly treasures by simply saying, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)

The way that you can easily assess whether or not your heart is truly focused on heaven is to evaluate where you choose to invest your treasures. 

You can be sure that your focus is on heavenly treasure when:

1. You invest in things that honor God (2 Corinthians 6:11-18);
2. You give to organisations that advance God’s kingdom (I Timothy 6:17-19);
3. You do not worry about money (Matthew 6:25-31);
4. You trust God to provide for your needs (Matthew 6:32-33).

My prayer for you today is that you will move your heart to Heaven and allow Heaven to direct the use of your treasure.