May
3, 2005
Where
Is Your Treasure?
"Do
not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and
rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay
up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth
nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
(1)
"The
love of money was the ruling passion in the Jewish age. Worldliness
usurped the place of God and religion in the soul. So it is
now. Avaricious greed for wealth exerts such a fascinating,
bewitching influence over the life that it results in perverting
the nobility and corrupting the humanity of men until they
are drowned in perdition. The service of Satan is full of
care, perplexity, and wearing labor, and the treasure men
toil to accumulate on earth is only for a season.
"Jesus
said, 'Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither
moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also.'- It is for your own interest to secure
heavenly riches. These alone, of all that you possess, are
really yours. The treasure laid up in heaven is imperishable.
No fire or flood can destroy it, no thief despoil it, no moth
or rust corrupt it; for it is in the keeping of God.
"This
treasure, which Christ esteems as precious above all estimate,
is 'the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.'
(2) The disciples of Christ are called His jewels, His precious
and peculiar treasure. He says, 'They shall be as the stones
of a crown.' (3) 'I will make a man more precious than fine
gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.' (4) Christ
looks upon His people in their purity and perfection as the
reward of all His sufferings, His humiliation, and His love,
and the supplement of His glory--Christ, the great Center,
from whom radiates all glory...
"Where
the treasure is, there the heart will be. In every effort
to benefit others, we benefit ourselves... At the final day,
when the wealth of earth shall perish, he who has laid up
treasure in heaven will behold that which his life has gained."
(5)
1. Matthew
6:19-21.
2. Ephesians 1:18.
3. Zechariah 9:16.
4. Isaiah 13:12.
5. Thoughts From The Mount Of Blessing, pp., 88-91.
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