“Where Your Treasure Is”
If we lay up treasures on earth, if we pin our material hopes on man, then our hearts will be wrapped up in humanistic goals rather than God and His Kingdom.
- R. J. Rushdoony
The trouble with most of us is that we do not really read the Bible with any desire to understand it. Take our Lord’s familiar words from the Sermon on the Mount: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21).
If you think as you read this, it will suddenly strike you that this seems altogether backward. Most people believe that a man will put his money where his heart is, that where his heart is, there will his treasure be also. Our Lord, however, reversed this common and ancient opinion: a man’s heart will follow his money, so beware of unwise investments (Matt. 6:19–20), because your heart will become unwise with them. If we lay up treasures on earth, if we pin our material hopes on man, then our hearts will be wrapped up in humanistic goals rather than God and His Kingdom.
Let us look at three examples of our Lord’s words. A man who had spent his life building up a company saw it go into other hands and into immoral courses of action when he resigned as chairman of the board. He was, of course, unhappy about the new policies, but, because he had a few million dollars tied up in the company, and because the profits were better than ever, he steadily became belligerently hostile to any criticism of the company. His heart had followed his treasure.
Another man had been an early champion of unionism in his field of work, and one of the first officials of the new union. Later on in life, he saw the union perpetrate as many evils against the workers as the old bosses had, but, because the union had been his life’s work and treasure, he refused to break with it or attack it. His heart had followed his treasure.
Still another man took pride in his church. His family had helped build it. Many of the stained glass windows and furnishings, as well as a chapel in the beautiful collection of buildings, represented memorials to members of his family. But the church became a flagrantly unchristian and evil congregation, the pastors mockers of the faith, and the buildings a center for every reprobate cause. Everything the church now represented went against this man’s professed faith. However, although all his friends left, he remained. His real treasure had always been, not Christ, but the buildings and their furnishings, that which his wealth had built up as a memorial, and his heart could not break with his treasure.
Beware of what you invest in with your time, wealth, and work. Your heart will follow it to your ruin. Lot’s wife could see Sodom burning, but it represented her life and work, everything she prized, and she turned back into it to be destroyed with it.
Taken from A Word In Season: Daily Messages on the Faith for All of Life, Volume 7, pp. 55-57
- R. J. Rushdoony
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony (1916–2001), was a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical law to society. He started the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965. His Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) began the contemporary theonomy movement which posits the validity of Biblical law as God’s standard of obedience for all. He therefore saw God’s law as the basis of the modern Christian response to the cultural decline, one he attributed to the church’s false view of God’s law being opposed to His grace. This broad Christian response he described as “Christian Reconstruction.” He is credited with igniting the modern Christian school and homeschooling movements in the mid to late 20th century. He also traveled extensively lecturing and serving as an expert witness in numerous court cases regarding religious liberty. Many ministry and educational efforts that continue today, took their philosophical and Biblical roots from his lectures and books.