Where Your Treasure Is: Choosing Heaven Over Worry - Sermon 26th October 2025

G'day. Thanks for joining the Heights Church podcast today. We hope you enjoy our message.

If you're in the Sydney area, be sure to join us at the Heights Church at Gostom

Road, Cornfield Heights, Summingsville.

So our reading this morning is from Matthew 6, verses 19 to 34.

Matthew 6:19–34

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy,

and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not

destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body.

If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.

But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?

No one can serve two masters.

Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the

one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink,

or about your body, what you will wear.

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?

Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns,

and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not much more valuable than they?

Can any one of you be worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes?

See how the flowers of the field grow? They do not labour or spin.

Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these.

If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow

is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothes you of little faith?

So do not worry, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?

For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Jessica, part two.

Last week, I started with the story of Jessica, how I met her on the plane. Remember that?

And it all came about through a God appointment.

There is no doubt about it, that when I was traveling through one of the islands

at the Mentawis, I thought that'd be a fantastic place to take Susan as a holiday.

And then texted this person who was the owner and they said,

no, sorry, the place is closed and I'm selling it.

And then I get on the plane and the person sitting next to me is the person

who owned the resort. So how would that ever come about other than God?

I finished off the story by Jessica asking me after she found out that I was

a minister, what do I believe in reincarnation?

Now, how would you answer that? Just to yourself, that's a rhetorical question.

How would you answer that? Do you believe in reincarnation?

I said to her, I do. I don't believe in reincarnation like the Hindus do,

but I believe that I'll come back with a new body and I'll live forever with

Jesus. I'll come back from the dead to newness of life.

I said, it's very different than Hindu. I'm not coming back as something else.

I'm coming back as who I truly am.

And I said, and we get a bit of a glimpse of that because of when Jesus rose again from the dead.

And so Jessica then started to explain a little bit about how her journey was

in owning the resort and how she loved the people that were there and knew the

plight that they were on and tried to do the best that she possibly can for them,

but it just didn't seem to click with her expectations of what excellence was

in the resort world and what their understanding of excellence was.

In other words, they come up pretty short.

She continued on and said, I'm sorry.

So what happens when you die? And I said, well, when you die,

you stand before God in judgment.

And based upon what you do with Jesus is whether you'll live with him forever

or whether you don't. And she said, I don't like the word judgment.

And I said to her, well, it doesn't matter whether you like the word judgment

or not. That's what's going to happen.

And I said, and she goes, well, I believe that I've done the right thing.

I treated my staff very fairly.

I've looked at my life and how she treated people throughout her life.

And she said, I've gone back.

And if I've done something wrong, I've tried to make amends for that.

And the staff, I've tried to help their family and help everybody.

And I said, well, judgment is based upon two things Jesus talks about.

I said, whether you've loved the Lord your God with all your heart,

soul, mind, and strength, whether you love your neighbor as yourself.

And I said, I think that you've covered the loving your neighbor as yourself quite well.

You've gone back and you've made amends to people that you thought you've wronged,

and you've treated people fairly and right.

I said, but you're in trouble because what do you do with love the Lord your

God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

I said, he's the only one that can forgive you of the things that you've done against him.

Not me, not a priest, not anyone. And I said, and not you.

You can't make up for things that you've done wrong. I said,

that's why Jesus came to die.

Jesus came to die so that you might ask him in his compassion to forgive you

of the things that you have done wrong against God and get that part right.

Jessica said, I've never heard that before.

I've never heard it presented that way before.

And so we talked, I talked about her saying that part of my journey is that

I'm grateful for Jesus. She said, I don't like that word, grateful.

And I said, well, it doesn't matter whether you like the word grateful or not,

that's what we're required to be.

She said, I'm a bit of a hermit. And why she went into the resort business is

that she would find solitude on this most magnificent island that you ever could have.

But she found herself constantly stressed about whether she was keeping up the

expectations of the clients that were going to be on there.

So she found it more stressful. So she says, I'm selling up.

I'm going to go to the top of a mountain, build a place up there,

become a hermit, and sit up there each morning and be grateful for what God,

no, be grateful for what she had.

And then after explaining to her about what Jesus did, she said,

I'm grateful that I'm sitting next to you on the plan.

And I went, okay. So we talked about it some more about what grateful might mean to God.

I said, great. She goes, but so many times I've heard about how people want a ticket to heaven.

And so they ask Jesus for forgiveness just to get that ticket to heaven.

And she goes, what do you think about that? And I said, well,

I think they're probably not in heaven.

I said, because being grateful means this.

And I said, there's a verse in the Bible that says that if you confess with

your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and if you believe in your heart that God raised

him from the dead, you'll be saved.

I said, so confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord means that you were

Lord of your life and he wasn't Lord of your life. And now you want him to be Lord of your life.

So you're grateful that he's given you the opportunity to do that.

And I said, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead means that

the penalty that he paid on the cross is sufficient to forgive you of your sins.

This is on the plane, sitting next to her.

And she goes, well, I think each morning I need to wake up, sit on top of the

hill and be grateful for what God has done for me.

I believe Jesse became a Christian at that time. And why do I tell you that story?

Because God's in control and brings people along your pathway way where you

are called to give an account when called upon.

She said, what do you believe? And I said, well, here you go.

And God opened up her heart to something that was incredible.

As she said, I've never heard that before.

And we're not talking about a 40-year-old woman.

We're talking about a person probably in her 60s, and she'd never heard that before,

that Jesus died for a sin, and her role in life was to be grateful for what

God has given to her in Jesus, and that's what saves her.

We left, and I said this. So I said, look, I've gone throughout this whole of this conversation.

I said, I am ashamed. I said, what is your name?

And she goes, Jessica. And I said, well, my name is, and before I finish,

she said, your name is Mark, because you texted me.

And I said, well, you now have my WhatsApp text, so let's journey for that.

And as we were going, we got off the plane, and you go through Jakarta Airport,

it's this maze of stuff to the baggage claim, and we're talking and talking

and talking along the way.

And I get to the place of the baggage claim and she said, I don't have a bag,

and so she took her backpack that she got on with and she went off to South

Africa and I said, this is my prayer for you, Jessica is that you will find

that mountain that you can find solitude on and that each morning you will get

up and thank God for what he has given to you.

God brings people along your pathway, whether it's the shops,

whether it's your neighbor, whether it's the people that you work with,

and will open up doors for you to step through in faith to share the gospel with people.

And all I did was say, you need to be grateful to God for what he has given to you.

It wasn't this, and theology, this and this, and this is sacrificial atonement.

It wasn't any of that. It was just sharing your heart to say,

God wants you to be with him forever.

I pray that God opens up the doors for you and that your Jessica,

whoever that might be, will in the same way walk through from darkness to life. Let's pray.

Lord, as we look at your word this morning, as we open up and see your compassion upon us,

I pray, Lord, that your heart will become our heart, that your desires and passions

will become our desires and passions so that we might walk in a way that honors

you and holds you up as Lord in our life as we are forever grateful,

for what you have gone through so that we might have that opportunity to walk with you.

And I pray this in your name. Amen.

I look at a lot of junk TV shows. There's no doubt about it.

Susan knows it because generally she either falls asleep or she goes to bed.

And one of them is Dino Hunters.

And basically what happens is a bunch of cowboys, literally ranchers,

that are out there in their fields in Arizona.

And they go out and they found it hard to be cattle people.

And so they've gone out and they found a way in which they found dinosaur fossils

on their property. So they go out there and they dig them all up and all the rest of the stuff.

So when I went to Winton, which I've been a few times now to Winton in Australia,

I love seeing all the dinosaur tourist sites.

And, you know, so you go through that, you see all the remains that have been

found up there, because that seems to be a place where they find them all.

And it's been great. Now, if you go to Chicago, I think that you probably,

if you're into that, you would visit the Field Museum, where the famous T-Rex

is, or it's 90% skeleton had been found.

And the dinosaur T-Rex is named Sue, which doesn't mean that if your name is

Sue, that you're a dinosaur, and that's not synonymous.

But that was kind of it. Now, so can't dispute that.

It's no doubt that when I went to New York City, one of the things I'd want

to go to is the American Museum of Natural History, where they have a massive

amount of ancient artifacts on display.

And floor by floor as they progress, which seems to be amazing,

upward from prehistoric to times of today, predominantly focusing on cultural

anthropology as they go through that.

It's unreal. But in the foyer, you're greeted with these words of Theodore Roosevelt

on this huge stone tablet.

The picture I got there is a photo that I took, so you can't read it,

so I was actually going to put up a closer view of that, which encapsulates

the ideas of many, definitely those who work on Wall Street.

Man's usefulness depends on his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.

It is hard to fail, but it's worse never to have tried to succeed.

All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer and nobler type of manhood.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die, and none are fit to die who

have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.

Sounds like an island pursuit of man, doesn't it? A bit narcissistic.

But as we'll see today, this passage stands in contrast to the thinking of the

disciples of Jesus, who Jesus encouraged us to think about what is your focus?

What's your value in life? Where do you place your trust in life?

And what do you worry about?

And they're the areas that the verses unpack this morning.

So if you've got your Bible, you'd like to open up Matthew 6.

And if you've got the QR code, you can see in the notes I'm following along with.

Matthew 6, 19-21 says this, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,

where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not

destroy, where thieves do not break and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Most of us probably wouldn't say that you're storing up treasures on earth, maybe.

I'm just working hard to get by.

Just paying the bills, raising my family, covering the basics.

But then Jesus challenges us to take a deeper look into our heart or deeper look into our life.

What's really important to you?

If I took an honest look at how I spend my time and my money and energy,

what would it say about my priorities?

What would your time and money and energy say about your priorities?

A lot of Australians, whether they know Jesus or not, life revolves around the great Aussie dream.

Earn more money, buy a nice house, move ahead in your career,

drive something decent, maybe get a dog, definitely not a cat.

That was a bad part of my trip.

On the Airbnb, be. Susan, when I've boned her up from there,

she couldn't hear me basically over all the cats just crying away because they

serve chicken, fish, chicken, fish, chicken, fish.

So it seemed to be every time fish was served, the cats would come around. I hate them.

Now, none of those things, except for the cats, would be bad in themselves.

We're incredibly blessed in living where we do. So the question is,

when do my goals become my treasure?

Treasure is what you value the most, what drives your decisions,

how you spend, what you chase, what you talk about, what you're willing to sacrifice for.

Remember, I've said in the past that you'll give to a commitment,

but you'll sacrifice for a conviction and your treasures are your conviction

that this is going to bring me happiness,

it's going to bring me life, this is going to bring me satisfaction in life

and you will sacrifice for that.

Jesus says it really simply, where your treasure is, there your heart will be.

We remember the story of the rich man in the Bible that came to Jesus when he

asked Jesus what I must do to inherit eternal life and Jesus told him,

sell everything you have and give to the poor.

And the man walked away sad because his money had his heart.

Money in itself wasn't bad, but his money had his heart. So that's the point, isn't it?

Whatever your heart has, it's your devotion.

And too often, we pour our time, energy into things that won't last.

But the followers of Jesus know, you know the ultimate value.

What we're investing in, the eternal treasure, are things that matter forever,

that we're putting our trust and our priorities in our Father's hand,

which is far safer than any bank that we have.

So what does it mean to store up treasures in heaven?

Jesus doesn't spell it out exactly, but in this same chapter earlier on in context,

because that's kind of like we look at Bible verses in context, he gives us some clues.

When you give, he says in verse 4 of chapter 6, your Father in heaven will see

what's done in secret and reward you.

When you pray, your Father who sees what's done in secret will reward you.

When you fast, your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

So we should get the point, I think, through the passage.

What we do in secret before God the Father will we be rewarded for. What?

By. Well, not by material things, but by relationship with Him.

In other words, heavenly treasure is about investing in eternal value,

your relationship with God and helping others to know Him.

Because the most valuable thing you ever have isn't money, a status, or success.

It's your relationship with the Father.

So let me ask you, and I ask myself the same question, is prayer,

talking with God, a real priority for you?

Is the Bible, hearing from God what he has to say to you, a regular part of your life?

I'm not talking about when you go to Bible study. I'm talking about,

do you crave to hear from God every day?

Is church worshipping together as God's family a consistent priority for you?

There's a simple test, isn't there?

What would it take for me and what would it take for you to stop praying,

stop reading, or stop being at church, or stop serving in ministry?

If your relationship with God or your treasure, your priority in life is him,

then nothing would keep you from those things.

Not tiredness or busyness, definitely not the state of origin,

not what's on the menu, not who's preaching or not preaching.

Your priority will be him. Now, I can imagine there's people sitting here today

listening to Jesus' thinking and say, I hope Emmanuel's listening to this.

I hope Rebecca really hears this message or maybe even nodding saying,

preach it, brother, preach it, yes.

But Jesus doesn't let anyone off the hook.

He's about to go deeper and we're involved in it.

And it's hard to hear, but it's a story of our life, Matthew 6,

22, 23. The eye is the lamp of the body.

If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.

But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If then, the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?

You can tell what's happening in someone's heart and mind by their eyes,

whether it's sadness or anger or fear or lust or surprise.

That famous picture behind us is that Afghan woman where you just look at her

eyes and think, what's she thinking?

Mesmerizing. has been said, the eyes of the window of the soul revealing what's inside.

And Jesus takes it further and goes much deeper than that. He says.

You focus on with your eyes, what captures your attention, reveals what's happening within your soul.

Your focus reflects your values, reflects your beliefs, reflects your heart.

Now at first, these verses can sound a little cryptic and wonder why they're

actually in there. It's a strange metaphor in the middle of Jesus' teaching.

But when you kind of look at it in context, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Just before Jesus talks about storing up treasures in heaven,

And so he's got the treasures in heaven part.

Then he speaks about what your eyes are focusing on. And after that,

he says, you can't serve two masters. So what are we supposed to control?

What controls who's going to be our master? What's going to control who's going

to be the treasurer? Well, it's our eyes. It's our focus.

I'm not talking about our physical eyes. I'm talking about our focus,

our brain, what's happening there.

So right in the middle, Jesus is asking, what have your eyes fixed on?

Because your eyes guide your body.

They set the direction you move towards and what you focus on.

So what have your eyes been drawn to? Is it like the bug zapper,

the more teen commercial?

It's a bit like Jesus' version of the bug zapper, isn't it? We're all drawn

to a light and whether the light's good or whether the light's bad,

whether the light's healthy for us and going to bring life or whether the light's going to bring death.

Well, you can tell through what Jesus says and what our focus should be.

Whatever captures your focus will shape your life. Whatever consumes your vision will be your master.

Your focus reveals your treasure. In fact, Jesus brings it home and says,

your focus will be your master.

See that in verse 24? No one can serve two masters.

Either you will hate one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to one and

despise the other. So you cannot serve both God and money.

You can have two bosses, but you can't have two masters.

A master wants complete loyalty and devotion, and you cannot serve God and money, and one will dominate.

See, the ancients came to see that money was like seawater. The more you drink, the more you want.

And it's easy to let money or the pursuit of money dominate your life,

And that's the reason why Jesus used that as an example.

There are TV shows that have the magic million dollars that prize money.

There's ads that will tell you how to handle it and how you get more and what

you should be concerned about.

And you can spend a lot of time worrying about money, wondering what to do with

it, how to get more, and where it's all going.

Memon is the word used for it. And at one time, Memon was talked about what

you entrusted bankers to keep safe.

But years later, Memon became not something that was entrusted,

but something where people would put their trust.

That a disciple of Jesus is to have total trust in Jesus, in God.

Total trust. Now, let's be honest. It's not going to be easy.

Life and the necessities of life will constantly tempt you to lose focus and freak out.

So Jesus says this as reassurance and application.

Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you'll eat,

what you'll drink, about your body, what you'll wear, is not life more important

than food, the body more important than clothes?

Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow, reap or store away in barns,

and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

How much more valuable are they, are you, than them?

Jesus' question hits home, doesn't it? Do we really trust God?

For even the most basic things in life, what we eat or what we drink or what

we wear, all those things that we're very much worried about.

And most of us here, I would say, have the basic necessities covered, yet we still worry.

Maybe that's for the payments that are due or the health that we have or the

assessments or the work pressures that are upon us, or maybe your appearance or fading appearance,

popularity or approval or safety or security, we seem to worry.

And yet Jesus says, birds don't worry about that. Flowers don't panic over anything.

Jesus talks about trusting in him.

Now, he doesn't remove the worries of life, but instead he reminds us that we're

far more valuable than they are.

So he says, trust in him.

He isn't saying quit your day job. He isn't saying stop being responsible.

He's not saying don't have a superannuation or a retirement plan.

He's not saying anything of that.

He's saying, don't be consumed with anxiety.

Give everything to him.

Don't live as though everything depends on you.

Of course, it doesn't. There are definitely inputs and outputs if we are wise

and we're wise stewards of what we have. The output would be positive.

That's generally proverbially the way that it works out.

We will have input if we want to fleet away everything and just spend on anything

that we want. Guess what? You won't have a lot of money.

I'd be more worried about your, not the lack of money, but rather your inputs,

your reasoning behind things.

Our world worries about food and drink and clothing, what drives them,

but followers of Jesus will live differently.

R.H. Mounts, who is a very well-known author, says, worry is practical atheism.

It's living as though God doesn't exist.

And whether or not I would call that an affront to God or not,

I'm not quite sure, but I know that worry reveals my lack of trust in him.

That's not only unhelpful, I think it's heartbreaking because our father loves

us and he knows what we need and he is worthy of our total trust.

So what's the solution behind all of that? Where do we go to Matthew 6, 33?

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things

will be given to you as well.

That's how our steps should take us. We don't want to have a master, anyone other than God.

We want to store up treasures in heaven, not on earth. So what do we do?

We seek first the kingdom of God.

If you want a personal testimony, then we listen to as that passage talks about

Solomon, who wrote Ecclesiastes, which is the story of his accumulation of wealth

and pleasures and prestige.

Over and over again, he had more than anybody in this world will ever have, ever and ever.

He makes Elon Musk look like he's on unemployment.

That he reflects upon in Ecclesiastes the meaningless pursuit of temporary things

and concludes, now to all that's been heard, here's the conclusion of the matter.

Fear God and keep his commandments. And that's the whole duty of man.

Isn't it amazing? And Jesus echoes the same thing in that verse 33.

He says that our guiding priorities of life, our eye, our focus,

the master of our hearts must be to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

And what does practically does that look like? What does it actually mean to seek God's kingdom?

It means this, that we want to see God's kingdom grow in numbers.

People becoming Christians, people giving their life to Jesus.

We'll be praying about that.

We'll be on about that. We'll be looking for the opportunities that God brings us to that point.

We want to see Christians, including ourselves, grow in maturity and obedience to God's word.

We want to live kingdom values of love and justice, mercy and compassion.

Everyday actions of our life. We want to have his values play out in all that we do.

We'll want to see everything else in life through its proper place under God's will.

That means taking inventory of our time, of our positions, of our priorities,

and placing God as king over them all.

Because Jesus said this, and this should sit us bolt upright,

where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.

So in evaluating what I have, what I do, and doing an inventory of my life and

what I say and how I act and where I put my priorities will reveal my heart.

And like you, I want my heart to be given to God as Master, as Lord,

as the compassionate Father,

as the guide and director of my life and yours. Let's pray.

Oh, they're words that strike through the Spirit of God. Where my treasure is,

they will be my heart also.

I pray, Lord, my heart is for you. I pray, Lord, the things that captivate my

focus and I find so hard to remove from my mind and removed from my thoughts.

And I pray, Lord, that they are transformed under your spirit so I'll focus more on you.

The things that I worry about, I'll give to you, knowing that you are a trustworthy

God. I'll have faith in a faithful God, and I pray that for each person.

Help us, Lord, to be honest before you. Help us, Lord, to be receptive to a

transformed life for your spirit.

I pray, Lord, that we allow you to do massive optical transformation so that

we see life, our treasure,

the people around us through your

eyes and that your kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.