Articles
Heavenly Treasure
Luke 12:34 reads, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” A great literary character of collecting physical treasures is Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens book, A Christmas Carol. As a teenager and young adult, Ebenezer is a happy go lucky and compassionate fellow, who even finds love. As he gets older, however, Ebenezer starts to make more and more money. As he does, Ebenezer neglected the woman who loved him, forsook his fellow man, and became a heavy handed miser: all because his heart belonged only to the counting and amassing of greater wealth. Treasure is a word associated with monetary wealth, but anything that children of God put before Him can become our hearts treasure and sole desire.
James 1:14-15 has this to say about desire, “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” In Numbers 16, the third son of Levi, named Korah, placed his heart into worldly treasures because he desired the title of leader more than he had wanted to obey God. Korah and his rebels said to Moses and Aaron, “You have gone too far! For all in this congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord.” God had directly appointed Moses and Aaron back in Egypt (Exodus 7). Korrah and his rebels were too wrapped up in their worldly desires to notice that rebelling against Moses and Aaron meant rebelling against God Himself. Thus, their desire led them to sin with false accusations, and their sin led them to their death at the hand of God (Num. 16:32-35).
When Jesus gave His sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7), he told mankind, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot love God and money.” Ebenezer and Korrah are two examples that help prove Jesus’ point: a heart cannot be in two places at once. If your heart is in not with God, then you will end up hating Him as you pursue your desire for some type of Earthly gain. The apostle Paul is a great illustration of a person who decides to put his heart in God. In the beginning of Philippians 3, the apostle Paul talks about how he had everything a man of stature in Jewish society could desire. He was a Pharisee who could prove his lineage to the tribe of Benjamin, was circumcised on the eighth day, and was considered blameless under the law. Yet, in the latter half of Phil. 3:8 Paul writes, “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” Paul is perfectly content to lose everything he had gained in his life on Earth because they are temporary and fleeting, while the righteousness he gains through loving Christ will last an eternity.
Jesus says in Mark 8:34-36, “ If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Are you on a temporary path like Korrah and Ebenezer, or are you on the path to everlasting life like Paul?
