A Treasure Hunt

Our new series is Counter Culture Christ because in our culture we face three giant issues: rampant materialism like I've never seen it before, just super high levels of anxiety. Everybody's so stressed; everybody's so worried. I don't know if you saw a new survey—we're gonna be talking about this more next weekend—but a new survey where they did psychological research on every single country on the planet. There were like 200 of them or something, and the United States was the third most stressed out country in the world. Just our levels of anxiety are so high, and incivility toward one another like I have never seen before. Anxiety, incivility, and materialism. Jesus had a lot to say about all three right in the middle of His most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. So the next three weekends we're gonna go verse by verse through the heart of the Sermon on the Mount. Today, let's talk about materialism. I call this the treasure hunt.

Did you know that there is more buried treasure in the land of Israel, the Holy Land, than probably any other place on the planet? Just recently, for example, at the ancient ruins of Megiddo, while unearthing a house in this area, archaeologists found this clay jar. When they opened it up, gold and silver spilled out—rings, earrings, and more. Somebody had apparently hidden this jar, and it had stayed hidden for two thousand years until just now. And this is just one of the buried treasures they found all over Israel. Just one month after that, excavators digging under a parking lot that they were building for a hotel near downtown Jerusalem discovered ancient Roman paving stones. It was the courtyard of a Roman mansion, and they noticed one of the paving stones was looser than the others. So they looked underneath and found this pile of gold and silver and coins and jewelry. There were gold earrings and there were beautiful rings, and experts say there is much, much more treasure to be found in Israel.

Watch this: an article in the Jerusalem Post recently said between 160 and 200 tons of gold and silver potentially lurked under the Judean hills and the Gew sands. Their estimated worth is over two billion dollars today. So, show of hands, how many of you want to go on a trip to Israel right now? You're very interested. We're taking up a collection. No, here's the weird thing: almost a hundred percent of the buried treasure that they have found in Israel is from a few decades of one century. Now, this is a part of the world where there has been human civilization for over 1000 years, yet almost all of the buried treasure is just from about two or three decades in one century, and it happens to be the first century around the time Jesus lived there. Now, why is that?

Well, in Jesus' day, they had a problem. They had a lot of money and no place to put it. What we think of as money was a relatively new idea back then. Now, this is the most common coin of Jesus' day, and people in his era were just starting to use coins most of the time to pay for things instead of just bartering. The problem was there weren't anything like our modern banks, and Israel in Jesus' day was going through an economic boom. In fact, some historians believe that Jesus's era was probably the most prosperous era that Israel has ever seen before or since. So there was a ton of wealth creation going on—lots of people with lots of money, but no banks to put the money in. So what do you do with all your treasure? Well, you hide it or you bury it.

But of course, there's two big problems with buried treasure. One, treasure gets lost. Right? You die and you never told anybody where you hid it, or you forget where you put it, or other people find it. Other people steal it; it gets lost. And then second, treasure gets people lost. And here's what I mean: there was, because of this social circumstance, treasure hunt mania going on in Jesus' day because everybody knew people were getting rich, and the only place they could go with their valuables was to hide them. And so it got to the point that everybody was constantly going around, you know, digging up fields trying to find treasure. If you look at Jesus' parables, He actually tells several stories along those lines. It got to the point where there was actually a cottage industry in fake treasure maps that people would sell, reporting to lead to treasure. In fact, one of them was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's called the copper scroll. It's made out of copper and it contains obscure coded directions to 64 spots where it claims there is hidden treasure. But most scholars believe this is a great example of one of the many fake treasure maps that were going around in Jesus' day.

Now, why in the world would anybody make a fake treasure map? Why? To make money, right? I mean, people saw that there was an opportunity to make money. People were looking for buried treasure. So yeah, sure, I'll make some money off a treasure hunt mania by making these fake maps. So treasure gets lost, and treasure gets people lost—two very annoying problems. So some of the most urgent questions that people in Jesus' day had because of the situation were what to do about these two problems. In answer to the first problem, they asked how can I keep my treasure safe, right? And not put it somewhere where thieves can find it or it can get lost or corroded? And to the second problem, they asked how can I find true treasure and not some fake treasure from some fake treasure map?

And Jesus comes along and says, you know what? I can help you with both those problems. I imagine His audience was riveted as He told them, here is how you can always keep your treasure safe, and here is how you can always find true treasure, not fake treasure. And they're sitting on the edges of their seats as He gives us the answer in Matthew 6:19–24. You can turn there in their Bibles if you have them with you, too. And this is not just a history lesson. This is so relevant to today, isn't it? Are we going through a boom time just like Israel was in Jesus' day? There was an article last week in the San Jose Mercury News. Look at this. It said if Silicon Valley was an independent nation, it would be the second richest nation in the world per capita, second only to oil-rich Qatar. Can you believe that?

Yet there is also so much financial stress in our area. I grew up over the hill in the Santa Clara Valley, and I have never seen the Santa Clara Valley or the whole South Bay Monterey Bay more prosperous. I've never seen us more prosperous, and I have also never seen us more stressed. We have the exact same questions as those first-century people. How can I invest best? How can I make sure that my life pays off? How can I make sure I'm not giving all my time and all my energy to some startup company that's gonna fold or to some company that's gonna get sold and I'm gonna get laid off? How can I make sure that my stocks are really going to help me in my future, in my retirement? And Jesus says I can help you with those questions, too.

And what comes out of these texts today are three great self-diagnostic questions. If you learn to ask yourself these questions seriously, they can change your life. They can change your stress level. They can change your whole satisfaction level. And I want to spend the majority of my time tonight on the first question. Ask yourself this: Where am I storing? Where am I storing? Now, let me explain that. Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 6, starting in verse 19: 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.

Now, look carefully at what He says here because people kind of get this wrong sometimes. Is Jesus saying anywhere in these verses that He's against treasure or wealth? No, He's not. He doesn't say a word against treasure. Is Jesus saying anywhere in these verses that He's against storing up treasure? No, He's not against treasure. He's not against storing up treasure. He says just make sure that your efforts don't go to waste. Make sure that your hard-earned treasure is stored where it's going to do you the most good, and that's not just in, you know, some earthly bank account or in your earthly possessions. And we really need to hear this because in our culture, what we imagine wealth will bring is really three things: first, security. If I have more, well, then I'll be secure. I'll be set for life. Second, satisfaction. If I only had more, I'd be perfectly satisfied. I'd be happy.

And we tend to think that wealth and achievement will give us significance. Maybe if I was powerful and wealthy and rich and famous, people would give me more respect. They'll like me more. Security, satisfaction, and significance. Is that true that that's what wealth brings us? I know that you hear this sort of thing from pastors, you know, probably since Sunday school, pastors have told you, you know, money doesn't buy happiness. So who cares what I say? I want to quote an authority that's not a pastor and as far as I know is not even a Christian. But look at this person's observation. There's a writer in New York named Cynthia Heimel, and she wrote an article about this for the Village Voice newspaper. This is a very liberal newspaper, you know, not some kind of an evangelical Christian or Catholic magazine in New York.

She says over the years living there in New York City, she knew a bunch of people who were struggling actors or actresses or, you know, fashion designers—people who wanted to make it. And then some made it. They became rich and famous. And she says when they actually got the wealth and fame that they'd been looking for, Cynthia says they not only became unhappier than they used to be, but they actually became unbearable to be around. Pretty honest. And here's part of a quote from her article: she says, I pity them. They were once perfectly pleasant human beings, but now their wrath is awful. More than any of us, they wanted fame. They worked; they pushed. And the morning after each of them became famous, they wanted to take an overdose because that giant thing that they were striving for that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and happiness had happened, and nothing changed. They were still them, and the disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.

What an observation! Being rich and famous doesn't really make you secure or satisfied or significant. I mean, the Warriors are playing right now, and in a famous quote after the first Warriors championship a couple of years ago, Kevin Durant said, I thought this would make me happy, and it didn't. I'm still the same inside. So if that doesn't make us happy, then what does? Jesus says store your treasure in heaven. Okay, that's beautiful poetry. That's awesome. What does this actually mean? How do I store my treasure in heaven? Well, Jesus explains. There's actually a parallel passage to the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus gives almost the very same sermon, and He elaborates a little bit on this point. In Luke 12, He says, sell your possessions and give to those in need. Now, it doesn't say sell everything you've got. It just means what it looks like. It means from time to time, sell some of your stuff and then give the proceeds to the poor. This will store up treasure for you in heaven, and the purses of heaven never get old or develop holes. Your treasure will be safe; no thief can steal it; no moth can destroy it.

So He says if you sell some of your stuff, you give it to the poor, you'll get treasure in heaven. What does that mean? I'm going to have treasure in heaven? Well, Jesus talks about I'm going to be rewarded in heaven. God's going to reward me, right? So I believe that to be true, but I think there's something that goes even deeper than that. It's also this: when you help the poor, many of them will take the first step into a relationship with God for eternity—something that completely changes their lives. And this is personal for me. Let me tell you a story I've told many of you. If you've been coming to church any length of time, that when I was very young, my own mother was widowed. I was four; my sister was one. And for the next eight years, we literally lived below the poverty level. Mom wasn't a citizen; she wasn't naturalized; she couldn't work. We had my dad's Social Security. It was a very, very tight spot.

Some of you heard the details of one night I will never forget. When I was right around 10 years old, my mom called me and my sister into our kitchen there in San Jose. I saw that she'd been crying, but she was trying to make her voice even. She looked at us and she said, "We have no food." And she opened up the refrigerator, and there was literally nothing in there, nothing. And she said, "Let's pray," with her Swiss accent, and she held her hands. We stood in this little circle of three in our kitchen, and we bowed our heads. And I have to be honest with you, already at 10 years old, pre-adolescent cynicism about religion was creeping in, and I wasn't really praying. But I was listening to my mom pray, and she said, "Lord, please give my children milk." Yeah, asking for milk. Amen. And listening to her pray, I was thinking, right. I thought there is no way this prayer is getting answered. I thought to myself, there's no God in heaven. We wouldn't be in the situation if there was. Dad wouldn't have died if there was. She's praying to the air. What are we going to do? And I went to bed feeling almost panicked, very alone, very worried.

The next morning, man, I remember this like it was yesterday. Like I remember the smells and everything. I opened the front door to go to school, and I almost stepped on it because there was a paper grocery bag right on the steps. I opened it up, and somebody had left two boxes of milk—powdered milk—in that bag on our doorstep. Anybody remember milkman powdered milk, right? Maybe somebody's kids didn't like it or something like that, and they left it there. But I remember my jaw just dropping and running back into the house yelling, "Mom!" That moment is crystallized in my memory as a fork in the road for me. I truly believe I went from a life of sad cynicism to a life of faith starting that day because I remember thinking, Wow. Do you mean prayers can get answered? Do you mean there's hope? Do you mean that there's somebody out here in our neighborhood who's noticing this and who cares? And who must have because Mom just prayed this, and now there's somebody out there who responded to God's prompting? That means it's going to be okay.

And to this day, I have no idea who did that for us, but I can tell you this: I want to be the one leaving food on other porches for other little kids and other little single moms. This is very, very personal for me precisely because I know that it's about much more than just giving food. It's giving people hope. And it's a problem here in Santa Cruz County. I don't know if you saw the latest stat: one quarter of the little kids here in our County are what they call food insecure, which is what me and my little sister were. One fourth of the kids in Santa Cruz County. Don't you think some of these other little kids have prayed to God for help? Don't you think some of these other little kids' mamas have prayed to God for help? And we can be the answers to their prayers and potentially, very realistically, change the way they think of God and prayer and Jesus and churches for the rest of their lives. I mean, how much is that worth? You know, how much would you give for the opportunity to change lives like that forever? Man, that is priceless. That is worth everything. And that's where I think Jesus' heart was when He said, man, you guys, you have no idea. You're just gonna get treasures in heaven. There's going to be people there partly because of your generosity because your good deeds opened their hearts to the good news.

This is probably why one of my heart causes in this County is the Second Harvest Food Bank because of my past experience. And you know, we've been talking about it. One huge way that you and I can apply this verse precisely and immediately is what we call around here the world's biggest garage sale. But you know, that's not a fundraiser for our church. A hundred percent of these proceeds, like every dime, goes to the food bank. So honestly, I just want to challenge you this week: go back to your house. Go back to your garage. Look at your clothes. Donate stuff to sell. And I got to be honest with you: for some reason this year, our donations have really come up short. Hardly anybody's donated anything so far this year, and we don't want it to be the world's most medium garage sale. So go through your stuff, get together, and let me get specific. If you got clothes, accessories, hats, scarves, shoes, t-shirts, pants that you don't wear anymore, if you have any kids' stuff whatsoever—toys, high chairs, baby seats your kids or grandkids have grown out of—if you've got collectibles somewhere in a box that you look at like once every five years, if you have bikes that you or your kids have outgrown, how about transferring that wealth that's just sitting unused? How about transferring that to heaven?

We're taking donations today through Wednesday down at the bus or empty out your garage, donate stuff, then come Saturday starting at 8 and fill your garage back up with the stuff that you find here. It's really gonna be a ton of fun. It really is, and you'll be storing up treasures in heaven. You know, Mark did such a great job last weekend talking about those early chapters of the book of Acts, the aftermath of the resurrection. One of the intriguing verses is Acts 2:45 of the early church. It says from time to time they sold possessions and gave the money to the poor. That's like in Acts chapter 2. So this whole idea of church garage sales for the poor, we're carrying out a 2000-year-old church tradition. So let's dig in; let's do it.

Like I said, I wanted to spend a good amount of time on this first question, but questions two and three are very important too. Number two: Where am I staring? Where am I staring? What am I focused on? Jesus says, look for where your treasure is; there your heart will be also. What's He saying? Look, if you bought, say, a hundred shares of Disney 15 years ago, right now you'd be totally into watching the news and stuff because there's a ton going on with Disney right now. You've got Avengers: Endgame, this big new movie, and it's making, you know, 50 billion dollars or whatever it's making, and you'd be a shareholder. So you'd be interested. There's new rides going on at Disneyland. There's all these new mergers and acquisitions going on. You'd be totally interested in all those news stories because where your treasure is, there your heart is also. And Jesus is saying when you give, it changes what you focus on. So if you want to give your attention to the things of God, then you give to the things of God because where your treasure is, there your heart is also.

Now watch this following a train of thought. Jesus says 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? That's such a great image: unhealthy eyes. What does that have to do with being too materialistic? Well, as always, Jesus cuts to the core of the issue, right? Where are your eyes at? What are you staring at? I'll get real specific. I read this week if you're an average American—this is average—you watch about a thousand hours of TV a year. That means around retirement age, you'll have amassed nine and a half solid years of TV viewing—nine and a half years of your life. And since every hour of TV is about 16 minutes of commercials, that's two and a half years of your life watching TV commercials if you don't skip them. And that's just TV. That doesn't include ads on apps or websites or podcasts or radio or magazines. And what is the message of basically every single one of those commercials? You need more stuff.

I'm not saying all media is bad; of course not. But I am saying it's so easy for our eyes to kind of go bad in this culture and just for our eyes to be on the stuff we don't have. So where are you staring? And that actually leads right into the final question: Who am I serving? Where am I storing? Where am I staring? And who am I serving? Jesus says here's the way it is: no one can serve two masters. Either you'll hate the one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Now again, read this carefully because Jesus is not saying it's wrong to be rich. He's not saying it's wrong to be successful. He's not saying it's wrong to have a great idea that makes you a ton of money. He's saying who's your master? Are you the master of your money and of your desires and of your coping mechanisms, or is that all about your money? Has your money mastered you?

Here's a good little exercise: at the beginning of every day, ask yourself, who will I serve today? And at the end of the day, ask yourself, who did I serve today? Who did I serve? Ultimately, did I really serve my materialistic culture or my ambitions or my desires or my hungers or my passions or other people's demands or plans for my life? Is that what I served, or ultimately did I serve others and the Lord? Now, you might think, well, René, only a pastor could come up with these questions because this is not practical in real life. I want to tell you about a fascinating conversation that I've been having via email this week on this very subject.

On Easter weekend, two weekends ago, one of the guests who was there was Rich Karlgaard and his wife Margie. Rich is the publisher of Forbes magazine. He's a columnist for Forbes. He wrote an article that is on the front page section of the lifestyle section of the Wall Street Journal this morning. So in other words, this is a man who knows about money—the publisher of Forbes. It's safe to say a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Safe to say he knows a little bit about money, and he's a Christ follower. He and I have been emailing back and forth all week on this topic, and he is the one who started it. He emailed me a few days ago and said, "René, I am looking forward to this series on Counter Culture Christ. This is exactly what is needed right now." And I said, "What do you mean by that?" Now, I asked him if I could quote from his emails to me. He said no, but I'm gonna do it anyway. No, he said yes. And look at this; see if you agree with this. He said one toxic aspect of today's culture is our obsession with achievement and the correspondingly insane pressure we put on our children.

You must see a TLC—the downside of that pressure, families going into debt, rising rates of anxiety. Now again, if the publisher of Forbes magazine thinks this is a problem, it's probably a problem. And by the way, he wrote a book about this called Late Bloomers. But in one of our emails, I asked him, so how do we escape what you're talking about? How do we escape that pressure to perform and to achieve? Part of his response is this: We need to remember we are created in the image of God, and our self-worth comes from God, and that's inviolable, indestructible, eternal. In other words, don't look to success for self-worth. And we were talking about his own spiritual journey, and it's interesting. Here's what he said about where he's at now spiritually. Interesting turn of phrase: he says, I feel a death—a good death—a death of my old self, ego-driven metrics obsessed, and the birth of somebody new, a servant on a mission.

I wanted to show you this because I wanted you to see he still got his day job. He's still a magazine publisher. He's still a columnist. He's still an author. But in those same exact roles, as a Christ follower, he now sees himself as a servant on a mission. And that's exactly the question: Whose servant are you? Whatever you do, whether you're retired, whether you work outside the home, whether you're at home raising kids, whether you're a student, whose servant are you? See, we all serve somebody, but unlike most slaves, you actually get to choose. You actually get to choose who your master is going to be, and there's a lot riding on this.

I started out talking about the copper scroll, that apparently fake treasure map from the time of Christ. Well, the copper scroll is still leading people astray. One American guy, a Continental Airlines pilot, spent all of his vacation time and then all of his retirement money in the 1960s and 70s digging in one spot that he believed the copper scroll described. And after years, he found a cave with elaborately carved steps that archaeologists told him were from the first century that led deep into a mountain. For the next several years, he spent all his time and money to dig further into the cave, only to reach a total dead end and not find even one single coin. The only thing he found at the very, very end of the cave was an ancient skeleton. Scholars now believe that those steps were simply a project designed to keep prisoners of King Herod busy, just carving steps that just led to nowhere for no reason. And I read that that man lapsed into total despair. You can imagine because he realized he had spent his entire life on a dead-end treasure hunt.

As Jesus said, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? He's saying I don't want you to spend your entire life on a dead-end treasure hunt. So ask these self-diagnostic questions of yours: Where am I really storing deliberately? What am I really staring at? What has entranced me, captured my imagination? You know, you've got to really, really lean into these questions. I've given you these self-diagnostic questions. I hope you ask them of yourself this week. But here's three quick application thoughts. These three things are gonna keep you on the right track, I think. First, be grateful. God lavishes His blessings on you all around you. You just need to notice that joy isn't getting what you want; it's enjoying what you have, right?

And second, be generous in large and small ways with your time, your attention, your money, your resources every day. This is a dramatic and decisive way to say to your possessions, I don't serve you; you serve me. Giving it away proves whose boss. And finally, be God-centered, and this is really the key to the whole issue. As we'll see next week, Jesus says to seek first the kingdom of God. That's the answer. This is the big question for all of life: what or who do I treat as my Savior and Lord? Do I treat money, in essence, as my Savior and Lord? Do I think it's going to rescue me and give me security and significance, or is it Jesus?

And listen, I really want to make this clear. This message is not about you trying harder to like your stuff less, and it's not about you trying harder to figure out how much you should give away. That's the wrong direction to put your attention. This message is about turning away from even thinking about that and refocusing on Jesus. The question is, does it move you to think of what Jesus did for you on the cross? So I mentioned Rich Karlgaard came with his wife Margie, and she added this to our conversation this week. She said, Jesus is saying to all of us, You are my treasure, and your mission is serving all my other treasures. She said the big difference for us Christ followers is we know we can't ever deserve that kind of love, yet we have it by grace. And when that begins to really move you, amaze you, make you weep that the Lord loves you that much, then you move toward Christ and toward loving others and away from idolatry.

The only way I know to counteract the power of money is to see the richest one in the universe giving it all up for you. And that's why we want to end this message, this time together, with a focus on that in communion. So let's prepare our hearts for that right now. Would you bow your heads with me? Lord, help us to refocus on you. There's so many distracting things in our culture. It's so easy in our culture to seek the wrong treasure. I know I've fallen into this at various times, and we confess that to you today, Lord. And Jesus, we want to say to you right now, You are our Lord and nothing else. Some of us here tonight might want to pray that prayer for the very first time: Jesus, I make you the Lord and Savior of my life because nothing else could give me security and significance like you can give me—nothing. And God, I pray that we would all grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.