"Learning From Jesus: Hope: Where Is Your Hope and Security?” | Rev. Vicki Harrison

This Sunday, New Hope continued Learning from Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount with Pastor Vicki Harrison bringing the message from Matthew 6:19-24.

The series has been walking through the picture Jesus paints of God's kingdom — the way God always intended the world to be. Look around at the world as it is, Vicki said, and you see evil, violence, corruption. Not a lot of positive things. That was never the design. God's kingdom looks very different from the kingdom of the world, and the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus showing us the difference: God's priorities, God's values, what God blesses.

This week the question was where we put our hope — and Jesus gets there by way of treasure.

"Oh No, Not Another Sermon On Money"

Vicki got ahead of the room before she started.

"It's at this point that some of you are like, oh my gosh, Pastor Vicki, not another sermon on money. You don't have to pretend. I know that's what some of you are thinking."

She asked for an open mind, and set out two things to know before opening the passage.

First, it is not just about money. It is about treasure, and those are two different things. Money is one form treasure takes. It is not the only one, and for a lot of people it is not even the main one.

Second, it applies to every single person in the room — and everyone watching online. Not the wealthy. Not the generous. Everyone who claims to follow Jesus.

Then she asked permission to go deeper and say some hard things. The room gave it.

What Treasure Actually Is

Her working definition is the most useful thing in the message, and it has nothing to do with a number:

"Our treasure is that thing that we have a really hard time letting go of."

Everyone has one. The poorest of the poor have one. The homeless man on the corner with his cart has something he treasures. The question is never whether you have a treasure. It is what yours is — and Vicki asked the congregation to sit with that. What is the thing you would find it hardest to part with?

Things Are Things

Jesus then says something Vicki called obvious: the things of this earth are temporary.

Money, cars, boats, 401(k)s, photographs, the teacup collection, designer purses, diplomas, autographed footballs. They all have expiration dates.

She pointed at museums as the proof. We take the things we consider most precious, put them in a temperature-controlled room under special lighting, go to extraordinary lengths — and they are still falling apart. Because regardless of what we call them, they are still things.

And they can be taken. She pointed to the recent run of art thefts across European museums: significant earthly value, serious security, and all it takes is a good enough thief.

Then she brought it home, and this is the line that landed hardest in the room:

"How many of our earthly treasures are going to eventually end up in landfills? Do you ever think about that, as you're looking around your house going — all this stuff my children will not want? It's probably going to go to Goodwill, or it will end up in the dump."

Even This Is Earthly Treasure

Here is where the message got uncomfortable, and Vicki said so before she said it — asking for an umbrella of grace, and noting that her husband was already saying no.

She gestured at the sanctuary itself.

"All of this stuff. It's stuff, right? The communion table, the pews, everything up here. It's just stuff. This is earthly treasure."

Sometimes, she said, this kind of stuff gets hold of our hearts in ways we do not even realize. It is subtle. We begin to put our hope in it. She picked up her Bible and kept going:

"The Bible is wonderful, but this is just a Bible. This is not the Word of God that will stand forever. This is a Bible. You know the difference."

Then she showed the congregation where she had worshipped the week before: a tent in a township outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Plastic chairs. Folding tables. No instruments. Rustic and sparse.

The people there were very proud of that tent. And the Holy Spirit was present.

So What Is Heavenly Treasure?

Jesus commands that we store up heavenly treasure instead — which raises the obvious question of what that actually is.

For the Jewish crowd listening to Jesus, Vicki explained, heavenly treasure would have meant the things they did that were merciful and kind. For us, she wanted to go deeper, and she got there through a question about eternity.

Read Scripture from Genesis to Revelation and three things are eternal:

• God

• God's Word

• People — because "whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." If you believe in Jesus, you are eternal.

Those three are the only things in this whole world that will last. So heavenly treasure is what attaches to them:

Doing the will of God. Being obedient to the commands of Scripture — the things Jesus is teaching us in the Sermon on the Mount. And caring for people. Really caring for people.

When that is the fruit of your life, when that is the spiritual legacy of your life, that is heavenly treasure. Which makes the audit simple, if not comfortable: What have we done for Jesus? What have we done for others? What are we doing for God's kingdom?

Your Heart Follows Your Treasure

Then comes the hinge of the passage — for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also — and Vicki pointed out that it runs the opposite direction from how we assume it works.

You would think you put your treasure wherever your heart already is. That is not how human beings work.

"Wherever our treasure is, our heart follows our treasure."

Which means the direction of a life is set by where its treasure goes:

"Give money and time to God's work in this world, and your heart will be focused on God's work in this world. Spend most of your time and money on yourself, and your heart will be focused on yourself."

She did not soften it. "It's a hard and convicting truth."

The Lamp Of The Body

Jesus keeps going, into what sounds at first like a detour about eyes and lamps and darkness. Vicki admitted her own first reaction: what in the world does that mean, and what does it have to do with treasure?

It was a common analogy in Jesus' day, and the crowd would have caught it immediately. A healthy eye meant someone sincerely generous. An unhealthy eye meant someone who pretends to care about other people's needs but is really obsessed with themselves.

Think of the Pharisees. They appear to care. They are really about personal gain. Look at me. Look at what I'm doing. Look at how great I am.

So it is a heart problem — a heart filled with darkness instead of light. Which is why the section closes where it does: you cannot serve both God and money. Or, put another way:

"You can't say that you trust Jesus, but then hold on so tightly to the things of this world. You can't say that your hope is in Jesus, but then be so stingy with your money and time."

What She Saw In Johannesburg

Vicki had just returned from General Conference, and she had spent the week reflecting on people she met there — people serving God for almost no money, at real cost to themselves.

An Irish woman she met briefly in an elevator, convinced God was calling her to preach the gospel in North Africa. A blonde, blue-eyed woman, in a place where preaching the gospel carries genuine danger. She was not deterred. This is what God has called me to do. So be it.

A pastor from Siberia, a presiding elder like Vicki. Vicki oversees about 19 churches and her furthest is a two-hour drive. This woman's closest church was five and a half hours away. Her furthest was a twenty-four-hour train ride.

"And I'm like, oh my gosh, that sounds terrible. And she's like — it is such a joy."

Vicki let that sit. "You know how convicting that is for me? You know how many times I've complained about sitting on I-75 coming back from my churches?"

And Rajan, from India — a former atheist who came to know Jesus, then planted a church in his own home with his wife and one other person. It is now over 150 people. He may not have two cents to rub together, and he is overflowing with joy and ready to talk to anybody about Jesus.

"Their hearts are so focused on heavenly treasure."

Her Own Honest Inventory

Then Vicki turned the message on herself, out loud, in front of the congregation. This was the most disarming stretch of the morning.

She knows God has been clear that she should start a Bible study or a house church in her neighborhood. Has she done it? "The answer is no. You can say no. I haven't done it."

She has excuses. Too tired. Too busy. And frankly, it is just not convenient.

Jesus has been strongly urging her to invite her unchurched neighbors over for dinner. Has she done that? Also no. Why? Because it is not convenient. It takes effort. It takes away her me time — and she likes her me time, her naps, and her pedicures.

She knows there are kingdom causes God is calling her to give significantly more money to. She and Richard are comfortable. They could give more generously if they did less for themselves. She could rearrange the budget if she really wanted to. She has not.

"I still worry — will there be enough? And if I'm really honest, the question in my head is: will there be enough for the things that we really want to do?"

Which led to the question she said God had been asking her all week, and which she then turned on the room:

"Where are you putting your hope?"

One Thing She Wanted Made Clear

Before closing, Vicki drew a firm line so no one heard something she was not saying.

Jesus is not saying money or resources or stuff are bad. That is not the teaching. The church needs followers with resources who give generously to kingdom causes. God blesses people to be a blessing to his work in this world. And none of what we own was really ours to begin with.

What Jesus shows us throughout the gospels is that the most extraordinary experiences of our lives have nothing to do with stuff. He lived in poverty — the Savior of the world, the Son of God, the Lord of all — and he experienced the good life, because the good life is found in loving God well and loving others well.

Would That Be Enough?

The service opened with one of Vicki's favorite hymns, sung at her request:

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness…
On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

Her closing question was whether we mean it.

"It is so easy to sing those words. It is so much harder, friends, to actually live them."

And then the image she left the congregation with:

"What if all the stuff — all the earthly treasure — what if it was all stripped away? I want you to just picture this. All of it was stripped away, and all you had left was Jesus and the heavenly things.

Would that be enough?"

Want to go deeper? Read Matthew 6 for yourself, and sit with her closing question for a week. We'll keep unpacking the Sermon on the Mount together — Sundays at 9:30 AM.

Catch up on the series at Learning from Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount.

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More Sermons in this Series

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Other Sermons from Pastor Vicki