Best. Sermon. Ever.: Your Heart On The Line

Well, I'm James Sutton, the associate pastor. Welcome to Christ the King. It's a joy to gather together and worship. I want to send a special welcome to those of you who are college students here. I understand you guys moved in recently, and I met a college student from Kenya. Special welcome to you, sir—you win the prize for the longest trip. We do want to invite you back next Sunday. We're having a welcome back coffee and donuts, especially for college students. We hope you'll come back and get some donuts. Actually, providentially, somebody thought that was this Sunday, so we actually have donuts downstairs now too. You can get donuts this Sunday and next Sunday, but next Sunday we'll have care packages as well. We just want to welcome you and we're glad you're here.

We are continuing our study of the Sermon on the Mount, and this morning we're looking at Matthew chapter six, verses 19 through 24. Let's read that together. As we look at God's word, let's dedicate ourselves to being transformed by it.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys 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 so then if your eye is clear your whole body will be full of light but if your eye is bad your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light that is in you is darkness how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. — Matthew 6:19-24

Lord Jesus, we thank you for this incredible sermon that you delivered and for the ways in which through it you call to us and describe a vision, a picture of what life in your kingdom looks like. Lord, we pray that as we encounter you, we would be moving towards that vision, that we would be transformed, that we would start more and more to look like you and to reflect you to a watching world. Lord, we pray that this vision of your kingdom would be infectious and spread, and that people who see us would see you and want also to be like you. Lord, draw people to yourself through our church. Help us to see the incredible value and beauty of what you're doing and to rejoice in it. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

As I mentioned, we are continuing our series through the Sermon on the Mount. We're kind of getting towards the end. You know that because at this point Jesus is asking for donations. You're supposed to laugh at that. Oftentimes that's how we approach this passage—as the foundational passage for asking for money. What I hope to show you today is that Jesus is asking for a donation, but the primary donation he's asking for is not primarily money. What he's looking to get at is your heart. He's calling for people's hearts. Money indicates where our heart is, and he's going to talk about that, but really he's going after us. He wants all of us, not just some of us, but our hearts—the whole of who we are.

My kids are into these things. They're like little rocks, but they're fake rocks—not real. Somebody has plastered a toy inside this rock-like plaster thing. You buy it and it comes with a hammer and a little chisel, and you start chiseling away at it. Eventually inside you discover a fossil, dinosaur toy, something exciting. My kids love this. I don't really like it mostly because as they're chiseling away, they're usually banging the hammer into something, destroying it or getting the powder all over my house. But essentially, this is a great picture of what Jesus is doing in this passage. He is trying to chisel away the plaster that has collected on our cold hearts. He's trying to get at us. He's essentially on a treasure hunt, and what he wants is our hearts. He's coming at it through three different angles.

That's something I've learned as I've watched my kids. They can't just bang at one side of this. They've got to go all the way around it. And so he's got really three metaphors that he is attacking the shell on our heart with—three different metaphors. The first is in verse 19 through 20, and he's talking essentially about investment, an investment metaphor, treasures.

He's talking about treasures and he's asking this question, or inviting us to ask this question, where are you invested? Where is your treasure? That's one metaphor. And then in verses 22 through 23, there's a sight metaphor. He's essentially asking the question of, are you blind? And this is related to the other metaphors because, of course, to invest, you have to be able to see clearly. And then the last metaphor is in verse 24—it's a servant metaphor. He's essentially asking, who is your master? Who is your lord?

So we have a treasure or investment metaphor, a sight metaphor, and a master-service metaphor. That's our outline for this morning. Real simple and hopefully, through that, Christ as he did with the original hearers of this sermon will be chiseling away at your heart. He's coming for you. You're his treasure.

The Treasure Metaphor: Where Your Investment Really Goes

We're gonna begin with treasures—the investment metaphor in verses 19 through 20.

Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. — Matthew 6:19-21

So very simply, this is pretty clear. Jesus is inviting a comparison between what we would maybe call depreciating investments and appreciating investments. And he's looking at it at a cosmic scale. He's essentially saying like earthly material investments, they're gonna fade. They're gonna go away. Rust, moth, thieves can take them. They're not very secure and eventually they will because they're part of the curse. As a result of the fall, they will disappear. They're kind of like mirages—things that are very close and seem very appealing but when you go to reach for them, you might get them for a little while but they're eventually gonna fade away.

They're visible and they're proximate. They're very near. And that's true of physical things, isn't it? Don't we find that these visible, proximate material things—these things that we can touch—they're easy to want to invest in.

You know, another thing that drives me crazy, that my kids like and I don't really like, is when we go to the state fair. There's all these guys set up with booths and microphones crying out essentially, "Come play a game." I don't really like the games at the fair. Kids always wanna play them. They're like, "Oh come on, Dad. It's only $10. We might win this $2 toy that is not manufactured well and will probably fall apart in five minutes on the ride home. But it'll be exciting." Let's spend our $10 and throw darts at balloons or have some random person guess our age. Whatever the game is, it's always rigged in some way and the prizes are never really all that appealing.

One of my favorite things to do is when that happens at the fair, and they're like, "Oh, I want this," I'm like, "Let me just look up and see what this actual prize costs on Amazon." Look at that. It's less than the price of the game. And you usually have to play three times in order to win the actual big prize. There's this kind of bait-and-switch dynamic to it. Essentially, that's a picture of us. And Jesus is calling our attention to that like, "Hey, you are drawn to these bait-and-switch kinds of less-than-valuable things."

It's not that they have no value. I do wanna be clear. Jesus isn't saying that you should never buy clothes or never buy a house or never buy a car or anything like that. But he's simply saying that if that is where you are putting your storehouse, your hope, your security, your identity, then you're investing in the wrong thing because if you compare that to heavenly treasures—things that are of infinite and eternal worth—they're just not a comparison.

You know, several years ago, my wife and I lived downtown. We started thinking about what happens if somebody breaks into our house? Like, what are the things that they could take that we would absolutely feel like we couldn't live without? We started kind of taking an inventory of all the stuff we had and we were like, "Yeah, we could live without that and we could do without that. They can take the TV. I'm definitely not gonna come downstairs and fight somebody for my computer or whatever." We can replace those things and we're just not worried about it. But the one thing that we just really would be upset if it were stolen is we had these external drives that had pictures of our entire life.

All of our kids being born, all of the little videos that I like to make, I'd be like, that would be kind of irreplaceable. So you know what we did? We backed them up in the cloud. Right? That's what Jesus is saying. Don't invest in physical external drives that can burn up in a fire or be stolen—back it up in the cloud. Now that is an imperfect metaphor and I'm aware that yes, it is possible the cloud itself will go away. But what Jesus is saying is he's calling our attention to something that is more secure. If you're going to put your valuables, if you're going to put your investment in something, invest in something that is far greater than something that will fade away, a mirage.

Jesus is ultimately talking about heavenly treasures. He's talking about himself. In Matthew 13, he talks about a pearl of great price. There's this parable that he issues where he talks about the kingdom of God being this pearl of great price and ultimately, he is referred to as the pearl of great price—Jesus himself. He's essentially pointing to the fact that all of the things on Earth, all of these material possessions, they can go. But look at me. I'm totally secure. I'm incredibly valuable. I'll last forever. I'm offering you the chance to place your investment in me. And isn't that a better thing? Isn't that far better than all of the little bubbles and trinkets that occupy our hearts and minds on a regular basis? If you think about the value of an eternal loving savior who offered himself entirely for you—this is something that you want to invest in.

Now, there's something incredibly profound about this passage. Jesus goes on to say:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. — Matthew 6:21

If there's nothing else in this sermon that you hear, I want you to hear this part. Jesus is essentially pointing us to the fact that in the grand scheme of investment, we have one thing that has intrinsic value. Money doesn't usually have a lot of intrinsic value. You think about the dollar bill—it's a piece of paper with stuff on it. But foundationally, money is something that we have given value to. It doesn't have typically intrinsic value. It used to be gold or really nice seashells or something back in the day, but over time, we've moved toward something that we have placed value on that doesn't have intrinsic value.

But what Jesus is saying here is this: if you're talking about investment in the cosmic economy, you have one thing. One thing that you can invest that's incredibly valuable, and it's your soul, your heart. You are made in the image of God. God has placed in you incredible, intrinsic, cosmic value. And here's the thing—Jesus is pointing us to the fact that we're not really doing a great job of investing our soul.

Think about it for just a minute. The things that we sell our souls for. The things that we invest in. I think everybody in this room would say, or maybe not everybody but most of us, we would say, "Hey, our hearts are spoken for. We've sold out for Jesus. He's gotten all of us. That's where our investment is." And I'm sure on some level that's true. But what Jesus is saying is he's saying, really take a close look at that. Have you really invested your heart in heavenly treasures? Have you really invested your heart in me? And he says, if you're going to do that, if you're really going to invest your heart and your soul in me, you need to look at where that resource lies, where your capital is resting.

When you think about investments, I tried day trading for a little while. That didn't go well. Day trading is not something I would recommend personally. Maybe some of you do it and maybe you're more successful than me. But a lot of what day trading is, is you're just looking at different things that you don't know the value of and just kind of taking a roll of the dice and moving your capital from one to the other and hoping that things go up. I did the same thing with Bitcoin. Let me tell you that didn't work out. Bitcoin was just up and up and up and then I invested and it went down.

So Jesus is essentially saying, look, you need to figure out where your capital really is. If you're going to say that you're investing in heavenly treasures, you're going to take advantage of the heavenly opportunity of investment that I'm offering you, you need to start by going on a hunt for your heart. You need to figure out where it is.

And you know, there was a movie called All the President's Men. You remember? Some of you may remember that. Some of you may have watched it later. It's an old movie. I think it came out in the seventies. But essentially it's a movie about the Watergate scandal, and there was an associate director of the FBI who was feeding these reporters facts about the Watergate scandal. He wasn't giving them a lot of details, but he was steering them in the right direction, trying to help them uncover the crime, the scandal. And in the movie, one of the conversations he has with the reporters is, he says, "Look, I'm gonna try and help you out. I'm gonna point you, but I'm not gonna tell you exactly everything. But listen to me. All you have to do is follow the money. Follow the money and it'll reveal everything."

There's a sense in which there's a scandal that has taken place. Our hearts have been claimed by things that were never meant for them. And they now reside invested in all these different places that they shouldn't be. If you want to figure out where that is, do a budget. Have a look at the budget. See where your money is going. Think about where is it easy for me to spend money? Where is it hard for me to spend money? And then evaluate that. Like, am I really sold out for Jesus? Or am I sold out for a new car? Or a house? Or some other material thing? Follow the money. Because if you follow the money, what you're going to find is not only where your heart is, where the things that you want are, you're also going to find essentially who your god really is.

Follow the money. Go on a hunt for your heart. That's the first step in investing this intrinsic gift that God has given you in a way that actually has a return on your investment. You gotta figure out where it is now.

The Treasure Hunt

Second thing that Jesus is inviting you to do in pointing this out is he's inviting you to go on a treasure hunt. First, go on a heart hunt, then go on a treasure hunt. My kids love treasure hunts. I am like the king of making treasure hunts. Maybe. I really enjoy making them. I have hidden clues in giant ice cubes that they've had to melt down in order to find the next clue. I go to the bank and get a bunch of gold dollar coins and put them in a chest and bury them like five feet under. I make my kids go through all kinds of things, and they're so excited about that treasure. I want that treasure to look like treasure, right? Because a treasure hunt's no fun if the treasure is just fake. But if it's real treasure, that's exciting. That's what Jesus is inviting you to do. He's saying where your heart is, there your treasure. Find your heart, reclaim it, and then go on a treasure hunt. Start digging. Start looking. Start trying to see. Start trying to find.

The women who were just up here were talking about a treasure hunt that they were going on. They're talking about Jesus essentially inviting them to enter into the process of searching him out because essentially what Jesus is saying is this: heavenly treasure is so valuable that you'll never really fully understand how valuable it is. You'll never find all of it. Just keep digging. Just keep going. You'll eventually be overwhelmed with the beauty and the majesty of what it is.

And for those of you who've been Christians for a while, you've seen this, but often times we stop digging, don't we? We just give up. We think, maybe I've seen enough of Jesus for now. I need to work on the square footage of my house. I'm speaking from personal experience. I'm not coming after anybody except for me. This is what we do. We often get distracted from the real hunt.

So Christ is offering us an investment and giving us something that our heart actually longs for and deserves. And what's interesting is he's offering us to go on a treasure hunt even as he's on a treasure hunt for our hearts. Do you see? There's an aspect of this that is just a love relationship. Our hearts were designed for this treasure just as his heart was designed for our hearts. Does that make sense? We were designed for relationship with one another.

The Eye and the Light

So that's the first metaphor. Related metaphor is in verses 22 through 23. This is about the eyes and the light. Listen to this:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? — Matthew 6:22-23

Isn't that so clear? I'm not really sure that's incredibly clear to us like what he's saying, but let me see if I can unpack it.

Essentially, what Jesus is saying is that when you walk into a room full of light with clear, open eyes, you see all the light and your body's full of light. You're aware you're in a lighted room. The light comes in and your brain processes it. But if there's something in your eyes preventing you from letting in the light, you could be in a room full of light and not realize it. Your body would still be in darkness, even though technically it's surrounded by light.

What Jesus is saying is that you're blind. The reason you invest in such terrible investments is because you can't see. What you see is the mirage right in front of you that's completely blocking your ability to see anything beyond it. Think about an eclipse—the moon is smaller than the sun, but it's closer. So when it covers the sun, you can't see behind it. That's what's happening with worldly pleasures and investments. They're closer and more tangible, so they essentially cover over and block our vision. We're unable to see. We're blind.

The American Advantage and Disadvantage

Americans, we have a pretty big moon. There's a lot of material possessions at our fingertips. The wealth of America is incredible. Our median income puts us in the top 1% when you compare it to the rest of the world—not our most wealthy, but our median income. So we have a lot of stuff right in front of us that makes it hard to look around and see Jesus.

Have you ever noticed people who are not well off worshiping Christ? Is it more or less filled with joy? Do you get a sense that maybe they see Jesus a little bit more? Why is that? It's because there's stuff in our eyes.

Darkness as Light

Here's what Jesus is also saying with this analogy: if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? He's essentially saying you're blind, but you don't know it. You think the darkness in you is light. You're calling darkness light. You have a tendency to double down on the darkness in your life and claim that it's light.

Here's how it works. We get a taste of something good, like a house. There's nothing wrong with owning a house—Jesus isn't saying don't do that. But you buy a house and immediately after, what do you notice? I'm going to Home Depot all the time. There's something rusting, moths are destroying it, thieves are threatening to break in. I need cameras to protect my cars in the driveway. There are all kinds of problems with homeownership. Immediately you realize this didn't solve all my problems.

Then you have five children and need more square footage, so you do an addition. Then you realize the addition isn't big enough, so you need another addition. And you think, hopefully, this will fulfill all the longings of our hearts and make us comfortable. We double down on the darkness. We keep investing in the darkness because we think if we get enough darkness, maybe we'll be able to make some light.

All of this stuff in our eyes, all the things right before us, all these earthly treasures—none of them satisfy. Why? Because our hearts were made for a heavenly investment, not an earthly investment. There is nothing this world can give us that ultimately will satisfy. There's only one thing, and that's Christ.

But here's the thing—we have a tough time seeing it, especially in this country, because there is a deceiver who loves to play the shell game. Satan loves to convince us that the darkness will produce light. Just hang in there. Just invest another five dollars. Double down. It'll be okay. Think about the story of him in the garden. He shows up and says, "Hey, just take this fruit. You'll be like God." He's offering a promise that isn't real.

It's not really the valuable thing that he pretends it is. He's saying, "I got these shells, right? Put your heart in here." Now watch. While he's distracting you, he drops the heart out of one of them and he says, "Now pick which one is it? If you pick the right one, you'll get double your soul, right?" And so you pick one and it's not in there. He's like, "Oh, so sorry about that. Would you like to play again, double or nothing?" And so we try again.

That is the game that he wants us to play—this deception, this sense of essentially like, if we can just get enough darkness, it'll make it light. We double down on it because we're blind.

Christ's Invitation to See

Here's what Christ is doing in this passage. He's saying in the kingdom, we're outlining these kinds of scams. We're not going to allow this kind of deception. I'm actually going to allow you to see. I'm gonna remove the obstacles from your eyes.

Think about the number of times Jesus healed blind people and he called us to see. He wanted us to see him. He wanted us to see the incredible value of who he is. If we just look at him, that's all it takes. One glance, right? And all of the stuff that we are so invested in suddenly looks like garbage because that's what it is.

He's saying, "No more scams. We're outlawing that. We're gonna remove the stuff from your eye. We're gonna allow you to compare apples to apples, light and darkness—which would you prefer?" And he gives you that by showing you himself.

The rest of the gospel of Matthew reveals who Jesus is. You're invited in the gospels to look beyond all the garbage that Satan wants to convince you to look at. And by the way, the bombardment of that invitation from the devil comes fast and often in this country. Americans on average see 4,000 to 10,000 ads every day. It's a Sunday, so you probably see about 5,000 today. Five thousand invitations from the devil, right? That essentially say, "All you need is this new perfume and all of your problems will be solved," or "This new car, right?" I mean, Teslas are nice—no more gas. Have you seen prices? Solves all your problems, right? Whatever it is, the ads come fast and furious. They come from the devil: "Step right up. Put your heart in. Let's play."

Jesus wants you to instead spend some time looking at him. Just gaze at him. It's not like this is hard. Just look at the beauty of what his offer is. It's incredible. That's what we do when we come into worship and it's what we do when we get together and we study his word. It's what we do when we rub shoulders with each other and we rejoice and worship side by side.

This morning at the 09:00 service, we were singing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" and I checked something off a bucket list that I didn't even know I had. There was a thunderstorm outside. You have not sung "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" until you've sung it with a thunderstorm. There is this sense in which the mighty fortress of our God is just accentuated by a whoop, whoop, right? This is the sort of thing that we should do. Just let's pause for a moment and look at the beauty of who Christ is and the wonder of the gifts that he gives us and how incredibly valuable he is compared to the things that we are often bombarded with.

The Metaphor of Masters

Okay, last point. Let's look at the final metaphor again. It's the metaphor of masters. In verse 24:

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. — Matthew 6:24

The word wealth here is often in different translations translated like mammon, or money. Jesus is here personifying money or wealth. If you follow the money, what does it ultimately reveal? Who your gods really are. And so for different people, there are different things that money or wealth would lead you to. But he's personifying it and saying essentially, there are two masters. There's all the false gods that money kind of points to, right? And then there's God, right? And you can't serve both of them because you only have one soul, right? You can't serve money and God. You can't chase after these false idols and serve God.

And you notice the word "serve" there. I think the best way for us to come at this metaphor is to think about a job, right? That's what he's saying. He's saying, "You've been invited, right? Two masters are gonna give you a job, right?" So college students, imagine those of you who just started, you just got here—congratulations. You just graduated. Now you've got a couple of job offers. I wanna describe the two job offers that essentially Jesus is inviting us to compare, right? The one is mammon, or money, and the other is God.

Here's the first one. Here's your full-time job offer. It's a full-time job. It's gonna take all your time, right?

You can't work for another company. You've gotta work for this one. But we're gonna give you everything. We're gonna give you so much money if you work here. You have no idea—the wealth and the wonders of things that you'll be able to buy. Come work for us.

It's all about the bottom line at our company. We're not gonna give you anything. We're gonna make you earn everything. Coffee is for closers. You need to always be selling. You take this job, you work hard, you're gonna get lots of money and lots of opportunity, but you've gotta work. We want workers and we're going to work you hard. We're not like those other companies that give you lots of time off. We're all in here. We're really committed to the product that we're making, and the thing that we want to get—which really is money.

And here's the thing: there's no benefits, no retirement. But you're really going to benefit from this employment because you're going to get all of this wealth.

And here's the truth about that company. Ultimately, it's going to deliver on none of its promises. You're gonna spend all your time working, and work and work and work. When you're done, all that money that you earned, you'll never get a chance to spend it because there's no time off and you can't take it with you.

There are jobs like that out there, ladies and gentlemen. Real jobs. In fact, most jobs have some element of that.

A Different Kind of Offer

Here's another job offer. How's this one sound?

Hey, we're really excited that you wanna work with us. We're all about relationship building here, and we're gonna accomplish good and beautiful things. If we don't make money, that's really okay. We're just really about the product that we're making. And listen, we really value your investment and involvement. We're literally willing to sacrifice everything in order to get you on the team.

Once you get here, I want you to know it's not gonna be really work all the time. We have kind of a light and easy workload. We're not gonna take it too hard because we're really about work-life balance. In fact, we're gonna demand that you take some time off from time to time because you need the rest. And we really value you. We really want you to take risks. It's okay if you mess up. We'll cover for you. We want you to go out there and explore and see what can be done—something beautiful.

And you know what? We've got incredible benefits. We're going to take good care of you and your family. And we're going to ultimately deliver on everything we promise. And here's what we promise: one day you're gonna be a partner. Not just a partner—we're going to adopt you into the family that owns this business. You're going to be a part of the ownership. Totally forever.

Those are the two masters. Christ is inviting us to compare. Him, right? Who gave up everything for us, who gives us everything, and who invites us into incredibly valuable work. And money, which promises us everything but doesn't really deliver any of it.

Application: Your Work Matters

There's a couple of points of application that I want you to think about. My wife, I was telling her about this and she said, "You know, this is great and all, but how does this apply to me? I get it. We all work for Jesus, but are you saying that we all need to be pastors?"

My wife works for GlaxoSmithKline. She's an internal auditor. I'm a pastor. In case you didn't pick that up.

And here's the thing: no matter what you do, Christ is inviting you to see your ultimate employment as in him. He's not saying you have to be a pastor. My wife is called to be an internal auditor at GlaxoSmithKline because Christ has determined that somebody needs to make sure that people sell drugs ethically in this country. And that's what she does to the glory of God. She's great at it.

We're all called to some sort of intrinsically valuable work—some sort of work that reflects some sort of heavenly treasure that reflects ultimately Christ, our great master, who has invited us into the family business. We're part of the royal family that runs this world, and what is our business? Redemption.

We're invited into incredibly important work. There's a position for everybody. There's all kinds of roles. Almost every kind of employment has some sort of function in this company. So whatever you're doing, you're called to do it for the glory of Christ. It's a beautiful thing that is working to redeem in some way, shape, or form this fallen and broken world.

You know that Martin Luther, who wrote "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" and who was converted in a thunderstorm, by the way—he said that if God of the universe has called you to be a farmer, why would you stoop to be a pastor?

Every single one of us are invited into this employment and yeah, you might make some money. That doesn't mean you're serving money, right? Money has its right place underneath you, the royal family member who is running the business. It is not the boss. Jesus is the boss. Right? And just practically speaking, that frees you up in so many ways. Think about that. You're never going to get fired. You can't lose your job. Your boss loves you too much. He's not going to let you go. You're too valuable. He gave his life for you.

You might lose your job, but you're never going to lose your job. Know what I mean?

You're also free to quit your job. If you start to find that your employment is starting to look more like that first employer and less like the second, if it's starting to treat you with less and less dignity or other people with less and less dignity or produce a product that is somehow damaging and not a part of the redemptive work of God, you can say, take this job and shove it. I work for somebody else. And you know what? You don't have to worry about money. You're part of the family where the boss has the cattle on a thousand hills. You're never going to go wanting.

This moves right into the do not worry passage. After this, you don't have to worry. He's got your back. There's a lot of investment in this. You're vested in that job. So you can take a financial hit. It's okay, right? You're investing in heavenly treasures. You're investing in Christ and his work.

Do you see? Do you see how understanding your master—who that is—reveals more of the value of who Jesus is? Makes your heart long to be with him.

So all three of these things really do that, right? Jesus gives us sight. He gives us purpose. He gives us treasure.

I think about King Theoden of Rohan from Lord of the Rings—you guys are gonna roll your eyes—but you know the scene? He's this old blind man, Wormtongue is whispering in his ear, right? Essentially, the servant has become the king. His eyes are blind. He feels helpless, useless, purposeless. He feels like a poor, almost dead person. And then Gandalf shows up and he starts calling him to more. That's what Jesus is doing in this passage. You have greater treasure. You can see. Look. You have purpose.

In the movie, you watch this guy's face as it just comes to life. That is what Jesus is wanting to do with our hearts—to break off all the crust and to bring us back to life ultimately by inviting us to invest in him and to be one with him.

CTK, that's my prayer. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, would you break through the crust of our hearts? Would you give us living and active beating hearts that long to live life the way that you've called us to? Would you fill us with visions of the treasure that you have already given us in you? Would you give us joy for the hunt of it? Lord, may we engage fully as treasure hunters who want to plumb the depths of who you are.

And Lord, would you give us clear eyes to see past the devil's schemes and the trappings of this world? Lord, as we turn our eyes on you, may the things of earth grow strangely dim in the overwhelming light of your goodness and grace.

And finally, Lord, would you fill us with purpose and direction? Lord, remind us of our heavenly calling and our role as kings alongside of you and queens. Lord, use us in your redemptive purposes and may we live lives of adventure and excitement.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.