Sermons Matthew 6:19-34 80-38 Mar 15, 1987. www.gty.org
Avoiding the Love of Money

Let’s open our Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 6, 1 Timothy chapter 6. We’re going back this morning to the text from last week, I really just want to expand on it. I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to say last Lord’s Day, which is not an uncommon phenomena for me. We covered verses 6 through 10, this matter of the danger of loving money. And afterwards, several people inquired of me, even to the point of writing me letters, about how to avoid that.
How do you set yourself in a spiritual position not to be victimized by the love of money? Let’s look at verse 10 just to establish a starting point. The apostle Paul says, “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, which some coveted after; they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many severe griefs, or sorrows".
And we talked last time about the danger of loving money. What I would like to do this morning is just to follow that up a little bit and talk to you about how to avoid loving money, how to avoid loving money. And the best text for that is just to leave 1 Timothy, and let’s go to the sixth chapter of Matthew. And I want to draw us back to this wonderful portion of the Sermon on the Mount to the teaching of our Lord Jesus and have us look at verses 19 through verse 34, the end of the chapter, and in so doing, come to grips with the very basic, elementary teaching of our Lord on how to live a life that is not preoccupied with affection for the material.
Now in looking at Matthew 6:19 to 34, we have a very practical portion of Scripture which our Lord outlines for us. He gives principles to eliminate the love of money, principles to remove our affection from moving in that direction. There are four of them. Let me suggest them to you at the outset and then we’ll look at them individually. First of all, the Lord says in order to avoid love of money you must have the proper treasury; secondly, you must have the proper vision; thirdly, you must have the proper allegiance; and fourthly, the proper confidence.
Let’s look first of all at the proper treasury, beginning in verse 19 and reading through verse 21: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Our Lord is saying your perspective must include the proper treasury. In other words, “Where do you put your deposits? Where do you invest? Where do you put your money?”
The principle simply stated in verse 19 is, “Treasure not up for yourselves treasure.” It’s the Greek verb from which the English word “thesaurus” comes from, which has to do with a treasury of words. The word means “to lay aside,” “to store,” “to hoard,” “to keep,” “to actually stack up.” In fact, if you look at some of the lexicons, it indicates that it has to do with a vertical stacking rather than a horizontal kind of stacking.
It’s an interesting word. And what the Lord is saying is this: He’s not forbidding us from earning money, He’s not forbidding us from keeping money for good purposes, He is forbidding us from storing money to be wasted on self-indulgence. That’s the whole issue here, that when you perceive life as mainly involving the gaining of money to be stored and then used for your own indulgence, you have a wrong perspective. The key words here are the words “for yourselves.” You might underline that or make a note of it in your mind, because that’s the issue. He doesn’t say, “Lay not up treasures on earth,” He says, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth.”
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