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“Our
Heart’s Location”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: MT 6:1-6;16-21
“For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also.”
Lent is the forty days before we come to our spiritual encounter with
the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ at Easter.
It is a very common practice within certain liturgical churches
for each individual to make a choice in his of her life where a certain
activity is halted during these days, so we can be closer to God.
People often stop participating in some favorite habit of theirs.
Repentance is seen as a way for ourselves to seek godly cleansing
so that we may experience being closer to God.
It may very well be our wanting to sacrifice, to let go, to surrender
something that actually costs us because the ultimate ministry in the
life of our Lord Jesus is that he sacrificed his life.
For Jesus to be an example for us as to how we are to live our
lives is one of the greatest aspects of his being our leader and our
teacher. And tonight, He is teaching us about where we are to place
our hearts, in this passage from Matthew.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the
earth and light that cannot be hidden.
As Christians, as those who have been brought into the faith of
Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, we are truly witnesses in this world to
God’s truth in Jesus Christ. And,
at the same time, as the salt on this earth, Jesus is teaching us how we
are to understand and live within our relationship with God.
It is our relationship with God that is to be the treasure within our
lives. That is where our hearts are to be located.
The most important thing in your heart is to be your relationship
with God.
That is why Jesus came to be with us.
The ultimate ministry of Jesus Christ in this world was to come
and reconcile us with God. He
is the only person in the history of faith in God who refers to God as
His Father. The very reason
Jesus Christ sacrificed His own life was to bring us to know God as He
does, as our Father. He
sacrificed his life so that we would know God as our Father.
As we follow his example of sacrifice, let us sacrifice that
which will help us grow in knowing God as our Father in Jesus Christ.
We can think of something we are involved in and if we surrender
it we may be able to find more time alone with God the Father in prayer.
That is what heaven is all about. Heaven
is not merely about some golden city with paradise oriented gardens that
will last for eternity, even though, Biblically, this does seem true,
heaven is first and foremost about being related to God the Father in
the same relationship that Jesus knows as the Son of God.
Here is what our Lord is teaching us.
Do not try to look religious so that other people will talk
highly about you in your self-righteousness.
Even when you are going to give to others, do it in a way that it
is truly kept secret. And, when you are truly praying with God, your
heavenly Father, do so in way that it is kept totally personal between
you and God.
I am not going to unpack each one of these instructions.
Their focus, however, is for us to know that our relationship
with God the Father, in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy
Spirit, is to be our heaven, is to be so important to us, where are
hearts truly are, in such a way that we are not doing certain things
that make us look good so that others will compliment us.
I would love to tell one story. When
I was in college I worked for a construction contractor, who had
actually been an engineer in New York, before he moved to Virginia and
became a general contractor. I
worked for him for about four years, every summer when I came home, and
all Christmas breaks. He died in my final year of college and during his funeral
his pastor told us that every Tuesday Mr. Cecil Moses went to a Safeway
store, bought some groceries and delivered them to some families in
needy situations. The
pastor then told us that no body ever knew that he did this for all
these years. This was brand
new news, even to his own family.
It is certainly wonderful that we may be together this evening in a time
of worship. Yes, we pray
together; on Sunday’s we make an offering, and we are in a
historically beautiful sanctuary. There
certainly is nothing wrong in our doing this.
But, we are not to being doing them because we want to look
religious to other people. We
do not do it in order to be praised by other people.
The truest situation in the heart of our lives is to be that we believe
that Jesus Christ has brought us into a relationship with our heavenly
Father in such a way that we are learning more and more of how much God
loves us and is with us on a one on one personal level.
And we come to church because we know that we are all our
brothers and sisters who are having the same experiences with God the
Father in our lives.
You heart is where you treasure is.
Your treasure is to be you personal relationship with God through
the faith of Jesus Christ. In
this time of Lent, give something up so that you may be closer to God in
your times of private prayer. Offer
a sacrifice within your life, just as Jesus did.
Don’t do this so that you can brag to others about how
religious you are. Sacrifice something so you can spend more time with God.
And as we do this we will experience God’s love in such a way
that in God’s timing we will be able to minister to someone else in
their lives when they need to know the love of God.
Let us pray…
Amen
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