Treasure in Heaven

Matthew 6: 7-21 “The Gospel of Matthew: Treasures in Heaven”   07/17/16

The Lord’s Prayer. Powerful words that we pray each and every Sunday. Powerful words that I know many of you pray daily. But have you ever stopped to consider exactly what we are praying together with this prayer? Have you ever thought about what Jesus is trying to teach us not just about nature of prayer, and how to pray, but about the Kingdom of God with these particular words.

We are now in our third week of exploring some of the stories found in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is the Gospel of Matthew found teaching through stories and parable to be crucial to his ministry. He certainly healed people in the text and performed mircales, but Jesus spent more time in the gospel of Matthew instructing the disciples then in the other three Gospel writings. Specifically, Jesus was intent to instruct those who gathered around him about the Kingdom of God. 

Today’s text starts off with Jesus teaching about prayer. In fact Jesus doesn’t start of with the philosophy behind prayer, he simply tells the disciples how to be in an attitude of prayer. Remember that the Gospel of Matthew is written to a primary Jewish audience - they are used to stories from the Hebrew Scriptures about leaders who prayed for them as a people and are used to hearing the great prayers of the Psalmists - but this is a different type of prayer - a personal prayer between them and God. Further, note that in comparing those hearing the teaching to the Gentiles, Jesus is not condemning the Gentiles - that simply isn’t Matthew’s audience here so he is using them as a contrasting point of comparison. 

We are to pray in a way that is simple and straight forward. We are to tell God what is honestly on our hearts. Prayer isn’t about seeking attention or who can talk the longest or getting all the words right. Prayer is about communicating with God. We pray in order to be in deep relationship with God. 

One of my favorite praise songs isn’t sung very often. Maybe because its not upbeat. Maybe because it just isn’t known very well. But its entitled ‘If I Could Just Sit With You Awhile’. “If I could just sit with you a while. If you could just hold me. Nothing could touch me though I’m wounded, though I die. If I could just sit you a while, I need you to hold me, moment by moment until forever passes by.” Friends, we have a holy, loving, Father who invites us to just come and sit with him in prayer. To cry. To be silent. To express our heart’s joy. To tell Him about our day. And to be loved. That is the attitude we approach prayer with.

At the same time, Jesus is teaching us to pray for big things - not just empty requests that we feel like we have to say. This can be a scary prayer to pray. Maybe you don’t want God to actually occupy all of your life. Maybe you want to hang on to control. So you don’t think about the boldness in the request “Thy Kingdom Come”. You avoid praying it in your own prayers, yet alone praying it first and foremost and instead settle for smaller requests. Personal wants and desires. What is God grants our heartfelt prayer to have the Kingdom of God come? What would that mean in our lives? In our town? In our nation? In our world? Our God invites us to make this request. Our Lord instructs us to pray in this way, that the Kingdom of God come and be known among us! Praise be to God! Do we believe our request will be granted? Do we pray as if it is coming? Or do we simply recite the words, not seeing and believing the power behind them? Jesus tells us not only to pray that the Kingdom of God come, but that God’s will be done. But once again, do we realize the power behind what we are praying? Time and time again in scripture we see the disciples just not getting it. They expect Jesus to come and overthrow the Roman government, even though Jesus came to overthrow the power of sin and death. They expect him to be a conquering King, not a humble Messiah. The walked with Christ for three years and still didn’t get what the will of God was.

God wants us to pray prayers that have the power to change the course of history. God wants us to ask for big things for the Kingdom on Heaven and Earth. But we shy away from this. Maybe because we are afraid that we will be disappointed, or that the answer will be no. We don’t want to take that risk, so we’d rather not pray for big things, life changing things at all. I think we all can tell stories of times we have pleaded with God for something and haven’t received the answer we wanted. And brothers and sisters, I can’t tell you why that happens, it is the way of God. But even if I don’t understand God’s ways, I do know that we are encouraged to keep praying for these big things, because sometimes God answers yes to our requests and lives are truly transformed.

God doesn’t just want us to pray prayers that can change the course of history, but also prayers that can change our very hearts. We can probably all think of someone who has hurt us. Someone who has wronged us. Someone who owes us something - maybe a thank you or an apology. Maybe something much more. Some of us are carrying around the weight of wounds from several years ago. The wounds of debts that we feel that someone owes us. Maybe you even have a list of “should haves”. People that should have treated you differently. But have you ever stopped to consider the times that you have been on someone else’s debt list? Times that you have hurt someone else?  Brothers and sisters, when we pray “Forgive us our debts as we have been forgiven” we remember the powerful truth of the cross. We remember the undeserved and unearned grace that we received through Jesus Christ and we desire to show others that grace, letting it shine through our lives.  We cannot control what other’s do with the forgiveness we offer them, we are simply admonished to forgive. To not let things eat us up or define us, for in the end that will harm us even more.  When we pray this prayer, we remember the people that we have hurt in our lives. We seek reconciliation. But even if they do not forgive us we know we are forgiven by God.

But Jesus didn’t just teach people about prayer, he went on to link it to acts of devotion. Remember that we often miss the links in Jesus’s teachings because we read bits and pieces about them or expound on smaller chunks in Bible Study or on Sunday morning. But Jesus kept teaching after presenting the Lord’s Prayer. He spoke about how to fast as well, and how fasting, like prayer, should be done in a way not to attract attention but rather to connect deeply with God. 

The final piece of this teaching I want to look at this morning is one that we rarely connect with prayer - our treasure. Treasure is defined as anything that is of value to us. There are some things that seem to have universal value - property, money, etc. But there are other things that we highly value for their personal memories for us. Treasure is more than something that has a monetary value, it can have an emotional value as well. 

Jesus teaches to not store up our treasure here, on this earth. And that is a really hard teaching we can consider another day. He says instead to store it up in the Kingdom of God. In ancient society treasure was stored in places, temples, shrine - the royal dwelling place. For us the royal dwelling place of our God and King in heaven. But here is the important line in this teaching “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Do you pray about what you treasure most? Do you pray that others will be blessed with what you treasure? Do you treasure things like forgiveness, mercy, all being fed, and God’s Kingdom coming, as expressed in the Lord’s prayer? Or do you often find yourself focused more on the here and now - gaining what you think you need. What would it look like if we took time to consider if what we treasure is the same thing God treasures? How can our hearts and attitudes about treasure be changed through praying the Lord’s Prayer? Lord, change us we pray. Amen.