David Stockton 8/1/21 David Stockton 8/1/21

Treasures in Heaven

We’re in Matthew, Chapter six, if you want to grab a Bible and turn there. Today we're looking at the words of Jesus again in the Sermon on the Mount and praying that his Spirit will open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to get a vision for the righteousness of God.

Series: The Sermon on the Mount
August 1, 2021 - David Stockton

And what I mean by that is we want to know what is righteous in God's eyes. Our culture or our pundits these days are telling us what justice and righteousness are and I’m not that interested in hearing what they have to say. I really want to know what God thinks. And that's what we're doing. We want to know how to be approved unto God. We want to know what pleases God. We even sang about it this morning: What moves your heart?

We want to know how to be rich in God's economy, more than being rich in this economy. So anti-American. It's so difficult for us. We are so steeped and we are so good at defining success in this economy. In the kingdom of heaven, in the temporal kingdom of this world, we are so good at it, and what Jesus is trying to teach his disciples and ultimately us, is what the economy of heaven is like, what God values. And that's where we get the word righteousness. That's what God values. And ultimately, we want to know how to live in a way that helps us to hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” the moment after we take our last breath on this earth.

In Chapter five, Jesus was teaching his disciples about the greater righteousness. You've heard me mention this time and time again. Jonathan Pennington, if you want to go deeper into that, wrote a book and really just constantly comes back to that, the greater righteousness as opposed to the counterfeit righteousness or the lesser righteousness.

Again, coming out of our cultural context, last year there was lots of claims to righteousness. We need to be those who are able to discern which ones are counterfeit righteousness, which ones are lesser and which one's greater righteousness. And so Jesus uses six very common human situations to help us understand and begin to unpack and discern the difference between lesser and greater righteousness. Those six common human situations, maybe you've heard of them: anger, lust, divorce, breaking of promises or deceit, vengeance, and enemies.

So in case you're familiar with any of those in the human situation, you can go back and listen to the podcast of the teachings online and… yeah, it was intense. It was real. And we're better, we're better because of it. But it was it was intense. And it hit us right in the heart.

So now in Chapter six, which for the last three weeks, we've been kind of spending some time and Jesus is teaching about the greater righteousness in our relation to God in some very common religious practices, so to speak: giving to the poor, prayer and fasting. And those are the three things that Jesus talked about.

So, first of all, the greater righteousness in regards to our neighbor and then the greater righteousness in regards to our relationship with God is is what Jesus is unpacking here.And as he does this, he's giving us a glimpse of of the greater righteousness. And it's beautiful and it's almost breathtaking. It's sometimes even discouraging when we think of where we are and what Jesus is depicting. It also is very challenging because it hits us and helps us see how far removed we are from this.

As Tim Keller writes, he basically, as you're reading through the Sermon on the Mount, you're understanding the inside out kingdom. So basically, we are such an external society. We base everything on external appearance. What who what you look like, what you have. And the kingdom of God, you know, measures everything internally. And so it's just so hard. It's inside out.

And then the other thing is, it's upside down. And that's where you have the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the persecuted. Blessed are those who are mourning, blessed are the pure in spirit. Whereas our our society and culture would say the exact same thing.

And the weakest is the strongest. The greatest is the least. All this kind of Upside-Down Kingdom stuff. So it's a little disorienting sometimes as we read Jesus's words. But it's not because Jesus is off. It’s because we're off and he's trying to help us get back on on track with who God is.

So as we've done this, a couple of things to note over Chapter six and our relation to God. Three things about God that have been brought up. One is God hates hypocrisy. As you see in this whole chapter, he continues to say, you know, "Don't be like the hypocrites. Don't do what the hypocrites do. This is hypocrisy. Don't do things just so other people will think you're cool if you're trying to do it for God. God hates it.”

And as you read through the entirety of the scriptures, God hates hypocrisy. He hates hypocrisy. He detests it. Isaiah, chapter one, if you want to get further into it, he's like, “I stop my ears when you're singing your hypocritical songs in church. It just makes my stomach churn. I want to spit you out of my mouth.”

This is the kind of things that God feels towards hypocrisy and sad to say, Christians. We are some of the best hypocrites in the world. We have created a complete art of it. We are awesome at it. And Jeff Gokee taught two weeks or three weeks ago on hypocrisy, did a great job. So you can go back and listen to that if you want.

But that's one thing that Jesus is really trying to make it very clear. You're not fooling God. You might be fooling everybody else, but you're not fooling God. He sees it and literally he hates hypocrisy. He hates it. And we’ve got to remember that as we process how we're living our lives and even in our worship to the Lord, we can even get that so messed up, which is crazy.

The second thing that we need to note as we go through Chapter six is God is our daddy. Literally daddy. The word, our father in heaven. And it’s Abba, or translation of Abba. And it means daddy. So when Jesus was saying, “Here, let me tell you how you should pray, you should say, ‘Daddy in heaven.” And is super uncomfortable.Tthe way I know it's uncomfortable, because after all these years of Jesus telling me to pray that way, I still don't. I'm like, “Our father who art in heaven.” You know, like old English or something when I say that prayer, because it just feels more serious. Then Jesus is like, “No, he’s still not getting it.”

And then, you know that like dred pirate guy that was doing the announcements just a second ago — his name is Alec. And he actually does this. He says, “Daddy," when he starts out praying and he's like, “Daddy." And I'm like, “What? Oh.” You know every time still today when he says that it like throws me off. I have intimacy issues, maybe.

But yeah, but that's what Jesus was saying. Like he is your father. He's your daddy. And you don't have to say a whole bunch, you don't have to get everything right, you just kind of talk to him about what's going on in the day. I mean, it's such a simple prayer. And again, Jeff Gokee taught on that last week. It was awesome. He unpacked that really well, gave us a lot to think about.

And so in that idea that God is our daddy, he's close to us. He is transcendent, no doubt. He's our father in heaven. And he's the father, not just of you. He's our father. So you need to remember that you're not the only child. It's really important for us to remember that. And it's very sad that we don't in our prayers and oftentimes even in our, you know, our faith. We a lot of times think that it's all about us. And we we judge God according to what he does for us alone, not understanding that he's kind of got a bigger job than just us.

So I think there's the transcendence of it is so important that God is big and he's created this entire world. And, you know, there's like two trillion galaxies. You know, our galaxy is just one of them and two trillion in our galaxy.

There's all these planets and everything is working in order. And we're on this place called the Earth. That's literally going sixty seven thousand miles an hour around the sun. Now it's in a circle, too. So it's like sixty seven thousand miles an hour straight, has a certain kind of like intensity to it. But the centrifugal force of sixty seven thousand miles an hour going in a circle, that's intense. Like I went on a Slip and Slide for about 30 minutes the other day and threw my back out. Seriously, like seriously sitting down. Back brace. I wasn't like showing them my super cool abs or anything. Just from doing that.

And we're going sixty seven thousand miles around the sun at the same time were spinning on our axis at — how fast? I wrote it down. I didn't know — it's on this page. It's not on this page, I don't know, it's like a thousand miles an hour. Anybody know? Come on, somebody out there knows. Ten thousand or a thousand?A thousand miles an hour. We're spinning on the axis while we're going six or seven.

I mean, and what I'm doing, I'm talking about the transcendence. He's the Creator of the heavens and all these things. And yet Jesus tells us to call him daddy. Anybody said when they prayed, they called him daddy. Yeah, Kurt, of course. Of course I love it.

Nobody else says that Jesus said, you're supposed to say daddy and none of us say, daddy. There’s some daddy's back there. All right. Try it this week. Try it this week. I'll try to.

Daddy. Daddy in heaven. He cares so much. We're going to get into that a little bit more next week. And as we continue on in the Sermon on the Mount, helping to know how God really does pay attention to every single detail of your life.

And the word daddy I know can be a little weird for some. It can have a bad connotation. But it's daddy in the best sense of the word. Daddy honestly, in the sense of the word that none of us have ever experienced in our earthly relationships. This is the way God wants you to see him and relate to him — as a daddy.

So the third thing to note again, Jeff, did those things last two weeks or last three weeks, which is awesome.

And today I want to unpack the idea that God is a rewarder. God is a rewarder. And yeah, it's interesting. But we see that clearly leading up to this point where God is a rewarder. Consistently he says, you know, “If you practice your righteousness before other people, I hope you enjoyed your reward,” kind of.

So if you're if you're going to fast, and you're going to kind of moan and groan so that other people will think that you're really holy, he says, “I hope you enjoyed that, because that's the only reward you're getting.” You know, when you pray and you're like, “Oh, Lord, God of the universe, you are so good and I am so bad,” like when you start praying like that, everybody thinks you're so holy. He's like, “I hope you enjoyed that, because that's all you're getting.” There's no reward for that at all.

And then the same thing when you give to the poor. But he says, “If you're willing to do those things in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you openly.”

So there's this constant, continuous theme that God is wanting to give you reward in result of your righteousness. So he is a rewarder. And we have that in Hebrews 11 verse six, you know, says that if we want to come to God, we must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. And reward is a huge concept, you know, in Revelation, all these type of things. But we'll get into that.

So God is a rewarder is what we're going to be looking at today. So, Matthew, chapter six, verse 19:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, 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. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and …

…mammon is the word. And money is a good translation, but it's more than that, actually. The word treasure has a whole kind of broad sense of it differently than just treasure. And money is not quite there. Mammon has a little bit broader sense. The things we value, the things that that that we that we have desire for, the things that we honor and give value to.

So anyway, we've just gotten through Jesus talking about the greater righteousness in these human examples, the greater righteousness, our relationship with God examples. And then he kind of goes into what almost seems like three completely separate proverbs. And it took me a while to kind of try and unpack, “OK, Jesus, what are you getting out here? Why is this after this?” I mean, I even started thinking like did Jesus, like the Jesus work on this message before this moment where he's sitting on a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee and he calls the disciples to him. Was it something that he was like had already worked on or was it just like catching a moment and saying, “Hey, guys, I want to share some things with you," and just kind of, you know, vamping a little bit? And and I don't know, obviously. But what it does seem like is, because it's recorded in a couple of the different gospel accounts, and because Jesus really was going around the Sea of Galilee and teaching on the kingdom of heaven, it almost really is more like Jesus's stump speech. Now, there was probably some variations where basically Jesus was going around from from village to village around the Sea of Galilee. And this was his speech, as you would call his people together.

That's another reason why it's recorded with such clarity is because it was such a familiar thing that the disciples had heard over and over and over and over and over again, which gives me a little better feeling that we've been in it for four months, and we're going to be doing it for the rest of this month, too. But it was this repetition that these guys really were trying to understand and Jesus was doing this. So there were variations. But Jesus definitely at this point was was moving away from those examples.

And he was talking about this this next life. He was talking about the kingdom of heaven that we are going to to dwell in and that economy that's there. And so he's talking about, “Don't store up treasures in this life. But store up treasures, things of value in the next life.”

That's the goal and what he says here, and actually when he's talking about the lamp, he's talking about, you know, if you're able to discern, if you're able to see what is truly a value, then what will happen is your whole soul will be filled with light. And the word there value, actually, it's like when your eye is singular, when when your eye is singular and what it values. It's like, I think it's Kierkegaard who says, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” And the way James says it is, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”

And there's something about Jesus saying here that we need to be singular in our focus and attention. We need to make sure that the kingdom of heaven, and the economy that's there, is our singular focus; that we're not necessarily trying to win in this life and that life.

And now we're beginning to hear those other words of Jesus, “What will you gain if you get this whole world and lose your soul?” There's this this kind of challenge where Jesus is now trying to help, “Hey, I do care about everything you're going through. I do care about your daily bread and all of those things. But I want you to understand that what I'm trying to do is help you gain a desire, gain a passion, gain a singularity in your focus for the next life.”

And this is where Christians start to sound a little crazy. And I'm totally OK with that, because the world view of the scriptures, the world view of Jesus and the New Testament, for sure, is that we are going to live on after our final breath on Earth, and the life that we live there is the real life. It is more real than this life. This is the temporal life. This is the fading life. This is the shadow. That is the reality. And Jesus is saying we need to keep that in mind. We need to focus on that, because when we get to that life, the things that are valuable there are the things that we are going to wish we had.

And oftentimes when we lose in this life, we actually are gaining in that life, like the Beatitudes teach. Oftentimes death in this life leads to resurrection life. Oftentimes sacrificial love in this life leads to something beautiful in the kingdom of heaven.

And you can look at the life of Jesus, and that's exactly what he did. He didn't just teach these things, but then he lived out those things. Basically, there's a moment in Jesus's life on earth where you can apply each beatitude to it. And the reason that he was doing that wasn't just because he was so masochistic. He was doing that because he understood the the value of heaven, and he understood if he gave himself in this life, he would gain so much more. And that gaining of so much more was you and I could be with him. And so he had joy while he was on the cross. “It was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross.” Because he understood the economy of heaven.

And that's what we're trying to do. It’s what we're trying to get to, is understanding that type of thing. Some of us are understanding a little better than others. Some of us get it some days and totally far away the other days.

I was teaching this to the third through fifth graders on Wednesday night. My wife is in charge of that group and she asked me to to speak to it. And she has a lot more pull than anybody else around here. So I was I was in there speaking. I was talking to them about how God is a rewarder. And it was so funny because the best example of that I could give to the third through fifth graders was like Brittany, my wife. You know, I was like, “She's a rewarder, right?” And they were like, “What?” I said, “Think about how much candy she gives you.” And they were like, “Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

I mean, that’s the number one complaint about Brittany. She does a thousand things so well. But people are just like, why she gotta give my kids so much Candy? And I'll tell you, because she's a rewarder. And so you should just be thankful because she's teaching your kids about God and his character, because she gives them candy for, like, showing up. She gives him candy for, you know, being good after they were bad. She gives him candy just because sometimes she's bored. She gives them candy … there are just endless amounts of reasons that they can give.

But that's literally, as you look through, the way that the Bible talks about God is he is a rewarder. He is such a great rewarder.

Jesus told this story about God's heart when it comes to rewards, and it's the worst parable by far.

He told a parable of this, this master employer that went and was telling people, “Hey, if you come work in my field today, I will give you this much in pay.” And so there were, you know, some people heard the news and one guy showed up 8:00 a.m. the next day. He was all ready to go, you know, and he started working in the field, excited about the pay that he would get. And he worked, you know, eight hours, or whatever it was.

The next guy shows up about 10:00 a.m. and he's like, “Hey, can I work?” And the master was like, “Sure, jump in!” And so he works the rest of that day.

One guy shows up at noon. He jumps in. He's like, "Hey, man, I know I'm late, but can I work?” And the master was like, “Dude, work it up. Let’s go!”

And so they're all doing this work. And then one joker Enneagram 9 shows up five minutes before it's over, five minutes before the sun's down, whatever, it was the end of the day. And he's like, “Hey, can I work?” And the master is like, “Sure. Jump in, man.” So he jumps in and he's just working so hard for five minutes. And then the bell rings. Day’s over. And they all line up to get their pay.

And, you know, the guy who was there for five minutes goes up first and and the master gives them the full amount, as if he worked the whole day, because he said, “If you come and work in my field, I'm going to give you this amount.” So the guy works for five minutes, gets the full pay. And the guy who was there at 8:00 am was like, “If he's getting that, I'm going to get big! This is going to be awesome.”

And so the next guy who came at noon goes up there and he gets paid the same amount as the five minute guy — the same amount that the guy said he would pay everybody if they came and worked. So he was like, “Oh, okay. It seems a little weird.” And then he takes off.

The guy who showed up at 10 a.m. shows up and he gets the same pay as the rest of them. He's like, “It doesn't seem right. Well, I got paid, you know, and at least I didn’t work as much as that guy.”

And the 8:00 a.m. guy shows up and he gets paid the same as everybody else, including the five minute guy. And he's ticked. He's American. He is offended at this point. And he will not lay down quietly. This is injustice. This is not fair. And he's like, "Come on! What's the deal?”Starts throwing tea in the ocean and, you know, he's like, “No, man! This is not right!”

And so this is the way the parable ends. It's basically like, “What is it to you if God wants to give somebody else something good?” That’s the resolve of this thing? I'm not resolved in my spirit here. And again, that it's totally justice. You know, the master did exactly what he said he was going to do.

However, there was there was someone that experienced mercy. Experienced grace. And in this story, what Jesus is trying to say is, “You got to understand, when you see God as a rewarder it should cause your heart to rejoice whether it be you or somebody else. You've got to start to value mercy — even more so than sacrifice. It's just so upside down. It's so bizarre when you put it into real life context. But that's what Jesus is trying to get them to do. “You’ve got to learn to store up and treasure and be singular in your focus and and really value the things that I value.”

And so when you see that situation, if our hearts were right, we would go, “Wow. Who is this master? What is this mercy? And how do I worship him, honor him? How do I get to know him? How do I get closer to him?” That's a bit of the shift that Jesus is wanting to do.

And in this last section, he talks about, "No one can serve two masters.” So it's kind of the same type of thing. You have to be singular in your worship. You can't actually worship God and mammon. If you start to value or treasure anything else on equal or greater than God, you've completely lost God.

Just recently, I was reading about, you know, the story of King David, who was a man after God's own heart, right? I mean, he basically was seeking exactly the way that we're seeking to know what moved God's heart. And yet at one point, David slipped. David messed up and he saw Bathsheba bathing on this rooftop. And there was something in his heart that begin to value that and to long for that, and he treasured that above his relationship with God.

And you know the story. That got him to where he was lying, he committed adultery, ended up murdering Bathsheba's husband and then taking Bathsheba as his wife. And when Nathan, the prophet, comes and busts him and basically says, “Look, God knows what you did and doesn't think it's that cool.” What he actually says is "You have despised the Lord. What God felt in that — it wasn't that, oh, you tried to love two things. You actually despised the Lord.”

And ultimately, whatJesus is trying to do is get us to value the things that the kingdom of heaven values. And ultimately there's nothing more valuable than God. He is the treasure. He is the reward.

This is what John Piper says about this passage. He says:

“You have a good eye if you look on heaven and love to maximize the reward of God's fellowship there. You have a good eye if you look at Master-money and Master-God and see Master-God as infinitely more valuable.”

This is really tough for us Americans.

In other words, a “good eye” is a valuing eye, a discerning eye, treasuring eye. It doesn't just see the facts about money and God. It doesn't just perceive what is true and false. It sees beauty and ugliness, it senses value and worthlessness, it discerns what is really desirable and what is undesirable. The seeing of the good eye is not neutral when it sees God. It sees God-as-beautiful and it sees God-as-desirable.

It's a singular focus. Not wanting what God can do for us — wanting God. Treasuring him, and as we do these things that that are done in secret, as we mentioned, as we store up this treasure in heaven, there's something that happens in our heart. As we as we discern things well and correctly in our singular, our focus, it does things to our soul. All these intense inner parts of us are stimulated and stirred in interesting ways.

And I think this leads us to a little fuller understanding of rewards and the scriptures. We have the story of the wood, hay and stubble, which a lot of us have heard about where Paul is trying to teach that believers, those who are believing in Christ, when we go and stand before God, we don't stand in judgment whether we're going to heaven or hell. We already have that assurance because we gave our life to Jesus. He bled on the cross for us, and he's put his Spirit inside us as a guarantee. So we have complete assurance that when we breathe our last, we are going to be with Jesus.

But we also will go through a judgment as believers. And it's not, again, heaven or hell. It's more what did we do that matters — and what did we do that doesn't matter. And the way Paul describes it is that we pass through a fire and whatever we did that was economy of heaven that was pleasing to God will become these precious metals that are not burnt by the fire. And whatever we did that was for critical, whatever we did that we did not honor, please God in the way that Jesus taught, it will become wood, hay and stubble, and it will just be consumed.

And it's hilarious, actually, if you read through it. Basically Paul kind of describes like, we're all going to pass through that and some of you are going to come through and there's going to be a lot of smoke on you. There's not going to be a lot of meat left on the bones after you get through, because you've been living like a hypocrite. And basically it's like you're going to come through and you're going to be like, “Yeah, I made it! Woohoo!” And all of us are going to be looking at you, like, Where’s all that smoke coming from, man? Well, you got to stop, drop and roll quick! You’re burning!”

And another way that it's described in the New Testament — and Paul alludes to this and it's picked up in Revelation and is having to do with crowns. So Paul is basically sharing with Timothy and Second Timothy four that he's come to the end of his life, he's been poured out, he's fought the good fight, he knows his time is coming to depart from this life and enter into the next life. And what he says is, “Timothy, I want you to know that there is stored up for me a crown of righteousness for all the all the things that I have done, all the times I've valued Christ above everything else. It's now created for me a crown of righteousness for when I get to heaven.”

And then later, it's picked up in Revelation, where we see this vision of heaven and all these angelic beings. And there's these elders and they have these crowns. And at some point in this worship service, they take these crowns and they go lay them at the feet of Jesus.

Again, this is a little strange for us, because, you know, my daughters were into the crowns for a little bit when they were younger, but I've never been in the crowns. I've never been like, “Dude, I want a crown so bad!”

But think of it more like, you know, the Olympics right now. So if you were to ask Michael Phelps when he was twelve years old, like, “Hey, man, could I get you a necklace with a cool, big, old medallion on it?”

He'd have been like, “No, weirdo, go away!” But then in the nature of that context, now that he's standing in the Olympic Village, and as he's, you know, gathered and the whole world is watching, you know, when they go and they put that necklace on him with a big old medallion, and it's like he really, really wants that. And when we get to heaven, when they start passing out crowns, we're going to care very, very much about the crowns.

You can also think about the NBA or the NFL. You know, like if you ask these big strong guys like, “Hey, man, you know, I got you this ring..” It’s "Get away from me, weirdo!” But like after they win the Super Bowl, after they win the finals — or not— you know, then they get the ring. And that really means a lot. They're really into rings, even though they've never been into rings their whole life. They're really into rings.

And I know I shouldn't have left the Suns. I should have stayed. I mean, I watched and I did my best to not jinx them and stuff, but I just should have stayed and they could have probably got that game four. And then they would’ve been … anyway.

But like those rings mean something in that moment. And when we get to heaven, what Paul is trying to help Timothy understand is that when we get there, these crowns are going to mean a lot. These are the rewards, so to speak. This is the treasure that we're storing up in heaven, these crowns of righteousness.

And again, that's a kingdom of heaven principle. A nd we want to take kingdom of earth perspective and think, you know, we want big, old mansions and we sing songs about how big our mansion is going to be, maybe. And then we're looking at everyone else and, “Look at your stupid mansion.”

But that's kingdom of earth perspective on a kingdom of heaven principle. And that's not right, because this is what's going to happen when we get those, when we stand in that line and they start giving out those crowns of righteousness. And some of us just barely made it through the fire. And ours is like kind of that crown that's made from the weeds, you know, that you just pick out of the out of the field and just kind of wrap them up and you put it on. Some of us are going to be like, “What's up? We've got a crown. I mean, like I got a crown.” And then when it's time to lay that before Jesus, we're going to understand we're giving him everything we have. But it's less than what we know could have happened. And maybe that's the point at where we start to weep and Jesus wipes the tears from our eyes. But there's going to be that moment where we're going to lay down at Jesus' feet our crown.

And some of us, you know, might have liked that pope, you know, like that pope thing is super tall and it's just like bling all around, all the way up, even in the back, maybe on the inside, too, where nobody could see, but you and Jesus like, “Jesus, just check it, bam.” You know, doing it in secret. Doing it in secret. But it's just like all blinged out. And then you're going to be able to lay that before Jesus. And again, it's not going to be a comparison thing where you're going to be like, “Dude, I'm so much better than them.” You're just going to be so glad that you get to lay this thing down before your King. And what it's going to mean between you as you lay down.

So the storing up treasure in heaven is, again, it's not an earthly thing where you're trying to stock up and become some baller. It's again, even the rewards that we're storing up in heaven ultimately lead back to more worship, and more value, and more treasuring, and more singular focus on who Jesus is.

And so Jesus is saying, “You want to get that right now, you want to figure that out now. And begin to have worship, purity now and singular focus now. And then in that day, it's going to matter so much.”

And just in case, it's still not making sense. When I got married in 2004 to my wife, Brittany, I remember about our one-year anniversary. I was looking at her and I told her I loved her and I said, “I love you.” And, for whatever reason, I remember saying it and maybe it was the look on her face or maybe it was how cheesy I can be sometimes or what, but I just in my mind, I was like saying, I love you with one year of emphasis behind it. It just felt so weak. It felt like I barely even got it out. And part of that was because, you know, I knew other people who have been married for a long time. I mean, I just you know, I know people in our church have been married sixty-five plus years. I know my grandparents are married sixty-five plus years. And I'm like, you know, I got this like one year, you know, nothing thing.

But I also know that, you know, Brittany's dad said, “I love you” to his wife and his kids for twenty-two years and then left. And so in my wife's heart and mind, so to speak, until I get to year twenty-three, my “I love you” doesn't even fill the hole.

You with me? Now, it's not totally true, and the grace of God changes things, and ultimately she needs God, not me, all of those things, but in our relationship, my “I love you,” it's only got sixteen years of weight behind it. And I'm excited about that because the hole is smaller. And I'm longing for the day when I get to say, “I love you” on year twenty-three, and to see what that feels like for her. But ultimately, I've told her this many times before, I can't wait to be married for fifty years and be like, “Oh, I love you." Like the weight of saying “I love you” at that point, all the, you know, the times where I've treasured her above everything else, all the times of kindness, all the times we've had to turn the corner, because our hearts were really hurting, all the times where she's forgiven me and I've forgiven her. I long for that end. And just, so you know, I'm saying fifty is kind of like a goal, but I'll keep going after that point. Is not like 50 — it's over — did my job. See you. You know, like, I’ll keep going.

But just the weight of that phrase, with all that backing is going to be very different. And I think that's what we're cultivating with our relationship with God. That ultimately the rewards we're after are not something God can give us if we're seeking God for what he can give us, we're losing from the very beginning. We're not hearing the words of Jesus. We're treasuring what he can give more than who he is, and really the goal of our entire lives is is to be intimate with God. It's to say, “Daddy.” It's to know and be able to receive the fullness of his love for us.

As Paul puts it one place, “I count everything as crap compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ.” He is the prize, he's the treasurer, he's the reward, and really, ultimately, the greatest reward we can receive in this life is a greater intimacy with him. And so that's why the rewards are so important, because they're going to represent a deeper intimacy with him. They're going to represent that “I love you” that has so much more effort behind it.

And and I'm sorry if this message is not helping you. I'm sorry if you know you're having trouble getting this, but this really is the gospel. Everything else, somebody's selling you something. The chief end of mankind is to know God and enjoy him forever.

So every joy, every pain in your life, ultimately, is God allowing it so that you will be closer to him. And if you can't see that, you're not a Christian and you're not practicing Christianity. You're practicing some form of Christianity that has no real heart behind it.

And we have to continually try and get pure in heart so we can see God. We have to continue to try and look at at our worship and see if we're really trying to value two things, or if we're really just being singular in our valuing of who God is. And we have to remember that the reward that we really long for, the reward that God really wants to give, the best thing we can get is to be able to have a greater intimacy with God in this life and the next. That is to the end for which you are made, why you have a beat in your heart, breath in your lungs and a mind that can know, it's for him.

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