Sermon Info
Summary
Worship is more than singing three or four songs on a Sunday morning at church. Worship is what you treasure. We are all going to worship something, so the question becomes – what do you worship? Worship is what you pursue with all your mind and all your heart. Take time to evaluate what you worship. Put God first in your life; this changes everything. This is where life truly makes sense and comes alive for you. Worship is our response back to God, so let’s live a life of worship and put Him first in our life.
Content
Treasure Is a Verb
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. Matthew 6:19-20
What does it mean to treasure something? It’s kind of a funny word, isn’t it? We’re probably more used to the word treasure as a noun than as a verb. Treasure is something locked away in a chest for safe-keeping. It’s something with an enormous value. It’s something we cannot resist talking about, and it takes on a legendary sort of status.
Whatever a treasure is, it’s almost always something rare. If precious metals like gold and silver weren’t rare, maybe people wouldn’t value them so much. And whatever a treasure is, it sends people on some serious journeys to find it! Around 1850, our American ancestors traveled a whole continent to get the chance to get in on the California Gold Rush. And in National Treasure, step one of finding a treasure was a heist for the Declaration of Independence!
But hold on, there’s another way to use this word, treasure. It’s a verb; it’s an action! You see, nothing in this world is truly a treasure unless we decide to make it so. Take, for example, collectible items like Beanie Babies. If you knew decades ago just how financially valuable these little stuffed animals would become in recent years, you would’ve bought a room full of them. But did the toys themselves change between their days in drugstores and their days on eBay? Of course not! All that changed was how much value collectors gave them.
This truth has consequences: you are not beholden to treasuring what everyone else treasures. The world says money and fame and the newest whatever are worth focusing on. The world encourages us to hoard these things for ourselves, allowing them to dictate our self-worth and define our personal identities. But the world’s appraisal system is broken. As you read in Matthew 6 above, the “treasures” of this earth are fleeting. They take from us more than they give.
Consider the irony presented at the idea of stealing the Declaration of Independence in order to locate a treasure. What elevating earthly possessions as treasure does to us, a little at a time, is that it enslaves us. When we seek out these things above the things of God, we in fact declare ourselves to be dependent upon them.
But in you, by God’s mercy (and by no merit of your own), is the potential to take what the world has cast aside and make it treasure in your eyes. By heeding God’s word, setting your eyes on what is eternal, and trusting Him with all that you value, you begin the process of freeing yourself from greed and misplaced desire. Meanwhile, you begin to store up the treasure which has already been offered to you by your God, who knows what we truly are made to value, and who will keep it in safe-keeping until the day you join Him in heaven.
Words on Worship
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. — Matthew 6:24
The process of treasuring something is tied directly with the idea of worship. Worship is much more than music; it’s more about the posture of the heart. True and good worship is our response to God for who He is and what He’s done in our lives.
He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure. — Isaiah 33:6
The key to true, eternal treasure is a reverence and awe (this is what “fear” means in this context) of the Lord your God. If instead we fear man, and worry more about what other people have to say than what God has to say, we will naturally find ourselves pursuing worthless earthly treasure. Whether we find that “treasure” or not hardly matters, because it will not fulfill us and we will lose it on our deathbeds. It is in our relationship with Jesus that we unlock the treasures of joy, peace, and love.
Worship of God will change your focus, driving you to doing greater works for His glory. Worship of God — who is bigger than all your problems — will cause those problems to shrink in comparison. Our decision to worship God brings us perspective which allows us to raise a hallelujah in the middle of the storms.
Resources:
Better Together // Worship Together // Jeff Simmons
