Location of the Heart
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21)
J.C. Ryle once said, “The heart is the main thing in religion.” What is the heart? The heart is the fountain from which flows all of man’s feeling, thinking, and doing. Sounds simple, right? Wrong! The heart can be harder to grasp than a greased pig. The heart is both deep and deceitful - who can know it? If the heart be the main thing, we have a responsibility to get a handle on our heart. In this passage (and the ones to come), Jesus provides us with means to assess our heart – by our loving, our looking, and our loyalty.
What does our treasure say about our heart? Our treasure tells us the “main thing” of our affections. Our hearts have a natural propensity to attach themselves to whatsoever they love. How many of us parents have spent an afternoon searching for that one stuffed animal because our children cannot seem to live without it? Their hearts are attached to the life of that animal. Before you brush that aside as the effects of adolescence, take a moment and consider yourself. What topic fills you with the most joy? What are you expecting in life? The language of joy is the language of longing, seeking to attach itself to what it loves. What makes you angry? Defensive? Combative? Anger defends whatever our hearts attach themselves to. The tone in our voice can tell us much about the treasure in our heart.
The heart does more than attach; the heart assimilates into whatever it desires. We become what we love. Children mimic the mannerisms of their heroes; husbands absorb the better qualities of their wives. Love transforms. Herein lies the problem. If we love earthly treasures, we will become earthly people. If our love is for things below, we will take on the qualities of the world below (John 8:23; Col. 3:5-7). When they suffer loss, our heart will suffer loss. However, if our treasure is the infinite, eternal, unchangeable God, so will be our joy. Whether we are discussing Paul’s contentment in hunger and need or the Christians of old who suffered loss of life and limb with joy, the secret to both lies in their treasure – Jesus Christ.
Reader – guard your heart. As John Owen says, “Multiplied thoughts inflame affections, and inflamed affections increase the number of thoughts concerning them.” A brief moment of indulgence may not seem like much, but these indulgences tell us everything about our treasure, about our heart.
