Christ’s Teaching on the Highest Good | Matthew 6:19-24
Brian Hedges | April 26, 2026
Well, good morning! So good to see all of you this morning. Let me invite you to turn in Scripture to Matthew 6. Today we are resuming our study on the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve been away from Sermon on the Mount for the last a month or so, and today we come back to it.
Throughout this series, we have been showing that Jesus speaks to us as our king, as our savior, and as a sage; that is, as a wise teacher. He is showing us what the good life is within the kingdom of God—that’s kind of been the running theme throughout this teaching of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount.
I want to lead into the message this morning, from Matthew 6:19-24, by reading something to you that I read yesterday from the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft. Someone actually sent me a screenshot of something they were reading, and I thought this was just perfect leading into the teaching of the passage today. So Peter Kreeft is kind of borrowing from C.S. Lewis here, and he says, “The ancient ethics always dealt with three questions.” Okay, those three questions are social ethics, individual ethics, and then kind of the ultimate good, the summum bonum, the highest good. He says, “Modern ethics usually deals with only one, or at the most two, but the three questions are like three things a fleet of ships is told by its sailing orders.”
This is the image from C. S. Lewis. “First, the ships must know how to avoid bumping into each other.” They’ve got a fleet of ships; they’ve got to know how to navigate so they’re not bumping into each other and crashing. Kreeft says that’s social ethics. That’s concerned both in the modern world and in ancient ethics as well. “Second, they have to know how to stay shipshape and avoid sinking,” and that’s individual ethics, how we live our lives as individuals. This has to do with virtues and vices and character-building and so on. And then third, most important of all, “they must know why the fleet is at sea in the first place.” What is their mission, their destination? This, says Peter Kreeft, is the question of the summum bonum. It’s the greatest of all questions, the highest good. Why do we exist? Why are we here in the first place? What is the highest good?
It connects directly to what Jesus is talking about in this passage we’re going to look at this morning in the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus is holding before us the ultimate good, the highest good. Again, it’s a portrait of the good life within the kingdom of God. And the words of Christ that we read today I think are some of the most searching that we ever find in Scripture, certainly searching to my own heart and I think will be to yours as well.
Let’s read this text, Matthew 6, beginning in verse 19. Our Lord Jesus says,
“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.
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
This is God’s Word.
I want to ask three questions this morning that are related to our values, our vision (that is, our vision of the good life), and our devotion, our ultimate allegiance. Three questions.
1. Values: Where Is My Treasure?
First of all, a question about values, and the question is, where is my treasure? Where is my treasure? This obviously comes from those first verses that we have just read, where Jesus says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
We see right here, as we see throughout this passage, that there’s a contrast. Jesus speaks in very stark terms. He’s holding out before us two different kinds of people, two different kinds of life. And here there’s a contrast between treasures on earth and treasures in heaven.
Don’t think merely of treasures in the afterlife. I think the idea, rather, is treasures, riches, wealth that simply have a temporal reference, time-bound but not lasting, in contrast to that wealth and reward and treasures that are tightly connected to the kingdom of God, to God’s reign, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the heavens.
So there’s a contrast here between living for earth and living for the kingdom, between living for that which is temporal and living for that which is eternal, between living for that which is fading versus that which is lasting. It begins with a warning, as Jesus says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.”
Frederick Dale Bruner in his commentary says, “The moth is nature’s corrosions eating away at our riches; the rust, time’s corrosions; and the thief, humanity’s corrosion. All three together represent the insecurity of life lived for accumulation.”
Now, we all know this intuitively. We know that we can’t actually depend on money and on what money can buy. The Scriptures warn us of this over and over again.
Proverbs 23:5 says, “Cast but a glance at riches and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.” Surely you’ve experienced this. You get a nice raise, a nice bump in your paycheck, and you’re thinking of all the things you’re going to be able to do with this extra money, but of course it just barely keeps up with inflation, and the refrigerator breaks down and then you have a car repair, and before you know it all of that extra money is gone. As soon as the money’s there, often it’s gone. I mean, that’s what Proverbs is saying.
This is a consistent reminder in Scripture, not to trust in the uncertainty of riches. Jesus speaks very clearly about this. You might think of Jesus’s parable of the rich fool, given in Luke 12. Somebody comes to Jesus, and it’s a squabble over who’s going to inherit the money. This guy’s saying, “Tell my brother to split this inheritance with me,” and Jesus warns, “Don’t think that your life consists in the abundance of possessions that you have. Beware of covetousness.” And he tells this story: There’s a man who’s very rich, his crops are doing great; he’s making so much he doesn’t have room to store it all! So he essentially says, “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to tear down my barns, I’m going to build bigger barns, and I’ll store up for years to come. I’ll just relax. I’ll eat and drink and be merry. I’ll just relax.” And God says, “You fool! Your life will be required of you this night, and then whose will all these possessions be?” Jesus says, “So is the person who lays up treasure on earth rather than is rich towards God.”
You can’t count on these riches. They may leave you in this life, but surely, even if you have riches you’re going to leave it all behind. It’s been said, “There are no pockets in a shroud, there are no you U-hauls behind hearses.” Nobody takes it with them. Nobody takes it with them. Don’t live for this world! Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
What does that mean? What does it mean to lay up treasures in heaven?
Well, first of all, in light of the whole context, it means living for the kingdom of God. It means living for and under the reign of God and investing our lives and our resources, our time, our money, our resources—investing in those things that truly last. It means living for the reward of the Father rather than for earthly reward. It means being rich towards God, and one way we do that, of course, is through our generosity, by giving to others, by meeting needs, by using what God has given us for the good of others.
Jesus says, “Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth; lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” And then verse 21 is the key: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
It almost seems backwards, doesn’t it? You would expect Jesus to say, “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be.” That’s not what he says. He says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be,” because our hearts tend to follow our practices, and what you give yourself to is what your affections will be shaped by.
This is really a diagnostic for our hearts: Where is your treasure? What do you think about most? What do you worry about losing? What do you get excited about gaining? Whatever the answer is, that’s your treasure. And if your treasure is on earth, if it is bound to temporal, fading things, you really have no ultimate treasure at all. You’re not living for the highest good. But if you’re living for the kingdom of God, if your treasure is in heaven, then your heart will be anchored in eternal things.
This means that our discipleship includes economics. As Frederick Bruner puts it, “Discipleship includes economics. It includes our lifestyles, it includes choices that we make.”
Now, let me just clarify. Jesus is not saying, and the Bible certainly does not say, that riches are bad in and of themselves. The issue is not money, the issue is the love of money. The issue is not what you possess, it’s what possesses you. Hear these words from 1 Timothy 6: “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” And then a few verses later Paul exhorts the rich Christians in Ephesus, “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty [not to be arrogant or proud] nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides for us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”
He’s just applying the words of Jesus. If you’re rich, if you’re wealthy, if you have resources, praise God; that’s a gift, that’s a blessing from God. Use it for the kingdom of God. Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth; lay up treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Where is your treasure? It’s a question of values. Where’s your treasure?
John Newton famously said,
“Fading is the worldling’s pleasures,
All its boasted pomp and show;
Solid joys and lasting treasures
None but Zion’s children know.”
I don’t know about you, but I want solid joys, lasting treasures. We find it in the kingdom of God. Where is your treasure?
2. Vision: How Clear Is My Focus?
Question number two is a question about vision: How clear is my focus? Look at verses 22-23: “The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is healthy [some versions say ‘if your eye is single’; another gloss might be ‘if your eye is generous’] your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad [or evil or stingy], your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness?”
All right, this is a little bit harder to understand. Jesus here is using a metaphor, and there are some translation issues. I don’t want to get into the technicalities of it. But the basic idea here is that what we see and what we perceive in our minds comes to us through the sensory organ of the eye. We all know what it is to have an eye problem and how it just affects everything else.
Last year I was out playing golf one day, and I wear hard contact lenses—I’m almost blind without them—and all of a sudden I felt my lens pop out on the golf course, down in the grass. I was on my hands and knees for twenty minutes; couldn’t find it. Couldn’t find it. I ended up having to replace the contact lens; I ended up having to finish that round with only half of my vision. I’ll tell you what, it threw off my depth perception. I was not making very many putts that day! Because what you see affects everything else, right? Your vision affects things.
Jesus is just saying that. Your vision affects things. So, how clear is your vision? How clear is your focus? If your sight is off, if your vision is off, it’s going to affect everything else in your life.
This is a metaphor for spiritual vision, for moral vision, for the clarity of your focus in life. And again, clarity about your vision of the summum bonum, the highest good, your vision of the good life. Jesus says, “If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”
That word “healthy,” that word is a word that actually has a double meaning in Greek. It literally means, “If your eye is single,” as opposed to divided. So think of clear, united vision versus double vision; or think of wholeness, wholeness of heart, sincerity of heart, versus a divided heart, a double mind, or hypocrisy. So Jesus is saying if you are wholehearted and singleminded… But then, this word also carries the idea of generosity. That which is healthy and single is also going to be generous. This is really clear when you contrast the single eye with the evil eye, the bad eye. “If your eye is bad.” In the Old Testament, the language of the evil eye was used for the greedy, stingy person. Deuteronomy 15:9 warns, “Do not let your eye be evil against your brother and give him nothing.”
There’s kind of a double meaning here. There’s a play on words. Jesus here is talking about the healthy heart, the healthy vision of life, the whole heart, and then the generosity that flows from it.
Of course, it’s connecting the first concept with this concept, that if your vision is clear, if your focus is clear, then you’re going to invest your life in the right things. You pursue treasure based on your vision.
So the question here for us is, How clear is my focus? What dominates my vision? What am I aiming at? Is my vision of the good life shaped by the kingdom of God or is it shaped by the values of the world? Is my eye single or divided? Is my heart whole or is it split? This is one of the perennial problems in our lives today, to have our hearts divided between Christ and the world.
I know of one Christian woman who I knew many years ago who I believe loved the Lord, but something was missing. I think the world had a part of her heart, and it showed up in little ways. It showed up, for example, in the fact that she didn’t want to host gatherings of Christians in her home because she didn’t want to wear out the new carpet. It seems kind of petty, really, but she would hold herself back from things because of those kinds of concerns.
I lost touch with her a long time ago, but she later was diagnosed with MS and actually died at a relatively young age, and I’m sure that in those last years of her life the carpet did not seem nearly so important. Her vision had been clouded by the earthly, the temporary, the fading. She had lost sight of the highest good.
Listen to bishop J.C. Ryle, writing in the nineteenth century, in his wonderful devotional commentary on Matthew. He says,
“Let us learn from our Lord’s words about the single eye the true secret of the failures which so many Christians seem to make. There are thousands in our churches uncomfortable, dissatisfied, and they hardly know why. The reason is revealed here: they are trying to keep in with both sides, to serve Christ and serve the world at the same time.”
Friends, it can’t be done. How clear is your vision? What is your understanding of the good life? Are you really aiming at the highest good? We should earnestly pray these words that we often sing:
“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night;
Waking or sleeping, thy presence, my light.
“Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise;
Thou mine inheritance, now and always.
Thou and thou only, first in my heart;
High King of heaven, my treasure thou art.”
Where’s your treasure? How clear is your focus, your vision?
3. Devotion: Whom Do I Serve?
Then finally, number three, a question of devotion: Whom do I serve?
In this final verse, verse 24, Jesus uses the language of slavery, and he addresses here the ultimate devotion of our hearts, which is either to God or to money.
Once again, the language here is proverbial. It is stark. It is binary. Jesus is forcing self-evaluation and decision. He says, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
Notice here how he uses both emotional and volitional language. “Either he love the one and hate the other,” that’s emotional language, “or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other,” volitional language. Again, he’s talking about our hearts. He’s talking about what we serve, and we either serve God or we serve money or we serve something else.
There’s only one throne in the human heart, and only one thing can sit on the throne at a time. It’s either God or it’s something else. Whatever you serve, that’s your master. Whatever you ultimately live for, that’s what rules your heart.
Now, we don’t particularly like this kind of language. We live in the age of individualism, we live in an age of freedom. We don’t like to talk about slavery, and when the Bible talks about slavery it makes people really uncomfortable. Let’s just be clear, slavery in the ancient world was different, in many ways, from the race-based slavery in our own history, which I think was a great evil. I think the Scriptures give us categories for clearly condemning that.
But in the ancient world, slavery was sometimes a temporary thing. Someone might become a bondslave for a period of time in their lives while they’re paying off a debt. But if someone was a slave, they did belong to their master, and they had no rights of their own. They had to do what the master said.
That is the image that Jesus is using here, and it’s an image that’s used often in Scripture. Paul talks about being either slaves of sin and living lives of unrighteousness or being slaves to God and living lives of righteousness. Jesus says that whoever serves sin is a slave of sin.
Here’s where I think you have the illusion of modern freedom. The illusion of modern freedom is, “I can live for myself, I can make my own decisions. This is freedom, if I get to do what I want and nobody tells me what to do.” I think it’s an illusion, because it misunderstands human nature. The human heart is not made to rule itself, and the reality is, something is going to rule your heart. Something’s always going to rule you.
Bob Dylan sang that song,
“You gotta serve somebody.
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord,
But you gotta serve somebody.”
He’s right! You’re going to serve something. You’re going to serve something. Everybody serves something. Everybody is mastered by something, and you’re either mastered by God, to whom service leads to perfect freedom, or you’re mastered by some other thing that will destroy your life.
Listen to these words from David Foster Wallace, a famous American author and novelist. I’ve shared these before, but it’s been a few years. This will be new to some of you. In a famous commencement address that Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005, Wallace said—Wallace, who was not a Christian—
“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship, and the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you’ll always feel ugly. When time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths. Worship power and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect—being seen as smart—and you’ll end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.”
If you worship anything other than the true and the living God, if you build your life on anything other than the true summum bonum, the highest good, your life will crumble. Jesus holds out to us something better.
Who do you serve? What controls your decisions, your emotions, your sacrifices? What are you building your life on? That’s a great question Jesus is asking here.
Let me close by sharing a story with you. For about the last week or so I’ve been reading this stirring biography by Stephen Olford. Some of you will maybe recognize that name, but he’s not as well known today as he was at one time. Stephen Olford was one of the great evangelists, pastors, and preachers of the twentieth century. He was raised on the mission field in Angola, East Africa; heard the gospel at a young age, believed in Christ, saw many amazing things on the mission field, and then as a young man he was back in England. His heart began to drift; he really went into a period of severe backsliding, to use an old word that talked about Christians who are following the world. He went through this period of severe backsliding, where he was spiritually cold, his heart was divided, he was not fully surrendered to Christ.
In contrast to his parents, who had given their lives—I mean, they lived their lives largely on the mission field—Stephen Olford was set on worldly success. He had a wonderful mind, and he was going to become an engineer. He had entered into the world of motorcycle racing in order to test the carburetors that he was experimenting with making.
He had become a great success in motorcycle racing, kind of a sensation in England in the world of sports. He was living a fairly loose life, not walking with the Lord. He would come in late at night from these races; he would notice the door ajar and his mother on her knees, praying for her backslidden, wandering son. His heart was just not with the Lord.
One night, when he was coming home from a motorcycle race with trophies in his pack, his front wheel hit ice, and he began to skid and had a pretty severe accident. It knocked him unconscious, he had a concussion, and it was some hours before he was found. Because he had been out in the cold so long, he contracted pneumonia. This was a long time ago; I mean, this was the first half of the twentieth century. They didn’t have the kind of medication that’s available today. So he was in the hospital, and the doctors had very little hope for his life; in fact, he was given two weeks to live.
He refused all visits from pastors. He wouldn’t really talk to anyone. He was holding onto his bitterness, his anger. Finally, the thing that turned him around is he received a handwritten letter from his father, who was still in East Africa. The letter had been written three months prior; that’s how long it took for a letter to get to him. He opened the letter, and this is what it said: “My son, this is of the utmost important: ‘Only one life, ’twill soon be past; / Only what’s done for Christ will last.’” And it turned him around. He said it was like a sledgehammer.
“I was crushed,” he said. “I knew he was right. After a few moments of deep struggle, I capitulated to the sovereignty of Christ. I slipped out of bed, fell on my knees, and prayed, ‘Lord, you have won. I own you as King of kings and Lord of lords. If you will heal my body, I will serve you anywhere, anytime, at any cost.”
God answered that prayer. Stephen Olford went on to have a vibrant, thrilling ministry. He saw revivals on college campuses like Wheaton, Illinois, where a young future missionary named Jim Elliot was stirred up. He discipled a young evangelist named Billy Graham. Billy Graham said that no one had a greater influence on his life than Stephen Olford. He pastored Calvary Baptist Church in New York City.
One of the great privileges of life was when I was 21 years old I got to spend a week—got to meet Stephen Olford, who was then in his seventies, and spend a week receiving his instruction on preaching, which dramatically shaped my whole understanding of what it meant to be a minister of the word.
It was a remarkable life, full of spiritual fruit, but it all came down to this one moment of surrender, where he gave his life fully to Christ. “Only one life, ’twill soon be past; / Only what’s done for Christ will last.” He chose the highest good.
Listen, friend. Brother, sister in Christ—or if you’re not a Christian and you’re here this morning, I want you to listen—the Lord Jesus Christ came and lived his life for you, he died in the place of sinners and rose from the dead for this purpose: to show us the highest good and to invite us into the kingdom of God, to live for the purpose for which we are made, to give us a clear vision of what life is really about. He invites us this morning—more than that, he commands us this morning, he summons us, calls us this morning—to live our lives for him; to live our lives for the kingdom; to lay up treasures in heaven, not on earth; to serve God with our whole hearts; and to keep our vision clear as we walk not in darkness, but walk in the light.
Where is your treasure? How clear is your focus? Whom do you serve? Let’s pray together.
Gracious, merciful God, we thank you this morning for your word, we thank you for this convicting and yet stirring challenge that comes to us from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, to examine our lives to see what we are living for, and to align all of our priorities with the highest good of all, life in your kingdom, devoted to you and devoted to loving you and loving others as Jesus has called us to do.
O Lord, would you work in our hearts this morning, by your Holy Spirit? Would you show us any aspect of our hearts in which we are divided in our loyalties, where we are trying to serve you and serve the world at the same time? Where we are earthly-minded rather than spiritually-minded? Where we are laying up treasures on earth rather than treasures in heaven? Lord, would you give us whole hearts? Give us pure hearts that are devoted entirely to you. Work in us today what is pleasing in your sight.
As we come to the Lord’s table, may we come today with a deep understanding of what Jesus our Lord has done for us through his doing and his dying and his rising again, to save us, to rescue us from sin and death and hell, to make us heirs of the kingdom of God, to make us members of your family, and to put our feet on the path of life, where we can live for the purpose for which you’ve created us. Lord, help us come today with humility, with reverence, with repentance in our hearts, wherever that is needed. Then, Lord, assure us once again of your great grace that is given to us in and through your Son, Jesus Christ. So draw near to us, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
