“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)

Martyn LloydJones tells the story of a farmer. The farmer bounded joyfully into his kitchen one day and confronting his wife with a great big grin on his face he announced to her that their finest cow had just given birth to twins, one brown and one white. He said, I feel the impulse to dedicate one of these cows to the Lord, we’ll bring them up together and when they are at a marketable age we’ll sell them and we’ll keep the proceeds from one and we’ll give the proceeds from the other to the Lord. His wife went right to the issue as wives are prone to do and said, which is the Lord’s cow? The white one or the brown one? He replied, well there’s no need to worry about that dear, or to decide that now since we’ll raise them together.

Some months later he entered the same kitchen a little more slowly, looking very sad. His wife asked why he was so sullen, to which he replied, I have bad news, the Lord’s cow died. Why is it always the Lord’s cow, that dies? I guess we laugh at that because we identify with that kind of approach. We could even say, the Lord took His cow home. I guess the fact is we all tend to lay up treasure on earth. The pull of the sin that is in us drags us down to the earth, it is like a magnet, it is like a gravity, and we want to be rich towards self and poor toward God. So it’s usually God’s cow that dies.

Jesus I believe speaks directly to this perspective on life in these verses, and I think He gives us a tremendous insight into ahow we are to really see the matter of wealth, the matter of money, the matter of luxuries.

Excerpt from John MacArthur message “Treasures In Heaven”