“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
– Luke 12:34
Luke 12:34 is about as simple as it gets, and we need to hear it. I think we all need to, I need to, we need to hear this simple truth. Our hearts follow our money.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. What we put our money in is where our hearts go. So, if we spend all of our money on ourselves, on the things of this world, on provision for ourselves, on needs and wants in this world for us, then that’s where our hearts will be focused.
This Verse Reminds Us to Look at Where We Spend Money
If you want to know where your heart is, look at what you do with your money.
On the contrary, if we spend our resources, put our treasure in the needs of others, in caring for others and providing for others, in giving to the church, in giving for the spread of the Gospel among the nations and giving for the relief of the poor, then that is where our heart will be.
So, if you want to know where your heart is, look at your bank account, where you’re spending your money, at your checkbook, if you use checks, your credit card statement, your cash flow. And that is a crystal clear picture of where your heart is. And so in this way, Jesus encourages us to put our treasure in what’s going to matter most in eternity.
That’s why he says right before Luke 12:34, in Luke 12:33 “Sell your possession and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that don’t grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.” This is what we saw already in Jesus’s command to a rich young man. Go sell your possessions, give to the poor. So this is a theme we see.
Luke 12:34 Leads US to Ask God For Help
So God help us to do it. Not that God calls every single one of us to sell every single thing we have. We don’t see that in the Bible. We definitely see that in some cases, like the rich young man, but he does tell us to pour our treasure into helping those who are in need. In physical need. Those who are poor in spiritual need. Those who don’t have the Gospel.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray For Pakistan
Like we’ve been praying continually for all kinds of different people groups in this podcast from Pakistan, recently, the Mochi people today in Pakistan, four million of them, four million people, as far as we know, no believers among the Mochis in Pakistan.
So, who’s going to give for the spread of the Gospel to the Mochi in Pakistan? Who’s going to sacrifice money for the spread of the Gospel among the Mochi in Pakistan? And you start to do that, your heart will start to be for the Mochi and Pakistan, for them to come to know the love, grace and mercy of Christ in the Gospel.
So God, please change our orientation toward money and are materialistic culture. Please change my orientation toward money. God, please help us, help us, help us, to put our treasure in that which will last forever, to give for the relief of the poor, for those who are in urgent physical need, to give for the spread of the Gospel to those who’ve never heard it, who are in urgent spiritual need.
God, please help us in our churches to put our money in what matters most, in eternity. God, please change the way our giving looks, our possessions look, our approach to money looks, so that you might be honored in our hearts, and that you might conform our hearts more and more and more to yours.
Oh, God, please help us. Please help me. Please help us in this area of our lives, our families, and your church in our day. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
