While the Israelites were wondering about in the desert for forty years, God sustained them by providing them manna for food each day. They were instructed to take only what they could eat each day. But on the sixth day they were to take enough food for two days so they wouldn’t have to gather on the Sabbath Day.
When they failed to follow these instructions, the food they gathered would spoil. They learned obedience and dependence on God this way. When they crossed into the Promised Land, God stopped providing them manna. They had to learn the wisdom needed to go from gathering what was provided to preparing for what they needed.
God provided them wisdom to build storehouses that would contain things of value they would need going forward. Many years later, Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:19, “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.”
In a way like with the Israelites, Jesus is telling us it is time for us to move on from simply living in the desert of today, gathering and storing up things that perish. It is time for us to cross over into the heavenly land and to live in a way that we store up things that will have eternal value.
So, I asked myself, what would the Lord find in our storehouses? This is what I found.
Those of us who are still focused on ourselves will store up the kinds of things that spoil. We will store up things that are important to us; the things that make us important before others. But the Lord is not asking us to store the things we treasure. The things we treasure are not treasures at all.
We should store up things that are treasures. And we should store our treasures in our heavenly storehouse. Just like stored food will eventually spoil, when we store up the pride we feel when we give to others, our pride will fail. But when we store up the treasure of provision to others, it will never fail. And when we store up as our treasures of our positions and status, these can be taken away. But when we store up the treasure of humility and support for others neither can be taken back again.
When we store up as our treasures what we get from our hard work, thieves can come in and steal it. But when we store up the treasure of hard work for others, there is nothing thieves can steal. The treasure is not what we get from what we do but what we get to do for others.
When we store up as our treasures the love and service others give us, it can grow rust. But when we store up the treasure of love and service to others, it will never rust. We treasure getting love and service from others, but the real treasures are loving and serving others.
Storing what we treasure is nothing more than gathering what we want to have and to consume. Storing up treasures is taking what we have that is of great importance and help to others and providing that in abundance for the good of others.
Our own storehouse of things we treasure should be close to empty. Let’s make sure we store up our treasures in the heavenly storehouses of others. For scripture also tells us where our treasures are, there our hearts are also.
What’s in your storehouse? Where are your treasures?
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