Two Perspectives

 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so if your eye is clear [spiritually perceptive], your whole body will be full of light [benefiting from God’s precepts].  But if your eye is bad [spiritually blind], your whole body will be full of darkness [devoid of God’s precepts]. So if the [very] light inside you [your inner self, your heart, your conscience] is darkness, how great and terrible is that darkness! - Matthew 6:22-23

Right now we're living in the dot.  But what are we living for? The short-sighted person lives for the dot.  The person with perspective lives for the line.  This earth, and our time here, is the dot.  Our beloved Bridegroom, the coming wedding, the Great Reunion, and our eternal home in the New Heavens and New Earth ... they're on the line.

The patriarchs lived as strangers and exiles on the earth, spending their days longing for a better country, that is, a heavenly one.  Peter encouraged Christians to find joy by focusing not on the trial that will go on only a little while, but on their heavenly inheritance that will never perish.   

 For I consider [from the standpoint of faith] that the sufferings of the present life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us and in us! - Romans 8:18

 For our momentary, light distress [this passing trouble] is producing for us an eternal weight of glory [a fullness] beyond all measure [surpassing all comparisons, a transcendent splendor and an endless blessedness]! - 2 Corinthians 4:17

Paul speaks not of a glory achieved for Christ but for us.  Jesus didn't say - "store up for God treasures in heaven" - He said, "store up for yourselves treasures in heaven."  Scripture teaches that we will not only behold His glory but also participate in it.  This gives the believer an incentive to do what the Philippian Christians did in giving to Paul's missionary work - withdrawing funds from their earthly accounts in order to have them credited to their heavenly account.

Soldiers, athletes, and farmers all know that short-term sacrifices are justifiable in light of their long-term benefits.  This same principle applies to those who adopt an eternal perspective.

Two kingdoms

"I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all. But whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess." - Martin Luther

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

In the greatest message ever preached, Jesus addresses the believer's proper relationship to money and possessions --

“Do not store up for yourselves [material] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store 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 [your wishes, your desires; that on which your life centers] will be also.

 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so if your eye is clear [spiritually perceptive], your whole body will be full of light [benefiting from God’s precepts].  But if your eye is bad [spiritually blind], your whole body will be full of darkness [devoid of God’s precepts]. So if the [very] light inside you [your inner self, your heart, your conscience] is darkness, how great and terrible is that 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 mammon [money, possessions, fame, status, or whatever is valued more than the Lord]. - Matthew 6:19-24

Jesus had two kingdoms in mind.  Two options and they demand one choice.  There is a default choice if "no choice" is made.  Unless the right choice is deliberately made and tenaciously clung to, the wrong choice will naturally be implemented.

 

Life Library — Two Kingdoms