Main Idea: Serve God, not money.
Reading Assignment: Matthew 6:19-34
Key Verse: Matthew 6:24
Jesus has two lessons on money, one for the haves and the other for the have-nots:
1. The wealthy should invest in eternal things. Jesus teaches this with three metaphors:
a. Storage: We should store up wealth in heaven and in eternity, not on earth where things degrade and fade. We should leverage our wealth to advance God’s works on earth, the advancement of His word, to be and to make disciples of Christ, to help the needy and show compassion and care to those whom God has brought into our lives.
b. Sight: Greed will blind people and ruin their spiritual eyesight. Those who hoard can no longer see spiritual and eternal reality clearly. Jesus shows us the danger of greed.
c. Slavery: Money can enslave people. We were created and redeemed to love and serve the only worthy master, God Himself. To make wealth the object of our love and devotion is to hate and despise God.
2. Those who do not possess wealth should avoid being worried and seek eternal things first.
a. Jesus teaches us not to worry about even the basic needs of life, food, water, and clothing. He illustrates this with two examples.
b. Birds do not stress out about food, yet God always feeds them. No bird has ever run out of seeds, bugs, worms, etc. God always takes care of them.
c. Fields do not stress out about their beauty, yet God clothes them with colorful flowers. God always takes care of the fields.
d. These examples show us that God takes care of His own. We need not worry. Instead, we make God our number one priority and set His kingdom and His righteousness first. We seek to live as heaven-bound people who live according to God’s word. God will take care of all our needs.
e. One clarification is needed: God’s will is that His people work. He does not want them to worry, but He does want them to work. This is a basic part of the Christian life.
Prayer Suggestions:
1. Jesus, thank You for teaching me that wealth should never take the place of God in my life.
2. My desire is to serve God and not my wealth or any material thing, or even the desire to amass riches.
3. My affections and my delight are to be for God and in God, not in the things of this world which is passing away.
4. Jesus, You are worth more than anything this world can afford. I do not wish to trade You for any amount of wealth or any sense of security this world may offer me.
5. You are my greatest treasure and my greatest delight.
6. Where I have gone wrong, please forgive me. Please forgive me for times when my heart has been overly drawn to wealth. Forgive me if I in any way have been selfish and self-serving with what You have entrusted to me. I want to make this right with You.
Transcript
Well, let's pray and we'll begin our time this morning.
Lord, we look to You, and even as we were just talking beforehand, we pray for Jeffrey that he would turn his heart to You and to Your word. Bring him to his senses. We seek for Your mercy and Your grace to guide him toward Your truth, toward a reconciled relationship with You. We pray that You would guide us in this time, as we now consider Your word. And I pray that You would bless everyone here who continues to engage with Your word, that Your word would have a central place in their lives. Guide us now, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The next reading assignment is Matthew 6:19-34. This is the remainder of Matthew 6. The main idea and the main truth are one and the same and it is this: Serve God, not money. Serve God, not money. The key verse is found in 6:24 where Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
In the passage as a whole, Jesus has two main lessons on wealth. The first lesson is for those who already possess wealth as to what they should do with the wealth that they already possess. The second lesson is for those who do not possess wealth. Those who don't possess wealth often deeply long to be wealthy. And Jesus speaks to the dangers of this camp. So the first lesson is to the haves and the second to the have-nots.
Let me start with the first lesson. For those who possess wealth, Jesus explains what they ought to do with their wealth. He employs three metaphors to deliver His lesson. The first metaphor is storage. Where will you store all your wealth? Jesus explains that His disciples are to store their wealth in eternal things. They store their treasures in heaven. And what this is talking about is that whatever material or financial possessions we might have, God wants us to spend them on eternal things. And there are lots of ways to work this out, but that's the first idea. Where are we storing our wealth, again, for those who possess wealth? There is another idea with storage that Jesus brings up, which has to do with durability. Storing wealth on Earth is sorely disappointing, because our wealth stored on earth will fade and deplete, whether by robbers or by rust, or by moths, or even by inflation. What we store here on Earth is quickly fading away and Jesus highlights that so that we would become wise about our earthly possessions. We should leverage our wealth for eternal things.
The second metaphor is sight, as in eyesight. He explains that those who are greedy, those who hoard their wealth, they are like people with poor eyesight. People with poor eyesight cannot see, therefore, they cannot get light into them. Jesus actually says that because of this condition, their bodies are full of darkness. It’s a kind of an interesting metaphor, but the point of it is rather simple. Those who hoard their wealth have very poor spiritual eyesight. And I think you would readily agree that this is how people are, that wealth can blind people to spiritual reality. And this is what Jesus is talking about.
Thirdly, Jesus talks about the metaphor of slavery. That's the verse that I quoted earlier. Jesus says that we can only serve one master, not two. We cannot serve God and our wealth. He teaches us that we are going to love one and not the other, that we will be devoted to one and not the other. He teaches us that there are only two ways to live, either we are loving and serving God, or we are loving and serving our possessions. Jesus is asking us, what is your greatest valued object in life, what is the most important thing in your life? He teaches us that it must be God, that money should never compete with God. Our greatest delight and treasure should be our Lord and God. To put money in the place of God is to hate and despise God. To love money is to forsake God.
Those are the three metaphors Jesus brings up to teach us: storage, eyesight, and slavery. The point of these three metaphors is that if the Lord has blessed us with material wealth, we ought not to hoard it, but instead use it for heavenly things. Use it to support ministries that advance the word of God on Earth. Use it to learn God's word, grow as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Whatever opportunity money can buy, use it to grow as a disciple of Christ and then go make disciples for Jesus. Oftentimes people who possess wealth think that they have plenty laid up for themselves for their own enjoyment only. But what Jesus teaches us is that all that we possess belongs to God. We ourselves are not our own. We have been purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ to serve God. This means everything we own belongs to God. And Jesus here teaches us to make good on that reality and utilize what we have been entrusted to serve God and advance His works on the earth. This means meeting needs of others, whether it's feeding the poor or meeting the needs of gospel ministries elsewhere. Perhaps there is a way to express compassion and care for someone else, or to simply bless other people that God has brought into our lives. We ought to share what God has given to us and bless other people with it. That's the sense there.
Second lesson is for those who are not well-off, those who do not possess wealth. Often those who do not possess wealth, they're overcome with the desire to become wealthy, and they worry often about simple everyday matters of life, like food, drink and clothing. These are the concerns Jesus brings up. Then Jesus teaches us with two metaphors why we should trust in God and not worry. The first metaphor is the birds of the air. They don't worry. God always feeds the birds. There's not a single bird that’s begging for food. There are always worms somewhere. There are always crumbs somewhere. There are always some bugs somewhere. God always feeds the birds, and so Jesus teaches us to look at the birds, and see how God takes care of them. If He takes care of the birds, He will most assuredly take care of us also. Secondly, Jesus says, look at the fields. The fields aren’t stressed out about what to wear for clothing, and yet every spring time God covers them with wild flowers. Especially in Galilee, that was the case where Jesus gave this sermon. And so Jesus teaches us not even to worry about what we will wear for clothing. God always takes care of His people. With these two examples from nature, Jesus encourages us to always make God's Kingdom and His righteousness priority number one. Always seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. He is saying, instead of making money your highest priority, let our spiritual development and the advancement of the word of God on Earth be the higher priority in life.
Now, having said all this, I need to clarify what the Bible says about work. Work and worry are not the same things, though sometimes worry can lead to overwork. The clarification I want to bring up is that God's will is that God's people work, not worry, not that we should be overcome with worry, but that we are to work, nonetheless. And so Scripture teaches us in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “If anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat either.” Sounds a little harsh, but it's the fact. God's people work. We roll up our sleeves and we get work done so that we can provide for ourselves, our families, and even to bless other people. Proverbs 12:11 also says, “He who tills his land will have plenty of bread, but he who pursues worthless things lacks sense.” This is to say we should engage in work, do good to someone else, provide goods and services to someone else, and we will always have plenty for our families. Those who pursue worthless things, doing things that are unprofitable, they will go hungry. And so Scripture is clear that God's will for His people is that they work.
So then, the point that Jesus makes in this second section is that we should not stress out about what they do not possess, but that we should trust in God. Because when we trust in God and keep Him as our highest priority in life, when we serve Him and love Him supremely, God will always take good care of us.
The main takeaway here that I want to point out, as I stated earlier, is this: We must serve God, not money. Imagine if we had a giant scale, and on one side of the balance was Jesus and on the other side was whatever may be an attractive or desirable sum of money. We have to ask ourselves, what would we rather choose? Would we rather choose to have Jesus as our Savior and our Lord and our Shepherd and King, or would we rather choose whatever it is the amount of wealth on the other side? The answer to that question reveals what is in our hearts, whether we love the Lord or we love wealth. And I hope to God that everyone's response to this question would be Jesus, not wealth. There's a wonderful hymn that we sing at church:
I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold.
I'd rather be his than have riches untold.
I'd rather have Jesus than houses or lands.
I'd rather be led by his nail pierced hand.
And this is the prayer and the affirmation of every disciple of Christ, because we understand that Jesus as our Savior is more valuable to us than anything this world can offer us. Nothing in this world will last forever. On our deathbed, we will have no taste for any of the world's riches. What we will long for is the one person who can save us for eternity. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Son has come to be our Messiah, and if we cling onto Him, then we can have treasures forevermore in heaven. But if we refuse Him, all that we owned on this Earth will be all that we would have ever possessed, which all will quickly fade away. One day we will have to part ways with all that we possessed on our Earth. And so, God forbid that we love the things of this world and not love the Lord who lay down His life to save us from our sins and our selfish ways.
With this, there's a lot we can pray about. We can first pray to thank Jesus for teaching us that wealth should never take the place of God in our lives. We could also express to Christ that our desire is to serve God and not our wealth, or any other material thing. We can also express to him that we desire for our affections and our delight to be in God first and foremost, and not in the things of this world that's passing away. We should also tell the Lord that we will never trade Him in exchange for any wealth or security or anything else in this world, that He is our greatest treasure and our greatest delight. We can also seek His forgiveness for the times when our hearts have been overly drawn to money, and not to Him, when we have been overly concerned about gaining or losing wealth, not about gaining or losing Him. And if in any way we've been selfish about our possessions, if we have been self-seeking and self-indulgent, and we have only sought to look out for ourselves and not for the good of others and for the advancement of God’s works on earth, then we should confess those things to the Lord and make them right with Him.
The issue of money is something that Jesus brings up over and over again in the Gospels. It's such a silly thing, on the one hand, it’s just a thing, but money can be a great source of temptation for people. Money holds out the promise of happiness, security, pleasure, respect, etc. But those are all ultimately lies. Money and all that it can buy will come to an end, and we will have to meet our God. And Jesus, out of His kindness gives us the wisdom to think properly about money so that we would spend whatever possessions He’s entrusted to us for eternal good. We’ll wrap it up there, and we'll resume next time on Monday when we'll dive into Chapter 7. So we'll conclude there. Lord bless you, and good bye.