2024-06-16 What We Look At Matters

Well, we are continuing our / / Money Matters series this week and looking at what Jesus says about money and possessions, specifically from the Sermon on the Mount. Obviously we have had been looking at the greater biblical encouragement as well because often times Jesus was referencing or pulling from Scripture in what He would teach. So, we’ve had to go back a little bit so that we understand the context to why Jesus says the things He says.

It’s always good to remember who Jesus is talking to, and why he is saying what he’s saying so that we understand how and why it does or does not apply to us. There are times when Scripture is specifically speaking to us, and then there are times where we can glean from scripture, but the story is about someone else, the meaning for someone else, or the context far from our current experiences. And it is really important for us to know these things because it allows us to read and interpret scripture for our own lives in a much more meaningful way.

I’ve mentioned this the last few weeks, just taking Malachi chapter 3 and trying to apply it to today left me thinking if I didn’t tithe to the church I was at my finances would be cursed by God. Now, that’s scripture. Malachi 3:9 says, / / “You have cheated me of the tithes and offerings due to me. You are under a curse, for your whole nation has been cheating me.”

Well, if you think that is about us, that’s pretty heavy. And if you think Israel is being actively cursed by God as a punishment, rather than just living in the consequence of not following the law, then you won’t understand the heart of God and you’ll apply scripture to your life in a really unhealthy way.

So, remember, the law of Moses was not and is not given to us, so the law of the tithe was not and is not given to us. But that also doesn’t mean God doesn’t work through the invitation of following a better way of living, which is exactly what the law was, an invitation to live in a certain way that would lead to life.

I’ll always go back to this because I think it is one of the most powerful scriptures in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 30:19, but I want to read a few more verses here this morning, just so we are always reminding ourselves of the purpose of the law, and I would suggest the purpose of Jesus invitation to follow him, as well.

So, Deuteronomy is Moses basically re-establishing the law, explaining it to the people. Chapter 1:1-5 says that it should have only taken Israel 11 days to get across the wilderness and prepare to enter the promised land, but it took forty years, so this is at the end of their time in the wilderness, when they are about to go into the promise land, and it says, / / Moses addressed the people of Israel, telling them everything the Lord had commanded him to say…Moses carefully explained the Lord’s instructions as follows.

Then we get to the end of the book, chapter 30 explains the end of this law.

So, this is important. The law has been given, and re-emphasized, and then Deuteronomy 30:11-20 says:

/ / “This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, and it is not beyond your reach. It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it.

“Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.

“But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.

“Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants may live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

This is just rich with invitation and purpose. Some key thoughts:

/ / Oh that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants may live!

/ / You can do this by loving God, obeying him, committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life!

It’s so beautiful. To think that the law was demanding and burdensome is, I think in a lot of ways, missing the point, isn’t it? Look what God said, / / This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you.

So, how does this connect with Jesus?

We know that the New Testament says on multiple occasions that we are not subject, or under the law of Moses. But when we look at the purpose of the law from these verses we just read, it was to lead to life, and then what do we read in the New Testament about the invitation of Jesus? What are we talking through in the Sermon on the Mount? The invitation to live a certain way and experience the Kingdom of Heaven!

So, John 10:10, one of my favorite verses, Jesus speaking, and he says, / / “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” Or some translations say, “life and life more abundant.”

How does he do that? How does Jesus give us a rich and satisfying life?

He goes on to explain. John 10:14, 27, / / “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me…My sheep listen to my voice I know them, and they follow me.”

Over and over again in the Gospel we read Jesus’ invitation for people to “follow him.” Why? Because he wants to lead us to life.

Matthew 16:24-25, / / “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”

So the Law of Moses was an invitation to a good life in the promise land here on earth. Israel and it’s nation, within it’s borders. The invitation of Jesus is to follow him to life and life more abundant found in the Kingdom of God and eternal life that doesn’t just start after death, but starts now. We become ambassadors of a kingdom that is to come, by living out the life of following the Jesus way here on earth. I promise you, if you, not just model your life after Jesus, but FOLLOW Jesus, truly and honestly follow him, you will experience a life you couldn’t even dream of. Paul actually prays in Ephesians 3:20, / / Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

So, in the context of Money Matters, we see in the Law that God gives the people of Israel, who know nothing about owning their own land and having their own crops without being under the burden of Egyptian slavery, a rule of life that involves generosity because God is generous and He created humanity in His image and intended for Israel to bless the nations around them as they lived for Him.

Jesus comes in and says, “Maybe you forgot that my father is generous, and wants you to be generous, but don’t do it for selfish gain, don’t do it for the praise of people around you, be generous in secret and my Father who sees will reward you. Because you’re not here to build up a bunch of treasure on earth, that gets you nowhere, you’re invited into an eternal kingdom, where rust and moths can’t access what you are given as eternal reward.”

That pretty much covers the first two weeks of this series, right?

So now we get to Matthew 6:22-24. And last week, this week and next week are all one flow of thoughts in scripture. If you have titles or headings in your bible, it probably says, “Teaching about Money and Possessions” and then includes everything from Matthew 6:19 all the way to vs 34.

But as there are different topics within this section we are taking our time through it and looking at what we can live in our lives through what Jesus is teaching. If Jesus is giving invitations to live a certain way, we need to slow down, look at it and ask, “How is Jesus inviting me to be different?”

So, Matthew 6 starting in vs 22:

/ / “Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!

“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

So, sometimes Jesus says things that seem pretty confusing, and some of those times he does nothing to explain it. We’re just left wondering, or hoping someone smarter has figured it out and can explain it to us. Other times we see in the gospels that the disciples will come to Jesus after they have left the crowds and say, “Jesus, we didn’t get that one.” and he will actually explain it.

This is one of the reasons I like the tv series The Chosen. Even though there is a fair amount of it that isn’t straight from the bible, obviously, you can’t make a 7 season show out of the content we have only in the bible. But, the bible tells us that the disciples and Jesus had separate conversations away from crowds, it says he had personal conversations with specific people, specific disciples, it says the disciples argued, didn’t always get along, struggled through things, and I think we all understand that as well. So, I like it because it puts a visualization to the stories we do know, and helps us ask questions about what we don’t know, or maybe never thought of, even if the answer we lean toward is, “No, I don’t think it happened like that.”

Well, we have one of these moments in this passage of scripture. Jesus talks about light in our eyes and somehow that light is the light for our whole body and it sounds like if we can see well we are good and if we can’t see well our whole body is in darkness. I actually wondered at one point in my life, “So, does me needing glasses suggest I’m full of darkness?” Obviously not what Jesus is saying. And although he doesn’t explain it further, if we think about what he’s saying, especially in the context to where he goes next, we can kind of figure it out.

So, after talking about lights and bodies, he says that it’s just impossible to serve two masters, if you try to serve God while also trying to serve money, you’ll get caught up in the money and end up being enslaved to it. There’s no other option it seems. You can’t serve God while also serving money. It doesn’t work like that.

And so this is why “the eyes” part makes sense.

First things first. As Jesus has been saying that we’ve seen in the last two weeks, this is about priority and motive. Hebrews 12:1-2 says, / / …let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

How do we win the race of life? By fixing our eyes on Jesus. Anyone remember singing: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.

So, as soon as Jesus starts talking about eyes, in the greater context of what he’s already been talking about and will continue talking about, think of it in this way, / / Jesus is talking about what we’re focused on, and that we should be focused on God.

The second thing he’s saying is that / / it matters what we do choose to look at. Here’s where you can cause health or unhealth in your “eyes”, and I say that in quotes because we’re not actually talking about your physical eyes, ok. If we allow the things in this world that are trying to grab our attention, to do just that, and we turn our eyes to fixate on it, is that saying something about what what we WANT to be looking at? Think about what we talked through last week, that the heart betrays your motives, well what you’re constantly looking at lets you know what your heart is desiring. If your heart is focused on Jesus, even though temptation may come, you will turn your eyes from what is trying to distract you. Not saying it’s automatic. It’s not.

Here’s the thing. This is classic Jesus invitation. Deny yourself and pick up your cross. You might very well have a desire to stare at certain things. And by this point we’re not just talking about money anymore. There’s this saying in today’s world that I don’t really like, “That’s just who I am. I can’t change that.” First of all, that’s a lie, most everything can actually be changed. And second, just because you are a certain way, doesn’t mean that you now have license to live that way, ESPECIALLY if you are a follower of Jesus.

/ / What you choose to look at might just give away what is in your heart.

So, if you have a hard time not fixating on money. Maybe you need to learn to trust God more.

If you have a hard time not focusing on people’s faults. Maybe you need to learn grace.

If you have a hard time not focusing on how angry you are. Maybe you need to learn peace or forgiveness.

If you find it difficult not to stare at women, or men, to scroll past certain things on social media, or unfollow certain people. Maybe you have an issue that needs healing. And Jesus is giving you an invitation to deny what Paul would call the flesh, for a better way.

/ / Just because you are a certain way in your humanity, does not give you license to act that way. If you have said you are choosing to follow Jesus then you must also choose to turn away from your personal desires and wants that contradict following Him. I’m not saying every personal desire or want is bad. But I am saying you can’t SERVE both. You can’t live out of your human desire for the things of this world while somehow also living for Christ. One of them will win, and if you don’t decide, like Paul says, to crucify the flesh, then the flesh will win. The only way to win in this battle is for the flesh, the earthly desire, to die.

Now, that doesn’t sound fun at all, does it? And that might sound downright depressing, like, do we really just live our whole lives denying what we actually want? Yes and no. Listen, crucifying the flesh is difficult, but let me tell you, the more you do it, the less power it has to get back up again. And the more you choose to follow Jesus, the more you fall in love with him and the easier it is to choose His way, and eventually, even though there will probably always be some element of choosing denial of self, but eventually His desires BECOME our desires.

So, let’s expand that for a second from what Jesus is saying.

/ / Stare at light, and you’ll be overcome by light.

Start at darkness, and you’ll be overcome by darkness.

In John 8:12, Jesus says, / / “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”

Makes me wonder if he said that after he talked about the eyes, but John wrote it and Matthew didn’t. It would make sense, but there’s no grounds to believe that’s how it happened. But, the two statements go together very well.

And the third thing, as N.T. Wright points out is we need to think of the eyes like the headlights of a car. So, what we take in, turn that around to what we see moving forward. / / Darkness begets darkness. Light begets light. I know this might seem way to simple and straight forward, but what you are looking at determines where you will go.

If you are looking at what you ought not to be looking at, that’s where the headlights of your life are pointing you, which will keep you going in that direction. And headlights only go in one direction, forward. You have to be willing to TURN your head to go in a different direction.

This is something they teach you in drivers ed. Don’t look at the ditch, because you’ll end up in it. Don’t look at oncoming traffic, you’ll end up veering right into their lane. Look down the road, to where you want to go.

You might be driving through the darkest night, but if you have chosen to follow Jesus, who is the light of the world, you will be filled with the light that leads to life and your vision will be directed forward and you will not be ensnared by the darkness.

What you face determines what you see. Either light that leads you forward, or darkness that ensnares you.

Now, like I said, sometimes Jesus would explain things a bit further. And actually, this is not the only place in the gospels that mentions the last part of what we’ve read in Matthew, it’s also found in Luke 16:13, / / “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

Word for word, same as Matthew, but if you remember, we’ve talked about the fact that the four gospel narratives, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, have overlapping, or parallel versions of certain moments in the life and ministry of Jesus. Some are exactly the same, and some share different perspectives. What’s interesting is that this particular verse, although word for word the same, is not considered a parallel scripture to Matthew 6:24 which we’ve read today.

Why say that? Well, it would make a bit of sense to think that Jesus maybe taught the same message more than once, right? Not everyone that was at the sermon on the mount was everyone that needed to hear the sermon on the mount. Here we are still talking through it 2000 years later. If this is the great invitation to living out of the nature of the kingdom of heaven, then it makes quite a bit of sense to think that Jesus shared these thoughts on more than one occasion. And to whoever he was speaking to at the time, he might just tailor that message to that particular group or setting.

In Matthew 6 this verse comes right after the light in the eyes conversation we just had. But in Luke 16 it comes right after a parable, a story he tells. And Jesus used parables to explain things. Sometimes even his parables needed explanations, but sometimes they were very helpful in bringing the idea that Jesus was teaching in a personal and relatable manner.

So I want to go to that story, and read it together and see if we can glean a bit more from this service to money and God that Jesus is warning against.

Luke 16:1-18, / / Jesus told this story to his disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer’s money. So the employer called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Get your report in order, because you are going to be fired.’

“The manager thought to himself, ‘Now what? My boss has fired me. I don’t have the strength to dig ditches, and I’m too proud to beg. Ah, I know how to ensure that i’ll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I am fired.’

“So he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, ‘How much do you owe him?’ The man replied, ‘I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil.’ So the manager told him, ‘Take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons.’

“‘And how much do you owe my employer?’ he asked the next man. ‘I owe him 1,000 bushels of wheat,’ was the reply. ‘Here,’ the manager said, ‘take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.’

“The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light. Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.

“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?

“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

The Pharisees who dearly loved their money, heard all this and scoffed at him. Then he said to them, “You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts. What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God.

“Until John the Baptist, the law of Moses and the message of the prophets were your guides. But now the Good News of the Kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is eager to get in. But that doesn’t mean that the law has lost its force. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the smallest point of God’s law to be overturned.

“For example, a man who divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery. And anyone who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

So, kind of a strange story, and definitely a strange way to end. But, if you read it from a 21st century perspective only, you will think some strange things and possible miss what Jesus is trying to say. What did we say earlier, you have to know context, you have to know Old Testament law. You have to know why Jesus would say what he’s saying to the disciples, to the Pharisees, and even why he is bringing up divorce after talking about serving God and money. But all of this can make sense.

Now, there are a couple different ways to approach this story, and I am going to approach it this morning from the perspective that makes the most sense to me, and that I think lines up with the whole biblical narrative in regard to money and serving God.

We need to break this story down, and we will link this to what Jesus is saying in Matthew 6, which was much more concise.

So, the story itself.

To understand the story you have to understand a bit of the Law of Moses. This is where commentators, those who study and try to help interpret what scripture means, differ. Some take the approach that the owner, the rich man, was not dealing well, while others don’t think that. Often times in Jesus’ parables the “master” of the story is related to God. But I do not think that is the case with this story at all. With how Jesus talks about the story afterward, I tend to lean toward this thought, that the amount owing is changed by the manager because he saw a loophole caused by the dishonesty of the owner. The manager was removing interest that the rich man was charging. And based on the value of the commodity it was changed accordingly.

So, the manager is going to lose his job, and so he calls in the first person that owes the owner 800 gallons of olive oil, and he says, “Quick, write down 400.” Second guy comes in, “1,000 bushels of wheat…” “Quick, write down 800 bushels.”

Why? The thought here is that the owner was charging interest, and this is why I think Jesus brings up the law a bit later, because the law says in Deuteronomy 23:19, / / “Do not charge interest on the loans you make to a fellow Israelite, whether you loan money, or food, or anything else.”

I think this is why when it’s all said and done, Luke 16:8 says, / / “The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd.”

Shrewd means having or showing sharp powers of judgement. The word Jesus uses also means prudent, which means acting with or showing care and thought for the future.

I think it is also why Jesus says next that the world is even more shrewd dealing with people around them than the children of light. I think / / Jesus is challenging dishonesty that comes from making money more of a priority than it should be, and the length people will go to in order to secure their own future. This is a trust in God vs. I gotta get my own and look after myself and my future. Which has been a pretty big theme so far in this series, hasn’t it? Do we truly trust God or do we give in to the ways of this world to try and get ahead and look after ourselves?

I think the complication can come in when you think that the owner commending the manager is a good thing, and then Jesus saying that the world is even more shrewd than the manager. If you think the manager did a good thing then you are going to think Jesus is also commending him, and how shrewd the world is. But I don’t think he’s doing either of those. When does the bible ever tell us to be “like the world”? Think of the whole biblical narrative here.

1 John 2:15, / / Do not love this world nor the things it offers you…

Romans 12:2, / / Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world…

James 4:4, / / Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?

And ultimately, Jesus saying in Matthew 6:24, and Luke 16:13, / / You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money!

So, what’s Jesus saying? If we follow this narrative that I have proposed, we follow that the owner was being dishonest by charging interest.

Then the manager, who was stealing funds from the owner is caught in the act. So, what does he do? He sees the loophole because of the law of Moses. He changes the amount owing to ONLY what was actually owed minus the interest. This is because the owner should never have been charging that interest in the first place according to the law, and so HE is caught acting like the way of the world where people were even more shrewd than that, thinking about how to get ahead for themselves. He’s basically challenging his boss, “You’re breaking the law and I have no problem throwing you under the bus.”

Also, why the owner has to step back and go, “Well played…” because he’s been trapped in something he can’t do anything about. If he calls the manager out for changing the numbers, he has to call himself out for charging interest, which would have been breaking the law of Moses. He’s not going to do that, so in that way, the manager has won. But only in the ways of this world.

Jesus isn’t saying either of these things are good. I think in some ways Jesus is saying, “The law will find you out.” And we’ll see that in a moment when he connects all of this to the law when talking to the Pharisees.

But then Jesus says, / / “Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.”

Is he saying that these guys did a good thing? Is he saying the manager did the right thing by buying favor with people and changing what they owe?

I don’t actually think so. I don’t think Jesus is commending anyone in the story. I think he’s using the story to show how not to do things. That is one of the major uses of stories and parables, to either show what to do, or what not to do. Think of the story of the boy who cried wolf. This shepherd boy keeps crying out, “There’s a wolf, there’s a wolf” when there isn’t one. The people in the town get so frustrated at running out and expecting to find a wolf, that eventually they ignore the boy. Finally a wolf does actually come, and when the boy yells out, “There’s a wolf!” no one comes and the sheep that the boy is tending all get scattered and run off. He asks the old man from the village why no one came when he cried out, and the man says, “Nobody believes a liar…even when he is telling the truth!”

That is a parable with no positive point to the story except the warning of how NOT to live.

I think Jesus is doing the same. Don’t be the owner, being like the world to try and get ahead while disregarding how God has told us to live. Don’t be the manager, stealing from the owner and being dishonest and manipulative in the process. The law will catch you both. The owner is still going to fire the manager. He’s without a job in the end. And the owner loses out on the interest he’s tried to gain.

So here’s the lesson, says Jesus, “You’re better to use what you have to benefit others and make friends. Then when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.”

Remember what we read last week. N.T. Wright says that storing up treasure in heaven wasn’t talking about heaven after we die so much as it is saying we are ambassadors of a kingdom that is yet to come, but living in the now, which means, we experience now what we choose to live out of as followers of Jesus.

Use what you have to benefit others and make friends. Be generous. Don’t hoard for yourself. Don’t act like the world and make bad business decisions just to “get ahead”.

I think I’ve said this a few times in this series, but if we proclaim to be Christians, that is followers of Jesus, those who live by a different, a better way, and then act like the world in all of it’s corrupt business dealings, then we lose the impact of the message of the gospel being a transformative work. How we handle money matters. How we handle business decisions matters. How we treat people when it comes to money, matters.

And this is simply emphasized by the next few verses where Jesus states that if you can’t handle a little, you won’t be trusted with more, not in this life with earthly possessions, and not with the true riches of heaven either. We are called to be faithful, generous, God honoring and people honoring when it comes to finances.

Well then the Pharisees get involved. And they don’t like what Jesus is saying. Why not? Why is this pressing a button in them? Jesus says:

/ / “You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts. What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God.”

That’s a big statement. First, he’s calling out the Pharisees for only appearing righteous. He’s done that before and will do that again, right? We read that in the series we did on the law and righteousness, Jesus says in Matthew 5:20, / / “But I warn you - unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Because it’s not about appearing righteous, is it? It’s about being washed in the righteousness of Jesus through His life, death and resurrection, and then living a life of righteousness to honor Him.

Matthew 9:13, / / “For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

So, Jesus is calling out the fakeness, the facade of the Pharisees. THEN he flat out tells them they’re acting like the world and God hates that.

How? What’s the explanation here? Jesus says it’s because they are using the law to look more righteous than they are. And they are twisting it and making it more difficult for the people to follow, making themselves look better. Jesus would say later in Matthew 23:2-4, / / “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they preach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.”

He says that even though John the Baptist and himself have now been preaching the Kingdom of God, and that everyone is eager to get in, it doesn’t mean the law should be ignored.

Then he makes this connection, which might seem odd, but because we’ve just recently looked at this, we should see it a little more clearly. He says in Luke 16:18, / / “For example, a man who divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery. And anyone who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

Why this connection to divorce and adultery?

If you remember what we looked at during our series on the law, when we talked about divorce, the Pharisees had basically made it so that they could write a paper of divorce for any reason. Matthew 5:31, / / “You have heard the law that says, ‘A man can divorce his wife by merely giving her a written notice of divorce.’” And Jesus explains in Mark 2 that the only reason Moses wrote that law was because it was a concession to their hard hearts, but that God intended something else, marriage without divorce.

What’s Jesus calling out here and how on earth does this connect with money and faithfulness?

Hard hearts and the way of the world will continually go against the ways of God, but God is continually calling us to a better way. Whether that is money or marriage or anything else for that matter. And this is kind of a big point. I think Jesus is calling out those who would use the things of God to advance their own lives rather than follow the heart and true intention of God.

The manager used the law to get out of his sin.

The Pharisees were claiming unhindered access to divorce.

We see it all the time, people using scripture to act how they want.

It’s not ok. It doesn’t fly. Jesus is calling us to a better way.

If you truly follow the way of Jesus, you will do everything you can to be faithful with your finances, faithful whether you have a lot or a little, faithful in your business dealings, and you won’t fear lack or being without, falling prey to bad business decisions to try and get ahead.

And so we get back to Matthew 6:24, / / “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

And I think that is an invitation to commit again to following the way of Jesus. I think it’s an invitation to do things differently, to learn a different way. You don’t have to know it all yet. You don’t have to know exactly how you should do everything the right way, but you do need to be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit to see both how we should be doing things, and maybe how we aren’t doing things the right way that we need to repent and change.

Let’s pray this morning, and I hope you pray with me, asking Holy Spirit to work in your heart and mind so that your eyes look ahead to the light, your understanding of Scripture is revealed by the Holy Spirit, and that the way of Jesus becomes your highest priority, to honor God with your finances, your financial dealings, and your representation of Him when it comes to money.