Who do you serve

Matthew 6:24–34 CSB

24 “No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. 25 “Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? 27 Can any of you add one moment to his life span by worrying? 28 And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. 30 If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you—you of little faith? 31 So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. 34 Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Dog’s are sneaky masters

Money is a sneaky master

Intro to the money series

our lives belong to God and will always be disordered until we live for him

Matthew 6:24–34 CSB

24 “No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

The word “money” here is the aramaic word Mammon and it means more than just money - its really pointing to the idea of wealth and possessions.

God is saying that you can’t serve him and wealth.

There is a spiritual force to money?

So we need to take a step back and talk about how God taught us about money.

Some people look at the book of Acts and say - it points to communism

Others try to say - its capitalism

But here’s the deal, God did set up a government and an economic policy that was completely unique and was probably never followed.

So what was God’s economy like?

Well, it was based on the ancient world, of course, but it didn’t allow you to charge interest. It had a form of slavery but the rules around it made it like indentured servitude - so you were supposed to be released at the end of 7 years and there rules about how they were to be treated.

over 20 percent taxes before the taxes imposed by the king.

They had one day off a week - one year off every seven

Sabbath year

And then every fiftieth year - land is even restored

It’s wild. They probably never followed it.

Here’s the difference it was God centered.

It was focused on God as the owner of everything. God owns the land. God owns the growth of the plants. God owns your body. All of it. He owns all of it.

Think about it this way - In Panama we rented an apartment. It was our home. We could kick people out. If someone broke in, they broke into our home. We had the key. It was ours.

But it also wasn’t ours. It was the landlords. We had a duty to the landlord.

That’s the way it was in Israel.

God owned everything. So if he wants 10%, of course, he get’s 10%. If he wants you to take a year off, of course you take a year off. He get’s what he wants because he is the owner.

But as you continue to read through the history books of the OT you will see that they don’t live that way. They don’t celebrate the sabbath year, or the year of jubilee. They don’t do any of it.

And they start to worship Baal and other god’s.

In the ancient world, all the god’s of human imagination were economic gods. it wasn’t like today. The question was, who is going to make my crops grow? That’s who I worship.

That’s the wrong way to do things.

But that is what we do today too.

In America, things like property rights are drilled into us. What you own is yours. Nobody has a right to it but you.

So we approach life with that same underlining assumption. That’s the way we think about things.

But God is calling us to view things differently. He wants us to understand that everything is God’s and we aren’t actually owners of anything.

It all belongs to him.

but it’s hard because we worry. But the antidote for worry isn’t wealth - its understanding your belong to God.

Matthew 6:24–34 CSB

25 “Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? 27 Can any of you add one moment to his life span by worrying? 28 And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. 30 If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you—you of little faith? 31 So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.

That’s why there is a friction between God and mammon. We have to choose how we are going to live. Who will be our god.

If mammon is our God, then we will live for always trying to get more and more. When we don’t have what we want we get depressed and envious.

We become entitled - even to our own life.

There was a video game I used to play called Civilization - you may have played it, it has been around for a long time. In it, you start off with as a stone aged person and you can build city and roads and you gather technology and armies. You fight with other groups. Sometimes your cities get upset, so you have to appease them with circuses and theatres. The goal of the game is to conquer the world. To build your kingdom up to such power that you can defeat everyone else.

That’s kind of the way we live our lives - although most of the time, we are less violent than in the video game.

But we are building our kingdom. And we want our kingdom to bring us joy and happiness just like the dog I bought.

So we add things to our kingdom. We add a spouse, maybe kids, maybe pets. We get a job and we try to accumulate wealth.

You see, we all start out our lives and start to live as if we are building our own personal kingdoms.

But our lies feel empty that way. So then we add God to our kingdom. And he is a part of it. We go to church, we give. We make it a part of our kingdom.

But the problem will always be that it isn’t our kingdom. We aren’t kings and queens. We are stewards. We don’t build our kingdom, because we aren’t the king.

God is the king. We should view it that way.

In the middle ages, the king was the absolute ruler of his kingdom, think about England. Picture that. And he would grant land to his nobles who would farm and administer the land. They would grant land, to their lesser nobles and so on.

However, all the land ultimately belonged to the king and he could take away your titles and your land and give it to someone else.

I want you to view your life not as someone who is building their independent kingdom but as someone who was just granted land by the king in order to build his kingdom. That’s the way our life is supposed to be. We cultivate our lives for His glory.

And if we view our lives that way, it changes everything about how we live.

Your marriage isn’t just about you being happy in your kingdom, its about you two working together to build God’s kingdom.

Your kids aren’t your own, to raise how you like. They are given by God to further his kingdom.

Your career isn’t just your own, it’s a tool for building God’s kingdom.

Your money isn’t your own, its a tool for building God’s kingdom.

You see life under the lens of God’s kingdom not your own.

You don’t serve wealth, you serve God. What that means is that there could be times where you turn down wealth in order to pursue God.

Maybe you boss is pressuring you to do something unethical.

Maybe a promotion would mean…

So, for instance, if you are under the age of 24 you are constantly asked one question - what do you want to be when you grow up. And there are kids here who are constantly asked that and think about that. I may ask you that.

And you start to think about your life and ask yourself, what do I want to do? What am I good at?

But here’s the question I want you to ask, you can ask those other ones, they aren’t bad, they are just in complete. The question I want you to ask is - How do I best position myself to help grow God’s kingdom?

That’s what we should always be asking. That doesn’t mean you have to be a pastor or a missionary, it means that you are thinking about your life as the steward of God’s resources. You are god’s resource.

But it isn’t just young people that need to ask that question - its adults too.

Let me give you an example of how this could works out:

One of the big things that I hear a lot nowadays is a desire to work from home. People looking for those type of jobs. Nothing wrong with that. But we should ask - What positions me best to further God’s kingdom?

So on the one hand, you may say, working from home will give me the best chance to interact with my family and disciple my kids.

Or you could say, If I go to the office, I’ll have coworkers I can evangelize. So I’m going to go into the office.

Here’s the deal, there isn’t one right answer. You organize your life a million different ways, that’s fine, but the question should always be how am I serving God and fighting against the rule of mammon.