S.O.T.M. God or Money [Matthew 6:19-24]

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 6:19-24]

We began last week to look at this section of the sermon on the mount where our Lord lays down a commandment, ‘do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth … but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.’ In other words, He tells us that we are to live in this world, and to use everything we have, whether our possessions, or gifts, or talents, or tendencies, in a way that we shall be laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven.

Then, having given us the injunction in that way, our Lord proceeds to supply us with reasons for doing this. Here we have a wonderful illustration of the understanding of our blessed Lord. He has no need to give us reasons. It is for Him to command. But He stoops to our weakness, mighty as He is, and He comes to our aid and supplies us with these reasons for carrying out His commandment. He does so in a very remarkable manner.

He elaborates the reasons and presses them upon our consideration. He does not merely give us one reason; He gives us a number. He works it out for us in a series of logical propositions, and, of course, there can be no doubt at all but that He does this, not only because He wants to help us, but also, and still more perhaps, because of the desperate seriousness of the subject with which He is dealing. Indeed, we shall see that this is one of the most serious matters which we can ever consider together.

Remember that these words were addressed to Christian people. This is not what our Lord has to say to the unbeliever out in the world; this is the warning that He gives to the Christian. We are dealing here with the subject of worldliness, or worldly-mindedness, and the whole problem of the world; but we must not think of it in terms of people who are in the world outside. This is a real danger for Christian people. At this point our Lord is dealing with them, Christians, and nobody else. You can argue if you like that if all this is true for the Christian, it is much more so for the non-Christian. That is a perfectly fair deduction; but there is nothing so fatal and tragic as to think that words like these have nothing to do with us because we are Christians.

This is perhaps the most urgent word that is needed for Christian people at this very moment. The world is so subtle, worldliness is such a pervasive thing, that we are all guilty of it, and often without realizing it. We tend to label worldliness as meaning certain particular things only, and always the things of which we are not guilty. We therefore argue that this has nothing to say to us. But worldliness is all-pervasive, and is not confined to certain things. It does not just mean going to bars, or others establishments we’d deem, worldly or doing a few things of that nature. No, worldliness is an attitude towards life. It is a general outlook, and it is so subtle that it can come into the most holy things of all.

Ask yourself...Do we have a Godly world view or are we more worldly minded? I think we shouldn’t assume, even as Christians, that we always have a Godly world view, at times we may be behaving more worldly than Godly. We should constantly test ourselves and examine our selves to see if we be in God’s will. We should ask ourselves often why do I hold this or that particular view whether it be politically, economically, or socially. What’s my real interest? What’s my real motive? Am I truly looking at this from an eye well versed in the word of God or simply out of worldly influence.

Am I bitter, angry, and overly passionate about certain things? Or do I have a kind of blessed detachment from the things of this world? Do I see myself as a pilgrim in this world just passing through or am I holding on to this world to tightly? What is my attitude towards possessions? Do I control them or do they control me? All of these questions are good for us to examine ourselves to see whether we are laying up treasures on earth or in heaven.

Last week we considered the injunction of laying up treasures on earth verses heaven. But let’s look this week at the reasons our Lord gives us.

Do not lay up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal

Our Lord is saying that worldly treasures do not last; they will decay. They are temporary, passing, and fading away. Change, decay, and transition is all around us. ‘Where moth and rust corrupt.’ How true it is. This element of decay in all these things, whether we like it or not. Our Lord puts it in terms of the moth and rust that tend to lodge themselves in these things and destroy them. Our favorite truck will begin to rust, our most comfortable jeans will begin to fade and wear out, even though my kids buy them already faded and with holes in them. Things on this earth are passing away.

I recall when I was in Israel, some places we went wouldn’t allow you to walk in certain areas. They’d have parts blocked off that were unstable or crumbling apart in order to preserve them. I just remember looking at some of those areas that had been deemed ‘historic’ was just a pile of crumbled up rocks and ruins. Nothing lasts in this life.

There is another way of looking at the effect of moth and rust. Not only is there an element of decay in these things; it is also true that we always tend to tire of them. Worldly treasures will never satisfy us fully. We may enjoy them for a while, but somehow or other we become bored and we lose interest in them. That is why we are always talking about new things and seeking them, the latest and greatest whatever.

Fashions change; and though we are very enthusiastic about certain things for a while, soon they no longer interest us as they did. Is it not true that as age advances these things cease to satisfy us? Old people generally do not like the same things as young people, or the young the same as the old. We say our tastes changes but in reality we just grow bored with them. As we get older these things seem to become different, there is an element of moth and rust.

We could even go further and put it more strongly and say that there is an impurity in them. At their best they are all infected. Do what you will you cannot get rid of the impurity; the moth and rust are there and all your chemicals and preservatives do not stop these processes. Peter says a wonderful thing in connection to this: ‘His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.(2 Pe 1:3–4) There is corruption in all these earthly things: they are all impure.

Earthly things inevitably perish. Your most beautiful flower is beginning to die immediately you pluck it. You will soon have to throw it away. That is true of everything in this life and world. It does not matter what it is, it is passing, it is all fading away. Everything that has life is, as the result of sin, subject to this process—‘moth and rust doth corrupt’. Things develop holes and become useless, and at the end they are gone and become utterly corrupt.

The most perfect physique will eventually give way and break down and die; the most beautiful things will in a sense will lose it’s luster when the process of corruption has taken place; the brightest gifts tend to fade. Your great genius may be slipping away as the result of disease. However wonderful and beautiful and glorious things may be, they all perish. That is why it’s so sad when people place all they have into chasing after this world and the things there in when ultimately it will all be gone.

Not only are things decaying right before us, thieves and robbers are always threatening to steal our possessions. There are many thieves in this life and they are always threatening us. We think we are safe in our house; but we find thieves have broken in and ransacked it. Other raiders are always threatening us—illness, a business loss, industrial collapse, war and finally death itself. It doesn’t matter what it is that we tend to hold on to in this world, and one or more of these thieves, illness, loss, collapse, war, death, is always threatening and will eventually take it from us. It is not only money. It may be some person you’re really living for and really love. We should be aware, my friends; there are robbers and thieves who are bound to come and eventually rob you of these possessions. Our Lord reminds us here of what we know is true nothing in this world last forever.

But let’s look at the other side… the positive side

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal

This is wonderful and full of glory. Peter puts it like this. He says ‘there’s an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you’ (1 Peter 1:4). Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:18 , ‘For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’

These heavenly things are imperishable and the thieves cannot break through and steal. Why? Because God Himself is reserving them for us. There is no enemy that can ever rob us of them, or can ever enter in. It is impossible because God Himself is the Guardian. Spiritual pleasures are invulnerable, they are in a place which is impregnable. ‘I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8:38, 39).

Furthermore, there is nothing impure there; naught that corrupts shall enter in. There is no sin there, nor element of decay. It is the realm of eternal life and eternal light. He dwells ‘in the light which no man can approach unto’, as the apostle Paul puts it (1 Timothy 6:16). Heaven is the realm of life and light and purity, and nothing belonging to death, nothing tainted or polluted can gain admission there. It is perfect; and the treasures of the soul and of the spirit belong to that realm. Lay them up there, says our Lord, because there is no moth nor rust there, and no thief can ever break through nor steal.

It is an appeal to common sense. Do we not know that these things are true? Are they not true of necessity? Do we not see it all as we live in this world? Take a look at the world around you; look at all that is happening. We know all these things. So why do we not practise them and live accordingly? Why do we lay up treasures on earth when we know what is going to happen to them? And why do we not lay up treasures in heaven where we know that there is purity and joy, holiness and everlasting bliss?

Now that’s just he first argument our Lord presents to us, but He doesn’t stop there, He presses the issue farther. His second argument is based upon the terrible spiritual danger involved in laying up treasures on earth and not in heaven. Our Lord warns us of...

The powerful grip of earthly treasures

You notice the terms He uses. He says, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ The heart! Earthly treasures control the heart. Then in verse 24 He talks about the mind. Earthly treasures control the mind. ‘No man can serve two masters’—and we should notice the word ‘serve’. These are the expressive terms He uses in order to impress upon us the terrible control that these things tend to exercise over us. We should all be aware of them the moment we stop to think—the tyranny of persons, the tyranny of the world? This is not something we can think about at a distance as it were. We are all involved in this; we are all in the grip of this awful power of worldliness which really will master us unless we are aware of it.

But it is not only powerful; it is very subtle. It is the thing that really controls most men’s lives. Have you seen the change, the subtle change, that tends to take place in people’s lives as they succeed and prosper in this world? Why do people tend to become more cynical as they get older? Why does the noble outlook upon life tend to go? It is because we all become victims of ‘treasures on earth’, and if you watch you can see it in the lives of people.

Read biographies. Many a young man starts out with a bright vision; but in a very subtle way—not that he falls into gross sin—he becomes influenced, perhaps when he is at college, by an outlook that is essentially worldly. Though it may be highly intellectual, he nevertheless loses something that was vital in his soul and spirit. He is still a very nice man and, moreover, just and wise; but he is not the man he was when he began. Something has been lost. Yes; this is a familiar phenomenon: as one commentator put it ‘Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy.’ Do we not all know something about it? It is there; it is a prison house of worldliness, and it fastens itself upon us unless we are aware of it. This grip, this power, masters us and we become slaves.

However, our Lord does not stop at the general. He wants to show us this terrible danger and He works it out in detail. He tells us that this terrible thing that grips us tends to affect the entire personality; not merely part of us, but the whole man. And the first thing He mentions is the ‘heart’. Having laid down the injunction He says, ‘For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ These things grip and master our feelings, our affections and all our sensibility. All that part of our nature is absolutely gripped by them and we love them. Read John 3:19. ‘This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’ We love these things. We pretend that we only like them, but really we love them. They move us deeply.

They not only grip the heart, they grip the mind. Our Lord puts it in this way: ‘The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!’ (verses 22, 23). This picture of the eye is just His way of describing, by means of an illustration, the way in which we look at things.

And according to our Lord, there are but two ways of looking at everything in this world. There is what He calls the ‘single’ eye, the eye of the spiritual man who sees things really as they are, truly and without any double view. His eye is clear and he sees things normally. But there is the other eye which He calls the ‘evil’ eye, which is a kind of double vision, or, if you like, it is the eye in which the lenses are not clear.

There is a mist and we see things in a blurred way. That is the evil eye. It is colored by certain prejudices, colored by certain lusts and desires. It is not a clear vision; it is all cloudy, colored by these various tints and taints. That is what is meant by this statement which has so often confused people, because they do not take it in its context. Our Lord in this picture is still dealing with the laying up of treasures. Having shown that where the treasure is, the heart will be also, He says that it is not only the heart but the mind as well. These are the things that control man.

This blurring of the vision by love of earthly treasures tends to affect us morally also! How clever we all are at explaining that a particular thing we do is not really dishonest. Of course if a man smashes a window and steals jewelry he is a robber; but if I just manipulate my income tax return …! Certainly that is not robbery, we say, and we persuade ourselves that all is well. Ultimately there is but one reason for our doing that, and that is our love of earthly treasures. These things control the mind as well as the heart. Our views and our whole ethical outlook are controlled by these things.

So these not only grip the heart and mind, they also affect the will. Says our Lord, ‘No man can serve two masters’; and the moment we mention the word ‘serve’ we are in the realm of the will, the realm of action. You notice how perfectly logical this is. What we do is the result of what we think; so what is going to determine our lives and the exercise of our wills is what we think, and that in turn is determined by where our treasure is—our heart. So we can sum it up like this. These earthly treasures are so powerful that they grip the entire personality. They grip a man’s heart, his mind and his will; they tend to affect his spirit, his soul and his whole being. Whatever realm of life we may be looking at, or thinking about, we shall find these things are there. Everyone is affected by them; they are a terrible danger.

We must remember that the way in which we look at these things ultimately determines our relationship to God. ‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve...

God and money

If you notice something about these…God and money. Both make a totalitarian demand upon us. Worldly things really do make a total demand as we have seen. How they tend to grip the entire personality and affect us everywhere! They demand our entire devotion; they want us to live for them absolutely. Yes, but so does God. ‘You shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.’ Not in a literal material sense necessarily, but in some sense or other He says to us all, ‘Go, sell all that you have, and come, follow me.’ ‘He that love father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that love son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.’ It is a total demand. Notice it again in verse 24: ‘Either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.’ It is ‘either—or’; compromise is completely impossible at this point. ‘Ye cannot serve God and money.’

This is something so subtle that many of us miss it completely and we feel happy with ourselves saying, “I don’t get caught up in money or things as others do.” But the bible plainly tells us that ALL materialism is atheistic. You cannot serve God and money; it’s impossible. If materialistic outlook controls us we are godless. But even worse than that is the person who thinks their godly because they talk about God some, they say they believe in God, goes to church on occasion, but is really living for earthly things.

There is a perfect illustration of that in the Old Testament. 2 Kings 17:24–41. The Assyrians conquered some area; then they took their own people and settled them in that area. These Assyrians of course did not worship God. Then some lions came and destroyed their property. ‘This’, they said, ‘has happened to us because we do not worship the God of this particular land. We will get priestly instruction on this.’ So they found a priest who instructed them generally in the religion of Israel. And then they thought that all would be well. But this is what Scripture said about them: they ‘feared the Lord, and served their graven images.’

What an alarming thing that is. You see it’s not a matter of what we say, as much as it’s a matter of who we serve. Our Lord said, some will say ‘Lord, Lord, have we not done this, that and the other in your name?’ But He will say unto them, ‘I never knew you’. ‘Not every one that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Nothing is more insulting to God then to take His name upon us and yet to show clearly that we are serving money in some shape or form. It is the greatest insult to God; and how easily and unconsciously we can all become guilty of this.

Lloyd Jones tells a story of a farmer who one day went happily and with great joy in his heart to report to his wife and family that their best cow had given birth to twin calves, one red and one white. And he said, ‘You know I have suddenly had a feeling and impulse that we must dedicate one of these calves to the Lord. We will bring them up together, and when the time comes we will sell one and keep the proceeds, and we will sell the other and give the proceeds to the Lord’s work.’

His wife asked him which he was going to dedicate to the Lord. ‘There is no need to bother about that now,’ he replied, ‘we will treat them both in the same way, and when the time comes we will do as I say.’ And off he went. In a few months the man entered his kitchen looking very miserable and unhappy. When his wife asked him what was troubling him, he answered, ‘I have bad news to give you. The Lord’s calf is dead.’ ‘But’, she said, ‘you had not decided which was to be the Lord’s calf.’ ‘Oh yes,’ he said; ‘I had always decided it was to be the white one, and it is the white one that has died. The Lord’s calf is dead.’

We may laugh at that story, but God forbid that we should be laughing at ourselves. It is always the Lord’s calf that dies. When money becomes difficult, the first thing we cut is our contribution to God’s work. It is always the first thing to go. Perhaps we must not say ‘always’, for that would be unfair; but with so many it is the first thing, and the things we really like are the last to go. ‘Ye cannot serve God and money.’ These things tend to come between us and God, and our attitude to them ultimately determines our relationship to God. The mere fact that we believe in God, and call Him, Lord, Lord, and likewise with Christ, is not proof in and of itself that we are serving Him, that we recognize His total demand of our lives, and have yielded ourselves gladly and readily to Him. ‘Let every man examine himself.’