"the 'god' That Can Never Be Satisfied"

“The ‘god’ that can Never be Satisfied”

Matthew 6:24-34

Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters…

…You cannot serve both God and money.”

The word translated as “money” here is “mamona.”

The King James Version of the Bible

brought “mamona” into the English language as a new word: Mammon.

When capitalized Mammon sounds like the name of a pagan god.

While there was no religion in Jesus’ day that worshiped a god called Mammon, people in every age worship at Mammon’s altar.

Today we might call it affluence or success or promotion or prosperity or the good life.

For many of us, we use it as a guide to set the direction of our lives.

But Jesus says we can’t be guided by both Mammon and God.

We can’t be the disciples of both Jesus and Money.

Think about it:

Jesus calls us to walk by faith, Mammon calls us to walk by sight.

Jesus calls us to be humble and Mammon calls us to be proud.

Jesus calls us to set our minds on things above and Mammon on things below.

Jesus calls us to the light of love and freedom, Mammon calls us to fear and darkness.

Jesus tells us to look toward things unseen and eternal and Mammon to look at things seen and temporary.

A few verses earlier Jesus teaches us:

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Worry or anxiety as it has to do with material things, with money, with Mammon is what Jesus is really getting at in our lesson for this morning.

The problem is not so much in having Mammon than in serving it—giving our heart to it—letting it rule our lives—making it our top priority—letting it stand between us and God.

David writes in Psalm 62:10: “if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.”

Wealth can tempt us to selfishness, but it is possible and vitally important to use wealth unselfishly.

God expects those of us who follow Him to help the hungry and the homeless, and that requires some financial resources.

Toward the end of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus will warn that, on Judgment Day, God will count as sheep those who have taken care of the needy and will count as goats those who have not done so.

While that might seem overwhelming in its scope, Jesus calls us to trust God and not to worry.

And there can be no doubt that worry as it has to do with money or Mammon is a soul-cancer that strikes at the rich, the poor and those in the middle.

“Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear” Jesus says in our Gospel Lesson.

This may cause some of us to balk and say: “That is impossible!”

And there is no doubt that worrying is a normal part of our human experience—we all experience it from time to time.

But left unchecked, it can get the best of us.

I find that worry gets me the most when and if I am struggling in my relationship with God.

If my faith has become weak, my worrying about the things of this world increases.

But if my faith is strong the opposite is true.

What exactly is worry?

Worry means to give way to anxiety or unease; to allow one’s mind to dwell on difficulty or troubles.

It is distress caused by something that we might possibly experience in the future.

The object of our worry can be anything from a presentation we have to give in 30 minutes to developing a serious health condition 20 years from now.

Mark Twain wrote: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”

Have you known a great deal of troubles that have never happened?

Do you ruin your peace and happiness by allowing your mind to dwell on things that might or could happen in the future?

Are you an excess worrier?

Perhaps you unconsciously think that if you “worry enough” you can prevent bad things from happening.

But we all know this is not true.

Worrying is feeling uneasy or being overly concerned about a situation or problem.

Excess worrying can cause our minds and bodies to go into overdrive as we constantly focus on “what might go wrong.”

And it’s difficult to think of others or to serve and love God when we are caught up in worrying—especially if that worrying has to do with Mammon, wealth, money.

If we are wealthy we might worry about our ability to accumulate more wealth or to protect what we have against moth, rust, embezzlement, accounting fraud, inflation, deflation, high and low interest rates, and innumerable other threats.