God And Mammon
Open your Bibles to Luke 12:15-21
And He said to them, "Take
heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the
abundance of the things he possesses. Then
He spoke a parable to them, saying:
"The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?' So he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry."'
"But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God."
What is your life’s purpose?
If your life was compared to a coin,
what would you say you have spent it on?
To many it is Fame; Fortune.
To others it is the pursuit of
happiness or pleasure or simply the preservation of life itself.
Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask, and it will be given to
you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
But what would you ask for?
In
Deuteronomy 30:19 God says, "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I
have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose
life, that both you and your descendants may live..."
God says "I place before you
life and death, choose life!"
We are taught that mammon is money - but
I believe that although money is included in it, mammon is more than money.
I believe that mammon is worldliness.
Life is found in godliness while
worldliness leads to slavery and ultimatly death.
How do you think that you should best spend
your life?
In Lk
12:15 Jesus says that a life does not consist in the abundance
of the things that are possessed.
The rich man stored up his wealth,
but Jesus says that another will use or own it.
We just borrow the things of this
world as we pass through - everything stays here when we leave.
The only thing that makes it beyond
the grave is our character - what we have become.
Worldly wisdom would applaud the
plans of the rich man of the parable.
But the Word of God calls him a fool
in Luke 12:20.
In contrast it has been said that he
is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot loose!
As far back as the 6th
century B.C, the Greek philosopher Aesop illustrated the importance of
circumspection (to have a thought about your future) with a fable about, “The
Grasshopper and the Ants”:-
“One bright, sunny winter’s day, a
nest of ants were drying some of the grain they had gathered during the summer. They had worked hard then, and now they were
working hard to keep the grain sweet and fresh all winter.
A hungry grasshopper hopped along and, seeing the ants hard at work, begged for a little food.
“Why don’t you have your food for the winter stored up?” asked the ants.
“I never had the time,” replied the grasshopper. “I spent the warm summer days singing in the sun.” To this, the ants only answered, “If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must go to bed without any supper in the winter.”
Sounds right, doesn’t it?
But doesn’t it oppose the message of
the parable that Jesus told?
First of all it must be remembered
that Aesop’s world ended at the horizon while Christ’s extended into eternity -
Jesus was not earthbound.
Even so, the call to circumspection
is a valid one.
Jesus tells us, in Matt 6:20-21, to lay up for ourselves
treasures in heaven.
So the problem isn’t with laying up
treasure - it is rather with the nature of the treasure: But
lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also.
There are basically two types of
treasure - stuff of earth (material), and things of the
Spirit.
Romans 8:5 says, “… those who live according to
the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live
according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
And … 1 Cor 2:14 tells us that, “… the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are
spiritually discerned.
The things of the earth stay with the
earth -
only those things which belong to the spirit accompany the soul beyond
material life and into heaven - the presence of God.
When Jesus told His followers to lay
up treasure in heaven, He warned in Matt 6:24 that nobody can serve God and Mammon - that
we must choose which of these we will serve: "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and
love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You
cannot serve God and mammon.
Do you know that in a very real way
we can be ruled by our possessions?
Mammon is earthly stuffing that we use to plump up our lives and so
often we becomes slaves to that stuff.
We can often look to material
possessions to find meaning in life.
But God is the author and sustainer of our lives - it is in Him that we
have meaning.
He has promised to give us what we
need in life.
In Matthew
6:25 God declares, "… do not worry about your life, what
you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
I know that this is a difficult
teaching to apply in all circumstances (for all of us), but it would seem that
if we ask for something and God doesn’t provide it, it may mean that we simply
don’t need it or want it badly enough.
We are natural accumulators.
It is only by an act of will that we
can restrain ourselves from acquiring the latest and greatest of material goods
– things that moght promise to improve our lives but often don’t.
An Oriental writer, when speaking
about the culture in the West, has been quoted as saying, “You call your thousand material devices ‘labor-saving’ machinery,
yet you are forever ‘busy’. With the
multiplying of your machinery you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous,
and dissatisfied. Whatever you have, you
want more; and wherever you are, you want to go somewhere else. You have a machine to dig raw material for
you; a machine to manufacture it; a machine to transport you; a machine to
sweep and dust; one to carry messages; one to write; one to talk; one to sing;
one to play at the theater; one to vote; one to sew; and a hundred others to do
a hundred other things for you. And you
are still the most nervous busy [people] in the world. Your devices are neither time-saving nor soul-saving. They are just so many sharp spurs which urge
you on to invent more machinery and to do more business.”
So much of our time and effort is
spent in reconciling ourselves to the world.
Jesus spent His life reconciling us
to God.
Shouldn’t we be seeking the things of
the Spirit and let God supply us with the things of the flesh?
The rich man of the parable didn’t
know what Solomon had discovered 1000 years earlier -
Turn to Ecc 2:18-22 Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun,
because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. 19 And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will
rule over all my labor in which I toiled and in which I have shown myself wise
under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 Therefore I turned my heart and despaired of all the labor in
which I had toiled under the sun. 21 For there
is a man whose labor is with wisdom, knowledge, and skill; yet he must leave
his heritage to a man who has not labored for it. This also is vanity and a
great evil. 22 For what has man for all his labor, and for the striving of
his heart with which he has toiled under the sun?
and Ecc 5:14-16 14 But those riches perish through misfortune; When he begets a
son, there is nothing in his hand. 15 As he came from his mother's womb, naked shall he return, To
go as he came; And he shall take nothing from his labor Which he may carry away
in his hand. 16 And this also is a severe evil-- Just exactly as he came, so
shall he go. And what profit has he who has labored for the wind?
I know that this is a hard
teaching - but it is the Lord’s teaching.
Listen, Insects and animals, by
nature, spend their whole lives eating or being eaten.
God has promised so much more for man.
There are perhaps few tragedies that will compare with the end of a
life that is lived to the glory of self.
For what does it profit a man if he
should gain the whole world and loses his own soul? Mark 8:36
In Ecc
12:6 we are admonished to “…Remember our Creator before the silver cord is loosed, Or the
golden bowl is broken, Or the pitcher
shattered at the fountain, Or the wheel broken at the well.”
It is genuinely in our best interest
to learn what pleases the Lord and make it part of our lives.
After all, God’s teachings are not
for His benefit - they are for our benefit.
I’m not talking about morality or
religious performance here.
I’m talking about being changed,
transformed, as we take His yoke upon us and learn of Him.
Romans 8:29 tells us that God wants us in the image of His Son.
The treasure the believer should seek
is to be found in receiving a godly character.
It is godliness that we will take
with us to heaven.
And while on earth it will draw men
to God - - (Evangelism and ministry are
of little value if they are not the outflow of a godly life.)
As our relationship with Jesus grows,
we will cease to be dominated by the things of the world and focus on the
things of the Spirit.
And here in 1 Tim 6:17-19 is the conclusion of the
matter:
The Apostle Paul told Timothy to, “…Command those who are rich in
this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the
living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good
works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good
foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.”
A person's value is not measured
in what he has - rather it is in how much of him that God has!
Amen
Read the written sermons preached by Pastor David here.
