This post is part of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:24. Plus we look at Luke 12:13-21. Who is your Lord? God or money? Do you have money or does money have you?

Entire books have been written on Jesus’s view of money, just on the Gospel of Luke alone. But let’s try to boil things down in this post.

The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click on this link:

biblegateway.com

In this post, links are provided for further study.

Let’s begin.

I.. Scripture: Matthew 6:24

A. God or Mammon?

²⁴ No one is able to serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You are unable to serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24)

No servant can serve two masters. Why not?

B. Paraphrase

Either he will hate one and love the other vs. he will be loyal to one and despise the other.

Who are the two masters? Jesus reveal them: God vs. Mammon. The Shorter Lexicon suggests that here Mammon should be personified or turned into a personal being of some kind, as if it is lurking to devour you. In Gen. 4:7 sin is depicted as crouching, lurking by the door, ready to attack Cain.

You cannot—are unable—to serve God and Mammon.

C. Slavery

The Greek word for serve is more closely related “to be a slave to.” Whose slave are you? In his comment on v. 24, R. T. France says we should translate it: “You cannot be slaves of both God and wealth.” He says we can work two jobs, so it’s better to translate it as he has it, but that misses the point. Yes, we can work two jobs, but if we are greedy and lust for money over God, then we are heading for trouble. He is right, however, in saying that Jesus means we cannot be doubleminded. We have to be totally committed to God and his kingdom. Finally, France is skeptical about Mammon being a god or spirit of some kind. “There is no evidence that anyone in the ancient world thought of an actual being called ‘Mammon.’” Yet, the Shorter Lexicon says it can mean this.

You can decide on this one.

D. Commentator

I like Craig Blomberg here:

Against those who might protest that they can accumulate both spiritual and earthly treasures, Jesus replies that they have only two options. They must choose between competing loyalties. “Master” suggests a slaveowner who required total allegiance. People could not serve two masters in the way in which people today often work two jobs. “Money” is more literally mammon, referring to all of a person’s material resources. Of course, many people do try to cherish both God and mammon, but ultimately only one will be chosen. The other will be “hated,” even if only by neglect. “Love” and “hate” in Semitic thought are often roughly equivalent to choose and not choose. (comment on 6:24, emphasis original)

“Love” and “hate” = “choose” and “not choose.” Don’t over-work the verbiage “love” and “hate.” I like his warning not to choose money. Choose God.

E. Jesus accepted offerings:

This verse explains:

[…] and Joanna, wife of Chuza, estate manager of Herod, and Susanna. And many other women were supporting them from their resources. (Luke 8:3b)

“their resources”: this is material resources, not just prayer and well-wishing from a distance. The pronoun their, incidentally, is feminine. It was their resources. No doubt they used the money to buy food for their Lord and the twelve and themselves, when they went into a town or village. They may have bought or gathered combustible material to cook some food in a campout, so to speak. We don’t know, but those guesses come from the logic of first-century, Israelite culture. They make sense.

In any case, Jesus did not get rich, and he did not buy luxury items, like a horse. He would have appeared ridiculous, if you think about it, yelling his teaching down to the crowds and issuing commands to his apostles. I can easily imagine a hyper-prosperity preacher saying, “No, Jesus would have looked wonderful!”  The American hyper-prosperity teacher is implying that he too can buy luxury items. No. Jesus did not buy a horse. He lived with the people.

Women Travel and Financially Support Men

II. Scripture: Luke 12:13-21

A. Jesus interrupted

¹³ Someone from the crowd said to him. “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!” ¹⁴ But he said, “Man, who appointed me to be a judge or arbiter over you?” ¹⁵ He said to them, “Watch out and guard yourselves from all greed because anyone who has abundance—his life is not sourced from his possessions!”

¹⁶ Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced bumper crops. ¹⁷ And he reasoned to himself, ‘What will I do? Because I don’t have any place to store my crops!’” ¹⁸ “He said, ‘I’ll do this! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones! Then I’ll store there all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ I’ll tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take it easy, eat, drink, and celebrate!”’” ²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This very night, your life will be demanded from you! What you set up, to whom will it belong?’ ²¹ And so it is for anyone who stores up possessions for himself but is not rich towards God.” (Luke 12:13-21)

B. Comments:

1.. Verse 13:

While Jesus was speaking, a man interrupted him. He respectfully called him teacher. Often experts in the law and teachers of the law—a class of proto-Rabbis, let’s say—sat in a synagogue or other local courts, to explain and adjudicate the law to them.

This man’s mind was stuck on his father’s possessions and the fact that his brother, probably the older one, would not share. Jesus saw that his mind needed to be elevated above material possessions. A believer is allowed to go to court (1 Cor. 6:1-8), though not a brother against a brother. It is wise to settle out of court, but if your opponent is stubborn and committing an injustice against you, then let a judge decide.

2. Verse 14:

Jesus was not a judge in the law in the specific way that the man demanded. The Lord knew the law well, but he was not a judge or arbiter over such mundane matters. It would distract him from his calling, on his way to Jerusalem to die. The interrupter did not discern who Jesus really was, nor his mission.

“greed”: it is the noun pleonexia (pronounced pleh-oh-nex-EE-ah), and it means “greediness, insatiableness, avarice, covetousness.” It combines the word pleon– (“much” or “more”) and echō (pronounced eh-khoh and means “to have”), so it means to “grasp for more.” The lexicon put together by Liddell and Scott says it means, “greediness, grasping, assumption [taking], arrogance.”

3. Verse 15:

“watch out” and “guard yourselves”: Jesus issues two commands in quick succession, so we must take these words seriously. He is about to tell us that money and resources like a land or a farm that produces bumper crops can deceive us. We can allow money to blind us to what matters.

We have all known people who are greedy. Yes, he may be a certain businessman who swallows and takes down other businesses by uneven and dubious means. But we ourselves can be greedy. We can covet out neighbor’s possessions. It violates the tenth of the Ten Commandments: “Don’t covet.”

Life does not consist in possessions. I translated the preposition ek (“from” or “out of”) as “sourced from.” The source of our joy and satisfaction is not in what we own, but in God.

4. Verse 16

“land”: it could be translated as “farm.” Land was the major source of money or wealth in the ancient world, because it was more stable than trading, sending out merchant ships that might sink. If the land was managed properly, like letting it rest on the seventh year, a kind of Sabbath (Lev. 25:1-7), then the soil could renourish itself and produce a bumper crop during the other six growing seasons.

The man was reasonable in wanting to build bigger barns. It is reasonable to expand a business or move to a bigger place when it grows. No doubt a growing business helps the local economy, provides more jobs for people, and prospers the business owner. None of this is immoral in itself, but in the next verses Jesus is about to drive home what was really in the rich man’s heart.

5. Verses 17-19:

The rich landowner spoke to his own soul. King David and other psalmists did that (Pss. 42:5, 11; 43:5; 57:8; 62:5; 103:1-2, 22; 104:1, 45; 116:7; 146:1). But they did not speak low-grade ideas to their soul. They exhorted it to praise the Lord or to cheer up in him.

“All of the ‘I’s’ and ‘my’s’ in his interior monologue are shortsighted. He is going to die, as all humans eventually do, rich and poor” (Garland, comment on 12:20)

The psalmist calls people fools who boast in their riches:

⁶ those who trust in their wealth
    and boast of their great riches?
⁷ No one can redeem the life of another
    or give to God a ransom for them—
⁸ the ransom for a life is costly,
    no payment is ever enough—
⁹ so that they should live on forever
    and not see decay. (Ps. 49:6-9, NIV)

6. Verse 20:

In this parable, God breaks into the man’s life and calls him a fool.

“fool”: it is the noun aphrōn (pronounced ah-frone). It combines the a-, which negates (un- or not) and phrōn, which means prudence or clear, sober thinking. So it could be translated as “unwise!” (See also Luke 11:40.) “The word ‘fool’ … is not used lightly but is used in the OT sense of one who rejects the knowledge and precepts of God as a basis for life” (Liefeld and Pao, comment on v. 20).

“will demanded of you”: it could be translated as “required of you.” The verb is in the passive form. Commentators teach us that in this context it is the divine passive, which is an indirect way of saying that God is the one who is about to demand the man’s soul.

“what you set up”: it could be translated as “what you have prepared.” God tells the rich man that everything he had built is about to be useless to him. It is about to belong to someone else. You are born naked into this world, and the hearse that transports your soulless body to the cemetery will not pull a U-Haul trailer behind it, so that your prized possessions will be thrown into the grave. Once in a while, however, the family of the deceased will put in the coffin a valued book or jewel or such like, but it does no good in the afterlife, biblically speaking. The deceased cannot take it with them. Back in the days of the Pharaohs, they commanded giant pyramids to house their priceless possessions to signal the gods in the afterlife that the Pharaoh was rich and therefore acceptable to them; he was another god. But the treasures were still in the burial cavity when thieves broke in and stole them.

Morris: “A man whose life hangs by a thread and who may be called upon at any time to give an account of himself is a fool if he relies on material things” (comment on v. 20).

“possessions”: this was added from the context (v. 15) for clarity.

7. Verse 21

And now Jesus delivers the punchline or main point to the parable. The rich man lost his perspective on material possessions and ignored God. It is better to ignore the accumulation of material possessions and be rich towards God, and this wealth is not measured in dollars and cents.

“It is important to note that the issue in the parable is not wealth, but how wealth is directed. The sin is accumulating riches for oneself. … Paul also teaches that the love of money—not money per se—is the root of all evil (1 Tim. 6:10). It is how money can cause us to focus inwardly that is the danger. … The one who relies on God has the true wealth of life” (Bock, p. 1154).

III. Application

A. So what does it mean to be rich in God?

It means having salvation, which is eternal life starting the moment you surrender to Christ and are saved. It means entering, by God’s grace, the kingdom of God and keeping it first in your life.

B. Another verse from Jesus

Matthew 6:33 says that we are to seek first his kingdom, and then all these things will be added to us.

C. Being rich towards God

And Jesus is about to repeat this truth that being rich towards God means that you go from darkness to light. It is reaching out in Jesus’s name to the lost. It is sharing your possessions with the needy. Most of all, it is in loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and loving your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:27). And how do we love our neighbor?

D. The Golden Rule

Do to others as you would have them do to you (Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31). If we were to do those basics, we would be rich towards God, and he would say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21).

E. Jeremiah the prophet

He has this relevant insight:

This is what the LORD says:

[…] Let not the rich boast of their wealth, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight. (Jer. 9:23-24, NIV)

The rich man in Jesus’s parable should have had a higher perspective than money. Focus on the Lord and his kindness, justice, and righteousness—on earth, not just in the air or in the abstract.

F. Closing verses

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. ⁶ Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. (Col. 3:5, NIV)

The word greed is pleonexia, again. See above (II.B.2) for its meaning. Greedy people are involved in idolatry, even if they do not see it. They are like the ancient Israelites who worshipped the Golden Calf, in the wilderness, right when God had given the law (Exod. 32; Deut. 9:7-21). Or someone can turn money into an idol when they desire it too strongly.

The tenth of the Ten Commandments:

²¹ “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” (Deut. 5:21)

Greed violates this commandment. Greedy preachers today desire the wealth of their donors and order them to give, so they too can be rich. They take those offerings from Joe Factoryworker and Jane Shopkeeper based on false promises (“you too will get prosperous if you give me money”). And then the false teachers, making money out of lying promises, brag about their big houses and luxury items. Meanwhile, Joe and Jane don’t get as rich as those Scripture twisters.

They even take the last of widows’ money. The hyper-prosperity teaching is diabolical.

G. Closing warning and practical solution

Judgment is coming. Before it is too late, the hyper-prosperity teachers who manipulate Scriptures to enrich themselves need to repent by downsizing or selling off their luxury items and giving all of the proceeds to the poor. They can give away items too. Then they need to live simple, streamlined lives.

Stop giving these people your money. Make them downsize.