“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Matthew 6:24)
Both the Old and New Testaments provide many principles about the way we are to handle money – from the way we earn it to the way we spend it – and all of them will reveal the true condition of our hearts. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there you heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). All the way back in the days of Jesus, materialism had a grip on many, revealing the true condition of their hearts and the god they had chosen to serve. Only one thing can sit on the throne of our lives: either God or something much smaller than God. Money is at the top of that list of “small things.”
Look at it this way: Either we will take orders from our Master or our money. We simply cannot serve both at the same time. Please note that Jesus never said that we cannot serve God and have money. We need money to pay our bills and to put food on the table and clothes on our back. Jesus did not teach a poverty gospel; what He did teach is that it’s not what you possess, it’s what possesses you. There is no sin in having money. None! But there is often great sin in the priority we place on our money. One of the best ways of examining our hearts to see whether or not money has a grip on us is to see what we are doing with the discretionary portion of it. We need only to check our bank statements to see where our true treasure is.
Focusing too much on our money keeps us in fear of never having enough of it, and this fear keeps us from even considering choices in life that would provide us with less money. Yet there are times when God is actually calling us into this. If God has promised to meet all our needs – and He has – then we can trust Him even when we cannot trace Him, and that will mean putting His plan and purpose for our lives ahead of our own.
So if we can only have one Lord, the question is: Who is lord of our lives? Is it money or our Master? When you look back on some of your recent decisions, are they finance-based or faith-based? To be sure, we need money to live, but we must not love money. I long ago lost count of how many times I’ve heard people misquote 1 Timothy 6:10 by saying, “Money is the root of all evil.” That’s not what the Bible says! What 1 Timothy 6:10 does say is that “The love of money is the root of all evil” (emphasis added).
We cannot be a soldier in two different armies at the same time. As disciples of Jesus, we are to renounce all other gods, and that most certainly includes money. Remember, a master is anything that enslaves us, and anything smaller than Jesus cannot and will not sustain. When the Lord described Himself as a “jealous God” (Exodus 34:14), He meant what He said! God will tolerate no rival, and that includes money. But He has promised us, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things [food, clothes, a place to live] will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).
God will meet all our needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19). So that means we are free to love Him and Him alone. He gives us money to live . . . not to love.
This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!