Trinity 15

Matthew 6:24-34- Trinity 15- October 2, 2011 

  The Service of God vs.
the Servitude of Mammon

“You shall have no other gods before Me.”  This is the 1^st Commandment and it sets the foundation for all the rest.  But what exactly does it mean to have a god?  What is a god?  Here is the answer that Martin Luther gives in the Large Catechism: 

A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the whole heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol.  If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together, faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.  So far Luther. 

Martin Luther defines what a god is by describing what faith does – by describing what takes place in the heart.  He learned this helpful insight from Jesus.  “Where your treasure is,” Jesus said, “there your heart will be also.”  Faith, whether it be faith in God or faith in something else, always proceeds from the heart.  It is with the heart that we worship, it is with the heart that we seek, and it is with the heart that we serve that which we desire most.  What do we desire most?  That is by definition our god.  What we most desire becomes our master.  Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters, for 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 God and mammon.”

Mammon is the name that Jesus gave to the false god who most often claims our affection.  Mammon is often translated as money, but it embraces much more.  It includes money, of course.  After all, there is probably nothing that people worship more.  But it also includes the stuff that you buy with money such as food, drink, clothing, house, car, etc.  Mammon also includes everything that money can’t buy such as well-behaved children, a faithful spouse, loyal friends, good reputation, good looks, health, more time, and so forth.  

But Jesus doesn’t spend much time explaining what exactly Mammon is.  There’s really no point, because the list would be endless. Rather than exhausting everything that Mammon could include, Jesus instead describes for us what kind of worship the false god Mammon requires.  Whereas the true God requires that we trust Him from the heart, and believe His promises, this false god, whom our own hearts have designed, requires that that we worry.  The worship that Mammon demands from us is that we be anxious about tomorrow.  “You cannot serve God and mammon.” 

Perhaps we can convince ourselves that we have no other gods or idols with which we have replaced the true God.  But when we put it in terms of whom we serve, when we put it terms of the worship that proceeds from our hearts, we would all be lying if we denied that we worry.  We do.  The confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol.  God requires that we trust Him; Mammon requires the exact opposite.  Mammon requires that we worry; God requires the exact opposite.  That is why we cannot serve two masters – because these two masters require mutually exclusive worship.  The false god that our own hearts have created cannot be served alongside of the God who made us.  “You cannot serve God and mammon.” 

Now obviously, in order to make a point, I am [Jesus is] personifying a false god here that in reality doesn’t even exist.  Mammon doesn’t have arms or eyes and he isn’t telling us anything.  But in reality, to give an example, neither does Allah exist.  The false god that the Muslims worship doesn’t say anything either.  He’s not in heaven.  He’s not in hell.  He’s only pretend.  The false prophet Mohamed made him up.  Allah is nothing more than a figment of imagination created by false faith.  But that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.  And you better believe that Allah, although he doesn’t exist except for in the hearts of sinful man, makes very strict demands on his servants.  Just watch the news. And you can see what people do to serve this idol. 

And if you want to know the service that Mammon requires of you, look at what you do to serve this idol.  Oh, sure.  Mammon, as a person of sorts, doesn’t really exist.  But your false faith most certainly does.  And your false worship most certainly can be seen by God.  Do you worry?  God Almighty who created heaven and earth promises to give what you need.  But are you nonetheless anxious about how you will meet your own needs?  Your Father in heaven who is most certainly real regards you as more precious than all the birds and flowers that He never fails to feed and clothe.  How much less will He fail to give you what you need?  Yet are you still worried about how you look, how you are dressed, how good you have it in life?  Do you still serve the same idols that your hearts have made, by doubting the certain promises that your God has made?  Do you still worry? 

In the Small Catechism, we conclude the 10 Commandments with the same words that God introduced them with on Mt. Sinai: “I the Lord your God am a jealous God.”  Jealous is a good word to know.  It is not the same as envious, although the words are often used interchangeably.  To envy, though, is to want what belongs to someone else, and not to you.  It’s a sin.  It’s to covet what’s not yours.  But to be jealous of something is to have zeal for it.  That is, it is to want something that does belong to you – because you have a rightful and exclusive claim on it – and furthermore, it is to want no one else to have it – because it’s yours, not theirs!  That’s jealousy.  Images of a mean and jealous boyfriend who tries to control his girlfriend’s life might come to mind.  That’s bad.  But jealousy’s not always a bad thing – as long as you know who it is who is jealous of you. 

The Lord our God is a jealous God.  He does not want us to worship others.  He will not share His glory or our affection with a false idol.  He punishes those who do.  Mammon is also a jealous god.  Mammon does not want you to know your Maker and Redeemer. 

Both these gods, the true God and the false god, profess to have rightful claims on us.  God: because He has made us.  Mammon: because we are sinners.  God: because Christ has born our sin.  Mammon: because we continue to fret and worry.  God: because we are baptized.  Mammon: because we nonetheless so earnestly seek those things that the heathen seek.  And we do.  All things said and done, dear Christians, we do.  We doubt God’s fatherly goodness, we count the fading things of this world as more important than hearing the word of God, and we thereby fall down and worship this mocker of God called Mammon. When we examine our own lives this one thing is certain. Where our treasure is, there, and only there, will our heart be as well.  The idol of our own hearts’ making testifies against us as to which master we serve. 

“You cannot serve God and mammon.”  Oh, we try to serve both.  We try to distribute our anxiety into both parts of our lives, equally servicing our earthly as well as our spiritual needs.  Do we worry about our bills?  So we also try to worry about how much we have done for the Lord.  Do we worry about our health and the cost of insurance?  So we also try to worry about how faithfully we attend church and how much we give.  Do we worry about our appearance, our popularity, the relationships we have with others?  Oh we know we shouldn’t worry.  But to off-balance the service we render to Mammon by worrying about these earthly things, so we also try to worry about spiritual things. 

It is interesting, and sad, and true that the more we render service to false gods, the more we begin to think that this is the kind of service that the true God wants from us as well.  But the kind of worship we offer determines the kind of god we serve.  That is why we do not look inside of our hearts to learn what kind of service God wants; we know what kind of god we will find there.  We do not serve God by worrying about our spiritual condition.  Worrying about religious things does not make worrying more acceptable to God.  No, we serve God by fixing our eyes on where He has met our spiritual need.  Our heavenly Father teaches us our needs better than we are able to figure them out.  And He fills all our needs better than we are able to fill them.  God gives to us what He never gave to the birds of the air and flowers of the field.  He gives to us not only what we need to eat, drink, and enjoy our lives, but He gives to us the service of His dear Son who freely gives us what our weak and timid hearts never even knew how to desire.  The kind of worship we offer determines the kind of god we serve.  That is why God serves us with the Gospel, so that we may know Him and so that He might be our God.  Man cannot serve two masters, but God became Man to serve sinners. 

Mammon will remind you of the claim he has on you.  But Mammon is a liar.  Your worry and doubt and idolatry that he claims make you his, Christ our Brother and Savior has taken all upon Himself.  If Mammon insists that you worry about your life, then you point your doubting heart to where God shows you how trustworthy He is.  If all the things in your life that you find so difficult to stop thinking about – even now – if this idol of ours insists that we serve him with our doubt, let us direct him to the God Man Jesus Christ who had no place to lay his head, who went without the comforts of life, and who took the punishment for our sin upon Himself, even as He hung on a cross forsaken by His Father whom He had always trusted, but for our sake suffered as though He hadn’t.  And even in His death, He trusted that His Father would preserve the life He had promised.  This death He died for us, so that the life He took again may be ours as well.  

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  And while we were yet anxious and filled with worry, our faithful heavenly Father brings to us the service of all our sins forgiven.  The devil may claim to be jealous; but he has no right.  He is only envious.  Because God has washed our conscience clean in Holy Baptism making a more enduring claim on us than any sin in our heart can, because this is the very sin that He suffered and died to take away.  And He feeds to us the food that no bird has ever received, that of His own body and blood that not even the angels partake of – all this He gives us because He wants so dearly for us to know and be certain that He loves us, and will never leave us, and that all our sin and guilt are gone forever.  Unlike Mammon, God does not force us to serve Him by telling us what we owe.  He invites us to serve Him – to believe and rely on Him.  He does this by paying what we owed.  Because we know Him, we have nothing to worry about. 

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall added unto you.”  It is true that we may go without.  It is true that tomorrow may have as much trouble as today.  It is true that our emptying barns and checking accounts may require us to toil and spin a little more than we would like.  But where one god would require us to worry, the true God bids us to trust in Him.  Although so many things in life that we have cherished and have been so grateful for may wither and dry up – even as we see our own bodies fail and fall apart, we who know our Savior Jesus, also know that this chastening breath of the Lord comes from a Father’s heart to turn our affections away from all our stuff and toward Him alone who gives it all to us, and who cares for us.  Therefore, cast all your burdens on Him.  This is the Kingdom of God which we seek by faith.  The Kingdom of God is where Jesus takes our sin off of our burdened consciences and shows us where He has borne it away in our place on the cross.  The Kingdom of God is where Jesus clothes us in His own righteousness through faith in Him.  We seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness here today, because this Kingdom of God has already found us and serves us where Jesus gives us all that we need – today despite our worries, and tomorrow despite its own trouble.  

In Jesus’ name, Amen.