The worldliness that we are called to avoid can take a religious or a secular form. And so we differ from those who are not Christians both in our devotional life, which Jesus has dealt with in the first half of the chapter, and also in our ambitions. These are disclosed principally in two ways: ‘What do we really value?’ and ‘What do we worry about?’ It is to these twin areas of money and worry that Jesus now turns, as he seeks to show with embarrassing directness what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom.
Verses 19–24 are all about money. Jesus is unambiguous on this subject, which many preachers dare not face. ‘You cannot serve both God and Money’ (24). Money is literally ‘Mammon’, who seems to have been the Carthaginian god of wealth. You cannot have divided loyalties in this matter. God has to come first, and money a poor second. Jesus is specific, too, about the sorts of things that grab our spending power. He warns against giving priority to items such as clothes, which will wear out and are so readily perishable. He warns against overvaluing precious metals, which rust can spoil. He warns against putting our treasure where it can be stolen. Wise people, the true children of the kingdom, put their treasure where they cannot lose it, where it will never wear out, and where it can never be eroded. Their treasure is in heaven. It is safe with the Father.
Verses 22–23 have a general application: the eye is the window to the soul. You can often tell how things are with people by the message relayed through their eyes. Jealousy, prejudice, resentment, greed, lust—these are like films that can creep over the eye and distort the vision. All this is true. But the particular application of this image is to money. And it is not without significance that the words good (literally ‘single’) and bad often have a financial nuance in the Greek language. ‘Single’ means generous, open-hearted, warm. ‘Bad’ means miserly, niggardly. So it would seem that Jesus is developing his theme about money. Not only is it important to have your treasure in the right place; it is also vital to approach life with a generous, warm appraisal of other people. There are few things so distorting as an ungenerous, mean and critical spirit.
Hence the conclusion: you cannot be devoted to God if you are devoted to money and the things money will buy (24). They are rival affections. Money, the ancients came to see, is like sea-water. The more you drink of it the thirstier you get. The love of money is indeed a root of all kinds of evil.16 In May 1987 Time magazine came out with an issue all about the corruption in high places brought about by wrongly placed priorities. ‘Whatever happened to Ethics?’ was splashed across the cover. More than a hundred of the Reagan administration either had to resign through scandals, many of them financial, or were under deep suspicion. ‘Not since the reckless 1920s have the financial columns carried such unrelenting tales of vivid scandals, creative new means for dirty-dealing, insider-trading, money-laundering, greenmailing.’ And this was all pitilessly documented by Time magazine. Money possesses a terrible power to corrupt. Believers must make sure that they are not overcome by it. And yet they are.
There are few areas where the standards of the world have so invaded the church as in this area of money. Christian giving is frequently at an abysmal standard, and when it rises to 10% or so, there is often the implicit or explicit assumption that God will bless you in financial terms for what you give. It is very convenient to forget that the preacher of this Sermon was penniless and remained that way until devotion to God drove him to a cross of wood. He practised what he preached. He did not try to serve God and Money. William Barclay makes an interesting point. ‘Mammon’ has a Hebrew root which means ‘entrust’. Mammon was the wealth people entrusted to bankers to keep safe for them. But as the years went on, Mammon came to mean not that which is entrusted but that in which people put their trust. God entrusted us with all we have. It is the supreme treason to prize the gift above the donor. This generation is accountable at this point. Things that have been entrusted to us by God to support us have become, in effect, our god. Disciples are marked out clearly by their attitude to money.
Closely allied to the theme of money is worry (6:25–34). On the whole, the more money people have, the more anxious care they expend on how to keep it, increase it, and stop others stealing it. Secular people are preoccupied with their lives and bodies (25), and in particular with three areas which Jesus takes as examples: food, drink and clothes. Disciples should stand out in sharp contrast. We should not be consumed by merimna, anxious care, over these things.
Worry is not a little weakness we all give way to from time to time. It is a sin that is strictly forbidden. R. H. Mounce says, ‘Worry is practical atheism and an affront to God’, and Jesus gives good reasons for the truth of this.
Worry is unnecessary, even for the hardworking. Nobody works harder for a living than a bird, but birds do not worry. Yet the heavenly Father looks after them. How much less should we worry!
Worry is useless. Anxious care cannot add a single hour to life (27; or, as hēlikia may be translated, ‘a few centimetres to height’). The past cannot be changed: the future cannot be charted. So worry about them is useless and debilitating.
Worry is blind. It refuses to learn the lessons of God’s providence taught us by the birds and flowers. Short-lived as they are, in their quiet dependence on their environment they display that ‘peace’ that should mark believers who know that behind their environment there is a loving heavenly Father.
Worry is essentially a failure to trust God. And for disciples to be of little faith (30) hurts God greatly. It means we do not trust him, and that is always grievous. It means that we do not put him first, but instead all these things (33) come first. Our ambition as disciples must be to put God and his kingly rule at the top of our list of priorities, and we shall find that God takes care of the necessities of life.
But what if he does not? What of the hardships of believers? Is Jesus being unfeeling and unrealistic here? No. He himself knew the pinch of near-starvation and was to taste in his flesh the bite of cruel nails. But these things did not rob him of his loving trust in his heavenly Father, whose overarching providence would not allow anything to befall him which was not, in the last analysis, for good. That analysis might not be apparent until eternity, but it could be relied on, and it still can. For it depends on the faithfulness of God to his creation. Christians, like their Master, are totally secure in their relationship with the Father—and in all other respects totally insecure. In a world marred by sin and suffering, hardship is inevitable for everybody, and particularly for those who seek to live for God. After all, we follow a crucified Messiah and cannot expect a bed of roses. We were never promised one. What we are promised is the endless, unremitting, detailed, loving care of the Father over every aspect of our lives. Even in deep need, even in the hour of death, the fruits of trusting him are evident in the way believers behave. There should be a quiet glow, a radiance, about us that comes from acknowledging God’s rule in our lives, and from seeking to act righteously and so to stay in that right relationship with him. When those things are in place, a Christian life stands out as a beacon in the surrounding gloom.
There is, in the life of the fourteenth-century German mystic Johann Tauler, a remarkable story that shows something of the attitude Jesus was looking for in his disciples. One day Tauler met a beggar. ‘God give you a good day, my friend,’ he said.
The beggar answered, ‘I thank God I never had a bad one.’
Then Tauler said, ‘God give you a happy life, my friend.’
‘I thank God’, said the beggar, ‘that I am never unhappy.’
In amazement Tauler asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ said the beggar, ‘when it is fine I thank God. When it rains I thank God. When I have plenty I thank God. When I am hungry I thank God. And, since God’s will is my will, and whatever pleases him pleases me, why should I say I am unhappy when I am not?’
Tauler looked at the man in astonishment. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘I am a king,’ said the beggar.
‘Where, then, is your kingdom?’ asked Tauler.
The beggar replied quietly, ‘In my heart.’
‘Do not worry about tomorrow’ (34). In anxiety, as in money matters, disciples are to demonstrate that they are governed by ambitions different from those of others. Our ambition should be to put God first; to avoid the pious worldliness of religious showmanship described in the first part of Matthew 6; and to avoid also the secular preoccupation with wealth and the daily concerns of life outlined in the second part. Incidentally, lest we allow the force of what Jesus says to pass us by through long familiarity, it might do no harm sometimes to check up on our finances and see how extravagant we are in our spending on food, drink and clothes, to mention just those three examples Jesus took. Our findings might disturb us.
Green, M. (2000). The message of Matthew : The kingdom of heaven (102–105). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill., U.S.A.: Inter-Varsity Press.
