Sermon Transcript
We are in the book of Matthew, Church. We are currently in the book of Matthew because we are going through a sermon series called, “Who is Jesus and What Does He Want?”
The title of today’s sermon is “Treasure God, Not Money.”
So as we’re going through this sermon series, “Who is Jesus and What Does He Want?”, the goal is that we make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all the commands of Christ. This is one of those commands: to treasure not things on earth, but to store treasures in heaven.
So today, Jesus is going to resume His Sermon on the Mount, and He’s going to illustrate the life of a Christian who seeks praise and accolades from the Father. So far, Jesus has led us through the Lord’s Prayer, or the model prayer, where we are called to pray for our daily bread, to be satisfied with just what we have every day. And He’s going to challenge our pursuit of relentless wealth in the world—anything that goes beyond our daily bread.
Rise with me as we read from Matthew 6:19–24.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store 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.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness!
No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. (Matthew 6:19–24 CSB)
This is the Word of the Lord. You may be seated.
Father, I come to You in the name of Jesus, and I ask humbly as Your servant that You would help us here today to glorify You. I ask again this week that You would take hold of this service and lay hold of it, to claim it as Your own, for me to take a back seat, for my mouth to be filled with Your words and Your words alone. I pray that the Holy Spirit would take over my mind, help me to focus, and to be present before You in the heavens. Lord, help me to be detached from this world and from worldly anxieties. I pray the same thing for everyone here—that none of us would be plagued with pain in our bones or our health, that we would not be focused on all of the things that are currently going wrong or challenging us, but that we would be able to detach from that and just focus singularly on You for the next few minutes so that we can feed from Your word and grow in it.
Lord, I pray that You would please be with all of our brothers and sisters who are not here today. I pray that You would please be with those who are being persecuted in Nigeria, the Congo, and China, and all over the world. Please protect them and bring them into safety. Lord Jesus, please, I ask that You magnify Yourself in today’s service. I ask that You would glorify Yourself so mightily that we can run in the midst of the cold and feel the warmth of God. Be with us and protect this service from Your enemy. In Jesus’ name, amen.
All right.
Every single one of us, when we walk in this world, every single one of us is like a lamp. Now, some of us, we’re like a city on a shining hill. We walk into a room and the world is just better for it. And then some of us, our lamps are more like black holes. We walk into a room and we suck all of the joy, the energy, and the light out and it disappears. Every single one of us is a lamp of some sort. And it’s either positive or it’s negative. And that’s what Jesus is going to get at today. And it has a direct correlation with where we lay our treasure.
So as we go through this, I want you to listen and keenly take hold. Because some of you are going to feel the prickles of the Holy Spirit on your heart if you are a miser—if you like to hold on to your money and count every nickel and dime and give very little to people that’s not you or your family—this might feel personal, but this is not from Josh. This is from the Spirit of God. Okay?
Besides, just to be clear, I don’t know what you guys give. And it’s that way on purpose. All right?
So here we go.
Today, Jesus is going to challenge the heart posture. The heart posture of what kind of lamp are we? Are we a lamp that shines brightly or a lamp that sucks all of the joy out of the room?
Now, as He challenges us, I want you to understand that the main point of today’s sermon—if you’re following on the sermon leaflet in your bulletin—the main point of today’s sermon is that we must worship God through charity and good works in order to flourish in the world morally and spiritually.
1. We must worship God through good works, especially charity (Matt 6:19–21)
a. Accumulating wealth on earth is like grasping the wind.
Let us begin with this. We’re going to begin with v. 19.
Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.” This is a wake-up call for every single one of us who loves to obsessively accumulate wealth or who loves to buy handbags and fancy coats. Me—I was just gifted with this beautiful leather bag for my birthday, and it’s handmade in Mexico, and I’ve got to oil it every year, and it was like a dream come true. Okay, and I look at that bag, and I realize that this is about as close as I can get to being challenged by Jesus in Matthew 6:19. Right, because it’s certainly vulnerable to things like thieves and moth and rust. And every single one of us is tempted to buy the shiny things in life. Every single one of us wants a fancy boat, a nice car, everybody wants a nice backpack made of leather, handcrafted in Mexico—everybody wants fancy things.
And Jesus is saying that when we put our heart and our mind on the fancy things, the finer things of life, we are very much putting our heart there. Now, we’re going to get to what it means when we put our heart there, but before we get to that, I first want to point out to you that accumulating wealth on earth is like grasping at the wind.
You see, in fact, when Jesus says this, we’re not the only ones who struggle. When Jesus says, “Do not store your treasures on earth,” He’s using a very specific Greek construction that lends this idea that this is probably a temptation the disciples were already struggling with. We can’t see it so much in English, but if we were to give a roundabout translation, it would be something like, “Do not store your treasures on earth as you’re already prone to do.”
And you see, how do we know that? Well, we know that not just because of the Greek, but also in the book of Matthew, we see that Jesus has to warn His disciples in Matthew 10—when they go out and do ministry, “Don’t charge anybody for it.” I assume that He gave them that warning because there’s one in their group or more who would be tempted to say, “Hey, you like what we did for you? Like that healing we gave? Well, here’s our little cup. You can drop a few coins in there.”
He also tells them in Matthew 19 that not even the wealthy can escape all the requirements to enter heaven. You know, He says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And the disciple responds with, “Well, then who can be saved if it can’t be for a wealthy man?” You see, they were likely buying the lie that the more money you have, the more favored by God you are.
So all of these are giving us clues about the kind of mindset the disciples have when Jesus says, “Don’t accumulate your wealth on earth.” They are already prone to do that. And they’re not the only ones. So are we.
Now, it is very… we’re going to get to the most important part—that we should not be accumulating wealth on earth is because we should be worshiping God. And those two things are at odds to each other. But before Jesus gets to that point, He wants to show us how it’s like grasping at the wind. And He begins to mention three enemies to earthly wealth.
The first one is moths. You see, moths ate all the valuable fabrics of society. I don’t think they can eat a leather backpack. But they certainly ate all of the fine purple linen that was known for the kings and for those who had a lot of money, or the very expensive bleached white wool, or, even more, in Roman society, silk was worth its weight in gold. All of the finest linens and fabrics of the ancient world could very easily be destroyed by a bug that my eight-year-old daughter could crush with her two fingers. That’s how vulnerable your earthly possessions are.
And if it’s not a moth, the second enemy to attack earthly wealth is—in our English translations they love to use the word “rust” or “corrosion.” It’s not the right translation. There are a few that knock it out of the park here. The Lexham Bible does it—mentions that these are other vermin. I can tell you why if you want to reach out to me—why do we translate it “rust,” but I’m going to save you a history lesson for the sermon. But if you’re curious, come and talk to me. It’s a very interesting story.
But this word is the same word that we get for “eating.” These are vermin, not moths, that also eat. In fact, in Exodus 10, this is the word that is used to describe the activity of the locusts in the ten plagues. So Jesus is saying the first enemy of earthly wealth is moths, and when it’s not moths, it’s other consuming creatures, or vermin, as the NIV puts it.
So your earthly wealth can be completely destroyed by just bugs alone. And where it can’t be destroyed by bugs, you get the third enemy—thieves. And in fact, the word “thief” here—I’m sorry, not the word “thief,” the word “break-in”—it’s actually this term that we use for “digging.” Because in the ancient world this word would have been used for the activity of digging through the mud walls in first-century Israel. So they’re not breaking in by picking the locks. These are people who are meticulously just eating away at you and breaking into your home very slowly.
You walk away from this and you read these three enemies and you go, “Nothing I have on earth is safe.” The answer is, you’re right. Nothing. You can fight and clamor and try to build up an IRA, build up a 401(k). You can hire a certified financial planner. You can stuff your money under a mattress, bury it in an old metal can in the backyard, and it does not matter. I don’t care how much you think you’ve learned from Black Tuesday in the early 20s. Nothing can save you from an economic collapse if God wills it. Nothing.
And I know this because when I worked for Geek Squad, every single week I had older people who were coming to me telling me, “I need help.” “Well, how can I help you?” “Somebody just defrauded me $50,000 on my cell phone.” And then you just talked to them and all of it was a friendly conversation. “Oh, we accidentally gave you $100,000 in your account. I just need you to give me access so I can go ahead and put the money back where it belongs, and as a result we’ll reward you,” and all this. And it’s all fast. And then before you know it, you’re giving them access to your computer and your phone. It’s gone.
So we may not have a fear of having our farm produce in our storehouse being eaten by locusts. We may not have to worry about bookworms eating our scrolls in our books today or moths eating our silk. But what we do have are the same things. Everything that destroys earthly wealth in first-century Israel is the same stuff that destroys ours: vermin and thieves.
(On a side note, I want you to also notice that Jesus is placing thieves in the same category as an insect.)
Now this is why we pray the Lord’s Prayer. My heart has been… Look, I’ve been walking with the Lord for twenty-plus years now. Super great relationship with Him. I’ve been very close with Him, and it’s awesome. But I’ve got to tell you, praying through and meditating over the Lord’s Prayer and the model prayer as I’ve prepared these sermons these last few weeks—this has been one of the most sanctifying periods of my life. The Lord’s Prayer is truly sanctifying me, and I’m beginning to see how Jesus intended to shape and disciple the Church through the Lord’s Prayer.
If you are praying through the Lord’s Prayer and not just citing it verbatim, but you’re thinking through all the petitions that you’re asking in the Lord’s Prayer, then you are not going to be susceptible to storing your treasures on earth. Because the Lord’s Prayer begins with, “Hallowed be Your name.” Immediately, you’re putting yourself before the throne of heaven, and you’re immediately thinking about creation from God’s perspective. How can you be thinking about a boat? Or a fancy car? Handbags? Nice books? Or in my case, the latest gadgets? But how can we be thinking about these things when our minds are in the heavens?
And then we say, “Your kingdom come,” and that’s a call for us to make disciples of all nations, to seek and save the lost, to take care of the widows and the orphans. You pray the Lord’s Prayer—how can you be thinking about a Maserati? How can you be thinking about a new fancy motorcycle? Or building up your IRA? These things take a back seat when you pray through the Lord’s Prayer.
And it’s genius what the Lord has done in His Sermon on the Mount—how He has so keenly, it’s almost like this guy knows everything—He has keenly placed His warning about gathering earthly treasures immediately on the heels of the Lord’s Prayer. And it’s been beautiful for me to meditate on this.
b. We must accumulate heavenly wealth by good works
Now, if we’re not to build our treasure and our wealth on the earth, what are we to do? We build it in heaven. How do we do that? Luke 12:33 and Matthew 19:21—they sum up this idea perfectly that Jesus is getting at for His disciples.
Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” (Matt 19:21)
But you see, Jesus was getting at something in this man’s life that every single one of us needs to reckon with. Every single one of us needs to reckon with. This man went away sad and he could not give up his wealth because his wealth was his god. But Jesus says in Matthew 19:21, “Sell your belongings, give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.” So for Jesus, we build heavenly treasures by giving away our earthly treasure. And we’re going to see more of this in verse 22.
But you see, this is not the only thing we get heavenly treasure for. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has already alluded to in Matthew 5:12, “Rejoice and be glad, because your reward is great in heaven…” So you get rewards in heaven simply because you’re so devoted to following Jesus that people will persecute you, spit on you, reject you, and mock you, and you take it. You boldly stand for Jesus and the kingdom of God, and you accept the rejection. There are rewards in heaven for that.
And not only rejection and suffering for Christ, but also there are rewards for loving your enemies (Matt 5:46). “For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have?” And not just that, but giving to the poor—we saw this a few weeks ago—there will be rewards from your Father if you give in secret to those who are in need. And there are rewards for sincere prayer, and for humble fasting.
So that is why we say that we build heavenly wealth by good works and charitable giving.
But guys, I want to make sure that you hear me very clearly. Some of us love legalism so much that we like taking our Christian walk into our own hands, and we like to make ourselves feel good by doing lots of good deeds, and we think that we’re somebody whose stuff doesn’t stink. I’m telling you right now—you cannot draw nearer to the Lord and make Him love you more by doing good works and giving all your money away.
So I am saying one thing, not saying two things. Do good works. I am saying that. Give to the poor. Be charitable with your money. I am definitely saying that. But what I am not saying is, by doing good works and charity, God loves you more. Jesus has paid everything, and if you ever doubt that God loves you, you look to the cross. Because that cross tells you that God loves you more than anybody could ever muster for you, even your mother. Nobody loves you more than Jesus.
So do good works, be charitable, but do not think that you are more special than another because you do them, or that God loves you more because you do them.
c. The location of our treasure reveals which god we are loyal to (v. 21)
Now, we have seen that that is how we build heavenly wealth, but there is another thing that we must take into account. You see, we are to worship God through these good works and through charity, but there is something that we must do. The ultimate reason why we must be careful about where we’re storing our treasures—the ultimate reason is because the location of your treasure will tell the world which god you worship.
You see, this verse is talking about—Jesus says in v. 21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Whenever the Bible is talking about the location of a heart, He’s always talking about where your loyalty lies, where your affections are. Very clearly Isaiah 29:13 highlights this:
These people approach Me with their speeches
to honor Me with their lip service,
yet their hearts are far from Me. (Isa 29:13)
The heart is everything to Jesus. Jesus wants all of our hearts. This is the whole point of Him making the warnings, right? He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not murder.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry at his brother is worthy of hellfire” (Matt 5:21–22). “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:27–28). The heart is everything to God.
You are a Christian because of your heart, not because you come to church. But if you’re a Christian in your heart, you should be in church. I’m looking at you people online. I love you guys. But I know somebody out there is going to say, “Pastor Josh said that we’re a Christian in our heart, not if we’re in church.” So, the heart is everything to God. And where you put your treasure, that reveals which God you worship.
If your treasure is in the heavens, then God is your treasure—He is your greatest treasure. But if your heart is always focused on your finances and making sure that you’re maximizing your wealth and maximizing your retirement and saving up for every single rainy day, you know what that tells me? That tells me that you think you’ve got more control over your security than God does. It also tells me that you think that God does not have your best interest in mind and that He won’t look out for you on a rainy day. I say, that’s bull. That’s baloney. That’s heresy, and it’s a false religion.
The God who died for you on the cross is the God who will see you through another Great Depression. The God who bled, who sweated blood and anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane for you is the God who will get you through a famine. In fact, as I uttered that, I go, “We’re worried about famine? And this is what God did?” Sounds foolish, doesn’t it?
You see, that’s what happens when you bring your mind to the throne. And this is why we should be praying the Lord’s Prayer.
Now, it was kind of heavy, but it is true. People who think that they can make their way in this world and grant themselves financial security—I’m telling you right now, you’re worshiping yourself, just like Eve did in the garden (Gen 3:1–6).
Satan looked at Eve and said, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (v. 1). “No, we just can’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” “Oh, well, God doesn’t want you eating from that tree because He knows that you’ll be just like Him. You will be like God, knowing good and evil” (v. 5). And the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise (v. 6). And she wanted to be like God. She wanted to replace God with herself.
Do not obsess over accumulating earthly wealth. We’ve been down this road as a species before. And it did not end well. In fact, that’s what we’re going to see it does to us.
2. Prizing wealth and possessions destroys our moral fabric (Matt 6:22–23)
a. The objects we treasure affect our internal moral state.
You see, in the bulletin: prizing wealth and possessions destroys our moral fabric. This is what Jesus is getting at in these verses. In vv. 22–23 it seems really cryptic to us. What does He mean by “the eye is the lamp of the body”? And “if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?” It’s very cryptic stuff.
And the truth is, I didn’t really understand it until this week. And I memorized this passage when my son was born. And I thought I understood it until this week. And now I’m convinced more than ever that every single one of us is going to be tempted to be like Scrooge. We’ll get to Scrooge in a second.
But before we get there, I want to first understand that the objects we treasure, Church, they affect our internal moral state. Jesus is using the same theory of light that we use today in science. Science understands that light enters the body—it feeds our body and our brain information and data through our eyes. So Jesus is saying that if your eyes are healthy, you’re going to have a healthy light inside of you, and if your eyes are bad, you’re going to have a dark light inside of you. The object of the eye is what He has in mind here, and it’s picking up the same illustration from the previous verse: where your treasure is, there your heart is also.
So when He’s talking about the eye, He’s talking about the object of the eye. You stare at your treasure. For us as Christians, we should be staring at heaven. Our treasure is on the throne. But as our brother Bob read today, the only thing a wealthy man who obsesses over his wealth can do is stare at his piles of cash—until the vermin gets it (Eccl 5:10–11).
So, I want to understand the good eye and the bad eye. This is a really cryptic text because if you are reading this in Greek, He literally says “single eye.” And you go, “What does that mean?” Well, to understand the idea of single eye, you have to understand what He means by bad eye first.
However, I will say that the phrase “good eye” among the Jewish people was an expression. And the good eye as an expression meant charitable. This is very clearly seen in Proverbs 22:9:
A generous person [literally, “goodness of eye, he”] will be blessed… (Prov 22:9)
Our translations say “a charitable or a generous person.” Well, bad eye also is an expression in the Old Testament. And this is seen in Deuteronomy 15:7–9:
If there is a poor person among you, one of your brothers within any of your city gates in the land, the Lord your God has given you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your poor brother… Be careful that there isn’t this wicked thought in your heart… you are stingy (literally, “having a bad eye”) toward your poor brother… (Deut 15:7, 9, CSB)
So, good eye = generosity, bad eye = stingy, a Scrooge.
But what does Jesus mean by “single eye”? Well, we know He means good eye because it’s contrasted with bad eye. And this is when I was just floored at how beautiful of an author Jesus is. He’s using a double entendre. If you don’t know, a double entendre is just a fancy French phrase for saying that it has two meanings. In fact, we oftentimes laugh at jokes because they have two meanings. Double entendre is the skill of the wittiest on earth. And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing. He is saying “single-eyed” and He means good and upright, but He also is alluding to v. 24—we can only have a singular worship. You either worship money or you worship God.
So He’s doing two things with one phrase. It’s stunning. It’s beautiful.
b. We are either vibrant or vile.
So, with that, I want you to understand, Church, that we are either vibrant or we are vile. That’s in your bulletin.
Jesus says here in this passage that if you have a good eye, then the light in you is good. And your whole body, it says in the ESV, will be full of light. But the Greek here is a word that is illuminating—it’s full of vibrancy and life. When you walk into a room, people are greeted, just shocked by how much joy and exuberance you exude from your person. That is the person who loves God and treasures God above everything else on earth.
So you are either vibrant or you are like Scrooge. Jesus says, “If the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
So as I’m reading this this week, I’m like, “Wow, that sounds a lot like Scrooge.” Now, to be fair, I’ve got to be honest—I’ve never read A Christmas Carol until this week. I just remembered, man, this character that Jesus is talking about in vv. 22–23 sounds a lot like the Scrooge duck from Mickey Mouse’s A Christmas Carol. So I went and picked up Charles Dickens’ copy, and I actually started reading it. And yeah, Charles Dickens is exactly describing what Jesus taught in Matthew 6:22–23.
So I’m going to read this for you. Scrooge is in his office, it’s Christmas Eve, and he uses very few coals. His clerk is only allowed to warm himself by the candle. And Scrooge makes sure that his clerk doesn’t get any fancy ideas of warming himself with a fire with coals, so he keeps the coal box in his office. But Scrooge’s demeanor is immediately contrasted with his nephew. His nephew walks into the office and he goes,
“A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” with a super cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
And Scrooge replies, “Bah humbug!”
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
And it’s completely contrasting these two characters—a man who was so in love with his money, contrasted with the guy who is just all heads over heels for Christmas and full of joy.
In fact, this line really struck me. It says in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol that Scrooge “loved the darkness because it was cheap.”
And that is a warning for every person’s soul. It is not cheap to be cheap. It will cost you eternity. Because the person who hoards onto their wealth and they are stingy, they are a person who is worshipping their money. They are worshipping themselves. They are setting up their own financial security. They have zero hope in God. All their hope rests on their own efforts. And that, my friends, is the depiction of a man who will not be received by Christ.
It is only the person who puts their faith in Christ, lays down their life for the Lord, calls Jesus Lord, repents of all stinginess and just a lack of generosity, and they love others, and they love God, and they walk with Christ, walking in the Holy Spirit.
3. We flourish spiritually by singularly worshipping the Lord (Matt 6:24)
So certainly Scrooge is not going to be one who flourishes, but I’m here to tell you that you can flourish. And how do you flourish? In your bulletin: we flourish spiritually by singularly worshiping the Lord.
I’ve already alluded to this idea that Jesus says that we must have a single eye. What makes it clear? Jesus makes it clear that we can worship only one God. This should wake you up. You can only worship one god.
Look at Matthew 6:24:
No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (CSB)
He uses the same word for “Lord”—Adonai, Kurios in Greek. He says no one can serve two Kurios. You either have the Lord of heaven and earth as your lord, or you have your mammon, your money, your wealth, your possessions.
“Since either,” listen to this, “he will hate the one and love the other.” You will hate Jesus in order to love your possessions. How do you know if you love your possessions more than you love Jesus? Do you get angry when you lose it? If your kids break it, do you get upset? Or do you respond to your children, grandchildren, and you say, “It’s just worldly possessions. Jesus is worth much more. Will you help me pick up the mess now?” That’s how someone who treasures God more than their worldly possessions responds.
“You will either hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and look down on the other”—meaning you’re not even going to give it time of thought, time of day.
This is what a wealthy Christian looks like: “Oh, stock market’s crashing? Sorry, I got Jesus.” “Oh, I just lost 90% of my wealth. All right, Jesus, I need You to build up my faith. Let’s walk in this.” You can see that you lose everything, and it doesn’t faze you because you look to the Lord, and that’s where your affections are. And then you look at the wealth that’s just fizzling away, and you just go, “It’s not worth my time.” Because that is not your god, so let it go. Let it burn. Trust in the Lord. Be charitable and generous. This is the people we are called to be.
Very interesting fact here: Jesus does not translate the… I’m sorry, Matthew, when he is recording Jesus’ sermon, he does not translate mammon. This is an Aramaic word. And I love my King James brothers and sisters because your Bible still says “mammon.” And these modern English translations decided they would just take out the word “mammon” and translate it instead. But, Matthew did not translate it.
See, King James had it right when he kept “mammon” because the whole of Matthew is written in Greek. But when they get to Matthew 6:24 and other passages in Matthew, he doesn’t say the word for money in Greek—he says mammon. This is not a Greek word. So Matthew does not translate this word. He kept it in Aramaic. It has this mysteriousness about it. And he personifies mammon.
And this is where we’re going to close. This is your warning, folks. He keeps money as a person in this passage. And he calls it a master.
You see, if you love your mammon, your wealth, it is a Scrooge of a slave driver. And it will eat you alive. If you worship mammon, I believe Matthew has left it untranslated for a reason. He wants it to be like the name of a mysterious and dark god.
In 1 Timothy 6, Timothy is charged by Paul to charge the rich not to set their hopes on their wealth, but to set their hopes on God and to be rich with good works (1 Tim 6:17-19). This is the same idea here. Do not worship the false god known as mammon, because he will eat you alive, but rather store your treasures in heaven, be rich in good works, and be very charitable. The Lord will always heap piles of blessings, not just in this life, but in the next.
This requires your mind to be in the heavens. So please, Church, go to heaven’s throne and worship Him there and forget about this world so that when you come out of your prayer closet, and you walk on the earth again, you can walk with a heavenly mind.
Let’s go to the Father.
Father, we thank You so much for being reminded and challenged, and I pray that every person here would forsake any idolatry they have and be obsessed with worldly wealth acquisition. I acknowledge, and we acknowledge that we are only capable of worshiping either You or money. Catapult our hearts to Your throne so that we can worship You alone and encourage us, Lord. For those of us who have been pricked by the heart, I pray that You would remind them that they can be encouraged because You stand today with Your arms open, offering grace and forgiveness.
I pray that You would help us all to be forgiven by coming to You in repentance and hope, and in faith in Christ Jesus and the love He has for us. So Lord, we come to You, and we rejoice that we can start over today and be as charitable as You were with Your life. Help us to love You and not the world or the things in the world. We love You, in Jesus’ name, amen.