Money, Mammon, and Worship: Choosing Eternal Treasure

But, like, it's all about what do you see? What do you devote your heart to? Your thoughts to your mind? It's not what you do for an hour on Sunday morning. It's what you do the other six days and twenty three hours of the week. That's what you're worshiping. What you think about, what you give money, time, attention to, what you bend over backwards to make sure it happens, that's what you are worshiping. As a result, everyone worships something. That's a biblical. Right? If if if you're breathing, you're worshiping. You can't stop worship from flowing through you. You can you can steer that flow toward better or worse places. So everyone worships Christian, not Christian. Spiritual spiritual stuff never made any sense to you. All of us all of us all of us have something in our lives that is most worthy or a constellation of things. And we say that's most important. I'm gonna build my life around that. So the scripture has a really key principle, and the key principle in the scriptures is this. That is that you become like whatever you worship. [00:01:00] (49 seconds)  #YouBecomeWhatYouWorship

throughout the New Testament, particularly, actually, Testament as well, throughout the scriptures, there is one thing that gets kinda put at the center that is the thing that humans have most often fallen for for wrong worship. The number one competitor for your worship throughout human history actually, the number one competitor steals your worship, and it's the thing that promises so so much, and it offers so so many things, and some of those promises are kinda true or partially true, and so it's so incredibly alluring. And the number one thing that's the biggest competitor for your heart and why Jesus talks about it so much is money. [00:03:29] (32 seconds)  #MammonStealsWorship

Some of you are more doers. Like, you don't you don't feel, you just do. Your heart is still driving the bus of what you do. Of course, some of you are big big big feelers, and you don't even know what to do with all these feelings all over the place. Your heart even steers the emotions. And what Jesus is saying is this. Jesus is saying, you get to lead your heart. Because wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest in, whatever you sort of focus on, give your time, talent, money toward, that's gonna steer your heart. That's gonna direct your heart. See how see how that is? See, listen. Your heart is a is a wild boar, and you get to steer the wild boar in a certain direction. The scripture say, we don't follow our hearts, we lead our hearts. [00:10:35] (35 seconds)  #SteerYourHeart

Alright. So there's mission things going on with the interpretation of all this. Right? So Jesus is speaking Aramaic. Right? That's what most Jews of his day spoke. Matthew, who's writing this all down, wrote it in Greek because everyone spoke Greek. Right? So he's writing almost everything in Greek. But every so often, Matthew and the other New Testament writers will choose, will pull the original Aramaic word that Jesus uses, and they'll keep it. Right in middle of all this Greek, a sea of all this Greek, they'll write the Aramaic word in the middle of that passage. And here, Matthew, as he's writing down these words of Jesus, he actually keeps the original Aramaic words. He says, you can't serve both God and money. Actually, it's you cannot serve both God and mammon. So if you heard this right, mammon is this old kind of word, it's actually the original Aramaic words. It's the word that Jesus means. Because what Jesus means here is this, it's not just about coins and cash and digits in your bank account. [00:13:19] (47 seconds)  #MammonDehumanizes

What he's talking about is the spirit of money that can hijack our lives. Mammon is the spirit of money that can hijack our lives. It takes the good tool of money because money can be a great tool, and it turns it into something an object of worship. An object that captures our hearts, our imaginations, and something that can overrun and overrule us. So money is a great tool to buy stuff you need. You need groceries. You gotta do you gotta pay the bills. Right? Money is a great tool to buy stuff you need. The spirit of mammon though is never satisfied with the stuff. Know anybody like that? Have you ever felt like that? It's never enough. Not enough stuff. I need more. And there's always someone else who has more anyway that you could be resentful of. Right? [00:14:05] (41 seconds)  #GuardYourHeartFromMoney

Money is a great tool to patch a hole in the roof or fix a car that's broken down. You need money as a tool to you to to fix or repair things. The spirit of Mammon says, I got you covered. I'm gonna provide for you. You don't need anything or anyone, and you don't need god. You've got the spirit of Mammon to protect you. It makes all these promises that I can't actually keep. Money is a great tool to buy gifts for people that you love. The spirit of mammon turns people into commodities, and every interaction is a transaction. Everyone just has dollar signs. If you've ever known someone who bought off their kids or made their way into a job by paying, bribing somebody to do something, that's the spirit of mammon. At work, corrupting relationships. Mammon is a spirit that hijacks money and breaks our hearts around the wrong things. [00:15:04] (56 seconds)  #ChooseGodNotMammon

How do you use money and not worship and get tangled up in the spirit of Mammon? Because the spirit of Mammon is like every other spirit that the evil one release on us. The spirit are here to steal, kill, and destroy. Anytime you allow some other dark spirit to get a hold of your heart, whether that's through anxiety or ambition, whether it's fear or greed, the spirit of mammon can gather our hearts and corrupt us and make us hardened and fearful and get us all twisted up, and you can completely lose sight of what's good and bad. Right, wrong, who God is, who you are, and how he created you to live. [00:16:00] (39 seconds)  #TruthSetsUsFree

But it turns out, this kind of slimy lawyer and Jesus actually share something in common. They both believe affluenza can make you sick. Too much money can actually make your heart toxic. It can harden your heart, distract you, make you forget what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad, and turn you completely upside down and inside out. But here's the thing, you don't get affluenza like someone catches the flu. You get affluenza because you've chosen affluenza again and again and again and again and again. Because the demon of worship is so strong, so enticing, so alluring, and you just keep giving your worship, giving it your time, your attention, your affection over and over and over again, and it takes you down the rabbit hole where you no longer care about right or wrong, frankly. You just need more and more and more. [00:17:51] (46 seconds)  #LiveByChristTruth