Matthew 6:22-24: God and Money

Matthew 6:22-24: God and Money

The passage of Scripture we’ll be looking at this morning is Matthew 6:22-24. It says,

²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, ²³ but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! ²⁴ “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 money.

May God bless the reading of his Word.

 Let’s pray: Father, we come to you with all kinds of needs this morning. But we believe that, by your Spirit and through your Word, you can minister to every need we have. So please do that and, above all, draw us into a deeper relationship with you. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

One of the things that healthcare professionals recommend for people as they get older is to have regular screenings for various kinds of cancer. Depending on a person’s age and gender, these might include screenings for colon cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, cervical cancer, or prostate cancer. And the reason these screenings are recommended is very simple: cancer will kill you—if it’s not treated in a timely manner.

Yet there’s also another kind of cancer that the screenings performed by those in the healthcare industry won’t be able to detect. That’s because it’s not a physical cancer but rather a spiritual cancer. It’s a cancer, we might say, within our hearts that’s commonly known as greed. And as we’ll see this morning, greed is just as deadly for us spiritually as any regular kind of cancer is for us physically.

We might even extend the metaphor a bit further and say that greed is also very much present in our family history. As you know, your likelihood of contracting cancer is exponentially higher if there’s a history of that kind of cancer in your family. And unfortunately for us, there’s an extensive history of the spiritual cancer of greed in each of our families. So, you might say that our chances of contracting this cancer are extremely high.

This is why Jesus warns us about it in our main passage this morning of Matthew 6:22-24. In the previous verses, Jesus has just told his disciples not to lay up treasures on earth but instead to lay up treasures in heaven. That’s the context here. And now, in verses 22-24, Jesus tells his followers that they essentially need to do a screening of sorts for the spiritual cancer of greed that’s quite possibly lurking within their hearts. Jesus obviously doesn’t use that exact terminology, but that’s nevertheless the overall thrust of what he’s saying. To be more specific, Jesus tells his followers to carefully consider the desires they’re cultivating and the master they’re serving. That’s the main idea of this passage. Jesus tells his followers to carefully consider the desires they’re cultivating and the master they’re serving. And we’ll look at each of those two things as we work our way through this passage.

Consider the Desires You’re Cultivating

So, let’s look first at Jesus’s admonition to consider the desires we’re cultivating. Look with me at verses 22-23. Jesus says, ²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, ²³ but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Now, obviously, when Jesus says that “the eye is the lamp of the body,” he’s not trying to give us a lesson about human physiology. Rather, he’s illustrating the enormous impact that the desires we cultivate have on our lives. That’s what “the eye” represents here. It represents our desires.

Because, usually, when someone looks at something with their eyes for more than a moment and really directs their gaze toward something, they’re looking at something they desire, right? Like, if you see someone gazing at a brand-new Aston-Martin sports car, let’s say, with a powerful V-12 engine, you’ll probably conclude that they’re experiencing a desire for that sports car. Or, in an alternative scenario, if a woman sees her husband gazing for a prolonged period of time at another woman, who happens to be very attractive, she’s probably not going to particularly happy about her husband looking at that other woman in that way. It would probably make her pretty upset actually. And it probably should—because we understand that a prolonged gaze at someone or something is usually an indication that we desire whatever it is we’re looking at. So, when Jesus speaks of “the eye” in this verse, he’s speaking of our desires.  

And he tells us that, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” In other words, the desires we cultivate have an enormous impact on everything else in our lives. Because that’s the way a lamp functions in a room, right? Even though a lamp is a relatively small object, it has an enormous impact on the room it’s in—especially if it’s dark outside. If it’s late at night and everything outside is completely dark and there aren’t any other lights on in the house, then a lamp will determine whether the room it’s in is filled with light or darkness. If the lamp is on, the whole room will be full of light. But if the lamp is off, the whole room will be full of darkness.

Similarly, Jesus says, that’s the function that our “eyes”—or the desires we cultivate—have in our lives. As Jesus goes on to explain, “[I]f your eye is healthy [that is, if you’re gazing at something good], your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.”

So, let’s pause for a moment and ask ourselves, what is it that we desire in our lives? Be honest with yourself. What do you find yourself thinking about and daydreaming about throughout the day? Is it a promotion you hope to get at work…or a vacation you hope to take this upcoming summer…or a new home or new vehicle you desire to purchase…or a romantic relationship you’re hoping will come about? What do you desire to the extent that you can’t stop yourself from thinking about it on a regular basis? 

Now, with that desire in mind, consider what Jesus is saying here. If you’re cultivating and feeding a desire within your heart for the wrong thing, it’s going to have an enormous impact on the entire trajectory of your life. “Your whole body will be full of darkness.” Instead of growing closer to God, you’re going to drift away from God. Instead of becoming more like Jesus, you’re going to become more like this world. Instead of experiencing the spiritual fullness and joy found only in God, you’re going to experience the emptiness and disappointment that eventually come from making your life about lesser things.  

And of course, in the context here, Jesus is warning us specifically about money and the inordinate desire we often have to accumulate material wealth. As we saw in verses 19-21, Jesus has just given us a very clear warning against laying up treasures on earth instead of laying up treasures in heaven. And as we’ll see in a few moments in the subsequent verse—verse 24—Jesus again gives us another very clear warning about money. So, everything Jesus says here in verses 22-23 about our eye being either good or bad is said in the context of warning us about the dangers of being fixated on earthly wealth.

If we allow ourselves to become enamored with earthly wealth and gradually begin to prioritize earthly wealth above our relationship with God and the work God’s given us to do on this earth, then we need to watch out, because we’ll eventually get to the point where our “whole body” is “full of darkness.” If we make our life all about the temporary treasures of this world, we’ll be spiritually impoverished and far from God and will eventually find ourselves face-to-face with the emptiness and joylessness that that kind of life inevitably brings.

It reminds me of a story I heard one time about a king who was incredibly rich but so unhappy and unsatisfied in life that he called in several of his top advisers to see if they could help him. These advisors discussed possible solutions and eventually agreed that if the king could find a man who was happy and borrow the man’s shirt and wear it for a day, the king would be happy as well. And when the king’s advisors presented this idea to the king, the king agreed that it sounded very reasonable. So, they organized a large delegation of people and sent them throughout the kingdom in order to find a man who was genuinely happy. And it took a surprisingly long time to find such a man—so long that they almost gave up. However, after a lengthy search, they finally found a man who seemed to be truly happy. Yet there was only one problem—this man was so poor that he didn’t own a shirt. 

Now, obviously, that story’s fictional. However, the point it makes is very real. Earthly wealth doesn’t bring true happiness. In fact, an inordinate focus on accumulating earthly wealth actually gets in the way of true happiness because it directs our focus away from God. And that’s essentially what Jesus is warning us about in these verses. If our eye is bad, our whole body will be full of darkness. However, Jesus also says that if our eye is healthy, our whole body will be full of light.

So, where is your gaze directed? Is it directed toward the material things of this world, or is it directed toward God? If you’ll cultivate a desire for God and focus your attention on him and make him the central pursuit of your life, you won’t be disappointed. As David says so well in Psalm 16:11, speaking to God, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Consider the Master You’re Serving

Then, moving forward in our main passage, Jesus not only tells his followers to consider the desires they’re cultivating but also tells them to consider the master they’re serving. He does this in verse 24, where he says, “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 money.”

You know, as I read this verse, it reminds me of a conversation I’ve had on several occasions with my kids. One topic that young children especially seem to be very interested in is their favorite color. In the mind of a young child, one of the most important things to know about a person is their favorite color. And there have been a few occasions when a couple of my children have claimed to have more than one favorite color. But, obviously, that doesn’t make any sense, right? Like, how can you have more than one favorite color? It’s impossible. The word “favorite,” by definition, implies that there’s only one. If you can’t narrow it down to one color that you like the best, then, by definition, you don’t have a favorite color. And I tried to explain that a few times to a couple of my kids, but, unfortunately, I’m not sure I ever really got through to them. They just kept talking about their two favorite colors. But hopefully you can understand what I’m saying.

And Jesus is saying something similar to that when he states here that “no one can serve two masters.” Now, obviously, Jesus isn’t affirming slavery in this passage, but he is using it as an illustration. And the way slavery worked is that masters owned their slaves completely. It’s not like one master would own 50% of a slave and be able to make him work on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, while another master would own the other 50% of the slave and be able to make him work Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. No, if you’re a slave, then, by definition, you have one master who owns you completely seven days a week. And in a similar way, Jesus says, when it comes to the things in our lives that we choose to prioritize and that we devote ourselves to pursuing, “no one can serve two masters.”

Now, note the underlying assumption of that statement. We will be mastered by something. We can’t help it. We’re worshippers by nature and can’t help but worship something and devote ourselves to something and be controlled by something. The only question is, what will that something be? Will it be God or something else? By the way, God is the only Master who won’t oppress us. Everything else that we allow to be our master will ultimately prove to be oppressive and will lead us down a path of progressively greater misery and eventual destruction. But those who have God as their Master will enjoy progressively greater joy and fullness and satisfaction. 

Nevertheless, the choice is ours. What will we allow to have mastery over us? Will it be God or something else? Because, as Jesus teaches here, it can’t be both. And of course, the “something else” Jesus is referring to is money. He clearly says at the end of the verse, “You cannot serve God and money.”

You know, people sometimes imagine that they’re able to be right on the fence, so to speak, and devote themselves to the pursuit of earthly wealth and material prosperity while, at the same time, maintaining a measure of devotion to God. Yet, as we clearly see from what Jesus says here, that’s simply not possible. And anyone who thinks they’re able to do that is only fooling themselves. You’re either totally devoted to God and sold out to his purposes for your life or you’re not really devoted to God at all.

And as I alluded to a moment ago, if you allow money or material wealth to become your master, it’s going to enslave you. For example, just think about all the people in our society who overextend themselves financially by purchasing things they really can’t afford. I once heard it said that we buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't even like. Maybe you’ve heard that before. We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't even like.

Yet it seems that many people just can’t stop themselves from making unwise purchases and racking up massive amounts of credit card debt in the process. I did a quick Google search for the average household credit card debt in the United States, and the results that came up ranged from about $7,000 to about $11,000. So, the average U. S. household is carrying a credit card debt right now of somewhere between 7 and 11 thousand dollars. And I don’t even want to think about how much interest the average U. S. household is paying on their credit card debt. I mean, wow. 

So, that certainly sounds a lot like a form of slavery to me. And it is. Proverbs 22:7 states that “the borrower is the slave of the lender.” Now, of course, buying new things may not make you feel like a slave. It usually feels pretty good, actually. That’s why a credit card that I used to have had the word “Freedom” written on it, right? It was a Chase “Freedom” card. The implication, I guess, is that using that card to buy all the things I wanted could supposedly make me free—or at least that’s what the folks at Chase would have liked me to believe. But, hopefully, we all understand that that’s not real freedom. Instead, it’s actually slavery.

And not only are many Christians enslaved externally to Visa and Mastercard, they’re also enslaved internally to the materialistic desires of their own hearts. Their external slavery is just a symptom of their internal slavery—which is the specific kind of slavery Jesus is focusing on in this verse. He’s primarily talking about slavery to the materialistic desires within our hearts.

It reminds me of something I heard one time about what some hunters do to catch monkeys in more primitive areas. Now, I should mention that I didn’t actually verify this information, so I don’t know if it’s true or not. But I think it’s pretty interesting, so I’ll share it anyway.

Supposedly, in some places in southeast Asia, when they want to catch a monkey, they make a monkey trap out of a coconut. Coconuts are naturally hollow inside. So, the hunter will take a coconut and cut a small opening into it—an opening that’s just barely large enough for a monkey’s hand to fit into. The hunter then baits the trap by putting a slice of fruit into the coconut and then lays the coconut out in the woods with a rope tied to it.

And eventually, a monkey comes along and sticks his hand into the coconut to get the piece of fruit. But then, because the monkey’s holding the piece of fruit in his hand, he can’t get his hand back out. His fist is too big to squeeze back out of the opening. Now, you’d think that, at that point, the monkey would simply let go of the fruit so he can slip his hand out again. That would certainly be the sensible thing to do. But apparently, monkeys won’t do that. Apparently, the monkey will keep on clutching that fruit even as the hunter comes up to him and takes him captive. It’s pretty crazy. And yet, reportedly, that’s how committed the monkey is to getting the fruit. He wants it so badly that he’s enslaved by his own desire. And that’s very similar to the way a lot of people are enslaved to their desire for wealth. Even though they think they’re free, they’re actually enslaved.

Conclusion

And maybe that’s you this morning. Maybe, as I’ve been talking, you’ve come to realize that you’re enslaved to your desire for money and material wealth. Please understand, first of all, that I’m not trying to condemn you or heap shame on you for any unwise spending habits or any credit card debt you may have. That’s certainly not my intention. Instead, my hope is that you’d find freedom in Christ from any and all desires to which you might be enslaved.  

You see, there’s only one way we can experience true freedom from the desire for earthly wealth that so easily enslaves us. Basically, our desire for earthly wealth has to be eclipsed by a greater desire—namely, a desire for Jesus.

And that happens through the change of heart and spiritual transformation that God accomplishes within us through the gospel. You see, every one of us, in our natural condition, is enslaved not just to greed but to all kinds of sinful desires. Jesus states in John 8:34, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” Not only that, Titus 3:3 refers to us as “slaves to various passions and pleasures.” And it actually gets even worse, because the Bible teaches that the penalty for our sins is eternal punishment. So, we’re both enslaved and condemned.

However, in his mercy, God didn’t leave us in our wretched condition but instead sent us a Savior in the Person of Jesus. Jesus existed as God from all eternity but entered this world as a human being, lived a perfectly sinless life, and voluntarily allowed himself to be crucified in order to suffer the punishment for our sins. Romans 5:8 says that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus died on the cross as our substitute. He suffered the wrath of God the Father so we wouldn’t have to. That’s how much he loves us. Even when we were in a state of sinful rebellion against him, Jesus died to pay for our sins. He was then raised from the dead three days later so that we also can be victorious over sin and death. This is a message we call the gospel.

And it’s through this gospel message that God changes our hearts and liberates us from the desires within our hearts that would otherwise enslave us. So, understand that it’s not like you can just decide one day that you’re going to be free from the sinful desires that dominate your heart. That’s actually the whole point of the gospel. You can’t fix yourself or change yourself or somehow rehabilitate yourself from being enslaved to sin. Only Jesus can fix you and change you and give you true and lasting freedom.

So, let me invite you today to look to him to do that. Recognize that Jesus is able to recue you from both the objective guilt and the subjective power of your sin. He offers you both forgiveness and freedom. Yet, in order to experience these things, you have to renounce your sinful way of living and put your trust exclusively in Jesus for rescue. Not in Jesus plus your religious observances or Jesus plus your attempts to earn God’s favor through your own morality but rather in Jesus alone.

So, I implore you even this morning to cry out to Jesus and tell him that you don’t want to be a slave to sin any longer and that you’re placing your confidence in him alone for rescue. And if you’ll do that, you’ll experience a kind of freedom that you’ve never known before. Because true freedom is serving the right master—and that means serving God. So, will you, first of all, stop pursuing earthly wealth as if it could ever bring you true joy and satisfaction? And will you instead look to God as the only one who can satisfy the deepest desires of your soul? As Jesus has already told us so clearly, “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 money.”

And perhaps this morning you’ve already put your trust in Jesus and devoted your life to him, but you still find yourself drawn in an unhealthy way to money and material wealth—and it’s a real struggle for you not to allow your desire for these things to get in the way of you pursuing and serving God. Rest assured that you’re not alone. Our society is so gripped by greed and materialism, and just about all of us are so immersed in our society, that it’s nearly impossible for us to be entirely free the greedy and materialistic mentality that’s all around us.

And many times, we don’t even realize how much of that mentality we’ve adopted until we read a passage like Matthew 6:22-24. Just like a fish doesn’t realize it’s wet because it’s swimming in an ocean of water, we often don’t realize how oriented we’ve become around money and material wealth until we read a passage like this and God shows us the true condition of our hearts. And maybe that’s your experience this morning. May God’s showing you just how much you desire wealth and how relatively little you desire him. Let me encourage you to listen to whatever the Holy Spirit’s telling you and respond appropriately to whatever the Holy Spirit’s showing you through this passage.

In addition, I’d also like to mention that one key indication our hearts are right in this area is that we’re stewarding the wealth God’s entrusted to us in a wise way—and that includes giving faithfully and generously to our local church. To put it in the terminology of Jesus in verse 24, if you’re genuinely devoted to God as your Master, that’s going to show up in a very tangible and pronounced way in the percentage of your income that you give to the advance of the gospel—which is chiefly accomplished through the local church.

In fact, if you’re really viewing God as your Master, then you actually don’t view the money you possess as yours anyway. Instead, you recognize that every dollar you possess actually belongs to God—even as you yourself belong to God. So, as John Wesley so famously pointed out, the real question to answer when it comes to giving isn’t how much of your money you’ll give to God but rather how much of God’s money you’ll keep for yourself. Again, the real question to answer when it comes to giving isn’t how much of your money you’ll give to God but rather how much of God’s money you’ll keep for yourself. That’s the kind of mentality Jesus is teaching us to have when he speaks of serving God as our Master and being, as it were, a slave of God.

And last week, we kicked off something that we’re calling the “Giving Challenge.” Last week, I asked you what your giving to the church would look like if you really took seriously the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 6. What percentage of your income would you consistently give? 5 percent? 10 percent? 15 percent? Even 20 percent? What would taking Jesus’s teachings seriously look like for you?

 And then, this is the challenge: If you feel the Holy Spirit prompting you to give a certain amount, be obedient to that prompting and step out in faith that God will take care of you and commit today even to give that amount for the next 8 weeks. That’s the challenge. Commit yourself to giving a specific percentage of your paycheck for the next 8 weeks. And to be clear, this challenge is only directed toward Christians who count this church as your church. So, I’m not talking to guests. I’m only talking to Christians who count this church as your church. In light of how Jesus teaches us to live and the mentality he tells us to have, make a commitment to give a specific percentage of your paycheck for the next 8 weeks—whatever percentage is a good next step for where you are right now and what you believe God’s prompting you to do.

Then after the 8 weeks is up, you can reassess your giving. At that point, you’ll be free from your Giving Challenge commitment. However, my guess is that you’ll want to continue with that same level of giving—because of the joy that’s available and that I myself have found by exhibiting the generosity the Bible teaches us to exhibit.

So, if you want to officially accept this Giving Challenge and be encouraged to follow through with it by the act of making it official, then take a Connection Card, fill out your information, and write, “Accepting the Giving Challenge” at the bottom. Just write that at the bottom in the prayer requests section—“Accepting the Giving Challenge.”

And for those who do that, we’ll send you a book by Paul David Tripp titled, Redeeming Money and with the subtitle How God Reveals and Reorients Our Hearts. Hopefully that’ll provide additional encouragement for you as we all continue to grow as disciples of Jesus in this area of our lives.