“You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matt. 6:24b, OAV)
Covetousness is the pressing desire to have more than you need. It is demonically instigated, and leads to a materialism in which the individual struggles to choose God above mammon. We find the concept of mammon in the four gospels, in the words of Jesus (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:9, 11 & 13). Unfortunately, in following Milton’s Paradise Lost, an abstract concept is personified to a spiritual entity with a first name: Mammon. This is however not Biblical. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia the word is derived from matmon, which means treasure. Therefore we also find Jesus spelling it out quite clearly in Matt. 6:21 – “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”.
Remember: a person with “a heart trained in covetous practices” (2 Pet. 2:14) does not only gain the spirit of mammon, but also a spirit of perversity. As we learnt in the teachings of Days 840-844 it is God who sends the spirit of perversion (Isa. 19:14). In this context 2 Thess. 2:11-12 is of utmost importance: “And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
The implications of this are frightening – if a person is exposed or confronted with truth and he does not accept this truth, or combine it with faith (“but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.” – Heb. 4:2), his heart hardens (Heb. 3:7-8 & 15; 4:7), and then God sends “strong delusion”, namely the spirit of perversion, in his heart. Through disobedience to the gospel (Heb. 4:6) the spirit of perversion forces you to the delusion of a religion based on good works (Heb. 4:7-11; Rom. 3:20 & 27). A religion based on good works strongly opposes the grace of God (Rom. 11:6), and thus you lose the grace of God (Heb. 12:15). The culmination of this on the road of an ever hardening heart is truly frightening. Gal. 5:4 says: “you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.”
Therefore we can understand that Jesus sets serving God in Matt. 6:24 as the opposite of mammon/covetousness: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Paul writes in 1 Tim. 6:10 – “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Other translations refer “the love of money” (ASV) as “the desire of money” (DRB), and “covetousness” (Tyndale). The NJB makes it very clear: “The love of money is the root of all evils and there are some who, pursuing it, have wandered away from the faith and so given their souls any number of fatal wounds.”
- Selah: Explain to someone the process of how covetousness can rob you of grace.
- Read: 13-17.
- Memorise: 14:10-14.