You Cannot Serve God and Your Own Interests

This last Sunday I preached on Matthew 6:19-24, and in following along with the theme of the Sermon on the Mount so far, Jesus gets at the heart of the matter, which is that God wants our hearts. Whether that be in looking at the laws in Matthew 5 where He is saying “You’ve heard it said… but I say…” to point to a surface understanding of the law versus the deeper heart behind why the law was given, or Him calling out religious hypocrisy in Matthew 6:1-18, our hearts are the issue. 

Matthew 6:24 is really one of the key verses to understanding the sermon on the mount, along with Matt. 5:17-20, and 7:12. Together they encompass its overall theme by showing Christ’s heart for the law and how we can’t measure up on our own apart from Him. 

Matthew 6:24
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.

This is really one of the toughest verses in the Sermon on the Mount when you think about it. Yes, Jesus is calling out our materialism, but to take it deeper it’s the issue of singleness of heart and mind, that divided attention and loyalty is unproductive and inevitably harmful. The two options being shown with the “one” and “the other” does not simply mean that we can’t multitask our ultimate affections, but the word used in the original languages gives the idea of two masters of distinct or opposite character and interests, like God and Mammon (or materialism).

not actually me… but you get the idea.

While this is a bit of a tongue in cheek example, it makes me think of my own experience in dating during my freshman year of college while working my first coffee shop job. This was my only coffee job I worked before I started dating my wife, which I ended up working in coffee for about 15 more years after this first job. But the issue is I was 19, working at the cool new independent coffee shop in my hometown, and that of course brought in a lot of young ladies wanting to hang out. Long story short I used my cool barista status to strike up a lot of conversations and began asking out different girls weekly and going on dates. What inevitably happened that I did not plan for was more than once, multiple girls who I had gone on dates with would come to see me at the coffee shop at the same time, unaware of the others. Yes, that blew up in my face on multiple occasions. I did not have “singleness of heart and mind” with dating, and in the end I just paid for a lot of dates that summer and ended the summer still without a girlfriend. 

That’s a funny story of my teenage exploits but without over spiritualizing my analogy, you can see Jesus’ point. “You cannot serve God and money” The problem that Jesus identifies is not money itself, but the divided loyalties that result from the pursuit of money (compare 1 Tim 6:10). That is why being a disciple of Jesus requires complete devotion to God, so to take it deeper still, think of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19. He wanted to know what he needed to do for eternal life and Jesus said follow the laws and sell all his possessions and give to the poor, which he was unwilling to do, revealing his wealth was an idol he wasn’t willing to give it up. 

1 Timothy 6:10 - For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. 

That is why this is so tough and condemning in general, because the law is “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3) and that is what is being shown here that we all inevitably have failed at. The underlying truth that Jesus is holding up as primary, again, is God wants your heart. It’s a difficult thing to grapple with in this verse, realizing that the two masters being setup are God and money, not God vs. the devil, like some sort of cartoon giving only these two blatantly dichotomous choices of an angel and a demon on your shoulders. And if we’re being honest, it’s not merely money and materialism, but it’s you, it’s ourselves. The struggle of who we will serve is between God or ourselves. 

Remember what Jesus has been saying so far in the Sermon on the Mount, He wants your heart. He’s not demanding that you try harder, but He’s calling you to give Him your heart. That’s why He’s using terms like master to call into question where our loyalties lie. Jesus is not being harsh, but He’s not pulling any punches either because He makes it clear that seeking wealth or worldly pleasure as a priority is the same as despising God. That is why the command that Jesus lays out in Matt. 6:19-24 is that materialism and self-centeredness have no place in a believer’s life. In the first half of Matt. 6 He called out our religious hypocrisy, and in the second half He’s calling out our day to day hypocrisy. 

“The struggle of who we will serve is between God or ourselves.”

But the Good News is Jesus doesn’t leave us in our failures as hypocrites, because “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Yes, we’ve all struggled and failed with self-centeredness in many forms, but God’s plan for those who place their faith in Jesus is that we reorient our hearts to kingdom values, and begin to lay up treasures in heaven through generosity, prayer, and fasting, growing more like Christ each day.