Hebrews 13:5

Heb 13:5 (NIV) Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."

"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. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:24-25.) I need to ask myself from time to time, “am I serving mammon?” If I am serving God I wouldn’t care about what I will eat or drink. But when I am serving mammon my wife and I may worry or fight over money. I have heard it said that in Christ’s day mammon was an actual pagan deity that represented prosperity. So that makes mammon the false god of prosperity. Much of the pagan idolatry at that time was connected to demonic forces, and today these demons are some of the Devils most powerful weapons to turn the hearts of Jesus’ followers away from God. Mammon is an evil spirit that causes men and women to give power and authority to money when money in reality it has no value and especially no power whatsoever. Mammon causes people to become fearful of running out of money when actually God supplies all our needs. Then mammon turns our hearts to love money and trust riches when our hearts are supposed to belong to God, and trust God alone. Once totally possessed by mammon people become corrupted by it then they will conspire in greedy ways to unethically acquire as much money as they can get.

A rich young ruler came to Jesus and wanted to know how to inherit eternal life, (Matt 19:16-21.) Jesus said “sell all that you have and give it to the poor, then come follow me.” How many of us could actually do something like that. When you are accustom to the finest clothes, the finest foods, servants waiting on your every need. Give it all away and live in destitution following around a Prophet, hated by the Priest and Pharisees. Jesus did. He was clothed in finer clothes than any human ever wore, ate the most perfect and delicious foods ever eaten from heaven. Angles served Him, and worshiped Him. He gave it all up and became a human child. Human birth is a nasty thing accompanied by blood and sometimes feces, as Mary cried with pain Jesus was born on the ground in a barn, He was wrapped in strips of cloth, and laid to sleep on straw in either a cow or donkey’s feeding troth. If only the rich young ruler had listened more carefully he would have heard Jesus say, “I have true riches for you, give everything you now have away, but you will lose nothing, and you will have treasure in heaven” The Bible asks the rhetorical question, “Can a man out give God?” I dare you to try.

It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, mammon can consume the hearts of all. The rich want more money and desire power from it so they collect it because they are afraid they may someday lose it. The poor have so little they protect what little they have. But protecting it is also another way of following Mammon. The story of the Widow’s mites is told in Luke 21:1-4 (NLT) and gives us a good example of how to have true riches. “While Jesus was in the Temple, he watched the rich people dropping their gifts in the collection box. Then a poor widow came by and dropped in two small coins. "I tell you the truth," Jesus said, "this poor widow has given more than all the rest of them. For they have given a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has."” Jesus praised this woman's generous and sacrificial giving. As followers of Jesus, we should be willing to give all—whether money, time, or talents—its only real value is when we put it in the LORD’s hands to use. If Jesus was willing to be satisfied with living day by day on what God provided for Him, then I can too. I can live with less and I can stop desiring more and accumulating more things than I need. It is so easy to look at what other people have and start to resent what I am missing. Instead I should be praising God that He has provided just the sufficient amount that I needed today. When we become materialistic we are saying to God, you can’t take care of me well enough, or at least not the way I want to be taken care of, and our drive for materialism leads us to a love of money. The cure for the sickness of mammon is to trust God to meet all our needs.

Have you experienced times where you trusted God to meet all your needs? What happened? How did God fulfill this promise in your life?