Crucifixion, Isenheim Altar by Matthias Grünewald

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Disclaimer: This is a transcript of Pastor Fenker’s sermon. It was preached from an outline, and the transcript taken automatically from the audio. Please forgive any typographical or formatting errors.

You cannot serve God and Mammon.

᛭ INI ᛭

Many a person thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions. He trusts in them, and boasts about them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. Such a person has a god, by the name of mammon, that is, money and possessions, on which he sets all his heart. This is the most common idol on earth. He who has money and possessions feels secure. And is joyful and undismayed as though he were sitting in the midst of paradise. On the other hand, He who has no money. doubts, and is despondent as though he knew of no God. For very few people can be found. who are of good cheer and who neither mourn nor complain if they lack mammon. This care, and the desire for money sticks and clings to our nature, right up to the grave. (LC I, § 5–9)

(2. No one can serve two masters.)

Christ takes up today to preach against mammon and greed. It’s clear from what he says. No one can serve 2 masters. He will either be faithful to the one and hate the other, or loyal to one, and despise the other. There is no dual allegiance between mammon and Christ. There is no dual citizenship in the kingdom of God. You are either citizens of God’s kingdom or you are citizens of the world’s kingdom. And God’s kingdom, righteousness and peace and the forgiveness of sins reigns. And in the kingdom of the world. money. Possessions and power reign. 


No one can serve 2 masters. You cannot serve God and Mammon. Christ couldn’t be any more clear. But we try to dodge that. We try to say, I can have my cake and eat it too. I can worship Christ and also seek all the wealth and prosperity that the world provides. 


Mammon is the great danger. in the modern West. We have more things, more money than we know what to do with. Even the poor among us are rich by worldly standards. And Christ is clear in another passage. “It is easier. For a camel, to go through the eye of a needle, then it is for a rich man. to enter the kingdom of heaven,” 
To have a citizenship not of this world, but of God’s heavenly kingdom.

And what Christ says today is that mammon is not necessary. You don’t need money. You don’t need stuff to be saved. The scriptures are quite clear on that. If riches increase, Do not set your heart on them, David says in the Psalm. Paul says if we have money and clothing, we’ll be content with these things. Because life is more than what you eat. or what you drink. Life is more than what you wear, Christ says, Just look at the birds of the air. Just look at the flowers of the field. Mammon is not necessary for you to be saved. 


But mammon is necessary. For your neighbor. God has given you all that you have for your good and for the good of your neighbor. 
Let the thief no longer steal, Paul says, but let him work with honest hands so that he might have something to give someone in need. So it is, we have the 7th commandment today along with the 5th commandment. Both of these go together when we consider Mammon. 
We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need. Or, You shall not steal, what does this mean we should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbors money or possessions or get them in any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his possessions and income. We are given what we have in order to be a blessing unto others. not to be a self serving blessing. 


After all, if you do not have Mammon, you can certainly still be saved. In fact, Christ ought to be believed. If you have less, the more likely it is that you will be saved. So what’s then to be done? Who then can be saved? The disciples asked that question, too. 
The disciples. Like, Peter and Andrew, James and John. Business owners, Fisherman. Or Matthew, tax collector. All those with professions, who then can be saved? 


Well, with man, with you and I, it’s impossible. Because our flesh, being the flesh of man will seek after mammon. But it is not impossible with God. All things are possible with God. Even to save the risk. James, talks about this in his epistle. that the rich should rejoice in actually their poverty. that they are humbled by the Lord, that the substance of their life is not in their many possessions, but rather in the true riches. 


(Transition.)

It is true. You cannot serve God and Mammon. No one can serve 2 masters. You’ll either hate the one and love the other, or be loyal to one and despise the other. You can’t serve God and Mammon. But more importantly than that. is you aren’t saved. by 2 masters. 
You are not kept safe and secure by 2 masters.

YOU’RE SAVED BY CHRIST NOT MAMMON.

(1. No one is saved by two masters.)


Your life is preserved and cared for, your daily bread given, by God, the Father, and by Christ his Son. And not by mammoth. by money or possessions. Because Christ is the true Lord, the true master, the one who saves. Because that’s what it means to be a Lord, means to be savior, and Mammon is no true Lord, Mammon only exacts more from you, the more you try to claim him, the more you are dissatisfied as we sang in our hymn. That the world never is content, the gold should fill its coffers. Christ is rather the true master.


He is the one who saves. He serves. And we see a glimmer of this. in the parable that Christ tells. All of his parables have something preposterous, something weird in them. In order that seeing they may not see. And the weird thing in this parable is that you have this steward who’s on the front end, wasting his master’s possessions, and then steals from his master. He slashes the bills of those who owe the master when he was no longer in the stewardship. And when he stole from his master. The master praised him. Preposterous. Why would a master do that?

But in this we see, yes, the sons of this age are more shrewd in their dealing than the sons of light. That this steward knows, or former steward knows how to be welcomed into the homes of others to be cared for in this life only. But in his actions, we see a glimmer of who Christ is. that he is the steward of his father’s kingdom. And that he comes, and he slashes the bills of the servants. Not partial. But completely. He gives the kingdom of heaven away To the poor and lowly, the destitute, the sinner, the dead. These are those Christ comes to save.

And Christ does this saving by rejecting Mammoth. The Son of Man, he says, has no place to lay his head. He had no grave to be buried in. 
In fact, you know the mercy of God. That though he was rich, yet for our sakes, he became poor. So that by his poverty, you might become rich. Not with worldly wealth, but with the true riches. He emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross. And on that cross, he had nothing left of his own. They took his possessions away. Cast lots for his garments. that he freely gave them away. that by his having nothing, not even his own life, that you would have everything, that you would have the kingdom of heaven forever. That you would have riches that do not fade away. A crown that degrades and rust, but rather a golden crown of salvation that endures unto everlasting life. In fact, reading Revelation, we find out that the crowns will be given, We’ll just cast before him anyway. What need do we have of those if we have Christ, the true king?


And Christ gives you the true riches, saving you not with gold or silver, or anything precious in this life, but by the shedding of his own blood. Far more precious than anything the entire universe could buy. For his blood cleanses us from all sins. 
His blood is the payment for the sins of the whole world. His purchase price is then received by faith. And he died. That we who live might no longer live for ourselves, but for him, who for our sakes, died and rose again. No one can serve 2 masters. You cannot serve God and Mammon.

(Conclusion.)


No one is saved by 2 masters. You’re saved by only one. And that is Christ, not Mammon. And God’s love is not based on the accumulation of wealth by the giving forth of his heavenly kingdom, and by giving you all that you have. He who gave up his own son, how will he not graciously with him give us all things? Not just things for salvation, but things for this life. that we might reject Mammon and possessions. 


That we take them not unrighteously. That we use Mammon not unrighteously, that is, for our own benefit. For that is where Mammon becomes unrighteous. Money and possessions, unrighteous thing. When used for ourselves. But God in Christ then uses us to make unrighteous mammoth, righteous mammoth, righteous money, righteous possessions, hoarded not for ourselves, but stored up in order to be used as a blessing unto others. 


For what is the world to me after all? When Christ has given you the true riches, his holy, precious blood, his innocent suffering and death, and heavenly kingdom. It doesn’t waste away. Moth and rust cannot destroy it. A thief cannot steal it. It is yours, kept in heaven, hidden in Christ by God for you, forever.

᛭ INI ᛭