Preached at Redmarley, Morning of the 15th Sunday after Trinity, September 8, 1861.
“No man can serve two Masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other—ye cannot serve God and Mammon.”—St. Matthew vi. 24.
Our Lord Jesus Christ knew what was in man. He knew what the people in Judea were thinking and were trying to do eighteen hundred and sixty years ago. He knew what the people in England would be thinking and trying to do in our day. The people of Judea professed to worship one God—the Lord God of their fathers; the Lord God who had delivered their fathers out of bondage, who had given them bread and water as they came through the wilderness; who had promised them a good land in which they should dwell; who had been with them and with their seed after them. That was the God to whom the temple was built. That was the God to whom the priests offered sacrifices. But when they were not in the temple they were about their farms and their merchandise. It was their duty to be about their farms and their merchandise. They were set in the world to till the land. The sea was given them that they might send their ships across it, and might send their good things to other lands, and receive the good things of those lands in exchange. God had appointed the sea and the land; God had set them their work to do. How cheerfully they would have done these works if they had believed that! With what glad hearts they would have risen in the morning if they had been sure that the good God, their deliverer and their friend, was rousing them to their day’s labour, and would be with them all through it! How pleasantly they would have laid themselves down at night if they had remembered that He who never slumbers nor sleeps was watching over them while they slept! How comfortable it would have been to remember all the day, ‘He is our God and our neighbours’ God. He helps them to work as He helps us; He cares for them as He cares for us.’
But it was not so. These Jews, when they were at their farms and their merchandise, did not remember the God whom they had worshipped in the temple. They thought chiefly of what they were to get by their labour; how much money would come of it. Each thought ‘How much more money can I get than my neighbour? How can I hinder him from having the profits that I want for myself?’ What came of that? Were they without a God, while they were thinking and plotting this way? No, my friends; men cannot shake off the thought of some God, try as hard as they will. They may forget the good God, the true God, the maker of heaven and earth—their deliverer and friend.
But then they will make to themselves a god; they will make him out of their own hard cruel fancies; they will make him like themselves. So it was with the Jews. They loved money, and money became their god. They did not know it; they would not have confessed it—but so it was. And a very hard savage god it was which they set up for themselves. Not a helper, not a deliverer at all—but a bitter tyrant; not one who cared for all, but one who set up this man and scorned that; not a god who made the people better that served him, but one who made them meaner and baser. This is the god whom our Lord calls mammon—a false god, a god that men had formed for themselves, but all the worse and more mischievous for that.
Now, what our Lord tells the Jews here is, that they could not have these two gods—the gracious loving God of their fathers; the God who sets captives free; who gives liberally to all; who seeks the good of all—and this selfish hard-hearted mammon-god—“Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” If you will love mammon, you will hate the good God; if you hold to God, you will despise mammon. You cannot worship one god on the Sabbath days, and the other through the week; you must have the same on the Sabbath days and in the week. If you worship mammon in the week, it will be to him you bring your prayers and offerings on the Sabbaths. You will each come to get him to do something for you, not for your neighbours; you will each of you come to persuade him not to be your enemy.
And again, if you worship the true living God on the Sabbath days, you will have Him with you on all other days.
So He goes on—“Therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life what ye shall eat, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on.” How is that? Did He mean that His disciples were to be idlers; that they were to trust in God to give them food for their bodies, and clothing for their bodies, without working for it? No, my friends; His disciples were to be hard workers; they were to hate begging. St. Paul said to some of those who had got this notion into their heads of being idle and trusting God ‘Those of you that will not work, shall not eat.’ But our Lord knew that it does not make men work better to be anxious and miserable about what should come of their work. He knew that makes bad workers; He knew that turned workers into beggars. They despised getting food and clothing by the labour of their hands, so they ruined themselves and their children by telling stories and asking other people for food or money. So he says—‘Do not you act so. Believe you have not a cruel hard mammon-god over you, but a gracious, loving, tender Father, the very same that you pray to in the temple. And, therefore, do not be anxious about what shall come of your labour; trust that to Him. Does He not give you life every day, and is not that more than the meat by which you support life? Did He not give you these curious wonderful bodies of yours? And is not that more than the dress that you put on your bodies? Look,’ He says, ‘at these birds that are flying about in the air; does your Father in heaven let them starve? Does not He find food for them? And do not you think that you men whom He had made in His own likeness, whom He so loves that He has sent His Son to take your flesh upon Him, do not you think that you are better than the birds? Suppose you were ever so anxious to be tall men; could you become tall men by being anxious about it? Would that add one inch to your stature? So you see it must be God who is providing for you every minute, every hour. It must be He who is causing your babies to grow. It must be He who is giving you all that you want. Cannot you trust Him?’
And then about your dress. Look at the flowers that grow about the fields and the hedgerows. Do you think any king had ever such beautiful raiment as these have? Do not you know that all the kings of the earth can do is to imitate the beauty of these flowers; to get some robes that look a little like them? And yet these flowers in the field will be soon mown down. You cast them away; you count them for nothing. Well, do you not think that the God who thinks of these will think of you? Oh, ye of little faith!
‘Therefore,’ He says, ‘do not be anxious and miserable about what you shall eat and what you shall drink. It is all very well for the heathens to do so, for they do not know that they have a Father. They fancy their gods have a grudge against them, and want them to buy their favour with a great many gifts. But you are told that you have a Father who knows just what you want, just what strength you require for each day. Be remembering Him. Say to yourselves, “He is the King of all the earth, and we are His own children.” He wants us to be right, good children. Let us ask Him to make us so; right in all our acts; right in all our thoughts; and then He will take care to send us whatever besides He knows is good for us.’
“Take, therefore,” He says, “no thought for the morrow;” that is, do not be fidgetty and restless about what shall come to-morrow. You have enough to do each day; enough of evil to bear each day. You need not make yourselves so many trials by fancying what you may have another day. Let that alone; only trust God, the good God who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. And so you will have the true life, the life which will not pass away for ever and ever.
Now, my friends, I said when I began, that our Lord Jesus Christ knew what the Jews were tempted to think and to do at that time; and that He knew what we should be tempted to think and to do at this time. Our temptation is the same as theirs was, the very same. We come here to church on Sunday. We call God our Almighty and most merciful Father. We say that we believe He gave His only begotten Son for us all, to die for us, and that He ever lives for us at His Father’s right hand. We say that we believe He so cared for us as to send His own Holy and Loving Spirit to dwell with us, that He might teach us the things we want to know, and help us to do the things we want to do. That is our Sunday doctrine. Then we go out to our different works during the week; and we forget that the God we have heard of in church is the God who rules over our houses and our fields; who gives us children; who enables us to work; who supports our lives. A man who has money, thinks, ‘How can I get a little more of this, and a little more still, and a little more still?’ A poor man thinks, ‘How can I keep myself from starving? for surely all things are against me; the Ruler of the world is against me.’ And so, brethren, all of us come by one way or other to get these thoughts into our hearts, that Mammon, the money-god, is somehow our master; that he has the upper hand; that our main business is to serve him. I say we are all tempted to this faith. I know that I am. And I know that if I am tempted to it in the week, I must be tempted to it on Sundays. I cannot have two Gods—one for the world and one for the church. I shall have Mammon in both if I have him in either. And I know not, brethren, how we should escape having him in both, if it were not for these dear words of our Lord Christ, and for the dear acts which He has done to make them good. I know we should set up a tyrant and worship him, even the cruel, brutal tyrant—this money-god—if He had not come down from heaven to show us what our Father is, and how He cares for us, and seeks after us, if He had not become a poor man, and had not died upon the cross and risen again and ascended on high. All this bears witness to every clergyman and to every one of his hearers, to every rich man and to every poor man, that there is a Father over all, upon whom they may all depend in all times of their tribulation, and in all times of their wealth, and in the hour of death and in the day of judgment; One to whom they may give up themselves and their children, their bodies and their souls, as to a faithful and loving Creator who has so loved them that He gave up His own Son for them all. Yes, verily, brethren, and it is not me only who preaches to you of this Father. The birds of the air preach of Him, the flowers of the field preach of Him; all these say—‘The mammon-god did not create us; the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ created us. His love has called us into existence. His love watches over the life of every man and woman and child.’
Therefore, do you men and women and children trust in Him, and give your hearts to Him, and ask Him to make you right and true and to make you love each other as He loves you.
And ask Him to deliver you from the worship of the mammon-god; for in very deed he is the false evil spirit, the devil who is seeking to destroy those bodies and souls in hell which the Son of God died to save, and to make heirs of Eternal Life.