Saturday after the Ninth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on August 20, 2022 by under
Scripture: St. Luke 16:10-13 (NKJV)
16:10 He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. 11 Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?
13 “No servant 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.”
Devotion
Note carefully our Lord’s choice of words: “You cannot serve God and mammon.” He does not say, “you should not,” as if it were a moral question, but, “you cannot.” It is a literal impossibility. This means that, if you think you have found a “balance” between the demands of God and the demands of the world, you are actually serving mammon and not God. Now mammon—earthly wealth—is not wicked. It becomes wicked when it becomes an idol. The man who serves mammon must always be anxious about getting more and preserving what he has. The man who serves God is thankful, whether he has much or little.
Even Christians are distracted by mammon. It is not always selfish, either. We see that wealth can produce much good in the support of the Gospel, the Ministry, and the poor. But the power of wealth is an illusion. God will support His Church with or without it. God often takes good things away to teach us this truth. It is this false trust in mammon of which we must repent.
Knowing our weakness, our Lord Jesus Christ conquered the idol of mammon by enduring extreme poverty and saying, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). We are not saved because we serve God perfectly; we are saved because He served God perfectly for us.
Prayer: Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of Thy humble servants; and, that they may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please Thee; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
