Working Challenges

Six studies on the Sermon on the Mount looking at key challenges at work

Week 4

The Challenge of Our Money at Work

Matthew 6:1-24

Introduction:

Is money evil?

Is making money evil?

Is being rich evil?

Is owning a second home evil?

Is the love of money evil?

Money is a poor investment (v.19-23):

Why are money and possessions a poor investment according to these verses?

What makes it difficult for us to live as if we believed that having lots of treasures on earth was a poor investment?

Money is a poor master (v.24):

Why can we not serve both God and Money?

"Our hearts have room only for one all-embracing devotion, and we can only cleave to one Lord". Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Money is a good servant, but it is a poor master, as we will find ourselves becoming a slave to it. How have you seen people become a slave to money?

In what ways are you in danger of becoming enslaved to Money?

Money is a good servant (v.1-4)

What are some right uses of money?

What is the wrong way and the right way to give to others according to verses 1-4?

"We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes the Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of reward. There is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward for love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation". C.S. Lewis

If the proper reward is the activity in consummation, what kind of reward will there be in giving to others?

We serve God, not Money. Money serves us as we seek to serve God. The money we possess is ultimately God's, not ours - we are to be good stewards of what we have been given. Pray for God's help to view money rightly.