Transcription
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Is money evil? No, money is not evil. Money is neutral. You can use money for good. You can use money for bad. You can use, uh, money for temporal purposes. You can use money for eternal purposes. So when he said unrighteous Mammon, he wasn't speaking of money. He was speaking of a spirit, this unrighteous spirit.
So we are in a series called The Blessed Life, and this is my life message. And I hope that God is speaking something through, through me to you. I believe that he is. And this week, there has been more warfare over this message than any of the messages so far. And this message is called Breaking the Spirit of Mammon. Breaking the Spirit of Mammon. And I'm going to explain to you what Mammon is, and that it is a spirit, but it is a principality.
So I've had unbelievable warfare this week, uh, not just with my back, but even not sleeping very well last night. And then today, feeling horrible. All sorts of just being attacked in my mind. So I just want to take a moment and just ask the Lord to rebuke the enemy, if that's all right. You know how in scripture it says, "The Lord rebuke you." Sometimes I say, "I rebuke you in Jesus' name." Other times I think, "You know what? I'm just going to say, 'The Lord rebuke you.'"
So, uh, Lord, we just come to you and we ask you that you will speak to us. And we open our hearts up right now because we realize this is a principality that is all over the world, world. And that is the, the, the, uh, demonic spirit of riches, not just being blessed for the kingdom's sake, but greed and selfishness and all the, the, the horrible things of the spirit of Mammon. We rebuke the spirit of Mammon in Jesus' name. And we say to the enemy right now, "The Lord rebuke you." And Holy Spirit, I pray that you'll come and speak in Jesus' name. Amen.
So the spir, the word Mammon is in the Bible four times, but Jesus spoke it all four times. But one of them is a repeat. So, in other words, he spoke the word, used the word Mammon in Matthew 6:24, "You cannot serve God and Mammon." But in Luke 16, he uses the word three times, and one of them repeats Matthew 6:24. So we're going to read in Luke 16.
Okay, so Luke 16:9, "And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous Mammon." So there you see it, the first time, Mammon. "That when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home." Now, that's a very confusing statement that I will explain to you later, so don't worry about it. All right. "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. Therefore, if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon," second time we see the word, "who will commit to your trust the true riches?" And we're going to talk about what are true riches. "And if you've not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?" You might want to think about that if you ever want to own your own business and you're working for someone else right now.
And then verse 13 is the repeat of Matthew 6:24. "No servant," and in Matthew 6 it says, "No one." I want you to get this, no one. That's all of us here, all of us listening to this message. No one can serve two masters. And this is Jesus speaking. "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. Can I just remind you who's speaking here? Would you, would you remind me? Jesus doesn't say you *should not* serve God and Mammon. You *cannot* serve God and Mammon.
So we want to talk about how to break the spirit of Mammon. So here I've got three points, but they're all questions. So the first question is, what is Mammon? It says, "You cannot serve God and Mammon." So what is Mammon? Okay, are you ready for this? It's not money. But that's what everybody thinks. As a matter of fact, there are some dynamic translations. There are exact equivalency translations, which are word for word, which is what I use. And they are dynamic, which are thought for thought, and they're good, and they're good to read. And I read them. And then there are paraphrases. Some say, "Money, you cannot serve God and money." The only problem is, that's not the word Jesus uses. He uses the word Mammon. And it doesn't mean money.
So what is Mammon? It actually means riches. But it is an Aramaic word. And it, it, it comes from the Syrian God of riches. He is actually referring to a spirit. Spirit. When he talks about this, you cannot serve the spirit, this, this, uh, false deity. You can't serve this demon, this principality, and serve God. And, and think about this, he puts the word unrighteous in front of it. Well, money is not unrighteous. We're going to talk about that in point two. So we're going to, so I'm not going to surprise you yet. So I'll wait till point two to get to that. All right. But here's the point. Here's what he's saying. He puts the word unrighteous in front of it because the spirit is unrighteous. So he says, "You can't serve unrighteous." "Don't watch out for the unrighteous spirit of Mammon."
So Mammon, the, the reason he's using this word is he's speaking of Jewish people who were enslaved to Babylon for, anyone remember how long? 70 years. You get, you get a star, gold star. All right, Thomas, get a gold star. Okay, 70 years. So they knew what he was talking about. This spirit of Mammon was one of the top eight spirits of Babylon, the top eight deities that they worshiped. And the number one, which many historians say the number one that they worshiped, was the god of riches. As a matter of fact, some people, now this is horrible, but no birth control back then. As their families would get larger, and they didn't want to take care of more children, they sacrificed their children to the god of Mammon so that they would be blessed financially. This is why Jesus uses this word. Does it mean money? He's referring to a spirit. Please hear me. All money has a spirit on it. Listen carefully. The money in your bank account has a spirit on it. It either has the spirit of God on it, or it has the spirit of Mammon on it. The way you get the spirit of God on it, and we just, we went through the whole thing last week, is you give the first 10% of it back to God, and the other 90% is redeemed. It's redeemed out from under the spirit of this world, which is the spirit of Mammon.
So Mammon is this Syrian god that Babylon, they, they worshiped this god. As a matter of fact, you can look up images of the spirit of Mammon. I looked up just to show you a few. All right, let me just show you four. Look at this image. Here's an image of the spirit of Mammon. Notice how she's worshiping this deity of riches. Here's another one. Guess, just, just look on the internet. Notice how he has, this is a couple, like a married couple. He's got his hand on, on her head, and he's got his foot on her back. He's holding this couple in bondage to riches and wealth. Here's another picture that you can find. Looks, uh, kind of like some of the cartoon characters that our children watch sometimes, doesn't it? Unfortunately. So, but that's, that's one. And then here's the last one. This comes from Egypt, by the way. Egypt had over 2,000 gods that they worshiped, 29 major gods that they worshiped. All right. And one was the spirit, it was, it was called a different word, but it was riches. Okay. So this has been going on for thousands of years. People have been worshiping this spirit.
Let me, this, uh, I told you that it was, uh, the, the main spirit they worshiped in Babylon. Uh, let me just help you again. I love words. Okay. So if you want to know what the word Babylon means, um, just slow down the pronunciation of it. Babel-on. You ever known anyone who babbles on? Don't look at anyone right now. You may have a, you may, she or he may babble on the whole way home to you about it. All right. Okay. So don't look at anyone. All right. So Babel means confusion. As a matter of fact, in Genesis 11, there was a tower of, and what did God do? Came down and confused them. Just read it yourself. Genesis 11. So when you put the "on" on the end of Babel, Babylon, the city, it means sown. Like you plant something. So Babylon actually means sown in confusion. You want to see confusion? Look at our economic system. Look, look at, study the mortgage meltdown in 2007, 8, and 9. How they had AAA rated loans, double A, B loans, double B, triple B, and boom, it all exploded. And 8 million people lost their jobs, and 6 million lost their homes. And by the way, do you know what, where, who came up with those loans? Wall Street and the federal government. You talk about a spirit.
Listen, all I, I had no reason to preach this, especially to Gateway Church, because they're the best givers I know, except to help those of you who don't know this. There is a war going on. And that war is, whom are you going to serve? And Jesus said, "You cannot serve God and Mammon." You can't do it. And there are even preachers who preach what I call a hyper-prosperity message. Because the Bible does teach on prosperity. The Hebrew word means to get behind someone and help push them up a hill. The Greek word means to take the load that they're carrying and carry it up the hill for him. Okay? That, that is pros-, the word prosper is not a bad word. But because of this hyper message, it has become a bad word. But here's what happens if you buy into that. The hyper-prosperity message is that everyone should have a Mercedes and a Rolex and, you know, and a big house. And God wants you all to have that. Here's the problem. That Jesus said, "If you do that, if you serve that God, you'll love one and you'll hate the other. You'll be loyal to one and you'll despise the other one." Here's what happens when you buy into the hyper-prosperity message. When your washing machine breaks, you despise God. Now you're mad at God because you bought into a message that, hey, God wants me blessed. He does want you blessed, but it doesn't mean that your washing machine's not going to break. It's 50 years old. Go buy another one.
You cannot serve God and Mammon. Can I just bring out one word about that? Mammon is looking for servants. Can I tell you something else about Mammon? G, G, this is the only, only place where God contrasts the spirit of God with another spirit. You know why he does? Because Mammon promises you everything that only God can give you. Mammon promises you identity, significance, happiness, peace, joy, all these things Mammon promises you, and it cannot deliver. Only God can deliver. And talk to some people who've made some money and ask them if money made them happy. Made them happy. Here's the other thing. Jesus never told anyone that the answer to his or her problems was more money. Never. He never said it to a lame man. Never said it to a blind man. Never. He didn't say it to the woman who had the issue of blood. He didn't say when the woman had the issue of blood, "Peter, give her some money." Here's the reason, because money is not the answer. Jesus Christ is the answer. We can't worship riches. And that's what Satan is trying to get us to do. He's trying to get us to worship riches. Um, Mammon is such a liar. Ever had this thought? "I'd be happier if I made more money." That's a lie. You'd be happier if you had a better relationship with God. See, see, see the contrast. I could. Here's, here's a lie. Here's one. You ready for this? "I could help more people if I had more money." No, you can't. Money doesn't help people. God helps people. See, it's a contrast. It's all through the Bible.
So don't ever accuse me of being a hyper-prosperity preacher just because I preach the blessed life. I do not preach give to get. I preach we get to give. We get to give. That's the whole reason we had offering boxes. I used to tell that, we've never passed the plate one time at Gateway Church. I used to tell the church when we were in the first building, we're ever had, I told them about the offering box. I said, "Here's, here's what, why we do this. I want you to give." We used to have people come and we wouldn't say anything about the offering during the service, you know, and they would have people come and say, "We went through the whole service, you never said how to give." We said, "This is great. This is what we want. We want you to give. We almost want to make it hard for you to give so that you give because you want to give." And I told the church when we were in that other building, I said, "You know what I'm thinking about doing? I'm thinking about putting one offering at the back of our property where it's not paved. And when it's pouring down rain, and you got to walk through mud, you will walk out there and give your offering." That's how much you want to give. And here's the amazing thing. God, I want, just please hear this, to bless the name of God. Gateway Church is the highest giving church in America, by twice as much. And we've never, never passed the plate one time. Never. Because you want to give. So I'm not preaching to you some hyper-prosperity message. I'm preaching against that. I'm telling you there's a God of riches that wants you to worship Him. And instead of, and you cannot, you cannot, you cannot serve Mammon and God.
Um, we, uh, Debbie and I have a boat. And we, we like boating. Uh, when we were younger, and our kids were younger, my dad always had a boat. And he never used it. It's just, he would loan it to us every summer. You know, uh, I don't know if any of you understand that if you're grandparents, but you'll do anything for grandkids. And so he had this boat. He usually, every now and then, but we'd borrow it, you know, during the summer. And every three or four years, he'd buy a new boat, you know. And so one year he buys this new boat. We take it, and we're out water skiing, tubing, doing all the things. And it starts beeping. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. You know, beep, beep, beep. Okay. So Josh, my oldest, James, you right here, okay, your next pastor. This says I'm saying this to show you how smart the three of us are together. And I, the boat is beeping. We three crawled up under the dash, found the wire that was beeping, and unplugged it. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Y'all are stupid. Uh-huh. It was trying to tell us something was wrong. Right? You know what it was trying to tell us was wrong? That it was low on oil. But we just kept skiing, kept tubing, and we blew up the engine. Brand new boat. This was back in the '80s. It was $4,000. That's like $40,000 today, basically. I, I probably made $30,000 back then. $4,000. And I said to my dad, and my dad has made and given away so much money, it's incredible. But I said to my dad, I said, "Dad, this is my problem, and I don't know how I'll pay for it, but I'm going to pay for it." And he looked at me and said, "My dad raised me tremendously not to serve the god of Mammon." And he's given away so much, it's incredible. But he said to me, "I said, this is my problem and I'm going to fix it." And he said to me, "Son, you've never had a problem in your life." And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Son, if money can fix it, it's not a problem. And if money can't, then God can." I've never forgotten that.
But think about many of our problems. As a matter of fact, you want to see the contrast again with Mammon and God? Have you ever had this thought? "I either need God to come through, or someone to give me some money. And if someone would give me some money, never mind God, I don't need you anymore." So that's what Mammon is.
Here's number two. Is money evil? No, money is not evil. Money is neutral. You can use money for good. You can use money for bad. You can use, uh, money for temporal purposes. You can use money for eternal purposes. So when he said unrighteous Mammon, he wasn't speaking of money. He was speaking of a spirit, this unrighteous spirit.
Look at 1 Timothy chapter 6. People tell me, you know, "The Bible says money is the root of all evil." It doesn't say that. Let's look at it and see what it says. 1 Timothy 6:10, "For the love of money, the worship, the following, the desire, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with with many sorrows." Loving and serving money is the god of riches is a root of all kinds of evil in your life.
Okay, so let's go back to this, this scripture where Jesus started, six, Luke 16:9, because it, it's, if you don't know what it means, it sounds kind of strange. "And I say to you, this is Jesus, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous Mammon." Wow. This is crazy. This is unbelievable. Now that we know what Mammon is, that when you fail, they, I need, need to, need you to see, when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. Okay. When I was young in the Lord, this is what I thought that meant. I thought that meant, okay, do favors for other people, and then when you're in trouble, other people will help you out too. That's what I, I thought that meant. That's not it. The Bible is so much deeper than we think it is. Okay. So you got to remember your unrighteous Mammon. You can take it and dedicate it to God by simply giving the first 10% to the house of God, and now it's blessed. Here's what I want you to know. God is the only one that can take unrighteous Mammon and turn it into true, true riches. And would you like to know what true riches are? I mean, just say what they are. Just look around. There's only one thing in this room, in every campus, every living room, there's only one thing that's going to last forever: souls. People. When I was in college at East Texas Baptist, we had this, you know, radical for God. He was all, he was radical, just all the time. He was radical. But one of his sayings was, "It's going to burn." Just the way he was. We would drive by, we'd be in college, and we'd look, we'd see some house and we'd say, "Wow, look at that huge house." He'd say, "It's going to burn." Well, his theology was pretty correct. Heaven and earth is going to burn. It's going to, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to be gone. But God's going to create a new heaven and earth. But what he was saying, really, was there's only one thing that lasts forever. Okay. So what do I do with this unrighteous Mammon? I take it and I give it to God. And I only have to give 10%. Once I do that, the other 90% is redeemed out from under the curse. But here's what's amazing. Make friends with yourself with this unrighteous Mammon. In other words, take what the enemy wants to use for evil and dedicate it to the kingdom of God. And then this is what, what he says. And then when you fail. Now, here's the only problem with that is that word "fail" is really not translated correctly. It's the Greek word for "die." Here's what he's saying: Take your money and use it to build the kingdom, and when you die, they, those people that came into the kingdom because of you, will welcome you into your everlasting home. Is that incredible? See, this book again is so much deeper than what we think it is. Here's what's going to happen. When I get to heaven one day, someone's going to come up to me and say, "Thank you." I say, "Why are you saying thank you?" "Because you gave to a missionary, and that missionary came to our village and shared Jesus Christ, and I'm here because that missionary shared Jesus. For that missionary shared Jesus because you gave. That's why I'm here." And they're going to welcome me.
Um, when I, I got saved at 19, and I wanted to witness. I remember I was in drugs before I got saved. And, and I wanted to witness to people, but I just, I was just scared. I was just scared to. I don't know if any of you have ever been scared, you know, I don't know what they're going to say, what they're going to do. And so we would leave a track on the table. I found, found these little, how many of you remember, do you remember the little gospel tracks? Okay. Well, see, remember I came out of drugs. Tracks meant something totally different. Tracks were when the police officer said, "Boy, you leave up, Robert, you know, we're going to..." All right, all right. So I just thought, man, maybe some ex-drug addict came up with this, you know, to share the gospel with. Tracks, you know? So we would leave a track on the table with a tip in it. And there was this one server we kept praying for. And we finally got like a bonus of like $50. And we decided to give that to her and put it in the track. And our meal might have been like $10. So we give this $50 bill in this track. We go back a few weeks later to the restaurant. She comes up, says, "I've been waiting for y'all to come back." She said, "I read that little book thing that you left." And she said, "I prayed, and I gave my life to Jesus." And then she said, she said, "Then I called my husband, and I read it to him over the phone, and he gave his life to Jesus." And so we said, "That's great." And so we talked for a while. And then I, I went back and I said, "So you said you called your husband? I mean, was he at work or at home or?" And she put her head down and she said, "He's in prison." And about three years later, he got out. And Debbie and I saw that husband and that wife get back baptized because we took what the enemy wanted to use for unrighteousness and used it for good. So money is not evil. You can use it for good or you can use it for evil.
And here's point three. What should I do with my money? Well, here's the simple answer according to this. Be a good steward. I'll show you the scriptures in just a moment. But I need to say this, okay? Because some of you might be thinking, uh, Pastor, to be honest, I have too little of this unrighteous Mammon to be concerned with this message. If I had more, I would be taking notes and really listening to this sermon and really, really, you know, but I just don't have very much. So it really doesn't matter. Well, I just want to say something to you lovingly. If that's your attitude, that you don't need to be faithful with a little, you'll never have more. And listen to the words of Jesus. Verse 10, "He who is faithful in what is least, or with a little, is faithful also in much, or with more. And he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much." Here's, here's a way he could be saying, "If you don't tithe when you make $30,000, you wouldn't tithe if you made $300,000." And by the way, when we're speaking of the tithe, remember we, we read it, we read it that God has separated the tithe to himself. All right, it's separated to him. Watch this next verse and just think about the tithe. "And if you," verse 12, "and if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?" I just wonder if that verse could be applied this way. If you won't be faithful with the 10%, why would you be faithful with the 90%? And why would I even increase your income? See, you have the ability, you have the power to break the spirit of Mammon off of your money. It's all up to you because all money has a spirit on it. It either has the spirit of Mammon or it has the spirit of God.
So one more thing about when I first got saved, Debbie and I had been married nine months before I got saved. Okay. So I was living a double life there. I was pretty heavy in drugs and things like that. And met Debbie and started trying to get my life right with God and trying to do things. But I was kind of living a double life. And finally then I got saved. I got saved, I told you before, in Jake's Motel. So not a high dollar place. But I got saved on a Monday. On Sunday, we go to church. Do you know what the pastor was preaching on, my first message when that I was in church? I went to church growing up, but once since I got saved. You know what he's preaching on? Anyone want to guess? Tithing. My first one. Okay. I made $600 a month when we, when I got saved. I don't know if that sunk in. Let me, let me put it another way. You are looking at a man that without Jesus, I can make $600 a month. I just want you to know that that's how smart I am without Jesus. $600 a month. I get saved. We go to church. He's preaching on tithing. My math immediately, $600, $60. I reached in, I looked, and opened up my wallet. I had three $20s. We didn't have credit cards back then, day. Me and, and they, nobody would give us a credit card. Nobody. And I had three $20s, $60. And I said to Debbie, "Do you still have that $20 that I gave you for like emergencies?" The reason was, I wanted, I need, I need to know if we had any money to live on for the rest of the month. By the way, we didn't even have an apartment. We were living with a widow that was letting us live with, in her one of her bedrooms. And before that, we were living in a trailer. And you ready now? You're going to think this is that I'm making this up, but I'm not. Down by the river. I'm not making that up. Was it down by the river? And I was preaching one time. And Pastor Oland said to me, he said, "I shared that." He said, "You know, and this is good. What he said was good because you want to reach everyone you can when you preach." He said, "You know, sometimes people find the word trailer offensive. You might want to say manufactured home or mobile home." And, and so I, I said, "Yeah, that's a good thing." But to be honest, it was a trailer. But we were not, we didn't even have our own home. I mean, we were, we weren't even be able to, we couldn't even rent an apartment when I got saved. But I took those three $20 bills out and put it in the offering. Made $600, $60, just like that. On Monday morning, when I got to work, this guy said to me, "Hey, the, the boss wants to see you in his office." That's normally not a good thing. I didn't know if I was going to get fired or what. This guy who was a Christian. I went into his office, and he said to me, "Oh, hey." He said, "Good." Uh, he said, "Listen," he said, "Yesterday I was at church, and during the offering, God told me something." He said, "God told me during the offering to give you a $200 a month raise." And he literally pulled his wallet out and said, "God told me to give you the first $200 myself." And gave me two $100 bills, just like that. And then, here's the thing. When he was giving it to me, I'll never forget. He looks at me right in the eyes. He says, "And I have no idea why I am giving you a raise." I have an idea because I heard a pastor teach from the Bible about tithing, and I did it. And I did it in faith. And God said, "Test me and see if I will not open for you the windows of heaven." And look what he's done. Look what he's done.
I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes. I don't want you to live under the spirit of Mammon. I don't want you to be that couple where he's got his hand pushing your wife's head down, and he's got his foot on your back pushing you down. I don't want you to worship and serve the economic system of this world because you can't serve the god of riches and Jesus. You have to do it God's way. And it's simple in the word of God. You can redeem that unrighteous Mammon for true riches by simply putting God first in your finances.
Let me, we want to pray for you. If you have a prayer need in any area of your life, even if it's health, or job, or family, or marriage. When, when I say that, we're going to have people at the front at every campus. We want to pray, pray with you. You're not a bad person if you ask for prayer. As a matter of fact, you're a good person to ask for prayer. You should ask for prayer when you come to church and you have a prayer need. So if you need prayer for any area, in just a moment, we're going to let you know how you can just come to the front and just let us pray with you. All right. But I really want you to ask the Holy Spirit, like we do every weekend, "Holy Spirit, what are you saying to me through this message?" Don't let [Music] Mammon control your finances any longer. Test God and see what He'll do.
Lord, I want to tell you thank you. Thank you, thank you for my brothers and my sisters. And I pray, God, that you will bless them in every area of their lives, their families, their marriages, their health, their businesses, their, uh, children, grandchildren. Lord, their finances, their jobs, their career businesses. All, Lord, will you bless us so that we can be a blessing? In Jesus' name. Amen.
Hey everyone, I'm Pastor Robert, and thank you so much for watching my YouTube channel. Be sure to share what God is teaching you in the comments below so that might encourage others. And click the subscribe button and then tap the bell icon so that you'll be notified every time a new video is posted. And don't forget, you can watch full episodes anytime right here on my YouTube channel. Thanks again for [Music] watching. [Music] [Music] [Music] in [Music]