Throughout his sermon, Jesus consistently points his followers to the intimacy they now enjoy with God. How do you respond to Jesus’ assertion that God sees everything you do (v 18)? Do we consider that whenever we give, pray and fast, out of love and honour for our heavenly Father, we are making an investment (v 18)? 

No one wants to lose what they have worked hard for, whether that’s a wool coat damaged by moths or a whole day’s work not backed-up. The things we care about, the things we want to last, we protect. If you knew of an investment that gave a sure return, wouldn’t depreciate or vanish, wouldn’t you invest (v 20)? Surely our greatest heavenly treasure, which will not fade or perish, is our relationship with our Father God. How are we investing in that relationship? 

If we want to make good investment choices for life, we will need to see clearly (v 22; see John 8:12) so that we do not waste time working for a master who is not eternal and for things that do not last (v 24).  

Help us to recognise the idolatry of Mammon, especially when it comes gift-wrapped and disguised. 

At the climax of this passage we find one of the key statements in the entire Sermon on the Mount. Jesus warns of the sheer impossibility of spiritual compromise in the attempt to serve both God and Mammon (v 24). This term is sometimes translated ‘money’ but it represents something broader: ‘the principle of materialism’ which is ‘in direct conflict with loyalty to God’.¹ The relevance of this in our globalised world is obvious, but we have to ask how this statement relates to the practice of fasting as this is described in the opening verses of today’s reading.

Once again Jesus contrasts public displays of fasting, which occurred at particular seasons of the Jewish year, with the practice of disciples whose abstention from food was to be God-directed and therefore done in private. The spirituality of kingdom people is internal, a matter of the heart, and transcendent, in that it is directed ‘only to your Father … who sees what is done in secret’ (v 18). Here is the connection with the warning about Mammon: it is spirituality of the kind demanded by Christ which alone can sustain the disciples when faced with the overwhelming pressures of a materialistic world. 

This results in an uncomfortable question for modern Christians – including this writer. ‘When you fast …’ (v 16) suggests that Jesus assumes that this practice will be a regular discipline of the spirituality of his new community. If fasting related to the ability to resist the lure of Mammon in the first century, what chance have we of living according to kingdom values if we think we can dispense with it in the twenty-first century?  

Reread the last sentence above. How would you answer this question? 

¹ RT France, Matthew, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, IVP, 1985, p139