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40th Sermon of Jesus... The Lord warns against worldly Thinking

April 20, 1872

Matthew 6:24-34
"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. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or. Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

These verses give the rules of conduct for the lives of My disciples. Adapted to their lives, these rules were meant to instil into them faith in the future when I would no longer be walking among them.

The entire sixth chapter contains measures for the future missionary lives of My disciples. These were the last fatherly admonitions they received from Me and were meant to teach them to take My words in their spiritual sense and not literally, which was often done. Before they could teach others and guide them onto the road of true cognition, they had to have a clear understanding themselves.

Thus this chapter contains details about how to give alms, how to pray and how to practise the religious rites spiritually for the benefit of the soul. It also discusses the actual value of the temporal-material and the eternal-spiritual things and how life's difficulties can be aligned with trust in Me. This last point was essential since, after My decease, My disciples had to choose between spirit and world or - as is written - between God and mammon.

My disciples had left everything that bound them to the world and followed Me, sacrificing worldly possessions and ties for the sake of spiritual values. Therefore, since I so often predicted My decease, it was understandable that the thought would arise in them: "What will become of us? It is true, in His presence we had no worries; but when He will no longer be with us, - what then?" I had to answer these thoughts that kept creeping in, to reassure their perturbed minds, not only during My presence on earth but also for later times, so that the concern about food and clothing did not burden them too much, which would have considerably interfered with their spiritual mission.

That was the reason for My fatherly words and My allusion to the lilies of the field, and that the loving Father in Heaven does not forget anything He has created and, therefore, would not forsake them, who had been chosen for a great task.

In the circumstances under which My disciples were living, what I spoke to them had for them a literal meaning; but for you and all future mankind it must be interpreted spiritually. For you live under quite different conditions and there is no need for you to forsake everything in order to follow Me spiritually on the designated path.

If in those times I said that no man can serve two masters, I meant to say that it is impossible to embrace two different things with the same degree of love. To "serve either God or mammon" means as much as to strive after either one or the other as a supreme goal; for "to serve" means: To devote oneself with all one's soul to that which is one's foremost love.

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