Jesus’ Teachings on Prosperity in the MarketplaceSample

The Idolatry of Mammon

One of Jesus’ teachings was on the role of money in the Kingdom of God and this teaching is absolutely essential to our practices in the modern day marketplace. One thing that Jesus said was that serving God was the number one priority of Kingdom minded people and that the rival to the love of God, is the love of Mammon. What is Mammon exactly? The spirit of Mammon is essentially the worship of money and assets rather than worshipping the provider of those assets – who is God. Simply put, Mammon is to value the assets more than people.  It replaces the role of money as a tool to serve people, by using it to oppress people.  You will encounter Mammon every day in the modern marketplace and as you begin to learn more about it, you will find that Mammon has become the root cause of almost all human misery in the world today. It stands to reason then, that the opposite of Mammon, which is generosity eradicates human misery and leads to the Kingdom model of human flourishing. As we work in divine generosity through our work in the marketplace, we will see a beautiful transformation across many aspects of society. 

In order to overcome the Spirit of Mammon that had taken over the culture of His day, Jesus confronted the corrupt priests in the temple at His first opportunity, which in ancient custom was at the age of manhood – 12 years old. You may recall when Jesus was found by His parents talking to the priests in the Temple at 12 years old, He said He was about His Father’s business. He was saying that God the Father had some very serious concerns about what was going on. Jesus was referring to the way the priests were charging the people exorbitant fees for healing, forgiveness of sins, and loans for offerings, drowning them in mountains of debt to the point of repossessing their lands and feudalising them to work on their own land for the benefit of the priests. In fact, the population had been reduced to the point of trafficking their children because they could no longer feed them. This was anathema to the Lord who loves children and values them way beyond physical assets.

So Jesus made it very clear that God the father wanted to establish a new system, one that establishes love, prosperity, and freedom for all people by using money as a tool to serve. One way that many business owners can operate in this Kingdom system of business is to have a motive of loving God and others as the foundation for all of their business decisions. They ensure that every person involved in their business transactions will flourish and that God is glorified.