What Does God Say About Money?

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Matthew 6:19-21

Jesus is not against saving. He is against storing your hope where it corrodes. Moth, rust, thieves: everything on earth has a failure mode. Then comes the diagnostic line. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Follow your money and you will find your heart.

“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.”

Matthew 6:24

Jesus does not say you should not serve God and mammon. He says you cannot. Two masters both demand final say, and only one can have it. Money makes a useful servant and a merciless master. The verse forces the question of which one yours is.

“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

1 Timothy 6:10

Read it carefully. Money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is. Paul had wealthy friends who funded the church; the danger he names is the coveting that erred from the faith and pierced itself through with many sorrows. The wound is self-inflicted, and it happens on the way up as often as on the way down.

“He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.”

Ecclesiastes 5:10

Solomon was the richest man of his age, so this is field data. He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver. More never arrives at enough, because the appetite grows with the pile. If satisfaction is what you are buying, money is the wrong currency.

“Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.”

Proverbs 30:8-9

Agur prays the strangest financial prayer in the Bible: neither poverty nor riches. He knows himself. Too full and he forgets God. Too poor and he steals and shames God's name. It takes rare honesty to ask for enough. Try praying it and see what it loosens.

“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

Hebrews 13:5

The command is contentment, and the reason is a promise. I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Covetousness grows in people who feel unaccompanied, so the writer answers it with presence, not budgeting advice. You can hold money loosely when the thing you actually need cannot be taken.

“But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:19

Paul wrote this thank-you note from prison, to a church that gave out of its poverty. My God shall supply all your need. Need, not want, and according to His riches, not your balance. It is a promise for givers, from a man who tested it with nothing in his pockets.