The Material is Immaterial

UV 1058/10,000 The Material is Immaterial

Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat.

Matthew 10 v 10

The Israelites as they were led through the desert were provided manna for food and quail’s meat for nourishment. The Lord heard their plaintive cry that they had no meat since they left Egypt and sent flocks of quail so that they had enough meat within reach of their hands. The manna today symbolizes the spiritual nourishment we need that the Lord gives us every day from His Word. The meat symbolizes all our earthly, fleshly and material needs. As long as we consider ourselves a faithful worker of the Lord, skilled in rightly distributing or disseminating the good news of the Lord, He undertakes to provide our wages or all that is needed to meet our every want.

We should not worry about how we are going to provide for our families or how our needs are going to be met when we are old and unable to work. The Lord reminds us that all the silver and gold is His. We must just live and serve the Lord in such a way that we are worthy or faithful. The Lord is a wonderfully generous and gracious paymaster. He will ensure that our cup runneth over with joy. Faith is the equivalent of spiritual gold and we must always take measures to increase our stock of faith. The enemy of our souls wants us to be preoccupied with pursuit of money in order to deplete our faith inventory. The Lord desires that we make money our servant whom we can dismiss from our attention and presence at will. Our decisions should not be “ bread decisions” or thoughts about how much money we will loose or gain in doing or not doing a particular thing. The concept of payment by the hour for work in western culture is one of the tools to condition the human mind to always think of profit and loss, to be obsessed with trying to gain as much as possible in available time. The joy of many people in today’s world is like a yo-yo that rises and falls with the Sensex. The Lord says, “ Provide no scrip for your earthly journey..” It is not scrip but scripture that will help us meet all the needs of our journey on earth including the meat or “flesh needs” of our bodies.

God is jealous and when we end up spending more time worrying about our money, material needs or bank balance, He sees where our sense of security rests- not in the provider but in the provision. We must always have this vision before us- The Lord will provide whatever I need, whenever I need and as much as I need. Our financial challenges will test the extent of our faith and our dependence on the Lord while our financial attitudes will demonstrate the quality of our faith. This is the reason Jesus said that the competition for the attention and commitment of man is not from other gods but from Mammon or materialism, the god of this age. It does not however mean we neglect our estates or the physical resources the Lord has placed in our care or stewardship. We need to be faithful stewards of all that the Lord has given us. More than the lifeless silver and gold, the greatest resources He has given us are : thought, temperament, tongue, talent and time. Unfortunately, the love of money has a corrosive effect on all these resources. The love of money displaces faith and the primacy of place of God in our lives. This is the reason the Lord Jesus said, “ the love of money is the root of evil.” He does not say that the converse – the hatred for money is the root of all goodness- is true. In fact, the love or obsession with God is the root of all goodness and godliness. Our attitude should be – the material is immaterial and the immaterial or spiritual is material.

Prateep V Philip