The certificate was lying on Danladi’s desk in a site office in Abuja, on the edge of a half-finished school building. He was the quantity surveyor on the project, and his job was simple to describe. Every month he measured the work actually completed, valued it, and signed an interim certificate so the contractor could be paid by the government for that portion of the work.
This month the contractor wanted the certificate to show that the second floor slab had been cast. It had not. The formwork was up, the reinforcement was half tied, and the concrete was at least six weeks away. “It is only a matter of time,” the project director told him, standing by the window with his hands in his pockets. “The work will be done. We just need the money to flow now, or the whole site stops. Sign it, and there will be something for you at the end of the month. Something good.”
Danladi knew what something good meant. It would clear the loan he had taken for his house in Gwarinpa. It would pay his two children’s school fees for a full year. And he knew what refusing might mean. He had seen colleagues moved to dead projects in remote states for being “difficult.”
The pen was in his hand. And as he sat there, his phone buzzed on the desk. It was his sister in Jos. Their father’s blood pressure was bad again, and he had been asking for Danladi. “When are you coming?” she wrote. “It has been eight months.”
Eight months. Danladi had not gone home because there was always more work: weekend site visits, extra consulting jobs, another contract to bid for. He had told himself it was all for the family. And now he was sitting with a pen in his hand, about to sign a lie, while his father asked for him in a hospital bed in Jos.
He put the pen down. He did not yet know what he would do. But he knew, with a clarity that frightened him, that something had been giving him orders for a long time, and it was not God.
No man can serve two masters
Jesus said it in the Sermon on the Mount, and He said it again in Luke’s Gospel, to an audience that did not want to hear it:
No servant 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. And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him. And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
The word serve here is the language of slavery. It means to belong to someone, to be at their disposal. A slave could not divide his week between two owners, giving Monday to one and Tuesday to the other. Each master would demand total loyalty. Sooner or later, their orders would conflict, and the slave would have to choose.
Mammon is an Aramaic word meaning wealth or property, the things a person possesses and trusts in. Jesus personifies it as a rival lord. Money is not neutral when it sits on the throne of the heart. It makes demands. It gives instructions. It promises rewards for obedience and threatens loss for disobedience.
Notice that Jesus does not say, “You should not serve God and mammon.” He says, “Ye cannot.” It is not possible. Eventually the two masters will give opposite orders. God says tell the truth, and mammon says sign the certificate. God says honour your father, and mammon says one more weekend contract. In that moment you will find out who your master really is.
Luke tells us how the Pharisees responded. They “were covetous,” lovers of money, and “they derided him.” The word means they turned up their noses, sneering. They had built a religious life that made room for wealth, and they could not bear to hear that the two might be at war.
Jesus’ reply goes to the heart. “Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts.” The Pharisees looked respectable. Their prosperity was even seen as a sign of God’s approval. “For that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.” A life that people admire can be one God grieves over, if money has quietly taken His place.
How a tool becomes a master
Money is meant to be a servant. It is a tool for providing for a family, building a business, supporting the work of God and helping the poor. There is nothing sinful about earning it, saving it or using it well.
The problem is that money does not easily stay in its place. It has a way of climbing. It starts as a means and becomes an end. It starts by serving your purposes and ends by setting them. Paul calls covetousness “idolatry” (Colossians 3:5), because the desire for more can take the very place in the heart that belongs to God.
That climb usually happens slowly. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to make money his god. It happens through a series of small adjustments, each of which seems reasonable at the time. A man works late “just this season.” A woman takes a little from petty cash “until salary comes.” A trader shades the truth about a product “because everyone does it.” A pastor tailors his preaching to avoid offending wealthy members. Each step makes the next one easier.
Jesus warned that “the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word” (Matthew 13:22). Deceitfulness is the key. Riches lie to us. They promise security they cannot provide. They persuade us that we are serving them for the sake of others when in fact others are being sacrificed to them.
So how do you know whether money has begun to give the orders? The question becomes practical at two points: when fear of loss or hunger for gain persuades a believer to override truth, and when it persuades him to neglect a person for whom he bears responsibility. Let us look at both.
When money overrides truth
Elisha’s servant Gehazi is one of the saddest figures in the Old Testament. He had served a great prophet and seen extraordinary miracles. When Naaman, the Syrian army commander, was healed of leprosy, he offered Elisha a large gift. Elisha refused it firmly. He wanted Naaman to understand that God’s grace could not be bought.
Gehazi could not stand it. “My master hath spared Naaman this Syrian,” he said to himself (2 Kings 5:20), and he ran after the chariot. He invented a story about two young prophets in need and asked for silver and clothing. Naaman gladly gave him twice what he asked. Gehazi hid it in his house and went back to stand before Elisha as though nothing had happened:
But he went in, and stood before his master. And Elisha said unto him, Whence comest thou , Gehazi? And he said, Thy servant went no whither. And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee , when the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards, and sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants? The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.
Notice how quickly one lie produced another. First he lied to Naaman. Then he lied to Elisha: “Thy servant went no whither.” Money had overridden truth, and once truth was set aside, it had to keep being set aside to protect what had been gained.
Elisha’s question cuts deep: “Is it a time to receive money?” There are moments when taking money is wrong, even when it is offered freely, because of what it will say and what it will cost. Gehazi chose the silver over his master, his integrity and the testimony of God’s grace to a foreign soldier. And he went out a leper.
Judas Iscariot followed the same road further. John tells us that when Mary of Bethany poured expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet, Judas objected:
Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son , which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.
Judas sounded concerned for the poor. In fact, he was stealing from the common fund. His love of money had already corrupted his speech, so that he could present greed as compassion. Not long afterwards he went to the chief priests and asked, “What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you?” (Matthew 26:15). Thirty pieces of silver. He did not begin with betrayal. He began with dipping into the bag.
The law of Moses understood how powerfully money can bend judgement:
And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
A gift, in this sense a bribe, “blindeth the wise.” It does not merely tempt a corrupt person. It blinds a wise one. A man who would never think of lying finds that, once his interest is involved, he can no longer see clearly. The slab looks almost cast. The overstatement looks almost true. That was where Danladi stood with his pen.
This is why believers in Nigeria need special courage. In many workplaces, overriding truth for money is so normal that refusing looks foolish or even arrogant. Inflated contracts, padded budgets, falsified certificates, payments to “facilitate” a file: these are not seen as sins but as the way things work. A believer may pay a real price for refusing to take part. But Scripture is clear. When money tells you to lie, it has become your master, and you must choose whom you will serve.
When money crowds out people
The second sign of financial bondage is quieter, and many respectable believers fall into it without noticing. Money begins to crowd out the people we are responsible for.
Jesus confronted the Pharisees over a practice called Corban. A man could declare that his property was dedicated to God, which meant it could no longer be used to support his elderly parents. Jesus quoted their rule back to them: “If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother” (Mark 7:11-12). They had found a religious way to keep their money and abandon their parents. Jesus said they were “Making the word of God of none effect” (Mark 7:13).
The modern version rarely sounds religious. It sounds like ambition, responsibility or even sacrifice. A father works every weekend so his children can attend a good school, and his children grow up without knowing him. A mother takes on three jobs to build a house in the village, and her teenagers are raising themselves. A son sends money home every month but has not visited his ageing parents in years.
A nurse I will call Bimbo told me that she realised something was wrong when her youngest daughter, aged six, introduced her to a visitor as “my mummy who works.” It was meant innocently. It broke her heart. She had been working night shifts at one hospital and day shifts at a private clinic for nearly two years, saving for a plot of land. The money was real. The land was a good goal. But her children were growing up in the gaps between her shifts.
Scripture insists that we provide for those in our care: “if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Timothy 5:8). Provision matters. A man who refuses to work and leaves his family hungry is not more spiritual than a man who works hard. But provision is more than money. A child needs a present parent. An elderly father needs a visit. A wife needs a husband who is home. The writer of Proverbs knew it:
Better is little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.
A plain meal in a home full of love is better than a feast in a house full of strife. Some families have more money than ever and less of what makes a home. Even on the cross, in agony, Jesus made provision for His mother, entrusting her to the beloved disciple (John 19:26-27). The Saviour did not let the most important work in history crowd out His responsibility to the woman who had raised Him.
PunchlineMoney has become a master when it can persuade you to sign a lie or to stay away from someone who needs you, and call it responsibility.
When the pulpit answers to money
It would be convenient to think of financial bondage as a problem for contractors and civil servants. Scripture applies it to religious leaders as well. Micah described a nation whose leaders had been bought: “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us?” (Micah 3:11). The terrible part of that verse is the last line. These men still felt spiritual. They still claimed the Lord’s presence. They did not notice that money had begun to write their sermons.
The same thing can happen in a church. A pastor softens his teaching because a wealthy member might be offended. A ministry chooses its programmes according to what will bring in the largest offering. A prophet’s words seem strangely to favour whoever has given most. A building project becomes so important that the leaders press the poorest members to give money they need for food. In each case, the fear of losing income or the hunger for more has begun to override truth and push aside the people the ministry exists to serve.
Remember to whom Jesus addressed Luke 16:15. It was the Pharisees, the most respected religious teachers of the day, who “were covetous.” Their standing before men was high, and God knew their hearts.
This is a word for every minister, including the one writing these lines. It is also a word of freedom for church members. You are not required to honour a ministry that uses pressure, fear or flattery to extract money. A faithful church can speak openly about its needs, account honestly for every naira and still say hard things to its richest members, because its Master is not mammon.
Fear: the quieter master
We often think of financial bondage as greed, the hunger for more. But Jesus spent more of the Sermon on the Mount on another form of it. Immediately after saying “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24), He turns to anxiety:
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 to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
“Take no thought” in the King James Version means do not be anxious. The Greek word, merimnao, describes a mind pulled in different directions, distracted and divided. Jesus connects it directly to the two masters. Worry about money is one of the ways money rules us.
Many believers who would never call themselves greedy are enslaved in exactly this way. They are not hungry for luxury. They are terrified of loss. They lie awake calculating. They cannot give, cannot rest, cannot enjoy what they have, because the fear of not having enough has become the voice that directs every decision. In a country where inflation can halve the value of savings and a job can disappear overnight, that fear is understandable. But it can still become a master.
Jesus answers fear by pointing to the Father. “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?” Birds still search for food. Lilies still grow. Jesus is not telling us to stop working. He is telling us that our Father is real, that He knows our needs and that He cares for us more than for sparrows and grass. “O ye of little faith.” The cure for money’s tyranny is a deeper trust in the Father.
Fear of loss also explains Danladi’s temptation more fully. The certificate was not only about the bonus. It was about the fear of being moved to a dead project, of the house loan, of failing his children. Hunger for gain and fear of loss often work together. Both say the same thing: you cannot afford to obey God here.
Seek ye first
Jesus finishes the passage with a reordering of priorities: “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” (Matthew 6:33-34).
First is the word that breaks money’s rule. Money cannot be first. God’s kingdom and His righteousness come first, which includes truthfulness at work and faithfulness to those in our care. When those come first, money returns to its proper place as a servant. Jesus promises that the Father will add the things we need.
This is not a promise that obedience will always be financially rewarded in the short term. Sometimes refusing to sign a false certificate costs you a promotion. Sometimes reducing your working hours to be present for your children means a smaller house. Hebrews was written to believers who had “took joyfully the spoiling of your goods” (Hebrews 10:34). Seeking the kingdom first can be expensive.
Nor does it forbid planning. Scripture commends saving, budgeting and preparation. Proverbs praises the ant that gathers in summer. What Jesus forbids is the anxiety that makes money the controlling concern of life. “Labour not to be rich,” says Proverbs, “for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven” (Proverbs 23:4-5). Work, plan and save, but do not let the pursuit of riches set your priorities, because riches are the least reliable thing you can trust.
The promise that sets you free
NuggetHow does a believer break free when money has become a master? Not simply by trying harder to resist it. Bondage is broken by a stronger relationship.
Hebrews gives the deepest answer. “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 reason we can loosen our grip on money is that God has promised never to loosen His grip on us. Money promises security and cannot guarantee it. God promises His presence and never fails. The next verse adds, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” (Hebrews 13:6). That includes project directors.
The gospel goes deeper still. “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). The Son of God gave up everything for us. When we have seen that kind of love, money loses its power to command. We have a better Master, and He has already given us more than mammon ever could.
Some practical steps help make that freedom real:
- Tell the truth to someone. Financial bondage thrives in secrecy. Confess to God, and talk honestly with a trusted believer, a spouse or a pastor.
- Make restitution where you can. If money has led you to take what was not yours, follow Zacchaeus and put it right.
- Give regularly and deliberately. Generosity loosens money’s grip on the heart in a way nothing else does.
- Guard your time with the people God has given you. Put family, rest and worship into your calendar before money claims every hour.
- Get help where it is needed. Compulsive gambling, crushing debt and anxiety that disrupts sleep and health are real problems. A qualified financial counsellor, a doctor or a trained counsellor can be part of God’s provision for you.
Danladi did not sign the certificate. He went to the project director the next morning and told him, as respectfully as he could, that he would certify the work when it was done, and not before. The director was furious. Within a month Danladi had been moved off the project to a road job in a remote part of Niger State. The bonus never came.
But before he reported to the new site, he took a week off and drove to Jos. He sat by his father’s bed in the hospital and then at home, for seven days. He fed him, read to him from the Psalms in Hausa, and listened to stories he had not heard since he was a boy. His father recovered slowly. Danladi now goes home every second month, whatever the work schedule says.
The house loan took longer to clear than he had hoped. He and his wife cut their spending, sold their second car and stopped some of the extras they had assumed were necessary. He told me it was one of the hardest years of his life, and one of the freest.
Punchline“I used to think I was working for my family,” he said. “Then I realised I was working for money, and my family was paying the price. Now I know who my master is.”
Look at the certificate on your own desk, whatever form it takes. Look at the phone message you have been ignoring. Ask the question honestly: Who is giving the orders? You cannot serve God and mammon. But you can be set free to serve the one Master who will never leave you nor forsake you.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- In what areas of your life is money giving the orders? How do you know?
- Have you ever been asked to override the truth for financial reasons? How did you respond, and what would you do now?
- Who are the people God has made you responsible for? Is money crowding any of them out of your time and attention?
- Is your relationship with money driven more by hunger for gain or by fear of loss?
- What would it look like for you to “seek first the kingdom of God” in your finances this month?
This Week
This week, make two lists. On the first, write any area of your work or finances where money is pressuring you to shade the truth, and decide on one step toward honesty. On the second, write the names of the people who depend on you: children, spouse, parents, others in your care. Beside each name, write when you last gave them unhurried time. Then put a specific date in your calendar, within the next month, to spend time with the person you have most neglected.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, You said that no one can serve two masters. I confess that money has given me orders I should never have obeyed. Forgive me for the times I have shaded the truth for gain, and for the people I have neglected while telling myself I was providing for them. Free me from both greed and fear. Teach me to seek Your kingdom first and trust You for what I need. Thank You that You have promised never to leave me nor forsake me. Be my only Master, and let money return to its place as my servant. In Your name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.