Matthew 6:24

6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate¹ the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise² the other. You cannot serve God and money.³

Matthew 9:15

9:15 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests⁴ cannot mourn while the bridegroom⁵ is with them, can they? But the days⁶ are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them,⁷ and then they will fast.

Matthew 10:28

10:28 Do⁸ not be afraid of those who kill the body⁹ but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the one who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.¹⁰

Matthew 16:3

16:3 and in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, because the sky is red and darkening.’¹¹ You know how to judge correctly the appearance of the sky,¹² but you cannot evaluate the signs of the times.

¹sn The contrast between hate and love here is rhetorical. The point is that one will choose the favorite if a choice has to be made.

²tn Or “and treat [the other] with contempt.”

³tn Grk “God and mammon.”

sn The term money is used to translate mammon, the Aramaic term for wealth or possessions. The point is not that money is inherently evil, but that it is often misused so that it is a means of evil; see 1 Tim 6:6-10, 17-19. God must be first, not money or possessions.

⁴tn Grk “sons of the wedding hall,” an idiom referring to wedding guests, or more specifically friends of the bridegroom present at the wedding celebration (L&N 11.7).

⁵sn The expression while the bridegroom is with them is an allusion to messianic times (John 3:29; Isa 54:5-6; 62:4-5; 4 Ezra 2:15, 38).

⁶tn Grk “days.”

⁷sn The statement the bridegroom will be taken from them is a veiled allusion by Jesus to his death, which he did not make explicit until the incident at Caesarea Philippi in 16:13ff.

⁸tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

⁹sn Judaism had a similar exhortation in 4 Macc 13:14-15.

¹⁰sn See the note on the word hell in 5:22.

¹¹tn Or “red and gloomy” (L&N 14.56).

¹²tn Grk “The face of the sky you know how to discern.”