The Choice Between Two Masters
“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 is telling us that we cannot serve two masters. Have you ever had a job where you had two bosses, each telling you what to do? It doesn’t take long to figure out that two people giving you conflicting instructions doesn’t work. It only causes confusion. Someone, with the emphasis on “one”, has to be in charge. There are a couple of old sayings that portray the problem of two many folks wanting to be in charge. One is “too many cooks spoil the broth”, and the other is “too many chiefs and not enough Indians.” Of course, that last saying is probably not politically correct, but it only goes to show us that many people desire to be the boss of everyone else even telling us what we can and cannot say. I don’t know why unless it is some sort of power trip. Being in charge is too big of a headache for me. It’s sometimes like herding cats.
The secular world conveys the idea that we can serve two masters, that we can satisfy both the spirit and the flesh. They say, whoever “they” are, that we can “have it all”. However, in Romans 8, Paul was very clear in his explanation of the great contrast in serving two different masters. “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:5-6). James also addressed the issue of a divided loyalty in James 4:4: “…whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God”.
What exactly is mammon? The commentator Matthew Henry stated that mammon is an Aramaic (Jesus spoke Galilean Aramaic) word that means “gain”. That certainly describes the world. Society is out to “gain” whatever they can for themselves. Oswald Chambers describes “mammon” as “a system of civilized life that organizes itself without considering God.” God and mammon are diametrically opposed to one another. A person cannot be loyal and faithfully adherent to both. The world system is sinful and anti-God. God is all loving, sinless, and anti-sin. How could a person claim to follow both? God says, “Do not commit adultery”. Mammon says, “A little affair is OK., do what feels good”. God says, “Do not take My name in vain”. Mammon says, “Blankity-blank this and blankity-blank that”. God says, “Do not lie”. Mammon lies all the time. Leaders lie, politicians lie, advertising lies promising their products will do all sorts of things that, after we buy them, we find out they don’t work as claimed. Mammon is so deceptive.
When Joshua led the children of Israel into the promised land, he was adamant that they would not go back to serving idols, but would “fear the LORD, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth” (Joshua 24:14). He then gave them an ultimatum in the form of a choice between serving the LORD or serving the gods of their fathers who represented the flesh, or mammon. He said, “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15). We sure could use a lot more folks like Joshua who are not afraid of what the cancel culture will do or say, and who will bear up the name of Christ to a lost and dying world.
There is a choice to be made. Jesus said that if we love one, we will hate the other, or we will fall in line with one while despising the other. To help make the choice, consider the end results. John wrote in I John 2:15-17: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever”. Jesus said that if we are to be His disciples, we must hate our family, which means that our love for Him should be so strong that our love for our families would seem like hate in comparison (Luke 14:26). Jesus would never condone actual hatred for anyone. It was His statement that separates the truly surrendered to God’s will from the “Sunday Christians”. Oswald Chambers wrote that our “dearest friend on earth is a mere shadow compared with Jesus Christ”. Mr. Chambers went on to say that we must have “a dominant, personal, passionate devotion to Christ, and only then are all other relationships right.” To me, this choice is a “no brainer”. If we allow Christ to be our master, then we will have the “best of both worlds”, here on earth and in the future in the glories of heaven.