YE CANNOT SERVE TWO MASTERS
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or he will hold to the one and despise the other. Mt.6:24
We read today from what is surely the greatest single block of teaching in the Gospels, St. Matthew’s record of the Sermon on The Mount. This section is full of the Love of God and Jesus expresses that love for us in beautiful word pictures.
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they
toil not, nether 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 today is and
tomorrow is cast into the oven; shall he not much more clothe you?
Jesus leaves us here in no doubt that God loves us above all else in His creation. It is a love which embraces us collectively, but yet is intensely personal, seeking to touch each one of us individually.
There is no doubt about this love. It is proved by the perfect sufficient sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the Cross. The human race has never been given such a manifestation of love as that.
From the Cross our Lord was laid in the tomb. From the tomb He arose from the dead and in His Resurrection, we know that Jesus lives. As God the Son lives, so God the Father lives and God the Holy Spirit lives.
And in our undivided, living, triune God lives on that incomprehensible, unlimited Love which led to the Cross and which burns with divine light from the Cross.
This Love is a living love; it is a dynamic love operating
in our lives, never failing us in its devotion.
Be ye not anxious saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we
drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
God is not some benevolent, passive entity sitting on a cloud, musing about what a rotten lot we are but how much he loves us. Our living God is actively involved in our lives, ever ready to work His Love in those lives.
Why, then, do so many of us get into so much trouble?
Look at the cross upon the altar. Hold in your hearts our crucified Lord.
With your eyes upon the Cross, listen again to the words of Matthew 6:24.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or he will hold to the one and despise the other.
The Sermon on The Mount is indeed full of the Love of God, but it also presents us with uncompromisingly stark choices.
Verse 24 speaks directly to the condition of slavery. A slave was owned by one master and that master alone was served by his slave. The slave could not take a day off every week to go and moonlight for a bit of extra cash with someone else.
But that is exactly how far too many people approach their Christianity. For six days a week they are both in the world and of the world, chasing some dream of worldly wealth and status; or wrapped up in the concerns of being busy, needlessly or because they have convinced themselves they have to. Ah, but on Sunday they go to church, where for an hour or so they think of God, when they are not navel gazing about shopping or the Monday morning staff meeting. This, they believe, makes them a Christian.
If this sounds harsh, it is not. Trust me, I have been there and in unguarded moments I can drift there still. And in the image of the slave, who can only have one owner, Jesus teaches us that we must be owned exclusively by God.
Not only is it insufficient just to offer God a bit of time on a Sunday; it is actually necessary to offer up to God every minute of every hour of every day.
I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. The words of God through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 42:8.
My glory will I not give to another. If we do not give ourselves exclusively to God, there must logically be times when we are serving another god, money, fame, etc. and we are not then giving glory to God. In reality, we have, for a time at least, slipped into idolatory and Jesus does all He can to teach us to avoid that pitfall.
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. The word, Mammon, is the transliteration of an Aramaic word for wealth, which takes in much more than just money. Everything covered by the scope of that word shares the same characteristics of worthlessness and impermanency when compared to the being, attributes and gifts of the God in whose image we are made.
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. The choice is uncompromisingly stark and the consequences of our decision are crystal clear.
In our cozy western world, where the comforts of this world are all too readily obtainable, it seems that they are also far too seductive. Far too many people choose Mammon, giving little or no glory to God. Churches are in decline, at least in part because they attempt to make compromises with the Word of God, focusing on the warm and fuzzy bits and ignoring anything hard.
The Cross and its uncomfortable realities not only fails to make it outside the church door, it is banished from the new fangled teaching within the walls of houses ostensibly dedicated to God.
But God will not be shoved into some dark corner. There are no compromises with His word. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.
I am the Lord: that is my name. Ye shall have none other gods but me. That is so simple and direct. And so ignored in this world. We are told that Islam is the fastest growing
religion in some western countries, including, I believe, in
Yet as the light of God fades around us here, in other parts
of the world it is becoming more evident.
The government of
And in
In reading the stories of these courageous people, there is a constant theme, that of the realization that the Christian God is indeed a living God. One Iranian convert said, God is a loving Father. Speak to Him as if He is next to you.
No man can serve two masters. Let us be on our guard constantly against
making the wrong choice. Seek ye
first the
Peter Jardine+
Trinity XV, 2006