Friday, 16 February 2018

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

We live in an unusual situation. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God while we live in a world that is not really our home. We can get caught up in a battle of two loyalties. It is easy to get trapped in following this world because it is right there in front of us. The problem with God’s kingdom is that it is invisible and we only can follow it by faith.

So there is the danger that we try to balance two masters. We think we can serve God and serve the world at the same time. We like to think that we can serve God while playing games with the world.

It is however impossible to serve two masters properly. You are going to eventually serve one and ‘hate’ the other. One master must have our supreme loyalty. We can’t have the ‘best of both worlds.’ Elijah confronted the people of Israel when they were mixing their worship of Jehovah and their worship of Baal. ‘If Jehovah is God worship Him, if Baal is then worship him.’

Joshua challenged the nation with ‘choose today who you are going to serve.’ But for Joshua and his family it was ‘we will serve the Lord.’

We must face the same choice. Is our master the Lord or is it the world. We need to know who our master is. We need to trust, follow, and obey our master and not be distracted by the world.

Choose this day who you will serve.

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