Bible Studies
©2011 Jeanne E. Webster
Matthew 6a:24 “No one can SERVE two masters; for either he will hate the one and will love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” KJV
Jesus says here that we cannot serve God and Mammon. Let’s delve into His meaning so we can apply this wisdom to our minds. What does serve mean? It means to “become a servant of,” or “become enslaved.” Ok, when we serve God OR Mammon, we are “taking care of business” for God OR Mammon. All right, who is God? God is the Creator who made everything in this world. He made people from the dirt of the earth. I’ve heard of “older than dirt,” and now I know how far back that goes! Therefore, God is the Main Man, the head honcho, # 1. He says so Himself in Exodus 3: 1-12. This might be a good place to pause and read all about it! The Old Testament is chock full of exciting discoveries.
Mammon is all about wealth, money, greed, ambition, and/or riches. Oh, that! Yes, that. Right away, we see that we have a dilemma. That little two letter word, OR, snaps our attention. How does serving God differ from serving Mammon? Serving God entails presenting to Him all our praise, honor, love and adoration as part of our daily lives. How do we SERVE Mammon? Serving Mammon is submitting all our love, praise, honor and adoration to our possessions and achievements. Wealth, money, greed, ambition, and riches become the main reason for getting up every morning. Yes, they do become our masters if we trust in them for our daily needs. We cannot trust in God while we trust in ourselves, our money, our possessions, our positions, our anything. We are NOT servants of God if we devote our given time (our life) to anything other than God.
Example: A Boston Red Sox player is at bat. He is there to drive in runs for his team so they can outscore the Yankees. Yet, when this same player defensively plays center field and purposely allows a Yankee player to hit a ball past him, he is defeating his purpose. He cannot play for both teams! He cannot serve both the Red Sox and the Yankees. One team has to hold all his attention and devotion or he is not good for either team.
So...as servants of God, we also must be wholly committed and devoted to God and to the things of God. We are on God’s team and anything we do to hinder or dishonor this team results in a loss of our usefulness and effectiveness to this team.
In Luke 2:49, Jesus tells his parents that He “must be about His Father’s business.” As children of God, we also have a single purpose in this life. Our hearts, minds, and spirits must always be about our Father’s business. We know we cannot truly serve Him while we are “about” the business of anything else. We must daily correct our course by communion with our heavenly Father.
“...by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, and ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Rom. 12:1-2 (ASV)
~shalom
(jew)
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A wonderful article Jeanne.You are so talented and I know you are one of the special writers for our Lord.
Dear Jeanne, a very nice article that reminds every Christian to serve the Almighty as sometimes we lose our focus. Thank you.
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