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

Observation

• No man is the subject, it’s verb tense is serve and the object is two masters
• The phrase has a colon which denotes a list
• two items in the list, with two conjoined phrases in each item
• Finial sentence summarizes the passage

Jesus is telling us here about the struggles of being in the world and not of the world. We must choose a master, we must choose a path to follow. Are we going to choose the path of the world, which is mamon.

Mamon, an old English word that the Westminster Scholars chose for this passage is actually from the Latin, mammona or ‘wealth’ or profit. What I found is it is often tied to greed. Jesus is telling us our focus in the world can’t be serving two opposed forces. Jesus is not telling us that money is evil, or that we must be socialist or communists. But what he is telling us is our stuff, this stuff of this world can’t be what’s driving our heart.

I see the conflict Jesus is describing between having two masters, you will love one and hate the other. This is so true. Even in a work environment, when you have more than one boss, it becomes hard to know exactly what is my purpose in this organization. You have to choose, it’s the way we are designed. We must choose a master, or we will be dealing with lots of anxiety.

How does this play out? What does it mean. We can’t strive to desire the prosperity of this world, if we are in Christ, our prosperity is of things above, not here, not now. Money is a resource, not the desire of our lives. Often people fall into two traps: they hate wealth (often because they desperately seek it and don’t have it), or they love wealth, but they seek more of it, but in the end find money itself is not fulfilling.

The third way is not to seek wealth, fame, or the things of this world, it’s to live humbly and trust God for his provision. We can plan for the future, but never make plans that remove our dependence on our true master. Understand that if God blesses us with provisions, they are to be used for Kingdom business, we are mere stewards.

Lord, help me to be single focused, help me to seek your rule over my life. Help me to push away the things here in this fallen place, and focus on Your Kingdom.