9/15/2019 The Problem with Two Masters

24 no one can serve two masters.

For a slave leader hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other you cannot serve God and wealth. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Well with a verse that short which is it's in the middle of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. So Jesus is the one that said that and I would say it doesn't seem to be Jesus is most profound statement right on some level seems pretty obvious. You can't serve two masters will okay. What else do you have for us? But if you look through the rest of the story we go back to the just about the very beginning of scripture. We realized that humans for a long time. Especially God's chosen people have been trying really hard to serve two masters. So there's this whole story of the Israelite people with God saying I Choose You and the people saying well, that's nice, but we're going to check out some other guys and see if we like them better than you right and so we might remember that the Israelites Open hedge their bets, right they had a back-up plan. They were like well as people got seems interesting or let's make a golden calf to worship at it. So we remember maybe if we know them the stories of Aaron and Moses and Joshua and the judges of the Israelite people in the leaders in the prophets and all of them saying to the people you have to choose which God you're going to serve and a lot of times they said it in words. Like do you choose life or do you choose death? Do you choose the guy who's the guy that created all things and is the god of the universe or do you choose these other gods who were nothing empty?

Who are you going to follow? Who are you going to worship? And so we might realize we have this is been a problem for a while, but then we can call it all ended. Well, right because all of these people tried to tell the Israelites what to do and then God sent us to straighten him out a little bit and show on the right way and then we are not just the chosen people could be God's people but everybody you can be God's people so maybe it's not that big of a deal if we mess up sometimes and we choose the wrong guy. But I think that if all of the leaders of Israel and all of the prophets and even Jesus mentioned that you can't serve more than one God then probably it's a big deal that we need to think about. In fact in I don't know if any of you have the book. I don't know if Rob offered it but there's a daily devotional book with treasure and Jacob Armstrong courses the author and he writes this explains. What the big deal. Is he a relationship with God's that's with a little G relationship with God leads to anger and fear in a relationship with God with the big G leads to peace and call when we're finding those other guys that we might want to worship and serve instead that all too often all the time leads to anger and fear in a relationship with the god of the universe the one true God leads to peace and calm. That's the big deal. That's why it's an important thing to think about. That's why Jesus had some words to say about who were serving and we can pick lots of other gods to worship and sometimes we do because it's just kind of tempting right we might worship success as the world defines it we might worship pleasure or people-pleasing or if you remember the first time that I ever met you which was two years ago. I don't know why I remember this vividly, but I know that we were talking Pastor Todd was going through parts of Genesis and we talked about idols. And so I told you that it did before I went to Seminary and Duke there are two places that people worship if you don't remember this, that's okay, but they worship at Duke Chapel. And they also worship at Cameron Indoor Stadium where the basketball team plays right? Sometimes we worship the gods of entertainment and sports and all those sorts of things that distract us. the one true God there are lots of things that we can worship. And yet all of these spell to bring us the joy in the peace in the wholeness. That is our hearts desire that we can only find in the one true God who made us and loves us.

So we can try to make everyone happy we can try to do what everybody wants or expects of us or what we think they expect of us. We can be busy and we can never let anyone down to the best of our ability. But then who are we serving people? Not guy we could do our best to make sure that we are safe that we're prepared for anything that might happen. We could be worried about our own security and safety and hold tight to all that we have but then we find ourselves serving the god fear instead of the one true God. There are so many ways that we find to serve other gods.

And we've been good at that for a really long time. People have always been tempted to do that. But today Jesus mentions one other God in particular that you definitely can't serve if you're trying to follow him. well now I know when you when I got here when I got here and you realize it wasn't Rob. Maybe you were like, yes, not a sermon on money. You don't get a break today. So we have this one verse from Jesus that he says you can't serve God and well, I'll be honest with you. I Don't Preach every Sunday anymore. But when we usually did some sermons on the Bible talks about money more than almost anything else except for like love so that should tell you something there something that we need to learn about it, even though we don't always like to talk about it. I had a church member come in one time. She came into my office. She's like I ran into somebody else in town. I haven't seen for a while and they said well, I'll come back at church and Betsy stop talking about money. I'd like what you can tell them that that's in about three weeks. So no, I didn't say that, but that's what I thought.

Tell us about how we handle the wealth that we have whatever that is in Jesus tells us specifically you can't serve both God and it makes me think of a young man that I knew once who was a he was a graduate student. And so we had a graduate graduate classes and a graduate assistantship and then he had an internship. He also had another job. So we had basically three jobs. He was also a student one of his Jobs when he was at his parents store. They had a successful business. He worked there all weekend every weekend. He had these other jobs. He had his classes and the more I got to know him. I wondered if you ever slept and I'm still not sure that he did but he also would tell me like he knew what he was doing. He had this play new how much money he needed to save by the time he was 40 in order to be a millionaire or whatever. I don't even remember but whatever the marks of success War he knew what they were and he was going to work and he didn't Here if you didn't have spare time, he didn't care. If you didn't get a whole lot of sleep had a kind of a boring diet because he's just not he's going to save money. He wasn't spending a lot of money, he could because that was going to make him successful and I believe that he will go somewhere in life. But the more I got to know him. I was so broken hearted because I thought but you are missing out on so much been to church a little bit growing up but didn't go a whole lot. His parents had this this business that was open on weekends. And so they had always worked and and it just didn't seem to matter so much but he knew where he was going and that was that he was going to make money.

I don't know. He had chosen which Master he was going to serve. You can't serve God and sometimes we think that serving God would make us for sometimes we don't remember that God says or the psalmist tells us that God owns all the cattle on a thousand hills, which is a think a lot of cattle. I've never owned any but I'm pretty sure that would be a lot of cattle. God has all the wealth already. And so our job is not to chase after that but to follow God. So often we say we really want to follow Jesus and do what he said and be like him, but we also like to be comfortable and I like I like to be comfortable. It's nice to feel like you have enough and you can be happy and everything. You know, it's nice you take a nap sometimes. and yet Jesus says you can't serve God and well, you can't necessarily just sit comfortably around and say oh, yeah, I'm following Jesus because I'm sometimes when Jesus tells us to do makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes where God leads us isn't comfortable. In fact of Jacob Armstrong rights are God's tell us that security is found in protecting everything God, the Big G tells us that security is found in being willing to give up everything.

How much are we willing to give up in order to follow God in order to be Servants of God instead of slaves of well and slaves and whatever the world around us tells us matters more. You cannot serve God and wealth. How much are we willing to give up to make the one true God our only God it's a hard question. And it's a question that will have to answer just about every day. Which God will we serve? And so maybe we like it better when Jesus talks about. I don't know of any others loving God. Jesus has a lot to say maybe we prefer that he would stay out of our pocket book. But Jacob Armstrong reminds us Jesus doesn't care so much about your money. He cares about you. He talks about your treasure because he Treasures you. Maybe the reason that the Bible talks so much about stuff and well is that we forget that the real treasure, isn't that? As people who are not always never perfect. We get stuck on the wrong face. I have a lot to learn but Jesus Treasures us. Jesus is concerned about us not just about our stuff. We don't say you should give to the church because we need the church that stay open generosity is a spiritual gift being able to give of what we have shows God. Love to the world around us. That's why our treasure can be used. To show that we follow God, it's not that you just can't have anything. Are we serving God and in that way using the gifts God has given us to show that to the world or are we just serving the money that we have some smoke some folks in their lives looking for a better offer. Right? And that's kind of what Jesus is saying to the people he's saying are you all in with me or are you looking for a better offer? You know what it's like to run into somebody who just always looking for a better offer. Looking for those things that are shiny and met a guy at church one who had big goals for his life. He attended church regularly and but he had these big goals like he really wanted to own a Ferrari that was one of his life goals and he was a graphic designer and he been led to believe that he would make a whole lot of money as a graphic designer and so far that hadn't panned out so he was resentful and he was resentful that when he was asked to help make props for Vacation Bible School. It took time away from his projects that made him money. Cuz that's what you wanted to do was make the money.

Who was he serving? I guess he had made that choice. I guess he had decided that What mattered most was chasing after the money in the shiny things instead of chasing after the God who gives us all good things. Anyway, we are all tempted to do that. So please you can do that for my friend that I would bring him up. But we are all tempted to do that right there all for all of us days. That money seems to be the most important thing. There are days I have two kids. I work in Ministry. If you don't know, it's not the most money making profession has when yes, it's like are we paying all the bills? Are we able to pay for the childcare this week? I understand. That we worry. But Jesus is saying that you have to choose whether you're serving God or whether you're just serving the money. You can't do both. Can we have that kind of relationship with God that we realize that all that we do have is a gift but all that we do have is something that we can share. You may not be as comfortable as we like. It may be a difficult choice to make. But God loves us so much.

to offer us everything

and God wonders each day if we're going to turn return it back. That's the good news. I guess maybe were uncomfortable talking about money at all. But that's the good news is that God loves us so much that Jesus cares about us and that's why he wants us to have a healthy relationship with wealth or money or whatever. We have. God loves us so much that God would say you're mine. And hope that we say yes back.

We have that opportunity every day to decide whom we're going to serve to decide which Master is more important to us. And so and difficult as it is. My Hope and my prayer is that in my life and in each of your life we choose God everyday let's pray God we thank you for all of the blessings that you give us. We thank you for all of the ways that you love us and we pray that we will learn more and more to use what we have to honor you and you show your love and grace and truth with the world. It's in Jesus name that we pray.

in our closing song