You Cannot Serve Two Masters--Life with God Series

            Some relationships in life seem to get better when you share them with others. Having one best friend in your life is great, but it seems to be even sweeter to have a circle of friends who all enjoy each other deeply. The joy of those friendships seems to be enhanced because it is shared with others.

            Other relationships, though, cannot be shared without doing tremendous damage to the relationship. Your relationship with your spouse is one such relationship. You simply cannot share the intimacy that you have with your spouse with anyone else. If you do, then the relationship is greatly harmed.

            Over the last two weeks, we’ve been talking about sharing our faith in Christ with others—inviting them to enjoy the same kind of relationship with God that we enjoy. Today, we’re going to see that there is one sense in which our relationship with God cannot be shared with anyone else—that is in God’s role as our Lord or Master. God alone must occupy that role in our lives. Yes, we do have lesser authorities that we’re called to obey, like your boss or our leaders in government. But as far as our highest allegiance is concerned, that is to be given to God and God alone.

            It’s fitting that I mentioned marriage a moment ago when talking about this kind of allegiance, because all through the Bible, God compares His relationship with us to that of a husband to his bride. A husband and wife are supposed to give each other exclusive devotion on a number of levels; thus, that relationship is a fitting comparison for our relationship with God. That illustration also helps us understand one of the most unusual claims about God that we read in the Bible.

The Jealousy of God

            You don’t have to read very far into the Bible before you encounter this odd-sounding claim that God is a jealous God. For example, in Exodus 20, where we find the Ten Commandments, we read these words in verses 4-6 [READ vv. 4-6].

            The gears of our minds almost come to a grinding halt when we hear God call himself a jealous God. We don’t know what to make of that because we normally think of jealousy as being always and only bad. So then how could God call himself jealous?

            To make sense of this, we need to understand that at its root, jealousy is simply a passionate desire to possess something or to see something come about. The question that makes all the difference is this – do you have a right to the thing that you desire to possess? If you do and you are deprived of that thing, then your response could be called a godly jealousy. If you do not have a right to it, that’s when your desire becomes a sinful jealousy.

            A good illustration of a godly jealousy could be when a wife discovers that her husband has been unfaithful to her. She has an exclusive right to her husband’s affection, so when that right is violated, she has a natural and appropriate complaint about that. Now we might call her reaction a number of things – anger, devastation, disappointment – but we could call it a godly jealousy.

            As far as God is concerned, he has the right to receive our worship and obedience. He is our Creator and the one who keeps us alive for every moment that we are given in this life. Not only that, he is also our Savior, the one who has so graciously delivered us from the penalty of our sins. For all of this, he deserves to be the unrivaled master over our lives.

            When we do not treat him as such, he appropriately takes offense at that. But remember – this is not the same kind of petty offense taken by the person who doesn’t get the new pair of shoes that they wanted. This is the same kind of offense taken by someone who is denied justice, or by the woman whose marital rights are taken from her and given to another.

            The Lord warns us in this passage and others that when we spurn him as the unrivaled master of our lives, the consequences may appropriately be quite severe. Notice how the Lord states in verse five that he “[visits] the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” The consequences of our sins may affect our grandchildren’s children, and whether or not that will happen is up to God. In his grace, he so rarely gives us the full brunt of what our sins deserve, but he has the right to do so if he deems it necessary.

            But to no one’s surprise, we see the grace of God shining out far brighter than his discipline. In verse six he reminds us that he “[shows] steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” That might be better translated “1000 generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” The effects of God’s discipline may last for three or four generations – which is no small thing! – but the echoes of his blessing can sound forth through 1000 generations!

So God has given us fair warning that he is a jealous God. He will not sit idly by as we serve other masters ahead of him.

No One Can Serve Two Masters

            Jesus put this warning in perhaps its most memorable form in the Sermon on the Mount. In the context of talking about money and wealth, he said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24).”

            We could put many things in that statement and the principle would be just the same. The Lord could have said, “You cannot serve God and popularity,” or “You cannot serve God and personal comfort.”

            Remember that the Lord is talking about our highest allegiance. I am supposed to serve others in love, but that’s because God tells me to, and he is my highest master. I am supposed to serve my family, but that’s because God tells me to, and he is the Lord of lords – he is my highest authority.

The Danger of Idolatry

            Any time that we fail to give God our highest allegiance, we are engaging in idolatry, even though we may not normally think of our actions in those terms. We may understand that our actions have been sinful, but we don’t think of them as being instances of idolatry, though in fact they truly are.

            The reason that we can overlook idolatry in our own lives is that we associate idolatry with false worship, but our definition of worship is far too narrow. We normally think of worship as praying to something or singing a song of praise to it or literally bowing down to it and paying homage to it. So we don’t think we’ve ever worshiped our wealth because we’ve never sang a song of praise to our wallets. We don’t think we’ve ever worshiped our friends because we’ve never seated them on a chair in front of us and bowed down to them.

            But at its root, the idea of worship is simply the idea of assigning value to something. Whenever you have treated something as if it is more valuable than anything else in your life, you have worshiped it and you have committed idolatry, because you have given that thing the position in your heart that belongs to God alone.

Diagnosing Idolatry

            With that understanding of worship in mind, we can begin to diagnose idolatry that might be hiding within our own hearts. Let me present some questions that I believe can be very penetrating and very helpful for exposing idolatry.

1. Who am I willing to disappoint by my decisions?

            If I’m in a position where my decision is going to disappoint either God or other people, who am I willing to disappoint? To put it another way, am I willing to disobey God in order to go along with other people – or to impress others or to be popular? If I am willing to disobey God in those moments, that means I value the approval of others more than the approval of God. That means I am worshiping the approval of others and thus committing idolatry.

            If you find yourself in that position, you have to ask, “Why do I place such a high value on the approval of others?” It may be due to fear. If we lose the approval of others, they may reject us, and we may fear the thought of being lonely or the thought of suffering for our faith.

            It may be that you so highly value the approval of others because of a faulty view of who you are in Christ. You may tie your self-esteem to what other people think of you, when really your personal sense of worth and value should be built on the fact that you are a child of God.

2. Where do I find my sense of security?

            To put this another way, do I value the promises held out by things like money or power more than I value the promises made to me by God? Whose promises do I trust more? Thus, who will I give my highest allegiance to in the hopes that their promises to me will be fulfilled?

            In the time of the Old Testament Kings, the children of Israel repeatedly sought security in other people rather than in the Lord. On several occasions, when rumors of war came up, the kings of Israel or Judah would put themselves under the protection of a foreign nation, even though the Lord was promising to protect them. A few times, they even took some of the treasures in the Temple and gave them to foreign nations in order to buy their protection. They clearly did not value the promises of God the way they should have.

            In our lives today, we are bombarded constantly by the nearly overwhelming temptation to find our security in our wealth. This temptation can lead us to disobey the Lord in a number of ways. We may fail to be generous because we worry about our own futures or we cannot tolerate a change to our own standard of living. We may go along with unethical behavior on the job because we say, “I don’t know what I’d do without my benefits,” or “I’m just a few years away from retirement. This is no time for me to be rocking the boat.”

            So let’s all ask ourselves – do I value the promises held out to me by my savings account more than I value the promises held out to me by God? Do I value the promises held out to me by my standard of living more than I value the promises held out to me by God? If we have to answer “yes” to those questions, then we are idolaters.

3. What are my dreams for the future?

            Does my highest goal look exactly the same as that of someone who does not know Christ? Can my highest goal be accomplished in this life, or can it only be achieved when I see Jesus?

            Please understand I’m talking about your highest goal. We naturally share a lot of desires with unbelievers simply because we’re human beings. We all want to see our children grow up healthy and have everything they need. We would all prefer to live in comfort rather than hardship. I’m talking about the goal that is in the driver’s seat – the goal for which you are willing to allow other goals to fall by the wayside.

            Do I value worldly goals more than the goals given to me by God? Godly goals would be carrying out the Great Commission, storing up treasures for ourselves in heaven rather than on earth, and so on.

            It is painful to admit, but we have all been idolaters at one point or another. If you really want to press this thought, you could say that every instance of sin is an instance of idolatry because you’ve chosen to value something else more than you value obedience to God.

            The Bible cannot be more clear on this point – you cannot serve two masters. To serve anything else above God will provoke his holy jealousy and we will face his discipline for that. The only question is, to what degree?

            But the very God who is a jealous God is jealous because he is loving. He will not allow us to harm ourselves through idolatry without opposing our actions. And when we come to our senses and repent of our idolatrous ways, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. May we forsake all our idols today through the power of God’s Holy Spirit so that we may give God our highest allegiance, and no one else.

A Father's Love for Rebellious Children--Isaiah Series

Every parent’s greatest nightmare is that their children will one day stop listening to them, stop responding to their discipline, and rebel against them. Most of us have seen others go through this heart-wrenching experience, and it can give us an almost irrational fear that its going to happen to us. Yet we have also seen enough of these situations to know that rebellion does not have to be the last chapter in that parent-child relationship. Reconciliation can occur, and it can lead to blessings that no one ever could have imagined. Throughout Scripture, God is often pictured as the Father of His people, so it should be no surprise that the Bible also pictures sin as an act of rebellion by a child against his parent. Isaiah 28-31 pictures the people of Israel as children who have rebelled against their Father, God. These chapters describe a list of sins that have come between God and His people, and this list can be very informative for us as we assess our behavior. What had pulled the children of Israel away from their Father? 1. Drunkenness (28:1-8) The impairment of judgment that comes from being drunk is an open invitation for sinful decisions. Back in chapter 5, God had pronounced doom on those who were pursuing alcohol, and now he visits this subject again [READ 28:1-8]. Notice how even those people who were supposed to be spiritual leaders were giving in to drunkenness. Isaiah mentions the priests and the prophets—referring here to the false prophets whom the people listened to because they told the people what they wanted to hear. So the people were being led by others who had their own judgment impaired by drunkenness. According to Scripture, drunkenness is a sin in its own right, but it also leaves us vulnerable to all kinds of temptations and sinful behaviors. Since our hearts are naturally inclined toward sin, we have to be sober and have our wits about us in order to be on guard against the sinful impulses that naturally arise within our hearts. That’s why drunkenness is so serious—it impairs our ability to think and thus counteract the sinful impulses that we have. Ephesians 5:18 says, “do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery,” which means a departure from the path of virtue. The Greek word behind that translation emphasizes recklessness and carelessness. Getting drunk is a reckless choice because it leaves us vulnerable to all kinds of temptations. The alternative, according to Ephesians 5:18, is to be filled with the Spirit. Rather than hand control of ourselves over to alcohol, we need to hand control of ourselves over to the Holy Spirit—to ask Him to empower us to make good judgments. By and large, our culture is far too casual about consuming something as powerful as alcohol. Advertisers spend millions upon millions of dollars to convince us that alcohol is the key to having a good time—just crack open a cold one and let the good times roll! But the Bible sobers us up about the dangers of alcohol. We must be very wise about how we handle something with such potential for danger. 2. An unwillingness to listen to Him (28:9-13, 30:8-11) How often do we see this attitude in our own children? They are unwilling to take our advice, and since we’ve been at this thing called “life” longer than they have, we know they are making a bad decision, but we just can’t get them to listen to us. We can actually adopt the same kind of attitude toward God, as the children of Israel had in Isaiah’s time [READ 30:8-11]. Now God was obviously describing the people’s attitude in these verses, not their actual words, because no one knowingly asks for false things to be taught to them. But these verses point out the deceptive nature of messages that come from the world rather than from God. The people wanted to hear “smooth things,” as it says in v. 10—things that go down easy, things that are easy to accept and pleasant to hear. God’s message through Isaiah was one of repentance and warnings about punishment, but the people didn’t want to hear that because it told them they were wrong and they needed to change. When we are presented with one message which tells us that we are wrong and another message that tells us that we are right, we want to believe the message which tells us that we are right because its much easier to accept. Its hard to admit that you’re wrong—that pill doesn’t go down smooth; that pill is a hard one to swallow. In chapter 28, we read that some of the people mocked Isaiah’s message as being too childish and unsophisticated [READ 28:9-10]. In Hebrew, the repetition of those words creates an effect that just sounds like a baby babbling (Sav lasav, sav lasav, Kav lakav, kav lakav, Ze' er sham, ze' er sham). So these scoffers were saying that Isaiah’s message from God was nothing more than baby talk. How ironic that they would reject a message from God as mere baby talk, because in the Gospels Jesus tells us “whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:4). They said the message was only fit for children, and ironically, they were correct in a way. How do we get to the point where we look down our noses at the Word of God? How do we lose our child-like faith in the Bible? Right now, we are teaching Adrianna that little song that says, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” How do we lose that simple trust in God’s Word? Well, it starts as we grow up. We start to learn more and more things, and before long we’re feeling pretty smart. We don’t feel like we need God’s advice as much because we think we’re starting to figure everything out. Then we hear criticisms about the Bible from so-called experts and we don’t want to be weird, so we tone down our confidence in the Bible. At that point, we no longer consult the Bible for all matters of life and faith, and the culture continues to tell us that the Bible is a wonderfully inspirational read, but its teachings just aren’t relevant for today. So our child-like faith gets undermined from within as we become wise in our own eyes and from without as we are pressured to conform to the wisdom of this world. And as all parents know, when your children won’t listen to good advice, there’s nothing left but for them to learn the hard way. I don’t believe God desires to teach us the hard way, but Hebrews 12 reminds us that He will discipline us when need be because He loves us and He wants to restore us to a place of blessing. 3. Hypocrisy (29:13-14) For all of the criticisms of the people of Israel that we have read in this book, we must remember that they were still very religious. They hadn’t abandoned the feasts and the sacrifices that God called for in the Law of Moses, but unfortunately their actions no longer flowed from hearts that were devoted to God. They were simply going through the motions, following traditions which they had been taught. Look at 29:13-14. The Lord Jesus quoted v. 13 in the Gospels to describe the Pharisees [READ 29:13-14]. What a sad consequence that we read of in v. 14. When God looked at the hearts of His people, He could see that they really didn’t want to hear what He had to say, so He was going to make them numb to His message. It is truly sad when people fall into hypocrisy because they are deceiving themselves. They think everything is okay between them and God because they are keeping up an outward conformity to His commands, but they are not allowing the purifying power of God’s Word to penetrate their hearts. Because our hearts are inclined toward sin, hypocrisy is a major threat to all of us—even if we only succumb to little bouts of it here and there. This threat is all the more real after we have established good spiritual habits in our lives, because habits can easily slip into rituals which we can mindlessly perpetuate. Hypocrisy can also be reinforced in a church setting in which church members are condemning toward each other and unwilling to admit their own faults. In these settings, we want to put up a good front for the people at church no matter what our lives are really like, and if we do that long enough we can convince ourselves that the good front is reality. The remedy for hypocrisy is integrity, where we have every part of our lives pointing in the same direction. Hypocrisy offers no rest for our souls because there is always tension from the various parts of our lives that are going in different directions, but integrity offers the sweet peace of a life that is wholly devoted to God. 4. A belief that God didn’t know their actions (29:15-16) Do you remember when you were a child and you just couldn’t figure out how your parents always knew what you were up to—especially when you were doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing? We never realized how obvious our behavior was, nor did we know about the advanced network of spies that our parents had around the neighborhood in other parents. Somehow it just never occurred to us that parents talked to each other about what we were up to! We read in chapter 29 that the children of Israel had a faulty understanding of God which led them to believe that God didn’t know everything that was going on. If you’ve ever been tempted to think that doctrine and theology are boring and irrelevant for daily life, here is yet another reminder that nothing could be further from the truth. Bad theology had given the children of Israel a twisted way of thinking, which led to an ungodly way of living [READ 29:15-16]. The children of Israel in the Old Testament lived during a time of widespread idolatry—some of which they bought into themselves. Idols were commonly thought to be localized gods who had authority over a certain area—like the mountains or the oceans—or a certain aspect of nature—like the harvest or fertility. The common denominator is that all of these idols were thought to have some kind of limits on their power, and it seems that the children of Israel had allowed that kind of thinking to influence the way they thought about their God—the one true God. Now I doubt that we would fall into this exact temptation, because I think most of us understand that God is everywhere and He knows everything. But I suspect that we could fall into a mindset in which we think that God doesn’t care about all aspects of our lives in the same way or He doesn’t care about every moment of our lives in the same way. We tend to think that certain moments or certain events in our lives are more important than others, so we might let “little” sins or “tiny” bad habits persist in our lives because we don’t think they are “that BIG of a deal.” But I don’t think God looks at our lives in quite the same way. He knows that every moment of life is significant and every choice we make is significant. He doesn’t pay attention to certain parts of our lives more than others—He cares about them all, so we must as well! 5. Looking for protection in other people rather than Him (30:1-5, 31:1-3) At this period of time, Assyria was becoming a major threat to the other nations of the Middle East—much like Iran today. All of the nations in the Middle East today must decide how they will protect themselves, and Israel in Isaiah’s day had to make the same decision. But rather than simply trust in the promises of protection that God had already given to them, the leaders of Israel chose to seek for an alliance with Egypt, displaying an unfortunate lack of trust in God [READ 30:1-5, 31:1-3]. On a personal level for us today, we don’t have many concerns about our safety, and that is a tremendous blessing. But God calls on us to trust in Him during droughts, during economic downturns, during times of personal suffering and at all other moments in our lives. The question that is ever before is this—will we trust God to be in control or will we try to control our own situations through some sinful means? Will we choose to trust God’s promises or will we not? The children of Israel at that were living like rebellious children against God their Father, but like any loving parent, God was ready to forgive His people and bless them once again [READ 30:18-22]. My friend, are you living in rebellion against God today? He is waiting for you; He is listening to hear your voice. He is ready to forgive you the moment that you repent of your sins and ask His forgiveness. Do not delay another day—run into the open arms of God your Father!