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.

What's the Connection Between the Lord's Supper and the Jewish Feast of Passover?--Understanding the Lord's Supper series

Recently, some people in our area had the opportunity to re-live a bit of the past at an old-fashioned harvest that used antique farming equipment and techniques. There is something special about re-living scenes from the past, whether it’s a Civil War re-enactment, a Renaissance festival, or an antique harvest.

Every time we observe the Lord’s Supper, we are re-living a scene from the past. We are re-enacting something that our Lord Himself did with His disciples, but our observance also has a connection to another ancient, biblical meal—the Passover Feast of the Old Testament. The gospel accounts tell us that when Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, he did so during a Passover meal. He was re-interpreting the Passover Feast and applying its picture of sacrifice and salvation to His own upcoming death, which was a sacrifice for our sins.

So today we’re going to answer the question, “What’s the connection between the Lord’s Supper and the Jewish Feast of Passover?” The elements of that feast foreshadowed the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus, and we can draw some amazing parallels by looking at it.

We’re going to look at the instructions that God gave to the Jewish people for the very first Passover meal, which they ate on the night that God set them free from their slavery in Egypt. Turn with me to Exodus 12, and follow with me as I read the first 13 verses [READ Ex. 12:1–13].

Let’s look at some ways that this meal points toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

I. Its primary place in the Jewish calendar (vv. 1–2)

While the Jews were slaves in Egypt, they probably didn’t have the freedom to follow a calendar of their own or to set their own schedule in any sense. But when God spoke these words, He was about to make the children of Israel a free people—free to govern themselves and to organize themselves as a nation. As part of their freedom, God said they were going to have a new calendar—their own calendar, their own way of keeping track of time.

God told them that this month in which the Passover was going to take place would be the first month for their new calendar. Its like God was saying, “I’m about to give you a new history as a people, and you need a new calendar to mark the occasion.” And the focal point of their new history would be their deliverance from Egypt. It would be the basis for their new lives, all the way down to the way that they organized their calendar.

There are some obvious parallels for our lives in this observation. Today, through Jesus Christ, we celebrate our deliverance from our spiritual slavery to sin, and even though our society doesn’t base its calendar on Good Friday and Easter, our lives are to be based on those events. As Paul says in Colossians 3, we are to think of ourselves as having died and risen with Christ, so that we are now supposed to live a whole new kind of life. We have a new history thanks to the freedom from our sins that we enjoy in Jesus Christ.

II. The selection of a Passover sacrifice (vv. 3–6)

Verses 3–6 describe the process of selecting an animal to serve as the Passover sacrifice. The people were to select a year-old male animal—either a lamb or a goat—and this animal would then be sacrificed and put to two uses—its body would be eaten to provide nourishment for the family, and its blood would be used to provide deliverance for the family. We’ll talk more about the blood in just a moment, but for now let’s focus on the animal’s body.

Verse 4 says that the animal should be “without blemish,” which means that by all appearances, it was to be perfect. It was to be strong and healthy rather than sick or weak; it was to be without any sort of physical defect such as blindness or a deformed limb. It was to be perfect because it was being offered to the Lord, and its blood would provide deliverance for the family.

Likewise, our Lord Jesus was a perfect, sinless sacrifice for our sins. In the New Testament, Peter reminds us that we were not ransomed with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot (1 Peter 1:18–19). So Jesus was like a Passover lamb for us—He was a perfect sacrifice, and thus His blood was able to deliver us from the wrath of God.

The Passover sacrifice also provided nourishment for the family as they ate it, and likewise, Jesus provides spiritual nourishment for us so that our spiritual needs are met. Just listen to the following statements from Jesus Himself:

• John 4:13–14—“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
• John 6:35—“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
• John 6:51a–b—“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.
• Matthew 11:28—“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Just as the Passover sacrifice provided physical nourishment for those who ate it, so our Lord provides spiritual nourishment through His sacrifice for those who accept Him.

III. The unleavened bread (v. 8)

Unleavened bread is bread that has no yeast in it, and so the bread would not rise during baking—it would remain flat. The traditional unleavened bread that the Jews baked is similar to a saltine cracker in its appearance and texture. The reason that they were to use unleavened bread in this meal is because on that Passover night in Egypt, they would be leaving immediately after God struck down the firstborn of every family in Egypt; they wouldn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise. That’s also why God told them to eat with their belts on, their sandals on, and a walking staff in their hands—they were going to eat and run, because God was about to set them free!

So in the original Passover Feast, the significance of the unleavened bread was that the Jews’ salvation from slavery was going to be sudden and dramatic. Jesus didn’t quite emphasize that same idea in the Lord’s Supper; instead, He used the bread to represent His body, which would be offered as a sacrifice for us. But it is safe to say that His sacrifice provided salvation for us in a dramatic fashion.

You may remember that at the moment that Jesus passed away on the cross, the veil in the Temple was torn in two, which revealed that mankind no longer had to be separated from God. Jesus’ sacrifice for us removed the barrier of sin that created a separation between God and man, and we no longer had to be held captive in our slavery to sin. So Jesus’ sacrificial death in our place did provide a dramatic deliverance!

IV. The blood of the Passover sacrifice (v. 7, 13)

Perhaps the most significant element of the Passover observance was the blood of the sacrifice. It was the blood that provided salvation from the wrath of God that was expressed in this final plague that killed every firstborn man and animal in Egypt. God told the children of Israel to put some of the blood from the sacrifice on the top and on the two sides of the doorframe of the door that led into their homes, and He said that the plague would pass over every home where the blood had been applied; the families in those homes would be spared from losing their firstborn. When the people put the blood on their homes as God had said, it was obviously an expression of their faith in God; it demonstrated that they believed His promise.

The authors of the New Testament unanimously and repeatedly state that it is the blood of Christ that provides salvation for us from our sins:

• Peter—1 Peter 1:18–19
• Paul
o Acts 20:28—“the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”
o Eph. 1:7—“In [Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses”
• John
o 1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus…cleanses us from all sin”
o Rev. 1:5—“to [Jesus] who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood…to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
• The author of Hebrews
o Heb. 9:11–12—“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come…he entered once for all into the holy places…by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.”

In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus used a cup of wine to represent His blood. Now back in Exodus 12, the people weren’t commanded to have a cup of wine with this meal, but most likely they did, just as we always have something to drink with our meals, whether we are enjoying a banquet or eating a bologna sandwich! But by the time that Jesus was on the earth, a cup of wine had become a formal part of the Passover Feast through Jewish tradition, so Jesus used the dark red color of the wine as a very natural symbol for His blood.

And so, when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together, we are remembering—and in a small way re-living—these events of sacred history that remind us of the sweet salvation that we enjoy through Christ. Just as the children of Israel were saved from their slavery in Egypt, we have been saved from our slavery to sin. Just as the Passover was the start of a new life for Israel, so our salvation is the start of a new life for us lived in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. Just as the Passover lamb was a perfect sacrifice, without any blemish, so Jesus was a sinless, perfect sacrifice for us. Just as the bread meant a dramatic deliverance for the Jews, so the sacrifice of Jesus’ body means a dramatic salvation for us. And just as the blood of the Passover lamb saved the people from the wrath of God that was poured out in that plague, so the blood of Jesus saves us from the wrath of God that has been aroused by our sins. So as we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we join a crowd of saints from across the centuries who have celebrated God’s salvation with a sacred meal.