WHOM WILL YOU SERVE? by Mary E. Doble

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 7, 1877

WHOM WILL YOU SERVE?

By Mary E. Doble

“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.” Matt. 6:24. A master is one whom we serve, either as a willing servant, or a bond servant. We cannot be a devoted servant to two masters, however near alike they may be; for while our time is employed in serving one, we must neglect the other. And if we cannot serve as masters two men, who may be very near alike, how utterly impossible it is for us to serve God and mammon! therefore, as we cannot serve both, we must serve one or the other alone. Mammon, which is riches or the lust of this world, has a great many subjects. “The love of money is the root of all evil.” 1 Tim. 6:10.

If we are employed in the service of God we must serve him with our whole heart. We may not serve God awhile, and sin awhile, for such service is not acceptable in his sight. But what is it to serve God? Is it to spend our time, our talent, and our money for improper and needless food to satisfy our pampered appetites, for that which only feeds the craving and makes it harder to be resisted than before? Is it to spend our time in the pursuit of foolish literature, which only poisons the mind? or is it to be devoted to the service of that powerful goddess, fashion, who has no power save through our weakness, who through that weakness is mighty?

Is this the service of God? Is not this the service in which a great many of us who are professing to be the servants of God are engaged? Let us look to this thing. We may think we serve God. We may pray sometimes, we may read the Bible, we may attend public worship, and we may give a small portion of our substance to the support of the gospel; but is it not too much our aim to get something good to eat, and something nice to wear? This is certainly not the Bible standard for serving God. Then what is? “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

This visiting of the fatherless and widows is a duty easy to be understood; but the duty to keep ourselves unspotted from the world is very broad. Now what is meant here by the world? Christ says, “I pray not for the world, but for those thou hast chosen out of the world.” Then the world are those that God has not chosen. God has not chosen the rich of this world, but the poor, being rich in faith. Then those that are not rich in faith, are called the world. These are they which are engaged in sin instead of the service of God. Then to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, we must not engage in the sins of the world. There are sins of commission, and also of omission. We are not only to restrain from doing evil, but we are to do good. Meroz was cursed because the inhabitants came not up to the help of the Lord. So will it be with us if we stand idle. Christ says, Go labor in my vineyard; and the apostle says, As much as in you lies, do good to all men; and also, He which converteth a sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from death. How can we expect to hear the “well done” if we have not been faithful?

Let us consider this matter, and see whom we had better serve. If mammon be our god, and we must serve it, there is no use in trying to serve the living God, for we cannot serve both; but if the Lord be our God, let us serve him, that we may not hear the sentence, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

MARY E. DOBLE.