Two Masters | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 23.

Two Masters.

“No MAN,” says our Lord, “can serve two masters.” And yet how to do this is the problem that multitudes are attempting to solve. The effort in this direction has, in all ages, culminated in a false spirituality which has been a curse to those attempting it, to the church in which it is developed, and to the world at large. The word of the Lord is that there shall be an absolute break with the god of this world, who rules through the flesh, and an entire and utter consecration to him who rules through the spirit. “If the Lord be God, follow him.” There can be no middle ground. God will accept no compromise on this point. By this, we do not mean that God accepts no one in whom there is any sin, no one who is not perfectly and utterly separated from the lusts of the flesh; for that would cut every man off who is trying to serve him. There is a vast difference between imperfect service and a deliberate purpose to serve two masters,—a deliberate compromise with the world, the flesh, and the devil. This double-mindedness in the service of God, this spirit of compromise, this false spirituality, has been the object of God’s wrath in all ages, and under every dispensation. Moreover, it is the way of death to all who walk in it. It deludes and deceives in life, and the end thereof is death.

The attempt to combine and harmonize the worship and service of God with our own natural desires and worldly plans is characteristic of a false spirituality. Men who are but half-hearted always attempt to please two masters. They desire to secure the favor of God, and at the same time to save and gratify the flesh. The Bible affords abundant illustrations of this principle. Cain was the first example of those who try to combine natural and spiritual worship,—to serve God and yet to protect and gratify the flesh. He brought of the fruit of the ground instead of the flock. He did not refuse to sacrifice, but he did not see the necessity of offering up a life. It seemed to him that fruit was as good as life. Thus he acted according to his own thought and desire rather than in accordance with God’s word. It is this intrusion of our own ideas and thoughts into the revelation of God, or rather the substitution of our thoughts for God’s word, that lies at the bottom of all false spirituality.

When the earth was well peopled, and there was a clear line between the worshippers of the true God and the unbelieving class, the sons of God began to intermarry with the daughters of men. Thus they tried to gratify their desires among those who were fair to see, and at the same time continue in the service of God. The result was the worst apostasy the world ever knew. God found it necessary to call Abraham out of his country and away from his people in order to train him and his descendants in a separated and spiritual life in which he should be seen and worshiped as the one supreme Master of all. Lot failed in maintaining a purely spiritual life by first pitching his tent toward Sodom, and finally going into the city to live. No doubt he thought he would be able to maintain a loyal service to God even while he was profiting after the flesh by a partnership in the well-watered plains round and about the commercial advantages and worldly honors of Sodom. No wonder he “vexed his righteous soul,” and was saved from that place of sin and compromise only “so as by fire.”

Moses saw the impossibility of holding a feast to the Lord in Egypt; for to do so would be to sacrifice to the abomination of the Egyptians; so he insisted on an entire separation, and went out of the land of Egypt, not leaving a hoof behind.

Balaam, on the other hand, is a perfect illustration of the double-minded man, who tried to preserve standing with God, and at the same time accommodate Balak and fill his own coffers with the gold of God’s enemy. Fear of God and covetous desire after this world contended for the mastery, and he tried to arrange a compromise. He desired the favor of God, and yet was unwilling to forego the advantages and pleasures of this world. He saw the advantages of righteousness, but did not have the courage to go over entirely to the Lord’s side. He desired to live like a sinner, and yet die like a saint. This was an effort to solve the problem of how to serve two masters. We know how he fared.

Moses, on the other hand, saw that if he was to serve God at all, he must forego not only Egypt, but the pleasures of sin and the riches of his Egyptian inheritance. He did not hesitate to make the choice as soon as he saw the issue. Joshua dealt with this same question in his farewell address to the children of Israel, “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.” This was the ground of Elijah’s controversy with Ahab on Mount Carmel. Baal and God could not both share the throne of Israel’s heart. If the Lord was God, then he must be served and Baal cast off; if Baal was God, then serve him and cast off Jehovah altogether. Since the days of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, Israel had tried to worship God, and yet serve Baal. It was this persistent tendency in Israel to compromise the pure service of Jehovah with the worship of Baal that, after long and patient effort to recover them, led God to give them over to captivity. We do not read of their return to idols after the captivity, but the principle of double-minded service and mammon worship appeared in the Phariseeism and formalism which our Lord found in Jerusalem when he came, and which he so unsparingly denounced. There was a great pretense of serving God; but underneath it and along with it was the “evil eye,” the covetous and carnal ambition after the wealth, the pleasures, and power of this world.

Dare we say that this false spirituality, this attempt to serve two masters, has been eradicated from the purer and more spiritual constitution of the Christian church? Is it not this double-mindedness as to God and mammon that is our curse and paralysis to-day? “The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. . . . 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.”

What shall we say to these things? Mammon enriches his thousands, and damns his ten thousands. Far be it from any servant of him who came “to destroy the works of the devil” to attempt to compromise with the devil for any portion of the world.—Independent.